作者简介

曼特娜（Karuna Mantena），哈佛大学政治理论专业博士，耶鲁大学政治科学系副教授。长期致力于近代政治思想、近代社会理论、帝国理论和历史、南亚政治和历史方面的研究，近期的学术兴趣主要集中于政治现实主义和圣雄甘地的政治思想，代表作有《帝国的辩解：梅因与自由帝国主义的终结》。

译者简介

何俊毅，甘肃省兰州人，法学博士，现任教于西北师范大学法学院。近年来致力于西方法理学、立法学方面的理论研究和教学工作，在《读书》等期刊上发表学术论文数篇。

"Alibis of Empire" presents a novel account of the origins, substance, and afterlife of late imperial ideology. Karuna Mantena challenges the idea that Victorian empire was primarily legitimated by liberal notions of progress and civilization. In fact, as the British Empire gained its farthest reach, its ideology was being dramatically transformed by a self-conscious rejection of the liberal model. The collapse of liberal imperialism enabled a new culturalism that stressed the dangers and difficulties of trying to 'civilize' native people. And, hand in hand with this shift in thinking was a shift in practice toward models of indirect rule. As Mantena shows, the work of Victorian legal scholar Henry Maine was at the center of these momentous changes. "Alibis of Empire" examines how Maine's sociotheoretic model of 'traditional' society laid the groundwork for the culturalist logic of late empire. In charting the movement from liberal idealism, through culturalist explanation, to retroactive alibi within nineteenth-century British imperial ideology, "Alibis of Empire" unearths a striking and pervasive dynamic of modern empire.