Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes

by Malcolm, Noel

• ISBN13: 9780199575718
• ISBN10: 0199575711
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode inseventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state".

Author Biography

Noel Malcolm is a General Editor of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes. He has been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Foreign Editor of The Spectator, and political columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He left journalism in 1995 in order to concentrate on scholarly research and writing. Since then he has been a Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, and Carlyle Lecturer at Oxford University. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.

Table of Contents

Preface

A Note on Dates and Transcriptions

Hobbes's Early Career

The Translation: Authorship, Date, and Style

The 'Secretissima instructio' Texts

The Distribution of the Altera secretissima instructio in England

Palatine Politics: Cavendish, Mansfield, and Hobbes

'Reason of State' and Hobbes

Hobbes's translation of Altera secretissima instructio

Altera secretissima instructio

List of Manuscripts

Bibliography

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.