Modern Democracies - In Two Volumes, Vol. I

A century ago there was in the Old World only one tiny spot in which the working of democracy could be studied. A few of the ancient rural cantons of Switzerland had recovered their freedom after the fall of Napoleon, and were governing themselves as they had done from the earlier Middle Ages, but they were too small and their conditions too peculiar to furnish instruction to larger communities or throw much light on popular government in general. Nowhere else in Europe did the people rule.
-from Chapter I: "Introductory"

This 1921 study of democracy in action-presented in two volumes-is not only an important examination of the state of the free world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it's a vital reminder, as democracy continues to struggle to fruition around the globe, of history as an ongoing story.

Volume I covers:

the definition and historical evolution of democracy
the theoretical foundations of democracy
democracy as it interacts with education and religion
the press in a democracy
and democracy at work in the ancient republic of Athens, in Spanish America, and in France, Switzerland, and Canada.

In 1921, William H. Taft said of Bryce, "no man in the world today is better fitted to discuss modern democracies... [His] encyclopedic knowledge of history, made vivid and practical by his actual observations and continued studies, give him a peculiar facility for discussing the present state of modern democracies."


British historian VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE (1838-1922) attended the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Oxford. He is best known for his scholarship of the Holy Roman Empire. His popular works include Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901) and Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903).