The International Thought of Alfred Zimmern

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.

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

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt
Chapter 1. An Apostle of Commonwealth: Introduction.- Chapter 2. Empire and Classical Republicanism.- Chapter 3. Zionist Internationalism.- Chapter 4. A Turn: From Global Reformism to Euro-Atlanticism.- Chapter 5. Nuclear One-Worldism.- Chapter 6. Postscript.