ABSTRACT
Anthony Pagden has been among the most important contributors to our thinking about the intellectual history of empires not just the place of colonialism in the history of political theory but also in broader ways. All the later European empires did the best they could to follow at least part of the example Rome had set them. The Spanish and the French both attempted to create something resembling a single society governed by a single body of law. Similarly, the British in India could never have succeeded in seizing control of the former Mughal Empire without the active and sometimes enthusiastic assistance of the emperors’ former subjects. The new imperialism turned out to be very different from the kind of empire of liberty for which Burke and Smith and Mirabeau had argued.
