Dr John Robertson
M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S.
Lecturer (CUF) in Modern History
Email: john.robertson@history.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests
His interests cover the intellectual history of Europe 1600-1800, with particular emphases on the Enlightenment, religious heterodoxy, and political and social thought, and its relation to political and social structure. He has recently completed a comparative study of Enlightenment in Scotland and Naples, which argues for the coherence and unity of the Enlightenment as a whole. New projects include study of the intellectual frontier between heterodoxy and unbelief, focussed in particular on Pietro Giannone, and further work on the later Neapolitan Enlightenment, including the legacy of Vico, and the political economy of feudalism.
Supervision Interests
European intellectual history between 1600 and 1800, including religious heterodoxy, political, social and historical thought, and the Enlightenment; also Scottish and Italian history across the same period.
Selected Publications:
- (ed.) A Union for Empire. Political Thought and the Union of 1707 . (Cambridge, 1995)
- 'The Enlightenment above National Context. Political Economy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Naples', The Historical Journal. Vol 40 (1997) pp. 667-697
- (ed.) Andrew Fletcher: The Political Works . (Cambridge, 1997) 243pp.
- 'The Scottish Contribution to the Enlightenment' in The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Re-interpretation. (Rochester, NY, 2000) pp. 37-62
- 'Enlightenment and Revolution: Naples 1799', Royal Historical Society Transactions. Vol 6, 10 (2000) pp. 17-44
- 'The case for the Enlightenment: a comparative approach' in Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment: Volume 93, Part 5 of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Vol 93, Part 5 (Philadelphia, 2003) pp. 73-90
- 'David Hume' in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Oxford, 2004) pp. 740-758
- The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680-1760. (Cambridge, 2005) 455pp.
- 'Women and Enlightenment: a historiographical conclusion' in Women, Gender and Enlightenment. (London, 2005) pp. 692-704
- 'Political Economy and 'The Feudal System' in Enlightenment Naples: A Problem in Outline' in . (http://oxhistonline.modhist.ox.ac.uk/publications/15/, 2007)
Future Publications:
- 'New approaches to the Enlightenment in the United Kingdom' in La cultura dell'Illuminismo europeo. Politica. diritto, idee. (Teramo, Italy, 2003)
Research Interests and Activities
Selected Links to External Websites
