Recent scholarship in political thought has closely examined the relationship between European political ideas and colonialism, particularly the ways in which canonical thinkers supported or opposed colonial practices. But little attention has been given to the engagement of colonized political and intellectual actors with European ideas. The essays in this volume demonstrate that a full reckoning of colonialism's effects requires attention to the ways in which colonized intellectuals reacted to, adopted, and transformed these ideas, and to the political projects that their reactions helped to shape. Across nine chapters, a mix of political theorists and intellectual historians grapple with specific thinkers and contexts to show in detail the unpredictable, complex and sometimes paradoxical impact of European ideas in an array of colonial settings.

Introduction: when ideas travel: political theory, colonialism, and the history of ideas - Burke A. Hendrix and Deborah Baumgold
1 Intellectual flows and counterflows: the strange case of J. S. Mill - Lynn Zastoupil
2 Rethinking resistance: Spencer, Krishnavarma and The Indian Sociologist - Inder S. Marwah
3 The other Mahatma's naive monarchism: Phule, Paine, and the appeal to Queen Victoria - Jimmy Casas Klausen
4 The New World 'sans-culottes': French revolutionary ideology in Saint Domingue - Johnhenry Gonzalez
5 Confronting colonial otherness: the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the limits of imperial legal universalism - Bonny Ibhawoh
6 The indigenous redemption of liberal universalism - Tim Rowse
7 Troubling appropriations: Pedro Paterno's Filipino deployment of French Lamarckianism - Megan C. Thomas
8 Colonial hesitation, appropriation, and citation: Qasim Amin, empire, and saying 'no' - Murad Idris
9 Marxism and historicism in the thought of Abdullah Laroui - Yasmeen Daifallah
Index