Civilizing Missions in the Twentieth Century

Rolf Hobson Boris Barth

ISBN 10: 9004436952 / ISBN 13: 9789004436954

Published by Brill Sep 2020, 2020

About this Item

Neuware - The contributions in Civilizing Missions in the Twentieth Century discuss how top-down interventions to 'improve' societies were justified in terms such as nation building, social engineering, humanitarianism, modernization or the spread of democracy.

Seller Inventory # 9789004436954

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Civilizing Missions in the Twentieth Century
• Publisher: Brill Sep 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004436952
• ISBN 13: 9789004436954
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 234W x 155H x 14D millimeters 234 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 14 millimeters depth
• Weight: 517 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The civilizing mission associated with nineteenth-century colonialism became harder to justify after the First World War. In an increasingly anti-imperialist culture, elites reformulated schemes for the “improvement” of “inferior” societies. Nation building, social engineering, humanitarianism, modernization or the spread of democracy were used to justify outside interventions and the top-down transformation of non-western, international or even domestic societies.

The contributions in Civilizing Missions in the Twentieth Century discuss how these justifications influenced Polish nation building, Scandinavian disarmament proposals and technocratic social policies in the interwar years. Treatment of the second half of the century covers the changing cultural context of European humanitarianism, as well as the influence of American social science on US foreign policy, more particularly democracy promotion.

Contributors are: Boris Barth, Rolf Hobson, Jürgen Osterhammel, Frank Ninkovich, Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Esther Moeller, and Jost Dülffer.

About the Author

Prof. Dr. Boris Barth is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Charles University, Prague. He has published monographs and many articles on financial imperialism, the stab-in-the-back legend, genocide, and on the crisis of the European democracies in the inter-war years.

Rolf Hobson is Professor of History at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies and the University of Bergen. He has published studies of modern European political history, war and society and German military history.