Liberal rhetoric’s colonial force came from flexibility, not fixed principle

Evidence

The similarities and differences between the two events suggest that the power of liberal rhetoric in mid-Victorian India lay less in its ideological consistency than in its ability to accommodate and vocalize the shifting interests of diverse groups. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 156

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how ‘floating’ political vocabularies get captured by opposed interest groups, using mid-Victorian India as the case study.
• DEEPTHINKING: Generalizable thesis about political language as an accommodating vessel rather than a coherent doctrine — worth sitting with.