A defense of the concept of bourgeois revolution in European history

An abridged edition of the insightful work praised as “an impressive contribution both to the history of ideas and to political philosophy” (Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue). Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, recently the concept of the “bourgeois revolution” has come in for sustained criticism from both Marxists and conservatives. In this abridged edition of his magisterial How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Neil Davidson expertly distills his theoretical and historical insights about the nature of revolutions, making them accessible for general readers. Through extensive research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson demonstrates that what’s at stake is far from a stale issue for the history books—understanding that these struggles of the past offer far reaching lessons for today’s radicals.

In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.

This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. The term 'early modern' has been familiar, especially in Anglophone scholarship, for four decades and is securely established in teaching, research, and scholarly publishing. More recently, however, the unity implied in the notion has fragmented, while the usefulness and even the validity of the term, and the historical periodisation which it incorporates, have been questioned. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 provides an account of the development of the subject during the past half-century, but primarily offers an integrated and comprehensive survey of present knowledge, together with some suggestions as to how the field is developing. It aims both to interrogate the notion of 'early modernity' itself and to survey early modern Europe as an established field of study. The overriding aim will be to establish that 'early modern' is not simply a chronological label but possesses a substantive integrity. Volume I examines 'Peoples and Place', assessing structural factors such as climate, printing and the revolution in information, social and economic developments, and religion, including chapters on Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam.

Charles Maier, one of the most prominent contemporary scholars of European history, published Recasting Bourgeois Europe as his first book in 1975. Based on extensive archival research, the book examines how European societies progressed from a moment of social vulnerability to one of political and economic stabilization. Arguing that a common trajectory calls for a multi country analysis, Maier provides a comparative history of three European nations and argues that they did not simply return to a prewar status quo, but achieved a new balance of state authority and interest group representation. While most previous accounts presented the decade as a prelude to the Depression and dictatorships, Maier suggests that the stabilization of the 1920s, vulnerable as it was, foreshadowed the more enduring political stability achieved after World War II. The immense and ambitious scope of this book, its ability to follow diverse histories in detail, and its effort to explain stabilization—and not just revolution or breakdown—have made it a classic of European history.

The "European Revolution" of 1989 has not only brought about dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social structure of East and West European countries, but also in the social sciences. This volume is an attempt to evaluate how sociology has been affected by this dramatic event and how it has developed in the post-revolutionary period in some selected European countries. Ten eminent representatives of sociology from Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Great Britain, Poland, and Scandinavia were presented with a set of questions which served as a common guideline for their contributions. Their answers can be summarized in the observation of the "interrelated diversity" of sociology in Europe today. The high heterogeneity and fragmentation, typical of contemporary sociological thought in Europe, are interrelated by a high degree of institutionalization and integration of sociology in the European university system. In addition, two prominent scholars from non-European countries, Japan and the US, present their views on sociology in Europe from outside. They declare the end of the period of one-sided flows of reception in sociology and foresee a strengthening of a two-way exchange between European and non-European social scientists in the twenty-first century

Discusses the shifting definitions of racism and challenges the common conception that racism is experienced exclusively by black people. The book aims to occupy the centre of debate on the sociology of racism and ethnic studies.

Now in its second edition, Bourgeois Europe, 1850–1914 is a general history of Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War, a successor to Revolutionary Europe: 1780–1850, also available from Routledge. The book offers wide geographic coverage of the European continent, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Urals. Topical coverage is equally broad, including major trends and events in international relations and domestic politics, in social and gender structures, in the economy, and in the natural and social sciences, the humanities, religion and the arts. For this second edition, the text has been completely revised, the latest directions in historical research considered, the further reading brought up to date and special attention has been paid to Europe’s global interactions with the rest of the world and the structures and norms of gender relations. Tables, charts, maps and other explanatory features help students explore further in the areas that interest them. Written in sprightly, jargon-free clear prose, the book is ideal for use as a text in secondary school or university courses, as well as for general readers wishing to gain an overview of a crucial era of modern European history.

An expansive and ambitious intellectual history of democratic socialism from one of the world's leading intellectual historians and social ethicists The fallout from twenty years of neoliberal economic globalism has sparked a surge of interest in the old idea of democratic socialism--a democracy in which the people control the economy and government, no group dominates any other, and every citizen is free, equal, and included. With a focus on the intertwined legacies of Christian socialism and Social Democratic politics in Britain and Germany, this book traces the story of democratic socialism from its birth in the nineteenth century through the mid-1960s. Examining the tenets on which the movement was founded and how it adapted to different cultural, religious, and economic contexts from its beginnings through the social and political traumas of the twentieth century, Gary Dorrien reminds us that Christian socialism paved the way for all liberation theologies that make the struggles of oppressed peoples the subject of redemption. He argues for a decentralized economic democracy and anti-imperial internationalism.

The distinction between 'capitalism from above' and 'capitalism from below' is important in the analysis of the agrarian question in poor countries. The 'Prussian path' and the 'American path' are here examined, against existing historical scholarship. Their unfolding, from their earliest roots to the point of final 'agrarian transition' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is considered. The dialectic between social relations and productive forces, mediated as it was by the state, is treated and the implications for capitalist industrialisation scrutinised.