Lectures on Modern history

Lectures on Modern History is a posthumous collection of lectures by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, the English historian and political philosopher better known as Lord Acton, who lived from 1834 to 1902. The lectures were originally delivered at the University of Cambridge during Acton’s tenure as Regius Professor of Modern History from 1895 to 1902 and were published after his death from his lecture notes and from notes taken by students who attended the lectures.

Acton is now famous primarily for the much quoted phrase about power tending to corrupt and absolute power corrupting absolutely, drawn from a private letter rather than from any of his major published works. He was however one of the most learned historians of his generation and the principal organizer of the Cambridge Modern History, the major collaborative work of British historical scholarship that appeared in the years after his death and that established standards for collaborative historical writing that influenced subsequent generations of historians.

The Lectures on Modern History cover the broad sweep of European history from the Renaissance through to the period of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Acton was particularly interested in the relationship between religion, politics, and morality across this period, and the lectures repeatedly return to his central preoccupations with the moral judgment of historical actors, the relationship between power and conscience, and the long historical development of the various forms of religious and political liberty that he believed had emerged across the modern period.

The lectures were not originally prepared for publication and have the slightly disconnected quality of materials assembled from notes rather than written for the book form. Despite this they have been widely read and have given subsequent generations of readers access to Acton’s distinctive historical vision in a form that the various unfinished projects of his actual lifetime never quite delivered. He was a notorious procrastinator who produced relatively few completed books despite his enormous learning and his substantial reputation, and the posthumous publications drawn from his lectures and his unfinished manuscripts have been important in establishing his legacy.

The book runs to several hundred pages and is best read by selecting particular periods of historical interest. For readers interested in late Victorian English historical writing, Acton is essential. It pairs naturally with his Lectures on the French Revolution and with his essays on freedom and power.