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Daniel Hannan

Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World Paperback – December 2, 2014

by Daniel Hannan (Author)

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British politician Daniel Hannan's Inventing Freedom is an ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of the principles that have made America great, and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled.

According to Hannan, the ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms—individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government—are the legacy of a very specific tradition that was born in England and that we Americans, along with other former British colonies, inherited.

By the tenth century, England was a nation-state whose people were already starting to define themselves with reference to inherited common-law rights. The story of liberty is the story of how that model triumphed. How it was enshrined in a series of landmark victories—the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the U.S. Constitution—and how it came to defeat every international rival.

Today we see those ideas abandoned and scorned in the places where they once went unchallenged. Inventing Freedom is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism. And it is offered at a time that may turn out to be the end of the age of political freedom.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Broadside Books
Publication date

December 2, 2014
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.94 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

006223174X
ISBN-13

978-0062231741
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“With the eloquence of Macaulay or Trevelyan―both of whom are liberally quoted here―Hannan sweeps us through English history to show the triumph of law-based liberty and “that total understanding which can only exist between people speaking the same tongue.” — The Telegraph (UK)

“Hannan’s well-written book is an excellent politically incorrect history of England.” — Washington Free Beacon

“Equal parts history and political theory, Inventing Freedom is a thought-provoking and stirring read for the holidays.” — The Blaze

From the Back Cover

Inventing Freedom is an ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of the principles that have made our country great, and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled. According to British politician Daniel Hannan, the ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms—individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and representative government—are the legacy of a very specific tradition that was born in England.

By the tenth century, a thousand years before most modern countries, England was a nation-state whose people were beginning to define themselves by inherited common-law rights. The story of liberty is the story of how that model triumphed, enshrined in a series of landmark victories—the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the US Constitution—and how it came to defeat every international rival. Yet today these ideas are being abandoned and scorned. A chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism, Inventing Freedom explains why the extraordinary idea that the state was the servant, not the ruler, of the individual evolved uniquely in the English-speaking world.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Broadside Books; Reprint edition (December 2, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006223174X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062231741
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.94 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #505,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #510 in Human Rights (Books)
- #1,029 in History of Civilization & Culture
- #2,405 in History & Theory of Politics

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Daniel Hannan

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Daniel Hannan is a writer and blogger, and he has been a member of the European Parliament representing South East England for the Conservative Party since 1999. He graduated with a double first in history from Oriel College, Oxford, and worked as a speechwriter and journalist before standing for election. His previous book, The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America, was a New York Times bestseller. He blogs at www.hannan.co.uk.

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Clay Garner

“This Bible is for the government of the people, for the people and by the people.” The author was the theologian John Wycliffe

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2018

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“Inventing Freedom - How the English-speaking people made the modern world’.

Hannan writes with a smooth, light pen. Easy to follow. Clearly presented and focuses on the evidence, not personalities.

He reaches back to historical works to show connections to present. For instance . . .

“On November 19, 1863, at in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Abraham Lincoln, made a speech that lasted for just over two minutes, and ended with his hope “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Why connected to English language?

“Those words have been quoted ever since, as the supreme vindication of representative government. Indeed, they are often quoted as proof of American exceptionalism. But the words were not Lincoln’s. Most of his hearers would have recognized their source, as our generation does not. They came from the prologue to what was probably the earliest translation of the Holy Scriptures into the English language:

“This Bible is for the government of the people, for the people and by the people.” The author was the theologian John Wycliffe, sometimes called “the Morning Star of the Reformation.” Astonishingly, the words had first appeared in 1384.’’

‘John Wycliffe’! Wow!

“Above all, and exceptionally for his time, Wycliffe believed in the centrality of the Bible. He taught that people should read the scriptures for themselves and not rely on the interpretation of priests and prelates.’’

This distrust of authority runs down to today. The individualist, personal, determined English love of liberty can clearly be explained by biblical reading as well as Anglo-Saxon roots.

“The idea that everyone should read the scriptures had egalitarian and democratic implications. Those who strove to, as they saw it, perfect the Reformation by abolishing bishops and allowing congregations to elect their leaders, were consciously campaigning for representative rather than hierarchical government. Their religious convictions were bound to spill over into their political opinions. These groups—Puritans in England, Presbyterians in Scotland and Northern Ireland, Nonconformists and Methodists in Wales, and the coreligionists of all these groups in the New World—provided the core of Whig support down the ages, though that party was sometimes called by different names.’’

Introduction: The Anglosphere Miracle
1 The Same Language, the Same Hymns, the Same Ideals
2 Anglo-Saxon Liberties
3 Rediscovering England
4 Liberty and Property
5 The First Anglosphere Civil War
6 The Second Anglosphere Civil War
7 Anglobalization
8 From Empire to Anglosphere
9 Consider What Nation It Is Whereof Ye Are
Conclusion: Anglosphere Twilight?

One theme is that the American Revolution is misnamed. He explains (in detail) why it should be called the ‘Second English civil war.’

“The day after Paul Revere’s ride, April 19, 1775, the first shots were fired in what most contemporaries took to be the second English Civil War—a continuation, in many ways, of the first. No one at that stage thought of the conflict as being between two distinct nations.’’

Another key conclusion is the significance of Puritan faith.

“Tocqueville, too, was struck by the connection, and could see that that political culture now covered English-speakers of all faiths. Again, he traced it back to its point de départ:

“When I consider all that has resulted from this first fact, I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on these shores.” That Puritan—like those of his coreligionists who remained behind—had necessarily created a distinction between the public and private spheres, between state and church, between Caesar’s realm and God’s.’’

This American political culture contrasts with French Revolution . . .

“From the first, the radical tradition in Europe was violent. The repression that followed the French Revolution is known as “the Terror.” That name, however, was not bestowed by opponents of the Revolution; on the contrary, it was taken up by the Jacobins themselves. On September 5, 1792, the revolutionaries announced their policy in these terms:

“It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators. So, legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty.”

Wow! French lawyers were the first terrorists!

After examining history, explaining culture, analyzing politics, what does Hannan conclude?

“The answer lies neither in politics nor in history, but in psychology. The more we learn about how the brain works, the more we discover that people’s political opinions tend to be a rationalization of their instincts. We subconsciously pick the data that sustain our prejudices, and block out those that don’t.’’

Confirmation bias is everything!

“We can generally spot this tendency in other people; we almost never acknowledge it in ourselves. A neat illustration of the phenomenon is the debate over global warming. At first glance, it seems odd that climate change should divide commentators along left–right lines. Science, after all, depends on data, not on our attitudes to taxation or defense or the family. The trouble is that that we all have assumptions, scientists as much as anyone else.’’

Are assumptions so bad?

“When presented with a new discovery, we automatically try to press it into our existing belief system; if it doesn’t fit, we question the discovery before the belief system. Sometimes this habit leads us into error. But without it, we should hardly survive at all. As Edmund Burke argued, life would become impossible if we tried to think through every new situation from first principles, disregarding both our own experience and the accumulated wisdom of our people—if, in other words, we shed all prejudice.’’

This is subtle, but profound.

“If you begin with the belief that wealthy countries became wealthy by exploiting poor ones, that state action does more good than harm, and that we could all afford to pay a bit more tax, you are likelier than not to accept a thesis that seems to demand government intervention, supranational technocracy, and global wealth redistribution.’’

‘Belief systems are trusted’ but ‘facts’ are not!

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Alan F. Sewell

The Libertarian Conscience of the Anglosphere

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 1, 2013

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Author Daniel Hannan is a person of English ancestry who was born and raised in Peru then relocated to the United Kingdom as an adult and made a career in politics, including becoming one of the U.K.'s representatives to the European Parliament. His global experience has shown him how unique is our "Anglosphere" heritage of representative democracy, protection of property rights, the sanctity of law, and the inalienable rights of the individual.

These values are imbedded so deeply in our culture that they have become part of our subconscious. Because we take them for granted, we often forget to value them as being the foundation of our liberty and prosperity.

I've also lived and worked around the world and have also come to a similar appreciation. English-derived culture and law IS unique in its protection of individual liberty and property rights. The Napoleonic-derived law that governs Continental Europe and its former Latin American Colonies assumes that in criminal matters the accused is guilty until proven innocent. It assumes that individuals have no natural rights to liberty, but are only licensed certain rights by the state. As a result, human rights and property rights are severely constrained.

For example, Latin America, which inherited Spanish and Portuguese law, does not permit individual ownership of subsurface mineral rights such as oil or gold. ALL subsurface wealth belongs to the state. These countries do not have independent judiciaries that are empowered to invalidate unconstitutional edicts of the government. Any judge in Latin America who rules against the wishes of the government risks being deposed and imprisoned. Most of these countries have not amounted to much either in terms of freedom or prosperity.

Hannan goes into interesting detail explaining the specifics of how the English developed their deeply ingrained respect for human rights and property rights and then transmitted that culture to its overseas colonies of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and (arguably) India. Here are a couple of excellent quotes among many:

=============
The foundation of the British Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and suspicion but in an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any other former period. --GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1783
=============

=============
It is true that each people has a special character independent of its political interest. One might say that America gives the most perfect picture, for good or ill, of the special character of the English race. The American is the Englishman left to himself. --ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 1840
=============

Like the British we Americans have had incessant conflicts over how best to balance the desire for individual liberty with the necessity to conform to national laws. How far should we go in decentralizing our government into small units of state and local governments, which are most responsive to the people, and how much authority should we retain in the national government?

We have been fighting over those issues of centralization vs. states rights from the time the Constitution was ratified (the Constitution's strong national government was OPPOSED by many of the original Patriots) through the Civil War and on down to the present "Tea Party Revolt."

Hannan provides a thorough grounding of how these issues developed throughout British history, including that murky time before 1776 when the territory that later became the USA was governed from England and took part in its civil wars and political intrigues.

Hannan also discusses some important questions about how the nations within the "Anglosphere" should affiliate with each other:

1. Should the United Kingdom distance itself from the centralizing tendencies of the European Union, which it has little in common with in law or culture, and strengthen economic and political ties with its "Anglosphere partners" in the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand?

2. And what about India, the giant of the English-speaking world, that will soon be the most populous country in the world (at well over a billion people), and with a dynamic, fast-growing economy, that may become one of the world's largest. Should we embrace India as an "Anglosphere" country on a par with England, the USA, Canada, etc. and engage it with free trade and facilitated immigration of Indians who would like to relocate to the other countries?

These are timely issues that all of us in the "Anglosphere" should be carefully considering.

I do have to fault the book on a couple of lesser points. One is that Hannan seems to be extremely well educated about every part of the world EXCEPT the United States. In my opinion his lack of complete knowledge of American history leads him to innocently mischaracterize the motives of the American Revolution. He takes the revisionist tack that the American Revolution was a manifestation of an English Civil War between the King's opponents and supporters. He throws cold water on the view that our revolution had anything to do with a nationalist desire to form an independent country.

That is an over-simplified view because American nationalists, who wanted the Thirteen Colonies to become an independent sovereign Republic, were prolific writers on that very subject decades before the Revolution broke out in 1775. This view doesn't detract any from the main ideas that Hannan wants to get across, but my antennae went up when I read his take on the American Revolution.

The book leaves us with the question: How do we of the Anglosphere maintain the precious heritage of human rights and property rights that the British instilled in our culture? The constantly improving means of communications and control seem to be centralizing power in national governments and leaving the state and county governments to wither on the vine. The American "Teaparty Movement" is confronting that issue at this very moment. They are particularly incensed by the federalization of healthcare and by the ever-rising taxes needed to pay for that and other exploding social welfare programs instigated by the national government.

If this is a question that interests you as a liberty-loving person, then you need to read this book in order to obtain a solid grounding on how our culture of human rights and property rights originated. Fish who live in the water don't miss it until they're taken out of it. This book will educate you on how to appreciate the ocean of liberty we swim in and what we would lose if it were ever taken away.

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Top reviews from other countries

D. Andrews

A Timely Reminder of the Importance of Freedom

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 14, 2016

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This book takes the reader on a journey of the history of the Anglosphere, a tale of two philosophies locked in battle for control of the political culture of the English. The first a tyranny of kings and absolutist rule, the second a liberty founded in rule of law, parliamentarianism, rugged individualism. The story focuses, quite rightly, on the concept of English Common Law - that body of culture and belief that sees the law of the land being something that comes from the people, bottom-up, as contrasted with the top-down civil-law based views of Europe where the law is imposed by philosopher-kings who, of course, know better than lesser mortals. The book is not just about history, but about the very current political situation in the Anglosphere and how Common Law has become increasingly battered and eroded by those same forces that once beat in the hearts of the Stuart kings and other tyrants of the world. The message of the book is clear: we must remember who we are, and the great treasure of freedom we have given and can yet give to the rest of the world.

4 people found this helpful