History is a discrete discipline because it aims to explain bygone events, mindsets, and the course of change. Its purpose is to understand the past on its own terms, and not to apply or deduce laws or patterns. Masterful research, particularly of documentary evidence, enables historians to understand what is missing and/or what questions are implicitly raised. This is why political history is the queen of the discipline. There is truth to be discovered ‘if only we can find it’: such outcomes are more likely in history than in scientific disciplines because events and evidence are unalterable and independent of the practitioner. Evidence is to be criticized, however, leading to differing interpretations, which may be magnified by the historian’s individual style of writing. The format of presentation itself will be either narrative, the superior of chronology, or analytical, the higher form of description. The choice is normally dictated by the topic. In making the case for more use of narrative (where possible), Elton displays one of many instances where he sets his cap against social scientists and sundry postmodernists – in 1965. Aimed at professionals, it includes a section on teaching and is therefore not fluid. Still, a confident, masterful brief.
Standouts
1. Doyle, French Revolution (7 Feb 2012)
Narrates the course of Europe’s first and probably greatest popular uprising, synthesizing political and social perspectives as well as competing interpretations. Making good use of illustrative facts amid the twists leading to Napoleon’s ascension in 1798, Doyle’s work reverts to the themes of political theory and faction, class and regional (especially Parisian) antagonisms, economic distortion and hardship, and international conflict borne of cynical French adventuring. Fueled by Enlightenment thought, the protagonists ‘failed to see … that reason and good intentions were not enough by themselves to transform the lot of their fellow men. Mistakes would be made when the accumulated experience of generations was pushed aside as so much routine, prejudice, fanaticism, and superstition’. The cost was millions of dead and as many or more lives wasted. Clearly written, worth re-reading.
2. Johnson, Napoleon (12 Feb 2012)
A concise biography of the world’s prototypical dictator, the first to embody Rousseau’s general will. Skillful at artillery and cartography, favoring speed and attack borne of interior lines, Bonaparte rode his 1796 Italian campaign to power, thereby ending France’s revolutionary era and creating the first 20th-century authoritarian government, replete with repressive state machinery and cultural propaganda. As a military leader, he squandered men and horses – though soldiers were permitted to pillage – while as head of state he roused nationalist resentment against France. Military failure in Spain and Russia, the British blockade, and resurgent German nationalism (newly shorn of the Holy Roman Empire), caused his downfall. Ironically, this period created, via the Congress of Vienna, an absolutist coda which survived until 1914. The short form diminished the tendency to glorify a monstrous figure.
13. Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (20 Oct 2012)
Demonstrates the Athenian statesman’s commitment to popular (democratic) governance in the face of monarchical and (uber)aristocratic tradition as well as the Peloponnesian War’s tribulations. As summarized by Thucydides, his leadership aspired ‘to know what must be done and to be able to explain it, to love one’s country, and to be incorruptible’. His successes are portrayed against the backdrop of the Athenian empire and regional conflagration, which broke both the city’s power and its experiment with representative government. As so often with Kagan, the bygone era’s realities are comprehensible to the modern reader.
1. Rumelt, Good Strategy (2 Jan 2013)
Strategy discovers a situation’s critical factors and derives a coherent, simply presented approach to the objective. According to Rumelt, who does not address the interplay with tactics, it comprises diagnosis, setting a guiding policy, and identifying / specifying a coherent set of actions. The latter creates strength, which sets it apart from Rumelt’s examples of bad strategy, which amount to sloganeering and disconnecting activity. Good strategy is often unexpected – not necessarily complex – because (pace Drucker) it has identified what’s really (already) going on. The key to the policy is to make it participatory (i.e., shared leadership).
6. Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order (10 Nov 2013)
Efficient apparatus, rule of law, and accountability are the pillars of effective government and thus political order. Bypassing the thinking of Ancient Greece, Fukuyama relies on anthropology to locate the modalities of government and simultaneously man’s tendency to underline structure through familial instincts. Premodern China, 13th-century Egypt, 16th-century Turkey, and the medieval Catholic Church provide leading case studies of statecraft and its demise. As ever, decline is an important theme: moral and cultural advancement suggest political decay. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, in this taxonomy of political forms (up to the French Revolution), the author as political thinker considers what is best for man, and as political scientist what is best for government. As such, passages are dry and detached; however, the beginning each chapter helpfully limns its contents. Worth rereading.
2. LaCouture, DeGaule: Ruler (19 Jan 2014)
A biography of 20th-century France’s leading figure, authoritatively narrated by the foreign editor of
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Le Monde
in the classical mode of synthesizing primary sources and interviews. This second volume ranges from de Gaulle’s efforts from August 1944 to restore France’s international status to his passing in 1970. The protagonist excelled in affairs of state, wherein the government must be preeminent (e.g., relations to the big 3, Algeria, the formation of Europe); whereas his endeavors to guide domestic politics without participating in them (styming communists in postwar elections, the 1962 constitution, the tumult of 1968-69) expose the authoritarian, arbitrary mnature of ‘Gaullism’ and the general’s egomania. De Gaulle was a warrior who parlayed close study of history into statesmanship, but he could not surmount politics as the French state is democratic. He also was a fine writer, thereby providing rich material for this study, which evinces a finely balanced dialectic treatment of core episodes while deftly using synthesis to energize the narrative. (Is it possible for an American to write in this style? It requires adjustment merely to read it.) However, the nuance of such an approach sometimes leaves one grasping for the author’s principal conclusions of the man.
3. Scuton, Modern Philosophy (5 May 2014)
Modernist philosophy, which since Descartes has sought to posit individuality (‘the self’) as naturally independent and transcendent, fails because ‘to be a self is simply to be a person’ – a member of the community. In the process of finding against existentialists, poststructuralists, and the like, Scruton surveys four centuries of thought by evaluating thinking about such concepts as truth, cause, and science. The thematic groupings also manage a rough chronological order, an impressive feat. Scruton’s hero is Kant for the categorical imperative: treat others as having inherent value, as ends not means. An excellent work.
4. Dudley, Understanding German Idealism (1 Jun 2014)
Surveys the trajectory of German philosophy 1780-1830, a formative period roughly from Kant’s setting out to prove reason trumps empirical determinism to the passing of Hegel. Kant, the protagonist, sought to establish a priori knowledge (what can I know? what should I do? what may I hope?), and concluded knowledge is bounded by the subject’s understanding of objects. His categorical imperative remains vital in modern society: treat fellow humans as you would yourself, and as ends not means. Subsequent German idealists challenged his principles of first knowledge, changing a critical understanding into absolute viewpoints. Hegel determined subject-object falsely limits understanding of appearances, and moved from knowing to being, thereby concluding man’s reconciliation with the natural world is the primary objective. Religion, art, and philosophy are the practices par excellence. Clear but difficult.
5. Ricks, Generals (14 Jun 2014)
A whirlwind study of US army leadership from the time of George Marshall. The military has all but abandoned the practice of rewarding officer success and treating failure by giving another a chance at command (and the relieved officer another chance elsewhere), thereby deferring personnel decisions to civilian oversight, which the army abhors for operational reasons. The trend began with McArthur and has persisted through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The army reached its quotidian / tactical nadir in Vietnam and then recovered, but has has yet to come to grips with a strategic doctrine for winning (i.e., ending) 21st-century, asymmetric conflict. This remaining gap, Ricks asserts, is attributable to conventional, insular career paths. A fine organizational study free of jargon.