Perez Zagorin
Encyclopedia
Perez Zagorin was an American historian
who specialized in 16th and 17th century English and British history and political thought, early modern European history, and related areas in literature and philosophy. From 1965 to 1990, he taught at the University of Rochester
, New York, retiring as the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus.
on May 29, 1947. They had one son, Adam Zagorin, who currently works for Time Magazine and has two sons of his own.
Zagorin's B.A. was from the University of Chicago
; he earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University
in 1947 and 1952 respectively. At Harvard, Zagorin was a friend of Wilbur Kitchener Jordan
.
He taught history at Amherst College
1947-1949, at Vassar College
1951-1953, and reached the rank of full Professor at McGill University
, Montreal
, while teaching there 1955-1965. The move to Canada resulted in part because of difficulties he encountered finding a tenure track position in the US because of his political beliefs, as McCarthyism
threatened academic freedom.
He then returned to the US, joining the faculty at the University of Rochester
, New York in 1965, subsequently chairing the History Department 1967-1969. He then held the Joseph P. Wilson Professorship of History (1982) until his retirement in 1990. From 1992 until his death, Zagorin was a research Fellow of the Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia
, Charlottesville.
He held fellowships at several other distinguished institutions, including the Folger Shakespeare Library
, Guggenheim Fellowship
, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, the National Endowment for the Humanities
, the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton
, and the Royal Historical Society
of Great Britain.
He then moved to consider the nature of early modern revolution itself, publishing a European-wide comparative survey of his results in two volumes, Rebels and Rulers 1500-1600 (1982), a study about early modern European revolutions in particular, and especially differentiating them from the modern exemplar, the French Revolution
. His next work, Ways of Lying (1990) was in effect a counterpart study that looked at the effects on individuals as early modern states demanded various forms of loyalty oath
s, often in pursuit of religious uniformity, and the emergence of counter-theories about the practice and acceptability of resisting such demands.
. Next was Francis Bacon (1999), about the English philosopher and courtier, Sir Francis Bacon
, that explored the dissonance between the soaring ideals of Bacon's philosophical ambitions and his life as courtier, politician and lawyer serving in government. A final monograph on Thomas Hobbes
, Hobbes and the Law of Nature was published posthumously in 2009.
Zagorin's last survey work, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (2003), returned to questions regarding individual belief ranged against those who claimed the right to enforce religious conformity by force if necessary, tracing the emergence of a particular and contested view of a right to freedom of conscience. It arose out of the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century, and informed the views of the American founders.
In 2005, Zagorin published Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader (2005); a non-specialist work on Thucydides
's History of the Peloponnesian War
. Zagorin argues the work is more than a mere chronicle of the conflict between Athens and Sparta, being also a story of politics, decision-making, the uses of power, and the human and communal experience of war. In his view the work remains of permanent interest because of the exceptional intellect that Thucydides brought to the writing of history, and to the originality and intensity of vision that inform his narrative. The book concludes with a discussion of Thucydides as a thinker and philosophic historian.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
who specialized in 16th and 17th century English and British history and political thought, early modern European history, and related areas in literature and philosophy. From 1965 to 1990, he taught at the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, New York, retiring as the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus.
Life and career
Zagorin was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 29, 1920 to Solomon Novitz and Mildred Ginsburg Zagorin. He married the artist Honoré Desmond SharrerHonoré Desmond Sharrer
Honoré Desmond Sharrer was a noted American artist first received public acclaim in 1950 for her Tribute to the American Working People. It was painted as a five-image polyptych echoing a Renaissance altarpiece, except its central figure is a factory worker not a saint...
on May 29, 1947. They had one son, Adam Zagorin, who currently works for Time Magazine and has two sons of his own.
Zagorin's B.A. was from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
; he earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1947 and 1952 respectively. At Harvard, Zagorin was a friend of Wilbur Kitchener Jordan
Wilbur Kitchener Jordan
Wilbur Kitchener Jordan was a historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain. In 1943, Kitchener rejected the presidency of the prestigious Scripps College, and he chose to become the fourth President of Radcliffe College , a constituting school of Harvard University.Raised in Lynnville,...
.
He taught history at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
1947-1949, at Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
1951-1953, and reached the rank of full Professor at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, while teaching there 1955-1965. The move to Canada resulted in part because of difficulties he encountered finding a tenure track position in the US because of his political beliefs, as McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
threatened academic freedom.
He then returned to the US, joining the faculty at the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, New York in 1965, subsequently chairing the History Department 1967-1969. He then held the Joseph P. Wilson Professorship of History (1982) until his retirement in 1990. From 1992 until his death, Zagorin was a research Fellow of the Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, Charlottesville.
He held fellowships at several other distinguished institutions, including the Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...
, Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
, the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
, and the Royal Historical Society
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...
of Great Britain.
Early work
His revised dissertation became his first major publication, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution. His second monograph, The Court and the Country: the Beginning of the English Revolution (1969) explored the origins of the English Revolution by examining the split in the English governing class.He then moved to consider the nature of early modern revolution itself, publishing a European-wide comparative survey of his results in two volumes, Rebels and Rulers 1500-1600 (1982), a study about early modern European revolutions in particular, and especially differentiating them from the modern exemplar, the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. His next work, Ways of Lying (1990) was in effect a counterpart study that looked at the effects on individuals as early modern states demanded various forms of loyalty oath
Loyalty oath
A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member.In this context, a loyalty oath is distinct from pledge or oath of allegiance...
s, often in pursuit of religious uniformity, and the emergence of counter-theories about the practice and acceptability of resisting such demands.
Later work
Zagorin then produced a series of monographs on particular participants in the troubles of 17th century England, first Milton : Aristocrat & Rebel (1992), looking at the political beliefs of the poet, John MiltonJohn Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
. Next was Francis Bacon (1999), about the English philosopher and courtier, Sir Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, that explored the dissonance between the soaring ideals of Bacon's philosophical ambitions and his life as courtier, politician and lawyer serving in government. A final monograph on Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
, Hobbes and the Law of Nature was published posthumously in 2009.
Zagorin's last survey work, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (2003), returned to questions regarding individual belief ranged against those who claimed the right to enforce religious conformity by force if necessary, tracing the emergence of a particular and contested view of a right to freedom of conscience. It arose out of the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century, and informed the views of the American founders.
In 2005, Zagorin published Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader (2005); a non-specialist work on Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
's History of the Peloponnesian War
History of the Peloponnesian War
The History of the Peloponnesian War is an account of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, fought between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League . It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general who served in the war. It is widely considered a classic and regarded as one of the...
. Zagorin argues the work is more than a mere chronicle of the conflict between Athens and Sparta, being also a story of politics, decision-making, the uses of power, and the human and communal experience of war. In his view the work remains of permanent interest because of the exceptional intellect that Thucydides brought to the writing of history, and to the originality and intensity of vision that inform his narrative. The book concludes with a discussion of Thucydides as a thinker and philosophic historian.
Books
- A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (1954).
- The Court and the Country: the Beginning of the English Revolution (1969).
- Culture and politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment (1980), editor, essays.
- Rebels and Rulers 1500-1600: v.1 Society, States, and Early Modern Revolution: Agrarian and Urban Rebellions (1982).
- Rebels and Rulers 1500-1600: v.2 Provincial rebellion: Revolutionary Civil Wars, 1560-1660 (1982).
- Ways of lying : dissimulation, persecution, and conformity in early modern Europe (1990).
- Milton, aristocrat & rebel : the poet and his politics (1992).
- Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England 1640-1700 (1992), co-editor, essays.
- The English Revolution: politics, events, ideas (1998). Collected essays.
- Francis Bacon (1999).
- How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (2003).
- Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader (2005).
- Hobbes and the Law of Nature (2009)
- [Honorificus] Court, country, and culture : essays on early modern British history in honor of Perez Zagorin (1992)
External links
- Oral interview: Zagorin was interviewed in 2007 in conjunction with the donation of the papers of his wife Honoré Sharrer (d. April 17, 2009) to the Smithsonian Archive of American Art.
- See Perez Zagorin's obituary in the Washington Post here.