ABSTRACT
The introduction to the essay collection Routledge History of Human Rights emphasizes the importance of historical context to understanding the human rights field. We note that perceptions of human rights change considerably depending on the political moment. To gain a fuller understanding less constrained by our own political times, it is imperative to take seriously, and on their own terms, the contexts of past advocacy, norms, and structures. The reward is more sophisticated thinking about the nature of the interaction of ideas, institutions, and human interventions, an interplay that continually renews human rights opportunities. The introduction notes the volume’s additional points of emphasis: the open-endedness and mutability of law; the analytical value of the voices of globally dispersed activists for redressing a Eurocentric and great power perspective that creeps into interpretations where states, not people, appear as the key human rights actors; and the importance of the mid-nineteenth century as a turning point in human rights history. The distinctive transnational identifications and movements, sentiments, institutional networks, and the truly global spread of imperial colonization of that era all led to the entanglements and contradictions that are characteristic of developments in rights and law when analyzed in the context of the geopolitical order.
