Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 Geoff Eley is available to download
|Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000|
|Type: ||eBook |
|Released: ||2002 |
|Publisher: ||Oxford University Press, USA |
|Page Count: ||721 |
|Format: ||pdf |
|Language: ||English |
|ISBN-10: ||0195037847 |
|ISBN-13: ||9780195037845 |
From Library Journal
The central thesis of this massive historical study is that an assortment of radical and leftist movements were chiefly responsible for the triumph of democracy in Europe.Forging Democracy: The History ...
Textbook Eley (history, Univ. of Michigan; Reshaping the German Right) provides a chronological and country-by-country examination of the emergence of democracy and the factors that promoted and hindered its development. Beginning with the growth of liberal constitutionalism in the 1860s, he writes eloquently about the influence of the labor movement, Socialists, Communists, and feminists throughout Europe. This history covers all the expected names Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Gramsci, Brandt, Gorbachev, et al. and the major political events and upheavals. Eley began working on this book 20 years ago and changed his focus as the political landscape of Europe changed, especially after 1989. The rapid democratization of the East-bloc nations led him to consider the future of democratic socialism within the politics of globalization. This is an impressive work of scholarship, with over 90 pages of notes and a bibliography of equal size. Eley has produced a worthy successor to David Caute's seminal study The Left in Europe Since 1789. Highly recommended for all academic libraries. Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"Combining the learning and analysis of the historian with the commitment of the student radical of 1968,Geoff Eley has written a manifesto of hope in democracy, and a long, regretful good-bye to the movements of the Left which, for 150 years, gave it its reality. Those who want to understand the history of Europe since 1848 will do well to read this wide-ranging and multinational survey, written with both thoght and feeling."--Eric Hobsbawm""A remarkable feat--a clear, balanced history of left politics which includes social and cultural movements from women's liberation to proletarian nudism, from Bolshevik street theater to New Age travellers. Geoff Eley covers the well-known international events along with the suppressed and marginalized. His long view defies forgetfulness and suggest that what will be found relevant in the future is always unexpected."--Sheila Rowbotham"Ranging over a century and a half and the entire continent of Europe, and with a cast of characters including unionists, feminists, radical intellectuals, political radicals, and many others, this remarkable book offers a much-needed account of the history of European radicalism. And it provides essential historical background for the rethinking of purposes and intellectual premises in which the European -- and American -- Left is now engaged."--Eric Foner"Shaped by the ideals of equality, liberty and solidarity, the idea of the left was represented by the democratic movementof the nineteenth century and later by socialist and communist movements. Recent histories of the left have not added anything new to this vision. By contrast, Geoff Eley's book has the merit ofhaving enriched both the conceptualization and the historical narrative of this key aspect of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."- Slavic Review