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History: Political Thought and Intellectual History

Introduction to Political Thought and Intellectual History

The Faculty of History at Cambridge has long been distinguished for study of the history of political thought and the broad field of intellectual history. The interests of our researchers engage with the multiple contexts, intellectual, political, and institutional in which past political, historical and philosophical texts were written. Specific interests of Cambridge scholars include the dialogue between the history of political thought and modern political philosophy, the connections between legal, moral and political thought, the interface between the histories of international law and political thought, global intellectual history, historiography, the history of natural philosophy, and the history of scholarship. Our researchers remain at the forefront of teaching and scholarship in the field, continually taking the distinctive Cambridge approach to the history of political thought and intellectual history in new directions.

Cambridge University Libraries boasts a large and varied collection of both physical and digital resources to help you in your studies. This includes books, online databases, newspapers, official publications, journals, and much more. Here in the Seeley, texts on Political Thought and Intellectual History can be found across the library, though the following sections may be of specific interest: 'B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion', 'J - Political Science', 'K - Law', 'LA - History of Education', for History ; '36 - Sociology of Knowledge', '37 - Political Theory and Philosophy' in POL-SOC ; '9.1 - Political Theory' in Land Economy ; and 'Politics and Sociology' in the Latin American Studies collection.

You also have access to the University Library (UL), where the classmark range 500-698 covers Geography and History and is then organised by region, all Faculty Department Libraries (FDLs), and your own College Library, so explore these for useful books and resources as well.

As with any library, searching on iDiscover for the text, journal or database that you require is a good starting point, and if you have any questions then please reach out to a member of staff who would be happy to assist.

Seeley Library Political Thought and Intellectual History Collection

Intervention Podcast

What do intellectual historians currently investigate? And why is this relevant for us today? These are some of the questions this podcast series, led by graduate students at the University of Cambridge, seeks to explore. It aims to introduce intellectual historians and their work to everyone with an interest in history and politics. Do join in on our conversations!

  • Indigenous Ideas: A Global Perspective (with Saliha Belmessous)This link opens in a new window In 1686, a French witness spoke openly of a Native American declaration of independence. ‘We have to assume’, he said, ‘that the Iroquois do not accept any master’. Claims such as this were made frequently throughout the history of European colonialism, forming a rich tapestry of indigenous ideas. Although often dismissed by historians as badly documented and politically irrelevant fictions, these ideas helped shape the destiny of peoples and polities across the globe, from New Zealand and New Caledonia to Ontario and Quebec. Join Saliha Belmessous, a leading light in the emerging field of indigenous intellectual history, as she looks at the legacy of the Treaty of Waitangi, visits the insulated offices of Victorian lawyers, and reflects on the interplay of colonial cooperation and violence.  Mar 4, 2025
  • Slavery, Empire, and John Locke (with Mark Goldie)This link opens in a new window John Locke continues to excite controversy. For American liberals, he is an honorary Founding Father, one of the architects of modern democracy. In their view, as Allan Bloom put it, ‘the whole world is divided into two parts, one of which traces its intellectual lineage back to Locke and the other to Marx’. For his critics on the left, by contrast, he is an apologist for slavery and European imperialism, his thought a reminder that liberalism and empire were born twins. But is either of these views really true? Perhaps if we look at Locke’s practical engagement with English colonialism, a more complicated picture will emerge.  Join Mark Goldie, one of the preeminent historians of seventeenth century political thought, as he sheds light on Locke’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, his relationship with England’s American colonies, and his views on empire and enslavement, asking how it was that the so-called father of liberalism could have accepted the absolute subjugation of other human beings.  Feb 4, 2025
  • Francis Bacon: A Lion under the Throne (with Richard Serjeantson)This link opens in a new window According to some, Francis Bacon accomplished nothing less than a scientific revolution. Some even say he was the founder of modern science itself. Born into a world where natural magic, astrology, alchemy, and the wisdom of the Ancients were all accepted as authentic sciences, he left behind a body of work expressing a new and strange idea. In this radical vision, humanity was destined to free itself from its mundane misery by investigating nature and discovering its laws. It was a vision of collective action and incremental progress that sustains scientific practice to this day. Yet Bacon was also a deeply paradoxical figure. A lover of humanity and believer in progress, he was also a Machiavellian statesman committed to advancing the interests of the English state, as well as a self-seeking loner who married for money and disinherited his wife.  Richard Serjeantson, Cambridge’s foremost authority on Bacon’s life and legacy, tells us the intellectually exhilarating story of the man who ushered in our modern age of science. This episode is hosted by Sam Tchorek-Bentall Dec 17, 2024
  • Big States, Small States, and the End of Enlightenment (Prof. Richard Whatmore)This link opens in a new window What lessons can we draw from eighteenth-century thought about the relationship of big and small states? What are the limits of intellectual history? How and why did the Enlightenment end? Richard Whatmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, joins us to discuss these questions and more. Sep 24, 2024
  • Equality, Intellectual Traditions, and the Seventeenth Century (Prof. Teresa Bejan)This link opens in a new window What can the seventeenth century teach us about equality? Why do philosophers construct intellectual traditions and how do we use them? In what ways is political theory an educative endeavour? These are some of the questions we asked Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Publications mentioned in this episode include: First Among Equals: The Practice and Theory of Early Modern Equality. Under contract with Harvard University Press. Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017) “The Historical Rawls,” Special Forum for Modern Intellectual History, co-edited with Sophie Smith and Annette Zimmermann (2021). “Rawls’s Teaching and the ‘Tradition’ of Political Philosophy,” Modern Intellectual History (2021).  “‘Since all the World is Mad, Why should not I be so?’ Equality, Hierarchy, and Ambition in the Thought of Mary Astell.” Political Theory (online first May 2019). “The Two Clashing Meanings of Free Speech,” The Atlantic (2 Dec. 2017).  “Teaching the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Education,” Oxford Review of Education 36:5 (2010). Apr 26, 2024
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History of Political Thought Journal

Modern intellectual history : MIH

  • Edward Long and Other Animals: The Orangutan and Race-Making in the Late Eighteenth CenturyThis link opens in a new windowDec 15, 2024
  • Democracy and Direct Legislation during the French Second RepublicThis link opens in a new window This article analyzes how direct popular legislation was discussed in France from 1850 to 1852. It is during the Second Republic that the idea of directly involving the people in the law-making process becomes a concrete proposal. It is extensively debated by left republican thinkers such as Ledru-Rollin, Rittinghausen and Considerant to argue, against Proudhon and Blanc, that political representation is, in fact, not democratic. Instead, they claimed that real democracy would require a sharp distinction between legislation and administration and the consequent direct involvement of the people in lawmaking through their participation in local assemblies, tasked with both drafting and approving legislative proposals of general import. These competing understandings of democracy, as theorized through debates about popular legislation in the mid-nineteenth century, foreground some of the fundamental challenges of representative politics and question the role of knowledge and expertise in legitimizing democratic procedures in the age of mass politics. Nov 26, 2024
  • The Intersection of Ableism, Domestic Colonialism and Statistics in Britain from Bentham to GaltonThis link opens in a new window Statistics, ableism and domestic colonialism were inextricably intertwined in Britain over the long nineteenth century, based on both engineering people deemed to be “backward” and improving “waste” land, which together were used to justify farm colonies for the disabled, bookended by two key moments. The first is Sir John Sinclair's introduction of descriptive statistics into the English language in order to provide a foundation for domestic colonization which, as the founding president of the British Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement, he promoted. He also enlisted Jeremy Bentham, who published his own domestic colonization plan (massive pauper panopticons on waste land) rooted in the statistics of his pauper population table. The second key moment occurs at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Sir Francis Galton develops key statistical arithmetic methods as the foundation for eugenics and his defense of compulsory segregation of the mentally disabled into domestic farm colonies. Sep 30, 2024
  • Affirmative Orientalism: August Bebel, Islam, and World HistoryThis link opens in a new window In 1884, during the period of the Socialist Laws, August Bebel took the time to publish a historical work entitled Die mohamedanisch- arabische Kulturperiode. In it Bebel positioned Islam and the early caliphates as the unacknowledged link between Greco-Roman traditions of knowledge and the blossoming of European culture that, he argued, had occurred since the Renaissance. He also used the book as an opportunity to reject claims that Christianity had played this key role in world historical progress. Through an examination and contextualization of Bebel's writings on Islam, this article shows how he viewed the role of different religious traditions within world history and how his views intersected with contemporary questions regarding the relationship between religion and socialism. The article also examines how Bebel's work fits within a longer tradition of socialist solidarity with the Ottoman Empire. Sep 29, 2024
  • The Irish Idea: James Connolly’s Political ThoughtThis link opens in a new window James Connolly is by most measures a canonical figure. He is widely recognized as a founder of the national and labor movements in Ireland: an organizer, agitator, journalist, trade union leader, and, ultimately, republican martyr. Yet his status as a political thinker has been curiously diminished and overlooked. Seeking to rectify this neglect, I undertake in this article a historical reconstruction of Connolly’s political thought, demonstrating that he was, contrary to the anti-intellectual anachronism of leading Irish historians, a complicated and innovative republican theorist. In the first section, I draw out Connolly’s understanding of colonialism and its relationship to both historical development and revolutionary subjectivity, pointing to the universalist and teleological dimensions of his thought, as well its boundaries. Second, I focus on Connolly’s fraught but productive encounter with Irish nationalism and the cultural flourishing it drove, reconstructing his strenuous efforts to cast the Irish nation and the proletariat as synonymous. Third, I probe the conceptual substance of his socialist republicanism, elucidating the centrality of two republican doctrines—popular sovereignty and freedom as nondomination—to Connolly’s thinking. Last but not least, I map the political and intellectual antecedence of Connolly’s decision to partake in the Easter Rising of 1916, his final act. Dec 26, 2024
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Journals

Seminars, Conferences and Lectures

Researchers in political thought and intellectual history have been involved in organising a range of conferences, symposia and workshops, as well as delivering seminars and public lectures across a wide variety of topics within the field. 

See below just some of the ongoing events and activities that take place for this research area across Cambridge as well as past conferences that have been delivered:

Individual Thinkers and Philosophers

Philosophical Ideas and Concepts

International Law

Databases

Newspapers

Useful Links

Official Publications

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