Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World

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A bold case for Anglosphere liberty

This will likely appeal if you enjoy big-idea history with a strong political argument and don’t mind a clearly opinionated voice. Hannan makes the story of freedom feel contingent rather than inevitable, which gives the book urgency and bite. Readers who like provocative takes on democracy, law, and national identity may find it energising, even when they disagree.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World

Regular price RM51.00 MYR
Unit price
per
Compare to estimated retail price: RM90.00 MYR  
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ISBN: 9780062231734
Authors: Daniel Hannan
Publisher: Broadside Books
Date of Publication: 2013-11-19
Format: Hardcover
Related Collections: History, Politics, Philosophy
Goodreads rating: 4.09
(rated by 566 readers)

Description

Does freedom have a future? The renowned conservative and author of The New Road to Serfdom argues that it rests with the fate of the Anglosphere: the English-speaking nations that invented political liberty and introduced it to the world. Until very recently, historians and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic took for granted that personal liberty, free contract, the rule of law, and representative government—the foundations of Anglosphere civilization—contributed to the success of the English-speaking peoples. Yet today we see those ideas abandoned and scorned in places where they once went unchallenged, including Washington, D.C. We often mistake these principles for universal liberal values: free elections, equality for women, jury trials, the accountability of the executive to the legislature. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that all these things, in their modern form, are products of a very specific English-speaking civilization. There was nothing inevitable about their triumph. They could easily have been snuffed out in the 1940s. They would not be ascendant if the Cold War had ended differently. When we speak of "the West" in a geopolitical sense, we really mean the alliance of free English-speaking democracies. It is they, not France or Germany or Italy or Spain, who have disseminated and preserved liberty. If we lose them, humanity itself will be the poorer. Inventing Freedom is an analysis of why the extraordinary idea that the state was the servant, and not the ruler, of the individual evolved in the English-speaking world. It is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism, offered at a time that may turn out to be the end of the age of political freedom.
 

A bold case for Anglosphere liberty

This will likely appeal if you enjoy big-idea history with a strong political argument and don’t mind a clearly opinionated voice. Hannan makes the story of freedom feel contingent rather than inevitable, which gives the book urgency and bite. Readers who like provocative takes on democracy, law, and national identity may find it energising, even when they disagree.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.