英国における大英帝国史の再編成と新帝国主義論の流行 : ニール・ファーガスンの『帝国』(2003)を中心にして

抄録

Niall Ferguson's book, Empire: How Britain Mede the Modern World (2003) has recently drawn attention. It was based on the namesake TV series (2003) on Britain's Channel 4, highlighting the history of British expansion from its beginning in the 17th century to the devolutions of the 20th century. Ferguson attempts to demonstrate that the British Empire was "a good thing" in spite of its slave trade and ethnic cleansing in the 18th century. He claims that its globalization with gunboats brought democracy and the free market to the world. This, he states, is definitely better than what the evil empires. Germany and Japan, might have done. Contrasting British differences with the evil empires, Empire emphasises the continuity from the British Empire to America, "empire m denial" and suggests that America should "take up the White Man's Burden" to propagate the "Anglo-balization" across the world thoroughly. This paper will put Empire in the context of the UK in 2002-3 when the term "imperialism" was recycled by the so-called "New Imperialists" during the Iraqi crisis while British imperial consciousness was refashioned by the controversy over its colonial past. On this point, Niall Ferguson has played a key role in the following movements: firstly, revision of the British Empire as a beneficial agent of globalization, and secondly, incorporation of Empire history as a GCSE subject. Taking into consideration Ferguson's articles, this paper suggests that he should be a historian counterpart of Robert Cooper, Blair's diplomacy guru. In this sense, Ferguson's academic and journalistic propaganda of new imperialism has a similar purpose as Cooper's strategy concerning Britain's international presence, standing on the shoulders of a giant, not shoulder to shoulder. Almost a century ago when America rose while the British Empire began to decline, Rudyard Kipling emphasised the British blood bondage to America in his "White Man's Burden" (1899). Ferguson's Empire may turn out to be a White Man's Burden for the 2lst century.