Inventing freedom : how the English-speaking peoples made the modern world / Daniel Hannan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hannan, Daniel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization--British influences.

Civilization.

Civilization--Anglo-Saxon influences.

Liberty.

Rule of law.

Representative government and representation.

Exceptionalism--United States.

Exceptionalism.

United States.

English language--Political aspects.

English language.

Physical Description:

xii, 395 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Freedom : how the English-speaking peoples made the modern world

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Broadside, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2013]

Summary:

Why does the world speak English? Why does every country at least pretend to aspire to representative government, personal freedom, and an independent judiciary? This book is an ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of those principles, and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled. According to author Daniel Hannan, the ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms--individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government--are not broadly "Western" in the usual sense of the term. Rather, they are the legacy of a very specific tradition, one that was born in England and that the Americans, along with other former British colonies, inherited. By the tenth century, a thousand years before most modern countries, England was a nation-state whose people were already starting to define themselves with reference to common-law rights. Inventing Freedom explains why the extraordinary idea that the state was the servant, not the ruler, of the individual evolved uniquely in the English-speaking world. It is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism.--From publisher description.

Contents:

The Anglosphere miracle

The same language, the same hymns, the same ideals

Anglo-Saxon liberties

Rediscovering England

Liberty and property

The first Anglosphere Civil War

The second Anglosphere Civil War

Anglobalization

From empire to Anglosphere

Consider what nation it is whereof ye are

Anglosphere twilight?

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9780062231734

0062231731

OCLC:

827260158