Description
Book SynopsisHistorians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and individual rights matter in the making of history. History written in the classical liberal tradition emerged largely in the nineteenth century, when the field of history was first professionalized in Europe and the Americas. Professional historical research was then imbued with liberal values, which included rigorous attention to the sources, historicist suspicion of an ultimate mover, an honest and dispassionate rational outlook, and humility towards what could be known. Above all, liberals wanted to chart the history of liberty, warn against threats to liberty, and defend it in an evolving political world. They believed history was real, and that it had lessons to teach, but that these lessons could not provide sufficient knowledge to predict the future or reorganize society around a central plan.This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists t
Trade ReviewHistorians who are classical liberals constitute a minority within a field that seems to be dominated by progressive, Marxist, feminist, postmodernist, and conservative schools. So it is refreshing and enlightening to have this insightful scholarly collection from some articulate classical liberal historians. Tackling such issues as historiography, the nature of capitalism, the role of social history, feminism, civil rights, civil liberties, and the origins of sustained economic growth, they reinvigorate a classical liberal approach to these profound historical questions. -- Jeff Hummel, San Jose State University
This is one of the freshest and most stimulating efforts to rethink the premises of modern historiography to appear in many years. While paying due respect to the collective and material forces that professional historians have come to regard as the principal drivers of historical change, the authors in this volume make a different commitment—to the priority of liberty and the dignity and agency of the individual person—in their accounts of the human past. The paths opened here by these authors are full of promise. May their enterprise flourish, and their efforts bear abundant fruit, and multiply. -- Wilfred M. McClay, University of Oklahoma
Table of ContentsIntroduction, Michael J. Douma Chapter 1: Beyond Laissez Faire and State Power: A Critical Look at the Transformation Thesis and Classical Liberalism in Nineteenth Century America, Scott Shubitz Chapter 2: Classical Liberalism and the “New” History of American Capitalism, Phillip W. Magness Chapter 3: The Historicity of Civil Liberties, a Liberal Predicament, Anthony Gregory Chapter 4: Constituting Liberty: Toward a History and Science of Association, Lenore T. Ealy Chapter 5: Some Roads Taken, and Not Taken, from the Progressive Era to the New Deal, David T. Beito Chapter 6: A Manifesto for Liberty: Toward a New History of Civil Rights in US History, Jonathan Bean Chapter 7: The End or Ends of Social History? The Reclamation of Old Fashioned Historicism in the Writing of Historical Narratives, Hans Eicholz Chapter 8: History through a Classical Liberal Feminist Lens, Sarah Skwire Chapter 9: Classical Liberalism in Eastern Europe: Very Vibrant but So Mild, Leonid Krasnozhon and Mykola Bunyk Chapter 10: “Start the Economy”: Causation, Emergent Order, and Social Change in the Origins of Modern Economic Growth, Matthew Brown Chapter 11: A Non-Manifesto of Liberal History, Alberto Garín
