Westminster Wisdom

Crossfire

2009-11-22T10:54:00.003Z

Crossfire announces itself as a film about racism. A police drama about a man who tries to evade a charge of murder by implicating something else- it eventually comes down to a discussion of who might have a motive to kill the victim. The policeman in charge of the case decides that the only motive within the case is a general one- anti-semitism- and suggests that none of the suspects actually knew the murdered man. He turns out to be right. Crossfire in a sense therefore is a pretty simple film and as a police drama it does not quite work- the acting is good, both Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan do well and Gloria Graham confirms my prejudice that Gloria Graham was one of Hollywood's best underused actresses of all time. Yet again she has a tiny amount of screen time and yet again she makes the most of what she has. The story though is too simple and slow to really make you feel intrigued by the 'thriller' aspect: from the start you can easily guess the murderer, from the start you feel confident that Mitchum's laconic sergeant and Robert Young's intelligent if cynical police officer will solve the case. The suspense just is not there.

There are three things though which make the film worth remembering. All of them relate to the dialogue of the characters. The first is a set of ideas, the second a historical circumstance, the third is a set of motifs which until now I feel have been ignored. Lets start with the ideas. The reason the film has survived is because of its analysis, in particular Robert Young's analysis as Captain Finlay, of prejudice. Prejudice says Young starts as a decision to exclude a race from country clubs or to say that your daughter shouldn't marry a Jew or an Irishman or an immigrant, and it ends in a man walking around to someone's house after he has had a few drinks in a bar and beating the other fellow to death because he doesn't want to share another drink with him. What Young does and the film seeks to do is provide the bridge between different types of prejudice and explain why and how the space for one allows another more murderous prejudice to thrive. Murder in this film is seen as an unconscious consequence of prejudice- it is not something anyone intends- but filled with hate and passion, a violent attack swiftly turns into murder. Prejudice is harmless or if not harmless, not murderous for most, but for some including one character it can easily turn into murder.

Secondly this is one of the few films made in Hollywood in the late forties that is explicitly post war. Almost every major character has served in the army and their service has consequences for them. As Robert Mitchum's character says it has exposed them all to the kind of killing 'for which you get medals', that kind of killing impacts on these men in different ways. It has helped Robert Ryan's character to hate: hatred as another man in the film says must be turned in another direction now the enemy is defeated and curiously for Ryan, it means that he can turn his bitterness on civilians but also ironically on Jews (the victims of the regime he was fighting). Mitchell, another key character, comes out of the war with chronic depression: wandering listlessly across Washington, missing his wife, and straying through drunkenness and tears into sadness and disaster. He evokes pity in most of the characters he comes across, but 'good old Mitch' is as much a victim of the war as anyone else. His character brings up a third aspect of the war, removal from wives and families- Mitchall longs for his, Robert Mitchum's character just feels cut off from his and from his previous life. If the one feels deadened by the absense of family and his presence in the army, the other looks back on his old life as something that has died.

Mitchall wonders through the city and at one point encounters Gloria Graham in a bar- she takes pity on him, dances with him and kisses him, telling him to go back to her flat and wait for her there. Whilst in Graham's flat, Mitchall encounters possibly the most mysterious character of them all: he might be Graham's husband, her boyfriend or her pimp, or he might be all three but we never find out. He delivers two monologues to Mitchall that I think are inspired- they are almost Pinteresque, both in the menace conveyed by ordinary sounding words and in the use of pauses as he finds a new story to intimidate both us and Mitchall. He ends up seeming rather pathetic as he offers to help the police again and again, but in those two little speeches last only about five minutes, I think there is something that later film makers and playwrights would and could take advantage of.

Crossfire is not a great film- it does not succeed in its main task as a suspense thriller but it does succeed in other ways. It has a message element, it reflects a historical situation and it provides a rather intriguing enigmatic character: these don't add up to a good film but they do add up to a historically significant film.

Review: Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery

2009-11-20T23:11:00.003Z

You can hardly not feel sympathy of Lady Jane Grey. At the age of seventeen, she was thrust, unwillingly by most accounts, into the throne of England. She lasted, through no fault of her own, for 13 days in that throne and was then imprisoned and later executed by her cousin Mary Tudor. Our sympathy may be heightened by the fact that she was intelligent and thoughtful and took her execution bravely and stoically. But her story is not merely interesting because of the feelings it evokes, but also because of the forces alive in Tudor politics that it illustrates: Jane was a victim but so also were many of the other individuals ranged around her, condemnation after the event seems to have been random rather than calculated. More than that though, the rebellion against Jane was the only successful rebellion against a reigning monarch between the reign of Richard II (1381-99) and Charles I (1625-49). 150 years passed with several notable rebellions- the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), the rising of the Northern Earls (1567), and several changes of religion- but only Jane Grey between Richard and Charles actually lost her head.

So what went wrong? What Eric Ives does in his book, a biography of Jane and an account of the fatal year of 1553, is suggest that the reasons for the failure of Jane's installation as queen lay not so much with Jane as with the reasons that she became queen. Jane did not push herself forwards for the crown at all. She had the misfortune to be the daughter of Frances Grey and granddaughter- through her mother- of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. The terms of the succession to the crown of England were established in 1544 by an act of Parliament: Henry VIII had declared that first his son Edward would succeed him and then his two bastard daughters, first the older Mary and then Elizabeth and after them Jane and her sister Katherine. This line of succession established two principles: the first was that Edward would receive the crown next, the second was that legally an English King had established that he could nominate his own successor- part of the crisis of every English reign from Henry's death (1546) until James I's accession in 1601 was that claim in the bill. It is the reason for instance that during Elizabeth's reign, she was constantly troubled by the succession- such matters were not automatically decided by some rule of who was the closest relative but by the monarch themselves.

Edward VI in 1553 decided to change the order of Henry VIII's bill. Until February 1553, everyone at court had assumed that Mary would succeed Edward- as Henry had laid out- but in 1553 Edward for some reason decided to change the law. What Edward did was place Jane and her sister ahead of his illegitimate half sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Ives suggests that Edward did this on his own initiative and did it because for him his half sisters were illegitimate- and illegitimacy under common law afforded no right to succeed. Once he had made that decision- his leading minister John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland stepped in behind it. The reason why Jane was given the crown therefore was that Edward took advantage of the precedent left by Henry and legally changed the succession: the reason why Mary won is because the council including Dudley had had barely weeks to prepare for the change of monarch. Furthermore they relied upon the fact that rebellion in England was not usually successful- their attention was focussed overseas and Dudley spent those final weeks of Edward's life insuring, not against a domestic rising, but against Mary's Spanish relatives (she was the daughter of a Spanish princess) invading England in support of her claim.

Ives sketches out the complicated motivations of those involved. Jane was a bookish young woman, a blue stocking, who corresponded with many of the leading intellectuals of reformist Europe including Martin Bucer and Bullinger. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, believed that Jane was a better scholar than the future queen- the best he told a friend in England along with Mildred Cecil. By the time she was sixteen, Jane was reputed to know eight languages- and though that may be exaggeration, she was definitely profficient in Latin, Greek and French and possibly had a working knowledge of Hebrew. She was though a political football as well- in her youth she had been intended as a future bride for Edward VI himself, a bookish 'lure' for him, and her father, Henry Gray, Duke of Suffolk, definitely used her for his own political ends- as any Tudor father would use his daughter. There are other characters here apart from Jane. Mary deserves a mention too- possibly the most sympathetic of the Tudor dynasty and definitely the most defiant.

Perhaps the other characters who dominate Ives's tale though are Dudley and Henry Gray. Dudley is perhaps the more interesting of the two. His father had been executed in the early 16th Century and Ives hypothesizes that Dudley lived under the shadow of that execution for the rest of his life. Ives is keen to dispel a black legend that has gathered around the Duke of Northumberland, portraying him as a devout Protestant and a dedicated monarchist. Furthermore Ives suggests that Dudley was neither a Machiavellian nor a blunderer- he was a politician who sought to preserve his dying master's wishes. Henry Gray gets a much less favourable press in Ives's story- he is seen as bookish but unpolitical, incapable of really seeing what the best political action was. Gray is seen as a blunderer- eventually he blundered so much that his head was separated from his shoulders.

There are many interesting points in this book- and as a micro study of a moment in Tudor history it is both interesting and moving. At times Ives inserts his own feelings too much into the narrative- comparing Jane with Anne Frank is not an obvious move- but his research is meticulous and though his canvass is small and the evidence, particularly concerning Jane is scant, he makes the best of what we have. High political history is always to some extent guess work- we cannot really know what is a press release and what is a genuine statement, which parts of a letter were written honestly and which were not. If I have one criticism of Ives it is that occasionally I got the feeling that his willingness to find evidence outweighed his scepticism about the evidence's ability to show us the internal feelings of his cast of characters. But the story is movingly and interestingly told- Jane Grey's brief reign and Edward's reign too deserve attention.

Afterall as Ives suggests in his introduction one of the most fascinating conjectures in British history is what might have happened had Jane stayed on the throne and the House of Dudley replaced the House of Tudor. As so much of the character of the modern British church and state is of Elizabethan and Stuart date, we cannot know what would have been different but we can know that the world we live in would have been very different.

The life of a Tudor Nobleman

2009-11-18T21:42:00.003Z

I just came across this quotation from Etienne Perlin, a French cleric, whose Description des Royaulmes d'Angleterre et d'Escosse was published in 1558, translated it reads

For my part (with reverence to my reader) I had rather be a hog driver and keep my head, for this disorder falls furiously upon the heads of great lords (Eric Ives, Lady Jane Grey, 30)

As a quote it sums up something of my own feeling about the Tudor nobility: to see a contemporary say it makes me feel more confident in their view. Under Henry VIII, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth politics to some extent was a blood sport- leading ministers from Dudley in 1510 to Norfolk in 1572 could find themselves kneeling under an axe about to receive the blow. I do not know how this affects politics, but when you look at the behaviour of the Duke of Norfolk who presided over the execution of two of his relatives (Anne Boleyn in 1536 and Catherine Howard in 1540) or Stephen Gardiner who merrily ushered his old friend Thomas Cranmer to the fire, you do wonder whether the psychology of those involved was quite different from the psychology of those politicians unthreatened by the fire or the grisly ritual of hanging, drawing and quartering. Perlin is right: no matter what career I might have chosen as a Tudor Englishman, a hog driver could have been preferable to a nobleman.

Review: Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England 1500-1700

2009-11-17T20:46:00.003Z

Tolerance and its history is a controversial and vast area. Professor Alexandra Walsham of Exeter University tackles this in her latest volume- Charitable Hatred- and brings together a large amount of evidence I was unaware of. What Professor Walsham does is show how subtle and difficult an issue early modern tolerance is- for a start it took many different forms, from the social tolerance that parishioners displayed towards each other to the legalised tolerance of the Proclamations of Oliver Cromwell, Charles II, James II and William III and the philosophical and theological tolerance of Levellers like William Walwyn or thinkers like John Locke. Tolerance had limits as well: Locke and Milton believed that Catholics could not be tolerated nor could Atheists. The first and so far as I know only person to suggest that Atheists could be good citizens was Pierre Bayle whose religious affiliations were uncertain to say the least. Toleration is a complex subject and intolerance and tolerance related on many different levels. The early modern state afterall was not organised with a simple structure; an order from the centre translated into actions in the locality but to some extent local magistrates and officials had the ability to obstruct, interpret and even ignore those orders.

It is in that climate that Professor Walsham establishes her book. Her book runs over two centuries and her approach is thematic rather than chronological. Obviously there are key events in the story of toleration- the reformation, the Edwardian reformation of the reformation,. the Marian counter reformation, the Elizabethan reformation, the Jacobean succession, the Caroline experiment, the English Civil War and the conflicts between Stuart Kings, Tories and Whigs which developed into the long constitutional crisis of the 1680s. What Walsham does is attempt to suggest that there were continuities down the centuries- and that there were cyclical movements in toleration which had an impact on society. She identifies moments like the Spanish match of 1621 or the 1670s when Catholics became more tolerated, and moments when toleration flowed leftwards such as the 1550s and 1640s. Toleration though could enduce popular rage which turned into riot and often destruction: so the 1620s might have been good in terms of leglislation for Catholics, but not so good for those injured when a chapel in Blackfriars collapsed- they were killed by a Protestant mob. Jurisdictions also overlapped and there were immunities: the embassies of European powers maintained Catholic chapels- though these too were attacked by Protestants- and in London and the ports there were stranger churches for Protestant refugees from the continent, created to allow them to practice their religion until they became anglican these became refuges for Dutch and French Calvinists.

Toleration had other dimensions too as had intolerance. Intolerance often took an Augustinian form- as Walsham shows arguments from scripture, particularly the cases of Achan and Phineas, were used to demonstrate God would turn his wrath upon those who tolerated unrighteousness. Intolerance rose at particular moments- the stabbing of John Hawkins by a mad puritan inspired repression of religious nonconformity in Elizabeth's reign, Guy Fawkes or the Popish Plot did the same for Catholics in the 17th Century. Anxiety could be pricked in popular terms by imagery- children in London in the 1650s were found reciting to a playmate whose parents were Catholic, 'Papist, Papist pray to the Pope/ Your neck in a halter, your heels in a rope'. Imagery was equally important: one image Walsham prints shows a Quaker woman being convinced by her inner light a devil to sexual infidelity. Anniversaries mattered to: Sir Humphrey Mildmay a Royalist kept at home during the civil war on Guy Fawkes day. Popular pressure, Walsham shows, often congregated around people who were unpopular anyway- so Alice Tailor of Bisham provoked her neighbour Agnes Miller to give evidence against her by calling her an old fool. Puritans gadding for sermons (moving round the country) or like Thomas Hudson of Aylsham spending three days singing psalms non-stop irritated their neighbours. It is those kind of local details that make Walsham's analysis work- bringing together the anxiety of moments with the hatred of people and a vague intolerance into a sometimes fiery combination.

There is much more here- but I think it is the interrelationship between governmental and popular action that is really where the heart of Walsham's argument about the complicated relationship of tolerance and intolerance lies. There is one last aspect which is worth acknowledging which is the problem of inclusivity: tolerance in the early modern period could mean different things- it could mean as Oliver Cromwell meant it tolerance for the community of the saints, it could also mean tolerance which accepted that everyone else was bound for hell. Contrast puritan ministers who refused to preach to the unredeemed with Archbishop Cranmer or the Catholic Bishop Bonner who might have burnt more, but also attempted to persuade more. Their hatred would have been described as charitable- for they cared for the individual soul rather than excluding it from the communion of the blessed. The last hope of practical intolerance was comprehension- the policy attempted by Charles II to bring all Protestants under the communion of the Church of England- there were even suggestions of a parallel structure of Presbyters and Bishops. This policy would have been universalist and included all Protestants in the British Isles but it would have been intolerant- exiling those outside the border of the universal church into legal apartheid.

Walsham also inquires into the attitudes of those persecuted and notes how toleration in the later seventeenth century accompanied confessionalisation: intermarriage between baptists and non-baptists early on was regular, but by 1668 Baptists were forbidden from marrying outside the church- a prohibition that as far as we can see 96% of Baptists in Sussex kept to right up until 1750, a proportion which slightly diminished afterwards. Intolerance created a number of behaviours- quietist Protestantisms like the Muggletonians and the Familists flourished because they hid their behaviour. The phenomenon of Church papists who conformed outwardly to the Anglican church but inwardly were Catholic worried Puritans. The Convectile Acts of the 1660s meant that any gathering above five outside a family unit was banned: some non-conformist ministers spent days circulating their parishes to avoid it. Understanding these routes to conformity means understanding that they were routes to communication: confessionalisation and multiculturalism were phenomena that emerged when it was no longer neccessary to conform. Indeed conformity may have itself led to intolerance losing its cache- far better to know your enemy and argue than to have him or her hide in the church.

Walsham's narrative has a couple of weaknesses. Stressing continuity is good because it reclaims the period's diversity from Whig narratives and what she does is layer traditional accounts of law and political theory with a social context. But there was a change as she acknowledges- by 1688 roughly more people were worried about atheism than they were about sectaries. The experience of civil war and of the incomplete reformation seems to have changed government attitudes. Politique ideas whether Bayle's or even Hobbes's were around in the late seventeenth century in a way they weren't in the early 16th. She is right to say that there were continuities but there was also a story here, a Whig narrative of Puritan and Parliamentary tolerance is obvioulsy inappropriate- afterall the most tolerant leglislative experiments drafted by Charles II and James II were what Parliaments strove against and she is right to say that many advocates for toleration (and James might be included in this) advocated it because they were weak. But there is a story and that story deserves telling- her work has complicated that story and possibly made it more about the limitations of government, the evolution of social structure (toleration was often justified through increasing trade) and the evolution of theology.

More than anything though what the book does is place at the heart of early modern belief, early modern experience. This works both ways: early modern people made mistakes- in the Gordon riots, a crowd passing over London was called to attack a house filled with Catholics, 'What are Catholics to us' they responded, 'We are only against Popery'. Locke and Jeremy Taylor were responding equally to their own experience of life in the period. Toleration also had odd effects- strengthening confessional divides and making the noise of anti-Catholicism and anti-Puritanism louder. Stressing your ideological differences allowed you in some sense to disassociate from the sin going on down the road. This is a provocative and interesting book- I have derived a lot from it both in terms of social and religious history and I think its one that should provoke thought about what we mean by toleration and how it structurally fitted within the early modern state. It is not enough after Walsham to write simply that toleration was a outgrowth of Protestant Parliamentarianism on a teleological line to Victorian England, the early modern world was complicated and tolerance and intolerance were part of that complication. Disintangling what they meant and we mean by the terms is the subject of a life's work: Alexandra Walsham's book is not a bad place to start from.

University Studies

2009-11-15T13:02:00.004Z

Isaiah Berlin wrote in June 1937 to Alfred Zimmern, then Professor of International Relations at Oxford. The letter is interesting because it lays out Berlin's thoughts about the then PPE course at Oxford: PPE is a course which still survives to this day in which undergraduates study politics, philosophy and economics together. What interests me about the letter is less the specifics of what should happen to the course than what it says about Berlin's ideas about what a university education should supply. Berlin was in favour of what we might call a narrow model of education: he believed that people ought to dive into one or two subjects at university and study them intensely, so for example he tells Zimmern that 'it is a widely recognised fact that practically no one can be expected to devote him or herself to three subjects and hope to be profficient in all of them'. Furthermore Berlin suggested that an extra year ought to be added to the PPE course so that people could further specialise- essentially so that they could do what was in effect a masters.

The other principle difference between some modern thinking on education and Berlin's is his view of languages. 'Languages, which ought, I think to be an integral part of the school since no one should be allowed to go down without some knowledge of at least two languages other than English, could be included..., in the form of set books in German and French.' For Berlin education in a subject was education to a certain depth and that required technical apparatus- much as historians in their first graduate years are sent on paleographic courses- so he thought students of politics and philosophy ought to be capable of mastering the technical details of languages. It is an attitude which survives: Richard Evans, the current Regius, has made clear on many occasions that he thinks all undergraduates and graduates in history ought to have a language. But we must understand this in the context of Berlin's other statements: depth in a subject is the first priority and linguistic skill is a means to achieving that depth and rigour.

Berlin's argument to Zimmern was based upon a shared culture- both men were exceptionally learned and valued the abilities of scholarship highly. For a variety of reasons that value system sometimes seems to decay- but I think what is key to retain within it is the idea that Berlin expressed in his letter to Zimmern: real depth in a subject, real understanding requires hard and intense work- work both on the techniques of scholarship- languages, paleography, analytical skills- and on the subject matter of scholarship. Such an education recognises that it has limits- Berlin as he confesses to Zimmern knew very little economics though we know he did read at least some- but it also allows expansion into other areas. Depth in one area allows the student to recognise what depth and analysis looks like, to detect it in other places and then to separate the obvious charlatan from the scholar (higher degrees of charlatanry resist all but expert analysis). Its this idea though of a quest which does not end, of a knowledge which needs to be sought for and tried hard for that I think lies at the heart of Berlin's letter and at the heart of his concept of a university education- possibly of a certain type of education itself.

Review: The English Civil Wars

2009-11-11T17:58:00.004Z

Blair Worden's new book on the English civil war is part of a genre that doesn't appear enough at the moment, it is an introductory essay. The best work I can think of comparing it to- and this should show those who know me how highly I rate it- is F.W. Maitland's fellowship essay on liberty and equality from Hobbes to Coleridge. What Worden does is provide us with a superb introduction to the civil war, which carries real intellectual punch within it. He attacks the large questions- why did the civil war begin, why did Parliament win it, what did it achieve- without breaking the pace of a narrative that seems to remain both detailed and unencumbered by detail.

His basic line is one that few English historians of the period would disagree with. There are motifs running through Worden's history. The major themes of his history are stories about the battles about religion, between Presbyterian, Anglican and Congregationalist advocates; the creation of an English state and the difficulties that Oliver Cromwell and Charles I found in fiscally supporting their own state; the devastation and economic costs of war, particularly the human cost in a war which saw 1 in 10 men in England in arms and a greater proportion of the population than in any other war in English history dying; the miscalculations of human individuals from Charles in the early 40s to John Lambert in the late 1650s and the great clashes of principle and arguments. Worden is deeply attuned to the ironies of history, to the fact that almost no one fighting in 1641 wanted to execute the King, and that not many in 1641 would have anticipated that the longest lasting consequence of the war on the statute books would be the Navigation Acts of 1651. We are left in no doubt that the outcome of the war was not intended and at almost every stage, participants were surprised and frightened by the turns of fortune.

There is the odd thing to criticise in the book. Sir Thomas Fairfax is a figure that Worden persists in underestimating: Luke Daxon's Cambridge MPhil showed that Sir Thomas did have a reputation in England prior to his command of the New Model in 1645 (far from having 'little national standing' Worden p. 61) and to label him as 'no politician' fits an image that Mr Daxon and Andrew Hopper have significantly undermined in the past ten years (Worden p. 88). Irish historians might object to the judgement that 'no narrator has succeeded in making them [Irish politics in the interregnum] more than momentarily intelligible (Worden p. 37). But these are quibbles- in general the narration is so rich in ideas and so well written that Worden can survive the occasional passable judgement, furthermore to criticise a work which deals with such a complex area for its asides seems a little unfair: Worden does not have the space to flesh out these observations here in the way that I am sure he would like to. There were other moments when I regretted the lack of space- there are some fantastic stories, Thomas Harrison shooting a soldier who was in civilian life a comedian at the Drury Lane Theatre, exclaiming 'Cursed be he that doth the Lord's work negligently' is a moment that deserves immortality (Worden p. 54). It also deserves a footnote- I would love to see where Worden got the story from! No doubt there are also angles on the war that were left out- women's history, to some extent economic history and the history of the book are three that sprung to my mind and more will come to others- but in a book of this length such omissions are to be expected.

The pace of the book though is necessary- both because it should keep anyone interested in what Worden has to write and say. At a short 160 or so pages, this book is a sprint rather than a marathon. It allows him to keep in the spirit of writing an introduction for the general reader- but what it also allows him to do is to make the book into an essay. Like Maitland, you feel with Worden in the hands of a master of the period- there is an incredible discipline to making writing so rich in analogy and interpretation. Every sentence in this book has been crafted and therefore every sentence counts. That in part adds intellectual cache to the conclusions. This richness though also means that the reader is continuously confronting big intellectual conclusions- you cannot draw away into some foxhole of detail but are continuously pressed to think about the impact of war on society, on the state and all the other issues that Worden wants you to confront. If writing the book is a discipline, then reading it is a pleasurable one and one I intend to return to one day.

This book therefore has things for both the general reader and the more specialist. For the general reader it is the shortest and best introduction I know of to the civil war. For the specialist, because Worden has packed all his fire into 160 pages, it is an incredibly provocative and intellectual exhilarating read: it helps refocus the mind on the big issues about the period- something I cannot think but to be a good thing.

The death of Decius

2009-11-09T22:43:00.005Z

Manlius sacraficed his son to Roman authority: Livy presents a second sacrafice to Rome therefore which brings back to my mind at least the second aspect of Roman authority- religion. The consul Decius commanded one wing of the Roman army against the Latins: Manlius the other. On Decius's flank the battle went badly and then Decius shouted to Marcus Valerius who blessed him and bade him put on his toga.

Then he girded up his toga in the Gabine manner, leaped fully armed on to his horse and rode into the midst of the enemy- a sight to admire for both armies, almost superhuman in its nobility as if sent from heaven to expiate allthe anger of the Gods and deflect disaster from his own people to the Latins. Thus the terror and panic in every form which Decius brought with him...penetrated deep into the Latin army.... and when he finally fell beneath a rainof missiles, from that moment there was no doubt that the Latin cohorts were thrown into complete confusion VIII 9

This incident is fascinating: obviously it describes something Livy admired. Decius's actions are the epitome of the Roman who throws away his own life to save his country: unlike Manlius's he sacraficed his own life- an unproblematic moment.

They also record something it is right to consider: for Livy here provides us an example of religious enthusiasm. In a peculiar sense Decius is a kind of martyr- unlike Christian or Muslim martyrs he does not die to justify a faith- rather Decius dies to justify an army to his Gods. In the first case the act of martyrdom says something about the individual's relationship with God, in the second the martyrdom, as Livy presents it (and as usual we have no idea of whether this happened or not) justifies the city to the Gods. The nature of the religious relationship has subtly changed between say Decius's sacrafice and Diocletian's persecution.

Daniel and Universal History

2009-11-08T02:15:00.002Z

Arnaldo Momigliano argues in a collection published in 1987 (the essay was first published in 1979) that the sources of modern universal history lie in Greece and Israel. The Greek tradition was mainly in the hands of non-historians: Hesiod who wrote before any of those that we normally consider historians (Hecateus, Herodotus and Thucydides are normally considered the first) formulated the first univeralist structure for history. Hesiod posited several ages- an iron succeeding gold, silver, heroic and bronze. There were other schemes available to the Greek universalist- that of ages, leading from youth to senility, something picked up by Romans who as late as Marcellinus in the fourth century compared Roman age to barbaric youth, and that of cultures perhaps expressed first by Hecateus and then carried on by others. Greek historians though were mostly interested in political history- Herodotus uses the idea of a succession of empires, Babylonian, Mede, Persian, to structure his non-Greek history. Others turned to the same idea- adding the Macedonian empire after the Persian once Alexander had acheived his conquests.

Momigliano talks about this using the familiar tools of close textual analysis. Perhaps as interesting though is where he takes up this narrative of empire and suggests that it became fused with the Hebraic apocalypticism visible in Daniel. Daniel is an odd book of the bible: it is one of two that appear to have been written in two languages- Hebrew and Aramaic. It concerns a figure Daniel- who we can locate in Middle Eastern literature right back to the 14th Century BC- and yet it places him in the reign of Belthazzar, the legendary successor of Nebuchudnezzar. Furthermore as Momigliano suggests it shows clear signs of being compiled- chapters 7-12 were compiled with a clear knowledge of the politics of the court of Antiochus IV which the previous chapters do not show. Incidentally Daniel also shows ignorance of contemporary events: there never was a 'Darius the Mede'! But more importantly the book interestingly separates into two parts- the first Momigliano argues was written when the Jews still believed in their place in the Seleucid Empire, its tone ressembles that of the Book of Esther and the second was written under Antiochus, referring to things like an unhappy marriage for one of his predecessors.

What is interesting about Daniel though is that whoever wrote it seems to have absorbed the Greek idea of a succession of world empires. In Daniel obviously these are the four human empires followed by the fifth divine empire- Hebrew apocalypticism has been imported into a Greek scheme. There is no echo outside of the Greek tradition of this scheme according to Momigliano and he submits that this must be an influence on Daniel- one of the first instances of the long story by which Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology became wedded together. Its an interesting argument and I leave the analysis of its truth to others: Momigliano does not fully develop it in his piece and more could be done to work with and through it but the argument that Daniel's structure owes much to Greek influence does not seem stupid and reminds us once again that the story of the Jewish and Christian Bible is not that of an unbroken single tradition, but rather of a conversation and impulses to record at different points in time.

Johnny Guitar: An Immigrant's Tale

2009-11-06T11:59:00.003Z

Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray's bizarre and operatic Western, can be read in many different way- as a feminist struggle between two women, as a freudian film about the paradoxes of sexual desire, as an attack on McCarthyism or as a discussion of art and masculinity. Watching it last night though one thing struck me more than anything. For those who do not know Johnny Guitar is the hero of a film in which he has very little to do. The film concentrates on the rivalry between two women- Vienna who owns a saloon bar on the outskirts of town, a bar which sits on the site of a future railway depot and Emma a local cattle rancher. Vienna represents an economic threat to Emma but also a sexual threat as she shares her beer and her bed with the Dancing Kid, a local man whom Emma desires. As a response to these threats Emma leads a posse to kill both Vienna and the kid- I will not go further without getting into the guts of the plot but it revolves around that hatred of Emma for Vienna. Rather than analysing the plot though, I think its worth digging into the nature of that hatred a bit: what Emma expresses in that hatred is the classic hatred of the native born for the immigrant. What Ray does is makes us identify with the immigrant in a classic piece of American cinema- cinema which celebrates the free movement of capital and labour.

Emma's argument against Vienna is an argument against immigration. Imagine, she tells McIvers who leads the posse, imagine if Vienna is allowed to do what she wants the railroad will pass through the town and eventually the life of the cattleranchers will be destroyed. The power of the cowboys will be unmade for they will be unable to stop the 'easterners', the 'farmers' becoming prominent. The story is the same as told in other Westerns about the progress of civilisation and resistance to it- but here that resistance is resistance from the native born, from those who live in the West to those that come there. Its the same song as many sing today about immigration into their communities. Emma's imagination is of women and children fenced in by barbed wire, of dreams of the tyranny of law and agriculture- those dreams impact on family structure, they segment it and destroy it in a tyranny of corn and gold. She makes this case hysterically and it is a case often made hysterically: but it can also be seen in the iconography of the film. Emma has a straightforward Anglo-Saxon name, Vienna's name is anything but. Emma's posse are the gathered democratic forces of the local town, populist and conservative to a man, Vienna dresses oppulently and her saloon is elegantly decorated. Populism confronts capitalism and doesn't like what it sees.

You can pursue this further as well and see the sexual rivalry running through the film between the two women in the light of the agonies of immigration. The terrifying imagery of losing sexual prominence in your community is what Emma is most threatened by. Vienna can 'have' and discard the Dancing Kid, for Emma an infatuation has turned into an obsession and she desires a male honour killing to vindicate her position. Sex is consciously at the forefront of Emma's mind as she attacks the immigrant, but subconsciously some urge, sexual or not, drives her to desire the immigrant's destruction. In moments of destruction, Mercedes McCambridge's face (playing Emma) is almost orgasmic in its pleasure, clenching her fist and her eye shining as she contemplates the ruin of her rival. Again one senses the fact that it is fun to hate the immigrant: it is fun to hate, much more enjoyable to hate than to consider. Emma is able to seduce the posse to hunt down Vienna because she can feed them on her diet of hate: as McIvers at one point discloses when men are hungry and wet, hate can both feed and heat them.

Seeing the film work on the level of immigration allows us one final interesting reflection I think about the film's characters. The final reflection is not about Emma but about Vienna and about Johnny Guitar. Both of these characters are ambivalent about the townspeople- and their ambivalence grows bitter as the film proceeds. Hate feeds on hate. They begin to desire the cultural transformation which will wipe away Emma, not merely because it will be good for them and theirs but because it will wipe away the old community. It is clear that this is the consequence of Emma's hate- but Ray's film is a realist one, immigrants to the old West were hard and tough individuals, meet them with hatred and the same coin is likely to be repaid. The same could be true of immigrants in general: when they are met by hate they are hated in return. A related point is that Ray's film shows the state to be utterly impotent before the power of the self righteous mob, he shows that the veils of democracy are never powerful enough to restrain prejudice. His marshall is impotent, evidence is influenced by Emma's wild anti-foreign imagination and deaths proceed without consequence. In the America that gave birth to the KKK and James Gang, that is unsurprising.

I do not think that Johnny Guitar has to be read in this way, but it is another way to add to the interpretations I noted above. Vienna's story can be interpreted in many different ways- but I think one of the points that Ray makes through his story is about the fragility of community faced with immigration and the way that so easily it can break down, with a Cleon to lead, the mob can rage without check and a legacy of bitterness and hatred bequeathed for the future.

Discipline

2009-11-05T23:49:00.002Z

One of the emblems of Rome was discipline. I think here it is worth understanding what discipline was: on the one hand it was the assertion of the authority of the state over its citizens, on the other the assertion of the authority of age over youth. The case of Titus Manlius illustrates both principles neatly. Titus commanded in his father's army sent out to battle the Latin forces, summoned in response to events discussed earlier. He rode close to the Latin camp as a scout and was accosted by Geminus Maecius. Insults flew and the outcome was that Manlius and Maecius fought a duel which Manlius won and took the body of Maecius back to his father, surrendering to the justice of the consul who had ordered the entire army not to engage before he had decided it should. His father's response is what interests me here though: the model up till now is familiar, a champion fights a champion for honour. His father's response carved out a niche which was to some extent Roman.

Manlius, the consul, told Manlius the son

You have respected neither consular authority nor your father's dignity; you have left your position to fight the enemy in defiance of my order and as far as was in your power, have subverted military discipline, on which the fortune of Rome has rested up to this day; you have made it neccessary for me to forget either the republic or myself. We would therefore be rather punished for our own wrong doing than allow our country to expiate our sins at so great a cost to itself; it is a harsh example we shall set, but a salutary one for the young men of the future. As far as my own feelings are concerned, they are stirred by a man's natural love for his children, as well as by the example you have given of your courage, even though this was marred by a false conception of glory. But since consular authority must either be confirmed by your death or annulled for ever by your going unpunished, I believe that you yourself, if you have any drop of my blood in you, would agree that the military discipline which you undermined by your error must be restored by your punishment. (Livy VIII 7)

Manlius the son was bound to a stake by lictors, and then executed as a common criminal.

The punishment, Livy tells us, caused a 'shudder' at the time (VIII 8) and there is no reason to suspect that the historian was not aware of its barbaric nature. But it is worth pausing over the consul's argument for it is an argument that reappears in Roman history and in Livy. The argument is basically founded upon a distinction between the public and the private. Manlius divides his personality in two: he acknowledges duties to his child as a private individual but tells us that his duties to the state as consul takes precedence. The second thing that is important here is the prominence that this gives hierarchy: the young aristocrat riding forth and challenging his enemy for honour's sake cannot be bound by hierarchy. Manlius the consul tells us that hierarchy is more important than a personal sense of honour. What we have here is a fusion of the state and the natural hierarchy of age, prudence and civil command. That must, according to Manlius the consul, be backed up even to extremis by actions- a father slaying his son- in other circumstances rightly deemed terrifying. The world may shudder but Manlius the consul operates with impeccable logic.

Signs of a Mature Blogging Market

2009-11-04T19:20:00.003Z

Often whenever you write something critical of the modern British blogosphere, some half witted drone will pop up to ask you why you don't yourself correct the problem. Part of the reason why the current features of the British Blogosphere will endure though is because it is no longer easy just to take up your typewriter and write something different and get readers. I think that is highlighted by the complete lack of collegiality in blogging- people talk about the blogosphere being social and communitarian, it is not. Rather than ressembling a discussion group in which quiet and respectful conversation is the norm, it ressembles a pub in which a set of West Ham fans in one corner yell abuse at a set of Chelsea fans in the other. Importance in the Blogosphere can largely be measured by ability to get linked to by a major media source or by an established blogger- normally someone as with Iain Dale or Guido Fawkes who has ties and influence on the major media and the media has deformed what blogging is about, the concentration on the narrow story as opposed to the analytical piece.

One of the best things about the blogosphere when I got involved at the beggining was the carnival. Blog carnivals basically shift around several websites, and link to submitted articles on a set of topics- I've submitted articles to carnivals on Asia, sexual violence, history etc etc etc. I'm sure there are others. Apparantly over the last year, carnivals though have begun to die or rather have been dying at an increasing rate. There are reasons for that, but I think that it would be incredibly sad if they did die out: I haven't been involved recently in maintaining any as much as I should have been, but I do think its important that such things exist and continue to maintain a way for new voices to be heard and new blogs to appear. I've found several of the best articles and blogs I've read on the net, including one today, through reading through carnivals- and if that route of new material finding audiences dies, then I fear that the real barrier to entry in blogging which is the barrier of finding a significant audience (significant in the eyes of that blogger- anything from 3-3,000,000) will grow bigger.

Age and Democracy

2009-11-03T14:45:00.002Z

Peter Burke in his book on the Renaissance argues that one of the differences between Florence and Venice lay in their attitude to age. Florentines became citizens at the age of 14 and young Florentines could easily take part in politics: Venetians became citizens at the age of 21 and did not become politically active until they had accumulated much more experience. Burke suggests that this may be one of the reasons why Venice, famously according to Machiavelli a republic for stability, was a much more cautious and conservative place than Florence. Burke's induction might be wrong but he is not the only person to try and tie age to political attitudes. George Monbiot suggested today in the Guardian that age may influence the way that people think about global warming: he argues that as global warming is really a threat to life and livelihood, that older people who are more concerned with death than the young (because they are closer to it) may attempt to resist the idea more.

I do not know quite frankly whether either idea is true: but leaving aside obvious questions like pensions and healthcare, the aging of a population must change the way that a population responds to risk and to decision making. One interesting thing for example is the predeliction for younger populations to choose older leaders, whereas as the proportion of the old increases in the west, the desire for youthful leaders (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Blair, Cameron) has never been stronger. If you regard, as I do, government as a mechanism to take decisions the changing age profile of the population and of politicians must change the ways that those decisions are made. I don't know enough about the scholarship in this area: but I do think one of the fascinating dynamics of the next century will be that as in China, the US, Europe and eventually the rest of the world, the population becomes older, we may need new models for the ways that states behave.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

2009-11-01T12:52:00.003Z

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser deals with a true story. In 1828 in Nuremberg a seventeen year old boy was found in the middle of the town carrying a letter addressed to the local cavalry captain, who did not seem to have either a history or the rudiments of social knowledge. Werner Herzog's film presents the story as the boy later told it- he was kept in a dungeon and a mysterious benefactor came to feed and clothe him. This benefactor then for his own purposes escorted him through the streets of Nuremberg to where he stood when he was found. He became a ward of the city, staying first within a tower and later, as Herzog simplifying events tells us, with an educational Professor Daumer. Daumer taught Hauser how to read and write. Whilst at Daumer's Hauser was attacked mysteriously by an assailant he believed was the man who had tended him in his youth. Later on, Hauser was patronised by a British nobleman- the Earl of Stanhope- and then he was attacked again, this time fatally and died at the age of 21. The story has provoked many people for years to speculate who Hauser was: some including Stanhope believed that he was an imposter, others conceived that he was the inheritor to a European throne- normally that of Baden- and a wild child.

Herzog does not take a position on these wider debates. The film deals with what we know about Hauser- his period in the light of society so to speak. Herzog's interest is in the process of socialisation- the way that Hauser is introduced to religion, philosophy, science and logic and to other human beings. What Herzog tries to show is through the eyeview of a 'natural' human being how artificial several of our conceptions are. For example when Daumer tells Hauser that apples do not want to lie in the grass and have no agency, Hauser disagrees. In order to prove that he is wrong, Daumer suggests to the boy that apples cannot act and to demonstrate it picks one up and throws it at his friend's foot. The apple though bounces on the stone path and runs over the foot and Hauser tells Daumer that he is wrong because the apple jumped, the apple was wiser than Daumer. Obviously Hauser's interpretation is wrong but it is a natural alternative to our normal interpretation: the apple might be jumping and it might not be, we believe that it is not because we attribute its action to external agency, bouncing on the stones.

The example of the apple is important because Herzog shows this process of 'natural' versus conventional knowledge in other settings. So Hauser sits down with a logician and cuts the gordian knot of a logical paradox in a way that does not obey philosophical rules. In a similar way he cannot understand the concepts that the religious men of the town try and explain to him: that three Gods are somehow one God, that life exists after death etc. Hauser's naivity demonstrates that these things are not natural to us- they do not arise by light of nature but by convention and are created explanations for the world around us. What Herzog is showing us is that knowledge is a social convention: that does not mean that it is illegitimate- the apple is not jumping- but it does show us that it does not arise from our first anticipation of the world. We gather data and interpret it according to rules: Kaspar does not which is why his explanations do not fit into ours.

The response of the community to Kaspar's inability to know is the core of the film. The community responds in four distinct ways. Daumer attempts to educate Kaspar and laughs off the boy's conventional confusion. The philosopher reacts with fury to the boy. The priests attempt to persuade as though it is his moral duty to understand and at the end of the film, they assume for his own good that he is wrong and perform a funeral service over him. Lord Stanhope condescends, presenting Kaspar as a witty joke. We have here three distinct bad reactions (Daumer is presented sympathetically) and to some extent I think Herzog is making a sociological comment. The intellectuals are arrogant- hence the philosopher's fury. The religious tend to presume that they know other people's goods and think that their knowledge is appropriate for those who do not share their views. The inhabitants of society are only interested in laughing not in listening. I also think that the purpose of the film is didactic- these are not for Herzog productive ways of responding to people: and so he critiques them.

Kaspar Hauser becomes an analogy for Herzog of knowledge within society and the mystery within life. The last point is that none of these men- philosophers, Christians, wits or scientists- can provide Hauser with a working explanation for where he has come from or where he is going. Hauser's problem is though only our own writ mysteriously: for we do not know where consciousness comes from or is going to. All they seem to do in this film is tell Kaspar how to think, not listen to his story and try and understand it. In that sense- Herzog's last point seems to be- that we risk forcing our natures, our mysteries (including that of who we are and what consciousness is) into artificial patterns.

Warsaw was worth a library

2009-10-30T23:09:00.003Z

As an exercise in the power of the law of unintended consequences, the reign of Augustus the Strong Elector of Saxony and later King of Poland is amongst the best. Augustus reigned as Elector in Saxony from 1694-1733, he was fortunate enough to be elected as King of Poland three years into his reign in 1697. As King he commanded the entire resources of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania- at that point one of the great powers of Europe (and beggining its great decline until its demise as a state in 1795). To become King of Poland though, Augustus had to renounce his Lutheranism. Like Henri of Navarre, Augustus found that Warsaw was worth a mass and became a Catholic but the consequences of this religious change in Saxony were vast and important for the future history of Germany.

As Jonathan Israel tells it (Radical Enlightenment p.106-7), Augustus's decision to become a Catholic meant that the court in Dresden refused to accept Lutheran censorship of books and manuscripts within the electorate. As Leipzig, within Augustus's domain, was by 1700 the largest book trading city in Germany (to compare in 1700 Leipzig had eighteen publishing houses and booksellers and a whole community of binders and other crafts, Berlin reputedly had one bookshop and Koenigsburg, a university town, but three)- the knock on effect was to change the way that the German book market itself operated. Moving censorship from the religious to the secular arm did not cease censorship: the works of Spinoza, Radicati and others were still proscribed, but what it did was to cease confessional censorship. So long as Calvinists, Lutherans, Catholics and even moderate enlightened Christians were willing to refrain from attacking each other, they might be published in Saxony. The outcome of course, allied with developments in other Kingdoms such as Prussia under Frederick the Great was to change German publishing and therefore German intellectual life. Augustus the Strong's conversion had an important impact therefore on the enlightenment during the early eighteenth century: Warsaw may have been worth a mass, it was also worth a library.

This prompts two reflections: which I think are also substantiated by Israel's work. The first is that the early enlightenment proceeded along physical channels of book selling, manuscript smuggling and letters. Without those physical channels and the markets in Western and Eastern Europe that were willing to accept the books and manuscripts and devour them, there would and could have been no enlightenment as we understand it. The second was that that was all facilitated by a movement of censorship across the continent from the religious to the secular arm: and by disputes and politics which had nothing to do with the enlightenment within the secular arm. Augustus's Polish crown is one example, the fortunes of Neapolitian intellectuals in Austrian and Spanish Naples is another, we could add others to the list but I think that is enough to prove that broader point. Intellectual life was at the mercy of politics and that meant that there was no consistent response from the ancien regime to the enlightenment. Israel's work illustrates both the ways the enlightenment was transmitted and the complicated ways that the censorship of that transmission operated.

Robert de Fishlake

2009-10-29T22:35:00.003Z

David Simpkins has written a short biography of an archer called Robert de Fishlake for the database of English soldiers in the Hundred Years War. Robert de Fishlake is an important man because he is one of the few English archers that we know much about in the period. English archers were one of the great weapons of the medieval English King's army- they were largely responsible for the victory at Agincourt most famously. What Simpkins illustrates through his biography of Fishlake, through the use of a record in the Court of Chivalry in 1410 and the use of muster rolls from 1381, 1387, 1388 and 1404. Fishlake testified in the court of Chivalry that his service in arms began in 1378 when he was 16. Therefore we can guess that he was an archer in 1378 as that is the rank he held in 1381, he also served in different retinues in the late 1380s. By 1404 he had been promoted to become a man of arms and by 1408-10 was sufficiently high in status to testify in the court of chivalry.

Simpkins draws out two conclusions from his evidence. The first is that there was a kind of career ladder for men who went to war- they would progress from archer to man at arms and some of them maybe further up the ladder. Fishlake demonstrates the way that war could become a means to social advancement in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Secondly Simpkins finds plenty of other Fishlakes serving around the same time- a Hugh Fishlake who served earlier in the 1370s, a John Fishlake who went to Agincourt with King Henry V. The idea that there were socially mobile military families is not implausible: but to find one and to demonstrate through court and muster records that at least one member did secure profit from war, starting low and finishing middling is important. There is a further aspect to this which I think is worth noting: Fishlake was summoned to the court of chivalry because he had served the Hastings Family from the 1380s onwards, but he had also fought with the Earl of Arundel's retinue and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk's retinue. This suggests that when a man's lord was not fighting or not involved, an enterprising soldier might find another commander to take him to war and to profit.

Perhaps rather than imagining 14th Century warfare as the clash of retinues or patriotic soldiers, we should remember that many on all sides would have been military entrepreuneurs, out to support their patrons and their country, but also crucially themselves.

Book Review: Peter Burke The Italian Renaissance

2009-10-27T19:52:00.003Z

In culture as in economic life, there are rentiers and there are entrepreneurs. (P. Burke, The Italian Renaissance p. 256)

Harvey Mansfield recently suggested that Quentin Skinner and John Pocock were historians who suggested that "ideas can be traced to prior conditions that are not ideas, such as economic forces or, more particularly for them, political interests." Professor Mansfield misunderstands the point of the Cambridge school of political thinking, which breaks down the distinctions between theory and practice, wilfully: if however he or those who read him wish to find an elucidating account of the way that economic and political forces can actually sustain ideas then they should turn to Peter Burke's book on the Italian Renaissance. Burke's account of the Renaissance is an attempt to place the Renaissance in a wider context: it is an attempt to answer the question, why did a renaissance happen in Italy over two hundred years at the end of the Middle Ages? Why did extraordinary figures like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Donatello, Guiccardini, Contarini, Botticelli, all emerge from the same corner of Europe at the same time? Why was there a concentration of people with good ideas from one particular society?

Burke's answer is painstakingly and elaborately constructed. He is one of the most elegant writers of history around today- his account is short (only 256 pages long) but testifies to a rich exposure to the sources. Burke's basic contention is that in Italy between 1400 and 1550, a fortunate series of structural events came together which helped produce the Renaissance. Part of those structural events had to do with the organisation of society- so for example he emphasizes the ways that Italian city states were more hospitable for the arts than the feudal communities of Northern Europe. In Italy, the artist joined the merchant in living in the gaps of the traditional feudal understanding of the world in which everyone was a fighter, a peasant or a priest. He talks about the ways that art was structured itself- it became entrepreunerial with great artists having workshops in which apprentices worked. Indeed Burke demonstrates that the urban world of Italy thrived on the model of the apprentice and master relationship with dozens of clientel relationships prospering in each individual city. He shows how urban Italy was- the most urban region of Europe at the time and how this helped sustain an art market. How disruption in such urban centres, whether in Florence in 1494 or Rome in 1527 may have effected not merely art but also political thought: Guiccardini began his own inquiries into history with 1497 for example.

Burke is attentive always to caution though- for him the world of the Renaissance was complicated and not simply driven by social pressures. Society provided the backdrop against which Renaissance art was conjured up. Like Rahe, whose book I have just reviewed, Burke is attentive to hidden meanings and yet unlike Rahe he provides evidence that contemporaries shared his attention. Take the painting I have illustrated this piece with. Its title is the Virgin, Child and Saint Anne. The Virgin sits upon St Anne's lap, restraining Christ from grabbing on to a lamb. In one sense it is an image of maternal love: yet Burke cites Pietro da Novellara writing about an early version of the picture to Isabelle d'Este giving his interpretation.

A cartoon of the cild Christ, about a year old, almost jumping out of his mother's arms to seize hold of a lamb. The mother is in the act of rising from St Anne's lap and holds back the child from the lamb, an innocent creature which is the symbol of the passion, while St Anne, partly rising from her seat, seems to anxious to restrain her daughter, which may be a type of the church, who would not hinder the passion of Christ (cited Burke p. 172)

The 'may' is Novellara's word but it is a word that Burke stresses that we should appreciate. Such caution about a hidden language is opposite to Rahe's extravagance with hidden meanings. Burke also seems more atuned to a variety of languages- from the religious (more than half of paintings from the Renaissance sample of 2000 Burke has looked at were of the Virgin) to the classical and political and even to the alchemical. This fecundity of meaning is an interesting part of Burke's book and something he is unwilling to endorse without further proof: like any good historian, Burke suggests ways we can translate the past but stresses how much of it remains untranslatable.

Burke's thesis is bold- he links commerce, commercialisation, capital, empire and republicanism together. Some of the details do not convince: Burke takes the line that republics foster artists whereas monarchies offer scope for patronage- that seems a sensible argument and yet it is worth saying that Burke devotes perhaps too little attention to fortifying it. Voltaire would have disagreed, suggesting the Age of Augustus and the Enlightenment of Louis XIV as counter examples. Again Burke is right that Italian art declined as Italian patrons moved from being entrepreuneurs to rentiers- but even he admits that the process had not completed by 1680, long after the Dutch and possibly English had passed Italian art. The argument that art and culture are products of recession (Lopez) is refined by Burke- he denies that people invested in art, but suggests that a lack of other investment led to surplus wealth- the Buddenbrook complex writ artistically, but it would have been interesting to hear more about spending patterns in merchant houses from this perspective. A short book leaves you vulnerable to not taking up every avenue and exploiting the potential to answer every doubt- but this is a tour de force that Professor Mansfield would not appreciate. In a sense what Burke does, the same enterprise that Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx and others were engaged in, is discuss what type of society best produces creativity. We may dispute his answer: but the question as he discusses is as old as the condition that gave rise to it- Vasari and Bruni during the Renaissance were the first to contemplate why the Renaissance should have happened.

I do not want to leave anyone with the impression that Burke does not write about or care about the art he studies. This is not a dull study which focusses away from the subject it studies- rather Burke is fascinated by the art. He is interested in the ways that artists thought- the movement towards rules of perspective and eventually towards mannerism. He is fascinated by what art meant- Michelangelo's David for instance fitted into a neat model of Florentine portraits of David symbolising their weakness and virtue against Milanese monarchist Goliathan imperialism. He writes illuminatingly about the way artists were educated- few knew how to read and commissions may have spread education. This is a book where the focus is wide not narrow.

Burke's work is also filled with illuminating detail. Italian painters were imitating classical models without having any to hand- all the Roman paintings that we have date from eighteenth century finds. We do not know much about major strands of art or performance because they are naturally of their time: we are told of sermons in which the preacher rode in arms to his congregation or elaborate festivals in the great cities, but we have no idea what these looked or sounded like. The book is a major acheivement with a lot packed into a small volume- but what it does do is turn us back, particularly in the conclusion where Burke matches Italy to the Netherlands and eighteenth century Japan, to major questions about society and creativity- about how clusters are caused and why they persist.

The Chess Players

2009-10-26T23:25:00.003Z

Machiavelli thought of politics as a sinister art, filled with treachery and ruled by fear, not by love. Satyajit Ray in his Chess Players creates an image of politics that is similar in many ways. He deals with the events of 1856 in the Kingdom of Oudh. That kingdom was one of the last not to be incorporated into British India, an ancient treaty bound Oudh and Britain together in common allegiance to each other. Yet members of the British elite in India, particularly Lord Dalhousie the Governor General and the British Resident in Oudh, General Outram, wanted to conquer the province and annex its revenues. The crown of Oudh had always supported Britain but fiscally even such support falls short of the kind of control the British wanted. (Some of these characters are fictional- Ray's picture of the status of Oudh before 1856 is not entirely incorrect, but I evaluate this film as a piece of political theory rather than history). The British desire to take Oudh and its acheivement are played out within the confines of the film in which arguments about law, good government and ability to govern are made against the background of a traditional state headed by a dilettante King. On the other hand, Ray's film has a second story which runs alongside his first- two chess players play each other constantly throughout the film, oblivious to the action around them.

One might think that Ray was making an analogy between chess and politics: he is not making that analogy at all. There are analogies made by the characters- particularly between the 'fast chess' of the British with its queen (instead of a minister) and its promoted pawns against the 'slow chess' of India- but I do not think that Ray wants us to see through the eyes of his characters. His film is an objective rather than a subjective view: the camera sees from in front of or behind the characters and an omniscient narrator is provided to prompt the audience to distance themselves from and question the truth of the characters. Chess though does become a sort of analogy for the movement of politics: the British general, General Outram, does play a game of chess across the board of the Indian state and eventually he captures the King. But the key thing here is that he does win because he actually succeeds, his position is dire from beggining to end, he wins because noone else wants to win- and because noone else gets involved. Politics like chess in this sense turns into a contest between two men battling over a board.

The interesting thing about that struggle is that both in the microcosm and the macrocosm, the chess players are oblivious to events outside the game. They do bring in those events but only as ways to disrupt the game- not to overcome it or obliterate it. One of the two chess players is comically humiliated by his wife- conned into failing to see she is having an affair. The other more tragically cannot seem to make any emotional connection with his wife because his only emotional connection can be with the board. The Chess game is an arid metaphor for life because it takes place outside of the currents of real life- its purpose is to exclude real life- as one character says we play chess because we do not want to see our own faces in the light. In a sense what happens in the Kingdom is the same: the two chess players and the whole population are oblivious of the British intentions, the game is played above and beyond them. In a sense therefore the politics of this are simple- engagement would frustrate imperialism, the crown calling its people into action would force General Outram out (this is a film made at the time of Vietnam and the successful anti-colonialist struggles of the mid-century). But there is another complicated strand to this in which politics, like the chess game, become unreal- who cares who rules if the only consequences are battles between frivolous old men over tables.

This is a perceptive attack on autocracy- both colonialist and Indian. Reviewers are right to say that almost all the characters are portrayed sympathetically- Ray's eye sees their perfections as well as their blemishes. The film is truly humanitarian. The British officer, played wonderfully by David Attenborough, is sinister but also sincere in his patriotism and his impatience with the follies of an 'oriental monarch'. The monarch may be frivolous- with his 400 concubines and 29 pleasure wives- but he is also a conspicuously good man, caring more for poetry than for anger. The chess players are comic not because they are evil or malicious but because they are good men trapped in blindness. Rather than being an attack which attacks personalities, Ray's is so much more powerful because he attacks the flaws in personalities and positions. He acknowledges and shows that these are rounded people, whilst letting us see their flaws. If Aristotle argued that monarchy should exist when a perfect man comes to government, Ray shows that there is no such thing- and that monarchy or empire without such degenerates into a game of chess.

Ray's humanism comes through thus both in his evocation of participation and in his description of the wider tapestry of life: he wants us to see social community as a worthwhile thing, that the chess players have forgotten wrapped in their game, that General Outram has neglected wrapped in his manoervre and that the King knows intuitively but does not know how to provide. This is an excellent film and I will write more about it- but for now, I lay this chess set aside!

Cuthbert and Durham

2009-10-25T12:02:00.002Z

The County Palatinate of Durham was a unique jurisdiction in medieval England. Independent of the crown and ruled by its bishop, the local nobility asserted their independence of the rest of England and of obligations such as knight service that other nobles held. What this book review in the Medieval Review explains is that that resistance was grounded upon a political motive- which should be obvious to most- but also upon a spiritual language. The nobility asserted their rights as the successors to those who had guarded the remains of St Cuthbert as they made their journey from Lindisfarne to Durham under Viking assault. What you have here therefore is the independence of a part of England being buttressed and described by a saintly and spiritual motif: religion provides the legitimacy for the County Palatinate to exist and exist free of the interference of London and the rest of the Kingdom.

Review: Paul Rahe Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic

2009-10-24T15:16:00.003+01:00

Paul Rahe's Against Throne and Altar is nothing if it is not ambitious. Starting with Al Farabi, working through Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonodes, he traces a line of thinking into the work of Machiavelli and through his ruminations into the thought of Francis Bacon, Marchamont Nedham, John Milton and James Harrington. His work culminates with a discussion of the way that Thomas Hobbes reformulated the concerns of Machiavelli- we finish with Hobbes and Harrington in the world of what Rahe calls a bourgeois republicanism. The vastness of the work means any reviewer will be taken outside the world they are comfortable with- and the vastness of the erudition means that Rahe's work is not merely difficult to challenge, when he is not on your own ground, he is impossible to challenge. I noticed as you might in such a work a couple of errors: John Wildman for example is given authorship of the tract, the Case of the Army truly stated, when as recent scholarship (published before Rahe published) suggests the author might have been Edward Sexby. But small errors are bound to exist in a work of this breadth and in general the scholarship is magnificent and awe inspiring: there are not many civil war students who comb the Bodleian Library Record for example for Jason Peacey's interesting article on Marchamont Nedham and the Lawrens letter, but Rahe has read it and absorbed it.

The argument he advances in the book is that there was a hidden tradition from the Arabic scholars forwards in philosophy. Let us describe the tradition and then describe the 'hidden element'. The tradition that Rahe describes has two elements that we must understand: in describing them we must commit a caricature. The first is that these thinkers from Averroes and Maimonides forwards problematised the cultural hegemony of revealed religion (83)- they viewed that as a political issue for philosophers and Kings to understand and work with or against. Rahe agrees with Marlowe who had Machiavelli say 'I count religion but a childish toy and hold there is no sinne but ignorance' (cited 85). Marchamont Nedham held a 'skepticism in matters religious or moral'. (185) Francis Bacon also repudiated Christianity (256) as did Hobbes (259). Rahe associates all of the later thinkers with the reception of Paolo Sarpi's history of the Council of Trent and Hobbes in particular he moves close to the sceptical French clergymen, Gassendi and Mersenne.

The second strand of Rahe's argument is to suggest that what bound all these thinkers together was a repudiation of a classical concept of Republicanism, based on virtue and education. He suggests that Machiavelli was not a classical republican and that neither were his followers. Rather Rahe suggests Machiavelli created a Republicanism based upon interest: and the assumption that all human beings were selfish and evil. This Republicanism then became the model for Thomas Hobbes, Nedham, Milton and Harrington in different ways. Hobbes created a psychology for the Machiavellian individual, Harrington created a political sociology for that individual. Both though benefitted from Francis Bacon who suggested that striving could take a peaceful and a warlike form: Machiavelli had supported states who were internally unstable, Bacon argued that human striving could be turned in an apolitical direction. The revolution that produces the bourgeois concept of history and the bourgeois concept of politics is one that turns political theory of an Aristotelian nature into historical speculation (Machiavelli) and thence into economics and sociology with Harrington and Bacon. This second trajectory ties to the first because in its rejection of reason and virtue as things that govern politics, it rejects the classical and Christian concept of man, placing over that a Epicurean concept of man as one who seeks, in Hobbes's phrase, power after power.

There is a lot to absorb here and I have not done Rahe's argument full justice- but in the space of a review it is almost impossible to do so. I have a couple of major problems with it which I wish to outline and a styllistic point which irritated me as I read the book. The first major problem with Rahe's book is his wilful ignorance of religion as a factor in the minds of those he describes. I can understand suggestions that Thomas Hobbes was an atheist- that seems to have some evidence for it- but John Milton's atheism strikes me as a strange position to adopt. Milton was as minded of the Bible as of classical precedent. To interpret everything Milton says as atheistical is to me a misunderstanding: to take an example, Rahe quotes Milton protesting about the prelates of England being able to override the common law and suggests that this is evidence of Milton's anticlericalism and hence his atheism. Milton's argument is reminiscent of arguments made by impecably devout Parliamentarians (including Cromwell) against the court of Chancery: Rahe has taken a single case and blown it into an argument for Milton's atheism when actually it arises out of a political tradition that includes the impecabbly devout. Rahe is unwilling to acknowledge how wide some of the languages that he talked spread within early modern Europe, when Harrington talks about the public interest, he need not be quoting Machiavelli as Rahe presumes (325), plenty of other thinkers including Henry Parker and Oliver Cromwell made use of that concept.

The second major objection I have is to the idea that if someone writes something down, because of their own interests (most often fear) what they mean is something different. I would not disagree that this does happen within life and history- but when interpreting a text written hundreds of years ago, it seems to me to be an unsafe presumption that the way to craft a tradition is to assume that those you want to put in it are lying when they contradict it. I am happy where there is evidence to accept that sometimes people do create an impression in order to preserve them from public calumny: but it needs to be proved that this is the move they are making, before we accept that this is the basis of interpretation we should use for a political tract. So Rahe for example tells us that Milton took on a mask of orthodox Christianity: I am unconvinced because I see no evidence of it. This is afterall the poet who said that Greek and latin poetry 'will far be found unworthy to compare with Sion's songs'.

These objections are important because what Rahe is trying to do is create a tradition of early modern republicanism to replace those created by John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. I am not expert enough, particularly in Machiavelli, Hobbes and Harrington to provide an answer to whether he succeeds or not but I have concerns. There are points in common between Rahe and Pocock in particular, that he does not stress but I think are important. Both of them are alive to a historical turn in Early modern thought: to the problematic of Machiavellianism being the replacement of political philosophy by history. Pocock of course has taken this to its furthest extent by leaving the 17th century and going to the great English historian of the 18th Century- Edward Gibbon. Rahe shares Skinner's analysis of Hobbes's concept of freedom. But he differs from them: both in the sense that he suggests the Renaissance marks a break with what had gone before and in the sense that he wants Machiavelli as the founder of something, rather than the renewer of classical republicanism. Rahe has amazingly long footnotes and occasionally this quarrell is distractingly relegated to those footnotes- if you are reading this book, you must read the footnotes as well as the text. I will leave both substantive questions to specialists in Machiavelli and classical republicanism.

Where I do think he is in error though is in his overestimation of the importance of the classical and his dimnuition of the importance of the Biblical. Rahe seems to me to play down the biblical resonances in what some of his authors- particularly Milton- are saying. He seems forever able to find a quote from the classics that his authors are referring to: but there were moments in the book when I found myself spotting hints of biblical language Rahe did not mention. Furthermore this is definitely a book about the great men of political thinking and not about the lesser inhabitants of that world- it sells itself as such but it is important to remember- partly because it misses out the world around those thinkers, and partly because (as Skinner and Pocock would rightly suggest) you need to understand those other thinkers to understand the great men. Rahe lumps together his great men- assuming that they had a conversation beyond and above the conversation that lesser beings took part in: I am not sure that is a fair assumption nor am I that those 'great' men are necessarily above the fray for any reason greater than that generations of historians have said they were great.

Reading Rahe's book I was impressed by the scholarship and the argument: I am not sure I am convinced and will need to reread by Machiavelli before I acknowledge the main thrust of his argument. His book is not perfect and leaving out the biblical aspect of the world frustrates me (it does about many intellectual historians who tend to assume that their authors were atheist dons in the 20th Century debating about Bush and Obama not men of the 17th or 18th Centuries). But his footnotes are a delight, his scholarship is inspiring and if his book is difficult to respond to instantly, it is also provocative and interesting. It may not convince you immediately or ever- but it will make you think.

Animal Studies

2009-10-22T13:03:00.003+01:00

Years and years ago, my brother was a vegetarian. Because I was an immature student I would tell him that he was participating in the mass murder of plants. It is not a particularly subtle or good argument against vegetarianism but it does raise what I think is a legitimate question about the reasons why we accord moral personality to some things and not others. We do so on the basis of the reactions whereby the other agent demonstrates to us a feeling that we identify with and empathise with. If I hit you, your reaction reminds me of what it is to be hit. If I shoot a pig, its squeel reminds me of what it is to be shot. Even those who advocate that we should give plants rights use this argument by suggesting that plants scream as their stalks are cut. This drives me onto a point of worry in terms of what is now called Animal Studies.

Animal Studies is a new field- spanning all the humanities. It looks at animals as interesting units. So a historian might write about the fate of dogs and horses in world war one as they were used for military reasons- a philosopher might consider the rights of animals and a literature theorist the division between humans and animals in literature. Reading an article in Chronicle which serves as an introduction to the field, despite the fact that as one commenter says it does not mention the leading philosopher of animal rights Peter Singer, something struck me. The problem with according animals rights or moral personality is not a problem about whether they should have rights or personality- ie it is not a problem about whether human life is preferable to animal life. Rather it is a distinct problem about the fact that the mind of an animal is unknowable: I presume to guess that you think similarly to me: so we would both abhore slavery even if it came with unlimited sufficiency- but I cannot do so with a pig.

This affects our moral judgements and our ability to judge for animals about what they would prefer in a given situation. Take the situation of a pig being fattened for slaughter. All human beings that I know would say that they object to that: they can see that the pleasure of more food and comfortable surroundings is being exchanged for an uncertain, painful and final future. We discount present happiness into the future: we do so with sadness too- studying for exams is no fun, but students do it to acheive a degree or qualification that will they hope benefit them. Are the same calculations made by pigs though? How do we know whether a pig would prefer to have an endless supply of food in exchange for a shortened life? The answer is that we do not know whether a pig would prefer that because we do not know what kind of idea of the future the pig has. We could imagine that the pig is a human being: but that seems to me to unwrite the whole idea of the animal having rights, the fundemental right is the right to define what is good for me.

There are two reasons why animal feelings are inaccessible to me whereas human feelings are not so inaccessible. The first is the obvious: I am a human so are you. Therefore when you and I come to the same situation we are likely to react in the same way. Despite our greater simularity this begs the same question though as my pig example- how do I know that I am not defining through my sympathy your good, how do I know that my morality is not moral but paternalistic. That is where the second key distinction comes in, language. You can tell me what you prefer in a given situation- you can inform me of what you see as the good and I can adjust my perceptions in response. Language is not a perfect tool of communication but it beats a grunt. The pig cannot tell me what it wants and therefore how can I presume to know what it wants- in that sense is it meaningless to talk about animal desires and animal wants, and therefore the rights to acheive them?

I don't say this to dismiss the whole idea of animal rights- others will know more and think more about this than me and may have answered these questions. But that is the central issue to me: defining animal rights means defining what is good for an animal and ultimately the internal consciousness of an animal is an undiscovered country to me. Its subjective impression of what it wants is something I do not know and therefore I cannot know if it would prefer say, a short life of abundant plenty followed by death or a longer life of scarcity but without the prospect of the farmer's knife. I know what I would prefer, but I don't think its my right to impose my preference on a pig, a chicken or anything else for that matter.

Book Review: Forlorn Hope: Soldier Radicals of the Seventeenth Century

2009-10-20T22:22:00.004+01:00

Antonia Southern's Forlorn Hope is an account of the English Civil War from the perspective of its military. She writes a collective biography of four radical soldiers- Thomas Rainborough, his brother William Rainborough, Edward Sexby and Richard Rumbold. All three lived interesting lives. Thomas Rainborough fought in Ireland, then in England- was an experienced commander on land and sea and Vice Admiral of the English navy for a couple of months. He was an opponent of Cromwell's at Putney, famously saying that the poorest he in England had as much a right to life as the richest he and consequently as much a right to the vote. His brother William was less senior and less famous- also commanded in Ireland and returned to England. William Rainborough was active within the army politically and later became a ranter- a religious radical who beleived that he was saved and therefore that it was impossible for him to sin. Edward Sexby was another radical figure whose political career began in 1647- also present at Putney, he memorably told the generals that if he did not receive the vote he did not understand what he had been fighting for. Sexby was promoted until 1653, when he was tried for corruption in Scotland and then he drifted into intelligence work and becoming a plotter with the royalists against Cromwell. Rumbold lastly was a soldier who signed one pamphlet during the civil war- he later emerged as a plotter against Charles II and was executed for his part in the Rye House Plot in 1683.

Southern has assembled an interesting caste therefore- their political careers span 40 years- from 1641 until 1683. All of them have lives that were veiled partially in obscurity: we do not know much about either Rainborough before the 1640s, Sexby's life before 1632 is a complete mystery (we know that in that year he was apprenticed) and Rumbold's is a product of speculation. One of them was ambushed and killed during the civil war (Thomas Rainborough), two were executed (Edward Sexby in 1657 and Rumbold in 1683) and we know nothing of what happened to William Rainborough in America. All four were politically committed- and through them Southern is able to tell us about other figures: Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax and Charles I perhaps most notably. However the book is not a success and partially that is because of its format- Southern adopts the approach of writing an essay about all three characters, this means that she repeats territory in the 1640s three times (first with Thomas, second with William and third with Sexby). The second major problem though is historical.

Southern has done some good work here- she obviously has tried to find out what she could about these men and their careers, her notes are reasonable- and Rumbold definitely is a figure that civil war historians ought not to forget about. However her work is flawed- partly because she is ignorant of more recent historiography (not her fault but Putney in particular has been revisited importantly since she wrote by John Morrill and others in ways that have changed our understanding of what the great debate was about) and partly because she misses several key things in the sources. Most notable is the fact that this is a very secular history of a very religious society. William Rainborough was a Ranter because he believed in a form of antinomianism- it would have been nice to hear more about the creed for which he risked his life. Southern tells us nothing- save she presumes that he did it because he was disappointed politically. Thomas Rainborough's arguments at Putney are strongly marked by religion: Southern knows this is true (she mentions it) but passes over it as insignificant before his support for democracy. Sexby is a very interesting and subtle thinker- Southern has little to say in explanation beyond contrasting him with what we might think today. Her tendency is to always compare the past to the present: perhaps her most illuminating insight is the way that she sees the profession of soldiery changing from a politically active into a democratically servile proffession- that seems to be her main interest but it is still a contrast between past and present rather than an examination of the past.

At some point, as historians we have to try and understand the world as they saw it rather than as we see them. It is not easy to do and the inevitability of failure hangs in the air but constantly asking what is different from where we stand or similar may not lead us to see that. I think Southern made a creditable effort here- it was her misfortune to publish just as the kind of history of the army that she wrote was going out of fashion, and just as others were about to publish more illuminating work- but she could have approached her sources and her figures with more imagination. Arnaldo Momigliano once said that there are two tasks as a historian: the first is to find a good question, the second to answer it. Though she partially fails the second test- her decision to write a biography of Sexby, Rainborough (both) and Rumbold was a good one- hopefully others will follow her lead.

St Dominic's

2009-10-19T20:32:00.004+01:00

William Dell, not his real name, published in the early 1980s an anthropological analysis of a Cambridge college called St Dominic's. St Dominic's is a real college in Cambridge under a disguise- the clue is in the name. The point about St Dominic's as Dell portrays it is that it is a little absurd: old dons fall asleep during governing body, the bursar's committee is the only committee in college to stand above the wine committee and the gardening committee, fines for being late come in claret and teaching is done over tea or sherry depending on the time of day and the mood of the don. Oxford and Cambridge have changed since then- they are more open places, open to women in particular- and they are less conservative than they once were. They still have oddities and they still harbour eccentricities that an unkind eye would stigmatise. They still live and die by a tutorial system that is as terrifying and rigorous an education as you can get, have within them exceptionally intelligent, learned and cosmopolitan people but still function on the basis of small rules and hidden insults. They are a mixture between the mannered, the kind, the cruel and the learned. St Dominic's has changed since William Dell wrote this article, but maybe not as much as some might have expected in the early 1980s.

The Virtues of Narrative History

2009-10-18T17:27:00.004+01:00

Those who know me well will pause perhaps at the title of this post. Given my contempt for lazy narrative history it might seem strange that I think there is a large and important place for narrative history within historiographical studies- but I do. Narrative history appeals to the fundemental nature of historians- as this post comments, we are ultimately storytellers. Historia, in the original Greek, means story. But narrative history has another function. One of the depressing things about historians themselves as well as the general population is how little we know outside of our own specialism or time. For whatever is being studied there is always a greater context: so for example, there must be political ways in which the industrious revolution in India and in Britain in the 17th and 18th Centuries affected both countries. Narrative history is in its widest sense a cure for that kind of historical parochialism: it can make us aware as say Braudel made us aware of the long duree- of the great rhythms of history, whether those be the rhythms of the harvest or of the tides. As historians become narrower and narrower in their focus and less and less willing to make a mistake, it is worth maybe considering whether errors are better than parochialism, whether narrative can lead to insight, whether span of knowledge is really less important than depth.

Law and History

2009-10-16T14:02:00.005+01:00

In 1959, John Pocock published what has become a key text in the history of English Political thought. The Ancient Constitution and Feudal Law charts the development of a set of ideas about the English past in the thought and political ideology of a number of lawyers: it suggests through an exploration of the paradigmatic figure of Sir Edward Coke, that this understanding of England's past played a vital role within seventeenth century history and controversy. Pocock's work touches on a vast theme which is that there are two groups of people interested professionally immediately in the past- one group are historians, the others are lawyers. History has not ceased to be important to lawyers today: currently in the US there are a group of conservative lawyers, headed by Justice Antonin Scalia, who argue for an originalist interpretation of the American constitution. The constitution, according to Scalia and his allies, should be interpreted in the way that it was written: the words should be applied with the intentions of the founders in writing those words down in mind. There are many problems with this idea about the constitution: some are picked up on in this article on History News Network, but there are deeper methodological problems involved in Scalia's project. First of all any constitution is a compromise document: the words are vague because they are intended to appeal to everyone in the room at the time- whose interpretation should a judge pick later as the 'original' interpretation?

There is however a greater problem implicit in Scalia's logic. Lawyers and historians do not think in the same way and do not want the past to work in the same way. Historians are in general interested in what the past has to offer as a totality: as a historian if I analyse eighteenth century America I want to see it in all of its complexity and abundance, I do not want to isolate (any more than I have to for reasons of practicality and time) any aspect of it from any other aspect. My enterprise is to understand the world as they saw it. Lawyers are not in that business. They are in the business of finding a precedent and abstracting it from that time forward into this time: they weigh and discuss precedents against each other. The discipline is very different: and the failures of lawyers in conceiving of history from Sir Edward Coke forwards was one of the subjects of Pocock's work. But it is important that we realise why lawyers fail as historians: it is not that they are stupid or wrong, but that they want to use the past for a different act- Justice Scalia is not interested in anything that does not effect his precedent. His problem is that everything, accurately understood, effects his precedent in the period he wants to abstract the law from. Consequently he has to be selective to do his job, ie be a judge, consequently he cannot find the original intention he so desires to abstract.

Originalism is not a sensible judicial doctrine not because it is unappealing as law but because it is unsound as history. Lawyers cannot recover the original intention of an act or a constitution, particularly something which was formed as a consequence of many intentions. They can arbitrarily insist upon a fragment of history that they choose to drag forwards, but in doing so they must abandon the argument that what they are doing is in any sense originalist. They must concede that they like their opponents are creating interpretation as opposed to restating interpretation. Sir Edward Coke may have been fixated on the past and the unchanging essense of English law: actually as Pocock showed he never understood the context of the law he quoted and became thus a great legal innovator rather than a great legal conservator.

Methinks despite the rhetoric of originalism and traditionalism, the fate of conservatives like Scalia is to become radicals who misuse historical evidence.

An Historical Irony

2009-10-15T11:54:00.002+01:00

Catholics fought in the English Civil War. Parliament accused the King of using papists to do his work on the battlefields of England and increasingly on the battlefields of Ireland. In part this accusation was tied up with the ethnic politics of English domination of the British Isles, fears of Irish barbarism and Irish massacres- but in part it was a religious prejudice. Englishmen consumed Foxe's Book of Martyrs with its grisly tales of the fates of Protestants under a Catholic regime, knew about the savagery of religious warfare between the Protestants and Catholics in the Thirty Years War (as well as in earlier conflicts stretching back to the time of Luther) and since 1570 there was always the possibility, lurking in Protestant Anglophone minds, that the Catholic minority were a fifth column, dedicated to fulfilling the Pope's excomunication and slaying the English King or Queen. Indeed one of the moments that precedes the English Civil War is the Bond of Association (1585) in which the nobility of England associated in declaring that should Elizabeth I be killed, then they would lynch her most likely successor Mary Stuart, the Catholic Queen of Scotland (then a prisoner in England).

Catholics were not the flavour of the month for most Protestants and it was believed by some and said by many that their strength lay behind the King's armies. William Shiels in a section of an article published in this collection examines the claim and what he finds is I think rather interesting. What Shiels finds is that Catholics did fight predominately for the King- they were a resource that Charles used. However in county studies, say of Worcestershire, Shiels finds that most Catholics remained neutral. A fascinating picture emerges though if you look at where most Catholics were recruited to the King's army. In Puritan heartlands such as the south midlands or East Anglia, only 10% of the King's officers recruited from the region were Catholic: however the figures for Northumberland 39%, Durham 38% and Lancashire 60% were very different. Shiels explains the differences by suggesting that in the north and west, Catholics remained active politically in the local arena whereas in the south and east, Catholics had been drummed out of local politics and become more quietist.

It is an interesting theory. There are two reasons for caution. The first is demographic- there may simply have been more Catholics in the north and therefore naturally the King will have recruited more Catholics. Our results may be skewed. The second is that as Newman has commented, very few of the King's Catholic officers directly held office within the commonwealth. Newman's conclusion is important but officeholding is not the same as influence- and the persistence of a large Catholic landed class in the north and west meant the persistence of large Catholic influence in counties like Lancashire and Cumbria. If we accept Shiel's argument, and at the moment I am prepared to partly accept it, it prompts a further reflection about historical irony. It was Charles I's ancestors using the power and strength of the English and later British monarchy who exterminated Catholics in the southern counties: Henry, Elizabeth and Charles's father James all were active anti-Catholics. In the civil war, Charles needed the Catholics of England to rally to his banner and found south of the Wash that there were too few to do so: his ancestors had been too successful and therefore the army that protected the monarchy was smaller than it might have been.

If I were a puritan or religious at all I would detect providence. Being neither this is yet another irony of history.