![]() Cromwell’s experiment came to an end with the Restoration of the popular libertine King Charles II. But rather like later communist governments, the natural tendency of the ordinary people to buy and sell products, celebrate pagan rituals and try to enjoy themselves overcame. In Britain, there was a Puritan revolution, the king was overthrown and Cromwell’s Leninist-style Commonwealth endured for 15 years – during which time Christmas, dancing, theatre and maypoles were banned. In the 17th Century, some attempted to move beyond theory and create living, breathing alternative societies. we have ships and boats for going under water.” As he wrote: “We imitate also the flights of birds: for we have some degree of flying in the air. His was a tech-based utopia and featured aeroplanes and submarines. Bacon argued that the state should endow a scientific college, which would invent machines to guarantee England’s pre-eminence on the world stage. Then in 1627, polymath and Lord Chancellor of England Francis Bacon produced a book called New Atlantis, proclaiming science as saviour. In 1619 came Christianopolis, a Christian utopia by German theologian mystic Johann Valentin Andrea and in 1623, Italian writer and Dominican friar Thomas Campanella published his City of the Sun. Most of these visions looked either backward or forward: they celebrated an old-fashioned ideal of community or envisioned a future paradise where the machines did all the work. More’s fantasy opened the floodgates for a new wave of utopian writing in the 17th Century. “I can perceave nothing but a certein conspiracy if rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of commonwealth,” More writes. Every three months, the people pile up loads of stuff in the market place anyone can come along and take what they need – like a recycling centre.Ībove all, Utopia was the earnest attempt to create a fair society, not one which benefited only the rich. “There is nothing within the houses that is private or any man’s own,” writes More. In Utopia, private property is abolished. Like Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia is the creation of a well-meaning member of the upper classes with a plan, rather than the live-for-the-moment dream of a peasant or worker. Everyone has his eye on you, so you’re practically forced to get on with your job, and make proper use of your spare time.” There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places. More writes: “You see how it is – wherever you are, you always have to work. Instead, in Utopia, there is a class of bosses – called the Syphograuntes – who look out for work-shy slackers.Īnd citizens are constantly being watched. #Utopia book free#Forget free love and lying around doing nothing. His vision of a perfect society was a long way from the sensual self-indulgence dreamt of by the peasants in Cockagyne. More writes of the Utopians: “They think that the contemplation of nature, and the praise thereof coming, is to God a very acceptable honour.” However, like a good modern politician, More also emphasises that Utopia is a land of hard-working families: “idleness they utterly forsake and eschew, thinking felicity after this life to be gotten and obtained by busy labours and good exercise.” First published in Latin in 1517, the book Utopia means “no place” in Greek some scholars have said that it may also be a pun on “happy place”. More coined the word to describe an island community with an ideal mode of government. This concept would shape books, philosophies and political movements as varied as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of passive resistance and the founding of the state of Pennsylvania. Today, though, we may know More best for his invention of a word – and for his development of an idea that would be exported around the world. An establishment figure, he was also an enemy of the Protestant Reformation and is known today as a Catholic martyr, having been beheaded by King Henry VIII. Born in 1478, he was progressive in some ways (he educated his daughters to a very high level) while also clinging to archaic customs (he wore hair shirts). An English lawyer, statesman, writer and saint, Thomas More was a strange character. ![]()
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