Brooks Adams

Brooks Adams 1848-1927, American historian, b. Quincy, Mass.; son of Charles Francis Adams (1807-86). His theory that civilization rose and fell according to the growth and decline of commerce was first developed in The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895). Adams applied it to his own capitalistic age, of which he was a militant critic, but failed to find the universal law that he persistently sought. His ideas greatly influenced his brother Henry Adams , whose essays he edited in The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919). In America's Economic Supremacy (1900), Brooks said that Western Europe had already begun to decline and that Russia and the United States were the only potential great powers left. His other chief works include The Emancipation of Massachusetts (1887), The New Empire (1902), and Theory of Social Revolutions (1913).

Bibliography: See biography by A. F. Beringause (1955); J. T. Adams, The Adams Family (1930, repr. 1957); T. P. Donovan, Henry Adams and Brooks Adams (1961).

Adams, Brooks (1848–1927), historian, whose works include The Emancipation of Massachusetts (1887), an iconoclastic study of the religious and political bondage of the colonists; Law of Civilization and Decay (1895); and Theory of Social Revolutions (1913). He wrote a lengthy history of the intellectual tradition of his family as a preface to the Letter to American Teachers of History by his brother Henry Adams, and published both under the title The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919). He was a grandson of John Quincy Adams and a son of Charles Francis Adams.

Adams, Brooks (1848–1927) US historian. Brother of Henry Brooks Adams, his influential book Law of Civilization and Decay (1895) held that civilizations rise and fall with the growth and decline of commerce. In America's Economic Supremacy (1900), Adams predicted the decline of Western Europe and proposed that, within 50 years, only the USA and Russia would be great powers.