Background
Peter Chardon Brooks Adams was born on June 24, 1848, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was the son of Charles Francis Adams and Abigail (Brooks) Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, and brother of Henry Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Brooks Adams graduated from Harvard University in 1870.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Brooks Adams studied at Harvard Law School in 1870 and 1871.
(The Law of Civilization and Decay is a classic book which...)
The Law of Civilization and Decay is a classic book which describes how the rise and fall of civilizations follows a cycle.
https://www.amazon.com/Law-Civilization-Decay-Brooks-Adams/dp/1986257096/?tag=2022091-20
1895
historian lawyer philosopher politician
Peter Chardon Brooks Adams was born on June 24, 1848, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was the son of Charles Francis Adams and Abigail (Brooks) Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, and brother of Henry Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
Brooks Adams graduated from Harvard University in 1870 and studied at Harvard Law School in 1870 and 1871.
In 1871, Adams began his service as his father's secretary abroad and later followed in the footsteps of his forbearers by going into the law. He practiced law in Boston until 1881. That year, after receiving a substantial inheritance from his mother's family, he was able to travel extensively abroad. During his travels, he formed an active correspondence with his brother Henry Adams, and they each proved to be an inspiration for the other.
By the late 1880s, Adams had issued articles and reviews for various publications, and in 1887 he produced his first book, The Emancipation of Massachusetts, in which he remorselessly prosecutes Massachusetts’ founders as blood-thirsty hypocrites. Adams followed The Emancipation of Massachusetts with The Gold Standard: An Historical Study, which he produced in 1894 and revised in each of the following two years. He then published The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History in which he related his theory of history. He also authored America’s Economic Supremacy (1900) and The Theory of Social Revolutions (1913), a study of defects in the American form of government.
Aside from his writing and research, in 1903 Adams became a lecturer at the Boston University Law School, remaining there until 1909. In 1912 he worked for Roosevelt's nomination by the Republican party. He was also elected a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1917.
(The Law of Civilization and Decay is a classic book which...)
1895In his personal life, Adams struggled with his personal beliefs spending much of his life as an agnostic. Later, however, he returned to the faith as a regular member of the family church at Quincy, Massachusetts.
Adams's theory of history tells that human societies differed among themselves in proportion as they were endowed by nature with energy, and that civilization follows exchanges, or commercial growth and decay. With these exchanges the center of civilization, particularly the economic aspects, moved ever westward. He later predicted in "America's Economic Supremacy" (1900) that that center of civilization would move to America with New York being the economic capital, and that within 50 years America and Russia would be the only two world powers. In "The New Empire" (1902) he discussed America as an economic power, and in "Theory of Social Revolutions" (1912) he attacked Capitalism and the ability of capitalists to govern.
Brooks Adams was described as the only American philosopher who had dealt with the history and destiny of man in a profound, searching, and skeptical fashion.
In 1889, Adams married Evelyn Davis. They had no children.