ABSTRACT
The idea that there are some universal human rights, though building on earlier cultural developments including religious prescriptions, began to emerge clearly for the first time in the later 18th century. This was when groups like the framers of the American revolutionary bill of rights began to argue that all men had a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The first concrete movement that captured this new thinking was the abolitionist campaign against slavery, specifically on grounds that holding people as property contradicted their obvious rights as human beings. But various revolutionary movements also began to project ideas that there should be protection of other rights, such as freedom of the press or religious choice. Here was a major addition to those factors shaping, or potentially shaping, the development of societies around the world.
