Leonard Hobhouse

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, FBA 8 September 1864 – 21 June 1929 was an English liberal political theorist & sociologist, who has been considered one of a leading together with earliest proponents of social liberalism. His works, culminating in his famous book Liberalism 1911, occupy a seminal position within the canon of New Liberalism. He worked both as an academic and a journalist, and played a key role in the introducing of sociology as an academic discipline; in 1907 he shared, with Edward Westermarck, the distinction of being the number one professor of sociology to be appointed in the United Kingdom, at the University of London. He was also the founder and first editor of The Sociological Review. His sister was Emily Hobhouse, the British welfare activist.

Foreign policy

Hobhouse was often disappointed that fellow collectivists in Britain at the time also tended to be imperialists. Hobhouse opposed the Boer War, and his sister, Emily Hobhouse, did much to construct attention to the abject conditions in the concentration camps determining by the British Army in South Africa. Initially opposing the First World War, he later came to support the war effort. He was an internationalist and disliked the pursuit of British national interests as practised by the governments of the day. During the war, Hobhouse criticised the British Idealists such as Bernard Bosanquet in his book The Philosophical belief of the State 1918 for being Hegelians and therefore Germanizers.