Democracy in Europe A History of an Ideoloy

by Canfora, Luciano; Jones, Simon

• ISBN13: 9781405111317
• ISBN10: 1405111313
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-01-23
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This history traces the development of democracy in Europe from its origins in ancient Greece up to the present day. The book opens with the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, and outlines the adoption and adaptation of Greek political ideas by French revolutionaries and intellectuals to suit their own ends. The author then goes on to consider all the major watersheds in the development of democracy in modern Europe: the twenty-year crisis from 1789 to 1815, when the repercussions of revolution in France were felt across the continent; the explosion of democratic movements between 1830 and 1848; the hijacking of democratic processes by Napoleon III, and the deacute;bacirc;cle of the Paris Commune. Canfora traces how the spread of Marxist ideas in east and west Europe, the Russian revolution, and the rise of fascism led to a ls"European civil warrs" lasting from 1914 until 1945. In conclusion, the book demonstrates how in the recent past democracy itself, far from making progress, has in fact become more limited and oligarchic, as indeed it was at the outset, 2,500 years ago.

Author Biography

Luciano Canfora is Professor of Classical Philology at Bari University, Italy. His previous publications include The Ideology of Classicism (1980), The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (1989) and Julius Caesar: The People’s Dictator (2004). He is the editor of Quaderni di Storia, Italy’s premier history journal.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(6)
A Constitution Imbued with Hellenism: Greece, Europe, and the West	7	(14)
The Beginning: Democracy in Ancient Greece	21	(14)
How Greek Democracy Came Back into Play, and Finally Left the Stage	35	(19)
Liberalism's First Victory	54	(11)
Universal Suffrage: Act One	65	(16)
Universal Suffrage: Act Two	81	(8)
Trouble for the ``Old Mole''	89	(6)
Europe ``on the March''	95	(9)
From the Slaughter of the Communards to the ``Sacred Unions''	104	(16)
The Third Republic	120	(10)
The Second Failure of Universal Suffrage	130	(22)
The ``European Civil War''	152	(22)
Progressive Democracies, People's Democracies	174	(24)
The Cold War: Democracy in Retreat	198	(16)
Towards the ``Mixed System''	214	(19)
Was it a New Beginning?	233	(15)
Epilogue	248	(5)
Notes	253	(20)
Bibliography	273	(14)
Index	287