Resistance and the Imperial Network

Abstract

To understand resistance to informal empire we must understand resistance to rationalization. Finding opposing strands to this rationalization is not difficult to do, as long as one does not expect consistency or agreement among the parties concerned. Resistance, if it has a common thread, often opposed the ideals of the Enlightenment and the sweeping changes that these ideals wreaked on traditional society. This is complicated by the fact that the English, Scottish and French thinkers of the Enlightenment do not offer a consistent, let alone always coherent, body of thought. Also many of the strongest critics of the Enlightenment have simultaneously been considered iconic figures of the very same movement, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) with his anti-democratic idea of the ‘general will’ overriding popular vote. In the twentieth century many ‘reactionary’ forces pulled inspiration from the mass politics initiated by the egalitarian French Revolution and merged mass democracy with an atavistic militant and aristocratic tradition.