A Cultural History of Democracy in the Age of Enlightenment

Description

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.” Contents List of Illustrations General Editor’s Preface Introduction Michael Mosher and Anna Plassart 1 Sovereignty Daniel Lee 2 Liberty and the Rule of Law Yoshie Kawade 3 The Common Good Rebecca Kingston 4 Economic and Social Democracy Alexander Schmidt 5 Religion and the Principles of Political Obligation Niall O’Flaherty 6 Citizenship and Gender Dorinda Outram 7 Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism Inder S. Marwah 8 Democratic Crises, 9 International Relations James Stafford 10 Beyond the Polis Joanna Innes Notes References Notes on Contributors Index