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François Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe Liberty Fund Inc., 2013.
Reviewed by Mariana Tepfenhart
In this book, the author examines the development of European civilization from the fall of Rome to the nineteenth century.
François Guizot was a brilliant historian of the nineteenth century. He was born in France, in 1787 in a Protestant family. He was a witness of the French Revolution, which claimed his father as a victim of the Great Terror in 1794. His mother decided to move to Geneva where she could get support from other Protestants. There he received a very good education in history and philosophy. Learning Greek and Latin, as well as other European languages, enabled him to be in contact with many new ideas of the time.
He returned to Paris and encountered the intelligentsia of the post-revolutionary France. He frequented the salon of Maine de Biran, the center of one of the best-known philosophical circles. The most important appointments in his career were to the position of Chair of Modern History at the prestigious University of Sorbonne and later, to the position of Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice, which gave him the opportunity to understand how the French Government worked.
The book is divided in 14 lectures, each one with a subheading that allows the reader to follow the main ideas easily. Lecture 1 covers the definition of civilization. For Guizot, civilization does not include only social relations, the power of the state, production, and labor relations but also the development of man, of his faculties. He argues that there is a strong correlation between society and the internal development of the man. There is a mutual influence as he clearly states: . all of the great developments of the internal man have turned to the profit of society; all the great developments of the social states to the profit of individual man." (p.22)
In the Lecture 2, Guizot compared the homogenous societies of the ancient world with the diversity of modern civilizations. He argued that in each of the ancient civilizations there is one dominant principle that permeates all aspects of life.
Guizot identified the three major components of European civilization: Roman, Christian, and Germanic. From the Romans, the Europeans inherited...