Narrates the interplay of Winston Churchill’s profession as amateur historian and Parliament pursuits, focusing on the writing of the History of English–speaking Peoples (HESP). Taking to journalism and authorship as cheaper than the military and yet sufficient to finance his aristocratic lifestyle, Churchill sought for fame to improve his negotiating power. At the outset, he was unconcerned with scholarly treatment of Anglo-Saxons contra Normans and the broader questions English-speaking nationalities, favoring family biographies or expected best-sellers. He composed all of his material; his stylistic influences Gibbon, Johnson, Burke, and Macaulay (ironic in the latter’s opposition to the Duke of Marlborough); but he belonged to no historiographic school. One effect of writing of his father’s biography was to persuade himself of abandoning the family Tory connection. In the interwar cabinet, moreover, he was anti-American. Out of office, he turned to HESP but often took on interim projects for revenue. Clarke recurs to the peculiarities of contemporary taxation and Churchill’s accounting. HESP was largely written, with the assistance of a committee of professionals, in 1938-39, save for volume 4 (which treats of the white dominions), completed in the 1950s. Yet its themes were manifest in wartime rhetoric: men who fight tyranny and barbarism deserve history’s plaudits; freedom and law, individual rights, and the subordination of government to society are the characteristic qualifies of English-speaking nationalities. HESP’s judgements often reveal Churchill’s contemporary politics: Clarke accuses Churchill of Whiggish history, not considering the conservative statemen’s preference for tradition. But he is diligent enough to quote Isaiah Berlin: ‘the single, central, organizing principle of his moral and intellectual universe’ was ‘an historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as to encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multi-coloured past’. (See Mr Churchill in 1940.) Chatham is Churchill’s hero; Clarke wonders why the dictatorial Cromwell doesn’t get the same adulation?! There is a persistent tone of professional jealously, and little recognition of Churchill’s statesmanship.
Month: July 2021
14. Spencer, Battle for Europe (19 Jun 2020)
A brisk monograph treating John Churchill’s (later Duke of Marlborough) daring 1704 German campaign, culminating in the defeat of Louis XIV and Marshal Tallard at Blenheim, effectively ending French designs on the Holy Roman Empire for most of the 18th century. The predatory Louis, unbeaten for 40 years, had unwittingly forged William of Orange’s Grand Alliance by promising James II restoration to the English crown. Yet the Dutch primarily wanted security, the British parliament seethed of the Glorious Revolution’s partisan aftermath, and imperial commander Prince Lewis of Baden was innately conservative. Escaping capture in 1702, Marlborough, seen as the scheming son of a penurious royalist, and his great ally Eugene of Savoy, another aggrieved aristocrat, seized on Count Wratislaw’s suggestion to relieve Vienna by marching up the Danube. Well financed, the Allies paid for supplies while campaigning, the French relied on confiscation; but Marlborough terrorized the Bavarian countryside to punish Maximillian Emmanuel. The allies won at Schellenberg in July, placing themselves between the French and Vienna. In the August battle, Spencer asserts Tallard ought to have defended the Nebel river with cavalry as Marlborough’s infantry sought to gain a foothold. Yet the French horse almost simultaneously lost a skirmish, shockingly and in view of the garrisoned town, just before the main battle. For this reason, the author asserts Tallard should not have given battle but retreated. In the successful assault, fought over 3 fronts, the Allies suffered 12,500 casualties including 300 of the 700 British officers; the French lost all but 250 of 4,500 officers and some 40,000 troops. The shock of the result was French surrender and the capture of Tallard. Bavaria was knocked from the war, which despite the French being driven from the Low Countries after Ramillies in 1706, persisted until 1714. Spencer asks why Blenheim isn’t remembered with same warmth of Agincourt, answering that partisan opposition to Marlborough’s character, as well as that of Swift and Macaulay, has diminished the affair. Accessible and well illustrated.
2. Costigan, History of Modern Ireland (18 Jan 2021)
Narrates Irish politics and society since the 18th century, climaxing with a polemical treatment of independence and civil war that scapegoats the British, credits the Americans, and skips past Irish economic development as well as de Valera’s cynical role. In a long prelude, points up Catholic monasteries made Ireland a European center of learning during the Dark Ages, while and Viking raiders established town life in Dublin, Limerick, Wexford, and elsewhere. In 1156 Henry II of England was authorized to invade by Pope Adrian IV, in order to promote Catholicism, beginning 750 years of oppression. Brechen law was replaced and peasants either enserfed or driven to inarable lands in the west. A second phase of colonization commenced with Elizabethan plantations, prompting the risings of Hughs O’Neill and O’Donnell; revealing tripartite division among a Catholic Kilkenny Confederation allied to Charles I, Ulster Scots Presbyterians, and Dublin-based loyalists; and accelerating with Cromwellian confiscations, which surpassed the 3 million acres previously taken in Ulster and Muster, claiming another 8 million – half the arable land – and driving Celts over the Shannon (‘to hell or Connacht’). Subsequent conversion to pasture meant fewer people could be supported.
Some 150 years later, the American revolution prompted the relaxation of penal laws, allowing Catholics to become landowners and Stormont flourished under Grattan; however, Wolfe Tone’s United Irish and the bungled French invasion of 1798 prompted the 1801 Act of Union. In the 19th century, the anti-colonial campaign turned political. To encourage participation, Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association set low dues but efforts to restore parliament neglected the agrarian problem (so too Young Ireland). The famine, which killed 2 million, in combination with 2 rental evictions and 2.5 million lost to emigration, evidences the wretched state of the countryside. From the 1850s, American public opinion and later dollars became a domestic factor, while new political actors continually emerged, such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (founded 1858) and the middle-class Fenians, which spurred the 1867 rebellion. Michael Davitt’s Land League sought to buy back and redistribute farmland, using the tactic of rent boycotts; Gladstone’s second Land Act to undermine its appeal. All along, England’s intellectuals staunchly opposed and savagely oppressed its neighbor, save alone for JS Mill. But the British arrest of Parnell was more representative of British intention, and Phoenix Park ruined prospects of Victorian Home Rule. Still, the 1904 Land Act increased quadrupled eligibility to buy land, to 300,000, and in all nearly 12 million acres were sold after 1885.
In the final turn, Patrick Pearse and WB Yeats, representative of a literary renaissance that fused pagan and Christian Ireland, served to ally culture with the rising dissatisfactions of Dublin’s slums, evidenced by the strike of 1913. The 1911 Act of Parliament having stripped Ulster’s last line of defense, Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteers shortly turned to mutiny, Bonar Law’s support ironically contrasting with the derided tactics of suffragettes or labor. It was clear from 1913 that Ireland would be partitioned. Redmond’s agreeing to wartime service mainly suborned the implementation of Home Rule. Even the north opposed conscription, and in December 1918 elections, Sinn Fein swept the balloting and resurrected the Dail. Michael Collins’ campaigning, prompting the introduction of Tans and the Auxiliaries, ultimately turned American opinion against Lloyd George’s penurious England and prompted negotiations (the author states de Valera was in secret contact with the prime minister?). Independence was due to Britain’s postwar decline and the rise of America – domestic events played a secondary role. De Valera could have prevented the civil war. However, upon becoming prime minister in 1932, he repudiated Land Act payments and other Edwardian residuals, prompting a trade war in 1932-38 and exiting the Commonwealth
Coda: although two-thirds of Protestants left Ireland after 1922 and emigration continued throughout the century, exodus reflected the repression of the Catholic Church and Britain’s generous welfare state. In Costigan’s telling, Irish’s citizens qua individuals making social and economic choices count for little.
23. Walsh, Introduction to Philosophy of History (14 Dec 2019)
Surveys concepts in philosophy of history, toward an understanding of a discipline that’s independent of science. Citing Collingwood’s view of the emergence of history as an early 20th-century phenomenon and noting contemporary British aversion to Continental views, the author commences with a dialectic approach to truth and fact (i.e., the unbiased search for all evidence), objectivity (unbiased but not as in science replicable, due to the personality of the practitioner), and explanation (including those events in which the truth is expressed). History can be objective in that we have rational conviction in the findings, as a portrait artist sees a subject from a point of view but certainly has real insight into the subject. That is, the historian has presuppositions but is not cut off from all understanding; his responsibility is to present an interpretation of all the evidence he admits. To establish cause is to establish means and motive, or to identify necessary conditions, or to determine the balance of the efficacy of forces. Colligation is a related process of rendering isolated events intelligible, dependent on connecting thought to action; however, it tends toward teleology or even Hegel’s universals in disguise. Still, cause / reason for adoption of ideas (and degree of success) is to be demonstrated. Memory provides access to the past but is not fact – it’s insufficient for verification. Truth and fact are divided between correspondence (to other accepted facts) and coherence (to accepted ideas or theories). Correspondence raises questions of which fact? Coherence lacks an element of independence (i.e., the past is dead). Oakeshott belongs to the latter school. Knowledge of the past must rest on evidence that is present. Walsh attempts a synthesis: all statements are relative to the constellation of evidence (coherence), all fact-based premises are independent (correspondence). As new evidence is constantly emerging, conclusions are inevitably provisional.
In history, to know the big things it’s necessary to know the details. The narration of events such that they explain themselves makes them ready-made for analysis. Whereas instrumental events are closer to science, easily recognized as fact. That is, the event cannot be falsified. The author accuses Oakeshott of an overly theoretic history, one that is independent of inquiry, and so a reductio ad absurdum that implicitly contrasts with Collingwood. Could it not be that facts suggest questions and sometimes so too the historian’s worldview? For to suggest history is solely the latter is to concede Heideggerian historicism. Further, history may not be teleological but it can reasonably be seen as a sequence of problems or events that cascade into one another.
Science differs from history in aspiring to the universal, in being predictive, whereas history is particular and cannot be replicated. (Collingwood: a scientist looks at mere phenomena, a historian for thoughts within events.) ‘Positivist’ historians, most obviously Marxists but also those associated with Popper, view history akin to engineering: practical application of known principles. Idealists are concerned with thought and experience, and unique and immediate character. Collingwood controversially asserted once the fundamental idea(s) have been identified, the matter’s essence could be intuited; Walsh counters this may be so if studying Admiral Nelson but not if a witch doctor.
Kant believed in an engine of history, following in the metaphysical tradition of seeking to understand the source of evil. Universal laws of nature, especially causality, do not provide the particular relations of events – the principle assumed is a material principle. The problem is relation of a priori to empirical elements. It’s too easy to fall into dogma. Hegel, the exemplar of the dialectic, believed the triad of fact, ideas (i.e., logic), and spirit must be reconciled to history; history is most aligned with spirit. Hegel was trying to make sense of a master narrative, and used the dialectic more than Kant or Enlightenment thinkers; he used a priori grounds of the triad. Ultimately, he identified the free with the self-contained or self-sufficient, and thus not with the individual but with society.
Seeing in the past certain preconceptions is not a private matter, it is metaphysics in Collingwood’s sense. Walsh uses the analogy of foreign travel: curiosity fades to learning how the locals see things, and then comparing with how things are at home. In a famous dispute, Trevelyan prevailed over Bury’s view of history as a science: the purpose of history is understanding the character of one’s own time by presenting the past in comparison.
2. Martinich, Philosophical Writing (28 Jan 2020)
A useful manual for writing philosophical essays, necessarily treating such fundamental concepts as argument, logic, and criticism. Sound argument follows from true premises (content), suitable structure (validity), and recognizable organization (coherence). Logic is the stuff of validity, often relying on syllogism or dilemma (see especially p16). The author recommends organizing essays in five parts: state the proposition, give the argument for, show the validity of structure, show truth of premises, state the upshot(s). Dilemmas are useful for upending widely held beliefs; counterexamples depend on imagination; reductio ad absurdum is useful in showing a proposition false, since truth cannot follow from invalid premises. There are two common standards of successful philosophical arguments: 1) do not contradict common sense, or 2) do not contradict basic theoretical propositions.
3. Devine, Union or Independence (15 Feb 2020)
Narrates the course of nationalism in Scotland since the Glorious Revolution, showing the strength of British ‘unionism’ through 1950 and the rise of Caledonian separatism in the 21st century. The shortcomings of the dual monarchy, dueling parliaments, and the threat of Catholic France prompted 1707’s Act of Union. In the first two-thirds of the 18th century, the merger was fragile because the treaty was subject to revision in Westminster. The revolt of 1715 was more serious (but less famous) than that of 1745; however, weak political leadership aside, the Presbyterian church was never willing to re-seat the Catholic Stuarts. After the Malt Tax riots of 1725, Walpole commissioned the personal authority of the Earl of Islay (later the Duke of Argyll, to be succeeded by Henry Dundas), in exchange for parliamentary support: the Scottish learned to play the game of patronage. England’s contemporary expansion meant Scotland had struck a good deal, in the author’s view, and quickly expanded trade to the West Indies, North America, and India under the cover of the English navy and (lack of) tariffs. The Seven Years’ War channeled the clans’ militarism, the Scots proving highly loyalist during the American and then the French Revolution. Scottish Enlightenment figures also were unionist, and so too capital Edinburgh although Glasgow was more imperialist.
Pessimists thought Scottish culture would be assimilated in the 1800s, but to the contrary Victoria identified with Scotland and the Highland military regiments were high status in imperial symbology. (World War II units were mixed, unlike the WWI, perhaps the last great unionist phenomenon.) The Scottish Burgh Act of 1833 devolved town management to the bourgeois, extending the remit of Europe’s most devolved region-in-state. But the Disruption of 1843, over clerical appointments, demonstrated Scottish identify was brittle. After the establishment of the Scottish Office in 1885 power began reverting to London. Over the long 19th century (1825-1936), 2.3 million Scots emigrated, among the highest totals in Europe, most to the US, Canada, or Australia – a phenomenon counter to expanding industrial economy which the author does not address.
The Depression persuaded the Scots to prioritize employment, welfare, and personal security. Scottish workers were highly unionized because of manufacturing’s predominance, and simultaneously its economy was statist. The war was seen to validate central planning (while nationalism was associated with Nazism). In the postwar era, which occupies the majority of Devine’s work, nearly 90 percent of new housing to 1965 was guilt by government, the highest outside the Soviet bloc: supplies available to private firms were limited and public costs subsidized. By 1960, the British empire was no long so important to the industrial economy of Glasgow and west-central Scotland. Further, imperial history fell out of favor in the academy: theories of ‘internal colonization’ arose with the takeover of Scottish concerns by England and American companies. Politicians were judged by delivering spoils of state. The Tories lost the loyalties of Presbyterians and the middle class, while Catholics (from Ireland) remained Labour voters. The roots of the party’s decline predated Thatcherite ‘neoliberalism’. Further the military, monarchy, and later Westminster (undermined by Brussels) fall in status.
Between 1979-81, 20 percent of Scottish industrial jobs were lost; but 1 in 3 worked in government and the region was receiving outsized grants under the Barnett formula. Thatcher sometimes showed restraint (as in preserving the Ravenscraig steel plan), but economic dislocation combined with Tory hierarchical politics made her the ‘greatest Scottish nationalist’. After 1987 the ‘democratic deficit’ – no Conservative MPs in Scotland – set in motion campaigns for devolution and then independence. The infamous poll tax actually originated in Scotland, and brought in a year early to stave off rising land taxes, but was seen to undermine autonomy. Thatcher didn’t cause devolution but accelerated it: since Conservatives were historically the party of union, Labour became heir to the ‘natural party of government’ and the Scottish National Party (SNP) the alternative. The 1988 Claim of Right for Scotland drew Labour into a pro-devolution position, and resulted in a constitutional convention which the Tories and SNP skipped. 1997’s Labour win produced a referendum on a Scottish parliament in Holyrood, which won 75 percent of the vote. Donald Dewar performed credibility albeit briefly as the first First Minister, particularly in recasting the terms of reference to encompass all powers not specifically reserved to Westminster.
Without devolution the SNP could not have stablished itself. Unique in regarding residence, not culture, as sufficient for Scottishness, the party failed in 2007 but triumphed in 2011 as Labour suffered the long-term effects of union membership losses, Catholics achieving parity, and general resentment of state spending (which accounted for up to 75 percent of Glasgow economy) being controlled in London. In the 2014 referendum, set against the backdrop of the Global Financial Crisis, democracy flourished despite the ruling out of a ‘devo max’ option. Labour sided with unionism, to its subsequent discredit. Questions surrounding Scotland’s putative currency hurt the ‘yes’ campaign; the establishment lined up against. Despite pulling level in the final days, the referendum lost 55-45. Symbolic concessions from prime minister David Cameron followed, but the Tories were again unrepresented after the 2015 election, and Scotland next voted to stay in the European union.
From the Earl of Islay’s time – and perhaps earlier, originating in the Highland clans? – Scotland seems to have absorbed patronage and corporatism: in the 21st century, it resembles the eastern Länder of otherwise market-oriented Germany, crossed with the separatism of Catalonia. Citing political science research, Devine notes that when controlling for class, the Scots distinguish themselves by identity in the same ways as the English, but not by political values. He might have done more to draw this thread over the past three centuries, perhaps touching on language and legal tradition. The narrative is elliptical but clear, although tending into polling numbers and other political science artefacts.
7. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke (11 Apr 2020)
Montesquieu deeply influenced Burke, particularly regarding the parliamentarian’s understanding of the British constitution and application of history. While sharing common views of l’esprit generale (roughly, sociological characteristics which interact with a country’s laws), the legislator (a representative not a delegate), and natural law (a superstructure for l’esprit), Burke’s outstanding debt consists of applying the Frenchman’s methods in a partisan way. From Montesquieu, Burke learned to derive a people’s nature from geographic, sociological, and historical events and used it to craft Rockingham ‘propaganda’ in political disputes over the American rebellion, Indian governance and the Hastings trial, and George III’s role in politics. Burke’s rationalizations do not rise to the level of political thought. But the era’s constitutional struggles particularly trouble this interpretation. Montesquieu’s identifying British separation of powers proved popular for articulating the outcome of 17th-century politics. Burke, an early enthusiast, opposed George’s capacity to influence Parliament and contended (in 1782) the crown’s power should be limited to appearance. Courtney observes the monarch conformed with the letter of the law, but elsewhere he says Burke bridged from Montesquieu to Bagehot’s 19th-century understanding. Further, he allows Reflections on the Revolution in France indeed rose to the level of political thought: Burke skillfully enunciated commonly held views or showed the way back to classical views. (In this, Courtney anachronistically calls Burke conservative.) The author holds to Namier’s view of individual behavior being explicable by classifiable political types, and the broad sweep of events corresponding to this structure, so to concede Burke’s originality is to undermine his presuppositions. Courtney also seems unhappy Burke moved on from considering history a repository of ‘scientific laws’ to a storehouse of the wisdom of precedent, and that he articulated principles for making these accessible.
9. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (13 May 2020)
The French Revolution was produced by the society it sought to destroy. Accumulated change during the ancien regime and the attempted reforms of Louis XVI prepared the ground for its successor, which effected fewer changes than supposed. For more than a century, France had been centralizing power through rule of the intendants. After the Fronde, the aristocracy continuously political influence and public administration, save for legal proceedings which could be superseded, content to retain financial (tax) privileges; by contrast the English aristocracy was willing to bear heavy taxes in order to retain power. Meanwhile, the towns became petty oligarchies subject to the intendants. By result, the gentry were separated from and resented by the bourgeois, who were themselves distinct from peasant farmers, since all who could sought to escape the land and its tax burdens. Industry was concentrated around Paris. Also in consequence, there was no common cause among the classes and no reservoir of power to oppose the monarchy. As the aristocrats played no role in shaping public opinion, the philosophes and particularly the physiocrats steered (over the course of the 18th century), the preparation of the Revolutionary cahiers, which exemplify the abstract, levelling ideals put into play after 1789. These targeted the Catholic church and heterogeneous economic arrangements. Centralized state power (‘democratic despotism’) was seen as necessary to rationalize government, and necessarily a power unto itself. The ‘flexibility’ of ancien regime would become intolerant. From 1775, Louis XVI paved the way by removing or undermining traditional municipal government, while mismanaged state finances required more taxes, prompting financial interests to demand change. The effect was to teach the populace to expect disorder. Tocqueville observes love of liberty ebbs, but of equality remains constant: a nation with a real instinct for freedom must feel itself its own master; but after the Revolution the peasantry transferred its natural affinities from aristocrats to government officials.
11. Trevelyan, English Revolution, 1688-1689 (30 May 2020)
The Glorious Revolution settled the two-part question of supremacy in English political and religious matters by compromising: Whiggish views of the monarchy and Tory high church preferences prevailed. The ultimate winner was Coke and Selden’s view that the king is chief servant but not master of the law. Like 1660’s restoration of Charles II, the revolution of 1688 ended lawless rule by restoring time-honored customs. Had James II submitted to Parliament, the scope of legal change would have been greater, for the monarch would have been circumscribed, but the hierarchy would have been less clear cut. (The subsequent independence of judges themselves was one of the broadest formal changes.) Writing with verve, Trevelyan shows it to be the decisive event in English constitutional history through the 20th century. Economic prosperity and geopolitical hegemony consequently followed. Although compromise prevailed in England, the victory was one-sided in Scotland and Ireland. To the north of the border, Catholics became Jacobites while Cavaliers opposed the Argyles and Whiggish ministers, especially after Holyrood acceded to Westminster. Across the sea, Protestants dependent on England emasculated native leaders save for Catholic priests, choking off the possibility of reform. Indeed, although the 18th-century English understandably favored institutional conservatism, and did effectively channel working-class and Radical sentiment into a system headed by Parliament, it was late in responding to the industrial economy and delivering the Reform Act.
13. Reason, Victorious Lions (13 Jun 2020)
A tart, triumphant account of the 1971 British Isles tour of New Zealand: the Lions posted an unbeaten provincial record and 2-1-1 test series win. Carwyn James’ insightful coaching, which converted author John Reason to the innovation, encouraged running via counterattack and made better use of personnel than New Zealand’s old-style committee system. Though mainly narrative, Reason focuses on violence and refereeing standards. As in 1966, the Canterbury match was marred by fighting; forward Sandy Carmichael’s fractured cheekbone forced him to leave the tour. Hawke’s Bay also was violent. Selections condone thuggery, Reason thunders, although he seems contradictory on whether crowd contribute (p107) or want it stopped (p171). Televising matches in the UK reduces foul play, he suggests. Regarding playing style, the New Zealanders overemphasize rucking while training unopposed slights defense. The Lions warmed up with ball in hand, and tight fives were chosen on the basis of contributing to open-field play (i.e., handling). In an era when the ball was in play and continuity were much lower, the NZ referees are berated for allowing foot up, crooked feeds, and forwards offside at scrummage as well as being inalert to quick throw-ins; also Kiwi players were allowed to berate refs. Ultimately he concludes refs watch tourists more closely and calls for international referee exchanges. The Lions’ best game was Wellington; after Auckland the tourists chose their strongest side to nail down the series win. JPR Williams’ drop goal famously put the game four out of reach. Williams, Barry John, Gareth Edwards, and Mervyn Davies (important to denying lineout ball to Colin Meads and controversially recalled Brian Lohore) are the heroes.