Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times

Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times
Author: Ricard Torra-Prat
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2024-08-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040115381

Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times challenges current historiographical approaches, proposing new interpretations to rethink the relation between corruption and the socio-political and economic transformations since early globalisation. By adopting both transnational and long-term approaches, the book explores the historical dimension of notions such as accountability, transparency, and vigilance in their immediate political, social, and legal contexts. The starting point is to view corruption not as a moral category that emerged in 1789 to delegitimise past, foreign or present state systems, but as a constantly contested concept that must also be historicised in past societies. The collection revisits chronologies and examines different local, regional, and national frames, highlighting that the path to modernity was contested and affected by a variety of unique circumstances, such as revolutions and external political powers. Building on the latest research and offering new methods of inquiry, this book is a compelling resource for academics interested in political history and the history of corruption.

Catalogue of the Books in the Manchester Free Library

Catalogue of the Books in the Manchester Free Library
Author: Manchester Public Libraries (Manchester, England)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1670
Release: 1864
Genre: Books
ISBN:

"The Catalogue ... has been prepared with a view to accomplish two objects. One, to offer an inventory of all the books on the shelves of the Reference Department of the Manchester Free Library: the other, to supply ... a ready Key both to the subjects of the books, and to the names of the authors." - v. 1, the compiler to the reader.

Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment

Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment
Author: Iain McDaniel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674075285

Although overshadowed by his contemporaries Adam Smith and David Hume, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson strongly influenced eighteenth-century currents of political thought. A major reassessment of this neglected figure, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future sheds new light on Ferguson as a serious critic, rather than an advocate, of the Enlightenment belief in liberal progress. Unlike the philosophes who looked upon Europe’s growing prosperity and saw confirmation of a utopian future, Ferguson saw something else: a reminder of Rome’s lesson that egalitarian democracy could become a self-undermining path to dictatorship. Ferguson viewed the intrinsic power struggle between civil and military authorities as the central dilemma of modern constitutional governments. He believed that the key to understanding the forces that propel nations toward tyranny lay in analysis of ancient Roman history. It was the alliance between popular and militaristic factions within the Roman republic, Ferguson believed, which ultimately precipitated its downfall. Democratic forces, intended as a means of liberation from tyranny, could all too easily become the engine of political oppression—a fear that proved prescient when the French Revolution spawned the expansionist wars of Napoleon. As Iain McDaniel makes clear, Ferguson’s skepticism about the ability of constitutional states to weather pervasive conditions of warfare and emergency has particular relevance for twenty-first-century geopolitics. This revelatory study will resonate with debates over the troubling tendency of powerful democracies to curtail civil liberties and pursue imperial ambitions.

Visions of Britain, 1730-1830

Visions of Britain, 1730-1830
Author: Sebastian Mitchell
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-05-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137290110

This is a revisionist study of the literary and visual representation of the nation in the century following the formation of the British state. It argues that the most engaging accounts of Great Britain subject their imagery to sustained artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction.