Geoffrey Elton

Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton ( born August 17, 1921 in Tübingen, † December 3, 1994; born Gottfried Rudolf Ehrenberg ) was a German-born British historian. He is known especially for his research on the House of Tudor and Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex.

Biography

Elton was born in 1921 as the son of the historian Victor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea summer. When his father was appointed in 1929 to the Charles University, the family moved to Prague. Shortly before the German invasion of the entire family in February 1939 fled to Britain. There Elton went on to Rydal School in Wales. After only two years he was employed as a teacher and assistant in mathematics, history and German.

On the side he took correspondence courses at the University of London. There he made in 1943 qualified as a historian and went in the same year for the British Army. As a soldier in the eighth army he was stationed from 1944 to 1946 in Italy. During this time he changed his name by Gottfried Ehrenberg in the Anglicized form Geoffrey Elton. After his return to England, he joined the University of London to graduate early modern history in the area. In 1947 he took on British citizenship in 1949, he received his Philosophiae Doctor ( Ph.D. ).

From 1949 Elton taught at the University of Glasgow and later at Clare College, Cambridge. There he headed the Department of Modern History as Regius Professor from 1983 to 1988. 1972 to 1976 he was president of the Royal Historical Society, from 1981 to 1990 he also worked for the British Academy.

Since 1952 he was married to the historian Sheila Lambert. In 1986 he was knighted. He was uncle of the writer Ben Elton.

Work

Elton initially focused on the life and work of Henry VIII, but also worked through Parliament in the era of Queen Elizabeth. Over time, he expanded his field to the entire Tudor era, and was soon regarded as an expert in the field of English Reformation.

Elton became famous when he described in his 1953 book The Tudor Revolution in Government Thomas Cromwell as the founder of the modern, bureaucratic governance, has ended the medieval type of governance. Monarchy and monarch had been inseparably united Before Cromwell and the Kingdom of private property of the king. The official guidance was then divided in the hands of the court and not in different ministries. In England Under The Tudors, which was published in 1955, he continued these theses. It became the best- selling book on the House of Tudor in England. The 1960 published work, The Tudor Constitution is one of the standard works on the time of the Tudors. This Elton John Aylmer supports theory that the Constitution under the Tudors reflects resist Sparta mixed constitution.

Elton was considered a conservative ( he was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher ), both in the political sphere as well as in the applied scientific methods. He was a strong critic of Marxist historians. Above all, he turned against the thesis that the English Civil War was triggered by socio - economic changes. Rather, it was triggered by the weak rule of the House of Stuart.

Elton refused postmodernism and was an important representative of traditional methods. The mid-1960s he was at the center of a dispute among British historians. It defended Elton traditional approaches to history, as it had formulated in the 19th century, Leopold von Ranke, Edward Hallett Carr against the views. Elton's The Practice of History is the answer to Carr's What is History?.

Works

  • Annual bibliography of British and Irish history, Brighton, Sussex [ England]: Harvester Press; Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1976.
  • The body of the whole realm; Parliament and representation in medieval and Tudor England Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969.
  • England, 1200-1640 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969
  • England Under The Tudors London: Methuen, 1955, revised edition 1974.
  • The English Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
  • English law in the sixteenth century: reform in at age of change London: Seldon Society, 1979
  • F.W. Maitland London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985.
  • Henry VIII; an essay in revision London: Historical Association by Routledge & K. Paul, 1962.
  • Modern Historians on British History, 1485-1945 At Critical Bibliography London, Methuen, 1970.
  • The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  • Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell, Cambridge University Press, 1973.
  • Political History: Principles and Practice, London: Penguin Press, 1970.
  • The Practice of History London: Fontana Press, 1967.
  • The Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
  • Reformation Europe, 1517-1559 New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
  • Reform and Reformation: England 1509-1558, London: Arnold, 1977.
  • Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1973 ISBN 0-521-20054-7
  • Renaissance and Reformation, 1300-1640, edited by GR Elton New York: Macmillan 1968.
  • Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  • Star Chamber Stories London: Methuen, 1958.
  • Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews, 1946-1972, 4 volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974-1992.
  • The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, Cambridge University Press, 1960.
  • The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII, Cambridge University Press, 1953.
  • Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983 ( written in collaboration with Robert Fogel )
Tudor dynasty Victor Ehrenberg (historian) Mixed government Marxism Integrated Authority File
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