J. G. A. Pocock - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Pocock was born in London in 1924, but in 1927 his family moved to New Zealand when his father, Greville Pocock, was appointed professor of Classics at Canterbury College. The younger Pocock's academic career also began at Canterbury, with a B.A. leading to an M.A. in 1946. He later moved to Cambridge, earning his Ph. D. in 1952 under the tutelage of Herbert Butterfield. He returned to New Zealand to teach at Canterbury University College, 1946–48, and to lecture at the University of Otago, 1953–55. In 1959, he established and chaired the Department of Political Science at the University of Canterbury. He moved to the USA in 1966, when he was named as the William Eliot Smith professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1975 Pocock assumed his present tenure at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; As of 2011 he holds the position of the Harry C. Black Professor of History Emeritus.

His first book, entitled The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law elucidated the common law mind, showing how thinkers such as the English jurist Edward Coke (1552–1634) built up a historical analysis of British history into an epistemology of law and politics; and then how that edifice later came to be subverted by scholars of the middle to late seventeenth century. Some of this work has since been amended.