Forging Democracy
The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000
1st Edition
Published on 11. April 2002
978-0-19-802140-7 (ISBN)
Description
Neither given nor granted, democracy requires conflict, often violent confrontations, and challenges to the established political order. In Europe, Geoff Eley convincingly shows, democracy did not evolve orgainically out of a natural consensus, the achievement of prosperity, or the negative cement of the Cold War. Rather, it was painstakingly crafted, continually expanded, and doggedly defended by varying constellations of socialist, feminist, Communist, and other radical movements that originally blossomed in the later nineteenth century. Parties of the Left championed democracy in the revolutionary crisis after World War I, salvaged it against the threat of fascism, and renewed its growth after 1945. They organized civil societies rooted in egalitarian ideals which came from the very fiber of Europe's current democratic traditions. The trajectories of European democracy and the history of the European Left are thus inextricably bound together.
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Book
04/2002
Oxford University Press Inc
€228.70
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Geoff Eley
Forging Democracy: The Left and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe, 1850-2000
The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000
Book
04/2002
Oxford University Press Inc
€137.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Geoff Eley is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author and editor of many books on British and German history, including Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck.
