Social reform in the context of "Robert Owen"

Progressivism is a left-leaning political philosophy and reform movement that seeks to advance the human condition through social reform. Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to human societies everywhere. Progressivism arose during the Age of Enlightenment out of the belief that civility in Europe was improving due to the application of new empirical knowledge.

In modern political discourse, progressivism is often associated with social liberalism, a left-leaning type of liberalism, and social democracy. Within economic progressivism, there is some ideological variety on the social liberal to social democrat continuum, as well as occasionally some variance on cultural issues; examples of this include some Christian democrat and conservative-leaning communitarian movements. While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, both the current and historical movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism, desiring a more active democratic government to take a role in safeguarding human rights, bringing about cultural development, and being a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies.

Shardha Ram Phillauri (September 1837 – 24 June 1881) was an Indian writer, poet and social reformer, known for his contributions to Hindi and Punjabi literature. He is best known for his Hindu religious hymn Om Jai Jagdish Hare and Bhagyawati, one of the first novels in Hindi. Phillauri has also been called the "father of modern Punjabi prose". Born in Phillaur, he visited cities across Punjab and died in Lahore in 1881.

Wang Anshi ([wǎŋ ánʂɨ̌]; Chinese: 王安石; December 8, 1021 – May 21, 1086), courtesy name Jiefu (Chinese: 介甫), was a Chinese economist, philosopher, poet, and politician during the Song dynasty. He served as chancellor and attempted major and controversial socioeconomic reforms known as the New Policies. These reforms constituted the core concepts of the Song-dynasty Reformists, in contrast to their rivals, the Conservatives, led by the Chancellor Sima Guang.

Wang Anshi's ideas are usually analyzed in terms of the influence the Rites of Zhou or Legalism had on him. His economic reforms included increased currency circulation, breaking up of private monopolies, and early forms of government regulation and social welfare. His military reforms expanded the use of local militias, and his government reforms expanded the education system and attempted to suppress nepotism in government. Although successful for a while, he eventually fell out of favor with the emperor.

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.

After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, KG (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885), styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Anne Spencer (daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough), and elder brother of Henry Ashley, MP. A social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England.

Michael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington (9 August 1915 – 14 January 2002), was a British sociologist, social activist and left-wing politician. Young was an urbanist, known as an academic researcher, polemicist and institution-builder.

During his career, Young was influential in shaping the policy and ideology of the Labour Party. As secretary of the policy committee of the Labour Party, he was responsible for drafting Let Us Face the Future, Labour's manifesto for the 1945 general election. Young was a leading advocate for social reform, and in that capacity he founded or helped to found a number of organisations. These include the Consumers' Association, Which? magazine, the National Consumer Council, the Open University, the Institute for Community Studies, the National Extension College, the Open College of the Arts and Language Line, a telephone-interpreting business.

The 1840s (pronounced "eighteen-forties") was the decade that began on January 1, 1840, and ended on December 31, 1849.

The decade was noted in Europe for featuring the largely unsuccessful Revolutions of 1848, also known as the Springtime of Nations. Throughout the continent, bourgeois liberals and working-class radicals engaged in a series of revolts in favor of social reform. In the United Kingdom, this notably manifested itself through the Chartist movement, which sought universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. In France, the February Revolution led to the overthrow of the Orléans dynasty by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1848, the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx would help lay the groundwork for the global socialist movement. Arguably the first major event of the decade was the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in the United Tribes (modern-day New Zealand) between Māori rangatira and representatives of the British Crown, which began in February 1840. Due to the differences between the Māori and English versions of the texts, the British claimed Māori had ceded sovereignty and proclaimed a new Colony, leading to more than 25 years of asymmetric armed conflict until the Colony secured substantive control.