Description
Book SynopsisThis 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
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
