Lewis Page: “Edmund Burke and the limits of unity: Empire and pluralism beyond the European Commonwealth”

Edmund Burke is often read as a proponent of a substantive model of international legitimacy that prizes the unity and cultural homogeneity of the international order. This article contends that such conceptions derive from a focus on Burke’s notion of the European Commonwealth at the expense of his work on the British Empire. A reading of Burke that proposes a more pluralist conception of his international theory is then developed. By drawing parallels between Burke’s portrayals in Europe and the Americas of the loss of international legitimacy through the loss of “peoplehood,” tracing connections between Burke’s writings on the risks of permanent revolution and unlimited empire in continental Europe, Ireland, and India, and showing how Burke feared the possible moral and political effects of imperial misrule more than he prized the unity of empire in America and India, the article argues that Burke prioritized protecting political order at various scales and preventing perpetual chaos and violence over maintaining or expanding an international order unified by a shared culture.