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Micheline Ishay

The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era

by Micheline R. Ishay (Author)

4.1 42 ratings

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Micheline Ishay recounts the dramatic struggle for human rights across the ages in a book that brilliantly synthesizes historical and intellectual developments from the Mesopotamian Codes of Hammurabi to today's era of globalization. As she chronicles the clash of social movements, ideas, and armies that have played a part in this struggle, Ishay illustrates how the history of human rights has evolved from one era to the next through texts, cultural traditions, and creative expression. Writing with verve and extraordinary range, she develops a framework for understanding contemporary issues from the debate over globalization to the intervention in Kosovo to the climate for human rights after September 11, 2001. The only comprehensive history of human rights available, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with humankind's quest for justice and dignity.

Ishay structures her chapters around six core questions that have shaped human rights debate and scholarship: What are the origins of human rights? Why did the European vision of human rights triumph over those of other civilizations? Has socialism made a lasting contribution to the legacy of human rights? Are human rights universal or culturally bound? Must human rights be sacrificed to the demands of national security? Is globalization eroding or advancing human rights? As she explores these questions, Ishay also incorporates notable documents―writings, speeches, and political statements―from activists, writers, and thinkers throughout history.

ISBN-10

0520256417
ISBN-13

978-0520256415
Publisher

University of California Press
Publication date

June 2, 2008
Language

English
Dimensions

5.9 x 1.2 x 8.9 inches
Print length

480 pages
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4.1 out of 5

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Francesco Lovecchio

Human rights history is great, and badly needed.

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2005

Highly recommended to everybody. The book is an attempt to provide an account of the evolution of human rights over time and through political and philosophical thought. The author is well versed in political science and shows it off in this book while surfing in a very wide literature. It is well written. Two drawbacks in this beautiful book: not enough history of human rights; a scarce attention to those movements which paved the way to future developments but were unsuccessfull at first. Great piece of work anyway! Look forward for Vol. II.

11 people found this helpful

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Roberto Hernandez

no comment

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2008

Book was too long and wordy, and I had no time to finish reading it.

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Melissa M

Good overview

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2006

What I really liked about this book was its emphasis on human rights and how previous and current laws help or hurt human rights. This book is very useful if you want to know where some of the laws we have today came from. It also compares the religious traditions and their laws. Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in human rights history.

2 people found this helpful

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Katherine Wallace

Readable, interesting, well-researched

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2006

This book is a great overall history of human rights. I really liked how it talked about the origin of ideas and then wove those ideas throughout the book. It's a very well-researched and complete work. One thing that does is make several assertions that are extremely contentious among human rights scholars; for example it contends that human rights is a concept that is western in origin.

2 people found this helpful

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Darby Martinez

The amazon kindle version does not have proper page numbers ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2017

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The amazon kindle version does not have proper page numbers. Fix this, it is increasingly difficult for a college student to read a page of a book that has no page numbers.

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Peter N. Jones

Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples

Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2008

Human rights are rights considered to be held by individuals simply because they are part of the human species. They are rights, in essence, shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, nationality, or ethnic background. They are universal in content. Despite this fairly straight forward definition, the recognition of human rights by individuals, groups, societies, states, and nations has been a constant battle across both space and time. Throughout the centuries groups or societies have failed to recognize certain human rights of individuals, groups, and cultures while at the same time recognizing those of others. Likewise, conflicting political traditions have elaborated different components of human rights or differed over which elements had priority. Today, the manifold meanings of human rights embodied in this definition reflects this process of history and change.

Presenting this long and conflicted history in one of the more accessible and comprehensive editions to date, The History of Human Rights by Micheline R. Ishay is the authoritative text on the subject. Using the main points developed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the book chronicles the clashes of ideas, social movements, and armies that comprise the history of human rights. This history, although largely told from a Western perspective does encompass the perspective of those who have struggled to obtain them. Framing the history of human rights development through six core arguments, The History of Human Rights offers not only a comprehensive history and analysis, but also the basis for a discussion of where human rights needs to progress. This last component is what gives this book particular importance for indigenous peoples. As lucidly covered through six in-depth chapters, one of the final battles in the history of human rights will be over the rights of cultures, and particularly the inherent rights of indigenous peoples and their cultural lifeways in relation to state, national, and international rights.

Beginning with the controversy of human rights and religion, Ishay argues that each great religion contains important humanistic elements which have contributed to our modern conceptions of rights. For example, in the West, the impact of Judeo-Christian morality and ethics has been central to the development of human rights. As Ishay notes Judeo-Christian morality was secularized, separated from politics, and strengthened in influence by the advent of capitalism and colonialism in Europe, largely at the expense of other notions of ethics. Because of the development of capitalism in Europe, Judeo-Christian ethics became secularized with the progress of the Reformation (16th century) and the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, finally being transformed into a liberal discourse that dominates our current conception of human rights.

This leads to Ishay's second major argument in The History of Human Rights: that our modern conception of rights, wherever in the world they may be currently voiced, are predominantly European in origin. Not only are they largely founded on a secularized version of Judeo-Christian ethics, but that their current definition largely originated out of this European beginning. As Ishay correctly argues, this does not imply that Western rights are reducible to contemporary free-market liberalism, but rather that the human rights vision currently depicted as liberal is in fact indelibly molded by the socialist ideals that grew out of nineteenth-century European industrialization and secularized Judeo-Christian ethics.

As Ishay clearly articulates, the two documents most responsible for modern legal formulations of human rights are the American Bill of Rights and the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Both of these documents were the result of various social movements in the pre-industrial era. When industrialization took over in Europe and America, becoming an all consuming process, these documents coupled with the previously secularized Judeo-Christian ethical thought became the guiding ideologies in human rights definitions.

As such, our modern liberal take on human rights is also indebted to the social thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Ishay's third argument). Current attempts at asserting universal human rights, as The History of Human Rights argues, are defensive mechanisms against either liberal or socialist ideologies, since these ideologies presumably represent the oppressive legacy of Western imperial and colonial domination of the world.

The fourth argument in The History of Human Rights builds on the previous three, as the progress of human rights moved from individual to social, and finally cultural in scope. As such, Ishay contends that cultural rights must always be informed by, and checked against, a universalist perspective of human rights.

Like religious rights, the notion of cultural rights, so strongly advocated by liberal nationalists in nineteenth-century Europe (and later championed during the twentieth-century post-colonial struggle) was largely rejected by socialists because it caused a disjunction between group solidarity and universal human rights (p. 131). Challenging liberal ambiguities, many socialists pointed out that the primary beneficiaries of cultural rights were more often particular groups or individuals within the culture, and not the culture as a cohesive whole.

If we cannot trace the history and development of human rights in a linear fashion of progression from the individual to the social to the cultural, how can we say there has been any progress made in their development? This is Ishay's fifth argument: has there been any progress through history towards a universal set of human rights. Her contention is that there has been, although not necessarily through the recognized mechanisms. This in spite of President Roosevelt's 1945 proclamation that the United Nations would "spell the end of the system of unilateral action, ... the balances of power, and all the expedients that have been tried for centuries - and have always failed" (Roosevelt 1950: 570).

In short, universal human rights are always potentially endangered by particularist and vague conceptions of rights framed in terms of the "national interest," "national security," the right to "individual self-determination," or "cultural rights." Therefore, we must constantly keep vigilance on those who are in power and those who define human rights and their scope. This last point leads to The History of Human Rights' final point; a question rather then an argument.

Is globalization a boon or a threat from a human rights perspective. This is an especially important question when looking at the human rights progress in terms of indigenous peoples. As Ishay argues, and I would agree, the answer is that globalization has the potential to be a boon for human rights, but that we are not there yet. With the development of global information technology, Human Rights Peacenet, Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources, Amnesty International, and a multitude of other websites human rights advocates now have unprecedented possibilities for fighting. One cannot overlook the success of the human rights community's "infopressure" on the Mexican government during the Chiapas rebellion or the human rights "infoactivity" during the turbulent events in Tiananmen Square or against Indonesia's repression in East Timor.

However, we have not reached a nadir, we are still fighting an uphill battle. Not only has globalization opened new networks and avenues, but it has also allowed unprecedented human rights violations to occur. The illegal war in Iraq, China's occupation of Tibet, and the taking of land and natural resources from indigenous peoples are just a few. Human rights are still not universal. The best way to fight for their universal application is to know their history. The History of Human Rights is the best place to start. By knowing where we have come from, and how we got here, we can positively move forward. The History of Human Rights should be on everyone's reading list.

Make a difference. Know the history. Change the future.

[...]

20 people found this helpful

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Cheryl Sigona &

Eurocentric Bias

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2013

Verified Purchase

It is disappointing to find some historians claim Europeans developed the vocabulary to describe human rights. Ishay supports this idea by not looking at the history of other areas after the ancient times. Ishay repeatedly mentions September 11, 2001 and Islamic terrorists. This does not provide a true picture of Islam that provides spiritual well-being for 1.6 billion people. It is unsettling that this is a textbook written by a university professor.

4 people found this helpful

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M. Ruddy

European History?

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2006

Although much of the book provides a good background for much of Western history though the goggles of Human Rights, it at time seems to skip and distort aspects of it. How did benevolent religions sanction large scale war? Robespierre was not a champion of human rights by killing 20,000 people. Why are human rights still so in danger today? Don't get me wrong though, if you are looking for a historical read and do not have a lot of knowledge about European History, pick this up.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Dr. Gerard Charmley

Interesting, but flawed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2015

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This is an ambitious book by any measure, attempting to trace the development of human rights discourses and the progress of the same in shaping and re-shaping societies. Micheline Ishay writes with a passion and an interest in the subject which makes the book most readable. For the most part a narrative history, the book is accessible, and with occasional selections from core texts, ideal for the student or the newcomer to the subject. That said, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, the book is written from a Marxist viewpoint, with the result that the achievements of liberals are downplayed in favour of the supposedly superior contribution of Socialists, thus the tendency of Marist thought where it is actually applied to issue in authoritarian dictatorship is not commented upon, whereas the less savoury aspects of liberal reformism, such as its tendency to support the economic status quo are mentioned at length. There is also a strain of anachronism running through the work's earlier chapters, as though human rights were expected to spring, Athena-like, fully armed from the head of Zeus. Thus a person supporting liberalisation of society cannot be considered a full supporter of human rights unless they were signed up to all that early twenty-first century men and women see as human rights. There is at times an all or nothing approach to Human Rights which has in the past been used as an apologetic for repressive regimes (a fact which does not seem to be picked up on). A number of historical howlers add to the impression that Micheline Ishay is not a historian. Given the scope of this work, it is perhaps unsurprising, but still frustrating to see, for example, the Treaty of Versailles inserted after, rather than before hyperinflation and depression as a factor in the rise of Nazism; no notice apparently being taken of the attempts by other powers to deal with the perceived injustices of the Peace Treaties.

All in all, this book is well worth reading, despite the frustrating flaws. It should not, however, be treated as anything other than one of several perspectives on the question of Human Rights.

2 people found this helpful

Matt Jenkins

A Good Introduction to the History of Human Rights

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2011

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A useful text covering the history of what today we consider human rights, from the earliest times (Mesopotamian Codes of Hammurabi ca. 1700 BC) to the present day.

"Well-written, passionate, and a pleasure to read, this remarkable book is essential to the development of a coherent theory of human rights and might well become an instant classic."
- John Vail, University of Newcastle

"Humane and generous in its approach, brilliant in its conception and presentation."
- Shlomo Avineri, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"A definitive account of the history of human rights told from the perspective of those struggling to obtain them. Ishay brings both historical context and conceptual acuity to modern debates about the role of human rights in a multicultural world."
- Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld

"This well-written book, chock-full of knowledge, presents a history of the idea, or ideas, of human rights through the prism of the author's thoughtful views on key controversies that bedevil human rights discourse to this day."
- Sir Nigel Rodley, Chair, University of Essex Human Rights Centre; and Member, Human Rights Committee, UN"

Also of interest may be The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present by the same author.

One person found this helpful

Gilly Davis

A hard read but definitely worth it!!

Reviewed in Canada on June 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book is a great book but a hard read. You would need to have an academic interest in human rights to get the most out of this book. That being said, it is wonderfully informative and detailed and gives you an in-depth understanding of the subject matter. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in Sociology, Politics, or anything to do with Human Rights.

John Holbrook

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

Great item. Just as described. Amazing.

One person found this helpful

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