During my second year of graduate school, one of my advisers asked me, a little exasperatedly: “But do you see dirty hands everywhere?” I realized that the answer I wanted to give was an enthusiastic “yes” – but that it would require a great deal more thought and work to begin to show that there was something to justify this urge. This book records the results of the thought and the work. The reader will have to judge whether it has been enough.

I owe much to many. My thanks must begin with Richard Tuck, in whose company this whole endeavor began. Richard was the principal supervisor of my graduate work and in particular of the doctoral dissertation from which this book emerged. Throughout the long process, Richard urged me to sharpen my focus without narrowing my view; to dare to pursue major figures and large, complex themes; to treat my own encounter with primary sources as primary in the scholarly process; and to trust my own capacity to be gripped as an accurate barometer of broad intellectual interest. Each chapter of this book bears the mark of Richard's wide learning, incisive intelligence, good humor, and friendship – as do I.

Let me next thank those individuals who read part or all of the manuscript of this book in its various stages of drafting and disarray, enabling those readers who came after to be spared some of its worst obscurities, infelicities, and mistakes.