Colonial Cosmopolitanism: Constance Cumming and Isabella Bird in Hong Kong, 1878

Abstract

Ever since the 1990s, the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ has been reappearing as a critical concept; more precisely, as a ‘new cosmopolitanism’ that is specific to the historical conditions of late twentieth-century/twenty-first-century globalization.¹ Inaugurated in criticism by, among others, Martha Nussbaum, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Appiah, Pheng Cheah, Bruce Robbins, Timothy Brennan and Ian Baucom, the connotations and denotations for cosmopolitanism have ranged widely, from the derogatory to the liberal, and from an actuality to an ideal. To map it broadly, in these debates cosmopolitanism is usually seen as either the false idealism of globalization and cultural logic of neo-imperialism, or as globalization’s critical advantage, namely an ‘ethos that attempts to encompass all humanity while remaining attentive to the pitfalls of humanism’.²