Book contents
- the cambridge history of rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction
- A Note on Translations
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I A Revolution in Rights?
- 1 Barbeyrac’s Intervention
- 2 Rights and the Bourgeois Revolution
- 3 Social Rights
- 4 Enlightenment Theories of Rights
- 5 Rights, Property, and Politics
- 6 Antislavery in the Age of Rights
- 7 Enlightenment Constitutionalism and the Rights of Man
- 8 Fundamental Rights at the American Founding
- 9 Declarations of Rights
- 10 The Rights of Women (or Women’s Rights)
- 11 The Image of Rights in the French Revolution
- Part II Postrevolutionary Rights
- Part III Rights and Empires
- Index
- References
2 - Rights and the Bourgeois Revolution
The Rise of Political Economy
from Part I - A Revolution in Rights?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2025
- the cambridge history of rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction
- A Note on Translations
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I A Revolution in Rights?
- 1 Barbeyrac’s Intervention
- 2 Rights and the Bourgeois Revolution
- 3 Social Rights
- 4 Enlightenment Theories of Rights
- 5 Rights, Property, and Politics
- 6 Antislavery in the Age of Rights
- 7 Enlightenment Constitutionalism and the Rights of Man
- 8 Fundamental Rights at the American Founding
- 9 Declarations of Rights
- 10 The Rights of Women (or Women’s Rights)
- 11 The Image of Rights in the French Revolution
- Part II Postrevolutionary Rights
- Part III Rights and Empires
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter highlights the crucial role of property in the history of rights, both as one of the key concepts driving the development of rights theories (and protections) onward from an early time, and their modern adaptations in the eighteenth century. Given property’s oversized importance in this history, it is surprisingly missing from many recent accounts. But since the French Revolution, property has been at the heart of most political efforts to secure and protect rights. As this chapter demonstrates, the centrality of property for so many later reforms can in large part be credited to the insistent claims of the Physiocrats. Political society, they argued, must extend natural rights, rather than replace them with positive laws. Economic circulation was itself part and parcel of a “natural order,” with subjective rights at its basis. The chapter suggests that contemporary theories and assessments of the role of rights in political society remain partial as long as they do not include an understanding of the historical role that property has played among them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Rights , pp. 45 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024