1
of
1
Democracy in Darkness
Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions
Brief Description
How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency...
Read More
Format: Hardback
$7199
Unit price
/
Unavailable
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 3-4 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
Democracy in Darkness
$7199
Unit price
/
Unavailable
How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy
Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency was key to self-government.
Using extensive archival research in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, Katlyn Marie Carter shows how state secrecy became associated with despotism in the lead-up to the American and French revolutions. But as revolutionaries sought to fashion representative government, they faced a dilemma: Where did secrecy fit in a context where gaining public trust seemed to demand transparency? Whether in Philadelphia or Paris, establishing popular sovereignty required navigating between an ideological imperative to eradicate secrets from the state and a practical need to limit transparency in government. The prolonged fight over this contradiction determined the character and durability of the first representative democracies.
Unveiling modern democracy’s surprisingly shadowy origins, Carter reshapes our understanding of how government by and for the people emerged during the Age of Revolutions.
Series: The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History
View all-
Affairs of Humanity
A new look at the origins of humanitarian intervention We are encouraged to empathise with the suffering of distant strangers every day, from ads for UNICEF to the outcry over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But where did this type of politics come from? Historian and practising barrister Catherine Arnold locates the religious origins of humanitarian politics in early eighteenth-century Britain...Hardback$20700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
1688
Based on new archival information, this book upends two hundred years of scholarship on England’s Glorious Revolution to claim that it—not the French Revolution—was the first truly modern revolution. For two hundred years, historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution—bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation, Steve Pincus refutes this...Paperback$5999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
An extraordinary work, decades in the making: the first atlas to illustrate the entire scope of the transatlantic slave trade Winner of the Association of American Publishers' 2010 R.R. Hawkins Award and PROSE Award “A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans...Paperback$8500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Race and the Scottish Enlightenment
How colonialism shaped the Scottish Enlightenment's conception of race and humanity In the decades after 1750, an increasing number of former medical students from the University of Edinburgh construed humanity as a subject of both intellectual curiosity and colonial interest. They drew on a shared educational background, blending medicine with natural history and moral philosophy, in a range of encounters...Hardback$11999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Making the Imperial Nation
How did creating the British Empire change politics in England itself? After 1660, English governments aimed to convert scattered overseas dominions into a coordinated territorial power base. Stuart monarchs encouraged schemes for expansion in America, Africa, and Asia, imposed closer control over existing territories, and endorsed systems of slave labour to boost colonial prosperity. However, English power was precarious, and...Hardback$7199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Allure of the Archives
An exquisite appreciation of the distinctive rewards of historical research and a classic guide to the personal yet disciplined craft of discovery, now in its first English translation. Arlette Farge’s Le Goût de l’archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily...Paperback$6400Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Archive of Empire
How modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British Empire Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces...Hardback$8399Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III
An important revisionist history that casts eighteenth-century British politics and imperial expansion in a new light “An important book . . . . Vaughn has greatly added to our understanding of Britain’s empire and politics.”—Journal of Modern History In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the scholarly consensus that British India and the Second Empire were founded...Hardback$10199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
A portrait of empire through the biographies of a Native American, a Pacific Islander, and the British artist who painted them both Three interconnected eighteenth-century lives offer a fresh account of the British empire and its intrusion into Indigenous societies. This engaging history brings together the stories of Joshua Reynolds and two Indigenous men, the Cherokee Ostenaco and the Ra‘iatean...Hardback$8399Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Democracy in Darkness
How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency was key to self-government. Using extensive archival research in the United States, France, and...Hardback$7199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Staging "The Mysterious Mother"
The first book-length study of Horace Walpole’s scandalous The Mysterious Mother, including critical essays, an abridged script, and a facsimile edition. Horace Walpole’s five-act tragedy The Mysterious Mother (1768), a sensational tale of incest and intrigue, was initially circulated only among the author’s friends. Walpole never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical. He...Hardback$13199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Rest Is Silence
A moving, intimate portrait of the Enlightenment philosophers as they faced the end of their lives and their historical moment. What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker turns our habitual perspective on the Enlightenment on its head, bringing to light a set of works...Hardback$7199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300246926
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 09 January 2024
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Illustration: 9 b-w illus.
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 235.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 392
About the Author
Katlyn Marie Carter is assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in South Bend, IN.
More from Politics & Current Affairs
View all-
New ReleaseOne Last Question, Prime Minister
From Muldoon to Luxon, untold stories from the House of Parliament Barry Soper has spent close to five decades questioning New Zealand's prime ministers.From the imposing, larger-than-life characters of Rob Muldoon and David Lange, to the golden age of Helen Clark and John Key, and the post-Covid era of Jacinda Ardern and the 'Chrises', Soper's insight and nose for a...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseRegime Change
From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House and the first year of his second presidency. Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader into...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$4299Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseA Different Kind of Power
#1 New Zealand bestseller #1 Amazon bestseller #2 Audible bestseller #3 New York Times bestseller #3 Sunday Times bestseller #4 Australian bestseller From the former prime minister of New Zealand, then the world’s youngest female head of government and just the second to give birth in office, comes a deeply personal memoir chronicling her extraordinary rise and offering inspiration to...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Ockham WinnerA Different Kind of Power
What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made...Hardback$4799Elsewhere:$5999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Signed Copy
Go Hard or Go Home
From the front bench to rock bottom: Go Hard or Go Home is Kiri Allan's fearless memoir of ambition, disruption and survival in NZ politics and beyond. Kiri Allan's six-year political career spanned some of the most challenging times in recent history. Events a government might encounter once in a generation stacked up: a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, destructive and deadly...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableOut 4 Aug 2026Pre-order -
New ReleaseSuicidal Empathy
The bestselling author of The Parasitic Mind shows why empathy in politics leads to civilizational collapse. What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue and decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And the West may be terminally infected. In his new book, Suicidal Empathy, Saad unleashes a blistering critique...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseThe Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Shameless, Brian Tyler Cohen explores how Republicans have abused power, how Democrats have refused to exercise power when they held it, and how progressives should wield power if they are fortunate enough to win a free and fair election in a post-Trump world. The Day After: How to Wield Power in...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Careless People
Shocking and darkly funny, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to the decisions that are shaping our world and the people who make them. Welcome to Facebook. Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook's potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there...Paperback$2800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Discipline
Silence is complicity, but how do we confront the cost of speaking up? Sydney, May 2021. Ashraf is an academic whose career and personal life are in freefall. Hannah is a young journalist struggling to honour the voices of her community. When a Year 12 Al-Bayinnah College student is arrested for protesting a university's ties to an Israeli weapons manufacturer,...Paperback$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Shattered Lands
'A sparkling debut by an outstanding young historian' – PETER FRANKOPAN 'This book is a revelation … both original and important' – MISHAL HUSAIN A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it. As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and...Paperback$3699Elsewhere:$4500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Handmaid's Tale
The bestselling dystopian classic that became a cultural phenomenon and inspired an award-winning TV series. THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series. 'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it.' Guardian I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no...Paperback$2000Elsewhere:$2400Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
This Way Up
The debut book from the YouTube sensation and all-round cartographical nerds, The Map Men! In their long-awaited debut, YouTube’s Map Men bring their highly infectious enthusiasm for everything map-related to the printed page for the very first time, in a brilliantly entertaining and eye-catching tome. Packed with humour and fascinating facts, This Way Up takes a deep dive into the...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
