History
The following are a selection of chapters and extracts taken from books in the OLL collection. They have been chosen because of their special importance for understanding the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and the free market. Some of the extracts are from the books themselves and serve as a representative sample of that author’s ideas. Others are introductions written by the editors of the volume which contain important biographical information about the author and a discussion of their ideas. Links are provided to the book from which the extract was taken so the reader can pursue the subject in more depth if they are interested.
Other collections of material from the OLL which are useful places to begin exploring these ideas are the following:
- Quotations about Liberty and Power
- The Best of the OLL: An Anthology
- Forgotten Gems of Liberty
- Key Documents of Liberty
- Classics of Liberty
Further Reading
- Subject Area: History
- Anthology: Key Documents of Liberty
- Topic: Progress
Selected Chapters and Introductions from the Collection
- Bede’s History of England
- Bright and 19th Century English Liberalism
- Gibbon on the Decline of the Empire in the West
- History in the Colonial Library
- Hoover, Herbert (1874-1964)
- Hume and Revolution
- Hume the Historian
- Hume’s Religious Partiality in his History of England
- Hume, The Progress of English Liberty (1778)
- James Mill on Writing his Critical History of India
- Jefferson, History, and the Rights of Expatriated Men
- Kames on Progress and Providence
- King Alfred’s translation of Boethius
- Lecky on Gibbon
- Lecky on writing a history of morals
- Livy’s History of Rome
- Millar and the English Government
- Pufendorf’s History of the German Empire
- Thierry on Conquest, Class, and the Theory of History
- Trevor-Roper on the General Crisis of the 17thC