F.W. Maitland and the Making of the Modern World

F.W. Maitland is sometimes thought of as merely a greatlegal historian of England. Yet in over three thousandpublished pages, including his History of English Law(1895) with F. Pollock (of which Maitland wrote all but one chapter), his Collected Papers in three volumes (1911), The Constitutional History of England (1919) and many other works he reveals himself to be one of the profoundest thinkers on how our modern world emerged, on a level with Montesquieu and Tocqueville. Maitland's works onTrusts, on Equity, on Government and on the great traditionof English Common Law explain, in brilliant and simpleprose, how the quintessential institutions of successfuldemocracy and capitalism were established in Englandand then America.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.