Democracy’s Twenty-First-Century Histories | Adam Tooze* (pdf)

Abstract: This essay approaches the idea that current conceptions of history are in fact tantamount to ideas about the historical unfolding of democracy, with history and democracy having become intellectually intertwined. This observation starts with various present-day challenges and debates, but then integrates them in broader historiographic and metahistorical interpretations. A survey of some major publications on the history of democracy in Europe and the United States from the nineteenth century to the present brings together US, British, French and German perspectives on the democratic condition of our age.