Old Continent Liberty is a publishing house for the European tradition of freedom.

We publish essays, a journal, a newsletter, and — because ideas travel better when they can be worn — a small editorial line of merch. Our subject is the intellectual genealogy most often forgotten by those who celebrate liberty: the long, uneven, unmistakably European story of how free men have tried to live under law without living under kings.

From the Icelandic Althing and the Swiss cantons to Bastiat in Paris, Menger in Vienna, Hayek in London, and Huerta de Soto in Madrid — liberty was not invented in 1776. By then, it had already been remembered.

What we believe

Liberty has a longer memory than the modern state. The continent now synonymous with regulation was, for most of its history, the laboratory of self-government. The Hanseatic merchants, the Venetian Republic, the medieval Dutch water councils, the Icelandic Commonwealth — all preceded and, in many ways, surpassed the centralised polities that replaced them.

Austrian economics is European economics. Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Hülsmann, Huerta de Soto — the tradition that explains how free people coordinate without central plans was born in a café in Vienna, not in a think-tank in Virginia. We read it in the original languages, and translate what matters.

Ideas deserve better typography. A Bastiat quote set in Comic Sans is an insult to Bastiat. A knowledge-problem diagram worth reading is worth setting properly. We treat design as a moral category.

What we publish

Who we are

A small editorial project based in the Old Continent, run by Fábio Fernandez.

We are not a think-tank. We have no donors, no party line, no axe to grind beyond this:

An older Europe. A freer one.

— Old Continent Liberty

The Weekly Dispatch

One essay, one list, one idea you'll wish you'd read sooner. Every Sunday. Free, with a paid edition for supporters.