Cultured Force

Bridging the gap between intellectual history/biography and military/colonial history, Barnett Singer and John Langdon provide a revisionist and very readable interpretation of Western and French imperialism and its leading figures from its beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the Fifth Republic. They ask us to rethink and reevaluate modern imperialism, pulling away from the current politically-correct condemnation of it. Instead they argue that "imperialism" came in many forms and figures and that it was not always necessarily a "bad" thing or the "same" thing. In a series of biographical case studies they show that imperialism was not monolithic. They offer what they hope is a more balanced portrait of imperialism and imperialists - demonstrating that it had a paradoxical mix of positive and negative outcomes. The book mixes military and cultural history with a strong bibliography, attractive photos, and an interesting biographical focus.