Fellowship and Trust

Abstract

In his consideration of the balance of liberty, equality and wealth through time, Maitland had effectively demolished one side of the famous nineteenth-century dichotomy which was the basis of most thought on the evolution of societies. He had shown that not all civilizations had started in a world where individuals were embedded within the community, where contract was entirely subordinate to status, and where hierarchy and patriarchy were universal. Yet his magnificent achievement would be incomplete if he were to be unable to reconstruct the other end of the famous supposed transformation. He needed to rethink the nature of the modern world as supposedly constituted by contract, individualism and absolute equality.