Globalisms and liberalisms

Scholar Meets Prophet:
Edward Granville Browne and Baha’u’llah (Acre, 1890)

Christopher Buck
Independent Scholar, Pittsburgh

Youli Ioannesyan
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg

Baha’i Studies Review, Vol. 20 (2014, published 2018): 21–38.

(The original publication (print or PDF) may be ordered online from Intellect.)

ABSTRACT
Rediscovery of contemporaneous handwritten notes by Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne,1 of his historic meetings with Baha’u’llah, prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith in Akka (St Jean d’Acre), Palestine, during his stay there – which lasted from his arrival on Sunday, 13 April 1890, to Browne’s departure on Sunday, 20 April 1890 – significantly adds to our knowledge of those spiritual and momentous events. Given the fact that Baha’u’llah was to become widely regarded as the founder of a new world religion, Browne’s published account of his 16 April 1890 audience with Baha’u’llah takes on added significance as a rare first-hand description by a distinguished contemporary from the West. Although well-known to those acquainted with Baha’i history, relatively little is known regarding the sequence of events. This article will draw from Cambridge manuscripts to add some new details, and will draw a fuller picture of what transpired by use of Browne’s correspondence with Russian academics, along with known Baha’i sources judiciously compared with Azali sources. Together, a composite account of that historic encounter between scholar and prophet, Browne and Baha’u’llah, will be offered.

Plan
L’« Europe de l’entreprise » et des nations de Thatcher au Brexit
La mondialisation économique par les nations
Trump, Bannon et l’inspiration paléo-populiste
L’anti-globalisme libre-échangiste de Rothbard et Rockwell
Patrick Buchanan, Röpke et le « nationalisme économique »

Despite the recurring temptation to declare its end (both during the ‘50s and the 90s), ideology is still an essential tool to be applied in order to understand major changes in political parties, the development of social movements and the political scenario as a whole (Freeden & Stears ed., 2013; Žižek, 1989, 1994). This paper aims to provide a literature review concerning the main authors focusing on the study of ideology in the last several decades and to suggest an interdisciplinary perspective as a necessary approach to the study of contemporary politics.
While some scholars have been focusing on distinctive aspects of contemporary ideology, such as: global politics (Steger, 2008) as well as the debated relationship between populism, authoritarianism and nationalism as ideologies (Mudde, 2004; Aslanidis, 2015; Anselmi, 2017), over the last 20 years a change has occurred in the way ideologies are studied and conceived. In particular, the morphological approach proposed by Freeden suggests the necessity to depart from the pejorative notion provided, among others, by the Marxist tradition (Marx & Engels, 1846). It follows that ideologies need to be evaluated for their effectiveness and not their truthfulness or falseness.  Furthermore, the field of ideology should be understood as a pluralistic arena inhabited by different perspectives, often struggling for hegemony (Freeden, 2013). This approach allows us to better highlight the “performative” aspects of ideologies. For instance, looking into how they relate to community building (Anselmi, 2008) and to rising global imaginaries (Steger 2008; James & Steger, 2016).
Building on the notion of ideologies as competing maps that provide interpretation of the world and confer social meaning onto it, it is argued that it becomes essential to have a deeper understanding of how ideologies are developed and popularized. Therefore, the study of transnational intellectual networks (such as those proposed by Mirowski & Plehwe 2009, Slobodian 2018) are relevant to grasp how ideas are circulated by organized actors.
Thus, this study adds to existing literature concerning the features of ideologies by providing an analytical framework to understand the social context in which ideologies emerge and influence contemporary politics.