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Article: Time to call history a day? (Francis Fukuyama, a member of State Dept., says history is at an end) (International)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 16, 1989
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1989 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Time to call history a day?
HEGEL declared history to be at an end after the battle of Jena in 1806. The authors of "1066 and All That" reckoned it went on a bit longer, to the Peace to end Peace after the first world war; that left America "clearly top nation, and History came to a." Mr Francis Fukuyama, a member of the American State Department, extends it 70 years but says that is enough: "What we may be witnessing ... is the end of history as such".
History as such he defines as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the evolution of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government"; and the spectacle that gives rise to ...