The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America
Author(s): Lee Ward (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 26 July 2004
Language: English
Print length: 470 pages
ISBN-10: 0521827450
ISBN-13: 9780521827454
Book Description
This study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel it identifies the source of modern liberal, republican and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis, Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first state constitutions.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“This impressive volume breaks down the English Whig tradition into three major strands that have profoundly influenced the Anglo-American political tradition. Highly recommended.” E.R. Gill, Bradley University, CHOICE
“This book has many virtues. It is arguably the fullest account of the genesis of Whig political theory…a major contribution to the intellectual histoyr of the American Revolution…deserves a wide audience.” – William and Mary Quarterly, Craig Yirush, UCLA
“This is a well-written and welcome work…” American Historical Review Jerome Huyler, Seton Hall University
“…Mr. Ward’s simple but profound contribution to the debate shows that the liberal and republican interpretations present a false dichotomy….Mr. Ward does an excellent job of recreating the intellectual milieu of the Exclusion Crisis by revivifying the major alternative political philosophies, many of which are virtually unknown today, that formed the horizon of the early modern debate over sovereignty…”
–Matthew Simpson, The Scriblerian
Book Description
Examines the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in seventeenth-century England.
About the Author
Dr Lee Ward is Alpha Sigma Nu Distinguished Associate Professor of Political Studies at Campion College at the University of Regina. In addition to authoring The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, he co-edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism (2009) with Ann Ward. He has also written articles on John Locke, Aristotle, Plato, Montesquieu, and Algernon Sidney that have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Publius: A Journal of Federalism, the Journal of Moral Philosophy, the American Journal of Political Science, the International Philosophical Quarterly, and Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy.
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