If you are having trouble with the NLR website, please provide details here, and we will try to improve the site accordingly.
New Left Review 15, May-June 2002
The sacking of the Emperor’s Summer Palace in Beijing by an Anglo-French expeditionary force was one of the high-points of nineteenth-century imperialism. The lucidity of its perpetrator, Elgin, offers a paradoxical contrast with the chorus of apologists for Anglo-American interventions today.
JOHN NEWSINGER
ELGIN IN CHINA
Imperialism today is emerging, freshly refurbished, as the progressive answer to problems of planetary disorder. Discarding conventional euphemisms, official ideologues and establishment media—from Blair’s former factotum for international security in Prospect, to opinion-makers in the Financial Times and Foreign Affairs—now openly celebrate the return of Western empire across the world. [1] Devoted in the service of human rights and free markets, military operations proceed without compunction for their consequences. As bombs rain down on the civilian populations of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, or Palestinians are buried in their homes, the drawl is at best of ‘collateral damage’—which, indeed, one enthusiast has complained was ‘almost pedantically avoided’ in Operation Enduring Freedom. [2] By comparison with such contemporary sensibility, the frankly colonial warfare of the nineteenth century could at times hold a more honourable record. If its agents were equally certain in the moral superiority of their mission, a few, at least, were troubled by the misery they caused.
|
Subscribe for just £35 and get free access to the archive Please login on the left to read more or buy the article for £3 |
’My institution subscribes to NLR, why can't I access this article?’