Originally given as a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, Francois Guizots The History of Civilization in Europe was published to great acclaim in 1828 and is now regarded as a classic in modern historical research. The History was particularly influential on Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville, in fact, requested that a copy of The History be sent to him when he arrived in the United States. This volume offers what Guizot himself describes as a philosophic history of Europe, one which searches for the underlying general causes and effects of particular events. Guizot considers European civilization in its broadest senses, encompassing not merely political, economic, and social structures, but also the ideas, faculties, and sentiments of man himself. Guizot understood a two-way relationship between external conditions (i.e., social, political, and economic conditions) and the inner man: external conditions affect the inner man, whos moral and intellectual developments eventually shape social and other external conditions. Guizots History describes the development of European civilization in terms of the inevitable advance of equality of conditions, due to many factors, including a new emphasis on the individual. The author explores the decentralization of power that characterized feudalism, the centralization of power after the fifteenth century, and finally the rebuilding of local autonomy necessary for representative and free government. As Editor Larry Siedentop describes, The [Historys] moral is about the social and political consequences of destroying local liberty ...excessive concentration of power at the center of any society is, in the long run, its own undoing.

""In every society there exists a certain sum of correct ideas. This sum of correct ideas is scattered among the individuals who make up the society and is unequally distributed among them. The problem is to gather up all the scattered and incomplete fragments of this power, to concentrate them, and to constitute them into a government. What is called 'representation' is nothing other than the means of arriving at this result. It is not an arithmetic machine intended to collect and enumerate individual wills. It is a natural process for extracting from the bosom of society the public reason that alone has the right to govern.""--from the bookThe French political philosopher and historian Francois Guizot (1787-1874) was one of the French Doctrinaires, thinkers who sought to avoid the interpretations of the Revolution advanced by either extreme of Left or Right. He argued that in order to understand the nature of political institutions it is necessary to study first the society, its composition, mores, and the relation between various classes. At the very center of his theory lies the principle of the sovereignty of reason.Aurelian Craiutu, associate professor of political science at Indiana University, writes in the introduction: "A cursory look at the table of contents shows the originality of this unusual book: it combines lengthy narrative chapters full of historical details with theoretical chapters in which Guizot reflects on the principles, goals, and institutions of representative government." The first part of the book covers the period from the fifth to the eleventh century and such topics as the "true" principles of representative government and the origin and consequences of the sovereignty of the people. The second part spans the Norman Conquest to the reign of the Tudors in England and analyzes the architecture of the English Constitutional monarchy.Guizot's historical method combined philosophy and history by passing from the exposition of facts to the examination of ideas. Readers not familiar with him will profit from an encounter with Guizot, who not only writes in a beautiful French style but also illustrates the French liberal-conservative tradition at its best, much like Constant and Tocqueville.

""In every society there exists a certain sum of correct ideas. This sum of correct ideas is scattered among the individuals who make up the society and is unequally distributed among them. The problem is to gather up all the scattered and incomplete fragments of this power, to concentrate them, and to constitute them into a government. What is called 'representation' is nothing other than the means of arriving at this result. It is not an arithmetic machine intended to collect and enumerate individual wills. It is a natural process for extracting from the bosom of society the public reason that alone has the right to govern.""--from the bookThe French political philosopher and historian Francois Guizot (1787-1874) was one of the French Doctrinaires, thinkers who sought to avoid the interpretations of the Revolution advanced by either extreme of Left or Right. He argued that in order to understand the nature of political institutions it is necessary to study first the society, its composition, mores, and the relation between various classes. At the very center of his theory lies the principle of the sovereignty of reason.Aurelian Craiutu, associate professor of political science at Indiana University, writes in the introduction: "A cursory look at the table of contents shows the originality of this unusual book: it combines lengthy narrative chapters full of historical details with theoretical chapters in which Guizot reflects on the principles, goals, and institutions of representative government." The first part of the book covers the period from the fifth to the eleventh century and such topics as the "true" principles of representative government and the origin and consequences of the sovereignty of the people. The second part spans the Norman Conquest to the reign of the Tudors in England and analyzes the architecture of the English Constitutional monarchy.Guizot's historical method combined philosophy and history by passing from the exposition of facts to the examination of ideas. Readers not familiar with him will profit from an encounter with Guizot, who not only writes in a beautiful French style but also illustrates the French liberal-conservative tradition at its best, much like Constant and Tocqueville.

Originally given as a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, Francois Guizots "The History of Civilization in Europe" was published to great acclaim in 1828 and is now regarded as a classic in modern historical research. The History was particularly influential on Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville, in fact, requested that a copy of The History be sent to him when he arrived in the United States. This volume offers what Guizot himself describes as a philosophic history of Europe, one which searches for the underlying general causes and effects of particular events. Guizot considers European civilisation in its broadest senses, encompassing not merely political, economic, and social structures, but also the ideas, faculties, and sentiments of man himself". Guizot understood a two-way relationship between external conditions (i.e., social, political, and economic conditions) and the inner man: external conditions affect the inner man, whos moral and intellectual developments eventually shape social and other external conditions. Guizots History describes the development of European civilisation in terms of the inevitable advance of equality of conditions, due to many factors, including a new emphasis on the individual. The author explores the decentralisation of power that characterised feudalism, the centralisation of power after the fifteenth century, and finally the rebuilding of local autonomy necessary for representative and free government. As Editor Larry Siedentop describes, The [Historys] moral is about the social and political consequences of destroying local liberty ...excessive concentration of power at the centre of any society is, in the long run, its own undoing.