The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century, by Helena Rosenblatt

Abstract

Helena Rosenblatt proposes ‘a word history’ (p. 3, emphasis original) of liberalism in three neat acts: its invention in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France, its transformation in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, and its adoption by the USA in the early twentieth century. The methodology is influenced by Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School and, accordingly, Rosenblatt rigorously contextualises the word ‘liberalism’, interrogating its shifting meanings across time and space. But the book is more than simply a history of the word liberalism: it provides a lucid overview of the development of liberal thought in France, Germany and the USA across the long nineteenth century. However, there are some frustrating omissions and the book is somewhat marred by its author’s insistence on ‘rescuing’ liberalism and restoring its putative core values. The book begins with a chapter on liberalism’s ‘prehistory’ in Ancient Rome and early modern Britain. Here Rosenblatt establishes her vision of liberalism, grounding it in ideas about generosity and duty to the common good as well as freedom. Thereafter the book proceeds chronologically through the long nineteenth century, beginning with the French revolutionary era and its impact on the emergence and spread of liberalism. Rosenblatt’s endpoint is a little less clear, and the final chapter on liberalism becoming a ‘creed’ in the USA condenses the history of twentieth-century liberalism up until the Second World War into just under twenty pages. Throughout the book, the analysis ranges across politics, religion, education and the ubiquitous nineteenth-century ‘social question’; there are also sections on Gladstone and the British Liberal Party alongside the core material from French, German and American political thinkers, leaders and actors. The breadth of the work creates a rather tricky balancing act, however, and the analysis is repeatedly pulled back to French liberalism, the focus of much of Rosenblatt’s previous work. At times, there is a sense that the author cannot quite escape the pull of France, even while insisting on the contribution of often overlooked German liberals, and on the significance of liberalism’s reformulation in the USA.