The rise and fall of leading nation-states is determined by the interplay of economics, technology, and military prowess. Expanding nations more easily support ever-rising costs of warfare; declining countries have to make fateful strategic choices. In the author’s multipolar framework, changes in trade patterns presage the outcomes of strategic conflicts, and so foreshadow the next political order. Individual leadership is less important because imperatives and choices are made in the context of Bismarck’s ‘stream of time’: strengths are relative. The outcome of warfare over 1450-1950 confirmed long-term economic shifts, often borne of new technology. Revised territorial order reflected redistribution, but peace did not freeze socioeconomic conditions.
Global powers tend to overspend on defense and underinvest in growth. Japan became a financial power (i.e., leading creditor nation) following its industrial rise: evidence – or the author – suggests the Asian country is most likely to supplant the ‘overstretched’ USA. The challenge to American longevity lies in defense commitments to overseas position obtained when it had a higher share of global GDP, a better balance of payments, and less debt. The most serious threat hegemons face is failure to adjust to change.
In the 15th century, European states trailed the Asian dynasties. War shaped its rising powers; distributed economic growth made it impossible to suppress all of them; the key economic development was the long-range ship. Within Europe itself, states were always spending to overpower another. Spain lacked manpower, grew slowly (aside from New World bullion), and suffered precarious finances. It was overstretched. French aspirations were checked by the balance of power, most importantly by result of the War of Spanish Succession, and backward finance. Following the Diplomatic Revolution of 1753, which crystallized England’s balance of power strategy, British mercantile prowess and ability to borrow fueled its win in the Seven Years War (one of seven with France over 1689-1815), and thus hegemony to 1945.
In the Victorian era, Britain’s industrial might was less oriented to the military than any era since the Stuarts. Further, it had no appetite for Continental interventions. Its power owed to its navy and colonies – productive investments – as well as the City of London. Despite the rise of late 19th-century US and Germany industry as well as Prussian military reform, the UK’s position circa 1914 was not so weak as often portrayed. Alliance diplomacy encouraged the drift to World War I, and prevented a quick resolution. The series of UK diplomatic concessions to the US (e.g., fisheries, the Panama Canal, Alaska) overturned conventional expectations of ‘natural’ Anglo-American hostility, and so won the UK a vital ally.
Kennedy observes the Versailles and peacetime politics were reshaped by ideology (Wilson and Lenin), one of the few nods to political ideas. The League didn’t deter aggressors but confused the democracies. Now comprising 27 countries, European consensus on colonies collapsed. Russia is seen as reactive instead of acquisitive in search of a ‘near abroad’ buffer. In the postwar era, the US rise was fueled by commanding share of world GDP, substantial tech innovation, a military proven in Europe and Asia, plus the atomic bomb. But Russia quickly erased the nuclear gap and America’s relative lead shrank after the 1960s: Vietnam, Iran, etc. indicate overstretch. The author applauds Kissinger for recognizing limits of American foreign policy; Nixon’s China overture changed the correlation of forces. Deng wisely recognized peace is necessary for the ‘four modernizations’: agriculture, industry, science, military. Kennedy sees less hope for Soviet Russia but suggests it will be hard to displace its Communist political system. Japanese central planning plus its lack of military commitments makes it the natural successor to the USA.
More like deterministic political science than long-view history, Kennedy’s work overlooks that power is a wasting asset, itself to be used as if an investment; that ideas have consequences, as fuel for socioeconomic events; and relative status is not a straight line – opportunities can be missed. Of course, he failed to anticipate two decades of Japanese stagnation due to real estate collapse, the fall of Soviet
United Kingdom
7. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (19 May 2019)
Narrates British foreign policy in the 1930s, relying on government records and personal papers to show Neville Chamberlain clung to once-respectable appeasement well after the dangers of Hitler’s Germany superseded the errors of World War I. The consequences were postponed rearmament, loss of any chance to head off the conflict, and near disaster in 1940. The consensus of appeasement comprised sympathy for rectifying the Versailles treaty, for great power conciliation (contra French obstruction), and limiting remilitarization, particularly aircraft. It further included strong belief in the League of Nations, and implicit opposition to an antebellum arms race. Chamberlain, who never attended university and so was uncomfortable with challenging debate, held an overmighty opinion of himself and was susceptible to Hitler’s flattery. Close allies Eden and Halifax were pushed away during a succession of events that gradually swung public opinion against status quo: occupation of the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, Czech occupation, Polish occupation. The author’s treatment of Soviet gambits, which Chamberlain correctly resisted as camouflaged aggression, is wrongheaded: although diplomatic papers don’t prove it, Stalin’s postwar behavior clearly shows his intent to aggrandize. Chamberlain was prepared to concede Hitler’s demands, if possible through Italian intervention, because he focused on independence (as determined by the UK) not territorial integrity; Eden’s exit from the cabinet made the policy his own. When Chamberlain finally allowed rearmament as a hedge, he focused on the navy and then the air force, despite the obvious threat of the new technology. His course neither deterred Germany nor made conciliation possible. (Aside: the possibility of the unseen moderate is plausible only if the extreme leader can be identified. Otherwise the leader is in fact the extremist and the policy is his.) Having drawn the main line, the author veers into problems presented by totalitarians in Spain and Japan, the latter threatening British economic interests in China, observing Chamberlain was too slow to pursue US support. This highlights the book’s understating Britain’s position as the world’s hegemon, but a declining one – the Athenian problem. Pursuant to which is treatment of Britain’s economic position, compromised by balance of payments shortfall and skilled labor shortage: the US recession of 1937 helped the British position. Chamberlain’s foreign policy dictated rearmament, at a slow pace. The Liberals offered no real alternative to the Conservative prime minister, but Winston Churchill’s presence offered a ‘duel’ comparable to Fox-Pitt or Gladstone-Disraeli; oddly, the author says Chamberlain’s policy has been ‘unfairly’ portrayed by the victor.
8. Bagehot, English Constitution (2 Jun 2019)
Studies British Parliamentary government, setting aside theory for normative analysis of function and drawing favorable contrasts with the American presidential system. Constitutions have dignified and efficient parts, the latter often more important than formal allocation of power. These gain stature through passage of time, even though yesterday’s conventions are not necessarily best suited for today’s affairs. The efficient secret of the British constitution is close union of the legislature (i.e., Commons) and the executive (the prime minister and responsible cabinet). Relations between the PM and Parliament are incessant, unlike the needlessly divided president and congress, and cabinet ministers further are better supervisors of the bureaucracy because they provide fresh views while being accountable to Commons. That is, English party government exposes the leadership both to functionaries and the requirement of maintaining a working majority. The USA’s splitting of sovereignty, by contrast, is particularly troublesome in times of crisis; Bagehot observes it’s well the Americas are law abiding. There are also valuable takes on political affairs: so long as there’s an uneasy class which lacks just power, the agitators will rashly believe all should have equal power; gross appearances are great realities; bureaucracy conflates substance of government with process, thereby overdoing quantity at expense of quality; in early societies more important for law to be fixed than good. A surprisingly resilient analysis.
9. Bagehot, Physics and Politics (8 Jun 2019)
A sociological study of characteristics which distinguish prehistoric (‘savage’), stationary, and progressive states, observing that ‘government by discussion’ combined with deliberation before acting produces the ideal nation. Lawfulness is the prime need of early societies: it’s more important elites know the application of custom than to achieve equality or fairness. Revolutionary principles don’t advance societies which don’t yet know their own nature, and it’s well that prehistoric races mixed little, for it would have produced a ‘general carelessness and skepticism … encourag(ing) the nation that right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of human opinion’ (p. 43) Custom binds age to age: an initial act of will leads to unconscious habit. But custom becomes a trap, a state of arrested development; further to oppose custom stifles innovation and invites opprobrium where there’s belief in collective guilt. Accumulated custom, pace Rousseau and Strauss, is thus significantly different than prehistory. Only government which encourages the discussion of significant, and more and more, matters makes the transition. Classical Athens was first to do so, followed by early modern Europe (after the interlude of medieval Christendom). Ultimately, order and choice are equally necessary for social progress: the energy of progressive nationals grows by coalescence and competition. Victorian England is a leading exemplar. In the course, Bagehot elaborates that military prowess (war) is the most obvious form of competition, of bringing social advantage to bear; the Jewish race is the sole exception of a nation achieving ‘variability’ without losing legality, probably because it’s skewed to the law; unconscious imitation is the main conduit of social catalytics, for disbelief often needs more reason than acquiescence. Though susceptible to charge of discredited social Darwinism, the problem Bagehot set to address cannot be explained away, and his effort has not been superseded by postmodern thought.
10. Ferguson, Empire (16 Jun 2019)
Sketches the trajectory of the British Empire 1550-1950, at times suggesting the economic, cultural, and political benefits outweigh the unintended consequences, more often lamenting illogical ideology or failure to impart democracy. The principal mechanisms of transferring goods, capital, labor, and Western civics were language, land tenure, banking, common law, Protestantism, team sports, the ‘night watchman’ state, representative assemblies, and political liberty – the last the most distinct from Continental tradition. British imperialism originated in pirating Spanish shipping. The Glorious Revolution imported Dutch banking acumen: surpassing France in North America and India depended on credit. Immigration, which began with the Cromwellian settlement in Ireland, turned on indentured servitude, which accounted for over half of newcomers to North American over 1650-1780 (not forgetting more moved to the West Indies). In the Victorian era, the ‘subtext’ of the Canadian Durham report regretted liberty had not been sooner extended; the abolition of slavery was notable because it was still profitable; evangelicalism was remarkable for its admixture with economic and political ends, and was ultimately seen as subversive especially in India. Education provided unprecedented civil opportunities on the subcontinent. However, the ‘White Mutiny’, which asserted the right to jury trial by one’s own race, exposed prejudice that launched Indian nationalism, fueled not by poverty of masses but alienation of the privileged. In Africa, trading monopolies often converted to protectorates. Imperial Britain spent only 2.5% of its GDP on defense; over 1870-1914 the terms of trade appreciated 10%, bolstered by shipping and insurance revenue, enabling more imports to the UK. Empire was a source of pride; however, the Boer War made the public uneasy, World War I profoundly doubtful of the value of international power. By the end of World War II, as rival economies undermined Britain’s economic advantages and her balance of payments turned negative, political commitment evaporated and the Empire was ‘for sale’ – save that it was liquidated by US-led internationalism, exemplified by Suez. Despite the rising living standard of Victorian England, the principal beneficiaries of Empire were ultimately emigrants to the White Dominions, where team games fostered ‘greater Britain’. The source of Empire’s redemption lies not in political economy, however, but comparison with European rivals which made no attempt to impart liberty: Britain’s failure reveals its goodwill. Normatively, British imperialism fared best in the wastelands of Virginia and New England and least well in urban India, where the temptation to plunder superseded the impulse to build and transfer. The back-and-forth of Ferguson’s account founders on the reality that civic projects are steered less by countries, centuries at a time, but individuals whose concerns are often competing and changing. Criticizing a country’s intent often slips into hindsight.
22. Jones, Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism (22 Oct 2017)
A problematic monograph studying Edmund Burke’s establishment as founder of British conservatism. Burke’s supple yet vociferous politics left the Georgian / early Victorians to decide whether he was a great statesman and who were his heirs: neither the Whigs nor the Tories could claim the whole of him, Peel and Disraeli making no overt appeals to his legacy. So too were they unsure of his Irish heritage. By mid century, however, in part because his contrasting the English constitution with French tumult, he was seen as a conservative genius — the author ignores Blackstone or Bagehot! — while Matthew Arnold and others acclaimed him a literary prodigy. Later, he became generally fashionable as an aphorist, a kind of Mark Twain. Amid constitutional reform of the 1860s, Liberals couldn’t accept his prior opposition; however, revisionist appraisals by Leslie Stephens and especially John Morley helped bring him into the Irish Home Rule debate of the 1880s. Gladstone was his foremost Liberal supporter, but the Liberal Unionists used him the most. The author asserts Irish conflict, in combination with the Unionists transition to the Tories, was the turning point. When it became evident the Liberals would not reconcile, the question of who truly succeeded Burke reach its final phase, ironically echoing the split between Fox and Burke over the French Revolution. Yet there were two additional dynamics at work. Burke’s oeuvre was reduced to body of political theory, notably by Hugh Cecil, son of Lord Salisbury, in which he was recognized as a pioneer of applying historical method in deriving just politics. Separately, he was widely studied in schools as a paradigm of English rhetoric as well as the English state (in contradistinction to the French Revolution). Sensibly organized but poorly written and occasionally conceptually muddy, the work is irredeemably undermined by both a rushed ‘epilogue’ citing a David Bromwich quote as evidence Burke is not in fact at conservative at all, and more importantly failing to deliver on the title’s promise, British political conservatism being nowhere treated in the whole.
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.
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.
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.