A Cultural History of Democracy in the Age of Enlightenment

by Michael Mosher (Editor), Anna Plassart (Editor), Eugenio Biagini (Editor)

Overview

This volume surveys the burst of political imagination that created multiple Enlightenment cultures in an era widely understood as an age of democratic revolutions. Enlightenment as precursor to liberal democratic modernity was once secular catechism for generations of readers. Yet democracy did not elicit much enthusiasm among contemporaries, while democracy as a political system remained virtually nonexistent through much of the period. If seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideas did underwrite the democracies of succeeding centuries, they were often inheritances from monarchical governments that had encouraged plural structures of power competition. But in revolutions across France, Britain, and North America, the republican integration of constitutional principle and popular will established rational hope for public happiness. Nevertheless, the tragic clashes of principle and will in fraught revolutionary projects were also democratic legacies.

Each chapter focuses on a distinct theme: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the “common good”; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and the transformations of sovereignty-a synoptic survey of the cultural entanglements of “enlightenment” and “democracy.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350272859
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/15/2022
Series:	The Cultural Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Michael Mosher is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa, USA.

Anna Plassart is Senior Lecturer in History at the Open University, UK.
Michael Mosher is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. His interests focus upon the history of political philosophy with an emphasis upon the enlightenment philosophe and founding father of the social sciences, Baron Charles-Louis de Montesquieu and his many disciples and critics. He has also published studies regarding contemporary concerns with civil society, rights and justice.
Dr Anna Plassart is lecturer in History at The Open University, UK. A specialist on the transnational dimension of eighteenth-century political culture, she is the author of many essays and of the monograph The Scottish Enlightenment and the French Revolution (2015).
Eugenio Biagini is Professor of History at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, UK. A historian of liberalism and democracy, he has written on British, Irish and Italian history since 1789. His publications include British Democracy and Irish nationalism 1876-1906 (2007), The Shaping of Modern Ireland (2016, edited with Daniel Mulhall), Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850-1914, (1991, edited with A. J. Reid), and Citizenship and Community. Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles 1865-1931, (1996).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
General Editor's Preface

Introduction
Michael Mosher (University of Tulsa, USA) and Anna Plassart (Open University, UK)

1. Sovereignty
Daniel Lee (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

2. Liberty and the Rule of Law
Yoshie Kawade (University of Tokyo, Japan)

3. The "Common Good"
Rebecca Kingston (University of Toronto, Canada)

4. Economic and Social Democracy
Alexander Schmidt (Vanderbilt University, USA)

5. Religion and the Principles of Political Obligation
Niall O'Flaherty (King's College London, UK)

6. Citizenship and Gender
Dorinda Outram (University of Rochester, USA)

7. Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism
Inder Marwah (McMaster University, Canada)

8. Democratic Crises, Revolutions, and Civil Resistance
Michael Mosher (University of Tulsa, USA)

9. International Relations
James Stafford (Columbia University, USA)

10. Beyond the Polis, Transforming Sovereignty
Joanna Innes (University of Oxford, UK)

Notes
References
Notes on Contributors
Index