Book Review: Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century, by Richard Whatmore

• Date: 01 December 2014
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591714549507
• Author: Paul Sagar
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

748
Political Theory 42(6)
diversity of other humans in the world” (p. 7). He explains the historical and
social background for diverse strands of political thought and tries his best to
make the ideas and arguments of all his authors comprehensible. Watanabe
does not hide his own preferences, however, and reveals his commitment to
the universal value of equality, justice, and freedom. His universalist stance
sometimes leads to a somewhat ahistorical perspective, especially when he
deals with ancient Chinese thinkers such as Confucius or Mencius. These
thinkers and their period are not the topic of his book, however, and are
mainly used as illustrations of Watanabe’s central claim that people of all
places and times had similar problems in organizing society and that the pro-
posed solutions to these problems that seem to be completely disparate at first
glance can be seen to share a common ground after more careful analysis.
Watanabe can therefore be understood as continuing the work of two of his
preferred authors, Fukuzawa Yukichi and Nake Chōmin, in trying to show
that political thinkers in the East and in the West are actually only proposing
different expressions of the same universal reason and justice. However a
reader might think about this project, she cannot but profit from Watanabe’s
clear and fresh presentation, from all the information provided in the book
and from its balanced and careful argumentation. The book is therefore highly
recommendable for everybody interested in Japan’s history and political
thought.
Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century, by
Richard Whatmore. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.
Reviewed by: Paul Sagar, King’s College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
DOI: 10.1177/0090591714549507
Richard Whatmore’s ambitious book is a two-track study in political extinc-
tion. At its centre it is an account of the final period of Geneva’s existence as
a truly independent self-governing political entity. By the beginning of the
eighteenth century, Geneva was living on borrowed time. A tiny commercial
republic nestled between the Swiss Cantons and the rising power of France,
this walled city without significant territory had retained its independence
only because the balance of power between France, Switzerland, and...