Table of Contents

Introduction: Human Rights and Revolutions
Part I: Two Opening Perspectives
Chapter 1: The Paradoxical Origins of Human Rights
Chapter 2: The Chinese Revolution and Contemporary Paradoxes
Part II: The English, American, and Russian Revolutions
Chapter 3: Tradition, Human Rights, and the English Revolution
Chapter 4: Natural Rights in the American Revolution: The American Amalgam
Chapter 5: A European Experience: Human Rights and Citizenship in Revolutionary Russia
Part III: Asian and African Case Studies
Chapter 6: An Enlightenment of Outcasts: Some Vietnamese Stories
Chapter 7: India, Human Rights, and Asian Values
Chapter 8: What Absence Is Made Of: Human Rights in Africa
Part IV: A Human Rights Revolution?
Chapter 9: (Homo)sexuality, Human Rights, and Revolution in Latin America
Chapter 10: Ethics and the Rearmament of Imperialism: The French Case
Chapter 11: The Strange Career of Radical Islam
Part V: A Concluding Perspective
Chapter 12: Human Rights and Empire's Embrace: A Latin American Counterpoint

About the Author

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Greg Grandin is professor of history at New York University. Lynn Hunt is Eugen Weber Professor of French History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Marilyn B. Young is professor of history at New York University.

Reviews

This book is a necessary addition to a research collection, because it provides a comprehensive framework and well chosen set of cases to illustrate the state of the art of the major debates in the human rights field.
*H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online*

The authors argue convincingly that without revolutions human rights would never have become a political reality, even though countries that never have had a revolution have done a better job of preserving freedom. Many of the essays are interrelated in that they illustrate one or another or both of these themes. On the whole, this is an interesting, worthwhile, and thought-provoking book. Social and political philosophers might gain a great deal from understanding the history of the concepts that they use and argue about.
*Human Rights Revolution*