Peter Laslett

Peter Laslett (18 December 1915 – 8 November 2001) was an English historian. Quotes For the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead. 'Introduction', in Philosophy, Politics and Society: First Series, ed. Peter Laslett (1956), p.vii For the 30 years of its existence the corporation has pursued a consistently responsible policy towards the educational and cultural duties of broadcasting. It has enjoyed the unreserved respect and confidence of literary, intellectual and academic opinion. The Third Programme has indeed become a symbol, both of B.B.C. policy and of public confidence, that it will be pursued. But can we be so confident that this policy is to be maintained when we hear that the Third Programme is to be cut, its staff reduced by the suppression of the important post of chief assistant, and its relation to other services radically altered? Letter to The Times (9 May 1957), p. 13 All societies, even English society at its stablest, are liable to break down into conflict, even armed conflict. Conflict is a common enough form of social interaction: there is nothing special about the things which bring it about. Since nearly everybody has an obvious interest in preventing differences from becoming collisions all parties will take strenuous avoiding action when collisions threaten. But collisions sometimes take place nevertheless, just as car collisions do, and there is a logical resemblance. Accidents on the road are rare because every driver does all he can to avoid them, but they happen, at a statistically understandable frequency. When they do happen, it makes sense to look for long-term, even 'deep-seated', causes, as well as for the errors of the drivers concerned, for such things as the continued growth of traffic, and the increase in its speed, or the progressive inadequacy of the roads. The more disastrous the accident, the more elaborate the examination will probably be, of all its circumstances and causes. But it does not follow that the more dramatic and important the crash and its consequences, the more profound the causes and the more likely it is that we are faced with the climax of some perennial 'process'. 'Foreword', in J. H. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (1961), p. xiv The Third Programme has been established for a generation now, with a reputation all round the world as the highest ever reached or reachable in cultural broadcasting. Through it the B.B.C. is seen to exercise its function of patronage in the arts and intellectual life of Britain in a way which no other national corporation can ever aspire to do. Perhaps in recent years the patronage has got smaller, but it is seen to exist and it is a vital part of the reputation of the Corporation at home and abroad.It is quite certain that by abolishing the title and the reality of the Third Programme the B.B.C. must lose this claim to respect, just as it must lose the support of the artistic and intellectual community of the country. Letter to The Times (19 February 1970), p. 11 We shall try to prove in this chapter how questionable it would be to assert that the transformation of English society by industrialisation was accompanied by any decrease in the size of the average household until very late on in that process. The facts presented will show that mean household size remained fairly constant at 4.75 or a little under, from the earliest point for which we have found figures, until as late as 1901. There is no sign of the large, extended coresidential family group of the traditional peasant world giving way to the small, nuclear, conjugal household of modern industrial society. In England in fact...the large joint or extended family seems never to have existed as a common form of the domestic group at any point in time covered by known numerical records. 'Mean household size in England since the sixteenth century', in Household and Family in Past Time: comparative studies in the size and structure of the domestic group over the last three centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and colonial North America, with further materials from Western Europe, ed. Peter Laslett (1972), p. 126 From the point of view of our discussion, the book as a response to political and literary circumstances, its origin belongs to the autumn and winter of 1678-80, exactly a decade earlier than it is traditionally supposed to have been written. Two Treatises is an Exclusion Tract, not a Revolution Pamphlet. "Introduction," in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Quotes about Laslett Peter Laslett was a scholar of unbelievable energy. He was truly a global figure, open to international co-operation in research, indeed, promoting it on many occasions. He was part of the process that made the Cambridge Group into a research institution of international excellence, a unique centre, attracting many international visitors for research in historical demography and family history. Markus Cerman and Michael Mitterauer, 'Obituary: Peter Laslett', Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, Vol. 26, No. 4 (98) (2001), p. 254 In some forty pages of introduction he has given us the most intelligent account of Filmer and his ideas that has yet appeared. There is a brief account of the results of his considerable researches into the life of Filmer, which is followed by an admirably concise statement of the argument of Patriarcha and its place in the political controversies of the seventeenth century. But the most notable part of the introduction is that in which Mr. Laslett deals with the place and significance of Patriarchalism generally in seventeenth-century thinking. Michael Oakeshott, review of Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Political Writings, ed. Peter Laslett in Philosophy, Vol. 25, No. 94 (July 1950), p. 281 Laslett's research was methodologically as well as historically important to me, because he tried to place Locke’s text within the precise historical context that made sense of Locke's preoccupations and commitments. I already believed in the need for such an approach, largely through my reading of Collingwood (who must surely have influenced Laslett too). But Laslett's edition seemed to me — and still seems to me — to exemplify the approach brilliantly. Quentin Skinner, interview at the interviewee’s home, London, 18 April 2008 The social historian Peter Laslett was an intellectual impresario and provocateur who long occupied a niche in the affections or demonology of many academics. He was a voluble and dedicated champion of the marriage of history and sociology, and a student of the history of marriage, the family and its dysfunctions. He was also, coincidentally, a Cambridge mentor of the Prince of Wales.Laslett's most important research was into the size and shape of families over the centuries. By gathering huge amounts of statistical evidence, he worked to demolish what he regarded as a romantic myth among historians: the idea that before the industrial revolution many or most people lived in extended, multi-generational families, which could accommodate the weak, the old and unmarried siblings. "In reality, the family hasn't changed a great deal; it shows an amazing resilience to change," he said. Nuclear families, he argued, were already the norm by the time parish records began in the 1540s. 'Peter Laslett: Historian who studied family life over the centuries and demonstrated its remarkable resilience in the face of social change', The Times (14 November 2001), p. 19 External links Category:1915 births Category:2001 deaths Category:Historians from England