Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century

Ideas in Context

by J.G.A. Pocock

This book collects essays by Professor Pocock concerned principally with the history of British political thought in the eighteenth century. Several of the essays have been previously published (though they have not all been widely available), and several appear here for the first time in print.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Politics, Theory

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

John Greville Agard Pocock was a historian of political thought, best known for his studies of republicanism in the early modern period (mostly in Europe, Britain, and America), his work on the history of English common law, his treatment of Edward Gibbon and other Enlightenment historians, and, in historical method, for his contributions to the history of political discourse. Pocock taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1966 until 1975, and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1975 until 2011.

Reviews

[Simon Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can you say about J.G.A. Pocock? Simply the greatest historical mind of the twentieth century. These essays are perhaps the most useful of his writings because they provide some succinct summaries of key arguments (as opposed to brilliant but long monographs that take some serious time to work through). These essays transformed the intellectual history of England, and of North America too (although North American historians hang on to Locke with deep belligerence). It was thanks to Pocock's reconstruction of the early modern idea of patriotic virtue that I was able to understand the world around me when I (a native of England) lived for five years in North Carolina.

[elmandfir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should've finished it last year... // Pocock is even more "structuralist" than the Marxist he critiques [reminds one of 1960s Foucault], and he seems to seal off the Anglo-Atlantic thought from the European Enlightenment [which is historically not true]. But the way he writes and the way he sees things are simply majestic. That much for sure: You never waste your time reading Pocock.