Introduction / Ewa Atanassow and Alan S. Kahan -- Part One. Liberal Beginnings. Montesquieu / Catherine Larrère, translated by Alan S. Kahan -- In Praise of Liberty: Madame de Staël's Considerations / Aurelian Craiutu -- Benjamin Constant on the Liberty of the Ancients and the Moderns / Jeremy Jennings -- Jeremy Bentham / Emmanuelle de Champs -- James Madison / Michael P. Zuckert -- Tocqueville's New Liberalism / Ewa Atanassow -- Part Two. Liberalism Confronts the World. Abraham Lincoln's Commentary on the "Plain unmistakable language" of the Declaration of Independence - Diana J. Schaub -- John Stuart Mill / Nicholas Capaldi -- Alexander Herzen / Robert Neil Harris -- T. H. Green / John Morrow -- Sarmiento: Liberalism Between Civilization and Barbarism / Iván Jaksić -- Namik Kemal's Constitutional Liberalism: Sovereignty, Justice and the Critique of the Tanzimat / H. Ozan Ozavci -- Khayr al-Din Basha / Nouh El Harmouzi -- Jacob Burckhardt's Dystopic Liberalism / Alan S. Kahan -- Part Three. Liberalism Confront the Twentieth Century. Max Weber / Joshua Derman -- Was Keynes a Liberal? / Reinhard Blomert -- John Dewey and Liberal Democracy / James T. Kloppenberg -- Public Ownership and Totalitarianism: Hu Shih's reflections / Lei Yi, translated by Yang Xiao -- Hannah Arendt: Power, Action, and the Foundation of Freedom / Roger Berkowitz -- Reading F. A. Hayek / Edwige Kacenelenbogen -- Maruyama Masao and Liberalism in Japan / Reiji Matsumoto -- Liberty and Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Freedom / George Crowder -- Czeslaw Milosz / Michel Maslowski -- John Rawls / Chad Van Schoelandt

"Liberalism today has perhaps more supporters and adversaries than any other political movement. This volume traces liberalism's global ascent through essays about some of the thinkers and actors who participated in its rise and spread. The essays included here present for the first time in one place the geographic and ideological diversity of liberal thought and practice as it developed since the eighteenth century. By exploring thinkers as diverse as Montesquieu, Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Burckhardt, Khayr al-Din, Hu Shih, John Rawls, and Czeslaw Milosz, this volume contributes toward a better understanding of liberalisms past and present."--

"Explores the work of the pivotal thinkers in the liberal tradition from Montesquieu to the present, exploring liberalism as the first truly global form of political thought"--