The Surprising New History of Human Rights

After taking a look at the traditional history of rights (Locke, Rousseau, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Civil War, civil rights, suffragettes, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights) I look at the history from two new and unique perspectives. Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia, argues that rather than being a product of the United Nations, human rights arose from the failure of the competing utopian projects of the US and USSR. While Lynn Hunt argues that the emergence of rights talk in the 18th century was the result of a surprising cultural trend: epistolary novels written by authors like Rousseau and read by people like Thomas Jefferson. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JJ76W4CZ2A8J2 Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/2ykJe6L Follow me on: Facebook: http://fb.me/thethenandnow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thethenandnow/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewlewwaller Credits: Stock footage provided by Videvo, downloaded from https://www.videvo.net 70’s strike photo by Paul Townsend: (https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/37213034732) Creative Commons 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/] Sources: Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia Hunt, Lynn, Inventing Human Rights Clapham, Andrew, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction Kenneth Cmiel, The Recent History of Human Rights, The American Historical Review