Empire, liberty and the 'rule of difference'. Anglo-French debates on British colonialism in Asia at the end of the 18th century

This essay explores the several questions raised by the increasing political and administrative presence of the British in India in the second half of the eighteenth century. It tries to connect them to the general context of the debates on European colonialism, its forms and its consequences, not only in the specific perspective of British politics with regard to India but also in terms of some of the basic problems faced by Enlightenment culture with reference to themes like empire, conquest, colonial dominion. The essay tries to elucidate the ideas emerging in the British and European debates out of the necessity of dealing not just with theoretical issues but with practical duties of government and administration in cultural settings entirely different from the European ones. The contributions elaborated in particular in Great Britain and France from the 1770s onwards delineate an approach revealing the sensibility to what can be termed the ‘rule of difference’.