Ideas of poverty in the Age of Enlightenment [Hardcover]

This collection of essays examines the ways in which poverty was conceptualised in the social, political, and religious discourses of eighteenth-century Europe. It brings together experts with a wide range of expertise to offer pathbreaking discussions of how eighteenth-century thinkers thought about the poor. Because the theme of poverty played important roles in many critical issues in European history, it was central to some of the key debates in Enlightenment political thought throughout the period, including the controversies about sovereignty and representation, public and private charity, as well as questions relating to crime and punishment. The book examines some of the most important contributions to these debates, while also ranging beyond the canonical Enlightenment thinkers, to investigate how poverty was conceptualised in the wider intellectual culture, as politicians, administrators and pamphlet writers grappled with the issue.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

Niall OFlaherty is Senior Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at Kings College London
R. J. W. Mills is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews

Although poverty in the eighteenth century has long been an object of focus for social historians, it has figured only marginally in the intellectual history of the period. It has largely been assumed that the existence of poverty was rarely problematised before the transformative decade of the 1790s. Yet because the theme of poverty played important roles in many critical issues in European history, it was central to some of the key debates in Enlightenment political thought throughout the period, including thlJ