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Given the almost universal assumption that democracy is a ‘good thing’, the goal of mankind, it is easy to forget that ‘rule by the people’ has been vehemently opposed by some of the most distinguished thinkers in the Western tradition. The book attempts to combat collective amnesia by systematically exploring the evaluating anti‐democratic thought since the French Revolution. Using categories first introduced by A. O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction, it examines the various arguments under the headings of ‘perversity’, ‘futility’, and ‘jeopardy’. This classification scheme makes it possible to highlight the fatalism and pessimism of anti‐democratic thinkers, their conviction that democratic reform would be either pointless or destructive. They failed to understand the adaptability of democracy, its ability to coexist with traditional and elitist values. Nevertheless, it must be granted that some of their predictions and observations have been confirmed by history.

William Bentley was a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, during the first few decades of independence. He was also a figure quite unlike anyone else in all of America. In talent, vision, and most importantly ideas, he was a unique and heretofore underappreciated member of the founding generation. To study his life is to study the intellectual world in which he moved and through which he cut a unique and illustrative path. In theological terms, he was both an Arminian and what this book calls a “Christian naturalist,” a combination that was both unique and volatile. For if his belief in the Arminian view of salvation put him at odds with his Calvinist contemporaries (including his senior colleague at the East Church), his unique denial of post‐biblical supernaturalism and his unique embrace of Socinianism (a denial of the divinity of Jesus more radical than what others would call “Unitarianism”) put him also at odds with other Arminians. But it was the only way that Bentley could keep both what he thought essential to Christianity and what he thought true about the natural world. In the realm of social ideology, he was both a classical liberal and a republican at the same time, but if he was able in the 1780s to be both, the 1790s would pull apart these dualities and see him move along the path to Jeffersonian Republicanism. But even here he was, among the New England clergy, alone, drawn to the party not by its support for disestablishment so much as by his unique approbation of Rousseau's state of nature theorizing. William Bentley's life, ministry, and thought allow a singular exploration of theology and philosophy as well as of ideology: of the social politics of race and class and gender, the ecclesiastical politics of establishment and dissent, and between minister and laity, the ideological politics of republicanism and classical liberalism, and the party politics of Federalism and Democratic‐Republicanism.

This book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and helping to shape policy about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State Department. From this exceptional background of practical experience Part I of this book seeks to distill basic conceptual ways of understanding the nuclear revolution—the transformation brought about by the existence of nuclear weapons, and their significance in preventing major war. It also surveys NATO's progressive development of thinking about nuclear deterrence, and then discusses the deep moral dilemmas posed—for all possible standpoints—by the existence of such weapons. Part II considers the risks and costs of nuclear-weapon possession, including proliferation dangers, and looks at both successful and unsuccessful ideas for risk-management. Part III illustrates specific issues by reviewing the history and current policies of one long-established possessor, the United Kingdom, and two more recent ones in South Asia. Part IV turns to the future, examines the goal of the eventual abolition of all nuclear armouries, and then discusses the practical agenda, short of such a goal, which governments can usefully tackle in reducing the risks of proliferation and other dangers while not surrendering prematurely the war-prevention benefits which nuclear weapons have brought since 1945.

For centuries, France has struggled to impose unity upon its diverse components. Its leaders have defined its identity by opposition to the ‘Anglo-Saxons’: first England, then Britain and the USA. After exploring France's self-image by contrast with the Anglo-American counter-identity, Part One deals with the unfinished revolution from 1789 to 1878 when the Third Republic achieved relative stability. After examining the variety of symbolic representations of French exceptionalism in search of democratic legitimacy and national unanimity, the enduring divisions in French society are explained in their ideological, social, religious, territorial, and political aspects. Emphasis is given to writers and intellectuals in expressing these cleavages. Part Two relates French political paralysis to the slowness of socio-economic modernization and the polarizing role of intellectuals in perpetuating varieties of Left and Right battles over who personified anti-France. The adversarial character of French party politics fluctuated between the rhetorical revolutionary and reactionary extremes and the conservative or reformist realities. The colonial and international role of France is described, while the protectionist aversion to competitive global capitalism results in reluctant adaptation to forces beyond French control.

The Naxalite beginnings are by now history, and not a little nostalgia tinges the memory of these dreaded events. The leaders, the organizers, the spine, and the continuity of the movement are the revolutionary intellectuals. The Naxalite movement is not principally a rural, agrarian problem as the doctrine of the Naxalites argues, but is a problem of the leading edge of the urban intelligentsia. Though the Naxalites take their name from the incident at Naxalbari in 1967, the defining attributes of the Naxalite view of revolution emerged only later. From the beginning, it was not the labouring poor of the nation or Bengal that Charu Mazumdar addressed, but, first, the disaffected revolutionary activists within the communist movement and, later, the ‘student–youth’. This book discusses the ideologies of the Naxalite terrorists, the terrorist in the Bengali society, the Communist Party of India, and the Indian economy.

In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.

This book argues that businesswomen were central to urban society and to the operation and development of commerce in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It presents a rich and complicated picture of lower-middling life and female enterprise in three northern English towns: Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. The stories told by a wide range of sources, including trade directories, newspaper advertisements, court records, correspondence, and diaries, demonstrate the very differing fortunes and levels of independence that individual businesswomen enjoyed. Yet, as a group, their involvement in the economic life of towns and, in particular, the manner in which they exploited and facilitated commercial development, forced a reassessment of the understanding of both gender relations and urban culture in late Georgian England. In contrast to the traditional historical consensus that the independent woman of business during this period - particularly those engaged in occupations deemed 'unfeminine' - was insignificant and no more than an oddity, businesswomen are presented not as footnotes to the main narrative, but as central characters in a story of unprecedented social and economic transformation.

Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. This book offers an examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume—writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers—show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were “created” equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. This book shows that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.