The French Revolution spurred the rise of nationalism in 19th-century Europe, a phenomenon which proved the major impetus for statecraft and warfare over the succeeding two centuries. More than simply self-conscious culture, nationalism in the 1800s was ideological, entwining a loose worldview with a defined sense of universal (often cultural) mission. It complemented economic modernization while overshadowing Marxism, which in its early phase had no conception of statecraft. Nationalism complicated life for Eastern Europe’s Jews, but (in its imperial guise) looked in colonial lands like routine military conquest. For social Darwinians cum nationalists, war was the ultimate test of folk strength – a view which died out after the carnage of World War I. In the 19th century, the Prussian mindset conflicted with German nationalism; Treitschke’s view that the essence of the state was power (macht), which required an army, bridged the two; ultimately, Nazism replaced Preussentum. Little is said of the interwar era. Howard coopts Churchill to makes a case for postwar British nationalism – as way to consensually accommodate postwar British decline – while giving the Russians a pass because the victorious Soviet army was ‘popular’ in postwar Eastern Europe! They and the Americans were the century’s inheritors of the universal mission, and in the current (when published) century, nationalism rather than social justice or economic equality remained the driver of public spirit. It provides the state apparatus with legitimacy: if unmoored (for example by supranational elites), the structure becomes alienating and oppressive. Turning to warfare, in which the author specializes, Howard’s primary insights are that 1) pre-WWI army doctrines failed to grasp the impact of mechanization despite the evidence of late-19th-century warfare – maneuver was ignored, and 2) in the greatest military literature, the hero cannot win, as abundantly demonstrated in WWI. As to history, the field is meant to train laymen – not professionals – to understand precedents of the contemporary. Howard asserts all ages of are equal interest to the historian, although the book fairly omits the developing world, and is comfortable with historicism though not polemical. In a ranging essay on ‘structure and progress’, he surveys why history has been held valuable and himself settles on its role in tracing society’s movement from the realm of necessity to the realm of choice. Such progress looks a leftward ratchet. The volume is not representative of his professional achievement and perhaps understates his contribution to understanding the relationship of warfare, society, and politics; however, it evinces the postwar bien pensant, the elite who could not see through the Soviets and uphold the enduring value of the liberal society.
History
22. Duggan, A Concise History of Italy (27 Dec 2018)
Narrates Italian history since unification in 1861, when Piedmont-led monarchists annexed republican southerners. Through the 1990s, government alternated between idealism and materialism, but generally operated as a one-party state compromised by the burden of southern economic development. Italy traditionally lacked the agriculture of Europe’s northern plain, has no navigable north-south rivers to facilitate trade and communications, was for many years plagued by malarial swamps that forced people into the hills, and until 1850s, silk was its only major industry. Italy’s ruling class was small, with comparatively fewer commercial interests and more landowners. Roman cities persisted into the medieval ages, presaging a tradition of communal autonomy. Venice, Milan, Genoa, and Florence (along with Paris) were the five great cities of the early 14th century, the Florentines and Venetians being strongly republican, with imperial (Ghibelline) vs papal (Guelf) rivalries also prominent. Charles V’s 1530 conquest brought the Catholic Church patronage: the Counterreformation revitalized 16th-century Rome; the opening of Atlantic trade marginalized the great trading cities. The Napoleonic era resurfaced the national question. 1848’s failed uprising against ruling Austria showed lack of unity among federalist moderates and democrats. Over the next decade, Piedmont king Victor Emmanuel accepted the principle of the executive answering to parliament, not the crown. Prime minister Cavour, seeing the need for an ally, struck a secret treaty with France and then provoked Austria in 1859, drawing in the French, who won a minor engagement at Solferino and then concluded an armistice; Savoy and Nice were traded in exchange for Piedmont’s annexing Lombardy; the central states were to revert to Austrian-supported rulers but instead asked join Piedmont. Separately, Garibaldi’s volunteers swept the south and then conceded at Teano. Unification was completed by Prussia’s 1866 defeat of Austria, which gifted Italy the Veneto, and 1870 victory over France, which brought Rome. Northerners dominated government; with the latifundi frustrating reform and excluding southern peasants from voting, legitimacy was a problem. One-quarter of manufacturing jobs were in textiles; emigration was widespread; an economic surge in the first decade of the 1900s depended on remittance. Giolotti, the predominant figure prior to Mussolini, failed to ‘transform’ the socialists into a parliament party, to build intellectual support of the liberal state. Followers of Croce’s neo-idealist, anti-socialist La Voce and the Futurists paved the way for corporatist fascism. Italy entered World War I by result of secret diplomacy; the effect of the war was to increase fragmentation; Italy overreached at the Paris peace conference and so didn’t get Dalmatia or Fiume. D’Nunzio’s 1924 occupation of the Adriatic city forced the one-time socialist Mussoilini to move rightward. Mussolini wasn’t part of the March 1922 march on Rome – his appointment was constitutional – and until 1927 he was forced to alternate between conciliating the establishment and movement faithful. The Acerbo bill legally provided the fascists 2/3ds parliament. Fascism was never an ideology, never strong enough to do more than temporize. By the 1930s, the Romantic, rank-and-file angry young men (or junior WWI officers) had become a church-going family man. But as they were unqualified to run the state, the liberal machinery was never abolished, the bureaucracy never aggrandized, the police independent (until 1940). Italians believed they gained security in exchange for loss of freedom. Mussolini’s economic policy was hodge-podge, despite controlling 20 percent of industry (second-highest in Europe, behind the USSR), and there were no gains in the south. Consequently, although jealous of Hitler, Mussolini was ill-prepared for war and performed poorly in Greece. The slowness of 1943’s Allied counterattack mean partisan resistance formed in the north (unlike southern liberation). After the war, the monarchy was narrowly abolished but general amnesty granted, so fundamental disagreement remained. The Christian Democrats ruled an essentially one-party state via Church support (against the PCI) and southern clientelism; the lightly planned economy favored northern industrialization (i.e., rising employment and materialism) as well as EEC membership. Notwithstanding legislation to break up the estates, the price was continued southern subordination. Regional autonomy (from 1970) introduced a degree of leftist influence (in the red zone of Tuscany, Umbria, and Emilia-Romagna, while post-1968 industrial unrest was channeled into constitutional forms, marginalizing the Communists. The postwar system collapsed in the 1980s; the northern separatists Forza Italia (and Berlusconi) rose in 1994, via the latter’s domination of mass media. The country just squeaked into the Euro, potentially exacerbating an internally conflicted nation.
17. Hexter, Historians (26 Sep 2019)
A collection of essays treating leading inter- and postwar historians including Carl Becker, Fernand Braudel, and JGA Pocock. As in other works, Hexter’s discussions of strength and weakness reveals his primary point only late in the game. Becker is shown to have recanted the relativism of Everyman a Historian, on the impetus of Nazi nihilism: ‘in the long run all values are inseparable from love of truth and disinterested search for it’. Braudel, whose remaking of the French academy is praised, could not connect the durable phenomena (e.g., geography) with rapid change, in part because he ignored law and custom. A ‘revolution’ is not always successful, Hexter, writes, but nonetheless reveals profound currents. Puritanism pressed Elizabeth but was diffusive not polarizing of England governance because of the peers-gentry and court-country axes. Although Hexter is strongest regarding England, the best chapter treats Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment. To know the political language of an era is to understand what words were intended to mean. Pocock shows the transition, beginning in 15th century Florence, from valuing stability, hierarchy, and universality to republicanism, patriotism, equality, utopia, etc. Florentine thought followed Aristotle but the ‘Anglosphere’, where next the revolution surfaced, grafted a view of God’s elect onto Italian humanism. Why? Hexter contends Pocock didn’t go far enough: in showing that Machiavelli and company demonstrated the fundamental condition of liberty is participation in public life, without which civic virtue can never be realized, Pocock omitted considering the alternate definition of liberty – freedom from state control. The opposition of positive liberty and negative liberty (‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’, as enunciated by Berlin) has a long history in the West. Positive liberty is Aristotelian; negative liberty is Roman (i.e., Stoic). Positive liberty was lost in the Dark Ages, resurfacing in Renaissance Florence and then Stuart and Georgian England. The rise of commerce upended classical conceptions of positive liberty, which presumed smaller, agrarian society. Its theorists include Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison. Whereas negative liberty is unconcerned with social structure – not who should govern but what should be the limits of power? Pocock ought to have raised new questions of the duality which are entailed by his showing the trajectory of positive liberty. Elsewhere, Hexter notes historians are obliged to police themselves, unlike scientists, for their researches are more difficult to check; the practitioners themselves best police the thesis and identify new horizons.
11. Clarke, Mr. Churchill’s Profession (26 Jun 2021)
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.
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.
16. Clogg, Modern Greece (17 Aug 2020)
From the late Ottoman era (the decline of Turkokratia), Greece has struggled with the boundaries between democratic and authoritarian government while international affairs have frequently overshadowed domestic political rivalries. In the run up to the 1820s, Ottoman decline afforded Greek merchants opportunity to gain local power; these individuals vitally underwrote the ‘native’ intellectual revival of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Simultaneously, traditions of irregular warfare and maritime autonomy (e.g., Hydra shipowners) proved valuable in the War of Independence, particularly control of the seas. The new state, founded in 1832, encompassed but one-third of Greeks in the Ottoman empire, omitting the major commercial centers: Smyrna, Salonica, and Constantinople. Midcentury, neoclassicism (especially German Romanticism) contended with Byzantine tradition while a new generation of politicians challenged those reared in the Ottoman tradition. Contemporary office was not the means to fortune as patronage demands were heavy. The slump of 1893 forced Greece to default on its international loans, bringing the unwonted supervision of Great powers; an indemnity following loss of the 1897 Turkish lower exacerbated balance-of-payment problems. By result of the 1913 war, however, Greek population grew by 70 percent (to 4.8 million from 2.8), its landmass by roughly the same. But the new populace was not homogenous: after 1923, some 1.1 million came to Greece while ~ 400,000 were sent to Turkey.) As much as World War I, the Megali idea divided Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine (whose family ties traced to the German Kaiser), and the effects of the National Schism (ethnikos Dikhasmos) between Venezelists and royalists set the precedent for recurrent 20th century purges of civil servants and teachers. The Metaxas dictatorship, commencing 1936, presaged the ‘worst decade’ of the century, comprising Nazi invasion and then savage liberal-communist civil war. The 1950s saw economic growth and continuing repression of the communist left. The Cyprus crisis evidenced renewed predominance of international affairs, the military dictatorship of 1967 the next bout with the authoritarian rule. Afterward, Karamlanis sought to draw clearer boundaries of civic rule; post 1974, Greece spent as much as 20 percent of its GDP on the military, pointing its attention to Turkey. Papandreou was often out of the step with NATO and Greece’s new partners in the European Community, but shifted the basis of patronage from individual to party.
24. Blainey, Short History of the 20th Century (23 Dec 2020)
During the 20th century political and economic power passed from the United Kingdom and Western Europe to Russia and ultimately America. Prior to 1950, the most important political decisions regarded war; following the advent of nuclear weaponry, the most important choices involved avoiding war. In the developed countries, sociological changes often preceded politics.
At the start of the century, railways had unified the corners of Europe, North America, and much of Russia and Africa. (South America is little treated by Blainey.) Germany was the expansionist power: once it acquired colonies, the navy that’s often seen as a leading cause of World War I inevitably followed. The conflict manifest the effects of specialized labor: whereas in the Napoleonic era the military commanded approximately of the combatants’ GDP, by 1915 it subsumed nearly half. Germany and France lost some 15 percent of their men, others higher, whereas the UK only six percent – yet the British famously lamented the squandering of the generation and so too long embraced pacificism in the face of dictators. Wilson made eloquent but irresponsible promises. National ‘self determination’ created tariff barriers. More significant, by the slump of 1930, half of the world’s population were economically dependent on international trade.
In speaking of Mussolini, the author observes that ‘one-party government goes hand in hand with an official set of ideas.’ Lenin made Russia communist, Stalin made it a world power (with some help from the US, as directed by Hoover!). Russian farming’s conversion to collectivism was hugely productive, enabling the country’s industrial base to reach third place globally by 1939. Hitler’s rise was less due to his personality than skillful manipulation of appeasement. The Japanese decision not to attack the USSR was key to Russia’s remaining in the early phase of the war. In the Pacific, air power gained its first triumph over maritime forces in the fall of British Singapore. Stalin outwitted Churchill and Roosevelt.
In the first postwar decade, the stage shifted to Asia: the fall of China, the Korean War, and the economic recovery of Japan. Decolonization commenced. Ghandi’s rise was shaped by Thoreau, Ruskin and Tolstoy. African leaders didn’t think past independence. The UK’s surrendering the strategic cornerstones of Suez (1956), Singapore (58), and Persian Gulf bases outweighed African concessions. Israeli settlement of Palestine eclipsed European postwar migrations (and the Asian subcontinent?). The rise of rocket science led to the boldest adventures in four centuries, and also to the Cuban Missile Crisis, on which topic the author makes the (rare) error of overlooking Kennedy’s handing back Turkish bases. By the time the Suez Canal recovered from the damage of the 1967 war, it was too small for modern tankers. Containers revolutionized shipping too in raising productivity, reducing theft, and so creating higher pay. The rise of radio (and later TV) had undermined the schoolroom, which in the 19th century had been expected to extend civilization influences, and later fueled the demagogues. (The British commentator David Frost observing that TV is entertainment by people you wouldn’t let into your home.) Women’s work (cooking, cleaning) was radically improved by advances in the 1960s, a decade that ‘enthroned’ the cult of the teenager, feminism and the pill, black rights, and the green movement. The direct result was declining European birth rates.
Vietnam was the last major Communist victory, soon overwhelmed by the Soviet-Afghan war as well as the contradictions and ossification of Communist societies. The author notes that when the Berlin wall fell, the Russians had more divisions on its Chinese border than in Eastern Europe. China’s rise dependent on capital from emigrants, not Western banks, most of whom came from Guangzhou (Guangdong) and Fujian provinces.
The end of World War I had fostered disagreement and disillusion, the end of the Cold War optimism. By century’s end, Europe was more united, under the aegis of the European Union, than at any time since the Holy Roman Empire. So was the world linked by the rise of global languages (especially English), culture (e.g., sport), technology, ‘megacities’ (Asian cities led by Tokyo). The most divisive trend was radical Islamism: after World War I, Turkey’s conversion to secular rule was less remarked; at century’s end, Russia had returned to a statist economy while Turkey was moving back toward Islam. Secular pluralism and social theory each petered out. It would be unwise to assume Western democracy has triumphed because it requires prudence and experience of elected officials. Blainey is typically orthodox liberal, endowing his views with common sense and disapproving of leftist ideology.
12. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (9 Jun 2020)
Evaluates shortcomings of mid-20th century historiography using examples from early modern England and Europe. Contemporary professional work has been too clever by half, failing the twin tests of common sense and explaining what happened and why on the past’s own terms. The historian may use a framework to study events, but not to determine their nature: history cannot be discovered or elucidated by rules. Particularly in times of convulsion – when history is most interesting – the narrative supersedes the analytic.
The Scientific Revolution marked a turning point in Western trajectory. Sixteenth-century aristocrats could no longer rise only by martial prowess, no more felt able to ignore the liberal arts. It was the reconstruction of a social class. By contrast, the myth of the contemporary English middle class muddles social change by misunderstanding the extent of the upper classes. Merchants buying in was an ancient habit; Tudor policy protected established groups even while promoting new ones; hierarchy was as important as ever. Economic change, absolutism, and Calvinism were more catalytic.
In the famous essay ‘Storm over the Gentry’, Hexter shows the gentry and peers were of the same class, so statistics are unhelpful. Political claims during the first half of the 17th century were grounded in ancient rights, not class interest; that is, classes do not inevitably pursue selfish ends. Religion may have been the prime mover, but politics was the medium. To get to the bottom of the Interregnum, the historian must ask what the Commons thought it was doing?
In fact, in an enduring conflict between the Stuarts and Parliament, the latter sought to husband its rights to legislate, to tax and supply, and to judge; but did not mean to topple the monarchy. The Petition of Right fell within the civic tradition. It was an effort to rebalance liberty and law, and after the Restoration politicians and notables cluster around the grandees as before.
See http://www.oeler.us/2021/06/22/the-historiography-of-the-english-civil-war/