The Scottish enlightenment and the stages of civilization -- American geography textbooks -- John Hill Burton's Political economy -- Invention, the engine of progress -- An outline of theories of civilization -- Reflections.

Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political scientists of all time. His Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and Ancien Regime (1856) are classics. Yet his work is not always easy to understand since it needs to be seen as a work which combines his essays, letters, travels and other materials. Through an examination of all of these, we can see that Tocqueville, more than any other thinker, understood the deep roots of individualism, equality and fraternity and in doing so the origins of the modern world. His three-way comparison of France, England, and America is unique and deeply illuminating. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

"Trace the career of Fukuzawa Yukichi, who began life as a lower-level samurai during the Tokugawa era and went on to become one of the leading figures in Japan during the late nineteenth century.

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 offers a panoramic view of reflections on progress in modern China. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the discourses on progress shape Chinese understandings of modernity and its pitfalls. As this in-depth study shows, these discourses play a pivotal role in the fields of politics, society, culture, as well as philosophy, history, and literature. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Chinese ideas of progress, their often highly optimistic implications, but also the criticism of modernity they offered, opened the gateway for reflections on China’s past, its position in the present world, and its future course.

Based on archival research undertaken in Japan, Britain and the United States, Mihalopoulos offers a new perspective on the relations between gender hierarchies and the political economy in a newly modernized Japan.

福澤諭吉の公私の場で著した女性論、家族論の代表著作11編と52通の書簡を選出、最新の研究成果をもとに英語に翻訳。詳細な注、索引付き。

Yukichi Fukuzawa rose from low samurai origins to become one of the finest intellectuals and social thinkers of modern Japan. Through his best-selling works, he helped transform an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged international force. In Outline of a Theory of Civilization, the author's most sustained philosophical text, Fukuzawa translates and adapts a range of Western works for a Japanese audience, establishing the social, cultural, and political avenues through which Japan could connect with other countries. Echoing the ideas of Western contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Fukuzawa encouraged a grassroots elevation of the individual and national spirit, as well as free initiative in the private domain. Fukuzawa's bold project articulated thoughts that, for him, bolstered the material evidence of Western civilization. He argued that the essential difference separating Western countries from Japan and Asia was the extent to which citizens acted like free and responsible individuals. This careful new translation, accompanied by a comprehensive critical introduction, highlights the truly transnational aspects of Outline of a Theory of Civilization and its status as a foundational text of modern Japanese civilization. Approaching Fukuzawa's progressive thought with a fresh eye, these scholars elucidate the monumental and peerless quality of his work.