First published in 1956, Nationalism and Liberty explores the possibility of nationalism being compatible with respect for individual liberty and diversity by studying the example of Switzerland. Composed of German, French and Italian speaking populations which in the age of nationalism had been involved in many bloody and bitter conflicts in Europe, Switzerland had succeeded in establishing harmony and cooperation. The author argues that Switzerland can serve as a model for Europ...

First published in 1936, Western Civilization in the Near East traces the spread and growth of Western civilization in the countries of the Levant and their immediate hinterland. The author argues that modern civilization took birth in Western Europe and then slowly spread to the rest of Europe and to all other parts of the earth, leading to the Europeanization of mankind. While Europe’s modern civilization initially enabled it to dominate the world economically and political, it ...

First published in 1932, Nationalism and Imperialism in the Hither East seeks to present the history of Turkey, Egypt and Arabia in the decade where the political structures created by World War I and the Peace Conferences sought consolidation and the evolution of their own life. The story begins where, after the immediate consequences of the War had been liquidated, the civil and political administration of the several countries was established. This book is intended as contribut...

First published in 1933, Nationalism in the Soviet Union aims at presenting the mentality of the Soviet citizen, of the Communist ‘theology,’ and the way in which it tried to make its peace with the ‘theology’ of nationalism that dominated the world. The author uses the term ‘theology’ intentionally for he argues that both the Soviet Union and the Western civilization are based on the same idea: the secularization of the Biblical faith in world history as a single comprehensive co...

First published in 1929, A History of Nationalism in the East brings together in one truly fascinating volume a mass of information hitherto scattered and partly unavailable. Hans Kohn sums up the general situation in his Introduction. He tells us that the World War I produced three great communities of interest, distinct and, to some extent, mutually antagonistic. The first was that of the continent of Europe, barring Russia, which was faced with the necessity for the gradual bre...

In this sixtieth anniversary edition of The Idea of Nationalism, Craig Calhoun probes the work of Hans Kohn and the world that first brought prominence to this unparalleled defense of the national ideal in the modern West. At its publication, Saturday Review called it an enduring and definitive treatise.... [Kohn] has written a book which is less a history of nationalism than it is a history of Western civilization from the standpoint of the national idea. This edition includes an extensiv...

Originally published in 1954, this book presents the view of nine liberal German historians in reconsideration of the dominant concepts of German political and cultural history in the immediate post-war years. They review critically not only the rise and rule of National Socialism, but also the strength of authoritarianism and militarism, the weakness of democracy and liberal attitudes in 19th Century Germany. The essays were published in German periodicals and pamphlets between 1945 and 1...

The riveting story of the Germania and its incarnations and exploitations through the ages.The pope wanted it, Montesquieu used it, and the Nazis pilfered an Italian noble's villa to get it: the Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, took on a life of its own as both an object and an ideology. When Tacitus wrote a not-very-flattering little book about the ancient Germans in 98 CE, at the height of the Roman Empire, he could not have foreseen that the Nazis would extol it as "a b...

The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights, gender and racial equality, individual liberty, and freedom of expression and the press, form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This fact is uncontested - yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present...

In the first volume of her landmark philosophical work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political theorist traces the rise of antisemitism in Europe.Since it was first published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism has been recognized as the definitive philosophical account of the totalitarian mindset. A probing analysis of Nazism, Stalinism, and the "banality of evil", it remains one of the most referenced works in studies and discussions ...

First published in German in 1911, Robert Michels’ ‘Political Parties’ is a classic of political and social science; it analyses the evolution of oligarchical power structures within political parties and trade unions, particularly those, ostensibly, most committed to egalitarian and democratic ideals — socialist parties, organisations and trade unions — including anarcho-syndicalist labour unions. Clearly and succinctly the libertarian syndicalist (at the time) M...

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in the wake of the Scientific Revolution - of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process which effectively overthrew all justicfication for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as ...