Utopias of the British Enlightenment [Paperback]

A major collection of tracts from the British utopian tradition.Showing how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development, this collection of eighteenth-century British utopias also examines relationships to key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.Showing how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development, this collection of eighteenth-century British utopias also examines relationships to key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.This collection of eighteenth-century British utopias shows how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development. The texts chosen reveal important trends in the development of liberal rights theories, of proto-socialist concepts of property distribution, and of conservative notions of the ideal hierarchical community. The introduction examines their relationship to the key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.Introduction; 1. The island of content; 2. A Description of New Athens in Terra Australis Incognita; 3. Idea of a perfect commonwealth; 4. An account of the first settlement, 5. Laws, form of government, and police, of the Cessares, a people of South America; 6. Memoirs of planetes; 7. The commonwealth of reason; 8. Bruce's voyage to Naples.