Synopses & Reviews
Evil and barbarism continue to be associated with the totalitarian 'extremes' of twentieth-century Europe. Addressing domestic and imperial conflicts in modern Britain and beyond, as well as varied forms of representation, this volume explores the inter-relations of evil, atrocity and civilizational prejudice within liberal cultures of governance.
About the Author
TOM CROOK is Lecturer in Modern British History at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has published in journals such as
Urban History,
Social History and
Journal of Victorian Culture. He is currently working on a book entitled
Time and the Social Body: Public Health and English Modernity, 1830-1910.
REBECCA GILL is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and specialises in the history of humanitarian relief in war. She has published in History Workshop Journal and La Revue Le Mouvement Social, and is currently completing a book entitled Calculating Compassion: British Relief in War, 1870-1914.
BERTRAND TAITHE is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Manchester, UK. He has published widely on France and Britain since 1860, and in particular on war and humanitarianism. His books include Defeated Flesh (1999), Citizenship and Wars (2001), and The Killer Trail (2009). He has also edited French Masculinities (2007) with Christopher Forth for Palgrave Macmillan.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Liberal Civilisation and its Discontents: Evil, Barbarism and Empire; T.Crook, R.Gill & B.Taithe
PART I: METROPOLITAN EVILS
Evil in Question: The Victorian Social and the Politics of Prostitution, 1830-1900; T.Crook
Terror, Spectacle and the Press: Anarchist Outrage in Edwardian England; D.Speicher
'And I am the God of Destruction!': Fu Manchu and the Construction of Asiatic Evil in the Novels of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1912-1939; A.Taylor
PART II: IMPERIAL EVILS
The Politics of Italianism: Reynolds's Newspaper, the Indian Mutiny, and the Radical Critique of Liberal Imperialism in Mid-Victorian Britain; E.F.Biagini
The Victorian Lexicon of Evil: Frederic Harrison, the Positivists and the Language of International Politics; H.S. Jones
PART III: GEOPOLITICS OF EVIL
Evil, Liberalism and the Imperial Designs of the Catholic Church, 1867-1905; B.Taithe
'Now I have seen evil, and I cannot be silent about it': Arnold J. Toynbee and his Encounters with Atrocity, 1915-1923; R.Gill
Atrocity Narratives and Inter-Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of 'Native Races', 1904-1939; C.Twomey
PART IV: AGENTS OF EVIL
Conrad's Horror: Heart of Darkness and the Imaginary of Power; T.Osborne
The Lives of Others: The Defeat of Evil or the Evil of Defeat?; S.McCracken
Islam, Violence and the New Barbarism; T.Jacoby
Index