Barbarism and Religion

by J. G. A. Pocock

• ISBN13: 9780521640022
• ISBN10: 0521640024
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The second volume in the acclaimed sequence of Barbarism and Religion explores the historiography of Enlightenment. John Pocock investigates a series of major authors who wrote Enlightened histories on a grand narrative scale, were known to Edward Gibbon and were important in the latter's own work: Giannone, Voltaire, Hume, Robertson, Ferguson and Adam Smith. With his recognition that the subject of the Decline and Fall demanded treatment of both the patristic as well as the papal church, Edward Gibbon's intellectual trajectory is both similar but at points crucially distinct from the dominant Latin 'Enlightened narrative' these writers developed. This volume is also informed by the perception that the interaction of philosophy, erudition and narrative is central to the development of enlightened historiography: once again John Pocock shows how the Decline and Fall is both akin to but distinct from the historiographical context within which Gibbon wrote his great work.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	x
Note on usage	xi
List of abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(6)
Prelude: The Varieties of Early Modern Historiography	7	(22)
PART I CONSTRUCTING THE ENLIGHTENED NARRATIVE
SECTION I GIANNONE: JURIST AND LIBERTIN IN THE CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN
Civil and ecclesiastical history	29	(13)
Popes and emperors: from the Isaurians to the Hohenstaufen	42	(16)
Angevins, Spaniards and Gallicans: to the brink of Enlightenment	58	(7)
Gibbon and Giannone: narrative, philosophy, erudition	65	(7)
SECTION II VOLTAIRE: NEO-CLASSICIST AND PHILOSOPHE IN THE ENLIGHTENED WORLD-PICTURE
On the horizons of Europe: the kings of the north	72	(11)
Courtly monarchy as the instrument of Enlightenment: the Siecle de Louis XIV	83	(14)
Asia and the dechristianisation of history: the Siecle and the Essai sur les Moeurs	97	(23)
The Christian Millennium in Europe: the Essai sur les Moeurs	120	(17)
The recovery of civil government, the rebirth of fanaticism and the return to the Siecle	137	(16)
Voltaire: the exasperating predecessor	153	(10)
PART II THE HISTORICAL AGE AND THE HISTORICAL NATION
SECTION III DAVID HUME AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The Problems of history in the Hanoverian kingdoms	163	(14)
David Hume: the Essays as contemporary history	177	(22)
The History of Great Britain: Hume's modern history	199	(23)
England under the House of Tudor: monarchy, Europe and enthusiasm	222	(19)
Hume's History of England: the Enlightened narrative in retrospect	241	(17)
SECTION IV WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND THE HISTORY OF EUROPE
The problems of historiography: the Scottish perspective	258	(10)
Scotland and the progress of society	268	(21)
The Reign of Charles V and the emergence of the European states	289	(11)
Robertson: histories written and unwritten	300	(9)
PART III THE PROGRESS OF CIVIL SOCIETY
SECTION V ADAM SMITH: JURISPRUDENCE INTO HISTORY
Moral philosophy and the stages of society	309	(10)
Smith's Glasgow lectures: narrative and philosophical history	319	(11)
SECTION VI ADAM FERGUSON: THE MODERATE AS MACHIAVELLIAN
Ferguson's Essay: Siberia as the cradle of world history	330	(16)
The Memoires litteraires and the Remains of Japhet	346	(16)
Scottish narrative: theoretical and civil history	362	(7)
PART IV INTENDING THE DECLINE AND FALL
The Enlightened narrative and the project of 1776	369	(12)
'Gibbon's dark ages': the writings of 1765-1772	381	(16)
Construction of a narrative: the evidence of the Memoirs	397	(6)
List of References	403	(11)
Index	414