History - III

NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,
ASSAM
B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) Five Years
II Year - III Semester

3.2 History - III
Course Compiled By:

Ms. Namrata Gogoi
Course Instructor:
Ms. Namrata Gogoi
Academic Session
(2015-16)
HISTORY – III
Semester July-November
Course Code 3.2
Course Credit 5
Maximum Marks 100
Teaching Hours Required 64
Tutorial/Presentation Hours 12-15
Medium of Instruction English
Course Objectives
This course has been incorporated with the aim of introducing the students with the
key theories of the modern world along with some major revolutions that took place
before the two World Wars in Europe and also in America that ultimately leads to
various developments in the modern period. The two World Wars that were
responsible for the paradigm shift in the sphere of world politics need to be introduced
to the students of history. Along with that, the Bolshevik Revolution also has its own
significance in terms of establishing for the first time a Communist State. In addition,
the American Civil war is an important lesson in terms of learning about the
emergence of America as a superpower and also the social significance in abolishing
slavery as an institution. The rise of dictatorship in Italy and Germany, the
Communist Revolution in China and Japan’s emergence as a modern state and their
respective impacts on the world politics are some of the important events worth
studying. It is also necessary to know the post war developments, the phase of the
Cold War and the post-Cold War developments because it is also important on the
part of the students to get acquainted with the process of transformation of the world
from a bipolar to a unipolar one with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The aim
of this course is also to give the students the idea of the different social movements
striving for social justice that emerged in different parts of the world and brought
about far reaching changes on the lives of those whom it impacted.
Teaching Methodology
The teaching methodology shall be participatory teaching with discussions on

the topics included and connected. The students are informed in advance the topic for
discussion and the topic of project / assignment they have to prepare. The students
prepare their topics from the sources suggested to them. The students are also
encouraged to do independent research on their respective assignments. In the
classroom every student is required to present his/her topic and to have his/her doubt
cleared through discussion. The teacher will be helping and guiding the students in
their pursuits of legal learning. The teacher summarizes after the students have
completed their discussion, and he clarifies the doubts, if any, and answer their
queries.
Course Textbooks
The students may refer to a wide variety of textbooks available to assist the students
like Norman Lowe, “Mastering Modern World History”, David Thompson, “Europe
since Napoleon”, Ranjan Chakrabarti, “A History of the Modern World”, Eric
Hobsbawm, “The Age of Revolution”, Eric Hobsbawm, “The Age of Extremes”,
Marc Ferro, “The Great War”, A.J.P.Taylor, “The Origins of the Second World War”,
William Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, John Fairbank, “The Great
Chinese Revolution”, Immanuel Hsu, “The Rise of Modern China”, Albert Soboul,
“The French Revolution”, E.H. Carr, “The Russian Revolution”, etc.
A list of suggested references is attached separately for the students to use as

reference for an in-depth understanding of the subject.
Course Evaluation Method
The Course is assessed for 100 Marks in total by a close book examination system.
There shall be a Mid-Semester Exam for 10 Marks and End Semester Exam for 40
Marks. 45 Marks are allotted for the Project work and 5 Marks for attendance. The
question papers shall be designed on application based questions.
Expected Outcomes of the Course
After the completion of the Course the students are expected to have a clearer and in-
depth understanding of the subject. It is hoped that such an understanding would act
as an efficient tool for the student in studying the legal systems in its entirety in
various parts of the world while acknowledging the very solid foundation upon which
the relationship between history and law rests.
MODULE I
The French Revolution : The Ancien Regime; Causes of the French Revolution –
Political, Economic and Social Causes; Enlightenment and the Philosophes; the
Aristocratic Revolt and the Bourgeois Revolt; the Jacobin Dictatorship; Significance
of the Revolution
The American Revolution : Settlement of the thirteen colonies in the New World;
Causes of the Revolution; Course of the War; Significance
The Industrial Revolution : Background of the Revolution; Phases of the

Revolution; Industrialization of the Revolution; Industries and Inventions;
Consequences of the Revolution; Industrial Revolution in the rest of the world
Rise of Nationalism in Italy and Germany : Italy- Pre-Unification Italy; the

Carbonari movement and Mazzini; Count Cavour and Garibaldi; Germany – Pre-
unification Germany; Otto von Bismarck’s Blood and Iron Policy; the Three Wars of
Unification
Compulsory Readings:
 Ch. II (The Age of Revolution),pp. 202-219, (France in the Revolutionary

Era), pp.263-281, (Political Change: the Anglo-Saxon World), pp.335-345;
Ch III (Asia’s Response to a Europeanizing World), pp. 418-442,; (The Era of
the First World War)
 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, 2012, Ch. II
(The French Revolution), pp. 32-64;
 J.M.Roberts, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 2006, Ch. I (Beginnings), pp. 1-
20; Ch. VI (The Revolution as History and Myth)
 Ajoy Chandra Banerjee, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, 1ST ED.,
1995, Ch. II (The Industrial Revolution), Ch. III (The American War of
Independence), Ch. IV (The French Revolution), pp. 17-48; Ch. X
(Unification of Italy), Ch. XI (Unification of Germany), pp. 119-131
 David Thomson, EUROPE SINCE NAPOLEON, Ch I (Revolution in France),
pp. 24-36; Ch II (France at War), pp. 37-54; Ch XIV (The Remaking of
Central Europe), pp. 300-320
 Eric Hobsbawm, THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, Ch II (The Industrial
Revolution), pp. 42-72; Ch. III (The French Revolution), pp. 73-100
 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, Ch. I (The
American War of Independence), pp. 16-31; Ch. II (The French Revolution),
pp. 32-64; Ch. IV (The Second Phase of the Industrial Revolution), pp. 119-
132; Ch. V (The Rising Tide of Nationalism), pp. 136-151
Module II
American Civil War : Westward Expansion; History of the Atlantic Slave Trade;
Causes of the War; Causes of the War; Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation
Proclamation, 1863; Consequences of the War
The First World War: Causes of the War; Course of the War; Peace Treaties;
Impact of the War on International Politics
The Russian Revolution; Emancipation of serfs and modernization of Russia; Rise

of the Communist Party in Russia; 1905 Revolution and the October Manifesto;
February and October Revolutions; Civil War
The Rise of Dictatorship in Italy and Germany : Germany- Causes of Rise of

Nazism; Birth of NSDAP and the Weimar Republic; Nazi Consolidation of Power;
Nazi Reorganization of State – Church, Education, Culture and Propaganda;
Nuremberg Laws; Italy- Causes of Rise of Fascism; Socialist threat; Benito
Mussolini and fascio di combattimentio ; Consolidation of Power; the Fascist State
 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, Ch. VI (The

American Civil War), pp. 161-175; Ch VIII (First World War), pp. 196-213;
Ch. X (Reform and Revolution in Russia), pp. 237-256; Ch XII (Fascism in
Europe), pp. 309-328
1995, Ch. XIII (The American Civil War), pp. 136-143; Ch. XV (Causes of the
First World War), pp. 157- 167; Ch. XX (Reforms, Revolutions in Russia), pp.
197-202; Ch. XXI (The Bolshevik Revolution), pp. 203-216; Ch XXIV
(Fascism in Italy), pp. 246-251; Ch. XXV (Nazism in Germany), pp. 252-262
 Arjun Dev and Indira Dev, HISTORY OF THE WORLD, (The First World
War), pp. 47-56; (The Russian Revolution), pp. 56-61
 David Thomson, EUROPE SINCE NAPOLEON, Ch. XIX(The Eastern
Question), pp. 462-488; Ch. XXI (The System of Alliances), pp. 524- 544; Ch.
XXII (Issues and Stakes), pp. 549-573
 Norman Lowe, MASTERING MODERN WORLD HISTORY, 5th ed., 2013,
Ch. I (The world in 1914), pp. 3-17; Ch. II (The First World War and its
aftermath), pp. 18-41; Ch. XIII (Italy 1918-1945), pp. 295-308; Ch. XIV
(Germany 1918- 45), pp. 309-332; Ch. XVI (Russia and the revolutions), pp.
351-370
 William L. Shirer, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, Ch. II
(Birth of the Third Reich), pp. 3-28; Ch. IV (The Mind of Hitler and the Roots
of the Third Reich), pp. 80-116; Ch. VII (The Nazification of Germany), pp.
188-230
Module III
The Second World War: Causes of the War; the War in Europe; War in the Pacific
Region; Consequences of the War
The Communist Revolution in China : The Opening of China – the Canton trade
system and the Opium Wars; Chinese Reaction to Imperialism; Revolution of 1011
and the Warlords; Rise of the Communists
Japan’s Emergence as a modern State: The Opening of Japan; the Tokugawa

Shogunate; the Meiji Restoration; Japanese Imperialism
The Cold War: Causes of the Cold War; Phases of the war; the Nuclear Arms race
and the Cuban missile crisis; Impact of the war
 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, Ch. XIII

(Second World War), pp. 329-342; Ch. XI (The Far East), pp. 267-308
1995, Ch. XXVII (The Second World War), pp. 268-278; Ch. XXII (Far East:
China), pp. 217-230; Ch. XXIII (Far East: Japan), pp. 231-245
 David Thomson, EUROPE SINCE NAPOLEON, Ch. XXVII (The eclipse of
Democracy), pp. 702-730; Ch. XXIX (The Second World War), pp. 765-816
 Norman Lowe, MASTERING MODERN WORLD HISTORY, 5th ed.,
2013,Ch. V (International Relations, 1933-39), pp. 69-86; Ch. VI (The Second
World War), pp. 89-119; Ch. VII (The Cold War), pp. 122-139; Ch.
XIX(China 1900-49)
 William G. Beasley, THE MODERN HISTORY OF JAPAN, Ch. I (Japan in
the Early Nineteenth Century), pp. 1-20; Ch. V (The Fall of the Tokugawa),
pp. 76-97
 Marius B. Jansen, THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, Ch. II (The
Tokugawa State), pp. 32-62; Ch. XI (The Meiji Revolution), pp. 333-370; Ch.
XIII (Imperial Japan), pp. 414-455; Ch. XV (Japan between the Wars), pp.
495-536; Ch. XVIII (The Pacific War), pp. 625-674
 John King Fairbank, THE GREAT CHINESE REVOLUTION 1800-1985,
Ch. IX (The Genesis of the Revolution of 1911), pp. 141-164; Ch. X (The
Early Chinese Republic and its Problems), pp. 167-181; Ch. XIII (Nationalists
and Communists 1927-1937), pp.217-239; Ch. XIV (The War of Resistance
and Civil War 1937-1949), pp. 240-270
 William L. Shirer, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, Ch. XII
(The Road to Munich), pp. 357- 427; Ch. XIII (Czechoslovakia ceases to
exists), pp. 428-454; Ch. XVIII(The Launching of World War II), pp. 597-624
Module IV
The Civil Rights Movement (USA): Racial Segregation – the Black Codes, the Jim
Crow laws, Judicial Decisions; the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Martin Luther King Jr.
and the March on Washington; Rise of Black Nationalism; Consequences of the
Movement
The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa: Political History of South Africa –

Colonization by the Dutch and the British; Formation of the African National
Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress; the Black Consciousness movement;
Contribution of Nelson Mandela
Feminist Movement (USA) : Developments between 1848-1920; Seneca Falls

Convention; Movement for Women’s Suffrage; Developments in 1960s and 1970s
Disintegration of the Soviet Bloc: the USSR under Stalin; the Khrushchev era;
Gorbachev and the end of the Communist Rule
Compulsory Readings:
 Norman Lowe, MASTERING MODERN WORLD HISTORY, 5th ed., Ch.

XXII (The USA before the Second World War), pp. 486-489; Ch. XVII (The
USSR and Stalin), pp. 372-395; Ch. XVIII (Continuing communism, collapse
and aftermath), pp. 396- 419
 J.M. Roberts, MODERN HISTORY, (The Early Feminist Movement), pp.
466-470; (The Civil Rights Campaign), pp. 783- 786; (The Apartheid System),
pp. 754- 760)
 A. Adu Boahen (ed.), UNESCO GENERAL HISTORY OF AFRICA, Vol.
VII, Ch.II (European Partition and the Conquest of Africa), pp.19-44; ch.
XIX (The Social Repercussions of Colonial Rule), pp. 487-508;
 Maurice Dobb, SOVIET ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1917, Ch.
VI (The Transition to the New Economic Policy), pp. 125-148; Ch. VII (The
First Years of Economic Recovery), pp. 149-176; Ch. VIII (The Problem of
Industrialisation), pp.177-207
List of References:
Lowe, Norman Mastering Modern World History
Dev, Arjun History of the World
Chakrabarti, Ranjan A History of the Modern World
Thomson, David Europe since Napoleon
Barraclough, G. An Introduction to Contemporary

History
Roberts, J.M. Modern History
Palmer, R.R. and Colton, Joel History of the Modern World
Lefebvre, Georges Coming of the French Revolution
Soboul, Albert History of the French Revolution
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Empire
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Extremes
Taylor, A.J.P. The Origins of the Second World
War
Immanuel, Hsu The History of Modern China
Roberts, J.M. The French Revolution
Furet, Francois Interpreting the French Revolution
Ramsay, David The History of the American

Revolution
McPherson, James Battle Cry of Freedom
Mathias, Peter The First Industrial Revolution
Bailyn, Bernard The Ideological Origins of the

American Revolution
Beard, Charles and Mary History of the United States
Carr, E.H. A History of Soviet Russia
Ferro, Marc The Russian Revolution of

February 1917
Ferro, Marc The Great War
Nove, Alec Economic History of the USSR
Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution
Fairbank, John The Great Communist Revolution
Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf
Shirer, William The Rise and Fall of the Third

Reich
Spielvogel, J.J. Hitler and Nazi Germany
Anderson, Perry Lineages of the Absolutist State
Lublinskaya, A.D. French Absolutism: The Crucial

Phase
The Past and Present Society
The Social Foundation of French Absolutism 1610-1630

Author(s): David Parker
Source: Past & Present, No. 53 (Nov., 1971), pp. 67-89
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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THE SOCIAL FOUNDATION OF
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-1630
READERSOF PAST AND PRESENT HAVE BEEN ACQUAINTEDWITH THE
debate between Boris Porchnev and Roland Mousnier about the
characterand function of Absolute Monarchy in seventeenth-century
France.' For the Soviet historian it was the guardian of the feudal
order, the instrument of the exploitation of the mass of peasants and
artisans.2 In opposition to this, Mousnier has argued that the
feudal orderno longer existed, and that the Crown, far from represent-
ing the class interests of the nobility, was increasingly dependent on
middle-class office-holders. Indeed, it was the antagonism between
the Crown and the nobility which, in Mousnier's view, underlay the
widespread revolts of the first half of the century.3 In recent years
he has broadened the original issue with the proposition that French
society in the seventeenth century was not founded on classes at all
but was a Society of Orders, thus developing his earlier conviction
that marxist concepts were largely unhelpful in penetrating the
foundations of Absolutism.4
It was something of a historiographicalirony when the next major
contribution by a Soviet historian produced conclusions, albeit by
a different route, very much closer to those of Mousnier than to those
of Porchnev. This was A. D. Lublinskaya's study, French
Absolutism; the Crucial Phase I620-29.5 The touchstone of
Lublinskaya'sthesis is not, as it was with Porchnev, the feudal basis
of class relations, but the degree to which capitalism had developed.
She proceeds from the premise that France, Holland and England
constituted the "concert of... countries which had firmly taken the
capitalist road of development".6 In France it was the growth of
capitalism which determined the balance of class forces, providing
1J. H. M. Salmon, "Venal Officeand Popular Sedition in France",Past and
Present, no. 37 (July 1967).
2
B. Porchnev, Les soulevements populaires en France de 1623 a 1648 (Paris,
1963), p. 42.
3 R. Mousnier, "Les Mouvements
Populaires et la Societ6 Francaise du XVII
siecle", Revue des Travaux de l'Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques
(I962); "Recherches sur les Soulevements Populaires en France avant la
Fronde", Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, v (I958).
4 R. Mousnier, Les Hierarchies Sociales de
I450 a nos Jours (Paris, I969).
A. D. Lublinskaya, French Absolutism: the Crucial Phase I620-I629
(Cambridge, I968).
6 Ibid., p. 329.
68 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 53
the Crown with a bourgeois ally in its struggle against the greater
nobility and Huguenots. Through its operation of mercantilist
policies, Lublinskaya argues, the government was responding to the
appeals of the bourgeoisie for help in their competition with the
English and Dutch;7 it thus ensured the support of the towns in the
crucial wars of the decade I620-29, which were a
peculiar expression of the development of capitalist relations inside the
country. Without the new phenomena in the economy and in the social
structure, the state authority would not have been able to grow so strong
that the reactionary groups of grandees and of the old nobility of blood were
obliged to fight against it so long and fruitlessly.8
Moreover because France was developing in a bourgeois direction
there "were no insuperable problems in the relationship between
the Huguenot bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy, which was
then in its progressive phase".9
The "progressive"orientationof the Monarchy was threatenednot
simply by the aristocraticopposition centred on the Queen Mother,
Marie de Medicis, the princes of the blood and the great nobles, but
by the existence of a powerful and well organized Huguenot party
which could be utilized by the factious grandees.10 Undoubtedly
the threat of an alliance between the great nobles and the Huguenots
was a real one;ll but when Lublinskaya comes to analyse the
objectives of the Huguenot leaders it is apparent that she overstates
the position. They "sought to obtain from the government" she
writes, "either peacefully or through civil war waged jointly with the
Catholic grandees, new strategic places of importance to them, in
Poitou, in Languedoc and to the north of the Loire". If they had
succeeded in their "striving to extend the Huguenot territory, secure
more fortresses and strengthen the political organisations" of the party
this would have meant that "the frontier of the Huguenot republic
would have become more clearly defined, extending along the Loire
and the line of the Cevennes to the shores of the Mediterranean,and
then along the Pyrenees to the Atlantic and up to the mouth of the
Loire". 1
7 Ibid., p. 145.
8
Ibid., p. 331. 9 Ibid., p. I67. 10Ibid., p. 195.
11 In November 1615 the Prince de Conde, who had refused to accompany
the Court to Bordeaux for the marriage of Louis XIII to the Spanish Infanta,
signed a formal alliance with the Huguenots, and in the following month with
the municipality of La Rochelle. L. F. H. Bouchitt6, Negociations, Lettres et
Pieces relatives a la Conference de Loudun i615 (Paris, 1862), p. 149; L. Arcere,
Histoire de la Ville de La Rochelle et du Pays d'Aunis (La Rochelle, I756-7), i,
pp. I39-I40. These alliances were short-lived as Cond6's main aim was to
negotiate with the Court.
12
Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. I65.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM I6I0-I630 69
Lublinskaya's picture of these grandiose expansionist objectives,

which would have meant the virtual dismemberment of the realm, is
immediately rendered suspect by her unqualified acceptance of the
opinion of those clearly hostile to the Protestant cause, who accused
the Huguenots of intending to set up a republic on the Dutch model.
Such opinion, she argues, correspondedto the "objective significance
of the Huguenot Programme".13 The evidence produced to jusify
this is thin. First Lublinskaya points to the "capture" of the
important town of St. Jean d'Angely14by the Protestant leader, the
duc de Rohan, in I612.15 Yet Rohan was already governor of this
town and although his power had been curtailed by Henri IV it
hardly makes sense to accuse him of capturing it. In fact all the
evidence suggests that the dispute over the town was the result of an
attempt by Marie de Medicis to remove it from Rohan's control.
The incident should properly be seen in the light of her resentment
at the part played by Rohan in defeating the attempts by the
government to manipulate the proceedings at the Huguenot
assembly which had met at Saumur in the summer of I6I .1'1
Government intrigue also extended to La Rochelle where, as at
St. Jean d'Angely, an attempt was made to influence the outcome of
the mayoral elections.17
Lublinskaya can point to no other "success" for the Huguenots
north of the Loire, but she cites their demands for the extension of
their church organization to include the autonomous and Protestant
principality of Bearn as proof of their ambitions in the south.18 But
this is likewise taken out of context. One of the concessions which
Henri IV had made to the Catholics was the re-establishment of the
'3 Ibid., p. I66.
14
Situated only a day's ride from La Rochelle, this town was of considerable
strategic value.
15
16J. A. Clarke, Huguenot Warrior: the Life and Times of Henri de Rohan 1579-
1638 (The Hague, I966), p. 40; the principal source for this episode is
D. Marceau, Discours sur les Differents Arrives a St. Jean D'Angely en l'Annee
1612 (Archives Historiques de Saintonge et l'Aunis, iv, I877); see also
D. Massiou, Histoire Politique, Civile et Religieuse de la Saintonge et l'Aunis
depuis les Premiers Temps Historiques jusqu'a Nos Jours (La Rochelle, 1836;
Paris, 1838), v, pp. 20o1 f.; for the Assembly of Saumur see Henri de Rohan,
Veritable Discours de ce qui s'est passe en l'Assemblee tenue a Saumur par la
Permission du Roi l'an I611 (Amsterdam, I646); Philippe de Duplessis-Mornay,
Memoires et Correspondence(Amsterdam, 1624-52), iii; B. Zeller, La Minorite de
Louis XIII: Marie de Medicis et Sully (Paris, 1892-7), i, pp. 275 ff.
17 Diaire de
Jacques Merlin ou Recueil des Choses les Plus Memorables en Cette
Ville de La Rochelle (Arch. Hist. de Saintonge et 1'Aunis, v, 1878), p. 166;
Diaire de J. Guilleaudeau Sieur de Beaupreau (Arch. Hist. de Saintonge et
l'Aunis, xxxviii, I908), p. 44.
18 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, pp. I71-2.
bishoprics of Oloron and Lescar, and thus he provided them with an

excellent base from which to erode Protestant power in the
principality. In France the Counter-Reformation continued to
make vigorous progress and, by the time of the Estates-General in
1614, the Clergy were demanding nothing less than the complete
restorationof their rights and possessions in Bearn.19 Confidence in
the government's will to resist this demand was shaken by its
arbitrarysuppression of the celebratedarticle, drawnup by the Third
Estate, which asserted that the King had no temporal or spiritual
superior on earth.20 When Cardinal du Perron then declared that
the edicts of toleration were only a provisional concession, it seemed
to the Huguenots that the victory of the apologists of papal
supremacy was complete.21 It was hardly surprising that the
Huguenot assembly, which met at Grenoble in the summer of I615,
raised the demand for the unificationof their churches in France with
those of Bearn.22 By the Treaty of Loudun, signed on 3 May I616,
the government granted this request, but made it absolutely clear
that it did so only because it had resolved to re-incorporate Bearn
into France as soon as possible.23 When the clergy gathered at
Paris for their assembly a year later, they lost no time in reiterating
their demand for the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in
Bearn. Having first obtained the dissolution of the Protestant
assembly which was in session at La Rochelle, the King then issued
the infamous edict for which the clergy had been pressing.24
Lublinskaya's contention, that this was in response to the
consolidation of the ties between the Bdarnais and the French
Huguenots, will not stand close investigation; on the contrary it was
they who were desperately trying to organize their defence in order
to stem the tide of the Counter-Reformationwhich threatened to
engulf them.
As further evidence of the Huguenot "programme", Lublinskaya
" L. Anquez, Histoire des Assemblies Politiques des Reformes de France
(Paris, 1859), pp. 299 ff.; Msgr. B. Jaquelin, "La Sacr6e-Congregation 'de
Propagande Fide' et La France sous le Pontificat de Gregoire XV, Dix-
Septieme Siecle, nos. 84-5 (1969) casts an interesting light on the Counter-
Reformation at this time. For a general account which brings out its vigour
see, V. L. Tapie, La France de Louis XIII et de Richelieu (Paris, 1967).
20 R. Mousnier, L'Assassinat d'Henri IV
(Paris, I964), pp. 242 and 250 ff.
The text of the article is incorporated as an appendix to this work.
21Clarke, Huguenot Warrior, pp.
54-5.
22
E. Benoist, Histoire de I'Edit de Nantes (Delft, 1693-6), ii, p. I74.
23 ... relatives a la Conference de Loudun, p. 764.
Bouchitte, Negociations
24
Bishop of Macon (G. F. Moreau), Collection des Proces-Verbaux des
Assemblies du Clergg de France (Paris, 1867), ii, p. 310; for the Assembly at La
Rochelle see Diaire de Jaques Merlin, pp. 294-5 and 328.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM I610-I630 7I
argues that "in 1620 the Huguenot provinces were grouped in a

number of cercles"which met every three years to draw up cahiers
and to elect deputies to the National Assembly which, in turn, elected
Deputies-General to attend the Court.25 According to Lublinskaya
the establishment of the cercleswas one of the few successes achieved
by the Huguenots after the death of Henri IV; but what she is in fact
describinghere is the system of provincialassemblieswhich was wrung
out of Henri between I60o and I608. The creation of cercleswas
a subsequent development, implemented by the Assembly of Saumur
of 1611 which met in the tense atmosphere engendered by the
enforced resignation of Sully from high office and by government
intimidation and intrigue.26 It was decided that a council should
be elected by each provincial assembly to watch over its affairs;in the
event of a serious threat to the churches within its jurisdiction a
council could request an assembleede cercle which would consist of
delegates from the councils (not the assemblies) of at least three
adjacent provinces.27 As far as the Huguenots were concerned, the
provision for the cercleswas a defensive measure, designed to enable
them to react speedily to any threat. This is borne out by the sparing
manner in which they were used. Assembliesde cercle were sum-
moned only three times in all: in 1612, to meet the threat to St. Jean
d'Angely;28in November I6I6, to deal with the threat to La Rochelle
from 7,000 troops with which the powerful duc d'Epernon had
flooded the surrounding region;29 and in November 1618, to meet the
threat to Bearn.30
When Lublinskaya's evidence for her assessment of the Huguenot
"programme" is scrutinized, what emerges is not a grandiose and
reactionaryscheme for the dismembermentof France, but a desperate
attempt to hold on to what had already been secured. Confronted
by the militant Counter-Reformation and a government which
apparentlycared little for the rights accorded by the Edict of Nantes,
the Huguenots had little alternative but to prepare to resist.
* * * *
25 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. I6I.

.6 J. Faurey, La Monarchie Franfaise et le Protestantisme Franfais (Paris,
I923), pp. I04 ff.
27 "Rglement General, dresse en l'Assemblee Gen6rale des Eglises
Reformees de France tenue A Saumur en l'an mil six cents onze par Permission
du Roi", in Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes ii, App. 5.
28Diaire de
29
Jaques Merlin, p. I74.
Ibid., pp. 294-5.
30
C. Drion, Histoire Chronologique de l'Eglise Protestante de France jusqu'a
la Revolution (Paris, I855), i, p. 297.
In the wars which inevitably followed the formal restorationof the

Catholic Church in Bearn, the government was ultimately
victorious. Lublinskaya explains this by reference to the royalism
of the towns which in 1620, when it seemed that the Huguenots might
lend support to the dissident faction around the Queen Mother,
"took decisive steps". They "hit out at the nobles and, despite the
noble garrisons occupying their citadels, opened their gates to the
small royal army". Thus, "the towns disruptedthese plans for a long-
drawn-outdefence of Normandy", enablingthe royal armyto advance
to Ponts-de-Ce before the rebels had time to prepareadequatelytheir
defence.31 At this point, confronted by the King in person, the
grandees thought discretion the better part of valour and decided to
salvage what they could from the situation. According to
Lublinskayathe rebels were thus deprived of noble leadershipand the
fate of Bearn was sealed.32 In view of the fact that it was to take
another nine years to defeat the Huguenots, the enormous
significance attached to the events at Ponts-de-Ce seems unjustified.
Up to this point, the royal army had not entered the Huguenot
provinces of the south and west, and their forces had not been
involved.33 In the course of the nine years that followed there were
engagements of far greater moment than the indecisive skirmishes
which characterizedevents north of the Loire: for instance, the rout
of the Huguenot forces under Soubise in April 1622 which effectively
destroyed their control of Poitou and its precious resources;34 or
the naval victory over the Rochelais fleet in September 1625, without
which the final triumph could not have been assured.35 But what
really exposes the dubious nature of Lublinskaya's argument is the
fact that (despite the events in Normandy) it was the towns that put
up the greatest resistance. If the royal army made easy progress as

31
a3
Ibid., p. I72.
33The only tangible link between the grandees and the Huguenots was
provided by Rohan who had sworn an oath of fealty to the Queen Mother:
J. Russell Major, "The Crown and the Aristocracy in Renaissance France",
Amer. Hist. Rev., lxix (I964), p. 636.
34 Cimber et
Danjou, Archives Curieuses de l'Histoire de France depuis Louis
XI Jusqu'a Louis XVIII (Paris, I834-40), 2nd ser. ii, p. 288; F. de Bassom-
pierre, Journal de ma Vie (Paris, I870-77), iii, pp. 20 if.; Bibliotheque
Municipale de La Rochelle (hereafter cited as B.M.L.R.), MS. 58, fo. I80.
Apart from Bassompierre who exaggerates wildly, the sources agree that the
Huguenots lost two to three thousand in battle, seven hundred were taken
prisoner, and hundreds more died as they fled, either in the sea or at the hands of
embittered peasants.
35G. Lacour-Cayet, La Marine Militaire de la France sous les Regnes de Louis
XIII et Louis XIV (Paris, I9I1), i, pp. 69 if.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 16I0-I630 73
far as Ponts-de-Ce, it was then obliged to spend a month to achieve
the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely.36 Montauban withstood a siege
of three months and the attackingforces finally retreatedin disarray.37
Events followed a similar pattern at Montpellier in the following year,
when the Pastors refused to contemplate peace terms despite angry
admonitions from Rohan.38 As for La Rochelle, even after its total
isolation a siege of over fourteen months duration was necessary to
enforce its capitulation in November 1628.
Rather than the royalism of the towns it was the defection of the
nobility that caused the defeat of the Huguenots. At the outset of
the wars of religion a very substantial proportion of the nobility had
been protestant and these included some of the most illustrious and
powerful - Conde, Coligny, Duplessis-Mornay, d'Aubigne, La
Tremouille and so on.39 In stark contrast, by 1621 it was virtually
impossible to find anyone willing to accept command of the eight
military departments established by the Huguenot assembly at La
Rochelle; some, like Gaspard de Coligny, grandson of the great
Admiral, simply defected; some, like the duc de La Force, were
bought off with military office; others, like the duc de Bouillon,
retired from the fray.40 Of the eight generals appointed by the
Assembly, only Rohan and his brother Soubise were more than paper
tigers. In the wake of the greater nobility followed lesser men.
When Louis marched on the south-west in I62I, place after place
yielded by the "cowardiceand defection of their governors"as Rohan
grimly wrote.41 By the following year he felt he had no alternative
but to urge the assembly at La Rochelle to sue for peace as "it was
totally destitute of the assistance of all the great nobles".42
It is impossible to reconcile Lublinskaya's insistence on the
reactionarypretensions of the nobility with their wholesale defection
at precisely that moment when they were offered command of the
most complete political and military organization that had yet been
established. Her treatment of Rohan, in particular, reveals the
36Cimber et
Danjou, Archives Curieuses,2nd ser., ii, p. 241 ff.; Clarke,
Huguenot
37
Warrior,p. 82.
Ibid., p. 87.
:18Cimber et Danjou, ArchivesCurieuses,2nd ser., ii, pp. 286 ff.
38 R. N. Kingdon, Genevaand the Comingof the Warsof Religionin France
(Geneva, I956), p. 6. The author'sestimate is that "half the high born" were
Protestant,a rather imprecise formulation,which however is not a misleading
picture of the success of the Reformationamong the nobility.
40 Clarke,
HuguenotWarrior,pp. 79-80 and 99; Actesde l'AssembleeGenerale
des Eglises Reformdesde France 1620-22, ed. A. de Barthelemy (Archives
Historiques de Poitou, v, 1876), p. xlvi.
41 Henri de Rohan, Memoires (Amsterdam, I646), p. i 8.
4" Diaire de J. Guilleaudeau, p. 218.
extent to which she has oversimplified the highly ambivalent

position of the nobility. She claims that, in the period 1620-22,
Rohan was mainly concerned "to decide all questions himself, to
conduct the war at his own discretion, disposing of financialresources,
putting forward conditions for peace negotiations, and so forth".43
The documents relating to the Assembly of La Rochelle reveal quite
another picture.44 At the outset Rohan offered his support to the
Assembly with immense misgivings and only under great pressure.45
Throughout 1621 and 1622 he continued to urge this body to make
a settlement with the King.46 It is mistaken to suggest that, in
January 1622, he ignored the Assembly's instructions to begin peace
negotiations; only illness delayed the start of discussions and terms
were, in fact, agreed in April only to be cast aside by the King.47
Eventually, in September the Assembly, relinquishing its own right
of ratification,granted Rohan the absolute powers to conclude peace
for which he had been pressing.48
The extent to which Lublinskaya has misjudged Rohan reflects
the extent to which she has oversimplifiedthe general situation. The
nobility were not as uniformly reactionary, nor as consistently
opposed to the Crown, as is suggested. When the point came at
which a choice had to be made between leading a highly organized
rebellion or loyalty, the nobility opted for loyalty. This was partly
because service in the royal cause offered increasing possibilities for
militaryand financialadvancement:royal agents conducted a vigorous
campaign among the Protestant nobility, encouraging them with
offers of militaryposts of all types, and armed with considerablesums
of money for the purchase of conversions.49 While the ascendancy
43 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. 202.

44These are the two volumes edited by A. de Barthelemy: Actes de
l'Assemblie Generale des Eglises Reformdes de France I620-22, and Documents
Relatifs a I'Assembleede La Rochelle (Archives Historiques de Poitou, v and viii,
1876 and I879 respectively). Lublinskaya makes no reference to these works
and the material from which she paints her picture of Rohan is extremely thin.
His most recent biographer, J. A. Clarke, op. cit., arrives at similar conclusions
to mine although he does not refer to Barthelemy's volumes.
46 See the letter from de Tabariere, governor of Fontenay, to Duplessis-
Mornay, 6 March 1621, in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire du Protestantisme
Fran;ais, xxiv (I875), p. 552, in which he describes the meeting between
representatives of the Assembly and Rohan, Soubise and La Tremouille.
46 Duplessis-Mornay, Memoires et Correspondance, iv, p. 559; Clarke,
Huguenot Warrior, pp. 75 ff.
47Ibid., p. 97.
48 Documents Relatifs c l'Assemblee de La Rochelle, pp. 363-4.
49 Evidence of this comes from very diverse sources but see, for instance,
L. Battifol "Louis XIII et la Liberte de Conscience" Revue de Paris (Paris,
I907), p. 560, for the cost of conversions among the nobility of the Cevennes.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM I6I0-I630 75
of Richelieu in the government of the realm had calamitous results

for those nobles who persisted in their opposition, he was careful to
reward those who served the Crown well; and, for some, this period
markedthe beginning of illustrious careersin the royal service. One
of the best examples is provided by Thoiras who, after distinguishing
himself at the siege of Montauban, became Marechal de Camp, then
governor of Aunis and the island of Re. His heroic defence of this
island against the duke of Buckinghambrought him a marshalshipof
France and, finally, the position of Lieutenant General in the royal
army in Italy together with the governorshipof Auvergne.50 Already
Richelieu appreciatedthe necessity of giving the nobility the "means
to subsist with dignity", to which he later devoted a chapter of his
TestamentPolitique.6S
The offers of material rewards were accompanied by an intense
ideological barrage, designed to sap the morale of the Huguenots.
Royal pamphleteers insisted that the King was not conducting a war
of religion, but a war against the enemies of the State;52 at every
possible instance the Edict of Nantes was confirmed and liberty of
conscience assured.53 The enemy was declared not to be the
Huguenots as such, but those who wished to establish a republic
within the realm. When the Assembly of La Rochelle created the
eight departments in I62I, government propagandistswere given all
the scope necessaryto make sharp and effective, if erroneous,compari-
sons with the United Provinces.54 Preservation of the social order,
they thundered, depended on complete obedience to the King; the
Monarch was at once the representativeof God, the embodiment of
the hierarchical and ordered society and the incarnation of State
power to whom unquestioning obedience was due. His armiesfought
for Christ and were possessed with Roman discipline and order.
These argumentsrested on a powerful blend of medieval and modern,
50 M.
Baudier, Histoire du Mareschal Thoiras (Paris, I644), pp. 37, 54, 2II;
F. Duval, Marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil, Mlmoires, ed. Michaud et Poujalat
(Paris, I836), p. 162.
1 Armand Jean Duplessis, Duc de Richelieu, Testament Politique, ed.
L. Andr6 (Paris, 1947), p. 2I8.
52 See, for
example, N. Pasquier, Lettres Contenant Divers Discours des
Affaires Arrivees en France sous les Regnes de Henri le Grand et Louis XIII, in
E. Pasquier, Oeuvres (Amsterdam, 1723), ii, p. 1367; E. Thuau, Raison d'Etat
et Pensee Politique a l'Epoque de Richelieu (Paris, 1966), p. 207.
53 This was done by Marie de Medicis on her assumption of power and by
Louis XIII at the opening of the Estates General in I6I4; in 1621 and 1625
those that rebelled were condemned while those that remained loyal were
assured of the protection of the Edict of Nantes.
64 Reglement Appelle les Lois Fondamentales de la Republique des Rebelles
Reformees (Mercure Francais, vii, 1621).
religious and secular, justifications of the monarchical regime; they

were reinforced by a spate of popular pamphlets extolling the
invincible, but pious, just and clement character of Louis XIII
himself.55
Such an ideological campaign exposed the Huguenot nobility to
their own inner convictions. Naturally aristocratic, they were
fearful of association with anything that smacked of republicanism
and their opposition to the Crown operatedwithin well-defined limits.
The enormously powerful protestant governor of Dauphine, the duc
de Lesdiguieres, expressed their position well when he told the
Assembly of Grenoble in 1615 that "we must measure ourselves by
what we can do, not by what we would like to do; by what is possible
not by what is due to us".56 It is not surprising that in 1620, when
confronted with an Assembly denounced as illegal and subversive,
and under enormous pressure from the King, Lesdiguieres
abandoned his co-religionists. His pleas to the Assembly to
moderate its position reveal how remarkably effective the royalist
propaganda was. On one occasion he declared that the seal which
the Assembly used for its documents was a public declaration of
disobedience and marked an attempt to "establish a new Holland in
5 Thuau,
op. cit., has shown how the doctrine of "Reason of State" developed
at this time. However, he seems to underestimate the extent to which
traditional notions of a society of Orders, which was part of the Divine Order,
bound together by religion and embodied in the Monarchy, continued to affect
official thinking. See, for instance, the Royal Declaration of i6 February 1627,
Pour le Retablissment de tous les Ordres de Son Royaume, et Soulagement de son
Peuple (Bibl. Nat. F46958/i6) with its unmistakably traditional view. Also,
Les Voeux de la France pour la Prospdrite du Roi et Pour l'Heureux Progres de
Ses Armes, contre les Ennemies de la Religion et de l'Etat (Paris, 1628: Bibl. Nat.,
8°Lb36 2625), p. 14. The growing admiration for the military discipline and
organization of the Romans also tended to fuse with medieval notions of
hierarchy and order without necessarily destroying them. This process is
shown in a remarkable tract written shortly after the fall of La Rochelle:
Discours d'Etat sur les plus Importants Succes des Affaires Jusqu'a la Prise de La
Rochelle envoye ai un Grand (Paris, 1629: Bibl. Nat., 8°Lb36 2672), pp. 21-2.
Thuau also overestimates the extent to which political thought was secularized.
Paradoxically, ideas of "Reason of State" went hand in hand with the exaltation
of the religious character of Monarchy. In the same breath, propagandists
talked about the necessity of maintaining the Edict of Nantes and that of
restoring religious conformity. To the latter end the government also took
active steps. See P. Jeannin, Memoires et Negociations, ed. Michaud et
Poujalat (Paris, 1836), p. 697; Battifol, "Louis XIII et la Liberte de
Conscience". In the long run "Reason of State" undermined, both
theoretically and in practice, the medieval community of Orders, but it was
initially developed with precisely the opposite intention. "Reason of State"
appears, until at least 1630, to be the Reason of the Monarchical and Catholic
State.
56Avis Donne par M. le Mardchal de Lesdiguieres a l'assemblee de Grenoble
(1615: Brit. Mus. 1193 h 10.25).
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-I630 77
France". 7 "The only hope and consolation" he offered the

Assembly when he parted company with it was that "his Majesty
has made it clearly known that he does not wish to touch our
consciences any more than the pupil of his eye and that he wishes to
allow us to live freely in our faith under the protection of the Edict of
Nantes . ..58 Notwithstanding Louis's personal assurances to
him, Lesdiguieres realized what was expected, and on 26 July 1622
"in the great church at Grenoble with the greatest possible
ceremony and extraordinaryexpressions of joy" he was received into
the Catholic faith.59
Even those who did not renounce their faith could find no effective
answer to the claims of the royalist propogandists, not even Philippe
de Duplessis-Mornay, who was almost certainly the author of that
most famous of justifications of the right of resistance, the
Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. His earlier convictions gave way to
a deep royalism, buttressed by notions of passive obedience.
Protestants, he declared, did not "scruple in their obedience to their
Kings. Of whatever religion they are, they believe them to be given
by God and sacred".60 Such views reflected, in part, the highly
principled basis of his religious convictions, but they also stemmed
from the contradiction inherent in the position of the Protestant
nobility. Duplessis unwittingly illuminated this contradiction when
he observed that it was necessary for the nobility to direct the
Huguenot movement, "because the Great have great responsi-
bilities; those who are part of the State take care of the State".61
When the H-uguenotparty was declared to be incompatible with the
purposes of State, those who were its natural "guardians" were
compelled to make a choice. Such was the strength of Duplessis's
convictions and so great his inner conflict that he was unable to
choose; he retreated into an ineffective idealism which left him quite
unable to resist the shabby manoeuvre by which the King evicted
him from his castle at Saumur in May I62I.62 Lublinskaya, by
insisting on the hostility of Duplessis to the Crown, misses the real
significance of this episode and, once again, exposes the weakness of
her general thesis.63 Undoubtedly, there were nobles who sought
'7Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Fran;ais, i (I852),
346.
p. 68
F. de Bonne, duc de Lesdiguieres, Actes et Correspondance,ed. C. Douglas
and J. Roman (Grenoble, I878-84), ii, p. 322.
59
Fontenay-Mareuil, Memoires, p. I68.
Duplessis-Mornay, Memoires et Correspondance, iii, p. 252.
1Ibid., iii, pp. 277-8.
s2 Ibid., iv, pp. 651 if.; Clarke, Huguenot Warrior, p. 8I.
'3 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. I86.
to use the Huguenot organizationfor their own profit; undoubtedly,

there existed tensions between the nobility and the Crown. But as
always, the relationship between the two was complex and contradic-
tory because while the nobility remained the biggest, if not the only,
political threat to the Crown, they also recognized their dependence
on the monarchy for the conservation of their privileged position in
the social hierarchy. In a period of vigorous political, military and
ideological offensive by the Crown, the class instincts and values of
the nobles left them ill-equipped to resist. The defection of the
Huguenot leaders was a two-sided process with a positive as well
as a negative aspect: the strengthening of the traditional bonds,
particularly military and ideological, which existed between the
Crown and nobility. Whatever strains these bonds were subse-
sequently subject to, their temporaryrenewal in the early decades of
the seventeenth century does much to explain the revival of the
Crown's authority.
* * * *
For Lublinskayathe explanationof the Crown's success lies in the

support it won from the towns. At the heart of her thesis is the idea
that the progress of capitalism made possible an alliance between
the bourgeoisie and the monarchy. Yet this is established by
inference only. According to Lublinskaya, Montchretien's cele-
brated treatise on political economy which he dedicated to the Regent
in I6I564 expressed the "aspirations and sentiments of the
commercial and industrial bourgeoisie"; it was a "bourgeois variant
of mercantilism".65 On the basis of similarities between Mont-
chretien's ideas and government policies, she concludes that it was
endeavouringto meet the wishes of the bourgeoisie. But there is no
analysis of government policies as they affected the bourgeoisie, nor
a satisfactoryinvestigation of the social and economic life of a single
town.
It is, of course, undeniable that the development of mercantilist
ideas was a measure of the growing importance of the bourgeoisie in
European society; in particularthese ideas reveal the impact of the
Dutch and English commercial classes. Montchretien fumed at the
way in which France was bled dry by its stronger rivals; his country
should retaliate by imposing the sort of restrictions on foreigners in
'4 A. D. Montchretien, L'Economie Politique Patronale. Traitt de l'Economie
Politique, ed. T. Funck-Brentano (Paris, I889).
*5Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, pp. I34-5.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-1630 79
France that Frenchmen encountered abroad and by establishing
trading companies as the Dutch had done.66 To say, however, that
Montchretien could "perceive the development of a bourgeois
economy in terms of autonomous movement", and that his very
practical proposals amounted to a wish to "see established those
conditions for the completely unhindered development of his class
which could only appear after a bourgeois revolution", is to read
something into his work which is not there. Lublinskayareveals the
weakness of her own argument when she observes that it is difficult
to explain why Montchretien said nothing about the political and
social obstacles to the development of the bourgeoisie.67 For this is
to pose a non-problem; far from seeing the existing regime as an
obstacle to the implementation of his ideas, Montchretien demanded
the intervention of the State in the economic life of the realm.
Recognizing the possibility of a conflict of interests,68 he declared
quite explicitly that the self-interest of merchants should not
be allowed to prejudice that of the State and their activities should
be regulated so that "no-one strayedbeyond the limits of the rights
given them by law".69 Montchretien was as much concerned
for the glory and enrichment of the State as he was for the
profit of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, as Lublinskaya concedes,
his proposals for tax reform, which did have a "purely bourgeois"
ring about them, never got off the ground because he demanded "more
than a feudal-absolutist France could in general give".70 This is to
recognize correctly that government policy was determined by its
own interests rather than those of the bourgeoisie, who were not
nearly so appreciativeof its efforts as Lublinskaya maintains. Even
protectionist measures designed to shield France from foreign compe-
tition provoked opposition from sections of the merchant com-
munity,71while the regulatory aspects of state policy - gild control,
trading monopolies - were often strenuously resisted.72 The
attitude of the bourgeoisie to mercantilist policies was certainly more
ambivalent and often more hostile than is suggested by Lublinskaya.
Furthermore, it would be a mistake to ascribe this hostility to the
growth of a capitalist class which was conscious of its own class
66
MontchrEtien, L'Economie Politique ... , pp. I50-2, I8I-2, I85, I94, 245-6,
256 ff.
' Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, pp. I34-5.
s Montchretien, L'Economie Politique. .., p. 30.
Ibid., p. I4I1.
70
Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. 135.
1 C. W. Cole, Colbert and a
Century of French Mercantilism (Hamden, I964),
i, p. 77.
72
Ibid., i, pp. 65, I63, I68-9.
interests. Montchr6tien's own attitudes show how far the French

bourgeoisie were from a really clear expression of their class interests
vis-a-vis the State; and the essence of his message was that the
bourgeoisie was so weak, and in such disarray,that State intervention
was imperative. Only the State had the power to mobilize the
nation's resources to meet the challenge of the Dutch and English.
But, precisely because of its relative backwardness,large sections of
the bourgeoisie were just not interested in long-term investment or
involvement in such ventures as trading companies or overseas settle-
ment. They showed little inclination to move beyond the
traditional limits of their economic activity, and even more they
resented government compulsion to make them do so.73
Above all this was true of the immensely rich, virtuallyindependent,
and impregnableHuguenot communes of the south and west. They
presented incipient absolutism with one of its biggest problems. By
far the most wealthy and powerful of the communes was La Rochelle.
From the acquisition of its first known charter in II99, it had
accumulated an array of important privileges.74 Municipal self-
government was crowned by exemption from a royal garrison and
governor; the mayor became the supreme authorityunder the King.75
Complete control of its own finances was enhanced by virtually total
exemption from royal taxes.76 Such concessions, once willingly
granted, became an impediment to royal policy as, under the pressure
of economic and military necessity, the Crown strove to maximize its
revenues. In 1542 Franqois I tried to extend the gabelle to the
western provinces which contained the most extensive salt marshes
in the realm; the entire region, accustomed to exemption from nearly
all taxes on salt production and trade, rose in revolt. The King
went to La Rochelle and suppressed the mayoralty, but it was later
restored by Henri II.77 Henceforth any attempt to undermine
the economic integrity of La Rochelle was successfully resisted.
Taxes imposed elsewhere, including the famous pancartedesigned to
raise un sol pour livre on every transaction, could never be levied at
3 H. P. Biggar, Early Trading Companies of New France (University of
Toronto Studies, I90I), pp. 5I-2.
74
Many of the principal privileges were bestowed on the Rochelais when they
helped expel the English in I37I.
75E. Trocm6, "Du Gouverneur a l'Intendant: l'Autonomie Rochelaise de
Charles IV a Louis XIII", Receuil de Travaux Offerts a M. Clovis Brunel
(Paris, I955), ii, p. 618.
76 For a comprehensive description of the Rochelais financial and economic
structure see, E. Trocm6 et M. Delafosse, Le CommerceRochelais de la Fin du
XV siecle au debut du XVII (Paris, 1952).
77 Cimber et Danjou, Archives Curieuses, 2nd ser., iii, pp. 35-64.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-1630 gI
La Rochelle, which clung determinedly to its ancient privileges. It

was a convenient back door for those merchantswho sought to escape
payment of taxes in the neighbouring provinces; continuing
government legislation to check this irritating evasion testified to its
own lack of effect.78
If there was one sphere more than any other in which Rochelais
independence frustratedgovernment plans it was in that of maritime
and colonial affairs. They had an old traditionof fearlessseafaring-
both piratical and peaceful - and, by 1622, could boast an
ocean-going fleet of one hundred and fifty vessels.79 Together with
merchants from other ports the Rochelais opposed the establishment
of monopoly companies for trade and colonization in Canada.80
When legal action failed they managed to obtain an authorizationto
trade with Canada from the Prince de Conde, who was, for a short
time, viceroy of the colony.81 They installed an agent to watch
over their affairsin Canada,and Rochelaisships were regularlysighted
in the St. Lawrence, infringing the monopoly of the officialcompanies
until I626.82
The French Crown was powerless to stop them. It could not
police its own coasts let alone those of Canada. At the beginning of
the century maritime administrationwas shared by four admiralties.
Although the Admiral of France was nominally the highest authority,
he effectively controlled only the coasts of Normandy and Picardy,
while the other admirals clung determinedly to their rights and
revenues.83 In addition there were vast numbers of smaller
"admiralties" which managed to exert some authority and distrain
revenues. A little progress in centralizing maritime administration
was made by I6I7,84 but it was abundantly clear that any real reform
was bound to founder against the force majeurof the Rochelais. In
times of crisis they established their own admiralty, which simply
abrogatedthe right to levy taxes, to commandeermerchantvessels and
authority over prizes.85 On one occasion four Rochelais ships
78 For example, Declaration du Roi pour la Levee des Droits de Traite et Imposi-
tion Foraine ... le 30 juin 1621 (Cognac, 1622).
79 Trocme et Delafosse, Le Commerce Rochelais. .., p. Io3.
80 Biggar, Early Trading Companies..., pp. 42-3.
81
Ibid., p. 52. This was a by-product of the brief alliance between La
Rochelle and Conde in December I615.
82
Ibid., p. 96. Trocme et Delafosse, Le Commerce Rochelais . . , p. 6I.
83M. Gouron, L'Amiraute de Guienne depuis le Premier Amiral Jusqu'i la
Revolution (Paris, I938), p. 66.
84 R. La
Bruyere, La Marine de Richelieu (Paris, I958), p. 67.
85Arcere, Histoire de la Ville de La Rochelle..., ii, pp. 139-40, I55;
Documents Relatifs lI'Assembleede La Rochelle, pp. 271 if.
82 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER
53
blockadedthe mouth of the Gironde preventing the departureof one
hundred and fifty merchant vessels while the royal agent desperately
searched to scrape a fleet together.86 Their command of the sea
would have lasted longer had not the Dutch and English been so
foolish as to provide the ships which finally destroyed the Rochelais
fleet in September 1625.87
Centralizationof maritimeadministrationwas completed in October
1626 when Richelieu himself became Grand-Maitreet Superintendant
de la Navigation et Commercede France. Next, an Assembly of
Notables was convened in order to gather support from representa-
tives of the ruling class - the prelates, the great nobles, the principal
magistrates- for the government'splans.88 The proposalsthat were
presented for approvalcovered everythingfrom the redemption of the
alienated royal domaines, to the reduction of expenditure on useless
forts. Most significant, however, was the emphasis on mercantile
and naval questions. France's inferiority in these fields was
hammered home: the lack of a navy, the dependence on foreign
merchants, all those things highlighted by Montchretien twelve years
earlier. Richelieu addressed the assembly and, with the help of a
multitude of statistics, painted a graphicpicture of the excessive duties
French merchandisewas subject to abroad,and the comparativelylow
tariffs imposed on imports to France. There was some disagreement
about the fiscal weapons that should be used to remedy this; but
Richelieu's proposals for the establishment of trading companies and
an Atlantic fleet of forty-five vessels was greeted with enthusiasm.89
The Assembly concluded by thanking the King for his proposals
and urged the full implementation of the policies necessary for the
"maintenance of authority over his subjects and the reputation and
glory of the French name".90
The linking of internal authority with foreign reputation was
extremely significant. Under the impact of the particularconjunc-
ture of internal and external developments which confronted the
French government, an economic policy had crystallized which
86
J. de la Graviere, Les Origines de la Marine Franfaise (Paris, I89I), p. 56.
87 pp. 69 if. P. P. de
Lacour-Gayet, La Marine Militaire de France...,
Beaulieu-Persac, Memoires (Paris, I913), p. I40.
88 J. Petit, L'Assemblee de Notables de I626-7 (Paris, I937). Unfortunately
this work is exceedingly difficult to obtain but the principal source, P. Ardier,
L'Assemblee de Notables tenue a Paris en I616 et 1627 et les Resolutions Prises sur
Plusieurs Questions (Paris, 1652), is easier to come by. Petit does not share
Lublinskaya's opinion that the Assembly showed little support for the
government's
89
plans.
Petit, cit., p. 18I.
90C. W. op.Cole, Mercantilist Doctrines before Colbert (New York, I93I), p. I84.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-1630 83
offered an overall solution to its problems and a perspective for the

future. "On the power of the seas" declared the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, "depends the lowering of the pride of England, Holland,
Spain... and the ruin of the Huguenots".91 La Rochelle was now
the focal point of a struggle of much wider dimensions than that of
a conflict between the King and a rebellious commune: it had also
become a catalyst in the development of notions of political economy
that were to dominate official views until the end of the century.
Moreover, this policy was not worked out in conjunction with the
bourgeoisie but with a handful of representatives of the great
nobility, upper clergy and leading magistrates. Its implementation
depended not on an alliance between the Crown and bourgeoisie,
but on the subordination of the towns to the fiscal needs
of the government. La Rochelle was the first major victim of
government policy. After its capitulation taxes, which it had so
long and successfully resisted, were imposed and the revenue from
shipping was appropriatedto the office of Grand-Maitrewhich was
held by Richelieu.92 In 1638 further taxes were introduced on a
whole range of commodities, expressly to defray war expenditure.93
But it was access to the salt marshesof the region that the government
really coveted. Offices connected with the salt trade were created
and imposed on La Rochelle and the neighbouring towns. La
Rochelle became the home of a new court with a vast arrayof officers
to deal with the litigation arising out of salt production.94 As the
number of officers multiplied, so taxation increased. Between
1633 and 1655 the Droit de Brouagepracticallydoubled. Moreover,
the principal beneficiaries were the King, Mazarin, Richelieu's
descendants and the duc d'Orleans - hardly evidence of an
alliance between the Crown and the bourgeoisie.95 On the
contrary, what is revealed is the exploitation of an important urban
centre by the feudal State. The extent to which this process was
carriedbecame apparentin 1695 when the government re-established
the mayoraltyof La Rochelle in order to sell the office for an exorbi-
'9 F. C. Palm, "The Economic Policies of Richelieu", University of Illinois

Studies in the Social Sciences (I920), p. 97.
92
"Declaration du Roi Sur La Reduction de la Ville de La Rochelle en son
Obeissance Contenant l'Ordre et Police que S. M. veut y Etre Etabli", article
no. I4: Cimber et Danjou, 2nd ser., iii, p. I2I.
93Declaration of I638: Bibl. Nat., F236II (270).
94 Edit Portant Creation d'une Cour Souveraine Des Salines de Ponant en la
Ville de La Rochelle (1639: Bibl. Nat., F236II (375)).
95 M. Delafosse et C. Laveau, Le Commerce du Sel de Brouage aux XVII et
XVIII sikcles (Paris, 1960), p. 65.
tant sum.96 As Nora Temple has shown, this ignominious fate was
similar to that suffered by many towns which had once boasted
municipal independence.97
It is clear that once the nobility had abandoned the Huguenot
cause the towns, though they put up a strenuous resistance, were not
able, in the long run, to withstand the royal onslaught. The
facility with which it was possible to isolate the towns, shows the
exten: to which they remained bourgeois enclaves in the feudal
structure and illuminates the still embryonic and unintegratedform of
the capitalist class.98 A brief analysis of the economy of La Rochelle
is sufficient to demonstrate the fact that, despite its importance, it
was rooted in feudal soil and medieval in character.
La Rochelle's prosperity had been founded on the wine and salt
trades and, despite a relative decline in their value, this continued to
be the case. No fundamental changes had occurred in the role of
those Rochelais who were involved in wine or salt production.
Mostly, the vineyards and salt pans were leased out for a share of the
produce. In the case of the former the proprietor supervised the
harvest himself and had a direct interest in the sale of the wine. Salt
production was the concern of the peasant family to whom the pans
were leased. In both cases the mode of production remained
traditional and the relationship of the proprietor to his tenants was
a personal one, more that of the feudal seigneur than the capitalist
entrepreneur; he was middleman as well as producer and the
vineyard proprietor would probably have a shop where he sold wine
retail and made his own barrels.99 Analysis of the other commercial
activities of the Rochelais confirms the impression that their primary
function was to act as middlemen. Four-fifths of them were
boutiquiersinvolved in retail selling on the local market and it is
significantthat no distinction was made between big tradersand small
retailers:all were embracedwithin the generic term marchand.100
96J. B. E. Jourdan, EphemieridesHistoriques de La Rochelle (La Rochelle,
I86I-7I), p. 138.
97N. Temple, "French Towns During the Ancien Regime", History, li,
(I966).
9 Far from the towns sharing a sense of identity, there was often deep
antagonism. Ports like Brouage, and even Bordeaux, which directly felt the
effects of Rochelais wealth and insolence were traditionally hostile to the
Huguenot Commune. Moreover a situation in which towns were "Protestant"
or "Catholic" did not facilitate the growth of an integrated bourgeoisie. In
addition, French ports often had closer commercial ties with other countries
than with the inland regions of France.
99E. Trocme, "La Rochelle de I560 a I628, Tableau d'une Societe Reformee
au Temps des Guerres de Religion" (Universite de Strasbourg, thesis for the
Doctorat en Theologie, I950), p. III.
100 Ibid., p. 31. As in general the term negociant was not incorporated into
the local vocabulary until mid-century.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 1610-1630
Economic status was achieved by entering the ranksof the bourgeois

for which the essential qualificationwas possession of a house valued
at 500 livres.101 Only the bourgeoiswere permitted to engage in
commerce and their position was protected by numerous regulations
to limit the freedom of merchantsfrom outside. Further regulations,
often prescribing a pattern for the smallest operation, were designed
to prevent members of the bourgeoisgaining an unfair advantageover
their fellows.102 In addition, through the strenuous efforts of the
Corpsde Ville, the gild basis of the municipalregine was strengthened,
so that, between I580 and I60o, the number of gilds rose from twelve
to twenty.103 Everything bears out the conclusion that "the
regulation of commerce at La Rochelle was still that of the middle
ages, aimed above all at preserving the commercial monopoly of the
bourgeois and maintaining as great an equality amongst them as
was possible".104
Industry at La Rochelle remained of very secondary importance.
It was almost entirely artisanalin character,based on a large number
of small production units, each consisting of a master and two or three
apprentices.105 Even shipbuilding was firmly rooted in this
system which meant that vessels in excess of ten tons were invariably
imported from the Dutch Republic.106 The major exception to this
mode of production was in sugar refining, but it was significant that
in the first place this industry was dominated by the Dutch, and
secondly that a number of early attempts at refining failed because of
the large capital investment that it demanded. Refiners were
obliged to buy their raw sugar on credit and reimbursethe merchants
from whom they bought as production got under way.107 While
this was indeed an industry of a new type, its growth was stunted
until the entrepreneurswere able to free themselves from the grip of
the merchants.
The prosperity of La Rochelle depended not on innovation, nor
on the development of new modes of production, but on the excep-
tionally privileged position which it had secured within the traditional
social structure. Its prime interest was in the maintenance of its
commercial monopoly and the preservation of favourable terms of
10 Ibid., p. 28.
102
Ibid., p. 29.
103 Ibid., p. 37.
0" Ibid., p. 31.
105 Ibid., p. I09.
106 Trocme et Dalafosse, Le Commerce Rochelais . . ., p. I6.
107
Ibid., p. 126.
trade.108 This determined the characterof the municipal oligarchy,

which was conservative and royalist. When it wished to justify its
precious privileges, to what did it refer but to the well-guarded
municipal archives, crammed with records of royal concessions going
back over four hundred years. When the mayor wished to oppose
those who denied his authority, he did it in the name of the King.109
The Corpsde Ville felt itself to be very much part of the traditional
hierarchy and its most senior members, the twenty-four e'chevins,
had long been granted hereditarynobility.110 Access to this body
became impossible without considerable amounts of ready cash.111
At the same time a number of leading citizens were officersin the royal
court, the Siege Presidial; their loyalties were often painfully divided
and many hesitated to carry out orders which brought them into
conflict with their fellow citizens. But by 1627 few were prepared
to defy the King by remaining within the rebellious town.112
The conservatism of the ruling elite was reinforced by fears of
popular disturbance which its own monopoly of power generated.
In I6I4, a revolt of the lesser bourgeois succeeded in imposing a
modified constitution on the Corpsde Villeby which they obtainedthe
right for their representatives to attend council meetings, a proper
system of elections when vacancies occurred and a very real measure
of control over the fortifications, artillery and militia.ll3 The lesser
bourgeois also established their own popular organization which
existed in parallel to the Corps de Ville.ll4 While these changes
undoubtedly stiffened the resistance of the town in its confrontations
108M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, I946),
pp. I2I-2, paints a general picture of the bourgeoisie at this time which has a
striking relevance to the situation at La Rochelle.
109
Duplessis-Mornay, Memoires et Correspondance, iii, p. 995.
110 Lublinskaya's description (op. cit., pp. I62-3) of the composition of the
Corps de Ville as comprising 48 peers and 51 bourgeois is inaccurate. It
consisted of the mayor, 24 echevins and 75 pairs, so called because they were all
equal. The mayor and echevins were granted hereditary nobility in I37I by
Charles V. See C. Petit-Dutaillis, Les CommunesFran;aises (Paris, I947), p. i 8;
A. Galland, Discours au Roi sur la Naissance, Ancien Etat, Progres et Accroisse-
ment de la Ville de La Rochelle (Paris, 1628), pp. I7-I8.
111 A place on the Corps de Ville could cost anything between 4,500 and 6,000
livres: B.M.L.R., MS. I50, fo. 251.
112B.M.L.R., MS. I53, p. 84; P. S. Callot, Jean Guiton (La Rochelle, I848),
P. 43.
113Les Articles du Reglement Passe et Accorde Entre Messieurs les Maire,
Pchevins, Conseillers et Pairs et les Bourgeois Jures de Commune, Manants et
Habitants de La Rochelle le 29 mars I614, (Paris, n.d.). Lublinskaya's account
is not correct in its details (op. cit., p. I63). The term francs bourgeoiswas not
used; the number of syndics was one for each parish, making five in all, not six.
114 Jourdan, Ephemerides ... de La Rochelle, pp. 88-9. This was based
directly on the militia and was not included in the negotiated agreement.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM1610-1630 87
with the government, in the long run they exacerbatedthe divisions
among the Rochelais, and served to reinforce the conservatismof the
oligarchy rather than to overcome it. At moments of crisis the
Consistory could be relied on to uphold the authorities by bringing
notions of passive obedience into play. In July 1614 it expressly
condemned the riotous expulsion of two municipal deputies who had
just returned from Court under the inevitable cloud of suspicion;
a statement was read out at prayers "exhorting everyone to modesty,
humility, moderation and to obey the word of God and the
magistrate. . .".115 On a subsequent occasion the bourgeois were in
the midst of a bitter dispute with the Corpsde Ville and threatenedto
assemble the militia; the Consistorydeclaredthat it could not approve
such an action and called on the people "to show the obedience due
to superiors and so to discharge their conscience before God".-16
The bourgeois gave way.
Lack of ideological conviction certainly contributed to the defeat
of the Rochelais. In September 1625 the reluctance of the Corpsde
Ville to commit itself while there was a remote possibility of
negotiations with the government led directly to the destruction of its
fleet and the loss of the offshore islands. While 1,400 soldiers sat
helplessly in the town, the fleet and the forces on Re were left to fend
for themselves with fatal consequences.17 Reluctance to join with
the relief expedition from England in 1627 gave Richelieu a month's
grace in which to advance the military preparations for the final
assault.118 When the alliance was finally agreed, the Corpsde Ville
insisted that nothing be done "which infringed their liberties and the
fidelity and subjection that they owed their prince".119 After the
last vestiges of La Rochelle's independence had been destroyed, its
citizens thought it quite naturalto come together in the service of the
Crown. The last and legendarymayorof the commune, Jean Guiton,
who lead its defence in ferocious fashion, spent fifteen years as a
captain in the royal fleet serving under the Archbishop of Bordeaux,
one of his former adversaries. 20 When Guiton died in I654 he
left among his possessions portraitsof Richelieu, Richelieu's nephew,
Louis XIII and Anne of Austria.121 There is no more eloquent
comment on the fate of the Huguenot towns.
11 Diaire de Jaques Merlin, p. 217. 116 Ibid., p. 344.
117 J. de Bouffard-Madiane, Iemmoiressur les Guerres Civiles du Duc de Rohan
(Archives Historiques de l'Albigeois, 1897), p. Io5; Rohan, AMemnoires, p. 23I;
Diaire de J. Guilleaudeau, pp. 299 ff.
18 F. de Vaux de Foletier, Le Siege de La Rochelle (Paris,
I93I), p. I38.
19 Jourdan, Ephemerides ... de La Rochelle, p. 435.
20
Lacour-Gayet, La Marine Militaire de France..., p. 65.
21 M. Delafosse, Ville Oceane (La Rochelle, I953), pp. I28-9.
As with the nobility, the attitude of the bourgeoisie to the Crown

was exceedingly ambivalent: on both, royalist ideas and notions of
passive obedience had a deep hold. The explanation for this lies in
the extent to which both classes were still bound up with the feudal
order; it was not the progress of capitalism and gratitude for
mercantilist policies which produced the royalism of the towns but,
on the contrary, the privileged, medieval, sectarian basis of their
wealth and power. The very nature of their autonomy imposed
severe limitations on the struggle to preserve it. Until the French
bourgeoisie became a fairly integrated class - as in the United
Provinces and England - capableof envisaging a development which
transcended the limitations of the traditional social order, it was
bound to remain a prisoner of its own contradictions.
* * * *
It seems that the difficultiesin Lublinskaya'sanalysisstem from the

manner in which she brackets together France, the Dutch Republic
and England as the countries which had firmly taken the capitalist
road. In France feudal social relations were dominant. Certainly
the social structure was subject to severe strains and dislocation; the
feudalism of the seventeenth century was not the classic feudalism of
the twelfth. It is necessary to avoid the simplistic view of class
divisions and the role of the monarchy depicted by Porchnev.
Nevertheless, his view that the seventeenth century witnessed not the
embourgeoisement of the monarchy,as implied in differentways by both
Mousnier and Lublinskaya, but the fdodalisationof the bourgeoisie,
is more compelling.122 In particular,the social and political attitudes
of the bougeoisie exemplify Marx's generalobservationthat the ruling
ideas in every epoch are those of the ruling class; the inability of the
bourgeoisie to escape the ideological domination of the monarchy
reflected its actual subordinate place in the social hierarchy.
Lublinskaya exaggerates the degree of capitalist development in
France and also appears to lose sight of the extremely uneven nature
of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. A major element in
European (and colonial) history of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was the immense strain imposed upon the French regime
by the rapid development in the Dutch Republic and England of
a qualitatively different, and superior, economic and social order.
Faced with an internalfinancialand political crisis at the same moment
that it had to meet the challenge of the maritime powers, and the
122
Salmon, "Venal Office and Popular Sedition in France", p. 24.
FRENCH ABSOLUTISM 16I0-1630 89
threat of encirclement by the Hapsburgs, the French monarchy could

no longer affordto let part of the country's resourcesremainunder the
control of independent towns or allow its revenues to be distrainedby
the nobility. In response to this crisis the government undertook a
political, military and economic offensive. Its methods were not
developed in response to the wishes of the bourgeoisie although the
programme that it envisaged reflected the impact of France's
commercial rivals. Government policy included the recovery of
the alienated Crown lands, the multiplication and extension of
traditionaltaxes, the strengtheningof the gilds, the creation of trading
companiesand of a navy. The destructionof the Huguenot party was
the sine qua non of this programme. Yet the government sought not
only to destroy but to recreate, to restore the monarchicalregime in
its former splendour. That is why its political and military offensive
was accompanied by a vigorous ideological campaign, asserting the
indivisibility of sovereignity and the necessity for Order within the
monarchical state. This involved a concerted effort to regain the
allegiance of the nobility by restoring its positions as mainstay of the
regime; above all it involved a drive to achieve conformity in religion.
Total restoration of the sort envisaged was impossible and
government policy so wracked with contradictions that in the long
run it could not save the ancien regime. But in the short run it
managed to achieve a period of stability and even magnificence.
Precisely because the opponents of the Crown, noble and bourgeois,
had their roots deep in this feudal and hierarchicalsociety, they were
unable to offer any practical alternative to the royal programme and
succumbed to it.
Universityof Leeds David Parker
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Rethinking the American Revolution
Author(s): Sylvia R. Frey
Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 367-372
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
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access to The William and Mary Quarterly.
Rethinking the American Revolution
Sylvia R. Frey
EN DWARD Countryman's "Indians, the Colonial Order, and the Social

Significance of the American Revolution" is an ambitious, bold,
important, and confusing work. It is ambitious in its effort to develop
a new intellectual framework for examining the social significance of the
American Revolution; bold in its bid to unite two schools of interpretation
of the Revolution-one that views the Revolution as a national liberation
movement, the other that counts as the Revolution's greatest achievement
the establishmentof democratic capitalism;important in its attempt to draw
Native Americans and African Americans into the explanatory framework,
something that no other synoptic work achieves;and confusing in its lack of
definitional and developmental precision essential to the intellectual journey
Countryman seeks to take us on. If his concept is to persuade,it needs clari-
fication on severalmajor points, beginning with his starting premise.
By contrast to Gordon S. Wood's soaring paean to the achievementsof the
Revolution, Countryman offers a sober cost/benefit analysis that leans heav-
ily on EdwardShils's analytic category of extended polity, central to which is
the distinction between center and periphery.1 The old colonial order,
Countryman tells us, was part of a British ancien regime, structurallya com-
posite monarchy, of which the metropolis formed the center and variant
models in socioeconomic, legal, and political arrangementsthe peripheries.
Among its many constituent components were Indians of the trans-
AppalachianWest, who were incorporatedinto the polity by the legal recog-
nition of certain rights and privileges particularly over land.2 The first
problem arises in Countryman's tendency to gloss over real and substantial
differencesbetween Europe's extended polities. His formulation builds from
a rathercasual readingof the argumentadvancedby R. R. Palmerin I959.
In TheAge of the DemocraticRevolution,Palmerwrites of Europeanconsti-
tuted bodies, "All were different, yet all were in some ways alike."
Countryman's thesis emphasizes the ways in which they were alike, while
Palmer stresses their growing difference. Eighteenth-centuryEnglish society
has not been analyzedas systematicallyas French society, but existing schol-
arship suggests that by the end of the century England was a society in tran-
1 Shils, The Constitutionof Society(Chicago, i982), esp. chap. 4; Wood, TheRadicalismof the
AmericanRevolution(New York, I992).
2 One of Countryman's ambitions is to modify and extend the work of Jack P. Greene,
Peripheriesand Center:ConstitutionalDevelopmentin the ExtendedPolities of the British Empire
and the United States,i607-I788 (Athens, Ga., i986), by broadening the historical landscape to
encompass the trans-AppalachianWest, thereby including Indians in the paradigm.
The Williamand Mary Quarterly,3d Series,Vol. LIII, No. 2, April i996
368 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
sition. Palmer maintains that there were two possible lines of development:
toward segregation and toward assimilation. After I75o, England was, he
contends, increasinglysegregationist,which-very significantly for our pur-
poses-he associates with the enclosure movement, while France was still
assimilationist.3 Picking up on Palmer's thesis, Jerah Johnson has recently
argued that these fundamental differences between English and French soci-
eties were transplantedto North America where they found new expression
in ethnic and racialpolicies.4
This brings me to the most problematic aspect of Countryman's argu-
ment-and the one on which the entire thesis rests-British incorporation
of Indians into the extended polity. Countryman premises that Britain, like
France, accepted Indian claims to control the land east of the Mississippi-a
vital constituent of territoriality. Citing as evidence the Proclamation of
I763 and the land provisions of the Quebec Act of I774, he concludes that,
"in practice and in something close to theory [Britain and France allowed]
for the participation of self-determining, nonwhite, communally focused,
custom-driven social entities, meaning Indian tribes."5 A second major
premise is that the Revolution created a new "composite reality,"republican
rather than monarchical, whose center was in a "self-sovereign people."
Participation by Indians in the American composite polity was doomed by
America's "self-formationas a liberal capitalist society" and by the adoption
of a different schema for the incorporation of groups in sovereignty, a route
through territorial status that could be "followed only by whites." The
exclusion of Indians from the new polity was formalized in the three ordi-
nances of I784, I785, and I787, and for the Northwest that dispossessed
Indians of their land and led ultimately to their removal and to the exten-
sion of chattel slavery.6
Countryman is on solid ground in insisting on the connection between
the dispossession of the land of Native Americansand the extension of slav-
ery, but his analysis founders on the hard rock of colonial land policies,
which were neither constant nor continuous. The question of land-who
possesses it and who controls it-was posed to the first English settlers in
Virginia by the Rev. Robert Gray in a i609 sermon: "By what right or war-
rant," Gray wanted to know, "we can enter the land of these Savages, take
away their rightfull inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their
places."7 Successive generations of Englishmen and women found their
answer in English precedent, the antecedent for which was perhaps the
3 Palmer, The Age of the DemocraticRevolution:A Political History of Europeand America,

I760-I800(Princeton, I959), 27-52, esp. 27, 7I, quotation on 27.
4 Johnson, "Colonial New Orleans: A Fragment of the Eighteenth-Century French Ethos,"
in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, eds., CreoleNew Orleans:Race and Americanization
(Baton Rouge, I992), I2-57.
5 Countryman, "Indians, the Colonial Order, and the Social Significance of the American
Revolution," 360.
6 This thesis is developed ibid., 354-60.
7 Gray, quoted in Wesley Frank Craven, "Indian Policy in Early Virginia," William and
Mary Quarterly,3d Ser., i (I944), 65.
RETHINKING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 369
medieval quo warranto proceedings used to dispossess first troublesome

nobles and later towns and other groups of rights and privileges, including
land;8 in parliamentary enclosure, which virtually destroyed the cottager
class and wreaked havoc in the lives of the laboring poor;9 in Lockean phi-
losophy, which pronounced idle land an evil and improved land a social
goal; in Puritan social values and the reality of life in the American colonies,
where land was, in the words of John FrederickMartin, "by default . . . the
principal capital."10
Whether this inherited tradition carriedover to the new world is certainly
debatable. One could, on the one hand, argue from the record that
England'sIndian land policy moved decisively toward exclusion: in the deci-
sion taken in the wake of the i622 massacre to separate European settlers
from native peoples by isolating the latter behind the Chiskiack-Jamestown
line, which effectively stripped away Indian title to 300,000 acres; in the
statutes of i645 and i646 that provided for the construction of blockhouses
or forts to isolate Indians beyond the borders of settlement; in the peace
treaty of i646, according to which Necotowance ceded all claims to the land
between the York and the James rivers and from the falls southward." This
is the basis for Johnson's claim that a policy of exclusion-segregation was
"bequeathedto, and accepted by, the new American republic at the time of
the Revolution and has ever since remained the essence of the U. S. govern-
ment's Indian policy."'12
True, a statute of i656 did extend the headright claim of English settlers
to Indians and thereby accorded to them implicit recognition of "a rough
equality of right in the land," as Craven noted some fifty years ago. Whether
a policy that substituted English title for Indian presumptive rights or had
the unintended effect of recognizing Indian control over part of the land not
yet subject to the pressuresof expansion proved sufficient to provide mem-
bership in the English composite polity is, however, debatable.13So too are
Countryman'sclaims that the Proclamationof I763 and the Quebec Act rep-
resented fixed English land policy rather than a blip on the wide screen of
history or, conversely, that the ordinances of I784, I785, and I787 repre-
sented a sharp break from fixed land policy.
Countryman's formulation of the problem places contrasting race rela-
tions and, by implication, gender at the very center of the argument, with no
systematic examination of the former and with only passing reference to the
8 Michael Prestwich, The ThreeEdwards: War and State in England, i272-I377 (London,
i980), I50; Maurice Powicke, The ThirteenthCentury,12I6-1307 (Oxford, I953), 376-79; J. H.
Plumb, The Originsof Political Stability in England,I675-1725 (Boston, i967), 55-59. I am grate-
ful to my colleague Linda Pollock for guiding me to the literature cited in the discussion of
English precedentscontained in this paragraph.
9 K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the LabouringPoor:Social ChangeandAgrarianEngland,i660-I900
(Cambridge,i985), i67-68, I74-75, I76n, I77-78, 2i8n, 22I.
10 Martin, Profitsin the Wilderness: Entrepreneurshipand the Foundingof New England Towns
in the SeventeenthCentury(Chapel Hill, 1991), 37-38, ii6, I22 n. 24, quotation on 123.
11 Craven, "IndianPolicy in EarlyVirginia,"74-77.
12 Johnson, "Colonial New Orleans,"25.
13 Craven, "IndianPolicy in EarlyVirginia,"78-79.
latter. If he is to exhaust the complexities of his subject, Countryman must

take into account Shils's caution that the center is not only "a realm of
action" but also "a phenomenon of the realm of values and beliefs." Shils
argues that the center consists of the realm of values and beliefs and a struc-
ture of activities within a network of institutions: the economy, the status
system, the polity, the kinship system, the ecclesiasticalsystem. Through the
"radiationof their authority"this central institutional system defines mem-
bership in society and establishesits obligations and claims. Land and those
who possess and control it enjoy a special status in relation to the center.14
But the possession of land does not exhaust the forces that create the rela-
tionship. Access to the various subsystemsthat form the center is also impor-
tant, and this Countryman needs to explore, both in terms of race and
gender and by rigorous comparisonsof Europeancomposite monarchiesand
of English to Americanpolities.
Historians have begun to examine various aspects of Europeaninteraction
with racial and ethnic groups in French and Spanish colonial North
America. While they sometimes tend either to exaggeratethe differences or
on occasion to make large claims without strict comparisons to either
English or Americanpolities, they do suggest substantivedifferencesin racial
and ethnic policies, differences, it should be emphasized, rooted not in
humanitarianor liberal philosophies but in economic and practicalconsider-
ations, in different demographic configurations, and in fundamentally dif-
ferent social structures and social theory. In New France, for example,
European populations were deliberately intermixed with native societies,
albeit for purposes of control. The i627 charter that reorganizedthe colony
as a trading company specified that "the savages . . . will be deemed and
respected to be natural-born Frenchmen"with the same rights of property
and possessions as other French subjects.15The object of the comprehensive
French policy formulated by Colbert beginning in i663 was to "civilize"
Christian Indians and "disposethem to come and settle them in community
with the French, live with them, and bring up their children in [the French]
manner and customs . . . in order that, having one law and one master, they
may form only one people and one blood."'16
The same broad assimilationist tendencies persisted in eighteenth-century
Louisianain the "fictive adoption" by Indian sponsors of young French boys
trained as Indian interpretersto the twenty different petites nations, as the
French tellingly called the surrounding Indian communities,17 and in the
French legal code that prohibited the separationof slave families by owners,
proscribedforcible mating of slave women, required masters to provide reli-
gious instruction to slaves and to have them baptized, and exempted slaves
14Shils, Constitutionof Society,94, 93, 97.

15Quoted in Johnson, "Colonial New Orleans,"2I.
16Ibid., 23.
17 Patricia Galloway, "Talking with Indians: Interpreters and Diplomacy in French
Louisiana,"in Winthrop D. Jordan and Sheila L. Skemp, eds., Raceand Family in the Colonial
South(Jackson,Miss.,i987), I09-29, quotationon I25.
RETHINKING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 37I
from forced labor on Sundays and holidays.18 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's

researchon colonial Louisiana finds compelling evidence of Spanish corpo-
ratist hierarchical concepts of race-a subject not addressed by
Countryman-in the access slaves had to Spanish courts, in the classification
of all free people, regardless of race, as white, and in the protections
accorded slaves by Spanish law, including the rights of reasonabletreatment
and self-purchase.19
To locate the concept "self-sovereignty"at the core of "a social transfor-
mation . . . as great as any the world has seen,"20without employing gender
as a category of analysis, ignores the key position it played in creating and
sustaining the central institutional and value system. As Linda K. Kerber,
Ruth H. Bloch, Joan R. Gundersen, Stephanie McCurry, and others demon-
strate, theories of government and citizenship, of social and political inequal-
ity, and of relations of power generally,were grounded in relationshipsof the
household and the presumednatural relations of men and women.21There is
a body of work on kinship and family as microcosms of the central institu-
tional system that could be profitably used in Countryman's analysis.22
There is comparativework in progressthat looks beyond the role of women
as wives and mothers to, for example, the realm of practicalcommunity poli-
tics, where ordinary men and women "acted as constituents of the political
order,"as John Bohstedt puts it.23 Comparativeresearchin the largely unex-
plored world of female religious institutions underscoresthe importance of
institutional traditions in establishing and maintaining the principles and
18 Mathe Allain, "Slave Policies in French Louisiana,"LouisianaHistory, 2I (ig80), I27-38,

esp. I32, I35, and Carl A. Brasseaux, "The Administration of Slave Regulations in French
Louisiana, I724-1766, ibid., I39-58, esp. s4I.
19 Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the
53, 258, 259, 264, 266, 273, 3I2.
Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge, I992),
20 Countryman, "Indians, the Colonial Order, and the Social Significance of the American
Revolution" 360.
21 Kerber, Womenof the Republic:Intellectand Ideologyin RevolutionaryAmerica(New York,
ig80); Bloch, "The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in RevolutionaryAmerica,"Signs, I3 (i987),
37-58; Gundersen, "Independence, Citizenship, and the American Revolution," ibid., 59-77;
McCurry,"TheTwo Facesof Republicanism:Gender and ProslaveryPolitics in AntebellumSouth
Carolina,"Journal of AmericanHistory, 78 (I992), I245-64; Alfred F. Young, "The Women of
Boston: 'Personsof Consequence'in the Making of the AmericanRevolution, I765-76," in Harriet
B. Applewhiteand Darline G. Levy,eds., Womenand Politicsin theAge of the DemocraticRevolution
(Ann Arbor, Mich., i99o), i8I-226; and Kerber,"'I have Don . . . Much to Carreyon the Warr':
Women and the Shapingof RepublicanIdeologyafterthe AmericanRevolution,"ibid., 227-57.
22 Representativeexamples include Melvin Yazawa,From Coloniesto Commonwealth: Familial
Ideologyand the Beginningsof the AmericanRepublic(Baltimore, i985), and Ruth Perry'sprovoca-
tive essay on motherhood as a colonial form in Anglo-America"Colonizing the Breast:Sexuality
and Maternity in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2 (I99I),
204-34. For Spanish America see Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in ColonialMexico
(Stanford, Calif., i988), and Ramon A. Gutierrez, WhenJesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went
Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, i5oo-i846 (Stanford, Calif., i99i).
23 Bohstedt, "The Myth of the Feminine Food Riot: Women as Proto-Citizens in English
Community Politics, 179o-i8io,' in Applewhite and Levy, eds., Womenand Politics in the Age of
the Democratic Revolution, 22; Barbara Clark Smith, "Food Rioters and the American
Revolution," WMQ,3d Ser., 5I (I994), 3-38.
practicesof sovereigntyand citizenship. It also provides valuable insight into

what was unique and specific to the American Revolution.24 Darline Levy
and HarrietApplewhite, for example, draw attention to dramaticdifferences
between women's experienceof the French and Americanrevolutions, differ-
ences that Kerber attributes to their diverse religious cultures.25 Emily
Clark'sdissertationresearchon communities of nuns in French and Spanish
colonial America suggests another promising approach. Clark's caution that
we need to see the "religiousand the socio-political as complementary and
linked, rather than competing or mutually exclusive interests" is a particu-
larly useful reminder to those of us who study the early modern world.26
Especiallyrelevant and important is Clark'sevidence that the Ursuline nuns
were vital instruments in the process of incorporation for all ethnic and reli-
gious groups into the multiculturalsociety that was eighteenth-centuryNew
Orleans.27
My comments are not meant to detract from the enormous importance of
Countryman'sachievement but ratherto call attention to the great complex-
ity of the conceptual assignment he has set for himself. There is a desperate
need for a new approach to the debate on the significance of the American
Revolution. A work of manifold ambitions, Countryman's thesis makes a
beginning that is fraughtwith problems and has significant omissions. If dis-
cussion is to progress profitably, he must address these questions and
increasehis efforts to draw ethnicity, race, and gender into the paradigm.
24 LaurelThatcher Ulrich, "'Daughterof Liberty':Religious Women in RevolutionaryNew

England," in Ronald Hoffman and Peter Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American
Revolution(Charlottesville, i989), 2II-43; Rosemary Skinner Keller, "Women, Civil Religion,
and the American Revolution," in Rosemary Radford Ruether and Keller, eds., Womenand
Religionin America,2 vols. (San Francisco,i983), 2:368-408.
25 Levy and Applewhite, "Women, Radicalization,and the Fall of the French Monarchy,"in
Applewhite and Levy, eds., Womenin the Age of the DemocraticRevolution,8i-i07, and Kerber,
"IHaveDon ... muchto Carreyon the Warr,"229-30.
26 Clark, "Sisters?A Comparison of Spanish and French Colonial Women Religious," paper
presented at the Conference on the History of Women Religious, June 20, I995, Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
27 Ibid. and "When Is a Cloister Not a Cloister? The Problem of Conflicting Gender
Traditions in Spanish Colonial Louisiana,"seminar paper, Tulane University, I995.
Political Experience and Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth-Century America
Author(s): Bernard Bailyn
Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Jan., 1962), pp. 339-351
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
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PoliticalExperienceand Enlightenment
Ideasin Eighteenth-Century America
BERNARD BAILYN *
THE political and social ideas of the European Enlightenment have had a
peculiar importance in American history. More universally accepted in
eighteenth-centuryAmerica than in Europe, they were more completely and
more permanently embodied in the formal arrangements of state and society;
and, less controverted, less subject to criticism and dispute, they have lived on
more vigorously into later periods, more continuous and more intact. The
peculiar force of these ideas in America resulted from many causes. But
originally, and basically, it resulted from the circumstances of the prerevolu-
tionary period and from the bearing of these ideas on the political experience
of the American colonists.
XVhatthis bearinrgwas-the nature of the relationship between Enlight-
enment ideas and early American political experience-is a matter of particu-
lar interest at the present time because it is centrally involved in what
amounts to a fundamental revision of early American history now under
way. By implication if not direct evidence and argument, a number of recent
writings have undermined much of the structure of historical thought by
which, for a generation or more, we have understood our eighteenth-century
origins, and in particularhave placed new and insupportable pressures on its
central assumption concerning the political significance of Enlightenment
thought. Yet the need for rather extensive rebuilding has not been felt, in
part because the architecture has not commonly been seen as a whole-as a
unit, that is, of mutually dependent parts related to a central premise-in part
because the damage has been piecemeal and uncoordinated: here a beam de-
stroyed,there a stone dislodged, the inner supports only slowly weakened and
the balance only gradually thrown off. The edifice still stands, mainly; it
seems, by habit and by the force of inertia. A brief consideration of the whole,
consequently, a survey from a position far enough above the details to see the
outlines of the over-all architecture, and an attempt, however tentative, to
sketch a line-a principle-of reconstructionwould seem to be in order.
A basic, organizing assumption of the group of ideas that dominated the

* Mr. Bailyn, professor at Harvard University, presented this paper in a briefer form to the
XIth InternationalCongress of Historical Sciences, Stockholm, i960. As printed here, it was read
at the MassachusettsHistorical Society, January 12, I96I.
339

340 Bernard Bailyn
earlierinterpretation of eighteenth-centuryAmericanhistoryis the beliefthat
previousto the Revolutionthe politicalexperienceof the colonialAmericans
had been roughly analogousto that of the English. Controlof public au-
thorityhad beenfirmlyheld by a nativearistocracy-merchants and landlords
in the North, plantersin the South-allied, commonly,with Britishofficial-
dom. By restrictingrepresentationin the provincialassemblies,limiting the
franchise,and invokingthe restrictivepowerof the Englishstate,this aristoc-
racyhad dominatedthe governmentalmachineryof the mainlandcolonies.
Their politicalcontrol,togetherwith legal devicessuch as primogenitureand
entail,had allowedthemto dominatethe economyas well. Not only werethey
successfulin engrossinglandedestatesand mercantilefortunes,but they were
for the mostpartablealsoto fight off the clamorof yeomandebtorsfor cheap
papercurrency,and of depressedtenantsfor freeholdproperty.But the control
of this colonialcounterpartof a traditionalaristocracy,with its Old World
ideasof privilegeandhierarchy,orthodoxyin religiousestablishment, and eco-
nomic inequality,was progressivelythreatenedby the growing strengthof a
native, frontier-breddemocracythat expresseditself most forcefullyin the
lowerhousesof the "rising"provincialassemblies.A conflictbetweenthe two
groupsand ways of life was buildingup, and it brokeout in fury after I765.
The outbreak of the Revolution, the argument runs, fundamentally
alteredthe old regime. The Revolutiondestroyedthe power of this tradi-
tional aristocracy,for the movementof oppositionto parliamentary taxation,
I76o-1776, originallycontrolledby conservativeelements,had beentakenover
by extremistsnourishedon Enlightenmentradicalism,and the once dominant
conservativegroupshad graduallybeen alienated.The breakwith England
overthe questionof home rule was partof a generalstruggle,as CarlBecker
put it, overwho shallruleat home.Independencegave controlto the radicals,
who, imposingtheir advanceddoctrineson a traditionalsociety,transformed
a rebellioussecessioninto a socialrevolution.They createda new regime,a
reformedsociety,based on enlightenedpoliticaland social theory.
But that is not the end of the story;the sequelis important.The success
of the enlightenedradicalsduring the early years of the Revolutionwas
notable;but, the argumentcontinues,it was not wholly unqualified.The
remnantsof the earlieraristocracy, thoughdefeated,had not been eliminated:
they were able to reassertthemselvesin the postwar years. In the I780's
they graduallyregainedpower until, in what amountedto a counterrevolu-
tion, they impressedtheir views indeliblyon historyin the new federalCon-
stitution,in the revocationof some of the more enthusiasticactionsof the
earlierrevolutionaryperiod,and in the Hamiltonianprogramfor the new

Politics and Enlightenment Ideas in America 34I
government. This was not, of course, merely the old regime resurrected.
In a new age whose institutions and ideals had been born of revolutionary
radicalism, the old conservative elements made adjustments and concessions
by which to survive and periodically to flourish as a force in American life.
The importance of this formulation derived not merely from its usefulness
in interpreting eighteenth-century history. It provided a key also for under-
standing the entire course of American politics. By its light, politics in
America, from the very beginning, could be seen to have been a dialectical
process in which an aristocracyof wealth and power struggled with the Peo-
ple, who, ordinarily ill-organized and inarticulate, rose upon provocation
armed with powerful institutional and ideological weapons, to reform a pe-
riodically corrupt and oppressivepolity.
In all of this the underlying assumption is the belief that Enlightenment
thought-the reforming ideas of advanced thinkers in eighteenth-century
England and on the Continent-had been the effective lever by which native
American radicals had turned a dispute on imperial relations into a sweeping
reformation of public institutions and thereby laid the basis for American
democracy.
For some time now, and particularly during the last decade, this interpre-
tation has been fundamentally weakened by the work of many scholars work-
ing from different approaches and on different problems. Almost every im-
portant point has been challenged in one way or another.' All arguments
concerning politics during the prerevolutionary years have been affected by
1 Recent revisionist writings on eighteenth-centuryAmerica are voluminous. The main points

of reinterpretationwill be found in the following books and articles, to which specific reference
is made in the paragraphsthat follow: Robert E. Brown, Middle-ClassDemocracy and the Revo-
lution in Massachusetts, I691-I780 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1955); E. James Ferguson, "Currency
Finance: An Interpretation of Colonial Monetary Practices," William and Mary Quarterly, X
(Apr. 1953), 53-80; Theodore Thaver, "The Land Bank System in the American Colonies,"
journal of EcononmicHistory, XIII (Spring 1953), I45-59; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics
in America from the Re olu-ttionto the Civil War (Princeton, N. J., 1957); George A. Billias,.
The MassachusettsLand Bankers of I740 (Orono, Me., I959); Milton M. Klein, "Democracyand
Politics in Colonial New York," New York History, XL (July 1959), 22I-46; Oscar and Mary
F. Handlin, "Radicals and Conservatives in Massachusettsafter Independence," New England
Quarterly,XVII (Sept. I944), 343-55; Bernard Bailyn, "The Blount Papers: Notes on the Mer-
chant 'Class' in the Revolutionary Period," William and Alary Quarterly, XI (Jan. 1954), 98-
1o4; Frederick B. Tolles, "The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Re-
Evaluation," American Historical Review, LX (Oct. 1954), i-i2; Robert E. Brown, Charles
Beard and the Constittution:A Critical Analysis of "An Economic Interpretationof the Consti-
tution" (Princeton, N. J., 1956); Forrest McDonald, We the People: The Economic Origins of
the Constitution (Chicago, I958); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Genitusof American Politics (Chicago,
1953), and The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York, I958). References to other
writings and other viewpoints will be found in Edmund S. Morgan. "The American Revolution:
Revisions in Need of Revising," Willian and Mary Quarterly, XIV (Jan. I957), 3-15; and
Richard B. Morris, "The Confederation Period and the American Historian," ibid., XIII (Apr.
1956), 139-56.

342 Bernard Bailyn
an exhaustive demonstration for one colony, which might well be duplicated
for others, that the franchise, far from having been restricted in behalf of a
borough-mongering aristocracy,was widely available for popular use. Indeed,
it was more widespread than the desire to use it-a fact which in itself calls
into question a whole range of traditional arguments and assumptions. Simi-
larly, the Populist terms in which economic elements of prerevolutionaryhis-
tory have most often been discussed may no longer be used with the same con-
fidence. For it has been shown that paper money, long believed to have been
the inflationaryinstrument of a depressedand desperate debtor yeomanry, was
in general a fiscally sound and successful means-whether issued directly by
the governments or through land banks-not only of providing a medium of
exchange but also of creating sources of credit necessary for the growth of an
underdeveloped economy and a stable system of public finance for otherwise
resourceless governments. Merchants and creditors commonly supported the
issuance of paper, and many of the debtors who did so turn out to have been
substantialpropertyowners.
Equally, the key writings extending the interpretation into the revolu-
tionary years have come under question. The first and still classic monograph
detailing the inner social struggle of the decade before 1776-Carl Becker's
History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, I76o-I776 (i909)-
has been subjected to sharp criticism on points of validation and consistency.
And, because Becker's book, like other studies of the movement toward revo-
lution, rests upon a belief in the continuity of "radical" and "conservative"
groupings, it has been weakened by an analysis proving such terminology to
be deceptive in that it fails to define consistently identifiable groups of people.
Similarly, the "class" characteristic of the merchant group in the northern
colonies, a presupposition of important studies of the merchants in the revo-
lutionary movement, has been questioned, and along with it the belief that
there was an economic or occupational basis for positions taken on the revo-
lutionary controversy. More important, a recent survey of the writings fol-
lowing up J. F. Jameson'sclassic essay, The American Revolution Considered
as a SoczalMovement (i926), has shown how little has been written in the last
twenty-five years to substantiate that famous statement of the Revolution as
a movement of social reform. Most dramatic of all has been the demolition of
Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (I913), which
stood solidly for over forty years as the central pillar of the counterrevolution
argument: the idea, that is, that the Constitution was a "conservative"docu-
ment, the polar opposite of the "radical"Articles of Confederation, embodying
the interests and desires of public creditors and other moneyed conservatives,

Politics and EnlightenmnentIdeas in America 343
and markingthe Thermidorianconclusionto the enlightenedradicalismof
the earlyrevolutionary years.
Finally,there are argumentsof anothersort, assertionsto the effect that
not only did Enlightenmentideas not provokenative Americanradicalsto
undertakeseriousreformduring the Revolution,but that ideas have never
playedan importantrolein Americanpubliclife, in the eighteenthcenturyor
after,and thatthe political"genius"of the Americanpeople,duringthe Revo-
lution as later,has lain in their brute pragmatism,their successfulresistance
to the "distantexampleand teachingsof the EuropeanEnlightenment,"the
maunderingsof "garret-spawned Europeanilluminati."
Thus from severaldirectionsat once have come evidenceand arguments
that cloud if they do not totally obscurethe picture of eighteenth-century
Americanhistorycomposedby a generationof scholars.These recentcritical
writingsare of courseof unequalweight and validity;but few of them are
totallyunsubstantiated, almostall of them havesomepointand substance,and
takentogethertheyaresufficientto raiseseriousdoubtsaboutthe organization
of thoughtwithin which we have becomeaccustomedto view the eighteenth
century.A full reconsideration of the problemsraisedby these findingsand
ideaswould of coursebe out of the questionhere even if sufficientfactswere
now available.But one might make at least an approachto the task and a
first approximationto some answersto the problemsby isolatingthe central
premiseconcerningthe relationshipbetweenEnlightenmentideas and politi-
calexperienceandreconsidering it in view of the evidencethatis now available.
Consideringthe materialat hand,old and new, thatbearson this question,

one discoversan apparentparadox.There appearto be two primaryand con-
tradictorysetsof facts.The firstand moreobviousis the undeniableevidence
of the seriousnesswith which colonialand revolutionaryleaderstook ideas,
and the deliberateness of theireffortsduringthe Revolutionto reshapeinstitu-
tions in their pattern.The more we know aboutthese Americanprovincials
the clearerit is that amongthem were remarkablywell-informedstudentsof
contemporary socialand politicaltheory.There neverwas a darkage that de-
stroyedthe culturalcontactsbetween Europeand America.The sourcesof
transmissionhad been numerousin the seventeenthcentury;they increased
in the eighteenth.Therewere not only the impersonalagenciesof newspapers,
books,andpamphlets,but alsocontinuouspersonalcontactthroughtraveland
correspondence. Aboveall, therewere Pan-Atlantic,mainlyAnglo-American,
interestgroupsthat occasioneda continuousflow of fresh informationand
ideas betweenEuropeand the mainlandcoloniesin America.Of these, the

344 Bernard Bailyn
most important were the English dissenters and their numerous codenomina-
tionalists in America. Located perforce on the left of the English political
spectrum, acutely alive to ideas of reform that might increase their security in
England, they were, for the almost endemically nonconformist colonists, a
rich source of political and social theory. It was largely through nonconform-
ist connections, as Caroline Robbins' recent book, The Eighteenth-Century
Commonwealthman (I959), suggests, that the commonwealth radicalism of
seventeenth-century England continued to flow to the colonists, blending,
ultimately, with other strains of thought to form a common body of advanced
theory.
In every colony and in every legislature there were people who knew Locke
and Beccaria, Montesquieu and Voltaire; but perhaps more important, there
was in every village of every colony someone who knew such transmitters of
English nonconformist thought as Watts, Neal, and Burgh; later Priestley and
Price-lesser writers, no doubt, but staunch opponents of traditional authority,
and they spoke in a familiar idiom. In the bitterly contentious pamphlet litera-
ture of mid-eighteenth-century American politics, the most frequently cited
authority on matters of principle and theory was not Locke or Montesquieu
but Cato's Letters, a series of radically libertarianessays written in London in
1720-I723 by two supporters of the dissenting interest, John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon. Through such writers, as well as through the major authors,
leading colonists kept contact with a powerful tradition of enlightened
thought.
This body of doctrine fell naturally into play in the controversy over the
power of the imperial government. For the revolutionary leaders it supplied
a common vocabulary and a common pattern of thought, and, when the time
came, common principles of political reform. T'hat reform was sought and
seriously if unevenly undertaken, there can be no doubt. Institutions were re-
modeled, laws altered, practices questioned all in accordance with advanced
doctrine on the nature of liberty and of the institutions needed to achieve it.
The Americans were acutely aware of being innovators, of bringing mankind
a long step forward. T'hey believed that they had so far succeeded in their
effort to reshapecircumstancesto conform to enlightened ideas and ideals that
they had introduced a new era in human affairs. And they were supported in
this by the opinion of informed thinkers in Europe. The contemporary image
of the American Revolution at home and abroad was complex; but no one
doubted that a revolution that threatened the existing order and portended
new social and political arrangrementshad been made, and made in the name
of reason.

Politics and Enlightenment Ideas in America 345
Thus, throughoutthe eighteenthcenturytherewere prominent,politically
active Americanswho were well aware of the developmentof European
thinking,took ideas seriously,and during the Revolutiondeliberatelyused
them in an effortto reformthe institutionalbasisof society.This much seems
obvious.But, paradoxically,and less obviously,it is equally true that many,
indeed most, of what these leadersconsideredto be their greatestachieve-
ments duringthe Revolution-reformsthat made Americaseem to half the
worldlike the veritableheavenlycity of the eighteenth-century philosophers-
hadbeenmattersof fact beforethey were mattersof theoryand revolutionary
doctrine.
No reformin the entireRevolutionappearedof greaterimportanceto Jef-
fersonthanthe Virginiaactsabolishingprimogenitureand entail.This action,
he laterwrote,was partof "a systemby which everyfibrewould be eradicated
of antientor futurearistocracy;and a foundationlaid for a governmenttruly
republican."But primogenitureand entail had never taken deep roots in
America,not even in tidewaterVirginia.Where land was cheap and easily
availablesuch legal restrictionsproved to be encumbrancesprofitingfew.
Often they tendedto threatenratherthan securethe survivalof the family,
as Jeffersonhimself realized when in I774 he petitionedthe Assemblyto
breakan entail on his wife's estateon the very practical,untheoretical,and
common ground that to do so would be "greatlyto their [the petitioners']
Interestand that of theirFamilies."The legal abolitionof primogenitureand
entail during and after the Revolutionwas of little materialconsequence.
Their demisehad been effectivelydecreedyearsbeforeby the circumstances
of life in a wildernessenvironment.
Similarly,the disestablishmentof religion-a majorgoal of revolutionary
reform-was carriedout, to the extentthat it was, in circumstancesso favor-
ableto it thatone wondersnot how it was donebut why it was not donemore
thoroughly.There is no more eloquent,moving testimonyto revolutionary
idealismthan the VirginiaAct for EstablishingReligiousFreedom:it is the
essenceof Enlightenmentfaith. But what did it, and the disestablishment
legislationthat had precededit, reform?What had the establishmentof reli-
gion meant in prerevolutionary Virginia? The Churchof England was the
statechurch,but dissentwas toleratedwell beyondthe limits of the English
Acts of Toleration.The law required nonconformistorganizationsto be
licensedby the government,but dissenterswere not barredfrom their own
worshipnor penalizedfor failure to attend the Anglican communion,and
they were commonlyexemptedfrom parishtaxes.Nonconformityexcluded
no one from voting and only the very few Catholicsfrom enjoying public

346 Bernard Bailyn
office. And when the itineracy of revivalist preachersled the establishment to
contemplate more restrictive measures, the Baptists and Presbyterians ad-
vanced to the point of arguing publicly, and pragmatically, that the toleration
they had so far enjoyed was an encumbrance, and that the only proper solu-
tion was total liberty: in effect, disestablishment.
Virginia was if anything more conservative than most colonies. The legal
establishmentof the Church of England was in fact no more rigorous in South
Carolina and Georgia: it was considerably weaker in North Carolina. It
hardly existed at all in the middle colonies (there was of course no vestige of it
in Pennsylvania), and where it did, as in four counties of New York, it was
either ignored or had become embattled by violent opposition well before the
Revolution. And in Massachusettsand Connecticut, where the establishment,
being nonconformist according to English law, was legally tenuous to begin
with, tolerance in worship and relief from church taxation had been extended
to the major dissenting groups early in the century, resulting well before the
Revolution in what was, in effect if not in law, a multiple establishment. And
this had been further weakened by the splintering effect of the Great Awak-
ening. Almost everywhere the Church of England, the established church of
the highest state authority, was embattled and defensive-driven to rely more
and more on its missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
to sustain it against the cohorts of dissent.
None of this had resulted from Enlightenment theory. It had been created
by the mundane exigencies of the situation: by the distance that separated
Americans from ecclesiastical centers in England and the Continent; by the
never-ending need to encourage immigration to the colonies; by the variety,
the mere numbers, of religious groups, each by itself a minority, forced to live
togethier;and by the weakness of the coercive powers of the state, its inability
to control the social forces within it.
Even more gradual and less contested had been the process by which gov-
ernment in the colonies had become government by the consent of the gov-
erned. What has been proved about the franchise in early Massachusetts-that
it was open for practically the entire free adult male population-can be
proved to a lesser or greater extent for all the colonies. But the extraordinary
breadth of the franchise in the American colonies had not resulted from popu-
lar demands: there had been no cries for universal manhood suffrage, nor
were there popular theories claiming, or even justifying, general participation
in politics. Nowhere in eighteenth-century America was there "democracy"-
middle-class or otherwise-as we use the term. The main reason for the wide
franchise was that the traditional English laws limiting suffrage to freeholders

of certaincompetencesprovedin the colonies,where freeholdpropertywas
almostuniversal,to be not restrictivebut widely permissive.
Representationwould seem to be different,since before the Revolution
complaintshad beenvoicedagainstthe inequityof its apportioning,especially
in the PennsylvaniaandNorth Carolinaassemblies.But thesecomplaintswere
basedon an assumptionthat would have seemednaturaland reasonableal-
most nowhereelse in the Westernworld: the assumptionthat representation
in governingassemblageswas a properand rightful attributeof people as
such-of regularunits of population,or of populatedland-rather than the
privilegeof particulargroups,institutions,or regions.Complaintstherewere,
bitterones. But they were complaintsclaiming injury and deprivation,not
abstractidealsor unfamiliardesires.They assumedfrom commonexperience
the normalcyof regularand systematicrepresentation.And how should it
have been otherwise?The colonial assemblieshad not, like ancient parlia-
ments,grownto satisfya monarch'sneed for the supportof particulargroups
or individualsor to protectthe interestsof a socialorder,and they had not
developedinsensiblyfrom precedentto precedent.They had been createdat a
stroke,and they were in theircompositionnecessarilyregularand systematic.
Nor did the process,the character,of representation as it was known in the
coloniesderivefrom theory.For colonialAmericans,representation had none
of the symbolicand littleof the purelydeliberativequalitieswhich, as a result
of the revolutionarydebatesandof Burke'sspeeches,would becomecelebrated
as "virtual."To the colonistsit was directand actual:it was, most often, a
kind of agency,a delegationof powers,to individualscommonlyrequiredto
be residentsof their constituenciesand, often, bound by instructionsfrom
them-with the result that eighteenth-centuryAmerican legislaturesfre-
quently resembled,in spirit if not otherwise,those "ancientassemblies"of
New York,composed,the contemporaryhistorianWilliam Smith wrote,"of
plain, illiteratehusbandmen,whose views seldom extendedfartherthan to
the regulationof highways,the destructionof wolves,wild cats,and foxes,and
the advancementof the other little interestsof the particularcountieswhich
they werechosento represent."There was no theoreticalbasisfor such direct
andactualrepresentation. It had beencreatedand was continuouslyreinforced
by the pressureof local politicsin the coloniesand by the politicalcircum-
stancesin England, to which the colonistshad found it necessaryto send
closely instructed,paid representatives-agents,so called-from the very
beginning.
But franchiseand representation are mere mechanismsof governmentby
consent.At its heartlies freedomfromexecutivepower,from the independent

348 Bernard Bailyn
action of state authority,and the concentrationof power in representative
bodiesand electedofficials.The greatestachievementof the Revolutionwas of
coursethe repudiationof justsuchstateauthorityand the transferof powerto
popularlegislatures.No one will deny that this action was taken in accord-
ance with the highestprinciplesof Enlightenmenttheory.But the way had
been pavedby fifty yearsof grindingfactionalismin colonialpolitics.In the
detailsof prerevolutionary Americanpolitics,in the complicatedmaneuver-
ings of provincialpoliticiansseeking the benefitsof government,in the pat-
terns of local patronageand the forms of factionalgroupings,there lies a
historyof progressivealienationfrom the statewhich resulted,at leastby the
1750's, in what ProfessorRobertPalmer has lucidly describedas a revolu-
tionarysituation:a conidition
. . . in whichconfidence of existingauthorityis un-
in the justiceor reasonableness
dermined;where old loyaltiesfade, obligationsare felt as impositions,law seems
arbitrary,
andrespectfor superiorsis felt as a formof humiliation;whereexisting
sourcesof prestigeseemundeserved . . .and government is sensedas distant,apart
fromthegQoverned andnotreally"representing" them.
Sucha situationhad developedin mid-eighteenth-century America,not from
theoriesof governmentor Enlightenmentideas but from the factionalop-
positionthat had grown up againsta successionof legallypowerful,but often
cynicallyself-seeking,inept,and aboveall politicallyweak officersof state.
Surroundingall of these circumstancesand in variousways controlling
them is the fact that that greatgoal of the Europeanrevolutionsof the late
eighteenthcentury,equalityof statusbefore the law-the abolitionof legal
privilege-had been reachedalmosteverywherein the Americancoloniesat
least by the early years of the eighteenthcentury.Analogies between the
upperstrataof colonialsocietyand the Europeanaristocracies are misleading.
Socialstratificationexisted,of course;but the differencesbetween aristocra-
cies in eighteenth-century Europeand in Americaare more importantthan
the similarities.So far was legal privilege,or even distinction,absentin the
coloniesthatwhereit existedit was an open soreof festeringdiscontent,lead-
ing not merely,as in the case of the Penn family'shereditaryclaims to tax
exemption,to formalprotests,but, as in the caseof the powersenjoyedby the
HudsonRiverland magnates,to violentoppositionas well. More important,
the colonialaristocracy,such as it was, had no formal, institutionalrole in
government.No publicofficeor functionwas legally a prerogativeof birth.
As therewere no socialordersin the eyes of the law, so therewere no gov-
ernmentalbodies to representthem. The only claim that has been made to
the contraryis that, in effect,the governors'Councilsconstitutedpoliticalin-

stitutionsin the serviceof the aristocracy.But this claim-of dubiousvalue
in any casebecauseof the steadilydecliningpoliticalimportanceof the Coun-
cils in the eighteenthcentury-cannotbe substantiated.It is true that certain
familiestended to dominatethe Councils,but they had less legal claim to
placesin thosebodiesthancertainroyalofficialswho, thoughhardlymembers
of an Americanaristocracy, sat on the Councilsby virtueof theiroffice.Coun-
cilorscouldbe and were removedby simplepoliticalmaneuver.Councilseats
were filled either by appointmentor election:when appointive,they were
vulnerableto politicalpressurein England;when elective,to the vagariesof
publicopinionat home. Thus on the one hand it took William ByrdII three
yearsof maneuveringin Londonto get himself appointedto the seat on the
VirginiaCouncilvacatedby his father'sdeathin I704, and on the other,when
in 1766 the Hutchinsonfaction'scontrolof the Massachusetts Councilproved
unpopular,it was simply removedwholesaleby being voted out of officeat
the next election.As therewere no specialprivileges,no peculiargroup pos-
sessions,manners,or attitudesto distinguishcouncilorsfrom other affluent
Americans,so there were no separatepolitical interestsexpressedin the
Councilsas such. Councilorsjoined as directlyas othersin the factionaldis-
putes of the time, associatingwith groups of all sorts, from minute and
transientAmericanoppositionpartiesto massive English-centeredpolitical
syndicates.A centurybefore the Revolutionand not as the result of anti-
aristocratic ideas,the colonialaristocracyhad becomea vaguelydefined,fluid
groupwhosepower-in no way guaranteed,buttressed,or even recognizedin
law-was competitivelymaintainedand dependenton continuous,popular
support.
Otherexamplescould be given. Were writtenconstitutionsfelt to be par-
ticularguaranteesof libertyin enlightenedstates? Americanshad known
them in the form of colonialchartersand governors'instructionsfor a cen-
tury beforethe Revolution;and after 1763, seeking a basis for their claims
against the constitutionalityof specific acts of Parliament,they had been
driven,out of sheer logical necessityand not out of principle,to generalize
that experience.But the pointis perhapsclearenough.Majorattributesof en-
lightenedpolitieshad developednaturally,spontaneously,earlyin the history
of the Americancolonies,and they existed as simple mattersof social and
politicalfacton the eve of the Revolution.
But if all this is true,what did the Revolutionaccomplish?Of what real

significancewere the ideals and ideas? What was the bearingof Enlighten-
ment thought on the politicalexperienceof eighteenth-century Americans?

350 Bernard Bailyn
Perhapsthis much may be said. What had evolved spontaneouslyfrom
the demandsof placeand time was not self-justifying,nor was it universally
welcomed.New developments,howevergradual,were suspectby some, re-
sistedin part,and confinedin their effects.If it was true that the establish-
ment of religionwas everywhereweak in the coloniesand that in someplaces
it was even difficultto know what was orthodoxyand what was not, it was
neverthelessalso true that faith in the idea of orthodoxypersistedand with
it belief in the proprietyof a privilegedstatereligion.If, as a matterof fact,
the spreadof freeholdtenurequalifiedlargepopulationsfor voting,it did not
createnew reasonsfor using that powernor make the victimsof its use con-
tent with what,in termsof the dominantidealof balancein the state,seemed
a disproportionate influence of "the democracy."If many colonists came
naturallyto assumethat representation shouldbe directand actual,growing
with the populationand bearingsome relationto its distribution,crown offi-
cials did not, and they had the weight of precedentand theoryas well as of
authoritywith them and hence justificationfor resistance.If state authority
was seenincreasinglyas alien and hostileand was forcedto fight for survival
within an abrasive,kaleidoscopicfactionalism,the traditionalideanevertheless
persistedthat the commongood was somehowdefinedby the state and that
politicalpartiesor factions-organizedoppositionto establishedgovernment-
were seditious.A traditionalaristocracydid not in fact exist; but the assump-
tion that superioritywas indivisible,that socialeminenceand politicalinflu-
ence had a naturalaffinityto each other,did. The colonistsinstinctivelycon-
cededto the claimsof the well-bornand rich to exercisepublicoffice,and in
this sensepoliticsremainedaristocratic.Behaviorhad changed-had had to
clhange-withthe circumstances of everydaylife; but habitsof mind and the
senseof rightnesslaggedbehind.Manyfelt the changesto be away from, not
toward,something:that they representeddeviance;that they lacked, in a
word,legitimacy.
This divergencebetweenhabitsof mind and belief on the one hand and
experienceand behavioron the otherwas ended at the Revolution.A rebel-
lion that destroyedthe traditionalsourcesof publicauthoritycalledforth the
full rangeof advancedideas.Long-settledattitudeswere joltedand loosened.
The groundsof legitimacysuddenlyshifted.What had happenedwas seen
to havebeengood and proper,stepsin the right direction.The glass was half
full, not half empty; and to completethe work of fate and nature,further
thought must be taken, theoriestested, ideas applied.Preciselybecause so
manysocialand institutionalreformshad alreadytakenplacein America,the

revolutionary movenment there,morethanelsewhere,was a matterof doctrine,
ideas,andcomprehension.
And so it remained.Socialchangeand socialconflictof coursetook place
duringthe revolutionaryyears;but the essentialdevelopmentsof the period
lay elsewhere,in the effort to think through and to apply under the most
favorable,permissive,circumstancesenlightenedideas of governmentand
society.T'heproblemswere many,often unexpectedand difficult;some were
only graduallyperceived.Social and personalprivilege,for example,could
easilybe eliminated-it hardlyexisted;but what of the impersonalprivileges
of corporatebodies? Legal ordersand ranks within society could be out-
lawed withoutcreatingthe slightesttremor,and executivepower with equal
easesubordinated to the legislative:but how was balancewithin a polityto be
achieved?What were the elementsto be balancedand how were they to be
separated?It was not even necessaryformallyto abolishthe interestof state
as a symboland determinantof the commongood; it was simplydissolved:
but what was left to keepclashingfactionsfrom tearinga governmentapart?
The problemswere pressing,and the effortsto solve them mark the stages
of revolutionaryhistory.
In behalf of Enlightenmentliberalismthe revolutionaryleaders under-
took to cotnplete,formalize,systematize,and symbolizewhat previouslyhad
beenonlypartiallyrealized,confused,and disputedmattersof fact.Enlighten-
ment ideas were not instrumentsof a particularsocial group, nor did they
destroya socialorder.T'heydid not createnew socialand politicalforcesin
America.T'hey releasedthose that had long existed, and vastly increased
their power. This completion,this rationalization,this symbolization,this
lifting into consciousnessand endowing with high moral purposeinchoate,
confused elements of social and political change-this was the American
Revolution.

A Study in Italian Nationalism. Giuseppe Mazzini
Author(s): C. R. Badger
Source: The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 31 (Sep., 1936), pp. 70-80
Published by: Australian Institute of Policy and Science
Accessed: 08-08-2015 07:34 UTC
Australian Institute of Policy and Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Australian Quarterly.
A Study in Italian Nationalism.
Giuseppe MazzinL
*
By C. R. BADGER
Mazzinfs is certainly not one of the great names in European
thought or inEuropean history. It is difficultto formulate from his
voluminous writings a definite theory to which we may attach his
name; it is equally difficultto assign to him a precise effect in the
movement for Italian liberation and independence, to which he gave
his life. That he is important in both fields,as a thinker and as a
revolutionary Nationalist, most historical writers are agreed, but they
differwidely about the exact degree of his importance. It is his hard
fate to have been acclaimed by the Liberals in his own day, from
whom he was divided by thought and temperament; and to be claimed
as father in our day by a numerous
intellectual progeny of Fascists,
whose title to sonship is clear, however much we may feel that Maz
zini would have resented the honour. He was persecuted and exiled
through a long life in defence of Liberty; in our day his name gives
authority to a system of government which denies Liberty in the
name of the Nation. He lived to findhimself classed with the re
actionaries and monarchists, whom he hated; to see those whom he
had taught to work for social betterment in the parties of his op
ponents. In his last days he almost regretted that Italy had passed
from under Austrian domination, if the consequences were to be those
his forebodings presaged. Nor are these contradictions and contrasts
accidental; they are rooted in the thought and personality of the
man. He was unable to assist in the final stages of the work of
making a United Italy because of the gap in thoughtwhich separated
him from Cavour; he could not make the Italy of his own dream
for himself, because his followers did not fullyaccept the implications
of his thought; and when these were made clear to them, they re
belled and lefthim.
Without his modern progeny and the noise that their youthful
strivings make in the modern world, Mazzini's name would belong
only to the history of the Italian Risorgimento, his work would be
as dead as that of Balbo or Gioberti, deserving only the pious tribute
of a page or two in a
learned work, a monograph by a specialist or
a handful of footnotes. On their account, however, and because of
*Lecturer in Tutorial Class Department, Adelaide University.

70
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
his influenceon modern Italian thought, it isworth while to give him

more attention than he usually receives, and to attempt to make clear
themain lines of his thought.
He is the more important in that, standing as he does midway
between the French Revolution and our own days, he stands at the
point where the consequences of the Revolution begin to appear in
the divergent streams of Liberalism and Nationalism. In his thought,
as in the great movement of Italian Liberation to which he devoted
his life, the streams are mixed, but we can already discern the direc
tion of their flow. Time has made clear that the Italian Risorgi
mento was predominantly a Nationalist, and not a Liberal movement;
Mazzini's writings provide the clue to the mental processes, at least,
by which the transitionwas made from the Liberal Democracy, which
was one outcome of the French Revolution, to the anti-Democratic
and anti-Liberal Nationalism which has been its other and later con
sequence. Mazzini makes it clear that the Italians, in deserting
the Liberal Parliamentary regime for the Fascist, are not deserting or
betraying the principles of the Risorgimento, but rather reverting to
these principles, and ridding themselves of institutionswhich have
no real relation to their dominantmodes of thought. The true line
of succession is fromMazzini toMussolini and the one interpretsthe
other. In this succession Giolitti appears as an interloper. It would
be idle and untrue to imagine that we can show why Italy has be
come Fascist merely by showing the logical connections in thought
betweenMazzini and Mussolini. At best we can trace out the thought
connection here, and point out that this is but one of several links
in the historical chain. The connection is there, though the fuller
reasons for it must be sought in the social and economic conditions
of Italy. It is our purpose in this article to treat the thought con
nections, and to leave the others for fuller discussion elsewhere.
The terms of Mazzini's thought are given in the problem that
was his chosen task, the Unification of Italy, the achievement of
Italian Independence and Liberty. But what Mazzini meant by this,
and what others before and since have meant, is a,matter of debate.
Briefly, it may be said that, for the Liberals, who under Cavour
brought about Italian independence and set up the new Kingdom in
1870, independence and libertymeant primarily the driving out of
Austria and the establishment of Parliamentary institutions,partly as
a means to independence and partly as an end in itself. They saw
their movement as a continuation of the work of the French Revolu
tion,a step towards the assertion of individual rights and the destruc
71
THE AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY
tion of feudal privilege. It meant, internally, that the barriers to

trade which oppressed and harassed the States under the old mon
arch were to be destroyed, that the Third Estate was to govern,
and that careers were to be opened to talent. Until this point of view
had gained ground in the cities of Milan and Turin, and throughout
the smaller capitals of Italy, there was no real movement for inde
pendence. When it did obtain a hold, and especially when themiddle

classes saw how vitally Austrian domination threatened their new
and growing commercial interests, the Independence movement be
came a major fact in European politics. For the moderate Liberals,
freedom was interpreted almost
entirely in economic and political
terms, and not
socially. They were, as yet, unaware of the deep
social implications of the Revolution and of the Industrial Revolution,
though of the direct and profitable results of economic liberty,and of
political liberty for the middle classes, they were fully aware. Par
liamentary government, or at the least constitutional government,
with a strictly limited franchise, and a gradually extending freedom
from feudal economic regulation and restriction, were the summits
of their ambition.
For Mazzini, independence, unity and libertywere quite other
things. For him independence of the foreigner, of Austria, was an
essential step forward to the growth of a unity which should be based
on the consciousness of mission, and not on the growth of trade. For
him, the conquest Of rights was a step to the acceptance of duties,
and the real significance of the Liberation lay not so much in an appli
cation of the principles of 1789 to Italy, as in the possibility it offered
of a new and real departure from them. He wanted Parliamentary
institutions, but with universal suffrage; he wanted unity, but a unity
which should genuinely weld the whole people into a brotherhood
with common principles and common duties. For him the solution
of the political problem is definitely the preliminary to the solution
of the social problem, of which most of his Italian contemporaries
were as yet unaware. These differences in aim, no less than the dif
ferences in theory of which they are the expression, led Mazzini to
formulate a radically differentprogramme of action from that of the
Moderate Liberals. they relied for their Italian forces on the
Whereas
active co-operation of the small majority, whose real interests were
involved, and alternatively bought and cajoled support from the Euro
pean Powers to accomplish their ends, Mazzini wished to drive out the
foreigner by a spontaneous rising of the Italian people. Mazzini
neglected entirely what to Cavour was always clear, that the people
72
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
of Italy were not in the slightest interested in Italian unity. Italy

was unifiedby the effectiveaction of a relatively smallminority, aided
by the fortunate conjunction of European Powers and events, not only
without the co-operation of themass of the Italian people, but in face
of their apathy and, in some instances, and those not rare, of their
downright hostility.
For Mazzini, the French Revolution had not initiated a new age,
but had rather completed the old. In the Revolution individualism
had been brought tomaturity, and to follow the French tradition fur
ther now meant degeneration. Already the French growth was rank
in his eyes, for he saw it differentlyfrom most of his Italian
contemporaries, because they saw different things. Whereas they
regarded and marvelled at the new wonders of trade and industry
from the safe distance of semi-feudal Milan and Turin, Mazzini saw
the manifold miseries of a growing industrial civilisation from the
intimate viewpoint of a cheap London lodging house. Moreover, his
long polemic with Marx and Bakunin had opened his eyes to the fact
that no purely political solution of the problem of national unity and
independence was enough. They made him see that when indepen
dence had been achieved, the way was open for an oppression of work
men by capitalists, of "passive" by "active" citizens; for a conflict of
rights within the body of the State, that was at least as vicious, and
ultimately'as damaging to human equality and dignity, as the oppres
sion by a feudal aristocracy of the third estate, or the insolent tyranny
of Austria over Italy.
However important as a stage in human growth, the Revolution
was but a step, part of what Mazzini called Progress, 'or alternatively
the fulfilmentof the Divine Plan. It was incomplete and partial; it
erred in its too powerful emphasis on Individualism, just as the Re
formationhad exalted too highly the right of private judgment; and
in both movements the results of error had been disastrous; in the
one producing the soulless capitalism of the 19th century,and in the
other the multitudinous sectarianism of Protestantism. He thought
it necessary to correct both the religious and the political error, by
making a new religion for humanity, which should avoid the errors of
Protestantism and the soul-destroying autocracy of the Roman
Church, and by providing Individualism in politics with the check of
his new principle ofAssociation. His vision interpretsunity in a new
way, not as a mere political conglomeration of States under a mon
archy or republic, but as a union of souls devoted to a mission. This
was to be the work of the new Italy, the Italy of his dream, for he
73
hoped that the revolutionary initiative, lost inFrance, avoided inEng

land, impossible for Germany, would be taken by Italy, which should
thus for the third time become the interpreterto Europe of a world
dominating thought?Unity. A unity based this time, not on blind
obedience to authority in Church or State, but on a fervid association
of the peoples devoted to a common forwarding of progress.
Such unity, either for the visionaryWorld State or for the par
ticular nation is,Mazzini thinks, impossible on the basis of a theory
of rights. All revolutions in the past, he says, have been based on
rights and the consequences are those we see. Each step forward
has meant that the nation has been plunged anew into the chaos of
individual struggles as soon as the old enemy has been destroyed.
After the French Revolution, "Liberty of belief destroyed all commu
nity of faith; libertyof education producedmoral anarchy.Men with
out a common tie,without unity of religious belief and of aim, whose
sole vocation was enjoyment, sought every one his own road, not heed
ing, if in pursuing it, they were trampling upon the heads of their
brothers, brothers in name and enemies in fact." Thus the revolu
tion of the futuremust get beyond this and achieve a new unity,
which will not be broken by the division of the nation internally,but
which will hold all subject in common obedience to a general faith and
in the obligation of duty.
The political and social problem is insoluble,Mazzini says, if it is
set in terms of rights, for rights can only produce the anarchy of com
petition, and never the unity of common purpose which is essential
for a solution. In the specific case, to drive out the Austrians from
Italy on the basis of the theory of the right of Italians to independ
ence, even supposing that the preaching of rights would generate the
necessary moral force to enable it to be done, would in itself not be
enough. For, the Austrians gone, the theory of rights would lead
straightway to the erection of a new tyranny, and end in still deeper
divisions within the nation thus set free.We must turn fromrights to
duties, from assertion to obligation, and this necessitates a meta
physical or religious basis for politics. Without God, says Mazzini,
there can be no duty, no obligation, but only superior force. Fact
Mazzini calls it, and Fact, whether its name be revolution, Austria, or
Bonaparte, has its own law, the law of force, from which there can
be no appeal in the name of right. Without law which is inviolable,
eternal, there can be no appeal from injustice to justice. For him,
the whole nature and purpose of life is religious, dominated from be
ginning to end by the working out of the Divine Plan which he labels
74
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
Progress. The
distinction, therefore, between God and Caesar is, at
best, merely a convenience, and at worst a quibble. If we are to know
what to do in any particular situation, we must see that situation in
relation to the Divine Plan, and the effectivenessof our action will
be coincidentwith the fulness of our knowledge.
It is as part of the general design of God forhumanity thatMaz
zini looks!for the significanceof the nation, a point which most Fas
cist writers fail to notice. While he undoubtedly believed that sep
arately existing nations were part of this Plan, and held that this
could be demonstrated from the facts of geography, he still held
that the nations were but the individuals of the great human family
?the Collective Humanity?and that it was as necessary to impress
upon them their duty as itwas to impress it upon the individualwith
in the State. He would never have accepted as permanent, as the
Fascists appear to do, a division of Europe into separate, self-stand
ing and sovereign National States. The nation is for him the con
ciliation point of the individual rights, which the long struggles of
the past have vindicated. In the association of the nation, the in
terests and powers, which to each individual appear supreme, are sub
ordinated in a common subordination to the collectivewill, to an ob
ligation of sacrifice,of duty, preordained by God; in the same way as
the individuals are associated in common bonds within the nation,
thus are nations to be subordinated in the Collective Humanity, de
voted to the furtherance of God's Will.
Nationalism and the vindication of national rights is forMazzini
a means, and not an end. The place of the nation is as an interme
diate in the chain of hierarchy of duties which God has set before
men. His duty to humanity is too vague for the individual to com
prehend, he cannot rise to its greatness, and he needs the more speci
fic series of duties to the nation as steps in his wider obligation. "The
individual is too weak
and Humanity too vast. . . .But God gave you
the means when he gave you a country, when, like a wise overseer
of labour, who distributes the different parts of the work according
to the capacity of the workmen, He divided Humanity into distinct
groups upon the face of our globe and thus planted the seeds of
Nations. Bad Governments have disfigured the design of God, which
you may see clearly marked out as far at least as regards Europe, by
the courses of the great rivers, by the lines of loftymountains
and by other geographical conditions."
Mazzini was not so blind to themap of Europe as to suppose that
geography, in the absence of other facts, could give a satisfactory
75
definition of national boundaries. Geography, at best, is for him but
a pointer, to be supplemented by other tests. How, for instance, could
Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, be shown to come within the "natural
frontiers" of Italy? Geographically they are Italian only by con
tiguity. Here, Mazzini says, we are to be guided by (1) identityof
language, and (2) the tacit general consent of mankind. He does
not state what happens if, by chance, these claims happen to conflict,
as they did, for example, in some of the States of the old Austro
Hungarian Empire. Such however, do not go to the heart
objections,
of Mazzini's theory of Nationalism, for external fact, geography, lan
guage, history, etc., are not for him the real tests of nationhood at
all. The nation is made by the will of the people who compose it.
"A country is a fellowship of free and equal men bound together in
labour towards a
single end. You must make it and maintain it as
such. A is not an aggregation,
country it is an association. There
is no true country without a uniform right. There is no true country
where the uniformity of that right is violated by the existence of
caste, privilege and inequality, where the powers and faculties of a
large number of individuals are suppressed or dormant, where there
is no common principle accepted, recognised and developed by all."
Or, elsewhere, "A country is not a mere territory; the particular ter
ritory is only its foundation. The country is the idea which rises
upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellow
ship which binds together all the sons of that territory." For a
modern parallel of this
theory weonly need to turn to a modern
Fascist writer, e.g., Gentile, who writes, "The nation is not a natural
"
entity, it is a moral reality "The nation is truly neither geography
nor history, it is programme, mission." It is true that Mazzini and
the modern Fascist would define the mission differently, the one in
terms of duty to humanity, the other in terms of struggle for exist
ence, or the obligation to impose the higher national civilisation upon
others. The intellectual starting-point is the same.
In Commonwith other idealist theories of the nation or state,
Mazzinfs theory fails to distinguish between fact and ideal; it is
guilty of confusing and even of confoundingwhat is,with what ought
to be. It purports to be grounded in the facts of geography, lan
guage and race, but easily transcends them to find its real justifica
tion in theology. It is a common characteristic of nationalist move
ments that they begin with the expression of a wish, or the asser
tion of an ideal, and then proceed to argue as if this wish or ideal
were fact. From the assumption that Italy ought to be one nation?
76
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
an assumption not justified in Mazzini's day either by the facts of

geography, of tradition or even by the common consent of the Italian
people, an assumption based, in fact, upon a dubious use of geography
and an intuitiveknowledge of the will of God, not capable of demon
stration?Mazzini passes to the conclusion nation, that she is one
with a mission to humanity, which exalts her above others, and pos
sibly, gives her rights of dominion over them. At least, in Mazzini's
view, her new found unity (when accomplished) puts her in the posi
tion of educator to Europe. We, in our day, have learned to look with
suspicion on such claims, knowing how easily instruction, when it is
concerned with teaching inferior and lesser peoples the ways of their
betters, may degenerate into crude conquest.
It is at this point that we need to examine the grounds 'ofMaz
zini's argument with great care. As we have pointed out above, the
theory turns on the nature of our knowledge of God and of His Will
for humanity. Mazzini does not attempt to meet the difficultythat
in the international sphere nations may, and certainly do, interpret
theWill of God differently. He assumes that once free of bad gov
ernment, they will be aware of their common obligation and work to
gether in amity towards a common end. In his treatment of the
same problem, however, within the State, he is a trifle more realistic,
and we may assume that his argument there would hold good for his
theory of foreign relations. For the problem is essentially the same.
Granted his new revolution, in which the bad old governments are
swept away, how does Mazzini propose that the new religious obedi
ence to God and to Duty will be found, the common agreement on
principle which he desiderates as the essential basis of the State?

To put the problem in his own way, how can we ensure that the people
and the state will be agreed upon what is theWill of God Mazzini
has several answers to this question, none of them satisfactory, or
even logically coherent. We may say, in the first place, that unity
of belief will be taught,which means that one form of authoritywill
be substituted for another, the authority of the secular schools, or
Mazzini's new Humanitarian church, for the Roman Church. Or we
may hope, as Mazzini himself at least in early years hoped, that the
people, once freed from tyrants, will, of itself, come to agreement on
principles, and that no formal authoritywill need to be enforced. At

the same time, even Mazzini admits, that, tyrants apart, the people
will need some enlightenment in the intermediate stages, to clear out
the last vestiges of error. Another possible answer is that the nation,
through its assembly or Parliament, when once allowed freedom to
77
speak itsmind, will declare theWill of God to the people, and that,
when it is once declared, the people will obey, a view which implies
extreme subjection to majority rule, with which Mazzini ap
pears to have agreed.
The answer which he gives in the "Duties of Man," in the chap
ter On Law, is that we can arrive at knowledge of God when the in
dividual conscience and the general conscience of humanity are agreed.
"God has given you the general opinion of your fellow-men and your
own conscience, to be your two wings with which to soar towards Him.
Why should you insist on cutting offone of them Why should you
isolate yourselves or let the World absorb you altogether? Why
should you want to suffocate the voice of the individual or of the
human race? Both are sacred, God speaks in both. Whenever
they agree, whenever the( cry of conscience is ratifiedby the general
consent of humanity, there is God, there you are sure of having the
Truth in your grasp; the one is the ratification of the other." This
position may perhaps be interpretedas meaning that, when what I
want to do is identicalwith what others want to do, or think ought
to be done, then I am to assume that this is God's Will. We are not
far here from the doctrine of theReal Will, beloved of Idealist philoso
phers.
Mazzini himself recognises the hopeless vagueness of this de
finition. He admits that the individual conscience is determined by
social environment and previous education, and that, on the other
hand, it is rarely,
if ever, possible for the individual to know what
the general consensus of human knowledge or conscience is upon any
particular moral or political problem. It appears at first blush that
in this formula Mazzini is offering the individual a safe refuge from
authority, but his own criticism of his position immediately reveals
the inconsistency. For Mazzini suggests that, in default of universal
knowledge, the individual shallfall back on authority again, not the
old bad authorities, but on good new ones. He ought to rely on good
popular books, if they are available, or if they are not, upon "the men
who by their ability and conscientiousness best represent historical
study and the science of Humanity . . . and have deduced from this
some of the characteristics of our Law of Life." They shall in fact
seek counsel of Mazzini and his friends. Like most nationalisms, this
is a form of religion, and Mazzini is to be Pope!
The problem set in this way is insoluble. The nation, or state,
or the people, can only exist when united on common acceptance of
principle, based on identity of aim and common purpose, which are
78
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
ultimately the aims and purposes of God. But, at the same time,
Mazzini postulates that the form of government, once the tyrants
have been overthrown, is to be a democracy, in which each is to have
freedom and the right to rebel against the State if it does not fulfill
the purposes of God. It is assumed that once the tyrants have been
overthrown therewill be unity, but if the unity does not follow,what
happens? Here Mazzini's difficultiesin attempting to reconcile the
opposed principles of unity and individual right become acute. It
cannot at once be true that "You have no master but God inHeaven
and the People on Earth," unless it is asserted that the people will
in every case do theWill of God. To go further,as Mazzini does, and
to assert "that when the People, the Collective body of your fellows
declare that they hold a certain belief, you must bow your head and
abstain from every act of rebellion," is to assume that God and the
People are one, and to neglect the fact fromwhich the argument
starts, that there is always the possibility and danger of disagree
ment. Such a position is,moreover, utterly inconsistentwith any
idea of democratic government,orwith any right of private judgment.
But Mazzini is all the while aware of the gap between his ideal
and the facts. He knows that the people will not arrive at any one
decision, unless that decision is carefully prepared beforehand, and
he supplies the necessary corrective to his own theory by his sugges
tion that the real means to national unity is through national educa
tion. He sharply distinguishes education from instruction;he means
by itwhat we should,more cynically but more accurately, label pro
paganda. "It is the Duty of the Nation to communicate its pro
gramme to every citizen." The agreement on principles, then, is not,
after all, something that will be spontaneously arrived at, as Mazzini
sometimes appears to suggest; it is a unitywhich must be sedulously
inculcated. All are to be taught to think the same things, to want
the same things, and to disobey or revolt from the general pattern
of belief or behaviour becomes not only political crime but actual
heresy; the voice of the People is the voice of God.
The above analysis makes clear that Mazzini's theory of obliga
tion and duty is, in fact, one of several ways of solving the problem
of government by denying that any such problem exists. He ad
mits that in bad government there,may be conflictbetween the indi
vidual and society, between the citizen and his government,but pos
tulates that in good government this conflictdoes not arise, because
the good citizen and the good government are one, and that in obeying
the State the citizen is obeying himself?a familiar position. The
79
revolutionary solution, which he rejects, was to admit that there was

always the possibility of conflict,and that there was not, and never
would be, complete identity of view between the citizens, but that
through the technique of discussion, opposed views would be modified
and common policies found, at least as long as the State couldmanage
to satisfy the great bulk of the citizens. Mazzini's rejection of this
view is conditionedby his theological presuppositions, by the idea that
the real nature and purpose of man, as of states, is to be found in
his relation to God, a relation that is outside the realm of experience.
The nation is not geography or history, it is mission, idea. If we
ask the question, "whose idea, and what mission?" we are thrown back
upon an investigation into the nature of God, and our answer will de
pend upon our view of metaphysical ultimates. Mazzini denies that
our answers can or will differ. His belief, however, lacks conviction,
forhe is prepared to see to it, by means of "education," that they do
not.
In Mazzini, however, as we have already pointed out, the two
consequences Of the Revolution are mixed. He is at once the Demo
crat and the Nationalist, the Liberal and the Fascist. As the ex
periment had not been tried, he was prepared to attempt to build his
new State upon democratic foundations, and to institute a Parlia
mentary system, without however allowing much local government.

He was still to some extent under the domination of the principles
of 1789, though his thought had moved a longway from them. If,
however, we pay attention to his main line of thought, it is obvious
that the sort of State Mazzini wanted is the sort of State Italy now
is. A State governed by a minority, which is the interpreterto the
nation of God, which, strong in its own infallibility, is prepared by
means of education, and, where that fails, by force, to impose the Will
of God which is, in the last resort, the National Will, interpretedby
a Leader or a Party, upon the individual. When the inconsistencies
and gaps in his ideas are made clear, it is obvious that Mazzini could
have no faith inDemocratic Liberalism and that his true importance,
as the Italian Fascists recognise, is as a slightly inconsistentbut quite
definite precursor of Fascism.
REFERENCES.
1. See Greenfield: Economics and Liberalism in the Italian Risorgimento. (John
Hopkins Press.)
2. Rosselli, N. Mazzini e Bakounine. (Torin 1927, p. 38.)
3. Mazzini. Duties of Man. p. 11. (Everyman Library Edition.)
4. Mazzini op cit. p. 56, 57.
6. Gentile. Che oosa e il Fascismo? p. 27.
7. Mazzini op cit. p. 35.
80
The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
Behind the Balkan Wars: Russian Policy toward Bulgaria and the Turkish Straits, 1912-13
Author(s): Ronald Bobroff
Source: Russian Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 76-95
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
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BehindtheBalkanWars:
RussianPolicytoward
Bulgariaand theTurkish
Straits1912-13
RONALD BOBROFF
Avs
societymovestowardthebeginning
of a newmillennium,
it has begunto reflect
activelyon thecentury nowending,trying tounderstandhowonehundred yearsfilledwith
suchtechnological advances,suchhumanachievement couldalso havebeenburdened with
so muchbloodshedanddestruction. A focalpointforcomprehending thechangehasbeen
and mustbe theFirstWorldWar. The GreatWarirreparably destroyedtheconservative
politicalsystemsstillin place in centralandeasternEurope,takingwithit fourgreatem-
pires,andforeshadowed muchthatwas to comein thenextworldconflict, bornoutofthe
muddledresolution ofthefirst.Indeed,someofourforemost historianshaverecently set
theirsightson theFirstWorldWar,provoking readerstothinkoncemoreaboutthecauses
andcoursesofthewar.'
Atthesametime,theongoingBalkancriseshavecalledattention to Russianactivity
in thearea. WhendiscussingtheRussianFederation'scurrent attempts to assistSerbia,
journalistsand commentators sometimes referto Russia's traditional
sympathies forthe
Slavicpeoplesofsoutheastern in
Europe an attempt tounderstand Russia'sintentions.The
juxtapositionofthecurrent criseswiththenewattention to theFirstWorldWarsuggesta
usefulavenueof approaching theproblemof RussianpolicytowardotherSlavic states.
Asidefromtheclimacticdecisiontakenin July1914to go to warostensibly on behalfof
Serbia,the two BalkanWarsof 1912-13providean excellentfieldforstudying Russia's
relationshipswith the Slavic states in the area. While a good deal of attention
Researchforthispaperwas supported inpartbya grantfromtheInternational

Research& ExchangesBoard,with
fundsprovided bytheNationalEndowment fortheHumanitiesandtheU.S. Department ofState.Fundshavealso
beenprovidedbytheDuke University GraduateSchool;CenterforSlavic,Eurasian,andEast EuropeanStudies;
CenterforInternationalStudies;andCenterforEuropeanStudies.Noneoftheseorganizations is responsible
for
theviewsexpressed.
'Niall Ferguson,
ThiePi/yof Waz;:Eq'plainilzg
Wor-ld
WarI(New York,1999); MartinGilbert,ThieFirstWorld
Wazr.A CowovleteHistory(NewYork,1994);JohnKeegan,ATeFirstWorldWar(NewYork,1999). Datesin this
essayare in New Style.
TheRzissianReview59 (January
2000): 76-95
Copyright
2000 TheRussiavzReview

theBalkan Wars
Behinid 77
hasbeengiventotheRussiandefenseofSerbiandesiresforanAdriatic portandtoRussia's
reactionto thepoliticsof the"systemofBalkanalliances,"thishas beendonein relative
isolationfromone ofRussia'smostvitalinterests: thesecurity oftheTurkishStraits.2
Long thesubjectof historical thecentrality
investigation, of theStraitsquestionin
Russiandiplomacy hasbeenacceptedbyall sidesofthedebate,evenwithsomedifferences
ofinterpretationovertheprimacy oftheissuevis-a'-vistheneedto containtheexpansion-
ismof theGermanicempires.3Giventhegeneralacceptanceof theircriticalnature, itis
surprisingthattheroleof theStraitsin RussianpolicyduringtheBalkan Warshas been
neglected.Theyprovidean excellentexampleof howRussiahad to choose betweenits
owninterests and thoseof one of thenewSlavic stateswhoseveryexistenceRussiahad
donemuchto assure. WhenfacedwithBulgarianaspirations to a roleat theStraits,the
Russiangovernment steadfastlyopposedit,refusing to allow theBulgarianspermanent
accesstoConstantinople, theDardanelles, theBosphorus, ortheSea ofMarmora.Leading
thiseffort,ForeignMinister SergeiD. Sazonovrepeatedly madeclearthathis government
couldallowno power,largeor small,theopportunity tocontroltheStraitssaveforTurkey
or,ultimately,Russia. His policywas thepreservation ofthestatusquo attheStraitsforas
longas possible,untilRussiawouldbe able to takethemoveritself.Thispolicycompli-
catedRussianattempts tokeepBulgariaat a distancefromViennaandultimately brought
Russiatoseriously considerarmedintervention, evenattheriskofwiderescalation.These
effortsultimatelysucceededinpreserving Turkish sovereignty in theseareasbutprovedto
haveunforeseen, negative consequences, callingintoquestionthevalueofthepolicyinthe
firstplace. Sazonovwoulddo whathe couldforBulgaria,buthe wouldnotpermanently
sacrificeRussia'sowninterests forSofia'sbenefit.
Russia'sinterestin theStraitswas bothcomplexandsharedbyotherstates.Russian
policymakers had been seriouslyconcernedwiththeStraitssinceCatherineII had made
Russiaa riparian poweron theBlack Sea. By Sazonov'stime,theireconomicvaluehad
increasedsignificantly,especiallyas southern Russianproduction of oil, manganese,and
coal grew.4In termsoftotalvalueoftrade,over1906-13thesouthern portsaveraged 26.1
percentof totalRussianinternational trade,whiletheBalticportsaveraged30.4 percent
overthosesameyears. Morecrucial,theBlack Sea portswerethegatewaylargelyfor
exports, whilethemajority of imports came through thenorthern ports.Thus,at a time
whenthegovernment was attempting to exportas muchas possiblein orderto afford
20n theBalkanWarssee ErnestC. Helmreich, TheDiplonzacyoftheBa.lkanWars,1912-1913 (Cambridge,

MA, 1938);AndrewRossos,Rutssiaand theBalkans:Inter-Balkazn Rivalriesand Rutssianz
ForeignlPolic); 1908-
1914(Toronto,1981);LuigiAlbertini, ofthieWarof1914 3 vols.,ed. andtrans.IsabellaM. Massey
The Origiins
(London,1952-57), 1:chaps.7-8; and GeorgeB. Zotiades"Russiaand theQuestionof Constantinople and the
Turkish Straitsduring theBalkanWars"Ba&lkaStudies11:2 (1970): 281-98.
3See,forexample,CountM. Montgelas,ThieCasefortheCenitr-alPowers (London,1925);SidneyB. Fay,Tlhe
OrigiZisofthe Worl-d War,2 vols. (New York,1929); I. V. Bestuzhev,"Bor'ba v Rossii po voprosamvneshnei
politikinakanune pervoimirovoivoiny(1910-1914gg.),"lstoricheskie zapiski75(1965): 44-85; V. S. Vasiukov,
"'Glavnyipriz':S. D. Sazonovi soglashenieo Konstantinopole inRossiisskaia
i prolivakh," dipnoznatiiavportteta-kh,
ed. A. V. Ignat'evet al. (Moscow,1992),355-77; andotherscitedbelow.
4See D. W. Spring,"RussianForeignPolicy,EconomicInterests, andtheStraitsQuestion,1905-1914,"inNew
Perspectives inModernRutssian Historyed. RobertB. McKean(NewYork,1992),217-18. Thefigures beloware
frompp.209-10.

78 RonaldBobroff
criticaltechnological imports, maintaining thatexportroutetookon addedsignificance.

TheTurkish closureoftheStraitsto all shipping forabouta monthinAprilandMay 1912,
becauseofan Italianattackon theDardanelles,madetheRussiansevenmoreprotective of
thisvulnerable connection to theMediterranean Sea.
Russia'snavalinterests attheStraitsbegantochangeshortly beforeSazonovbecame
foreign minister in 1910. Russia'ssouthern coasthadlongbeenprotected bytheprohibi-
tionagainstthepassageof foreignwarshipsthrough theStraitswithout theSultan'sper-
mission,butfromthetimeoftheRusso-Japanese Warthisprohibition provedmorea hin-
drancethana help. Duringthatwar,St.Petersburg hadbeenunabletosendreinforcements
fromtheBlackSea tothePacific.Then,although the1907Anglo-Russian ententereduced
traditionalfearsofa Britishattackon Russia,technological advancesandrenewedTurkish
interestin navalarmscomplicated Russia's situation.The invention of thedreadnought-
classbattleship-faster,better-armed, andbetter-armored thananything elseafloat-quickly
madeeverything on theBlackSea obsolete.AftertheYoungTurksbegantoruleTurkey in
1908,theybeganhavingwarshipsbuiltbroad,whichcouldthenbe brought intotheBlack
Sea. Effectively unabletobringtheirownwarships through theStraits, theRussianshadto
buildthemthemselves, buttheydidnotpossesscapablesouthern shipyards until1911-12.
Even once theseinstallations existed,theslow pace of Russiannavalconstruction kept
Russiafromcompensating fortheefficiency of westernandcentralEuropeanshipyards.5
The Straitsregimethusplayeda criticalpartin Russia'ssenseofnationalsecurity.
BeforetheBalkanWars,efforts to changethissituation had begun. Diplomatically,
therehadbeentwonotableRussianattempts tochangetheStraitsregime.In 1908,Foreign
Minister A. P. Izvolskiitriedto exchangeRussianacquiescencetoAustrianannexation of
BosniaandHerzegovina forAustrian support forallowingRussiatomovewarships through
theStraits.Austria, however, annexedtheprovinces beforeIzvolskiicouldobtaintheagree-
mentof otherpowers,andtheresultant diplomatic crisisdealtRussianprestigea serious
blow.ThelessonthatIzvolskii'ssuccessor, Sazonov,musthavelearnedfromthiseventwas
thatuntilRussiawas strong enoughtoseizetheStraits, andthisonlyinthecontext ofa pan-
a
Europeanconflict,change at theStraits would have to wait.6 Thus, when N. V. Charykov
triedinlate1911totakeadvantage oftheTurks'distraction during theItalo-Turkish warby
pressingthemto allowRussianwarshipsto pass theStraits,Sazonovrefusedto condone
his attempt,opposedto makinganyunilateral effort on thisquestion.7
Ifthatwardidcome,thearmedforceswerepreparing to seize atleasttheBosphorus.
In 1885planning beganto sendan expedition to capturethewaterway.8 Duringthecrisis
'Casteletdep. 173 toMinistrede la Marine,22 December1910,ServiceHistorique de la Marine(Paris),BB7,

131,d. c.; PeterGatrell,Governmene, Industryand Rearmament in,Russia,1900-1914. TheLustAsulrnent of
Tsarism(Cambridge, England,1994),231-32, 286, 303. By 1914 thepace of suchworkhad significantly in-
creased.See David Stevenson, Armaments and theComingof Was:Europe,1904-1914(Oxford,1996),349.
6On thelinkbetweenEuropeanwarand theStraitssee SergeSazonov,FatefulYears1909-1916 (London,
1928),126-27,242.
70n the"Charykov Mission"see EdwardC. Thaden,"Charykov andRussianForeignPolicyatConstantinople
in 1911,"JournalofCentralEuropeanAffairs 16 (1956/57):25-43.
8ZhilinskiandDanilovrep.6 toSukhomlinov, 23 January
1912,Rossiiskiigosudarstvennyivoenno-istoricheskii
arkhiv(RGVIA),f.2000,op. 1,d. 2220,11.133-37.

BehindtheBalkan Wars 79
overtheTurkishmassacresofArmenians in 1895-96,St. Petersburg resolvedto seize the

if
Bosphorus LondonforcedtheStraitsin an attempt to pushreforms on thePorte.The
Russiansintendedsuchan actionto preventtheBritishfromsendingits shipsintothe
BlackSea orfromimposing internationalcontrolovertheStraits, thusthreatening Russia's
interestsinkeepingthemclosedtoforeign warships.9 Opposition fromtheirFrenchallies,
however, prevented Russiafrommakingfinalpreparations alongtheselines.As theBalkan
Warsbeganin 1912,theRussianarmyandnavywereenergetically updating andpreparing
plansandtroopsforsuchan operation, iftheneedarose.10
Thetemporary closureoftheStraits in 1912alsomadeapparent howconcerned people
outsideofgovernment werewiththeStraits.Severalministers receiveda largenumber of
lettersandtelegrams frommerchants, bankers, andothersinterested in tradeon theBlack
Sea, callingon theRussiangovernment to do something tohelpthem.11 A widespectrum
of deputiesin theRussianStateDuma also believedthatRussia shouldactivelyworkto
improveitssituation attheStraits.'2Furthermore, thepresswas vehement in itscriticism
ofSazonov'spoliciesandsoughta stronger line.'3
Buttheexistenceorvolumeofsuchopiniondoes notequalpoweroverpolicy.While
Sazonovwas certainly awareofthecriticism andrecognizedtheconcreteconcernsofspe-
cificinterest groups,he thought littleof thepressand did notpay it muchheed when
formulating policy,contrarytotheassumptions ofmosthistorians.'4 Revealingly,Sazonov
informed his representativesthatnotonlywouldhe notbe bulliedby attacksfromthe
Russianpress,butin facttheattackswouldservehispurposes.The Russiangovernment
hadbeenable "touse statements aboutapparent disorderto inclinecabinetsto theidea of
thenecessityof takingintoaccountthedifficulty of ourpositionand to fightwiththe
onslaughtof ourpublicopinion."15Whileit couldbe arguedthatthisstatement was an
attempt to tryto hidethefactthathe was actuallyfollowing publicopinionon thisissue,
noneofhisextendedwritings fromthisperiodbetrayanysympathy fortheclamorin the
pressorelsewhere, andinsteadshowfrustration anddisgust.In contrast, thereis reasonto
believethatSazonovfeltthathe better understood publicopinionthanthepapersdid.'6In
June1913he wroteto Izvolskiiabouthowdifficult he had foundthiswinterof 1912-13,
whenattackson his policycame fromall sides. He deeplyappreciated thatNicholasII
had stoodbehindhimthewholetime,forwhichhe feltRussia also oughtto be grateful.
9M.S. Anderson, TheEasternzQiuestion (London,1966),256-58.

"0See,forexample,materials in RGVIA,f. 2000, op. 1,d. 2219-2221;andRossiiskiigosudarstvennyi arkhiv
voenno-morskogo flota(RGAVMF),f.418,op. 1,dd.734,784,and2936,andf.418,op. 2, dd.260,267,and273.
"See thematerials receivedin Rossiiskiigosudarstvennyi istoricheskii
arkhiv(RGIA), f. 1276,op. 7, d. 469b.
Forthematerials receivedbyS. I. Timashev, ministeroftradeandindustry, seeTimashevletter 3636 toKokovtsov,
23 April1912,ibid.,1.43, senttoSazonovas letter2204 on 25 April1912.
'2K.F. Shatsillo,Russkiii~nperializin
irazveitijeota(1906-1914gg.) (Moscow,1968), 194-96.
'3Bestuzhev,"Bor'ba"55ff.
'4See,forexample,Rossos,Rilssiaand theBalkans. NotethatGreatBritain'spolicymakers actedsimilarly
(ZaraB. Steiner,BritainandtheOnginzs oftheFirstWorldWar[NewYork,1977]).
'5Sazonovletter678 to Izvolskii,Benckendorff, et al., 31 October1912,ArkhivvneshneipolitikiRossiiskoi
imperii(AVPRI),f. 151,op. 482, d. 130,11.78-81.
"6SeeDavidM. McDonald,"A Leverwithout a Fulcrum:DomesticFactorsandRussianForeignPolicy,1905-
1914,"in ImperialRuissian ForeignPolicy,ed. HughRagsdale(Cambridge, England,1993),271-72.

80 Ronald Bobroff
Furthermore, he feltthat"onedeeplycomforting fact"hadtobe noted:"Thegovernment as

representedbymeduring theBalkancrisismoretruly reflected
publicopinionofthecoun-
trythandidthenationalist presswiththeunscrupulous at itshead."'7With
Novoe vi-enmia
suchan attitude,itwouldbe easiertocontinue topaylittleheedtothepress,butatthesame
timeuse itas a toolforgaininggreater concessionsfromotherstates.
A wholedifferent setoffactorswereatworkinBulgaria.RussiahadhelpedBulgaria
gainindependence fromtheOttomanEmpirein the1870s and 1880s,whichmadefora
strongfeelingofamityamongBulgarianstowardRussia. ButRussia'sconstant meddling
inBulgarianaffairs drovethetwostatesapart.After RussiasucceededinhavingAlexander
of Battenberg removedfromthethrone,theBulgarianschose,againstRussia's wishes,
Ferdinandof Coburg,a princeand officer in theAustrianarmy.WhileRussia came to
acceptFerdinand as PrinceofBulgariaseveralyearsafterhis succession,Ferdinand often
displayedan alarming inclination
toward Viennaas he soughtthemostadvantageous posi-
tionfromwhichto advanceBulgariandesires. Amongthemostimportant of themwas
territorial
expansiontoreacquirethebordersgiventoitbytheRusso-Turkish TreatyofSan
Stefanoih 1878,whichhadbeenso quicklyoverturned bytheGreatPowers.'8Thisaspira-
tionputBulgariaat odds withtheOttomanEmpire,whichstillpossessedtheland that
Sofiawanted,and withGreeceand especiallySerbia,whichhad theirown aspirations to
landtheBulgariansclaimedinMacedonia.As unrest inAlbaniaandMacedoniagrewinthe
yearsleadingto 1911,followedbytheItalianwarwithTurkeythatyear,Bulgariaandthe
otherBalkanstatesreconsidered theirmutualdisagreements and signedtreaties, uniting
themto endTurkishpowerin Europe. Theyhopedto divideup itsterritory whileTurkey
was distractedbywarelsewhereandbeforeRussiaandAustiia-Hungary themselves inter-
9
venedandimposeda solutionon thearea. Butmorethanthat,Ferdinand and somena-
tionalists
hopedforevenmore,especiallytheconquestof Constantinople, makingit the
newcapitalofanevenlargerBulgarianstate.20 Thesedreamswereknown.outside Bulgaria
and had forseveralyearsalarmedthemakersof Russianforeign policy,amongothers.
Withthecommencement oftheBalkanWars,Bulgariasoughttofulfilthesedreams.
The Ottomangovernment, of course,was workingin theoppositedirection.After
decadesofdecay,a groupofnationalist Turkish officersseekingtherecentralizationofthe
stateandreestablishment ofTurkish strength,seizedpowerin 1908-9. Theforeign policy
ofthese"YoungTurks"(officially, theCommittee ofUnionandProgress)dealtprimarily
withresistingtheterritorial expansionof theBalkanstates-at Turkishexpense-and re-
ducingtheinfluence oftheGreatPowersovertheirnation,enshrined inprivileges knownas
capitulations.22
Whiletheleadingmembers of theleadershipdisagreedabouttheoverall
orientationOttomanforeignpolicy,suspicionof Russia's intentions towardtheStraits
'7SazonovlettertoIzvolskii,26 June1913,AVPRI,f. 340,op. 835,d. 39, 11.35-36.

"8Anderson,EasterlzQutestion,227-31; BarbaraJelavich,
RussiasBvalkalz Enitaglemnelits1804-1914(Cam-
bridge,England,1991),chap.5.
'9Rossos,RussiaanidtheBalkaws,chaps.1 and 2.
20A.Nekludoff, Diplomnatic beforeanlddurbitg
Reminisiscelces theWorldWas;1911-1917(London,1920),116-
20.
21See Bax-Ironsideletter22 toGrey,24 February1912,inBritishlDocumniewtsol tileOfigiisoftheWa;;1898-
1914 (BD) (London,1933),9.1, no. 554; andRossos,Rutssiaalndtze Bzalkazns,
87-90.
22F.A. K. Yasamee,"Ottoman Empire,"inDecis/oiisforWM;; 1914,ed. K. Wilson(London,1995),229-68.

andArmeniaremainedstrong,
andtheTurkishgovernmenttendedto seekbetterrelations
withGermanyandAustria-Hungary,
whilepreserving tieswithGreatBritainand
beneficial
France.23
Theinterests oftheothergreatpowersintheStraits questionvaried.GreatBritainhad
been Russia's traditionalopponenton theproblemand had long soughtto keep Russia
bottledup in theBlack Sea to protect Britishlinesofcommunication to India. Butbythe
beginning of thetwentieth century newfactorswerealtering London'sviews. The exist-
enceoftheFranco-Russian alliancemeantthatwarwithRussiawouldbringwarwithFrance,
reducing thevalueoftheStraitssincetheFrenchfleetwouldbe able tothreaten theRoyal
Navy even if theStraitswere bottled
up. Increasingly sophisticatednavalthinking and a
strengthening positioninEgyptmadetheAdmiralty lessworriedaboutitsabilitytoprotect
accesstoBritain'sAsianempire.A fewmembers oftheForeignOfficewerealreadybegin-
ningatthistimetolinktheirpositioninPersiawiththeRussianpositionatConstantinople,
butreadinessto makea quid pro quo wouldcome onlyonce WorldWarI had begun.24
Frenchpolicymakers weremoreconcernedat thistimewithTurkey'sfinancialsituation
andtheirinterests in whatis nowSyriaandLebanon.25Decades ofinvestments hadgiven
themlargeandoftencontrolling stakesin a varietyof Ottomanagricultural andindustrial
ventures,mining,andinfrastructure. Pariswas thusveryanxiousto avoidoffending the
Turkish government totheextentthatitsinfluence orreturn on investment was threatened,
especiallyif Germany wouldbenefit fromtheshift.But theFrenchalso hopedthatthe
Straitswouldremainclosed,toprevent anychangeinthebalanceofnavalpowerthatwould
comeifRussiacouldbringitswarshipsoutof theBlack Sea.26 France-Russia's ally-
thusprovedtobe a biggerobstaclethanRussia'sold rival,GreatBritain.
ForGermany andAustria-Hungary, theOttomanEmpirerepresented a possiblepart-
nerin containing Russianexpansionand limitingits pan-Slavactivitiessince all three
statesstoodto lose fromRussiansuccess. In Germany's case,Turkeyalso serveda colo-
nial purposeas its dreamsof an Africanempirefaded.Germanyinvestedheavilyin
railwayprojects, mostnotablytheBerlin-to-Baghdad railroadproject,whichwouldserve
as a meansofeconomicpenetration andof spreading Germaninfluence through theOtto-
manEmpireas it further weakened.Austria-Hungary, however, feltfarmoreambivalent
thanGermany did abouttheTurksthemselves.Viennaopposedthepartition oftheOtto-
man Empire,includingRussia's gain of theStraits,whiletheyhad no footholdin the
empirethatwouldfalltothemincase ofitsdisintegration. Turkey'sassistanceagainstthe
Balkanstateswas whatinterested theAustrians themost.27
23Rossos, Russiaand theBa.lkans,13-15.

24Keith Neilson,Britainand theLast Tsar(Oxford,1995); 114-15,233, 284; Geoffrey
Miller,Stonits:
British
towaidstheOttoman
Pokicy Empireand theOrigtnsoftheDaIdanellesCampaign(Hull, 1997),pt.3.
25John F. V. Keiger,FranceauidtheO-Igidns
oftheFirstWordWar(NewYork,1983),74.
26L.BruceFulton,"Franceand theEnd of theOttomanEmpire,"in Tie GreatPowvers and theEnd of the
OttotnanEmpire,ed. MarianKent(London,1984),141-71.
27F.R. Bridge,"TheHabsburgMonarchy andtheOttoman Empire,1900-18,"in Kent,TheGreatPowers,31-
51.

82 Ronald Bobroff
BEFORE THE WAR
Fearingarmedconflicton theBalkanPeninsuladuringthesummerof 1912, theGreat

Powersincreasedtheirpressure foran endtotheItalo-Turkish wartohelpTurkey lookless
vulnerable totheBalkanallies. Beyondtheseefforts, Sazonovsoughttowardoffanythreat
ofchangeincontrolandaccesstoConstantinople andtheStraitsalongtwolines:first with
theGreatPowers,andsecondwithBulgaria.
First,theRussianforeign minister soughttoprevent theStraitsfrombecominga topic
of discussionamongtheGreatPowers. Simultaneously, however, he refusedto takeany
stepthatmightsuggestthatRussia had washedits handsof interest in thefateof these
Turkishpossessions. These efforts developedmostclearlyin threehigh-levelmeetings
withtheGerman,French,andBritishgovernments in July,August,and September1912.
In noneofthesemeetings didSazonovraisetheStraitsas a subjectforseriousdiscussion,
eventhoughthesewouldhavebeenperfectopportunities forRussiato have soughtnew
declarations of supportfora changein theStraitsregime. At thesame time,however,
Sazonovrefused tocooperatewithFrenchsuggestions thatthePowersdeclaretheir"disin-
terestedness" intheregion:he sensedandresented thattheFrenchweremotivated bysuspi-
cionofRussianmotives;andhe believeditimpermissible totrample uponSlavicsensibili-
tiesin theregionandto sacrifice Russianinterests thereas well.28
This extended effortby Sazonov to minimize discussion of the Straits and
Constantinople does notmean,however, thathe ignoredtheissue. On thecontrary, as the
threatof waron theBalkanPeninsulagrewmoreserious,so too did theRussianfearof
BulgarianactionagainsttheTurkishcapital. Thisthreatwas enhanced,ironically, bythe
Russians'own actions-theencouragement of a systemof military alliancesundertheir
aegisamongBulgaria,Serbia,Greece,andMontenegro-which increasedthechancesofa
victory overtheOttoman Empireandreducedthehesitation ofthosealliedstatestooptfor
war.29Addingto theirony,one of thefactorsbehindtheRussiansupportfora Balkan
alliancewasprotection ofthestatusquo attheStraitsandConstantinople.30 Butas itgrew
increasingly apparent through1912thatBulgariaposeda dangertoTurkish controlofthese
areas,Sazonov warnedtheBulgariangovernment againstcapturing Constantinople.In
May he toldBulgarianleaderS. DanevthatRussiacouldnotcondoneanyBulgariancon-
queststhatincluded Adrianople (thelastfortresscitybetween BulgariaandConstantinople),
or pointsbeyond.3'Duringthesummer, Sazonov cautionedtheBulgariansthatRussia
28Seethecorrespondence in BD, 9.1; Mezhadunarodnyeotnoshentia (MO) (Moscow,

v epo/lzuimperializma
1939-40),ser.2, 20.1-2; andDocuments (1871-1914)(DDfi) (Paris,1931-34),3.3,for
Era/ifCaires
Diplornatiques
June-September 1912.
29TheRussians,andSazonovin particular, wereveryawareofthispossibility at thetime.See O'Beirneletter
416 to Grey,14 October1912,BD, 9.1, no. 193.
300ntheRussianrolein theformation oftheBalkanLeague see Rossos,Russiaand theBalkans,Helmreich,
DiplomacyoftheBalkan Warr, andE. C. Thaden,Russia and theBalkanAlliance(University Park,PA, 1965),
chaps.3 and4.
3'Sazonov letter299 toNekliudov, 23 May 1912,MO, 20.1,no. 64; andSazonovmemorandum toNicholasII,
10 May 1912,MO, 19.2,no. 878.

wouldendeavor tostopthematAdrianople,32 butiftheydefeated theTurksthereandturned

toConstantinople,"Russiawouldbe obliged,"Sazonovsaid,"towarnthemoff,as, though
she had no desireto establishherselfat Constantinople, she could notallow anyother
Powerto takepossession of As
it."33 longas Russia was unable to controltheprocessof
change,SazonovdemandedthatConstantinople remainTurkish.He believedthatall Rus-
sia neededto do was to "present an ultimatum at Sofiaandthatwouldsuffice to arrestthe
furtheradvanceof theBulgarianarmy."34 This overconfidence in theweightof Russia's
warnings is symptomatic ofthelargerRussiandelusionthattheycoulddictatetheactions
of theSlav peoplesin theBalkans. Muchto theRussians'chagrin,theywouldfindthat
theywerealmostas powerlessto setlimitsto theBalkanstates'expansionas theywereto
preventthemfromgoingto war. ButBulgariaenteredtheFirstBalkanWarwellawareof
Russia'sattitudeaboutConstantinople andtheStraits.
BULGARIANS AT THE GATES
Throughout thefirstweeksofthewarandbeyond,theGreatPowerssearchedfora wayto

end the Balkan war as quicklyas possiblewhilekeepingthemselvesout of the actual
combat,butformulating policyprovedmoredifficult
an effective thatanyof themhad
anticipated.35Sazonov'staskwas complicated bytheneedtoprevent eithersidefromgain-
inga victory so greatthatitmightthreatenthestatusquo attheStraitsandfurther destabi-
lize theregion.He therefore hadtoprevent theBulgarianarmiesfromseizingtheTurkish
capitaland,conversely, toavoidanexaggerated Turkish victoryoverBulgaria.Earlyinthe
warthePowersexpectedtheBalkanarmiesto havea difficult timeagainsttheGerman-
trainedOttomanforces,so theRussiansconsentedto promising Turkeyfullcontrolof its
capitaland surrounding area,whiletherestof itsempirein Europewouldbe subjectto
Europeancontrolandreform andkeptunderthenominalsuzerainty ofthePorte.36
The Balkanallies' surprisingsuccess,however,allowedtheGreatPowersto accept
changesat theexpenseoftheOttomanEmpire.The Bulgarianadvanceon the
territorial
Chataljalines-the maindefensiveworksbeforeConstantinople-increasingly alarmed
Sazonovbecauseit seemedto possessthemomentum to reach all theway to theTurkish
capital. Sazonovthussoughtto defineandprotect whathe saw as Russia's interests.On
31 Octoberhe senta circularto theRussianrepresentatives in thecapitalsof theGreat
Powersand ofthe new out
setting
belligerents thebases ofRussian policy.Russiarequired
statusquo couldnotbe preserved,
that,iftheterritorial Constantinople anda regionto its
west definedlargelyby the MaritsaRiver,includingthe fortresscityof Adrianople,
"mustremainunderthe real sovereignty of the Sultan in guaranteeingthe security
of Constantinopleand of the related European and Russian interestsof the first
32Nekliudov letterto Sazonov,20 July1912,MO, 20.1, no. 216; Doulcettels.443 and 444 to Poincar6,14
September 1912,DDF 3.3,no. 402.
33Buchanan letter283 to Grey,18 September1912,BD, 9.1, no. 722.
34Ibid.
35Montenegro wentto waron 8 October,andBulgaria,Greece,andSerbiaon 17 October.
36Sazonov letter671 toIzvolskii,23 October1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 130,11.47-50.

84 Ronald Bobroff
order."37Thiswas nota newdemand,so SazonovexpectedthatBulgariawouldnotmake

thingsdifficult foritselfandRussiabyignoring his position.
To persuadetheBulgarians, Sazonovtriedtwostrategies. First,hewarnedthemagainst
storming theChataljalinessincethatmightcause riotsin thecapital. The powersofEu-
ropemostdeeplyinvestedthere-BritainandFrance-could thereupon turnagainstBul-
garia,leavingthelattervulnerable tointervention byAustriaandRumania.38 Thisattempt
to scaretheBulgariansintostopping didnotwork,forLondonandPariswerenotso easily
swayedagainsttheBulgariansas Sazonovintimated theymightbe.39Second,withperhaps
as muchwishfulthinking, he pointedoutthata failureof thesiege ofAdrianoplemight
seriouslyreducetheterritorial acquisitionsthatthealliescouldreceive.
Regardlessoftheirreactionto this,SazonovstressedtotheBulgariansandtheGreat
Powersthattherecouldbe no misinterpretation ofRussia'sinsistence on theSultankeep-
ingthelandfromtheMaritsaRiver,includingAdrianople, underhis ownrealcontrol.40
He personally toldtheBulgarianminister in St. Petersburg,"Be content withSan Stefano
Bulgariaanddo notenterConstantinople underanycircumstances, becauseyouwilloth-
erwisecomplicateyouraffairs Less directly,
too gravely.'"4' he soughtthecooperation of
his Ententepartners on 31 Octoberand 1 November, requesting thatthey,too,pushthe
Bulgariangovernment tohaltitsattacksat theChataljaline,or,failingthat,nottooccupy
Constantinople. BritainandFranceagreedthattheSan Stefanoborders hadtobe the"basis
ofthefuture settlement."42Both,however, opposedpressuring Bulgariainthemanner that
theRussiansdesired,fearing eitherthatan abandonment oftheoffensive wouldallowthe
Turkish forcesto regroup, orthatintensepressure"couldalienatetheBulgariansfromthe
PowersoftheTripleEntenteandease forAustriaa separateagreement with[Sofia]."43
Sazonovnonetheless in
persisted seeking united actionby the Powers tohalttheBul-
garians.He hopednotonlytoprevent theriotsandmassacresacrosstheOttomanEmpire
thatcouldresultfromtheBulgarians'entry intoConstantinople, butalso to denySofiathe
bargaining chip forfuturenegotiations thatpossessionof thecitywouldhandit, since
Bulgariamightretreat fromConstantinople onlyifthePowersforcedit to do so.' Ulti-
mately, he insistedtotheBritishambassador thatthecapitalandtheregionaroundit"must
eitherremainTurkish [or]becomeRussian,andthatRussiawouldregardanyattempt made
by another Powerto takepermanent possessionof themas a casus belli."45 In thisway
Sazonovclearlyindicatedhowvitalthelocationwas to Russia;theonlyothereventthat
mightotherwise havebrought Russianmilitary intervention was an Austrianattack.He
37Sazonov letter678 toIzvolskiiet al., 31 October1912,ibid.,11.78-81.

38Sazonov tel.2403 toNekliudov, 31 October1912,ibid.,d. 3699,1.273.
39Rossos,Russiaand theBalkan-s, 88.
40Sazonovtel.2403 toNekliudov, 31 October1912.
41Rossos,Ritssiaand theBalkans,87-88.
42Buchanan tel.401 to Grey,1 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 85; Fleuriautel.326 to Poincare,1 November
1912,DDE, 3.4,no. 307; Benckendorff tel.288 to Sazonov,1 November1912,Krasnyiarklziv (KA), 16,no. 47.
tel.314 to Sazonov,1 November1912,KA, 16,no. 49; Greyletterto Benckendorff,
43Izvolskii 1 November
1912,BD, 9.2,no. 92; Bertietel. 189 to Grey,2 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 97.
44Sazonov tel.2423 to Izvolskii,Benckendorff, et al, 2 November1912,Material)po istoriifranko-russkikh
1910-l91?4g.g.(FRO) (Moscow,1922),293.
otnos/zeniiza
45Buchanan privatetelegram toGrey,2 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 98.

Behindtde Balkan Wars 85
was absolutely opposedto theBulgariansremaining atConstantinople andtrying toincor-

porateitintosomelargerBulgarianstate.
But alongwiththisstubbornness, Sazonov appearedreadyto compromise in other
areas consideredless vital. On 2 November, in a privateconversation withSir George
Buchanan,theBritishambassadortoRussia,Sazonovelucidatedlinesofpolicythatwould
definehis positionfortherestof thecrisis:whileBulgariawouldbe allowedto expand
beyondtheSan Stefanoborders, to includeevenAdrianople, theSultanmustcontinueto
possess real sovereignty overtheStraits,theirshores,and Constantinople, witha zone
sufficient foritsdefense.46On 3 November thisviewwasconfirmed ina high-level
meeting
thatincludedSazonov,PrimeandFinanceMinister V. N. Kokovtsov,NavalMinister Adm.
I. K. Grigorovich, and Chiefof theGeneralStaffGen. I. G. Zhilinskii.Deferring to the
opinion of the War MinistrythatAdrianople was not essential to the defense of
Constantinople, themembers ofthemeetingdecidedthatBulgariacouldkeepthecityas a
fortress ifitdesired.Butto preservehis owndiplomatic optionsSazonovtriedto restrict
thisnewsto a smallcircleof people in theEntentecapitals.47As long as thisdecision
remained secret,Sazonovwouldhavea stronger bargaining positionwiththeBulgariansif
thesituation demandedit.
Indeed,developments suggested thatthetimemightnotbe faroffwhenhe wouldneed
tonegotiate theBulgariansoutofConstantinople. Fearingthattheywereabouttobe over-
whelmedbytheBulgarianforces,on 3 and4 NovembertheTurkishgovernment pleaded
withthePowersforhelpin forcing theBalkanalliesto acceptan immediate armistice and
preventing theBulgarians,and especiallyKingFerdinand, fromentering Constantinople
andcausingriotsanddestruction.48
Stilltryingto obtainthecooperation of his Ententepartners, Sazonov informed the
Frenchforeign minister,RaymondPoincare,andtheBritishforeign Sir
secretary, Edward
Grey,thatifConstantinople werecaptured, Russiawouldbe forcedto senditsentireBlack
Sea fleetthereatonce. Thusitwouldbe muchbetter iftheywouldhelppressure Germany
andAustria-Hungary toagreeto a generalplanlestRussiabe forcedto deployitsfleet,an
actionthatcouldwellhavepan-European complications.49 ButPoincareandGreyrefused,
believingthatsuchpressurewas pointlessand mightevenbe counterproductive, driving
BulgariaintothehandsofAustria-Hungary.50
Withno supportfromhis foreignallies, and withSofia pressingits attacktoward
Constantinople, Sazonov feltobligedto tryto tempttheBulgariansby announcing that
46Buchanan tel.405 to Grey,2 November1912,BD, 9.2 no. 100.

47Buchanan tel.408 toGrey,4 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 119;Louis tel.511 toPoincare,4November1912,
DDF, 3.4, no. 343; J.Cambontel.393 toPoincare,4 November1912,DDF, 3.4,no. 333.
48Giers tel.982 to Sazonov,4 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 3700,1. 92; Sazonov tel.2451 to
Izvolskii,4 November1912,tel.2451,ibid.,d. 130,1.94.
49Sazonov tel.2455 toIzvolskii,4 November
1912,ibid.,11.96-97; Benckendorff tel.302 toSazonov,6 Novem-
ber1912,in GrafBenckendotffsDiplomawischerSchif/fivec/hsel(GBDS), ed. B. Siebert(Berlin,1928),2:no.710.
50Poincar6 tel.804 toLouis,2 November1912,DDF, 3.4,no. 313; Izvolskiitel.324 to Sazonov,3 November
1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 3700, 1.49; Benckendorff tel.295 to Sazonov,2 November1912,in Entente
DivloInacyandtheWorld -MahixoftheHirtor)qofEurope,1909-1914(London,1921),no.448; Poincaretel.810
toFleuriau,5 November1912,DDF, 3.4,no. 349.

86 RonaldBobroff
Russia had no objectionsto theirretaining Adrianopleafterthewar.5' But thisdid not

deflecttheBulgarians'drive,andby6 NovemberSazonovhadbecomeso pessimistic that
he appearedtomakethepenultimate concession:he informed theFrench,British,andBul-
gariangovernments thattheRussiangovernment "did notwantto opposethetemporary
occupationof Constantinople by theallies."52He did pointout,however, thata Turkish
withdrawal toAsia Minorwouldmakesubsequent negotiations as theTurk-
moredifficult,
ish armycouldthenregroup, "andforthePorte,thenecessitywouldnotariseof showing
anyparticular whileconvinced
tractability thataffairscouldnotgetworse."53 Furthermore,
he reminded themthatan extendedoccupationofConstantinople wouldcompelRussiato
stationitsBlack Sea fleetoffConstantinople untiltheBalkanallies departed.Untilthe
attackbytheoverextended BulgarianarmyfailedattheChataljalineson 17-18November,
Sazonov continuedto speak in thismannerand, as theFrenchambassadorto Russia,
GeorgesLouis,putit on 10 November, seemed"resigned"to a Bulgarianentranceinto
Constantinople,eventhoughhe stillrefusedto allowthattheymightremainthere.54
Although mosthistorians havebelievedthatSazonovwasreadytoacquiescetoa brief
Bulgarianoccupationof Constantinople, rarelyciteddocuments raisegravedoubtsabout
thewillingness of SazonovandtheRussiangovernment to see thisoccupationtakeplace.
WhiletellingthePowersthattheRussiangovernment wouldendurea temporary Bulgarian
occupationof Constantinople, theRussiansactuallywerepreparing to landtroopsthere,
ostensiblytokeeporderin thecityandprotect theEuropeancoloniesandthewiderChris-
tianpopulation.Prompted by Izvolskii,who recalledtentative Russianplansto occupy
Constantinople duringdisturbances in 1896-97 and 1908, Sazonov,Kokovtsov, and the
NavalMinistry begantodiscussa similarexpedition.55 As theBulgarians drewclosertothe
Chataljalines,thePorteinvited eachGreatPowerto senda single(thena second)warship
to Constantinopletohelpmaintain orderinthecapital.56TheRussiangovernment decided
to do more. First,between4 and 8 Novemberdirecttelegraphic communications were
betweenthecommander
established oftheBlackSea Fleetin Odessa andtheRussianam-
bassadorin Constantinople, M. K. Giers,so thatwarships, whichwerealreadyon a war
footing,couldbe called in withoutwaitingforapprovalfromSt. Petersburg.57 Second,
Sazonovnotified Gierson 6 November thatthesecondwarshipforConstantinople would
containtwocompaniesofsoldiers,someonethousandmen,whichhe also couldcall in at
hisdiscretion.Notingthatitwouldbe desirableforthetroopsto arrivein Constantinople
beforetheBulgarians, tomaintain
lestitbe toodifficult order,SazonovaskedGierswhether
"Greytel.139toBax-Ironside, 2 November1912,BD, 9.2,no.99; Bax-Ironside tel.120toGrey,3 November

1912,BD, 9.2,no. 109; Buchanantel.412 to Grey,5 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 130.
52Sazonov tel.2474 to Izvolskii,6 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 130,1. 104. See also Rossos,
Russiaand theBalkans,89.
53Sazonov tel.2474 toIzvolskii.
54Louistels.517 and518 to Poincar6,10 November1912,DDF, 3.4, no. 411.
letter
55Ilzvolskii to Sazonov,23 October1912,FRO, 289-91; EntenteDiploinacyand theWorld, no. 430.
56SeenoteinBD, 9.2, p. 89; andHelmreich,DiplomacyoftheBalkan Wars,201.
57Sazonovtel.2426 toGiers,2 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 3700,1.30; Sazonovtel.toNicholas
II, 4 November1912,ibid.,1.57; Nicholas'sapprovalon telegram ofsamedate,ibid.1.58; Grigorovichtel.320 to
NicholasII, 8 November1912,in Ia. Zakher,"Konstantinopol' i prolivy,"
AA,6, 51.

a thousand
menwouldbe sufficient.58
In response,Giersinformed
theministerthata mini-
mumoffivethousandsoldierswouldbe neededsimplytoprotect theEuropeanpartofthe
city.59
Thisfigurewas approved,
thetroopswereprepared, andthenavy,unabletoaccom-
modatesuch a largenumberof troopson thesingletrooptransport it had availableat
begantheprocessofchartering
Sevastopol, twolargesteamers fromtheVolunteerFleetin
Odessa.60
Amidtheintenseplanning andpreparation ofNovember, Sazonovcomposedtwolong
letters,
justbeforethecommencement oftheBulgarianattackon theChataljalines. These
toKokovtsov,
letters theserviceministers,andGiersof 12 and 14 November allowa better
understanding not only of the rationalebehindthe plan to land Russian troopsin
Constantinople butalso ofhiswiderviewson theStraitsquestion.61First,Sazonovspelled
outwhatwouldbe thegovernment's official,
publicexplanationfordispatching troops:to
maintain orderandsecurity "forEuropeansandlocal Christians,andalso forthenumerous
enterprisesand interestsof a worldcenter,likeConstantinople."62 Since Russia was the
closestGreatPowerand thetraditional protectorof Christians
in theOttomanEmpire,it
wasnatural forittobe theonetosendthetroopsforthispurpose.Butthislegitimate reason
maskedmorepressingissuesthatconcerned theRussianforeign minister, hisgovernment,
andhisemperor.Mostimportant, Sazonovsaw thisdeployment as an opportunity togain
moreinfluence overthefateof Constantinople andtheStraitsiftheTurkswereforcedto
retreatto Asia Minor. Sazonov suggestedthatthe longerthe Bulgariansspentin
Constantinople,thegreater werethechancesthatthefateofConstantinople andtheStraits
couldbe decidedin a fashioncontrary to Russia'sinterests.ThusRussiahad to possess
sufficientforceto giveit "thedecidingvoice"in anyresolution of thesematters.63 Here,
then,wasthecruxofthematter: Sazonovmeanttoemploythelegitimate needsofthelocal
andEuropeanpopulation forRussia'sownends:ensuring thatanyresolution ofthisissue
wouldaccordwithRussia'sinterests. Heretoowasoneoftheearliest, butrarelyidentified,
timesaftertheRusso-Japanese WarthatRussia consideredemploying military forceto
support itsdiplomacy.Butgiventhedistancesinvolvedandthepresenceofshipsfromall
theotherGreatPowers,Russiawas forcedtomakethesepreparations quietly,in starkcon-
trastto theopenmeasuresit was takingalongits westernborderwithAustria-Hungary,
wherethetwonationswereengagedin an armedstandoff, defending theirinterests vis-a'-
vis Serbia.54At Constantinople, Russiacouldnotbe sureof its abilityto applyconstant
pressureso was forcedtopreparemoresubtle,ifstillmilitary, measures.
Sazonov thenexplainedtheresolution thatwouldbest suitthoseneeds. First,he
dismissedinternationalizationofConstantinople andneutralization oftheStraitsas an in-
sufficientguaranteeofRussia'skeyinterests.Land or sea forcescouldbe usedtoviolate
58Sazonov tel.2473 to Giers,6 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 130,1. 103.

59Gierstel 1000to Sazonov,7 November1912,ibid.,d. 3700,1. 182.
60Sukhomlinov toKokovtsov, 19 November1912,letters1735and 1736,RGIA,f. 1276,op. 8, d. 465,11.4 and
18-19.
61Sazonovletter to[Kokovtsov, Servicechiefs],12November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482,d. 3700,11.242-49;
Sazonovletter to Giers,14 November1912,AVPRI,f. 138,op. 467, d. 459/478,11.
22-24.
62Sazonov to Kokovtsov, 12 November1912,242.
63Ibid.,
244.
64SeeStevenson, Armaments, 232-46 and253-66.

88 RonaldBobroff
anytreatythatdisarmedtheseareas,threatening boththeclosureof theStraitsand the

penetrationofotherPowers'warshipsintotheBlackSea. Russiamustnotrelyon written
agreements, Sazonovconcluded, butinsteadmustphysically atthis
assureitsvitalinterests
crucialwaterway.
Findingsuchanarrangement, ofcourse,wasnoeasymatter. Theradicaloptionwas to
seize Constantinople and theStraitsby force. Such an arrangement wouldgiveRussia
severaladvantages, includingcontrolofa centerofworldtradeanda "keyto theMediter-
raneanSea." Italso wouldprovidethe"basisofan unprecedented development ofRussian
power"through a relatively
shortbutverystrongly fortified
borderwithBulgaria,comple-
mentedbyequippingtheDardanelleswiththe"mostmodernfortress armaments."65 Not
onlywouldtheresultbe Russiandomination oftheBalkanstates,Sazonovpredicted, but
also Russianaccessionto "a worldpositionwhichis thenaturalcrownofherefforts and
overtwocenturies
sacrifices of ourhistory."
Thegrandeur ofsucha missionandalltheinnumerableconsequences

ofitsachieve-
mentinreligious, economicandpoliticalrelations
cultural, wouldbringa healing
in ourinternal
(ozdorovlenie) life,[and]wouldgivetheGovernment andsociety
thoseachievements andthatenthusiasm (pod"ein)whichcouldunitethemin the
serviceofa matter pan-national
ofindisputable (obs/ichenarodnot)
importance.66
TakingConstantinople, then,notonlywouldgreatlyimproveRussia's strategic position

butalso act as a healingbalmuponRussia'stroubledinternal affairs.
Afterexpressing theselofty thoughts,however, Sazonovbrought hisreadersbackdown
to earthby turning in
to thedilemmasinvolved implementing sucha plan. Russiacould
fulfillitslong-standing desireto seize theseregions,butthatwouldlikelyprompt Austria-
Hungaryto act similarly at theexpenseof theveryBalkanpeoplesforwhomRussiahad
beenstruggling undertherubricof"theBalkansfortheBalkanpeoples."The consequent
loss ofBalkansupport wouldweakenRussiaagainsttheTripleAllianceandon theBalkan
Peninsulaingeneral.67 ForSazonov,itwas obviousthatifa choicehadtobe madebetween
Russia possessingtheStraits,or unitingtheBalkanpeoplesagainstAustrianexpansion,
thenthelatterwas theonlypossibleoption.Whenall of Russia's interests in theregion
wereconsidered, therefore, Sazonovwas prepared todeferRussia'sownexpansiontopre-
ventAustria-Hungary's, thereby preserving theindependence of thepeoplesRussia had
workedso hardtoliberateoverthepreviousdecades.
Sazonov'spreferred optionwas to controltheupperBosphorus, oncefurther Turkish
ruletherewas impossible, eitheras an outright possessionor througha long-term lease.
Mostimportant, a fortifiedpositionon theBosphoruswouldallow St. Petersburg to pre-
65Sazonov
toKokovtsov,
12 November1912,246.
66Ibid.
67Ibid.,
246-47. On Austria-Hungary's planssee GoleevskiiReport108 to RussianGeneralStaff,14 August
1912,MO, 20.2,no.468, whichwas sentin abbreviated formto theForeignMinistry as Zhilinskiiletter2455 to
Sazonov,5 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 3717,11.43-44. On theotherhand,ifAustria-Hungary
tooktheinitiativein seizingterritory,
Russiawouldthenhave"completefreedom in arriving
at a decision"about
subsequent action(SazonovtoGiers,14 November1912).

ventanyhostileshipsfromentering theBlackSea. Constantinople itselfcouldbe interna-

andtheDardanellesstripped
tionalized, ofanyfortifications.Undersuchan arrangement,
Sazonovhypothesized, thestrengtheningoftheRussianBlackSea FleetwouldallowRus-
sia freedom ofpassagethrough theDardanelles.68 In thismanner, Russiawouldoccupya
minimum of territorybutacquirea significant changein itsrightsat theStraits.Russia
wouldalso havemadean important firststeptowardsomedayacquiringthewholeregion.
From this analysis,then,certainthingsstandout in Sazonov's attitudetoward
Constantinople andtheStraits.First,he believedthatanyarrangement wouldhaveto sat-
isfyRussianneedson theground,forno written agreement could protectRussia's eco-
nomic,military, and culturalintereststhere. Second,whileSazonovwas fullyawareof
Constantinople's and theStraits'potentialimportance to theRussianEmpire,thecurrent
threatofAustrian expansionoutweighed theminhiscalculations.Here,then,was notsome
blind,romantic pursuitoftraditional
aspirations,buta calculatedappraisalofRussia'sstra-
tegicposition.Austrian expansionintotheBalkanswouldnotonlydestroy further
hopes
ofcontaining theGermanic powersbutalso destroyRussia'spositionas protectorandleader
of thesouthern Slavs, a roleRussia had claimedforitself,albeitmorerecently thanits
gravitationtowardtheStraits.WhiletheStraitswerecriticalin his view,theirimmediate
possessioncouldbeoutweighed byotherconsiderations-and hewouldmakesimilar choices
againin thefuture.
Withthecommencement oftheBulgarianattackon theChataljalineson 17 Novem-
berandtheinitialfailureoftalksbetweenthealliesandtheTurksforan armistice, it still
appearedthatBulgariamight taketheTurkish capital.Sazonovwasforcedtospeak,atleast
to theFrenchambassador, ofthepossibility notonlyofinternationalizing Constantinople
butalso of neutralizing theStraits,buthe deferred a definitivestatement untilhe could
consultwiththetsarandotherauthorities.69 WhiletheinternationalizationofConstantinople
hadbeenforeseen intheabovewritings, thechangeattheStraits hadnot.Giventheimpor-
tanceofthematter totheRussians,however, one mustwonderifthissuggestion was nota
Russianploytoattract France'sgoodwillandsupport beforeclaiminglaterthatthetsarand
otherswouldnotallowthefullneutralization of theStraits,
becauseofreasonssimilarto
thoseSazonovdevelopedabove.
But withthecollapse of theBulgarianoffensiveand the ebbingof the threatto
Constantinople, St.Petersburgcoulddevoteitsattention tootherissuescreatedbythenear-
completeOttoman retreatfromEurope. The StraitsandConstantinople appearedin Rus-
sianstatements duringthesetalksonlyin a negativesense,whichis to saythatas longas
Constantinople remained Turkish,Russiahadno desiretoraisethesubject.70 Indeed,once
68Sazonovwas a vigorousproponent of a stronger

Black Sea Fleet. See Shatsillo,Russk/i iperia&linz; and
RonaldBobroff, "Roads to Glory?SergeiD. Sazonov,theTurkishStraits,and RussianForeignPolicy,1910-
1916"(Ph.D. diss.,Duke University,
2000).
69Louisdep.330 toPoincar6,20 November1912,DDT, 3.4,no.506. Zotiadesalso takesnoteofthisintimation
bySazonovbutmakesmoreofitthanis warranted bythecontextofSazonov'swritings inNovember, thefulltext
of the despatch,and the militaryand naval preparationson the Black Sea ("Russia and the Questionof
Constantinople,"
292).
70Buchanan tel.446 toGrey,22 November1912,BD, 9.2, no. 254; Sazonovletter787 toIzvolskii,29 Novem-
ber1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op.482,d. 131,11.110-13;Sazonovtel.2764 toIzvolskii,30 November1912,ibid.,1.56.

90 RonaldBobroff
theconference oftheambassadors gotunderwayinLondon,thefateofConstantinople and

theStraitsremainedon thesidelines.But in OctoberandNovemberthesequestionshad
receivedsignificantattention.AlthoughRussia had been pushedby theBulgariansuc-
cesses to concedeon mostterritorial
points,itremainedsteadfastin itsoppositionto per-
manentBulgarianaccess to theStraitsandpossessionoftheOttomancapital. Itsresolve
was suchthatitwas preparingto sendan expeditionoftroopstoConstantinople toprotect
whatitconsideredtobe itsvitalinterests.
Nottrusting anyagreement on papertouphold
Russia'sdesires,Sazonovhadtheagreement ofhiscolleaguesandtsartotakemilitarysteps
toensurethatitsvoicewouldbe heard.
BULGARIAN ADVANCE REDUX
ThefailureoftheDecemberarmistice andtherenewedfighting from2 March1913sparked

a renewedBulgarianattempt tocaptureAdrianople andrevivedRussianfearsforthesafety
ofConstantinople. Thisin turninspiredSt. Petersburg toreturnto thepoliciesofthefall:
insistingthatBulgariamustnotpossessConstantinople orhavelandaccess to theStraits,
andpreparing todispatchshipsandtroopstoConstantinople toprotect theChristianpopu-
lationandRussia'sinterests. On 22 March,witha renewedattackonAdrianople seemingly
imminent, Sazonov beganto implement thesepoliciesin a discussionwiththevisiting
Bulgariangeneral,RadkoDimitriev.Dimitriev indicatedthatBulgariawishedtoreceivea
borderwithTurkeythatincludedcoastlineon theSea of Marmora. He simultaneously
threatened Sazonovthatrefusalcouldmeanthereplacement ofthepresent Russophilegov-
ernment by anothermoreinclinedto looktowardAustria-Hungary forsupport.Sazonov
repliedbyreminding thegeneralthatRussiahad madea seriousconcessionby allowing
Bulgariato takeAdrianople, whichSazonovduplicitously describedas crucialto thede-
fenseoftheTurkish capital,eventhough, as notedabove,on 4 Novemberithadbeende-
cidedthatAdrianoplewas notas important as first
thought.Sazonov,furthermore, would
notbe intimidated byhisinterlocutor's warning ofa changein government. He informed
thegeneralthatif thegovernment in Sofiadid takea pro-Austrian line,thenthatwould
showhowlittleRussiashouldvalueBulgaria,negating anyreasonformakingtheconces-
sion. Sazonovalso refusedthegeneral'ssuggestion thatSofiacouldmakeConstantinople
a giftto St. Petersburgsincethequestionof Constantinople was too complicatedto be
resolvedthougha Russo-Bulgarian bilateralagreement.Sazonovrecognizedthatin the
wakeofthe1878CongressofBerlinanychangeattheStraitswouldhavetobe on a multi-
lateralbasis. Giventhisand thecurrent stateofreorganization of theRussianarmy,the
presentmoment was notthebesttoresolvetheseissues.71Additionally, theconsequences
of a Bulgarianoccupationof thecitybothfortheChristian populationof theOttoman
capitalandempireandforRussianinterests thereweretoopotentially disastrousto allow
theBulgariansso muchinfluence overthepace ofevents.
AfterAdrianople'sfall to the allied armieson 27 March,a Bulgarianseizureof
Constantinople loomed. Sazonovrespondedto thisin thesamewayas he didin Novem-
7'Sazonovletter262 toNekliudov,
22 March1913,AVPRI,f. 138,op. 467, d. 318/321,11.4-5.

Behind theBalkan Wars 91
ber1912:heplannedtosendthefleetandtroopstothecapitaltomaintainorderandprotect
Giers'spowertosummon
On 28 March,afterrenewing
Russianinterests. theRussianfleet
Sazonovinformed
Constantinople,72
iftheBulgariansthreatened thetsarthatthejustifica-
tionforthedispatchoftheshipswas
notonlythenecessityto takemeasuresfortheprotection ofthepeacefulChris-

tianpopulationofConstantinople duringa disorderly
retreat
oftheTurkisharmy,
but also the desirability,in case of the entryof the Bulgarian armyinto
Constantinople,toplacea powerful RussianforceinthewatersoftheBosphorus,
withitsarrivalabletorendertherequisitepressure forpreventingsuchsolutions
to thequestionsof Constantinople andtheStraitswhichwouldbe incompatible
withtheinterestsofRussia.73
Butina manner thatsuggested hisrealintentionswereotherwise, Sazonovtoldthetsarthat

ifthefleetwas senttotheTurkish capital,thegovernment couldanticipate misunderstand-
ingsin thepressbymakingitknownthattheRussianshipswouldstayonlyuntilthefinal
conditionsofpeace weresettled.WhileSazonovwouldsubsequently tellthePowersthat
BulgarianseizureofConstantinople wouldresultintheappearanceoftheRussianfleetoff
itsshore,thereis no indication in anyof thedocuments thathe toldanyothernationof
Russia'sintentionto sendfivethousand troopsthereas well.
Although thetroopswereagainpreparedfordispatchin April1913,therewas now
insufficient
transportforsucha numberofmen.74Untila shipor shipsarrived thatcould
carrythesoldiers(and was thenunloadedand preparedfortheirconveyance-a process
alreadyshowntotakeseveraldays),Russiacouldnotmovethemenandwasthuspowerless
toprotecteithertheinhabitants oritsowninterestsatthecapital.WiththeBulgariansonly
one setof defensiveworksawayfromConstantinople, Russiapossessedfeweroptionsto
stopthemthanpreviously.Giers,unawareofthetransport wroteon 1 Aprilthat
situation,
ifRussiawas unabletosendthesetroops,"itwas extremely necessary tohastentheconclu-
sionofpeace beforethefalloftheChataljapositionandthento applyall ofourefforts to
neveragainbe surprised byevents."75
Thus stripped of one of his fewphysicalmeansof influencing events,Sazonov re-
doubledhisefforts in thediplomatic arena. Evenbeforelearning howlimitedhis options
were,Sazonov attempted to satisfytheBulgariansand head offa continuation of their
militaryoperationswithonefurther concession.On 27 MarchheacceptedSofia's
territorial
requestfora borderwithTurkeynotfollowing theflowoftheriverErgenebetweenEnos
andMidia,butinsteada straight linebetweenthosetwocities. He pressedforspeedin
havingthePowersandTurkeyacceptsucha line,fearing that"anydelaymeansa serious
dangerforConstantinople," buthe insistedthatthismustbe theverylastconcession.76 As
72Zakher,
"Konstantinopol'i prolivy,"62.
73SazonovreporttoNicholasII, 28 March1913,AVPRI,f. 138,op. 467, d. 721/780,11.58-59. Thisletterwas
approvedby Nicholason 29 Marchand thensentto Kokovtsovforhis information in Sazonov letter288 to
30 March1913,RGIA,f. 1276,op. 9, d. 600, 1. 1.
Kokovtsov,
Russkiiimperlializn,
74Shatsillo, 102.
tel.218 to Sazonov,1 April1913,RGIA, f. 1276,op. 9, d. 600, 1.5.
75Giers
76Sazonovtel.723 to Giers,27 March1913,in Der DIplomatlischeSchrifwechsell.swolskis 1911-1914.'Aus
demGeheilnaktei derRussiychen (DS1),ed. Friedrich
Staatsarchiv Stieve(Berlin,1926),3, no. 789.

92 RonaldBobroff
mentioned above,undernocircumstances wouldBulgariabe allowedtoobtainseashoreon

eithertheStraitsortheSea ofMarmora.77 ThismetlittleresistancefromtheGreatPowers
andso was incorporated intotheirtermsforpeace. One Bulgariandemandwas thusmet.
inBulgaria,
conflict
Civil-military however, gavethisconcessiondebatablevalue,since
thecivilianleadershipwas recognizedto havelittleinfluence overthepolicyfollowedby
KingFerdinand andhis armychiefs.78 Althoughthecivilianleadership respondedto the
offerofthestraight Enos-Midialineinreturn foran assurancethatBulgariadidnotintend
to attackConstantinople,Ferdinand andhis generalswereexpectedto attacktheTurkish
capitalas soon as possible. Indeed,evenBulgarianPrimeMinisterI. S. Gueshovfeared
thatif an armisticedid notcome verysoon,an attackon theChataljalines"could not
be avoided."79Sazonov thussoughtto maketheofferto theBulgarianleadershipmore
attractive.
Whileatthesametimetrying totemperSofia'sexpectations, Sazonovsoughttogain
thePowers'acceptanceofa Turkish indemnity forBulgariathattheBulgarianenvoyshad
requestedin St. Petersburgin mid-March, alongwiththerevisedborder.80 He hopedthat
once thePowerspromisedsuchcompensation to Sofia,Bulgaria would acceptan armi-
sticeand notattackConstantinople.In contrastto theproposalforthestraight Enos-
Midialine,theindemnity was metwithhostility,especiallybyFrance.Paris,alreadyafraid
thatthesenewchangeswouldleadViennatoputforward demandsserving felt
itsinterests,
thatsuchanaddition toTurkey's financial
burden directly France'sinterests.8'
affected France
carried45 percentof theOttomandebtand had hugecapitalinvestments there,so was
especiallyinterestedinTurkeynotgoingbankrupt undertheaddeddebt. Moreover, other
powers,especiallyGermany, wouldsurelyresist,and werean indemnity imposedon the
Turks,theGermanswouldmakeuse ofthispressuretoshowitselfas a better friendofthe
Porte.82As muchas Sazonovinsistedon meetingtheBulgarianson thisissue,therefore,
theFrenchwouldagreeonlyto allow thecommission in Parisin chargeof theOttoman
debttoexaminetheissueafterthewar.
Whilehe struggled withtheFrenchon thisissue,Sazonovdidmakediplomatic use of
whatmilitary cardshe couldrelyon-the dispatchoftheBlack Sea fleettotheStraitsand
Constantinople. Unlikethesecrecysurrounding thepreparation ofthelargedetachment of
troopsforoccupationof Constantinople, Sazonovmadeveryclearto Britainand France
Russia'sreadinesstoemployitsfleet.On 31 Marchthegovernments inParisandLondon
learnedthatRussiawouldsenda squadronof warshipsto Constantinople if theTurkish
armyretreated fromthatcity.Thiswouldbe donenotonlytoprotect theChristian popula-
tionfromany disordersthatmightoccurbutalso "in case of theBulgarianentryinto
Constantinople, thepresenceofanimposingRussianforceis necessary inthewatersofthe
Bosphorusinordertoexercisebyitspresencetheneededpressureandtoprevent solutions
77Sazonov tel.724 toBenckendorff, 27 March1913,DSI, 3, no. 790

78Rossos,Russiaand theBalkans,chaps.4, 7.
79Panafieutels.95 and96 toPichon,29 March1913,DDT 3.6, no. 109.
80Sazonovtel.680 toBenckendorff, 22 March1913,DSI, 3, no. 783.
8lIzvolskiitel. 139 to Sazonov,31 March 1913,in UinLivreNoi:- Divlomatied'a va-itguerred'apres les
des archivesr-usses,
docunmewits novemnbre1910-juillet,1914 (LA), ed. Ren6Marchand(Paris,1922-34),2:59.
82"Notede Directeur desAffairespolitiques"(MauricePal6ologue),7 April1913,DDT, 3.6,no. 222.

on thesubjectof Constantinople and theStraitsincompatible withtheinterests of Rus-

sia."" Furthermore, Sazonovnotedthathe wouldinform thepressthatthewarships would
remainoffthecoast of Constantinople onlyuntilconclusionof thepeace. Here again,
though, thewording ofthecommunique, togetherwithhisearlierstatements onthesubject,
suggests hisactualintentionswereotherwise-the fleetwouldremainuntilConstantinople's
fatewas resolvedto Russia'ssatisfaction.
ThiselementofSazonov'spolicywasnotlostontheBritish andespeciallytheFrench,
whosoughtto limitthescopeofRussia'sunilateral actions.WhiletheFrenchheldstrong
suspicionsaboutRussia's intentions, theBritishweremoreinclinedto supportRussian
action.Greysuggested thatall thePowerscouldsendshipsto Constantinople anddisem-
barktroopstokeeporder(unawareofSazonov'splanstothateffect), andhisassistants also
madeit clearthattheydid notoppose Russia takingindependent action.84Britainthus
appearedtobe unknowingly condoning themeasuresquietlybeingprepared in St. Peters-
burg.
The reactionin Paristo Russia'sintentions was significantlydifferent.Notonlydid
theFrenchanticipate an aggressiveAustrianreaction,85but,as notedabove,theyalso feared
whatRussiamightdo oncein de factopossessionoftheTurkish capital,andtheyopposed
anyunilateral actionbyRussiathatwouldplaceitina commanding positionthere.Indeed,
theFrenchmaynothavehiddentheirsuspicionsofRussianintentions wellsinceevenback
inNovember 1912,Sazonovquietlycomplained toIzvolskiiofhissuspicions thattheFrench
weretrying to encouragetheBulgarianstotakethecity.86
By 8 April,however, thelikelihoodofa Bulgarianattackon Constantinople beganto
diminish.Cholerahad appearedin theBulgarianarmyinThracemonthsbefore,butnow
thediseaseseemedto dampentheBulgarianenthusiasm forattack.On 8, 9, and 10April,
LondonandParisreported increasingsignalsthatFerdinand was leaningagainstan attack
on theTurkishcapital.87Suchnewsservedto confirm information receivedin St. Peters-
burgthattheBulgarianswerereadytocometotermswiththeTurks.88
Sazonov,however,concealedhis knowledgeof Bulgarianintentions fromhis En-
tentepartners inordertogainsomediplomatic leveragebyfollowingpolicymoreconces-
a
sionarythanitreallywas. Sazonovlearnedon 8 AprilthatPoincare,nowtheFrenchpresi-
dentbutstillcentralin Frenchforeign policyformulation, wouldrenouncetheidea ofcol-
lectingan internationalfleetoffConstantinople ifSazonovhad"theleastobjection"toit.89
83"Note de lambassadede Russie,"31 March1913,DDT, 3.6, no. 127; Benckendorff tel.287 to Sazonov,31
March1913,in GBDS, 3, no.931; Communication fromEtter,1 April1913,BD, 9.2, no.788; Sazonovtel.766 to
Giers,30 March1913,GBDS, 3, no. 927; Sazonovtel.777 to Benckendorff, 30 March1913,GBDS, 3, no. 928.
84Grey letter235 to Bertie,3 April1913,BD, 9.2, no. 800; Benckendorfftel.298 to Sazonov,3 April1913,
RGIA,f. 1276,op. 9, d. 600, 1.6; Beckendorff tel.301 toSazonov,3 April1913,RGIA, f. 1276,op. 9, d. 600,1.
7.
85Pichon tel.393 and393 bis toDelcass6,7 April1913,DDT, 3.6,no. 217.
86Sazonov tel.2502 toIzvolskii,8 November1912,AVPRI,f. 151,op. 482, d. 130,1. 110.
87P.Cambontel. 111toPichon,8 April1913,DDT, 3.6,no. 234; Bertietel.46 to Grey,9 April1913,BD, 9.2,
no. 822; Delcass6 tels. 188, 189,and 190 to Pichon,10 April1913,DDF, 3.6, no. 254; P. Cambontel. 118 to
Pichon,1OApril1913,DDF, 3.6,no. 262,withcontent passedalongbyIzvolskiiin tel.171 toSazonov,11April
1913,LA",69.
88Rossos, Russia ald theBalkanis,127.
89lzvolskiitel. 165 to Sazonov,8 April1913,LN/V2:66.

94 RonaldBobroff
BelievingthatSofiawas aboutto makepeace,thereby removing theneedto sendships,

Sazonovnowacceptedtheproposal,whichhehadearlieropposed.90 Furthermore, attempt-
ingtouse thisopportunity todevelopthefiction ofpublicinfluence on hispolicy,he stipu-
latedthattheshipsshouldbe sentonlyincase ofimminent dangerandthat,in sucha case,
thePowersshouldarrangethingsso thattheRussiansquadronwouldnotarriveat their
destination afterthoseoftheotherPowers,lesta publicstormofdisapproval arisein Rus-
sia.91WiththeRussiannavyunabletofurnish transportfor thelarge number of troopsthat
he wishedtosendtoConstantinople, Sazonov'seffective optionsforstrengthening Russian
influence wererather limited,butgiventhathe feltthedangerwas passing,he couldafford
sucha concession.Andon 15Apriltheneedforsucha demonstration disappeared withthe
agreement ofBulgarianandTurkish forcestoan armistice.It appearedthattheconclusion
offighting on theeasternBalkanfront endednotonlythethreat to Constantinople butalso
Russia'simmediate worriesforitsinterests at theTurkishcapitalandin theStraits.The
alliedvictoriesgaveSt.Petersburg hopethatRussiawouldnowhavestronger helpinresist-
ingAustrian expansiontotheAegeanandinprotecting thebackdoortoConstantinople and
theStraits.
Beforethefirstwarhadevenended,disputesaroseamongthealliesoverthedivision
ofthespoils,especiallyin Macedonia. The growing betweenSerbiaandGreece,
hostility
on theone hand,and Bulgariaon theothercame to a head at theend of June,whenthe
BulgarianarmyattackedtheSerbianarmyin Macedonia.Greecequicklycameto Serbia's
aid,followedcloselybyRumania,interested inobtaining itsowncompensation forSofia's
gains. WhiletheRussiangovernment deploredthisinternecine struggle thatthreatened its
advantageous positionin theBalkansso soonafteritsconstruction, Sazonovadmitted that
havingBulgariachastened wasnotall bad: itmightcreatea balanceofpoweron thepenin-
sula thatwouldlenditselfto a future allianceof thesesmallpowers.92Thisreduction of
Bulgaria'sstrength wouldalso lessenthethreat to theStraitsandConstantinople.
Sazonovdidnotopposetheaggrandizement of theChristian statesat Bulgaria'sex-
pense,buthe soughttoprevent Turkey fromrecapturing Adrianople.He learnedon 12July
thatthePortewas preparing to do so,therefore he triedtorushBulgaria,Greece,Rumania
andSerbiaintopeace talks,butthisfoundered ontheirreconcilability ofthedemandsofthe
twosides. Sazonovalso attempted to coordinate jointdiplomaticactionagainstthePorte
bytheGreatPowers,butthisattempt also collapsedbecauseofthediffering ofthe
priorities
Powers,whichmadeanycooperative actionnearlyimpossible.Onceagain,France'sfinan-
provedtobe oneofRussia'sbiggestobstacles,as Parisrefusedtoapplyfinan-
cial interests
cial pressureon Constantinople in muchthesamefashionas ithad withBulgaria.Butthe
issues now hadless todo withthesecurity oftheStraitsthanwiththeabsolutehumiliation
of theBulgariansand reapplication of MuslimruleoverChristian Balkanpeoples. The
OttomanEmpireregainedAdrianopleand someEuropeanterritory, in largepartbecause
of theBulgarianmilitary collapsecoupledwiththedeadlockeddiplomacyof theGreat
90Sazonov
tel.897 toBenckendorff, 9 April1913,DSJ 3, no. 832; "Notede lambassadede Russie,"10April
1913,DDT 3.6,no. 252; andDelcass6tels.188, 189,and 190 to Pichon,10 April1913,DDE, 3.6, no. 254.
9'Buchanantel. 147 to Grey,13April1913,BD, 9.2, no. 843.
92Sazonov
letter to Izvolskii,10 July1913,AVPRI,f.340, op. 835,d. 39, 11.37-38.

Powers,buttheiradvancehaltedshortof forcinga unilateral Russianintervention.Sofia

continued toharborthehopethatthePowerswoulddemanda reviewoftheTurko-Bulgar-
iantreatyof29 September1913,butthePowers,exhausted, bytheexertions
literally, ofthe
previousyearofBalkanWardiplomacy, leftitunchanged.
Thus,Sazonovendeavored in 1913,as hehadin 1912,tokeeptheBulgarianforcesout
ofConstantinople.Thistime,facedwiththeinability totransporttroopstoConstantinople
andtherefusalofRussia'sFrenchallyto cooperatein effectivemeasures,Sazonovhadto
relyevenmoreon diplomacy, makingconcessionsandseekingadditional inducements for
Sofia,butas before,alwaysrefusingto concedeBulgariaa permanent roleat theTurkish
capitalandon theStraits.
By theendofthetwelvemonthsfromtheoutbreak oftheFirstBalkanWarto theconclu-

sionof theTurko-Bulgarian agreement, Russiahad achievedverymixedresultsfromits
diplomaticexertions.Most positively, theTurkishStraitsremainedcompletelyunder
TurkishcontrolwiththeBulgariansa relativelysafe distanceaway. Furthermore, by
deferring longer-term Russiahelpedprevent
interests, Austrian military inthe
intervention
conflict, thereby allowingall theBalkanstatestogainterritory andstrength tosomedegree.
Conversely, Sazonov'spoliciesof opposingBulgariaat sometimeswhilesupporting it at
othertimes,muchas Russiadid withotherBalkanstates,alienatedthosestatesto some
extent,especiallyBulgaria,setting thestageforBulgaria'sentrance intoWorldWarI onthe
side of theCentralPowers. Frustratingly forSazonov,his Frenchally,lookingcarefully
afteritsowninterests intheregion, provedtobe littlehelpinpressuring BulgariaorTurkey.
Withtheloss of prestigeabroadcame blows to his prestigeat home,and therenewing
internal effects he hadhopedthatvictories abroadwouldbringremainedfaroff.
Butthiscrisisdoes providean important windowintoRussianpatterns ofpolicyfor-
mulationwhenfacedwithcompeting interests.On theone hand,Sazonovworkedtopre-
serveas muchinfluence as possibleamongtheBalkanstatesbydeferring anygrabforthe
whichcouldhavebrought
Straits, Austrian movesforcompensation. Whilethismeantthat
Russiangainednothing it also meantthatitslosseson theBalkanPeninsula
at theStraits,
werelimitedin theirmagnitude comparedtothatwhichwouldhaveresulted fromanAus-
trianannexation ofmoreterritory. On theotherhand,Sazonovdidnotletthisconcernfor
theSlavic statesdamageRussianvitalinterests at theStraits.WhileRussia mighthave
gainedgreatfavorbyallowingKingFerdinand torecapture Constantinople fromitsMus-
limpossessors,itwouldhavefacedtheinterference ofa newpowerin thefreedom ofthe
Straits.This Sazonov could notallow,and he workedto preventit even at thecost of
diminished influenceatSofiaandincreasedfriction in Russia'salliancewithFrance.This
lessonmustbe keptinmindwhentrying tounderstand andpredicttheRussianFederation's
policies in theBalkans today. WhileRussia may tout thestrengthofitsbondstotheBalkan
Slavsandbe prepared forsomesacrifice, thatsacrifice willnotextendtothemostvitalofits
interests. Russia,likemoststates,willcontinueto lookafteritsowninterests stand-
first,
ingup forothersonlywhentheriskto itselfis nottoogreat.

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History
The Origins of World War I

Author(s): Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.
Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, The Origin and Prevention
of Major Wars (Spring, 1988), pp. 795-818
Published by: The MIT Press
Accessed: 15/10/2014 06:37
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The MIT Press and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of
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of Interdisciplinary History.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xvII:4 (Spring I988), 795-818.
Samuel R. Williamson,Jr.
The Origins of World War I World War I began in
eastern Europe. The war started when Serbia, Austria-Hungary,
Russia, and Germany decided that war or the risk of war was an
acceptable policy option. In the aftermath of the Balkan wars of
I912/I3, the decision-makers in eastern Europe acted more asser-
tively and less cautiously. The Serbian government displayed little
willingness to negotiate with Vienna; in fact, some elements of
the Belgrade regime worked to challenge, by violent means if
necessary, Habsburg rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria-
Hungary, threatened anew by the Balkan problems, grew more
anxious about its declining position and became more enamored
of the recent successes of its militant diplomacy. Having encour-
aged the creation of the Balkan League and benefited from Serbia's
military triumphs, Russian policymakers displayed a new aggres-
siveness toward their Danubian neighbor. The German leader-
ship, for its part, fretted more than ever about its relative position
in the European system and found the new Russian self-confi-
dence troubling. Then came the Sarajevo assassinations on 28
June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian
throne, and his wife Sophie. Within a month of these deaths,
Austria-Hungary and Serbia would be at war, followed by the
rest of Europe shortly thereafter.
Although the war began in eastern Europe, the events there
have received only modest attention from historians. This neglect
is not entirely surprising, given the Versailles "war guilt" clause
against Germany and subsequent efforts to defend or denounce
Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., is Professor of History and Provost of The University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Origins of a Tragedy:July 1914
(Arlington Heights, Ill., 1981).
The author is indebted to Scott Lackey, Jonathan Randel, and Russel Van Wyk for
research assistance.
? T988 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of
Interdisciplinary
History.
I The most perceptive recent study is James Joll, The Originsof the First WorldWar(New
York, 1984). For a survey of the issues, see Williamson, The Origins of a Tragedy:July
1914 (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1981). See also Steven E. Miller (ed.), Military Strategyand
the Origins of the First WorldWar:An InternationalSecurityReader(Princeton, I985).

796 SAMUEL R. WILLIAMSON, JR.
the war guilt accusations. The interwar documentary collections

encouraged this emphasis on Germany and Anglo-German rela-
tions, as did post-I945 access to the Western archives. Since I96I
Fischer and the Hamburg school have clarified further the irre-
sponsible nature of German policy before and during the July
crisis. Yet most scholarship has eschewed a broader focus, such
as that used by Fay and Albertini, concentrating instead on single
countries or focusing almost exclusively on the west European
origins of the war. Too much concentration on Berlin's role
slights developments taking place in Austria-Hungary, Russia,
Serbia, and the Balkan states in the months before July I914.2
Recent articles, multi-volume background works, and new
monographs by scholars on both sides of the Iron Curtain offer
insights into the east European origins of the July crisis-the
linkages between events there and the onset of the larger war.
These new studies also help to illumine the motivations and be-
haviors of the decision-makers in Belgrade, St. Petersburg, Vi-
enna, and Budapest.3 In seeking to prevent a future major war,
2 Fritz Fischer's two major works are Griffnach der Weltmacht(Disseldorf, 1961) and
Krieg der Illusionen(Dusseldorf, I969); both are available in translation. See also idem,Juli
1914: Wir sind nicht hineingeschlittert:Das Staatsgeheimnisurn die Riezler-Tagebiicher:Eine
Streitschrift(Hamburg, 1983). Among his students, see Imanuel Geiss (ed.), Julikrise und
Kriegsausbruch 1914: Eine Dokumentensammlung (Hannover, I963-64), 2v, and his English
selection of documents, July 1914: The Outbreakof the First WorldWar:SelectedDocuments
(New York, 1967). Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the WorldWar (New York, I928), 2V;
Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the Warof 1914 (London, 1952-57), 3v.
3 Published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and edited by Adam Wandruszka and
Peter Urbanitsch, the series on Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848-1918 has volumes on the
economy, nationalities, administration, and religion; one on the army will appear soon.
J6zsef Galantai, Die Osterreichisch-UngarischeMonarchieund der Weltkrieg(Budapest, I979);
Istvan Di6szegi, Hungariansin the Ballhausplatz: Studies on the Austro-HungarianCommon
Foreign Policy (Budapest, I983). For a recent East German view, see Willibald Gutsche,
Sarajevo 1914: Vom Attentat zum Weltkrieg(Berlin, I984). For Western scholarship, see
Francis Roy Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The ForeignPolicy of Austria-Hungary,1866-
1918 (London, 1972);John D. Treadway, The Falconand the Eagle: Montenegroand Austria-
Hungary (West Lafayette, Ind., I982); Norman Stone, The EasternFront, 1914-1917 (Lon-
don, 1975); Richard Crampton, The Hollow Detente:Anglo-GermanRelationsin the Balkans,
1911-1914 (London, 1979). See also Williamson, "Vienna and July 1914: The Origins of
the Great War Once More," in Peter Pastor and Williamson (eds.), Essays on WorldWarI:
Origins and Prisonersof War (New York, 1983), 9-36. E. Willis Brooks has brought the
following recent Russian titles to my attention: Iurii Alekseevich Pisarev, Velikiederzhavy
i Balkany nakanunepervoi mirovoivoiny [The Great Powersand the Balkans on the Eve of the
First WorldWar] (Moscow, I985); Andrel Sergeevich Avetian, Russko-germanskie diploma-
ticheskieotnosheniianakanunepervoi mirovoi voiny, 1910-1914 [Russo-GermanDiplomatic Re-
lations on the Eve of the First WorldWar,1910-1914] (Moscow, 1985).

ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I | 797
the crisis of the summer of 1914 remains fundamental to an

understanding of the issues of peace and war.
Historians often talk about the long-term origins of World War I

-those physical, intellectual, emotional, and political activities
that created parameters and left legacies that influenced the July
crisis. Although these causes remain a central feature of all recent
historical works, new research reveals an almost quantum alter-
ation in our perception of the character and nature of the causes
of the war. Recent studies-based upon rigorous archival re-
search-make clear the dramatic changes that took place after
1911 in the relationships resulting from the alliances and ententes,
military planning, imperial attitudes, nationalism, and confidence
about the future of the governmental systems.
By 1912, the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance had been
consolidated by the Bosnian crises of I908-09 and the Moroccan
tensions of 1911. Russia, Britain, and France formed, along with
Russia's Serbian client, the Triple Entente; Austria-Hungary,
Italy, and Germany comprised, with their secret ally King Carol
of Rumania, the Triple Alliance. In the months before July 1914,
these two groupings collided with each other on fundamental
issues, although brief periods of cooperation and apparent detente
existed.
From 1912 to the eve of the war, France and Russia worked
to convert the Triple Entente into an alliance. Paris pressed Lon-
don to confer with Russia about naval issues, while assiduously
working to define their own military and naval arrangements
with Britain. In the spring of 1914, Sir Edward Grey, the most
insular of British foreign secretaries, and Winston Churchill, First
Lord of the Admiralty, agreed to start negotiations with St. Pe-
tersburg. Almost immediately German intelligence learned of this
development. When asked about such conversations, Grey denied
that any were underway. Berlin thus found itself unable to trust
Grey's assurances about these talks and could only speculate that
Britain had also made military and naval arrangements with
France.4
4 Zara Steiner, Britainand the Originsof the First WorldWar(London, 1977); Francis Harry
Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey (Cambridge, 1977); Keith M.
Wilson, The Policy of the Entente:Essays on the Determinantsof British ForeignPolicy, 1904-
1914 (Cambridge, I985); Williamson, The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France

During I9I2 and 1913, the Franco-Russian alliance within

the Triple Entente assumed new meaning. The French wanted
immediate Russian pressure on Germany if war came and invested
capital in railway construction that could be used to facilitate the
movement of Russian troops. Raymond Poincare, first as premier
and then as president of France, brought new vigor to French
diplomacy and spared no effort to strengthen the Paris-St. Pe-
tersburg connection. Despite socialist opposition, he even man-
aged to secure passage of a three-year military service law that
increased the number of French troops on active duty.5
Russo-Serbian relations had also grown closer in the years
before Sarajevo. St. Petersburg had played mid-wife to the Balkan
League, a pact signed in the spring of 1912 and directed against
both the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy. Vigorous
Russian diplomatic support, along with shipments of military
supplies during the Balkan wars, buttressed the ties. In the spring
of I914, Nikola Pasic, the Serbian premier, depended upon Rus-
sian support in his disputes with the Serbian military. Indeed,
when Pasic resigned in June I914, the Russians pressured King
Peter I to restore him to the premiership.6
The leaders of the Triple Alliance were also active in the
months following the Agadir crisis over Morocco. In late 1911
Berlin and Vienna backed Rome in its war with the Ottoman
Empire over Tripoli. At the end of 1912, the partners renewed
the alliance for another five years and reinstituted military and
naval planning, though neither Berlin nor Vienna expected much
Preparefor War, 1904-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969); Paul Halpern, The Mediterranean
Naval Situation, 1908-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., I97I). Bernt von Siebert, third secretary
of the Russian embassy in London, was the source of Berlin's information; see Fischer,
Krieg, 632-635.
5 John F. V. Keiger, Franceand the Origins of the First WorldWar(London, I983); Gerd
Krumeich (trans. Marion Berghahn), Armamentsand Politics in Franceon the Eve of the First
World War: The Introductionof Three-YearConscription,1913-1914 (Dover, N.H., 1984);
Jack Snyder, The Ideologyof the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disastersof 1914
(Ithaca, 1984); Thomas Hayes Conner, "Parliament and the Making of Foreign Policy:
France under the Third Republic, 1875-1914," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Chapel Hill, 1983).
6 Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo(New York, 1966), 385-388; BarbaraJelavich,
History of the Balkans (Cambridge, I983), II, io6-Ii2; Hans Ubersberger, Osterreich
zwischen Russlandund Serbien(Koln, 1958); Andrew Rossos, Russia and the Balkans: Inter-
Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908-1914 (Toronto, I98I). Publication of the
Serbian diplomatic documents, now in progress, will facilitate a study of Serbo-Russian
relations before I914.

support from their southern ally. Furthermore, the three partners

maneuvered for position with each other over a potential division
of Turkish Asia Minor, and a new issue-Albania and its future-
emerged after the Balkan wars as a point of friction between
Vienna and Rome.7
Vienna's problems were not confined to Italy. The Balkan
wars had shaken Vienna's confidence about German support if a
crisis arose. On three occasions the Habsburgs had nearly gone
to war; in each instance the Germans had counseled caution and
prudence. To be sure, Kaiser Wilhelm II talked boisterously of
strong action, but the German political leadership spoke about
negotiation. As a result, there was considerable apprehension in
Vienna over Berlin's possible behavior in a crisis involving either
Serbia or Russia or both.8
The major problem confronting the Austro-German allies
was not their own relationship, but evidence that Bucharest would
probably defect from the alliance. If King Carol opted out, Aus-
tria-Hungary faced a new and nearly intolerable strategic situa-
tion. Furthermore, Rumanian nationalism, stirred by the successes
of the month-long second Balkan war, demanded changes in the
status of the three million Rumanians living in Transylvania under
Magyar domination. Budapest, however, offered virtually no
concessions. Thus the Rumanian problem, like the Serbian issue,
encompassed both a domestic and a diplomatic dimension. For
Vienna, distinctions between Aussenpolitik and Innenpolitik simply
did not exist. Foreign policy provided much of the raison d'etre
for the Habsburg state, but foreign affairs also furnished most of
the threats to its future.9
7 Michael Behnen, Ristung-Bindnis-Sicherheit: Dreibundund informellerImperialismus,

19oo-19o8 (Tubingen, 1985); Richard Bosworth, Italy and the Approachof the First World
War (New York, 1983) and Italy, the Least of the Great Powers (Cambridge, I979). On
Habsburg concerns about Albania, see Ludwig Bittner and Ubersberger (eds.), Osterreich-
UngarnsAussenpolitikvon der bosnischenKrise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch(hereafter Aussen)
(Vienna, I930), VII, VIII; Bridge, "'Tarde venientibusossa': Austro-Hungarian Colonial
Aspirations in Asia Minor, 91I3-I4," Middle EasternStudies, VI (1970), 3I9-330.
8 Fischer, Krieg, 289-323; Bridge, Sadowa, 360-368; Erwin Holze, Die Selbstentmachung
Europas(Frankfurt am M., I975), 269-278; Hugo Hantsch, LeopoldGrafBerchtold:Grand-
seigneurund Staatsmann(Graz, 1963), II, 520-539.
9 Keith Hitchins, "The Nationality Problem in Hungary: Istvan Tisza and the Rumanian
National Party, I906-I9I4," Journal of ModernHistory, LIII (1981), 619-65I; Gheorghe
Nicolae Cazan and Serban Radulescu-Zoner, Romania si Tripla Aliantd, 1878-1914 (Bu-
charest, 1979).

In a desperate effort to rescue the situation, Vienna sent

Ottokar Czernin, a confidant of Franz Ferdinand, as minister to
Bucharest in late I913. Czernin achieved nothing. Then in June
the czar and czarina visited Constantsa in Rumania. During the
trip Serge Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister, actually crossed
into Transylvania in a defiant show of support for the Rumanians
living in Austria-Hungary. These events thoroughly alarmed Vi-
enna. More than ever, Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold
and his associates believed that Bucharest was lost to the alliance
and that Russia was determined to cause problems at all costs.10
Russia also antagonized Germany and Austria-Hungary more
directly. The Liman von Sanders affair, a Russo-German dispute
over whether the German general would have actual command
over Turkish troops in Constantinople, embroiled St. Petersburg
and Berlin for weeks in late 1913. The crisis created genuine
concern in Berlin and accelerated a series of studies by the German
general staff of Russian mobilization plans. For the first time since
March I909, the two Baltic powers were in direct confrontation,
and this time St. Petersburg, not Berlin, was the protagonist.ll
Relations between St. Petersburg and Vienna were more
fragile still. The Austrians held the Russians partly responsible
for the Balkan wars. Vienna had difficulty forgetting St. Peters-
burg's tactic in the fall of 1912, when it kept an additional 1.2
million troops on duty to check any Habsburg move against
Serbia. Vienna had responded by calling up 200,000 reservists,
stationing many of them in Galicia. The border tensions led to
bank runs and public unrest in the Habsburg provinces; the po-
tential conflict also prompted passage of emergency legislation in
Austria and Hungary in December 1912 in the event that war
should come. Not until March 1913, after extensive negotiations,
did the two powers begin to demobilize troops and tensions abate.
But the residual perceptions of the incident were not so easily
Io Czernin to Berchtold, 22June I914, Aussen, VIII, no. 9902; also Czernin to Berchtold,
22 June 1914, Berchtold Archiv, no. 9, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna; Hantsch,
Berchtold,II, 545-557.
II Fischer, Krieg, 481-515; Stone, "Austria-Hungary," in Ernest R. May (ed.), Knowing
One's Enemies: IntelligenceAssessmentbeforethe Two WorldWars(Princeton, I984), 43-48;
Holger Herwig, "Imperial Germany," ibid., 86-92; William C. Fuller, Jr. "The Russian
Empire," ibid., II5-I23.

altered, certainly not among the military leaders in either St.

Petersburg or Vienna.12
Despite the growing tensions, there were moments of co-
operation and concession. The rhetoric of Anglo-German rela-
tions was muted somewhat; the powers cooperated to keep the
Balkan turmoil within bounds in the spring and summer of I913.
Austrians invested funds in a Russian armaments factory, and
royal visits continued. Yet the clashes of I9I I and thereafter were
not easily forgotten. The future of the Balkans and the Macedon-
ian inheritance of the Ottoman Empire were significant issues.
The Eastern Question and the fate of Ottoman holdings in the
Balkans, the bane of British foreign secretaries in the nineteenth
century, had now become a problem for all foreign ministers.13
No group of decision-makers recognized this new danger
more quickly than the military commanders. Everywhere the
doctrine of offensive warfare and the "short war illusion" pre-
vailed. The French revamped their war plans after 1911 to con-
form to these doctrines. The Germans, British, and Austro-Hun-
garians further refined their offensive schemes in the belief that
offensive warfare alone offered the possibility of quick success.
No one probed the question of what would happen if success did
not in fact come quickly at the start of a war. Sufficient intelligence
information existed about the manpower pools and general inten-
tions of the opposing powers; what remained uncertain was the
location and timing of the deployment. Few realized that stale-
mate could also be the result of offensive operations. Nor were
general staffs cognizant of their own differing conceptions of what
mobilization actually meant for the other governments; for some
it meant actual war and for others, the mere possibility of war.
Questionable assumptions had now become dogma.14
12 Ernst Christian Helmreich, The Diplomacyof the Balkan Wars,1912-1913(Cambridge,

Mass., 1938), I57-164, 281-290; Williamson, "Military Dimensions of Fabsburg-Roma-
nov Relations during the Era of the Balkan Wars," in Bela K. Kiraly and Dimitrie
Djordevic (eds.), East Central EuropeanSociety and the Balkan Wars (New York, 1987),
3 18-337.
13 Paul Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London, I980);
Steiner, Britain, 42-78. Cf. Volker R. Berghahn, Germanyand the Approachof Warin 1914
(New York, I973), I65-I85; Fischer, Krieg, 613-635.
14 Snyder, Ideology;Joll, Origins, 58-91; Lancelot L. Farrar,Jr., The Short War Illusion
(Santa Barbara, 1973); Stone, Eastern;Douglas Porch, The Marchto the Marne: The French

No generals faced greater problems than did the Habsburg

commanders after 1912. To the south, Serbia, their most formid-
able foe, had fought well in the Balkan wars, had virtually dou-
bled its territory and population base, and possessed seasoned
military leaders. Rumania's probable defection added another bor-
der to defend, and Bulgaria's defeat in the second Balkan war
reduced its ability to offset either Serbia or Rumania. Reports
from Berlin were even more disturbing; the Russians were short-
ening their mobilization timetables by five to seven days. Each
day gained by the Russians endangered the Schlieffen-Moltke
plan, in turn putting a higher premium on a Habsburg assault
against Russia. In May 1914 General Franz Conrad von H6tzen-
dorf, chief of the Austro-Hungarian general staff, met Helmuth
von Moltke, his German counterpart, to review the increased
Russian threat. Conrad asked for more German troops in the east
to protect Germany (and Austria-Hungary); Moltke pressed for
more immediate Austro-Hungarian action against Russia with
only secondary action against Serbia. The two generals failed to
reach agreement. Conrad had always wanted to defeat the trou-
blesome Serbians, yet he could not ignore the Russian threat. He
never overcame this dilemma.15
After 1912 the European military and naval leaders grew less
confident. Troop increases and the continuing naval race (though
with less rhetoric) fueled fears, as did the sudden shifts of military
fortune in the Balkans. Everywhere the military leaders warned
their civilian superiors of the dangers of falling behind in the race
for military supremacy. The militarization of attitudes and un-
spoken assumptions, even in Britain, grew more noticeable and
pervasive. Militarism, despite occasional signs of pacificism, re-
mained a dynamic factor.16
Army, 1871-1914 (Cambridge, I98I); Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnoughtto Scapa
Flow. I: The Road to War, 1904-14 (London, 1961); Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Army of
FrancisJoseph (West Lafayette, Ind., 1976); Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War:
The Nature of InternationalCrisis (Baltimore, I98I); Kennedy (ed.), The WarPlans of the
Great Powers, 1880-1914 (London, I979); Williamson, Politics.
I5 Conrad's memoirs are valuable. See his Aus meiner Dienstzeit, 1906-1918 (Vienna,
1921-25), III, 665-675; Rothenberg, Army, 172-176; Stone, "Die Mobilmachung der
osterreichisch-ungarischen Armee 1914," MilitdrgeschichtlicheMitteilungen,XVI (I974), 67-
95. See also Kurt Peball's edition of Conrad's private notes, Private Aufzeichnungen:Erste
Ver6ffentlichungenaus den Papierendes k.u.k. Generalstabs-Chef(Vienna, I977).
i6 Joll, "1914: The Unspoken Assumptions," in Hannesjoachim Wilhelm Koch (ed.),
The Origins of the First WorldWar:Great Power Rivalry and German WarAims (New York,

ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I 803
Closely linked with militarism was another long-term cause

of war: imperialism. It was reinforced by ideas of Social Darwin-
ism and racism as well. After the second Moroccan crisis in the
summer of 191 I, imperialism became more a Balkan phenomenon
and less an Asian or African one. As the Eastern Question flared
anew, the dangers for Europe, in the context of the rigidity of
both the alliance and the entente, increased exponentially.
Three examples illustrate the dangerous changes. First, in the
autumn of I91 , the Russians renewed their pressure on the Straits
issue. Second, the Italians were reluctant to return Ottoman ter-
ritory in the Aegean which they seized in their war with Turkey
in 1912. Indeed, Rome and Berlin actually plotted to carve out
potential gains in Asia Minor. Third, Bosnia and Herzegovina
represented a special part of the Ottoman legacy. Annexed by
Vienna in I908 after thirty years of de facto Habsburg adminis-
tration, the two provinces were Habsburg imperial gains at Ot-
toman expense. Bosnia and Herzegovina now became the focus
of South Slav agitation for greater Serbian and/or Yugoslavian
unity. Franz Joseph had, however, no intention of relinquishing
the two provinces which represented the only gains of his long
reign. Vienna would protect its acquisitions just as the British,
French, and Italians had protected their gains from the gradual
breakup of the Ottoman Empire.17
Nationalism as a long-term cause of World War I has received
sustained historical attention. Nationalism and a mixture of chau-
vinism and racism were prevalent in both Europe and North
America. In Germany, Britain, Russia, and France, nationalism
often served as a centripetal factor.18
By contrast, in the Habsburg monarchy nationalism had a
disruptive function. In Rumania, the impact of nationalism was
growing, and St. Petersburg encouraged intensive campaigns
I972), 307-328. On the peace movement in Germany, see Roger Chickering, Imperial
Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement in German Society, 1892-1914
(Princeton, 1975).
17 Little has been written about the two provinces, but the following books are helpful:
Peter F. Sugar, Industrializationof Bosnia-Hercegovina,1878-1918 (Seattle, 1963); Robert J.
Donia, Islam under the Double Eagle: The Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1878-1914
(New York, I98 ).
18 Keiger, France;Fischer, Krieg; Bosworth, Italy and the Approach;Steiner, Britain, treat
the issue of nationalism. For Russian attitudes, see Dominic C. B. Lieven, Russia and the
Origins of the First WorldWar(New York, 1983).

804 | SAMUEL R. WILLIAMSON, JR.
among the Ruthenians in Galicia and Bukovina. Although pan-

Slavic propaganda did not match the intensity of the challenge
posed by the South Slav demands, Russia's subvention of pan-
Slavism provided still one more reason for Vienna to distrust its
northern neighbor.19
The Habsburgs' most dangerous threat from nationalism lay
along its southern border. The victorious Balkan states stimulated
a new self-confidence among the monarchy's South Slav citizens.
Serbian and Croatian political leaders talked openly of greater
Yugoslavian unity. In Croatia political violence intensified. The
Balkan wars not only revolutionized the geographical situation;
they also revived and accentuated feelings of South Slav unity.20
Vienna held Serbia directly (and the Russians less directly)
responsible for much of the mounting friction. Their annoyance,
indeed anger, had basis in fact. After the I908-09 Bosnian crisis,
Belgrade, in spite of commitments to the contrary, developed a
propaganda machine to inculcate the ideals of Yugoslavian unity
(under Serbian leadership) among the Slavs living in the Habsburg
realms. Political cells like the Narodna Odbrana served as instru-
ments for political activity.21
Far more dangerous, however, was a secret organization
known as the Black Hand, a group of Serbian military and polit-
ical figures sworn to a violent solution to the South Slav problem.
Although Habsburg intelligence was aware of the Black Hand, it
never fully appreciated the strength of its commitment to the use
of violence. Among the members, none was more sinister than
Dragutin Dimitrijevic (known as Apis), who participated in the
1903 murder of King Alexander of the Obrenovic dynasty. By
I912, Apis had become chief of Serbian military intelligence.
Although it is unlikely that the exact details will ever be estab-
lished, Apis played a major part in the plot against Franz Ferdi-
nand. In his plans for the assassination, Apis and his associates
exploited the nationalism of young students and the inability of
19 Two excellent recent studies are Raymond Pearson, National Minorities in Eastern
Europe, 1848-1945 (London, I983); Wandruszka and Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Volker des
Reiches (Vienna, I980), 2v. See also Robert A. Kann and Zdenek V. David, The Peoples
of the EasternHabsburgLands, 1526-1918 (Seattle, I984).
20 Jelavich, History, II, 79-I 12; Dedijer, Road, I60-284; Ivo Banac, The National Question
in Yugoslavia:Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, 1984).
21 Dedijer, Road, 261-284. See also Friedrich Wiirthle, Die Spurfihrt nach Belgrad:Die
Hintergriinde des Dramas von Sarajevo 1914 (Vienna, 1975).

the Pasic government to control the Black Hand. Serbia's spon-

sorship of South Slav agitation inside the Habsburg monarchy
posed threats of an immediate and practical nature for the Habs-
burg leadership. For Vienna, Serbia represented the twin issues
of state security and state survival.
The decay in the effectiveness of the political structures of
the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov regimes is noted as
a final long-term cause of the war. After I9II, demands for
constitutional change in Prussia increased, the growth of the so-
cialist party frightened the established elites, and Kaiser Wilhelm II's
ineffectiveness were matters of public comment. Certainly Chan-
cellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and his associates feared
for the future of the existing political order. Much the same could
be said of Russia where the abortive revolt of I905 had already
revealed the weaknesses of the czar's regime.
The future of Austria-Hungary after the death of Franz Jo-
seph, an octogenarian, was already a matter of international spec-
ulation. In Vienna and Budapest, linked by a common monarch,
common army, and common foreign policy, the blows of the
Balkan wars and the prospect of Franz Ferdinand as ruler worried
many. Yet the archduke desperately wanted the dynasty to sur-
vive, and he thought a pro-Russian foreign policy would help
him achieve that goal. A force for peace during the Balkan wars,
Franz Ferdinand had supported Berchtold's policy of militant
diplomacy, but not militant action, against Conrad, his own pro-
tege. The archduke's death removed a force for peace and pro-
vided the pretext for decisions in Vienna that launched the third
Balkan war. Within these parameters, the decisions during late
June and early July 1914 are critical.22
22 On internal pressures and the causes of war, see Arno J. Mayer, The Persistenceof the
Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York, 1981), 275-329. See also Joll, Origins,
92-I22. On Germany, see Fischer, Krieg, 289-323, 663-738; David Kaiser, "Germany and
the Origins of the First World War,"Journalof ModernHistory,LV (1983), 442-474; Konrad
Jarausch, The EnigmaticChancellor:BethmannHollweg and the Hubris of ImperialGermany
(New Haven, 1973), 153-170. On Russia, see Lieven, Russia, I39-I5I. On Austria-
Hungary, see the period piece, Henry Wickham Steed, The HapsburgMonarchy(London,
1914, 2nd ed.); Arthur J. May, The HapsburgMonarchy,1867-1914 (Cambridge, Mass.,
195I); Joachim Remak, "The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed Was the Habsburg Empire?"
Journal of ModernHistory, XLI (I969), 127-143; idem, "I9I4: The Origins of the Third
Balkan War Reconsidered," ibid., XLII (I971); Robert A. Kann, ErzherzogFranz Ferdinand
Studien (Vienna, I976), 15-25; Williamson, "Influence, Power, and the Policy Process:
The Case of Franz Ferdinand," The Historical oournal,XVII (I974), 417-434.

Many historians have devoted their attention to the July

crisis, and any analysis here risks injustice to the complexity of
historical thought concerning the events of that summer. To fa-
cilitate a systematic examination of that period, this essay focuses
upon a number of key decisions taken during July. Each decision,
one can argue, led to the next, and in the absence of any one of
them, the crisis might have been averted. One may quarrel with
the choices or the emphasis, but most will agree that the decisions
discussed here were important, possibly decisive, on the road to
war.23
The first steps toward war began in Vienna. The deaths of
Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie shocked Berchtold and the
other civilian ministers who wanted action against Serbia.
Strongly supporting this view were Conrad and General Alex-
ander von Krobatin, the minister of war. They were joined from
Sarajevo by General Oskar Potiorek, who exaggerated the post-
Sarajevo unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina to justify immediate
military action against Belgrade. Put simply, Potiorek demanded
that Vienna should go to war to protect the two provinces. Thus,
in early July, well before Germany indicated strong support, Vi-
enna planned retribution against Serbia. Only Istvan Tisza, the
Hungarian premier, disliked this prospect.24
With the conversion of Franz Joseph to a policy of retribu-
tion, Berchtold had the crucial support he needed within the
Habsburg government. The emperor/king's decision stemmed in
part from evidence of Belgrade's complicity in the murders, for
police interrogations in Sarajevo had quickly established the con-
spiracy of Gavrilo Princip and his associates and the possible
involvement of some members of the Serbian government. By
July 3, Franz Joseph was talking of the need for action. For the
next ten days, Tisza was his only senior adviser who remained
unconvinced. But his reluctance to act should not obscure the fact
23 Joll, Origins, has the most current bibliography; Dwight E. Lee, Europe's Crucial
Years: The Diplomatic Backgroundof World War I, 1902-1914 (Hanover, N.H., 1974);
Leonard Charles Frederick Turner, Origins of the First World War (New York, 1970);
Stephan Verosta, Theorieund Realitdtvon Buindnissen(Vienna, 197I).
24 Conrad, Aus meinerDienstzeit, IV, I3-36; Hantsch, Berchtold,II, 557-569; Leon von
Bilinski, Wspominieniai dokumenty,1846-1922 [Memoirsand Documents, 1846-1922] (War-
saw, I924), I, 274-278; Potiorek's reports from Sarajevo are found in part in Aussen, VIII.
See also Potiorek's separate reports to the military leadership in Nachlass Potiorek, Kriegs-
archiv, Vienna.

that the Habsburg civilian and military leadership wanted to pun-

ish Belgrade for the deaths at Sarajevo. No pressure from Berlin
was required for Vienna to reach that decision.25
The second step in the July crisis was Berlin's decision to
support Habsburg military action against Belgrade. Kaiser Wil-
helm II genuinely grieved over the Sarajevo victims and wanted
action against Serbia, as did Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Thus
both men proved receptive to the Hoyos mission in which Vienna
asked for assurances of German support and indicated its plan to
take radical action against Serbia. On July 5 and 6 Berlin gave
Vienna the backing it sought. In contrast to its earlier hesitations
during the Balkan wars, this time Berlin supported Vienna's desire
to act. Thus, by July 6 Berchtold had assurances from Berlin and,
he hoped, a deterrent against possible Russian intervention.26
Why did the German leaders endorse Austro-Hungarian ac-
tion against Serbia? Alliance loyalties, personal feelings, and Beth-
mann Hollweg's desire for an assertive German policy are among
the traditional explanations. To these reasons have been added
Germany's desire to intimidate the Triple Entente and to end
Serbian affronts against its Habsburg ally. The German decision
had many fateful consequences.
Vienna probably would not have gone to war without Ber-
lin's assurances of support. However, the unilateral and provoc-
ative measures taken by Vienna during the Balkan wars, often
with scant German knowledge, suggest that Berchtold and Con-
rad might well have staged some kind of military action (for
example, a border incident or alleged bombardment of a Habs-
burg town) without a firm German guarantee. In any event, in
25 On the investigation in Sarajevo, see Wurthle, Spur, and idem, Dokumentezum Sara-
jevoprozess:Ein Quellenbericht(Vienna, 1978). For one indication of FranzJoseph's thinking,
see Heinrich von Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 2 July 1914, in Max Montgelas and
Walther Schiicking (eds.), Outbreakof the WorldWar:GermanDocumentsCollectedby Karl
Kautsky (New York, 1924) (hereafter Kautsky Documents), no. II; Kann, Kaiser Franz
Joseph und der Ausbruchdes Weltkrieges(Vienna, I97I). On Tisza see Galantai, Weltkrieg,
251-278; Gabor Vermes, Istvdn Tisza: The Liberal Vision and ConservativeStatecraftof a
Magyar Nationalist (New York, 1985), and Burian's diary entries for 7-14 July 1914, in
Istvan Di6szegi, "Aussenminister Stephen Graf Burian: Biographie und Tagebuchstelle,"
Annales: UniversitatisScientiarumBudapestinesis,Sectio Historica,VIII (1966), 205-206.
26 Fischer, Krieg, 686-694; Fritz Fellner, "Die 'Mission Hoyos'," in Vasa Cubrilovi6
(ed.), Recueil des trauvaux aux assises scientifiquesinternationales:Les grandespuissanceset la
Serbie d la veille de la Premiereguerre mondiale(Belgrade, 1976), IV, 387-418; Albertini,
Origins, II, 133-I50.

808 I SAMUEL R. WILLIAMSON, JR.
July 1914 Austria-Hungary wanted action against Serbia; the Ger-

mans certainly did not discourage it; and they soon found them-
selves pulled into the crisis.27
Even though Vienna had obtained Berlin's pledge of support
against Serbia by July 6, more than two weeks elapsed before the
ultimatum was presented to Belgrade on July 23. A major factor
explaining this delay lies in the organization of the Habsburg
military. Early in his tenure as chief of staff, Conrad instituted a
policy of "harvest" leaves to appease the monarchy's agrarian
interests. This policy allowed soldiers to go home to help in the
fields and then return to their duty stations for the annual summer
maneuvers. In the days after Sarajevo, sizable numbers of Habs-
burg soldiers were scattered over the empire on harvest leave.
Cancellation of the leaves would have alerted Europe to the im-
pending military action, disrupted farm production, and risked
confusion concerning the railway's mobilization plans. Conrad
therefore decided to let the current leaves run their normal course,
but to cancel any new harvest leaves. As a result, most of those
leaves already granted would end by July 2I or 22. Conrad's
decision gave Berchtold the parameters for the timing of the July
crisis.28
Another cause of delay involved convincing Tisza to permit
military action against Serbia. When the Common Ministerial
Council met on July 7, the Magyar premier initially persisted in
opposing military action but, by the end of the lengthy session,
his resistance had weakened. Tisza then appealed to Franz Joseph,
only to find that his sovereign was strongly committed to action.
In his efforts to sway Tisza, Berchtold stressed Germany's support
for action and, possibly more important, warned of Rumania's
probable defection from the alliance. The foreign minister appar-
ently suggested that a failure to deal with Serbia would encourage
Bucharest to press the Transylvania issue ever more insistently.
Whatever the arguments, Berchtold convinced Tisza that inter-
vention was required. On July I5, the Magyar leader met with
27 See Fritz Stern, "Bethmann Hollweg and the War: The Limits of Responsibility," in
Leonard Krieger and Stern (eds.), The Responsibilityof Power (Garden City, I967), 27I-
307. Fay argued that Austria-Hungary pulled Berlin along (Origins, II, I98-223).
28 General Staff memorandum, "Vorbereitende Massnahmen," n.d, but seen by Conrad
on 6 July I914, Generalstab: Operations Buro, faszikel 43, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna; Conrad,
Aus meinerDienstzeit, IV, 13-87.

the Hungarian House of Deputies and openly hinted of the need

for action. His only requirements were that Vienna would present
an ultimatum to Belgrade and would pledge not to annex addi-
tional Slavic territory.29
A further reason for Vienna's delay was more prosaic. Poin-
care and Rene Viviani, the French premier, were scheduled to be
in St. Petersburg on a state visit from July 20 to July 23. Under-
standably, Berchtold wanted the ultimatum presented after the
French had left St. Petersburg. As a result, it was finally delivered
at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 23, when the French leaders were at
sea.
Vienna used the hiatus of mid-July to mislead the other
European governments about its intentions. After July 12 Berch-
told restrained press comment about Serbia, and the journals in
Vienna and Budapest recounted little about the adjoining state.
Conrad went hiking in the mountains; Franz Joseph stayed at Bad
Ischl; and the other Habsburg leaders carried out their customary
duties. The Danubian monarchy appeared to have returned to
normal. 30
Berchtold had another motive for his deception. In mid-July,
he discovered that on July II Berlin had informed Hans von
Flotow, its ambassador in Rome, about the possibility of Habs-
burg action against Serbia. Shortly afterward, Flotow conveyed
this message to Antonio San Giuliano, the Italian foreign minister;
not surprisingly, San Giuliano cabled the information to Vienna.
When the telegram reached Vienna, the Austrian codebreakers
duly deciphered it, thereby exposing the indiscretion of both
Germany and Italy. Berchtold could only assume that San Giuli-
ano had also sent the same information to St. Petersburg and
Belgrade. Henceforth, he gave Berlin no further details about his
plans, including the text of the ultimatum, until the very last
moment. Later, this secrecy would be held against Berchtold as
a sign of duplicity; at the time, it appeared to be the only way he
could maintain his options.31
29 Galantai, Weltkrieg,258-27I. See also Norman Stone, "Hungary and the Crisis of
July I9I4," Journal ofContemporary History, I (I966), 153-170; Fremdenblatt, I6 July I914.
30 Berchtold used the Literary Bureau of the foreign ministry to help with the press; his
efforts were generally successful, but the stock market continued to show signs of uneas-
iness.
31 Gottlieb von Jagow to Flotow, (tel.) I July I914, KautskyDocuments,no. 33; Habs-

The Common Ministerial Council met secretly in Vienna on

July 19 to review the ultimatum. Although none present believed
Belgrade could accept it, the ministers approved the ultimatum
and concurrently affirmed their acquiescence to Tisza's demand
that there would be no territorial annexations, only modifications
of strategic boundaries in case of victory. Conrad reportedly said,
when leaving the meeting, "We will see; before the Balkan war
the powers also talked of the status quo-after the war no one
worried about it."32 His cynicism matched the Habsburg approach
to war. Vienna wanted war with Serbia in the summer of 1914;
for that conflict the leaders were willing to risk a war with St.
Petersburg but hoped (and believed) that Germany's support
would deter the Russians.
With the ultimatum delivered, Belgrade became the focus of
activity. Although the reactions of the Pasic government have
never been chronicled in detail, recently published Serbian doc-
uments for the pre-I914 years confirm that senior officials in the
Serbian government were aware of Apis' conspiratorial activity
in May and June and sought to stop it. Yet Pasic's weakened
political base made a public confrontation with the Serbian mili-
tary or with Apis impossible. Apis, behind a carefully constructed
non-answer to Pasic's queries about reports of agents being smug-
gled across the border, essentially went his own way. After the
assassinations, Pasic could not, of course, offer Apis to Vienna or
do more than proceed as if he and the government had known
nothing.33
burg ambassador in Rome, Kajetan von M6rey to Berchtold, (tel.) i8 July I914, Aussen,
VIII, no. 10364; Berchtold to M6rey, (tel.) 20 July 1914, ibid, no. I0418. San Giuliano to
Berlin, St. Petersburg, Belgrade, Vienna, (tels.) I6 July 1914, in Italian Foreign Ministry,
I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (1908-1914), XII, no. 272.
32 Conrad, Aus meinerDienstzeit, IV, 92. The meeting on July 19 took place at Berch-
told's private residence, not at the Ballhausplatz. Conrad came in civilian clothes and in a
private car.
33 I am indebted to Dragan Zivojinovic for help with the documents. Dedijer, who
edited the July volume of documents, drew upon them in Road to Sarajevo.The volume
of documents is Dedijer and Zivota Anid (eds.), Documentssur la politique exterieuredu
Royaumede Serbie[Dokumentio spoljnojpoliticikraljevineSrbije, 1903-1914](Belgrade, 1980).
For 14 May-4 August I914, see VII, pt. II. The general series was under the editorial
direction of Vasa Cubrilovic. On knowledge of some kind of activity, see Protic (minister
of the interior) to Pasic, 15 June 1914, ibid., no. 206; report from Sabac county on
smuggling of arms across the border, i6 June 1914, ibid., no. 209; Apis to Putnik (chief

ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I 8II
On one point, however, the Serbian documents are definite-

Serbia had no intention of accepting any Habsburg ultimatum
that infringed in the slightest on Serbian sovereignty. On July I8
Pasic, probably alerted to Vienna's intentions by the Italian min-
ister to Belgrade, prepared a memorandum stating unequivocally
that Serbia would tolerate no infringement of its sovereignity.
This defiant tone persisted through the discussions in Belgrade
on July 24 and 25. Thus, contrary to earlier explanations which
argued that the Russians had acted to stiffen the Serbian will to
resist, the Serbian documents reveal a hard-line position in Bel-
grade that predates the ultimatum. In taking this stance, Pasic and
his colleagues were obviously confident of Russian help. In July
1914, the Serbian government showed little willingness to com-
promise; that stance also contributed to the escalation of the
crisis.34
Given this new background on the Serbian attitude and the
messages sent from Rome, the state visit of Poincare and Viviani
to St. Petersburg assumes new importance. Indeed, some histo-
rians have long suspected that Poincare's talks were more detailed
and more relevant to the Balkan situation than either his memoirs
or the official memoranda of the visit indicate. Since the Russians
probably had broken the Italian code, just as the Austrians had,
St. Petersburg must have known of Vienna's intentions.
This assumption in turn helps to explain a series of actions
by both French and Russian officials during the crisis, suggesting
a coordinated Franco-Russian policy based upon advance knowl-
edge. On July 21 and 22, Poincare deliberately and abruptly
warned Friedrich Szapary, the Habsburg ambassador to Russia,
against any action by Vienna, while indicating strong French
support for Serbia. The content of Poincare's message alarmed
the ambassador, the president's tone even more. Given the almost
total black-out of news from Vienna about its intentions, Poin-
care's warnings were probably prompted by the intercepted tel-
egrams. Certainly, given the anti-Habsburg views of Miroslav
Spalajkovic, the Serbian minister to Russia, the merest hint of
of the Serbian general staff), 21 June 1914, ibid., no. 230; Putnik to Pasic, 23 June 1914,
ibid., no. 234. On Pasit's attempts to curb the activity, see Pasic to Putnik, 24 June I914,
ibid., no. 254.
34 Pasic to all Serbian missions abroad, (tels.) I8 July 1914, Documents,no. 462.

action by Vienna would have prompted overtures to the French

and the Russians for strong declarations of support.35
Similarly, throughout the crisis, the French apparently never
cautioned St. Petersburg to urge Serbia to show restraint. The
Russian military preparations on July 25, and thereafter, were
those of a government supremely confident of French support;
that confidence could have come only from Poincare and Viviani
in a series of discussions in St. Petersburg. Thus, the provocative
Russian diplomacy of 1912 would be repeated anew, this time
with advance French approval.36
In Belgrade on July 23, Wladimir Giesl von Gieslingen, the
Austro-Hungarian minister, delivered the forty-eight hour ulti-
matum. Pasic, campaigning for the general elections in the coun-
tryside, returned home to draft a reply. His response stunned even
the Habsburgs. He accepted most of Vienna's demands, thus
winning European sympathy, while carefully evading the essential
demands. Above all, Pasic could not agree to a police investigation
of the assassinations, for he knew where such an inquiry could
lead. Otherwise, Pasic was so acquiescent that Serbia almost ap-
peared to be the injured party in the proceedings. In any event,
the Austrians immediately rejected Belgrade's answer as insuffi-
cient and issued orders onJuly 25 for partial mobilization to begin
on July 28.37
The senior Russian ministers, meanwhile, met in St. Peters-
burg onJuly 24 and 25 to consider their options. Their conclusions
can easily be construed as belligerent, provocative, and ill-de-
signed to keep the crisis in check. Furthermore, their decisions
were taken before St. Petersburg knew either the Serbian reply
or the Austrian response to Serbia. With the czar's approval, the
ministers agreed to a series of pre-mobilization measures: military
35 See Szapary to Berchtold, (tels.) 21 July and 22 July 1914, Aussen, VIII, nos. I046I,
10497. On the Russian documents for the Poincard visit, see Otto Hoetzsch (ed.), Die
internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Berlin, 1932-1934), V, nos. I, 2.
On the French records for the visit, see Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Documents
diplomatiquesfranfais, 1871-1914 (Paris, 1936), X, no. 536 which refers only to Anglo-
Russian naval talks; the editors of the volumes indicate that they could find no other
records. On this issue, see Albertini, Origins, II, 188-203.
36 Lieven, Origins, makes no mention of the French visit, in keeping with his general
view of the lack of Russian activism during the crisis (I40-141); cf. Keiger, Origins, I5o-
152.
37 The ultimatum and the Serbian reply have been frequently reprinted. See Geiss, July
1914, 142-146, 201-204.

ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I 813
cadets were promoted early, protective measures were instituted

along the borders, and troops in the east were ordered to prepare
to move west. From July 25 to July 30 Serbian officials in Russia
sent detailed reports of Russian military measures and referred to
them as partial mobilization. Simply put, the Russians initiated a
series of military measures well in advance of the other great
powers, although Austria-Hungary's partial mobilization came
shortly after the Russian initiative. These measures, moreover,
were the equivalent of a partial mobilization and accelerated the
crisis far more than recent historiography has usually conceded.
The Russian measures upset both Habsburg and German assump-
tions about St. Petersburg's probable behavior in the crisis. Fur-
thermore, the steps disrupted the timetables in Vienna and Berlin,
thus reducing the options that were available and, of course, the
time to consider them.38
The final stage of the third Balkan war began with Austria's
declaration of war on July 28 and the desultory shelling of Bel-
grade that same night. There was little further hostile action for
several days. Neither Vienna nor Belgrade showed the slightest
willingness to negotiate or to consider half-way measures. Talk
of a "Halt in Belgrade" as a Habsburg military objective got
nowhere with Conrad, who wanted a total reckoning with Serbia.
The once reluctant Tisza now zealously pressed Conrad for action,
fearing possible Rumanian movement into Transylvania against
the Magyars. Already at war with Serbia, Vienna had risked the
wider war that would soon follow.39
At this point in the July crisis the diplomatic activity shifted
abruptly from eastern to western Europe and to Anglo-German
efforts to contain the escalating hostilities. Wilhelm remained as
fickle as ever. Returning from his North Sea cruise, the kaiser
praised the Serbian response to Austria's ultimatum and suggested
38 Lieven describes some of the measures, Origins, I4I-I5I; Snyder, Ideology, I83-198;
Stone, Eastern, 37-60; Ulrich Trumpener, "War Premeditated? German Intelligence Op-
erations inJuly I914," CentralEuropeanHistory, IX (1976), 58-85. Cf. Fischer, Krieg, 704-
709. On the Serbian reports, see, e.g., Spalajkovic to Pasic, (tels.) 25, 26, 29 July 1914,
Dedijer and AniE (eds.), Documents, nos. 570, 584, 673. See also Risto Ropponen, Die
russischeGefahr (Helsinki, 1976), 180-206.
39 Galantai, Weltkrieg,344-373; Hantsch, Berchtold,II, 618-647. Pasii indicated he would
concede nothing; note by Pasi6, dated 27 July 1914 on telegram from Berlin of the same
date (Dedijer and Anic [eds.], Documents,no. 588).

814 | SAMUEL R. WILLIAMSON, JR.
a resolution of the crisis. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg now

wavered too; at moments Berlin sought to restrain Vienna, but
the German leadership did not abandon Vienna or act responsibly
to avert the crisis.
Grey was not much more helpful. Whether a more assertive
British policy-action or inaction-would have decisively influ-
enced the crisis has long fascinated historians. It can be argued
that the rapidity of the crisis played a major role in the outcome,
perhaps a more decisive role than Jervis suggests elsewhere in this
volume.40 Throughout the crisis, Grey failed to appreciate Vi-
enna's desire for war. Accustomed to treating Vienna as an ap-
pendage of Berlin, Grey and his hard-line, anti-German associates
believed Berlin could control Vienna. But the third largest state
in Europe, with a population of fifty million, with two proud
governments, and a proud monarch, wanted a resounding defeat
of the Serbians. Grey's failure to acknowledge the differences
between this crisis and earlier ones constitutes a major failure of
perception that severely reduced Britain's ability to manipulate
the crisis toward a peaceful solution. In fact, after August I, the
British leaders, like their counterparts on the Continent, sought
chiefly to make their actions appear defensive in nature. Just as
the Russians obliged the Germans to enter the war, so too the
Germans would oblige the British by invading Belgium on their
way to France.41
In the final days of July, Russia's general mobilization made
containment of the crisis an impossibility. Historians have devoted
ample attention to Russia's call for general mobilization on July
30. A frequent theme has emerged: why, if the Russians had
partially mobilized during the first Balkan war, could they not
have done so again? The Serbian documents offer a new inter-
pretation of this issue. A partial mobilization was impossible
because the steps St. Petersburg had ordered after July 25 were
effectively already those of a partial mobilization. After the pre-
paratory measures, only full mobilization remained. Czar Nich-
olas agreed to this step on July 29, but on receipt of a letter from
Kaiser Wilhelm II, the czar rescinded the order. With difficulty,
40 Robert Jervis, "War and Misperception," Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, XVIII

(I988), 675-700.
41 Steiner, Britain, 220-241; also Albertini, Origins, III, 521-525; Bridge, Great Britain,
2I T-2 8.

Sazonov and the generals convinced the czar to reissue the order
on July 30. The headquarters' troops allegedly then tore out the
telephones to prevent any further delays. With Russian mobili-
zation, Berlin faced the dilemma of a two-front campaign. Wil-
helm and his associates proceeded to set in motion their own
plans, plans that guaranteed a European conflict.42
In Vienna, meanwhile, the war plans unfolded. Conrad re-
mained transfixed with plans for an attack on Serbia. In the north,
along the Russian frontier, he planned to leave only minimal
defensive forces. He persisted in his intentions despite mounting
evidence that the Russians would not stand aside. His southward
gaze remains almost inexplicable. Only months before, in the
spring, he had worried about the Russian threat and about the
implications of recent Russian behavior in the Balkan wars. Yet,
he disregarded reports reaching Vienna of Russian preparations,
perhaps because of his long-standing distrust of diplomats and his
own desire for war. The sooner the troops were engaged, the
more likely it was that Conrad would succeed in precipitating the
war that he had advocated since the Bosnian crisis of I908. And
the fastest way to engage the troops was to send them south to
fight against the Serbian forces. Later, when he could not ignore
the movement of Russian troops toward the Habsburg lands,
Conrad had to order most of the Habsburg troops to return to
fight in Galicia. Not surprisingly, the soldiers were fatigued by
the time that they faced the Russian units.43
Conrad's desire for war set him apart from most of the other
actors in the July crisis. Whereas many would accede to the
developing situation with regret or caution, he welcomed the
crisis. Anxious to settle scores with the Serbians, the Habsburg
chief of staff made a difference in the decision-making process.
Of all of the central actors in 1914, Conrad alone could have-
by saying no to Berchtold or expressing hesitation to Franz Joseph
42 The Serbian documents report extensive military steps by the Russians afterJuly 25;
e.g., Spalajkovic to Pasic, (tel.) 26 July, 1914, Dedijer and Anic (eds.), Documents,no.
585. Albertini summarized the Russian mobilization arguments well in Origins, II, 528-
581. See also Fischer, Krieg, 704-729.
43 Stone, "Die Mobilmachung," I76-184; see also Williamson, "Theories of Organiza-
tional Process and Foreign Policy Outcomes," in Paul G. Lauren (ed.), Diplomacy: New
Approachesin History, Theory, and Policy (New York, 1979), 15I-54; Jack S. Levy, "Or-
ganizational Routines and the Causes of War," InternationalStudiesQuarterly,XXX (1986),
I93-222.

or accepting some modified "Halt in Belgrade"-brought the

crisis to a more peaceful conclusion. Conrad, however, did not,
and that raises in stark relief the role of the individual in history.
In this instance, Conrad's military ambitions were motivated,
possibly, by his own desire to be a military hero and thus be able
to marry Gina von Reininghaus, the woman he loved but could
not wed because she was already married (and the mother of six
children). Between I907 and their nuptials in 19I5, Conrad wrote
literally thousands of letters to Gina, many mailed, others not. In
several his theme is: if war comes and I am a hero, then I can
marry Gina. But first he had to have the war. In the summer of
1914, he finally got his war and a year later his bride.44
While Conrad delayed any shift of his forces from the south
to the north, Berlin attempted to cope with the Russian mobili-
zation. Those decisions opened the final stages of the July crisis.
Faced with the two-front war, the German leadership demanded
that the Russians and French cease their preparations. But neither
yielded to German pressure. The German high command pointed
to unambiguous evidence of extensive Russian military activity;
the Schlieffen-Moltke plan demanded action. On August 2, in
scenes far distant from Sarajevo, Germany moved against Lux-
embourg and, one day later, against Belgium. With Germany's
violation of Belgium neutrality, Grey pressed the British govern-
ment to intervene. Thus the third Balkan war became World War I.
The outbreak of World War I saw a fusion of long-term causes

with short-run tactical decisions. Although the momentum of the
crisis differed from capital to capital, the limited options available
to the policymakers are explicable only when the eastern Euro-
pean dynamics are considered. Alliance loyalties, the pressures of
the military bureaucrats, and the juxtaposition of different per-
ceptions with personal motivations made the chances of peace
extremely remote in the last days of July and early August 1914.
What broader conclusions can be drawn from the July crisis
about the origins and prevention of major wars? A few deserve
emphasis, even if they are familiar. Nationalism and ethnic arro-
44 For a discussion of Conrad's relationship with Gina, see Williamson, "Vienna and
July I914," 13-I4. See also Gina Conrad's indiscreet, Mein Lebenmit Conradvon H&tzendorf
(Leipzig, I935).

gance should never be underestimated. The powerful, emotive

forces of prestige and survival press statesmen to take chances
that ostensibly rational actors might not take, especially when the
civilian ministers fail to comprehend the ramifications of military
planning or its illusory nature. Even Berchtold and the other
senior Habsburg statesmen, well versed in crisis management after
the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, never fully probed the logic
of Conrad's plans. The offensive ideology swept aside any doubts
harbored by the civilian leadership and left them no time to
ponder and reconsider.
The alliance and entente structures likewise placed a premium
upon action. To be sure, the arrangements seemingly offered
protection to their members. The alliances, however, could also
coerce a state into taking action simply for the sake of the alliance.
Strong, tight alliances may in fact be more dangerous to peace
than loose, ambiguous ones where the actors must negotiate
among themselves before taking action.
A number of conclusions can be drawn concerning the July
crisis. First, "satisficing" as a decision-making process was evident
everywhere; the statesmen repeatedly took the first suitable op-
tion, not necessarily the best option.45 An economist model of
decision-making was seldom seen during the weeks after Sarajevo;
instead, a series of reactive decisions were taken by statesmen in
Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. Cost-benefit analysis, such as
occurred during the Cuban missile crisis, may take place if the
time parameters of a crisis are known. But such a process is
unlikely (and the Cuban missile crisis is not a good guide for
decision-making during a crisis), because in most international
crises the denouement can be projected only at an unspecified
future time, not at a specific future time. In most crises, this is
not possible, and, certainly in 1914, the statesmen had no time
carefully to consider their decisions, the Habsburg leadership ex-
cepted, once the ultimatum was delivered in Belgrade on July 23.
Second, the events of July reaffirm the power of perceptions
and past experience in assessing current situations. In 1914 a group
of leaders, all experienced in statecraft, power, and crisis man-
agement, deliberately made decisions that risked or assumed war.
45 Graham T. Allison, The Essenceof Decision:Explainingthe CubanMissile Crisis (Boston,

1971), 72.

8I8 | SAMUEL R. WILLIAMSON, JR.
Statesmen and generals cast the die because of their fears and
apprehensions about the future. No group had less confidence
than the Habsburg leaders, who had been battered during the
Balkan wars, Serbian expansion, and the loss of Franz Ferdinand,
their experienced heir apparent. The Habsburg policymakers des-
perately desired to shape the future, rather than let events control
them. The prospect of domestic disintegration, exacerbated by
foreign intervention from the north and south, made war an
acceptable policy option. Frustration and fear were a fatal and
seductive combination for Vienna and Budapest. The Habsburg
decision, backed by the Germans for their own reasons, gave the
July crisis momentum and a dynamic that rendered peace the first
casualty.
But the willingness of the Habsburg leadership to rescue a
sagging dual monarchy by resorting to force had echoes elsewhere
in Europe. In each capital, and despite the recent Balkan wars,
the policymakers adopted a fatalistic, almost reckless, approach
to the crisis. A convergence of offensive military strategies, fears
about the future, and an unwillingness to consider other less
dangerous options formed the perceptual agenda for the govern-
mental leaders; peace had little chance once Vienna decided war
was an acceptable option.
The war of I9I4 began as a local quarrel with international
ties; those ties converted it into a major conflagration. Therein
lies possibly the most salient lesson of theJuly crisis: a local quarrel
does not always remain a local issue. Peace is more easily main-
tained if one avoids even the smallest incursion into war, for,
once the barrier of peace is broken, the process of diplomacy in
restoring peace or preventing a larger war is infinitely more dif-
ficult. The maintenance of peace requires an aggressive commit-
ment to imaginative diplomacy and to continual negotiation, not
spasms of despair and the clash of military action in the hope for
something better. Something better is almost always something
worse, as all of the European governments discovered in World
War I.46
46 On the problem of maintaining peace over long decades, see John Lewis Gaddis,
"The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System," International
Security, X (1986), 99-142.

University of Glasgow
The Bolshevik Revolution

Author(s): G. D. H. Cole
Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Oct., 1952), pp. 139-151
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Accessed: 08-08-2015 08:45 UTC
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and University of Glasgow are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Soviet Studies.
THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
A NUMBER of critics have taken Mr. Carr to task for beginning his
massive work on The Bolshevik Revolution with a volume devoted chiefly
to the political aspects, and for leaving the economic aspects for subse-
quent treatment in the second volume. In the preface to this second
volume Mr. Carr defends his arrangement somewhat hesitantly: he is
'not wholly convinced' that it was wrong to deal first with what Marxists
regard as the 'superstructure', and to come to the economic foundations
only in a second round. But in truth the criticism is misconceived; for
volume one did deal with the economics as well as with the politics of
the Revolution, and volume two is not a completely separate account of
the economic aspects, but rather a filling in of the general story already
narrated in volume one. Similarly, the third volume, when it arrives,
will no doubt carry out the author's promise to deal with the international
aspects; but that does not mean that these aspects have been ignored in
either volume one or volume two. Indeed, they could not have been;
for at every point the three aspects are to such an extent different visions
of an indivisible whole as to make separation an impossible task. The
political aspect of Bolshevik policy was greatly affected by belief in the
imminence of proletarian revolution in western Europe; the economic
aspect was abruptly altered by changes in the area under Bolshevik con-
trol as affected by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, allied intervention, and the
course of the civil war; and the internal experience of the Revolution in
action - politically as well as economically - reacted sharply on the
international attitudes of the Bolshevik leaders.
The second volume of Mr. Carr's book, then, though it is mainly
an account of the economic events and tendencies of the years from 1917
to 1923, is not a full history of the Bolshevik Revolution in its economic
aspects, but rather a detailed narrative based on and implying the
general (and not by any means purely political) history given in volume
one. This narrative has been arranged to fall into three main periods -
those of the immediate 'impact of the Revolution', of 'War Communism'
and of the 'New Economic Policy', with a short section dealing with the
transition from 'War Communism' to the N.E.P., and a brief concluding
chapter on 'The Beginnings of Planning'. Under each of the three main
headings there are five separate sections, dealing respectively with
agriculture, industry, labour and the trade unions, trade and distribution,
and finance; and the volume begins with a short general introductory
chapter on the 'Theories and Programmes' which the Bolshevik Party-
and particularly Lenin - had taken over and adapted from the writings
of Marx and Engels. This is on the whole an excellent arrangement for
139
140 THE BOLSHEVIK
the materials with which Mr. Carr has worked. He has shown very great
skill as well as industry in weaving together, from the original documents
where they are available and from secondary sources where they are not,
a coherent narrative which brings out the changing attitudes and con-
flicts of policy and idea of the various leaders in face of the largely un-
foreseen situations with which they had to cope. It would have been
impossible to do this without great confusion unless the narrative had
been broken up both into the three main sub-periods and under the
separate aspects - agrarian, industrial, and so on; moreover, Mr. Carr's
arrangement suits his highly objective manner, and makes it the
easier for him to maintain the appearance of Olympian detachment that
he evidently wishes to give. His views can at a good number of points be
read pretty plainly between the lines; but he cannot be fairly accused
of ever distorting his account of the events or of other people's opinions
to fit in with his own likings.
I had better say at the very beginning of this article that I can make
no claim to expert knowledge of the subject of Mr. Carr's book. I can-
not read Russian, and I have not read more than a small fraction of the
immense amount that has been published in languages open to me
about the Bolshevik Revolution. I have undertaken to write this 'review-
article' not as an expert on Russian affairs but as a student of Socialism,
and I shall have a good deal less to say in it about Mr. Carr than about
the Revolution in its relation to the general development of Socialism
as theory and movement. I have, however, one bone to pick with Mr.
Carr on a purely technical point. Why does he, in his plentiful and
excellently chosen citations from Marx, Engels, Lenin and other writers,
give references, not to editions which persons who do not know Russian
can consult, but to Russian editions of 'Collected Works' to which few
of his readers can be in a position to refer, and usually in such a way as
not even to tell his readers from what particular work of the author
he is quoting? Sometimes, it is possible to 'spot' the source of the citation
fairly easily; but quite often it is not, so that one cannot look up the
context, even when the work in question is available in English or Ger-
man or French. It is also annoying to have to wait for volume three both
for any sort of bibliography and for an index - though the good logic of
Mr. Carr's arrangement of chapters and sections mitigates the latter
evil.
It has been said again and again - and amply supported by references
to what was said at the time - that the Bolsheviks, in 19I7 and for some
time afterwards, disbelieved in the possibility of a successful Socialist
revolution in Russia unless there were also a successful Socialist revolu-
tion in the more advanced Western countries. Mr. Carr brings this
point out very clearly in both his volumes. Why was this view generally
RE VOL U TION I4I
accepted; and what sort of help from the West was thought to be indis-
pensable? It is the less easy to give a quite clear answer because the
belief was so much taken for granted as to be but little discusssed. It
rested, of course, partly on the evident numerical inferiority of the in-
dustrial proletariat in Russia, on the predominantly agricultural - and
agriculturally backward - economic structure of Russian society, and
on the denial of the Narodnik view that the Russian peasantry could act
as a creative revolutionary force on its own account. The correlative
both of the numerical weakness of the proletariat and of the backward-
ness of peasant agriculture was a low stage of development both of the
,capitalist class and of the trading and professional groups: so that it
looked as difficult for the proletariat to push the bourgeoisieinto making
a bourgeoisrevolution as for the proletariat to make a revolution on its
own account. It was, however, an unquestioned assumption of Bolshe-
vik doctrine that a bourgeoisrevolution had to come first, and that the
proletariat must help the bourgeoisieto overthrow the autocracy as a
necessary part of the preparation for Socialism. The course of events in
I905 seemed to have made it plain that the proletariat would have to
play the leading part in pushing the bourgeoisieinto power and that, if
and when they had been so pushed, their rule would be feeble. The
autocracy once destroyed, the bourgeoisiewould not of itself be strong
enough to offer much obstacle to a subsequent Socialist revolution, as
soon as the proletariat was ready for it. But how soon could the proletar-
iat be ready? According to the Marxian view of history, no system was
ever superseded until its full potentialities had been realized, and it had
become a 'fetter' on the further advance of the 'powers of production'.
But a successful bourgeoisrevolution would be made in Russia with the
forces of capitalism still far short of their potentialities, and therefore
presumably with a long interval to come before they could be super-
seded. Or rather, that would have been the position, had the revolution
in Russia been thought of as standing by itself, and not as part of a
general revolution involving the overthrow of Western capitalism as a
whole. Some Russian Marxists - especially among the Mensheviks -
did think of it in this way: the Bolsheviks did not. In their view, the
future held in store, not a series of independent national revolutions, but
a single historic movement in the course of which capitalism as an inter-
national system would be superseded by Socialism. The timing of this
single revolution would accordingly be settled, not in Russia, but in the
more advanced West; and as soon as the Western revolution occurred,
the time for its equivalent would have arrived in Russia, whatever the
relative backwardness of the Russian economy might be. There would
still have to be in Russia two successive revolutions- the first to put
the bourgeoisiein power and the second to overthrow them - for that
142 THE BOLSHEVIK
was part of the Marxian doctrine which went practically unquestioned.
But how soon the second revolution would follow the first would depend
on the timing of the Socialist revolution in the more advanced capitalist
countries.
Thus, the help the Bolsheviks looked for from the proletariat of the
West was twofold. The Western workers were to prevent the Western
capitalist-imperialists from intervening to defeat the Russian workers;
and they were also, having overthrown their own capitalists, to provide
out of the superior economic resources of the West the means of
developing large-scale production in Russia and of helping the Russian
proletariat to grow bigger and also to take in hand the modernization
of Russian agriculture in accordance with Socialist conceptions of
large-scale collective cultivation. The Socialists of the West were to
become providers of capital and technical assistance to backward
Russia, as well as to enable the Russian proletariat to settle accounts
with its own class-enemies unhampered by foreign imperialist inter-
vention.
Without this double help, the problem of Socialist revolution in
Russia looked insoluble, not so much because either Czarism or the
Russian bourgeoisielooked too strong to be overthrown as because even
a momentarily successful Socialist revolution confined to Russia would
be bound to break down in face of the undeveloped state of the country
and of the impracticability of turning the peasantry into a revolutionary
force with the very limited resources which would be at the disposal of
the workers in the hour of their first success. But the Bolsheviks knew
that proletarian revolution was bound to occur; and in I9I7 they felt
tolerably sure that it would occur soon, for the war itself, which they
regarded as an outcome of imperialist rivalries, appeared to be hastening
the downfall of capitalism and maturing the Western proletariat for its
historic tasks. Moreover, the collapse of the undeveloped Russian
economy under the strain of war had been preparing the way for
revolution in Russia itself - that is, for bourgeoisrevolution - despite
the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie. When the Czarist system broke
down in the early months of I9I7 and a sort of bourgeois revolution
actually occurred, it seemed as if the Russian proletariat would need
only to wait for the expected Socialist revolution in the West and would
then be able, with Western help, easily to overturn the feeble regime
which had temporarily replaced the old autocracy.
But, in the event, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin's influence, decided
not to wait, but to seize an authority which the Russian bourgeoisie
had already let drop and the rival Socialist parties appeared quite
unable to exercise. They did this, expecting failure should the prole-
tarian revolution in the West not mature in time to come to their help,
RE VOLUTION I43
-and hoping that their own initiative would be of some effect in bringing
the crisis in the West to a head. When the expected revolution in the
advanced capitalist countries failed to develop directly out of the war,
they continued to hope for it and to scan the horizon eagerly for signs
of renewed crisis and revolt; and in the meantime they had to carry on
with their own revolution without Western aid. In doing this, they
could hardly avoid gradually changing their minds. When the civil
war was over and foreign military intervention no longer an immediate
danger, the Bolsheviks were confronted with the miracle that their
movement had survived; and they would have been inhuman had they
not come to feel that it might be possible at any rate to advance some
distance towards 'Socialism in one country', however formidable the
,obstacles still seemed to be, in theory as well as in practice. N.E.P. was,
no doubt, a bitter pill to swallow; but Lenin made the party see it as a
retreat rather than a rout. Before the end of the period dealt with in
Mr. Carr's present volume, Lenin had been able to proclaim that the
retreat was over and that the emphasis was shifting to forms of economic
planning which implied that the Soviet peoples had at least the chance of
consolidating the Socialist revolution, even if capitalism remained for
a considerable time in control of the most advanced sectors of the
world economy.
All these points are fully stated in Mr. Carr's analysis of events and
opinions, though they are not brought together to make as clear a
picture as they might have made. Mr. Carr correctly uses them to
explain how very uncertain the Bolsheviks - including even Lenin -
were about the constructive side of the revolution at the time when they
seized power. Almost to the point at which they became the Govern-
ment, they had been thinking in terms of being the opposition, or at
most of controlling the Government from outside by virtue of their
command over the workers in large-scale industry. They had never
planned for taking over a productive system in a state of sheer collapse
and for making it work somehow in face of a hostile world. This,
however, was what they found themselves called upon to do; and in the
circumstances all they could do at the outset was to tell the industrial
workers to take power into their own hands and to improvise as best
they could. The forms of 'workers' control' in factories, on railways,
and in other forms of enterprise that grew up during the first phase of
the Bolshevik Revolution were not the outcome of any advance plan-
ning, or even consistent with Bolshevik ideas of what was the right form
of 'workers' democracy'. They were the only possible ways of dealing
with the actual situation- the industrial equivalents of the peasants'
action in seizing the land - which was also quite out of line with Bol-
shevik ideas of how the land ought to be used under Socialist control.
I44 THE BOLSHEVIK
Indeed, almost the only clear idea the Bolshevik leaders had about the
conduct of production after the 'revolution' was that the advance of
Socialism was absolutely bound up with that of large-scale enterprise
in both industry and agriculture, and with a carrying further of the
tendency of developed capitalism towards concentration and centraliza-
tion of control. They regarded as incurably reactionary and obsolescent
both the individual peasant holding and the small-scale enterprise of
individual craftsmen and artels or Co-operatives made up of such
persons, and also the enterprise of petty traders of every sort. They
regarded the growing centralization of capitalism as a preparing of the
way for the still greater centralization which would follow the victory
of the proletariat; and when they spoke of 'workers' control', they had
usually in mind, not the control over a factory or other enterprise of
the particular workers employed in it, but the collective class-control
of the entire working class organized in a proletarian dictatorship.
They encouraged the peasants to seize the landlords' lands and the
workers to seize and run the factories, not because they regarded the
results as consistent with the conditions of Socialism, but because these
seizures were alike necessary parts of the destructive work of the
Revolution - the only ways open of destroying the power of the land-
lords and of the capitalist class. They had not the smallest intention of
allowing the peasants to remain permanently in individual occupation
of the lands which they were to seize, or the workers to establish a
lasting syndicalist control of the instruments of industry. For them,
Socialism - and a fortiori Communism - meant centralized class-
control and the organization of production on the largest scale called
for by the possibilities of advanced technological development. The
Bolsheviks' coalition with the Left Social Revolutionaries could not
possibly have endured for long in face of the complete disagreement on
this issue. The S.R.s - Left as well as Right - were believers in
spontaneous group activity, in localism, and in the creative capacity of
the peasant masses: the Bolsheviks, whose strength lay among the
workers in the great industrial establishments, regarded all these ideas
as instances of reactionary, petit bourgeoisromanticism, and as obstacles
to the revolution's advance. As for syndicalist notions of 'workers'
control', which had an obvious appeal to the industrial proletariat, the
Bolsheviks dismissed them as equally 'utopian', and as plainly incon-
sistent with the need to place the entire equipment of industry at the
collective disposal of the new proletarian ruling class.
Mr. Carr has a useful appendix, in which he discusses the views of
Marx and Engels on the peasant; and a considerable part of his volume
is concerned with the Bolshevik attitude towards the peasants at the
successive stages of the Revolution. Like much besides, this attitude
RE VOLUTION 145
was affected by the sharp distinction drawn by Lenin, on the basis of
what Marx and Engels had written, between the bourgeois and the
proletarian revolutions. For the purposes of the bourgeois revolution,
Lenin insisted, the peasantry had to be thought of mainly as a whole,
and its discontents and land-hunger exploited in order to turn it against
the feudal State and the landowners. As soon, however, as the prole-
tarian phase of the revolution set in, the aim of the revolutionaries must
be to split the peasant class and to turn the poorer peasants against the
kulaks - defined broadly as those peasants who employed regular
hired labour. To organize the poorer, and especially the landless,
wage-working peasants, and to persuade them to make common cause
with the urban proletariat, was a necessary step in the conversion of the
bourgeoisinto the Socialist revolution. There were, however, in reality,
not two groups of peasants, but three - the landless, the kulaks, and the
middle peasants cultivating small farms without the aid of hired labour;
and the effect of the land-redistribution during the first phase of the
revolution was to promote a large proportion of the poor peasants into
the middle group. Although the Bolsheviks did what they could both
to bring about the establishment of state farms replacing specialist large
farms previously under private ownership and to encourage collective
and co-operative cultivation of the land seized by the peasants, these
efforts met with scant success, and most of the re-distributed land
passed to individual peasant families not employing hired labour. Thus
the first phase of the revolution strengthened rural individualism,
which the Bolsheviks - unlike the Social Revolutionaries - were
determined to uproot as soon as they got the chance, regarding it as
both economically obsolete and socially reactionary. But both during
the period of the civil war and subsequently the overriding necessity
was to get higher immediate total production in order to keep the towns
fed, even if this involved the postponement of measures designed to
lead to higher production in the long run. It was impossible either
while the civil war lasted or subsequently as long as the threat of famine
continued to take any steps that might so antagonize the individual
peasant cultivators as to lead them to take sides against the revolution;
and as the difficulties of forced grain collection increased, it became
necessary to provide incentives to the land-holding peasants to grow
more and to supply their surpluses to the areas of deficiency instead of
concealing them. Thus, under N.E.P., Bolshevik policy was temporarily
based on the giving of high inducements both to the kulaks and to the
middle peasants; but never for a moment did Lenin or his chief lieuten-
ants give up their intention of returning to a policy of large-scale
agricultural cultivation as soon as the conditions allowed this to be
done. Indeed, whereas in the earlier stages of the revolution the attack
c
146 THE BOLSHEVIK
had been directed mainly at the kulaks proper, as petty exploiters
employing landless workers, when the renewed onslaught came, in the
form of the drive for collectivization, the conception of a kulak had
undergone great enlargement, to include many of the middle peasants,
and the entire system of individual cultivation came under fire as
inconsistent with Socialist modernity of technique and with the pro-
letarian way of life.
In industry, meanwhile, the period of War Communism had made
an end of the system of 'workers' control' dominated by factory com-
mittees, and also of syndicalist forms of control such as had been
installed by the Railwaymen's Trade Union. The Trade Unions, at
the beginning of the Bolshevik rule, were still largely dominated
by Mensheviks, who had a large following among the skilled workers;
but the Bolsheviks succeeded at a fairly early stage in establishing a
firm control over the central Trade Union federation, which was
organized on industrial lines. They even split the Railwaymen's Union,
in which the syndicalist element was well entrenched, and created in
its place a more amenable rival Union. The Trade Unions, moreover,
as they developed their hierarchies and corps of officials, showed a
strong centralizing tendency which fitted in with Bolshevik policy and
brought them into conflict with the marked localism of the factory
committees. The Trade Union leaders thus became the allies of the
Bolshevik party in combating 'workers' control' in the factories, and
came to act more and more as agents of the central power.
Then arose the controversy over the question of the role of Trade
Unions under a system of proletarian dictatorship. Were they to
continue as independent bodies, concerned mainly with protecting
the workers' interests, or were they to become in effect a part of the
Workers' State, devoting themselves mainly to promotion of higher
output, to the transference of workers to the jobs in which they were
needed most in the general interest, and to the administration of labour
laws and social services on the State's behalf? The first of these posi-
tions had its upholders in the early stages of the Revolution, but was
fairly soon outlawed in its extreme form. This, however, did not
involve full acceptance of the opposing view, but rather a choice among
a number of alternative positions ranging from complete 'statization'
of Trade Unionism to the maintenance of a degree of independent
power based on an attempted division of functions. One group, while
accepting the need for the Unions to work for higher output and planned
distribution of man-power, held that they should be regarded as inde-
pendent agencies for these purposes, acting side by side with the State
rather than in subordination to it. This was broadly the standpoint of
the successive 'oppositions' that grew up inside the Trade Union
REVOLUTION I47
movement after the liquidation of the 'syndicalists'. But the Party
view was that there could not be any room for 'separation of powers'
within the Workers' State, and that the Trade Unions must accept the
decisions of the economic departments and planning agencies of the
Government, and of the Party as the final policy-making authority,
receiving in return large functions in the administration of social service
benefits and in representation in the Labour Commissariat. On these
terms, with the Trade Union centre dominated by Party members
removable at the Party's will if they offended against its discipline, the
Unions soon became virtually a part of the state machine and keen
exponents of a policy of centralized control against the advocates of
control of industry by the factory representatives. This became a matter
of high importance when, during the period of the civil war, industry
had to be strictly subordinated to the needs of defence, and when, in
revulsion from the experience of workers' committee control, the Party
became insistent on the need for unfettered one-man management.
It was no less important when, as part of N.E.P., the budgets of the
various nationalized industries were strictly separated from the State
budget, accounting methods introduced, and public enterprises ordered
to pay their way instead of looking to the Treasury to meet their deficits.
Without control over the Trade Unions, the Bolsheviks would have
been able to face neither the unemployment which this policy engen-
dered nor the sharp break with the equalitarian tendencies of the
Revolution in its earlier stages.
Mr. Carr brings out excellently the nature of this revulsion against
'equality'. At first, the tendency of the Revolution was to regard work
as a form of service to the Workers' State, to be enforced upon all and
to be requited by payments which should differ as little as possible from
occupation to occupation or from individual to individual. Complete
equality was not attempted; but there was an active attempt to reduce
differentials and an insistence on a minimum standard for all as the
primary consideration. Incidentally, as inflation developed, this
standard had to be achieved more and more by means of payments in
kind. N.E.P. both undermined the system of payments in kind, and
shifted the emphasis from the minimum to the offering of incentives
and to payments corresponding to service rendered as measured by
market demand. 'Equality' was more and more denounced as a petit
bourgeois prejudice; and Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme was
cited in favour of inequality based on differences in service rendered as
the correct principle of distribution during the transitional stage between
capitalism and Communism proper. The Trade Unions, under
Bolshevik influence, accepted this change of attitude- though not
without a good deal of internal friction.
148 THE BOLSHEVIK
The Russian Co-operative movement underwent similar transforma-

tions. At the outset, it was mainly controlled by the Social Revolution-
aries in the villages, and by S.R.s and Mensheviks in the towns. It had
three main sections - consumers' stores, producers' Co-operatives or
artels, and peasant Co-operatives organized in Credit Unions. These last
were engaged not in collective cultivation of the land but in marketing
of peasant supplies and in purchasing of agricultural requisites. The
consumers' societies were of vital importance as wholesale and retail
distributing agencies in a situation in which private trade had hopelessly
broken down; and the shortage of consumers' goods, involving an urgent
need to make the most of small-scale artisan production, especially in
the rural areas, gave the producers' Co-operatives a position of great
temporary importance till large-scale industry could be restored and
developed. The Credit Unions were of less importance because infla-
tion was rapidly destroying their resources. The Bolsheviks, then, had
to make large use of both consumers' and producers' societies, but
were by no means prepared to leave them under the control of leaders
hostile to the policies of centralization. There were some who advo-
cated the complete liquidation of the consumers' Co-operatives and
their replacement by 'consumers' communes' based on compulsory
membership and serving the entire populations of their areas. But this
policy, throughout the period covered by Mr. Carr's volume, ran much
too strongly against the Co-operative tradition to be successfully
enforced. What occurred in fact was that, after a number of shifts of
policy, the central body of the Co-operatives (Tsentrosoyuz) was
brought firmly under Bolshevik control by the replacement of most of
its leaders, and the Co-operatives then in effect became distributive
agencies of the State, side by side with State shops and factory supply
agencies. Under N.E.P. consumers' Co-operatives for a time regained
a good deal of independence; but the Bolsheviks had no intention of
allowing them to establish themselves lastingly as a 'State within the
State', and, when N.E.P. came to an end, their independence virtually
ended with it. The producers' Co-operatives, almost entirely engaged
in small-scale production, had little connection with the central State,
and were left mainly to the supervision of the regional state authorities,
which continued to encourage them as long as consumers' needs could
not be met by factory production; but they were always regarded as
survivals of obsolete methods and as destined gradually to die out in
face of the advance of large-scale industry.
Out of a host of matters dealt with in Mr. Carr's thorough study,
I have been able, in a short review-article, to pick out for discussion
only a very few. I have so far said nothing of the control of public
finance, of the attitudes adopted towards banking, or of the relations
REVOL UTION I49
between the State and industry in their financial aspects. The national-
ization of banking had long occupied a high place among revolutionary
priorities; for the banks were regarded as the main controlling agencies
of capitalism in its developed form of 'Finance-Capital' and as key
positions for the planning of economic development. But little con-
sideration had been given to the respective places of budgetary and
banking financial policy in a society in which the main industries had
come to be owned and operated by the State. Nor had much been
done towards formulating any policy for a Socialist Finance Minister
to follow either in framing his budget or in controlling the issue of
money. Even if plans had been laid, they could have been of little use
in facing the actual situation with which the Bolsheviks had to deal on
assuming power or subsequently during the civil war. The tax system
had broken down completely, and there was no possibility of instituting
a new one in the prevailing conditions. There was, in effect, no expe-
dient except the printing press for meeting either the expenses of the
State or the claims of industry, for which the State had to become
responsible in order to keep production going at all and to prevent mass
discharges of workers. Accordingly, inflation, which had already gone
a long distance before the Revolution, continued uncontrollably and at
a rapidly increasing rate. Banks became mere intermediaries for passing
on money printed by state authority, and it soon seemed easier for the
Finance Commissariat to undertake the tasks of handing out the means
of payment directly. Nationalization of banking was followed by its
abolition - that is, by its conversion into a function of the Finance
Commissariat; and this fusion lasted until N.E.P. required a sudden
reversal. The detachment of industrial financing from the State budget
and the requirement that enterprises should pay their way involved the
setting-up of agencies for rationing credit apart from the State, which
had enough to do in facing its new task of attempting to balance the
budget. Accordingly, banks were brought back into existence, under
the co-ordinating control of a new Central Bank, which had the task of
bringing the currency back into some sort of stable relation to produc-
tion and of co-operating with the Finance Commissariat in making an
end of the recurring inflation of the periods of war and of 'War Com-
munism'.
Mr. Carr's book ends with the beginnings, in I923, of the transition
from N.E.P. to the planned economy towards which the leaders of the
Soviet Union by then felt strong enough to attempt a renewed advance.
It ends, too, with the passing of Lenin as the active protagonist of the
Revolution. Throughout this study, in this economic volume as much
as in its predecessor, Lenin dominates the scene, and appears plainly as
the man who, on every critical occasion, not only knew his mind but
I50 THE BOLSHEVIK
also made his will prevail. Not of course that he was never defeated;
but his reverses were always on secondary issues and in the long run
he got what he wanted as far as the circumstances allowed. This power
over the Party and over the whole complex of revolutionary organiza-
tions Lenin owed partly to his prodigious strength of will; but he owed
it also to the very fact that his inflexible convictions made it possible for
him to be endlessly flexible in tactics and gave him an uncanny know-
ledge of the difference between concessions that could be made without
loss of control and driving power and concessions which once made
became irrevocable. He had constructed for himself, on foundations
laid by Marx, a simple set of principles of action which gave all his
shifts of immediate policy a consistent quality that could not be mis-
taken. These principles included, as a derivative from Marx's theory
of class and of the historical tendency towards the concentration of
capital, a firm belief in centralization, in large-scale enterprise, and in
what came to be called 'democratic centralism' as the essential of a
method corresponding to class needs. Anything organized on a small
scale he thought of as savouring of the illusions of petit-bourgeois
individualism: anything large and modern aroused his instinctive
sympathy. The comprehensive project of electrification-the fore-
runner of the five-year plans of later years - he greeted with enthu-
siasm above all as the means whereby both industry and agriculture
could be transformed in accordance with the most advanced techniques
of mass-production - a curious contrast to the view of Kropotkin, who
welcomed electric power in the belief that it would make possible a
revival and diffusion of small-scale, workshop production. Lenin
deeply admired German planning, including Rathenau's organization
of war industry; and he was greatly influenced by German ways of
thought. In the situation in which Russia stood in 1917 and during the
subsequent years of war and economic collapse, these beliefs provided,
in all probability, the only foundation for action capable of saving the
Revolution. If the libertarians had had their way during these years,
the Russians could not have emerged from the terrific misfortunes and
sufferings which fell upon them to build the 'Socialism in one country'
that, for good or ill, they have actually built. If it is assumed that the
Revolution was worth preserving, Lenin is assuredly to be acclaimed
as the hero who saved it. The very qualities, however, that enabled him
to achieve this miracle left their stamp on what came out of the struggle
and prepared the way for the Soviet Union as it became when Stalin
had replaced Lenin as its paramount leader. This is not least true in
respect of what Lenin did towards shaping the Bolshevik party and
giving it the sovereign position it holds today, defacto, in relation to the
formal structure of Soviet government. One thing that stands out very
REVOLUTION ISI
clearly in Mr. Carr's narrative -taking his two volumes together -

is that the party was but a feeble instrument at the time when it seized
power and, through the years of Lenin's life, gained strength and
coherence only by gradual stages, and, above all, because of the driving
force he gave it. The maker of the Soviet 'one-party' State, with the
party as a highly centralized policy-making body, working from the
centre downwards and not from the local groups upwards, was Lenin,
and to all intents and purposes no one else. The domination of the
party was to be carried much further after his death; but he had set it
definitely on the road to universal de facto sovereignty over the whole
society.
These qualities and achievements Mr. Carr not only brings out very
clearly, but also, I think, likes and admires; for I think he shares Lenin's
preference for bigness and has a preference for being on the side of
history's big battalions. In persons like me, who have no objection to
being called 'utopians' and have an intense dislike for bigness, they stir,
not liking or admiration, but strong distaste. I cannot deny that, in
order to save 'the Revolution', Lenin had to act as he did; and I cannot
deny that he was right to do so, because 'the Revolution' needed saving.
But for all that, I cannot forget that Lenin believed in bigness and
power, not only as means of saving the Revolution, but as essential
elements in the Revolution itself - as of its essence, not simply for
defeating the counter-revolution, but also in relation to its constructive
tasks and to the society that was to be built up on its foundations. No
doubt, he also believed that, some day, the State would 'wither away',
and 'government of men' give place to 'administration of things'. But
even then he looked forward to their being administered on a vaster
and vaster scale, and believed that government would 'wither away'
only because, when class-differences had vanished, everybody would
come to think alike. I find that sort of 'utopia' a nightmare. Mr. Carr
does not say plainly what he feels about it; but I fancy he at least half
likes the notion. Whether that is true or not, he has done a tremendous
job of careful analysis, for which everyone who wishes to understand
the Russian Revolution ought to be profoundly grateful.*
G. D. H. COLE
* E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution vol. II. Macmillan, I952,

19I7-1923,
397 PP., 30/-.
Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism
Author(s): Ian Kershaw
Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Understanding Nazi Germany (Apr.,
2004), pp. 239-254
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Accessed: 08-08-2015 08:50 UTC
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Journalof Contemporary HistoryCopyright? 2004 SAGEPublications,London,Thousand Oaks, CA and
New Delhi, Vol 39(2), 239-254. ISSN0022-0094.
DOI: 10. 177/0022009404042130
lan Kershaw
Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism
There was something distinctiveabout nazism, even compared with other

brutaldictatorships.That muchseemsclear.A regimeresponsiblefor the most
destructivewar in history, leaving upwardsof 40 million people dead, that
perpetrated,on behalf of the most modern,economicallyadvanced,and cul-
turallydevelopedcountryon the continentof Europe,the worst genocideyet
known to mankind,has an obvious claim to singularity.But where did the
uniquenesslie? Historians, political scientists and, not least, the countless
victimsof the nazi regimehave puzzledover this questionsince 1945.
One set of answerscame quickly,and quitenaturally,afterthe war to those
who had fought against the nazi menace. The Germanmilitaristic,Herren-
menschculturethat for centurieshad soughtdominancein centraland eastern
Europewas takento be the key in this approach.A.J.P.Taylor'sThe Courseof
GermanHistory,writtenin 1944, might be seen as characteristicof its genre.'
Its cruditywas, in the circumstances,perhapsunderstandable.But as an expla-
nation, it led nowhere(as could also be said of the most modernvariantof the
'peculiarityof Germancharacter'interpretationin Daniel Goldhagen'scontro-
versialbook, emphasizinga uniqueand longstandingGermandesireto elimi-
nate the Jews).2From the Germanside came, unsurprisingly,a diametrically
opposed position, representedin differentways by FriedrichMeinecke and
GerhardRitter: that Germany'shealthy course of developmenthad been
blown completelyoff track by the first world war, opening the way for the
type of demagogicpolitics that let Hitler into power.3The interpretationsaw
This article was first delivered in 2002 as a Trevelyan Lecture at the University of Cambridge.
1 A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History (London 1945). 'In the course of a thousand
years, the Germans have experienced everything except normality', wrote Taylor. 'Only the
normal person . . . has never set his stamp on German history' (paperback edn, 1961, 1). Any
positive qualities in Germans were in his eyes 'synonymous with ineffectiveness': 'There were, and
I daresay are, many millions of well-meaning kindly Germans; but what have they added up to
politically?', he asked (viii-ix). The attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 was, for him, 'the climax,
the logical conclusion of German history' (260). The long pedigree of German abnormality, and
its climax in nazism, is also a theme of Rohan O'Butler, The Roots of National Socialism (London
1941); William Montgomery McGovern, From Luther to Hitler. The History of Nazi-Fascist
Philosophy (London 1946); and, in essence, of William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich (New York 1960).
2 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (New York 1996).
3 Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesbaden 1946); Gerhard Ritter, Europa
und die deutsche Frage. Betrachtungen iiber die geschichtliche Eigenart des deutschen Staats-
denkens (Munich 1948).
240 Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 39 No 2
nazism as part of a European problem of the degradation of politics. However,

this in turn left open what was unique to Germany in producing such a radical
strain of inhumane politics. Stirred by Fritz Fischer's analysis of Germany's
'quest for world power' in 1914, locating the blame for the first world war in
the expansionist aims of Germany's elites,4 and by Ralf Dahrendorf's emphasis
on the essence of the 'German problem' as social and political backwardness
in tandem with a rapidly advancing capitalist and industrial economy,5 a new
generation of German historians, led by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, now turned the
spotlight on a 'special path' (Sonderweg) to modernity.6 Defence of privilege
by threatened but entrenched social and political elites provided the focus for
this interpretation of the German peculiarities which saw a line of continuity
running from Bismarck to Hitler. By the 1980s, however, this interpretation
was itself running into a wall of criticism, beginning with the attack on
'German peculiarities' launched by Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn, who
undermined much of the case that had been made for the continued domi-
nance of pre-industrial elites and stressed instead the common features which
Germany shared with other modern, capitalist economies at the time.7 Oddly,
interpretations have since that time tended to shift back in emphasis to what,
if in completely different fashion, Meinecke and Ritter had been claiming so
much earlier: that the first world war and its aftermath, rather than deeper
continuities with Imperial Germany, explain the nazi phenomenon. Detlev
Peukert, for instance, in a superb short study of the Weimar Republic,
expressly rejected the Sonderweg argument as an explanation of nazism,
stressing instead a 'crisis of classical modernity' during the first German
democracy.8 Perhaps, it may be thought, this just reformulates the problem of
German uniqueness. Perhaps, the thought lingers, the Sonderweg argument, or
at least a strand or two of it, has been thrown out too abruptly.9 My concern
here, in any case, is not directly the Sonderweg debate, but the uniqueness of
nazism itself, and of the dictatorship it spawned. Unavoidably, nevertheless,
this raises questions about mentalities, prompting some reconsideration about
what was special about Germany that led it to produce nazism.
To demonstrate uniqueness, comparison is necessary. That ought to be
4 Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Diisseldorf 1961).

5 Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (London 1968).
6 Among Hans-Ulrich Wehler's prolific output, Das Kaiserreich 1871-1918 (Gottingen 1973),
serves as a paradigmatic expression of the thesis. He has modified, though maintained, the
Sonderweg approach in his magisterial work, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd.3, 1849-1914
(Munich 1995), 460-89, 1284-95. Another prominent proponent of the Sonderweg thesis, Jiirgen
Kocka, put the case succinctly in his article, 'German History before Hitler: The Debate about the
German Sonderweg', Journal of Contemporary History, 23, 1 (January 1988), 3-16.
7 David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford 1984).
8 Detlev J.K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik. Krisenjahreder Klassischen Moderne (Frankfurt
am Main 1987), 271 for the explicit rejection of the Sonderweg approach.
9 On this point, Peter Pulzer, 'Special Paths or Main Roads? Making Sense of German History',
Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture, 22 May 2002 (as yet unpublished) offers some valuable reflec-
tions and insights.
Hitlerand the Uniquenessof Nazism
Kershaw: 241
obvious, but seems often not to be so. Alongside those theories that looked no
further than German development to explain nazism, ran, from the start,
attempts to locate it in new types of political movement and organization,
dating from the turmoil produced by the first world war: whether as a German
form of the European-wide phenomenon of fascism, or as the German mani-
festation of something also found only after 1918, the growth of totalitarian-
ism. To consider all the variants of these theories and approaches would take
us far out of our way here, and would in any case not be altogether profit-
able.10So let me begin to make my position clear at this point. Both 'fascism'
and 'totalitarianism' are difficult concepts to use, and have attracted much
criticism, some of it justified. In addition, going back to their usage in the Cold
War, they have usually been seen as opposed rather than complementary con-
cepts. However, I see no problem in seeing nazism as a form of each of them,
as long as we are looking for common features, not identity. It is not hard to
find features that nazism had in common with fascist movements in other
parts of Europe and elements of its rule shared with regimes generally seen as
totalitarian. The forms of organization and the methods and function of mass
mobilization of the NSDAP, for example, bear much resemblance to those of
the Italian Fascist Party and of other fascist movements in Europe. In the case
of totalitarianism, superficial similarities, at least, with the Soviet regime under
Stalin can be seen in the nazi regime's revolutionary elan, its repressive
apparatus, its monopolistic ideology, and its 'total claim' on the ruled. So I
have no difficulty in describing German National Socialism both as a specific
form of fascism and as a particular expression of totalitarianism.
Even so, comparison reveals obvious and significant differences. Race, for
example, plays only a secondary role in Italian fascism. In nazism it is, of
course, absolutely central. As regards totalitarianism, anything beyond the
most superficial glance reveals that the structures of the one-party state, the
leadership cult and, not least, the economic base of the nazi and Soviet systems
are quite different. The typology is, in each case, markedly weakened. It can,
of course, still be useful, depending upon the art and skill of the political
10 I exploredthesein some detailin the secondchapterof my TheNazi Dictatorship.Problems

and Perspectivesof Interpretation(4th edn, London2000). See also my reservationsabout the
totalitarianismconcept in the essay 'TotalitarianismRevisited: Nazism and Stalinism in
ComparativePerspective',Tel AviverJahrbuchfur deutsche Geschichte,23 (1994), 23-40.
Amonga libraryof works on fascism,RogerGriffin,The Nature of Fascism(London1991), is
outstandingin conceptualizationand Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945
(London1995), in typology,while MichaelMann'sas yet unpublishedstudy,Fascists,offersthe
most profoundcomparativeanalysisundertakenof the supportersof fascist movements,their
motivation,and their actions. I am extremelygratefulto ProfessorMann for a previewof this
importantworkand its interlinked,companionvolume,TheDark-Sideof Democracy:Explaining
Ethnic Cleansing(not yet published).Recent anthologieson totalitarianism,a concept revived
since the fall of Soviet communism,include EckhardJesse (ed.), Totalitarismusim 20. Jahr-
hundert.EineBilanzderinternationalen Forschung(2ndedn, Bonn1999);and EnzoTraverso,Le
Totalitarisme: le XXe siecleen debat(Paris2001).
scientist, historian, or sociologist involved, and can prompt valuable empirical

comparative work of the kind too rarely undertaken. But when it comes to
explaining the essence of the nazi phenomenon, it is less than satisfying.
Whether seen as fascism, totalitarianism, or both, there is still something lack-
ing. Martin Broszat hinted at this in the introduction to his masterpiece, Der
Staat Hitlers, in 1969, when he indicated the difficulty of placing nazism in
any typology of rule.1"Ultimately, the singular, the unique in nazism, remains
more important, if more elusive, than what it has in common with other move-
ments or regimes.
In the eyes of the non-specialist, the ordinary layman, nazism's historic
perhaps metahistoric - significance can be summed up in two words: war and
genocide. It takes us back to the self-evident initial claim to singularity with
which this article began. By war, we naturally mean here the war of unparal-
leled barbarity that the nazis launched, especially in eastern Europe. And by
genocide, we think primarily of the destruction of the European Jews, but also
of the wider-ranging genocidal intent to restructure racially the whole of the
European continent. Both words, war and genocide - or perhaps better:
world war and murder of the Jews - automatically evoke direct association
with Hitler. After all, they lay at the heart of his Weltanschauung, his world-
view; they were in essence what he stood for. This is the obvious reason why
one significant strand of historical interpretation has remained insistent that
there is no need to look any further in the search for nazism's uniqueness than
the personality and ideas of its leader. 'It was indeed Hitler's "Weltan-
schauung" and nothing else that mattered in the end', Karl-Dietrich Bracher
summed up, many years ago.12Nazism's uniqueness was Hitler, no more and
no less. Nazism was Hitlerism, pure and simple.
There was a certain easy attractiveness to the argument. At first sight, it
seemed compelling. But, put at its most forthright, as so often, by Klaus
Hildebrand, the thesis was bound to raise the hackles of those, prominent
among them Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, who sought more complex
reasons for the calamity wrought on Germany and Europe and found them in
the internal structures and workings of nazi rule, in which Hitler's hand was
often none too evident.13 So was born the long-running, everyday story of
historical folk: the debate between the 'intentionalists', who looked no further
than Hitler's clear, ideological programme, systematically and logically
followed through, and the 'structuralists' or 'functionalists', who pointed to an
11 MartinBroszat,Der StaatHitlers(Munich1969), 9.
12 Karl DietrichBracher,'The Role of Hitler' in WalterLaqueur(ed.), Fascism.A Reader's
Guide(Harmondsworth1979), 201.
13 See the directlyopposedcontributionsof KlausHildebrandand Hans Mommsenin Michael
Bosch(ed.), Personlichkeitund Strukturin der Geschichte(Dusseldorf1977), 55-71 and further
referencesto the controversyin Kershaw,The Nazi Dictatorship,chap. 4. Martin Broszat's
brilliantessay, 'SozialeMotivationund Fuhrer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus',Vierteljahrs-
'Hitlerism'
heftefur Zeitgeschichte,18 (1970), 392-409, also amountedto a subtleassaulton the
argument.
Kershaw:Hitlerand the Uniquenessof Nazism 243
administratively chaotic regime, lacking clear planning, and stumbling from

crisis to crisis in its own dynamic spiral of self-destructiveness.
The 'Hitlerism' argument will not go away. In fact, there are some signs,
amid the current preoccupation with sexuality in history (as in everything
else), that the old psycho-historical interpretations are making a comeback,
and in equally reductionist fashion. Hence, we have recent attempts to reduce
the disaster of nazism to Hitler's alleged homosexuality, or supposed syphilis.14
In each case, one or two bits of dubious hearsay evidence are surrounded by
much inference, speculation and guesswork to come up with a case for world
history shaped fatefully and decisively by Hitler's 'dark secret'. Reduced to
absurdity, a rent-boy in Munich or a prostitute in Vienna thereby carries
ultimate responsibility for the evils of nazism.
However, the 'structural-functionalist' argument is also weak at its core. In
reducing Hitler to a 'weak dictator',"sat times coming close, it often seemed, to
underestimating him grossly, even to writing him out of the script, and in
downplaying ideology into no more than a tool of propagandistic mobiliza-
tion, this line of interpretation left the central driving-force of nazism ulti-
mately a mystery; the cause of the (ultimately unprovable) self-destructive
dynamism hard to explain. My own work on the Third Reich since the mid-
1980s, culminating in my Hitler biography, was prompted by the need to
overcome this deep divide in interpretation, which was by no means as sterile
as is sometimes claimed. The short analysis of Hitler's power which I wrote in
1990, and even more so the biography that followed,16 were attempts to
reassert Hitler's absolute centrality while at the same time placing the actions
of even such a powerful dictator in the context of the forces, internal and
external, which shaped the exercise of his power. Writing these books clarified
in certain ways how I would understand the uniqueness of nazism. I will
return shortly to Hitler's own role in that uniqueness.
Let us meanwhile go back to war and genocide as the hallmarks of nazism.
Surprisingly, they played remarkably little part, except on the fringes, in the
'intentionalist-structuralist' debates before the 1980s. Only since then, and in
good measure via the belated take-off of 'history from below' (as it was fre-
quently called), have the war, in which nazism came of its own, and the
murder of the Jews, that emanated from it, become the focus of sustained and
14 Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler (London 2001), for the argument, which has encoun-
tered widespread criticism, that Hitler was a homosexual. The syphilis argument, outrightly
rejected by those who have most thoroughly explored Hitler's medical history, notably Fritz
Redlich, Hitler. Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (New York/Oxford 1999), and Ernst Giiunther
Schenck, Patient Hitler. Eine medizinische Biographie (Diusseldorf 1989), has recently resurfaced
in an investigation - the most thorough imaginable of this topic - by Deborah Hayden, to
whom I am grateful for a preview of this, as yet, unpublished work.
15 A formulation which has become famous, coined by Hans Mommsen and first stated in a
footnote to his Beamtentum im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart 1966), 98, note 26. The debate ensuing
from the term is explored in my Nazi Dictatorship, op. cit., chap. 4.
16 Ian Kershaw, Hitler. A Profile in Power (London 1991, 2nd edn 2001);
Hitler, 1889-1936:
Hubris (London 1998); Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis (London 2000).
systematic research and fully integrated into the history of the nazi regime.
This research, given a massive boost through the opening of archives in the
former Soviet bloc after 1990, has not simply cast much new light on decision-
making processes and the escalatory genocidal phases within such a brutal
war, but has also revealed ever more plainly how far the complicity and par-
ticipation in the direst forms of gross inhumanity stretched.17This is, of course,
not sufficient in itself to claim uniqueness. But it does suggest that Hitler
alone, however important his role, is not enough to explain the extraordinary
lurch of a society, relatively non-violent before 1914, into ever more radical
brutality and such a frenzy of destruction.
The development of the nazi regime had at least two characteristics which
were unusual, even in comparison with other dictatorships. One was what
Hans Mommsen has dubbed 'cumulative radicalization'.18Normally, after the
initial bloody phase following a dictator's takeover of power when there is a
showdown with former opponents, the revolutionary dynamic sags. In Italy,
this 'normalizing' phase begins in 1925; in Spain, not too long after the end of
the Civil War. In Russia, under quite different conditions, there was a second,
unbelievably awful, phase of radicalization under Stalin, after the first wave
during the revolutionary turmoil then the extraordinarily violent civil war had
subsided in the 1920s. But the regime's radical ideological drive gave way to
boosting more conventional patriotism during the fight against the German
invader, before disappearing almost entirely after Stalin's death. Radicaliza-
tion, in other words, was temporary and fluctuating, rather than an intrinsic
feature of the system itself. So the 'cumulative radicalization' so central to
nazism is left needing an explanation.
Linked to this is the capacity for destruction - again extraordinary even for
dictatorships. This destructive capacity, though present from the outset, devel-
oped over time and in phases; against internal political, then increasingly,
'racial' enemies in spring 1933, across the spring and summer of 1935, and
during the summer and autumn of 1938; following this, the qualitative leap in
its extension to the Poles from autumn 1939 onwards; and the unleashing of
its full might in the wake of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The
unceasing radicalization of the regime, and the different stages in the unfolding
of its destructive capacity cannot, however, as has come to be generally recog-
nized, be explained by Hitler's commands and actions alone. Rather, they
followed countless initiatives from below, at many different levels of the
regime. Invariably, these occurred within a broad ideological framework asso-
ciated with Hitler's wishes and intentions. But those initiating the actions were
17 For a summaryof the advancesin research,see UlrichHerbert(ed.), Nationalsozialistische

Vernichtungspolitik1939-1945 (Frankfurtam Main 1998), 9-66. Much of the new researchis
incorporatedin the excellentsurveyby PeterLongerich,Politik der Vernichtung.Eine Gesamt-
darstellungdernationalsozialistischen (Munich/Zurich1998).
Judenverfolgung
18 Firstformulatedin Hans Mommsen,'DerNationalsozialismus.KumulativeRadikalisierung
und Selbstzerstorungdes Regimes',MeyersEnzyklopddisches Lexikon,Bd.16 (Mannheim1976),
785-90.
Kershaw: 245
seldom - except in the realms of foreign policy and war strategy - following
direct orders from Hitler and were by no means always ideologically moti-
vated. A whole panoply of motives was involved. What motivated the indi-
vidual - ideological conviction, career advancement, power-lust, sadism and
other factors - is, in fact, of secondary importance. Of primary significance is
that, whatever the motivation, the actions had the function of working
towards the accomplishment of the visionary goals of the regime, embodied in
the person of the Fiihrer.
We are getting closer to what we might begin to see as the unique character
of nazism, and to Hitler's part in that uniqueness. A set of counter-factual
propositions will underline how I see Hitler's indispensability. Let me put
them this way. No Hitler: no SS-police state, untrammelled by the rule of law,
and with such massive accretions of power, commencing in 1933. No Hitler:
no general European war by the late 1930s. No Hitler: an alternative war
strategy and no attack on the Soviet Union. No Hitler: no Holocaust, no state
policy aimed at wiping out the Jews of Europe. And yet: the forces that led to
the undermining of law, to expansionism and war, to the 'teutonic fury' that
descended upon the Soviet Union in 1941 and to the quest for ever more radi-
cal solutions to the 'Jewish Question', were not personal creations of Hitler.
Hitler's personality was, of course, a crucial component of any singularity of
nazism. Who would seriously deny it? But decisive for the unending radicalism
and unlimited destructive capacity of nazism was something in addition to
this: the leadership position of Hitler and the type of leadership he embodied.
The bonds between Hitler and his 'following' (at different levels of regime
and society) are vital here. A constant theme of my writing on Hitler and
National Socialism has been to suggest that they are best grasped through
Max Weber's quasi-religious concept of 'charismatic authority', in which irra-
tional hopes and expectations of salvation are projected onto an individual,
who is thereby invested with heroic qualities.19Hitler's 'charismatic leadership'
offered the prospect of national salvation - redemption brought about by
19 I first directly deployed Weber's concept to help explore the shaping of popular opinion in
'The Fiihrer Image and Political Integration: The Popular Conception of Hitler in Bavaria during
the Third Reich' in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (eds), Der 'Fiihrerstaat': Mythos
und Realitdt. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart 1981), 133-61,
'Alltagliches und AugIeralltagliches:ihre Bedeutung fur die Volksmeinung 1933-1939' in Detlev
Peukert and Jiirgen Reulecke (eds), Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beitrdge zur Geschichte des
Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal 1981), 273-92, and, more extensively, in The
'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford 1987). I deployed it more directly to
examine the nature of Hitler's power in Hitler: A Profile in Power, op. cit., as well as in a number
of essays, such as 'The Nazi State: an Exceptional State?', New Left Review, 176 (1989), 47-67
and "'Working towards the Fiihrer": Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler
Dictatorship',
Contemporary European History, 2 (1993), 103-18. The concept is also used by M. Rainer
Lepsius, 'Charismatic Leadership: Max Weber's Model and its Applicability to the Rule of Hitler'
in Carl Friedrich Graumann and Serge Moscovici (eds), Changing Conceptions of Leadership
(New York 1986), 53-66.
purging the impure and pernicious evil within - to rapidly expanding

numbers of Germans experiencing a comprehensive crisis of social and cul-
tural values as well as a total crisis of state and economy. Of course, mani-
festations of 'charismatic leadership' were far from confined to Germany in
the interwar period. But Hitler's was both different in character and more
far-reaching in impact than the charismatic forms seen anywhere else - some-
thing to which I will briefly return.
There was another big difference. Hitler's 'charismatic power', resting on the
invocation of the politics of national salvation, was superimposed after 1933
upon the instruments of the most modern state on the European continent -
upon an advanced economy (if currently crisis-ridden); upon a well-developed
and efficient system of enforcement and repression (if for the time being
weakened through political crisis); upon a sophisticated apparatus of state
administration (if at the time its exponents were demoralized by perceived
undermining of authority in a disputed and crisis-wracked democracy); and,
not least, upon a modernized, professional army (if temporarily enfeebled)
which was thirsting for a return to its glory days, for a chance to kick over the
traces of the ignominy summed up by the name 'Versailles' and for future
expansion to acquire European hegemony. Hitler's 'charismatic authority' and
the promise of national salvation fitted, if not perfectly, then nevertheless
extremely well, the need to unite the expectations of these varying strands of
the political elite. Hitler was, we might say, the intersection point of a number
of ideological traits which cumulatively, if not singly, made up the unique
political culture of which these elites were a product, and which extended
beyond class confines to extensive sections of German society. This political
culture was not in itself nazi. But it provided the fertile ground within which
nazism could flourish. Among its components were: an understanding of
nationality that rested upon ethnicity (and was hence open to notions of
restoration of national strength through 'ethnic cleansing'); an imperialist idea
that looked not in the main to overseas colonies, but to German dominance in
the ethnic melange of eastern Europe, at the expense of the Slav population; a
presumption of Germany's rightful position as a great power, accompanied by
deep resentment at the country's treatment since the war and its national
weakness and humiliation; and a visceral detestation of bolshevism coupled
with the sense that Germany was the last bulwark in the defence of western
civilization. Not the least of Hitler's contributions to the spiralling radicalism
of the nazi regime after 1933 was to unleash the pent-up social and ideological
forces embraced by this short catalogue of ideological traits; to open up hither-
to unimaginable opportunities; to make the unthinkable seem realizable. His
'charismatic authority' set the guidelines; the bureacracy of a modern state was
there to implement them. But 'charismatic authority' sits uneasily with the rules
and regulations of bureacracy. The tension between the two could neither
subside nor turn into a stable and permanent form of state. Allied to the under-
lying ideological thrust and the varied social forces which Hitler represented,
this created a dynamism - intrinsically self-destructive since the charismatic
Kershaw:
Hitlerand the Uniquenessof Nazism 247
regime was unable to reproduce itself - which constitutes an important com-

ponent of nazism's uniqueness.
If this explosive mixture of the 'charismatic' politics of national salvation
and the apparatus of a highly modern state was central to nazism's unique-
ness, then it ought to be possible to distinguish the unholy combination from
the differing preconditions of other dictatorships. This, however briefly and
superficially, I shall try to do.
The quest for national rebirth lay, of course, at the heart of all fascist move-
ments.20But only in Germany did the striving for national renewal adopt such
strongly pseudo-religious tones. Even if we count the Spanish dictatorship as
outrightly fascist, its national 'redemptive' element, if important, was nonethe-
less far weaker than that in Germany, amounting to little more than the quest
for the 'true Spain' and the restoration of the values of reactionary Catholi-
cism, together with the utter rejection of all that was modern and smacked of
association with godless socialism and bolshevism. In Italy, pseudo-religious
notions of national 'salvation' or 'redemption' were even weaker than in
Spain, and certainly possessed little or nothing of the apocalyptic sense of
being the last bulwark of western, Christian culture against the atheistic threat
of Asiatic (and Jewish) bolshevism that was prevalent in Germany. Mussolini's
external ambitions, too, like Franco's, were purely traditional, even if dressed
in new clothes. War and imperialist expansion in Africa were intended to
restore lost colonies, revenge the ignominy of Italian humiliation in 1896 at
the hands of the Ethiopians, and thereby establish Italy's glory and its place in
the sun as a world power, with the useful side-effect of bolstering the dictator-
ship within Italy through the prestige of external victories and acquisition of
empire. But nothing much resembled the depth of hope placed in national
salvation in Germany.
Though it is often played down in historiography these days, the extraordi-
narily strong fears of a threat to German culture, a profound cultural pessi-
mism in Germany's unusually broad-based intelligentsia, widespread already
before the first world war, formed one of the roots of such susceptibility.
Oswald Spengler's widely-read and influential tract on the downfall of western
culture, the first volume of which was published a month before the end of the
war in 1918,21embodied feelings which, in cruder form, had been spread by a
multiplicity of patriotic organizations long before the nazis appeared on the
scene. In the polarized society of the Weimar Republic, the antagonism of the
perceived threat of modernity to what were portrayed as traditional and true
German values - a threat focused on socialism, capitalism and, not least, the
representative scapegoat figure for both: the Jew - spread both at elite and
popular levels. Shored up by the trauma of a lost war, a trauma arguably
greater in Germany than in any other land - in a country where the hated
20 Griffin, in particular, has made this the focal point of his interpretation of fascism. See his
Nature of Fascism, op. cit., 26, 32ff.
21 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Vienna/ Munich
1918-22).
socialism had come to power through revolution and where established

religion seemed to be losing its hold - an appeal to hopes of national salva-
tion held substantial political potential. Though other countries were also
traumatized by the war, the cultural crisis, even in Italy, ran nowhere near so
deep as in Germany and, in consequence, was less formative for the nature of
the dictatorship. In addition, the length of the crisis and the size of the mass
movement before the takeover of power were significant.
Only in Italy, apart from Germany, did home-grown fascism develop into a
genuine mass movement before the takeover of power. By the time Mussolini
was made prime minister in 1922, in the wake of Italy's postwar crisis, the
Italian Fascist Party had some 322,000 members, whereas in Spain, amid quite
different conditions of the mid-1930s, before the Spanish Civil War, the
Falange could only muster around 10,000 members in a country of 26 million
inhabitants. If these figures are a deceptive guide to the potential backing for
politics of national salvation in those countries, the activist base was in both
cases, quite extremely so in Spain, far more limited than it was in Germany.
There, the hard core of believers in a party leader who promised national
salvation as the heart of his message was already massive, with 850,000 party
members and 427,000 SA men (often not members of the party itself), even
before Hitler took power.
And, as elsewhere, the first world war had left, as part of its legacy, the
readiness to resort to extreme violence to attain political aims. The crusading
idea of national salvation, redeeming Germany from its humiliation, purging it
of the enemies - political and racial - seen to be threatening its life-blood,
championing the cultural fight against the threat of Slavdom, evoking notions
of racial struggle to win back lost territories in eastern Europe, heralding an
ultimate showdown with godless, 'Asiatic' bolshevism, tapped brilliantly into
this new climate of violence. And whereas there was only a three-year period
before Italian fascism gained power, after which its elan rapidly waned, the 14
years of 'latent civil war'22that preceded Hitler's takeover allowed the prospect
of violently-accomplished national salvation to fester and spread, massively so
in conditions of the complete collapse of legitimation of the Weimar Republic
after 1930.
Not only the street-fighters and beer-hall brawlers in the nazi movement
were attracted by the idea of violently-attained national salvation. As much
recent research has shown, a new generation of intelligent, middle-class
students at German universities in the early 1920s soaked up volkisch ideas,
those of extreme racist nationalism, intrinsic to the ideas of national regenera-
tion.23 In this way, 'national salvation' found intellectualized form among
groups which would constitute a coming elite, groups whose doctorates in law
22 For the term, see Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford 1993), 262.
23 See, for this, especially Ulrich Herbert, "'Generation der Sachlichkeit": Die volkische
Studentenbewegung der fruhen zwanziger Jahre in Deutschland' in Frank Bajohr, Werner Johe
and Uwe Lohalm (eds), Zivilisation und Barbarei. Die widerspriichlichen Potentiale der Moderne
(Hamburg 1991), 115-44.
Kershaw:
combined with a rationalized 'Neue Sachlichkeit' (or 'new objectivity') type of

approach to the 'cleansing' of the nation: the excision of its 'life-threatening
diseases'. Such mentalities were carried with them, 10 or 15 years after study-
ing, into the upper echelons of the SS and Security Police, as well as into state
and party planning offices and 'think tanks'. By the early 1940s, some of these
'intellectuals' had their hands covered in blood as they led the Einsatzgruppen
into the Soviet Union, while others were laying down plans for the racial
'cleansing' of the occupied territories of the east and the new ethnic order to be
established there.24
That 'national salvation' involved not just internal regeneration, but a 'new
order' based on the ethnic cleansing of the entire continent of Europe, also
singles out National Socialism from all other forms of fascism. No small part of
its uniqueness, in other words, was the combination of racial nationalism and
imperialism directed not abroad, but at Europe itself. And, as already indi-
cated, though nazism amounted to the most extreme expression of such ideas,
the politics of national salvation had every prospect of blending into the cul-
tural pessimism of neo-conservatives and the anti-democratic and revisionist-
expansionist currents that prevailed among the national-conservative elites.
It is not just the force in themselves of the ideas of national rebirth that
Hitler came to embody, but the fact that they arose in such a highly modern
state system, which was decisive for their uniquely destructive quality. Other
interwar European dictatorships, both fascist and communist, emerged in
societies with less advanced economies, less sophisticated apparatus of state
administration, and less modernized armies. And, apart from the Soviet Union
(where policies directed at creating a sphere of influence in the Baltic and
Balkans to provide a 'cordon sanitaire' against the looming German threat
took concrete form only by the end of the 1930s), geopolitical aims in Europe
generally stretched no further than localized irredentism. In other words: not
only did the expectations of 'national salvation' invested in Hitler enjoy a mass
basis - 13 million nazi voters already in free elections in 1932, countless
further millions to join them over the following years; not only did such ideas
correspond to more 'intellectualized' notions of the defence of western culture
among the upper social classes and political elites; not only did 'national
salvation' involve the reconstruction on racial lines of the whole of Europe;
but - something present in no other dictatorship - a highly modern state
apparatus, increasingly infected by such notions, existed in Germany and
was capable of turning visionary, utopian goals into practical, administrative
reality.
Let us return at this point to Hitler and to the implementation of the politics
of national salvation after 1933. I have been suggesting that a modern state
system directed by 'charismatic authority', based on ideas, frequently used
by Hitler, of a 'mission' (Sendung) to bring about 'salvation' (Rettung) or
24 See the fine study by Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten. Das
Fiihrungskorps des
Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg 2002).
'redemption' (Erlosung) - all, of course, terms tapping religious or quasi-

religious emotions - was unique. (I should, perhaps, add that, in my view, this
populistic exploitation of naive 'messianic' hopes and illusions among mem-
bers of a society plunged into comprehensive crisis does not mean that nazism
has claim to be regarded as a 'political religion', a currently voguish revamping
of an age-old notion, though no less convincing for being repeated so persist-
ently.25)The singularity of the nazi form of rule was, thus, undeniably bound up
with the singularity of Hitler's position of power. Though familiar enough, it is
worthwhile reminding ourselves of the essence of this power.
During the course of the early 1920s, Hitler developed a pronounced sense
of his 'national mission' - 'messianic allures', as one ironic remark had it at
the time.26The 'mission' can be summed up as follows: nationalize the masses;
take over the state, destroy the enemy within - the 'November criminals'
(meaning Jews and Marxists, much the same in his eyes); build up defences;
then undertake expansion 'by the sword' to secure Germany's future in over-
coming the 'shortage of land' (Raumnot) and acquiring new territory in the
east of Europe. Towards the end of 1922, a small but growing band of fanati-
cal followers - the initial 'charismatic community' - inspired by Mussolini's
'March on Rome', began to project their own desire for a 'heroic' national
leader onto Hitler. (As early as 1920, such desires were expressed by neo-
conservatives, not nazis, as the longing for a leader who, in contrast to the
contemptible 'politicians' of the new Republic, would be a statesman with the
qualities of the 'ruler, warrior, and high priest' rolled into one.27)Innumerable
letters eulogizing Hitler as a national hero poured into the Landsberg fortress,
where in 1924 he spent a comfortable few months of internment after his trial
for high treason at Munich, which had given him new prominence and stand-
ing on the racist-nationalist Right. A book published that year waxed lyrical
(and mystical) about the new hero:
25 The perception of nazism as a form of political religion, advanced as long ago as 1938 by the
emigre Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen (Vienna 1938), has recently gained a new lease of
life. Among others who have found the notion attractive, Michael Burleigh adopted it, alongside
'totalitarianism', as a major conceptual prop of his interpretation in The Third Reich. A New
History (London 2000). See also Burleigh's essay, 'National Socialism as a Political Religion' in
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1, 2 (2000), 1-26. It has also been deployed for
fascist Italy by Emilio Gentile, 'Fascism as Political Religion', Journal of Contemporary History,
25, 2-3 (May-June 1990), 229-51, and idem, The Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy
(Cambridge, MA 1996). See also Gentile's 'The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions,
in
Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism'
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1, 1 (2000), 18-55. For sharp criticism of its
und
application to nazism, see Michael Rigmann, Hitlers Gott. Vorsehungsglaube
Sendungsbewu/ftsein des deutschen Diktators (Zurich/Munich 2001), 191-7; and Griffin, Nature
of Fascism, op. cit., 30-2. Griffin, once critical, has, however, changed his mind and now favours
the use of the concept, as can be seen in his 'Nazism's "Cleansing Hurricane" and the
Metamorphosis of Fascist Studies' in W. Loh (ed.), 'Faschismus' kontrovers (Paderborn 2002).
26 Cited in Albrecht Tyrell, Vom 'Trommler' zum 'Fiihrer' (Munich 1975), 163.
27 Cited in Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (3rd edn,
Munich 1992), 217.
Kershaw: 251
The secret of his personality resides in the fact that in it the deepest of what lies dormant in
the soul of the German people has taken shape in full living features .... That has appeared
in Adolf Hitler: the living incarnation of the nation's yearning.28
Hitler believed this bilge. He used his time in Landsberg to describe his
'mission' in the first volume of Mein Kampf (which, with scant regard for
catchy, publishers' titles, he had wanted to call 'Four and a Half Years of
Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice'). He also learnt lessons from
the failure of his movement in 1923. One important lesson was that a re-
founded nazi movement had, in contrast to the pre-Putsch era, to be exclusively
a 'Leader Party'. From 1925 onwards, the NSDAP was gradually transformed
into precisely this 'Leader Party'. Hitler became not just the organizational ful-
crum of the movement, but also the sole fount of doctrinal orthodoxy. Leader
and Idea (however vague the latter remained) blended into one, and by the end
of the 1920s, the NSDAP had swallowed all strands of the former diverse
volkisch movement and now possessed a monopoly on the racist-nationalist
Right. In conditions of the terminal crisis of Weimar, Hitler, backed by a much
more solid organization than had been the case before 1923, was in a position
to stake a claim for ever-growing numbers of Germans to be the coming
national 'saviour', a redeemer figure.
It is necessary to underline this development, however well-known it is in
general, since, despite leadership cults elsewhere, there was actually nothing
similar in the genesis of other dictatorships. The Duce cult before the 'March
on Rome' had not been remotely so important or powerful within Italian
fascism as had the Fiihrer cult to the growth of German National Socialism.
Mussolini was at that stage still essentially first among equals among the
regional fascist leaders. The full efflorescence of the cult only came later, after
1925.29 In Spain, the Caudillo cult attached to Franco was even more of an
artificial creation, the claim to being a great national leader, apeing the Italian
and German models, coming long after he had made his name and career
through the army.30An obvious point of comparison in totalitarian theory,
linking dictatorships of Left and Right, appears to be that of the Fiihrer cult
28 Georg Schott, Das Volksbuch vom Hitler (Munich 1924), 18.

29 See Piero Melograni, 'The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini's Italy', Journal of Contemporary
History, 11, 4 (October 1976), 221-37; Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power (London 1973),
72ff, 166-75; and, most recently the excellent political biography by R.J.B. Bosworth, Benito
Mussolini (London 2002), chaps 6-11. It took several years before the customary mode of address
and reference to Mussolini changed from Presidente to Duce and some among his old comrades
never took to the 'heroic' form. See R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship. Problems and
Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London 1998), 62, note 14. A valu-
able study of the incomparably more dynamic impact of the Fiihrer cult than the Duce cult on
state administration and bureaucracy is provided by Maurizio Bach, Die charismatischen
Fiihrerdiktaturen. Drittes Reich und italienischer Faschismus im Vergleich ihrer
Herrschaftsstrukturen (Baden-Baden 1991). Walter Rauscher, Hitler und Mussolini. Macht, Krieg
und Terror (Graz/Vienna/Cologne 2001), provides a parallel biography of the two dictators,
though offers no structural comparison.
30 See Paul Preston, Franco. A Biography (London 1993), 187ff.
with the Stalin cult. Certainly, there was more than a casual pseudo-religious
strain to the Stalin cult. Russian peasants plainly saw in 'the boss' some sort of
substitute for 'father Tsar'.31Nonetheless, the Stalin cult was in essence a late
accretion to the position which had gained Stalin his power, that of Party
General Secretary in prime position to inherit Lenin's mantle. Unlike nazism,
the personality cult was not intrinsic to the form of rule, as its denunciation
and effective abolition after Stalin's death demonstrated. Later rulers in the
Soviet Union did not try to revamp it; the term 'charismatic leadership' does
not readily trip off the lips when we think of Brezhnev or Chernenko. In con-
trast, the Fiihrer cult was the indispensable basis, the irreplaceable essence and
the dynamic motor of a nazi regime unthinkable without it. The 'Fiihrer myth'
was the platform for the massive expansion of Hitler's own power once the
style of leadership in the party had been transferred to the running of a
modern, sophisticated state. It served to integrate the party, determine the
'guidelines for action' of the movement, to sustain the focus on the visionary
ideological goals, to drive on the radicalization, to maintain the ideological
momentum, and, not least, to legitimate the initiatives of others 'working
towards the Fiihrer'.32
The core points of Hitler's ideology were few, and visionary rather than
specific. But they were unchanging and unnegotiable: 'removal of the Jews'
(meaning different things to different party and state agencies at different
times); attaining 'living space' to secure Germany's future (a notion vague
enough to encompass different strands of expansionism); race as the explana-
tion of world history, and eternal struggle as the basic law of human existence.
For Hitler personally, this was a vision demanding war to bring about national
salvation through expunging the shame of the capitulation of 1918 and
destroying those reponsible for it (who were in his eyes the Jews). Few
Germans saw things in the way that Hitler did. But mobilization of the masses
brought them closer to doing so. Here, Hitler remained the supreme motiva-
tor. Mass mobilization was never, however, as he realized from the outset,
going to suffice. He needed the power of the state, the co-option of its instru-
ments of rule, and the support of the elites who traditionally controlled them.
Naturally, the conservative elites were not true believers. They did not, in the
main, swallow the excesses of the Fiihrer cult, and could even be privately
contemptuous or condescending about Hitler and his movement. Beyond that,
they were often disappointed with the realities of National Socialism. Even so,
Hitler's new form of leadership offered them the chance, as they saw it, of
sustaining their own power. Their weakness was Hitler's strength, before and
after 1933. And, as we have seen, there were plenty of ideological overlaps
even without complete identity. Gradually, a state administration run, like
31 See Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social History of Interwar
Russia (London 1985), 57-71, 268-76; and also Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, Stalinism and
Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge 1997), chaps 1, 4 and 5.
32 For the term, see Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, op. cit., 529.
Kershaw:
that of all modern states, on the basis of 'expedient rationality', succumbed to

the irrational goals of the politics of national salvation, embodied by Hitler -
a process culminating in the bureaucratically-organized and industrially-
executed genocide against the Jews, premised on irrational notions of national
redemption.
Not only the complicity of the old elites was needed for this process of
subordination of rational principles of government and administration to the
irrational goals of 'charismatic leadership'. New elites, as has already been
suggested, were only too ready to exploit the unheard of opportunities offered
to them in the Fuihrerstate to build up unimaginable power accretions, free of
any legal or administrative shackles. The new 'technocrats of power', of the
type exemplified by Reinhard Heydrich, combined ideological fanaticism with
cold, ruthless, depersonified efficiency and organizational skills. They could
find rationality in irrationality; could turn into practical reality the goals asso-
ciated with Hitler, needing no further legitimitation than recourse to the 'wish
of the Fiihrer'.33This was no 'banality of evil'.34This was the working of an
ideologically-motivated elite coldly prepared to plan for the eradication of 11
million Jews (the figure laid down at the Wannsee Conference of January
1942), and for the 'resettlement' to the Siberian wastes, plainly genocidal in
intent, of over 30 million, mainly Slavs, over the following 25 years. That, in
such a system, they would find countless 'willing executioners' prepared to do
their bit, whatever the individual motivation of those involved, goes without
saying. This was, however, not on account of national character, or some
long-existent, specifically German desire to eliminate the Jews. Rather, it was
that the idea of racial cleansing, the core of the notion of national salvation,
had become, via Hitler's leadership position, institutionalized in all aspects of
organized life in the nazi state. That was decisive.
Unquestionably, Hitler was a unique historical personality. But the unique-
ness of the nazi dictatorship cannot be reduced to that. It is explained less by
Hitler's character, extraordinary as it was, than by the specific form of rule
which he embodied and its corrupting effect on the instruments and mecha-
nisms of the most advanced state in Europe. Both the broad acceptance of the
'project' of 'national salvation', seen as personified in Hitler, and the internal-
ization of the ideological goals by a new, modern power-elite, operating along-
side weakened old elites through the bureaucratic sophistication of a modern
state, were necessary prerequisites for the world-historical catastrophe of the
Third Reich.
33 Gerald Fleming, Hitler und die Endlosung. 'Es ist des Fiihrers Wunsch' (Wiesbaden/Munich
1982), shows how frequentlythe phrasewas invokedby those involvedin the exterminationof
theJews.
34 The memorable,though nonethelessmisleading,concept was coined by Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (London 1963).
lan Kershaw
is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. His
latest publications are (ed. with Moshe Lewin), Stalinism and
Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge 1997); Hitler,
1889-1936: Hubris (London 1998); Hitler, 1936-2000: Nemesis
(London 2000).
Anti-Semitism and the Appeal of Nazism
Author(s): Dieter D. Hartmann
Source: Political Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 635-642
Published by: International Society of Political Psychology
Accessed: 08-08-2015 08:52 UTC
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Psychology.
Political Psychology,Vol. 5, No. 4, 1984
and theAppeal of Nazism

Anti-Semitism
DieterD. Hartmann'
Althoughanti-Semitism wasfundamental to Nazism,itseemsnotto have

beenessentialto themajority of Germans. Nordoesitappearto havebeen
a decisive
factor in eithertheNazi risetopowerorHitler'svastpopularity
throughout the1930s and in the earlyyearsof thewar.YetNazi Germany
wasa societyon itswayto theHolocaust(Hilberg,1961).Hitlerassumed
powerto save Germany fromtheJews.Hatredof theJewshad beenthe
coreofhis Weltanschauung fromtheverybeginnings ofhispoliticalcareer
(Jackel,1969;Waite, 1977).This paper askswhetherwe maytendtounder-
ratethesignificance of anti-Semitism forthepopularappealofNazismin
Germany.
Germany(1933-1945); Holocaust; Nazism.
KEY WORDS: anti-Semitism;
BothGermaneliteand thegeneralelectorate to bringing

contributed
to
Nazism power. Neither
group was motivatedmainlyby anti-Semitism.
Largepartsoftheruling interests
classhadtangible liberaland
indestroying
democracy.
pluralist They sidedwithNazism because questforpower
their
was limitedbyonlyhollowmoralrestraints: forthem,theHolocaustwas
a side-showthatwouldmovethemto neither applausenorprotest (Baum,
1981).However, was
anti-Semitism part parcelofmostofthesepeople's
and
personaloutlooks.(Students' forexample,
fraternities, hadlongbeenstrong-
holdsof anti-Semitism, careers-themostprestigious
and military of all-
werenotopentoJews).Indeed,as welearned (Hamilton,
onlyrecently 1982),
theNaziparty won
verylargely support inthe and
upper upper middle classes,
which,as faras canbe determinedtoday,votedNazi morereadilythandid
'Kurze Str. 14, D-7000 Tubingen 1, West Germany.
635
? 1984 InternationalSocietyof Political Psychology

0162-895X/84/1200-0635$03.50/1
636 Hartmann
all othersegments of Germansociety:Interest in powerand profitwasjoined

by sympathywithNazi ideas.
The upsurgeof Nazi votesafter1929was due to manyfactors.Quite
probably,nationalgreatnessand economicdespairloomed muchlargerin
mostpeople'smindsthandid theratherremoteissueof theso-calledJewish
question.But ifso manyGermanspaid littleregardto theverycoreof Nazi
ideology,theycould do so only because theydid not trulyresentit. Nazi
propagandawas, afterall, drenchedin hatredforthe Jewsfrombeginning
to end. AlthoughtheNazis sometimesadapted anti-Jewish propagandaac-
cordingto itspopularityin different regionsof thecountry(Noakes, 1971:
209 f; Pridham,1973:237-244;Hamilton,1982:366f.,370 f.,422),theynever
had to abandon it altogether.Hitler'shatredof the Jewsdid not lessenhis
popularity (Kershaw,1980: 132f.). Mostpeopleapparently foundanti-Jewish
sentiments both familiarand abstract,nothingto object to and nothingto
worrymuch about.
The seminalstudyof the Nazi seizureof powerin a smallWestGer-
mantownconcludedthatpeople"weredrawnto anti-Semitism becausethey
weredrawnto Nazism, not the otherway around" (Allen, 1965: 77). This
conclusion,however,has to be read in context(Allen, 1965): An "abstract
anti-Semitism" prevailed"in the formof jokes and expressionsof general-
ized distaste."Enmitythuslurkedbeneatha civilizedvarnish.Anti-Jewish
jokes in particular,farfrombeingjolly or good-humored,revealan emo-
tionalhostilitythatmayroot deeply.Moreover,researchintolocal history
has to relymuchon eyewitness accountsbysurviving contemporaries.Such
oral history,howeverhonestlytold,maytendto avoid or extenuatethesig-
nificanceof anti-Semitism. This maybe so, on theone hand,because it was
so commonand sociallyacceptedas to escape notice. On the otherhand,
thissubjectmaybe eschewedin retrospect because itis fraughtwithpainful
and uneasyconnotationsof hiddenguiltand helplessshame.
Germancultureindeedwas infestedwithanti-Semitism (Massing,1949;
Ehrlich,1963; Pulzer, 1964; Mosse, 1964; Mosse, 1966). A pervadingun-
dercurrent of hostilityand contemptis revealedbythespitefulimageof the
Jewsin Germanfolkoreand popularliterature. At besttheJewwas expected
to assimilate,thatis, cease to be Jewish.In a countrywhosepoliticalculture
and publicmindneverfullyhad embracedtheidea of universalhumanrights,
Jewsstillcarriedtheburdenof proofthattheysimplyhad therightto be there.
The ambiguityof common but abstractanti-Jewishattitudesalso
prevailedaftertheNazis came to power.Germanpopularopinionabout the
persecution of Jewshas beeninvestigated recently (Kershaw,1981,1983;and
see Steinert,1977; Stokes, 1973; Kulka, 1975, 1982).2 Without undue
2Sourcesof popular opinionin Nazi Germanyare, of course,subjectiveand impressionistic.

Recentresearch,however,presentsan overallpicturethatlooks coherentand undistorted.
For
a detaileddiscussionof thisproblemsee Steinert(1977) and Kershaw(1981, 1983). Roughly
Anti-Semitism
and the Appeal of Nazism 637
generalization- leavingasideregional differencesin particular- it maybe

heldthatmostGermansdid notwantpogromsbutprovedreadyto de-
humanize theJews.The 1933boycott waslargely a failure, andviolencein
subsequent yearsdidnotinciterabidJewbaiting inthemajority ofthepopu-
lation.This,however, was notso becauseof widespread sympathies with
theJews.Peopleresented anddisorderly
lawlessness conductbutlargely ap-
provedoflegaldiscrimination. Theywenton buying in Jewish shopswhen
theywerecheapest. Inthecountryside, theonlyrealcontact withJewsusually
was withcattledealers,and thiscontactwas governed by economicself-
Notinfrequently,
interest. somereservations aboutNazibrutality werevoiced.
Yet therewas verylittleprincipled opposition (Kershaw,1981).The weak
stanceof theChristian clergyis wellknowntoday.
WhileNazismfailedto rousefanatical hatred,it did succeedin win-
ningwidespread compliance withanti-Semitism as a basicpolicyofa highly
popularnationalleadership. Theendlesschainofviolenceandhumiliation
in yearsto comewasmeticulously plannedandexecuted all overGermany.
Millionsofallegedly decentpeopletookpartin devising or executing legal
vilifications.
Virtually all branchesof thecivilservicewereinvolved in im-
plementing anti-Jewish policies.For 1933alone,reports of anti-Jewish ac-
tionscomprise a sizeableBlackBook(Schwarzbuch, 1933).Manyanti-Semitic
ineveryday
activities lifeoriginatedfromcitycouncilsorbusiness organiza-
tions(forsomeexamplessee Saldern,1979:204-206).Theydid nothave
towaitfororders from above.(To givebutoneillustration: inthetownwhere
I amliving, thecitycouncilas earlyas 1933closedthelocalswimming pool
to Jews).Largenumbers oflaw-abiding alsoenriched
citizens themselves at
theexpenseof Jewsby wayof so-calledAryanizations. Thereweremore
andcontempt
hostility thanmostGermans wouldliketo admiteventoday.
Morethanthat,therewereindifference andcompliance. Therealsowasmut-
ed dissent.Butgenuinesympathy or plaincompassion was rare.
Peopleveryfrequently approvedof legalmeasures againsttheJews,
however drastic;theyrejectedonlywantonlawlessness and downright pil-
lage(Kershaw, 1983:268f.,272f.).TheNumber 1938pogrom virtuallyevery-
whereinGermany metwithindignation. Buteventhissignaldeed"receded
current
speaking, research reliesontwomaingroupsofsources:First,policeandcivil
largely
administrations compiled
regularly confidential aboutthesituation
reports andmoodin the
Theyhavebeenparticularly
population. wellpreserved
inBavaria.Selectreports
aboutreac-
tionsto thepersecutionof Jewsare publishedin Broszatet al. (1977: 427-486). For material
fromotherpartsof Germanysee Heyen (1967: 125-163),Thevoz et al. (1974), Kulka (1975:
260-290). Second, the exiled leadershipof the Social DemocraticPartyissued reportsfrom
insideGermanyfrom1934to April1940.Theyhavebeeneditedrecently (Deutschland-Berichte,
onthepersecution
1980).Reports ofJewsareinVolume2 (1935):800-814,
920-937,
1019-1021,
1026-1045;Volume3 (1936): 20-42,973-992,1648-1664;Volume4 (1937): 931-947,1563-1576;
Volume5 (1938): 176-206,732-771,1177-1211,1275-1297,1329-1358:Volume6 (1939): 201-226,
381-383,898-940; Volume 7 (1940): 256-268.
638 Hartmann
within a fewweeksintothedimbackground ofpeople'sconsciousness" (Ker-

shaw, 1981:281). Later on,deportations rumors
and aboutmasskillings did
notevokestrong reactions. In partatleast,thismaybe dueto mostpeople's
desperate situation at thattime.Butpeopledidprotest againstotherNazi
measures. Many Germans for
objected truly humanitarian reasonswhenthe
Nazisbegantomurder theinsane.SomeGermans stoodup fora moralcause
whentheNazisordered crucifixes tobe removed fromclassrooms. Symbols
thusbrought forthmoredeeplyfeltreactions thandidthefateof humans
as alienas weretheJews.
On theotherhand,therehasbeena broadconsensus inpostwar Ger-
manythat the Wehrmacht had no share in mass killings.Today we know
thatthiswas notthecase (Krausnick, 1981).Overand again,theGerman
armyreadily cooperated withthekilling units;and,quitefrequently, high-
ranking army officers showed theirsympathy withtheNazi cause.
The Nazisvirtually nevermetwithanydifficulties in mustering their
executioner wherever they looked for them (Hilberg,1961). Nazism did not
unleashmuchpassionate hate.Nordiditneedto. Hitlerdidnotwantanti-
Semitism to be motivated bypassion.He askedfordetachedand ruthless
efficiency.Callous toughness ("Hirte")wasfarfrombeingunpopular. Raul
Hilbergrecently summed it up in a simplequestion(1980:100):"Amazing
tome,afterinvolving myself forthirty yearsinthisresearch, is stilltheques-
not
tion:whywerethey inefficient?"
The dismalfeatures of relentless compliance and stunted compassion
and
maycovera stilldeeper lessconsciouslevel sympathy of withtheulti-
mategoalofNazism.Contemporary observers, whilestating widespread dis-
approvalof wantonlawlessness, underlined thefactthatNazi propaganda
eventually had itseffect(Kershaw,1981:274; 1983:275, 371 f.). People
provedreadyto dehumanize theJews.A greatmanyGermansagreedthat
therereallywasa Jewish question. (Thisquiteprobably wastruefora majori-
tyof contemporary Germans).Manypeople wanted theJewsto disappear
and be goneforgood. TheyagreedthattheJewsshouldbe out of sight.
Theydid notwantto sharetheirownworldwithJews.Theyjustdid not
botherto thinkwhatthismeantforthevictims.
Sigmund Freudnoted(1900:254 f.) thatforchildren, "to havedied"
meanstobe goneawayforever, nolonger totrouble thesurvivors. Thechild,
in Freud'sview,doesnotdistinguish thewaysandmeansthatbringabout
suchabsence.A deathwishbasicallyis forsomeoneto be gone,awayand
outofsight,forever. Suchis infantile imagery; butitlingerson intheadult
mind.A deathwish,therefore, neednotincludethewish killor to see
to
somebody die.Killingmight add cruelsatisfaction, butitis notindispensa-
ble.TheNazisdidnotwantindividual sadism;they wanted a worldwithout
Jews.
Anti-Semitism
and the Appeal of Nazism 639
Most Germansprobablywould have recoiledfromtheultimateconse-

quence of theirown hostilefeelingstowardtheJews.But theydid not want
to know. Nobody was requestedto offerany clear-cutideas about the fate
of thedoomed. Wishfulthinking neednotbe vehement or conspicuous.Peo-
ple may harbor destructivefantasies
without givingheedto theirsignificance
and implications.This makesthemno less pernicious,but rendersit more
difficultto face and overcomethemby way of acceptingcivilizedlimits.
Therefore,thefactthatNazi anti-Semitism did notresultin blood-lustdoes
not implythatit had littleappeal. Nazi policies of dehumanizationcould
workbecause theystrucka consonantchord. People wereled along a road
theywerewillingto go. Few sharedtheirleadership'sresoluteness.Manymore
agreed withtheir Fuhrer thattheJews shouldbe marched offintosomebleak
nowhere.
These are dimand vaguenotions,buttheymustnotbe takenforbeing
insubstantial becausetheyare so thoughtless;
norare theyinnocuousbecause
of theirseemingtriviality. Theiruncaringcallousnesspointsto an inclina-
tion,so gravewithconsequence,to treathumanbeingsas matter.Theyre-
veal indifference and contemptratherthan hate or fear.
Disdain forthe Jews'humanity,howevervague and trivial,constitut-
ed an essentialcomponentof someofthemostprominent aspectsof Nazism's
popular appeal. Anti-Semitismnot only allowed for extremeformsof
scapegoating,butalso itis linkedto whatmaywellbe themostenticingfea-
tureof Nazism: the delusionof Germansuperiority. The indifference and
theunemotionalqualityof contemptsignifynarcissistic grandiosity, no less
than does vengefulrage. The emotionalappeal of Nazism focusedon im-
ages of greatness,purity,and impregnability.Beyondeconomicdespairand
politicaltroubles,Nazism answeredto forcefulemotionalneeds. It offered
opportunity to distanceoneselffromtheweak,thevulnerable,and theugly.
Such imageryneedshumansymbols.The dreamof powerand puritystands
above some foil of utterhuman refuse.
Identification withruthlessgrandiosityalso makes it possibleto exe-
cute licensedviolencewithoutremorse.This is a lesson manya German
had learnedfromearliestchildhoodon3. Most people who wenta long way
withNazism did so witha clear conscience.In theircoarse language,com-
passionhad no voice. In an era whenmanyGermanstriedto dissociatetheir
fatherlandfromWesternliberaland humanitarianideas, Germanpolitical
cultureapprovedof manyformsof violence.It remainsone of themorein-
triguingquestionswhyHitler'seligibilityforChancellorof the Reich was
30Onthepsychodynamics and psychohistory of theseemotionalscarssee Loewenberg, (1975, 1983:

205-283). Much insightintothe social causes of Nazi anti-Semitismmay stillbe gained from
Reichmann(1950).
640 Hartmann
notruledoutbyhiswell-publicized "Potempatelegram" of August1932,

whenhe ferociously sidedwithsomestorm-troopers who(ina Silesianvil-
lagebythenameofPotempa)hadcommitted murder. Research on Hitler's
has
popularimage emphasized the satisfaction amonglargesegments ofthe
that
populace accompanied confessionsto drastic measures (Kershaw, 1980:
49f.,75,79).Together withthe authoritarianinclinationto sanctionedruth-
lessness, commonplace anti-Semitism enabled largenumbers ofGermans to
somehowgetinvolvedin the preparation forand administration of the
Holocaust.
In trying
toassesstheimpactofanti-Semitism, wemustappreciate cer-
tainconfounding factors. Looking back 50 our
years, insight dependsupon
fragmentary knowledge of opaque and ambiguous humanreactions. And
weareconstrained, too,by our own backgrounds and environments. Gen-
tilesandGermans, likemyself, mayrealizewithdistress thatwearerelated
morecloselyto theperpetrators thanto thevictims: WiththeNazi genera-
tionwesharemanyofthecultural socialconventions,
traditions, andthevery
languagethatshapeouroutlooks.Thereis muchin ourenvironment that
asksus notto be so hardon ourownfathers and grandfathers.In effect,
weunwittingly areurgedto sidewiththeNaziconstituency fromtheoutset.
It is a disturbing experience no
to longer minimize thetraitsof destruction
andhostility inthe mindsofcommonpeople who areso closeto ourselves.
Andindeedwe mayhesitate to allotso muchconcernto theJewish
minority. MuchtalkaboutGermanFascismstopsshortofreallyfacingthe
Holocaust.Quitefrequently, anti-Semitism is seenas beingjustan extreme
caseofracism, xenophobia, ortotalitarianterror andmanipulation. Thevery
namesofAuschwitz andtheHolocausttendto be usedas generalsymbols
ofgrossdestruction. Thesignificance oftheHolocaustis beingsidestepped
evenin muchof thescholarly literature,bothin theEast and in theWest
(Dawidowicz, 1981).Ourapproach inexplaining Nazismthusmaysubtly serve
to detachus fromtheJews.
ManyaspectsofNazismarefading intothepast.Notso anti-Semitism.
Thereareindications thatitis gainingground withtheyoung.Onlyrecently
havewe begunto studytheimpactof theHolocauston thechildren of the
Nazigeneration (Bergman andJucovy, 1982).Little,as yet,do weknowabout
thelegacyof Nazismto thethirdgeneration. Throughanti-Semitism, the
inequities ofthefathers mightbe visiting thechildren, evenuntothethird
and fourth generation.
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What Caused the American Civil War?
A number of circumstances, tracing back to political issues and disagreements
that began soon after the American Revolution, ultimately led the United States into Civil
War. Between the years 1800 and 1860, arguments between the North and South grew
more intense, slavery being the central issue of the conflicts, although not the only one.
Another point of major contention between North and South involved taxes paid
on goods brought into this country from foreign countries. This tax was called a tariff.
Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed primarily toward them because they
imported a wider variety of goods than most Northerners. Taxes were also placed on
many Southern goods that were shipped to foreign countries, an expense not always
applied to Northern exports of equal value.
In the years before the Civil War, political power in the Federal government,
centered in Washington, D.C., was changing. Northern and mid-western states were
becoming more and more influential as their populations increased. Southern states lost
political power because their populations did not increase as rapidly. As one portion of
the nation grew larger than another, people began to perceive the nation as divided into
sections, distinguished by different economies, cultures, and even values. This was called
sectionalism.
Library of Congress: View document at:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart3b.html
Just as the original thirteen colonies fought for their independence almost 100
years earlier, the Southern states felt a growing need for freedom from the central Federal
authority in Washington. Southerners believed that state laws carried more weight than
Federal laws, and where there was a conflict, they should abide by state regulations first.
This issue was called State's Rights and became a hot topic in congress.
However, the main quarrel between the North and South, and the most emotional
one, was over the issue of slavery. America was an agricultural nation and crops such as
cotton were in demand around the world. Cotton grew well in the southern climate, but it
was a difficult plant to gather and process. Labor in the form of slaves was used on large
plantations to plant and harvest cotton as well as sugar, rice, and other cash crops. The
invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney in 1794 had made cotton more profitable
for Southern growers. Before this invention,

it took one person all day to process two pounds of cotton by hand, a slow and inefficient
method. Whitney's Cotton Gin machine could process that much within a half hour. This
invention revolutionized the cotton industry and Southern planters saw their profits soar
as more and more of them relied on cotton as their main cash crop. Slaves were a central
part of the cotton industry. (View the Census of 1860 with the number of slaves by state
at:
www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html)
Slavery, a part of life in America since the early colonial period, had become
more acceptable in the South than the North. Southern planters relied on slave labor to
run larger farms or plantations and make them profitable. Slaves also provided labor for
various household chores. The institution of slavery did not sit well with many
northerners who felt that slavery was uncivilized and should be abolished. Those who
held those beliefs, called abolitionists, thought that owning slaves for any reason was
wrong. They vehemently disagreed with the South's laws and beliefs concerning slavery.
Yet slavery had been a part of the Southern way of life for well over 200 years and was
protected not only by state laws, but Federal law as well. The Constitution of the United
States guaranteed the right to own property and protected citizens against the seizure of
property. A slave was viewed as property in the South and was important to the
economics of the Southern cotton industry. The people of the Southern states did not
appreciate Northerners, especially the abolitionists, telling them that slave ownership was
a great wrong. This created a great amount of debate, mistrust, and misunderstanding.
The first confrontation over slavery occurred in the West in 1819. Missouri
applied for admission to the Union as a slave state. The admission of Missouri would
upset the balance of power in the Senate where at the time there were 11 free states and
11 slave states. Senator Henry Clay proposed what became known as the Missouri
Compromise. In 1820, he suggested that Missouri enter as a slave state and Maine as a
free state to keep the balance of power. The Compromise of 1850 also addressed
balance of power, admitting California as a free state, but allowing voters in the Utah and
New Mexico territories to decide if they wanted slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 proved very controversial. It required that all
citizens were obligated to return runaway slaves. People who helped slaves escape would
be jailed and fined. The law enraged Northerners because it made them feel as if they
were being forced to perpetuate the slave system they opposed. Harriet Tubman,
Frederick Douglass and many others involved with the Underground Railroad worked
to subvert the law.
Frederick Douglass
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This novel told of
the story of Uncle Tom, an enslaved African American, and his cruel master, Simon
Legree. In the novel, Stowe wrote of the evils and cruelty of slavery. It helped change the
way many Northerners felt about slavery. Slavery was not only a political problem, but
also a moral problem in the eyes of many Northerners.
Many Americans felt that slavery should be allowed in the new territories such as
Kansas and Missouri, while others were set against it. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in
1854 led to “bleeding Kansas”, a bitter sectional war that pitted neighbor against
neighbor.
In 1857, the United States Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in the Dred
Scott Decision. Dred Scott was a slave who applied for freedom. He claimed that
because his master had taken him to the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin, he
should be free. The court ruled that because Dred Scott was not considered a citizen, but
property, he could not file a lawsuit. The Court also ruled that Congress had no power to
decide the issue of slavery in the territories. This meant that slavery was legal in all the
territories and the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
Anti-slavery leaders in the North cited the controversial Supreme Court decision
as evidence that Southerners wanted to extend slavery throughout the nation. Southerners
approved the Dred Scott decision, believing Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in
the territories. Abraham Lincoln reacted with disgust to the ruling and was spurred into
political action, publicly speaking out against it.
In 1859, a radical abolitionist from Kansas named John Brown raided the Federal
armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the hopes of supplying weapons to an army of
slaves who would revolt against their southern masters. A number of people were taken
hostage and several killed, among them the mayor of Harpers Ferry. Brown was cornered
with several of his followers in a fire engine house, first by Virginia militia and then by
Federal troops sent to arrest him and his raiders. These troops, commanded by Union
Colonel Robert E. Lee (who later became the leading Confederate general), stormed the
building and captured Brown and several of his men. Brown was tried for his crimes,
found guilty, and hanged in Charlestown, WV. Though John Brown's raid had failed, it
fueled the passions of northern abolitionists, who made him a martyr. It was reported
that bells tolled in sympathy to John Brown in Northern cities on the day he was
executed. (Read his Trial Speech at: www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2943t.html)
John Brown
This incident inflamed passions in the South, where Southern leaders saw this as
another reminder how little their region’s interests were represented in Federal law,
which they considered sympathetic to runaways and anti-slavery organizations.
The debate became very bitter. Southern politicians outwardly charged that their
voices were not being heard in Congress. Some Southern states wanted to secede, or
break away from the United States of America and govern themselves. Emotions reached
a fever pitch when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860.
A member of the anti-slavery Republican Party, he vowed to keep the country united and
the new western territories free from slavery. Many Southerners, who were Democrats,
were afraid that Lincoln was not sympathetic to their way of life and would not treat them
fairly. The growing strength of the Republican Party, viewed by many as the party
friendly to abolitionists and northern businessmen, and the election of that party's
candidate was the last straw.
Abraham Lincoln
The Crittenden Compromise was one of several last-ditch efforts to resolve the
secession crisis of 1860-1861 by political negotiation. Authored by Kentucky Senator
John Crittenden (whose two sons would become generals on opposite sides of the Civil
War) it was an attempt to resolve the crisis by addressing the concerns that led the states
of the Lower South to contemplate secession. It failed by one vote.
Southern governors and political leaders called for state referendums to consider articles
of secession. South Carolina was the first state to officially secede from the United States
on December 20, 1860 followed by six other Southern states in January and February
1861. These seven states established a constitution and formed a new nation, which they
named the Confederate States of America. They elected Jefferson Davis, a Democratic
senator and champion of states rights from Mississippi, as the first president. (View the
Constitution at: www.civil-war.net/pages/confederate_constitution.asp)
After South Carolina seceded, Major Robert Anderson transferred his small
garrison from the coastal Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, located on an island in Charleston
Harbor, to secure that important bastion for the Union. In 1861, the newly established
Confederate government demanded Anderson's withdrawal. Despite dwindling supplies,
Anderson’s reply was: “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
communication, demanding the evacuation of this fort, and to say, in reply thereto, that it
is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor and my obligations to my
Government prevent my compliance.”
On April 12, 1861 the Confederate States of America attacked Fort Sumter,
South Carolina. The bombardment lasted 34 hours and the fort was heavily damaged.
Anderson surrendered the fort and its garrison to the Confederate commanders. The Civil
War had begun.
Confederate Attack on Fort Sumter: Harper’s Weekly 1861
President Lincoln responded with a call for 75,000 volunteers from 23 states still
loyal to the Union, to enlist and put down what he argued was a treacherous act of
rebellion (four border slave states remained in the Union and two Union states were
added during the Civil War). Four more states seceded making eleven Confederate states:
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The war that President Lincoln had tried to
avoid began anyway. War talk was on everyone's lips and sharp divisions took place,
even among families and neighbors.
At first, no one believed the war would last very long. Some people said it would
take only a few months and the fellows who volunteered to fight would come home
heroes within a few weeks. No one realized how determined the South was to be
independent, nor did the South realize how determined the North was to end the
rebellion. Armies had to be raised in the North and the South, and every state was asked
to raise regiments of volunteers to be sent for service in the field. Many young men
chose to enlist and volunteered for military service. In the South, men readily went to war
to protect their homes and save the Southern way of life. Most did not believe that the
government in Washington was looking out for the South's interests and they were better
off as a new nation where the states would make up their own laws. Many were happy to
be called rebels because they thought they were fighting against a tyrant like their
forefathers did against the British during the American Revolution. Northern men
volunteered to put down the rebellion of southern states and bind the nation back
together. Most felt that the Southerners had rebelled without good cause and had to be
taught a lesson. Some also felt that slavery was an evil and the war was a way to abolish
it.
Few people realized how terrible war really was and how hard life as a soldier
could be. The armies were raised and marched off to war. It was only after many battles
and many lives were lost that the American people recognized the horror of war. The
soldiers communicated with their families and loved ones and told them of the hardships
they endured and terrible scenes they had witnessed.
The fighting of the American Civil War would last four long years at a cost of
620,000 lives. In the end the Northern states prevailed, our country remained united, the
Federal government was changed forever, and slavery came to an end.
Learn more about the Causes of the Civil War and view a Timeline at:
http://civilwarcauses.org
www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/this-day-in-the-civil-war.html
(Note: Research topics in bold type)
Written by: Joe Ryan – adapted with additional content added
Source: http://americancivilwar.com
Newspaper Activity:
There are civil wars and wars of liberation taking place all over the world. Find news
stories in the print edition and conduct searches in the e-edition of the newspaper to find
stories about these wars. Where is the war taking place? What are the issues that are
being fought over? Do you believe that one party is fighting for freedom and liberty like
our own? Should the country remain together as one country like in our civil war or
would it be better to separate because of the differences involved?
(Sidebar)
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of
South Carolina from the Federal Union (short excerpt)
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th
day of April, A.D. 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the
United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved
rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union;
but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore
at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to
increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place
among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to
the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to
this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain,
undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen
American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted,
on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and of right
ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent
States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right
do.”…
Full text of this and other state declarations at:
www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources
Abraham Lincoln
In 1846 Lincoln was elected as a representative in the 30th U.S. Congress.

Lincoln’s term in Congress was fairly uneventful and upon its completion he returned to
Springfield and his law practice.
Lincoln was thrust back into politics with the 1854 passage of the Kansas-
Nebraska Act. This act allowed the inhabitants of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska
to decide the slavery issue through election. This in effect repealed the Missouri
Compromise of 1820, which had admitted Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state,
and prohibited slavery in the old Louisiana Purchase Territory above 36° 30’.
In 1854, his profession as a lawyer had almost superseded the thought of politics
in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never
been before. Lincoln took to the stump and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1854.
He resigned that seat, however, so that he could run for the U.S. Senate. The Senate had
long been Lincoln’s ultimate political goal. Lincoln, however, withdrew his name from
consideration and supported another Whig candidate in order to prevent the election of a
rival.
Throughout 1855-57, Lincoln continued to practice law, but also traveled
extensively giving political speeches. In 1858, he again ran for the U.S. Senate, this time
against Stephen A. Douglas.
On June 16, 1858 Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination to run against
Douglas and delivered his famous “House Divided Speech” in the Illinois state house.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot
endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I
do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course
of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike
lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.”
With that speech Lincoln began what came to be known as the Lincoln-Douglas
Debates, which included stops at seven communities across the state of Illinois. While
Lincoln lost the Senate race to Douglas, he gained valuable exposure that helped propel
him to a higher office two years later.
He was not convinced of his presidential potential, but admitted, “The taste is in
my mouth a little.”
On May 18, 1860 he was chosen as the Republican nominee for the presidency
and received official notification of his nomination in his Springfield home. Given that
the Democratic Party was split with three candidates, Lincoln’s presidency was all but
assured.
Lincoln became the first Republican elected to the presidency on November 4,
1860. On March 3, 1861 Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth president of
the United States thus beginning what would prove to be the most difficult presidency in
history.
Lincoln opposed secession for these reasons:
1. Physically the states cannot separate.
2. Secession is unlawful.
3 A government that allows secession will disintegrate into anarchy.
4. That Americans are not enemies, but friends.
5. Secession would destroy the world’s only existing democracy, and
prove for all time, to future Americans and to the world, that a
government of the people cannot survive.
Even during this time of crisis, Lincoln held out the hope for peace in his
inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and
heath-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
This last minute appeal failed to stop the approaching Civil War.
Newspaper Activities:
You’ve just been elected President. Use newspaper stories and editorials to understand
the issues that you’ll need to address as President. You may also want to search online for
recent inaugural speeches. Now write your own inaugural speech detailing what the
issues are and what you plan to do about them. Give your speech to your class.
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of America throughout its
existence during the American Civil War (1861- 65).
Jefferson Davis was the 10th and last child of Samuel Emory Davis, a Georgia-
born planter of Welsh ancestry. When he was three, his family settled on a plantation
called Rosemont at Woodville, MS. At seven he was sent for three years to a Dominican
boys' school in Kentucky, and at 13 he entered Transylvania College, Lexington, KY. He
later spent four years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in
1828.
Davis served as a lieutenant in the Wisconsin Territory and afterward in the Black
Hawk War under the future president, then Colonel Zachary Taylor, whose daughter
Sarah Knox he married in 1835. According to a contemporary description, Davis in his
mid-20s was “handsome, witty, sportful, and altogether captivating.” In 1835 Davis
resigned his commission and became a planter near Vicksburg, MS, on land given him by
his rich eldest brother, Joseph. Within three months, his bride died of malarial fever.
Grief-stricken, Davis stayed in virtual seclusion for seven years, creating a plantation out
of a wilderness and reading prodigiously on constitutional law and world literature.
In 1845, Davis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and, in the same
year, married Varina Howell, a Natchez aristocrat who was 18 years his junior. In 1846
he resigned his seat in Congress to serve in the war with Mexico as colonel in command
of the First Mississippi volunteers, and he became a national hero for winning the Battle
of Buena Vista (1847) with tactics that won plaudits even in the European press. After
returning, severely wounded, he entered the Senate and soon became chairman of the
Military Affairs Committee. President Franklin Pierce made him Secretary of War in
1853. Davis enlarged the army, strengthened coastal defenses, and directed three surveys
for railroads to the Pacific.
During the period of mounting intersectional strife, Davis spoke widely in both
North and South, urging harmony between the sections. When South Carolina withdrew
from the Union in December 1860, Davis still opposed secession, though he believed that
the Constitution gave a state the right to withdraw from the original compact of states. He
was among those who believed that the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, would
coerce the South and that the result would be disastrous.
On Jan. 21, 1861, twelve days after Mississippi seceded, Davis made a moving
farewell speech in the Senate and pleaded eloquently for peace. Before he reached his
Brierfield plantation, he was commissioned major general to head Mississippi's armed
forces and prepare its defense. But within two weeks, the Confederate Convention in
Montgomery, AL, chose him as Provisional President of the Confederacy. He was
inaugurated on Feb. 18, 1861, and his first act was to send a peace commission to
Washington, D.C., to prevent an armed conflict. Lincoln refused to see his emissaries and
the next month decided to send armed ships to Charleston, S.C., to resupply the
beleaguered Union garrison at Fort Sumter. Davis reluctantly ordered the bombardment
of the fort (April 12-13), which marked the beginning of the American Civil War. Two
days later Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, a move that brought about the secession
of Virginia and three other states from the Union.
Davis faced a dire crisis. A president without precedent, he had to mold a brand-
new nation in the midst of a war. With only one-fourth the white population of the
Northern states, with a small fraction of the North's manufacturing capacity, and with
inferior railroads, no navy, no powder mills, no shipyard, and an appalling lack of arms
and equipment, the South was in poor condition to withstand invasion. Its only resources
seemed to be cotton and courage. But at Bull Run (Manassas, Va.), on July 21, 1861, the
Confederates routed Union forces. In the meantime, with makeshift materials, Davis
created factories for producing powder, cannon, side arms, and quartermaster stores. In
restored naval yards, gunboats were constructed, and the South's inadequate railroads and
rolling stock were patched up repeatedly. Davis sent agents to Europe to buy arms and
ammunition, and he dispatched representatives to try to secure recognition from England
and France.
Davis made the inspired choice of Robert E. Lee as commander of the Army of
Northern Virginia in June 1862. Lee was his most valuable field commander and his most
loyal personal supporter.
Davis had innumerable troubles during his presidency, including a squabbling
Congress, a dissident vice president, and the constant opposition of extreme states' rights
advocates, who objected vigorously to the conscription law he had enacted over much
opposition in 1862. But despite a gradually worsening military situation, unrelieved
internal political tensions, continuing lack of manpower and armament, and skyrocketing
inflation, he remained resolute in his determination to carry on the war.
Nearing the end of The Civil War, after Lee surrendered to the North without
Davis's approval, Davis and his cabinet moved south, hoping to reach the trans-
Mississippi area and continue the struggle until better terms could be secured from the
North. At dawn on May 10, 1865, Davis was captured near Irwinville, Ga. He was
imprisoned in a damp casemate at Fort Monroe, Va., and was put in leg-irons. Though
outraged Northern public opinion brought about his removal to healthier quarters, Davis
remained a prisoner under guard for two more years. Finally, in May 1867, he was
released on bail and went to Canada to regain his shattered health. Several notable
Northern lawyers offered their free services to defend him in a treason trial, for which
Davis longed. The government, however, never forced the issue, many believe because it
feared that such a trial might establish that the original Constitution gave the states a right
to secede. The case was finally dropped on Dec. 25, 1868.
First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas):
An End to Innocence
To many Americans, the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate troops on the
morning of April 12, 1861, signaled the separation of the United States into two nations.
Soon thereafter, both the North and the South began preparing for war — enlisting
armies, training troops, and raising rhetoric to a fevered pitch. At first, Americans viewed
the conflict romantically, as a great adventure. To many, it was a crusade of sorts that
would be decided quickly, and would return both the North and South to a peaceful way
of life, either as one nation or two. Scarcely three months later, however, events near the
small Virginia community of Manassas Junction shocked the nation into realizing that the
war might prove longer and more costly than anyone could have imagined — not only to
the armies, but also to the nation as a whole.
Courier & Ives Lithograph: Library of Congress
The First Battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas by the South) was fought on
July 21, 1861. Although neither army was adequately prepared at this early stage of the
war, political considerations and popular pressures, including the fact that many of the
Union’s 90-day enlistments were about to expire, caused the Federal government to order
General Irvin McDowell to advance southwest of Washington to Bull Run in a move
against Richmond, VA. The 22,000 Confederates under General P.G.T. Beauregard, after
initial skirmishing, had retired behind Bull Run in defensive positions three days earlier.
To counter a Union flanking movement, the Confederates swiftly moved in 10,000
additional troops from the Shenandoah under General Joseph E. Johnston. On July 21 the
Union army assaulted the Confederates. The battle raged back and forth.
During the battle, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson rushed his Confederate troops
forward to close a gap in the line against a determined Union attack. Upon observing
Jackson, one of his fellow generals reportedly said, “Look, men, there is Jackson standing
like a stone wall!”— a comment that spawned Jackson’s nickname. Jackson was
commissioned a major general in October 1861.
Finally the arrival of Johnston's last brigade forced the Federals into a
disorganized retreat to Washington. The victors were also exhausted and did not pursue
them. Among the 37,000 Northern men, casualties numbered about 3,000; out of 35,000
Southern troops, between 1,700 and 2,000 were killed, wounded or captured.
Among the victims were not only the dead and wounded of the opposing armies,
but members of the civilian population, and, ultimately, the wide-eyed innocence of a
nation that suddenly realized it had gone to war with itself.
The importance of this battle was not so much in the movement of the armies or
the strategic territory gained or lost, but rather in the realization that the struggle was
more an apocalyptic event than the romantic adventure earlier envisioned.
Learn more at:
www.civilwar.org/battlefields/bullrun.html
www.nps.gov/mana
General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-63) was a war hero and one of the
South's most successful generals during The Civil War. After a difficult childhood, he
graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in time to fight in
the Mexican War (1846-48). He then left the military to pursue a teaching career at the
Virginia Military Institute. After his home state of Virginia seceded from the Union in
1861, Jackson joined the Confederate army and quickly forged his reputation for
fearlessness and tenacity during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign later the following
year. He earned his nickname “Stonewall” at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). He
served under General Robert E. Lee (1807-70) for much of the Civil War. Jackson played
a decisive role in many significant battles until his mortal wounding by friendly fire at the
age of 39 during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.
(Learn more about all the generals of the Civil War at:
www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies)
(SIDEBAR)
Major Sullivan Ballou Letter, July 14, 1861
Excerpts from a letter written by Maj. Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah at home
in Rhode Island. Ballou died a week later, at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was 32.
Read the full letter at: www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/ballou_letter.html
Camp Clark, Washington, DC

My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days — perhaps
tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that
may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
Our movement may be one of a few days’ duration and full of pleasure — and it
may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If
it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no
misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my
courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans
upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went
before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing —
perfectly willing — to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this
Government, and to pay that debt.
But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of
yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows… my unbounded love for you,
my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my
love of country…
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables
that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me
like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield…
(SIDEBAR)
The Significance of Names
During the Civil War, the Union and Confederate armies tended to give battles
different names. Thus the battle known to the Union as Bull Run was called Manassas by
the Confederacy. Similarly, the Battle of Antietam was known by the Confederacy as the
Battle of Sharpsburg. In general, the North tended to name battles and armies after bodies
of water (such as the Army of the Potomac or the Army of the Mississippi), while the
Confederacy tended to name battles after towns and armies after land areas (such as the
Army of Northern Virginia or the Army of Kentucky). It seems likely that the
Confederacy used such names to convey a sense that its soldiers were defending
something of pivotal importance: their homeland.
There were also several different names for the war used by each side. Among
them are:
Union Names for the War

The Civil War
The War for the Union
The Southern Rebellion
The War of Abolition
The War Against Slavery
Confederate Names for the War

The War Between the States
The War for States’ Rights
The War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance
The War for Southern Independence
The Yankee Invasion
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 was the culmination of the
Maryland Campaign of 1862, the first invasion of the North by Confederate General
Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. It ranks as the bloodiest one-day battle
in American history.
After Lee’s dramatic victory at the Second Battle of Manassas August 28-30, he
wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis that, “we cannot afford to be idle.” Lee
had several goals: keep the offensive and secure Southern independence through victory
in the North; influence the fall mid-term elections; obtain much needed supplies; move
the war out of Virginia, possibly into Pennsylvania; and liberate Maryland, a Union state,
but a slave-holding border state divided in its sympathies.
Lee sent a “Proclamation to the People of Maryland” saying “…the Southern
people will rejoice to welcome you to your natural position among them,” an invitation to
join the Confederacy. (Read the Proclamation at:
www.civilwarhome.com/leeproclamation.htm)
After splashing across the Potomac River and arriving in Frederick, MD, Lee
boldly divided his army to capture the Union garrison stationed at Harpers Ferry.
Gateway to the Shenandoah Valley, Harpers Ferry was a vital location on the
Confederate lines of supply and communication back to Virginia. The 12,000 Union
soldiers at Harpers Ferry threatened Lee’s link south. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
and about half of the army were sent to capture Harpers Ferry. The rest of the
Confederates moved north and west toward South Mountain and Hagerstown, MD.
Back in Washington D.C., President Abraham Lincoln turned to Major General
George B. McClellan to protect the capital and respond to the invasion.
Lincoln with McClellan at Antietam
McClellan had an advantage. Robert E. Lee had issued Special Order 191 during
the Maryland campaign, before the Battle of Antietam. A copy of the order was lost then
recovered by Union soldiers. The order provided the Union Army with valuable
information concerning the Army of Northern Virginia's movements and campaign plans.
Upon receiving Lee's “Lost Order” McClellan exclaimed “Here is a paper with which, if I
cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.” (Read the “Lost Order 191 at:
www.civilwarhome.com/antietam.htm)
McClellan quickly reorganized the demoralized Army of the Potomac and
advanced towards Lee. The armies first clashed on South Mountain where on September
14, the Confederates tried unsuccessfully to block the Federals at three mountain passes:
Turner’s, Fox’s and Crampton’s Gaps.
Following the Confederate retreat from South Mountain, Lee considered returning
to Virginia. However, with word of Jackson’s capture of Harpers Ferry on September 15,
Lee decided to make a stand at Sharpsburg. The Confederate commander gathered his
forces on the high ground west of Antietam Creek with Gen. James Longstreet’s
command holding the center and the right, while Stonewall Jackson’s men filled in on the
left. However there was risk with the Potomac River behind them and only one crossing
back to Virginia. Lee and his men watched the Union army gather on the east side of the
Antietam.
Battle of Antietam: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c1888, Library of Congress
Thousands of soldiers in blue marched into position throughout September 15th

and 16th as McClellan prepared for his attempt to drive Lee from Maryland. McClellan’s
plan was, in his words, to “attack the enemy’s left,” and when “matters looked
favorably,” attack the Confederate right, and “whenever either of those flank movements
should be successful to advance our center.” As the opposing forces moved into position
during the rainy night of September 16, one Pennsylvanian remembered, “…all realized
that there was ugly business and plenty of it just ahead.”
The twelve-hour battle began at dawn on September 17, 1863. For the next seven
hours there were three major Union attacks on the Confederate left, moving from north to
south. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s command led the first Union assault. Then Gen. Joseph
Mansfield’s soldiers attacked, followed by Gen. Edwin Sumner’s men as McClellan’s
plan broke down into a series of uncoordinated Union advances. Savage, incomparable
combat raged across the Cornfield, East Woods, West Woods and the Sunken Road (also
called The Bloody Lane) as Lee shifted his men to withstand each of the Union thrusts.
After clashing for over eight hours, the Confederates were pushed back but not broken.
More than 15,000 soldiers were killed or wounded.
The Sunken Road, also called The Blood Lane
Neither flank of the Confederate army collapsed far enough for McClellan to
advance his center attack, leaving a sizable Union force that never entered the battle.
Despite over 23,000 casualties of the nearly 100,000 engaged, both armies stubbornly
held their ground as the sun set on the devastated landscape. The next day, September 18,
the opposing armies gathered their wounded and buried their dead. That night Lee’s army
withdrew back across the Potomac to Virginia, ending Lee’s first invasion into the North.
Lee’s retreat to Virginia provided President Lincoln the opportunity he had been awaiting
to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, followed soon after by the final
Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Now the war had a dual purpose of preserving the
Union and ending slavery. (Credit: www.nps.gov)
The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863
A Proclamation.
Emancipation Proclamation Reading With Lincoln’s Cabinet
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the
United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a
State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be
then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United
States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the
freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of
them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation,
designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively,
shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the
people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the
United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified
voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing
testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not
then in rebellion against the United States.”
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of
the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United
States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the
United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do,
on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period
of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the
States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion
against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines,
Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne,
Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans)
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia,
(except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of
Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk,
including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the
present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare
that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and
henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the
freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all
violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases
when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition,
will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions,
stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the
Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and
the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United
States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States
of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.
Newspaper Activity:
The President is Commander-in-Chief of U.S. armed forces. Find newspaper stories
about how the president is using his authority to wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other
parts of the world. What is presently occurring? Are U.S. forces seen as liberators,
invaders, or occupation forces? Is the public behind the war or opposed to it continuing?
How do you feel about the war: is it justified or not?
Union General George B. McClellan
Credit: National Archives
After the disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, McClellan was
placed in command of what was to become the Army of the Potomac. He was charged
with the defense of the capital and destruction of the enemy's forces in northern and
eastern Virginia. In November of 1861, he succeeded General Winfield Scott as general
in chief of the army. His organizational abilities and logistical understanding brought
order out of the chaos of defeat, and he was brilliantly successful in whipping the army
into a fighting unit with high morale, efficient staff, and effective supporting services.
Yet McClellan refused to take the offensive against the enemy that fall, claiming
that the army was not prepared to move. President Abraham Lincoln was disturbed by the
general's inactivity and consequently issued his famous General War Order No. 1 (Jan.
27, 1862), calling for the forward movement of all armies. “Little Mac” was able to
convince the president that a postponement of two months was desirable and also that the
offensive against Richmond should take the route of the peninsula between the York and
James rivers in Virginia.
In the Peninsular Campaign (April 4— July 1, 1862), McClellan achieved far
more victories than defeats. But he was overly cautious and seemed reluctant to pursue
the enemy. Coming to within a few miles of Richmond, he consistently overestimated the
number of troops opposing him, and, when Confederate forces under General Robert E.
Lee began an all-out attempt to destroy McClellan's army in the Seven Days' Battles
(June 25— July 1), McClellan retreated.
Returning to Washington as news of the Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull
Run (August 29— 30) was received, McClellan was asked to take command of the army
for the defense of the capital. Again exercising his organizing capability, he was able to
rejuvenate Union forces. When Lee moved north into Maryland, McClellan's army
stopped the invasion at the Battle of Antietam (September 17). But he again failed to
move rapidly to destroy Lee's army, and, as a result, the exasperated president removed
him from command in November of 1862.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee served as a captain under General Winfield Scott in the
Mexican War, in which he distinguished himself during the battles of Veracruz,
Churubusco, and Chapultepec. He was slightly wounded in that war and earned three
brevets to colonel. General Scott declared him to be “the very best soldier that I ever saw
in the field.”
In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point. Three years later, with
the approval of Jefferson Davis, then U.S. secretary of war, he transferred as a lieutenant
colonel to the newly raised Second Cavalry and served in West Texas.
After John Brown's raid on the U.S. Arsenal and Armory at Harpers Ferry,
Virginia (now West Virginia), in October 1859, Lee was placed in command of a
detachment of marines that captured Brown and his band.
On April 20, 1861, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, he resigned his
commission and three days later was appointed by Governor John Letcher of Virginia to
be commander in chief of the military and naval forces of the state. When Virginia's
troops were transferred to the Confederate service, he became, on May 14, 1861, a
brigadier general, the highest rank then authorized. Soon after he was promoted to full
general.
When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines on
May 31, Lee took command of what became the Army of Northern Virginia. He
successfully repulsed the efforts of Union general George McClellan in the Peninsula
Campaign. Victories were won through Lee's aggressiveness and daring in the face of
McClellan's timidity rather than by any comprehensive generalship on Lee's part, for he
was unable to exercise control over his subordinate commanders, and individual battles
could be considered tactical defeats.
On August 28-30, Lee defeated General John Pope in the second Battle of Bull
Run (Manassas), but when he invaded Maryland he was checked on September 17 by
Union forces under McClellan at Antietam. On December 13, he defeated General
Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, and it was here that he made the remark to General
James Longstreet that many of his admirers have tried to explain away: “It is well war is
so terrible—we should grow too fond of it.” Lee loved fighting a war.
Lee's most brilliantly fought battle was the defeat of Joseph Hooker at
Chancellorsville on May 1-6 1863.
Again invading the North, he was once more checked, this time at Gettysburg,
where his haste in insisting on what became known as Pickett's Charge, a massed infantry
assault across a wide plain, cost the South dearly.
From the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor in May-June
1864 until the siege of Petersburg from July 1864 until April 1865, Lee fought what was
essentially a rearguard action. In the winter of 1865, President Davis appointed Lee
general in chief of the armies of the Confederate states, but by that time the Confederates
had lost the war.
Lee has been charged with being too bloody-minded, of fighting on even when he
must have known that his cause was lost. Viewed realistically, this was certainly true; but
what the mind knows, the heart cannot always accept. Lee was not alone in failing to
admit defeat in a cause to which he was emotionally attached. He fought to the bitter end,
and that end came on April 9, 1865, when he surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at
Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
Battle of Chancellorsville
Chancellorsville is considered Lee's greatest victory, but the Confederate
commander's daring and skill was greatly helped by Union general Joseph Hooker’s
puzzling timidity once the battle started. Using cunning, and dividing their forces
repeatedly, the massively outnumbered Confederates drove the Federal army from the
battlefield. The cost had been frightful. The Confederates suffered 14,000 casualties,
while inflicting 17,000.
The Beginning, April 26 - May 1, 1863
Morale in the Federal Army of the Potomac rose with the appointment of Joseph
Hooker to command. Hooker reorganized the army and formed a cavalry corps. He
wanted to strike at Lee's army while a sizable portion was detached under Longstreet in
the Suffolk area. The Federal commander left a substantial force at Fredericksburg to tie
Lee to the hills where Burnside had been defeated. Another Union force disappeared
westward, crossed the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers, and converged on
Fredericksburg from the west. The Federal cavalry opened the campaign with a raid on
Lee's line of communications with the Confederate capital at Richmond. Convinced that
Lee would have to retreat, Hooker trusted that his troops could defeat the Confederates as
they tried to escape his trap.
Major General Joseph Hooker (Library of Congress)
On April 29, Hooker's cavalry and three army corps crossed Kelly's Ford. His
columns split, with the cavalry pushing to the west while the army corps secured
Getmanna and Ely's fords. The next day, these columns reunited at Chancellorsville. Lee
reacted to the news of the Federals in the Wilderness by sending General Richard H.
Anderson's division to investigate. Finding the Northerners massing in the woods around
Chancellorsville, Anderson commenced the construction of earthworks at Zoan Church.
Confederate reinforcements under Stonewall Jackson marched to help block the Federal
advance, but did not arrive until May 1. The Confederates had no intention of retreating
as Hooker had predicted.
Hooker's troops rested at Chancellorsville after executing what is often considered
to be the most daring march of the war. They had slipped across Lee's front undetected.
The End, May 1-6 1863
As the Federal army converged on Chancellorsville, General Hooker expected
Lee to retreat from his forces, which totaled nearly 115,000. Although heavily
outnumbered with just under 60,000 troops, Lee had no intention of retreating. The
Confederate commander divided his army: one part remained to guard Fredericksburg,
while the other raced west to meet Hooker's advance. When Hooker's column clashed
with the Confederates on May 1, Hooker pulled his troops back to Chancellorsville, a
lone tavern at a crossroads in a dense wood known locally as The Wilderness. Here
Hooker took up a defensive line, hoping Lee's need to carry out an uncoordinated attack
through the dense undergrowth would leave the Confederate forces disorganized and
vulnerable.
Battle of Chancellorsville, Harper’s Weekly May 23, 1863
To retain the initiative, Lee risked dividing his forces still further, retaining two
divisions to focus Hooker's attention, while Stonewall Jackson marched the bulk of the
Confederate army west across the front of the Federal line to a position opposite its
exposed right flank. Jackson executed this daring and dangerous maneuver throughout
the morning and afternoon of May 2.
Such actions seemed so unthinkable to Hooker that he could not take it in. He
paused to think about it, and his pause was fatal.
Striking two hours before dusk, Jackson's men routed the astonished Federals in
their camps. In the gathering darkness, amid the brambles of the Wilderness, the
Confederate line became confused and halted at 9 p.m. to regroup. Riding in front of the
lines to reconnoiter, Stonewall Jackson was accidentally shot and seriously wounded by
his own men. Later that night, his left arm was amputated just below the shoulder.
On May 3, Jackson's successor, General J.E.B. Stuart, initiated the bloodiest day
of the battle when attempting to reunite his troops with Lee's. Despite an obstinate
defense by the Federals, Hooker ordered them to withdraw north of the Chancellor
House. The Confederates were converging on Chancellorsville to finish Hooker when a
message came from Jubal Early that Federal troops had broken through at
Fredericksburg. At Salem Church, Lee threw a cordon around these Federals, forcing
them to retreat across the Rappahannock. Disappointed, Lee returned to Chancellorsville,
only to find that Hooker had also retreated across the river. The battle was over.
Perhaps the most damaging loss to the Confederacy was the death of Lee's “right
arm,” Stonewall Jackson, who died of pneumonia on May 10 while recuperating from his
wounds.
Source: “The Atlas of the Civil War” by James M. McPherson
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg symbolizes the Civil War in our country’s imagination,
and remains one of the defining moments in U.S. history. Of the more than 2,000 land
engagements of the War Between the States, Gettysburg is the greatest and by far the
bloodiest battle of the four-year national conflict. It took place July 1-3, 1863.
After two long years of war and fresh from the Confederate triumph at
Chancellorsville, the Confederacy’s supreme commander, General Robert E. Lee, was
convinced that the South’s best hope for victory lay in bringing the war to the North. He
reasoned that a decisive defeat of federal troops on home soil would alter the momentum
of the war, create panic and strengthen the growing peace movement in the North, and
keep the question of British and French recognition of the Confederacy alive.
In mid-June, Lee boldly ordered his Army of Northern Virginia across the
Potomac in a major invasion of the Union’s heartland. By June 28, his 75,000 soldiers
were spread out in southern Pennsylvania. The Union Army of the Potomac, with 95,000
men and under a new commander, Major General George Meade, was on the march and
the stage was set for the two forces to meet.
Major General George Meade
On July 1, Confederate soldiers encountered Union fire in the small town of

Gettysburg. As the day progressed, more Union and Confederate units converged on the
town and joined the action. By the second day more than 170,000 troops were committed
and the two opposing generals had taken direct charge of their respective battle strategies.
And, as a grim omen of the carnage to come, in the first 8 hours of fighting, more than
10,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured.
On the battle’s second day, the conflict intensified with Confederate forces
seeking to penetrate the Union defensive lines, which had been secured along the high
ground around Gettysburg. Fighting occurred around local landmarks that would become
famous in the titanic three-day battle: Cemetery Hill, Seminary Ridge, Little Round Top,
the Peach Orchard, Wheatfield, Culp’s Hill, and Devils Den. The fighting was so fierce
that it proved to be the second bloodiest day of the Civil War. The First Minnesota
Volunteers lost 224 of the regiment’s 262 officers and men in a successful charge to hold
back the Rebels. At Little Round Top, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain led the 20th Maine
Regiment in a desperate fight that secured the Union’s left flank. Night fell with neither
side having gained much advantage.
Battle of Gettysburg: Lithograph published by Thomas Kelly, Library of Congress
On the final day of Gettysburg, General Lee made his fateful decision to attempt a
bold frontal assault at the center of Meade’s entrenched Union lines. After an early
afternoon bombardment that engaged the massed cannon of both sides in a thundering
duel, the three-day battle climaxed with Pickett’s Charge. Major General George
Pickett’s 5,500 men along with 6,500 others marched in parade-ground precision across
an open field toward enemy lines.
“It was,” a Union colonel was heard to marvel, “the most beautiful thing I ever
saw.”
As the Confederate soldiers emerged from the trees on Seminary Ridge, they
formed perfectly aligned battle ranks in one mile-long line and Pickett gave the order to
charge: “Up men and to your posts! Don’t forget today that you are from old Virginia.”
Frank Aretas Haskell, a Union soldier from Wisconsin watched in awe. “Right on
they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, over ridge and slope, through orchard and
meadow and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible. Man touching man, rank pressing
rank… the red flags wave, their horsemen gallop up and down, the arms of thirteen
thousand men, barrel and bayonet, gleam in the sun, a sloping forest of flashing steel.”
Pickett’s Charge: Painted by Edwin Forbes, Courtesy Library of Congress
Within moments, Union artillery fire began to cut down row after row of the Gray
column and when the thinned ranks were closer to Federal lines, the Rebel yells could be
heard above the thundering guns as they made a last, futile dash. Lieutenant William
Harmon of the 1st Minnesota Volunteers remembered the chaos as one small Rebel
contingent penetrated the Union line and his unit received orders to charge: “If men ever
became devils that was one of the times. We were crazy with the excitement of the fight.
We just rushed in like wild beasts Men swore and cursed and struggled and fought,…
threw stones, clubbed their muskets, kicked, yelled, and hurrahed… When the line had
passed, those who were not wounded threw down their arms, I remember that a
Confederate officer… gathered himself up as our men swept by and coolly remarked,
‘You have done it this time.’”
In less than one hour more than half of the Confederate troops had been killed,
wounded or captured. Pickett’s division alone lost 75 percent of its men. The defending
Union forces suffered only 1,500 casualties. When General Lee ordered a dazed Pickett
to ready his division for a Union offensive, Pickett’s famous reply came back, “Sir, I
have no division.”
Major General George Pickett

The battle was over. The Army of Northern Virginia staggered into retreat
physically and psychologically exhausted. Lee would never again attempt an offensive
against the Union of such proportions. Although General Meade was criticized for not
immediately pursuing the Confederate army, he had carried the day. The war was to rage
on for two more terrible years, but the Confederacy never recovered from the losses at
Gettysburg.
The statistics from the Battle of Gettysburg are staggering. More than 170,000
men and 500 cannon had been positioned over an area encompassing 25 square miles. An
estimated 569 tons of ammunition were expended. The dead horses and mules numbered
5,000. All told, casualties have been figured at 51,000, including the 9,600 soldiers who
gave their lives for the Union or Confederate cause.
(SIDEBAR)
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain & The Twentieth Maine Regiment at Gettysburg
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain
This 400-man regiment of lumberjacks, trappers and seamen led by a college

professor was the leftmost regiment in the Union army and rendered valuable service in
their legendary defense of Little Round Top.
The relentless Confederate assaults shredded Chamberlain's ranks and the
situation looked grim as ammunition began to run out. Soldiers ransacked the cartridge
boxes of the wounded and dead strewn on the hillside, but there was not enough to
continue for much longer and that meager supply soon ran out. Chamberlain had not only
been directing his men, but closely observing the southern attacks as well. Sensing
exhaustion among the Confederates who were also probably running out of ammunition,
he formulated a final plan to defend the 20th Maine's part of the shrinking Union line—
the 20th Maine was going to make a charge!
Charge of the Maine 20th Regiment (July 2, 1863)
“Not a moment was about to be lost! Five minutes more of such a defensive and
the last roll call would sound for us! Desperate as the chances were, there was nothing
for it but to take the offensive. I stepped to the colors. The men turned towards me. One
word was enough — 'BAYONETS!' It caught like fire and swept along the ranks. The men
took it up with a shout… it was vain to order 'Forward!'… The whole line quivered from
the start;… and the bristling archers swooped down upon the serried host — down into
the face of half a thousand! Two hundred men!...
“Ranks were broken; some retired before us somewhat hastily; some threw their
muskets to the ground — even loaded; sunk on their knees, threw up their hands calling
out, 'We surrender. Don't kill us!' As if we wanted to do that! We kill only to resist killing.
And these were manly men, whom we could befriend and by no means kill, if they came
our way in peace and good will.”
— Joshua Chamberlain (He became a general later in the war, was wounded
several times, and won the Medal of Honor.)
Gettysburg Address
On November 2, 1863 Lincoln received an invitation to give a speech at the
dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
He was not to be the main speaker. Edward Everett, a Republican politician, was
invited a month before Lincoln received his invitation, leaving the President with less
than two weeks to prepare. Lincoln prepared his “few appropriate remarks” in the White
House prior to the November 19 ceremony and added some finishing touches in
Gettysburg the night before. Following the two-hour oration from the featured speaker
Everett, Lincoln rose and gave his two-minute “Gettysburg Address.”
Lincoln returned to Washington feeling that his speech was a failure. Everett
wrote to the president, "I should be glad if I flatter myself that I came as near to the
central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." Lincoln responded,
“I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a
failure.” Little did Lincoln know that his short speech would become one of the best-
remembered and most famous speeches in history.
Artists Conception of Gettysburg Address: Sherwood Lithograph Co., c1905, Library of

Congress
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a
new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are
created equal.’”
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those
who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a
larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow, this
ground — The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.”
“It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedicated to the great
task remaining before us — that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here
highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall
not perish from the earth.”
Newspaper Activity:
The Gettysburg Address is considered one of the most significant speeches in American
history. Research the events leading up to Lincoln’s delivery of this address and review
the events of that day. Write a newspaper article describing Lincoln’s arrival, the delivery
of his address, and the atmosphere at the cemetery before and after the speech. Make sure
to provide the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and H (how) in the first couple
paragraphs.
(SIDEBAR)
New York Draft Riots
In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Congress passed a conscription law
making all men between twenty and forty-five years of age liable for military service.
The attempt to enforce the draft in New York City, on July 13, ignited the most
destructive civil disturbance in the city's history. Soldiers that had just fought at the Battle
of Gettysburg were sent to New York to quell the uprising.
New York Draft Riots: Harper’s Weekly 1863
Rioters torched government buildings and, on July 15, fought pitched battles with
troops. Conservative contemporary commentators, concerned about an anti-Union plot,
claimed that 1,155 people were killed. In fact, about 300, more than half of them
policemen and soldiers, were injured, and there were no more than 119 fatalities, most of
them rioters.
A majority of the rioters were Irish, living in poverty and misery. The spark that
ignited their grievances and those of other workingmen and women was the provision in
the law that conscription could be avoided by payment of three hundred dollars, an
enormous sum only the rich could afford. In a context of wartime inflation, black
competition for jobs, and race prejudice among working people, particularly the Irish,
New York's blacks were chosen as scapegoats for long-accumulated grievances. Many
innocent blacks were slain and their homes sacked. A Colored Orphan Asylum was
razed. In this intersection of ethnic diversity, class antagonism, and racism lay the origins
of the draft riots.
Battle and Siege of Vicksburg
From its strategic location on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River,
Vicksburg, MS became a fortress. For 47 days in 1863 Vicksburg and its people were
entangled in a siege that changed the course of America’s history.
In October 1862, Vicksburg became the focus of military operations for Major
General Ulysses S. Grant, who was ordered to clear the Mississippi of Confederate
resistance. Lt. General John C, Pemberton, who with about 50,000 scattered Confederate
troops, was expected to keep the river open.
Siege of Vicksburg: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c1888, Library of Congress
Vicksburg was protected by heavy gun batteries along the riverfront, swamps and
bayous to the north and south and by a ring of forts mounting 172 guns that guarded all
land approaches. Grant failed in a direct attack on Dec. 29, when he sent Sherman toward
Vicksburg by way of Chickasaw Bayou, where he was defeated. Grant next tried a series
of amphibious operations aimed at forcing the city’s surrender. Despite Grant’s large
riverboat flotilla and supporting warships, all failed. By spring, Grant decided to march
his army of 45,000 men down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi, cross the river below
Vicksburg, and attack the city from the south or east.
Grant marched south and then eastward, where he defeated elements of
Pemberton’s forces and captured Jackson, MS, the state capital, on May 14, 1863. He
then turned west towards Vicksburg. On May 16, at Champion Hill, Grant defeated part
of Pemberton’s army in a bloody action. The next day, Federals drove the Confederate
troops back into the Vicksburg fortifications. After several attacks, Grant, reluctant to
expend more of his men’s lives, surrounded the city and began siege operations.
Confederate soldiers and civilians were surrounded by a powerful army, unable to obtain
arms, ammunition, food or medicine, but still refused to surrender.
The besieged city’s people and soldiers endured the hardships of sweltering heat,
mosquitoes, exhaustion, hunger from reduced rations, sickness, and depression. Soldiers
and civilians survived the best that they knew how. Some kept diaries to help relieve the
tension of battle. Others held tight to the Bible and their religious beliefs for comfort.
Artillery batteries hammered Confederate fortifications from land while gunboats
blasted the city from the river. By the end of June, Pemberton knew he would need to
“capitulate upon the best attainable terms.” Grant and Pemberton met on July 3rd. Grant
wanted unconditional surrender. Pemberton did not agree. The two parted without
agreement. Later that evening, Grant sent word to Pemberton that he would parole the
Confederate forces. At 10:00 am, on July 4, 1863, the weary Confederates put down their
weapons and marched out of their fortifications to be paroled. All men had to sign a
statement that they would not take up arms against the U.S. until exchanged for Union
soldiers instead of being sent to a prison. (Learn about Civil War prisons at:
www.civilwarhome.com/prisons.htm)
The surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, together with the defeat of General
Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, July 1-3, were significant
reversals for the Confederacy.
Ulysses S. Grant
Library of Congress
Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio leather tanner. He went to West Point
rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he
fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in
Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer
regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861, he had risen to the rank of
brigadier general of volunteers.
He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862, he took
Fort Henry and then Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for terms,
Grant replied, “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be
accepted.” The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major
general of volunteers.
At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came
out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying, “I can't
spare this man—he fights.”
For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win
Vicksburg, MS, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two.
Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga, TN.
Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman
to drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down
Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant
wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.
As the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, he was a logical candidate
for President. He was elected and became the 18th U.S. President in 1869. He served two
terms.
Battle of Chickamauga
Legend holds that the word “Chickamauga” means “River of Death” in an old
Indian language. It is an appropriate legend considering the brutal and deadly fighting
that took place along the creek of that name during the Battle of Chickamauga, GA.
Chickamauga was the culmination of a campaign that had begun three months
earlier in Murfreesboro, TN. The Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by
General William S. Rosecrans, had occupied Murfreesboro following the Battle of Stones
River, while the Confederate Army of Tennessee, led by General Braxton Bragg, had dug
in 20 miles away at Tullahoma.
Gen. Braxton Bragg & Gen. William Rosecrans: Library of Congress
Throughout the spring of 1863, the two armies had warily eyed each other until,
in late June, Rosecrans began to move. Over the next three months, he and Bragg carried
out a campaign of maneuvering in which the Union general and his larger army (60,000
men) tried to corner and destroy Bragg and his smaller force (43,000 men). Bragg,
however, skillfully avoided the destruction of his army as the two forces moved southeast
to Chattanooga.
In early September, Rosecrans moved south around Chattanooga and over
Lookout Mountain into Georgia. Moving to counter this development, Bragg left
Chattanooga and pulled back to Lafayette, GA. From there — knowing that strong
reinforcements in the form of General James Longstreet's Corps from the Army of
Northern Virginia were on the way — Bragg took the offensive.
On September 18th, he moved forward to a position along Chickamauga Creek
where he formed the Confederate army along a line that stretched for miles from Reed's
Bridge to near Lee and Gordon's Mill.
The Battle of Chickamauga began on the morning of September 19, 1864, when
Union infantry collided with a force of Confederate cavalry near Jay's Mill on the
northern edge of the battlefield. From there the battle spread south for four miles as both
Rosecrans and Bragg fed more and more men into the fight.
Battle of Chickamauga: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c1890, Library of Congress
Neither of the commanders had wanted to fight along Chickamauga Creek, as the
area was one of heavy woods and small fields with limited visibility. Command and
control issues plagued both armies.
The day's fighting was fierce and bloody, with the men often fighting hand-to-
hand in thick underbrush and woods. Slowly, though the Confederates forced the Federal
line of battle back to the LaFayette Road about a mile west of where the fighting had
begun. There the first day of the battle sputtered to a close, with the moans and screams
of thousands of wounded penetrating the night. In some areas the woods burned,
tragically killing wounded soldiers who were unable to walk or crawl away.
Both armies reorganized their lines during the night and Bragg, growing more
confident in his ability to defeat Rosecrans, planned to take the offensive at first light the
next morning. General Leonidas Polk was placed in command of the right wing of the
Southern army, while the newly arrived General James Longstreet was given command
of the left. Polk was to begin the attack and the rest of the army would then follow with a
series of hammer-like blows down the length of the line.
The Confederate attack was slow in getting off, but as the morning progressed the
Battle of Chickamauga once again flared to life.
General James Longstreet

Realizing that the battle was running behind schedule, however, General
Longstreet held back his main assault. Not facing immediate attack on his right,
Rosecrans began to shift units to reinforce Thomas. This mistakenly led to the creation of
a gap in the Union line of battle directly at the point where Longstreet would lead his
main attack. It was a critical mistake.
Finally unleashed, the Georgia general's soldiers stormed forward and General
John Bell Hood's command struck the gap and pierced the Union line.
Longstreet quickly exploited the situation, pouring in additional troops and
moving his forces to begin rolling up the Union line. The Federal troops right and left of
the point where Hood broke the lines began to crumble and retreat in confusion. General
Rosecrans himself was swept from the field by a mass of running soldiers, as were many
of his subordinate commanders.
The only part of the Union army to hold was the force under the immediate
command of General Thomas, who beat back assault after assault at Snodgrass Hill. He
would soon be dubbed the “Rock of Chickamauga.”
General George H. Thomas
Thomas held out until near sundown when he received orders from Rosecrans to
withdraw and fell back to Missionary Ridge. The next day the Federals retreated into the
fortifications of Chattanooga.
The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the most stunning Confederate victories of
the Civil War. It was also one of the most costly. More than 34,000 men in the two
armies were reported killed, wounded or missing.
Sherman’s March to the Sea
From November 15 until December 21, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman
led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The
purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into
abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman’s soldiers did not wantonly destroy towns in
their path, but rather focused on things of potential military value. They stole food and
livestock and burned the houses and barns of people who tried to fight back (These
groups of foraging Union soldiers were nicknamed “bummers.”) They also wanted to
teach Georgians a lesson: “it isn’t so sweet to secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home,
“as [they] thought it would be.”
General William T. Sherman: Library of Congress
The Yankees were “not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people,”
Sherman explained; as a result, they needed to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel
the hard hand of war.”
The Fall of Atlanta
General Sherman’s troops captured Atlanta on September 2, 1864. This was an
important triumph, because Atlanta was a railroad hub and the industrial center of the
Confederacy: It housed munitions factories, foundries and warehouses that kept the
Confederate army supplied with food, weapons and other goods. It stood between the
Union Army and two of its most prized targets: the Gulf of Mexico to the west and
Charleston to the East. It was also a symbol of Confederate pride and strength, and its fall
made even the most loyal Southerners doubt that they could win the war. (“Since
Atlanta,” South Carolinian Mary Boykin Chestnut wrote in her diary, “I have felt as
if…we are going to be wiped off the earth.”)
Currier & Ives lithograph
The March to the Sea

After losing Atlanta, the Confederate army headed west into Tennessee and
Alabama, attacking Union supply lines as they went. Sherman, reluctant to set off on a
wild goose chase across the South, split his troops into two groups. Major General
George Thomas took some 60,000 men to meet the Confederates in Nashville, while
Sherman took the remaining 62,000 on an offensive march through Georgia to Savannah,
“smashing things” (he wrote) “to the sea.”
"Make Georgia Howl"
Sherman believed that the Confederacy derived its strength not from its fighting
forces but from the material and moral support of sympathetic Southern whites. Factories,
farms and railroads provided Confederate troops with the things they needed, he
reasoned; and if he could destroy those things, the Confederate war effort would collapse.
Meanwhile, his troops could undermine Southern morale by making life so unpleasant for
Georgia’s civilians that they would demand an end to the war.
To that end, Sherman’s troops marched south toward Savannah in two wings,
about 30 miles apart. On November 22, 3,500 Confederate cavalry started a skirmish with
the Union soldiers at Griswoldville, but that ended so badly — 650 Confederate soldiers
were killed or wounded, compared to 62 Yankee casualties — that Southern troops
initiated no more battles. Instead, they fled South ahead of Sherman’s troops, wreaking
their own havoc as they went: They wrecked bridges, chopped down trees and burned
barns filled with provisions before the Union army could reach them.
Sherman’s troops arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864, about three weeks
after they left Atlanta. The city was undefended when they got there. (The 10,000
Confederates who were supposed to be guarding it had already fled.) Sherman presented
the city of Savannah and its 25,000 bales of cotton to President Lincoln as a Christmas
gift.
Early in 1865, Sherman and his men left Savannah and marched northward
through the Carolinas. In April, most of the Confederate forces surrendered and the war
was over.
Sherman’s Grand March, Harper’s Weekly 1864
Total War
Sherman’s “total war” in Georgia was brutal and destructive, but the key purpose
of the campaign was achieved: it hurt Southern morale, made it impossible for the
Confederates to fight at full capacity and likely hastened the end of the war. “This Union
and its Government must be sustained, at any and every cost,” explained one of
Sherman’s subordinates. “To sustain it, we must war upon and destroy the organized
rebel forces — must cut off their supplies, destroy their communications…and produce
among the people of Georgia a thorough conviction of the personal misery which attends
war, and the utter helplessness and inability of their ‘rulers’ to protect them…If that
terror and grief and even want shall help to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are
fighting us…it is mercy in the end.”
Sherman After the War
For his military prowess, Sherman is justly renowned; he succeeded Grant as
commander in chief in 1869 and remained in that post until 1883. Two memorable
remarks of his also have entered history. Having written to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta in
1874 that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it,” he sharpened this definition in a
commencement address at the Michigan Military Academy in 1879 to the oft-quoted
phrase, “War is hell.”
Five years later, when his name was frequently mentioned as a prospective
Republican nominee for president, Sherman sent the Republican National Convention of
1884 the most famous of all rejections: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve
if elected.” Even today, “a Sherman” is well-understood slang for a firm refusal.
Newspaper Activity:
Choose a controversial current topic in the news where the government and/or citizens
are struggling with making a choice as to what to do. Groups of students should research
the topic both in the newspaper and online, outlining the positions of the various parties
involved. Students will then chose opposing positions and then debate the merits of their
position against each other.
The Fall of Richmond and the Appomattox Campaign
March 29 - April 9, 1865
The final campaign for Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, began
when the Federal Army of the Potomac crossed the James River in June 1864. Under
General U.S. Grant's command, Federal troops applied constant pressure to the
Confederate lines around Richmond and Petersburg. By autumn, three of the four
railroads into Petersburg had been cut. Once the remaining South Side Railroad was
severed, the Army of Northern Virginia would have no other choice but to evacuate
Petersburg and, therefore, the capital.
Fort Sedgwick, Petersburg, VA
However, Lee's concern stretched beyond the Confederate capital. By February of

1865, two Federal armies, one under Major General William T. Sherman and the other
under Major General John M. Schofield, were moving through the Carolinas. If not
stopped, these armies could cut off Virginia from the rest of the south. If these forces
joined Grant at Petersburg, Lee's men would face four armies instead of two.
Realizing the danger, Lee wrote the Confederate Secretary of War on February 8,
1865: “You must not be surprised if calamity befalls us.” Lee knew he would have to
abandon the Petersburg lines; the only question was when. Muddy roads and the poor
condition of the horses forced the Confederates to remain in the trenches throughout
March.
Grant seized the initiative. On March 29, Major General Philip H. Sheridan's
cavalry and the V Corps began moving southwest toward the Confederate right flank and
the South Side Railroad. On the 1st of April, 21,000 Federal troops smashed the 11,000-
man Confederate force under Major General George Pickett at an important road junction
known locally as Five Forks. Grant followed up this victory with an all out offensive
against Confederate lines on April 2nd.
With his supply lines cut, Lee had no choice but to order Richmond and
Petersburg evacuated on the night of April 2-3. Moving by previously determined routes,
Confederate columns left the trenches that they had occupied for nearly ten months. Their
immediate objective was Amelia Court House, where forces from Richmond and
Petersburg would concentrate and receive rations sent from Richmond.
Courier & Ives Lithograph: Library of Congress
The march from Richmond and Petersburg started well enough. Many
Confederates, including Lee, seemed exhilarated to be in the field once again, but after
the first day's march, signs of weariness and hunger began to appear. When Lee reached
Amelia Court House on April 4, he found, to his dismay, the rations for his men had not
arrived. Although speed was crucial, the hungry men of the Army of Northern Virginia
needed supplies. Lee halted the march and sent wagons into the countryside to gather
provisions. Local farmers had little to give and the wagons returned practically empty.
The delay at Amelia meant a lost day of marching which allowed the pursuing
Federals time to catch up. Amelia proved to be the turning point of the campaign.
Leaving Amelia Court House on April 5, the columns of Lee's army had traveled
only a few miles before they found Union cavalry and infantry squarely across their path.
Rather than attack the entrenched federal position, Lee changed his plan. He
would march his army west, around the Federals, and attempted to supply his troops at
Farmville along the route of the South Side Railroad. Lee hoped that he could put the
rain-swollen Appomattox River between his army and the Federals
Union cavalry attacked the Confederate wagon train at Paineville, destroying a
large number of wagons. Tired from lack of sleep (Lee had ordered night marches to
regain the day he lost) and hungry, the men began falling out of the column, or broke
ranks searching for food. Mules and horses, also starving, collapsed under their loads.
As the retreating columns became more ragged, gaps developed in the line of
march. At Sailor's Creek (a few miles east of Farmville), Union cavalry exploited such a
gap to block elements of Lee’s army until a much larger force of Union infantry arrived
to crush them.
Watching the debacle from a nearby hill, Lee exclaimed, “My God! Has the army
been dissolved?” Nearly 8,000 men and 8 generals were lost in one stroke — killed,
captured, or wounded. The remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia arrived in
Farmville on April 7 where rations awaited them, but the Union forces followed so
quickly that the Confederate cavalry had to make a stand in the streets of the town to
allow their fellow troops to escape. Most Confederates never received the much-needed
rations.
Robert E. Lee portrait by H.A. Ogden: Library of Congress
Blocked again by Grant's army, Lee once more swung west hoping that he could
be supplied farther down the rail line. The Union II and VI Corps followed. Unknown to
Lee, the Federal cavalry and the V, XXIV, and XXV Corps were moving along shorter
roads south of the Appomattox River to cut him off. While in Farmville on April 7, Grant
sent a letter to Lee asking for the surrender of his army. Lee received the letter, read it,
and then handed it to one of his most trusted corps commanders, Lt. General James
Longstreet. Longstreet tersely replied, “Not yet.” As Lee continued his march westward
he knew the desperate situation his army faced. If he could reach Appomattox Station
before the Federal troops he could receive rations sent from Lynchburg and then make his
way to Danville, VA. If not, he would have no choice but to surrender.
On the afternoon of April 8, the Confederate columns halted a mile northeast of
Appomattox Court House. That night, artillery fire could be heard from Appomattox
Station, and the red glow to the west from Union campfires foretold that the end was
near. Federal cavalry and the Army of the James, marching on shorter roads, had blocked
the way south and west. Lee consulted with his generals and determined that one more
attempt should be made to reach the railroad and escape.
At dawn on April 9, General John B. Gordon's Corps attacked the Union cavalry
blocking the stage road, but after an initial success, Gordon sent word to Lee around 8:30
a.m., “...my command has been fought to a frazzle, and unless Longstreet can unite in the
movement, or prevent these forces from coming upon my rear, I cannot go forward.”
Receiving the message, Lee replied, “There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see
General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”
Source: National Park Service
www.nps.gov/apco/appomattox-campaign.htm
Surrender at Wilmer McLean House
Lee arrived at the McLean house about one o'clock on April 9, 1865, and took a
seat in the parlor. A half hour later, the sound of horses on the stage road signaled the
approach of General Grant. Entering the house, Grant greeted Lee in the center of the
room. The generals presented a contrasting appearance; Lee in a new uniform and Grant
in his mud-spattered field uniform. The two conversed in a very cordial manner, for
approximately 25 minutes.
Wilmer McLean House, Appomattox Court House, VA
The subject had not yet gotten around to surrender until finally, Lee, feeling the
anguish of defeat, brought Grant's attention to it. Grant, who later confessed to being
embarrassed at having to ask for the surrender from Lee, said simply that the terms would
be just as he had outlined them in a previous letter. These terms would parole officers and
enlisted men but required that all Confederate military equipment be relinquished.
The discussion between the generals then drifted into the prospects for peace, but
Lee, once again taking the lead, asked Grant to put his terms in writing. When Grant
finished, he handed the terms to his former adversary, and Lee — first donning spectacles
used for reading — quietly looked them over. When he finished reading, the bespectacled
Lee looked up at Grant and remarked, “This will have a very happy effect on my army.”
Lee asked if the terms allowed his men to keep their horses, for in the Confederate
army, men owned their mounts. Lee explained that his men would need these animals to
farm once they returned to civilian life. Grant responded that he would not change the
terms as written, but would order his officers to allow any Confederate claiming a horse
or a mule to keep it. General Lee agreed that this concession would go a long way toward
promoting healing.
Grant's generosity extended further. When Lee mentioned that his men had been
without rations for several days, the Union commander arranged for rations to be sent to
the 25,000 hungry Confederates.
After formal copies of the surrender terms and Lee's acceptance had been drafted
and exchanged, the meeting ended.
Read the Articles of Agreement Related to the Surrender of the Army of Northern
Virginia at: www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=39
(SIDEBAR)
Lee’s Farewell Address to the Army of Northern Virginia April 9, 1865
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude,
the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and
resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have
remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of
them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could
compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I
determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared
them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and
remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from a
consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will
extend to you His blessings and protection.
With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country,
and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid
you all an affectionate farewell.
Camp Life
“Soldiering is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror,” a Civil War soldier wrote to
his wife. Soldiers spent weeks, and sometimes months, between battles, even during
active military campaigns. Their lives consisted of tedious daily routines. They
participated in a range of activities to relieve the boredom.
Life in camp was very different for officers and enlisted men. Officers in the field
lived better than enlisted men and were allowed more comforts and freedoms. They slept
one or two officers to a tent. Since they provided their own personal gear, items varied
greatly and reflected individual taste.
Each junior officer was allowed one trunk of personal belongings that was carried
in a baggage wagon. Higher-ranking officers were allowed more baggage. Unlike
infantrymen, who slept and sat on whatever nature provided, officers sometimes had the
luxury of furniture.
Enlisted men, unlike their officers, carried all their belongings on their back. On
long marches, men were unwilling to carry more than the absolute essentials. Even so,
soldiers ended up carrying about 30 to 40 pounds.
Each soldier was issued half of a tent, designed to join with another soldier's half
to make a full size tent. The odd man lost out.
Enlisted Man’s Tent: Gettysburg National Military Park
When suitable wooden poles were not available for tent supports, soldiers would
use their rifles with the bayonet stuck in the ground.
From reveille to taps, soldiers endured the daily round of roll calls, meals, drills,
inspections, and fatigue duties. Throughout this tedious and seemingly endless routine, it
was often the personal necessities sent or brought from home, or purchased from sutlers
(licensed provisioners to the army) that made camp life tolerable. Many items were used
for personal hygiene, grooming, and keeping uniforms in repair.
Confederate and Union soldiers added clothing and equipment to their military
issue. To make their life more tolerable, they brought various personal items to camp or
were given them by family and friends.
Like soldiers of all wars, games of chance and the exchange of money were
popular in both armies. A successful gambler could send money home to help in the hard
times shared by many. The most popular game was poker. Although many officers
forbade gambling in their regiments, the practice couldn't be stopped. It wasn't unusual
for some soldiers to lose a month's pay on unlucky wagers. Soldiers could pass several
hours away playing games with friends. Soldiers played board games including checkers
or draughts, chess, dominoes, cards, and other games of chance.
Officers of 114th Penn. Infantry, Petersburg, VA Playing Cards in 1864: Library of

Congress
Drinking intoxicating beverages and smoking tobacco was common in both

armies. In moderation, these habits instilled a sense of well-being and normalcy. Along
with a lot of social drinking, there was some hard drinking, particularly among officers.
Drunkenness was not tolerated in either Federal or Confederate camps.
Whittling is an age-old pastime. Skilled hands and idle hours often resulted in
surprising displays of what has come to be known as “soldier art.”
Music played an important role in the Civil War army. Individually, and in
groups, playing musical instruments and singing were common in the soldier's life in
camp and on the march.
It was not surprising that soldiers living with the possibility of death or injury in
battle sought spiritual comfort and assurance. In camp, religious services were held
whenever possible. Worship at camp was much like worship at home. Each soldier could
spend his free time studying the scriptures or in private prayer.
Chaplain Conducting Mass for the 69th New York State Militia at Fort Corcoran,
Washington, DC 1861: Mathew B. Brady, National Archives
The American Civil War was the first to be truly photographically recorded. The
war’s most well known photographer, Mathew Brady, inspired many other photographers
to record the war’s most difficult and harrowing moments. Despite technical limitations,
intrepid photographers captured many aspects of the conflict, including officers and their
men, in camp, on the battlefield, and in the studio.
Photographs quickly became an easy way to preserve a moment during
tumultuous times. Soldiers took advantage of any opportunity to have their “likeness”
made for the folks back home.
For more on Camp Life and images of these topics visit the National Park Service
sites at:
www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/gettex
www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/cwarmy.htm
The Navies of the Civil War
As the Civil War raged on the land, the two national navies — Union and
Confederate — created another war on the water. The naval war was one of sudden,
spectacular lightning battles as well as continual and fatal vigilance on the coasts, rivers,
and seas.
President Abraham Lincoln set the Union’s first naval goal when he declared a
blockade of the Southern coasts called the Anaconda Plan. The plan was to cut off
Southern trade with the outside world and prevent sale of the Confederacy's major crop,
cotton. The task was daunting; the Southern coast measured over 2,500 miles and the
Union navy numbered less than 40 usable ships. The Union also needed a “brown water
navy” of gunboats to support army campaigns along the Mississippi River.
USS Cairo, a 512-ton “City” class ironclad river gunboat, was part of the U.S. Army’s
Western Gunboat Flotilla.
The Southern states had few resources compared to the North: a handful of
shipyards, a small merchant marine, and no navy at all. Yet the Confederates needed a
navy to break the Union blockade and to defend the port cities. Confederate Secretary of
the Navy, Stephen Mallory, scrambled to find ships and even took on an offensive task:
attacking Union merchant shipping on the high seas.
The first task for Lincoln’s naval secretary, Gideon Welles, was straightforward,
but huge: acquire enough vessels to make every Southern inlet, port, and bay dangerous
for trade. The Northern navy immediately began building dozens of new warships and
purchased hundreds of merchant ships to convert into blockaders by adding a few
cannons. The result was a motley assortment that ranged from old sailing ships to New
York harbor ferryboats. Critics called it Welles’s “soapbox navy.”
The Union’s blockading squadrons needed not only ships, but also bases on the
Southern coast from which to operate. In 1861 the Union began a series of attacks on port
cities like Hatteras, NC, and Port Royal, SC, along the southeastern seaboard. Poorly
defended, they fell to Union gunnery and were seized to use as bases. Though never
airtight, by late 1862 the blockade had become a major impediment to Rebel trade.
With a smaller fleet and fewer shipyards than the North, the Confederates counted
on making the ships they had as formidable as possible. They decided to challenge the
Union navy with the latest technology: ironclads. Though iron-armored ships had
appeared in Europe in the 1850s, Union warships were still built of wood. The first
Confederate ironclad began its career as a Union cruiser, the Merrimack, captured by the
Southerners when they seized Norfolk navy yard in Virginia. The Confederates ripped off
nearly everything above the waterline of the ship—which they renamed CSS Virginia—
and replaced it with a casemate of heavy timbers covered by four inches of iron plating.
Though underpowered and crude, as yet there was no match for her in Lincoln’s wooden
navy.
The Union quickly met this challenge with the ingenuity of inventor John
Ericsson. Most of his ironclad—the Monitor—was underwater. All that appeared above
board was a flat main deck and a circular housing carrying two guns. This “tin can on a
raft” was the world’s first rotating gun turret, and it was protected by eight inches of iron.
Monitor met Virginia in March 1862 at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Their three-hour
engagement—often fought at point-blank range—was the world's first battle between
ironclad vessels. The engagement itself was a draw but naval warfare was changed
forever. Suddenly the wooden naval vessel—and most of the Union fleet—was obsolete.
Shipyards North and South began to turn out ironclads as quickly as possible.
Battle of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia: By Bill Henry
Early 1862 also marked the beginning of the Union campaigns to split the
Confederacy apart along the Mississippi River. A fleet of gunboats was built to support
Ulysses S. Grant’s army as it moved from Illinois down the Mississippi River into the
heart of the South. Most of these vessels were little more than flat-bottomed, steam-
driven barges with heavy timbered sides; the most powerful, like the Cairo, were also
iron plated. Grant’s army and the brown water navy captured Rebel strongholds such as
Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. At the same time, a squadron in the Gulf of
Mexico, under David G. Farragut, boldly took on the defenses of New Orleans, LA, with
the intention of moving past the city and northward up the Mississippi River. In April
1862, Farragut’s fleet fought past two formidable forts and forced New Orleans to
surrender. In July, 1863, after a series of hard-fought campaigns against both Rebel forts
and fleets, these two Union forces—one moving south and one moving north—would
meet at Vicksburg, MS and sever everything west of the River from the rest of the
Confederacy.
In April 1863, the Union navy turned with force on the Southern port cities when
it took on the defenses of Charleston, SC. The Confederates were well prepared—having
had two years to position guns, floating obstructions and mines (torpedoes)—and the
attack failed. Charleston did not fall until the war was nearly ended. After the debacle at
Charleston, two other major port cities were targeted: Mobile, Alabama—the last major
port in the Gulf—and Wilmington, North Carolina—the last and most important Atlantic
gateway in the Confederacy. Two large forts defended Mobile but these fell under
Farragut’s assault in August 1864. In January 1865, after a failed first attempt, the largest
Union fleet ever assembled attacked Fort Fisher—the key to Wilmington’s defense—and
the stronghold fell. Its loss deprived Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army in
Virginia of a major supply source and contributed directly to the end of the war.
Civil War Technology
The Civil War was a time of great social and political upheaval. It was also a time
of great technological change. Inventors and military men devised new types of weapons
and technologies like the railroad and telegraph. Innovations like these did not just
change the way people fought wars: they also changed the way people lived.
Minié Balls & Repeating Rifles
Before the Civil War, infantry soldiers typically carried muskets that held just one
bullet at a time. The “effective range” of muskets was only about 80 yards. Therefore,
armies typically fought battles at a relatively close range.
Rifles could shoot a bullet up to 7,000 yards — and were more accurate— but
were difficult to load and took too much time between shots.
In 1848, a French army officer named Claude Minié invented a cone-shaped lead
bullet with a diameter smaller than that of the rifle barrel. Soldiers could load these
“Minié balls” quickly. Rifles with Minié bullets were more accurate and more dead than
muskets, which forced infantries to change the way they fought: Even troops who were
far from the line of fire had to protect themselves by building elaborate trenches and
other fortifications.
Rifles with Minié bullets were easy and quick to load, but soldiers still had to
pause and reload after each shot. This was inefficient and dangerous. By 1863 there was
another option: so-called repeating rifles, or weapons that could fire more than one bullet
before needing a reload. The most famous of these guns, the Spencer carbine, could fire
seven shots in 30 seconds.
Spencer Carbine 7-Shot Rifle
These weapons were available in limited number to Northern troops but hardly at
all to Southern ones: Southern factories had neither the equipment nor the know-how to
produce them. “I think the Johnnys [Confederate soldiers] are getting rattled; they are
afraid of our repeating rifles,” one Union soldier wrote. “They say we are not fair, that we
have guns that we load up on Sunday and shoot all the rest of the week.”
Balloons and Submarines
Other newfangled weapons took to the air — for example, Union observers
floated above Confederate encampments and battle lines in hydrogen-filled passenger
balloons, sending reconnaissance information back to their commanders via telegraph.
“Iron-clad” warships prowled up and down the coast, maintaining a Union blockade of
Confederate ports.
For their part, Confederate sailors tried to sink these ironclads with submarines.
The first of these, the Confederate HL Hunley, was a metal tube 40 feet long and 4 feet
across that held an 8-man crew. In 1864, the Hunley sank the Union blockade ship
Housatonic off the coast of Charleston but was itself wrecked in the process.
Confederate H.L. Hunley Submarine: Drawing by Conrad Chapman, Confederate
Museum, Richmond, VA
The Railroad
More important than these advanced weapons were larger-scale technological
innovations such as the broader-than-ever use of the railroad. Once again, the Union had
the advantage. When the war began, there were 22,000 miles of railroad track in the
North and just 9,000 in the South, and the North had almost all of the nation’s track and
locomotive factories. Furthermore, Northern tracks tended to be “standard gauge,” which
meant that any train car could ride on any track. Southern tracks, by contrast, were not
standardized, so people and goods frequently had to switch cars as they traveled--an
expensive and inefficient system.
Both sides used railroads to move troops and supplies from one place to another.
They also used thousands of soldiers to keep tracks and trains safe from attack.
The Telegraph
Abraham Lincoln was the first president who was able to communicate in real
time with his officers on the battlefield. The War Department's telegraph office enabled
him to monitor battlefield reports, lead real-time strategy meetings and deliver orders to
his men. Here, as well, the Confederate army was at a disadvantage: They lacked the
technological and industrial ability to conduct such a large-scale communication
campaign.
In 1861, the Union Army established the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, led by a
young railroad man named Andrew Carnegie. The next year alone, the U.S.M.T.C.
trained 1,200 operators, strung 4,000 miles of telegraph wire and sent more than a million
messages to and from the battlefield.
Telegraph Engineer on Pole: National Archives
Civil War Photography

The Civil War was the first war to be extensively documented through the lens of
a camera. Taking and developing photos using the so-called “wet-plate” process was a
meticulous, multi-step procedure that required more than one “camera operator” and lots
of chemicals and equipment. As a result, the images of the Civil War are not action
snapshots: They are portraits and landscapes. Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady
were two well-known Union Civil War photographers, as was George Cook in the South.
Technological innovation had an enormous impact on the way people fought the
Civil War and on the way they remember it. Many of these inventions have played
important roles in military and civilian life ever since.
African-American Soldiers in the Civil War
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves within any States…in rebellion against the
United States,” it declared, “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” (More than
one million slaves in loyal border states and in Union-occupied parts of Louisiana and
Virginia were not affected by this proclamation.) It also declared “such persons [that is,
African-American men] of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of
the United States.” For the first time, black soldiers could fight for the U.S. Army.
A White Man’s War

Black soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary War, and unofficially in the War
of 1812, but state militias had excluded African Americans since 1792. The U.S. Army
had never accepted black soldiers. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, was more
progressive: African-Americans had been serving as shipboard firemen, stewards, coal
heavers and even boat pilots since 1861.
After the Civil War broke out, abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass argued
that the enlistment of black soldiers would help the North win the war and would be a
huge step in the fight for equal rights: “Once let the black man get upon his person the
brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and
bullets in his pocket,” Douglass said, “and there is no power on earth which can deny that
he has earned the right to citizenship.” However, this was just what President Lincoln
feared. He worried that arming African Americans, particularly former or escaped slaves,
would push the loyal border states to secede, making it almost impossible for the Union
to win the war.
The Second Confiscation and Militia Act (1862)
However, after two grueling years of war, President Lincoln began to reconsider
his position on black soldiers. The war did not appear to be near an end, and the Union
Army badly needed soldiers. White volunteers were dwindling in number, and African-
Americans were eager to fight.
The Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, was the first step
toward the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. It did not explicitly
invite blacks to join the fight, but it did authorize the president “to employ as many
persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of
this rebellion…in such manner as he may judge best for the public welfare.”
The War Department issued General Order 143 on May 22, 1863, creating the
United States Colored Troops. (Read Order 143 at:
www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=35)
U.S. Colored Troops
Slaves' Role in Their Own Liberation

Slaves played a critical role in their own liberation. Southern slaves deserted
plantations and fled to Union lines. Slaves also staged a few small insurrections during
the war as the slave system itself began to unravel. Planters were stunned to see trusted
house slaves and field drivers lead field hands in deserting to the Union army. Eventually,
90,000 former slaves fought as soldiers in the Union army.
Confederate Threats
In general, the Union army was reluctant to use African-American troops in
combat. This was partly due to racism: many Union officers believed that black soldiers
were not as skilled or as brave as white soldiers. By this logic, they thought that African
Americans were better suited for jobs as carpenters, cooks, guards, scouts and teamsters.
Black soldiers and their officers were also in grave danger if they were captured in battle.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis called the Emancipation Proclamation “the most
execrable measure in the history of guilty man” and promised that black prisoners of war
would be enslaved or executed on the spot. (Their white commanders would likewise be
punished—even executed—for what the Confederates called “inciting servile
insurrection.”) Threats of Union reprisal against Confederate prisoners forced Southern
officials to treat black soldiers who had been free before the war somewhat better than
they treated black soldiers who were former slaves—but in neither case was the treatment
particularly good. Union officials tried to keep their troops out of harm’s way as much as
possible by keeping most black soldiers away from the front lines.
The Fight for Equal Pay
Even as they fought to end slavery in the Confederacy, African-American Union
soldiers fought against another injustice as well. The U.S. Army paid black soldiers $10 a
week (minus a clothing allowance, in some cases), while white soldiers got $3 more (plus
a clothing allowance, in some cases). Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay for
black and white soldiers in 1864.
By the time the war ended in 1865, about 180,000 black men had served as
soldiers in the U.S. Army. This was about 10 percent of the total Union fighting force.
Most—about 90,000—were former (or “contraband”) slaves from the Confederate states.
About half of the rest came from the loyal border states, while the remainder were free
blacks from the North. Forty thousand black soldiers died in the war: 10,000 in battle and
30,000 from illness or infection.
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry
Early in February 1863, the abolitionist Governor John A. Andrew of
Massachusetts issued a call for black soldiers. Massachusetts did not have many African-
American residents, but by the time 54th Infantry regiment headed off to training camp
two weeks later more than 1,000 men had volunteered. Many came from other states,
such as New York, Indiana and Ohio; some even came from Canada. One-quarter of the
volunteers came from slave states and the Caribbean. Fathers and sons (some as young as
16) enlisted together. The most famous enlistees were Charles and Lewis Douglass, two
sons of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
To lead the 54th Massachusetts, Governor Andrew chose a young white officer
named Robert Gould Shaw. Shaw’s parents were wealthy and prominent abolitionist
activists. Shaw himself had dropped out of Harvard to join the Union Army and had been
injured in Battle at Antietam. He was just 25 years old.
Robert Gould Shaw: Library of Congress
So Full of Hope and Glory

At nine o’clock on the morning on May 28, 1863, the 54th’s 1,007 black soldiers
and 37 white officers gathered in the Boston Common and prepared to head to the
battlefields of the South. Cheering well-wishers, including the anti-slavery advocates
William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, lined Boston’s streets.
“I know not,” Governor Andrew said at the close of the parade, “where in all human
history to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so
proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you.” That
evening, the 54th Infantry boarded a transport ship bound for the South.
Tragedy at Fort Wagner
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts prepared to storm Fort Wagner, which
guarded the Port of Charleston. At dusk, Shaw gathered 600 of his men on a narrow strip
of sand just outside Wagner’s fortified walls and readied them for action. “I want you to
prove yourselves,” he said. “The eyes of thousands will look on what you do tonight.”
As night fell, Shaw led his men over the walls of the fort. Unfortunately, the
Union generals had miscalculated: 1,700 Confederate soldiers waited inside the fort,
ready for battle. The men of the 54th were outgunned and outnumbered. Two hundred
and eighty one of the 600 charging soldiers were killed, wounded or captured. Shaw
himself was shot in the chest on his way over the wall and died instantly.
Storming Fort Wagner: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c1890, Library of Congress
The 54th lost the battle at Fort Wagner, but they did a great deal of damage there.
Confederate troops abandoned the fort soon afterward. For the next two years, the
regiment participated in a series of successful siege operations in South Carolina, Georgia
and Florida. The 54th Massachusetts returned to Boston in September 1865.
Women in the Civil War
In many ways, the coming of the Civil War challenged the ideology of Victorian
domesticity that had defined the lives of men and women in the antebellum era (1812 to
start of Civil War). In the North and in the South, the war forced women into public life
in ways they could scarcely have imagined a generation before.
Harper’s Weekly, September 6, 1862
In the years before the Civil War, the lives of American women were shaped by a
set of ideals that historians call “the Cult of True Womanhood.” As men’s work moved
away from the home and into shops, offices and factories, the household became a new
kind of place: a private, feminized domestic sphere, a “haven in a heartless world.” “True
women” devoted their lives to creating a clean, comfortable, nurturing home for their
husbands and children.
During the Civil War, however, American women turned their attention to the
world outside the home. Thousands of women in the North and South signed up to work
as nurses. They also organize ladies’ aid societies to supply clothing, food, and funds
raised to support the troops. It was the first time in American history that women played a
significant role in a war effort. By the end of the war, these experiences had expanded
many Americans’ definitions of “true womanhood.”
Learn more about Women in the Civil War at:
www.history.com/topics/women-in-the-civil-war
Lincoln Assassination
President Lincoln had guided the country through the Civil War. By April of 1865,
he began to concentrate on reconstruction of the Union and life with his family following
the presidency. On April 14th he and his wife, Mary, took a carriage ride and talked of
the future. He seemed more cheerful than he had been in a long time.
Later that evening Lincoln and Mary attended a play at Ford’s Theatre. At 10:30
p.m., southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential theater box, put a
derringer pistol to the back of Lincoln’s head, and fired.
Courier & Ives Lithograph, Library of Congress
Lincoln was immediately taken to the Petersen House, a rooming house across the
street from the theater. He stayed alive for nearly nine hours after being shot, although he
was unconscious the entire time. On April 15, 1865, at 7:22 a.m., Abraham Lincoln died.
He was the first American president to be assassinated. A shocked nation was
thrown into mourning.
Newspaper Activities:
One of the most useful ways to reflect on the significance of any leader is to write an
obituary. Read one or two obituaries in the newspaper as examples. Then write an
obituary that captures Lincoln’s life and his importance. Share them as a class.
Reconstruction 1865-1877
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 gave some 4 million slaves their
freedom. Yet the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period
introduced a new set of significant challenges. Under the administration of President
Andrew Johnson, in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive
“black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African
Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known
as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the
Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly
enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history,
winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than
a decade, however, reactionary forces— including the Ku Klux Klan— would reverse the
changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white
supremacy in the South.
Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

13th Amendment
Lincoln and the Republican Party recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation,
as a war measure, might have no constitutional validity once the war was over. The legal
framework of slavery would still exist in the former Confederate states as well as in the
Union slave states that had been exempted from the proclamation. So the party
committed itself to a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. The overwhelmingly
Republican Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment by more than the necessary two-
thirds majority on April 8, 1864. But not until January 31, 1865, did enough Democrats
in the House abstain or vote for the amendment to pass it by a bare two-thirds. By
December 18, 1865, the requisite three-quarters of the states had ratified the Thirteenth
Amendment, which ensured that forever after:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or
any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born
Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves. It was written
in a manner so as to prevent state governments from ever denying citizenship to blacks
born in the United States.
Section 1 states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they
reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Learn more at: www.14thamendment.us
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men (not
women) the right to vote by declaring that “The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Although ratified on February 3, 1870,
the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century.
Preservation Revolution
The Civil War Trust’s story began in 1987, when twenty or so stalwart souls met
to discuss what could be done to protect the rapidly disappearing battlefields around
them. They called themselves the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites
(APCWS) and they were spurred to action by destruction of Northern Virginia
battlefields like Chantilly, where today only five acres remain. Watching the constantly
expanding suburbs of Washington, D.C., they knew that it was only a matter of time
before other battlefields were similarly swallowed up. The only way to save these sites
for posterity, they decided, was to buy the physical landscapes themselves.
As word of efforts to protect these battlefields spread among the Civil War
community, both membership and accomplishment lists began to grow steadily
In 1991, another national organization, the Civil War Trust was founded to further
efforts to protect these vanishing historic landscapes. Eight years later, in an attempt to
increase the efficiency with which preservation opportunities could be pursued, the two
groups merged to become a single, more effective, organization (first called the Civil
War Preservation Trust, and recently shortened back to the Civil War Trust).
With a single organization combining the influence and resources of its two
successful predecessors, a battlefield preservation revolution began. Since the merger,
the Civil War Trust has nearly tripled the base of preservationists from which Civil War
Trust draws support. The organization can now claim to have saved more than 30,000
acres of hallowed ground in 20 states. By saving battlefield land at four times the rate of
the National Park Service, this organization, which began so humbly two decades ago,
has become the number one entity saving battlefield land in America today.
Now in its third decade in the business of Civil War land preservation, Civil War
Trust recognizes the importance of working closely with partner groups, federal and state
agencies, local governments, community-minded businesses and willing sellers who see
the intrinsic benefits of historic preservation. The Civil War Trust will continue working
to educate Americans about the plight of the fields where our national identity was
shaped. And the Civil War Trust will continue to be on the front lines of preservation,
standing guard over history.
Teachers, students, and communities can learn how to save hallowed ground in
their state or city at: www.civilwar.org.
CIVIL WAR WEB LINKS
HISTORY.com: www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war
Civil War Trust: www.civilwar.org
CWT Lesson Plans & Curricula: www.civilwar.org/education/
Census of 1860 (slaves numbers): www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
Civil War Discovery Trail: http://civilwardiscoverytrail.org
Civil War Timeline: www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/this-day-in-the-civil-war.html
Civil War Web Links – Univ. of Tennessee: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html
Generals of the Civil War: www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History: www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/modules.php &
www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/module_pop_intro.php?module_id=277
Glossary of Civil War Terms: www.civilwar.org/education/history/glossary/glossary.html
Great American History – Civil War Outline: www.greatamericanhistory.net/outlines.htm
Hallowed Ground: www.hallowedground.org
Student Service Learning Project: www.hallowedground.org/content/view/537/52/
Harper's Weekly Civil War Newspapers: www.sonofthesouth.net
History Standards: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/standards/era5-5-12.html
Letters and Diaries: www.civilwarhome.com/links6.htm#Letters
List of Major Battles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Civil_War_battles
Medicine: http://civilwarmed.org & http://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon
National Park Service: www.nps.gov/civilwar
Photography and Images of the Civil War: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml -
www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/photos - www.civilwarphotography.org -
Primary Sources: www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources
Prisons: www.civilwarhome.com/prisons.htm
Slavery: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit
Soldier Life in the Camps: www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/cwarmy.htm -
The Civil War - Film by Ken Burns: www.pbs.org/civilwar
Warfare: www.civilwar.org/education/history/warfare-and-logistics
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
Women & Children: www.history.com/topics/women-in-the-civil-war -
http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/bingham/guides/cwdocs.html - www.civilwar.org/education/history/on-the-
homefront/culture/southernchild.html
Assembled_Issue_3 v5 (Do Not Delete) 2/22/2012 9:07 AM
Conceptions of Law in the

Civil Rights Movement
Christopher W. Schmidt*
I. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 641

II. Conceptions of the Law During the Civil Rights Movement ............................ 644
A. The Defense of Jim Crow—Protecting Folkways Against
Stateways ..................................................................................................... 644
B. The Racial Liberal Argument for the Capacity of Law ....................... 649
C. The Sit-Ins: An Alternative to the Law?................................................ 652
III. Law as Social Change: King and Bickel’s Conceptions of Law ........................ 658
A. Alexander M. Bickel .................................................................................. 659
B. Martin Luther King Jr............................................................................... 662
C. When Law Is Not Law ............................................................................. 665
IV. Defining Law’s Boundaries in Histories of the Civil Rights Movement ........ 667
V. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 675
I. INTRODUCTION
“The legal redress, the civil-rights redress, are far too slow for the demands
of our time,” proclaimed James Lawson at a meeting of student leaders of the
lunch counter sit-in movement in the spring of 1960. “The sit-in is a break with
the accepted tradition of change, of legislation and the courts.”1 Lawson
contrasted the student-led movement to the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was “a fund-raising agency, a
legal agency” that had “by and large neglected the major resource that we have—a
disciplined, free people who would be able to work unanimously to implement the
*Assistant Professor, Chicago-Kent College of Law; Faculty Fellow, American Bar Foundation. For
helpful comments, suggestions, and conversations, I would like to thank Joanna Grisinger, Sarah
Harding, Jill Weinberg, and my fellow participants in the “‘Law As . . .’: Theory and Method in Legal
History” conference held at the UC Irvine School of Law. Special thanks go to conference organizers
Catherine Fisk and Christopher Tomlins for putting together such a terrific event and for offering the
invitation that led to this article.
1. David Halberstam, A Good City Gone Ugly, REPORTER (Nashville), Mar. 31, 1960, reprinted in
REPORTING CIVIL RIGHTS: AMERICAN JOURNALISM, 1941–1963, at 441 (2003).
641
642 UC IRVINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 1:3
ideals of justice and freedom.”2

At the heart of this attempt to describe what was distinctive about the sit-in
protests is a particular conception of law. From the perspective of Lawson and his
fellow student activists, law can be readily defined. It is located in specific
institutions (courts in particular). It is identified with a profession (lawyers). It
even has a preferred speed of change (gradual). And for the purposes of the
student protesters, law’s most important characteristic is that at some point it runs
out. The assumption behind Lawson’s critique of the NAACP and the “civil-rights
redress” is that there is a realm of law—and there is something else. It is this
assumption that there is something else outside of law, a world of “not-law,” if
you will, that is the focus of this essay. For the sake of convenience, if not
precision, I will refer to this realm of not-law as “society.”3 From the students’
point of view, then, the activities at the center of their civil rights project—college
dorm room bull sessions, lunch counter protests, community mobilization,
picketing, marching, negotiations with restaurant owners and city leaders—were
largely separable from the work of the law. Law and its perceived absence thus
became a vital source of collective identity for the students. Their understanding
of law’s boundaries, of the law-society division, helped to create a sense of
community and common purpose. Making a claim about the concept of law can
be a way to critique or embrace a particular organization or tactic, to rally public
support for a particular cause, or to urge a specified course of action. The
students’ conception of law, through their collective act of definition and
boundary construction, played a central role in this crucial stage of the civil rights
movement.
The students’ claim to be standing outside the realm of the law offers a
resonant example of a theme of the civil rights movement that I believe deserves
more attention from sociolegal scholars. The sit-in movement was only one of
many instances in which participants in the civil rights movement made a
conscious effort to establish a boundary between the work of the law and the
work of social interactions outside the sphere of formal legal institutions and legal
actors. Diverse and sometimes competing claims about the relationship between
law and social action pervaded the black freedom struggle.
2. A Passive Insister: Ezell Blair Jr., N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 26, 1960, at 10; Claude Sitton, Negro
Criticizes N.A.A.C.P. Tactics, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 17, 1960, at 32.
3. My use of this term is not meant to make a conclusion about the presence or absence of
law, in some form, in this sphere of “society.” By “society” I simply mean to give a label for a sphere
of life that, in the minds of the historical actors whose ideas I examine, is distinct from their
conception of “law.” By using this term I am trying to recreate the distinction between law and “not-
law” as others have understood it, and to adopt a label that allows for comparisons between diverse
efforts to define the boundaries of the law. At different times in this Article “society” will refer to
customs, traditions, and attitudes; to protest actions and political contestation; even to certain kinds
of laws. The only common denominator among this disparate collection of activities is that at some
point in time, for some group of actors, they were distinguished from a sphere of activity understood
as “law.”
2011] CONCEPTIONS OF LAW 643
The persistent value of the law-society distinction as a historical artifact is all

the more striking when contrasted with the recent efforts of sociolegal scholars to
question its utility as an analytical framework. Law, these scholars insist, can never
be fully separated from the processes of social change. The separation of the
world into “law” and “society” fails to reflect lived experience. It is a post hoc
construction of scholars looking for neat categories in which to cabin phenomena
that always resists such categorization efforts. This critique of the law-society
divide has served a valuable role in expanding our understanding of the way law
functions. Yet, as I seek to demonstrate in this Article, the subjects of our
historical inquiry can often be quite insistent in defending the barricades of the law
as something discrete and distinct from society. Various individuals and groups
with quite distinct and often opposed agendas regularly expended considerable
thought and energy in creating conceptual boundaries around the law. They put
considerable faith in distinguishing law (as they understood it) from the rest of the
world. I argue that even as legal scholars have rightly questioned the usefulness of
a dichotomous law-versus-society framework for understanding the dynamics of
law in all its rich complexity, it remains an essential object of study for legal
historians.
This Article unfolds in three main Parts. In Part II, I begin my examination
of the way law was conceptualized during the civil rights movement with a
consideration of three efforts to sharpen the boundaries of the law. First, I look at
the vision of law put forth by defenders of Jim Crow as they mobilized against
federal civil rights intervention—a vision based on the assumption that law should
reflect norms and customs that had evolved outside the law. I then consider the
ways in which civil rights advocates in the lead-up to Brown v. Board of Education
challenged the segregationist conception of the law by pressing the case for the
capacity of law to undermine discriminatory behavior and attitudes. Third, I
examine the efforts of the sit-in protesters to define themselves in opposition to
lawyers and legal reform tactics. As these episodes demonstrate, the various
demands of the civil rights movement created incentives to clarify the boundary
around the law. In each of these instances, the essential characteristic of law was
its perceived separateness from something else.
In Part III, I then examine two individuals who articulated an alternative
approach to categorizing law, an approach that sought to break down the
separateness of law and society. The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and
Yale law professor Alexander Bickel both argued for a definition of law that was
more capacious than one based on the formal pronouncements of recognized
governmental institutions. Each in his own way sought to reconceptualize law so
as to recognize processes of cultural change, social disorder, and political agitation
as integral to the legal process. Their effort to break down the law-society division,
like the efforts of those who sought to emphasize this same division, came in
response to the pressures and demands of the civil rights movement.
Finally, in Part IV, I consider the possible implications of this account of the
law-society divide in the civil rights movement for legal historians. One of the
challenges in moving scholarship of the civil rights movement beyond a
dichotomous law-and-society framework, I suggest, will be to remain attentive to
the conceptions of law drawn upon by the historical actors themselves, including
the value they often placed upon the differentiation of law from society.
II. CONCEPTIONS OF THE LAW DURING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
A. The Defense of Jim Crow—Protecting Folkways Against Stateways

Defenders of Jim Crow embraced their own conception of law and the law-
society boundary. It was based on the idea that established cultural norms and
traditions are the basis of a strong and stable society and that laws should
reinforce and support these cultural foundations. To ask law to do more than to
reflect and reinforce society—to use law to try to change entrenched norms—
would be at best a waste of effort, at worst a recipe for social upheaval.
“Stateways” are powerless to change “folkways,” went the popular dictum, most
commonly associated with Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, the leading
proponent of social Darwinism in the United States in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.4 Translated for the purposes of segregationists,
“folkways” were the customs and practices of white supremacy, “stateways” were
civil rights laws. For generations of southern proponents of Jim Crow, Sumner’s
dictum was, according to Gunnar Myrdal, “a general formula of mystical
significance.”5
The classic articulation of this principle can be found in Plessy v. Ferguson,
where the Court expressed skepticism toward civil rights laws that conflicted with
society’s natural racial prejudices. “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial
instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences,” the Court
explained in upholding a Louisiana railroad segregation statute, “and the attempt
to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.”6
The belief “that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal
rights cannot be secured to the negro except by enforced commingling of the two
races” was deeply misguided.
The object of the [Fourteenth Amendment] was undoubtedly to enforce
the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of
things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
4. See WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER, FOLKWAYS: A STUDY OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL

IMPORTANCE OF USAGES, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, MORES, AND MORALS (1906).
5. GUNNAR MYRDAL, AN AMERICAN DILEMMA 1049 (1944); see also Christopher W.
Schmidt, “Freedom Comes Only From the Law”: The Debate over Law’s Capacity and the Making of Brown v.
Board of Education, 2008 UTAH L. REV. 1493, 1498–1510 (2008).
6. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 551 (1896).
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a

commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. . . . If
one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United
States cannot put them upon the same plane.7
Social change, if it were to arrive, would do so through pressures other than
legal compulsion. “If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it
must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s
merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals.”8 Plessy is pervaded with a general
skepticism toward the power of the law to effect change in the “social” sphere.9
Over fifty years later, these same arguments—with much the same
conception of law as separate from and subordinate to society—featured
prominently in the segregationist argument in Brown v. Board of Education. Arguing
before the Supreme Court, the Virginia Attorney General presented a bleak vision
of what a desegregation ruling would create, drawing on language that echoed
Sumnerian folkways principles. A legal mandate to desegregate schools, he
warned, would be “contrary to the customs, the traditions and mores of what we
might claim to be a great people, established through generations, who themselves
are fiercely and irrevocably dedicated to the preservation of the white and colored
races.”10
On the Supreme Court, Justice Jackson was particularly receptive to these
7. Id. at 544, 551.

8. Id. at 551.
9. See, e.g., id. at 543 (referring to segregation law as creating “merely a legal distinction”
(emphasis added)). The conception of law at the heart of the Plessy decision, based on a strict division
between the social sphere (assumed to be a realm of free choice, unencumbered by legal constraints)
and the civil and political spheres (where law had a role), was well established by the time of Plessy. See,
e.g., People ex rel. King v. Gallagher, 93 N.Y. 438, 448 (1883) (Social equality “can neither be
accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with the general sentiment of the community
upon whom they are designed to operate. . . . In the nature of things there must be many social
distinctions and privileges remaining unregulated by law and left within the control of the individual
citizens, as being beyond the reach of the legislative functions of government to organize or control.
The attempt to enforce social intimacy and intercourse between the races, by legal enactments, would
probably tend only to embitter the prejudices, if any such there are, which exist between them, and
produce an evil instead of a good result.”); CONG. GLOBE, 39th Cong., 2d Sess. 252 (1867) (remarks
by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Ohio) (“This [equal protection] doctrine does not mean that a Negro
shall sit on the same seat or eat at the same table with a white man. That is a matter of taste which
every man must decide for himself. The law has nothing to do with it.”).
10. ARGUMENT: THE ORAL ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT IN BROWN V.
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, 1952–1955, at 98 (Leon Friedman ed., 1969). See also id. at 61
(remarks of John W. Davis, attorney for South Carolina) (“Is it not of all the activities of government
the one which most nearly approaches the hearts and minds of people, the question of education of
their young? Is it not the height of wisdom that the manner in which that shall be conducted should
be left to those most immediately affected by it, and that the wishes of the parents, both white and
colored, should be ascertained before their children are forced into what may be an unwelcome
contact?”); cf. Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Little Rock, 6 DISSENT 45, 46–56 (1959) (distinguishing
between political, social, and private realms, classifying child education as social, and arguing that the
legal mandate of nondiscrimination should only apply to the political realm).
arguments for the incapacity of law to reshape established social practices. In his
unpublished concurring opinion in Brown, Jackson wrote that courts “cannot
eradicate” the “fears, prides and prejudices” that support segregation.11 Jackson
continued:
This Court, in common with courts everywhere, has recognized the
force of long custom and has been reluctant to use judicial power to try
to recast social usages established among the people. . . . Today’s decision
is to uproot a custom deeply embedded not only in state statutes but in
the habit and usage of people in their local communities.12
From this he concluded, “In embarking upon a widespread reform of social
customs and habits of countless communities, we must face the limitations on the
nature and effectiveness of the judicial process.”13
Following the Brown decision, segregationists in the South renewed their
critique of “stateways” that conflicted with established Jim Crow customs. In
1956, 101 members of the United States Congress, all representing the South,
signed what became known as the Southern Manifesto. The document defended
the Court’s “separate-but-equal” interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in
Plessy. “[R]estated time and again, [it] became a part of the life of the people of
many of the States and confirmed their habits, traditions, and way of life.”14 Law’s
proper role, according to this reasoning, was to respect commitments that had
taken shape outside the realm of the law.
President Eisenhower, who personally opposed Brown, echoed this view in
less confrontational terms. He said privately that he believed the decision had set
back racial progress by decades,15 and in public he conspicuously refused to say
that the decision was right, limiting himself to bland statements about respecting
the Court and carrying out his duty to enforce the law.16 In the aftermath of Brown,
he repeatedly dismissed the idea that law could affect prejudice. “[I]t is difficult
through law and through force to change a man’s heart,” he explained at a 1956
11. Robert H. Jackson, Memorandum by Mr. Justice Jackson 2 (Mar. 15, 1954) (unpublished
manuscript) (on file with the Library of Congress).
12. Id. at 10.
13. Id. at 12.
14. 102 CONG. REC. 4460 (1956).
15. EMMET JOHN HUGHES, THE ORDEAL OF POWER: A POLITICAL MEMOIR OF THE
EISENHOWER YEARS 201 (1963) (“I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress
in the South at least fifteen years. . . . It’s all very well to talk about school integration—if you remember
you may also be talking about social disintegration. Feelings are deep on this, especially where children
are involved. . . . We can’t demand perfection in these moral things. All we can do is keep working
toward a goal and keep it high. And the fellow who tries to tell me that you can do these things by
force is just plain nuts.”).
16. On Eisenhower’s position on Brown and civil rights generally, see, e.g., J.W. PELTASON,
FIFTY-EIGHT LONELY MEN: SOUTHERN FEDERAL JUDGES AND SCHOOL DESEGREGATION 46–55
(1961); Michael Mayer, With Much Deliberation and Some Speed: Eisenhower and the Brown Decision, 52 J. S.
HIST. 43, 44–45 (1986).
news conference.17 Eisenhower admonished that

we must all . . . help to bring about a change in spirit so that extremists
on both sides do not defeat what we know is a reasonable, logical
conclusion to this whole affair, which is recognition of equality of men. . . .
This is a question of leadership and training and teaching people, and it
takes some time, unfortunately.18
The President used this skepticism to justify his tepid public support for
federal involvement in desegregating schools. Writing in 1961, two civil rights
scholars lamented:
In the six years immediately following Brown v. Topeka, President
Eisenhower, by his statements and by the things he left unsaid, reflected
the views and sentiments of large sections of the American people who
were inclined to question the efficacy of law as an instrument of social
control and advancement in the field of race relations.19
The inconsistencies and ironies that pervaded the segregationist commitment
to a conception of law as independent of and subordinate to social norms are
readily apparent. Most obviously, segregationist claims tended to ignore the
inconvenient fact that a crucial component of the construction of the “tradition”
of Jim Crow was, in fact, law. Despite all the talk about the limits of law, Plessy
upheld a Louisiana statute—a statute that defenders and critics alike assumed
would have an impact on behavior. As C. Vann Woodward famously argued in
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, laws were essential to the development of
segregation.20 Before the imposition of Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth
century, Woodward wrote, “the Negro could and did do many things in the South
that in the latter part of the period, under different conditions, he was prevented
from doing.”21 “[S]egregation statutes, or ‘Jim Crow’ laws . . . constituted the most
elaborate and formal expression of sovereign white opinion upon the subject.”22
They gave an “illusion of permanency.”23 While recognizing “evidence that
segregation and discrimination became generally practiced before they became
law,” Woodward emphasized “that segregation and ostracism were not nearly so
17. Text of President Eisenhower’s News Conference on Foreign and Domestic Affairs, N.Y. TIMES, Sept.
6, 1956, at 10.
18. Id. Despite his call for leadership, Eisenhower saw little role for the nation’s chief
executive in leading on school desegregation. “I think it makes no difference whether or not I endorse
[Brown]. What I say is the—Constitution is as the Supreme Court interprets it; and I must conform to
that and do my very best to see that it is carried out in this country.” Id.
19. MILTON R. KONVITZ & THEODORE LESKES, A CENTURY OF CIVIL RIGHTS 255 (1961).
In the words of Roy Wilkins: “If [President Eisenhower] had fought World War II the way he fought
for civil rights, we would all be speaking German today.” ROY WILKINS WITH TOM MATHEWS,
STANDING FAST: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROY WILKINS 222 (1982).
20. C. VANN WOODWARD, THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW (1955).
21. Id. at 91.
22. Id. at 7.
23. Id. at 8.
harsh and rigid in the early years as they became later”—that is, after the
legalization of Jim Crow.24 Even if scholars have challenged some of Woodward’s
stronger claims regarding the fluidity of race relations and the significance of Jim
Crow laws in the late nineteenth century,25 his basic point, that laws played a
central role in the solidification of what segregationists would come to defend as
custom, is irrefutable. Segregationist portrayals of law as subordinate to society
sought to efface the role that law had played in the maintenance of Jim Crow.
A further irony in all this segregationist talk about the limited efficacy of
“stateways” was that a centerpiece of massive resistance, the southern effort to
resist implementation of Brown, was, in fact, law: namely, state laws designed to
circumvent federally imposed desegregation.26 (As one segregationists aptly—if
incorrectly—put it, “As long as we can legislate, we can segregate.”27) Defenders
of Jim Crow used state laws to shift decision-making power over school
assignments so as to minimize desegregation. Sometimes this meant using state-
level authority to reign in local school boards that might be moved to comply with
Brown, as was the case in Virginia, which created a state-wide pupil placement
board. Sometimes it meant granting increased powers of discretion to local
decision-makers. A particularly effective example of this segregationist legal
maneuver was the pupil placement law, under which states granted local school
boards power to make school assignments. The end result: token integration of
selected schools, with the vast majority of students still attending single-race
schools.28 Another segregationist tactic was to protect against federal interference
by increasing state-level control over localities, in an attempt to diffuse overtly
defiant actions that risked attracting federal intervention.29
Segregationists thus shifted back and forth between proclaiming law as
subordinate to practices and attitudes and turning to law to protect these same
practices and attitudes when threatened by the civil rights movement. This
vacillation highlights a fundamental inconsistency in the segregationist definition
24. Id. at 23. See also Howard N. Rabinowitz, More Than the Woodward Thesis: Assessing the Strange
Career of Jim Crow, 75 J. AM. HIST. 842, 844 (1988) (“[D]espite [Woodward’s] partial disclaimers, the
existence of law enforcing segregation has always been the key variable in evaluating the nature of
race relations.”).
25. See, e.g., Rabinowitz, supra note 24.
26. See NUMAN V. BARTLEY, THE RISE OF MASSIVE RESISTANCE: RACE AND POLITICS IN
THE SOUTH DURING THE 1950’S (1969); Patrick E. McCauley, Be It Enacted, in WITH ALL
DELIBERATE SPEED: SEGREGATION-DESEGREGATION IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS (Don Shoemaker
ed., 1957); Tom Flake, 475 Legislative Actions Pertain to Race, Schools, 10 SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS,
May 1964, at 1b.
27. PELTASON, supra note 16, at 93.
28. See, e.g., JACK GREENBERG, RACE RELATIONS AND AMERICAN LAW 61–78 (1959);
PELTASON, supra note 16, at 78–92; Daniel J. Meador, The Constitution and the Assignment of Pupils to
Public Schools, 45 VA. L. REV. 517 (1959).
29. See ANDERS WALKER, THE GHOST OF JIM CROW: HOW SOUTHERN MODERATES USED
BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION TO STALL CIVIL RIGHTS (2009).
of law. In claiming that, as a prescriptive matter, law should never stray too far
from local commitments and practices, segregationists wavered between two polar
opposite assumptions about law’s efficacy. On the one hand, they often
characterized law as powerless in the face of entrenched social norms: stateways
cannot change folkways. Custom is primary, law epiphenomenal. Effective laws are
those that reflect and reinforce established customs. But at other times defenders
of segregation traded their Sumnerian conservatism for something more in line
with the conservatism of Edmund Burke. In this view, law had revolutionary
potential: law was distinctly powerful and dangerous and potentially disruptive of
social norms. It is not that stateways cannot change folkways; it is that stateways
should not attempt to change folkways. Law’s capacity here is significant: law is a
potentially dangerous weapon; law must therefore be respected and used
circumspectly. Thus, for the segregationists, the construction of the law-society
boundary was an effort to both demote law’s capacity for social change and
elevate this same capacity so as to warn against reckless attempts to use the law for
social transformations.
B. The Racial Liberal Argument for the Capacity of Law

In their challenge to Jim Crow, civil rights proponents commonly embraced
a conception of law they framed as a direct response to segregationist skepticism
toward legal reform.30 This approach largely accepted the premise of the
segregationists’ conception of law as functioning on a distinct plane from society
(consisting of attitudes, customs, practices—Sumner’s “folkways”), but they
sought to challenge the segregationists’ society-over-law hierarchy. Law could
shape social behavior, argued liberal scholars and activists. After all, as Woodward
explained in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, the edifice of Jim Crow was largely the
product of law.31 In the 1940s and 1950s, racial liberals increasingly attributed the
major sins of racial oppression less to underlying attitudes and more to legal
constraints on behavior. “[T]he chief device of social segregation in the South is
the law,” concluded one scholar in 1947,32 a point that Thurgood Marshall would
echo in his arguments before the Supreme Court in Brown, where he emphasized
that the fundamental problem of racial segregation was “the state-imposed part of
it.”33 This focus on the particular potency of law has clear implications for the
racial liberal reform agenda. If law could indeed dictate social behavior in a
relatively direct and predicable manner, then the removal of segregation laws and
the passage of antidiscrimination laws could lead the way toward integration.
The creation of a compelling, persuasive ideology of civil rights reform had
30. I examine the racial liberal vision of law in the period leading up to and immediately
following Brown at more length in Schmidt, supra note 5.
31. See supra notes 20–25 and accompanying text.
32. Ira de A. Reid, Southern Ways, SURVEY GRAPHIC, Jan. 1947, at 39.
33. ARGUMENT, supra note 10, at 49.
two key components, each aimed at challenging assumptions of the folkways

school of thought that segregationists embraced. First was the destabilization of
the belief that racial hierarchies were natural and inflexible and that racial prejudice
was a necessary component of the human condition.34 Second was pressing the
argument that legal commands can be particularly effective in transforming social
relations. In the early postwar period, these two projects were necessarily
connected. The more malleable the attitudes and customs of Jim Crow, the more
readily external pressures (such as a federal antidiscrimination law) could reform
community attitudes and customs. And the more powerful the law, the deeper
into Jim Crow race relations it could penetrate. Thus, the case for the capacity of
the law made these two interlocking arguments: iniquitous racial customs and
prejudices were not nearly as entrenched as was generally assumed (and certainly
not the solid rock of Sumnerian folkways), and wide-scale legal reform was the
most effective way to lead the nation away from its damaging tradition of racial
inequality. Attitudes, liberals argued, followed actions. So even if the law was
limited in changing hearts and minds, it could regulate discriminatory behavior.
And eventually a lessening of discrimination in social relations would lead to a
lessening of prejudicial attitudes.35 The cycle of legally enforced separation
exacerbating racial distrust and stereotypes on which Jim Crow was built might
therefore be reversed, with a new cycle initiated in which legally enforced
integration might lead to better race relations.
New findings in the social sciences offered advocates of legally enforced
integration scientific support for their position. In making their case for the value
of law in breaking down patterns of segregation, racial liberals drew particularly on
the “contact” hypothesis. This sociological theory, premised on the idea that
increased interaction among various groups (in relatively equal status settings)
would lead to improved relations between these groups, had largely displaced the
assumption, prominent earlier in the century, that excessive interactions between
different groups risked destabilizing society. The basis of contact theory was that
ignorance produced prejudice, and the best remedy for ignorance was exposure
and education. As one scholar put it, “[S]ome kind of legal force is necessary to
bring members of the two groups into a close enough relationship for the
discriminators to learn from experience how inadequate their stereotypes have
really been.”36 Social psychologists quickly built an entire scholarly literature
around contact theory. Experiments in interracial housing came to the conclusion
that, under the proper circumstances, living in close contact made different groups
more tolerant and less prejudiced; military and workplace integration studies
offered much the same conclusion.37 In 1949, sociologist Arnold M. Rose (who
34. This was a central contribution of GUNNAR MYRDAL, AN AMERICAN DILEMMA (1944).
35. See, e.g., GORDON W. ALLPORT, THE NATURE OF PREJUDICE 261–82 (1954).
36. Gene Weltfish, Implications for Action, and More Facts Needed, 1 J. SOC. ISSUES 47, 52 (1945).
37. Prominent works in this vast area of postwar scholarship include ALLPORT, supra note 35;
had worked closely with Gunnar Myrdal in the preparation of An American

Dilemma) published an article in Common Ground — titled “‘You Can’t Legislate
Against Prejudice’—Or Can You?”—in which he summarized what appeared to
be an emerging scholarly consensus: “A significant amount of evidence has
become available to indicate that the attitude of prejudice, or at least the practice
of discrimination, can be substantially reduced by authoritative order.”38
By the time of Brown, the skepticism toward the idea of civil rights law that
had dominated the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while far from
dead, had been pushed to the margins of mainstream reformist discourse. The
efforts of a generation of scholars, activists, and lawyers had seriously weakened
the claims of legal skeptics. “It is now generally accepted,” observed the author of
a 1951 law review article on segregation and the Fourteenth Amendment, “that
legal action, within limits, can influence ways of living.”39
The case for the capacity of the law in the context of school desegregation
was built upon at least a decade of civil rights accomplishments. These included,
most notably, the Supreme Court decisions in the white primary case of 1944,40
the desegregation of the military by executive order in 1948,41 and the 1950
Supreme Court decisions holding that the separate-but-equal principle established
in Plessy no longer satisfied the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment when
applied to university education.42 In each case a new legal mandate was placed in
opposition to established practices. And in each case, the new law led to
significant change. Although segregationists predicted blood in the streets, the
reactions to each of these civil rights breakthroughs were, while not
overwhelming, more promising than catastrophic.43
The experience of the white primaries and the desegregation of the military
and higher education featured prominently in the case for Brown, in and out of the
courts. The NAACP journal Crisis dismissed predictions of violence in reaction to
Court-ordered desegregation, citing as evidence the success of the higher
MORTON DEUTSCH & MARY EVANS COLLINS, INTERRACIAL HOUSING: A PSYCHOLOGICAL

EVALUATION OF A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT (1951); SAMUEL STOUFFER, AMERICAN SOLDIER (1949);
WALTER WHITE, HOW FAR THE PROMISED LAND? 87–103 (1955).
38. Arnold M. Rose, “You Can’t Legislate Against Prejudice”—Or Can You?, 9 COMMON
GROUND 61, 61 (1949).
39. J.D. Hyman, Segregation and the Fourteenth Amendment, 4 VAND. L. REV. 555, 572 (1951).
40. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).
41. Executive Order 9981, 13 Fed. Reg. 4313 (July 26, 1948).
42. Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); McLaurin v. Okla. State Regents, 339 U.S. 637
(1950).
43. See, e.g., Channing Tobias, Implications of the Public School Segregation Cases, 60 CRISIS 612–13
(1953); Note, Grade School Segregation: The Latest Attack on Racial Discrimination, 61 YALE L.J. 730, 739
n.38 (1952); Comment, Racial Violence and Civil Rights Law Enforcement, 18 U. CHI. L. REV. 769, 781
(1951); Bernard Crick, Eve of Decision: The South and Segregation, NATION, Oct. 31, 1953, at 350; William
H. Hastie, Appraisal of Smith v. Allwright, 5 LAW. GUILD REV. 65 (1945); Race Prejudice is Dying, LIFE,
June 19, 1950, at 34.
education cases and the “high respect” of the American people for the Supreme
Court.44 “Segregation has been legally disintegrating under one court decision after
another,” observed a 1953 New York Times editorial.45 In light of the impressive
strides that had been made to break down segregation in higher education, the
turn to public schools was “a logical sequence of events.” There were “risks”
involved when a change in law is placed in opposition to “mores and social
practices . . . [y]et change in race relations in the South . . . has been swift in recent
years.”46 In making their arguments in Brown, NAACP lawyers framed each of
these legal interventions as demonstrating a relatively straightforward causal
relationship: law commanded a new social norm; and society responded.47
The racial liberal approach to civil rights reform, like that of the
segregationist adherents to Sumnerian principles, was premised on a conception of
law as an independent force acting upon society. Both groups accepted the
folkways-versus-stateways framework. That is, both recognized a division between
the force of law and the force of culture. But whereas segregationists elevated
folkways above stateways, liberals sought to put them on more equal footing. In
their more confident moments, they even elevated stateways above folkways:
stateways could change folkways, law could lead society. To the segregationists,
stateways were a threat; to civil rights proponents, they were an opportunity. The
premise for the legalist reformers was that law could move society. And for law to
move society, it must be have some causal force, independent of society. To lead
society, law must stand apart from society. As it gained strength in the 1940s and
1950s, the racial liberal campaign for civil rights reform was thus premised on a
faith in the idea of a clear divide between law and society.
C. The Sit-Ins: An Alternative to the Law?

The students who launched the sit-ins self-consciously identified their
protest as a critique of civil rights lawyers and their reliance on the courts. They
defined their efforts as an alternative to the court-focused approach to civil rights
of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), which, by 1960,
was struggling with the frustrating task of implementing its great victory in Brown.
The students’ anti-legalist posture led to considerable tension between the
students and the NAACP lawyers, who urged them to stop protesting and allow
the judicial process to take over. But these tensions also provided a valuable tool
for the student protesters, as they energized and helped to unify the student
movement. As Lawson’s attack on the NAACP, quoted in the opening of this
44. School Cases, 60 CRISIS 356 (1953).

45. The Paradox of Segregation, N.Y. TIMES, June 14, 1953, at E10.
46. Id.
47. ARGUMENT, supra note 10, at 65 (“Every single time that this Court has ruled, they [i.e.,
white southerners] have obeyed it, and I for one believe that rank and file people in the South will
support whatever decision in this case is handed down.”).
Article, demonstrates, the leaders of the student movement sought to locate the
significance of their protests as an alternative to “the civil rights redress,” as an
alternative to litigation and to dependence upon lawyers and judges—as, in their
eyes, an alternative to the sphere of the law.48 They understood law as something
that could be delineated, differentiated, and thereby used as a defining
characteristic for their own sense of identity as participants in the larger struggle.
As much as possible, the sit-in protesters pushed the law to the side,
recognized (without necessarily accepting) the disjuncture between morality and
legality, and worked to change minds more than laws. By resisting the reduction of
their efforts into a formal legal claim and by putting their faith into protest and
negotiation, they might lose the leverage of a claim based on formal law, but they
gained something that was, to them, considerably more valuable: they were able to
maintain control over the course of their challenge. They did not need to hand
their protest over to the lawyers, as judicial appeals or other direct challenges to
existing laws would necessitate. They were asserting their own understanding of
their actions, which, while perhaps too moderate and lacking in long-term goals
for some,49 had the irreplaceable attribute of being all their own.
Rather than focusing on changing particular laws, the students spoke more
of drawing attention to offensive practices that were designed to subjugate and
humiliate African Americans and drive them from the public sphere.50 The sit-in
tactic would allow them not only to put forth a public plea for equal, dignified
treatment, but, by sitting down at a “whites-only” lunch counter, to enact an
alternative social practice in which the students had already assumed for
themselves the place of dignity and respect to which they were entitled. This is
what Thoreau memorably termed “the performance of right.”51 “The idea,” one
48. In an influential article on the first weeks of the sit-in movement, Michael Walzer
reported: “None of the leaders I spoke to were interested in test cases . . . . That the legal work of the
NAACP was important, everyone agreed; but this, I was told over and over again, was more
important.” Michael Walzer, A Cup of Coffee and a Seat, 7 DISSENT 116, 116–17 (1960).
49. Some lawyers with the NAACP felt that while the sit-ins might win small-scale
concessions from business owners and local officials, litigation victories and the passage of civil rights
laws were the only sure ways to secure significant and lasting change. As an internal NAACP
memorandum explained, “The only way we will be able to successfully break down the practices of
segregation and discrimination and undermine the legal support of these practices through the law is
by the process of having such laws and ordinances declared unconstitutional.” NAACP Position on
Jail, No Bail, n.d., NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Part 21, Reel 21.
Thurgood Marshall was making much the same point when he lectured the Greensboro student
protesters not to settle for “token integration.” WILLIAM H. CHAFE, CIVILITIES AND CIVIL RIGHTS:
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, AND THE BLACK STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM 93 (1980).
50. See, e.g., Walzer, supra note 48, 116–17 (“None of the leaders I spoke to were interested in
test cases; nor was there any general agreement to stop the sitdowns or the picketing once the
question of integration at the lunch counters was taken up by the courts. That the legal work of the
NAACP was important, everyone agreed; but this, I was told over and over again, was more
important. Everyone seemed to feel a deep need finally to act in the name of all the theories of
equality.”).
51. Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government, in THOREAU: POLITICAL WRITINGS 8
participant explained (in a letter written from a Florida jail), “was to demonstrate
the reality of eating together without coercion, contamination or cohabitation.”52
Student leader Diane Nash spoke of the need to create “a climate in which all men
are respected as men, in which there is appreciation of the dignity of man and in
which each individual is free to grow and produce to his fullest capacity.”53 For
the students, a courtroom battle, even if victorious, would never allow for this
kind of statement.
The students’ actions and their efforts to distinguish these actions from the
work of civil rights lawyers resonated with diverse groups. The Southern Regional
Council, a leading voice of southern liberalism (an embattled position at this time
that was premised on an effort to critique Jim Crow while also opposing federal
intervention), praised the students for seeking an alternative to legal reform and
urged them to stay out of the courtroom. By “appeal[ing] to conscience and self-
interest instead of law,” a Southern Regional Council report explained, the
students brought a much-needed new approach to the problem of racial
discrimination. “They have argued on the basis of moral right and supported that
argument with economic pressure. By their action they have given the South an
excellent opportunity to settle one facet of a broad problem by negotiation and
good will instead of court order.”54 The sit-ins, noted Howard Zinn, then a
professor at Spelman College, “cracked the wall of legalism in the structure of the
desegregation strategy.”55 African American journalist Louis Lomax praised the
students for displacing the “Negro leadership class”—most notably the
NAACP—as “the prime mover of the Negro’s social revolt.”56 He wrote of the
students’ accomplishments:
The demonstrators have shifted the desegregation battle from the
courtroom to the market place, and have shifted the main issue to one of
individual dignity, rather than civil rights. Not that civil rights are
unimportant—but, as these students believe, once the dignity of the
Negro individual is admitted, the debate over his right to vote, attend
public schools, or hold a job for which he is qualified becomes
academic.57
(Nancy L. Rosenblum ed., 1996).

52. Patricia Stephens, Tallahassee: Through Jail to Freedom, in SIT-INS: THE STUDENTS REPORT 1,
1 (Jim Peck ed., 1960).
53. Diane Nash, Inside the Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides: Testimony of a Southern Student, in THE NEW
NEGRO 44 (Mathew H. Ahmann ed., 1961).
54. Margaret Price, Toward a Solution of the Sit-In Controversy (Southern Regional Council
report), NAACP Papers, May 31, 1960, microformed on NAACP Relations with the Modern Civil Rights
Movement, Part 21, Reel 21, Frame 783 (John H. Bracey & August Meier eds.) (Univ. Publ’ns of
Am.).
55. Howard Zinn, Finishing School for Pickets, THE NATION, Aug. 6, 1960, at 71–73.
56. Louis E. Lomax, The Negro Revolt Against “The Negro Leaders,” 220 HARPERS 41, 41 (1960).
57. Id. at 42. See also Daniel H. Pollitt, Dime Store Demonstrations: Events and Legal Problems of the
First Sixty Days, DUKE L.J. 315, 365 n.298 (1960) (“Constitutional amendments, congressional
The rejection of legalistic tactics not only won the students considerable
support, but it also provided an invaluable way for the students to measure their
accomplishments and create a sense of momentum for their movement. “We
don’t want brotherhood,” one protester announced, “we just want a cup of
coffee—sitting down.”58 Such tangible, small-scale goals had the tremendous
advantage in that they held the possibility of immediate attainment—a far cry
from the distant prospect of a victory in the courtroom, which invariably took
months and even years of appeals.59 Defining their goals in this way empowered
the students. Restaurants were unwilling to give in to the students demands to
desegregate, but many temporarily shut down in the face of the protests, an act
that showed the students the power of their concerted actions.60 When the
Greensboro protests led to the first lunch counter closing of the movement,
cheers erupted from the students and, in a premature burst of enthusiasm, they
started shouting, “It’s all over.”61 Before long, restaurants did begin to desegregate
in the face of the protests. “Buried in the reams of copy about the southern sit-
ins,” noted a Congress of Racial Equality newsletter in April 1960, “is the fact that
since the protest movement started, over 100 lunch counters and eating places in
various parts of the south have started to serve everybody regardless of color.”62
Despite limited progress in the Deep South, elsewhere much desegregation took
place in remarkably short order.63 Marion Wright, then a young civil rights lawyer,
observed, “in the majority of instances capitulation [to the students’ demand for
service] came peacefully, almost gracefully.”64
enactments, and Supreme Court decisions have failed to achieve their desired purpose. It was
inevitable, therefore, that a more direct approach would be sought . . . .”); Nat Hentoff, A Peaceful
Army, COMMONWEAL, June 10, 1960, at 275–78.
58. Walzer, supra note 48, at 112. Franklin McCain, one of the Greensboro Four, told
reporters that they did not want an economic boycott: “We like to spend our money here, but we
wish to spend our money at the lunch counter as well as the one next to it.” A&T Students Campaign to
End Dime Store Bias, CHI. DEFENDER, Feb. 13, 1960, at 11. Similarly, Joseph Charles Jones, a leader of
the Charlotte sit-ins, explained: “I have no malice, no jealousy, no hatred, no envy. All I want is to
come in and place my order and be served and leave a tip if I feel like it.” Negroes Extend Sitdown
Protest, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 10, 1960, at 21.
59. For example, Robert Mack Bell, the plaintiff in the most significant of the sit-in cases to
make its way to the Supreme Court, Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226 (1964), was not even aware when
the NAACP argued his case before the Supreme Court—some three years after his initial arrest.
“Nobody kept us posted on it or anything else,” he would later recall. PETER IRONS, THE COURAGE
OF THEIR CONVICTIONS 146 (1988).
60. See, e.g., Lunch Counter Protest Spreads, CHI. DEFENDER, Feb. 11, 1960, at A2; N.C. Stores
Close Down Counters, GREENSBORO RECORD, Feb. 10, 1960, at 1, 3; Sit-Down Strike Here Closes Lunch
Counters, RALEIGH TIMES, Feb. 10, 1960; Student ‘Sitdown’ Protest Spreads to Virginia, Tenn., CHI.
DEFENDER, Feb. 16, 1960, at 1.
61. Negro Protest Lead to Store Closing, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 7, 1960, at 35; Sitdown Leader Persists in
Goal, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 26, 1960, at 10.
62. CORE-LATOR, April 1960, at 1.
63. Id.; Marion A. Wright, The Sit-In Movement: Progress Report and Prognosis, 9 WAYNE L. REV.
445, 448 (1963).
64. Wright, supra note 63, at 448.
Yet, despite the efforts of the students to keep the law out of their work, the
law—in the form of police, judges, and lawyers—quickly asserted itself. The
earliest waves of sit-in protesters recognized that they might be thrown in jail for
their actions, perhaps they even expected it, but getting arrested was not their
intention, at least not initially.65 The most common response of restaurant
operators was not to call the police, but to shut down their lunch counters.66
Eventually, however, students were arrested, thrown in jail, and forced to defend
themselves in court. This was when the lawyers arrived.
Here we can briefly return to the legalist posture toward civil rights reform
discussed in the previous section, for the NAACP’s dealings with the students in
the opening months of the sit-ins sharply highlight their differences. Initially wary
toward this dramatic departure from the carefully scripted litigation strategy they
famously pioneered, LDF lawyers quickly came to see the sit-ins as offering the
opportunity to revitalize their own work. NAACP lawyers were soon advising and
representing arrested protesters,67 and Thurgood Marshall and his team of lawyers
in the national office began to prepare a constitutional challenge to discrimination
in public accommodations.68 Yet in their effort to justify their own involvement in
the sit-ins, NAACP lawyers sought to redefine the goals of the protests. And they
did so by emphasizing the limitations of working outside the legal process.
NAACP strategy memos on the sit-ins repeatedly referenced the importance of
“ultimate success” in the sit-in battle.69 Activists must never forget the “main
objective” of the protests, and they must always keep in mind the “long run” aims,
none of which would be achieved without “a carefully planned and continuous
attack.”70 Assumed was that the end goal of the protest should be the judicial
recognition of the constitutional rights of the protesters.71 Although the sit-ins
“began as an issue of community relations,” explained another NAACP memo,
they “may well end as a question of legal rights and privileges,” with the ultimate
achievement being “a re-definition of the legal duties and rights of property
owners in the conduct of their business.”72 Here we see the central legalist
assumption in action, sharpened by its juxtaposition to the antilegalist position of
the students: true reform of social practices requires legal change. Changes in
practices without changes in the legal regulatory structure are ultimately limited—
65. See, e.g., Sitdown Leader Persists in Goal, N.Y. TIMES, supra note 61, at 10.
66. See supra note 60.
67. JACK GREENBERG, CRUSADERS IN THE COURTS: HOW A DEDICATED BAND OF
LAWYERS FOUGHT FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION 273–79 (1994).
68. Id. at 275–77; James Feron, N.A.A.C.P. Plans Student Defense, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 18, 1960,
at 23; NAACP Sits Down With the ‘Sit-Inners,’ N.Y. AMSTERDAM NEWS, Mar. 26, 1960, at 1, 24.
69. NAACP Position on Jail, No Bail, n.d., NAACP Papers, supra, note 54 at Frame 968.
70. Id.
71. See supra note 49 and accompanying text.
72. NAACP Report on the Student Protest Movement After Two Months, NAACP Papers,
supra, note 54 at Frame 572.
they were nothing more than “appeal[s] of one segment of the citizenry to
another.”73 Lasting change required the availability of authoritative, formal,
external constraints on behavior. The logical, even “inevitable,” path of change led
from protest to law.74 It was not until the sit-in movement accepted the necessity
of legal reform that its success would be ensured.75
The divergent agendas of the students and the lawyers appeared with
particular clarity over the question of how arrested students should deal with the
legal system. The key question was whether they should appeal their convictions
or whether they should accept the punishment and serve their jail sentences. The
civil rights lawyers felt the students should plead not guilty to charges of disorderly
conduct or trespass, pay bail, and appeal the conviction. They were being unjustly
prosecuted, and there was a clear legal remedy for this. If convicted, they should
pay the fines. At all costs, they should stay out of jail.76 But the students had
another option: to go to jail and thereby draw further attention to the injustice of
the situation. Inspired by Martin Luther King’s urging for them to adopt what
came to be known as the “jail, no bail” strategy,77 students envisioned filling up
the jails and prisons with protesters and thereby elevating their moral challenge to
the southern system of racial oppression.
Their “jail, no bail” tactic was a classic case of co-opting the tools of
oppression in order to advance the cause of liberation. But unlike the civil rights
lawyers, the students did not intend to beat the system by its own rules. They
brought their own set of rules, the rules of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
The goal here was to use the central institutions of the legal system, the
73. Id. at Frame 571.

74. Id. at Frame 572.
75. Initially, the NAACP lawyers tried to convince the students to stop or scale back their
protests. According to John Lewis, a leader of the Nashville student movement, “Thurgood Marshall,
along with so many of his generation, just did not understand the essence of what we, the younger
blacks of America, were doing.” JOHN LEWIS WITH MICHAEL D’ORSO, WALKING WITH THE WIND:
A MEMOIR OF THE MOVEMENT 113–14 (1998). The NAACP’s position was captured in an internal
memorandum, which explained: “If the aim is to test the law, then the threshold question is what is
gained by the large numbers of people being arrested and involved in appeals in the courts? . . . [O]ne
does not need hundreds of cases and appeals to test the validity of a particular law. One or two is
usually sufficient.” Untitled, undated memorandum, NAACP Papers, microformed on Legal Department
Administration Files, 1956–1965, Part 22, Reel 3, Frames 374–75 (John H. Bracey & August Meier
eds.) (Univ. Publ’ns of Am.).
76. See supra note 54, at Frame 376 (“We realize that remaining in jail has moral and ethical
implications not to be discounted, yet there is a grave danger that the individual, by his failure,
neglect, or refusal to right a criminal charge levied against him and through accepting a jail sentence in
lieu thereof, will defeat his main purpose and thus render ineffectual our overall legal attack on this
spiteful, vicious system.”).
77. Martin Luther King, Jr., A Creative Protest (Feb. 16, 1960), in THE PAPERS OF MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR.: VOLUME 5, at 367, 369 (1992) (speech to student protesters in Durham, North
Carolina) (“Let us not fear going to jail. If the officials threaten to arrest us for standing up for our
rights, we must answer by saying that we are willing and prepared to fill up the jails of the South.
Maybe it will take this willingness to stay in jail to arouse the dozing conscience of our nation.”).
courtrooms and the jails, as platforms from which to continue their appeals to the
conscience of the defenders of Jim Crow—and to the nation at large. They would
defy the counsel of their lawyers, reject the lawyers’ advice to shift their focus
from protest and consciousness-raising to litigation. They would attempt to
maintain their own distinctive identity as standing outside the law, outside the
“civil rights redress,” even as police dragged them from lunch counters, as they
stood before judges in court, and as they were locked up in jail cells.
For the students, the division of civil rights activism into the world of law
and the world of “not-law” was fundamentally about empowerment. Defining
their own identity as contributors to the freedom struggle in contrast to the “legal”
approach was a way to unify their movement, to emphasize its uniqueness, and to
elevate its tactics and goals. Their conception of the law was formal and
institutional. The legal approach was, quite simply, the approach of the NAACP:
legal challenges fought out in court. Of course, sociolegal scholars can easily see
that a broader conception of law, one that recognizes the way in which legal
norms and rights claims function as tools of contestation in society, would
recognize that law pervaded the sit-in movement, regardless of students’ claims to
the contrary. The protests themselves constituted a powerful challenge to the
meaning of the Constitution, well before the lawyers took the sit-in cases to
court.78 Nonetheless, the students’ project of defining the scope of the law, so as
to identify themselves as standing outside its boundaries, is also a central element
of the legal history of the sit-in movement. In this way, the process of
constructing the law-society divide was an essential organizational tool for this
generation of pioneering civil rights protesters.
III. LAW AS SOCIAL CHANGE: KING AND BICKEL’S CONCEPTIONS OF LAW

While approaching the issue from starkly different backgrounds and from
distinct institutional settings, Martin Luther King Jr. and Alexander Bickel showed
striking similarities in their efforts to expand the conception of “law.” Each
embraced a capacious definition of law, one broader than the traditional concept
of law as the formal pronouncements of recognized governmental institutions.
Whereas the experiences of the groups described above created incentives to
define clear boundaries around their particular conceptions of the law, King and
Bickel’s experiences pointed in the opposite direction, toward an understanding of
law as an unfolding social process. They sought to reconceptualize law so as to
recognize processes of cultural change, social disorder, and political agitation as an
78. See Christopher W. Schmidt, The Sit-Ins and the State Action Doctrine, 18 WM. & MARY BILL
RTS. J. 767, 776–91 (2010); see also Kenneth Karst, Boundaries and Reasons: Freedom of Expression and the
Subordination of Groups, 1990 U. ILL. L. REV. 95, 96 (“The demonstrators were . . . acting out a living
narrative, claiming their equal citizenship with their bodies.” (footnote omitted)); Mark Tushnet,
Popular Constitutionalism as Political Law, 81 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 991, 994 (2006) (“People perform
constitutional law as political law through (some of) their mobilizations in politics.”).
integral part of giving meaning to the law.
A. Alexander M. Bickel
Much of Bickel’s legal scholarship examined the limitations of formal legal
pronouncements, particularly Supreme Court opinions. In his early work,
published in the decade following Brown, Bickel’s central project was to balance his
commitment to a limited role for the judiciary in American life with his equally
strong commitment to the rightness of Brown. In the face of massive resistance,
“the judicial process had reached the limit of its capacity,” Bickel warned in his
1962 classic The Least Dangerous Branch.79
The Supreme Court’s law, the southern leaders realized, could not in our
system prevail—not merely in the very long run, but within the decade—
if it ran counter to deeply felt popular needs or convictions, or even if it
was opposed by a determined and substantial minority and received with
indifference by the rest of the country.80
Eisenhower’s decision to send federal troops into Little Rock, according to
Bickel, was hardly a mark of the strength of the rule of law, “[f]or enforcement is a
crisis of the system, not its norm. When the law summons force to its aid, it
demonstrates not its strength and stability, but its weakness and impermanence.”81
In response to the challenge of massive resistance to school desegregation, Bickel
formed his conception of law and its limitations. It was in this context that he
would begin to integrate resistance to formal law as an integral part of the process
of creating law.
While the Court and political leaders regularly asserted that compliance with
Brown was simply about respect for the rule of law and for established legal
institutions, and that defiance was therefore illegitimate,82 Bickel recognized that
the law rarely worked along such command-and-control premises.
“[D]isagreement is legitimate and relevant and will, in our system, legitimately and
inevitably cause delay in compliance with law laid down by the Supreme Court,
and will indeed, if it persists and is widely enough shared, overturn such law.”83
Bickel’s suggestion that resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown was in
some way legitimate, that it was part of the process of law, was an effort to
undermine the law-society boundary as defined by the liberal legalists. No longer
was law standing apart and above society, setting rules by which society must
79. ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SUPREME COURT AT
THE BAR OF POLITICS 256 (1962).
80. Id. at 258.
81. Id. at 266.
82. See, e.g., Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958); Robert F. Kennedy, Civil Rights: Conflict of Law
and Local Customs, in VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 482, 484 (1961) (“Some of you may believe the
decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law. And we both respect the law.”).
83. Alexander M. Bickel, The Decade of School Desegregation: Progress and Prospects, 64 COLUM. L.
REV. 193, 196 (1964).
abide (or change through formal mechanisms of revision). Some assume, Bickel
explained,
that when the Supreme Court lays down a rule of constitutional law, that
rule is put into effect just about instantly. . . . But that has never been
how things have worked on occasions when the Court judgments have
been directed at points of serious stress in our society, and on such
occasions that is not the way things should or conceivably could work.84
Law requires some level of consensus; coercion can only do so much.85 The
system requires opportunity to express disagreement with Court decisions, even to
defy their validity as law. If the American constitutional structure did not offer
“opportunity and means to reject and to alter the rule of law handed down from
above,” then, Bickel noted, “I for one would find it extremely difficult to defend
the Supreme Court’s function as ultimately consistent with democratic self-rule.”86
By 1964 Bickel saw the Brown principle as having won out in the “pitched
political struggle over the validity of the ultimate goal of desegregation.”87
Opposition and defiance had failed. The political branches of the federal
government were now lined up behind school desegregation. Although Bickel
thought such political struggles inevitable in attempting to make fundamental
shifts in social practices, he also saw advantages to the extrajudicial debate over
the meaning and validity of law. There were benefits in protecting the principle of
democracy; and there were benefits in creating consensus in society behind new
legal norms. “Law is a process,” he explained. “It is the process of establishing
norms that will not need to be frequently enforced.”88
Bickel thus envisioned law as the product of a dialogic relationship—“a
continuing colloquy”—between the Court, whose job is to translate fundamental
principles into legal commands, and society (including the elected branches).89
It is the political process that realizes in American life constitutional rules
and principles enunciated by the Supreme Court. The Court’s major
pronouncements are subjected to the stresses of politics. Thus—and not
by some mystic process of self-validation—do they become ways of
ordering society, rather than mere literary compositions.90
Bickel’s efforts to understand law as created through the process of social
and political contestation led him toward an increasingly conservative view of the
84. Id. at 198.

85. Id. at 198–99; see also BICKEL, supra note 79, at 258.
86. Bickel, supra note 83, at 200.
87. Id. at 202.
88. Alexander M. Bickel, Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience, in POLITICS AND THE WARREN
COURT 87 (1965).
89. BICKEL, supra note 79, at 240; see also ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE SUPREME COURT
AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 91 (1970) (describing Court decisions as the beginning of a
conversation with society).
90. ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, POLITICS AND THE WARREN COURT, at ix (1965).
law, with his later work emphasizing tradition and custom as the basis for legal
development. “Law is the principle institution through which a society can assert
its values,” Bickel explained in his final book,91 a statement that seemed to assume
that the values are developed largely apart from the processes of the law. The
Warren Court became Bickel’s primary foil. The Court was dominated by an
approach that was “moral, principled, legalistic, ultimately authoritarian.”92 The
idea that “laws alone, or even alone the men of laws who constitute the Supreme
Court, can govern effectively” was nothing more than an “illusion.”93
Nothing of importance, I believe, works well or for long in this country
unless widespread consent is gained for it by political means. And there is
much that must be left to processes of political and even private ordering,
without benefit of judicially enforced law. The Court must not
overestimate the possibilities of law as a method of ordering society and
containing social action. And society cannot safely forget the limits of
effective legal action, and attempt to surrender to the Court the necessary
work of politics.94
It was during this latter part of his career that Bickel turned to the writings of
Edmund Burke. Bickel approvingly quoted Burke’s observation that “[t]he
foundation of government is . . . not in imaginary rights of men, but in political
convenience, and in human nature . . . .”95 “Government,” Bickel concluded,
“thus stops short ‘of some hazardous or ambiguous excellence,’ but is the better
for it.”96 From this Burkean premise, Bickel identified the circumscribed role of
the judiciary:
The Court’s first obligation is to move cautiously, straining for decisions
in small compass, more hesitant to deny principles held by some
segments of society than ready to affirm comprehensive ones for all,
mindful of the dominant role the political institutions are allowed, and
always anxious first to invent compromises and accommodations before
declaring firm and unambiguous principles.97
In Burke, Bickel found confirmation for his more chastened understanding
of the relationship between legal principle and custom.
Bickel’s appreciation for the social context in which law received meaning,
evident in all his academic writing, ultimately led him to question the legal liberalist
assumption that law had the capacity to lead society. It brought him to a greater
appreciation for the stability of customs and traditions, and the need for legal
reformers, particularly the courts, to defer to social norms. Legal principles, Bickel
91. ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE MORALITY OF CONSENT 5 (1975).

92. Id.
93. BICKEL, supra note 90, at x.
94. Id. at ix.
95. BICKEL, supra note 91, at 19.
96. Id.
97. Id. at 26.
argued, must derive from political consensus. He began to describe himself as a

conservative, a conservatism that his friend Robert Bork described as “a habit of
mind and a quality of spirit—thoughtfulness, prudence, respect for established
values and institutions.”98 By the early 1970s, in the final years of his life, Bickel’s
critics would accuse him of elevating customs and social consensus to the point of
seeming to accept an antilegalist pessimism reminiscent of the arguments used by
Sumnerian defenders of segregation.99
B. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. would adopt much the same vision as Bickel of the
process of law as being fundamentally one of political and social struggle. For
Bickel, whose primary interest was in the promulgation of law from formal legal
institutions, this position led to a call for caution, an appreciation of the
conservative defense of tradition. King’s focus was on the other end of the
process: not with the creation of new formal law, but with the work required to
give life to basic legal principles. For King, the recognition of the process of law in
society was a call to action.
From the time of his emergence onto the national scene as the young leader
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King assumed the role of mediator between the
legal achievements of the NAACP lawyers and the grassroots activism of an
increasingly impatient African American community. By attempting to stand
astride the law-society boundary (as both the student leaders of the sit-in protests
and the NAACP lawyers generally defined it), he took on a role that was going to
make him at times a target of criticism for the NAACP lawyers and at times a
target of criticism for student activists. But this position, this shifting back and
forth from protest marches and jail cells to White House signing ceremonies, put
him in a particularly powerful position from which to assess the value and
accomplishments of both legal and extralegal reform efforts. In attempting to
explain the relationship of legal reform and social protest, he would abandon the
conception of a law-society boundary that occupied both the students and the
lawyers, instead adopting a view of law as a project of social and political
construction.
From the start of his civil rights career, King positioned himself as building
upon the work of the civil rights lawyers. In his December 1955 speech in
98. Robert H. Bork, A Remembrance of Alex Bickel, NEW REPUBLIC, Oct. 18, 1975, at 21; cf.
Anthony T. Kronman, Alexander Bickel’s Philosophy of Prudence, 94 YALE L.J. 1567, 1569 (1985)
(“Bickel’s ‘Burkean ending’ was entirely consistent with the basic intellectual outlook that dominated
his work from its beginning and gave it its distinctive shape” (quoting JOHN HART ELY, DEMOCRACY
AND DISTRUST 71 (1980)).
99. See ELY, supra note 98, at 70–72; LAURA KALMAN, YALE LAW SCHOOL AND THE SIXTIES
274 – 78 (2005); Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Alexander M. Bickel and the Post-Realist Constitution, 11 HARV.
C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 521, 552 (1976); J. Skelly Wright, Professor Bickel, the Scholarly Tradition, and the Supreme
Court, 84 HARV. L. REV. 769, 769 (1971).
Montgomery on the eve of the bus boycotts, he referenced the Constitution and
the Supreme Court (which had recently issued its Brown decisions) as supporting
the rightness of their cause.100 It was particularly important for King to emphasize
this point—that the “law” was on the side of the protesters—so as to differentiate
their actions from those of the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils.101
Furthermore, the resolution of the boycott was made possible by a Supreme Court
decision.102 When news of the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the
segregated bus system arrived, the boycott was teetering on the brink of failure,
faced with a potentially crippling legal challenge to the carpool system relied upon
by the boycotters.103 Yet King also sought to distance himself from the NAACP
and its litigation-based tactics, an approach urged upon him by his influential
advisor Bayard Rustin.104 Blacks “must not get involved in legalism [and] needless
fights in lower courts,” King said, “Our job now is implementation . . . . We must
move on to mass action.”105
King was not alone in emphasizing the linkages between the activism of the
boycotts and the transformation of civil rights laws. The mainstream press was
eager to draw a direct connection between King’s work and that of the NAACP
lawyers. This interpretation had the effect of elevating the significance of his
achievements while also emphasizing the nonradical nature of his demands and
techniques. In 1957 Time ran a cover story on King, noting that “[i]n terms of
concrete victories,” he ranked “a poor second to the brigade of lawyers who won
the big case before the Supreme Court in 1954.”106 Yet, his “leadership extends
100. Martin Luther King Jr. (Dec. 5, 1955) (speech at MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street
Baptist Church, Montgomery, Ala.) (“And we are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing.
(Well) If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. (Yes sir) [Applause] If we are
wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. (Yes) [Applause] If we are wrong, God
Almighty is wrong.”).
101. The differentiation of civil disobedience from segregationist lawlessness was a central
theme of King’s famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham
City Jail, in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR. (James M. Washington ed., 1986).
102. Gayle v. Browder, 352 U.S. 903 (1956).
103. See Randall Kennedy, Martin Luther King’s Constitution: A Legal History of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 98 YALE L.J. 999, 1065 (1989) (“[T]he judicial victory [in Gayle v. Browder ] alone would not
have been nearly as significant without the mass boycott from which it arose, for the boycott
facilitated active participation on a scale impossible for any lawsuit. At the same time, it is important
to appreciate that without the suit and the eventual support of the Supreme Court, the boycott may
well have ended without attaining any of its expressed goals, a result that would have been cruelly
discouraging.”); see also Christopher Coleman, Laurence D. Nee & Leonard S. Rubinowitz, Social
Movements and Social-Change Litigation: Synergy in the Montgomery Bus Protest, 30 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 663
(2005); Robert Jerome Glennon, The Role of Law in the Civil Rights Movement: The Montgomery Bus Boycott,
1955-1957, 9 LAW & HIST. REV. 59 (1991).
104. DAVID J. GARROW, BEARING THE CROSS: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., AND THE
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE 86 (1986).
105. Id. at 91.
106. The South: Attack on the Conscience, TIME, Feb. 18, 1957.
beyond any single battle. . . . King reached beyond law books and writs, beyond
violence and threats, to win his people—and challenge all people—with a spiritual
force that aspired even to ending prejudice in man’s mind.”107 In targeting “the
South’s Christian conscience,” King “outflanked the Southern legislators who
planted statutory hedgerows against integration for as far as the eye could see.”108
King captured and gave voice to the deep challenge to legal liberalism posed
by the two major developments of the post-Brown decade—the rise of massive
resistance and the emergence of direct action protest as a viable reform tactic.
Direct action protest was both an extension of, and an alternative to, the
NAACP’s project of school desegregation litigation, which by the late 1950s had
largely stalled in the face of obstructionist legal maneuverings. A new wave of civil
rights protest, sparked by the student lunch counter protests of 1960, emerged,
motivated in large part by frustration with the slowness of legal reform.109 To
understand what drove African Americans to take to the streets to demand their
rights, King explained, “[o]ne must understand the pendulum swing between the
elation that arose when the [school desegregation] edict was handed down and the
despair that followed the failure to bring it to life.”110 He critiqued what he saw as
an overly idealistic vision of the law that the NAACP lawyers relied upon in
making their case for Brown,111 adopting instead an explanation for the relationship
between law and prejudicial attitudes, between civil rights reform and the
achievement of racial equality, that balanced an appreciation of the value of legal
change with an insistence that formal legal change was never enough. For King,
the law by itself was limited in its ability to affect hearts and minds.
Injustice might find expression in unjust laws, but, King emphasized, the
roots of injustice are deeper. To truly uproot entrenched patterns of inequality,
one must acknowledge the limits of legal reform. African Americans “must not get
involved in legalism [and] needless fights in lower courts,” King warned, for that
was “exactly what the white man wants the Negro to do. Then he can draw out
the fight.”112 This was the harsh lesson of Brown and massive resistance. “Our job
now is implementation. . . . We must move on to mass action . . . in every
community in the South, keeping in mind that civil disobedience to local laws is
107. Id.
108. Id.
109. See, e.g., CHAFE, supra note 49, at 101 (describing the sit-ins as “creat[ing] a new method
for carrying on the struggle” for racial equality); RAYMOND ARSENAULT, FREEDOM RIDES: 1961
AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL JUSTICE (2006).
110. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., WHY WE CAN’T WAIT 5 (1964).
111. King suggested that he too might have bought into the lure of racial liberalism when the
decision first was announced. Martin Luther King Jr., ‘The Time for Freedom Has Come,’ N.Y. TIMES
MAG., Sept. 10, 1961, at 118 (“When the United States Supreme Court handed down its historic
desegregation decision in 1954, many of us, perhaps naively, thought that great and sweeping school
integration would ensue.”).
112. GARROW, supra note 104, at 91.
civil obedience to national laws.”113 King also emphasized the limits of the law
(and the failures of overly simplistic and optimistic versions of contact theory) in
discussing the distinction between desegregation and integration. “Desegregation
is eliminative and negative, for it simply removes . . . legal and social
prohibitions.”114 It is a “first step,” a “short-range goal,” and by itself it is “empty
and shallow.”115 In contrast, integration requires the “positive acceptance of
desegregation and the welcomed participation of Negroes into the total range of
human activities.”116 It is “the ultimate goal of our national community.”117 To
achieve desegregation without integration has “pernicious effects.”118 “It leads to
‘physical proximity without spiritual affinity.’ It gives us a society where men are
physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and
hearts are apart.”119
One of King’s invaluable contributions to the struggle for racial equality
stemmed from his skepticism toward the efficacy of legal change when it was
unaccompanied by organized social action. “On the subject of human nature,”
King was, in the assessment of historian David L. Chappell, “close to the modern
conservatism of Edmund Burke . . . . [He] leaned toward a prophetic pessimism
about man.”120 Violence, King explained, “is inevitable in social change whenever
deep-seated prejudices are challenged”—and for this reason, nonviolent resistance
was the best policy because it had the ability to “absorb” violent resistance to
change.121 King’s demanding vision, a potent mixture of prophetic radicalism and
realism, resonated in the post-Brown years. The limited accomplishments of school
desegregation litigation undermined the central claim of those most committed to
more formal, legal-centric approaches to social reform, helping to open space in
the national debate for King and those young activists who placed direct-action
protest rather than legal reform at the center of their reform project.
C. When Law Is Not Law

For all their vast differences of background, professions, and ideological
commitments, King and Bickel converged on a basic insight into the functioning
of law in creating social change: law is part of a process of struggle; it never stands
113. Id. at 91–92.

114. Martin Luther King Jr., The Ethical Demands for Integration (Dec. 27, 1962), in A
TESTAMENT OF HOPE, supra note 101, at 117, 118.
115. Id. at 118.
116. Id.
117. Id.
118. Id.
119. Id.
120. DAVID L. CHAPPELL, A STONE OF HOPE: PROPHETIC RELIGION AND THE DEATH OF
JIM CROW 46 (2004).
121. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., Our Struggle, in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE, supra note 101, at
75, 80.
apart from that struggle. Each adopted the same trope to illustrate this unbounded
conceptualization of law’s role in society: law is not always law.
Looking back on the struggle over Brown, Bickel emphasized the necessary
consensual foundation of law. “Whenever a minority is sufficiently large or
determined or, as in the case of Brown, strategically placed, we do not quite have
law.”122 The project of law then becomes to “generate a greater measure of
consent, or reconsider our stance on the minority’s position.”123 Coercion is a
tool, but not the only one, and more often than not a less than effective one.
Ultimately more effective are “methods of persuasion and inducement, appeal to
reason and shared values, appeal to interest, and not only material but political
interest.”124 “We act on the realization that the law needs to be established before
it can be effectively enforced, that it is, in a quite real sense, still provisional.”125
Along similar lines, King wrote in 1961, “The law tends to declare rights—it
does not deliver them. A catalyst is needed to breathe life experience into a judicial
decision by the persistent exercise of the rights until they become usual and
ordinary in human conduct.”126 In King’s eyes, the students sitting at lunch
counters, like the participants in the bus boycotts he led in Montgomery, were
“seeking to dignify the law and to affirm the real and positive meaning of the law
of the land.”127 King’s vision of social justice demanded not only legal reform
through recognized institutional channels such as litigation and lobbying, but also
social protest and interracial negotiation on the local level.128 While protesters
122. BICKEL, supra note 91, at 110. Archibald Cox also sought to capture this point when, in
1966, he noted that “the principle of Brown v. Board of Education became more firmly law after its
incorporation into title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Archibald Cox, The Supreme Court, 1965
Term—Foreword: Constitutional Adjudication and the Promotion of Human Rights, 80 HARV. L. REV. 91, 94
(1966).
123. BICKEL, supra note 91, at 110–11.
124. Id.
125. Id.
126. King, supra note 111, at 119. See also KING, supra note 114, at 124. (“A vigorous
enforcement of civil rights laws will bring an end to segregated public facilities which are barriers to a
truly desegregated society, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which
was the barriers to a truly integrated society.”); but see MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., The American Dream
(1961), in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE, supra note 101, at 208, 213 (“Both legislation and education are
required. . . . We need legislation and federal action to control behavior. It may be true that the law
can’t make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important
also.”).
127. Interview on “Meet the Press” (Apr. 17, 1960), in THE PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING,
JR.: VOLUME 5, supra note 77, at 428, 430.
128. On this point, King’s vision of the nature of the law and social change was closer to
Bickel’s than to some prominent civil rights lawyers, such as Thurgood Marshall. When, for example,
the Kennedy Administration proposed a sweeping civil rights law, explicitly intended to get protesters
off the streets, Bickel supported the effort, but warned “that if one is passed, neither the
Administration nor the public should view the problem as solved, or should regard further agitation
and mass marches as unjustified.” Alexander M. Bickel, Civil Rights Boil-Up, NEW REPUBLIC, June 8,
1963, at 13. See also Alexander M. Bickel, Much More Than Law Is Needed, N.Y. TIMES MAG., Aug. 9,
1964, at 7 (“It is an all-too-common delusion with us that the way to solve a problem is to pass a law
“should not minimize work through the courts . . . legislation and court orders can
only declare rights. They can never thoroughly deliver them. Only when the
people themselves begin to act are rights on paper given life blood.”129 King
embraced the rhetoric of rights, but he demanded an expanded understanding of
what constitutes a right, differentiating a formal proclamation of a legal right from
the substantive protection—the “life blood”—of a fully realized right.
Although the experience of the 1960s moved them in opposite directions—
Bickel toward Burkean conservatism, King toward a more radical social
democratic posture—they shared a central insight about the law: in certain
circumstances a particular law (i.e., the product of the formalized mechanism of
law making) might fail to achieve the status of law (i.e., a constraint external to and
superior to the normal workings of social interactions). Law must be constructed,
and this is a process in which there are no clear boundaries between a legal and
social sphere. It is all law, and it is all society. For both Bickel and King, the law-
society boundary ultimately has little relevance to the construction of law. Laws
become law not through formal mechanisms of legal production alone, but
through a process of enforcement, education, and struggle.
Bickel and King thus offer an approach to conceptualizing the law-society
boundary that is ultimately quite different from those described in Part I of this
Article. While the diverse groups described there—segregationists, racial liberals,
and student sit-in protesters—saw their causes as best promoted by emphasizing
the boundaries of law, Bickel and King saw their own distinct agendas best served
by breaking down these very same boundaries.
IV. DEFINING LAW’S BOUNDARIES IN HISTORIES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS

MOVEMENT
If we shift our perspective from the history of the civil rights movement to
historical accounts of the movement, we see that historians of the civil rights
movement have also drawn on distinctive conceptions of the law-society divide. A
useful way to understand the historiographical development of the civil rights
movement is to focus on the various approaches historians and legal scholars over
the past four decades have taken in conceptualizing law and its role in the civil
rights movement. In fact, on the question of law and the limits of law,
historiography has generally mirrored history. The four basic approaches to the
about it and then forget it, and we are naturally prone to seize on facts that seem to confirm what we
wish to believe.”). Marshall, on the other hand, remained skeptical toward King’s tactics (referring
once to King as a “first-rate rabble-rouser,” MARK V. TUSHNET, MAKING CIVIL RIGHTS LAW, 1936–
1961, at 305 (1994)), and he never lost his faith in social change through litigation. See, e.g., Thurgood
Marshall, Law and the Quest for Equality, 1967 WASH. U. L.Q. 1, 8 (1967) (“[T]he social reform inherent
in the [civil rights] decisions was achieved by the efforts of men, largely lawyers, who believe that
through the rule of law change could indeed be wrought. The Negro who was once enslaved by law
became emancipated by it, and is achieving equality through it.”).
129. TAYLOR BRANCH, PARTING THE WATERS, 1954 – 1963, at 598 (1988).
law-society divide that I described above—the “folkways” skepticism toward the

capacity of law; the legalist claims of the NAACP lawyers and their allies; the
grassroots antilegalist tactics of the sit-in movement activists; and the effort to
break down the law-society boundary embraced by King and Bickel—each
capture different assumptions about law that can also be found within civil rights
movement historiography.
The role of competing conceptions of law in legal historical scholarship can
be seen with particular clarity by examining an issue that has become a central
point of debate for civil rights movement scholarship: the connection between the
Supreme Court and the direct action protests of the 1950s and 1960s. The long-
held assumption, embraced by popular accounts and by most scholarship, is that
Brown served as a catalyst for subsequent social activism. In declaring segregated
schools unconstitutional, the Supreme Court redefined the terms of the game,
placed the law of the land behind the cause of racial equality, and provided the
spark that ignited the civil rights movement.
The first generation of histories of the civil rights movement that adopted
this interpretation of Brown grew directly out of the work of midcentury racial
liberalism.130 Extending the theme C. Vann Woodward used to explain the rise of
Jim Crow, scholars placed law and lawyers at the heart of changes that were taking
place. While the civil rights movement was obviously defined by dramatic episodes
of social protest, its achievements were best measured by the changes in the law
that had resulted. This was a narrative that the mainstream media tended to
embrace as the civil rights movement unfolded. In a retrospective on the ten-year
anniversary of Brown, for instance, New York Times reporter Claude Sitton wrote,
“Negroes frequently observe that, while the Emancipation Proclamation freed
them physically, the Supreme Court decision freed them mentally. . . . [O]bservers
generally agree that the forces unloosed by the Supreme Court are shaping an
America that will differ sharply from the one that existed on May 17, 1954.”131 In
the following decades, civil rights lawyers and law professors regularly promoted
this same narrative. The desegregation ruling, according to NAACP lawyer Jack
Greenberg, “profoundly affected national thinking and has served as the principal
ideological engine of today’s civil rights movement”;132 Brown “sired” the
130. See, e.g., RICHARD KLUGER, SIMPLE JUSTICE: THE HISTORY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF
EDUCATION AND BLACK AMERICA’S STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY (1976); LOREN MILLER, THE
PETITIONERS: THE STORY OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE NEGRO
(1966); CLEMENT E. VOSE, CAUCASIANS ONLY: THE SUPREME COURT, THE NAACP, AND THE
RESTRICTIVE COVENANT CASES (1959).
131. Claude Sitton, Since the School Decree: Decade of Racial Ferment, N.Y. TIMES, May 18, 1964, at
1. New York Times Supreme Court Reporter Anthony Lewis also regularly emphasized the inspirational
impact of Brown in his writings. See, e.g., ANTHONY LEWIS, PORTRAIT OF A DECADE: THE SECOND
AMERICAN REVOLUTION 303 (1964) (“However discouraged one may be at the continuing reality of
discrimination, he should remember that this country is at least on the right course—and that the law
put it there.”).
132. Jack Greenberg, The Supreme Court, Civil Rights, and Civil Dissonance, 77 YALE L.J. 1520,
movement, wrote J. Harvie Wilkinson.133 Brown’s achievement could be most

easily measured by the scope of the social change that resulted. Social protest was
tightly linked to legal institutions: the Supreme Court’s Brown decision served as a
catalyst for subsequent direct action protest, which, in turn, pressured the federal
government to enact landmark civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s.134 The
Supreme Court provided a spark that set in motion events that resulted in a
constructive dialogue between social protest and further legal change.
Although this narrative, with the Supreme Court as the fulcrum of the civil
rights movement, has retained a prominent place in popular culture and in the
legal academy, there has always existed a counternarrative, one more skeptical
about the role of the Court. In the years leading up to and immediately following
Brown, the NAACP and its allies worked to marginalize those who supported the
cause of the black freedom struggle but questioned the ultimate value of civil
rights victories in the courts.135 Skepticism toward the capacity of the Court never
disappeared, however. The social and legal upheavals of the 1960s—with inflated
hopes for transforming society through civil rights laws followed, inevitably, by
disappointment with the realities of entrenched inequalities—led to a resurgence
of Court skeptics. A moderate form can be seen in King and Bickel’s efforts to
reconceptualize law. A more sustained challenge to the idea that the work of
lawyers and judges—the law in its formalistic sense—created the conditions
necessary for the civil rights movement was the black nationalist scholarship that
emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The black nationalist critique of civil rights reform was part of a broader
enterprise of challenging the white-dominated legal structure—a challenge that
saw traditional legal reform, litigation and lobbying, as too limited, too dependent
on whites, and too unresponsive to the needs of the masses of black Americans.
Harold Cruse, in his classic critique of the African American reform tradition, The
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), portrayed the NAACP as a mouthpiece for the
“Black Establishment” and school desegregation as little more than “a cause dear
to the hearts of most middle-class Negro constituents.”136 Brown did not lead
society, wrote NAACP lawyer Lewis Steel, in a controversial attack on the
Supreme Court (which would lose him his job).137 All Brown did was “bring the
1522 (1968); see also Robert L. Carter, The Warren Court and Desegregation, 67 MICH. L. REV. 237, 246 –
47 (1968) (Brown “fathered a social upheaval . . . . [T]he psychological dimensions of America’s race
problem were completely recast. . . . As a result, the Negro was propelled into a stance of insistent
militancy.”).
133. J. HARVIE WILKINSON III, FROM BROWN TO BAKKE: THE SUPREME COURT AND
SCHOOL INTEGRATION 3 (1979); see also MORTON J. HORWITZ, THE WARREN COURT AND THE
PURSUIT OF JUSTICE 15 (1998); Glennon, supra note 103.
134. For a list of sources that adopt this kind of approach, see Michael J. Klarman, Brown,
Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement, 80 VA. L. REV. 7, 8–9 n.2, 75 n.328 (1994).
135. See generally Schmidt, supra note 5.
136. HAROLD CRUSE, THE CRISIS OF THE NEGRO INTELLECTUAL 240 (1967).
137. JACK GREENBERG, CRUSADERS IN THE COURTS: HOW A DEDICATED BAND OF
Court up to date” with changes already taking place.138 “[T]o give nine white
Supreme Court judges the credit for exposing to Black people the nature of racial
discrimination is to ignore an entire people’s history,” one radical legal activist
argued.139 Those writing in this radical or nationalist vein generally believed that
law could be effective in shaping social practices, they simply thought it invariably
served majority interests. Therefore even those legal breakthroughs that seem
most significant, such as Brown and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ultimately had
limited racially egalitarian effects in challenging entrenched patterns of racial
inequality.140 The strong version of this position resuscitated William Graham
Sumner’s pessimism toward legal reform: white supremacy was engrained in the
folkways of American life and civil rights laws were largely ineffectual in changing
this fact.141 “Brown has made it clear that, even if the Court wanted to, it could not
free Blacks from their oppression,” wrote Howard Moore Jr. “Blacks now know
that only through self-reliance and solidarity in the continuing struggle can they
attain freedom, justice and equality.”142 Whatever accomplishments came out of
the civil rights movement, nationalists argued, should be attributed to grassroots
activism and organization, not to court decisions and legislation.143
This focus on organizing and local politics was at the heart of the social
histories of the civil rights movement, which came to dominate the historiography
of the movement in the 1980s. Social historians did not necessarily seek to directly
refute the law-centric account in the way black nationalist scholars did. Rather,
their accounts pushed federal legal reform to the margins of the story. Basically
LAWYERS FOUGHT FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION 481 (1994); Lewis M. Steel, A Critic’s View
of the Warren Court — Nine Men in Black Who Think White, N.Y. TIMES MAG., Oct. 13, 1968, at 56.
138. Steel, supra note 137.
139. Kenneth Cloke, The Economic Basis of Law and State, in LAW AGAINST THE PEOPLE:
ESSAYS TO DEMYSTIFY LAW, ORDER, AND THE COURTS 56, 77 (Robert Lefcourt ed., 1971).
140. See, e.g., Haywood Burns, Racism and American Law, in LAW AGAINST THE PEOPLE:
ESSAYS TO DEMYSTIFY LAW, ORDER, AND THE COURTS, supra note 139, at 38, 48 (“There are serious
questions about the amount of true change the series of modern civil rights victories and legislation
since Brown and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 have been able to effect in the real-life situations of
nonwhite people in America.”).
141. See, e.g., id. at 39 (“[Law] has been the way in which the generalized racism in the society
is made specific and converted into particular policies and standards of social control which mirror
the racism of the dominant society.”); id. at 54 (“The law will change when men who make the law
change—or when we make new men.”). By 1968, Robert Carter combined (somewhat inconsistently
perhaps) a view of Brown as inspiring black militancy with a skepticism toward legal reform. See Carter,
supra note 132, at 248 (“For, whatever the Court does, our society is composed of a series of insulated
institutions and interests antithetical to the Negro’s best interests. Effective regulation and control of
these institutions and interests must come not from the Supreme Court but from the bodies politic.”).
142. Howard Moore, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education: The Court’s Relationship to Black
Liberation, in LAW AGAINST THE PEOPLE: ESSAYS TO DEMYSTIFY LAW, ORDER, AND THE COURTS,
supra note 139, at 55, 60.
143. The belief that law was dependent on other, more fundamental social processes was a
commonplace assertion in the emerging law and society movement. See, e.g., LAWRENCE M.
FRIEDMAN, A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW 10 (1973) (describing law “as a mirror of society” and
“as relative and molded by economy and society.”).
adopting the perspective of the sit-in leaders and other movement activists, this
scholarship assumed the world of law (defined in its formal sense, as lawyers,
court decisions, and legislation) was readily separable from the lives and
achievements of the participants. Law plays only a background role (if that) in
classic accounts of the movement by Clayborne Carson, John Dittmer, Doug
McAdams, Aldon Morris, Charles Payne, and others.144 In these local histories, as
Kenneth Mack has recently explained, the methodological assumption was “that
law was epiphenomenal, not that important to local movement actors, and
sometimes even corrosive of local community organizing.”145
Thus, into the 1990s, the histories of the civil rights movement were
generally told on several different, largely distinct tracks, each premised on a
different conception of the relationship between the distinct spheres of law and
society. One was the traditional account, popular in law schools and in text books,
in which legal institutions, particularly the Supreme Court, were critical in
energizing and sustaining the movement. A more skeptical account, pioneered by
the black nationalist scholars of the late 1960s and 1970s and then picked up in
various forms by critical legal and critical race scholars in the 1970s and 1980s,
assumed that legal elites lacked either the power or the inclination to use the law
as a force of significant reform.146 Much of this work treated law as a secondary
phenomenon, ultimately dependent on social and economic forces. And then
there were the grassroots society histories, in which law played only a minor
background role in the development of social movement organization and
activism.
Beginning in the 1990s, a new generation of legal scholars revisited the
question of how formal legal changes, particularly Brown v. Board of Education,
144. CLAYBORNE CARSON, IN STRUGGLE: SNCC AND THE BLACK AWAKENING OF THE
1960S (2d. ed. 1995); JOHN DITTMER, LOCAL PEOPLE: THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN
MISSISSIPPI (1994); DOUG MCADAM, POLITICAL PROCESS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK
INSURGENCY, 1930–1970 (2nd ed. 1999); ALDON D. MORRIS, THE ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT: BLACK COMMUNITIES ORGANIZING FOR CHANGE (1984); CHARLES M. PAYNE, I’VE
GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM: THE ORGANIZING TRADITION AND THE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM
STRUGGLE (1995); see also AUGUST MEIER & ELLIOT RUDWICK, CORE: A STUDY OF THE CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT, 1942–1968 (1973).
145. Kenneth W. Mack, Bringing the Law Back into the History of the Civil Rights Movement, 27 L. &
HIST. REV. 657, 658 (2009); see also Kennedy, supra note 103 at 1004–05 (writing in the late 1980s and
noting the lack of legal analysis in scholarship on the civil rights movement). Some of these studies
did acknowledge the value of Brown and other federal legal reforms on the grassroots movement. See,
e.g., DOUG MCADAM, POLITICAL PROCESS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK INSURGENCY,
1930–1970, at 108 (2d ed. 1982) (noting the “symbolic importance of the shift” of federal
government policy on civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s, which “was responsible for nothing less
than a cognitive revolution within the black population regarding the prospects for change in this
country’s racial status quo”); MORRIS, supra note 144, at 39 (“[T]he two approaches—legal action and
mass protest—entered a turbulent but workable marriage.”).
146. See, e.g., Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence
Dilemma, 93 HARV. L. REV. 518 (1980). See generally RICHARD DELGADO & JEAN STEFANCIC,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY (2001).
related to the emergence and development of civil rights era social activism. It was
during this decade that Gerald Rosenberg and Michael Klarman began publishing
a series of books and articles that directly challenged the traditional legalist
interpretation of Brown as a significant causal factor in the emergence of civil rights
protests. Rosenberg, in his 1991 book The Hollow Hope, argued that Brown
accomplished little—it did not desegregate the schools (the Civil Rights Act of
1964 should be credited with this); and it had minimal effects on the rise of the
direct-action phase of civil rights movement.147 Klarman took up the same
question but came to a somewhat different conclusion. In several articles and in a
2004 book, he argued that the decision’s most significant effects were indirect: the
decision mobilized the white South to resist segregation at all costs; the threat of
integration radicalized southern politics. This led to the bloody and highly
publicized confrontations in Birmingham, Selma, and elsewhere, which in turn led
to increased support in the North for civil rights and transformative legislation
such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.148
Klarman has labeled this the “backlash thesis.”149
Rosenberg and Klarman’s approaches, like all studies of the social impact of
judicial decisions, depend upon a basic assumption about the nature of law: law
can be identified as a force independent of society and law’s effects on society can
be meaningfully measured.150 This was much the same assumption that was at the
heart of the legalist vision of the NAACP lawyers who made the case for Brown.
Yet in assessing the capacity of law to create social reform, Rosenberg and
Klarman make a further distinction that was generally not found in the arguments
of the NAACP lawyers in the 1950s. They differentiate law from politics. For their
purposes, law is the product of the courts; politics is the product of democratic
institutions and social activism. Both Rosenberg and Klarman isolate judicially
produced law from the law produced from representative institutions. And then
147. GERALD N. ROSENBERG, THE HOLLOW HOPE: CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT SOCIAL
CHANGE? 39–169 (1991); see also Gerald N. Rosenberg, Brown is Dead! Long Live Brown!: The Endless
Attempt to Canonize a Case, 80 VA. L. REV. 161 (1994).
148. MICHAEL J. KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS: THE SUPREME COURT AND
THE STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY 344–442 (2004); see Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of
Education: Facts and Political Correctness, 80 VA. L. REV. 185 (1994); see also Klarman, supra note 134. In
his 2004 book, Klarman acknowledges a more significant role for Brown in influencing black activism
than he allowed in his earlier essays. See, e.g., KLARMAN, supra, at 369 (“Brown prompted southern
blacks to challenge Jim Crow more aggressively than they might otherwise have done in the mid-
1950s.”); id. at 467 (“Brown raised the hopes and expectations of black Americans.”). But he maintains
his basic point that Brown’s relationship to the movement was indirect. Id. at 374 (“The nearly six-year
gap between Brown and the Greensboro sit-ins suggests that any such connection must be indirect and
convoluted. . . . The outbreak of direct-action protest can be explained independently of Brown.”).
149. Michael J. Klarman, How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis, 81 J. AM.
HIST. 81 (1994).
150. For a classic assessment of the assumptions underlying legal compliance and impact
studies, see Malcolm M. Feeley, The Concept of Laws in Social Science: A Critique and Notes on an Expanded
View, 10 L. & SOC. REV. 497 (1976).
they consider the relationship between law (i.e., the federal judiciary) and various
nonlaw categories: school desegregation statistics; public opinion polls; newspaper
coverage; the words and actions of (nonlegal) activists and political leaders. To fit
this into the terminology I have been using, their law-society boundary is
essentially a circle around the judiciary.
Partly in reaction to these revisionist accounts of Brown’s impact, partly in an
effort among sociolegal scholars to bring more attention to the role of law in
social movements, recently scholars have sought to redefine the law-society divide
that, in its various forms, has dominated civil rights movement scholarship thus
far. Legal histories of the civil rights movement have found more law on the
grassroots level than social historians had recognized, even as they tend to
challenge the revisionist impact studies as overly focused on the Supreme Court
and insufficiently attentive to the way nonelite actors draw upon legal norms. The
past decade or so has seen the flowering of legal historical scholarship on the civil
rights movement that simply asks different questions and focuses on different
areas of civil rights law and activism. This scholarship has sought to undermine
the assumption of a clear distinction between law and the rest of society. The
latest scholarship on the NAACP has emphasized the diversity of its efforts,
drawing attention to the work of its lawyers in settings outside the courts. Of
particular interest has been the NAACP’s efforts on behalf of labor rights151 and
legal activism within its local branches.152 In some ways this is traditional legal
history, focusing on the efforts of civil rights lawyers to change the laws. But in
reconstructing the lives and worldviews of these civil rights era lawyers, the lines
between activism and legal reform, between politics and law are blurred to the
point where they no longer seem to matter.
Recent scholarship in political science and sociology has also offered
powerful analytical tools for studying the role of law in social movements—and in
the process challenging the utility of the law-society division. This sociolegal
scholarship has tended to be much more self-conscious about conceptualizing
“law” as a category of analysis than work in the field of legal history.153 Much of
this work has sought to capture the creation and development of legal
151. See, e.g., RISA L. GOLUBOFF, THE LOST PROMISE OF CIVIL RIGHTS (2007); NANCY
MACLEAN, FREEDOM IS NOT ENOUGH: THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE (2006);
Sophia Z. Lee, Hotspots in a Cold War: The NAACP’s Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948–1964, 26
LAW & HIST. REV. 327 (2008); Kenneth W. Mack, Law and Mass Politics in the Making of the Civil Rights
Lawyer, 1931–1941, 93 J. AM. HIST. 37 (2006); Kenneth W. Mack, Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering and
Politics in the Era Before Brown, 115 YALE L.J. 256, 265 (2005); see also MARK V. TUSHNET, THE
NAACP’S LEGAL STRATEGY AGAINST SEGREGATED EDUCATION, 1925–1950 (1987).
152. See, e.g., TOMIKO BROWN-NAGIN, COURAGE TO DISSENT (2011); GOLUBOFF, supra
note 151.
153. See, e.g., Michael McCann, Law and Social Movements, in THE BLACKWELL COMPANION TO
LAW AND SOCIETY 506, 507 (Austin Sarat ed., 2004) (“Much of the debate regarding how law matters
for social movements derives from quite divergent ways of understanding and studying law itself.
Most generally, when we refer to ‘the law,’ we imply different types of phenomena.”).
consciousness in informal settings.154 In his classic study of the “politics of

rights,” for example, Stuart Scheingold critiqued the “myth of rights,” which was
“premised on a direct linking of litigation, rights, and remedies with social
change.”155 Judicially protected rights were instead better understood as “political
resources of unknown value in the hands of those who want to alter the course of
public policy.”156 Law, in this sense, is a social phenomenon. It is a resource of
social movement mobilization; it acts within society rather than upon society. The
central concern of sociolegal scholars doing this kind of work is less with whether
law produces social change and more with the way in which law functions within
different institutions and in different social settings—these are legal “rights at
work,” in Michael McCann’s phrasing.157 From this perspective, talk about the
boundaries of the law make little sense. Applied to the civil rights movement, this
genre of scholarship has located a legal consciousness within the ranks of civil
rights movement activists—including those who insisted that their tactics offered
an alternative to legal reform.158
While much recent work on the history of civil rights and the role of law in
social movements has critiqued Brown revisionist scholarship by challenging its
underlying assumptions about the boundaries of the law and the role of law in
shaping social action, some legal scholars have sought to challenge the revisionist
interpretation on its own ground. This critique accepts the identification of causal
links between judicial rulings and extrajudicial action as a question worth
considering, but they challenge the revisionist conclusion that Brown had such a
minimal impact on the civil rights movement. Some of this work has attempted to
154. See, e.g., SALLY ENGLE MERRY, GETTING JUSTICE AND GETTING EVEN: LEGAL
CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG WORKING-CLASS AMERICANS (1990); SUSAN S. SILBEY & PATRICIA
EWICK, THE COMMON PLACE OF LAW (1998); Laura Beth Nielson, Situating Legal Consciousness:
Experience and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens About Law and Street Harassment, 34 LAW & SOC’Y REV. 1055
(2000); Austin Sarat, “. . .The Law is All Over”: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare
Poor, 2 YALE J.L. & HUMAN. 342 (1990).
155. STUART SCHEINGOLD, THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS: LAWYERS, PUBLIC POLICY, AND
POLITICAL CHANGE 5 (1974).
156. Id. at 6–7.
157. MICHAEL W. MCCANN, RIGHTS AT WORK: PAY EQUITY REFORM AND THE POLITICS
OF LEGAL MOBILIZATIONS (1994); see also, e.g., Michael W. McCann, Reform Litigation on Trial, 17 LAW
& SOC. INQUIRY 715, 733 (1992) (describing a “bottom-up, dispute-centered approach” to studying
law that “emphasizes that judicially articulated legal norms take a life of their own as they are
deployed in practical social action”); id. at 734 (“The key insight provided by this view is to emphasize
the dynamic, variable interaction between formal and informal, adjudicatory and nonadjudicatory, and
state-centered and indigenous legal processes in evolving social struggles.”); Mark C. Suchman &
Lauren B. Edelman, Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition, 21
LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 903, 907 (1996) (“Law and society scholarship depicts the law as a culturally
and structurally embedded social institution. By focusing on law-in-action rather than law-on-the-
books, Law and Society research highlights the ways in which extralegal social processes continuously
construct and reconstitute the meaning and impact of legal norms.”).
158. See, e.g., Coleman et al., supra note 103; Francesca Polletta, The Structural Context of Novel
Rights Claims: Southern Civil Rights Organizing, 1961–1966, 34 LAW & SOC’Y REV. 367 (2000).
identify instances in which Brown did in fact have a direct influence on social
movement activism, emboldening individuals to demand rights in ways they might
otherwise have been unable to do.159 Another approach is to focus on the negative
response to Brown—to the white “backlash” the decision produced. Rather than
treating this as a cost of pressing the law too far ahead of society, Robert Post and
Reva Siegel have advocated a model of “democratic constitutionalism,” in which
cultural debate and constitutional conflict are recognized as a central site of rights
formation.160 Backlash to legal pronouncements is not necessarily something to be
feared or avoided, they argue. Struggle over fundamental constitutional conflicts
may have a beneficial role in the constitutional system. Backlash may have
“potentially constructive effects”;161 it “may be a necessary consequence of
vindicating constitutional rights.”162
Activists, lawyers, social scientists, and politicians who were part of the civil
rights movement in the middle decades of the twentieth century debated the
meaning of law—its efficacy in shaping social relations, its relation to custom, the
role of litigation in social reform movements, the possibility of activism outside
the sphere of law. And ever since, scholars of the civil rights movement have
debated these very same questions.
V. CONCLUSION
All struggles for social change create incentives for putting forth a vision of
what the law is—and what it is not. The civil rights movement offers a particularly
clear illustration of this. The concept of law had a particular value to the historical
actors involved in the movement. Law was important not simply for its ability to
regulate behavior or to legitimate certain norms (although it could have these
attributes), but for the way it helped to organize the complex landscape of social
reform politics. The act of conceptualizing the law was often a way to define and
to justify one’s role in the movement. Each of the groups I have examined defined
the boundaries of the law in a way that was overly simplistic, even misleading.
Segregationists tried to ignore the role of law in creating and maintaining their
folkways; racial liberals exaggerated the distinctive nature of the law so as to make
their case for law’s efficacy in shaping race relations; and the sit-in leaders relied
upon a caricature of civil rights lawyering in the process of defining their own role
in the struggle. Yet by committing themselves to these conceptions of law,
159. See, e.g., David J. Garrow, “Happy” Birthday, Brown v. Board of Education? Brown’s
Fiftieth Anniversary and the New Critics of Supreme Court Muscularity, 90 VA. L. REV. 693, 712–20 (2004);
David J. Garrow, Hopelessly Hollow History: Devaluing of Brown v. Board of Education, 80 VA. L. REV.
151 (1994); McCann, supra note 157, at 735–36; Mark Tushnet, The Significance of Brown v. Board of
Education, 80 VA. L. REV. 173 (1994).
160. Robert Post & Reva Siegel, Roe Rage: Democratic Constitutionalism and Backlash, 42 HARV.
C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 373 (2007).
161. Id. at 375.
162. Id. at 395
however simplistic or misleading, each group illustrates the value of the law-
society divide for social movement participants.
As a methodological premise for legal history moving forward, challenging
the conception of the law as a bounded, exogenous locus of power and influence
seems a useful starting point. Approaching law as functioning in a constitutive
manner within society, rather than in a causal manner upon society, effectively
captures a critical part of historical reality.163 This approach, demonstrated in
different ways in the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Alexander Bickel,
would seem to render the law-society divide as basically irrelevant. This is the
direction in which the best of recent legal historical scholarship on the civil rights
movement has been heading.
Yet even as scholars question the analytical value of a conception of law as
separate from other spheres of life, we should also recognize that a perception of
separateness has often resonated in powerful ways with the subjects we are trying
to understand. A central part of the history of the civil rights movement was not
only the work of rights and the exposure of the artificiality of the separateness of
law and society, but also the value that various groups placed upon a conception
of law as separate from society. The drawing of the law-society boundary was a
central part of the way in which historical actors understood their world and the
role of law in that world. For this reason, regardless of its methodological or
theoretical shortcomings, the law-society dichotomy remains an essential object of
legal historical inquiry.
163. See Christopher Tomlins, How Autonomous Is Law?, 3 ANN. REV. L. SOC. SCI. 45 (2007)
(exploring the assumptions underlying the relational law-and-society framework and considering
possible alternatives).
Romanticism and the Rise of German Nationalism
Author(s): Hans Kohn
Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1950), pp. 443-472
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Romanticism and the Rise of German
Nationalism
By Hans Kohn
ROMANTICISM, though in its beginninglittle concernedwith

politics or the state, preparedthe rise of Germannationalism
after 1800. It was an aestheticrevolution,a resort to imagination,
almost femininein its sensibility;it was poetrymore deeply indebted
to the spirit of music than the poetryof the eighteenthcenturyhad
been, rich in emotionaldepth, more potent in magic evocation. But
Germanromanticismwas and wishedto be more than poetry. It was
an interpretationof life, nature and history- and this philosophic
characterdistinguishedit from romanticismin other lands. It was
sharplyopposedto the rationalismof the eighteenthcentury;it mobil-
ized the fascinationof the past to fight againstthe principlesof 1789.
In that indirectway romanticismcameto concernitself with political
and social life and with the state. It neverdevelopeda programfor a
modernGermannation-state,but with its emphasison the peculiarity
of the Germanmind it helpedthe growthof a consciousnessof Ger-
man uniqueness.
It started as a movementof intellectuals,many of them of the
type of unsettledbohemianswho are often found in the vanguardof
movementsof culturalrenovationwhich coincidewith the beginning
of social change. They were the spiritualchildrenof the Storm and
Stresswhichhad precededthemby thirtyyears,and theywerein ardent
oppositionto the mature Goethe who had long outgrownhis brief
Storm and Stress period. They admiredhim as a creativeman of
letters,as the embodimentof the princelyartist,but his conceptof the
individualthey rejected. Goethe's goal of educationwas the well-
roundedharmoniousindividual,the "Persinlichkeit,"the personality
whichwillinglysubordinateditself to bindingformsand to the obliga-
tion of universallaw, which rejoicesin measure,symmetryand pro-
portion,whichacknowledgesthe limits of the humanand the humane.
The romanticindividual,on the other hand, regardedhimselfnot as
443

444 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
a representative of the universal order,but as unique,rejectinglimits

imposedby measure or society and demanding full freedomfor his
creativegenius.1 But the romanticist, feeling himself hemmedin by
the societywhichhe foundaroundor ratherbeneathhimself,did not
acceptthe titaniclonelinessof the Stormand Stress.He wasdrawn
longinglytowardsa community of like-minded individualswhowould
live a full life according to theirinnermost emotions.The complexity
and anguishof this searchfor a community wereheightened by the
underlyingall-demanding subjectivism; the uniqueindividuallonged
for a total self-assertion of all his conflicting desiresand yet felt the
tragic need for fulfillment in the miracle of a trueharmonious union
in whichall the conflicting opposites of life would be of a
reconciled,
new goldenage whichseemedaccessible to the magicpowerof the
artist. Art becameto the romanticists the newreligion.
In theirquestfor the miraculous theromanticists foundthe ration-
of
alismand commonsense theeighteenth centuryshallowandsuper-
ficial. The decisiveforceof the individual,accordingto the roman-
ticists,residedin his sentiments whichdistinguished him fromothers
andrendered himuniqueamongmen. The strengthof theindividual's
desiresin whichhis trueego expressed itselfvalidatedthem;the pas-
sionof longingestablished therightto its object.The morepassionate
manwas,the morefullyhe lived. Passionwasthe prerogative of the
artist,poet, seer who obeyeddeep impulses in his innermost self.
Whilethis discoveryof the irrational enrichedpoetryand the under-
standingof man, it carried,as Goetherecognized, a threatto the
1 See on "personality"and "individuality"Fritz Strich, Dichtung und Zivilisation

(Munich, 1928), p. 35, and his Deutsche Klassik und Romantik (Munich, 1922). See
on romanticismin general the articlesby Arthur O. Lovejoy, Goetz A. Briefs and Eugene
N. Anderson in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. II, No. 3 (June, 1941). On the
political implications see Paul Kluckhohn, Persinlichkeit und Gemeinschaft,Studien Zur
Staatsauffasungder deutschen Romantik, (Halle, 1925); Carl Schmitt, Politische Roman-
tik, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1925); Jakob Baxa, Einfihrung in die romantischeStaatswissen-
schaft (Jena, 1923); Gesellschaftund Staat im Spiegel deutscherRomantik,ed. by Jacob
Baxa (Jena, 1924); Kurt Borries, Die Romantik und die Geschichte (Berlin, 1925);
Andries David Verschoor, Die iltere deutsche Romantik und die Nationalidee, (Amster-
dam, 1928); Gottfried Salomon, Das Mittelalter als Ideal in der Romantik (Munich,
1922); Reinhold Aris, History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815
(London, 1936), pp. 205-341; Josef Kmrner,Die Botschaft der deutschen Romantik an
Europa (Augsburg, 1933). Two more general works are Julius Petersen, Wesenbestim-
mung der deutschen Romantik (Leipzig, 1926), and Henri Brunschwig, La Crise de
l'Etat Prussien a la fin du XVIIIe siecle et la genese de la mentalite romantique (Paris,
1947). On the differencebetween English and German romanticismsee Hoxie N. Fair-
child, "The Romantic movement in England," part of a symposium on romanticismin
PMLA, vol. 55 (March, 1940), pp. 1-60.

ROMANTICISM AND GERMAN NATIONALISM 445
rationalorderof law and societyif it luredmanto lose oneselfin it

insteadof challenging himto controlit. The desiredeasilyappeared
to poeticimagination as the indispensable to be achievedat any cost;
everything could be turned into an instrument of full self-realization
or self-enjoyment. The idealcommunity of theutopiandreamrefused
to acceptthe hard limitations of realityimposedin the interestsof
equalfellow-men; it promised to uniteall in an organicwayin which
everybody would be fully himself withoutany limitations and yet at
the sametime fully part of the wholein a lovingembracewithout
conflictor friction. In such a perfectcommunityindividualand
societywereno longerin needof legaland constitutional guarantees
in theirrelationship; individual and community becametwo sidesof
the one perfectlife whichwouldbe all in all, far beyondand above
all legaldistinctions andtheneedforthem.The anarchic individualism
found its complement in the total community.Both theseextremes
existedoutsidethe real societywith its necessaryadjustments and
compromises; they led a "pure life"in the imaginationof the romantic
artists.To mistakeimagination for desirablerealitywas boundto
spelldangerto the freeindividual andto a societybasedon law.
The romanticmovementbegan as an artisticrevolt against
eighteenthcenturyculturewhichseemednot to satisfythe soul and
not to warmthe heart. This apparently uninspiredand uninspiring
civilization
seemedinflatedwithphilistinepridein the recentprogress
of men. The romanticists found thereneitherchivalrynor poetry,
neithermiraclenor mystery.Frenchrationalism had contemptuously.
lookeddownupon the past and especiallyupon the MiddleAges.
The romanticists foundin theseveryperiodsthe wondrous fairyland
whichthey missedin the present.Repelledby theircontemporary
world,theydiscovered inspiration and beautyin history.
On thisroadto the pasttheyfollowedJustusM6serandHerder,
the forerunnersof Germannationalism.2 But Moser was a practical
statesman,andhis love of the ruralfreeholdersof the MiddleAges
wasrootedin his nativesoil and in his personalexperience.
Herder's
visionwas infinitelybroader;like the romanticistshe saw creative
forcesat workin everyphenomenon of natureandhistory,a dynamic
pantheism organicgrowth,yet theseforceswereheld withina
of all
2 Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, pp. 413ff,

contextof enlightened humanitarianism and rationalmorality, rejected

by the romanticists. But though Moser andHerdervaluedthe past,
theylivedin the presentand wishedto go forward;the romanticists
succumbed to the lureof historyand wishedto enrichthe presentby
reviving past. Theyfeltit so overflowing
the withpoetry,so venerable
withlegendandprophecy, thattheycouldnot studyit withrational
detachment; it seemedto themimpenetrable to theanalyticalapproach
of scholarlyreason;it couldbe embraced only as a whole by the in-
tuitionof greatlove whichimmersed the longingindividualin the
flow of the pastwhichwas organically livingon in the presentand
wascarrying forward intothefuture.
Thus the individualfoundhimselfrootedin the past and deter-
minedby it. He appeared conditioned by the peculiartraditionsof
the nationalcommunity.Thoughtheyhad no factualfoundation for
it, the romanticists were convinced that these national characteristics
wereneveras pronounced as in theMiddleAges. The artof knights
andguildsseemedto themto expressthetruenationalsoul,its creative
forcenot yet corrupted by a rationalism whichmakeseverything alike
andwhichdeprivesit of life. The nationalpastset the model,valid
only for the one nationalcommunity; it gaineda new centralim-
portance for all cultural life. The conceptof individuality, unique
andall-containing, wastransferred fromthe individual to the national
community.The nationwasno longera legalsocietyof individuals
enteringinto unionaccordingto generalprinciplesand for mutual
benefits;it was now an originalphenomenon of natureand history,
leadingits own life according to the lawsof its growth. Civilization
andlawweredeemeddueto the immanent forcesof the people. This
nationalindividuality alive, growingand striving,often stirredby
desiresfor powerand expansion,appearedas a manifestation of the
divinewith a specialmissionto fulfill;it overcamethe quietstatic
characterof stillness and the listeningwithin characteristic of
eighteenthcenturyGermanyand followed instead voicescalling it to
unfoldits dynamicforcesandto liveand exploreall its potentialities.
The nationalcommunity or the state- the romanticists did not
establishcleardistinctions-became thesourceof all aesthetic andsoon
also of politicaland ethicalcreativeness.It was a personality over-
flowing with life and with
pulsating movement, not a mechanical and
"dead"conceptas the state of the Enlightenment appeared the
to

romanticists.The relationship of man to the statebecameintimate

and highlypersonal;the state,an objectof deeplove and admiring
devotion. Such a stateeasilyresembled the feudalpatriarchalstate,
a greatfamilyestate,heldtogetherby tiesof loveandmutualresponsi-
and to the
bility,deeplyhostileto the spiritof rationalcapitalism
mobilityof trade,but agreeableto socialistmeasuresof controland
protectionof theindividualwithinthecommunity.Thisidealwasnot
a returnto thepast,for thepastof whichit talkedhadhardlyanything
in commonwiththe past reality;it was a poeticdreamwhichtrans-
figuredthepastintoa goldenage. The firstgreatGerman romanticist,
FriedrichFreiherrvon Hardenberg (1772-1801),or Novalis,livedin
a strangeborderlandof poeticgenius,mysticthoughtandconsuming
malady;he hatedthe Prussiaof Frederick the Greatas a soulless
rationalmachineandglorifiedthe mediocre WilhelmII and
Frederick
his touchinglybeautifulQueenLouise as the fulfillmentof true
monarchy.
II
Novalis'close friendand contemporary Karl FriedrichSchlegel

(1772-1829)definedin 1798 theirpoetic ideal. Poetry "can be
fathomedby no theory,and only divinatory criticismcouldpresume
to characterizeits ideal. It aloneis infinite,becauseit aloneis free,
and recognizes as its firstlaw that the arbitrary capriceof the poet
toleratesno law."3 Schlegel'sbrotherAugustWilhelm(1767-1845)
had alreadyin 1789bitterlycomplained aboutthe unpoeticcharacter
of the age. "Thetimeswhena poetby thepresentation of greatevents
of antiquitycould becomethe preserver of folk sagas,the beloved
teacherof his nation,are perhapsgone forever.It seemsalmostim-
possibleto writea nationalheroicpoem. The wordFatherland has
lost its magicpower;theplaceof patriotism hasbeentakenby a more
generalbut thereforealso colderinterestfor mankind.With the de-
structionof the folk religionsthe old sagaperishedtoo. We have
beenalienatedfromourancestors, whilethe laterGreeksencountered
the memoryof theirHomericheroesin thousandsof objects.But
our peacefuleducation,whichis entirelydirectedtowarddomestic
3 In an essay in the periodicalAthenaum (Berlin, 1798-1800), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 28f,

quoted by John C. Blankenagel,PMLA, vol. 55, p. 3.

activities,seemsto have made us generallyless susceptibleto the im-

4
pressionof great deeds in whichwarriorcourageprevails."
In spite of this lamentover the loss of heroicpatriotism,the early
romanticistshardly betrayedany national feeling. Though Novalis
endowedthe state with an unprecedentedimportance,he did not see
it as a Germannationalstate. His famous"fragments" someof which
were publishedin Athenium and many more only after his death
were sometimescontradictoryand often non-consequential, ratherthe
resultof a deep intuitionthan part of a politico-philosophical system;
nevertheless,their main tendencywas unmistakable.They all wished
to make the state more of an intimaterealityin man's life. "It is a
great mistake of our states, that one sees the state too little. The
state should be visible everywhereand every man should be charac-
terized as a citizen. Could one not introduceeverywheremarksof
distinctionand uniforms? Whoever regardsthis as insignificantdis-
regardsan essentialpart of our nation." "The state is known too
little to us. There should be heraldsof the state, preachersof pa-
triotism. At presentmost citizensare on a ratherindifferentalmost
hostile footing with the state." "The state is a person like the indi-
vidual. What man is to himself, the state is to men. The states
will remaindifferent,as long as men are different. Essentiallythe
state like man remainsalwaysthe same." "The perfect citizen lives
entirelyin the state; he has no propertyoutsidethe state." This all-
embracingstate was howevernot a political concept,it was a poetic
creation,the embodimentof that perfectionto whichman aspires. "A
state with intensespiritualand intellectuallife will by itself be political.
The morespiritualthe state is, the moreit approachesthe poetical,the
more joyfully will every citizen out of love for the beautiful great
individuallimit his demandand be readyto makethe necessarysacri-
fices, the less will the state need it, the moresimilarwill the spiritof
the state becometo the spirit of a single exemplaryman who has ex-
pressedforeverone law only: be as good and as poeticalas possible."5
4 Review of "The Athenaid," an epic in thirty books published in 1787, two years
after the death of its author, Richard Grover (1712-1785), in the GottingischeAnzeigen
von gelehrtenSachen, 1789, p. 1988.
5 Novalis' Werke, ed. by Hermann Friedemann(Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong
& Co., n.d.), vol. 3, pp. 168, 159, 163 (Fragments 947, 884, 885, 887, 919). See also
Richard Samuels, Die poetische Staats- und GeschichtsauffassungFriedrich von Harden-
bergs (Novalis), Frankfurta.M.: Diesterweg, 1925.

ROMANTICISMAND GERMANNATIONALISM 449
Novalis'emphasison the statewas a manifestation of the same

love whichhe foundin idealmarriage and in religiousmysticism, a
perfect union and interpenetration. The ideal state was for him a
divineworkof art. "A trueprinceis the artistof artists. Everyman
shouldbecomean artist. Everythingcan becomebeautifulart."6
As everymanshouldbecomean artistanda king,this truemonarchy
was compatible witha truerepublic, in fact theywerecomplimentary
for the republicdemanded the identification
of everycitizenwiththe
state. Novaliscomplained thatin the Germancitiesonlysmalllocal
eventswerediscussed,whilegreatand generalquestionsarousedno
interest."Thisis betterin republics
wherethestateis themainconcern
of everypersonandeverybody feelshisexistence tiedup in an immense
livingwhole,andthusbroadens hisimagination andhisunderstanding
withgreatcausesand almostinvoluntarily forgetshis narrowself in
the greattotality."True republicanism was generalparticipation in
the wholestate,intimatecontactand harmonyof all members of the
state. Novaliswas convincedthat a king withouta republicand a
republicwithouta kingwerenothingbut emptywords.7 Neitherof
themexistedfor the utilitarian purposeof makingmenhappier;the
truestatemademenbetterandstronger.It increased theburdensim-
poseduponthem,not however withoutincreasing theirstrength."The
bestamongthe formerFrenchmonarchs wishedto makehis subjects
so richthateverypeasantwouldhaveeverySundaychickenand rice
on the table. But wouldnot a government be preferable underwhich
a peasantwouldratherhavea sliceof moldybreadthana roastin
anothercountry,andyet thankGodfor the goodluckof havingbeen
bornin thisland?"8
Novalisnowhere stresseda German stateas a desirablegoal. "The
Europeanstandsas high overthe Germanas the Germandoes over
the Saxon,the Saxonoverthe residentof Leipzig.Abovethe Euro-
peanis the cosmopolitan." "Ourold nationalitywas trulyRoman.
The instinctiveuniversalpolicyandtendencyof the Romansis shared
6 Novalis Werke, p. 175 (Fragment 967). See also Fragment 946, "Alle
Menschen sollen thronfiihigwerden," and Fragment980 which explains that there is only
one king by reason of economy. "If we were not obliged to proceed economically, we
would all be kings."
7 Ibid., pp. 155, 174, 169 (Fragments863, 965, 950).
8 Ibid., p. 165 (Fragment 936).

by the Germanpeople. The best thing the Frenchgainedin the

Revolutionis a shareof Germanity.""Thereare Germansevery-
where. As littleas Romanity, Hellenicityor Britannity, is Germanity
confinedto a peculiarstate;theyall aregeneralhumancharacteristics
whichonly havebecomehereand theremoregeneral.Germanity is
truepopularity, and therefore 9
an idea." Thoughhe expected much
fromthe true state,and sometimes hintedin his mysterious way at
somefutureculturalgreatness of the Germans, his visiondid not en-
compassthe age of nationalism; it lookedbackward to an idealized
Christianity which had broughtspiritualunity to mediaeval Europe;
it lookedforwardto a newJerusalem as the capitalof the earthwhere
Christianity wouldagainestablishits spiritualdominion."Bloodwill
not ceaseto flowoverEuropeuntilthenationsbecomeawareof their
frightfulmadnesswhichdrivesthem aroundin a circle,until the
nations,struckand soothedby divinemusic,stop beforethe altar
intermingling to undertakewordsof peace,until a loving feast of
peaceis celebrated withburningtearson smokingbattlefields.Only
religion can reviveEurope,canmakethe nationssecure,can reinstall
Christianity in a new and visiblegloryon earthin its old peacemak-
ing 10
office."
This was the messageof Novalis'strangeand significantessay
"Die Christenheit oder Europa"(1799) whichhe submittedto the
Athenaum.Its editors,the Schlegelsand Tieck,rejectedit because
theyfoundits historical conception too arbitrary.ThoughNovalis,a
descendantof ProtestantPietists,neverembracedCatholicism, his
praise for the mediaeval Christian hierarchy was too strong for his
friends,manyof whomlaterjoinedtheCatholicChurch.Butin spite
of the fact that the essaymingledpoetrywithreligiousoutpourings,
it introduced a newinterpretation of historywhichrancounterto that
of the eighteenth century. Like de Bonaldand de Maistre,Novalis
of
rejectedthe claims reasonand progress.11Reformation, rational-
ismand revolution seemedto him a deviationfromthe truepathof
Europe,a rapiddescentfrom the spiritualuniversalmonarchyof
9 Ibid., pp. 137, 176 (Fragments 756, 972, 973).

10 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 145.
11 Though Novalis himself warned wisely: "It is strong proof how far we have
really progressed,that we think so contemptuouslyof our progress, of the stage we have
reached." Ibid., vol. 3, p. 139 (Fragment 768).

Christendom in the thirteenthcentury. "Thesewerebeautifulbril-

liant times,"the essaybegan,"whenEuropewas a Christianland
inhabitedby one Christianity; one greatcommoninterestunitedthe
most distantprovincesof this vast spiritualrealm. Withoutgreat
earthlypossessionsone supremehead directedand unitedthe great
politicalforces. A numerouscasteto whicheverybodyhad access
was immediately submissiveto his orders,readyto executehis hints
andto try zealouslyto strengthen his benefitsandpower."Herewas
a newpictureof theMiddleAges,no longertheDarkAge of savagery
andsuperstitionbuta havenof peaceandspirituality.The romanticists
rediscoveredthe MiddleAges and presented themin the transfigured
gloryof magicpoetry.
III
For Novalisthe MiddleAges wasstill a universal period. Soon

however,the romanticists were to reinterpret
it as the fountainhead
of nationalcultures.Throughromanticism historyestablishedits im-
pact over nationalism.Even Novaliscontributedto this historicism.
"We carrythe burdensof ourfathersevenas we havereceivedtheir
good,and thusmenactuallylive in the wholepastandin the future
and nowhereless than in the present.""Thehistorianmustoften
becomean orator. For he recitesgospels-the wholehistoryis a
12
gospel." Fromthis view,it was only one stepto a visionof the
nation'spastas a gospelto whichthelivinggenerations werebeholden
and to whichthey wouldhave to betakethemselves to discoverthe
artisticand spiritualtreasureswhichweretheir own. Within one
decadea pioneerwork was accomplished by the romanticists; the
literatureof the MiddleAges wascollectedand edited,the poetryof
courtsand knightsas well as the talesof the commonpeople. The
romanticists found a modelin JohannesMullerwhoseGeschichten
schweizerischerEidgenossenshaft(1786) combined lovefor mediaeval
historywithskillin writingandabilityto evokelocalcolor. His rhe-
but slightlysupported
toricalbrilliancy, by exactknowledge,secured
to hima vastaudienceamongthe generation underthe spellof Rous-
seau'ssentimentalism. The emphasiswhichhe put on old chronicles
12 Ibid., pp. 191, 192 (Fragments 1064, 1072).

endeared him as much to the romanticistsas his theory that a historian

needs a soul. He wrote with patriotic fervor about the strong Swiss
men of the Middle Ages and confirmedthe romanticconvictionthat
the Middle Ages was a period of true patriotismand heroic man-
hood.13 Muller also drew attentionto the importanceof the Nibe-
lungenliedwhichwas publishedin 1782, after having been practically
unknownfor threecenturies. A few yearslater,Miillerdeclaredin his
Histories of the Swiss Confederationthat the Nibelungenliedcould
becomethe GermanIliad, an opinion in which August Wilhelm
Schlegellaterconcurred.In an articlein FriedrichSchlegel'sDeutsches
Museumin 1812, August Wilhelmdemandedthat the Nibelungenlied
be used as the chief classicin Germaneducation,so as to endowGer-
man history with a great poetic background.14His wish was soon
fulfilled. FriedrichHeinrichvon der Hagen (1780-1856), one of the
early Germanisticscholarswho popularizedmediaevalpoetry, trans-
lated the Nibelungenlied. So did August Zeume (1778-1853), the
founderin 1814 of the Gesellschaftfur deutscheSprache,who gave
Germanyouth on their way to war in 1815 a special edition of his
translation,a Feld- und Zeltausgabe,to carry with them as an in-
spirationonto the battlefieldand into theirtents.
The firstdecadeof the new centurybroughta richcropof editions
of mediaevalliterature.This quest for nationalculturalroots in the
soil of the past, offeredan exampleto the nationalawakeningof other
central and eastern Europeanpeoples. Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853)
who with the Schlegelsand Novalis belongedto the older generation
13 Later the romanticistsaccused JohannesMiller of a lack of patriotism. In reality,

Miiller was fundamentallyan eighteenth century rationalist and cosmopolitan,an enthusi-
ast for human rights and liberty. Adam Miiller in an article in Phoebus, a periodical
which he published together with Heinrich von Kleist in Dresden in 1808, blamed the
historian for being too impartial. Such an attitude, Adam Miiller conceded, could be ad-
mitted while discussing the domestic affairs of the fatherland but it was inadmissible
regardingan external enemy. The heart of the historian must include hatred besides love
which can be easily corrupted. "Every hero, therefore also the scholarly hero, needs a
fatherland, a firm foundation, on which he could build his army camp, his place d'armes."
An historian must take a stand; a cosmopolitanmentality was contraryto true humanity,
Adam Muller maintained.
14 Josef Krnmer,Nibelungenforschungenin der deutschen Romantik, Untersuchungen
zur neuern Sprach- und Literaturgeschichte,ed. by O. Walzel, N.F., no. 9 (Leipzig,
1911). Zeume was also the author of "Der Rheinstrom,Deutschlands Weinstrom, nicht
Deutschlands Rainstrom"("printed on the Rhine in the second year of German liberty")
which never achievedthe fame of Amdt's similar book.

of the romanticists, opened the cycle with his Minnelieder aus dem
schwibischenZeitalter (1803). "If we look back,"he wrote in the
introduction,"upon a period hardlypast which was characterizedby
indifferenceto and disregardof the lettersand arts, then we shall be
astonishedabout the quickchangewhich in so short a time has come
about,so that one is not only interestedin the monumentsof the past
but appreciatesthem." At a time when Germanpolitical fortunes
seemedat so low an ebb as in the ThirtyYears War, when therewas
hardlyanywherean active national sentiment,the romanticistscalled
up the past to kindle spirits;they went back to the treasureswhich
they believedburiedand yet alive in the minds of the people, in the
Volksgemit which had not yet been influencedby the universalra-
tional civilizationof the eighteenthcentury. Two years after Tieck's
minnesongs,there appeareda collection of folk songs, Des Knaben
Wunderhorn,edited by two representatives of the youngerromantic
generation,the PrussianJunker,LudwigJoachim(called Achim) von
Amim (1781-1831), and the Rhinelander,ClemensBrentano (1778-
1842).15 In 1807 their friend Joseph G6rres (1776-1848) investi-
gated popularalmanacsand other old story books;16 and the next
decade brought the famous editions by the brothersGrimm,Jacob
Ludwig(1785-1863) and Wilhelm Karl (1786-1859) the Kinder-und
Hausmirchen(1812-1815) and the DeutscheSagen (1816-1818), an
analysisof the oldest epic traditionsof the Germans.
In 1808 Amim edited the Zeitung fur Einsiedler("Joural for
Hermits"). In his introductionthe changedthemesannouncedthem-
selves-the birth of a new patriotism: "Germany,my poor, poor
fatherland,"he wrote, "and tears began to flow out of our eyes, my
15 Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Alte deutsche Lieder appeared in Heidelberg in the

fall of 1805 with the date of 1806. Two further volumes followed in 1808. The first
volume contained an importantintroductionby Tieck. Arnim's letter "An Herrn Kapell-
meister Reichardt" which appeared first in Reichardt's Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung
was printed as a postscript to the "Wunderhorn." Both texts are reprinted and easily
accessible in Deutsche Vergangenheit und Deutscher Staat, ed. by Paul Kluckhohn,
Deutsche Literaturin Entwicklungsreihen,Reihe Romantik, vol. 10 (Leipzig, 1935), pp.
83-126. Under the impression of romanticism Stendhal wrote in 1807 to his sister
Pauline: "Je ne sais pourquoi le moyen age est lie dans mon coeur avec l'idee de
l'Allemagne."
16..Die Deutschen Volksbucher. Nahere Wiirdigung der schonen Historien-, Wetter-,
und Arzneibuchlein,welche teils innerer Wert, teils Zufall Jahnhundertehindurch bis auf
unsere Zeit erhalten hat. Von J. Gorres, Professor der Physik an der Sekondarschulezu
Coblenz (Heidelberg, 1807).

17
eyes and the eyes of the readers." Jacob Grimm wrote: "In our
time a great love of folk songs has developed and will also draw atten-
tion to the sagas and folk tales which still circulate among the same
people and are preservedin some forgotten places. The ever growing
realization of the true nature of history and poetry has aroused the
wish to save from oblivion what previously appeared contemptible, at
the very last moment when it still could be collected." This literature
of the common people seemed to the romantic enthusiasts of great
value: truly national and superior to modern art-literature. "Only
folk poetry is perfect," Wilhelm Grimm wrote, "because God himself
wrote it like the laws of Sinai, it is not put together from pieces like
human work is."
Romantic nationality was based not upon a modem constitution
but upon traditional customs which grow organically and which should
not be interfered with from without. They represented the true folk-
spirit, the Volksgeist; there seemed in them much greater wisdom than
in all the lofty constructions of rational principles. The folk tradi-
tions were securely founded in history and had stood the test of the
time whereas, as the romanticists believed, the principles of 1789 had
failed because they were conceived without regard for history and had
claimed universal validity. Had the edifice so proudly built on these
abstract foundations survived a few days of enthusiasm? Had it not
crumbled in chaos and disorder, in terror and war? Surely, the ro-
manticists argued, men could not find their salvation in rational gen-
eralizations but only in the concrete historical tradition. Even should
the French Revolution establish a regime fitting for France, it could
not be imitated in other countries where it must fail because it was
alien to the national character. History alone was a safeguard for
national destiny; and romanticism made the study of national history
and the exploration of the national past important to statesmen who
found therein an arsenal for fighting the spread of revolution and for
establishing or maintaining national independence.
The historical Volksgeist had to determine, according to the ro-
manticists, not only the constitution but also the laws of a nation. In
1794 Prussia had introduced a new code of legislation, the Allgemeine
17 The full title of the journalread: "Zeitungfir Einsiedler.Alte und neueSagen

undWahrsagungen, Geschichten und Gedichte."It appearedfor onlyhalf a yearandwas
then publishedin book form "Trist-Einsamkeit." It was publishedas no. 3 of the
Neudruckeromantischer Seltenheiten(Munich,1924).

Preussische Landrecht, conceived in thespiritof the rationalismof the

enlightenment thoughmakingall due concessions to the aristocratic
and militaristic structureof Frederick's kingdom.The romanticists
regarded it as a violationof the Volksgeistandof the lawsof history.
In May, 1805JacobGrimmwroteto hisbrotherWilhelm:"I received
yesterdayverybad news,that a codeof lawsshallbe introduced in
Hesse. Musteverything be imitatedthatsproutsout of the flatPrus-
siansand? The newshas affectedme grievously."In anotherletter
of thattimehe expressed his convictionthat the newcodewouldde-
stroyall truejudicalscholarship.18 For truelawcouldbe only cus-
tomary law, rooted in the remote past and an almostunconscious
the Law
growththroughout generations. codifiedto modernprinciples
wasrejectedby the "historical schoolof law"as muchas wasthe con-
cept of natural law founded on reason. Boththeseconceptsof law
seemedtoo universal andtherefore unhistorical
andunscholarly. When
AntonFriedrich JustusThibaut(1772-1840),oneof the leadingGer-
manjuristsof that period,pleadedafterthe defeatof Napoleonin
his (Jberdie Nolwendigkeit einesallgemeinen biirgerlichenRechtes
fur Deutschland (1814) for the unificationof Germanythroughthe
introduction of a civil law code commonto all Germanlands,thus
endingthe confusionand diversityof the manyantiquated laws,he
was sharplyansweredby FriedrichKarlvon Savigny(1779-1861),
thenprofessorof law at the newlyfoundeduniversityof Berlin.In
his VomBerufunsererZeit fur Gesetzgebung undRechtswissenschaft,
Savignydeniedthe vocationof the age to introducenew legislation
andjurisprudence.19 "True"lawwasan emanation of the Volksgeist,
andcourtsof lawactedas its representatives, not as theexponents of a
commonreason.Karl FriedrichEichhorn(1781-1854)inaugurated
withhis DeutscheStaataundRechtsgeschichte, of whichthe firstvol-
ume appearedin 1808,researchinto the historyof Germanlaw for
the promotionof the continuityof legal development in accordwith
the nationalcharacterand the folk traditions.Romantichistoric
scholarship hadits greatday;it couldexplain,andif needbe excuse,
18 Hermann U. Kantorowicz,"Volksgeist und Historische Rechtsschule,"Historische

Zeitschrift, vol. 108 (1912), p. 211. Not only law but also religion was a product of the
Volksgeist.
19 A translationof Savigny's pamphlet by Abraham Hayward, Of the Vocation of
Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence,was printed by Littlewood & Co., London,
1831 (?), "Not for Sale."

everythingby appealingto the newly discoveredmysticallycreative

forces of the folk, of the various Volksgeisterwhich formed and
determinedcharacterand events,art and religion,constitutionsandlaw.
IV
Earlierthan other Germanwriters,FriedrichSchlegel found the
way from rationaluniversalismto a mysticnationalism.20Under the
influence of Kant's essay on perpetualpeace he wrote in 1796 an
"Essayon the Concept of Republicanism" in which he regardedpo-
litical liberty and equality as indispensableconditionsof the good
state. In the enthusiasmof youthhe wroteto his brotheron May 27,
1796: "I can not deny it beforeyou that divinerepublicanism is still
a little nearerto my heart than divine criticismand the most divine
poetry." Like many Frenchmenof that period,he looked to classical
antiquityas the model for the ideal political form which could be
nothing other than republican.21But he had alreadydiscoveredthe
promiseof greatnessof the Germannationalcharacter. "One does
not pay much attentionyet to the Germancharacter,"he wroteto his
brotheron November8, 1791. "RecentlyI think I have discovered
that our peoplehas a very great character."He saw it accomplished
so far only in a few greatmen,Frederick,Goethe,Klopstock,Winckel-
mann and Kant. "Thereis not much found anywhereto equal this
race of men, and they have severalqualitiesof which we can find no
tracein any knownpeople. I see in all the achievements of the Ger-
mans, especiallyin the field of scholarship,only the germ of an ap-
proachinggreat time, and I believe that things will happen among
our people as never before among men. Ceaselessactivity,profound
penetrationinto the interiorof things, very great fitness for morality
and liberty,these I find in our people. EverywhereI see traces of
becomingand growth."
20 Ernst Wieneke, Patriotismusund Religion in Friedrich Schlegels Gedichten (Mun-
ich, 1913); Richard Volpers, Friedrich Schlegel als politischer Denker und deutscher
Patriot (Berlin-Steglitz, 1916). Similar was the developmentof his brother August Wil-
helm who first welcomed the Revolution and the consulate and later changed under the
influence of Madame de Stael. Otto Brandt, August Wilhelm Schlegel, der Romantiker
und die Politik (Stuttgart, 1919).
21 The "Versuchiiber den Begriff des Republikanismusveranlasstdurch die Kantische
Schrift zum ewigen Frieden"was printed in FriedrichSchlegel, ProsaischeJugendschriften
1794-1802, ed. J. Minor (Vienna, 1882), vol. II, pp. 57-71. There on page 68 Schlegel
wrote in the Kantian way: "Nur universellerund vollkommenerRepublikanismuswiirde
ein giltiger . . . Definitivartikelzum ewigen Frieden sein."

This newtunewasresumedin a poem"Andie Deutschen" in the

beginningof 1800. He calleduponthe Germansto remember their
spiritualmissionandto createanewin religion,philosophy
andpoetry
theformerflowering of HellasandIndia. WhileEurope
civilizations
decayed, he found in Germany sourceof new life whichwould
the
awakentheotherpeoples.22
EuropasGeisterlosch:In Deutschlandfliesst
Der Quell der neuenZeit: Die aus ihm tranken
Sind wahrhaftdeutsch:Die Heldenscharergiesst
Sich iiberall:Erhebtden raschenFranken,
Den Italienerzur Natur und Rom
Wird wach.
Schlegelhadbeenconverted to nationalismbutit wasa purelycultural

nationalism.Had not the Greeks,withoutdesiringor achievingna-
tionalstatehood,assuredthe leadership of mankind,and had their
greatworksnot bornethe stampof theirnationalcharacter?Could
the Germansnot followtheirexampleandbecomethe Greeksof the
new age? At aboutthe sametimeSchillerexpressed similarhopes
in his fragmentarypoem "DeutscheGrosse."23 The Germanswere
the universal people,whosemissionit was"tofulfilin themselves uni-
versalmankindand to unitein a wreaththe mostbeautifulflowers
of all peoples."
The changecamewith Schlegel'sjourneyto Parisin 1802. In
crossingthe Thuringian mountains and the Rhineriverhe discovered
His
Germany. presence in France madehim consciousof the alien
character of the newenvironment.He was deeplyimpressed by the
ruinsof the castleWartburgnearEisenachwherethe famouscontest
of the Minnesingers had beenheld and whereLutherstruggledand
worked."If one seesobjectslikethese,onecannot helpremembering
whatthe Germans hadformerly been,whenthemanstillhada father-
land. Lookingat suchhighcastlesliketheWartburg, onetrulyfeels,
andwouldunderstand, whyourancestors alwayslivedin theircastles
on the top of mountains andwhatjoy of life wasconnected withthe
heights. Since men have gathered in the and
valleys around the great
roads,greedyfor alienwaysandalienmoney,the heightsand castles
standdeserted."Thus the MiddleAges and theirruinsbeganto
22 FriedrichSchlegel, Sammtliche Werke, 2. Originalausgabe,15 vols., ed. by E. von
Feuchtersleben(Wien, 1846), vol. X, p. 14.
23 See The Idea of Nationalism, p. 413.

recalla timeof joyouslivingand highmorality,whilein themodem

age people,assembled in the cities,succumbed to the lureof foreign
gold and immorality. "But the poetry of former timeshasdisappeared
andwithit virtue,its sister. Insteadof the furortedescowhichhad
beenmentionedso frequently by the Italianpoets,patiencehas now
becomeourfirstnationalvirtueandbesideit humility,in contrastto
the formerlyreigningmentality, on accountof whicha Spaniardwho
traveledwith EmperorCharlesV throughGermanycalledthe Ger-
manslos fierosAlemanos.Butas faras we areconcerned, we wishto
retainfirmlythe imageor ratherthe truthof thesegreattimesandnot
becomeconfusedby the presentmisery. Perhapsthe slumbering lion
will wakeup oncemoreandperhaps evenif we shouldnot live to see
it, futureworldhistorywillbe full of the deedsof theGermans."
SchlegelturnedfromtheGreekrepublic of antiquityto theGerman
monarchyof the Middle Ages, followingNovalis,but with a new
emphasis, no longeron Christian spiritualityandunity,buton German
virtue. "Amongthe worldconquering nationsof the past,the Ger-
mansoccupya placeof the firstrank,andwhetherwe compare them
withthe Romansor the Arabsthe comparison will be in theirfavor.
What distinguishes themaboveall fromthe Romansis theirgreater
love of liberty;it was withthemnot a merewordand rulebut an
innatesentiment.Thoughtheyweremuchtoo high-minded to wish
to imposetheircharacter upon othernations,it nevertheless struck
rootwherethe soil wasnot too unfavorable, andthenhonorandlove,
courageand loyaltygrewtheremightily.On accountof thisoriginal
libertyof the Germanlife, whichis an everlasting characterof the
it
nation, appears alsoin its good time more and
originally enduringly
romantic thaneventheorientalfairyworld. Its enthusiasm wasfullof
joy,childlikesimplicity,withoutcoveting,not as one-sided anddestruc-
tiveas theenthusiasm of thoseadmirable fanaticswhosettheglobeon
firefasterand widerthaneventhe Romans.EinegefiihlteRechtlich-
keit, die mehrist als die Gerechtigkeit des Gesetzesund der Ehre,
eine kindlichaufrichtige und unerschiitterliche Treueund Herzlich-
keit der Gesinnungist der tiefsteund hoffentlich nie ganz zu vertil-
gendeZug des deutschenCharakters." 24
24 Schlegel's "Reise nach Frankreich"appeared in Europa, a periodical which he
edited in Frankfurt-am-Mainin 1803. There he wrote also: "How immensely farther
would Europe be on the road to true liberty and culture,if the center of the Church in past
times had not been in Italy but, as it ought to be, in Germany, where the natural great-
ness of the spirit and the freer heart had better fitted the great aim." In Paris Schlegel

The Rhine impressedSchlegel as much as the Wartburg,as a

symbolof Germannatureand history.His poem"AmRheine"(1802)
markedthe beginningof the glorificationof the riverwhichhe called
"the all too faithfulimageof our fatherland,our historyand our char-
acter." "Der alte vaterlandischeStromerscheintuns wie ein machtiger
Strom naturverkiindeter Dichtkunst."25 These sentimentsfound their
theoreticalexpressionin his Philosophische Vorlesungen aus den
Jahren1804 bis 1806, in whichhe for the firsttime expressedhis polit-
ical philosophy.26 Eight years before, the republichad appearedto
him the most perfectform of governmentand the only safe guarantee
of peace. Now, however,republicanismhas become "a transient
meteorwhichshinesa few momentsin a splendorof light but quickly
goes out in a stormof civil discordand leavesbehinddestructionand
confusion." Only the monarchycould be a true guardianof peace,
not a constitutionalmonarchybut the mediaevalmonarchyof the
Estates,the Standestaatunderthe moralguidanceof the Church. In
the mediaevalunionof Empireand Church,the internationaltie among
nationswas guaranteedby the hierarchyof priestsand scholarswhich
was above all national differences. But Schlegel went far beyond
Novalis in his emphasison nationalitywithin this Christianuniver-
sality, on the nation as a higherrealityof natureand history. "The
conceptof nation requiresthat all its membersshould form as it were
only one individual." This fictitiouscorporatepersonalitybecamea
jealousguardianof the lives of the single and real individualwhichit
comprisedand whichit claimedto mold. It imposedconditionswhich
wentfar beyondthe conceptof a politicalnationality;it was intimately
and intricatelytied up with the naturaland spirituallife of all its
members.
To form a true nation- and this meant to Schlegelto resemble
a closely knit and all inclusivefamily-he demandedthat all its
membersbe held togetherby ties of blood, of descentfrom the same
ancestors. The antiquityand purity of this commondescent would
discoveredold German art; he praised Diirer because he had decided to paint not like the
ancients or the Italians but in a German way. He went even so far as to prefer for
national and religious reasons, old German poetry to Greek poetry and old German paint-
ing to Italian art.
25 See Sammtliche Werke, vol. X, p. 93 and vol. VI, p. 212. Schlegel was also the
first to sing the glory of the romanticGerman forest, therein the precursorof Eichendorff.
26 They were edited after his death by his friend C. J. H. Windischmann, professor
of philosophy at the University of Bonn, in two volumes (Bonn: 1836-37); a second edi-
tion appearedthere in 1846.

guaranteethe persistence customs

of, and the loyaltyto, traditional
and habits: the of
greaterthe community blood,and the stronger
therefore theperseverance of thepast,themorethepeoplewouldform
a nation. Secondto a commonpastand affinityof blood,Schlegel
ratedthe unityof languagein which- for reasonsdifficultto under-
stand becausethey contradictall historicalevidence-he saw "the
indisputable testimonyof commondescent."This newtheoryof na-
tionalismculminated in two summary and apodicticsentencescharac-
teristicof the age of nationalism: "It is muchmoreappropriate to
naturethatthehumanracebe strictlyseparated (strengeabgesondert)
intonationsthanthatseveralnationsshouldbe fusedas hashappened
in recenttimes .... Eachstateis an independent individualexisting
for itself,it is unconditionallyits ownmaster,hasitspeculiarcharacter,
and governsitself by its peculiarlaws, habitsand customs."27 From
thatpointof viewSchlegelprotested alsoagainstthe assimilation of a
defeatedand backward nationto the highercivilization of the victor.
"Thatwouldbe highlyimmoral.The originalmoralcharacter of a
people, its customsand must
peculiarities, be regarded as sacred." A
subjectnationality must be maintained as a separateentity but it
mightbe educatedby the victor,even forcibly,as far as thatbe com-
patiblewithits character.In thatway,Schlegelmaintained, the Ger-
mans have educatedmany nations,the Magyarsand others. The
French,however,Schlegelthought,wereabusingtheirsuperiority to
the
destroy nationality of other peoples. Such an attitude justified
in his opinionthe unionof all peoplesthreatened by the Frenchin a
war whichwould lead to the "totalannihilation" of this "corrupt
nation."2 Schlegelwas perhapsthe firstGermanwriterof renown
to issuesucha strongcallfor Germannationality andfor a sacredwar.
Schlegelwas also the firstto writepatrioticpoetry,exhortingthe
Germansto a confidentstruggleagainstNapoleon'styranny. This
poeticactivityfilledonly a few yearsof his life, from1805to 1809,
whenotherslikeAmdt,Schenkendorff, andRiickerttookup the task
of nationalbardsandsoonsurpassed himby farin popularity. During
thoseyearsSchlegeljoinedthe CatholicChurchand,a northGerman
27 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 358, 382. Schlegel was in his lectures, however, so fascinated
by the mediaeval Standestaat and so hostile to all the innovationsof the French Revolu-
tion, that he was against universal military service of citizens and wished, in the interests
of peace, to reservemilitary service to the aristocracy.
28 Ibid., p. 385.

by birth,turnedto Austriaas the hope for Germanregeneration.

Therehe becamean officialpropagandist
for the Austriancause;in
1809in strongandstirringproclamations,
he calleduponthe Germans
outsideAustriato standby herandto braveall dangersin unityand
courage.The samespiritbreathedthroughthe ferventappealof his
"Geliibde"("The Vow") : 29
Es sei mein Herz und Blut geweiht,
Dich Vaterlandzu retten....
Der deutscheStammist alt und stark,
Voll Hochgefiihlund Glauben;
Die Treue ist der EhreMark,
Wankt nicht,wennStiirmeschnauben....
So spottejederder Gefahr,
Die Freiheitruft uns allen;....
Though"TheVow"markedtheend of Schlegel'spatrioticpoetry,he
continuedto elaborate in thelectureswhich
his theoryof nationalism,
in Viennain 1810"OnModer History"andthe lecture
he delivered
in 1812. Those
serieson "Historyof Ancient and ModernLiterature"
of 1810 glorified the heroes of German history, especially the Habs-
burg princes, Rudolf I, Ferdinand II, and Charles V. "If one does
not look on details but on the whole, there is no better counterweight
against the onrush of the age than the memory of a great past. For
that reason I thought of adding to the interpretationof the three great
world-shaking periods-the migration of the Germanic tribes, the
Crusades and the Reformation- a picture of the former German
nation painted in colors as strong as I could; of its oldest conditions
when it lived in its original liberty and character, as well as of its
development and culture in the Middle Ages. This demanded a spe-
29 Sammtliche Werke, vol. X, p. 159. The poem was also included into
"Deutsche Wehrlieder," edited by Jahn in 1813. Schlegel's stepson, Philipp Veit who
served in the free corps, wrote to him and Dorothea, his mother, from Schonhausennear
Magdeburg on July 1, 1813: "Jahn is sending you herewith the first issue of a collection
of songs which are being sung in our corps or are being rehearsed. You will find there
one of your own which was sung here yesterday in church to a good melody by Zelter."
His brother August Wilhelm had preceded Schlegel to Vienna. In a letter from Coppet
he wrote in 1807 to Countess Louise von Voss, he declared that he knew only one aim
for a writer in that historical age, "to present to the Germans the image of their ancient
glories, their old dignity and liberty, and the mirrorof the past, and thus to kindle every
spark of national sentiment which might be dormant somewhere." Briefe von und an
August Wilhelm Schlegel, ed. by Josef Kmrner,2 vols. (Vienna, 1930), vol. I, p. 199f.

cial interpretativeconcernfor the great mediaevalforces and forms

of the state, for the relationand unifyingtie of the Churchand of
the old imperialposition in Germany,Italy and Europe,and for the
spirit of knighthood."30 His nationalismhad all the fervor which
the age of nationalismlater developedin centraland easternEurope,
but it was turnednostalgicallybackwardto the period when the im-
perialidea- of whichSchlegelthoughtthe Germansalone worthy-
and the universalismof the churchstill maintainedsome ethicalunity
amongnations. It was his Catholicreligionwhichpreventedhim from
glorifyingthe secularizedpopularstate with its unlimitedmoral self-
sufficiency.31
The lectures of 1812-and the periodicalDeutsches Museum
which Schlegel edited then-were devotedto the thesis that "every
literaturemust and should be national; this is its vocation and this
alone can give it its true and full value." The same nationalspirit
should determinelanguageand music, paintingand philosophy.But
the first place belongedto poetry, it must preservefor a people its
memoriesand legends,embellishthem and perpetuatethe gloriesof a
great past, "as happensin the heroic epics wherethe miraclefreely
occurs and where the poet attaches himself to mythology." The
spiritualgrowth of a nation dependedon its possessionof great na-
tional memories"whichoften lose themselvesin the darknessof its
originsand the preservationand glorificationof whichconstitutesthe
most excellenttask of poetry. Such nationalmemories,the most won-
derfulheritagethat a peoplecan have,are an advantagewhichnothing
else can replace;and if a peoplefinds itself in its own feelingselated
and so to speakennobledby the possessionof a great past, of mem-
ories from prehistorictimes, in brief by the possessionof poetry, it
will be raisedby this very fact in our judgmentto a higher plane.
Memorabledeeds,greateventsand destiniesalone are not sufficientto
30 Sammtliche Werke, vol. XI, p. 195.

31 Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbirgertum und Nationalstaat, 7th ed. (Munich, 1928),
p. 92, objected from the point of view of the modem German power-stateas much to the
Christianpolitical ethics of the romanticistsas to the rational universalismof the enlighten-
ment. "Beide schalten das als blinde Herrschsucht, was im Wesen des Staates selbst
begriindetlag, was Ausfluss seiner Selbsterhaltungund Selbstbestimmungwar." Meinecke
argued that besides universal morality for individuals there exists an individual morality
for the state and that this individual morality justifies the apparent immorality of the
power-egotismof the state. "Denn unsittlich kann nicht sein, was aus der tiefsten indi-
viduellen Natur eines Wesens stammt," which would justify every strong state and every
strong individual to establish his own "nature"as a yardstickof all morality.

keep our admirationand to determinethe judgmentof posterity;a

people must also gain a clear consciousnessof its own deeds and
of a nationwhichexpressesitself
destinies. This self-consciounsess
in reflectiveand descriptiveworks,is its history." The romanti-
cists pointedto Shakespeare's historicplays as the model for the
attempt to revivethe pastandto makeit partof the national
national
consciousness.The theaterseemedto themthe most "national" of
all the arts; unfortunately muchstrongerin Ger-
the romanticists,
manyin reflectionthanin creation,wereunableto createa national
theater. Even their strongestdramatictalent,Heinrichvon Kleist,
neverreached thepopularityof a Schiller.32
Throughthe romanticists the state becameagain an objectof

poetry and adoration; they regardedit as somethingso lofty and
wondrous, so full of miracle and mysterythat it couldno longerbe
the workof men. The wordsof Hugo Grotiusdefiningthe Western
conceptof the state-"Est autemcivitascoetusperfectusliberorum
hominum jurisfruendiet communis utilitatiscausasociatus"-did not
applyto thestateof the romanticists.It was,likethe humanbeing,a
creationof the unfathomable will of God andof the elemental forces
of nature,an individuallike manhimself,only infinitelygreaterand
morepowerful.JosephFreiherr vonEichendorff (1788-1857),a leader
of the youngerCatholicgeneration of romanticism, calledthe state"a
spiritualcommunity for a life as as
perfect possibleby developing the
strength of mind and soul in a people, which alone could be called
33
truly life." ZachariasWerner,who startedas a discipleof the
enlightenment andlaterjoinedthe CatholicChurchand the romantic
movement, definedthe state as "a unionwhichshouldmakeit pos-
32 The Germans owe to the romanticists,to A. W. Schlegel and Tieck, their first
famous Shakespearetranslation. Shakespeareas a great national poet was praised by A.
W. Schlegel, Sammtliche Werke, ed. by Eduard Bicking, 12 vols. (Leipzig, 1846-47),
vol. VIII, p. 145; and by Tieck, KritischeSchriften, (Leipzig, 1848), vol. I, pp. 38, 327.
33 "Eine geistige Gemeinschaft zu einem m6glichst vollkommenenLeben durch Ent-
wicklung der Geistes- und Gemiitskrafteim Volk, welche ja eben allein Leben genann
werden kann." Joseph Karl Benedikt von Eichendorff, Sammtliche Werke. Historisch-
Kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Kosch and Sauer, 24 vols. (Regensburg, 1908-13), vol. X,
p. 159.

sible for a groupof humanbeingsto fulfill theirhighestvocation. It

isolatesthis groupto give it backto mankindin an ennobledform."34
Yet the romanticistswere as individualstoo strongly artistic to
allow the state to imposea deadeninguniformity. Accordingto their
ideal, the individualshould serve and love the state with all his soul
and mind,yet he shouldnot be a robotbut a free individualliving his
own personaland peculiarway and uniting with the otherswithout
losing his individuality.35They praisedlibertybut it was libertynot
rootedin reasonand equalitybut in historyand peculiarity.In Eichen-
doff's novel Ahnung und GegenwartLeontin shouted "Long live
liberty,"but he did not mean the universal,natural, philosophical
libertyof 1789, whichwas the samefor everybodyand in whichevery-
body felt himselfproudlyfree everywhere.He found this cosmopoli-
tan and individualisticlibertyas loathsomeas he found the natural
religionof that periodwhichregardedall religionsas equal manifesta-
tions of the Divine, withoutgradationsor preferences.To him liberty
was the ancient and vital freedom (jene uralte, lebendigeFreiheit)
whichhe found in the proudand simplelife of mountainpeopleswho
could not live except as honor dictates.36 The romanticconceptof
the patriarchalstate and its union of love, was compatiblewith the
existence of strong and independentindividualsconsciousof their
positionand their privileges. But it rejectedthe new age of individ-
ualism, of economicrationalism,of equal rights, approachingappar-
ently from the West; it was a defensiveattitudewhichlooked long-
34 Zacharias Werner (1768-1823), an east Prussian, served the Prussian government

in Warsaw and in other Prussian parts of Poland where he became one of the first Ger-
man poets expressing their sympathy for the Polish cause. See Robert F. Arnold,
Geschichte der deutschen Polenliteraturvon den Anfangen bis 1800 (Halle, 1900), p.
277.
35 "So wird auch der grossen Genossenschaftdes Staates mit innerlich ausgewechsel-
ten Gesellen nicht gedient, sondern der der liebste sein, der ihr, weil mit ungebrochener
Eigentumlichkeit, aus ganzer Seele dient, wie er eben kann und mag." Eichendorff,
SdimmtlicheWerke, vol. X, p. 341.
36 Ibid., vol. III, p. 325.
37 The romanticists opposed capitalism, commerce and the "influence of money."
Schlegel went as far as to oppose taxes because they might give to the moneyed classes
the power to influence the state. He suggested that the state should receive its income
from the ownership of land and from the monopoly of all foreign trade. To Iniebuhr
in his "Roman History" the period when the Romans tilled their own fields represented
the ideal, while the later period based upon commerceand trade, representeddecadence
and moral corruption. Another romantic historian Karl Ottfried Muller (1797-1840)
found in Greek history his model in Sparta and its constitutionfull of "deepest political

ingly to the good old times and to moreprimitivecommunitieswhich

had preservedtheirancienttraditionsandtheirsocialorder.
Novalis and Eichendorffwere poets, the brothersSchlegel were
literaryhistoriansand critics;38 Adam Miller (1779-1829) was the
politicalphilosopherof romanticism.39With characteristic vagueness
the limitsbetweenpoetryand scholarshipwerenot clearlydrawn. Yet
amid its contradictions- the romanticistswere not systematicthink-
ers; their work remained mostly fragments or lectures- romantic
politicalphilosophyheld fast to the thesisthat the state was not man's
workor establishedfor the benefitof the individualwho on the other
hand was indissolublypart of the state and inevitablydeterminedby
its past. "Man cannot be imagined outside the state. ... The state
is the intimateunion of all physicaland spiritualneeds, of the whole
physicaland intellectualwealth,of the whole inwardand outwardlife
of a nation in a great energeticwhole infinitelyfull of movementand
life. ... It is the totality of all human concerns" (Der Staat ist die
Totalitat der menschlichenAngelegenheiten)40- in these words
wisdom." A romanticphilosopher,Franz Xaver von Baader (1765-1841) charged in his

"OCberdas damalige Missverhaltnisder Vermogenslosenoder Proletars zu den Vermogen-
besitzenden Klassen der Sozietat in betreff ihres Auskommens, sowohl in materieller, als
intellektueller Hinsicht, aus dem Standpunkte des Rechts betrachtet" (Munich, 1835)
that plutocraticservility to gold under liberalism rendered the poor into serfs of money
whose conditions were worse than those of rural serfs. See on his social philosophy
David Baumgardt,Franz von Baader unde die philosophischeRomantik (Halle, 1927).
38 August Wilhelm Schlegel became a student of Sanskrit and Indian literature.
FriedrichSchlegel regardedhis Standestaat as related to the Indian caste system and both
as an Aryan heritage. Sammtliche Werke, vol. XII, p. 347.
39 Adam Muller was practicallyunknown in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The German neo-romanticistsof the twentieth century rediscoveredhim. See Otto
Weinberger, "Das Neue Schrifttum iiber Adam Miiller," Archiv fir Sozialwissenschaft
und Sozialpolitik, vol. LI (1924), p. 808 ff; Reinhold Aris, Die Staatslehre Adam
Millers in ihrem Verhaltnis zur Deutschen Romantik (Tiibingen, 1929); Ferdinand
Reinkemayer,Adam Millers ethische und philorophische Anschauungen im Lichte der
Romantik (Osterwieckam Harz, 1926); Jakob Baxa, Adam Muller, Ein Lebensbild aus
den Befreiungskriegenund aus der deutschenRestoration(Jena, 1930). At the same time
many of his works were republished, Von der Notwendigkeit einer theologischen Grund-
lage der gesamten Staatswissenschaftenund der Staatswirtschaftinsbesondere (Leipzig,
1819) as vol. XVI of the Allgemeine Biicherei der 6sterreichischenLeo-Gesellschaft
(Vienna, 1897); his Zwoilf Reden iber die Beredsamkeitund deren Verfall in Deutsch-
land (Vienna, 1812) and his Vorlesungen iber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Liter-
atur (Dresden, 1907) were edited by Arthur Salz (Munich, 1920); Othmar Spann's
series "Die Herdflamme" published his Die Elemente der Staatskunst, 2 vols., ed. by
Jakob Baxa, and his Versuche einer neuen Theorie des Gelds mit besondererRicksicht
auf Grossbritannien,ed by H. Lieser (Vienna, 1922).
40 Die Elemente der Staatskunst,vol. I, pp. 29, 37, 48.

Miillerexpressed romanticoppositionto the liberalstate;he and his

friendswere equallyfirmin theiruncompromising rejectionof the
economicdoctrineof liberalism.He saw in Westerncapitalism "the
mostgeneralmanifestation spirit,of that arrogant
of that anti-social
egotism,of thatimmoral enthusiasm for falsereasonandfalseenlight-
enment" whichweretherootsof theFrenchRevolution.41 He regarded
its libertyandequalityas a changefromruralserfdomto wageslavery
and foundthe latterinfinitelyworse;he hadno doubtthatthe capi-
talisticsystemwas incompatible withthe divineorderof things. To
the optimism of theeighteenth centurywhichlookedtowardthefuture,
Miilleropposedan optimism regardingthepast. Whilebothformsof
be
optimismmight equally unfounded, the past was knownto the
memory of men and accessibleto historicalresearch;the futurewas
knownto Godalone,andthismayexplainwhyin thelongrunutopias
whichplacethe goldenage in the future--especiallyin the distant
future- exercisea greaterattraction thanthoseplacingit in thepast
-especially a not too distantpast.
Miiller'srevoltagainstthe enlightenment was a revoltagainsthis
own youth. He was born,a son of a Prussianofficial,in the Berlin
of Frederick II. While a studentin Gottingen,he cameunderthe
influence AdamSmith;only later,underthe influenceof Burke
of
and of his friendship withGentz,he turnedto an organictheoryof
the state. "If oneregardsthe stateas a greatindividual encompassing
all thesmallindividuals," he wrote,"thenoneunderstands thathuman
society cannot be conceived exceptas an and
august completeperson-
ality-and one will neverwish to subjectthe inwardand outward
peculiarities of thestate,the formof its constitution
to arbitrary specu-
lation." In 1805he joinedthe CatholicChurch;he remained for a
few yearslongerin Dresdenand Berlinin closetouchwithPrussian
conservative circlesbeforehe foundin Austriahis politicaland spir-
itualhome. After1817he became evermore traditionalist
andremoved
fromthe mainstreamof Germanintellectual and politicallife, bent
exclusivelyuponthepraiseof thepastandthevainhopefor its return.
But between1806and 1810,yearsof decisiveimportance in the de-
velopment of the German mind, he helpedto arousenational resistance
to Westernideasandto strengthen Germanconfidence in its mission.
After 1806,whenthe Germancauseseemedlost andfoundscarcelya
41 Ausgewihlte Abhandlungen, ed. by Jakob Baxa (Jena, 1921), p. 21.

friendin Germany, Miillerdeliveredin Dresdenlectureson German

scholarship and literaturein whichhe proclaimed: "thedevelopment
of the scholarly mindin Germany is themostimportant eventin mod-
em intellectual history. It is certainthat foreignintellectuallife in
all its varietywillhaveto attachitselfin the courseof timeto thatof
Germany, and that,just as Germantribeshavefoundedthe political
orderof Europe,the Germanmindwill sooneror laterdominateit."42
Politicallyprostrate,
Germany wasdestinedto spiritual leadership.The
Germanmind,morethanany other,Mullerclaimed,was a universal
mind,in whichotherculturesfound theirconsummation and their
harmonious mediation, a mindtoleranttowardsall othersand infinite
in its longing. "TheGermanmindis forcedto ascribeto itselfas an
advantage overall othernationsits obedientandpiousunderstanding
of everything alien,even if this penetration and understanding may
sometimes degenerate into the of
idolatry foreignhabitsand persons.
We findourown happiness not in the suppression but in the highest
flowering of the civilization
of our neighbors, and thus Germany, the
fortunateheartland, will not needto denyits respectfor otherswhen
it willdominate theworldbyits spirit." 43
WhenMiillerdeliveredhis addresses, Germanpoliticaland social

life seemedin a processof transformation undertheimpactof Western
ideas. Eventhe Germangovernments seemedeagerto introducere-
forms. Againsttheserationalinnovations whichMiillercondemned
as inorganic, he calledup the powerof the deadand the necessityof
continuity."Onlythe traditionsand the historyof the past (die
Geschichte der Vorwelt)cantransform the meaningless letterof pres-
enttimes,alsoof thestate,intoa wordof light. The ancestors evoked
by history are not merely witnesses called to testify;they respond,
theycontinueto act full of thewarmthof life,becausethespellof the
42 Adam Miiller, Vorlesungeniber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Literatur,p. 4.

43 Ibid., pp. 14f. See also pp. 48, 59f. and passim. What Germany is to Europe,
Europe is to the world. "Die gesamte Erdoberflacheunseres Planeten strebt offenbar nach
einer grossen Gesellschaft,bei deren ErrichtungEuropa im Ganzen dieselbe Vermittlerrolle
spielen wird, nach der sich, unserer neulichen Auseinandersetzungzufolge, die deutsche
Bildung im Verhaltnis zu dem Staat von Europa hinneigt. Mittelpunkt der Zivilisation
der Welt, nicht bios ihr Gipfel, soll Europa werden." Ibid., p. 38. About the pan-
geringeresangelegt als die Vorziige der verschiedenenNationalitaten zu vereinigen,sich in
humanismof the Germans see also A. W. Schlegel in Europa, I, 269: "Es ist auf nichts
alle hineinzudenkenund hineinzufiihlen und so einen kosmopolitischenMittelpunkt des
menschlichenGeistes zu stiften."

hearthas rousedthem: in theirpresenceone performsin a loftierway

and with greaterfreedom. Man shouldnot act for himselfand out of
himselfalone, as an absolutelynew beginning:his deeds should only
continue the deeds of the ancestors;he should attach himself to a
communitywhichhas alreadybeen in existence- all communitiesare
one but the nearestis the best to him; he should derivethe blood of
his instinctiveadvice,the spiritof his decisionfromolderandeverolder
ancestors. This is the immortalityof all greatnessand goodnesson
earththat whereverworthynew life stirs, the old one alwayslives on,
and that only cold and vile souls speakof it as if it had gone forever
and crumbledinto dust. The great and immortalsoul, for the welfare
of which the hero exposed his mortalbody, must be called his true
body,"for only in the immortalityof the nationalcommunity,of the
state could the passingindividualfind his own immortalityand could
his life and actionsreceivemeaning.44
In this subordinationof the presentto the past, Miiller followed
Burke; in his identificationof the individual'simmortalitywith the
continuityof the fatherland,he anticipatedFichte. He called Burke
"the greatest, profoundest, most powerful and most human statesman
of all periodsand all nations"who belongedmore to the Germans
than to the British who never understoodhim fully.45 But of the
practicalwisdom of Burke, of his respectfor individualliberty and
constitutionalrights, of his understandingfor the living forces of
history,Muller knew little. His politicalsensewas hardlydeveloped.
Like Fichte, he wished to call the Germansto a fatherlandof the
mind, first to be built in some awakenedhearts and throughsome
miraculoustransformationtriumphingover the enemy.46 The vic-
toriousstate whichwould emergewas hardlydefinedas a state of the
German nation-Muller was little concerned with the problem of
44 Vorlesungeniber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Literatur,p. 163 f.

45 Ibid., p. 165 f. See also Zwolf Reden iber die Beredsamkeit, pp. 124 ff.
(describinghis oratory duel with Fox in the night of February 11th to 12th, 1891), 135
ff., 167 ff., 186 f. He paid his tribute also to the oratory of Fox and of the two Pitts
but Burke was the greatest of all to him. He called him "Stellvertreterdes unsichtbaren
Englands, Geisterseherseiner Geschichte,Prophet seiner Zukunft; . . . Wenn die weltliche
Beredsamkeit. . . in Fox einen Gipfel erreicht hat: so hat die heilige Beredsamkeitin
diesem Jahrhundertnur durch Einen Mund geredet, durch den Mund Burkes."
46 "Bilde dein angewiesenesWerk nur ruhig fort, du vielfach verwundetesund unter-
dricktes, aber auch jetzt schon mit Guitern,die die spitesten Enkel deiner Unterdriicker
noch segnen werden, vielfach entschadigtes Volk .. ." Vorlesungen uber die deutsche
Wissenschaft und Literatur,p. 167, p. 169.

- it wasa stateopposedin everything

Germanunification to theideas
of 1789 and to economicliberalism,a theocraticstate much less in-
spiredby Burkethan by the Vicomte de Bonald and his Theorie du
Pouvoir Politique et Religieuxdans la socie'tecivile which had ap-
pearedin Constancein 1796, twelve yearsbeforeMiiller delivered-
in the winter of 1808-09 his lectureson Die Elementeder Staats-
kunst. There he developedat length his theorythat "the state is not
only the union of many familiesliving togetherat one time but also
followingeach otherthroughtime, a union not only infinitelygreatin
spacebut also immortalin time." Against the emphasison the present
and on the pursuitof happinesshe stressedeternityand duty: "A
people is the august communityof a long enduranceof past, living
and future generations,who all hang together in a great intimate
union for life and death,of whomeach single generation,and in each
single generationagain each individual,guaranteethe commonunion,
and are againguaranteedby it in their whole existence;this beautiful
immortalcommunityrepresentsitself to the eyes and sensesin a com-
mon language,in commoncustomsand laws, in thousandsof bene-
ficentinstitutions,in manylong-flourishingfamilieswhichareespecially
designedto link the periodsof historymoreclosely,finallyin the one
immortalfamilywhich forms the centerof the state, the royal family,
and to make the true center of the whole even more visible, in the
present king of that family."47 Thus the hereditarynobility, and
above all the royal house, was proclaimedthe guaranteeof the con-
tinuityand identityof stateand nation.
Miiller believedthat the tragicerrorsof the Revolutionoriginated
in the belief that the state was designedto assurethe securityand
prosperityof its members. If that were true, the individualcould
direct the life of the state into new channels,and every generation
would be free to begin anew. But in reality,in the immutablenature
of things,the individualhad none of thesefreedomsand the state was,
Miiller proclaimed,so inextricablylinked up with everythinghuman,
so indispensablefor the fulfillmentof the most elementaryneeds of
man's heart, mind and body, that at no time could he hear or see,
think or feel, live or love withoutthe state. Nor could scienceand
scholarshipexist as "pure"effortsor responsibilitiesof the individual
47 Die Elemente der Staatskunst, 3rd and 7th lectures. Adam Miiller, Vom Geiste
der Gemeinschaft,ed. by FriedrichBillow (Leipzig, 1931), pp. 41, 81.

mind,independent of the state.48 Theywouldlose all vigorif they

ever triedto developin theirown rightwithoutservingthe society
and the state. The politicaland the intellectual life wereonly two
sidesof bodyandsoulwhichcouldexistbut as one.
The highestgoodof a nationwasaccording to Miillerthe ideaof
its peculiarity,the way in whichit wasdifferentfromall others,its
uniqueness.A worldin whichtherewouldbe only one government,
one law,one systemof weightsandmeasures all overtheearthwould
lack that creativeforceof movementwhichspringsfromdifference
and conflict. Mullerregardedperpetualpeace,whetherassuredby
a universal monarchy or by a leagueof republican nations(permanen-
ten Volker-Kongress),as a misfortune whichwouldbringhumande-
velopment to a standstill.Nothingseemedto hima firmercementing
of nationsand statesthan "the true war,"becausecommonperil,
sorrowand tearsbind betterthan luck and prosperity, and because
everything that can be hiddenin peacemustin warbecomemanifest
andgivento thewhole. A truewarmorethananyothereventwould
fill and saturatethe existenceof everyindividual withthe life of the
state.49 ThoughMiillerbelievedin war as a vital and beneficial
forcewhichenhancesthe character of the state,he acceptedat other
times, as the Holy Alliance did, a supra-national Christianorder
withinwhichnationscouldnot isolatethemselves."Theconceptof
the fatherland, as deeplyas it mightbe felt, is not sufficient:
thereis
only one world-idea, the centerof all orderbecauseit is the idea of
worldorderitself:the Christian religion."50
FromDresdenMiillerreturned for a shortwhileto Berlin. There
in the like-minded company of Prussian noblemen andromantic poets
he couldnote with satisfaction that "thebetterones amongus have
beenfortunately curedof cosmopolitanism; it wasthe chapterof our
historythrough which we had to pass." Understandably he found
muchto blamein Frederick the Greatwho had rationalized the ad-
48 2nd lecture, pp. 20-23, 28, 34f.

49 Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. I, p. 589,
praised very highly a book Vom Kriege by Riihle von Lilienstern (1780-1847): "No-
where did the keen political idealism of the War of Liberation find a nobler expression
than in that book," which in Treitschke's opinion "proved victoriously the indestructible
blissful necessity of war." He proposed to "nationalize the armies and militarize the
nations." In reality the book was largely plagiarizedfrom Adam Muller.
50 34th lecture, p. 236.

ministrationof the state and had felt himself culturallyto be a dis-

cipleof the Frenchenlightenment.In the lectureson the king and the
natureof the Prussianmonarchywhichhe deliveredin Berlinin 1810,
he stressedthat it must be for everyman a point of honor to have a
definite fatherland; to declare that one has none or that one belongs
to a cosmopolitan society of independent rational minds, must be as
insulting as to declare that one was without sex or honor.51 As regards
a European community, Muller believed that it could be realized only
through German ideas. "I, too, dreamt much of a union of that great
nation of which we are only a branch," he declared, "I, too, expected
revolutions and heroes and changes in the mentalities of peoples which
would come and favor the realization of my dream. The great con-
federation of European nations will come some future day, and as
truly as we live, will also wear German colors; for everything great,
thorough and lasting in all European institutions is German- that is
the only certainty which has remained from all those hopes." The
Germans have sown their seeds over Europe; their growth should be
left to the care of nature. "Our concern is the nearest and concrete,
an enthusiasm foe, our own fatherland, for our own royal lord and for
his centenary crown which with royal devotion he regards as some-
thing higher than himself."52
Miiller, while paying his respectsin Berlin to the Prussian monarch,
was soon to follow the Schlegels to Austria but whether in Berlin or
in Vienna, whether praising the Hohenzollern or serving the Habs-
burgs, he did not alter his fundamental conviction. He waged war
51 Ober Konig FriedrichII und die Natur, Wirde und Bestimmungder Preussischen
Monarchie. Offentliche Vorlesungen gehalten zu Berlin im Winter 1810 von Adam
Muller (Berlin, 1810), 1st lecture, p. 5.
5:2 2nd lecture, p. 52f. There is something of the spirit of Fichte's "Reden" in
Miiller's eighth lecture: "Um die Zukunft mit Kraft und Bestimmtheit zu empfinden,
muss man erst das Nationalleben empfunden haben. Was der Privatmann "Zukunft"
nennt, ist ein weites Feld des Zufalls, woriiberdie Wetter Gottes und seine Winde und
Zeiten walten, wovon das Herz nichts ahndet: eben weil es ein isoliertes Herz, ein Privat-
herz ist, und weil es den unendlichen Gott von sinem einsamen Standpunke nicht fassen
kann, sein Gesetz in den Erziehungscalciilnicht aufnehmen kann. Was der nationale
Burger "Zukunft" nennt, ist dagegen etwas sehr Bestimmtes und Besonderes;das Vater-
land, d.h. Gott selbst und sein Gesetz, ist ja in der Rechnung. Nicht also der Privat-
mann, sonder nur der nationale Burger, kann erziehen; also ist die Nationalitat selbst
conditio sine qua non aller Erziehung. Wie moigtihr denn erziehen,bevor ihr einen Altar,
ein Heiligtum, ein vaterlandischesh6chstes Gut fest und fur die Ewigkeit erkannt habt?
Ohne so ein Mittelstes, Nationales, Religioses, worauf alles bezogen werde, und welches
die junge Generationund ihr ganzes Streben ordne und festhalte, erzieht Ihr nur Privat-
manner,und ereuert die alte Misere."

against Western ideas. After 1813 he was happy to see-partly

throughhis efforts- the tide turn. There "grewup in betternations
a tremendouslonging for the discreditedbarbariansof the Middle
Ages. Burke and some Germansdivined that there the lost jewel
might be found. Thus the idea of nobilityagain reappeared."But
with it also the theoriesand the realityof an anti-liberal,anti-Western
nationalism,a Germanophilism which becamethe model of the later
Slavophilism, a nationalism unknown to the Middle Ages and to
Burke. The esotericthoughtsof the Germanromanticiststurneda cen-
tury later,undera differentleadershipand with a differentemphasis,
into people's mystical nationalismsin central and eastern Europe.
Theirunitinglinkwas "thewaragainstthe West."

Remembering Mussolini
Author(s): Charles F. Delzell
Source: The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 118-135
Published by: Wilson Quarterly
Accessed: 08/08/2013 07:32
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ITALY
REMEMBERINGMUSSOLINI
by CharlesE Delzell
AftermeetingBenitoMussolini in Romein 1927,Winston Chur-

chill,thena Conservative memberof Parliament, saidthathadhe been
an Italian,he wouldhave"wholeheartedly" supported the Fascistlead-
er's "triumphant struggleagainst the bestial appetitesandpassionsof
Leninism/' In 1940,however, whenhe wasprimeminister of anembat-
tledBritain,Churchill calledthe Ducea "jackal," andblamedthis"one
manalone"fordragging ItalyintoWorldWarII anddisaster.
Therehavebeenfew,if any,dictators of the Rightor Leftin our
centurywhoserise to powerowedmoreto the myopiaof democratic
statesmen andplaincitizens.Mussolini's fallfrompowerwasas dramatic
as hisascent,andthe Fascisterameritsourreflections today.
ManyyoungerAmericans maythinkof Mussolini onlyas actorJack
Oakieportrayed himin CharlieChaplin's classic1940 film,TheGreat
Dictator:a rotund,strutting clown,whostruckpompous posesfromhis
Romanbalcony andtriedto upstageAdolfHitlerwhentheyfirstmet,in
Venicein 1934.
Yetthe caricature shouldnotblindus to history.Perhapsthemost
sobering aspectof BenitoMussolini's careerwashowmuchapplause he
onceenjoyedfromhighlyrespectedintellectuals, andpoliti-
journalists,
cians,abroadandat home.Exasperated by Italy'sfragile,fractious par-
liamentary democracy, worriedaboutincreasingpopularunrest,and
fearfulof the Socialists' risingpopularity, statesmensuchas the Liberal
PartyleaderGiovanni GiolittiandKingVictorEmmanuel HIwelcomed
Mussolini's adventto powerin 1922.AndtheKingsupported himduring
mostof the 21 yearsthatthe Duceruledin Rome.
Mussolini's strong-man appeal - andthat of the Fascismhe es-
-
poused grew out of thepostwar disorder andeconomic hardship which
reignedin Italyandmuchof Europe.It alsostemmedin somemeasure
fromthefactthatduringthelate19thandearly20thcenturies, Italyhad
beengovernedby squabbling legislators.By 1883,the yearMussolini
wasborn,thevariouskingdoms andduchiesontheItalian peninsula had
onlyrecentlybeenunifiedunderVictorEmmanuel H,Kingof Sardinia-
Piedmont. "Thepatriotism of theItalians," as the 19th-century Neapoli-
tanhistorian LuigiBlanchhasobserved, "istheloveofa singletown,not
of a country; it is the feelingof a tribe,notof a nation."
Indeed,Italywasheirto long-embedded regional differences; these
wereaggravated by poortransportation andgreatdisparities in educa-
tion,wealth,andclass.Duringthe early20thcentury,the churchwas
powerful almosteverywhere. Andeverycornerof the countryhadits
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The Duce at workin Palazzo Chigi, c. 1925. Mussolini dislikedsmall talk

and expresseda "physicalrepulsion"to human contact "A leadercan have
no equals, no friends/' he said, "and must give his confidenceto no one."
own traditions, customs, and dialect. The north-south contrasts were

striking:At the turn of the century, for example, there were no primary
schools in the south; in fact, nearly 80 percent of all southerners were
illiterate. Many peasants lived in a kind of Third Worldpoverty, subject
to drought, malaria,and the vagaries of absentee landlords.
The nation was politicallyfragmented too. In rural Italy, especially
in the central "Red" Romagna region where Mussolini was born, anar-
chist-socialistideas had spread rapidly.By the 1890s, a Marxist brandof
socialism won favor among workers in northern Italy's new "industrial
triangle." By 1919 Italy's Socialist Party- "revolutionary"and "revi-
sionist" factions- held more seats than any other single party (though
still not a majority) in the Parliament, thanks to the introduction of
universalmanhoodsuffrage and proportionalrepresentation.The Roman
CatholicChurch,meanwhile, was at odds not only with the Socialists but
also with the kingdomof Italy itself. The kingdomhad annexed the papal
states of Rome and central Italy between 1861 and 1870, prompting
Pope Pius DCto proclaim himself a "prisoner of the Vatican."
In the eyes of his early Fascist supporters,Benito Mussoliniwas the
man who was restoring order and establishing nationalunity.
His origins were no more auspicious than Hitler's or Stalin's. He
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was bornon July29, 1883, into a poorbut politicallyactivehousehold.

His father,AlessandroMussolini,was a blacksmithand an anarchist-
socialistwho helpedorganizea localgroupof the SocialistInternational,
andwho readaloudpartsof Das Kapitalto his family.Benito'smother,
Rosa, was a piousCatholicschoolteacherwho insistedthat the family
speakhighItalian,ratherthanthe Romagnadialect.Benitolivedwithhis
parentsand a youngerbrotherand sister in two roomson the second
floor of a small,shabbybuildingoutsideof Predappio,about 50 miles
southeastof Bologna.Two pictureshungon a wallin the parents'bed-
room:one of the VirginMary and one of the Italiannationalistand
anticlericalagitatorGiuseppeGaribaldiThe parentsnamedtheireldest
son not aftera saintbut afterBenitoJuarez,the Mexicanrevolutionary
who hadhelpedoverthrowSantaAnna'sdictatorship in 1855.
In his youth,Benitowas moodyat homeanda bullyat the Catholic
boardingschoolhe attendedin nearbyFaenza.Indeed,he was expelled
afterstabbinga fellowstudentwith a knifeandassaultinga priestwho
triedto disciplinehim.Benitowas, nevertheless,an academicachiever;
in 1901 he got his diplomafrom anotherschool,in Forlimpopoli, and
later becamea part-timeschoolteacher.At age 19, Mussolinileft Italy
for Switzerland ("thatrepublicof sausages'9),partlyto avoidcompulsory
military service. "I was a bohemianin those days,"he later wrote. "I
mademy own rules andI did not keep even them/'
Changing Tunes
- moving
At first, Mussolinilived a vagabond'slife in Switzerland
from town to town, doingodd jobs to survive,sometimessleepingin
publiclavatoriesandparks.But the youngman'sinterestsoonturnedto
politics.In 1903 Mussolinitookup residencein Bern;he begancontrib-
uting articlesto socialistjournals,organizeda strike of masons,and
foughta (harmless)pistolduelwith a fellowsocialist.
AfterwanderingthroughSwitzerland, France,andGermany,Mus-
solinireturnedto Italyto do his militaryservice.In 1909 he decidedto
move to Italian-spéaking Trentein Austria-Hungary. There he editeda
weekly socialist
newspaper, L'Awenire dd Lawratore ("TheWorkers'
Future").Later,in Forli,Italy,he edited anothersocialistweekly,La
Lotto di Classe ("The Class Struggle"),and translatedPyotr Kropot-
kin'sGreatFrenchRevolution.By 1910, displayinga naturaltalent,he
That year
was one of Italy'sbest-knownsocialistjournalist-polemicists.
he also beganto live with RacheleGuidi,the 17-year-olddaughterof a
widowwith whomBenito'sfatherhadlivedafter the deathof his wife.
CharlesR Delzell,68, is professorof historyat VanderbiltUniversity.Born
in KlamathFalls, Oregon,he receiveda B.S. from the Universityof Oregon
(1941)and an M.A (1943)and a Ph.D. (1951)from StanfordUniversityHe
is the author of Mussolini'sEnemies:The ItalianAnti-FascistResistance
(1961), Italyin ModernTimes (1964), and Italyin the 20th Century(1980).
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Theircivilmarriage wouldnottakeplaceuntil1915.
Mussolini's
earlycommitment to socialism,or to anyotherism,
shouldnotbe takentooseriously,
despitehispassionate rhetoric.
Musso-
liniwouldrepeatedlydemonstratehiswillingnessto changehispolitical
stancewhenever hisprospects.
it advanced As a youngmanhe readthe
worksof NiccolôMachiavelli,FriedrichNietzsche,GeorgesSorel,and
others.Buthe wasmostlyinterestedin ideasthathe couldappropriate
for his own use. LikeotherItaliansocialists,Mussoliniat first con-
demnedWorld WarI as an"imperialist
war."Hiscountry's involvement,
he said,wouldconstitutean "unpardonablecrime."ButafterFrance's
amazing at
survival the Marne in September 1914, he reversedhis
position.InAvantU,theSocialist
Partynewspaper thathe theneditedin
Milan,he urgedthatItalyenterthe conflicton the sideof Britainand
France.TheSocialists expelledhimas a traitor.
promptly
Faad di Combattimento
Nowa maverick "national"socialist,Mussolini quicklyfounded his
ownnewspaper inMilan,B Popolod'ltolia("ThePeopleof Italy").The
paperwasfinanced, inpart,bylocalindustrialists. Slogansonthepaper's
masthead read:"Whoever hassteelhasbread"(fromtheFrenchrevolu-
tionaryAugusteBlanqui)and"TheRevolution is an ideawhichhas
foundbayonets!" (fromNapoleon). When the government declared war
onAustria-Hungary in May1915,Mussolini hailedtheeventas "Italy's
baptism as a greatpower"and"aculminating pointin worldhistory."
Mussolini'sown role in the conflict-he was draftedin August
1915andservedin theAlps- wouldprovidehimwitha lodeof (mostly
imaginary) storiesabouthis heroicsin combat.Neverinvolvedin any
majorbattles,the youngsergeantwas injuredon February 22, 1917,
whena mortaraccidentally exploded in histrench,spraying hisbackside
with44 piecesof shrapneL Afterrecovering, Mussolini returnedto B
Popolo, where he pounded out fieryeditorials in favor of the wareffort
andagainstbolshevism. He considered Lenina "manof straw"and
observed that"onlya TartarandMongolian peoplecouldfallforsucha
program as his."
Astimewenton,Mussolini becameincreasingly Insist-
nationalistic.
inguponItaly's"greatimperial destiny,"he demanded theannexation of
the Austro-Hungarian whereItalianwasspoken,suchas the
territories
portof Trieste,the ItalianTyrol,andmostof Dalmatia. Withstrong
businesssupport,Mussolini changed the subtitle of B Popolo d'ltalia
from"asocialistnewspaper" to "thenewspaper of combatants andpro-
ducers."Andina speechin RomeinFebruary 1918,Mussolini declared
thatItalyneeded"amanwhois ferocious andenergeticenoughto make
a cleansweep,withthecourageto punishwithouthesitation, particularly
whenthe culpritsarein highplaces."
Although Italyemergedas a victorin WorldWarI, theconflicthad
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wreakedhavocon Italiansociety.Some 650,000 soldiershad perished.

Returningveterans swelled the ranksof the unemployed;nearlytwo
millionItaliansfoundthemselvesout of workby the endof 1919. A wave
of industrialstrikesbrokeout in the north.Someworkers,stirredby the
news of the BolshevikRevolutionin Russia,urgeda "dictatorship of the
for
proletariat" Italy.Meanwhile, Rome,in one feeble LiberalParty
coalitiongovernmentafter anothertriedvainlyto restorestability.
Withthe GreatWarat an end, and the fear of bolshevismwide-
spread,Mussolinicast aboutfor a new nationalistcause to lead. On
March23, 1919, he foundedItaly'sFascist movementin a business-
men'scluboff Milan'sPiazzaSanSepolcro.His Fasci di Combattitnento
("FightingFasces")took their namefromthe bundleof rodswith pro-
trudingaxe-bladesthathadbeenthe symbolof authorityanddisciplinein
ancientRome. About 120 peoplewere presentat the Milanmeeting,
includingveteransof the arditi, a groupof wartimeshocktroops."We,
the survivorswho have returned,"Mussoliniwrote, "demandthe right
of governingItaly."The Fascistschose as theiruniformthe same black
shirtRomagnalaborershadfavored.
Though Mussolini'sFascist movementwas always anti-Marxist,
anti-Liberal, and virulentlynationalistic,it wouldendorse(andquickly
drop)manycauses.At first Mussolinicalledfor a republicanduniversal
suffrage,and criticizedthe RomanCatholicChurch.Later,he would
endorsethe monarchy,renderelectionsmeaningless,andcozyup to the
church.The Fascistmovementattractedunemployed youths,frightened
membersof the bourgeoisie,industrialists, landowners,and,especially,
war veteranswho believedthat Italy,at the 1919 Parispeace confer-
ence, had not gainedall of the territoriesshe was due.
"WhenI came backfrom the war,"ItaloBalbo,a noted Fascist,
wouldlaterrecall,"I, like so manyothers,hatedpoliticsandpoliticians,
who, it seemed to me, had betrayedthe hopesof the fightingmen and
had inflictedon Italya shamefulpeace. . . Struggle,fightto returnthe
countryto Giolittdwho had barteredevery ideal?No. Better [to]deny
everything,destroy everythingin order to buildeverythingup again
fromthe bottom."
Cudgels and Castor (Ml

The Fascist movement'sabilityto straddle,howeverawkwardly,
Italy'sconventionalpoliticaldivisionsbetweenRightandLeft provedto
be one of its greatestinitialstrengths.Duringthe "Fascismof the First
Hour,"Mussolini'sprogramdidnot differmuchfromthat of the Social-
ists, except that the Fascistshad favoredItaly'swartimerole and still
praisedit. Butwhenthe Fascistmovementfailedto elect even one of its
candidatesto Parliamentin the November1919 election,Mussolinide-
cidedto shift to the Right.
To winmoresupportfromCatholics,he mutedhis anticlerical rhet-
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oric and said that Rome should subsidize churches and religious schools.
The Liberal government's decision to withdraw troops from Albania,
which they had occupied since 1914, Mussolini said, represented a "dis-
gusting exhibitionof nationalcowardice."Above all, Mussoliniintensified
his anti-Socialistrhetoric and berated the Liberalgovernment for "doing
nothing"when, in September 1920, metal workers in the north forcibly
occupied the factories and set up Soviet-style workers' councils. The
Fascists, Mussolini promised, would restore "law and order."
Mussolini's message won over many employers, who believed that
the Fascists could keep militant labor at bay. Bands of Fascist thugs,
known as squadristi, Launched"punitive expeditions" against Socialist
and Catholic leagues of laborers and farmworkers. They beat some
members with cudgels and forced castor oil down their throats. By offi-
cial count, the Fascists destroyed 120 labor union offices and murdered
243 persons between Januaryand May of 1921.
The ruling Liberalswere happy to look the other way. Local police
officers even supplied the Blackshirt militias with weapons. And when
Prime Minister GiovanniGiolitti called for new elections, to take place
on May 15, 1921, he proposed to the Fascists that, following the elec-
tion, they should join his constitutional bloc in Parliament. This time,
Italian troopsmarch throughRome, boundfor Ethiopia, in October1935.

The British, Mussolini assured his countrymen,would not go to war to
"
defend"an African country. . . withouta trace of civilization.
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Mussolini'sFascistPartywouldwin 35 seats.
By 1922, Mussoliniwas impatientto seize powerin what seemed
more and more like a politicalvacuum.In Octoberof that year, the
Fascist Partyheld a congressin Naples,where Mussoliniand his col-
leaguesdrewup plansfor a "Marchon Rome."Underthe plan,Fascist
militiaswouldleadthe marchwhileMussoliniprudentlyremaineddose
to the Swissborderin case the attemptedcoupd'étatfailed."Eitherwe
are allowedto govern,"Mussoliniwarnedin a speech to the Fascist
militiamen,"orwe willseize powerby marchingon Rome"to "takeby
the throatthe miserablepoliticalclass that governsus."
Taking Power
The weakcoalitiongovernmentled by LuigiFactaknewthat Mus-
soliniwas planninga coup,butat firstthe primeministerdidnot takethe
Fascists'intentionsseriously."I believethatthe prospectof a Marchon
Romehas fadedaway,"Factatold the King.Nor were all of the Social-
ists eager to confrontthe Fascistthreat.Indeed,some radicalMarxists
hopedthat Mussolini's"reactionary buffoonery" woulddestroyboththe
Socialistsandthe Liberals,thus preparingthe way for a genuineCom-
munistrevolution.For their part,the Liberalsworriedmost aboutthe
ideology.Indeed,Liberalsand
Socialists,becauseof their anticapitalist
Socialistswere "as anxiousto scuttle each other,"as historianDenis
MackSmithhas observed,"as to preventa Fascistrevolution."
The Fascistsinitiatedthe "Marchon Rome"on the nightof Octo-
ber 27-28, 1922. The militiasbegantakingover telephoneexchanges
andgovernmentoffices.LuigiFactawantedthe Kingto declarea state
of siege, but in the end no showdownoccurred.Unconvincedthat the
armycouldor woulddefendRomefromthe Fascists,or thatthe Liberals
couldprovideeffectiveleadership,VictorEmmanuelrefusedto sign a
formaldecree declaringa state of emergency.Instead,he telegraphed
Mussolini,askinghim to come to Rome to forma new government.
Boardinga train in Milan,Mussoliniinformedthe stationmaster
thathe wantedto depart"exactlyon time [because]fromnow on every-
thingmustfunctionperfectly"- therebygivingrise to the myththathe
made Italy'strainsrun on time. Upon his arrivalin Rome, the Duce
proceededat once to the Palazzodel Quirinale.Still wearinga black
shirt,he toldthe 53-year-oldmonarch(whohadexpectedhimto appear
in formaldress):"I have come fromthe battlefield."
Thus,on October31, 1922, at age 39, Mussolinibecamethe youn-
gest primeministerin Italy'sshortparliamentary history.Withthe Fas-
cists holdingonly35 seats in the 510-memberChamberof Deputies,he
headeda cabinetof "nationalconcentration" composedmostlyof liber-
als, socialistDemocrats,andCatholicPopolari.In his firstspeechto the
deputies,whogave himan overwhelming vote of confidence,he boasted:
"I could have transformedthis drab hall into a bivouac for my
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squads... I couldhaveformeda governmentexclusivelyof Fascists,but

I chose not to, at least not for the present."
Despite the Duce's threats, many veteran politiciansin Rome
thoughtthat,in time,they couldco-optMussoliniEvenGiovanniGiolitti
and AntonioSalandra,the two senior membersof the LiberalParty
establishment,favoredMussolini'sascensionto power.LuigiAlbertini,
the editorof Milan'sCarrièredeltaSera voicedhis delightthatFascism
had,aboveall, "savedItalyfromthe dangerof Socialism."
Otherswere pleasedthat,finally,Italyenjoyedstrongleadership,of
whateverkind."Theheartof Fascismis the love of Italy,"observedthe
liberal senatorandphilosopher BenedettoCroceinJanuary1924. "Fas-
cism is overcoming the traditional indifference of Italians to
politics... andI valueso highlythe cure whichItalyis undergoingfrom
it thatI ratter hopethe patientwillnot get up too soonfromIdsbed and
risk some grave relapse."
In Britain,France,andthe UnitedStates, manyconservativesalso
gave theirblessings.The New YorkTribuneremarkedthat "the Fasci-
sti movement is- in essentials- a reaction against degeneration
throughsocialisticinternationalism. It is roughin its methods,but the
aimswhichit professesare tonic."Eventhe New YorkTimessuggested
that Mussolini'scoupwas of a "peculiarandrelativelyharmlesstype."
The Matteotti Crisis
Now at the centerof power,Mussoliniincreasinglybecamea soli-
taryfigure.Duringhis firstfive yearsin office,the Duce livedalonein a
smallrentedapartment;his wife Racheleremainedin Milan,where she
cared for their five children.He lived austerely,dined on vegetarian
meals, and, partlyto avoidirritatinga gastricdeer, eschewedalcohol
and tobacco.(He once braggedof his "uttercontemptfor the lure of
money/')An inveteratewomanizer,Mussolinievincedlittle genuineaf-'
fectionforthe oppositesex, or for peoplein general."I haveno friends,'
he once admittedto the GermanpublicistEmil Ludwig,"first of all
becauseof my temperament;secondlybecauseof my views of human
beings.That is why I avoidbothintimacyanddiscussion."
Mussolinimanagedto projecta morecongenialimageto the outside
world.He contrivedfrequent"photoopportunities," posingat the con-
trolsof an airplane,grinningbehindthe wheel of a sportscar,or taming
a lioncub in its cage at the zoo. ManyAmericanssaw himas an Italian
TeddyRoosevelt- a stout-heartedadvocateof the strenuouslife.
But "image"was not enough.Eagerto putmoreFascistsin Parlia-
ment, Mussolinicalledfor an election,to take place on April6, 1924.
Duringthe campaignandvoting,the squadristiengagedin widespread
intimidation."Whenit is a matter of the Fatherlandor of Fascism,"
Mussolinisaid on January28, 1924, "we are readyto killanddie."
In the election,the Fascistsclaimedto have won 64.9 percentof
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the votes. But on May 30, Giacomo Matteotti, the widely respected
leader of the Unitary Socialist Party, courageously stood up in Parlia-
ment to read a list of incidents in which Blackshirts had threatened
voters and tampered with the ballot boxes. Fascist deputies, now in the
majority, taunted him, yelling "Hireling!", "Traitor!", "Demagogue!"
Ten days later, Fascist toughs who were closely linked to Mussolini's
press office kidnappedMatteotti near his home in Rome, stabbed him,
and then half buried his corpse in a grove outside the capital.
The assassinationprecipitatedthe most serious crisis of Mussolini's
early days in power. Many Italians,after all, believed that Mussolini had
at least incited, if not ordered, the murder.The anti-Fascistopposition-
Socialists, Catholic Popolari, Republicans, and Constitutional Demo-
crats- boycotted the Parliament,forming the "Aventine Secession." It
was time for the King, they believed, to dismiss Mussolini and call for
new elections.
But the ever-timid King, who was weary of the governments of the
past, refused to intervene. Nor did the Vatican support the
oppositionists.Pope Pius XI himself warned Italiansagainst "cooperation
with evil" (Le. the Socialists) for "whatever reason of public welfare."
In a fit of wishful thinking, many foreign commentators did not
blame Mussolini for the murder. They preferred to cite certain "gang-
The Duce and the Fûhrer meetfor the first time in Venice,June 1934.
Afterward,Mussolini describedHitler as "a gramophonewith just seven
tunes and once he had finished playing them he startedall over again."
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ITALY
ster elements"amongthe Fascists."The Matteottiincident;'lamented

the New YorkTimes"isof a kindthatmaykilla movementby depriving
it at one strokeof its moralcontent/'
In Rome,Mussolinitauntedhis hapless,dividedopponentsduringa
speechto Parliament:
But afterall, gentlemen,whatbutterfliesare we lookingfor
underthe arch of Titus?Well, I declarehere before this
assembly,beforethe Italianpeople,that I assume,I alone,
the political,moral,historicalresponsibilityfor everything
that has happened
By failingto oust Mussoliniduringthe Matteotticrisis, his foes

effectivelyentrenchedthe Duce as Italy'sall-powerfulleader.
On January3, 1925, Mussolinilauncheda counter-offensive, an-
nouncingin an impassionedhalf-hourspeechto Parliamentthat "force"
was the "onlysolution"to the threat of disorder.Under a series of
"exceptionaldecrees,"Mussolinicensoredthe press and outlawedall
oppositionparties,includingthe SocialistsandLiberals.He replacedla-
borunionswithFascistsyndicates.His SpecialTribunalfor the Defense
of the State sentencedthousandsof oppositionactivists(especiallyCom-
munistsandanarchists)eitherto longprisontermsor to internalexile in
the south.Youngsterswere recruitedby Fascistyouthorganizations-a
futuremodelfor Germany'sHitlerYouth- whichstressedindoctrination
anddiscipline,andexhortedthem to "Believe!Obey!Fight!"
Allthe while,Mussolinicontinuedto garnerpraiseabroad."Musso-
observedthe WashingtonPast in August1926, "evi-
lini'sdictatorship,"
dentlyappealsto the Italianpeople.They neededa leader,and having
foundhim they gladlyconferpoweruponhim."
Giving Italy Back to God

State: "Everythingin
Mussolinicalledhis regime the Totalitarian
the State,Nothingoutsidethe State,NothingAgainstthe State!"Buthis
harshandnoisyas it oftenwas,wasfarless brutalthan
"totalitarianism,"
that of Stalin'sRussiaor Hitler'sGermany- partlybecausethe King
retainedcontrolof the ItalianArmyandthe rightto dismissthe prime
minister.Not until1938 didthe regimebeginto discriminate againstthe
nation'sroughly40,000 Jews;manywouldlose theirjobsin government
and academia.But Mussolinidid not seek a "finalsolution"to Italy's
"Jewishproblem"-as the Germansdid after they occupiednorthern
Italyin September1943.
On the economicfront, Mussolini's"Corporative State" tried to
The regimeset up parallelFascistsyndicates
foster "classconciliation."
of employersand workersin varioussectors of the economy.Labor
courtssettleddisputesundera system of compulsoryarbitration.
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In 1933, the regime establishedthe Institutefor IndustrialRe-

construction(IRI) as a holdingcompanyto shore up failingindustries.
State-subsidized industrial
(or "parastate") wouldsoonfur-
organizations
nish about17 percentof all goodsandservices.To stimulatethe econ-
omy,Mussolinibuiltroads,sportsstadiums,and governmentbuildings.
The governmentlaunchednumerousprogramsfor mothersandchildren
and developeda land reclamationscheme, whichwas responsiblefor
drainingthe PontineMarshesnear Rome. Mussoliniinitiateda much-
publicized"battlefor grain";newsreelcameramenfilmedhim pitching
straw, bare from the waist up. Perhapsmost significantly, the Duce
beganan ill-fatedeffortto rebuildthe nation'sarmy,navy,andairforce.
DespiteMussolini'spromiseto restore"theAugustanEmpire,"he
generallyfailedto pushItaly'sbackwardeconomyforward.The regime's
cartelssometimeshinderedeconomicadvanceby discouraginginnova-
tion and modernization.The Duce demoralizedworkers by cutting
wages, raisingtaxes, and banningstrikes and other forms of protest.
Even as the governmenttook over industriesand preparedfor war,
unemploymentremainedhigh. Fully half of those who did work were
employedin agriculture.Italianfamilies,meanwhile,were spending50
percentof their incomeson food.
Mussolini,however,sought(andgained)amicablerelationswiththe
Catholicchurchby signingthe LateranPactswiththe Vaticanin Febru-
ary 1929. The pactscreatedthe State of VaticanCity,withinwhichthe
Popewouldbe sovereign.They establishedRomanCatholicism as Italy's
state religion,bestowingon it extensiveprivilegesandimmunities.The
Duce's star soaredthroughoutthe Catholicworld;devoutItalianpeas-
ants flockedto churchto prayfor the manwho had "givenbackGodto
ItalyandItalyto God."Ignoringthe suppressionof civilliberties,Pope
PiusXI referredto Mussolinias "amanwhomProvidencehascausedto
meet us" and sprinkledhim with holywater.
Grabbing Ethiopia
By the late 1920s, the Duce had solidifiedsupportfor his regime,
bothin Romeandabroad.Soonafterenteringthe WhiteHousein 1933,
FranklinD. Rooseveltwrote that he was "deeplyimpressed"by this
"admirable Italiangentleman,"who seemedintentupon"restoringItaly
andseekingto preventgeneralEuropeantrouble."
Indeed,untilthe mid-1930s,Mussolinistayed (for the most part)
out of foreignventures.But great nations,Mussolinibelieved,couldnot
be contentwith achievementsat home. "ForFascism,"as he wrote in
the EnciclopediaItaliana in 1932, "the growthof empire... is an es-
sential manifestationof vitality,and its oppositea sign of decadence.
Peopleswhichare rising,or risingagainaftera periodof decadence,are
alwaysimperialist: any renunciation
is a sign of decayanddeath."
Mussoliniwouldbecome increasinglyobsessed with foreigncon-
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U.S. G.I.'s in Rome on June 5, 1944, the day after they liberated the Eternal
City. Mussolini had begged Hitler to defend the capital- to no avail.
questsafterJanuary 1933,whenAdolfHitlerbecamechancellor of Ger-

manyandsoonwondictatorial powers.Although MussoliniandHitler,as
fellowFascists,admired eachother,theiralliancewouldbe markedby
periodicfitsofjealousy ontheDuce'spart.Hitler,as biographer Joachim
C. Fest has written,"aroused in Mussolini complexfor
an inferiority
whichhe thereafter triedto compensate moreandmoreby posturings,
imperialactions, or the invoking of a vanished past."
Mussolini'sfirstmajor"imperial action"wouldoccurinAfrica.The
Duce hadlong covetedEmperorHaileSelassie'sEthiopia, whichan
armyhadfailedto conquer
Italian in 18%.Onthemorning of October2,
1935,as 100,000troopsbeganmovingacrossthe Eritrea-Ethiopia bor-
der,Mussolini announced that"Agreathourin the historyof ourcoun-
tryhasstruck. . . fortymillionItalians, a sworncommunity, willnotlet
themselvesbe robbedof theirplacein the sun!"
Paralyzed by economicdepressionandpublicantiwarsentiment,
Britain'sPrimeMinisterStanleyBaldwin refusedto intervene,despite
theinherentthreatto Britishcoloniesin Africa.TheLeagueof Nations
denounced the Fascistaggression. However, lackinganycoherentlead-
ership or U.S. support, Leaguestoppedshortof closingthe Suez
the
Canalor imposing anoilembargoon Italy.Eitheraction,Mussolini said
later,wouldhaveinflicted"aninconceivable disaster."
The barefooted Ethiopianlevieswereno matchfor Italy'sSavoia
WQ SPRING 1988
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ITALY
bombersandmustardgas. The Duce'spilotson, Vittorio,toldjournalists

in Africathat the Ethiopiansoldiers,when hit from the air, "exploded
likered roses."AddisAbabafell in May 1936. Withthisvictory,Musso-
linireachedthe pinnacleof his popularityat home.Speakingto an enor-
mous crowdfromhis PalazzoVeneziabalcony,the Duce declaredthat
his "triumphover 50 nations"meantthe "reappearance of the Empire
uponthe feted hillsof Rome."SignseverywhereproclaimedH Duce ha
sempreragione("Theleaderis alwaysright").
Emboldened by his Ethiopiansuccess,Mussolinibeganto intervene
elsewhere.He dispatchedaircraftandsome 70,000 "volunteers" to help
GeneralissimoFranciscoFranco'sFalangistinsurgentsin the Spanish
CivilWar.He pulledItalyout of the Leagueof Nationsand decidedto
lineup withHitler'sGermany,whichhadalreadyquitthe League.Thus,
in June 1936, Mussolini's33-year-oldforeignministerand son-in-law,
CountGaleazzoCiano,negotiatedthe Rome-BerlinAxis,whichwas ex-
pandedinto a full-fledgedmilitaryalliance,the "Pactof Steel," in May
1939. BothcountriesalsoestablishedlinkswithJapanthroughthe Anti-
CominternPact The Duce now belongedto what he calledthe "most
formidable politicalandmilitarycombination that has ever existed."
Humiliations in the Desert
Mussolini'smilitaryforces,however,couldnot be describedas for-
midable.Lackingcoal, iron, oil, and sufficientheavy industry,Italy's
economycouldnot supporta majorwar effort.The Duce, who spokeof
"eight millionbayonets/' proveda better propagandistthan military
planner.Onthe eve of WorldWarH, the ItalianArmyowned1.3 million
outdatedrifles and even fewer bayonets;its tanks and artillerywere
obsolete.By June 1940, the ItalianNavy boastedfast battleshipsand
WesternEurope'slargestfleet of submarines.But it sadlylackedradar,
echo-sounding equipment,andother new technologies.AndMussolini's
admiralsandgeneralswere better knownfor theirpoliticalloyaltythan
for professionalcompetence.
WhenHitlerquicklyannexedAustriain March1938, andCzecho-
slovakiain March1939, Mussolinicomplainedto CountCiano:"The
Italianswilllaughat me. Everytime Hitleroccupiesa country,he sends
me a message."The Duce, ignoringCatholicsensibilities,orderedthe
invasion<rfAlbaniaon GoodFriday,April7, 1939, bringingthat back-
wardAdriaticcountryinto his empire.
WhenGermanyinvadedPolandon September1, 1939, thereby
launchingWorldWarn, MussoliniknewthatItalywas not readyto fight.
The list of needed
He initiallyadopteda positionof "non-belligerency."
war suppliesthat the Duce requestedfromBerlin,noted CountCiano,
"is long enoughto kffla bulL"But as Hitler'sBlitzkriegbroughtDen-
mark,Norway,the Low Countries,andFranceto their knees in 1940,
Mussolinidecidedhe hadlittleto lose, andperhapssome spoilsto gain.
WQ SPRING1988
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ITALY
On June 10, 1940, withoutconsultingeither his cabinetor the

FascistGrandCouncil,Mussolinideclaredwar on bothFranceandBrit-
ain.Injoiningthe conflict,Mussoliniinadvertently
let Hitlerbecomethe
masterof Italy'sfate.
The Italianpeoplesoonfelt the pain.The battlefieldperformance of
Mussolini'sarmedforces reflectedthe homefront'slade of zeal. One
debacleafter anotherensued. Under Field MarshalRodolfoGraziani,
Italy'smuch-touted*armoredbrigadesin Libyaattackedthe Britishin
Egypt, hopingto capturethe Suez Canal.But in the seesaw battles
acrossthe desert,as wellas in navalengagementsin the Mediterranean,
the outnumbered Britishinflictedrepeatedhumiliations on the Italians,
who hadto beg the Germansfor help.By the end of 1941, the British
hadalsoshop Mussoliniof ItalianEritreaandSomalia,as well as Ethio-
pia,reinstatingHaileSelassieas emperor.
The King Says Good-bye
Italy'sinvasionof Greece, launchedfrom Albaniaon October28,
1940, didnotfaremuchbetter.Sayinghe was "tiredof actingas Hitler's
tail-light/'Mussolinilaunchedthe attackwithoutnotifyingBerlin.The
waragainstthe Greeks,the Duce predicted,wouldbe littlemorethana
"militarypromenade/'But the Italianswere boggeddownin the moun-
tainsfor months,untilHitler'sspring1941 invasionof the Balkansres-
cued Mussolini'slacklusterlegions.And Italy'sparticipationin Germa-
ny's 1941 invasionof the SovietUnionyieldedfew triumphs.Mussolini
dispatchedthree infantrydivisionsandone cavalrydivision.At least half
of the 240,000 Italiansoldierssent to the Easternfrontneverreturned.
For Italy,the beginningof the end came on December7, 1941,
when the JapanesebombedPearl Harbor,bringingthe United States
into the war againstthe Axis powers.AlthoughMussoliniseemed de-
lightedto be fighting"a countryof NegroesandJews,"he knewthathis
regimewas now in deep trouble.
Across the Mediterranean,in November1942, GeneralDwight
EisenhowerputAlliedforcesashorein MoroccoandAlgeria.He begana
push to meet Field MarshalBernardMontgomery'sBritish Eighth
Army,whichhad alreadybrokenthroughAxis defensesat el-Alamein.
The GermanAfrikaKorpsfoughta toughdelayingaction.Butwhenthe
NorthAfricacampaignendedin May 1943, some 200,000 Italianshad
been takenprisoner;few hadfoughtthe Allieswith muchenthusiasm.
New bases in North AfricaenabledAlliedairmento step up the
bombingof Italiancities andrailcenters,whichleft the nation'salready
hard-pressed economyin tatters.Tardily,the regimerationedfoodsup-
plies and restrictedthe consumptionof gas andcoal. Despitewage and
pricecontrols, soared,anda blackmarketflourished.Ordinary
inflation
Italiansbegan to demonstratetheir disaffection.In early 1943, public
employeesin TurinandFiatworkersin Milanwent on strike."InItaly,"
WQ SPRING 1988
131

ITALY
Mussolini would later write, "the moral repercussions of the American

landing in Algiers were immediate and profound.
" Every enemy of Fas-
cism promptly reared his ugly head
By the time the Allies invaded Sicily on July 10, 1943, even those
Italian politicianswho had long enjoyed privileges and perquisites were
fed up; plots were being hatched in Rome to oust Mussolini and turn
over politicalpower to King Victor Emmanuel.All this came to a head on
the night of July 24-25, when the Fascist Grand Council met at the
PalazzoVenezia to decide Mussolini'sfate. Some Fascist councillorscriti-
cized the shaken dictator to his face for being too indecisive; others
berated him for not ridding the government of incompetents. Nothing
was working, they said, and the Germans in Italy, coping with Anglo-
American advances, regarded their sagging ally with contempt.
In a two-hour monologue, the Duce tried to defend himself, saying
that "this is the moment to tighten the reins and to assume the neces-
sary responsibility.I shall have no difficultyin replacing men, in turning
the screw, in bringingforces to bear not yet engaged." But the Council
adopted a resolution, which had been supported by Count Ciano, calling
upon the King to take over the leadership of the nation.
The next afternoon, Mussolini went to the King's villa, hoping to
bluff his way through the crisis. But the King had decided, at last, to
Votingin Italy'sfirst postwarparliamentaryelections,in Romeon April 18,

1948:Italian-Americanswroteto theirfriends and relativesin Italy,urging
them to rejectthe Communistsin favor of ChristianDemocrats.
WQ SPRING1988
132

ITALY
separatehimselffromthe Fascistregime.He quicklyinformedMussolini

thathe haddecidedto set up a royalmilitarygovernmentunderthe 71-
year-oldArmyMarshal,Retro Badoglio."Theneverythingis finished,"
the Duce murmured.As the ex-dictatorleft the VillaSavoia,a Carabi-
niere officermotionedhiminto an ambulance,pretendingthis was nec-
essaryto avoid"a hostilecrowd/'
Mussoliniwas taken to a police barracks,unawarethat he was
underarrest At 10:45 a governmentspokesmanannouncedover the
radiothe formationof the new regimeby the KingandBadoglio.Jubilant
crowdsrushedintothe streets to celebrate.But they were dismayedby
Badoglio'sstatementthat "the war continues" - a statementmade to
wardoff Germanretaliation.
Rescuingthe Duce
MarshalBadoglioplacedthe formerDuce underguard.Later,he
was transferredto a ski resort atop GranSasso, the tallest peak in
centralItaly.He remainedthere for almosta fortnight,while the new
regimesecretlynegotiatedan armisticewith the Allies.The armistice
was announcedon September8- even as AmericanandBritishtroops
landedagainststiff Germanresistanceat Salerno,near Naples.
Thereafter,events movedswiftly.
AnticipatingItaly's about-face, Hitler had dispatched strong
Wehrmachtreinforcementsacross the Alps; the Germanswere able
quicklyto disarmand internthe badlyconfusedItaliantroops.Fearing
capture,the KingandBadogliofled Romebeforedawnon September9
to jointhe Alliedforces in the south.Six weeks later the Badogliogov-
ernment,now installedin Brindisi,declaredwar on Germany.
On September12, 1943, CaptainOtto Skorzeny,leading90 Ger-
man commandosin eight glidersand a smallplane,landedoutsidethe
mountaintop hotel on GranSassowhere the sicklyDuce was still being
kept Skorzeny's men brushedasidethe Italianguards,andtookMusso-
linito Munich,where Hitlermet him. Henceforth,the Duce wouldbe
one of Hitler'slackeys,a "brutalfriendship" as Mussoliniput it.
The FuhrerorderedMussolinito headup the new pro-NaziItalian
SocialRepublic(RSI) at Sale, in German-occupied northernItaly.The
ItalianFascistswouldhelpthe Nazisdeport,andlaterexterminate,over
8,000 Jews. From Munich,Mussoliniappealedby radioto his "faithful
Blackshirts" to renewAxissolidarity, andpurgethe "royalistbetrayers"
of the regime.
Butfew Italianswillinglybackedthe "SaleRepublic."Instead,most
hopedfor a swiftAlliedvictory.A determinedminorityeven joined the
- the armed anti-German and anti-Fascist resistance- in
partisans
northernItaly.But Mussolinididmanageto punishthe "traitorsof July
25." In Verona,a specialFascisttribunalput on trialMussolini'sson-in-
law,CountCiano,andothersin his partywhohadvotedfor "theelimina-
WQ SPRING1988
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ITALY
tionof its Duce."Rejecting the pleasof his daughter Edda,Mussolini

decreedthatCianoandhisco-conspirators be shotto death,andso they
were,onJanuary 11, 1944.
At last,inApril1945,thegrinding Alliedoffensive,havingreached
northern Italy,overwhelmed theGermans, whosehomeland wasalready
collapsingunder attackfrom East and West. At this point,Mussolini
triedto savehimselfby negotiating withanti-Fascist
resistanceleaders
in Milan.Butwhenhe learnedthattheyinsistedon an "unconditional
surrender/' he fledwithseveraldozencompanions to LakeComo,where
he wasjoinedby hismistress,ClaraPetaccLFromthere,theyplanned
anescapeto Switzerland.
Per Nécessita Familiale
Unableto crosstheborder, Mussolini andhisbanddecidedtojoina
Germantruckconvoythatwas retreating towardSwitzerland through
the ItalianAlps.But Italianpartisans haltedthe convoynearDongo.
Evertheactor,Mussolini donneda German overcoat,
corporal's a swas-
tika-marked helmet,anddarkglasses,andclimbed intooneofthetrucks.
Butthe partisans identified
Mussolini,arrestedhimandhiscompanions,
andlet the Germans proceedunmolested.
The nextday,WalterAudisio,a Communist resistancechieffrom
Milan,arrived, claiming he had ordersto execute the Duceand15 other
Fascistfugitives.He summarily shotMussolini andhis mistressat the
villageof Giulino di Mezzegra onApril28. Theircorpsesweretakento
Milanandstrungupbytheheelsin Piazzale Loreto,whereaninfuriated
mobrepeatedly kickedandspaton the swingingcadavers.
Lookingbackon Mussolini's career,it mightbe said that he
changedItalymorethanhe changedthe Italians. Indeed,the Duceleft
behinda networkof pavedroads,reclamation projects,anda vastcen-
tralized bureaucracy.TheIRIholding company andotherpara-state cor-
porations thatMussolini foundedstillexisttoday;theyaccountfor the
mostinefficient 20 percentof the nation'seconomy.
ButMussolini convinced fewItalians forlongthatFascismwasthe
waveof thefuture.Tobe sure,manyhadsupported theDuceenthusias-
fromthetimehisregimesignedtheconcordat
tically,especially withthe
Pope(1929)throughthe easyconquestof Ethiopia (1936).Anda small
neo-Fascistparty,the MovimentoSocialeItaliano(MSI),still wins
roughlyfivepercentof the popular votein national electionstoday.
MostItaliansquietlyturnedtheirbackson Mussolini onceit be-
cameclearthathe hadengagedthenationin costlyventuresthatcould
notsucceed.(Morethan400,000Italianslosttheirlivesin WorldWar
H.)DuringtheDuce'sfoolishexpeditions againsttheGreeks,theBritish,
andthe Soviets,manyItaliansconsidered themselvesto be "half-Fas-
cists,"whohadtakenouttheirFascistPartymembership cardsonlyper
nécessita familiale(forthe goodof the family).
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ITALY
OnJune2, 1946,thefirsttimethatItalians got a chanceto votein

a postwarelection,theychoseto oustthe monarchy. Theycouldnot
forgiveKingVictorEmmanuel forinvitingMussolini to takepower,and
for supporting the Duce'simperialambitions - even if they forgave
The
themselves. voters elected a constituentassembly, whichdrafteda
newconstitution for the republic, for a
providing primeminister, a bi-
cameralparliament, anda systemof 20 regionalgovernments.
Mussoliniandhisideology provedinfluentialbeyondItaly'sborders.
Astheworld'sfirstandperhaps mostpopular Fascistleader,he provided
the modelfor otheraspiringauthoritarian rulersin EuropeandLatin
America, who,fora time,wouldmakefascismseemanattractive alter-
nativeto socialism, communism, or anarchy.
In Germany, AdolfHitleralliedMussolini's 1922Marchon Rome
"oneof theturningpointsof history." Themereideathatsucha march
couldbe attempted, he said,"gave[Germany's NationalSocialists]an
impetus." WhenNazisdidtheiroutstretched armsalutes,orwhenSpan-
ish Falangistscried"Franco! Franco!Franco!", they were mimicking
theircounterparts in Italy.JuanPeron,Argentina's president(1946-
1955), echoed thé sentimentsof many anotherambitiousLatin
strongman whenhe calledMussolini "thegreatestmanof ourcentury."
JustbeforeMussolini cameto power,Italians, likecitizensof sev-
eraltroubledEuropean societiesafterWorldWarI, faceda choice -
eithermiddlingthroughdisorderandeconomicdisarrayunderoften
inept,yet essentially benevolent democratic regimes,or fallingin line
behinda decisivebutbrutaldictatorship. Italianschosethe latter.They
embraced thestrongman'snotionsof a grandNewAge.ButMussolini's
intoxicatingvisionof Italyas a greatpower,theyeventually discovered,
wasa disastrous delusion.
TheFascisteraservesto remindItalians andothersof something
important: thatnational well-being may not come fromcharismatic lead-
ership,revolutionary zeal, or military might. Indeed, Italy'speculiar
greatnesstodaymaylie in its citizens'toleranceof regionalandeco-
nomicdifferences, intheirabilityto copewiththeinefficiencies of demo-
craticgovernment, intheirpragmatic acceptance of human foibles- and,
mostof all,in theirappreciation of the richtextureof everydaylife.
WQ SPRING1988
135


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NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,

B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) Five Years

II Year - III Semester

Course Compiled By:

The teaching methodology shall be participatory teaching with discussions on

A list of suggested references is attached separately for the students to use as

Course Evaluation Method

Expected Outcomes of the Course

The Industrial Revolution : Background of the Revolution; Phases of the

Rise of Nationalism in Italy and Germany : Italy- Pre-Unification Italy; the

 Ch. II (The Age of Revolution),pp. 202-219, (France in the Revolutionary

The Russian Revolution; Emancipation of serfs and modernization of Russia; Rise

The Rise of Dictatorship in Italy and Germany : Germany- Causes of Rise of

 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, Ch. VI (The

Japan’s Emergence as a modern State: The Opening of Japan; the Tokugawa

 Ranjan Chakrabarti, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, Ch. XIII

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa: Political History of South Africa –

Feminist Movement (USA) : Developments between 1848-1920; Seneca Falls

 Norman Lowe, MASTERING MODERN WORLD HISTORY, 5th ed., Ch.

Lowe, Norman Mastering Modern World History

Dev, Arjun History of the World

Chakrabarti, Ranjan A History of the Modern World

Thomson, David Europe since Napoleon

Barraclough, G. An Introduction to Contemporary

Palmer, R.R. and Colton, Joel History of the Modern World

Lefebvre, Georges Coming of the French Revolution

Soboul, Albert History of the French Revolution

Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution

Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Empire

Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Extremes

Taylor, A.J.P. The Origins of the Second World

Immanuel, Hsu The History of Modern China

Roberts, J.M. The French Revolution

Furet, Francois Interpreting the French Revolution

Ramsay, David The History of the American

Mathias, Peter The First Industrial Revolution

Bailyn, Bernard The Ideological Origins of the

Ferro, Marc The Russian Revolution of

Nove, Alec Economic History of the USSR

Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution

Fairbank, John The Great Communist Revolution

Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf

Shirer, William The Rise and Fall of the Third

Anderson, Perry Lineages of the Absolutist State

Lublinskaya, A.D. French Absolutism: The Crucial

The Social Foundation of French Absolutism 1610-1630

Lublinskaya's picture of these grandiose expansionist objectives,

bishoprics of Oloron and Lescar, and thus he provided them with an

argues that "in 1620 the Huguenot provinces were grouped in a

25 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. I6I.

In the wars which inevitably followed the formal restorationof the

Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. I53.

extent to which she has oversimplified the highly ambivalent

43 Lublinskaya, French Absolutism, p. 202.

of Richelieu in the government of the realm had calamitous results

religious and secular, justifications of the monarchical regime; they

France". 7 "The only hope and consolation" he offered the

to use the Huguenot organizationfor their own profit; undoubtedly,

For Lublinskayathe explanationof the Crown's success lies in the

interests. Montchr6tien's own attitudes show how far the French

La Rochelle, which clung determinedly to its ancient privileges. It

offered an overall solution to its problems and a perspective for the

'9 F. C. Palm, "The Economic Policies of Richelieu", University of Illinois

Economic status was achieved by entering the ranksof the bourgeois