The Cambridge School, c.1875-c.1975

Abstract

The ‘Cambridge School’ is a term associated with some historians of political thought who since the 1960s have claimed to have something to say of contemporary relevance about politics. Here it is argued that the School has to be understood as a long consequence of Seeley’s determination at the foundation of the Historical Tripos in the 1870s to relate history and politics to each other. For a century almost all the major figures in Cambridge agreed that history and politics should be related, but disagreed about how to do it. The writings of Seeley, Sidgwick, Acton, Maitland, Figgis, Barker, Oakeshott, Cowling, Laslett, Runciman, Dunn, Skinner and others are studied here in order to indicate how the historians of the Cambridge School for a century attempted to relate history and politics in not one but four ways — through political science, the history of political thought, political philosophy and political theology. © 2017 Imprint Academic. All rights reserved.