What conditions the chances of liberty, wealth, and equality at the start of the third Christian millennium? Why did human civilizations develop so slowly for thousands of years, and then transform themselves during the last three hundred? This study of four great thinkers who lived between 1689 and 1995 - Montesquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner - weaves their lives and works together and through their own words shows how they approached the question of the nature of humanity, our past and our future.

At the start of the third Christian millennium we are aware of massive political, economic and ideological changes which condition the chances of liberty, wealth and equality. Yet it is surprisingly difficult for us to understand these forces, for we cannot see what surrounds us so closely. This book analyses our condition by looking at the work of two great thinkers, one of whom provides a deep historical perspective, the other a wide comparative analysis. F.W. Maitland (1850-1906) was more than the greatest professional historian of modern times, he was a philosopher who provides a...

What conditions the chances of liberty, wealth and equality at the start of the third Christian millennium? Why did human civilizations develop so slowly for thousands of years, and then transform themselves during the last three hundred? This study of four great thinkers who lived between 1689 and 1995, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner, weaves their lives and works together and through their own words shows how they approached the question of the nature of man, his past and his future.

Through detailed comparative analysis of English and Japanese history the book explores such matters as the destruction of war, decline of famine, the control of fertility.

The Origins of English Individualism is about the nature of English society during the five centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, and the crucial differences between England and other European nations. Drawing upon detailed studies of English parishes and a growing number of other intensive local studies, as well as diaries, legal treatises and contemporary foreign sources, the author examines the framework of change in England. He suggests that there has been a basic misrepresentation of English history and that this has considerable implications both for our...

This book aims to solve the problem of how parts of mankind escaped from an apparently inevitable trap of war, famine and disease in the last three hundred years. Through a detailed comparative analysis of English and Japanese history it explores such matters as the destruction of war, decline of famine, importance of certain drinks (especially tea), the use of human excrement and the effects of housing, clothing and bathing on human health. It also shows how the English and Japanese controlled fertility through marriage and sexual patterns, biological and contraceptive factors, abortion and...

Ralph Josselin, vicar of Earls Colne in Essex from 1641 to his death in 1683, kept for almost forty years a remarkably detailed account of his life--his mental and emotional world as well as his activities. Few diaries from this period afford such a rounded picture of a family from so many aspects. Alan Macfarlane, a historian and lecturer in social anthropology at Cambridge University, explores through the diary Josselin's life as a farmer, businessman, Puritan clergyman, neighbor, husband, and father, providing a unique view of seventeenth-century life from the inside.

Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction 1300–1840 is a history of the intimate lives and aspirations of the English people from medieval to modern times. It is scholarly, provocative, and highly readable. Alan Macfarlane shows why people married, at what age and with what expectations, as well as the nature of their courtship. He examines their reasons for having children, and the attitudes between the sexes and between generations. He considers how far in all of these respects behaviour varied by class, and how it changed or remained constant over five hundred years. Finally,...

As both a historian and an anthropologist, Alan Macfarlane is able to explore capitalist society from a number of original perspectives. It is the essence of his argument that capitalism is more than an economic system: it is a culture that affects not just the material but also the social, familial, and even spiritual bases of existence. Drawing on new research data generated by detailed historical community studies, and literature on non–western societies, he offers searching observations on the origins of modern civilization. He considers, for example, the nature of evil, attitudes...

This book should stimulate work and thought rather than impose a new orthodoxy. Its combination of iconoclasm with questioning gives it an interest that is relatively rare in recent English historiography.