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Voltaire: Incidents in his Life

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Voltaire

Source: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version. A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901). In 21 vols. Vol. 1.

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Hong Kong: A Story of Human Freedom and Progress

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Subject Area: History Subject Area: Economics Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Questions for further thought and conversation to complement an EconTalk podcast with…

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Raico on Wilhelm von Humboldt

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Ralph Raico Wilhelm von Humboldt

Source: New Individualist Review, editor-in-chief Ralph Raico, introduction by Milton Friedman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). Chapter: RALPH RAICO, GREAT INDIVIDUALISTS OF THE…

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François Guizot (1787-1874)

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François Guizot

Source: François Guizot, General History of Civilization in Europe by François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, edited, with critical and supplementary notes, by George Wells Knight (New York: D Appleton…

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The Peasants’ War and Martin Luther

In 1524, rebellion broke out in southern Germany. The uprising, known as the Peasants’ War, grew out of demands for greater freedom for the serfs. It was not, despite its name, just a revolt by farmers. Serious thinkers advanced it,…

The Maskilim Launch the Haskalah: The Jewish Enlightenment

“The Haskalah movement had no less a historical impact on the Jews than did the French Revolution on Europe.” —Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment

The Adventures of Marco Polo: From the Liberty Fund Rare Book Room

With the official start of summer this week, the world seems to be gearing up for travel. The OLL staff has been everywhere from Arizona to Glasgow to Jerusalem, with a lot more travel coming up through the summer month.

Ilia Chavchavadze – the Father of Georgian Liberalism on Private Property

While in Europe the famous English philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote his eminent On Liberty (1859) and perfected the teachings of utilitarian liberalism, in the East, namely in Georgia, which at that time was a part of the Tsarist…

The French Revolution Spawns the Terror—and the Classic Conservatism of Burke

It can seem that every battle Edmund Burke fought became epic, remembered by history: his attempts to head off the war with the American colonies, his defense of representative democracy, his opposition to the British East India…

Letters from Ireland: From the Liberty Fund Rare Book Room

The copy of Harriet Martineau's Letters from Ireland that lives in the Liberty Fund rare book room as part of the Hamburger collection, seems to be an idea book to take off the shelves for both Women's History Month and St.…

What Irish Enlightenment? The Case of Edmund Burke

Four times I have posed, in these pages, the question: “What Irish Enlightenment?” And answered with the “cases” of John Toland, Jonathan Swift, George Berkeley, and Maria Edgeworth—a priest/academic, a satirist, a philosopher, and…

What “Irish Enlightenment”? The Case of John Toland

“What Irish Enlightenment?” is the first question for one setting out to discuss Ireland’s participation in the pan-European philosophical, political, economic, social, and literary movement that created the modern world. About…

Tracing Turkey’s Creation to French Enlightenment’s Influence

Antecedents of the revolution led by Ataturk must be sought in the Turkish Enlightenment, which had two phases.

Kemal Atatürk Founds a Twentieth-century Islamic Nation Rooted in Enlightenment Ideas

He led an overwhelmingly Islamic population out of the Ottoman Empire, created a new secular nation, introduced protections of individual rights, deposed both the sultan and the caliph to introduce a presidency, initiated a Western…

Fukuzawa Yukichi: The Man Who Was “Civilization and Enlightenment” in Japan

“Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage.”
Fukuzawa Yukichi made this statement in Japan in 1872, a few years after the end of Japan’s last samurai…

Brought to the Scaffold": Pepys, Smith, and Voltaire on Public Executions

In early October of 1660, the diarist Samuel Pepys got up in the morning and headed out to Charing Cross to spend a pleasant day with friends and
to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered;

Acton on Doing History: To Judge or Understand

In July’s Liberty Matters Discussion of the Declaration of Independence, a main theme of our deliberations was on the role and purpose of history. A distinction was made between an older ethic of understanding the past in its own…