Overview

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, contemporary authors explored the myriad ways in which the concept of rights could be understood but almost always arrived at the same conclusion: It was vital that rights should never be conflated with power. Through twenty-six expertly written essays, Volume III of The Cambridge History of Rights focuses on the language of rights, exploring its use in contexts as diverse as the English family, trading relations, and Asian powers. This was a period in which rights came to the forefront of political discourse, making it crucial to the longer history of rights reflected in this series. By foregrounding the idea of rights in action, the volume considers the relationship between the ways in which rights were articulated – by individuals, institutions, and states – and how they were enacted in practice. In doing so, it uncovers the complexities inherent in the development of the language of rights during this formative period.

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9781108837323

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Andrew Fitzmaurice is Professor of the History of Political Thought in the School of History, Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of American Colonisation, 1500–1625 (2003); Sovereignty, Property, and Empire 1500–2000 (2014); and King Leopold's Ghostwriter (2021). Rachel Hammersley is Professor of Intellectual History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University. She is the author of French Revolutionaries and English Republicans: The Cordelier Club, 1790-1794 (2004); The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France (2010); James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography (2019) and Republicanism: An Introduction (2020).

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