Tuck's book on Hobbes is part of the Past Masters series.
Tuck was certainly qualified to write it. He was professor of government at Harvard. He was the author of Natural Rights Theories (1979) and Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (1993).
Now, wait a second. The book was published in 1989, how can its About the Author page cite a 1993 book? I gather I'm looking at a reprint.
Anyway, the title of the 1993 book intrigues me. It gives the terminal dates of its coverage as 1572 to 1651. What events do the terminal dates reference?
In 1572, fifteen hundred English volunteers under Humphrey Gilbert (an adventurer, shown above, not acting officially on behalf of the Queen) fought the Spanish/Hapsburg forces in the Netherlands, on behalf of the Dutch resistance, known at this time as the Sea Beggars. That seems to be an important date in Tuck's understanding of British intellectual history, because it helped set England on the road to more direct confrontation with the Spanish. This led to the Armada War and many other developments I'll skip by.
Tuck's point, in starting the 1993 book with Gilbert's adventure, was that England would stay on the Dutch side until the late 1630s. Charles I would work to shift England's position more toward the Spanish side, because the Dutch were getting dangerously strong, That helped set up the Civil War.
The other terminal year? That was he end of the third stage of that long civil war. Charles I had been dead for two years. Charles II lost the battle of Worcester in September '51 and managed his getaway to France by mid October.
All of this has a lot to do with Tuck's reading of Hobbes. But I will come back to that another time.
The books in the Past Masters series have been reissued in the "A Very Short Introduction" series; the quoted phrase is the subtitle of each book. Thus, Tuck's became "Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction" (2002).
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