Overview
- Offers an intellectual biography of Zimmern by examining the entire development of his thought in the first half of the twentieth century
- Utilizes source material from British, American and French archives as well as the bulk of Zimmern’s published writings
- Shows the distinctive ways in which Zimmern combined diverse and disparate ideological sources, including Edmund Burke, Ahad Ha’am, Horace Kellen, St. Augustine and Henri Bergson
- Highlights the unique features of Zimmern’s ideas vis-à-vis other key British internationalists such as J.A. Hobson and Lionel Curtis as well as important IR thinkers like Hans Morgenthau
Part of the book series: The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought (PMHIT)
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About this book
This book is a comprehensive examination into the shifting international thought of Alfred Zimmern, a Grecophile intellectual, one of the most prominent liberal internationalists and the world’s first professor of IR. Identifying the writings of Burke and cultural Zionism as two important ideological sources that defined his project for empire and global order, this book argues that Zimmern can best be understood as an apostle of Commonwealth. It shows that while his proposals changed from cosmopolitan democracy to Euro-Atlanticism and to world federal government, they were constantly shaped by the organizing principles of a professedly universal British Commonwealth. It was the empire transhistorically chained to classical Athens.
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Keywords
Table of contents (6 chapters)
Reviews
“Baji’s work is a well written study into one of the early practitioners of International Relations. As the discipline faces its own imperial past, it is necessary to look again at these early figures. These were men who had complex relationships with imperialism, racial hierarchy, democracy, liberalism and the discipline’s self-anointed mission of establishing world peace. Through Baji’s study on Alfred Zimmern we can see how these influences intermingled, contradicted each other and informed the first years of the discipline. For anyone interested in the early years of International Relations or interwar politics this book is a vital resource.” (Benjamin Whitlock, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in The Round Table)
“In this excellent book, Tomohito Baji offers a comprehensive and original account of Alfred Zimmern's political thought. Baji ranges widely, covering all phases of Zimmern's extraordinary career, and demonstrating the thread of continuity running through his influential work on ancient history, his contributions to IR, and his arguments about religion, empire, race, citizenship, and the nature of political community. Erudite and insightful, this is an admirable contribution to the history of international thought.” (Duncan Bell, Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK)
“Alfred E. Zimmern was one of the most important international thinkers of the twentieth century – and one of the most far-ranging. Trained as a classicist, he became an advocate for both the Commonwealth of Nations and Zionism, a prominent internationalist, and a designer of a proposed global constitution. This perceptive book analyses the underpinnings and evolution of Zimmern’s ideas, drawing deeply on his published work and his papers.” (Ian Hall, Professor of International Relations, Griffith Asia Institute, Australia)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Tomohito Baji is Associate Professor in the History of Political and Social Thought at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Japan. His articles have appeared in Modern Intellectual History and the History of European Ideas as well as the several journals of Japanese academic associations.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The International Thought of Alfred Zimmern
Book Subtitle: Classicism, Zionism and the Shadow of Commonwealth
Authors: Tomohito Baji
Series Title: The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66214-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-66213-4Published: 12 March 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-66216-5Published: 13 March 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-66214-1Published: 11 March 2021
Series ISSN: 2690-5825
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5226
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 232
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations
Topics: International Relations Theory, Political Theory, British Politics