Human Rights as an Imperialist Ideology

Abstract

This chapter has three main points. In the first place, I look at the imperialist ideology, focusing on the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, because this period corresponds to the formal imperialism which consecrated the domination of the rest of world by the West. Now paying attention to that period shows that the formal imperialism thrived because of the work of international law. Thus, the second point analyzes the relationship between international law and imperialist ideology. Hoping that these two first points will have highlighted the content of imperialist ideology, the third and last point will then expose how the rhetoric of human rights incarnates this imperialist ideology. But before I develop all these points, the chapter offers some delimitation to the definitional scope of the concept of imperialist ideology, succinctly analyzing each term before bringing them together.