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Richard Whatmore, Daniel I. OʼNeill. Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 302–303, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.302
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What are historians supposed to do in analyzing the past? More particularly, what categories should they employ to scrutinize the thoughts of historical actors? One approach says: why not use our own categories, and look at the past through the lens of the present? Such an approach appears to have immediate advantages. We can evaluate past authors to see how liberal or conservative they were, and perhaps glean lessons for present politics, especially for the current North American imperium. This is the approach Daniel I. OʼNeill adopts in Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire, a clearly written revisionist account of Edmund Burkeʼs political thought. Burke, according to OʼNeill, developed a clever strategy for British politicians when dealing with the constituent elements of their empire. The implication is that contemporary politicians should listen to OʼNeill for his distillation of Burkeʼs lessons.
For OʼNeill, Burke was an enemy of liberalism—defined as the advocacy of democracy, human rights, and gender equality—and a lifelong and coherent supporter of conservatism, meaning, in the case of the British Empire, supporting “landed aristocracy,” social hierarchy, and the “established church” (5). OʼNeill further argues that Burke was both an Orientalist and an Ornamentalist (1–2). O’Neill employs Edward Saidʼs category of Orientalism to explain Burkeʼs view of Africans and Native Americans, whom Burke held to be the “other” and beyond the norms of civilization because of what he saw as their violence and peculiar cultural practices, possibly including the rejection of religion. O’Neill also uses David Cannadineʼs term “Ornamentalism,” the strategy of creating a common culture within an empire, to encompass Burkeʼs view of North American settlers, the inhabitants of Ireland, and aspects of long-standing communities in the various provinces of India (172–173). In other words, Burke perceived certain peoples living within the British Empire to have developed social orders that were parallel to British experience, and ultimately to be capable of becoming part of the same civilization. This led Burke, in turn, to justify the alternative forms of worship and culture to be found within foreign societies, such as Hinduism and Islam in India, and to applaud them for fostering social hierarchy and the forces that made their societies stable. Those beyond the pale were savages and barbarians, to be dealt with accordingly. Burke sought to identify across the British Empire the social groups capable of promoting forms of life that would help to sustain the empire, and advised the government in London to support these groups. Burke, in consequence, wanted the taxation of goods in North America to be reduced or abandoned, productive landowners across India to have their property protected, and the Irish to enjoy life without penal laws and restrictions upon trade. The conservative logic of empire is therefore the strategy of identifying the forces in foreign societies that promote order, and the policy from the metropolis of defending them.
