2. Early Modern Critics of Tyranny and Oppression

Second Lecture of Professor Jeffrey Stout's Gifford Lecture Series.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday 2 May 2017, 5.30 - 6.30pm

The lecture may be followed by questions. Latest finishing time is 7pm.

Venue: Business School Auditorium, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9JS

Lecture abstract

Religion had no exact semantic analogue outside Latin Christendom when the modern era began. Missionaries, explorers, admirals, traders, soldiers, slavers, and settlers carried a value-laden discourse of religion with them overseas, and used it to classify the peoples they conquered and converted there. Las Casas and other Dominicans turned the same terminology against imperial tyranny and oppression in the Indies. In Florence, Savonarola called for political arrangements consistent with freedom and true religion. As demands for reform spread, lives, liberties, and regimes on several continents hung in the balance.

Lecture video

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