Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of
Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.
In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John
Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply
to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of
international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not
reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their
minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently
under the influence of distant motives” (“A Few Words on
Intervention,” in Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, ed.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1962).