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Book No. – 4 (Political Science)
Book Name – Western Political Thought (Shefali Jha)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
2. THE ECONOMIC CONFLICT
3. THE RELIGIOUS CONFLICT
4. THE POLITICAL CONFLICT
5. HOBBES ON HUMAN NATURE
6. THE STATE OF NATURE
7. THE LAWS OF NATURE
8. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE CREATION OF THE STATE
9. SOVEREIGNTY
10. HOBBES ON LIBERTY
11. HOBBES’S THEORY OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION
12. SOME PROBLEMS IN HOBBES’S THEORY
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LANGUAGE
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): Contract as the Basis of Political Obligation
Chapter – 6
Table of Contents
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
- The English Civil War of the 17th century influenced the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
- The war was between the Stuart kings and the Parliament, with economic, religious, and political dimensions all playing a significant role.
- The economic dispute centered on Charles I’s attempts to stop the enclosure movement.
- The enclosure movement was supported by English Parliament, which was known in the 18th century as the ‘committee of landlords’ due to its support for landlords and driving small farmers off their land.
- Parliament was against religious liberty, particularly for non-conforming denominations such as the Independents, Puritans, and Catholics.
- The Stuart kings, some of whom were Catholic, tried to use a qualified advocacy of religious freedom to gain support.
- Parliament was anti-poor and against religious dissent, but presented itself as the champion of the people and democracy.
- The monarch’s authority was based on divine right, not derived from the people, making the monarch anti-people.
- In contrast, Parliament claimed its supreme authority was based on being the representative of the people.
THE ECONOMIC CONFLICT
- In the 16th and 17th centuries, the ‘commercial revolution’ was underway, but agriculture still provided the majority of people with their livelihood.
- Agriculture was changing, with the wool trade driving commercialized agriculture, as England became a leading producer of fine wool.
- The profitable trade in wool and grain led many landlords to drive the commercialization of agriculture.
- Raising sheep and capitalist grain farming required large tracts of land, leading to enclosure of common lands and peasant lands.
- Enclosures began in the 16th century, with manor lords and tenant farmers enclosing village commons and land, depriving peasants of their customary rights.
- Before the Civil War, enclosures were ‘encroachments’ by lords on lands with manorial population common rights or open arable fields.
- By the 16th and 17th centuries, approximately half-a-million acres were enclosed.
- With the commercialization of landholding, land was seen more as an income-yielding investment than as a symbol of status.
- Peasants displaced by enclosures either sought poor relief or moved to disease-ridden towns to work as wage laborers, creating a new class of wage laborers.
- Labor became a commodity, bought and sold in the market, just as land was now seen as a commodity with value based on its price.
- Charles I tried to prevent the enclosures to protect the peasantry, opposing Parliament‘s actions and eventually attempting to rule without Parliament.
- This conflict between Charles I and Parliament led to the English Civil War of 1642.