Across Time and Continents: A Tribute to Victor G. Kiernan 9788187496342, 8187496347

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Across Time, >nr ana, • » Continents A T R IB U T E T O V IC T O R G. K IE R N A N Edited by Prakash Karat

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Firsl published September 2003 by LcftWord Books 12 Rajendra Prasad Road New Delhi 110001 India www.leftword.com LeftWord Books is a division of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

This collection © 2003, LeftWord Books Individual articles © respective authors ISBN 81-87496-54-7 Printed at Progressive Printers A 21 Jhilmil Industrial Area Grand Trunk Road Shahdara Delhi 110095

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Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

TVibutes to Victor G. Kieman U n d erstan d in g the H um an R ecord by Prakash Karat

i

V ictor K iem an by Eric Hobsbawm

7

Seeing T hings Historically by Harvey J. Kaye

13

Essays by Victor G. Kieman M arx a n d India

54

M arx, Engels, an d the Indian M utiny

95

India a n d the L abour Party

729

After d ie M udny

14 6

Faiz A h m e d ‘Faiz*

265

Iqbal as P ro p h et o f C hange: T he Message o f the East

795

T h e C om m unist Party o f India a n d the Second W orld War

209

Rem iniscences o f India

228

Appendix

244

Index

24 6

Acknowledgements

‘V.G. K iernan: Seeing T hings Historically' by Harvey J. Kaye, in History, Classes and Nation-States', C am bridge, UK: Polity Press, NY: Blackwell 1988 ‘M arx an d India*, The Socialist Register 1967, L ondon: M erlin Press 1967 ‘M arx, Engels and the Indian M utiny’, Homage to Karl Marx: A Symposium, ed. P.C. Joshi, New Delhi: P eople’s Publishing H ouse 1969 ‘In d ia an d the L abour Party’, Marxism and Imperialism: Studies by V.G. Kieman, New York: St M artin’s Press 1975 ‘A fter th e M utiny’, extract from The Lords o f H um an Kind, H arm ondsw orth: Penguin 1972 ‘Faiz A hm ed ‘‘Faiz’” , Intro d u ctio n to Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz*, New Delhi: O xford University Press 1971 ‘Iqbal As P ro p h e t o f C hange: T h e Message o f the East’, Iqbal Commemorative Volume, eds Ali Sardar Jafri an d K.S. Duggal, New Delhi 1980 ‘T h e C om m unist Party o f India an d the Second World W ar’, South Asia, J o u rn a l o f South Asian Studies, Vol. 10, D ecem ber 1987 ‘U n d erstanding the H um an R ecord’ by Prakash Karat, ‘V ictor Kiernan* by Eric Hobsbawm, an d ‘Rem iniscences o f In d ia ’ by V.G. K iernan are being published for the first tim e in this volume.

P rakash K arat

Understanding the Human Record

This book is to h o n o u r Victor K iernan o n his n in etieth birthday, which fell o n S e p te m b e r 4, 2003. K iern an is o n e o f th e m ost distinguished M arxist historians alive - o n e o f the survivors, along w ith E ric H obsbaw m , o f th e fam ous B ritish C o m m u n ist Party H istorians’ G roup form ed in the 1940s. It consisted o f such historians as E.P. T hom pson, C hristopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney H ilton, G eo rg e R ude a n d A.L. M o rto n .1 Less know n is K ie rn a n ’s long association an d link with India and South Asia. It is to com m em orate this fruitful relationship an d his historical a n d o th e r work on India th at LeftW ord Books is publishing this collection o f his writings. K iernan, as C h risto p h er Hill observed, ‘is o n e o f the m ost versatile o f British historians’. His reading an d e ru d itio n is truly encyclopaedic. Hill refers to this with an am using anecdote: ‘T he story goes th at h e was once asked by a jo u rn a l fo r an article on British im perialism in China. H e replied that he had ra th e r lost interest in th a t subject, but h e could let them have a piece on the Jesu its in Paraguay. T h e article they finally g o t was on English Evangelism a n d th e F ren ch R ev o lu tio n .’2 In b rin g in g o u t this volum e, we have narrow ed the scope to select w ritings w hich bring o u t his exceptional skills as a historian o f the M arxist school through his writings on India, to his special passion for U rd u p o etry an d his d eep attach m en t to the Indian su b co n tin en t a n d its people. To g et an overall appreciation o f Victor K ie rn a n ’s life and work, we tu rn e d to Eric Hobsbawm, o n e o f the g re a t historians o f th e tw entieth century. As o n e o f the few survivors o f the C am bridge

2

A C R O S S T I M E AND C O N T I N E N T S

C om m unist g ro u p and the M arxist H istorians’ G roup to which they both belonged, his friendship with K iernan extends to nearly seven decades. I am grateful to Eric Hobsbawm, who prom ptly agreed to write ab o u t his ‘d e ar an d adm ired frien d ’. In betw een his travels this sum m er, he wrote a gem o f a piece which captures the prodigious talents, in n ate m odesty an d charm o f Victor K iernan. T h e vast range o f K iernan’s scholarship can n o t be easily described. T h e best account is provided by Harvey J. Kaye, whose essay ‘V.G. K iernan: Seeing T hings Historically’ is included in this book. Kaye’s introduction to the first o f the books edited by him , is the m ost com prehensive evaluation o f K iernan as a historian an d his role as p a rt o f the British M arxist historians .8 We are grateful to Professor Kaye for his interest in this project to publish K iern an ’s Indian writings a n d for giving perm ission to use his In troduction. K iernan lived in India betw een 1938 an d 1946. It was the p erio d o f the Second W orld War. In India, the nationalist m ovem ent was reaching its peak, the fledgling C om m unist Party was beginning to strike roots in parts o f the country. K iernan becam e a com m unist while studying at C am bridge. It was his association with the ‘colonial g ro u p ’, consisting mainly o f South Asian students, which triggered his interest in India. H e m arried Shanta G andhi in India, whom he had m et in L ondon where she was studying .4 H e had a host o f friends a n d c o m ra d e s fro m C a m b rid g e a n d L o n d o n w ith w hom h e m ain tain ed close links later in India an d Pakistan. D uring his stay in India, mainly in L ahore, he was in touch with th e C om m unist Party. H e becam e a good friend o f P.C.Joshi, th e G eneral Secretary o f the Party then. Included in this volum e is an essay o f his rem iniscences o f the CPI which first ap p ea re d in the jo u rn a l South Asia from Australia. W hen told that this would go into th e volum e, K iernan wrote to say, ‘You may find the essay perhaps som ew hat negative. I was really very m uch im pressed by w hat I saw o f the Party in its ord in ary workings - a n d my life in the Bombay “C o m m u n e” o r H Q , w here I sp en t a good deal o f tim e. Life there was very Spartan, bu t there was plenty o f enthusiasm an d optimism.* Two essays published h e re are ab o u t M arx’s writings on In d ia. T h e first o n e , ‘M arx a n d In d ia ’, is a highly p ercep tiv e

U n d e r s t a n d i n g the H u m a n Record

3

exploration o f the im pact o f British ru le in India, seen by M arx as two-fold, ‘o n e destructive a n d the o th e r regenerative*. K iernan critically exam ines M arx’s articles on India. H e notes M arx’s correct insights about the colonial system o f exploitation and the destruction o f the old system o f production. H e explains the gaps in M arx’s u n d e r s ta n d in g d u e to in c o m p le te in fo rm a tio n . H e f u r th e r u n d erlin es the underestim ation o f the religious factor in Indian society which M arx had assum ed would be overcom e in the Indian p eo p le’s m ovem ent for freedom . H e sum s up: ‘M arx’s writings on Asia may often seem to throw m ore light on him than on it. But he was, after all, a pioneer in trying to look at Indian history scientifically, ab o u t th e first m an to foretell an in d e p e n d e n t India, the first to see th at its real em ancipation m ust com e from industry.’ In a c o m p a n io n p iece, ‘M arx, E ngels, a n d the In d ia n M utiny’, K iernan broadly adheres to M arx’s stan d p o in t - sympathy for th e first ‘national revolt’ while recognizing th at it was d o o m ed by th e n atu re o f the forces which led the rebellion. Elsewhere, in The Lords o f H um an Kind, K iernan d en o u n ces the savagery o f the British in pu ttin g down the rebellion. H e com pares it with som e o f the worst atrocities com m itted in the history o f colonialism . W ith his inim itable style of historical com parison, K iernan notes in his essay o n the M utiny that the reb u ilt Indian arm y played a m ajor role in securing the British em pire: ‘India was to Britain w hat the Illyrian provinces o f the Balkans were to R om e, and w ithout this reservoir o f cheap soldiery, added to that o f Ireland, its huge em pire would have b een an impossibility. In the first O pium War nearly the whole o f the M adras Army had been em ployed. Indian troops were again indispensable when expansion was resum ed in Malaya in the late 1870s an d then Egypt in 1882 an d U p p er B urm a in 1885.’ T h e th ird historical essay c o n c e rn s the a ttitu d e o f the L abour Party in Britain to Indian in d ep en d en ce. ‘India a n d the L abour Party’ is an excellent exam ple o f K iernan’s incisive wit and his d e e p dislike o f hypocritical can t. T h e re is th e w o n d e rfu l description o f the redoubtable L abour leader, Keir H ardie, who shocked parliam ent by appearing in a cloth cap ‘gravely conversing’ with a m agistrate in Benaras, on en couraging landow ners to have a

4

A C R O S S T I M E AND C O N T I N E N T S

stake in th e country, so th at they can have ‘a m o d eratin g influence*. K iernan notes wryly th at the distinction betw een ‘cloth cap an d top h a t’ g o t forgotten in a place like Benaras. N o selection o f K iernan’s writings on India will be com plete w ithout draw ing u p o n The Lords o f H um an Kind, his m ost p o p u lar bo o k w hich has b e en b ro u g h t o u t in m any editions. It is an e ru d ite an d sparkling survey o f the attitudes o f E uropeans towards nonE u ro p ean s in the im perial age. An ex tra ct reg a rd in g th e social attitudes a n d prejudices o f the British towards Indians in the period after the 1857 revolt has been included. T h e Preface to the Penguin ed itio n in 1972 contains m any in terestin g ideas c o m p a rin g the ex p erien ce o f d ifferen t E uropean colonialism s. K iernan softens his assessm ent o f British ru le in India w ithout shifting from his basic in d ictm en t o f its exploitative n ature. As for the beneficial aspects o f th e British Raj, he com es o u t with a typical Kiernanism : ‘Dacoits an d highway ro b b ers were suppressed, ab sen tee lan d lo rd s who filched far m ore were caressed .’5 K iernan, like m ost o f the o th e r British M arxist historians, took to history after being deeply interested in literature - a fact Hobsbawm recalls in his co n trib u tio n to this volum e. F ortunately fo r us, this a ttach m en t to literature led K iernan to U rd u poetry d u rin g his stay in India. K iernan’s passion for the two g reat U rdu poets - M oham m ad Iqbal a n d Faiz A hm ed Faiz - is well known. H e ranks them b o th am ong the greatest o f m o d ern Indian poets. He b ecam e a close friend o f Faiz d u rin g his stay in L ahore. H e did the first translation o f Faiz’s poem s into English which, according to K hushw ant Singh, is still the m ost successful .6 T h e In tro d u ctio n K ie rn a n w ro te fo r his tra n s la tio n o f Faiz’s p o e m s in 1971 is re p ro d u c ed in this volum e. It is a substantive piece which sets Faiz’s literary creations in the co ntext o f the social m ilieu in w hich he lived an d his progressive beliefs. Kiernan recalls having written som e verses for Faiz, which alas, h e could n o t trace for publishing in this book. K iernan wrote three pieces in 1980 on the occasion o f Iqbal’s b irth c en ten ary for a volum e edited by Ali Sardar Jafri an d Kartar Singh Duggal, both well-known poets an d writers. His article ‘Iqbal as P ro p h e t o f C hange: M essenger o f the East’ gives an interesting

U n d e r s t a n d i n g th e H u m a n R e c o r d

^

assessm ent o f the p o et a n d his co ntribution. Characteristically, the two o th e r pieces he wrote in th at volum e are com parative in n ature - ‘Iqbal an d Milton* and ‘Iqbal and W ordsw orth’. Finally, th ere is a p ersonal m em o ir o f his trips in In d ia d u rin g the forties. T hese rem iniscences were written in August 2003 especially for this volume, and are draw n m ainly from a diary h e has k ept fo r over six decades. They are notable for th eir delightfully droll hum our.

I first m e t V ictor K iernan in 1968 w hen I w ent to study a t th e University o f E d in b u rg h for a M.Sc. in Politics. I was draw n to him by his M arxist scholarship and his knowledge o f India. It was a storm y tim e in British universities with the anti-Vietnam war m ovem ent, the an ti-ap artheid protests, a n d the general stu d e n t revolt against th e e s ta b lis h m e n t. K ie rn a n was s y m p a th e tic to th e s tu d e n t m ovem ent. H e felt a kinship with the young p eople who felt they h ad discovered the tru e springs o f revolution. T h o u g h b elonging to this g e n e ra tio n , I fo u n d m yself m o re in a g re e m e n t w ith him , w henever h e p o in te d o u t with his h isto rian 's e x p erien ce th a t a revolutionary m ovem ent required m uch m ore than youthful fervour. Set u p o n re tu rn in g to India as quickly as possible, I used to seek his advice o n various m atters. H e did n o t necessarily agree with my decision to abandon academ ic research and work for the C om m unist Party, b u t h e did n o t discourage m e either. Looking back, I can see th at he was a m entor. Over the years we have kept in touch thro u g h occasional m eetings b u t mainly through letters, he being an excellent an d p ro m p t letter-writer. I have long felt the desire to bring o u t a book o f his writings, so th at a new g en eratio n in India can becom e acq u ain ted with his work a n d c o n trib u tio n s. V ictor K iernan is a g re a t sch o lar with rem arkably varied interests, b u t he has never b e en a d ilettan te. W riting ab o u t history, K iernan had on ce rem arked th a t ‘we are still far from being able to feel th at we u n d erstan d the h um an re c o rd ’. T h at is w hat he has b e en ceaselessly engaged in - u n d e rstan d in g the h u m an record. All thro u g h his life, he has felt passionately about th e causes he believed in. Socialism is o n e such cause to w hich he has rem ain ed loyal. W hile correspo nding for this volum e, his letters

6

A C R O S S TIME AND C O N T I N E N T S

were full o f indignation a t Tony Blair's perfidious role on Iraq. H e was m oved to write an article d en o u n cin g Bush a n d B lair for th eir despicable war and send it to m e to publish. At ninety, V ictor Kiernan still wields his pen, his form idable intellectual powers an d his d eep hum anity for ju s t causes. T his book is a m odest trib u te to a g reat historian, M arxist scholar, and frien d o f the peo p le o f India an d South Asia.

T his book has becom e possible d u e to the u n failin g assistance o f V ictor K iernan's wife H eather. She resp o n d ed to all my calls for in fo rm atio n , h e lp e d track dow n u n p u b lish ed m aterial, and m a d e available p h o to g ra p h s fo r th e cover. My th a n k s also to Vijay Prashad for efficiently locating books an d articles by K iernan, to V.K R am achandran an d Sudhanva D eshpande fo r h elp in g in m yriad ways, and to M oloyashree Hashm i for com piling the index.

1 Of the group, the others alive are John Saville, Dorothy Thompson, Brian Pearse and, of course, Eric Hobsbawm. 2 Christopher Hill, ‘Touché’, review of The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy by V.G. Kiernan; New York Reuieiu of Books, Volume 37, Number 10, June 14, 1990. * History, Classes and Nation-States: Selected Writings of Victor Kiernan, edited with an introduction by Harvey J. Kaye, Oxford: Polity Press 1988. Two other volumes of selected writings edited by Kaye are Poets, Politics and the People, London: Verso 1989, and Imperialism and its Contradictions, New York: Routledge 1995. 4 Kiernan married Shanta Gandhi in Bombay in 1938. They were divorced a few years later. Shanta Gandhi was a leading theatre personality, who died in May 2002. r> The Lords of Human Kind, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1972, p. xxvii. h Khushwant Singh, 'Faiz, a revolutionary Urdu poet’, The Tribune, April 20 , 2002.

Eric Hobsbawm

Victor Kiernan

Victor K iernan is so m odest a n d reticen t a m an th at he has b een persistently u n d e rra ted as a historian an d a M arxist. N o th in g could be fu rth e r from his personality than the tide o f an Am erican w riter’s book: Advertisements fo r M yself Even in the days o f the fam ous C.P. H istorians’ G roup, in which he played an im p o rtan t part, he never played it, as it were, centre-stage, so m uch so th a t C h risto p h er Hill and I, acting as an inform al ‘Victor K iernan A ppreciation Lobby’, co n stan tly tried to g e t th e rest o f th e g ro u p to reco g n ize the extraordinary range and originality o f V ictor’s work. Even Professor Harvey Kaye paid less atten tio n to him than he m ight have d o n e in the original version o f his p io n eerin g book on The British M arxist Historians, but soon recognized his mistake, and has since m ore than co m p en sated fo r it by b rin g in g V ictor’s work to g re a te r public a tte n tio n .1 In some ways the sheer universality o f V ictor’s interests have stood in the way o f wider recognition. T rained in the languages o f classical antiquity and, like so many British Marxist historians, initially with literary interests, he cam e to history relatively late and, w hen he did, Marxism a n d Indian friendships gave him global interests. In his career o f en o rm o u s and, if anything, accelerating productivity ranging over centuries an d contin en ts he has, so far as I am aware, no parallel am ong tw entieth-century British historians. W ho else has w ritten with co m p arab le e x p e rt know ledge b o th a b o u t the an cien t Rom an p oet H orace a n d tw entieth-century U rd u poets, books ab o u t Shakespeare and studies on W ordsworth, ‘Iqbal and

8

ACR OSS TIME AND CO N TI NE NT S

M ilto n ’ a n d ‘C iv ilizatio n a n d th e D a n c e ’, a b o u t s ix te e n th sev en teen th c en tu ry E urope, E ngland in the e ra o f th e F rench R evolution, duelling, tobacco an d the Spanish Revolution o f 1854, diplom atic history in th ree continents, religion and war? In the Dictionary o f M arxist Thought which he co-edited ,2 h e was personally responsible for the entries on Agnosticism, Christianity, E m pires o f M arx’s Day, H induism , H istoriography, Intellectuals, Paul Lafargue, F erdinand Lassalle, N ation, Nationalism , Religion, Revolution, M.N. Roy, Stages o f D evelopm ent an d War. A nd this in addition to the work o n im perialism a n d em pires, by which he is probably best know n. B ut even in th is field h e w rites as a m an o f universal know ledge ra th e r than simply as a specialist. No lesser scholar could have w ritten The Lords o f H um an Kind, my favourite am ong his works, a n d European Empiresfrom Conquest to Collapse. In d eed , in the m iddle 1960s I convinced a p ublisher to com m ission a book on this subject a n d u rg ed V ictor to write it, because it was clear to m e th at he, an d only he, was capable o f writing it .3 It was in connection with em p ire th a t I first m et V ictor in 1937, a recently elected Fellow in a dressing gown, em erging from b e h in d masses o f books in his room s on the attic floor o f the G reat C o u rt o f Trinity College, C am bridge. I had expressed an in terest in In d ian lib eration an d my com rade an d fellow-Kingsman M ohan K um aram angalam h a d told m e h e was the m an to see. V ictor was th en responsible for the so-called ‘colonial g ro u p ’ o f officially n o n ­ existent C o m m unist students from w hat was th e n the E m pire m ainly South Asians - an d consequently kept a low profile in the public activities o f the C am bridge left. W hile it lasted, th e g ro u p was led by a succession o f historians who c o n trib u ted substantially to m aking British history less E urocentric an d m ore global. Victor him self, whose first book on C hina was soon to be p u b lish ed ,4 had taken over from the C anadian E.H. N orm an, a p io n ee r o f Jap an ese history who was to be h o u n d e d to death in the 1950s by the US anti­ com m unist w itch-hunt, a n d succeeded by a n o th e r C anadian who was later to move politically to the right, H arry F erns (special field: A rg en tin a). H e, in tu rn , was d u e to be followed b y jack G allagher, a brilliantly original, com plicated an d eventually ex-Marxist Liverpool Irishm an who later h eld the chairs o f C om m onw ealth H istory in

Victor K i e r n a n

9

bo th O xford a n d C am bridge Universities. T h e g ro u p d id n o t survive the outbreak o f W orld War II. T he friendships o f the ‘colonial g ro u p ’, follow ed by alm ost eig h t years in In d ia from 1938 to 1946 teaching, first in th e Sikh N ational College a n d th en a t A itchison C ollege in L ah o re, gave V ictor th e fo u n d a tio n fo r his su b se q u e n t w ork as historian, an d incidentally established his passion fo r th e g reat U rdu poets, Iqbal a n d Faiz. V ictor re tu rn e d from his years o n the su b c o n tin e n t in 1946 to two rem ain in g years as a research fellow a n d an u n c e rta in future. Trinity C ollege did n o t renew the well-known leftist’s fellowship, let alone o ffer him a m ore p e rm a n e n t post as a teacher. C om m unist a cad em ics, how ever b rillia n t a n d c h a rm in g , w ere so o n to b e unw elcom e in the universities o f cold war Britain. M oreover, he him self was u n certain w hat to d o next. His m ajor passion at th at time, as I recall, was struggling with the M arxist analysis o f the works o f Shakespeare, on which he had p rep a red a massive m anuscript, which was unlikely to interest history departm ents. (It was to take alm ost a n o th e r fifty years fo r this work to co m e to fru itio n .5 ) F ortunately in 1948 R ichard Pares, an intelligent a n d u n d e rra te d historian, h a d sense e n o u g h to recognize V ictor’s uniqueness, an d accepted him into his history d e p a rtm e n t a t E d in b u rg h University, w here h e rem ain ed for the rest o f his career. V ic to r’s r e tu r n fro m In d ia (as yet u n d iv id e d ) a lm o st coincided with the establishm ent o f the C.P. H istorians’ G roup. For the n ex t few years h e was o n e o f the leading pillars o f th e g ro u p , which fo rm ed a sort o f regular sem inar w here we g o t to know o n e a n o th e r and, o n the basis o f a mass o f cyclostyled statem ents, theses an d co m m ents, we ed u ca te d ourselves as M arxist historians. By general ag reem en t the im pact o f the g ro u p on the w riting o f history n o t only in Britain, b u t world-wide, has b een substantial. Even today a b rie f search reveals over 31,000 references to it on th e in te rn et. It was essentially a collective enterprise, in which it is difficult a n d unwise to single o u t any individual co ntribution. It was evident to all o f us from the start th at V ictor was central to this e n te rp rise and, like several o th e r leading m em bers o f the g ro u p -C h ris to p h e r Hill, Rodney H ilton, G eorge Rudé, and the present a u th o r - he continued to rem ain loyal to the flexible, open-m inded M arxism o f the g ro u p ,

IO

ACR OSS T IM E AND C O N T IN E NT S

which owed so much to his quiet determ ination to think out p ro b lem s o f class, culture an d tradition for him self. T h e central question discussed in the early years o f the g ro u p was th e n a tu re o f the transition from feudalism to capitalism in E u ro p e , a n d this stim u lated Victor, w ho d isag reed with the m a jo rity ’s so m ew h at rig id view o n th e n a tu re o f th e E nglish R evolution, to develop his interest in sixteenth a n d seventeenth c e n tu ry history, w hich p ro d u c e d som e o f his m ost stim u latin g writings in th e jo u rn a l Past & Present, an d th e im p o rta n t book State and Society in Europe 1550-1650 (1980). M eanw hile in th e m iddle 1950s he co n tin u e d to publish on Asian in te rn a tio n a l h isto ry in th e m o re tra d itio n a l style ,6 b u t e x te n d in g th e range o f his interests to L atin Am erica, becom ing o n e o f th e few British historians to take a serious in terest in this region b efo re Fidel C astro’s triu m p h drew w ider atten tio n to i t 7 At this tim e V ictor’s H ispanic interests led him in to several years’ work o n th e Spanish Revolution o f 1854, which p ro d u c e d w hat is still the sta n d ard acco u n t o f this revolution in E nglish .8 In a way it was - as he told m e at the tim e - a deliberate test o f his stam ina as a m arathon r u n n e r th r o u g h a rc h iv es a n d lib ra rie s - as h e n o te d in his bibliography, ‘I have tried to consult all [my em phasis, EJH] books an d pam phlets, co n tem porary o r later, b earin g on the politics o f th e p e rio d ’ - which tu rn e d into his own farewell to the practice o f so u rce-ex h au sting history. As he now discovered, V ictor’s g reat stren g th lay in his ability to ask historical questions an d suggest answers to them by bringing and fitting to g e th e r an unparalleled ran g e o f in fo rm atio n , constantly e x te n d e d by o n e o f th e g reat read ers o f o u r time. H e had always b een a com paratist - som ething which com es naturally to Marxists. From the 1960s his works becam e less m onographic, an d m ore general, increasingly bringing to g eth er in his analysis o f societies in transform ation class, state, culture an d th e forces o f globalization. T h is was to be the basic style o f his im p o rta n t writings on the n atu re o f western imperial expansion into the non-western world, w hich b ecam e cen tral to his interests fo r the re m a in d e r o f his teaching career. It p ro d u ced the m ajor books - The Lords o f H um an Kind (1969), European Empires from Conquest to Collapse (1982) - as

Victor K i e r n a n

well as o th e r writings b o th on im perialism in general a n d on its transatlantic version in the USA. This is alm ost certainly the field o f history o n which he has left the largest m ark. T h e official age o f retirem en t for British university teachers, which h e reach ed alm ost a q u a rte r o f a cen tu ry ago, did n o th in g to slow dow n his activities. O n the contrary, it left him free to write m ore, an d on a wider range o f subjects th an ever - from books on the history o f duelling in aristocratic society, on the historic im pact o f tobacco, on Shakespeare an d H orace, to the lucid, suggestive a n d beautifully w ritten c o n trib u tio n s to jo u rn a ls a n d collective volum es w hich h e was ever p re p a re d to supply to e d ito rs who appreciated the collaboration o f one o f the grand old m en o f Marxist history.

And now h e is ninety. To write an appreciation o f a m an who has c o n trib u te d so m uch to history and fo u g h t for so long in the cause o f c h an g in g the world for the better, is a pleasure and privilege for an old adm irer. But that is n o t primarily why I accepted the invitation to c o n trib u te to this volum e in his m uch-deserved honour. M ore than anything, it was to recall alm ost seventy years o f friendship and of enjoying the com pany a n d the c h arac ter o f a m an o f endless sincerity, charm , w arm th and surprise. A d ouble surprise: O n the one h a n d he surprises the friends who love him , b u t have trouble u n d e rs ta n d in g w hat goes on inside th is a p p a re n tly o p e n a n d welcom ing, but very private person. O n the o th er hand I have always had th e im pression that V ictor is constantly en co u n terin g a world th at is n o t quite like his - a world in which it is unusual to travel with a L atin ed ition o f the p oet Virgil, to write English with beauty and correctness b u t no concession to colloquialism , o r to translate great (and progressive) U rdu poets into traditional English verse an d to treat every h um an being with good -tem pered courtesy, b u t w here it is co m m o n to drive m otor cars, go to the cinem a, listen to pop music and live with children. T h at is o n e o f the reasons why so m any o f o ur e n c o u n te rs over the years continue to live in my m ind, even when n o th in g m em orable h ap p en e d - ex cep t the exp erien ce o f his u n iq u e p re se n c e , in re c e n t years no lo n g e r a lo n e , b u t in th e

12

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fo rtu n ate p a rtn e rsh ip with H eather. I am n o t the only o n e o f his friends who feels th at life is a little m ore w orth living every tim e he com es away from a m eeting with o r te lep h o n e conversation with V ictor o r read s o n e o f his fam iliar single-spaced typed letters. His writings will oudive his death, b u t w hen he an d those w ho have known him in person are gone, th ere will be n o way o f knowing q u ite how rem arkable a h um an being V ictor G ordon K iernan was, an d why those who knew him were so glad to be his contem poraries. In th e m ean tim e, let us p o stpone th at m o m e n t by wishing him a long life.

. Notes 1 See History, Classes and Nation-States: Selected Writings of Victor Kiernan, edited by Harvey J. Kaye, Oxford: Polity Press, 1988. 2 Tom Bottomore et al. (eds.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. * V.G. Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to the Outside World in the Imperial Age, (London 1969), Foreword: T h e theme of this book was suggested to me by my friend Dr E.J. Hobsbawm’ 4 V.G. Kiernan, British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885, Cambridge: The University Press, 1939. 5 V.G. Kiernan, Shakespeare, Poet and Citizen, London and New York: Verso, 1994, and Eight Tragedies of Shakespeare, London and New York: Verso, 1996. 0 ‘India, China and Sikkim 1886-1890’, ‘India, China and Tibet 188586’, ‘Kashgar and the Politics of Central Asia 1868-78’, ‘Britain, Siam and Malaya’ in various learned journals . 7 Note especially his ‘Foreign Interests in the War of the Pacific’ and ‘Britain’s First Contacts with Paraguay’, both in 1955. 8 V.G. Kiernan, The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

H arvey J . Kaye

Seeing Things Historically

V ictor K iernan is probably best known as a historian o f m o d ern imperialism, through such works as The Lords o f Hum an Kind, European Empiresfrom Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960, Marxism and Imperialism, and America: The New Imperialism, plus two earlier m onographs, British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885 an d Metcalfe's Mission to Lahore, 18081809} T hese books are them selves q u ite varied b o th in term s o f the subjects they trea t a n d the d im en sio n s o f im perialism they consider, e x te n d in g from diplom atic a n d m ilitary to social and cultural history; an d they are jo in e d by n u m ero u s articles an d essays in in te rn atio n al studies taking up such diverse topics as the South A m erican War o f the Pacific, n in eteen th -cen tu ry im perial rivalries in C en tral Asia, colonial arm ies in Africa, the historic relationship betw een Portugal a n d Britain an d the post-colonial developm ent o f In d ia a n d Pakistan .2 Yet how ever w ide-ranging the subjects a n d geographical areas d ealt with in these writings on im perialism an d intern atio n al h isto ry , they re p re s e n t m erely o n e o f th e th e m e s o f m o d e rn E u ro p ean a n d world history th at have en g ag ed K iernan’s historical im agination. O n e m ight tu rn to the recen d y published Dictionary of M arxist Thought? o f which he was a co-editor, n o tin g the en tries for w hich h e was personally responsible: A gnosticism , Christianity, E m pires o f M arx’s Day, H induism , Historiography, Intellectuals, Paul L a fa rg u e , F e rd in a n d L asalle, N a tio n , N a tio n a lism , R e lig io n , Revolution, M anabendra N ath Roy, Stages o f D evelopm ent, an d War. But even this list does n o t give full acco u n t o f the subjects o n which K iernan has w ritten, for beyond the history o f diplom acy and war,

A C R OS S T I M E AND C O N T I N E N T S

politics a n d th e state, revolution an d social ch an g e a n d intellectuals a n d relig io n ,4 h e is also the a u th o r o f articles on lab o u r a n d the working class ,5 an d literature, the arts an d cultural studies .6 Finally, h e has tran slated th ree volum es o f South Asian p o etry a n d prose for publication in English .7 It is not, h o w e \tr, ju s t the range, diversity a n d volum i­ nousness o f K iernan’s writings that w arrant o u r atten tio n , though they are truly impressive. As significant is th e consistently critical perspective which he has b ro u g h t to bear on the variety o f issues he exam ines historically. Kiernan is, o f course, closely identified with a distinguished g eneration o f historical scholars that includes Rodney H ilton, C h risto p h er Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, G eorge R ude a n d E.R T h o m p s o n . As I have a rg u e d elsew h ere, in a d d itio n to th e ir o u tstan d in g individual contributions to th e ir respective fields o f historical study these British Marxist historians have m ade im portant collective co n tributions to the discipline o f social history a n d to historical-social th eo ry m ore generally .8 F ram ed by the historical p ro b lem atic o f ‘the transition from feudalism to capitalism ’, th eir studies - from the medieval to the m o d e rn - have provided the basis fo r th e developm ent o f history from below o r ‘the bo tto m u p ’. R ecovering th e history which was m ade by th e lower classes b u t n o t w ritten by them , they have appro ach ed the past th ro u g h the g ran d hypothesis offered by M arx a n d Engels in The Communist Manifesto th at ‘T h e history o f all h ith e rto existing society is the history o f class stru g g les’, thereby developing M arxism as a th eo ry o f ‘class d e te rm in a tio n ’. C learly K iernan has always been very m uch a p a rt o f this c o h o rt as an early a n d active m em b er o f th e C om m unist Party H isto rian s’ G roup in the period 1946-56 a n d thro u g h the form al an d inform al relationships th at were m aintained after 1956 w hen m ost o f th em left the Party .9 T he principal form al link has been the jo u rn a l, Past (if Present (founded by H ilton, Hill, Hobsbawm and o th ers in 1952), for which Kiernan wrote an article for the inaugural issue, a n d served on th e e d ito rial b o a rd from 1973 to 1983.10 N e v erth ele ss, it is a rg u a b le th a t K ie rn a n ’s sc h o la rsh ip stan d s som ew hat ap art from th at o f his fellow British M arxist historians. His w ritin g s, fo r all th e ir variety, a re reg u la rly set w ithin th e

S e e in g T h i n g s H i s t o r ic a l ly

p ro b lem atic o f the transition to capitalism a n d they are strongly in fo rm ed by class-struggle analysis (to w hich the selection o f essays in this volum e attests); a n d to the e x te n t th a t history from below is generally c o m p re h e n d e d to m ean having ‘sympathy with the victims o f historical processes a n d scepticism ab o u t th e victors’ claim s ’ 11 then K iernan has b een w orking from th e botto m up. N evertheless, if history from below is u n d ersto o d m o re specifically to entail both a perspective and the recovery o f the ex p erien ces a n d struggles o f the lab o u rin g classes historically, th e n , except for a small n u m b er o f h is w r itin g s , 12 K ie rn a n h a s n o t b e e n w o rk in g in th is historiographical tradition. Rather, h e has b een the historian o f the original g ro u p w ho has co n ce n tra te d m ost o n w hat P erry A nderson has ap p ro priately term ed ‘history from above - the study o f the intricate m ach in ery o f class dom ination*; th o u g h - it should be reasserted h e re - always conceived in term s o f the relations o f conflict and struggle th a t d e te rm in e a n d shape it .13 T h is ch ap ter is offered as an in tro d u c to ry survey o f Victor K iernan’s scholarly c areer as a M arxist historian an d thinker. T h e re are to o m any directions in w hich he has travelled as a w riter for it to be com prehensive, b u t following a b rie f biographical sketch it will c o n s id e r h is w ork o n M arxism a n d h isto ry , d ip lo m a c y a n d im perialism , classes a n d nation-states a n d culture an d socialism.

V.G. Kiernan Edward V ictor G o rd o n K iernan was b o rn 4 S e p tem b er 1913 in Ashton-on-Mersey, a so u th ern area o f M anchester. H e describes his parents as lower-middle class a n d his family generally as ‘n o t political in any activ e se n se b u t m ostly well sto re d w ith c o n serv a tiv e prejudices*. H is paren ts were, however, quite religious an d K iernan was b ro u g h t u p an active Congregationalism which he views as having been an im p o rta n t form ative influence co n trib u tin g to his later socialist com m itm ents a n d also to his c o n tin u in g scholarly interest in th e place o f religion in history .14 K ie rn a n was e d u c a te d at M an ch ester G ra m m a r School which had only recently set up a ‘H istory Sixth fo rm ’; if it had n o t it would have m ean t his e n te rin g the ‘Classical Sixth fo rm ' - an d thus

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A C R O S S TIME AND C O N T I N E N T S

h e n o tes th a t his ch o ice o f history was m o re ‘a c c id e n ta l’ than anything else. In 1931 he e n te re d Trinity College, C am bridge to read history a n d was an outstandin g student. A lifelong friend (in spite o f th e ir co n trastin g political trajectories since th e 1930s), Professor H en ry Ferns presents this picture o f K iernan the young scholar at C am bridge: A visit to Mr. K iernan was my first intellectual e n c o u n te r with C am bridge University. [H e] is a m an o f my own age. 1 have always th o u g h t o f him , however, as senior to me. H e was my first supervisor a n d I was in statu pupiUari fo r my f ir s t te r m . A lth o u g h we b e c a m e g o o d f r ie n d s a n d com panions, this feeling o f V ictor’s superiority e n d u re d , a n d fo r g o o d reason. H e h a d achieved a first class with distinction in b o th parts o f th e H istorical Tripos. In 1936 h e was in his th ird year as a research scholar a n d in 1937 he was elected a Fellow o f Trinity College. A list o f his academ ic distinctions does n o t alo n e acco u n t for his authority in my m in d then. H e was im m ensely lea rn ed . H e h a d a good know ledge o f Latin, G reek, F rench . . . a n d Spanish. H e knew som e Italian a n d was acquiring a know ledge o f U rdu . . . H e loved m usic - particularly th at o f the seventeenth an d eighteenth century. H e had an intim ate knowledge and love o f English literature, which, like his taste in m usic, seem ed co n cen trated on com paratively few artists o f the first rank: Shakespeare, Sam uel Jo h n so n , a n d W ordsworth. If his know ledge was lim ited to m en o f the past his taste was catholic .15 Taking his deg ree in 1934 K iernan rem ain ed a t C am bridge for th e n ex t fo u r years, first as a research scholar a n d th en as a Fellow o f Trinity. Also in 1934 h e jo in e d th e C om m unist Party. C am bridge University o f this p erio d has provided th e m aterial for n u m ero u s rem iniscences, exposés, historical studies a n d fictional representations, an d K iernan was very m uch a p art o f the generation o f stu d en t C om m unists th at has b e en the subject o f so m any o f those w ritings .16 In d ee d , am ongst his closest friends a n d com rades were

S e e in g T h i n g s H i s t o r ic a l ly

*7

J o h n C o rn fo rd a n d J a m e s K lu g m an n , th e le a d in g fig u re s o f C am b rid g e C o m m u n ism ;17 also K iernan was q u ite close to the C anadian, H e rb e rt N o rm an .18 By m ost accounts these years seem to have b e en u n d e rsto o d by these young leftists as ‘th e worst o f tim es . . . the best o f tim es’. T h e world econom ic depression an d industrial unem ploym ent, the rise a n d triu m p h o f Fascism in C entral E urope a n d the ever-increasing th rea t o f a seco n d w orld war (m ade even m ore evident by events in Spain), all c o n trib u te d to th e view th at th e capitalist w orld was going th ro u g h its final crisis. Yet for these stu d ents th ere was also the sense th at they were living th ro u g h the p relu d e to socialist revolution, which perhaps by their own efforts they m ig h t h asten .19 K iernan did n o t see his political com m itm ents as b eing in conflict with his scholarly labours. H e has always b een o f the opinion that his explorations o f th e past were, an d sh o u ld be, co n n ected with his political concerns; indeed, h e says th a t ever since his days at C am bridge he has held the view th at ‘H istory an d politics are two sides o f th e sam e c o in .’ C o n fro n tin g a w orld c h a rac terize d by persisting overseas colonial em pires, resu rg en t E uro p ean im perial aspirations in Africa and E urope itself, a n d Ja p an e se expansionism in Asia a n d the Pacific, K iernan focused his research on the historical developm ent o f m o d ern colonialism an d em pire-building. Especially he took u p the study o f B ritain’s relations with Asia, m ore specifically, A n g lo -C h in ese relations. T hus, h e was also m otivated to m ake co n tact with Asian stu d en ts at C am bridge w ho w ere them selves attem p tin g to deal with th e questions o f B ritish a n d E u ro p ea n im perialism a n d colonialism , an d his activity fo r the Party principally took th e fo rm o f w orking w ith an In d ia n M arxist study g ro u p organized by his friend, H e rb ert N orm an. T h e p ro d u ct o f his Fellowship research was the book, British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885. T he outcom e o f his work with Indian students was his d e p artu re from C am bridge a n d E ngland to take up school-teaching in India, first at the Sikh N ational College an d then at A itchison College in L ahore (in w hat is now Pakistan). S pending the Second W orld W ar years in India (1938-46) K iernan c o n tin u ed to p u rsu e b o th the study o f British im perialism in Asia and political work in co n tact with the C om m unist Party o f India. His historical

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researches led to a n o th e r sh o rter m o n o g rap h in diplom atic history, Metcalfe's Mission to Lahore, 1808-1829, an d the mix o f his political a n d literary interests b ro u g h t him in to c o n ta c t with th e Indian Progressive W riters’ Association which had b e e n form ed in L ondon before th e war. Im proving his knowledge o f literary U rdu a n d H indi, K iernan was stim ulated to begin a series o f translations eventually published as Poemsfrom Iqbal, From Volga to Ganga, an d Poems byFaiz.20 H e also w rote a c h ild re n ’s novel, The March o f Time, p o etry , a collection o f which was published as Castanets, a n d several stories, two o f which appeared in Longman ’5 Miscellany.21 T hese years in India were trem endously im p o rtan t in shaping his later work. Pre-existing in terests e x p an d e d a n d d eep e n ed : his study o f colonialism an d im perialism grew to encom pass the issues o f nationalism a n d nation­ state fo rm ation, a n d h e has m aintained a lifelong fascination an d c o n c e rn for the politics and culture o f th e Indian subcontinent. But also, it is arguable th at this p erio d - living in a colonial society in co n tact with an intelligentsia which was, a t best, am bivalent ab o u t th e B ritish war e ffo rt - m u st have c o n trib u te d g reatly to th e dev elo p m en t o f his own perspective on im perialism an d colonialism which is undeniably critical an d yet quite sensitive to the historical co n trad ictio n s o f those experiences (as I will discuss). F o llo w in g th e w ar K ie rn a n r e t u r n e d to C a m b rid g e University for a two-year p erio d as a Fellow o f Trinity d u rin g which (am ongst o th e r studies) he wrote a 200,000*word m anuscript dealing with th e political an d social ideas o f S hakespeare’s dram a. T h o u g h publishers w ere interested in the work, he was unable to carry o u t the necessary revisions because he was too busy p rep a rin g courses for his first university teaching-post (Now, forty years later, h e is com m itted to taking up this project anew, focusing on Shakespearean tragedy.) His work with the C om m unist Party u p o n his re tu rn to Britain involved b o th practical political w ork within the University an d in th e town and contributions to the form ation an d developm ent o f th e H istorians’ G roup, the activities o f w hich were cen tere d on L o n d o n . H e was extrem ely active with the G ro u p in its first few years a n d re m a in e d in co n tact following his m ove to S cotland a n d a lectureship. However, as a form al en terp rise, the G ro u p all b u t fell a p a rt in 1956-7 when m any o f its central figures left the Party in

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79

protest at th e Soviet invasion o f H ungary a n d the failure o f the British Party to break with the Soviets a n d reform itself.22 K iernan was active in th e d eb ates o f the tim e, b u t he did n o t leave the party until 1959, h o p in g for changes th a t did n o t take place. Since th e n h e has referred to him self as an ‘in d e p e n d e n t M arxist’ with ‘no enem ies o n th e Left’. H e has jo in e d no o th e r party o r political grouping. In 1948 K ie rn a n h a d taken u p a le c tu re sh ip a t th e U niversity o f E d in b u rg h in the H istory D epartm ent, later b eing p ro m o te d to R eader an d th en Professor before retirin g as Professor E m eritus in 1977. By all accounts, his teaching responsibilities were as varied as his researches. Before turn in g to consider K iernan’s ideas, a n o th e r feature, o r characteristic, o f his eru d itio n sho u ld be noted. In addition to im p o rtan t studies based o n prim ary research, K iernan’s scholarship includes m asterful works o f synthesis draw ing o n both prim ary and - in som e cases, mostly - secondary study .23 M oreover, he has been recognized as an exceptionally skilful ‘historical essayist’, w hich I believe th e articles in this volum e illustrate. T his has b een accom ­ plished th ro u g h vast and extensive reading, phenom enal note-taking an d file -k e e p in g a n d especially, as h is lo n g -tim e frie n d , E ric Hobsbawm, has rem arked, his ‘encyclopaedic know ledge ’.24 In light o f recen t criticism s that the historical profession is failing to write in such a way as to m ake its studies m eaningful to non-scholars, an d the associated call to provide new syntheses, o r ‘g ran d narratives’, out o f th e in n u m erab le explorations o f th e past carried o u t d u rin g the last twenty years and m ore, it may well be that we should atten d as m u ch to the form an d shape o f K iern an ’s writings as to th eir

content.25 Marxism and the Necessity of History K iernan subscribes to the classical o r Renaissance ideal o f historical practice w herein scholarship is closely b o u n d up with ethicopolitical discourse .26 In this view history is n o t m erely ‘for its own sake’ - as some conservatives have recendy insinuated even as they practise o th erw ise - b u t in the w ords o f E.H. C arr: ‘To e n ab le m an to u n d e rstan d the society o f the past, an d to increase his m astery over

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th e society o f th e present, is the dual fun ctio n o f history .'27 Thus, history is a critical pursuit standing in dialectical relation to social a n d political th o u g h t. K iernan has b e e n q u ite d irec t a b o u t the necessity o f history for perspective an d im agination. For exam ple, in th e heady days o f the late 1960s he wrote: T h e past is n o t abolished by b ein g disregarded b u t tu rn e d in to a d ead w eight o f habit, stultifying th e p re s e n t It is only by trying to c o m p re h en d the past rationally th at we can tran sform it from a shapeless m ass in to a platform , o r draw en ergy from it like the g ian t A ntaeus from con tact with his m o th e r E arth. T h e m axim th at only active involvem ent in th e p resen t can develop the rig h t sense o f touch fo r the past is a tru e one, b u t so is the converse, that only familiarity with the past can im part the rig h t touch for the present. We c a n n o t act on things g one by, b u t they c o n tin u e to act o n us, a n d past an d p resen t com bine to m ake the fu tu re .28 In th e m ore bracing e x p erien ce o f the 1980s, discussing th e ideological inclinations o f n in e te e n th < e n tu ry historians, he p o in ts to th e im perative, o r at least p o ten tial, o f history as critique o r dem ystification, q u o tin g th e epigram o f Paul Valery th at ‘H istory is th e ipost d a n g ero u s p ro d u ct evolved from the chem istry o f the in te lle c t ’29 T h e intim acy o f history a n d politics for K iernan m ust n o t, h o w e v e r, be c o n s tr u e d as im p ly in g an y to le r a n c e fo r s u b o rd in a tin g the study o f th e p ast o r its fin d in g s to political e x p e d ie n c y . H e has s ta te d h is c o n te m p t fo r th e a b u se a n d m isrepresentation o f history in b o th th e East a n d the West* by both the Right a n d the Left, because, as he warns, if history is to contribute to th e c o m p reh en sio n a n d the m aking o f new history, it will n o t do to deceive ourselves: ‘Any falsification o f th e past m ust p o in t a w rong way to th e fu tu re .'30 K iernan's own guide to the past has b een , o f course, Marx: ‘A M arxist likes to suppose th at all he writes, even if n o t w ritten in term s o f a rt o r H egelian geom etry, is - to a d a p t Boswell - fully im p reg n ated with the M arxian e th e r . . . I, at least, always liked to feel while w ritin g th a t th e G ra n d O ld Man was w ithin h a ilin g

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distan ce .*31 For K iernan, as for his fellow British M arxist historians, M arxism is historical m aterialism (th e stress is th eir ow n!). It is n o t to be conceived o f as a system o f logic o r philosophy in e ith e r the H egelian o r A nglo-Saxon analytical m odes. O n a variety o f occasions he has expressed a particular frustration with the tendency in M arxist studies towards such practice. In fact, h e seem s to sh are th e g en eral an tip ath y o f historians tow ards philosophers: ‘All th a t p h ilo so p h ers have discovered since th e world began could be written on o n e sh eet o f p a p e r - o r so o n e is frequendy tem pted to c o n clu d e .’32 N ot a philosophical system, n e ith e r is M arxism a m odel to b e a p p lied to, or a form al theory to be simply fleshed o u t with, historical m aterials. W hat Marxism is - o r at least w hat K iernan in te rp rets it to b e - is historical theory, to be developed fu rth e r in th e course o f historical study a n d revised in its lig h t T his is n o t to suggest, however, th a t K iernan assum es som e kind o f m onopoly licence to have b een g ran te d to historians: ‘W hat is o f solid w orth in M arxism lies in its th eo ry o f history, its th eo ry o f politics, o r econom ics, o r art, a n d its prom ise if n o t yet p e rfo rm an ce o f a psychology an d an e th ic .’ T h e m ain th in g is that M arxist p ractitioners o f w hatever discipline th in k historically. Thus, in urging serious attention to th e related issues o f justice a n d morality, he writes th a t they should be stu d ied ‘n o t in the abstract bu t in th e setting o f history *.33 K iernan has long b e en insistent that M arxist th o u g h t give priority to history over m odels an d abstractions. R ecalling th e early years o f th e H istorians’ G ro u p , Eric Hobsbawm notes th a t th ere was a te n d e n c y a m o n g s t th e m to a llo w th e ir a s s u m p tio n s a n d ex p ectatio n s to d e te rm in e th e ir historical answers. To K iernan, how ever, H obsbaw m gives th e title ‘o u r c h ie f d o u b t e r ’, a n d C h risto p h er Hill, refe rrin g to th e sam e experiences, says o f him th a t ‘H e k e p t u s o n o u r to e s . ’34 It is q u ite likely th a t th e se rem iniscences o f Kiernan*s particip atio n refer in p articu lar to his dissensions in th e course o f th e g ro u p ’s deliberations in 1947 o n the subject o f th e transition to capitalism , treating specifically the questions o f the n a tu re o f E n g lan d ’s m o d e o f p ro d u ctio n a n d social stru c tu re in the six tee n th a n d sev en teen th c e n tu rie s, th e class ch aracter o f the state in th at p eriod, an d thence th e deg ree to which th e E n g lish R e v o lu tio n c a n be u n d e rs to o d as a ‘b o u rg e o is

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revolution’. In short, K iern an to o k issue with the thesis, offered in a d o cu m en t p rep ared for the G roup by Hill, th at the T u d o r polity was a feudal-absolutist landow ners’ state. H e agreed that th e T u d o r state was absolutist, but he h eld that it could n o t be d e fin e d as feudal because whereas absolutism entailed centralized political power and authority, feudalism was a polity characterized by d ispersed powers a n d au th o rities. M oreover, the agrarian relations o f p ro d u ctio n a ro u n d which the social o rd e r a n d the state were fo rm ed in the sixteenth cen tu ry were no longer feudal b u t m uch m o re capitalist R e g a rd in g th e stru g g les o f th e se v e n te e n th c e n tu ry K ie rn a n p ro p o sed th at ra th e r than th ere having b een only o n e bourgeois revolution th ere had actually been several from the fifteen th to the se v e n te e n th c e n tu ry . Finally, o n th e re la te d q u e s tio n o f th e ch aracterizatio n o f th e p erio d as e ith e r feudal o r capitalist, he suggested th at ‘m erchant capitalist’ seem ed m ost a p p ro p riate to this transitional phase; ind eed , K iernan felt th at too m u ch was being m ade o f a supposed distinction betw een m ercantile a n d industrial capitalists, th e fo rm er conservative an d th e latter progressive (a p o sitio n advanced by M aurice D obb in his book, Studies in the Development o f Capitalism) ,35 T h e G roup did n o t accept K iernan’s criticisms .36 Forty years on, these questions continue to be deb ated , though o u r knowledge o f th e transition process is greatly increased a n d the co n cep ts used to analyse it are arguably m ore refin ed .37 We find that the historical evidence a n d c u rre n t argum ents do su p p o rt aspects o f K iern an ’s dissent, especially th at the developm ent o f agrarian capitalism was well u n d e r way in the sixteenth century and th at th e ‘bourgeois rev o lu tio n ’, though culm inating in the struggles o f th e seventeenth century, was in fact a m uch longer an d m ore com plex process .30 Yet it would ap p ear th at h e underestim ated the d e g re e to which West E uro p ean absolutism could be a ‘feudal’ state (a position which he revised in his later w ritings), a n d I w ould argue th at, th o u g h the transitional centuries rem ain ill-defined, h e was also m istaken both in p ro p o sin g the term m erch an t capitalism to cover th e p erio d an d in assessing m erch an t capital as an essentially developm ental force in th e process .39 N evertheless - p erh ap s even in sp ite of, o r on acco u n t of, the rejection o f his criticism s o f w hat was to be the

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G ro u p ’s ‘official’ position - K iernan has rem ained actively interested in th e historical problem o f th e transition, as evidenced in his m any writings o n both im perialism an d nation-state form ation (a p o in t to which I shall re tu rn ). Am ongst his fellow M arxist historians K iernan is b o th one o f th e m ost critical a n d o n e o f the m ost appreciative o f M arx him self (th o u g h this may be d u e to th e fact th at K iernan has seem ed m ore willing th an m ost to reflect aloud ab o u t Marx an d th e developm ent o f M arxist th o u g h t ).40 In his 1983 M arx C entennial essay, ‘H istory’ (the first o f his articles inclu d ed h e re ), K iernan surveys an d assesses the d ev elo p m ent o f ‘historical M arxism ’. H e d o es so by situating M arx, Engels a n d a variety o f later M arxists in th e ir historically specific circum stances, acknow ledging their personal com m itm ents, the p articu lar intellectual legacies available to them , an d the specific in tern atio n al and national developm ents, dem ands an d possibilities th at sh a p ed their work. In this fashion h e objectively considers the b ases u p o n w hich M a rx ist h is to ric a l p r a c tic e h a s ev o lv e d , highlighting in these experiences the ideas worth preserving, subject to fu rth e r e x p lo ratio n a n d possible revision, a n d th e pro b lem s d e m a n d in g u rg e n t c o n sid era tio n e ith e r because o f in a d e q u a te a tten tio n in the past, o r worse, intellectual c o rru p tio n , o r becausc Clio h as only now throw n th em u p in such a form th a t we can p ro p erly recognize them . C ritical a p p re c ia tio n o f M arx a n d E n g e ls is e v id e n t th ro u g h o u t K iernan’s writings. At o n e m o m en t he points to w here they overem phasized th e econom ic factor in o rd e r to secure th eir m aterialist perspective; at another, to th eir im perfectly successful attem p ts to discover th e ‘logic’ o f history which m ig h t th ereafter guide th em th ro u g h th e thickets o f th e past; and, at yet another, to those n u m ero u s occasions on which M arx allowed his ideas and aspirations for hum anity to o u tru n th e historical evidence .41 At the sam e tim e, however, K iernan m aintains that it was probably this very sam e ‘passion’ which infused M arx’s writings with th eir c o n tin u in g relevance: ‘T he m ost form idable intellect can n o t work at full stretch on h u m an problem s, except passionately, and all original and intense th o u g h t m ust be one-sided; th e eye th at sees every aspect o f a question sees n o n e o f them vividly.’ K iernan does n o t hesitate to

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rem in d us th at ‘M arx was an am ateu r histo rian ', but, o f course, on e whose ‘m in d roam ed over world history at larg e’. R egarding his co n trib u tio n s to historical th eo ry h e finds M arx a g reat explorer: ‘M uch as C olum bus and those who cam e after him convinced m en o nce for all th at the e a rth was ro u n d , M arx b ro u g h t recognition o f an o rd e r an d priority o f relationships am ong all h um an co n cern s .’42 Even as he pays hom age to Marx, K iernan notes th at it seems u n fo rtu n ate th at an ever-developing body o f th o u g h t should go ‘u n d e r o n e m an 's n a m e ’. A m ongst the things he may well have had in m ind were the labours o f M arx’s com rade a n d intellectual partner, Engels; for in contrast to the m any philosophers who have attrib u ted th e reductionism s in M arxism to Engels, K iernan expresses warm ap p reciatio n (again, critical) for his efforts. Fully aware o f E ngels’s sim plification o f M arx’s th o u g h t following M arx's d eath , K iernan sympathetically attributes this to Engels having the weighty responsi­ bility o f draw ing to g eth er a n d popularizing his frien d ’s ideas, which necessarily en tailed simplifying them . K ie rn a n ’s ap p reciatio n is, however, n o t only on acco u n t o f Engels’s su p p o rt for M arx an d M arx’s writings, b u t ju s t as m uch because o f Engels’s own com m it­ m en t to historical study, a p ro d u ct o f which was his p io n eerin g work, The Peasant War in Germany. In fact, K iernan rem inds us th a t it was n o t unusual for Engels to be pushing M arx into b ein g ever m ore historical in his w riting .43 O f those who have followed M arx and Engels, K iernan feels th e greatest affection for the Italian, A ntonio Gram sci (1891-1937), whom h e dubs the ‘first g reat standard-bearer o f W estern Marxism*. In two articles, considering Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and Prison Letters respectively, K iernan m akes clear th at his adm iration is inspired by th e rich political, cultural a n d literary c o n te n t o f these writings and th e c o n trib u tio n s they m ig h t m ake to so cialist th o u g h t a n d practice .44 Above all else, however, K iernan seem s to resp o n d to G ram sci’s co m m itm en t to history and his view th at M arxism m ust be ‘com pletely historical in spirit’. G ram sci’s im prisonm ent fo r over a decade u ntil his d eath k ept him from carrying o u t any o f the historical researches he ou tlin ed in the Notebooks, b u t as K iernan states adm iringly: ‘All G ram sci’s speculations took. . . a historical shape, a n d history was with him the grand interest, em bracing all

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th e rest*; indeed, ‘No o n e has laid m ore stress o n history as the acco m p an im ent o r vehicle o f all thinking ab o u t hu m an affairs .’45 A n other practice o f G ram sci’s th a t K iernan co m m en d s is his willingness to co n fro n t o th e r intellectual traditions n o t m erely for th e sake o f critique a n d dismissal b u t with th e in te n tio n o f learn in g from them an d possibly even draw ing o u t elem en ts to be in c o rp o ra te d into M arxism itself. I f historical m aterialism is to c o n tin u e to develop, it is essential, K iernan argues, th a t it b e selfconscious an d self-critical ab o u t its own inadequacies, responsive to new challenges a n d dem ands a n d receptive to w hat may possibly be g a rn e red from com peting theories: ‘Marxism in o th e r words cannot generate all its intellectual capital out o f its own resources .’46 Kiernan him self has been m ore than willing to be critical o f M arxists whose analyses fail on historical grounds, as he is, for exam ple, with E rnst Fischer’s book, The Necessity o f Art, in a review essay en titled ‘A rt an d th e Necessity of H istory ’.47 In the sam e spirit, he has shown him self to be warmly disposed towards non-M arxist scholars whose works have c o n trib u tio n s to m ake to M arxist h isto rical e n q u iry . F o r exam ple, in a review essay on B raudel’s Capitalism and M aterial Life, 1400-1800, h e writes: T h ere is also a great deal in the book for Marxists to p o n d e r over, asking themselves w hether th eir categories have grown flex ib le a n d su b tle e n o u g h to a c c o m m o d a te all th is m ultitude o f facts and ideas. T h eir u n d erstan d in g o f ‘base an d superstructure* would profit from such an exercise. Above all they m ight c o m p re h en d m ore clearly how an d why m ankind has m ostly b e e n stan d in g still, instead o f focusing th eir studies on the few ‘big leaps *.48

Imperialism and its Contradictions W ritten before the Second W orld War, Kiernan*s first book, British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885, is in o n e sense a traditional work focusing on the efforts an d intrigues o f diplom ats an d statesm en to secu re a n d fu rth e r th e ir respective c o u n trie s ’ in te rests in late n in eteen th -century C hina and East an d South East Asia. In a n o th e r

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sense, however, it stands as an attem p t at innovation for, as K iernan explains, h e was seeking to unravel the m an n e r in which the politics o f diplom acy are bound u p with, an d expressive of, econom ic forces, a n d thereby brin g together the two seem ingly separate fields o f diplom atic and econom ic history. This is accom plished well, b u t th e book is, nevertheless, m arked by a duality. W ithin the larger work th ere is a second, sh o rte r one reflecting K iern an ’s Marxisthistorical concerns, and th erein he presents a sociological analysis o f C h in a’s historic m ode o f prod uction, social stru ctu re a n d the state, a n d class conflicts, in flu en ced by the ‘hy d rau lic’ theo ries offered by Karl Wittfogel and others .49 This latter ‘work’ is indicadve o f th e d irecd o n in which K iernan’s post-war an d later scholarship w ould go. A lthough he c o n tin u ed to publish in diplom atic history right in to th e 1960s, he increasingly cam e to see diplom adc affairs, in so far as his own rese a rc h e s w ere c o n c e rn e d , as o f m ostly an tiq u arian in terest .50 The Lords o f Human Kind appeared in 1969 an d though there are evident links with his diplom atic writings, it represents a real shift, for it is a study in the historical psychology o f race. Set within th e process o f E uropean expansion overseas, the book surveys the attitudes o f m erchants an d traders, diplom ats an d m ilitary m en, an d missionaries and colonial officers towards those over whom they sought hegem ony. Although concerned with the view, o r perspective, ‘from above’, Kiernan appreciates that the developm ent o f E uropean a ttitu d e s c a n n o t be tre a te d in iso latio n . T h u s, in a d d itio n to illustrating how E uropeans’ racial(ist) a n d ethnocentric perceptions o f the ‘outside w orld’ were co nditioned by the particulars o f th eir cou n tries o f origin and therein by class, he shows how these views were sh ap ed by the cultures, social structures an d levels o f develop­ m en t o f th e n o n-E uropean p eo p les them selves, w hich w ere, o f course, determ inants of those peoples’ capacities to resist, o r possibly thwart (as in the case of Ja p a n ), E uropean advances, encroachm ents a n d conquests. The Lords of Human Kind is com plem ented by K iernan’slater book, European Empiresfrom Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960, published in 1982. W hereas the form er treats the cultural dim ension o f imperial expansion, the latter is a historical sociology o f E u ro p e ’s im perial

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and colonial wars. European Empires looks at E u ro p e ’s arm ies an d technologies o f death an d their applications to killing in Africa, Asia an d th e Pacific, to g eth er with considerations o f th e ideologies an d d o ctrin es o f colonialism a n d colonial w arfare, th e publicity an d political consequences at h om e an d the resistance an d rebellions offered by colonial peoples. A reading o f this w ork should cure on e o f any nostalgia for E u ro p e ’s colonial past. In d e e d , b o th The Lords o f H um an Kind an d European Empires arose o u t o f K ie rn a n ’s m utual historical a n d political concerns. T h e first book was in te n d e d to provide a historical m irro r in which B ritons m ig h t reflect on th eir attitudes a n d relations with non-E uropean peoples, w hich K iernan saw as all th e m o re u rg e n t as B ritain was e v er m o re obviously becom ing a m ulti-ethnic a n d multiracial society with all the attendant difficulties ex acerb ated by post-im perial political a n d econom ic d eclin e .51 T h e second book was also fo r the p u rp o se o f historical reflection a n d to draw atten tio n to the persistence a n d continuity o f th e past in the present: ‘T h ere are, after all, g o o d reasons for prying in to the past with the historians’ telescope, a n d trying to see m ore clearly w hat h a p p en ed , instead o f being c o n te n t with leg en d or fantasy. O f all the reasons for an interest in th e colonial wars o f m o d ern tim es the best is th at they are still g o in g o n , openly o r disguised .’52 T h u s, K ie rn a n has also e x p lo re d A m e ric a n h isto ry in America: The New Imperialism, published in 1978. In it he provides an in te r p r e ta tio n o f A m e ric a n h isto ry in w hich e x p a n s io n a n d im perialism are conceived as central to its developm ent. T h o u g h n o t o ffe rin g an o rig in a l thesis as to th e c au ses o f A m erican im p e ria lism , th e b o o k is effectively w ritte n , c o n n e c tin g th e historically particular m odes o f the U nited States’ ‘m arch westward’ an d heg em onic advances globally to the ch an g in g com plex o f its regional and class forces an d conflicts. K iernan’s observations on A m erican history a n d politics, in the book a n d re la te d articles ,53 are often acerbic, yet in the very same texts h e exhibits a n d expresses a sensitivity to, a n d appreciation of, the tensions a n d contradictions which have characterized A m erican grow th a n d d e v e lo p m e n t At the b eg in n in g o f the book h e writes:

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A m erica’s early settlers left an E ngland astir with progressive im pulses, an d m ight have seem ed to b e building in the w ilderness the b e tte r society th at th e Levellers tried in vain to b u ild in England. B ut th ere was always in this new lan d a duality, a division o f the soul as d e e p as the racial cleavage betw een black a n d white. Aspiration towards a new life was n ev er to succum b entirely to w hat o u r ancestors called ‘the w orld, the flesh a n d the devil’. Yet th ese latter tem ptations re m a in e d p o ten t, an d im perialist h an k erin g s - ru n n in g all th ro u g h A m erica’s history a n d a t last b ecom ing its m ost obtrusive feature - have b een o n e c o n seq u e n ce .54 P ublished in th e wake o f the V ietnam War, America: The New Imperialismjo in e d those studies which have so u g h t to dem olish that pow erful historical myth o f A m ericans which holds th a t the U nited States has never b een a ‘colonial’ power; b u t it is also m ade quite clear in th e course o f the historical narrative, as well as in an earlier a r tic le , ‘I m p e r ia lis m , A m e ric a n a n d E u r o p e a n ’, how th e d ev elo p m en t o f A m erican im perialism has c o n trasted historically with th at o f E urope: ‘It lost interest o v ern ig h t in its first flu tter with colonialism , in a volatile fashion im possible to a E urope rancid with h e re d ita ry am bitions a n d v en d ettas .’55 N evertheless, fo reg o in g d irec t colonialism A m erican em pire-building led th e way towards neocolonialism . In line with his p ro n o u n ce m en ts on M arxism a n d history, K iern an ’s studies in this area have n o t b een pu rsu e d for the purpose o f elab o ratin g a form al th eo ry o f the causes o f im perialism an d colonialism , b u t they have b e en w ritten in relatio n to th e develop­ m en t o f M arxist historical thinking on the subject. In the ‘Foreword* to M arxism and Imperialism, a collection o f articles published in 1974, K iernan rem arks th a t the strength o f M arxist a n d L eninist th o u g h t has b e en in econom ic analysis, a n d ‘In this p reo ccu p atio n M arxism c o n tin u e d M arx’s own tu rn in g away... from a m any-sided approach to history a n d society towards a narrow er co n ce n tra tio n o n th eir eco n o m ic stru c tu re .’ This, however, was inad eq u ate. M arxist work o n im perialism had becom e ‘m ost vulnerable to criticism th ro u g h its c o m p a ra tiv e n e g le c t o f o th e r m o tiv e fo rc e s, p o litic a l o r

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psychological*. In o th e r words, M arxism had been red u c ed a n d was now b e in g e q u a te d to o m u ch w ith e c o n o m ic s a n d e c o n o m ic determ inism . The Lords o f H um an Kind, European Empires an d America: The New Imperialism can be read, then, as efforts to ‘ro u n d o u t’ Marxist investigations. Yet they are m ore than m erely attem pts to add politics a n d c u ltu re to econom ics. A lth o u g h K iernan d o e s n o t a tte n d adequately to political econom y, his studies do rep re se n t, as I have indicated, explorations o f the dialectical relations betw een class an d im perialism , a n d thus his writings in this area (alo n g with those on nationalism a n d nation-state form ation to be discussed) are very m u ch a p a rt o f th e B ritish M arxist h isto ria n s’ d e v e lo p m e n t o f M arxism as a ‘th eo ry o f class determ ination*. As K iernan suggests: M odern im perialism has b een an accretio n o f elem ents, n o t all o f equal weight, th a t can be tra c e d back th ro u g h every ep o ch o f history. P erhaps its ultim ate causes, with those o f war, are to be fo u n d less in tangible m aterial wants th an in the uneasy tensions o f societies d isto rted by class divisions, with th eir reflections in d isto rted ideas in m e n ’s m inds .56 W here he has spoken direcdy to the th eoretical questions, as in ‘T h e M arx ist T h e o ry o f Im p erialism a n d its H isto ric a l Formation*, we find it has been in the fashion o f his previously n oted article, ‘History*. T h a t is, he brings th e th eo ry face to face with historical experience, his purpose being to sep arate o u t ‘w hat may b e o f p e rm a n e n t value in it from w hat was e p h e m e ra l, o r has b e e n d isco u n ted by later history *.57 In th e past several years K iernan has o ften b e en invited to consider an d address the consequences o f im perialism and colonialism b o th fo r E uropeans a n d for Afro-Asians. His assessm ents rem ain critically objective a n d his observations offer little co m fo rt to e ith e r party. For exam ple, however m uch his own w ritings attest to the brutality o f conquest a n d oppressiveness o f colonialism , he also feels com pelled to state in conclusion to European Empires th a t ‘Even with th e aid o f m achine-guns a n d high explosives, th e total o f d eath s inflicted on Afro-Asia by E urope m ust have b e en trifling com pared

30

ACROSS TIME AND CONTINENTS

w ith th e n u m b e r inflicted on it by its own ru lers, in Africa chiefly th ro u g h wars, in Asia chiefly th ro u g h c ru sh in g revolts .’58 In d eed , since K iernan has consistently b een attentive to th e pre-existing m o d es o f class d o m in atio n am ongst both the colonizers and the colonized, h e has necessarily recognized th at ‘So m any lands were u n d e r alien o r semi-alien rule th at the overthrow o f th ro n es m ight b e w elcom ed as the deliverance which E u ro p ean s professed to be b rin g in g .’59 (It n e ed hardly be said th at rem arks such as these are n o t in te n d ed to absolve E uropeans o f th eir colonial histories and atrocities.) W hat a b o u t the longer-term , the so-called ‘dev elo p m en tal’ co n seq u en ces o f E u ro p ean im perialism an d colonialism ? T his is a qu estio n K iernan him self asks, n o tin g th at ‘W estern thinking has usually favoured th e view th at colonialism , d esp ite m uch th at is sham eful in its record, rescued backw ard o r stagnating societies by giving them b e tte r governm ent, a n d tran sfo rm ed them by draw ing th em o u t o f isolation in to the c u rre n ts o f the w orld m arket a n d a w orld civilization ’;60 but, o f course, as he is fully aware: ‘Each nation feeling itself th e strongest - has sought to im pose its will o n others, b u t to th in k o f itself as th eir w arden o r rescu er *.61 H is own answ er is historical. First, h e distinguishes betw een the early colonialism o f Spain an d Portugal - w hen ‘E urope was still to o little developed to have m uch to bestow ’62 - an d the later north-w estern E u ro p ean im perialism s following on the Industrial a n d A m erican a n d F rench Revolutions. T h en he considers th e differing effects o f these latter im perialism s o n various Asian a n d African peoples, fo r clearly the im p act o f E u ropean expansion on, fo r exam ple, India, C h in a and Ja p a n was dram atically different .63 N evertheless, allowing fo r signi­ ficant historical an d m oral reservations, it appears th at K iernan does c o m p re h en d E uropean im perialism an d colonialism as having been 4progressive’, at least initially, in the developm ental sense. It is h e re that we e n co u n ter m ost directly a central character­ istic o f K iern an ’s conception o f history, o n e th a t links him closely with M arx a n d Engels, perhaps m ore so than any o f the o th e r British M arxist historians. I am referrin g specifically to his sense o f history as tragedy. H e aim s us toward it him self with reference to imperialism

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w hen h e writes: ‘C o n q u est a n d occupation w ere grievous e x p e ­ riences; w hatever beneficial results m ight en su e, the cure was at best a harsh one, like old-style surgery w ithout anaesthetics. O nly in th e light o f th eir tragic vision o f history could M arx a n d Engels co n tem plate conquest as som etim es a ch ap ter o f h um an progress.’ O n a n o th e r occasion, h e observes th at th e re is a ‘som bre contra­ diction at the h e a rt o f im perialism ’.64 T h a t is, if we subscribe to the assum ption th at econom ic developm ent - or, ‘m o d ern iza tio n ’ - is p referable to the persistence o f ‘pre-industrial’ social orders, then we are draw n inevitably to the historically ‘realistic’ position th at north-w estern E u ro p e ’s intrusions overseas were a req u ired catalyst for change an d developm ent because it was the only region dynam ic en o u g h to accom plish it. T his was M arx’s an d E n g el’s view a n d thus they w elcom ed capitalism ’s revolutionary m o m en tu m ; and this is K iern an ’s view - up to a point. As he rem inds us, th o u g h M arx an d Engels had a tragic vision o f the past, they were optim istic ab o u t the future and, indeed, too ready to separate the two, crediting capitalism with too m uch revolutionary d eterm in atio n an d , as a result, they failed to recognize th e way in which it w ould com prom ise an d in co rp o rate pre-capitalist forces to acom plish its ends. K iernan, too, sees E uropean im perialism as having been necessary to instigate change and, potentially, developm ent, an d yet h e also recognizes - m ore so than M arx a n d Engels - how the tragedy was co m p o u n d ed . N ot only did im perialism have the effect o f reinforcing class pow er at hom e an d ab ro ad - this fact M arx an d Engels h a d sadly realized; but, as K iernan shows, this often help ed to b rin g about the coalescence of bourgeois an d aristocrat in E urope (thereby m aking a fatally im portant contribution to war a n d Fascism in th e tw entieth century) a n d the buttressing o r calling into b eing o f ‘parasitic ru lin g g ro u p s’ in the colonies. T hus, at the sam e tim e th a t K iernan sees im perialism as having b een progressive - a t least to som e ex ten t, h e also indicates how, in tim e, it was inevitably ‘d efo rm in g ’ to bo th colonizers and colonized. In th e en d he declares th a t th e real co ntribution o f E uropean im perialism ‘was m ade less by im posing its ru le on oth ers than by teaching o th ers how to resist it *,65 referrin g both to the capitalist m odern izatio n from above o f

A C R O S S T IME AND C O N T I N E N T S

Ja p an an d th e ideologies and forces o f nationalism a n d socialism in Asia a n d Africa, w hich, I would add, have g e n e ra te d th e ir own dialectics o f h o p e and tragedy.

Classes, Nation-States and Force In ‘N otes o n M arxism in 1968’, K iernan em phasizes th a t ‘Marxist history owes m uch o f its strength to its grasp o f the im portance o f class’. T his is n o t because we should ex p ect to find fully form ed class-conscious assemblages in every epoch; ind eed , such m om ents are rare - m o d e rn W estern E urope b eing exceptional in so many ways. R ather, it is because o f the centrality o f class struggle in the m ovem ent o f history. (In this way, K iernan aligns him self with his fellow British M arxist historians.) H e suggests th a t th e re have been, broadly-speaking, only two types o f class societies, each characterized by th e role o f the ru lin g class in the process o f p ro d u ctio n . T h e first type, o ccu rrin g twice in history, is w here the ru lin g g ro u p organizes p ro d u ctio n ; in its early form exem plified by the an cien t civilizations o f th e N ear East, a n d in its m o d ern form by capitalism (and, we should add, state socialism). T h e second type, which has b e en m uch m ore com m on historically, covers the whole array o f ‘feu d al’ m odes o f p ro d u ctio n in which the rulers are ‘parasitic’ on production. Even th o u g h h e provides this generic m odel o f the latter type, K iernan insists th at the historical varieties o f ‘feudalism ’ need to be exam ined m uch m ore closely for they are quite distinct form s o f appropriation. H e especially urges fu rth e r investigation o f m edieval E uropean feudalism ‘fo r it was the incubator o f m o d ern capitalism a n d o f the w hole world-civilization o f today .’66 K iernan him self has shown greatest interest in the European aristocracy, originally the feudal ruling class, which he explains (here distinguishing his work from th a t o f H ilton, e t al.) on these lines: Even if classes were likely to disappear soon, they would deserve all the light th at M arxism can throw o n them . They will rem ain em balm ed in the com m on culture, the amalgam o f values, to which every class like every race by its unique co n tact with life has a unique co n trib u tio n to m ake. It is o f

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peculiar im portance . . . to scrutinize th e ru lin g classes o f th e past a n d th eir cultural record: feudal ru lin g g ro u p s still m ore th an capitalist, because they w ere se t m ore a p a rt a n d above societies they co n tro lled , enjoyed a m o re u n iq u e status a n d privilege a n d co m m an d ed a k in d o f awe th a t no mill-owners however rich can aspire to, so th a t so far as those s o c ie tie s f o r m e d a n y m e a n in g f u l w h o le it was th e aristocracies th at rep re se n te d it .67 T h e n , in a b r i e f b u t i n tr i g u i n g d is c u s s io n o f th e characteristics o f E u ro p e's feudal ru lin g classes, he proffers th e idea th a t in spite o f their distance and separateness from those over whom they ru led , th eir experience was both u n iq u e and m etap h o ric o f h u m an ex p erien ce as a whole. Following Shakespeare, he finds in th e aristocracy in its declining years as a ru lin g class, ‘incarnations o f th e tragic spirit we all dimly feel in th e lives o f all o f u s \ K iernan's m ost recent book, Duelling in Social History: A Study in the Aristocratic Ascendancy,68 is an exploration o f a practice th at was ch arg ed with political a n d cultural significance. O rig in atin g earlier, th e m o d ern d uel actually developed in th e sixteenth a n d seventeenth centuries, a p erio d characterized by c h ro n ic warfare; lin g erin g into th e n in e te e n th c en tu ry a n d c a rrie d ab ro a d in the course o f E u ro p ean expansion (for exam ple, to th e U nited States). K iernan argues th a t the d u el was an ‘exclusive’ class practice, its m oral a n d ideological p u rp o se b eing to secure th e nobility's ‘esprit de corps*. M oreover, d u e llin g served to re d u c e intra-ruling-class conflicts to symbolic p roportions; th at is, since it was confined to individuals, as op p o sed to whole fam ilies a n d th e ir entourages, it req u ire d only a lim ited n u m b e r o f victims. Actually it m ig h t be said th at duelling reflected the developm ent o f aristocratic individualism u n d e r th e influence o f the age o f em erg en t bourgeois individualism. At th e sam e tim e, duels which p itted noble vs. b o u rg eo is provided a m ode o f in co rp o ratio n o f bourgeois individuals by the aristocracy. K iernan's previous studies o f the aristocracy’are also fram ed by the transition from feudalism to capitalism bu t focus m ore directly o n th e p o litic a l d im e n sio n . T w enty years b e fo re th e c u r r e n t heig h ten ed attention to the issues o f nationalism a n d state form ation

34

A C R O S S T I M E AND C O N T I N E N T S

Kiernan was pursuing such questions ,69 doing so in a M arxist fashion which p resen te d the state as class-structured b u t allowing for it an au to n o m o u s role in social change. His m ost significant writings in this area are his article, ‘State and N ation in W estern E u ro p e ’ ,70 a n d his State and Society in Europe, 1550-16fO .11 In these, K iernan co n cen trates o n the absolutist m onarchy a n d state o f the sixteenth an d sev en teen th centuries. Revising the position h e took in the H isto rian s’ G ro u p discussions o f the 1940s, K iernan argues th at the absolutist m onarchy was essentially a feudal polity ‘existing primarily for the ben efit o f the landed nobility*, which rem ained the dom inant class b u t was decreasingly a ‘governing class*. Still, h e d o es see difficulties with this form ulation: ‘Absolutism was th e highest stage o f feudalism m uch m ore than the first stage o f bourgeois o r m iddleclass hegem ony. To speak o f the new p a tte rn as “feudal** is, all the sam e, liable to m any confusions; the least m isleading designation for it m ay b e “the aristocratic state ***.72 K iernan d em onstrates how th e absolutist state cam e to be established o u t o f the very ‘crisis o f feudalism*; the absolute m onarchy having secu red th e seigneurial o rd e r by su bduing both peasant d iscontent a n d conflict within the nobility, a t the same tim e lim iting the authority o f the latter in its own favour. How this was effected varied, o f course, across E urope, b u t it d id n o t re p re se n t a ‘“freezing** o f th e status quo*. T his is evidenced in part, he says, by th e fact th at th e absolute m onarchs th e m se lv e s w ere q u ite o fte n ‘new m en*, th o u g h a d m itte d ly establishing them selves on ‘old fo u n d atio n s ’ .73 T h a t absolutism was essentially feudal, o r aristocratic, was o f crucial significance, for this was a form ative state in the m aking o f th e m o d e rn world, a n d the absolutist state itself was th e political crucible in which the m any rich tensions o f late m edieval society were m elted down to varying degrees, re-form ed a n d b e q u ea th e d to th e m o d e rn . T hus, however dynam ic n ascen t capitalism was an d was to becom e - it was originally sh ap ed by aristocratic states an d im b u e d with feudal elem ents o f which it w ould n o t so easily rid itself. It is n o t very difficult to see how these works are related to his writings o n im perialism . As K iernan says, th e absolute m onarchies d id n o t set o u t to establish national states b u t ra th e r ‘Each aim ed at u n lim ited extension . . . a n d the m o re it p ro sp e red the m o re the

Seeing Things Historically

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o u tco m e was a m ultifarious em pire instead o f a n a tio n .'74 Never­ theless, inheriting territorial roots from th e ir medieval antecedents, the absolutist polities were the em bryonic experiences o u t o f which d e v e lo p e d th e n a tio n -sta te , w estern E u ro p e ’s m a jo r p o litica l co n trib u tio n to th e world. T h ere is to be n o m ythologizing o f the origins o f national states fo r K iernan. To start with, it is his co n ten tio n th at the State m o u ld ed the N ation (out o f the existing m aterials o f ‘nationality’) m o re th an vice versa, and State and Society portrays a t length how this process was d e te rm in e d by war a n d class conflict. In d eed , the a b so lu te m o n arch ies co m m itted so m u ch o f th e ir reso u rces to w arfare th at it has often b een assum ed th at the developm ent o f ab so lu tist states was d u e m ostly to ‘foreign pressures’. K iernan, h o w ev er, d isse n ts, in sistin g th a t th e p re s s u re s to w a rd in te rm onarchical bellicosity were prim arily in te rn al in th at th ere was a c o n tin u in g n e ed to tu rn ‘outw ards’ th e intra-class conflicts o f the nobility an d the class antagonism s betw een them an d the com m on p e o p le .75 T h e m ilitarism o f the developing absolutist states also provided an o u d e t fo r the surplus lab o u r throw n up by the crisis o f feudalism ; although, as K iernan shows in ‘Foreign M ercenaries an d A bsolute M onarchies ’,76 th eir arm ies d e p e n d e d m ost heavily on fo re ig n h irelin g s. T his h a d several ad v an tag es. First, how ever unw illing the com m on people were to b e exploited in o rd e r to pay for th e wars, they w ere less e a g e r to fight in th em , so foreign m ercen aries were a welcom e alternative fo r m onarchs. Secondly, foreign m ercenary arm ies stren g th en ed the m onarchs against their nobles. Thirdly, though they were m ore costly to em ploy they could be ‘se n t h o m e ’ w hen no longer n eed ed a n d th ere was no obligation to th e widows a n d o rp h an s o f those w ho did n o t re tu rn . Fourthly, professional soldiers regularly kept u p with the latest technologies o f war. Finally - a n d perhaps m ost im portantly - it was safer politically than arm ing o n e ’s own peasants and, m oreover, foreign m ercenaries w ere especially useful in suppressing rebellions, an im portant feature o f g o v e rn m e n t in the sixteenth century. A legacy o f feudalism , the absolutist state thus took on a w arlike c h aracter which, K iernan observes sadly, it was to pass on to th e m o d e rn state. T his was o f tragic c o n seq u e n ce , fo r however

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intim ate th e relationship betw een Mars a n d m arkets has b e en there was, he surmises, nothing in h eren t in the laws o f capital th a t it should seek o u d e ts in arm s an d conquests .77 It m ight be n o te d in this c o n tex t th a t K iernan's adm iration for Engels is in p a rt attrib u tab le to th e fact th a t he, m ore than M arx, was a stu d e n t o f war, to the p o in t o f being nicknam ed ‘T h e G eneral’ by M arx’s family .78 Kiernan him self w rote in 1968 th a t ‘T h e fo rtu n es o f M arxism m u st d e p e n d a g reat deal o n its ability to illum inate the causes o f war b o th past and p resen t .*79 K ie rn a n 's articles, ‘N a tio n a list M ovem ents a n d Social Classes’ a n d ‘C onscription a n d Society in E urope be fo re th e W ar o f 1914-1918*,80 e x te n d his class-structured analysis o f nation-state form ation a n d the place o f th e m ilitary in those experiences. T hese to o rev eal how th e re was n o th in g n a tu ra l o r o rg a n ic a b o u t nationalism a n d nation-states, which were in g reat p a rt ‘creations fro m a b o v e ’ (by th e sta te , n o t a d iv in ity ). In th e a rtic le on conscription K iernan notes how com pulsory service has ap p eared th ro u g h o u t history a n d in each episode reflects m uch m o re ab o u t th e society th an simply how it raises up an army. In the case o f late n in e te e n th -c e n tu ry E u ro p e h e arg u es th a t c o n sc rip tio n to th e military served as a m ode o f educating the masses both to the political an d ideological requirem ents o f the nation-state and the regim enting d em an d s o f industrial capitalism. In ‘N ationalist M ovem ents an d Social Classes’, K iernan traces th e dev elopm ent o f nationalism as a political force from its origins in north-w estern E urope - E ngland first o f all; across the c o n tin e n t th ro u g h the course o f th e n in e te e n th cen tu ry , and, by way o f selected countries, aro u n d the globe in the tw entieth, showing how th e class bases o f nationalist m ovem ents varied in th e d ifferen t historically stru ctu red contexts. C onsidering the E u ro p ea n p a ttern , K iernan links its em ergence in the early m odern period to the growth o f c a p ita lis m w ith in th e fra m e w o rk o f th e a b s o lu tis t s ta te . U n d erm in in g traditional social relations, capitalism provided for even m ore intense class antagonism s requiring b o th a stro n g er state ap p aratu s a n d a renovated set o f ideologies. In this co n te x t it was th e u r b a n m id d le classes th a t w ere m o st i m p o r ta n t to th e d ev elo p m en t o f nationalism : ‘Patriotic feeling could b olster th eir

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self-esteem a n d confidence, an d by identifying them selves with it they co u ld b e tte r aspire to a leading place in a ch an g in g p attern o f society .*81 In d ee d , h e notes how the national revolt o f the D utch was so m ething o f a ‘bourgeois revolution’ a n d how the ‘bourgeois revolutions’ o f E ngland and France were im bued with nationalist fe rv o u r. A risto c ra ts, how ever, f o u n d n a tio n a lis m m u c h less convenient, fo r it entailed the in co rp o ratio n o f th e p o p u lar classes in to public life; a n d K iernan asserts, w hereas fo r peasants a n d the lo w er-m iddle classes th e a p p e a l to ‘n a tio n a l c o m m u n ity ’ was attractive, the u rb an pro letariat originally had d ifferen t priorities, th o u g h in tim e it too resp o n d ed as it increasingly h a d to a tten d to the activities o f the state an d its political culture. T h e revolutions o f 1789 a n d 1848 had d ram atic effects on the history o f nationalism as a political force. T h e significance o f th e fo rm e r is th a t it provided the basis for ‘nationalist m ovem ents o f o p p o sitio n ’ which m ight be e ith e r conservative o r progressive. Later, th e struggles o f 1848 p u t fear in to the h e a rts a n d m inds o f b o u rg eo is a n d a risto c rat alike a n d thus, as K ie rn a n describes, n atio n al states were even ‘m ore rapidly to be built from above with m o d ern adm inistrative resources’, as was m ost definitely th e case in G erm an y . T h e re a fte r, w ith th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f so cialist a n d C o m m u n is t p a rtie s c o m m a n d in g w o rk in g -cla ss a lle g ia n c e s , ‘patriotism ’ becam e ‘the last refuge o f reaction, an d nationalist labels w ere favourites with right-w ing p a rtie s’ (for ex am p le , F ra n c o ’s ‘N atio n alist’ m o vem ent a n d H itle r’s c o rru p tly title d ‘N a tio n a l’ Socialists .)82 N evertheless as his com parative-historical narrative illustrates, nationalism rem ained an am bivalent force in this century, even b ein g m arried to socialism in the defence o f th e Soviet U nion in th e Second W orld War a n d in th e anti-colonial struggles in Africa an d Asia. A long with his work o n aristocracy, absolutism a n d n ation­ state fo rm a tio n , K iernan has p u rsu e d research a n d w riting on revolutions. In the article ‘R evolution *,83 he surveys the social an d political struggles from the sixteenth to the n in e te e n th century, highlighting the bourgeois revolutions o f the N etherlands, E ngland and France. His co n cern , as we should expect, is w ith the way class forces a n d conflicts shaped the course o f these upheavals. T h o u g h

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subscribing to the view th at social revolts a re usually instigated by ‘intensified pressure from above’, an d also th a t ‘Revolutions m ore th an an y th in g else can only b e c arrie d fo rw ard by m in o ritie s’, K iern an d o e s n o t d isc o u n t th e ro le o f th e p o p u la r classes. In re sista n c e a n d re v o lt th e c o m m o n p e o p le c o n tr ib u te to th e m ovem ent o f history, even in defeat, to the e x te n t that ‘fear o f social upheaval’ d e term in es the actions o f states 2m d ru lin g classes. As to th e classification o f the D utch, English an d F ren ch Revolutions as ‘b o u rg eo is’ K iern an ’s view is th at ‘T hey were n o t projected, fought a n d won by any bourgeoisie, th o u g h this class would be th eir chief heir. Capi talism was as yet em bryonic.’ In d ee d , rep eatin g a proposi­ tion he advanced in the H istorians’ G roup in 1947, he adds that ‘B ourgeois revolutions, like “bourgeois a rt”, are m ade for the m ore o r less re lu c ta n t bo u rg eo isie by th e rad ic al petty-bourgeoisie.* M oreover, th e lower-middle classes, lab o u rers and, in the F rench case, th e peasantry, who did m ost o f the fighdng, d id n o t have in m in d th e fu rth e rin g o f capitalist d e v e lo p m e n t .84 N evertheless, whatever* th e co n tra d ic tio n s a n d ironies, th ese rev o lu tio n s d id rep resen t ‘progress’, which is all the m ore a p p a re n t when contrasted with th e absence o r failure o f such revolutions. A p p ro p ria te to his tragic vision o f h isto ry is K ie rn a n ’s prim ary w ork in this area, The Revolution o f 1854 in Spanish History, published in 1966.85 T h e volume is dedicated to his father, to whom h e credits his initial interest in Spain, b u t th e re can be n o d o u b t th a t it has also b een d e te rm in e d by the dram atic im pact which the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) had on the political fo rm atio n o f K iern an ’s g e n eratio n .86 As a study o f the ‘B ien io ’ o f 1854-56, the book is K iernan’s effort to unravel the historical origins o f twentiethc en tu ry Spain an d its Civil War: ‘B rief as it was a g reat deal o f history was co n ce n tra te d in it; nearly all the persistent problem s o f m o d ern Spain - political, econom ic, cultural - asserted them selves forcibly; nearly all th e parties o f the epoch had th eir roots in it.’87 Essentially, th e tragedy o f the Revolution, with its grave co nsequences for both Spain a n d E urope, was the failure o f Spanish liberals and, in th eir wake, S panish dem ocrats, to m obilize mass d isc o n te n t o r place them selves a t th e h e ad o f the p o p u lar struggles th a t p resen te d them selves, which m ight have en ab led th em to renovate Spanish

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society along the lines o f a bourgeois revolution. But, o f course, as m u ch o f K ie rn a n ’s w ork rem in d s us, history d o es n o t o p e ra te according to form ulae a n d we find in the disruption o f 1854-56 the first in terventions o f the Spanish pro letariat as a class, which in the shadows cast by the upheavals o f 1848 rep resen ted too m uch o f a th rea t to the p ro p ertied for them to risk too g reat a co m m itm en t to social transform ation.

Culture and Socialism T h o u g h very m uch the m em b er o f the original H istorians’ G roup who went on to pursue the study o f ‘who rides whom and how ’ rath e r than th e story o f the com m on people, K iernan has always set his work in the co n tex t o f class relations an d struggle .88 M oreover, he has regularly called for the past to be ex p lo red from the bo tto m up and, as n o ted earlier, he has him self w ritten several pieces in the g e n re .89 T h e question which seem s to inform these studies a n d co n cern him m ost - in response to which he offers a variety o f historical observations - is ‘W hat is the relationship betw een the struggles o f the w orking class and the m aking o f socialism?’ His observations are as objective as ever an d his assessments are far from sanguine. H e notes th at M arx may have been overly im pressed by the 1844 weavers’ insurrection in Silesia, to the p o in t o f assum ing that th e p ro letariat was innately revolutionary. K iernan disagrees: ‘T h ere are n o revolutionary classes in history, n o n e whose intrinsic n atu re com pels revolt.’ As for the revolutionary instincts o f the w orking class in p articu lar, K iernan re m in d s us th a t ‘W orkers everywhere have been rea d ier to fight against the establishm ent o f industrial capitalism than for its abolition, once firmly established .’90 N ow here, he says, has the identity o f the w orking class m erged with the cause o f socialism to the degree o r in the fashion th at M arx presum ed it would. K iernan has written several articles on the ‘m aking o f the English w orking class’ in which he describes its developm ent in the course o f the n in e te e n th cen tu ry in term s o f a m etam orphosis: w hereas th e early w orking class o f artisan a n d p ro le ta ria t was characterized by som e ‘vision’ which enabled them to conceive o f

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tu rn in g th e w orld upside dow n, the post-C hartist w orking class b ecam e ever m ore enveloped in ‘“labourism ”, c o n te n t with w hat im provem ents could be got by trade unions, a n d relinquishing any design o f transform ing society *.91 D epicted m ost concisely in his article, ‘W orking Class a n d N ation in N ineteenth-century B ritain *,92 K iern an ’s analysis is pu rsu ed in term s o f a p a rticu la r in terp retatio n o f G ram sci’s co n cep t o f hegem ony which d o es n o t red u ce it to cultural d o m in atio n . H e allows th at working-class accom m odation in th e n in e te e n th c en tu ry was accom plished in p a rt th ro u g h a co m b in atio n o f coercion, especially in the first few decades; slow refo rm in response to working-class organization a n d dem ands; an a p p a re n t o r m erely lim ited share in th e benefits o f em pire; a n d a variety o f nationalist appeals (patriotism an d jin g o ism ). B ut equally significant was the collective ¿¿^enclosure o f th e w orking class in ‘labourism*; m irro rin g the geographical a p a rth e id o f class in the cities o f V ictorian Britain. K iernan depicts the w orking class in this p erio d as ‘segregated, m orally a n d physically* in th e ex p an d in g industrial towns and, m obilized o u t o f an agricultural p ro letariat dispossessed o f b o th its land an d folk arts, lacking a ‘culture o f its own*, w hich h a d the effect o f keeping it *incomunicado' 93 In sp ired by the writings o f the British M arxist historians (those o f Hobsbawm, R ude an d T hom pson m ost especially), and carried o n m ost fervently through the H istory W orkshop m ovem ent, th ere has b een a g eneration o f scholarly exploration o f p o p u lar and w orking class experience in eighteenth- a n d n in etee n th -ce n tu ry Britain, revealing a rich variety o f custom s and cultural practices .94 K iernan, however, is no t m uch im pressed with this ‘culture*. In 1968 b efo re m uch o f this work was available, h e spoke o f the kind o f p o p u lar activities th at were b eing 'discovered* as ‘m oral lightningrods’ channelling into the gro u n d the energy which m ight otherwise b e d irected against the social o rd er .95 Even a d ecad e later h e would say q u ite bluntly th at th ere can be no ‘p ro letarian culture ex cep t on th e h um blest level*. T his m ight be taken to be m erely an expression o f an elitist view o f culture an d the arts, a n d to som e e x te n t it no d o u b t is, b u t he is also refe rrin g to w hat h e sees as th e lab o u r m o v em en t’s failure to a p p ro p ria te u n to itself, a n d develop, the c u ltu re , arts a n d ideas ‘b elo n g in g to th e c o m m o n stock .96 H e

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concedes th a t labourism has insulated the working class against some o f th e w o rst fe a tu re s o f ruling-class id eo lo g y a n d even w orse alternatives (for exam ple, Fascism), b u t, he contends, it has also in h ib ited th e effectiveness o f socialist appeals. In d eed , K iernan has arg u ed th a t a consequence o f labourism was th at ‘th e w orking class suffered fro m what may be called a c rip p led im agination . . . [and] w ithout im agination n o audacious action is possible .*97 Lest h e be m isinterpreted, it should be stressed that however m uch K iernan seem s to u n d erestim ate th e working-class co n tri­ bu tio n to th e m aking o f an a t least social-dem ocratic Britain - which adm ittedly is in g reat jeo p ard y at the m o m e n t - h e is n o t arguing th at class struggle has ever b een laid to rest o r suspended. N eith er is he saying, in the crudest sense, that British workers o f the Victorian era suffered from 'falseconsciousness’, for, as he acknowledges: ‘T h e plain w orkm an has always known w ithout aid o f syllogisms th at his em ployer lives by exploiting h im .’98 W hat he is saying, however, is th at class conflict does n o t in itself m ake socialism, or, to p u t it a n o th e r way: ‘Socialists are n o t b o rn , in any class, b u t have to be m ade .'99 It sh o u ld b e n o ted th at K iernan d id n o t jo in those W estern socialists o f th e 1960s who, exasperated by working-class ‘econom ism ’ an d ‘refo rm ism ’, p ro jected th e ir rev o lu tio n ary aspirations o n to T h ird W orld struggles, expecting peasantries to provide the basis for w orld revolution. H e com pares such n o tio n s to the eig h teen th cen tu ry d ream a b o u t ‘n oble savages *.100 Reflecting, however, th at ‘No revolution has ever succeeded w ith o u t massive su p p o rt from the peasantry*, h e adm onishes M arx for having failed to properly appreciate p easan t revolts historically. Nevertheless, while the T h ird World ‘may liberate its e l f .. . it c an n o t lib erate all o f humanity*. In the e n d his position is th at no class on its own - n e ith e r w orkers n o r peasants, in th e developed or underdeveloped countries - is capable o f b ringing a b o u t socialism. E uropean history illustrates, he says, th at som e form o f alliance is necessary .101 In th e language o f the 1980s, d o es K iernan eschew ‘class politics* in favour o f the ‘new social m ovem ents’, pluralism an d middle-class alliances ?102 His call for a ‘spring-cleaning’ o f Marxism as early as 1968, along with his historical assessm ents o f the w orking

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class, w ould seem to indicate this. T hat, however, w ould be pushing his views too far. In fact, he cannot be assim ilated to e ith er orthodoxy o r th e new socialist revisionism. A lthough h e is n o t at all optim istic a b o u t th e possibility o f such d e v elo p m e n ts, h e persists in the conviction th at working-class struggle ‘rem ain s indispensable to any th o ro u g h g o in g social c h a n g e / b o th for th e necessary stren g th it would provide to the socialist m ovem ent and for the sake o f ensuring th a t its successes entailed the m axim ization o f dem ocracy. At the sam e tim e, his historical findings lead him to su p p o rt a ‘progressive alliance, including radical middle-class g ro u p s a n d intellectuals ’.105 K ie rn a n has b e e n especially in trig u e d by th e p lace o f intellectuals in history a n d has w ritten often on the subject .104 As ever, w hat h e has to say is critical, never failing to co n sid er the in tellig en tsia’s traditional role o f su p p o rtin g the powers th at be; / a n d in th e sam e way th a t he does n o t subscribe to th e fantasy o f p easants providing the socialist alternative to the W estern w orking class, n e ith e r does he d efer to those who p ro p o se the ‘intellectual class’ as th e stand-ins. H e does, however, see an essential role for intellectuals o f th e Left which fu rth e r explains his special interest in Gram sci, who m ore than any o th e r M arxist figure c o n c e rn e d him self w ith th at problem . T h o u g h actually h e often seem s closer to L enin o n the role o f intellectuals in th e m aking o f socialism, K iernan clearly appreciates G ram sci’s th o u g h t for its assertion o f the crucial p a rt that intellectuals m ust play b o th in the developm ent o f th e ‘progressive alliance’, with the w orking class as its leading force a n d , in ‘organic relatio n sh ip ’ with th e w orking class, in the d ev elo p m en t o f socialist consciousness. Also, in spite o f his own inclination to pessimism, Kiernan is m ost sym pathetic with G ram sci’s advocacy o f socialist intellectuals p ro m o tin g the intellectual an d cultural advancem ent o f the w orking class in p rep aratio n fo r the m aking o f socialist dem ocracy .105 As p o in te d o u t a t th e b e g in n in g o f th is in tro d u c tio n , K iernan has w ritten widely on literature a n d cultural studies a n d he has b e e n insistent th a t M arxists a n d socialists co n tin u e to give ever g rea ter a tte n tio n to b o th the arts and religion. In an essay originally p u b lish ed in 1956, e n tid e d ‘W ordsworth a n d the P eople’, h e closes with th e reflection th at ‘M arxism also has m u ch to learn, th at it has

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n o t yet learn ed , from poetry .*106 (O n a m o re general level, h e has lam en ted th at th o u g h the English am ongst all E uropeans are the richest in b o th history and poetry, they are also 'th e m ost indifferent to b o th .’ ) 107 A rt o u g h t to have a natural relationship to socialism, he says: ‘After all [it] had a share in inventing th e id ea ’.108 T hese sentim ents are n o t m erely the result o f his elitist opinion o f workingclass ‘culture*; they are also linked to the view, w hich he shares with Gram sci, th at M arxism an d the m aking o f socialism are n o t to be conceived o f as entailing the rejection o f E u ro p e ’s cultural past and achievem ents b u t ra th e r th eir red em p tio n and renovation .109 As fo r the place o f religion in history, K iernan expresses am bivalence. His own studies amply reveal th at religion has for the m ost p a rt served as a conservative force an d that the clerical an d sacerdotaj elites have regularly lined u p with the rest o f the rich an d pow erful. Yet he also realizes th at religion has b e en a d e e p source o f inspiration to m ovem ents o f resistance an d reb ellio n .110 Indeed, K iernan was an active stu d e n t C ongregationalist before becom ing a student Com m unist, and h e has w ondered aloud on several occasions about the relationship between the Christian an d Jewish upbringings o f his com rades on the Left a n d th e ir ‘conversions’ to socialism an d C om m unism . A selective historical survey o f the m ovem ents, institu­ tions an d individual figures th at nourished the idea o f a social o rd e r characterized by liberty, equality a n d com m unity, K iern an ’s article, ‘Socialism, the P rophetic M em ory’, includes an acknow ledgem ent th at socialism is an u n in te n d ed progeny o f Christianity - o n e strand o f th e C h urch itself having k ep t alive th ro u g h the cen tu ries the vision o f a tru e commonwealth. H ere an d elsewhere Marxists are urged to reco n sid er th eir too often one-dim ensional views o f religion, for in g en eral, h e states, M arxism has failed to value properly ‘ideas and Ideals, the em otional wants left by religion a n d m any o th e r things o f the past, which are needed to create the will to socialism ’.111 Yet K iernan also w arns against illusions a n d d e lu sio n s derived from history. E choing the M arx o f the Eighteenth Brumaire, he concedes th a t because socialism is to be a ‘new th in g ’ it can n o t be a p p ro ach ed in reverse, ‘eyes fixed o n fam iliar landm arks o f the past’. T h is may be tru e, b u t n o t in the obvious form in w hich it is presented. K iernan’s own writings illustrate that however ‘new ’ a

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social form ation may appear, th e ‘past is never m ere d e a d ru b b le to b e c a rted away’. F u rth e rm o re , as g rea t a h in d ran c e to th e m aking o f socialism , ind eed o f progressive social change generally, is th e c o n te m p o ra ry self-deception th a t history does n o t actually c o u n t fo r very m uch. K iernan him self writes o f this am nesia: ‘H istory, it o fte n seem s, weaves everyday its lessons, a n d every n ig h t, like P en elo p e, unpicks th e web, leaving m e n ’s m inds as blank as ever .*112 K iernan’s w ritings assert em phatically th e necessity o f history b o th fo r p e rsp ectiv e a n d c ritiq u e a n d fo r re m e m b ra n c e a n d im agination; and a t th e sam e tim e, they attest to his own persistent d ed icatio n to objective a n d critical exploration a n d d ereification o f th e p a s t H is findings a n d conclusions may well be subjected to criticism a n d revision in th e lig h t o f fu rth e r research, b u t however o ften scholars o f th e R ight o r Left c o n te n d with a n d challenge K ie rn a n 's work a n d arg u m en ts, they would d o well to c o n sid er carefully a n d try to im bue th e ir own with th e k in d o f rig o ro u s co m m itm en t ‘to ru b b in g history against th e g ra in ’ so characteristic o f his .113 1 arg ued in The British M arxist Historians th at while H ilton, Hill, H obsbaw m , R udé a n d T h o m p so n have n o t b e e n prim arily strategists o f socialist politics, by way o f th e ir historical practice they have b e e n pursuing a p articu lar political strategy. T his m ig h t be c o m p re h e n d e d as th e creation o f a ‘historical aesth etic', a n d th eir w ritin g s se en as c o n trib u tio n s to th e fo rm a tio n o f a c ritic a l, d em o cratic and socialist historical consciousness. T h o u g h , as I have n o ted here, K iernan’s work both intersects and diverges in significant ways from th a t of his fo rm e r com rad es o f the H istorians’ G ro u p , his wide-ranging historical efforts have consistently been b o u n d u p with this project. H ere I w ould recall th e words o f th e Germ an-Jewish writer, W alter Benjam in, th at ‘O nly th a t historian will have th e gift o f fan n in g th e spark o f h o p e in th e past who is firm ly convinced th a t even the deadmW n o t be safe from the enem y [th e ru lin g class] if h e wins. A nd this enem y has n o t ceased to be victorious’. For it m ig h t be said that while his fellow-historians have b een ‘fan n in g the spark o f h o p e ', K iernan has b e en rem inding us th a t ‘T h e enem y has n o t ceased to be victorious .’ 114 T h o u g h K iern an ’s own vision o f history is tragic - an d we

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m ight well ask ourselves if it could be anything but so - it is important that we recognize how he understands this sense of the past: W hat makes tragedy is n o t failure in action, but the impossibility of seeing its results, so that every tragedy is a tragedy of errors; and if tragic drama ends on a note of acceptance, of turning away from past to future, this only epitomizes human experience that through storms and stresses, the strife of wills and its unguessable outcome, new beginnings are at last reached.115 Notes 1 Y.G. K iernan, The Lords o f Human Kind, revised e d itio n , Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1972; European Empiresfrom Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960, London: Fontana 1982; Marxism and Imperialism, London: Edward Arnold 1974; America: The New Imperialism, London: Zed Press 1978; new preface, 1980; British Diplomacy in China, 18801885, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1939; reprinted with new foreword, New York: Octagon Books 1970; and Metcalfe's Mission to Lahore, 1808-1809, Lahore: Punjab Government Record Office, Monograph 21,1943. * V.G. Kiernan, ‘Foreign Interests in the War of the Pacific', Hispanic American Historical Review, 35, 1 (February 1955), pp. 14-36; ‘India, China, and Sikkim: 1886-1890’, Indian Historical Quarterly, 31,1 (March 1955), pp. 32-51; ‘India, China, and Tibet; 1885-1886\ Journal of the Greater Indian Historical Society, 14,2 (1955), pp. 117-42; ‘Kashgar and the Politics of Central Asia: 1868-1878’, Cambridge HistoricalJournal, 11,3 (1955), pp. 317-42; ‘Colonial Africa and its Armies’, in B. Bond and I. Roy (eds), War and Society, London: Croom Helm 1977, vol. 2, pp. 20-39; ‘The Old Alliance: England and Portugal’, in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register 1973, London: Merlin Press 1973, pp. 261-81; and ‘India and Pakistan: Twenty Years After’, in R. Miliband andj. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register 1966, London: Merlin Press 1966, pp. 305-20. For a complete bibliography of Kiernan's writings to 1977, see the special issue of New Edinburgh Review, ‘History and Humanism', prepared in his honour: 38-39 (Summer-Autumn 1977), pp. 77-79. * Tom Bottomore, et al. (eds), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1983. 4 See, for examples, V.G. Kiernan, ‘Intellectuals in History’, V/inchester

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Research Papers in the Humanities, Winchester: King Alfred’s College 1979; ‘Class and Ideology: The Bourgeoisie and its Historians’, History ofEuropean Ideas, 6, 3 (1985), pp. 267-86; and ‘Evangelicalism and the French Revolution’, Past (si*Present, 1 (1952), pp. 44-56. See V.G. Kiernan, ‘Working Class and Nation in Nineteenth-century Britain' (1978) [chapter 7 in History, Classes and Nation-States: Selected Writings of V.G. Kiernan, edited by Harvey J. Kaye, Cambridge: Polity Press 1988 - Ed.)\ also, ‘Victorian London: Unending Purgatory’, New Left Review, 76 (November-December 1972), pp. 73-90; and ‘Labour and the Literate in Nineteenth-century Britain’, in D. Martin and D. Rubinstein (eds), Ideology and the Labour Movement: Essays Presented to John Saville, London: Croom Helm 1979. pp. 32-61. See, for examples, V.G. Kiernan, ‘Wordsworth and the People’, in J. Saville et al. (eds), Democracy and the labour Movement, London: Lawrence and Wishart 1956, reprinted with a postscript in D. Craig (ed.), Marxists on Literature: An Anthology, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books 1975, pp. 161-206; ‘Human Relations in Shakespeare’, in A. Kettle (ed.), Shakespeare in a Changing World, New York: International Publishers 1964, reprinted in Eric Bentley (ed.), The Great Playwrights, New York: Doubleday 1970, vol. 1, pp. 283-300; ‘Art and the Necessity of History’, in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register 1965, London: Merlin Press 1965, pp. 216-36; ‘Civilization and the Dance’, Dunfermline College of Physical Education Occasional Papers, 2 (April 1976); and ‘Private Property in History’, in J. Goody, J. Thirsk and E.P. Thompson (eds), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1976, pp. 361-98. V.G. Kiernan (tr. and ed.), Poems from Iqbal, Bombay 1947; revised edition London: Murray 1955; Poems by Fait, New Delhi 1958; revised edition London: George Allen and Unwin 1971; From Volga to Ganga, Bombay: People’s Publishing House 1947. HarveyJ. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians, Oxford: Polity Press 1984. Ibid., pp. 8-18; and Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’, in M. Cornforth (ed.), Rebels and their Causes, London: Lawrence and Wishart 1978, pp. 21-47. Kiernan’s article is ‘Evangelicalism and the French Revolution’, see note 4 above. Also, see the retrospective in the 100th issue of Past & Present by Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm. Barrington Moore, Jr, Sodal Origins ojDictatorship and Democracy, Boston: Beacon Press 1966, pp. 522-3. [ For example, see V.G. Kiernan, ‘The Covenanters: A Problem of Creed and Class’, in F. Krantz (ed.), History From Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honour of GeorgeRude, Montreal: Concordia University Press 1985, pp. 95-115.

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15 Perry Anderson, Lineages ofthe Absolutist State, London: New Left Books 1974, p. 11, and Kaye, The British Marxist Historians, p. 229. 14 One cannot help but note once again the biographical relationship between Nonconformism and socialism found in the lives of Kiernan, Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompson and Sheila Rowbotham. See my references in The British Marxist Historians, p. 103. It should be added that Kiernan has for many years kept notes towards a book to be called ‘Religion in History*. 15 H. S. Ferns, Readingfrom Left to Right, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1983, pp. 76-7. 16 SeeT.E.B. Howarth, Cambridge Between Two Wars, London: Collins, 1978. For a recent fictional representation, see Raymond Williams, Loyalties, London: Chatto and Windus 1985. For Kiernan *s own thoughts on Cambridge in the 1930s, see his piece, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’, in R.W. Bowen (ed.), E. H. Norman: His Life and Scholarship, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1984, pp. 25—45. 17 Ibid. Cornford died fighting for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Klugmann remained a Party activist and official until his death in 1977. On Cornford, see Kiernan’s 'Recollections’, in P. Sloan (cd.),John Cornford: A Memoir, London:Jonathan Cape 1938, pp. 11624; and Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War, Boston: Utde, Brown and Co. 1966. 18 Norman returned to Canada to pursue an outstanding career as a diplomat and scholar until his death in 1957, when he committed suicide having been hounded by McCarthyite witch-hunters. See Bowen (ed.), E. H. Norman-, also, Reg Whitaker, ‘Return to the Crucible - the Persecution of E. H. Norman’, The Canadian Forum (November 1986), pp. 11-28. 19 Kiernan, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’. 20 See note 7. Also, see with regard to Kiernan’s work in this area his contributions to Ali SardarJafri and K S. Duggal (eds), Iqbal Commemor­ ative Volume, Delhi, 1980; these are ‘Iqbal as Prophet of Change’ [included in the present volume - Ed], ‘Iqbal and Milton’, and ‘Iqbal and Wordsworth’. 21 V.G. Kiernan, The March of Time, Lahore: Gur Das Kapur and Sons 1946; Castanets, Lahore: Lahore Art Press 1941; and ‘Brockle’ and ‘The Senorita’ in Longman's Miscellany (Calcutta), 3, 4 (1945 and 1946). 22 Hobsbawm, T h e Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’. 25 See V.G. Kiernan, State and Society in Europe, 1550-1650, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1980. 24 Hobsbawm, T h e Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’, p. 24. 25 For examples: in Britain, David Cannadine, T h e State of British History’, Times Literary Supplement, 10 October 1986, pp. 1139-40; and in the United States, Thomas Bender, ’Making History Whole Again’,

48

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New York Times Book Review, 6 October 1985, pp. 142-43. DoiYiinick La Capra, History and Criticism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986. 27 E. H. Carr, What is History f, New York: Vintage Books 1961, p. 69. A recent assertion of the conservative position is Alan Beattie, History in Peril, London: Centre for Policy Studies 1987. 588 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Notes on Marxism in 1968% in R. Miliband andJ. Saville (eds). The Socialist Register 1968, London: Merlin Press 1968, p. 182. w Kiernan, ‘Class and Ideology', p. 268. 10 Kiernan, ‘Notes on Marxism in 1968’, p. 184. 51 From Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind, p. xiv; and a letter to HJK of 8 June 1986. 52 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Problems of Marxist History’, New Left Review, 161 (January-February 1987), p. 106. 55 Kiernan, ‘Notes on Marxism in 1968’, pp. 186, 208. Indeed, the opening words of Kiernan’s first book, British Diplomacy in China, are: ‘All abstraction falsifies’ (p. xxvii). 54 Hobsbawm, ‘The Historians' Group of the Communist Party’, p. 31; and Christopher Hill in conversation with the editor in January 1987. 55 Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1946, e.g., pp. 17-18. M Keith Tribe, ‘The Problem of Transition and Question of Origin’, in his Genealogies of Capitalism, London: Macmillan 1981, pp. 19-21, also from papers in the possession of V.G. Kiernan. The Group’s ‘position’ was stated in ‘State and Revolution in Tudor and Sluart England', Communist Review (July 1948), pp. 207-14. 57 See Kaye, The British Marxist Historians, ch. 2, pp. 23-69. 58 See T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (eds). The BrennerDebate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985; and Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1985. Christopher Hill’s own ‘bourgeois revolution thesis’ has been much revised; sec Kaye’, The British Marxist Historians, ch. 4, pp. 99-130. *9 See Kaye, ibid., esp. pp. 36-40, 51-53. It should be noted, however, that Kiernan’s general position on merchant vs. industrial capital has also been revised; see his Development, Imperialism and some Misconceptions, University College of Swallsea, Centre for Development Studies 1981, Occasional Paper 13, p. 25. 40 Though, o f course, so too have Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson. For exam ples, see: Hobsbawm’s ‘Karl M arx’s C ontribution to Historiography’ in R Blackburn (ed.), Ideology in Social Science, London: Fontana, 1972, pp. 265-83; and Thompson’s The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London: Merlin Press 1978. 41 ‘History’ [chapter 1 in History, Classes and Nation-States-Ed]\also* see

Seeing T hin gs Historically

49

Kiernan’s essays in Marxism and Imperialism. 42 Kiernan, ‘Notes on Marxism in 1968’, pp. 178,183, 45 F. Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, New York: International Publishers 1966. Kiernan, ‘H istory', p. 43. Also, see K iernan’s ‘Foreword* to F. Engels, The Condition o f the Working Class in England, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1987, pp. 9-25. 44 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Gramsci and Marxism* [chapter 2 in History, Classes and Nation-States - Ed ] and ‘The Socialism of Antonio Gramsci*, in K. Coates (ed.). Essays on Socialist Humanism, Nottingham: Spokesman Books 1972, pp. 65-86. Also, see his article ‘Gramsci and the Other Continents’, New Edinburgh Review,?! (1985), pp. 19-23. For Gramsci’s writings, see Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and tr. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, New York: International Publishers 1971; and Lynne Lawner (ed.), Lettersfrom Prison, New York: Harper 8c Row 1973. 4* Kiernan, ‘The Socialism of Antonio Gramsci’, p. 75; and 'Gramsci and Marxism', p. 45. Related to this, see HarveyJ. Kaye, ‘Political Theory and History: Antonio Gramsci and the British Marxist Historians', Italian Quarterly, 97-8 (Summer-Fall 1984), pp. 145-66. 46 Kiernan, ‘Gramsci and Marxism’, p. 73. 47 Kiernan, ‘Art and the Necessity of History’. 48 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Reflections on Braudel', Social History, 4 (January 1977), p. 522. 49 This part of the book, which would normally appear first, is situated rather late in the text. This is probably due to the fact that the work was attuned to the requirements of diplomatic history, the latter section added by a young Marxist interested in questions of social and political structure, change and development 50 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Foreword to the 1970 edition', British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885, p. xii. See note 2 above for references to his post-war and later diplomatic studies, though additionally should be noted his article ‘Diplomats in Exile', in R Hatton and M. S. Anderson (eds), Studies in Diplomatic History, London: Longman 1970, pp. 301-21, one of the things which he says he most enjoyed writing. 51 This concern also led him to write ‘Britons Old and New', Colin Holmes (ed.), Immigrants and Minorities in British Society, London: George Allen and Unwin 1978, pp. 23-59. This article surveys British historical development in terms of its being a receiver of immigrants and refugees. Also, see Kiernan’s pugnacious piece, ‘After Empire’, Nero Edinburgh Review, 37 (Spring 1977), pp. 23-35. 52 Kiernan, European Empires, p. 230. Another similarity between this book and The Lords of Human Kind is the style in which they are written. A British reviewer of The Lords refers to it as ‘historical impressionism’; the reviewer of European Empires in the American Historical Revieiu (June 1983) describes its form as 'pointillist'. I would agree with the latter,

o

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applying his description to both books for, indeed, the two are characterized by numerous ‘capsule accounts* of incidents, episodes and batdes drawn by Kiernan from the entire geography of imperialism to provide particular pictures of its landscape. M For an example of a related article, see V.G. Kiernan, ‘American Hegemony under Revision’, in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register 1974, London: Merlin Press 1974, pp. 302-30. 54 Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism, p. 1. 55 Kiernan, ‘Imperialism, American and European’, in his Marxism and Imperialism, p. 130. 56 Kiernan, Marxism and Imperialism, pp. viii, 67. 57 Ibid., p. viii. ‘The Marxist Theory of Imperialism and its Historical Formation’ is the first essay in Marxism and Imperialism, pp. 1-68. 58 Kiernan, European Empires, p. 227. Unfortunately, Kiernan provides no estimates here; nor do we know if he is including the African slave trade prior to the nineteenth century (which, admittedly, Africans themselves participated in quite actively). 59 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Imperialism and Revolution’, in R. Porter and M. Teich (eds), Revolution in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986, p. 129. 60 Ibid., p. 121. (il V.G. Kiernan, Tennyson, King Arthur and Imperialism’, in R. Samuel and G. Stedman Jones (eds), Culture, Ideology and Politics, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1982, p. 139. 62 Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind, p. xxvi. ndon 1965, pp. 296-98. 4S Hobsbawm, p. 50.

go

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

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War of Independence, pp. 32-3. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., pp. 26-7. The Eastern Question, p. 533. Ibid., p. 573. War of Independence, p. 31 ; cf. On Colonialism, pp. 70-71. War of Independence, pp. 150-56. Cf. On Colonialism, pp. 65, 67, where he reproaches English liberals for regretting the elimination of Indian princes. 51 War of Independence, pp. 34-36. M Ibid., pp 30-31; cf. On Colonialism, pp. 24-25. Marx did stress the power, but only of inertia, of the large India House bureaucracy in London: On Colonialism, pp. 62-63. 54 As n. 51. M 0j Independence, p. 33. 56 Minute on Indian Education (1835). 57 The German Ideology, p. 57. 58 Ibid., pp. 32, 57; cf. p. 67. •w War of Independence, p. 36. In 1881 we find him complaining of the railways being ‘useless to the Hindus’, On Colonialism, p. 304. Knowles, p. 322. 7 War of Indefjendence, p. 40. Ibid., p. 112. ,w Ibid., p. 160. Seejagdish Raj, ‘Introduction of the Taluqdari System in O u d h ', in Contributions to Indian Economic History, I, ed. T. Raychaudhuri, Calcutta 1960, pp. 46 ff. 70 War of Independence, p. 130. This estimate is in line with that of Jagdish Raj, op. cit., pp. 55-6. 71 War of Independence, p. 203. 72 See Benoy Ghose, T h e Bengali Intelligentsia and the Revolt’, in Rebellion 1857, pp. 103 if. 75 As n. 2. 74 The Eastern Question, p. 576. 75 War of Independence, p. 43. 7,i Hobsbawm, p. 46. 77 See e.g. Pavlov, op. cit., chap. I. 7H See Bal Krishna, Commercial Relations betxueen India and England, 1601 to

Marx and India

9 *

1757, London 1924, chap. I. Capital, I, viii. HO The German Ideology, pp. 50 flf.; Formations, pp. Ill ff. 81 Formations, p. 84; there is a similar phrase in Capital, I, p. 91, and again in III, p. 388. 82 See the early chapters of L.C.Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, London 1926. 83 See a valuable discussion of the failure of true capitalism to emerge in old China, in L. Dermigny, La Chine et VOccident. Le commerce a Canton au xviiir siecle. 1719-183), Paris 1964. pp. 58 ff.. 321 ff.. 817 ff.. 1.434 ff. 84 V.G. Kiernan, The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History, London 1966, pp. 154, 195. 85 In Marx on China, pp. 45 ff. As with India, some other articles and letters on China are to be found in On Colonialism. 86 Jain, op.cit., p. 185. 87 See R. Dutt, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, 7th edn., London 1950, chap. xii, ‘History of Tariffs’. 88 On the early stages see W.N. Lees, Tea Cultivation . . . in India, London 1863. 89 See e.g. G.M. Broughton, Labour in Indian Industries, London 1924, p. 75. 90 See e.g. V. Anstey, The Economic Development of India, 4lh edn., London 1952, Introd., and pp. 272 ff. 91 War of Independence, p. 37. 92 JA . Hobson, Imperialism, London 1902, part II, chap. V, section IV. 93 On Colonialism, p. 202. 94 War of Independence, pp. 37-38. 95 See Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (1844), English edn., Moscow 1956, pp. 166-67. 96 The Wealth of Nations (1776), World’s Classic edn. 1904, Vol. 2, p. 236. 97 Ibid., pp. 184-85, 202-05. 98 War of Independence, pp. 31, 47. 99 N.K. Nigam, Delhi in 1857, Delhi 1957, pp. 82, 95. 100 War of Independence, pp. 124 ff.; On Colonialism, pp. 145-48. 101 War of Independence, pp. 86-90. 102 On Colonialism, pp. 63, 70. 103 War of Independence, p. 209 (9.4.1859). 104 Ibid., p. 208 (14.1.1858). 105 Vol. 2, pp. 210-11. 106 Marx on China, p. 55. 107 On Colonialism, p. 13. 108 Marx on China, pp. 90-91. 109 Ibid., p. 87. MO Ibid., pp. 91-2. This anticipates a passage in Capital, Vol. Ill, pp. 39179

\2

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93. 1.1 Ibid., pp. I fT. 1.2 Marx on China, p. 87. 1.5 Ibid., pp. 9, 66. 1,4 On Colonialism, p. 286 (to Engels, 8.10.1858). 115 Marx on China, p. 51, 1.6 As n. 114. 1.7 On Colonialism, p. 313; cf. p. 311. 1.8 Hobsbawm, pp. 11, 13. 119 L. van dcr Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari, Penguin 1962, p. 69. 120 Hobsbawm, p. 38. 121 Poems from Iqbal, trans. V.G. Kiernan, London 1955, p. 43. 122 The German Ideology, p. 46.

V ictor G. Kiernan

Marx , Engels, and the Indian Mutiny

E nglishm en o f the Mutiny years cam e to very diverse conclusions a b o u t w hat h a d caused th e su d d en e ru p tio n , a n d In d ian historians differ as widely am ong them selves now. In the p erio d o f the national m ovem ent stories o f the M utiny h elp ed to rouse patriotic em o tio n , a n d for this p urpose it was all th e b e tter for being a m ysterious event in to w hich anyone was free to read w hatever h e w anted. Patriotism , itself in m any ways an illusion, has often fed on myths. Socialism, having m ore am bitious aim s for the future, requires a m ore exact u n d e rstan d in g o f the past; in m o d ern Asia w here it interacts with th e naive nationalism th at peasants easily com e to feel, though n o t to originate, it has to make a special e ffo rt to achieve this. Briefly the choice am ong presentday views o f the M utiny lies betw een seeing it as o n the w hole feudalistic a n d retrogressive, o r p o p u lar an d forward-looking. O f th e first R.C. M ajum dar may be taken as a n accredited e x p o n en t, o f th e second S.B. C h a u d h u ri .1 M arx an d Engels arrived at no clear-cut diagnosis. T hey saw o f course, as everyone saw, th a t the rebellion revealed very strong anti-British feelings, n o t co n fin ed to the sepoy army, th o u g h also far from universal; b u t o n balance th eir o p inions o r conjectures fit m ore readily in to th e first o f the two hypotheses. Clearly the annexation o f O u d h in early February 1856, in L o rd D alhousie’s eyes his crow ning service to In d ia on e m o n th b e fo re h e laid dow n office as g o v e rn o r-g e n era l, h a d a cru c ial im p o rtan ce. From this old British p ro tecto rate o r vassal kingdom a g re a t n u m b e r o f sepoys had always b een recru ited , a n d it was to be

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th e biggest storm -centre o f the rebellion. M arx fo u n d reasons o f his own for disapproving o f the a n n ex a tio n ,2 b u t o f local conditions a n d o f how th e people would be affected he could form only a rough idea. R um ours o f th e com ing event had b een causing excitem ent in O u d h fo r m o nths b efo reh an d . D alhousie was convinced th a t the o rd in ary p eo p le were b o u n d to welcom e it. E m pire-builders have always b een able to convince them selves th at th e p eo p le they m ean t to a n n ex w ere thirsting to com e u n d e r th eir en lig h ten e d rule; and D alhousie was a religious m an with a g reat deal o f C u rz o n ’s selfrighteousness a n d autocratic tem per, as well as his energy a n d sense o f duty. H e h ad n o t b een to see O u d h him self, b u t h e cam e from a Scotland still cram m ed with the m o u ld erin g castles w here m en like his own ancestors lived with th eir bands o f retainers a n d k ep t the c o u n try in turm oil. T h at was precisely th e con d itio n o f O u d h now, full o f stro n g h o ld s o ccu p ied by feudal m ag n ates each w ith his m in iatu re c o u rt a n d army, a small replica o f the parasitic c o u rt at Lucknow. T he ram shackle m onarchy kept a disorderly arm y o f 60,000 m en, an e n o rm o u s b u rd e n for so lim ited a territory, whose sole fu n ctio n was the collection by force o f arm s o f revenue to be sp en t o n p o m p an d luxury at the capital. All this double load fell, Dalhousie co rrecd y saw, o n the peasantry, whom h e sincerely p itie d .3 W hat he d id n o t see was that, since the C om pany was always h a rd u p a n d its land-taxes consequently were far too high, its ru le m ig h t be only an ex ch an g e o f evils. T h e prelim inary revenue settlem ent m ade in O u d h in 1856 was less sweepingly anti-feudal than the progressive party am ong th e British w ould have liked, an d left a good h a lf o f th e province still u n d e r th e taluqdars, o r feudal lords .4 But it was en o u g h to alarm th em , especially as revenue d u e from them would now have to be p aid in full instead o f b ein g d o d g ed as it h a d b een before. A nything th at could upset o r dislocate the new governm ent would be welcom e to them ; it would give them a breathing-space if no m ore, a n d a h o p e o f b ein g able to g e t b e tte r term s. N othing could be m o re con v en ien t to them than trouble in the sepoy army. T h ere h a d often b e e n ^mutinies before; th e difference in 1857 was th at th e tro u b le was far bigger a n d was n o t du e to the usual m atter-of-fact griev­

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ances, b u t was instigated by w hatever agency set afloat th e ru m o u r th at th e British m ean t to deprive the soldiers o f th eir religion. T hey w ere in a generally resdess m ood, ready to believe any ill o f th e ir foreign m asters, even a story as absurd as this. N o one was in a b e tte r position to set the story afloat th an the taluqdars, on whose estates a great m any o f the sepoys’ families lived. O th e r feudal interests, lords a n d princes outside O u d h , an d jeh ad ists o f Muslim revivalism, jo in e d in, e ith er by previous a rra n g e m e n t o r to p ro fit by a situation they saw developing. Many o f the big landow ners may have b e en astonished a n d frig h ten ed by th e violence o f th e arm y’s explosion, a n d the possibility o f its getting ideas in to its h e ad th at w ould be bad for them as well as fo r th e British. As a class th eir tactics w ere to m ake them selves as pow erful as they could d u rin g th e breakdow n o f order, until the British in th e ir death-struggle with th e arm y were com pelled to th in k o f buying them off, an d th en m ake haste to change sides. In the e n d they e m e rg ed with nearly all O u d h m ore firmly in th eir clutches than before. O f all c o n c e r n e d in th e c o n flic t, th ey a lo n e , th e m o st selfish a n d reactionary, d id well o u t o f it. T h e villagers they preyed on were th en left with n o b e tter p ro te c tio n th an a few pio u s p hrases from m inisters far away in L o n d o n . W hat th eir feelings w ere d u rin g 1857-58 is less easy to m ake o u t T hey h a d long b e en engaged in a ru n n in g struggle to d efen d them selves against the e n cro ach m en ts o f the taluqdars; b u t th e British in 1856, while d o in g e n o u g h to antagonize the lords, did to o litd e to win th e confidence o f th e peasants. Ig n o ran c e an d conservatism , if n o th in g m ore rational, m ight m ake them p refer the evil they knew to the o n e they did not. A nd the sepoys were th eir relatives o r neighbours. But situated as they were, they really h a d little choice; the taluqdars h eld the w hip h a n d .5 In all th a t we see o f m artial p rep aratio n s in O u d h d u rin g th e struggle, it is the taluqdars a n d rajas collecting forces a n d guns a n d stre n g th e n in g th eir forts. Similarly in n u m ero u s cases we see dispossessed landow ners recovering th eir estates from new m en, b u t scarcely ever lands being taken over by th e ir actual cultivators. India co m p ared with C hina had a less m ature tradition o f p easant revolt, th o u g h peasants had often in old days too b een draw n into risings

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started by th eir superiors - particularly in this sam e G angetic region in th e tim e o f the Sultans o f Delhi, w hen the villager m ust have felt anti-M uslim , o r anti-Turk, m uch as in 1857 he felt anti-C hristian, o r anti-British. T h e contrast betw een India and C hina is h eig h ten ed by th e fact th at the M utiny cam e towards the e n d o f the Taiping R eb ellio n , an upheaval on a vaster scale a n d o n e defin itely o f peasants a n d artisans with a c ru d e social program m e. It is o p e n to speculation th a t if the British arm y (one o f whose officers eventually h e lp e d to suppress the Taipings) had b een as feeble as the C hinese army, th e M utiny likewise m ight have spread w ider a n d d e e p e r and developed a m ore distinct social an d agrarian character. In th e C om m unist Party o f In d ia ’s im p o rtan t com m em o­ ratio n volum e o f 1957, its ed ito r seem s closer to the m ark w hen he rejects any conception that ‘the Indian peasantry du rin g this struggle decisively b u rst th ro u g h th e feudal b o n d s’, than w hen he speaks o f class strife being ‘su b o rd in ated to the b ro ad n e ed o f national unity against th e foreign u su rp e r ’.6 A re a d e r fam iliar with the party’s h isto ry may d e te c t som e traces o r ech o es o f its own past in its in te rp retatio n o f the national past; a n d in its language o f 1942-47 th e w ord ‘p atrio tic’ a n d the w atchw ord o f ‘national unity’ were very m uch to th e fore. At o d d m om ents in 1857 the th o u g h t o f an Indian nation can be glim psed, b u t only as socialism can be glim psed in th e class struggles o f the fifteenth a n d sixteenth cen tu ries in central Europe. W hat stands o u t is that those provinces which had a strongly m arked local nationality o f th eir own, a n d had b een free to assert it since th e b reak u p o f the M ughal em p ire - Bengal, th e Punjab, R ajputana, M aharashtra, the South - were from the p o in t o f view o f a u n ite d India non-national, o r even anti-national, because ‘In d ia 1 had always m ea n t an em p ire im posed on them by force. D uring the reb e llio n they w ere all e ith e r n e u tra l o r even pro-B ritish. O nly ‘H in d o stá n ’, the H indi-speaking region o r G angetic valley th a t had b een th e platform o f the old em pires, w anted an ‘In d ia ’, b u t could visualize it in no o th e r form than as the resu rrectio n o f a b u ried past whose fitting symbol was the decrepit B ahadur Shah, descendant o f th e M ughals. H indostán was populous, a n d h eld the strategic c e n tra l p o sitio n ; b u t a lm o st a lo n e o f th e m ain reg io n s o f th e

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su b co n tin en t it had no sense o r tradition o f unity o f its own, because it was to o big a n d sprawling, a n d too m ixed in religion a n d culture, with cities pardy Muslim in a mosdy H in d u countryside, a n d because its m em ories w ere o f em p ire m ore th an o f national revolt against em pire. M artial sp irit a n d a b se n c e o f n a tio n a l c o h e sio n m ad e H in d o sta n a p rim e re c ru itin g -g ro u n d fo r m e rc e n a ry soldiers, som ew hat as G erm any had been for early m o d ern E urope w hen the sole G erm an ‘national* fram ew ork was th at vaguely splen d id relic, th e Holy R om an E m pire. By supplying troops to the Com pany, as it had form erly d o n e to the M ughals, H indostan was in a certain sense reb u ild in g its em pire; a n d the Sikh attitu d e in 1857-58, far m ore anti-sepoy than anti-British, show ed how violendy o n e o f th e o th e r provinces m ight rea ct to this kind o f sub-im perialism . Ju d g in g by th e m uch b e tte r show ing o f the sepoys at D elhi than a t Lucknow, they fo u n d m ore inspiration in the capital o f the old em p ire th an in th e capital o f the kingdom to which m any o f them b elo n g ed by b irth . O u d h as a state was a m eaningless ab o rtio n , an accidental frag m en t o f H indostan to which no loyalty could b e felt. All In d ia’s growing-points now were o n the coasts, in contact with th e o u te r w orld th at all its em p ero rs had neglected: H indostan lay in lan d , land-locked, d e a f to the stirrings o f the age. N ot until the days o f N e h ru a n d the C ongress would it find its historic role again, as the h u b o f an Indian wheel, a n d th en in a new style. In 1857 B engalis rea d in g th e ir S hakespeare a n d th in k in g o f th eir in v e stm e n ts in C o m p a n y lo an s m u st have c o n te m p la te d th e M utineers m uch as E nglishm en in 1745, with no g rea t love for G eorge II, co n tem p lated the wild H ighlanders p o u rin g dow n from th eir n o rth e rn fastnesses to d e th ro n e him an d bring back a banished dynasty. A good m any affinities m ight be discovered betw een the last o u tb u rst o f the old feudal Scotland in 1745 an d th at o f the old feudal In d ia in 1857; an d the brutalities o f the repression in 185758 can be b e tte r c o m p re h e n d e d w hen the atrocious trea tm e n t o f th e H ig h land w ounded, prisoners, non-com batants by th e English arm y after the b attle o f C ulloden in 1746 is re m e m b e re d .7 ‘N o w h ere ’, M arx w rote to E ngels d u rin g 1857, ‘is th e relatio n sh ip betw een factors o f p ro d u ctio n a n d th e stru c tu re o f

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society m o re clearly illustrated than in the history o f the arm y .’8 It is rem arkable that although old India was perpetually at war, in the e n d its level o f m ilitary proficiency was scarcely h ig h er than th a t o f pacific C hina. T his w ent with a stagnant society n e ith e r truly feudal, in th e E u ro p ean sense, n o r m od ern ; its soldiers were a floating mass o f professionals, w ithout even the loyalty o f th e em ployee to his paymaster, since they were paid so irregularly. C om pany wages were very low, b u t they were regular, a n d th ere were pensions; they gave In d ia its first taste o f an im personal, m ethodical relatio n sh ip o f capital a n d labour. It was the bourgeois a n d unw arlike British who organized th e first effective arm y in m o d ern Asia. T h e ir own arm y desig n ed fo r service in E urope provided a m odel; it too was o n e o f m ercenaries, rec ru ite d largely from the c o n q u e re d H ighlands an d Ire la n d . R e c ru itm e n t fro m fo re ig n so u rc e s h a d always b e e n co m m o n p lace in Asian arm ies. E q u ip m en t in the sepoy arm y was p o o r e n o u g h , a n d the m en were badly fed, housed in unsanitary q u a rte rs , d re s se d u p u n d e r th e tro p ic a l sun in p re p o s te ro u s uniform s, heavily overloaded on the m arch; they had low-grade, often absentee British officers .9 Yet they, along with British troops in n o b e tter condition, c o n q u ered India. In m ilitary history there are only shades a n d degrees o f stupidity an d inefficiency. M arx an d Engels were aware th at the ‘Bengal A rm y’ was com posed mainly o f high-caste H indus from outside Bengal .10 T hese w ere peasan ts, serving as infantry, like the ran k a n d file in all E u ro p ean arm ies o f the eig h tee n th a n d n in e te e n th centuries; this m ade them am enable to a grin d o f drill a n d discipline unknow n to In d ia n old-style arm ies, mostly m ade u p o f ho rsem en who liked to th in k o f them selves as g en tlem en o f fo rtu n e, a m ob o f individuals instead o f an in teg rated mass. T his class shift gave the sepoy arm y a m ore ‘p o p u la r’ character; it may in a dim fashion have felt a kind o f anti-feudal class consciousness as it h elped a C om pany o f m erchants to tram ple o n rajas an d overturn thrones, as if taking an o blique revenge for the way its fellow-peasants in O u d h were tram p led on by th e taluqdars. O n the o th e r h and, as B rahm ins a n d Rajputs who took service partly because they th o u g h t it d erogatory to th eir caste dignity to h an d le the plough a n d till the field them selves ,11 these m en w ere tiny land o w n ers ra th e r th an actual cultivators. T his

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fostered th e ir m artial spirit a n d self-esteem, b u t it m ust also have re n d e re d their attitude towards feudal rulers an d landlords an am bi­ valent one: they had som ething in com m on with the aristocracy, and m ight th e m ore easily be got to follow its lead in a crisis like 1857. T h e re was the sam e am bivalence in the arm y’s attitu d e towards its British em ployers, who paid it faithfully and led it to victory, b u t treated it with c o n te m p t a n d often injustice. It was tru e, as M arx w rote, th a t in this arm y the British created In d ia ’s ‘first g en eral cen tre o f resistance’ to th e m ,12 b u t only in a certain sense. Like th e w estern-educated élite in Bengal, th en a n d m uch later, it was ready and eag er to h e lp the British to ru n India, if they would only behave reasonably and give it the status o f a ju n io r partner. It h a d n o e x p erien ce like the War o f In d ep e n d en c e o f 1808-14 which M arx spoke o f as having ‘tra n sfo rm e d a n d rev o lu tio n iz ed ’ the Spanish arm y .13 O n the co n trary its latest exploits had b een attacks o n th e in d e p e n d e n c e o f th ree peoples each with a strong identity, th e Sikhs a n d A fghans and B urm ese. It may have le a rn e d som e­ th in g from con tact with them ; b u t w hat it lea rn ed may have b een n o t so m uch ‘patriotism* as an aspiration towards som ething like th e privileges o f a m ilitary aristocracy, o r p rae to ria n force, th at the Khalsa arm y had won for itself in the Punjab. It may have h a d som e know ledge o f the sim ilar privileges enjoyed by the janissaries in Turkey, until th eir d estruction by the Sultan in 1826. All th e lim ite d m u tin ie s b e fo re 1857 h a d b e e n o v er professional grievances, though m isconduct by British officers m ight give resen tm en ts a racial (ra th e r than ‘n a tio n al’) colour. T hese officers h a d at tim es set the exam ple by going on strike for b e tter pay a n d condition, an d there was a m o m en t in 1767 w hen E uropean privates in Bengal sharing th eir officers’ d isco n ten t had to be held in check by loyal sepoy un its .14 H ere was a n o th e r variant o f the politics o f divide-and-rule. E u ro p ean privates w ere p aid scarcely b e tte r by th e C om pany than the sepoys ,15 a n d m ust have suffered still m ore from th e clim ate and hardships o f this alien land from w hich few re tu rn e d h om e. A u n ite d fro n t betw een In d ia n a n d E u ro p ean rank-and-file would have b een a p o rte n t in d eed , th o u g h probably n o t a happy one fo r the rest o f the country. In early days they w ere clo ser to g eth er, a n d in 1764 d id show sym ptom s o f

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com bining; at any rate they w ere b o th g ru m b lin g together. But as soon as th e white soldiers w ere b rib ed with a bigger sh are o f a d o n atio n , they were glad to display loyalty by tu rn in g against their In d ian fellow-sufferers .16 Many later struggles gave th e sepoy arm y a strong tradeu n io n spirit, an d an exp erien ce o f secret com bination, w hich m ight tu rn into patriotism , b u t only in an altering national environm ent. It h ad also the esprit de corps o f the cam p a n d the battlefield, and a professional p rid e in its victories - nearly all o f them over fellowIn d ia n s . All th is h e lp e d to m ak e th e a rm y a n e n tity w ith a consciousness o f its own, stre n g th e n ed by the fact th a t m en jo in e d it, in o rd e r to gain the m odest rank o p en to them , an d the pension, for very long term s o f years. It was the family in w hich a sepoy’s w hole active life was passed. Its hold on him was the firm e r because all In d ia ’s own institutions above the level o f caste o r village had c ru m b led away, leaving a vacuum . W hen 1857 cam e an E nglishm an in O u d h h e ard o f sepoys saying th a t they m ust d o w hat the arm y did. ‘T h e feeling o f the authority o f the MFouj ki B h eera”, o r “general will o f the arm y”, was to individual m en, o r regim ents, alm ost irresistible .’ 17 Its unity a n d cohesion in the h o u r o f trial were impressive; an d it was a democracy, for th e re were n o lo n g er as th ere had been in early British days, any In d ian officers above the lowest grade. B ut in H indostan, unlike th e Presidency towns, th ere was no background o f public controversy, d e b a te o n ‘n a tio n a l’ issues, to give it th e k in d o f p o litic a l consciousness that inspired Crom well’s arm y in the English civil war. H en ce it could hardly d o otherw ise than trail b e h in d the feudal interests, th e only pow erful voice to be h eard. Princes an d taluqdars step p ed into the position th at the C om pany was losing. H ence also th e loudest slogan was th at o f ‘Religion in d a n g e r’, an u n real on e because in fact religion was the o n e th in g in In d ia not in d a n g er from th e British, who were th ere to pick th eir subjects’ pockets, n o t th eir souls. Som e ideas o f a m ore rational sort were canvassed am o n g th e reb e ls, a n d som e o f th e ir p ro c la m a tio n s in c lu d e d p u b lic grievances against the governm ent, b u t even these set religion in th e fo refro n t .18 T h e feudalists could m ake no m ore valid ap p eal to

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the soldiers, a n d the soldiers no m ore valid appeal to the masses. After all, if British taxation was too heavy, a large p a rt o f the proceeds w ent to paying sepoy wages a n d pensions: the arm y h a d n o wish to lose these, a n d m ust have b een fearing th at with th e co m pletion o f th e co n q u est o f In d ia th ere would be red u ctio n s in its stren g th for th e sake o f econom y, as had h a p p e n e d before in intervals o f peace. Even th e Crom w ellian arm y with its high political consciousness fell foul o f th e public over the question o f taxation for arm y pay. D efence o f In d ian religion m ight be said to re p re se n t a d efen ce o f India, th o u g h against an im aginary danger, b u t only in an atavistic form ; an d it was a p o o r g u aran tee even o f unity o f action, since th ere were two religions, an d any excitem ent m ight set them against each other. T h e re h a d b e en serious com m unal clashes in O u d h itself as lately as 1855. As a fighting force the sepoy arm y h a d b e en criticized n o t long since by an unconventional English officer as too slavishly an im itation o f E uropean arm ies .19 T his m ad e fo r weaknesses which in 1857 tu rn e d to B ritain’s advantage. It was too m uch in th e h abit o f fighting in large masses, too little accustom ed to flexible tactics an d initiative. Asia, especially India, had always b een accustom ed to vast cu m b ro u s arm ies, a n d th ere was som ething like h e rd instinct in th e flocking to g eth er o f th e rebel regim ents at D elhi. Discipline an d co m b ination had en ab led the sepoys to defeat o th e r In d ian arm ies, b u t against a E u ro p ean o p p o n e n t m ade th em rigid and im m o b ile. S uch re g u la r officers as they h a d w ere o ld ish m en p ro m o te d by seniority, the least fit o f all to work o u t new tactics for a novel war, o r to take in d e p e n d e n t charge o f small c o m b at groups. A later British m ilitary c o m m en tato r n o ted th a t the sepoys scarcely ever tried a n ig h t attack .20 ‘T h e Indian M utiny was rem arkable for the readiness displayed by the enem y in accepting battle; had it b e en otherw ise its final suppression w ould have b e e n far m o re a rd u o u s .*21 T h e sepoys ‘often fo u g h t with d e sp era tio n ’, b u t it was their o p p o n en ts who kept the initiative an d took the offensive ‘alm ost as a m atter o f co u rse ’.22 In retre a t they were relentlessly p u rsu ed , a n d heavy to ll was tak en o f th e m by q u ite sm all n u m b e rs o f assailants .23 I f they h a d m a rc h e d o n C a lc u tta in ste a d o f s h u ttin g

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them selves u p in Delhi, things m ight have tu rn e d o u t differently. As it was, th e war becam e very m uch a m atter o f siege a n d d efen ce o f fortified towns. T he T urkish soldier’s p referen ce fo r fighting in defensive positions had a sim ilar cause, sh o rtag e o f c o m p e te n t officers, o th e r than foreigners. B ut the sepoys h a d n o t b e en train ed for this k in d o f warfare: India had b een c o n q u ered by long m arches a n d p itch ed battles. Still less had they been train ed for any kind o f improvised fighting; and they were all the less able to tu rn to guerrilla tactics now, after their m ain forces were crippled, because o f th eir caste rituals, the lum ber o f separate cooking-pots th a t each m an had to carry, the taboos th at h a d m ade them so unw illing to serve overseas. T h e rigid British arm y fram ew ork m ade it possible for m en so h an d icap p ed to function as efficient regulars; n o th in g could tu rn them into effective guerrillas. Ironically it was the m ore individualistic British who were able to a d ap t them selves to local scattered fighting. H o dson a n d Jo h n N icholson deserved D alhousie’s praise o f them as sp len d id ‘gu errilla chiefs ’.24 A n o th er paradoxical re m in d e r o f how E u ro p e an d Asia have chan g ed places with each o th e r since th en is th a t the British were able to o p e ra te a good intelligence serv ice, th e sepoys h a d n o n e .25 A lto g eth er, c o n sid e rin g th e ir advantages, the sepoys m ade a p o o re r fight o f it than th e Sikhs had d o n e a few years before; b u t all th eir disadvantages m ust be k e p t in view if E ngels’ h ard verdict on them is to be u n d ersto o d .

M arxists in E urope are grow ing m o re aware than they used to be o f their n eed to know som ething about history outside E urope; Marxists in Asia have at least an equal n e e d to know m ore than they have usually d o n e a b o u t history in E urope. It may th erefo re be w orth while to look at M arx’s com m ents on the M utiny in th e c o n tex t o f w hat h e was saying about events elsew here, chiefly in E u ro p e, in th a t d ecade. For M arx him self In d ia was n o t an-isolated problem , b u t p a rt o f a com plicated w orld-pattem . Asia a n d E urope h e was com ing to th in k of, it is tru e, as contrasted regions, the o u tco m e o f distinct lines o f evolution. Still, they were two aspects o f o n e universal pro b lem , a n d h u m an beings w ere m em bers o f o n e race with on e destiny. T h a t th e ‘Asiatic ch o le ra ’ sw eeping E urope in th at ep o ch

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o rig in ated as he believed in India, an d was the result o f im perialist exploitation and poverty there, seem ed to M arx ‘a striking a n d severe exam ple o f the solidarity o f h u m an woes an d w ants ’.26 M arx studied c u rre n t events m ost intensively in this decade o f th e 1850s, th e m iddle o r pivotal o n e o f his intellectual life. H e was c o n c e rn e d with them partly as a jo u rn a list e a rn in g his b read, partly as a revolutionary trying to p lo t the tides o f history. His philosophy o f history, never com pleted or halfcom pleted, was taking shape as h e p o re d over his newspapers; h a p p en in g s o f the m o m en t a n d long-term tren d s jo sd e d to g eth er in his m ind, a n d he like all lesser M arxists often fo u n d it h a rd to keep them apart. His topical writings, hasty articles o r letters o r jottings, are full o f suggestive hints a n d speculations, b u t th ere are no w orked-out d o c trin es in them . In th e y e a rs j u s t b e fo r e th e M u tin y th e E u r o p e a n happenings that he and Engels were chiefly co n cern ed to study were th e revolutions o f 1848-49, with the co n seq u en t rise to pow er o f N apoleon III in France; the Liberal revolution o f 1854 in Spain; an d th e C rim ean War o f 1854-56, an affair o f Asia as well as o f E urope, with Turkey as the bridge (o r handcuff) betw een the two. In d ia h ad begun to occupy M arx in 1853, w hen the C h a rte r o f the C om pany cam e u p again for renew al and debate. C hina e n te re d his vision with the second O pium W ar which began in 1856, a n d Persia to a sm aller deg ree with the Anglo-Persian war o f 1856-57. In each case he w ent to g reat pains to study the historical b ackground, if it was n o t already, like th at o f F rance o r G erm any, fairly fam iliar to him . Spain in E urope and India in Asia were the two cou n tries he delved into m ost thoroughly, a n d ju st a b o u t the sam e time. M odern Spanish history began with the long struggle, from 1808 to 1814, against N apoleon’s attem pt to add Spain to his em pire; an d betw een this a n d th e M utiny it is n o t h ard to find sim ilarities. Spain unlike India was old as a u n ited n ation, b u t it was by westE u ro p ean stan d ard s a very backw ard o ne. It led the way in the tu rn in g o f the peoples o f E urope against the F rench dom ination established by the arm ies o f the Revolution, and then o f its h e ir N apoleon, as they m arched across the continent overthrow ing wormeaten m onarchies and opening the way to progress, but antagonizing

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by b ru ta lity a n d a rro g a n c e th e p e o p le s they p ro fe sse d to be liberating. In th e e n d these peoples rallied ro u n d th eir old tyrants to g et rid o f the new ones; ra th e r as H indostán tu rn e d against the British co n q uest in 1857. T h e Spanish resistance was heroic, b u t it was also uncom prom isingly reactionary; it was royalist a n d clerical, fan n ed by b e n ig h ted priests a n d th eir feudal patrons. ‘Religion in d a n g e r’ was its g ran d rallying-cry. At the e n d Spain was rew arded for six years o f sacrifice by the restoration, to the g reat delight o f th e illite rate m ajority o f th e In q u isitio n , th e pow er o f the big landow ners, a n d the decad en t m onarchy w hich lasted until the civil war o f th e 1830s. ‘T h e absolute m onarchy in S pain,’ M arx w rote in 1854 as h e lo o k ed back over these years, ‘b earing b u t a superficial resem ­ blance to th e absolute m onarchies o f E urope in general, is ra th e r to be ran g ed in a class with Asiatic form s o f g o v ern m en t .’27 Q uestions ab o u t how State a n d society in Asia an d E urope differed were already m uch in his m ind. In the anti-French ranks, h e n o ted , peasants an d priests a n d in habitants of small inland towns, ‘all o f them deeply im b u ed with religious an d political prejudices, form ed the g reat m ajority ’;28 upper-class conservatives k e p t the lead. M ost o f the fighting was d o n e by guerrilla bands in the countryside (guerrilla, ‘little war’, an d Liberal, were two Spanish contributions o f th at period to in tern atio n al speech). It is very noticeable th at M arx’s estim ate o f guerrillas as a political factor was by no m eans flattering. It seem ed to him self-evident th at after having for years ‘freely indulged all th eir passions o f h atred , revenge, a n d love o f plunder, they must, in tim es o f peace, form a m ost dan g ero u s m o b ’.29 T h e rom antic aura th at invests the g u errilla today did n o t exist for M arx. In his age politically progressive struggles were fought by organized, disciplined b an d s, whose ex em p lar was the new -m odel arm y o f th e F rench R evolution, o r by u rb an w orkingm en at th eir barricades. Irregular a rm e d m ovem ents were for the m ost part, as in Spain, p o p u lar J>ut reactionary; m ovem ents of peasants, who in w estern E u ro p e were, by a n d large (and in France itself once the Revolution o f 1789 was over), an anti-progressive force. N o g u errilla struggle can last long w ithout a p o te n t ideology, and the only o n e known to these peasants was th e ultra-conservative C atholic religion.

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In th e W ar o f In d e p e n d e n c e th e r e was a sm all active m inority o f ‘L iberals’, m iddle-class u rb a n progressives, w ho g o t a n o th e r ch an ce after 1814 because th e arm y was d riftin g away from reaction. In 1854 the Liberal revolution which first set M arx studying Spain was in itiated by a section o f th e army, led by th e p se u d o ­ progressive general O 'D onnell .30 In such a retard ed country soldiers m ig h t take th e lead, fo r w ant o f anyone better, as they d o in su n d ry p a rts o f th e w orld today. If th e arm y could give th e signal to the c o u n try in Spain, why n o t in India? O n the o th e r side it m ust n o t b e fo rg o tten th a t the counter-revolution o f July 1856 was also ih e work o f th e army, led by the selfsam e g eneral O ’D onnell. In 1848-49 the restless forces d a m p e d dow n after 1815 by th e Holy Alliance ex p lo d ed in a confused m edley o f revolutions ov er h a lf E urope. Som e o f these cancelled each o th e r o u t In the m ultinational H apsburg em pire, especially, reaction was able to m ake use o f backw ard Slav m inorities to defeat th e A ustrian a n d Magyar progressive m ovem ents. T his was som ething th a t M arx a n d Engels a n d m any o th e r G erm ans could n o t forgive th e Slavs for. W hatever th e rights an d w rongs o f this controversy, M arx obviously h a d no b e lie f in a divine rig h t o f all nationalities to go th e ir own way a t all tim es. His instinct was to ju d g e a national struggle, e ith e r in E urope o r in Asia, o n its m erits as a co n trib u tio n o r a h in d ra n c e to g eneral p ro g ress. (It is by th is c riterio n th a t h e w ould have ju d g e d th e K ashm ir dispute o f today.) In E urope th e 1850s a n d 1860s w ere a tim e o f agitation an d wars for national indep en d en ce o r union, which M arx w elcom ed w hen they seem ed likely to b reak dow n obstacles to progress, b u t did n o t rhapsodize a b o u t in them selves. W ould a resto re d P oland last long, h e asked? 'O n e th in g is certain: it w ould p u t a n e n d to w hat is hollow in th e enthusiasm fo r Poland, which fo r th e last forty years has b e en affected by everybody a n d anybody calling him self liberal o r progressive .*31 Free P oland w ould b e ru n by serf-ow ning noblem en. Ram M ohun Roy h a d tau g h t th e new class o f In d ian s with m o d e rn education to keep a close eye on western politics. W atching E u ro p ean events in 1848-49 a re a d e r a t C alcutta could n o t fail to be im pressed by two things - the solid stability o f British institutions, a n d th e tangle o f contrad icto ry forces o n the c o n tin e n t th a t e n d e d ,

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in th e H ap sb urg em p ire above all, in the failure o f th em all a n d the triu m p h o f th e old regim e. Between British In d ia a n d the H apsburg e m p ire a n u m b e r o f resem blances m ight be p o in ted out; a n d it can b e su p p o se d th a t in 1857 re c o lle c tio n s o f 184 8 -4 9 h e lp e d to e n co u rag e E nglishm en, an d to discourage ed u cated In d ian s from siding with th e rebels. It was the salient d ifference betw een th e two upheavals th at in A ustria-H ungary the m ost progressive elem ents w ere in th e vanguard, in In d ia they stayed a t hom e. O f all M arx’s writings the m ost bew ildering are the vast heap o f articles w ritten betw een the spring o f 1853 an d th a t o f 1856 on th e ‘E astern Q u e stio n ’, the rival interests o f E u ro p ean pow ers in th e decaying O tto m an em pire. In 1853 Turkey a n d Russia engaged in a n o th e r o f th eir re c u rre n t wars, an d n e x t year B ritain a n d France jo in e d in to p rev en t a Russian victory. T h e C rim ean W ar dragged o n until 1856. M arx looked o n tsarist Russia, which h a d h e lp e d to suppress th e revolutions o f 1848-49, as the bulw ark o f all E u ro p ean reaction, a n d was passionately eager to see it defeated. W hat he h o p e d fo r at bottom was that the war would tu rn into a revolutionary stru g g le involving th e w hole c o n tin e n t. B ut it was a co n fu sed , to rtu o u s, business, an d even M arx could n o t m ake very m uch sense o f it. P art o f its topsyturviness was th a t despotic Russia, instead o f th e liberal West, stood for liberation from Turkey o f oppressed Balkan nationalities. M arx show ed as litde sentim ental c o n c e rn for these Balkan peoples as in 1848-49 for the Slavs; a n d equally litde for th e A rm enians u n d e r Turkish rule, for he was eager to see Turkey driving th e Russians back in Asia M inor to o .32 Yet M arx d id n o t share th e official W estern faith th at the T urkish em p ire was capable o f b ein g revived an d m odernized. At the outset in 1853, before a g e n e ra l war was in pro sp ect, he gave w hat m ay b e tak en as his a u th e n tic o p in io n o f O tto m an ru le in E urope. H e saw it th e n as hopelessly ro tte n , a n d any W estern talk o f m aintaining it as absurd. T his h a d n o th in g to d o with the Turks b eing aliens, in tru d e rs in E urope. ‘T h is splen d id territory*, h e w rote o f th e Balkans, ‘has the m isfortune to be in h ab ited by a conglom erate o f d ifferen t races a n d nationalities, o f w hich it is h ard to say w hich is th e least fit for progress an d civilization.’ H ence the Turks, though a small minority,

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m ig h t have seem ed th e best able to give the pen in su la the o rd e r a n d th e unified control th at M arx felt it n eed ed . But by now they h ad proved them selves q uite in ad eq u ate for the task, a n d becom e m erely a h in d ra n c e .33 It was from the p o in t o f view o f th e collective E u ro p e a n in te re st, w hich fo r M arx o v e rro d e th a t o f any local n a tio n ality , th a t h e th o u g h t it still w orse to have th e T sar at C o n stan tinople than the Sultan. H e looked u p o n O tto m an adm inistration as by origin an am algam o f ‘eastern barbarism ’ with ‘w estern civilization’34; as such it h ad started with certain potentialities, th o u g h these tu rn e d o u t to be defective. If the Balkan peninsula and itsja rrin g peoples offered a ‘m ission’ to som e ru lin g pow er from outside to set them in order, th e sam e m ig h t m anifesdy b e said o f India. M arx’s logic w ould lead him to see T urks in m edieval India, o r M ughals in m o d e rn India, p e rfo rm in g the sam e function. But if the O tto m an em pire, with the b en efit o f close proxim ity to ‘W estern civilization’, was a failure, th ere m ust be a strong presum ption th at any sim ilar em p ire o f Asian co n q u ero rs far away in India h a d b e en capable o f only a still m ore lim ited a n d tem p o rary success. N or d id M arx w hen he looked at Asiatic Turkey a n d saw revolt breaking o u t th e re in 1854, as well as in th e Balkans, feel hopeful o f its leading to anything b e tte r than anarchy. ‘T h e rebels . . . constantly d escend from the m ountains, invade th e villages. . . p lu n d e r the inhabitants a n d caravans, violate th e w om en, an d m u rd e r everyone th a t resists .’35 T his was exacdy w hat E nglishm en always said would h a p p en in India if they were n o t th e re to p revent it. If M arx saw n o th in g objecuonable in principle to law an d o rd e r b ein g im posed on a region o f E urope like the Balkans by an Asiatic g o v ernm ent, h e could have no reason to object in p rinciple to law a n d o rd e r b eing im posed on a region o f Asia like In d ia by a E u ro p ean governm ent. E xcept in the excitem ent o f a C rim ean War, he in fact reg ard ed even tsarist ru le as a step forw ard fo r Asia, o r for those p arts o f w estern an d m iddle Asia w here it was spreading in th e n in e te e n th century. It d o es n o t follow th a t he w ould have considered Russian rule in India as good as, o r no worse than, British. How he viewed the chronic scare in Britain ab o u t a Russian th rea t to In d ia is doubtful. Late in 1853 h e like official L o n d o n saw b o th

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th e Persian move against H erat and the Russian move towards Khiva as en d an g erin g the Punjab .36 In 1854 he discounted such alarm ism : ‘T h e re are always som e vague an d alarm ing ru m o u rs afloat about R ussian p ro g ress in C e n tra l Asia, g o t u p by in te re s te d In d ia n politicians o r terrified visionaries .’37 Even if h e (correcdy on the whole) th o u g h t the Russian th re a t to British pow er in India a bogy, things w ould be d ifferen t if the British were driven o u t by a revolt, a n d In d ia th en fell back into its old political condition. A Russian entry, so o n e r o r later, w ould th e n be n o t at all im probable. In 1808-14 the Spanish p eople fo u g h t the F rench with the aid o f a British army, co m m an d ed by a general w ho had le a rn e d his trad e in India. It would have b een a n e a t re to rt if a F rench arm y had g o n e to aid the Indian rising, o r had attacked E ngland, in 1857. If N ap o leo n III had n o t so very recently b een Q u e en V ictoria’s p a rtn e r in the Crim ea, he could scarcely have resisted the tem ptation to settle accounts for his uncle a n d for F ran ce’s old friend T ipu Sahib. Barely a year after the M utiny was over Britain was form ing a V olunteer C orps to resist an expected F rench invasion. H ad the sepoys waited until then, they would have h a d fewer reinforcem ents from Britain to cope with .38 O r had they started th eir rising eighteen m o n th s earlier, while the C rim ean W ar was still going o n , Russia m ust have seized th e chance to strike at Britain from the rear by giving them s u p p o rt It was possibly the m ost im portant consequence o f th e C rim ean War, which settled n o th in g in E urope, th a t in 1857 France was neutralized a n d Russia crippled, an d In d ia fo u g h t alone. Persia a n d C hina were n o t m ore than trivial em barrassm ents for Britain. T h e rebellion could scarcely have b e en worse tim ed; w ho­ ever chose th e m o m e n t for it can have known little a b o u t w orld politics. Yet in India the C rim ean War aroused keen interest. M arx m ig h t have b e en ex p ected to p o n d e r this aspect o f it; D alhousie co u ld n o t h elp d o in g so. H e had h o p ed fo r the sake o f tranquility in India th at war w ould be avoided ,39 an d w hen it cam e h e was very relu ctan t to let any o f his E uropean troops be rem oved .40 (At the b eg in n in g o f 1857 th ere were fewer than 30,000 in all India, an extraordinarily small total.) At First he found com fort in the th o u g h t th at In d ian Muslims were ‘im m ensely pleased at o u r taking the p art

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o f the S u ltan ’ ,41 b u t this ceased to com fort him as the stalem ate in th e C rim ea w ent on a n d British prestige d ro p p e d . T h e re w ere ru m o u rs th at the q u een had b een forced to flee from E ngland an d was hid in g in India, a n d D alhousie felt ‘m ore an d m ore the n e e d o f som e g reat success *.42 It cam e at last with the fall o f Sevastopol in S e p te m b e r 1855, a n d h e h a ste n e d to c irc u la te a ju b ila n t p ro ­ clam ation o f the news to every town and village in the co u n try .43 B ut th e m ischief h a d b e en d one. Britain with two allies was being forced to struggle long an d h a rd against a single o p p o n e n t, a n d in th e e n d fo r fairly small rewards; and it could n o t be k ep t a secret th at th e war-effort was h a m p e red by a vast a m o u n t o f bungling. No legend o f invincibility could survive this.

M arx is n o t to be taken q uite literally w hen h e speaks o f th e M utiny being ‘intim ately co n n ec te d ’ with B ritain’s C hinese an d Persian wars o f 1856, as p a rt o f a ‘general disaffection’ o f Asia .44 His disapproval o f these wars does however em phasize how little h e w anted to see any fu rth e r expansion o f British im perialism . H e had n o th in g good a n d m uch bad to say a b o u t the O pium Wars with C hina. If Britain o r E u ro p e had any Far Eastern ‘mission* in his eyes, it was simply th at o f a gadfly, to irritate nations th at had fallen asleep an d sting th em awake. Politically C hina, by contrast with In d ia o r the Balkan peninsula, stood in no n eed o f unification. It did no d o u b t at presen t stand in n e ed o f order, being in the grip o f an im m ense in tern al convulsion. M arx’s curiosity was aroused by the T aiping rebellion, a n d at first along with m any w esterners h e th o u g h t it h eld a prom ise o f progress. C ertainly h e had no wish to see w estern conservatism in terv en in g against it. B ut h e could form no very clear view o f it, a n d by this tim e it was past its best days. H is approval - tac it o r im p lied - o f c o lo n ial wars was restricted to those by which Britain b ro u g h t India u n d e r a single con tro l. For him as for the world, India was a u n iq u e case. T h e re was n o o th e r big British possession as yet in Asia. By the tim e he c am e to tak e an in te re s t in it th e c o n q u e s t was so n e arly an accom plished fact th at he seem s to have assum ed that it m ig h t as well b e co m p leted quickly. F or the achievem ent it rep re se n te d he

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was n o t w ithout respect. H e adm ired the eccentric genius o f Sir Charles Napier, who added Sindh .45 Pining in 1854 for ste rn er action against Russia, an d lam enting th at d e ca d en t E urope h a d ceased to be equal to ‘a d ecen t, hearty, hard-fought w ar’, he con trasted the d eed s o f E uropeans in colonial cam paigns with th eir presen t torpor. ‘T h e troops th at have c o n q u ered A lgeria. . . o n e o f the m ost difficult th eatres in existence, the soldiers who fought the Sikhs o n the sands o f th e Indus, a n d the Kaffirs in the thorny bush o f South Africa . . . th e re they are, helpless a n d u seless.. . .’46 Im plicit in M arx’s approval was the conception o f ‘In d ia ’ as in som e sense a logical unit, a n atio n potentially if n o t actually. H e m ay have o v erestim ated th e d e g re e o f m oral unity it possessed already, o r th e speed with which this could be e n g en d ered by political unity im posed from outside. M arx was a p t to u n d e rra te the force o f relig io u s divisions, w h e th er o f M uslim ag ain st C hristian in the Balkans o r o f Muslim against H in d u in India. H e m ad e too little allowance fo r th e strength o f local feelings a n d feuds w ithin India. In 1857-58 the Niazis, a tribe o f the north-west, w ere to aid the British, grateful to these new ru lers fo r having ‘e m an cip ated them from th e th raldom o f the Sikh ’47 while the Sikhs a id ed them against th e H in d o stan is, as th e H in d o stan is h a d form erly serv ed them a g a in st th e B engalis. F o r In d ia th e g a m e o f p lay in g o f f o n e com m unity o r people against a n o th er would have far m ore dam aging results th an the o ld er o n e o f m anipulating princes. M arx’s g eneral feeling a b o u t In d ia was a c o m p o u n d o f two opposites. O n e was respect for Indians, as a civilized race with g reat accom plishm ents in antiquity a n d a capacity for new ones in the future. H e h ad b een reading a b o u t the links betw een Sanskrit an d th e E u ro p ean language family, and could even refer to an cien t India as ‘th e source o f o u r languages, o u r religions ’.48 H e believed that m o d ern In d ians were quick to learn, a n d a new class could an d s h o u ld b e g iven a p p r o p r ia te tra in in g a n d b r o u g h t in to th e adm inistration - n o t the futile old gentry, whose exclusion from it was d e p lo re d by British conservatives .49 W ith everything In d ian betw een a n tiq u ity a n d fu tu re , o n th e co n trary , M arx felt only im patience. G row th had b e en paralysed by caste divisions, an d also by d iv isio n in to a m y riad villages, e a c h a tiny se lf-su ffic ie n t

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com m onw ealth uniting agriculture with handicrafts, d e a f a n d blind to all outside its own narrow limits. T h e re were English officials o f the newer, anti-feudal school w ho w a n te d to p re s e rv e , in O u d h fo r in sta n c e , th e j o i n t o r ‘c o p arcen ary ’ village ho ld in g o f land, by rid d in g it o f th e en cro ach ­ m ents o f feudal landlords. T his did n o t appeal to M arx as a way forw ard. H e th o u g h t o f th e village co m m u n e in In d ia as Engels spoke o f it m any years later in Java, w here it was p reserved by the D utch a n d m ade the basis o f th eir ‘C ulture system’, o r centralized extraction o f wealth from the peasantry. Engels argued that ‘primitive com m unism furnishes th e re as well as in In d ia a n d Russia th e finest an d b ro ad e st basis o f exploitation a n d despotism *.50 In d ia in short h ad g ot in to a blind alley, from w hich it h a d n o strength to extricate itself; so stupefying th at it was w orth while to b e d rag g ed o u t o f it even ‘th ro u g h blood a n d dirt, th ro u g h m isery a n d degradation*, by capitalism a n d foreign ru le .51 M arx could acknow ledge som e negative benefits o f foreign ru le in In d ia o f a less painful kind. ‘A g en eral war was declared against dacoity, thuggee, infanticide, human sacrifice, suttee, etc.’, we read in his Notes o n Indian history, for 1849-51.52 But in 1853 India stood, h e was convinced, on the th resh o ld o f a m ore constructive epoch, because British capitalism itself was e n te rin g a m o re m atu re phase. This was being inaugurated by Dalhousie, who w orked him self nearly to d e a th over his p ro je c ts o f im p ro v e m e n t. H is h e a lth n ever recovered, a n d he d ied in 1860; it w ould n o t b e too m uch to say that, after his own fashion, he d ied for India. In his Notes M arx m ade a derisory reference to the list o f achievem ents D alhousie drew up as h is farew ell m essage: ‘A nsw er to this rodom ontade, the sepoy revolution.'** B u t in h is a rtic le s o f 1853 M arx to o k th e new p ro g ram m e seriously, an d in th e n e x t two o r th re e years it was show ing som e rem arkable results. In April 1854 th e G anges Canal was o p e n e d at Roorkie, an d D alhousie could boast th a t it was the longest m ain channel in th e w orld, b o th fo r irrigation an d fo r navi­ gation. In F ebruary 1855 the new telegraph lines from C alcutta to M adras, Bom bay and A ttock were throw n o p en to the public, and th e first stretch o f railway, 122 m iles long, was inaugurated. Bengalis th ro n g e d to enjoy the thrill o f a ride. In all these fields In d ia was

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a h ead , in irrig ation far ah ead , o f a backw ard w estern c o u n try like Spain. It is m uch to be d e p lo re d th a t as 1853 w ent o n M arx ’s a tte n tio n was je rk e d away from In d ia a n d m o d ern im perialism to th e far less profitable co n u n d ru m s o f the Eastern Q uestion, on which he w rote in th e n ex t th ree years nearly th ree tim es as m uch as he w rote a lto g e th e r o n India. H is new spaper-readers in New York w anted news p ip in g hot, an d M arx him self was always to rn betw een th e talk o f th e h o u r a n d th e riddle o f the ages. It was the Mutiny th at b ro u g h t him back to India - in a particularly bad tem p e r with B ritain for fighting, as he saw it, only a p honey war against tsarist Russia in th e C rim ea. H e was as m uch taken by surprise as anyone else, a n d found n o sh o rt cu t to a n explanation. T h e M utiny was an event, as British India was a possession, u nique in the history o f im perialism . N othing like it o c c u rre d in the lon g history o f D utch Indonesia, w here local tro o p s h a d b e en enlisted since very early days, th o u g h fo r som e years after 1857 th ere w ere fears o f a sim ilar explosion in Java .54 Clearly M arx was draw ing on fresh recollections o f th e C rim ea w hen h e w rote now o f ‘th e d esp erate obstinacy with which M ussulm ans are accustom ed to fight b e h in d walls’.55 To him as to m ost E uro­ peans, T urk an d Muslim m ean t m uch the sam e thing. H e com pared th e British h o ld in g o n to isolated points in In d ia with th e F rench re d u c e d to th e sam e straits in Spain d u rin g the P eninsular War. H aving so lately be en w riting a b o u t a Spanish revolution, he spoke o f sepoy regim ents ‘p ro n o u n c in g *,56 i.e. m aking a pronunciamiento. T h e Mutiny has often been rep roached with being too m uch an in su rrectio n o f soldiers, too little o n e o f a n ation. But to M arx it was in a sense a reassuring feature th at an army, a c o h e re n t a n d disciplined force, was in the vanguard. W atching Spanish events in 1854 h e h a d w elcom ed sym ptom s o f ‘w holesom e anarch y ’ in the provinces, as ten d in g to save the revolution from b eing sabotaged by th e politicians at M adrid .57 B ut ‘an arch y ’ in relatively orderly Spain m e a n t peasants refusing to pay rents, n o t a d e scen t in to blind social chaos; w hereas in Asia (as in Asiatic Turkey lately) h e may have th o u g h t such chaos a likely result o f any breakdow n o f authority. His allusion in th e Notes to th e S anthal rising o f 1856-57 - the

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p recu rso r o f th e Mutiny, a t least in its total u n ex p ected n ess - as an affair o f ‘a half-savage tr ib e . . . p u t dow n, after seven months* guerrilla w arfare'** scarcely suggests th at h e placed m uch h o p e in rebellion o f so prim itive a type. In retro sp ect M arx seem s to have th o u g h t o f the Bengal Army prim arily as a professional organization on bad term s with its em ployer. R elations had b e en bad for years, h e w rote in his Notes: the m en were ‘b o u n d together by caste and nationality; o n e com m on pulse in a rm y . . . officers powerless; laxity o f discipline____ *59 In his first article o n the Mutiny, in Ju n e 1857, h e m en tio n ed th e fam ous greased cartridges, an d sepoy fears ab o u t religion, as the rep o rte d cause o f th e tro u b le ;60 h e did so w ithout co m m en t o r q u e r y. H e was soon convinced th a t th ere h a d b een conspiracy in the arm y on ‘an im m ense scale*, an d also th at anti-British feeling was w idespread am o n g th e masses. How things would now develop he did n o t profess to know. An Indian rebellion he rem arked could n o t be expected to follow th e sam e lines as o n e in E u ro p e .61 H e m ust have b een relying on Engels, always his m ilitary guide, w hen h e wrote in July 1857 th at it would be ‘p re p o stero u s’ to im agine th e rebels ho ld in g D elhi for long, an d disparagingly called th em ‘a m otley crew o f m u tin e erin g soldiers w ho have m u rd ere d th eir own officers ’.62 By the e n d o f th a t m o n th he was w riting in a d ifferen t strain. It h a d always b e en said th a t 3,000 English troops could at any tim e b e at 30,000 Indians, a n d now th eir failure to take D elhi was h e lp in g the rebellion to spread. It was no m ere m utiny, as th e British public was trying to believe, b u t ‘a national revolt ’.63 T his was m uch n e a re r to his own b e n t o f m in d th an his previous words; still, the passage stands alone in his articles, an d c an n o t safely be taken to re p re se n t his considered ju d g m e n t. Allowance m ust be m ad e fo r the fact th at em otionally M arx resp o n d ed to any revolt against any o f the governm ents h e detested; a n d also, h e re a n d th ro u g h o u t his m any series o f articles for the New York Daily Tribune, for th e fact th at h e was w riting for a rem o te A m erican public with n o responsibility for w hat was b eing d o n e o r m ight be d o n e, a n d th ere fo re could indulge his natural love o f epigram and rhetoric m o re freely. H e was, as it were, com m uning with himself, som etim es e x p erim e n tin g with theories, som etim es blow ing o ff steam .

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His m ind cam e back to Spain w hen h e m et th e clam o u r o f th e British press a b o u t In d ian atrocities by poin tin g o u t th a t the British public applau d ed sim ilar atrocities co m m itted against the F rench by its Spanish g u errilla allies in the P eninsular War .64 In Septem ber, two years after the fall o f Sevastopol, Delhi was storm ed by th e British. Marx surm ised th a t the rebel failure had b e e n d u e to dissensions betw een regim ents, betw een H in d u s a n d Muslims, an d betw een th e sepoys a n d the trad in g class o f Delhi which they were forced to lay u n d e r co ntribution now th a t they were w ithout regular pay.65 H ere he seem ed to be taking a narrow er view o f the rebellion, as essentially an arm y affair, b u t h e was still eager to find sym ptom s o f o th e r regions jo in in g in ,66 an d hopeful o f a b e tte r lead er com ing forw ard. F or a while he h a d his eye on Sindhia - ‘young, popular, full o f fire’ - as the n atu ral lead er fo r all M arathas .67 In o th e r w ords h e h a d m o re hope o f leadership b eing provided by o n e o f the old ru lin g fam ilies than em erg in g from the ranks o f the sepoys. His Notes reveal his disillusionm ent: S indhia figures th e re as an ‘English dog-m an’, together with the m aharaja o f Patiala w hom M arx likewise despised for standing by the British .68 At the sam e tim e h e does n o t a p p e a r to have form ed a m uch h ig h er o p in io n o f any ru lers o r ex­ ru lers who took p a rt in the rebellion, a n d in the Notes w here he goes in to detail a b o u t the motives o f N ana Sahib a n d the Rani o f Jhansi, h e treats them in both cases as m erely personal a n d selfish .69 A fter all, the m ost rem arkable th in g a b o u t w hat M arx said o f th e M utiny is that - alth o u g h intensely absorbed in it - he said so little. It m ight well baffle him a n d throw him into a painful dilem m a. H e could feel enthusiasm fo r w hat was heroic in it, b u t to fit it into a rational historical p a tte rn was a n o th e r m atter. O n its constructive side th e British mission th a t h e th o u g h t so indispensable to In d ian progress h a d only ju s t begun. Spain won its struggle in 1814 only to sink back in to the past. T his was n o t fatal, because Spain how ever backward was part o f w estern E urope, a n d could n o t be k ep t sealed o ff for long against m o d ern ideas. It w ould take m uch lo n g er for these ideas to find th eir way into a rem o te In d ia free o f w estern control. At any rate, o f M arx’s thirty-three articles o n India, twelve b elo n g to 1853; four o f the fifteen w ritten in 1857, a n d all six o f

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those w ritten in 1858, deal with the g eneral back g ro u n d o f In d ian affairs; an d am ong the rem aining eleven on th e M utiny itself several are only frag m en tary c o m m en ts on c u rre n t news. All th e e ig h t articles o n th e c o u rse o f th e M utiny fro m N o v em b er 1857 to S ep tem b er 1858 are by Engels. M arx, it would seem , was giving u p th e p ro b lem in despair, a n d leaving it to his frien d to follow events on th e m ilitary level. H e was tu rn in g away from it as if h e felt th at h e h a d lost the clue a n d m ust go back in to the past to recover it. H e p lu n g e d in to a study o f fu n d am e n ta ls o f e co n o m ic theory, far rem oved from the hurlyburly at Delhi o r Lucknow. O f the resulting treatise, com posed in 1857-58 b u t never p u blished by him , o n e section consisted o f a highly abstract analysis o f w orld history an d its socio-econom ic phases .70 H ere he h a d m uch to say a b o u t ‘Asiatic society*, o n the lines o f the conclusions h e had already b een com ing to a b o u t th e old Indian society a n d its static n atu re , its incapacity for fu rth e r evolution.

Engels h ad a considerable rep u tatio n as a m ilitary critic, a n d am ong his m any hobbies the study o f war was p erh ap s th e favourite. H e revelled in m ilitary technicalities and term s o f a rt like Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. *Ah, th e im m ortal passado! the p u n to reverso! th e hai!’ In th e M arx family circle he was nicknam ed ‘T h e General*. All his thin k in g was in term s o f reg u lar w arfare practised by w ell-trained m o d ern arm ies: the guerrilla style o f o u r day lay beyond his horizon. In this h e was a m an o f his tim e. It was the experience o f n in etee n th cen tu ry E urope, as it m arch ed over Asia a n d Africa, th a t irreg u lar o p p o n e n ts were seldom form idable against disciplined troops and flexible coord in atio n o f all arm s by a unified com m and. N ot only was this m ore efficient, b u t it g e n erate d m ore courage, o r a steadier type o f courage, than the m ost warlike o f wild enem ies, m en like the B edouin o r the Pathan, could m uster .71 E urope’s m ost dangerous antagonists were n o t guerrillas b u t the elaborately organized Sikhs in Asia a n d Zulus in Africa. E ngels had d o n e a spell in th e Prussian arm y, th e best tra in e d in E u ro p e , th o u g h h e h a d h is b a p tism o f fire in th e in su rrectio n ary m ovem ent o f 1849 in w estern G erm any, which the

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Prussian arm y h elp ed to put dow n. H e was now a mill-owner, an d ru n n in g a m ill m ust rem in d even a socialist daily an d hourly o f the im p o rtan ce o f o rd e r a n d m ethod. It is a striking testim ony to his o rth o d o x y as a m ilitary m an th a t w hen serving in the V olunteer C orps, fo rm ed in Britain in 1859 d u rin g th e F rench scare, h e was entirely in favour o f its being a well-drilled replica o f the regular army, n o th in g in the least like a dem ocratic, decentralized force o f skirm ishers. His call to the n atio n was exactly th e same as L ord Tennyson, th e P oet L aureate’s - ‘Form , riflem en, form!* Yet this m ea n t su b o rd inating the volunteers to the generalship that (besides being politically reactionary) h a d proved itself so ludicrously incom ­ p e te n t in th e C rim ea, a n d its fossilized h e a d q u a rte rs the H orse G uards. We in th e n o rth o f England, h e w rote in o n e o f his e n th u ­ siastic articles o n the m ovem ent, unlike the carping L ondoners ‘have always b e en o n capital term s with o u r n atu ral m ilitary superiors ’.72 T h e fate o f the po p u lar m ilitia fo rm ed in Spain in 1854 m ig h t have cautioned him . It was cru sh ed in July 1856 in a two-day battle against th e reg u lar army in M adrid, largely because it had im itated th e arm y too closely in organization a n d training. W hen th e big socialist parties o f the Second In te rn a tio n a l cam e to b e form ed, th e faith in disciplined mass strength, firm est o f all am ong th e G erm ans, was carried over from m ilitary into political thinking, a n d h e lp e d to m ake parties to o heavy an d rigid to retain th e ir revolutionary fire. At the o th er ex trem e th e Spanish anarchists who rejected all party organization whatever were translating into political term s th e g u e rrilla tactics th a t m o d e rn S pain h a d fo u n d m ost congenial in tim e o f war. T urkey in th e C rim ean War, a n d th e n th e P ersian an d C hinese wars o f 1856, drew Engels* e x p e rt eye towards Asia. H e took for g ran te d th at the way for Asia to learn to d efen d itself was to scrap its old-style arm ies a n d build new ones on the western m odel, train ed to begin with by E uropean officers; ju s t as M arx w anted to see Asia scrap ping its past and building a new society on w estern technology. H e recognized that to form a reliable arm y was a slow, difficult task, in the swamp o f c o rru p tio n a n d obscurantism that was ‘Asiatic barbarity ’ .73 This struck him forcibly in the spring o f 1856 when 600 Indian cavalry o f the Bombay Army, whom he thought

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very poorly of, routed 10,000 m odem -trained Persians. T h e spectacle n e ith e r in duced him to dismiss Persians as ‘a n ation o f cowards*, n o r to despair o f western train in g in Asia. H e recalled th a t the new Turkish arm y had done poorly in its earlier stages o f m odernization, yet h ad fo u g h t well against the Russians in the war ju st finished. In a n o th e r twenty years a Persian arm y m ight be as efficient as the Turkish now was .74 In reality the Turks, as later wars were to show, never m ade m ore than very lim ited progress. Engels looked on an efficient cadre o f officers an d NCOs as the vital factor ;75 h e did n o t raise th e m ore fundam ental question, w hether an Asiatic state could have a m o d ern arm y w ithout a political a n d social revolution first. Ja p a n was about to em bark on such a revolution; n o o th e r free Asian co u n try did, an d n o o th e r m ade any serious m ilitary p ro g ress in the n in e te e n th century. Engels d id m ake a shrew d p rophecy w hen h e recognized in the war o f 1856 the quickness o f o rd in a ry C hinese to learn. T h e ir g u n n e ry o n th e C anton river was astonishingly im proved since the last tim e th e British tested it, he w rote. ‘In everything practical, a n d war is em inently practical, the C hinese far surpass all the O rientals, a n d th ere is no d o u b t th a t in m ilitary m atters the English will find th em a p t so ld iers .*76 His political co m m en t on this contest could serve e ith e r as epilogue to th e Spanish War o f In d e p e n d e n c e o r as prologue to the In d ian Mutiny: these C hinese w ere fighting a national, p o p u la r war in d efen ce o f a traditional society steeped in ‘overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learn ed ignorance an d pedantic b arbarism ’ .77 Engels was a revolutionary, b u t a mutineer w ent against the grain with him . M oreover the o p in io n he had form ed o f the sepoy arm y b efo re the Mutiny was n o t flattering. Indian troops h e th o u g h t - u n d e rra tin g a good deal the p art they had played in the conquest o f India - were useful to the British chiefly by th eir ability to m arch faster in h o t w eather and on p o o re r food than E u ro p ean troops c o u ld .78 In d ian soldiers o f the old un-drilled type he reg ard ed as b e n ea th co n tem p t. An arm y o f 5,000-7,000 E nglishm en has always b een th o u g h t fully sufficient to go anyw here and do anything in the o p en field in India. T hat stam ps the o p p o n en ts at o n c e .*79 It should be a d d ed th at Engels th o u g h t poorly e n o u g h o f the British arm y an d m ost others. Englishm en a n d Russians were ‘the worst light

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in fan try in E urope’ 80 Presum ably F renchm en o r G erm ans would have m ade even shorter work o f India. As for generalship, he adm ired Sir C olin C am pbell an d praised Sir C harles N apier very highly, b u t d e rid e d o th ers like W indham , one o f the C rim ean blockheads. D uring the M utiny Engels m ust often have looked back on his own ex p erience in the arm e d uprising o f 1849. In his articles on th a t e p is o d e , w ritte n in 1 8 5 1 -5 2 , h e h a d la id it d o w n th a t ‘in su rrectio n is an a rt q uite as m uch as w ar’, a n d th a t on ce started it m ust b e pushed on boldly a n d rapidly. ‘T h e defensive is the d e a th o f any a rm e d rising’, while aggressive action wins the su p p o rt o f ‘those vacillating elem ents . . . which always look o u t fo r th e safer side ’.81 W hen he saw the bulk o f the rebel arm y shutting itself u p in Delhi h e m ust have felt th at it was com m itting a cardinal erro r. H e was co n v in ced o n the o th e r h a n d th a t the British co m m itted a b lu n d e r by tying up th eir forces ro u n d D elhi, for political reasons o f prestige, while disaster th rea te n ed th eir rear in the G anges valley. Delhi h e considered o f n o strategic im portance, and th e a tte m p t to take it by siege foolish .82 It is th en a trifle surprising to find him in his first article reporting its capture as quite an easy feat. H e credited th e sepoys with individual bravery, b u t h e ld them ‘utterly w ithout le a d e rsh ip ’ above th e com pany level, destitute o f ‘th e scientific e le m e n t w ithout which any arm y is nowadays hopeless ’.85 Scientific principles o f w arfare were the speciality o f his native Prussia, inventor o f the G eneral Staff, a n d the sepoys’ total lack o f them m ade it h a rd e r for Engels to sym pathize with them . O f course he h ad to d e p e n d on th e new spaper rep o rts slowly trickling in to E ngland, often garbled, o r d istorted by the anti-Indian hysteria. H e was far m ore scathing a b o u t the fall o f Lucknow to th e British in M arch 1858 than a b o u t th a t.o f Delhi. T h e rebel force th e re had b e en grow ing dem oralized, h e th o u g h t, with som e o f the sepoys slipping away and raw recruits taking their place .84 T his com bination m ig h t well acccntuate the weaknesses o f b o th elem ents. Engels had seen th e sam e thing in 1849, w hen the arm y o f o n e small G erm an state, B aden, jo in e d the rising. 'As in every insurrectionary war’, he had w ritten ab o u t this, ‘w here arm ies are m ixed o f well-drilled soldiers a n d raw levies, th ere was plenty o f heroism , a n d plenty o f unsoldierlike, often inconceivable p anic .’85

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Som e o f the new faces in the ranks at Lucknow m ust have b elo n g ed to m en o f the royal arm y o f O udh, disbanded by the British in 1856, o n e o f the worst collections o f riff-raff in Asia. Som e o f the o th ers may n o t have b e en th ere o f th e ir own free will. ‘T h e g reat T alookhdars had sent in th eir c o n tin g en ts’, writes Kaye ;86 an d all th e village levies in the province seem to have b e en got to g eth er by th e feudal chiefs .87 W hen the feudal chiefs o f the H ighlands raised th eir clansm en for the rebellion o f 1745, they m ade sure o f every m an v o lu n teerin g by th rea te n in g to b u rn his house over his h e a d if he d id not. If a good m any o f the d efen d ers o f Lucknow w ere th ere u n d e r sim ilar pressure, th eir disposition to ru n away w hen the crisis cam e is u n derstandable. Engels d em onstrated with a wealth o f the technical detail he loved th a t the defenders o f Lucknow were utterly ig n o ra n t o f how to c o n stru ct and d e fe n d fortified positions. W orst o f all, h e th o u g h t th at unlike the sepoys at Delhi they let th e ir courage ooze away, until in th e end ‘th ere was b u t o n e g ran d a n d u n an im o u s act o f b o ltin g ’. H e went o n to generalize ab o u t the triu m p h s o f the bayonet in Asia .88 This too belo n g ed to accepted m ilitary doctrine. T h e b ay o n et was the w eap o n th a t re q u ire d m ost tra in in g a n d steadiness; these were E u ro p e ’s strongest points, a n d it was n o t by su p erio rity in long-range w eapons a lo n e th a t it was w inning its em pires. B ut Engels was also a m ilitary m an o f his tim e in cherishing an ideal o f civilized, as well as scientific, warfare. H e c o n d em n ed th e sack o f Lucknow in very strong language, as ‘an everlasting disgrace’ to the British army, the only arm y h e p o in te d o u t th a t still clung to th e ‘tim e-honoured privilege’ o f freedom to loot a captured city.89 It was th e only arm y th a t d id m ost o f its fighting outside E urope. A bout this same tim e, he w rote an encyclopaedia article on Badajoz, th e Spanish town storm ed by W ellington’s forces in 1811 a n d given u p to m ilitary e x ecu tio n . T h e re th e victors, h e said, p e rp e tra te d h o rro rs ‘which m ight well m ake the angels weep, a n d which obscured, if they could n o t efface, the glory o f their w onderful ach iev em ent ’.90 Badajoz an d Lucknow m ust have b e en in his m ind together. A fter Lucknow fell Engels predicted a long, toilsom e effort

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by the British to wear down scattered resistance. ‘T h e whole Kingdom o f O u d h bristles with fortresses.’9* B ut these w ere as he saw feudal strongholds, rallying-points for the zam indars a n d th eir ragtag a n d bob-tail .92 H e does n o t seem to have expected m uch in th e way o f a g en u in e g uerrilla struggle: on the contrary he ex p ected the b eaten sepoys to d eg en erate in to bandits, with th e p eo p le against th em 93 H e p ictu red ‘Oudhians* ra th e r vaguely as a ‘warlike trib e ’, brave b u t capable only o f ragged fighting ‘in the no rm al Asiatic m anner*. In his eyes even an irregular force ou g h t to have som e definite shape an d leadership, and, as he had w ritten to M arx, ‘we have n o t h eard in a single instance th at any in su rrectio n ary arm y in India had b een p roperly instituted u n d e r a recognized c h ie f 94 Engels still th o u g h t the e n d far o ff until he h e a rd o f places like Bareilly being su rre n d e re d w ithout a fight, b u t by S ep tem b er 1858 he felt that the h e a rt had g o n e o u t o f the resistance. H e saw th ree factors at work to weaken it. Too m any sepoys w ere c o n te n t to levy contributions from the areas they controlled, instead o f harassing th e British and cutting off food supplies from th eir u rb an bases. S econdly th e ‘c h ie fs’ o r ‘la n d h o ld e rs ’ w ere g o in g over to the governm ent, which was now ready to com prom ise with them . Thirdly he believed that th e British reign o f te rro r was intim idating, th o u g h fu rth er em bittering, the country .95 Altogether, Engels seem s to have c o n clu d ed by this stage th a t th e so o n er things w ere b ro u g h t to an e n d , th e better. T h e next colonial cam paign h e had occasion to study was th e fum bling Spanish invasion o f M orocco in 1859-60. In his essays o n it, while not referrin g to the M utiny specifically, he com pared th e m obility and energy displayed by the British in In d ia a n d the F rench in Algeria with Spanish sluggishness. B ut he fo u n d fresh evidence to prove th a t a disciplined m o d ern arm y with its screen o f skirm ishers was m ore than a m atch for any n u m b e r o f irregular a tta c k e rs o n any g r o u n d .96 Two years la te r h e a n d M arx were w atching th e Civil War in Am erica, w here two im provised regular arm ies w ere in conflict. In o n e o f th eir articles they w rote th a t if the South resorted to ‘gu errilla warfare a n d b rig an d ag e’ (two things always associated in th eir m inds) it w ould be the d o in g o f the p o o r whites, a n d would only alarm th eir superiors, the rich so u th ern

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planters, who would th en be glad to see them suppressed by the N o rth .97 In the sam e way they may have supposed, a n d with good reason, th at real peasant m ilitancy in O u d h would have frig h ten ed (o r d id h e lp to frighten) the taluqdars into th e arm s o f the British. O n the US w ar th e o p in io n s o f th e two frie n d s so o n diverged. Engels never failed to be im pressed by g o o d soldiering, w hatever politics it w ent with, an d he felt sure th at the half-hearted N o rth m ust be defeated by the so utherners. T hese m en m ight be slave-owners, b u t they were in ‘bloody earnest. . . . Besides, they fight q u ite famously .’98 M arx d e m u rre d . ‘It seem s to m e th a t you let yourself b e swayed a litde too m uch by the m ilitary aspect o f th in g s .’99 H e m ight have said th e sam e in 1857, b u t h e d id not. In A m erica h e w anted the N o rth to win, a n d believed it would. In India h e m ig h t w ant to see the British b eaten , b u t he could n o t expect, an d p erh ap s could n o t h o p e, th at the rebels w ould win.

Nearly all th e thinking o f M arx an d Engels, as they g ro p ed th e ir way th ro u g h th e press o f n in eteen th -cen tu ry events, explorers m aking th eir own m aps as they w ent along, was provisional an d speculative. Som etim es am biguides in it stand o u t m o re noticeably w hen we see th em theorizing a b o u t the new political a ren a o f Asia. T h e re was an unresolved discord in M arx’s thinking a b o u t em pire, betw een the idea o f a w estern ‘m ission’, an d h a tre d o f co n q u est as a reinforce­ m en t o f class power abroad and at hom e. At times, particularly a b o u t 1853, a n d p articularly in In d ia, h e was p re p a re d to th in k o f a ‘civilizing m ission’ n o t m uch different from the one th at W inwood R eade h a d in m ind w hen h e declared: ‘Asia is possessed by a few kings a n d by their so ld iers. . . the masses o f the people are invariably slaves ’.100 Even if M arx fo u n d it h a rd e r later on to believe th a t Asia w ould b e any b etter o ff u n d e r w estern rule, w estern in terferen ce m ig h t b e b etter for it th an to be left in the com a it had b een sunk in for ages. Engels lived to welcom e the effect, as h e forecast it, o f Ja p a n ’s attack on C hina in 1894, the final disintegration o f the old im m obile C hinese society .101 M arx did n o t overcom e the co ntradiction in his thin k in g (or betw een his thinking a n d his feeling, as in 1857) on im perialism ,

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an d tu rn e d away from the problem o f its consequences b o th for Asia a n d fo r E u ro p e, the effect o f In d ia o n Britain as well as o f B ritain o n India. H e w ent on reading a b o u t In d ia at intervals, and may have in te n d e d to write a b o u t it again som e tim e o r o th e r .102 B ut in th e e n d h e an d Engels b e q u e a th e d to the socialist parties only a puzzlingly uncertain guidance here - especially w hen we recall th at th eir writings on Asia were fugitive pieces which have only in recen t years been salvaged from oblivion, and which they them selves d id n o t th in k m ature en o u g h to be w orth collecting. It is possible th at they th o u g h t o f im perialism after 1857 as a process th a t had m o re o r less reach ed its limits, as som ething ro o te d in an earlier p h ase o f history, a n d o f less significance for th e future. If so, they w ere to be co n trad icted by the lessons o f th e decades before 1914 w h e n im p e ria lism b e c a m e th e b u r n in g issue, a n d th e w orst im p ed im en t to th e in tern atio n al socialist m o v em en t Before this h a p p en e d , th e re was a lull o f a q u a rte r< e n tu ry in im perial expansion. It can be ex plained (as by L enin) in term s o f th e in n e r laws o f capitalist evolution, o r (m ore simply) in term s o f political a n d ‘accidental’ factors. O n e o f these was the M utiny itself. H a d it su cceeded, w hatever the result m ig h t have b e en fo r India th e effect o n the w orld w ould have b een great. E urope m ig h t have lost its taste - shared so far by only a few nations - for em pire-building; all th e m o re if th e spirit o f revolt had spread, as it m ight, from India to the n ex t m ost profitable colony in Asia, Indonesia. Even as a failure th e M utiny m ust rank as an event o f w orld history, for it m ust have h a d som e d a m p in g influence o n all expansionists in th e West, in c lu d in g th e US. E ngels w ound u p his c o m m e n ta ry o n it by p red ictin g a g eneral clash o f British an d Russian interests across Asia, with battles in C entral Asia in which Britain would be ham strung by In d ia ’s h a tre d .103 T h e clash o f interests did develop, b u t less im m ediately th an he expected; a n d th e batdes were never fought, pardy because the British in India were very conscious o f the d an g er o f a rebellion in th eir rear. T hey w ere occupied for a good m any years after 1857 with reb u ild in g th eir political position in India, a n d with forging a new n o rth e rn army. India was to Britain w hat the Illyrian provinces o f th e Balkans w ere to Rom e, a n d w ithout this reserv o ir o f ch eap

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soldiery, a d d ed to th at o f Ireland, its huge em p ire would have b een an impossibility. In the first O pium W ar nearly the whole o f the M ad ras A rm y h a d b e e n e m p lo y ed . In d ia n tro o p s w ere ag ain indispensable w hen expansion was resum ed in Malaya in th e late 1870s a n d th e n Egypt in 1882 and U p p e r B urm a in 1885. By that tim e a political m ovem ent o f m o d ern type was u n d e r way in India: th e new sepoys had nothing to do with it - a n d were only occasionally req u ire d to take action against it. O th e r w estern countries too w ere inactive in Asia d u rin g th e p o st-M u tin y y e a rs, p a rtly b e c a u s e B rita in was in a c tiv e : gov ern m en ts always w atched an d im itated each other, an d w hen o n e m oved the rest flocked after it like fierce sheep. In addition they each h a d preoccupations o f th eir own. T h e re was a series o f wars inside E urope until 1878. T h e France o f the Second E m pire so u g h t to regain hegem ony over its own c o n tin e n t Russia was tem porarily knocked o u t by the C rim ean War an d then absorbed in in tern al p roblem s o f reconstruction. Britain itself was fo r several years in fear o f F rench invasion. In the 1860s the US was busy with its civil war, a n d its first intervention in Asia, the forcible o p e n in g o f Jaipan to trade in 1853-54, was n o t followed u p until the e n d o f the cen tu ry with th e seizure o f the Philippines. AJ1 this gave Asia a breathing-space after 1857, which it o u g h t to have p ro fite d by. Its failure to d o so len d s w eight to M arx ’s hypothesis th at the old o rd er in Asia had reach ed a dead end. Only Ja p an seized the opportunity, after change was forced on it by first A m erican an d th e n British a n d F rench warships in the 1850s - th at d ecad e so rich b o th in great events in the East an d in studies o f w orld affairs by M arx and Engels. Between th en an d the start o f a new phase o f im perialism about 1880, Ja p an got through the critical stages o f m odernization. In a very ro u n d ab o u t way the Indian Mutiny may be said to have help ed to m ake J a p a n ’s survival possible. It is a g reat pity th at M arx’s full atten tio n was never draw n to th e rise o f this new power, far m ore m eaningful in the long ru n than the decline o f th e O tto m a n em p ire, at the o th e r e n d o f Asia, on w hich h e lavished so m uch th o u g h t an d ink. If there was a discord o r d o u b t in M arx’s m ind about em pire in India, it was an extension into Asia o f on e th at b eset him a t hom e

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in E urope. M ankind, th e family o f hu m an beings, was like Asiatic society too in e rt to move forw ard spontaneously. It could only be d rag g ed forw ard, by the dom inion o f a capitalist class; a n d capital could only be accum ulated, as em pires could only be nourished, by th e exploitation a n d m isery o f the masses. T h e p an o ram a o f history u n ro llin g itself befo re him was a harsh o ne, som ething like the Calvinist th eo lo g ian 's grim schem e o f eternity. Even then th ere still rem ain ed th e problem o f how capitalism , having d o n e its work, was to b e g o t rid of. C onsidering th e high resp ect Engels always show ed fo r th e pow er o f m o d ern stan d in g arm ies, o n e is com pelled to w o n d er how h e a n d M arx ever expected them to be overcom e by revolutions, unless first d isru p ted (as the tsarist arm y was in 1917) by foreign war. T h e relatively easy suppression o f the Mutiny, in spite o f th e rebels having superiority o f num bers, a n d fighting o n th eir ow n g r o u n d , a n d b e in g so far away fro m B ritain , m ig h t well discourage them ab o u t the prospects o f any future revolts in E urope, w h e th er n ational o r proletarian. L ater g en eratio n s o f E u ro p ean s h a n k e re d for an easier, sm o o th er ro ad than the one charted by Marx. H e himself, as youthful ex citem en t a n d hopefulness wore o ff (w hen th e Mutiny e n d e d he was a m an o f 40), m ust have had m oods o f dejection. If h e felt a grow ing d o u b t ab o u t hum an beings, th eir readiness to revolt against tyranny, th eir ability to revolt successfully - an d ab o u t w hether revolts m ight b e p rem a tu re a n d self-defeating - it is less strange th a t in his later years h e tu rn e d from scrutiny o f actual history to analysis o f capital as a th in g in itself. Capitalism was a com plex m achinery m ade by m en b u t in d e p e n d e n t o f m e n ’s wills; its in tern al contradictions w ould, like a lurking death-wish, en su re its destruction, o r com pel its m akers to destroy it, at the h o u r w hen hum anity was ready to dispense with it.

Notes 1 R.C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857, Calcutta 1957; S.B. Chaudhuri, Theories ofthe Indian Mutiny 1857-1859, Calcutta 1965. 2 ‘The Annexation of Oudh’ (May 1858), in Marx and Engels, The First Indian War of Independence 1857- 1859, Moscow 1959. * See his letter of 5 February 1859, in Private Letters of the Marquess of

M a r x , E n g e l s , a n d t he I n d i a n M u t i n y

Dalhousie, ed. J.G.A Baird, Edinburgh 1910, p. 399. 4 For a detailed account of how the annexation affected the taluqdars and peasants, see Jagdish Raj, T h e Introduction of the Taluqdari System in Oudh', in Contributions to Indian Economic History, ed. T. Raychaudhuri, Calcutta 1960, pp. 46ff. ' Raychaudhuri, op. cit., pp. 56-57. * Rebellion 1857, ed. P.C. Joshi, Delhi 1957, pp. 200-01. 7 See J. Prebble, Culloden, London 1961. 8 W.H. Chaloner and W.O. Henderson, Engels as Military Critic, collected articles; Manchester 1959, Introd. 9 See Amiya Barat, The Bengal Native Infantry, Calcutta 1962, pp. 72 ff., 166-67, 171. 10 War of Independence, p. 45. 11 M.R. Gubbins, An Account of the Mutinies in Oudh, London 1858, p. 432. 12 War of Independence, p. 40. 114 Marx and Engels, Revolution in Spain, collected articles, New York 1939, p, 81 (1854). 14 A. Barat, op. cit., p. 33. 15 A. Barat, op. cit., p. 138. 16 A Barat, op. c it, pp. 16,18. 17 M.R Gubbins, op. cit., p. 111. 18 See texts in N.K. Nigam, Delhi in 1857, Delhi 1957, pp. 83-84, 86-87. 19 H.T. Lambrick, John Jacob ofJacobabad, London 1960, p. 358, etc. 20 Col. C.E. Calwell, Small Wars. Their Prinäples and Practice, War Office, 3rd edn., London 1906, p. 444. 21 Ibid., p. 104. 22 Ibid., pp. 154, 405. 23 Ibid., pp. 174, 209, 211. 24 Private Letters, p. 414. This is emphasized by N.K. Nigam, op. cit., pp. 142, 144, etc. 26 On Colonialism, p. 75 (1853). 27 Revolution in Spain, p. 26. 28 Ibid., p. 32. 29 Ibid.. p. 55.' I first read Marx’s writings on Spain in the inspiring atmosphere of the ‘commune’ of the CPI at Bombay, about 1944.1 have since tried to re-examine the events he was observing in my book The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History (1966). 51 Marx, The Eastern Question, collected articles, ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling, London 1897, p. 505. 52 Ibid., pp. 592, 611 fT. M Ibid., pp. 2-4. 54 Ibid., p. 81.

A C R O S S T I M E AND C O N T I N E N T S

55 * 57 **

Ibid.. p. 468. Ibid.. p. 158. Ibid., p. 533. As it was, in 1857 Marx noticed and shared a feeling that Britain might find itself dangerously denuded of troops, in view of the precarious European situation ( War of Indpendence, pp. 69-70). 39 Private Littery, p. 304 (12June 1854). 40 Ibid., p. 355 (23 Sep. 1855). 41 Ibid.. p. 313 (12 Aug. 1854). 42 Ibid.. p. 357 (6 Oct. 1855). Cf. SirJ.W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, London 1865, Vol. I, p. 342, on the current rumours of British collapse and Russian invasion. 45 Private betters, p. 362 (15 Dec. 1855). 44 War of Indepenence, p. 40; cf. p. 153. 45 The Eastern Question, pp. 573^-74. 46 Ibid., p. 452; cf. p. 506. 47 W.B. Andrew, Our Scientific Frontier, London 1880, pp. 84-86. 48 War of Independence, p. 37. 49 On Colonialism, pp. 66-69 (1853). 50 See two letters to Kautsky in 1884: On Colonialism, pp. 309-10. Marx had wavered for some time on this point, when studying the Russian m tr a r village co m m u n e.

51 War of Independence, p. 37. 52 Notes on Indian History (664-1858), Moscow, n.d. This is a mainly chronological oudine made by Marx for his own use. •w Ibid., pp. 176-77. 54 ‘Multatuli’ wrote his novel Max Havekutr, 1860; trans. W. Siebenhaar, N.Y. 1927, an exposure of Dutch exploitation of Java, with the aim of averting a conflict there like that of 1857 in India (pp. 202-24). 55 War of Independence, p. 107. 56 Ibid., p. 46. s7 Revolution in Spain, p. 119. 58 Notes, p. 176; cf. the reference to the Santhals in War of Independence, p. 109. w Notes, p. 176; he adds that ‘fakirs’ told the men that the new cartridges were a design against their religion. 60 War of Independence, pp. 40-41. 61 Ibid., p. 65. 62 Ibid., p. 44. 65 Ibid., pp. 54-57. 64 Ibid., p. 91. w War of Independence, p. 112. N.K. Nigam, op. c it, pp. 66 fT., confirms the forcible raising of money from traders. eague214-15, 224-26, 234 Muslimprogressivewriters 185 Muslimreligiousrevival 68, 95 Muslimrule86 Muslims108, 114, 153, 174-75, 177. 200, 203, 215, 218, 224 Mussolini 229 Mutiny(of1857) 3,4,55,57,58, 62, 63, 66,68, 69, 70,71, 72,74, 79,80. 81,82, 87, 146-64, 174, 175 Mysore 144 Nagas211 NanaSahib114 Napier, SirCharles110, 118 Napoleon(III) 68,103, 147,155, 206 Napoleonicoccupation87 Narain. Brij211 Narodnik63 NationalAssembly67 national Culture170 National Socialists37 nationalism8, 13,18, 29, 32,33, 36, 37, 63,143, 151,204,211 nationalist movements36, 37 nationalists 151, 153, 212 nationalities215 nationality67,96 nations63,96 nation-stateformation 18.23, 29 nation-states 15, 32-39 N a tiv e S ta ir « 143. 234 naturalism185 Nazi invasion168 Nazis229 Nazism205, 235 necessityofhistory19-25, 44

INDEX

Negrorebels 147 Nehru.Jawaharlal97. 141,210. 21314, 228 Netherlands37 NewZealand79 Newton67 Niazis110 Nichoslon.John 102 Nietzsche80. 184,187. 197, 200. 202 Nizam158 non-alignment 204 Normanconquest 172 Norman, E.H.8, 17,2«) NorthAmerica74. 84 NorthAmericancolonies80 O’Donnell 105 Olivier. Lord, SecretaryforIndia136 OmarKhayyam179 OpiumWar3, 109. 123;secondOpium War55. 83, 103 opium,profits81;trade75 Ottomanempire74, 106, 107, 123 Oudh64, 70-71, 94-95, 97-98, 100-11, 119-21, 153, 157 Oxford9, 77, 218;Universityof209 Pacific27 Pakistan2, 13, 62,168-70, 173-74, 176, 183-85, 188-89, 192, 215, 223. 22526; PeaceCommittee 169 Pakistan Times 169 PalmeDutt 225 Palmerston, Lord64, 71 Pan-Islamic184, 187 Paraguay1 Pares, Richard9 ParisCommune (of 1871) 230 parliament 131, 133 parliamentarianism141 parliamentarymethod 141 Parsees75 partition 131. 169, 175. 184 Past C 7*Present 10. 14 Patiala. Maharajaof235 peacemovement 188 Pearce, Brian218 peasant, militancy222; revolts41, 95; risings86 peasantry41, 62. 63, 70,94. 96;232 peasants42

Index

PeninsularWar 114 People’s War 220, 221 PermanentSettlement 78, 150 Persia73, 82, 108,174. 176, 181.191. 203 Persian63. 173, 174, 175, 185, 187, 188. 195, 197;poetry178, 183 Persianwar (1856) 103, 109, 116 Peshawar 237 Philippines 123, 132 plantation-economy66, 160 planters 160-62 Plassey65, 71 Poland105 Polishrebellion55 Poona237 Portugal 13 pre-BritishIndia83 primitivecommunism63, 111 PrinceofBerar 158 PrinceofWalesMuseum210 princelyrule 152-53 princelyStates 156 Progressive W riters’ Association 18, 168, 223 proletarianculture40 proletariat 39, 55, 67. 69, 70 prose 14 Prussianarmy116;autocracy129 publicsector78 Punjab63,96,99,146,153, 165,168, 175-77, 181, 187-88, 191-92, 200, 204, 214-15, 221-22, 224-25, 23031, 233-34; Universityof166 Punjabi 154, 174, 177, 183, 185, 192, 204 QueenVictoria 151 race26 racialism157, 158 railway64, 65,66, 68, 69, 74, 77, 111, 148 Raj 139, 152, 155, 158, 231.233 Rajputana96 Rajputs98, 154 Ranadive, B.T.226 Rani ofjhansi 114 Rawalpindi 171;Conspiracytrial 169 Reade, Winwood 121 RedFlagunion217

RedFort trial 242 religion13, 14. 42, 43, 64. 67, 75, 87. 100. 101, 110, 113, 143, 178, 180, 182, 200,201,224 revoltof1857, seeMutinyof1857 revolution13, 14 revolution (of1789) 37,86, 104 revolution(of 1917) 197 revolutions(of1848-49) 37, 61, 70, 72, 84. 103. 105. 106. 118, 230 Robespierre 147 Romanhistory59 Romanticism67 Rome3, 60. 123 RoundTableConference, 1930144 Rousseau 148 Roy,ManabendraNath8. 13 Roy, RamMohun66. 68, 105 royal proclamationof 1858151 Rud6, George 1,9, 14, 40. 44 Rumi185, 201 Russell, LordJohn 156 Russia63-64. 83, 86. 106, 110, 122-23, 211,217, 220 Russianadministration 152 ryotwari 62 sackofDelhi, 185883 Salisbury134 Sanskrit 110, 173 Sankrityayan, Rahul 218, 239 Santhal rising(of1856-57) 113 Saqi 180-83, 186, 189 Saville,John6, 218 Scotland97 Scott, Rev. Michael 211, 212 SecondInternational 116, 136 SecondWorldWar2,9, 17,25, 37,134, 142, 168, 169, 209, 212,213, 214, 215, 216,218, 221, 222, 225, 228, 229, 230, 231, 236 secularist 223 self-determination 225 self-government 141, 152 Selfhood199, 200-04, 206 serfs77 settlement (of1856) 94 settlersinIndia 159-62 Shakespeare7,9, 11, 16, 18, 33, 59, 67. 97, 148, 150, 168, 172, 175, 179, 189

*54

Shelley56, 200 Shylock160 Sikh75,97, 153, 177, 201,215,233, 242 SikhNational College. Lahore9. 17 Sikhism176 Sikhs99. 102, 110. 115, 146. 154, 166. 224. 226 Silesia39 SimonCommission133, 144 Sindhia 114 Singh. Bhai Vir201 Singh, Khushwant4 Sinkiang241 slavery56 Slavs60. 106 Smiles, Samuel 202 Smith, Adam80, 81 Snow,Edgar 142 social equality181, 205 social history14 socialism5, 15, 32, 37, 41, 42. 43, 44, 55, 63, 96, 130-35. 167, 184, 204, 209 socialist 188. 189; literature223; movement 42; revolution 17, 84; worldmovement 188 socialistChina76 Socialist DemocraticFederation 138 socialists144, 212, 214 SouthAmericanWarofthePacific13 SouthAsia1,5 SouthAsianpoetry14 SouthEastAsia26 SouthIndia96 southernAfrica85 Soviet 210, 229 Soviet Union, see USSR Spain17, 38, 39. 55, 78,87, 103, 104, 105, 114 Spanisharmy99 SpanishCivilWar (1936-39) 38 SpanishinvasionofMorocco(185960) 120 SpanishRevolution(of 1854) 8, 10,55, 74, 103, 112 SpanishWarofIndependence105, 117 SlPetersburg74 Stalin216

INDEX

Stalingrad229, 236 statesocialism32 Strabolgi, Lord141, 144 strikes222 student movement 223 studyofwar 115-21 sub-imperialism97 Sufis201 Sufism181 surpluslabour 35;-power 76 Tagore 177 Taipingrebellion69. 70. 83. 96. 109 Taj Mahal 179 taluqdars or revenue-collectors70. 72. 94,95. 98. 100. 121. 153 Tamberlane (Timur) 69. 206 Taseer, M.D.233 taxation68. 73 tea161. 162;-plantations75 telegraph 111 Tennyson200, 232 Thomas,J.H. 144 Thompson, Dorothy6 Thompson, E.P. 1,14, 40, 44 Tibet 151 TipuSahib108 Tolstoy202 Tories 130. 139. 142, 144 Tory133, 134;Government 137; policies 131 Toryism135, 141 TradeUnionCongress 133, 140. 169 tradeunionism140 tradeunion40, 100, 139, 209 Trevelyan. G.O. 147, 148, 150. 160, 161 tribal revolts79 TrinityCollege9,219, 228 Tsar60 tsarism55. 64 tsaristrule 107 tsarist Russia73, 106 Tudor, England73, 79; polity22 Turk187 Turkestan 191 Turkey57, 76. 99. 103. 106, 107, 116 underdevelopedcountries 41 UnionistParty212 UnitedStatesofAmerica11,27, 28, 33. 56. 122, 123, 132, 171\ see also

Index

America Upper Burma3, 123 Urdu 18, 169, 172-75, 177-78, 183, 185, 191-92,195, 212, 232 Urdupoetry1,171, 175, 177-78, 18083, 187, 189,191-92 USSR37, 76, 143, 168, 171, 213, 222, 223, 230 usury72, 78 Utilitarianism65 Valery, Paul 20 VictorianBritain40 Vietnam135;War28 Virgil 11 wage-labour 63 war 13 weaving61, 83 Wedgwood 130 Wellington 119 West Bengal 174 WestPakistan172, 174, 175

westernAsia83 westerncapitalism84 westernEurope55, 86, 114 westernimperial expansion 10 westernimperialism84, 184 westernMarxism24 Westminster74. 131, 134, 138, 139. 140, 155 Windham118 Wittfogcl, Karl 26 women157, 159 Wordsworth4, 7, 16. 42. 189. 195, 200, 203 workingclass14, 43, 55. 69; struggle 12 worldcivilization30 worldhistory24 worldmarket 30. 73 worldrevolution41 YoungBengal 148 mmindari system62, 78 zainindsrs71