Lynn Hunt

Two French Protestant refugees in eighteenth-century Amsterdam gave the world an extraordinary work that intrigued and outraged readers across Europe. In this captivating account, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt take us to the vibrant Dutch Republic and its flourishing book trade to explore the work that sowed the radical idea that religions could be considered on equal terms.Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza.Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. In this beautifully illustrated book, Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt cast new light on the profound insight found in one book as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion.

The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women’s expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers’ satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval. Hunt also explores how promotion in French revolutionary armies was based on men’s singular capabilities, rather than noble blood, and how the invention of financial instruments such as life insurance and national debt related to a changing idea of national identity. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, The Revolutionary Self is a fascinating exploration of the conflict between individualism and the group ties that continues to shape our lives today.

In this book Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer lucidly trace events from 1789 until the fall of Napoleon, stressing the global dimensions of the French Revolution and offering balanced coverage of both its causes and outcomes. In doing so, Hunt and Censer reaffirm its huge significance for the modern political world in the process. Hunt and Censer give due attention to global competition, fiscal crisis, slavery and the beginnings of nationalism alongside more traditional topics, such as human rights and constitutions, terror and violence, and the rise of authoritarianism. This global lens allows the authors to convincingly demonstrate how the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire fundamentally altered the political landscapes of Europe, the Americas, North Africa and parts of Asia as well. The book also contains end-of-chapter questions, timelines and a wealth of primary source extracts for analysis and class discussion.This 2nd edition has been fully updated throughout and now includes:· A new first chapter which greatly enhances the wider 18th-century background material. It explains how events, trends, and personalities from the 1770s onwards created an opening that was turned into a world-shattering revolution.· A historiography textbox feature in each chapter that addresses topics and individuals like Louis XVI, terror, Robespierre and the Haitian Revolution. The feature sees two contrasting excerpts analysed and contextualized in each case.· 18 further images and 6 more maps for a stronger visual aspect and better geographical context.

In this book Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer lucidly trace events from 1789 until the fall of Napoleon, stressing the global dimensions of the French Revolution and offering balanced coverage of both its causes and outcomes. In doing so, Hunt and Censer reaffirm its huge significance for the modern political world in the process. Hunt and Censer give due attention to global competition, fiscal crisis, slavery and the beginnings of nationalism alongside more traditional topics, such as human rights and constitutions, terror and violence, and the rise of authoritarianism. This global lens allows the authors to convincingly demonstrate how the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire fundamentally altered the political landscapes of Europe, the Americas, North Africa and parts of Asia as well. The book also contains end-of-chapter questions, timelines and a wealth of primary source extracts for analysis and class discussion.This 2nd edition has been fully updated throughout and now includes:· A new first chapter which greatly enhances the wider 18th-century background material. It explains how events, trends, and personalities from the 1770s onwards created an opening that was turned into a world-shattering revolution.· A historiography textbox feature in each chapter that addresses topics and individuals like Louis XVI, terror, Robespierre and the Haitian Revolution. The feature sees two contrasting excerpts analysed and contextualized in each case.· 18 further images and 6 more maps for a stronger visual aspect and better geographical context.

The Making of the West has all of the tools students need to understand the cross-cultural, global exchanges that shaped Western history.

Vi rättfärdigar våra handlingar i nuet genom vår förståelse av det förflutna. Men vi lever i en tid då politiker obesvärat ljuger om historiska fakta och lägger sig i historieböckers innehåll, och då medier ofta återger en och samma händelse på häpnadsväckande olika sätt. Vi lever dessutom i en tid då nya upptäckter tvingar oss att omvärdera allt vi trodde att vi visste om det förflutna.Hur kan vi i dag skaffa oss säker kunskap om historien? Och varför angår den oss? Lynn Hunt beskriver sökandet efter sanning om det förflutna som en kontinuerlig upptäcktsprocess som är livsnödvändig för våra samhällen. Historieskrivning spelar en viktig roll i strävan att ge en hederlig presentation av fakta, men den fram-manar också ödmjukhet inför våra dagsaktuella angelägenheter, en kritisk inställning till nationalism och andra chauvinistiska tendenser samt en öppenhet för andra folk och kulturer. Historien är, enligt Hunt, vårt bästa försvar mot tyranni.

We justify our actions in the present through our understanding of the past. But we live in a time when politicians lie brazenly about historical facts and meddle with the content of history books, while media differ wildly in their reporting of the same event. Frequently, new discoveries force us to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about the past. So how can any certainty about history be established, and why does it matter? Lynn Hunt shows why the search for truth about the past, as a continual process of discovery, is vital for our societies. History has an essential role to play in ensuring honest presentation of evidence. In this way, it can foster humility about our present-day concerns, a critical attitude toward chauvinism, and an openness to other peoples and cultures. History, Hunt argues, is our best defense against tyranny. Introducing Polity's Why It Matters series; in these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

We justify our actions in the present through our understanding of the past. But we live in a time when politicians lie brazenly about historical facts and meddle with the content of history books, while media differ wildly in their reporting of the same event. Frequently, new discoveries force us to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about the past. So how can any certainty about history be established, and why does it matter? Lynn Hunt shows why the search for truth about the past, as a continual process of discovery, is vital for our societies. History has an essential role to play in ensuring honest presentation of evidence. In this way, it can foster humility about our present-day concerns, a critical attitude toward chauvinism, and an openness to other peoples and cultures. History, Hunt argues, is our best defense against tyranny. Introducing Polity's Why It Matters series; in these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer’s The French Revolution and Napoleon provides a globally-oriented narrative history of events from 1789 until the fall of Napoleon. It emphasizes the global origins and consequences of the French Revolution and explains why it is the formative event for modern politics. The book integrates global competition, fiscal crisis, slavery and the beginnings of nationalism with the more traditional emphases on human rights and constitutions, terror and violence, and the rise of authoritarianism. This global approach then enables the authors – two world-renowned scholars in the field – to clearly illustrate how the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire changed all the political givens for Europe, the Americas, North Africa and parts of Asia as well. Including numerous illustrations and maps, end-of-chapter questions, timelines and primary source document extracts for analysis in each chapter, this book is essential reading for all students of modern European history who want to understand the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire in a truly global context.

Exploring the issue of rights and citizenship, Revolutionary France, French Revolution and Human Rights uses original translations and commentary of both debates and legislation that led to the French development of the modern concept of human rights.

The Making of the West features a chronological narrative that offers a truly global context and tells the story of the cross-cultural exchanges that have shaped western history. This brief book includes a full-color map and art program and comprehensive supplement options. The result is a brief book that is an excellent price and an outstanding value.

George Orwell wrote that "history is written by the winners". Even if that seems a bit too cut-and-dried, we can say that history is always written from a viewpoint but that viewpoints change, sometimes radically. The history of workers, women and minorities challenged the once unquestioned dominance of the tales of great leaders and military victories. Then cultural studies brought fresh perspectives but those too have run their course. With globalisation emerging as a major economic, cultural and political force, Lynn Hunt examines whether it can reinvigorate the telling of history. In tandem, she proposes a sweeping re-evaluation of individuals’ agency and their place in society as the keys to understanding the way people and ideas interact. Writing History in the Global Era is bound to shake up the discipline and break new ground for historical studies.

George Orwell wrote that "history is written by the winners". Even if that seems a bit too cut-and-dried, we can say that history is always written from a viewpoint but that viewpoints change, sometimes radically. The history of workers, women and minorities challenged the once unquestioned dominance of the tales of great leaders and military victories. Then cultural studies brought fresh perspectives but those too have run their course. With globalisation emerging as a major economic, cultural and political force, Lynn Hunt examines whether it can reinvigorate the telling of history. In tandem, she proposes a sweeping re-evaluation of individuals’ agency and their place in society as the keys to understanding the way people and ideas interact. Writing History in the Global Era is bound to shake up the discipline and break new ground for historical studies.

This latest work from an author known for her contributions to the new cultural history is a daring, multidisciplinary investigation of the imaginative foundations of modern politics. Hunt uses the term `Family Romance', (coined by Freud to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's family and belonging to one of higher social standing), in a broader sense, to describe the images of the familial order that structured the collective political unconscious. In a wide-ranging account that uses novels, engravings, paintings, speeches, newspaper editorials, pornographic writing, and revolutionary legislation about the family, Hunt shows that the politics of the French Revolution were experienced through the network of the family romance.

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.

Time is the crucial ingredient in history, and yet historians rarely talk about time as such. These essays offer new insight into the development of modern conceptions of time, from the Christian dating system (BC/AD or BCE/CE) to the idea of "modernity" as a new epoch in human history.

When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.