Race, Nation, History: Anglo-German Thought in the Victorian Era 9780812296235

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RACE, NATION, HISTORY

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN AGE Series Editors Angus Burgin Peter E. Gordon Joel Isaac Karuna Mantena Samuel Moyn Jennifer Ratner-­Rosenhagen Camille Robcis Sophia Rosenfeld

R ACE , NAT ION, HISTORY Anglo-­German Thought in the Victorian Era

Oded Y. Steinberg

Universit y of Pennsylvania Press Phil adelphia

Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www​.­upenn​.­edu​/­pennpress Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 A Cataloging-­in-­Publication record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-5137-1

As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. —­Cavafy, Ithaka, 1911

For my fellow and beloved travelers: Rachel, Nadav, Ayala, and Carmel

Contents

Introduction. Racial Time

1

Chapter 1. The En­glish Teutonic Circle

21

Chapter 2. Roman Decline and Teutonic Rejuvenation: The Racial German and En­glish Gemeinschaft of Scholars (1850–90)

50

Chapter 3. Racial History: The Convergence of Race and Periodization

89

Chapter 4. The Unique Historical Periodization of E. A. Freeman

109

Chapter 5. Teutonism and Romanism: James Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire

134

Chapter 6. The Illusion of Finality: Bury and the Unity of the East

157

Epilogue. Values and Interests

189

Notes 195 Bibliography 233 Index 253 Acknowl­edgments

269

introduction

Racial Time

History can only exist as a discipline if it develops a theory of periodization. —­Reinhart Koselleck

Reinhart Koselleck h ­ ere summarizes the method of history that materialized in the Enlightenment and was further developed during the nineteenth ­century. With this idea of the period, the division of historical time became dominant. For the first time, according to Koselleck, concepts (Begriffe) such as the M ­ iddle Ages or the Re­nais­sance became associated with a unique and demarcated historical era. Indeed, it could be argued that this development in the classification of time contributed to the establishment of history as a profession or even as an in­de­pen­dent discipline. History suddenly possessed borders. Th ­ ese “borders of time” defined the main division of history into three demarcated periods: antiquity, M ­ iddle Ages, and modernity. This Eurocentric triad dominates our general perception of historical time and corresponds with the division between antiquity, feudalism, and capitalism. It does not, as Jack Goody notes, take into consideration other “spaces” or “times” of non-­ European civilizations.1 In the modern era, to use this dominant Eurocentric periodization, especially ­because of the tendency to trace modernity’s own alleged origin, this division became almost sanctified and could be referred to as the historiographical “Holy Trinity.” Periodization arose as a concept in the nineteenth c­ entury si­mul­ta­neously with the emergence of two other, sometimes amalgamated terms: “nation” and “race.” The significance of nationalism (as a concept), some argue, remained almost unnoticed by nineteenth-­century scholars. For instance, Isaiah Berlin

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argues that, with the exception of Moses Hess in his Rome and Jerusalem (1862), no nineteenth-­century con­temporary thinker considered nationalism as the po­liti­cal force of the f­uture.2 ­W hether or not one accepts Berlin’s assertion, his argument seems plausible in the sense that, for most nineteenth-­century scholars, nationalism was conceived as merely another stage in h ­ uman pro­ gress. This stage corresponded with the basic natu­ral feeling of belonging to a certain community, or Gemeinschaft. It could be argued that “race,” like “nation,” was also not identified as a distinct concept ­until the twentieth ­century. However, especially following the “Darwinian revolution” of the 1860s, a somewhat unique and allegedly scientific character was given to the notion of “race” by late nineteenth-­century scholars. Thus, it may be argued, the concepts of “race” and “periodization” w ­ ere transformed during the 3 nineteenth ­century. The pres­ent book proposes a novel thesis as to how historical periodization converged with racial, national, and religious themes and came to inform the historical perception of certain notable En­glish and German scholars during the second half of the nineteenth ­century.4 The argument is developed by way of the exploration of two interlinked themes: how a specific group of En­glish and German scholars employed the Teutonic notion to construct their past and pres­ent communities; and, given this notion, how some of the En­glish scholars came to perceive historical periodization. In light of t­ hese two themes, the book is divided into two interlinked parts: “community” and “time.” “Community” engages with a particularly close community—or Gemeinschaft—­of En­glish and German scholars that emerged around the ­middle of the nineteenth ­century. On the En­glish side, this community included Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92), William Stubbs (1825–1901), John Richard Green (1837–83), and James Bryce (1838– 1922). On the German side, it comprised scholars deeply involved with En­ glish scholarship, like Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen (1791–1860), Reinhold Pauli (1823–82), and fi­nally the renowned, almost En­glish, Oxford scholar Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900). Building on the notion of Teutonic kinship, this community of scholars founded an ­imagined community of belonging, composed of several subnations that ­were nevertheless understood to be united by racial, ethnic, and cultural bonds. Hence, ­England’s dominant Anglo-­ Saxons—­namely, the retrospective identification of the Germanic Saxons, ­A ngles and Jutes as the nation’s ancestors (Chapter 1)—­were ­imagined to have racially united most of the British Isles’ inhabitants (excluding the autochthonic Celts of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland) with the Germanic entities of



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mainland Eu­rope. From their historical work arose a vision of the En­glish and Germans as ultimately one ­people, an almost indivisible community. For most of ­these scholars, the Teutonic notion was not a remnant of the past but a pres­ent, living ideal determining their social, po­liti­cal, and religious realities. Due to the Napoleonic Wars and, l­ater in the ­century, the Franco-­ Prussian War (1870–71), France was a key force in shaping ­these nineteenth-­ century realities. For many, including the above-­mentioned Anglo-­German scholars, France denoted the g­ reat as well as eternal “other” of both Germany and ­England. Why eternal? ­Because since antiquity, according to ­t hese scholars, France’s Celtic/Gallic, Roman, and ­later Catholic identities have confronted the Teutonism and (­later) Protestantism of Lutheran Germany and Anglican ­England. Indeed, the book ­will illustrate how ­these Anglo-­German scholars studied the glorious tribal/barbarian past also in order “to penetrate below the Roman surface of Western Eu­rope.”5 Thus, their mutual Anglo-­Saxon/Teutonic and Protestant narratives mainly emerged in response to France’s “Latinity” and Catholicism. Through the idea of “race,” scholars categorized time with a more precise criterion than hitherto, based upon scientific and philological reasoning. “Race” was taken as reflecting the assumed “purity” of the community in the most predominant way. The appearance of a certain race at a specific space and time signified the beginning or the end of a period; in other words, a certain correlation was now established between the method in which ­these scholars divided time and their perception of the emergence of national communities. For many, the beginning or end of a certain era also signified the ascent or descent of a race or of a nation. Scholars t­ oday tend to discuss race and time prolifically, though usually as in­de­pen­dent entities and without exploring the explicit correlation between t­hese terms. In this book, however, they are incorporated, since the development of the modern racial doctrine, it is argued, influenced the division of time. Throughout the discussion, I ­will refer to this aspect as “racial time.” Note that I do not claim that, according to t­ hese scholars, only racial characteristics demarcated history. Rather, I argue that racial perceptions of time w ­ ere dominant but not exclusive in the division of time. The racial ele­ment, I assert, was especially prevalent in the modern perception of the nature and significance of the invasions and wanderings of the Teutonic tribes into the realms of the Roman Empire—­a development that signified for many the end of antiquity and the beginning of the M ­ iddle Ages. Teutonism, as part of this concept of “racial time,” thus gave shape to scholars’ historical periodization. For some, the invasions of the Teutonic tribes

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initiated a new period in world history. The year AD 476, associated as it is with the fall of Rome, plays a crucial role h ­ ere. During the nineteenth c­ entury, “Roman” scholars emphasized the barbarism of and the devastation caused by the tribes, which they contrasted with the glory of Rome, while “Germanic” scholars highlighted the role of the Germanic tribes in rejuvenating a decaying empire. For the latter, the tribes’ conquest of the Roman Empire was not “ordinary” but “formative,” symbolizing the transformation from antiquity to the ­Middle Ages by way of the injection of a new and dominant ethnoracial character into the decaying empire. As w ­ ill be shown, for both the “Romanist” and “Germanic” schools, the fifth ­century became the ultimate “time border” between antiquity and the ­Middle Ages. Following this initial discussion, the first part of the book (the first and second chapters) sets the Teutonic “community/Gemeinschaft” at the center of the research. In this part both the common ground and the divergences between individual scholars w ­ ill be addressed. In the first chapter, I concentrate on the En­glish Teutonic scholars and especially on the writings of Thomas Arnold (1795–1842), Freeman, Stubbs, Green, and Bryce. The chapter explores the shared Teutonic theme that dominated all their writings. ­These scholars w ­ ere connected with each other through both social and academic ties. Some of them played a formative role in the construction of the historical profession in ­England. Together with their Teutonism, the chapter explores the “Anglo-­Saxon” identity of t­ hese scholars. Through their Anglo-­Saxonism, which was similar but not necessarily identical with their Teutonism, some of ­these scholars found affinity with American scholars such as Herbert  B. Adams. Chapter 2 turns to several German scholars who maintained prolific relations with t­ hese En­glish scholars. Th ­ ere is, as I w ­ ill show, a “genealogy” of German scholars who embraced the Teutonic theme and maintained long-­ lasting links with E ­ ngland. This scholarly genealogy begins with B.  G. Niebuhr (1776–1831), the g­ reat German historian of Rome, and continues with Baron Bunsen, Max Müller, and Reinhold Pauli. As in the first chapter, the Teutonic theme again sets the tone. This German “Teutonism,” as ­will be shown, included a seminal anti-­French and anti-­Celtic tendency also evident among the En­glish scholars. Chapter 3 merges the discussion of community in the first part of the book with the idea of temporal periodization, which is the focus of the second part. The chapter demonstrates how the perceived emergence and decline of a certain historical community/race/nation was pivotal in the periodization of



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history. In concrete terms, the chapter discusses how the invasions of the Germanic tribes signified, according to many nineteenth-­century scholars, the time border between antiquity and modernity. The chapter delves into the works of “Roman” authors such as François Guizot (1787–1874), Numa-­Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89), as well as ­others who named the period a­ fter the fall of the Roman Empire the “Barbarian Era.” The chapter then engages with a close reading of the Germanic position, prevalent among En­glish scholars, which identified the Teutonic tribes as active and creative agents in a momentous historical transformation: the tribes defeated Rome, the greatest empire of all time, paved the way for the ­Middle Ages, embraced the Christian faith, and spread Chris­tian­ity among the pagans. While the first chapters are dedicated to the conventional periodization, the second part of the book—­Chapters 4, 5, and 6—­examines the theme of “time” in greater detail and delves into the distinctive periodizations of Freeman, Bryce, and John Bagnell Bury (1861–1927). Although t­ hese scholars still held to some aspects of the conventional triadic periodization, they mainly ­adopted a vision of a historical continuum. Both Freeman and Bryce, as ­will be detailed in the first part of the book, belonged to the Teutonic circle. Hence, through their contact with and reading of German scholars, the Teutonic notion was transferred into their historical perception. Indeed, the two men ­were themselves good friends for over four de­cades and maintained a prolific correspondence, a thorough examination of which provides a fair part of the documentary evidence used in the book. Despite some divergence in their respective attachments to the Teutonic idea, both highlighted the historical significance of the Germanic tribes and celebrated their vast influence on the making of the nations of modern Eu­rope. Bury, however, was far less keen on the notion of “Teutonism” and, although admiring Freeman, can be viewed as a contrasting example to that of both Freeman and Bryce. In the case of Freeman and Bryce, it is impor­tant to note that their creation of a unique historical periodization did not contradict their Teutonic affinity. The three scholars, discussion of whose work is at the heart of the second part of the book, reveal impor­tant similarities but also major differences. Their unique historical periodization, it is ­here argued, has not been recognized in the secondary research lit­er­a­ture. All three ­adopted a certain historical unity that signified a departure from the conventional and time-­hallowed division between antiquity and the M ­ iddle Ages. Thus, their concept of the “unity of history,” initially developed by Thomas Arnold, while a central focus throughout the book, is especially prominent in the second part. ­These scholars, it should be

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noted, also left a substantial mark on the professionalization of the En­glish university system. All three ­were regius professors in Oxbridge and each aimed to implement a certain innovative periodization within the Oxbridge curriculum. Starting with the unique periodization of Freeman in the fourth chapter, I ­will focus primarily on his notion of the “unity of history” and its associated idea of a long-­lasting historical continuum. For most of his life, Freeman was an in­de­pen­dent man of letters who published broadly on vari­ous historical ­matters. From 1884 to his death in 1892 he was regius professor of modern history in Oxford. Although he at times admitted the role of religion and language, in general, Freeman viewed historical unity and historical continuity as pertaining to the history of a single race. As such, however, his unity theory appears incompatible with his occasional use of periodization. Chapter 4 explores the in­ter­est­ing and idiosyncratic ways in which Freeman conceived of a long historical unity that was nevertheless divisible into subperiods. Chapter 5 concentrates on the distinctive periodization of the scholar and politician James Bryce. At the center of this chapter is a study of Bryce’s underresearched The Holy Roman Empire (THRE, 1864). Bryce offered an innovative scheme that identified a long unity that had lasted within the Roman Empire from its foundation by Augustus u ­ ntil its dissolution in 1804– 6. The key to this this long historical Eu­ro­pean unity, he argued, was that the original Roman institutional ele­ment had integrated with the new Teutonic components. Together with emphasizing the racial fusion between Teutonic and Latin races, Bryce also looked to an institutional, cultural, and juristic inheritance that glued the empire together for centuries. Chapter 6 explores the work of Bury, the Irish classicist and historian of the “late” Roman Empire (i.e., Byzantium). Bury—in contrast to all the other figures discussed in this book—­was only lukewarm on Teutonism. In fact, he opened up a ­whole new path of historical research that recognized the late Byzantine Empire as the true successor of Rome. For him, Rome and, with it, antiquity w ­ ere not terminated in the fifth ­century, and ­there was a continuity between the “old” Rome of the West and the “new” Rome of the East. This periodization, as in the cases of Freeman and Bryce, partly resulted from Bury’s adoption of a par­tic­u­lar version of the “unity of history” idea. But, in part due to his Irish Protestant background, Bury also dismissed Chris­tian­ity— or, more accurately, Catholicism—as a marker of historical unity. For Bury, Catholicism stood in opposition to two notions central in his writings: reason



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and pro­gress. Thus, Bury turned his gaze to the Roman East as providing an alternative to the “­imagined” Catholic unity of the West. ­These three scholars reveal similarities as well as major differences in their writings. They all devised a method that signified a departure from the accepted and almost sacred division between antiquity and the ­Middle Ages. Each from his unique point of view, presented an innovative scheme for the division of time. In terms of the w ­ hole book, “race,” as w ­ ill be shown, was the cornerstone for temporal periodization. It was key in the establishment of the triad periodization as well as in the unique periodizations of Freeman and Bryce.

“Race,” “Language,” and “Periodization”: Some Preliminary Remarks Throughout this work, I s­ hall refer to terms such as “race,” “language,” and “periodization,” and their role in the pro­cess of constructing the national community by vari­ous scholars. In this introduction, I therefore turn to an initial clarification of ­these terms. From the mid-­and especially late eigh­teenth ­century, following the publications of scholars such as the Scottish naturalist James Hutton (1726–97), major debates had evolved regarding prehistory, the origins of mankind, and the earth’s age. Hutton, for instance, refuted the time-­honored belief in the biblical narrative and replaced it with a scientific approach to the earth’s age. The earth, according to him, was very old, millions of years older than biblical calculations. Thus, both God and men, as Jack Repcheck shows, ­were omitted from Hutton’s t­oday somewhat forgotten but unique and pathbreaking scientific theory.6 While Hutton was challenging the biblical chronology, some of his Enlightenment contemporaries followed a related path and contested the divine origins of language. Th ­ ese thinkers a­ dopted the ancient Epicurean theory attesting to the linkage between language and real­ity. Language, they argued, developed gradually through history. This claim differed from theories that, mainly based on the Genesis narratives concerning Adam’s naming of the animals and the Tower of Babel, posited the existence of a perfect original language.7 As Maurice Olender aptly commented on this tradition, “the story of Genesis is thus the story of language in action—­first the language of God,

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then the language of man.”8 ­A fter the Deluge, in a narrative that has received multiple commentaries, the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, scattered over the face of the earth and formed three distinct language (as well as ethnic) families. According to the genealogies of the M ­ iddle Ages: Shem was the ur-­father of the Asian p ­ eople, the Eu­ro­pe­ans descended from Japheth, and the Africans from Ham.9 Thomas Trautmann has named this Bible-­ oriented genealogy the “Mosaic ethnology.”10 Its influence may be seen, for instance, in the works of Sir Isaac Newton, who offered his own interpretation of the Noachite scheme.11 Some scholars, including Rousseau, even attempted to merge the biblical and Epicurean theories by claiming, for instance, that ­human history (and the use of mundane languages) had only developed a­ fter the Deluge, while between the age of Adam and the Flood had existed an original divine language.12 In 1771 a famous contest on the origins of language was held at the Berlin Acad­emy.13 Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) won the first prize with what would become a celebrated essay, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1771), in which he argued that four natu­ral laws (Naturgesetze) define language. The third law states: “Just as the w ­ hole h ­ uman species could not possibly remain a single herd, likewise it could not retain a single language ­either. So ­there arises a formation of dif­fer­ent national languages.”14 For Herder, languages form a central part of the community’s identity and nurture the community’s alleged superiority over other neighboring groups. Language, he writes, was a “characteristic word of the race [Merkwort des Geschlechts], bond of the f­ amily, tool of instruction, hero song of the f­ athers’ deeds, and the voice of ­t hese f­ athers from their graves. Language could not possibly, therefore, remain of one kind, and so the same familial feeling that had formed a single language, when it became national hatred, often created difference, complete difference in language. He is a barbarian, he speaks a foreign language [Er ist Barbar, er redet eine fremde Sprache].”15 Through language, the community constructs an attachment to the nations’ forefathers and to a certain ­actual or even mythical past. As George Mosse writes concerning the importance of ancient ­imagined or real narratives for the establishment of national communities: “the roots determine the ­ ill further trace throughout the book, firmness of the tree. ”16 Indeed, and as I w Mosse’s figure accentuates the importance of deep history in the writings of many nineteenth-­century scholars, including the Anglo-­German circle. Herder, in his essay, had asserted that language difference denoted cultural and national variation.17 Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) absorbed Herder’s



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insight into the relation between languages and national uniqueness.18 Turning his gaze eastward in his On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians (Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, 1808), Schlegel praised Sanskrit, defining this ancient Indian language as an Ursprache (protolanguage) that vari­ous Eu­ro­pean languages had originated from.19 The study of India’s languages, religions, and history supposedly validated not only the linguistic but also the cultural and some argued racial continuity between the subcontinent and Eu­rope. The connection with India was especially evident in the northern parts of Eu­rope, in the German-­speaking spheres.20 Schlegel, however, did not necessarily identify the p ­ eople who spoke t­hese languages as physi21 cally superior in racial terms. For some nineteenth-­century scholars, however, language was an essential part of racial belonging. The notorious Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816–82) is perhaps the best known of t­hose who attempted to blend racial and linguistic origins. In his famous Essay on the In­equality of the ­Human Races (Essai sur l’ inégalité des races humaines, 1853), Gobineau underscored a strict association between language and race: “Where the ­mental development of a race is faulty or imperfect, the language suffers to the same extent. This is shown by Sanskrit, Greek, and the Semitic group, as well as by Chinese.”22 Correspondingly, language, he continued, could also mirror “the genius of a race.”23 Race and language, for scholars such as Gobineau, became synonymous concepts.24 The importance of language in ­these considerations ­will be seen throughout the discussion. The role of the philologist was hence no less and sometimes even more impor­tant than that of the historian. It was through language that one traced an alleged linkage to the ancient past of a certain race.25 Other nineteenth-­century scholars, however, perceived language and race as separate. John Crawfurd (1783–1868), a Scottish ethnologist, declared in an 1862 lecture before the Ethnological Society: “I do not hesitate at once to affirm that language, although valuable evidence of the history and migrations of man, affords no sure test of the Race he belongs to.”26 As Thomas Trautmann shows, Crawfurd insisted on a gap between language and race mainly ­because he rejected the theory of the common racial origins of the Britons and the Indians.27 Crawfurd and other scholars, such as Isaac Taylor (1787–1865), insisted that while it was pos­si­ble to acquire language, biological characteristics ­were natu­ral and fixed.28 “Race,” it must be noted, also included what in the post–­World War II era is defined as “ethnicity,” that is, a common ancestry with shared memories and

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culture.29 Thus, in the nineteenth c­ entury, race and ethnicity w ­ ere not entirely distinct concepts, and in some cases it is futile to distinguish between them.30 Indeed, it is rather difficult to form a clear and comprehensive definition of “race” in nineteenth-­century discourse.31 Race could mean ­either “lineage” or “type.” As lineage, it usually took its meaning from the idea of a common ancestry of all mankind and an evolving physical differentiation that led to the division of mankind into races.32 Indeed, in modernity the purported theory that physical difference separates ­human beings became prominent. Already in the first half of the eigh­teenth c­ entury naturalists such as the Swedish Carl von Linné (Linnaeus, 1707–78) divided mankind into four races, distinguished by unique physiognomy and social structures (Systema naturae, 1735).33 ­L ater in the c­ entury the scientific character of race became far more prominent, especially through the development of climatic theories. For instance, in his encyclopedic Histoire naturelle (1749– 1804), Comte de Buffon (1707–88) singled out climate as the main f­actor determining the physiognomy of mankind. In this theory, it impor­tant to note, race was not a fixed criterion but could change depending on dif­fer­ ent climates. Herder, influenced by Buffon’s work, also cherished the noglish Charles White (1728–1813), tion of racial mutability.34 The En­ nevertheless, rejected Buffon’s (and Herder’s) stance. In An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man (1799), White “sanctified” race and located it at the heart of science. An unmitigated gap, he argued, separated the allegedly superior white race from the black Africans.35 Some of ­these late eighteenth-­c entury debates injected a prominent physical-­biological dimension into the nineteenth-­century discourse about “race.” The Scottish anatomist Robert Knox (1791–1862) wrote in 1850 that “race is every­thing: lit­er­a­ture, science, art, in a word civilization, depends on it.”36 Knox’s aphorism hinged on ostensible “scientific evidence” gathered from his studies of the ­human body. As the title of his book—­The Races of Man (1850)—­suggested, “race” separated ­human groups: “Men are of vari­ous Races; call them Species, if you w ­ ill; call them permanent Va­ri­e­ties; it m ­ atters not . . . ​ 37 men are of dif­fer­ent races.” Resembling the eighteenth-­century Charles White in his views, Knox believed that racial identity could not be altered. But the most dramatic impact on the racial discourse of the nineteenth ­century, especially in Britain, occurred following the publication of Sir Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). As has been argued in many studies, Darwin was no racist. Alas, the interpretation of Darwin’s writings became central among many racist thinkers.38 Race, ­after Darwin, also received a



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supposedly more scientific aura, as seen, for example, in the works of Darwin’s half cousin Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), the founder of eugenics.39 Over the course of the book t­hese racial readings of Darwin w ­ ill occasionally surface. However, following the above preliminary account, the scholars at the center of this research rather reflect a somewhat vague and loose definition of “race” and “language.” Thus, occasionally, the distinction between “race” and “language” is clear in their writing, while in other cases what we find is hazy, and the two terms are blended. Caution is therefore required when asserting that scholars followed a certain interpretation of language and race. Still, and this is the main point, during the late eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries both race and language could play a vital role in constructing new classifications of belonging, which ­either united or divided communities.

The Pillars of Periodization In the context of the pres­ent discussion, it is crucial to examine the theme of historical periodization from a broader perspective. Together with the technical division of historical time, periodization seems to include an essential meaning that influences the way we perceive the past. As the famous French medievalist Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014) noted in his last book: “Periodization is not only a way of acting upon time. The very act itself draws our attention to the fact that t­ here is nothing neutral, or innocent, about cutting time up into smaller parts.”40 Racial classifications, it ­will be argued, should be examined with this wider and long-­standing drive to periodization in mind, since through this discussion the modern distinctive features of the racial classification w ­ ill emerge into light. Thus, I w ­ ill now pres­ent other f­ actors, besides race, that regulate historical periodization but also define communities. ­These other ­factors are significant, since in many cases they converge with the racial aspect in the works of vari­ous scholars. Furthermore, ­these categories of periodization, I maintain, intertwined during the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries with the Germanist and Romanist arguments. In conjunction with the racial division of time, which, as claimed, was predominantly a derivative of modernity, it is pos­si­ble to identify several other leading methods of periodization. The religious division of time originated already in antiquity. Julius Africanus (ca. AD 160–240) devoted his Chronologia (AD 212–21) to calculating the world’s (religious) time. His work, following his

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conversion from paganism to Chris­tian­ity, was heavi­ly dependent on the Old and New Testaments. For this reason, Africanus ­adopted a time scheme of six thousand years that w ­ ill elapse between the Creation and the Second Coming of Christ.41 The Christian writer Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Small) was the first to allude to the distinct periods of BC (“before Christ”) and AD (anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”), which he did, according to his own classification of time, in anno Domini 525. This binary division was l­ater employed also in the writing of the Venerable Bede (672–735).42 This conception of time was founded on a specific end event. The establishment of the Christian community by Christ and his followers marked the beginning of a new epoch. Bede ­adopted in The Reckoning of Time (AD 725, De temporum ratione, chap. 66) the scheme of Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430).43 Augustine devised the most famous Christian time line by identifying six ages in world history. Five of t­hese ages, beginning with Adam in the Garden of Eden, had already come to pass, while the sixth and final age commenced with the birth of Jesus Christ: “With His coming the sixth age has entered on its pro­cess; so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations”) On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed 22.39). Augustine himself relied on the periodic construction of Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in his Kanones, mentioned six ages before the arrival of Christ. Hence, Eusebius identified seven and not six ages. ­There are also other differences between the two periodizations. For instance, Augustine, following the genealogical list in the synoptic Gospels, mentioned that each of the last three eras lasted fourteen generations. Eusebius, however, divided the last three eras differently. Nevertheless, both church ­fathers emphasized the birth of Jesus as the monumental event in the history of the world. This event transformed history forever and ­will eventually lead to the redemption of the Christian community. The biblical chronology that marked a six-­thousand-­year period between the Creation and the Second Coming was cherished exclusively for over a millennium. However, vari­ous writers gave dif­fer­ent dates for the Creation. Martin Luther applied the biblical scheme in the sixteenth ­century when he wrote that the Creation had occurred in 3961 BC. In the seventeenth c­ entury, the British archbishop James Ussher was even more specific when he elected Sunday (noon) October 23, 4004 BC, as the start of every­thing. Sir Isaac Newton also a­ dopted the biblical chronology and followed Ussher’s year of creation (although not stating a specific day).44



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Time, therefore, merged with a “holy sequence” and was even governed by religion. Other similar examples are found in the Jewish notion of the Messiah and the idea of the Mahdi in Islam.45 Time, or, more accurately, history, as Mircea Eliade comments, ­will “cease to exist” when the Messiah appears.46 Hence, ­these religions look to a forthcoming miraculous appearance that ­will initiate a new order that is almost out of time. The religious community of the believers ­will become universal and obliterate its former structure. Thus, religious time is attuned to the transformation of the community and vice versa. In a sense, this religious conception of time, especially as conceived by contemporaries who look back into the past, emphasizes the idea that the past was far more glorious than the pres­ent. This vision thus embeds a prominent nostalgic feature that mythicizes the deeds of founding members or institutions. The Jews flourished when the t­emple existed. Chris­tian­ity reached its zenith when Jesus and his disciples wandered in the Galilee and Judea. Muhammad’s voyages and deeds in the Arabian Peninsula became a theme that ­every Muslim wishes to emulate. As for the ­future, in all the mono­the­istic religions it possesses the potential to be equal and even superior to the past, yet this ­will only be achieved in a forthcoming era and only if the members of the community obey certain rules. Thus, time moves downward from a past peak, with the belief that in ­future times the members of the community ­will be redeemed and even surpass the nostalgic-­celebrated past. The division between monarchies and reigns of kings, or the po­liti­c al periodization, as I label it, also originated in antiquity. Possibly this is the most conventional method of periodization. ­Until our own age, it was the most commonly used scheme to delineate historical eras. The succession of kings provided a definite time line that allows chronicles and books such as the Bible to pres­ent a sequence that depends on one criterion only, the year of the king. Bible chapters often begin with a verse stating the year or the era of a king. In the New Testament, for example, the famous verse from the synoptic Gospels states that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod (Matthew 2:1). This example in fact located Jesus in a specific time, which allowed ­later writers to develop the scheme of BC and AD. Despite its given name, the po­liti­c al division of history is sometimes apo­liti­c al, since it technically divides time between rulers with no distinct po­liti­cal agenda. Nevertheless, in other cases this periodization may depend on the po­liti­cal tendency of con­temporary or of l­ ater writers. In general, special stature was usually given to the last ruler in the lineage. For example, the young Roman emperor with the ironic name of

14 int ro du c t io n

Romulus Augustulus (merging both the name of the mythic ­father of Rome, Romulus, and that of Augustus, the founder of the principate), signified the end of the Roman Empire ­because he was the last emperor to rule in the city of Rome before the barbarian invasion of AD 476. A similar stature was attributed to the first monarch in the line of kings. This was also the case with William the Conqueror who symbolized a new period in En­glish history. In antiquity, we find examples of a fusion between religious and po­liti­cal periodizations. Perhaps the most prominent such example is the famous description of the four monarchies in the book of Daniel. ­These narratives appear twice in the book. In the first instance (2:31ff.) t­ here is a description of a four-­piece figure denoting the four monarchies that rule the world one ­after another. ­These kingdoms w ­ ill be followed by a fifth eternal monarchy representing the kingdom of God (2:44). ­Later in the book, this vision of Daniel is repeated in a dream depicting four animals that surface from the sea successively (7:17–18). Once again, each of t­ hese animals symbolizes the four monarchies ruling the world successively. One of the main debates concerning ­these prophecies is which monarchies they signify. One view, fitting to the second ­century BC when the book was written, maintains that the kingdoms represented are Babylon, Media, Persia, and Macedonia/Greece. Another view argues that Media, Persia, Greece, and Rome are denoted. The difference between the two interpretations derives from the fact that the second possibility was offered following the decline of Greece and before the establishment of the promised kingdom of heaven. For this reason, the fourth kingdom was thought to be Rome rather than Greece. The scheme of the four kingdoms was the foundation of the medievalist concept of the translatio imperii. This idea stressed the notion of imperial succession from the Roman Empire into the ­later kingdoms of the Carolingians, France, Rus­sia, and so on. According to this interpretation, which l­ater in the nineteenth c­ entury also received secular interpretations by some of the scholars who are at the heart of this book (Bryce and o­ thers), the “fourth kingdom,” Rome, never fell and in fact continued to thrive through vari­ous po­liti­cal entities (Carolingians, Holy Roman Empire, and so on). Another interpretation of time may be defined as social time. This interpretation, comparable with racial time, can also be regarded as the product of modernity. It is epitomized in the development of the socialist and Marxist schemes of history. Perhaps, in similarity with the de­pen­dency of religious time on certain sacred texts, social time is predominantly based on several nineteenth-­century texts, such as the Communist Manifesto.47 This notion of



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social time is reflected in the opening pages of the Manifesto, where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels assert their famous judgment that all history is but the strug­gle of the classes.48 Class, therefore, governs time. In an added footnote, Marx and Engels claimed that the impact of class on the course of history was fi­nally revealed in 1847 when “August von Haxthausen (1792–1866) discovered common owner­ship of land in Rus­sia.” In the same footnote, they also mention the German l­egal historian Georg Ludwig von Maurer (1790– 1872), who argued that all the Teutonic races had devised a communal owner­ ship that already originated in their natu­ral stage.49 The significance of Maurer is crucial. In his study, race and class merged in the history of Teutonic races since t­ hose presented the communal concept in the most seamless way.50 What, then, is “racial time”? I identify it as a modern invention in which certain scholars divided history subsequent to the emergence and fall of races throughout history. The racial alternation is achieved through conquest, invasion, or even peaceful migration that may eventually transform the po­liti­ cal, religious, social, and economic conditions ­either of a ­whole civilization or of a certain community and land. For instance, the case study of the wandering of the Teutonic tribes provides one of the most explicit historical examples for the convergence of periodization and race.

Racial Bound­aries: Between Time, Community, and Space According to vari­ous writers, ancient as well as modern, natu­ral borders such as the Rhine, the Danube, the Alps, and the Pyrenees ­were considered borders that separated vari­ous cultures even during the times of the Romans. What was natu­ral was identified with what was au­then­tic. Thus, Andreas Alföldi defined the rivers Rhine and Danube as demarcating the territories of the barbarians from the Roman Empire as “moral barriers”: “the frontier line was . . . ​the line of demarcation between two fundamentally dif­fer­ent realms of thought, whose moral codes did not expand across the boundary.”51 At the beginning of the first ­century BC, Julius Caesar and Strabo described the regions beyond the Rhine as wild zones inhabited by barbaric ­peoples, while referring to the rest of the Roman provinces as belonging to an established civilization. In this, they expressed a common Roman perception according to which Rome ruled the world (orbis terrarum) and therefore its rulers should be accorded the title “the masters of the world” (dominus totius orbis). In classical Greece, four hundred years earlier, a similar contrast was made

16 int ro du c t io n

wherein the zone of culture was defined as the “populated world,” which was an antithesis to the “wild” zone. The ­peoples who resided within the border ­were sometimes attributed similar or identical characteristics. This contributed to the formation of a comprehensive or ste­reo­t ypically generic perception in which “­whole nations are treated as a single individual with a single personality.”52 Nevertheless, alongside this essentialist identification, t­here was among the ancient writers a more nuanced perception that differentiated between vari­ous ethnic groups in accordance with certain characteristics and customs. Most ancient authors, it seems, held both perceptions. The view that ­there existed a clear geo­graph­i­cal boundary between the Roman world and the barbarian one greatly enhanced both the attitude that regarded the Germanic tribes as wild ­people who destroyed the ancient world and the converse attitude that named them as the “knights of freedom” who formed a better world. Th ­ ese two opposite approaches are based on, among ­others, the dichotomist view of the natu­ral border already developed during ancient times. Following this, a substantial premise arose in which the ethnic/racial, cultural, and geo­graph­i­c al boundary also outlined the boundary of the historical era. In other words, the contrast between the barbarians and the Romans determined also the periodization of antiquity and of the M ­ iddle Ages. While a clear geo­graph­i­c al boundary allegedly separated the two cultures, it was regarded as one historical era. However, when the Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine and Danube rivers from the fourth ­century and spread all over the empire during the fifth ­century, t­ here came an end to the ancient era and a new historical epoch began. For many scholars, as I w ­ ill demonstrate, ­there is no difference in the periodization of the end of antiquity between t­ hose who observed the Germanic tribes as heroes and t­ hose who viewed them as the enemies of civilization. Both approaches maintained that since the tribes breached the old borders and upturned the conventional order, they should be defined as the harbingers of the ­Middle Ages. The crossing of the natu­ral, almost mythic geo­graph­i­c al border also denoted a racial change. Following the invasions, a new g­ reat mass of p ­ eople transformed the character and culture of the autochthonic socie­ties. The Rhine marked geo­graph­i­cally one of ­these “racial borders,” and its crossing by the tribes became seen as a dramatic event, in par­tic­u­lar during the wars of German unity and in­de­pen­dence (1870–71). Th ­ ese arguments concerning “racial time” are particularly significant since they nourished the construction of the racial English-­German community of scholars. Through them it was pos­si­



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ble to construct a transnational racial affinity linking ­England and Germany. The Teutonic (Vandals, Alans, and Suebi tribes) crossing of the Rhine (AD 406) and ­later the crossing of the Channel by the Anglo-­Saxons (AD 449) ­were part of the same ­great Teutonic expansion. As ­will be illustrated, for the vari­ous scholars discussed, it was the racial emergence of the Teutons that altered time and, even more significant, forever bonded Germany and ­England. This, as I argue, is the main significance of “racial time.” It allowed new racial communal demarcations to come into force, as well as dividing history and influencing the construction of communities during the nineteenth ­century. One example of the merger of blood (not necessarily using the term Rasse) and periodization emerges from the arguments of the German phi­los­o­pher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). In his famous Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808), Fichte portrayed the tribes as authentically German and as commencing a new historical age: “The Germans are first and foremost one of the Teutonic tribes [Stamm der Germanier]. As to the latter it w ­ ill suffice h ­ ere to define them as ­those whose task it was to unite the social order established in ancient Eu­ rope with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and thus to develop out of themselves a new age in opposition to the antiquity that had perished.”53 The w ­ hole modern world must regard the Germans as such, since their belief in the princi­ple of freedom paved the way to the f­uture: “To their stubborn re­sis­tance the entire modern world owes the fact that it is as it is.”54 The German nation was constructed thanks to the tribes ­because it inherited their innate characteristics. For Fichte, the tribes determine the nature of the German nation both at pres­ent and in the f­ uture: If the Romans had succeeded in subjugating them also and, as the Romans did everywhere ­else, in exterminating them as a nation, then the entire development of humanity would have taken a dif­fer­ent—­and surely not a happier—­course. We, the immediate inheritors of their soil, their language and their convictions, owe it to them that we are still Germans [dass wir noch Deutsche sind ], that we are still borne along by the stream of original and in­de­pen­ dent life; to them we owe every­thing that we have since been as a nation [ihnen verdanken wir Alles, was wir seitdem als Nation gewesen sind ]; and, ­unless it is now the end for us and the last drop of blood descended from them has dried up in our veins [der letzte von ihnen abgestammte Blutstropfen in unseren Adern versiegt ist], to them we s­ hall owe every­thing that we ­shall yet become.55

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The significant sentence ­here, which may be referred to as an emerging racial discourse, is the statement that the modern Germans w ­ ere connected to their tribal ancestors not only through cultural, po­liti­cal, or geo­graph­i­cal links but also through an a­ ctual physical connection. Consequently, the blood of the Germanic tribes flows in the veins (Adern) of the modern nation. The German poet and historian Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860) also signified the Rhine as an integral part of the German “racial” sphere.56 The ­people who dwelled in the Rhine valley belonged to the Germanic tribe of the Alemanni, as attested through their language, manners, and physical appearance. Despite their mingling with other races, causing a certain racial degeneration, the ancient Germanic kernel of the ­people on both banks of the Rhine was evident. Thus, the purity of the race was most vital for preserving its merit and strength.57 The Franks, however, when entering Gaul in the fifth ­century, became mingled with other races and lost their racial purity: “the Frank in Gaul was soon contaminated by the corrupt, servile, and Romanised Gaul, and became as cunning and faithless as he was brave and cruel.”58 This was the origin of the French character, subsequently manifested in their ill-­ deeds throughout history. The invasions of the Germanic tribes did not exterminate the Gallo-­Romans. Instead, a fusion occurred between the two races, the result of which was France. The racial alternation in Gallia and the ability of the Germanic tribes to prevent the Romans from conquering the territory East of the Rhine, marked the emergence of a new racial order and era that resulted eventually in the construction of the Eu­ro­pean states. The same threat of racial dilution also endangered the purity of Germany in Arndt’s times: “the Rhine, of which Germany was once so proud, w ­ ill be shared with the Franks, that this fine race w ­ ill be reduced to a hybrid set; that Germany, the unconquered, w ­ ill become the scorn of all nations.”59 Arndt explained how animosity t­ oward another race was necessary for the freedom of the nation. If Arminius had not pushed (getrieben) the Romans out of Germany’s natu­ral bound­aries, the Germanic p ­ eople would have been demolished. Arminius’s courageous act, Arndt asserted, was the epic culmination of the love of the Volk and hatred of ­others (Volksliebe und Volkshaß ).60 The discourse of race and time was not absent in the French sphere, and thinkers such as Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836), famous for his essay “What Is the Third Estate?” (Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-­État?, 1789), identified the ­people of the third estate with the Gauls and the nobility of France with the Franks. For such anti-­aristocratic thinkers, the Gauls ­were the true ancestors of the French, while the Franks ­were mere conquerors and not “natives” of



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France. Therefore, only the offspring of the Gauls, meaning the masses, are fit to be called “French.” The Gallic myth thus served the phi­los­o­phers of the revolution. ­Here was a historical legitimation of the claim that the French nobility did not deserve its old po­liti­cal and social status: “When our poor fellow-­citizens insist on distinguishing between our lineage and another, could nobody reveal to them that it is at least as good to be descended from the Gauls and the Romans as from the Sicambrians, Welches and other savages from the woods and swamps of ancient Germany? ‘True enough,’ some ­will say; ‘but conquest has upset all relationships and hereditary nobility now descends through the line of the conquerors.’ Well, then; we s­ hall have to arrange for it to descend through the other line!”61 It is impor­tant to emphasize that this argumentation was a reaction to the claim of some representatives of the nobility, such as Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722), who argued long before the French Revolution that the nobles deserved their high social and po­liti­cal status ­because they ­were the offspring of the Franks. For him, the Franks, following the conquest, deprived the local Gallo-­Romans of their superior rights and stature. Hence, ­there was a racial strug­gle between the two social classes of the modern population. The main attribute of the Franks was their love of freedom, a notion that originated in Tacitus (AD 56–117). Boulainvilliers identified the Franks as an overclass. For him, the Gallo-­Romans ­were tyrannical and oppressive, as seen in their legislation, tax laws, and governmental system. This split between the Franks and the Romans reflected the po­liti­cal stance of Boulainvilliers, who wished to endorse the power of the aristocracy and was opposed to the growing power of the third estate.62 The idea of the ethnic strug­gle between the Gallic Romans and their German conquerors became very significant during the nineteenth ­century. Its effects can prob­ably be discerned in the thesis of Marx and Engels about the strug­gle between the dif­fer­ent social classes and, as mentioned earlier, in the racist views of Gobineau, who predicted the degeneration of Eu­ro­pe­an/ Aryan civilization due to the fusion between the world’s races. The perception of the existence of a “strug­gle” was integrated also into the national-­territorial nineteenth-­century confrontation between France and Germany. This insight enabled French statesmen and thinkers to argue that some disputed territories belonged to France and not to Germany, for they (the French) ­were the native ­people of Gallia (France), while the Germans ­were conquerors who had invaded this territory and therefore had no historic rights. The French discourse demonstrates the incorporation of the “racial time” with what I defined

20 int ro du c t io n

earlier as “social time.” As in the case of religion and race, the two ideas merge and construct a certain understanding of history. In light of ­these examples of “racial time,” it may be asked how the racial and national schemes differed from each other. Many nineteenth-­century scholars comprehended the concepts of nation and race as nearly identical and therefore interchangeable. Thus, the main difficulty is to differentiate between them, since, for some, such a distinction is only semantic. Indeed, it is pos­si­ble to claim that race is focused on the physical aspect, while the nation is more concerned with language, cultural, po­liti­cal, and religious definitions. Yet, in regard to nineteenth-­century historiography, this distinction was less apparent, since the physical aspect was occasionally adjoined with the discourse on the nation, while other traits, such as language, ­were linked to race. Race and ethnicity ­were intermingled. Another perhaps more helpful way of approaching the distinction is between what each of the terms consists of and classifies. Race may include a variety of nations, and for that reason distinct nations can be part of the same race. The nation, alternatively, denotes a specific group usually living in a par­ tic­u­lar land. For that reason, “racial time” is more general and includes a more universal periodization. However, the national periodization concentrates on the time line of the nation itself. In many cases, t­here is a fusion between the two, and the more general “racial time” is attached to the particularistic national time. The reason for this is due mainly to the fact that before the “birth” of the nation in a specific historical event the p ­ eople who construct it belonged to a certain race. Therefore, to detect their origins t­ here is a need to “invent” an earlier sense of belonging that precedes the nation. As many scholars have demonstrated, the racial discourse emerged with ­great vigor during the m ­ iddle of the nineteenth c­entury.63 Conversely, sometimes the “new” racial units breached the singular national demarcations and constructed other usually more generalized classifications. As w ­ ill be shown in the first part of this book, the Pan-­Teutonic movement created a shared transnational community that included E ­ ngland, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. The racial and the national distinctions added new and particularistic delineations to the division of historical time. Thus, they not only divided time but w ­ ere also used as a tool for differentiating between merging ­people and communities. Suddenly, ­every nation or race was conceptualized along with a unique time line that was deemed essential for its creation.

chapter 1

The En­glish Teutonic Circle

Now I have told you about Caradoc and Boadicea, and it is right that you should know about them and care for them. But you should care for Arminius a ­great deal more, for though he did not live in our land, he was our own kinsman, our bone and our flesh. If he had not hindered the Romans from conquering Germany, we should not now be talking En­glish; perhaps we should not be a nation at all. —­Edward A. Freeman

­ ese words of Freeman, from his Old En­glish History for C Th ­ hildren (1869), epitomize his approach to the origins of the En­glish nation. For Freeman, the En­glish are part and parcel of the German tribes and are distinct from the autochthonic Celtic inhabitants of the isles. Therefore, En­glish ­children as well as adults should seek their past in the deeds of the ­people who inhabited the German lands and be conscious of the linkage between the German tribes and the En­glish nation. This is not only a ­matter of the past; it also determines the pres­ent and the f­uture affinities between E ­ ngland and the Germany. For Freeman, a common En­glish and German community, or Gemeinschaft, that shared roots, territory, and ancestors was a ­viable and almost pres­ent real­ity. As this chapter and the next aim to show, such a close Anglo-­ German community emerged during the m ­ iddle of the nineteenth c­ entury. This community believed that to revive the unique bond between the German and the En­glish nations it was necessary, first, to write historical books and, second, to establish En­glish and German communities, beginning with a community of scholars.

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In this chapter, the focus ­will be on the En­glish Teutonic scholars and on the question of how the idea of Pan-­Germanism or Pan-­A nglo-­Saxonism constructed the past and pres­ent perception of their community. Some En­ glish historians, as Peter Mandler demonstrates, became obsessed with Teutonic themes.1 This obsession was at times depicted by contemporaries as a “Teutomania.”2 In its origin, the term “Teutons” referred to a Germanic tribe from Jutland that, together with the tribe of the Cimbri, invaded the Roman Republic during the end of the second c­ entury BC. Yet, with time “Teutonic” became a generic name denoting the ­whole of the so-­called Germanic nations, including ­England. The affiliated German and En­glish scholars ­were united in their shared interest in the common Germanic origins of their p ­ eople. In contrast to the de­c adence of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Germanic tribes symbolized the regeneration of western Eu­rope that led eventually to the establishment of both ­England and Germany. Together with “Teutons,” the term “Anglo-­Saxons” also became dominant among the writings of ­these nineteenth-­century En­glish scholars. The generic title of the Anglo-­Saxons was given to the Germanic tribes of the ­A ngles, Saxons, and Jutes, who invaded the isles during the fifth ­century while defeating the autochthonic Celtic inhabitants of Britain (the Britons). Thus, “Anglo-­ Saxonism” as a distinct collective term denotes the particularity as well as the alleged superiority of the Anglo-­Saxons. The term, in some cases, is parallel to “Teutonist,” especially as an antonym to “Celticism.”3 Yet, while “Teutonism” includes all p ­ eople of Germanic decent, “Anglo-­Saxonism” mainly refers to the English-­speaking p ­ eoples. In this study, in most instances, “Anglo-­ Saxonism” and “Teutonism” are interchangeable terms. Anglo-­Saxonism includes ancient as well as early modern and modern characteristics. According to Allen J. Frantzen and John D. Niles, it signifies “the pro­cess through which a self-­conscious national and racial identity first came into being among the early p ­ eoples of the region that we now call ­England and how, over time, through both scholarly and popu­lar promptings, that identity was transformed into an originary myth available to a wide range of po­liti­cal and social interests.”4 In the following discussion, I refer to the modern aspects of this term, to its racial connotations and the method by which it constructed modern communities and time. As Reginald Horsman and ­others have asserted, affinity ­toward Anglo-­Saxonism existed in Britain since the sixteenth c­ entury. However, the racial aspect of Anglo-­Saxonism and its alleged superiority over Celtic identity became most prevalent during the eigh­teenth and nineteenth



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23

centuries and was apparent in vari­ous fields such as history, philology, archaeology, and lit­er­a­ture.5 This racial ele­ment was not only a feature of En­glish Anglo-­Saxonism but also central in its North American manifestations.6 Before focusing on the English-­Teutonic circle of scholars, I pres­ent, briefly, the origin of the Anglo-­Saxon racial theme among three early nineteenth-­century British scholars: John Pinkerton, Sir Walter Scott, and Sharon Turner. Th ­ ese scholars fused the notions of race and periodization within their arguments. Their evolving interest in the Anglo-­Saxon past and its racial implications, it w ­ ill be argued, laid the foundation for the l­ ater views of the English-­Teutonic scholars.

The Forerunners of Anglo-­Saxonism: Pinkerton, Scott, and Turner The Scottish historian John Pinkerton (1758–1826) delineated a clear separation between the Celtic and Germanic or, as he named them, the “Gothic races.”7 Pinkerton asserted that all the g­ reat nations of Eu­rope, including his “­imagined” ancestors, the Picts, had descended from Scythian or Gothic stock. When the Scythians invaded Eu­rope from their native land of Persia, they pushed the Celtic ­people into the far western parts of Eu­rope, t­ oward Gaul and the isles. The Celtic influence remained notable ­until the modern age, especially among the Celto-­Welsh, the Celto-­Irish, and in the Highland communities of Scotland.8 Pinkerton described the Celts in degrading terms: “they are savages, have been savages since the world began, and w ­ ill be for ever savages while a separate ­people; that is, while themselves, and of unmixt blood; I say the contempt borne by t­hose Celts for the En­glish, Lowland Scots, and l­ater Irish (who are En­glish and Scots) is extreme and knows no bound­aries.”9 Pinkerton offered a secular chronological time line that epitomized the deeds of a single ultimate race, the Goths. Other histories, he insists, pale in comparison to that of the Goths. Their expansion was divided in his repre­ sen­ta­tion into two waves. The first portrayed their emergence from Persia beginning in 3660 BC, when they defeated the Egyptians and conquered all of Asia. In 740 BC the Scythians conquered Scandinavia, Germany, and large parts of Gaul. In 300 BC the Belgae, who Pinkerton declares w ­ ere a Germanic ­people, entered the south of ­England and Ireland. At the same time, the Picts, the forefathers of the Lowland Scots, sailed from Scandinavia and settled in large parts of northern Britain.10 During the second wave of wanderings, the

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Goths once again entered the Roman Empire. Gradually, and especially from the fourth c­ entury, they gained major success in their strug­gle against Rome and ultimately defeated the Western Empire. Pinkerton, like many o­ thers, although moving between AD 475 and 476, marked the end of Romulus Augustulus’s reign as a crucial turning point in the history of the empire. Pinkerton concluded his Roman chronology soon a­ fter this date, with the conquest of Gaul by the Franks between AD 490 and 509.11 The uniqueness of Pinkerton and the main cause for his inclusion h ­ ere is that he pres­ents a racial periodization of history. He ­adopted an original view that attached the history of Eu­rope, and in a sense the history of the world, to the deeds of one race. In the case of the Scots and En­glish, this marked a prominent difference from the conventional thinking since their history began eight hundred years earlier, at the end of the fourth ­century BC, and not in AD 449. His main argument classified the En­glish and Scots as belonging to an identical racial community. As with the arrival of the Anglo-­Saxons, and the early Belgic and Pictish invasions, the Germanic race pressed the Celts into the outskirts of the isles. Thus, one race gradually replaced another as the majority inhabitants. A significant conclusion from Pinkerton’s treatise is the usage of race as demarcating historical time. However, as ­will be discussed, unlike the approach of many of his contemporaries and of the English-­Teutonic scholars, Pinkerton located the racial transformation in an earlier stage and ­under a dif­fer­ent racial classification. For Freeman and Stubbs, the Scots/Picts ­were part of the Celtic race and ­were inferior to the Anglo-­Saxon Germanic race, which only arrived in the isles during the fifth ­century. One of Pinkerton’s associates and fellow Scotsmen, the famous Walter Scott (1771–1832), refuted his attack upon the Celts, specifically the Celts of Scotland, who ­were regarded by Pinkerton as a “dishonoured, timid, filthy, ignorant, and degraded race.”12 Scott defended the Celts of the Highlands and named their merits. He also doubted the theory of Pinkerton that the Picts, the supposed forefathers of the Scottish Lowlanders, had originated from a Scythian/Germanic origin. Tacitus, Pinkerton’s main source, does not mention that the Caledonians spoke a Germanic language, but writes only that a physical similarity existed between the Caledonians and the Germanic tribes. For Scott, the physical evidence was not sufficient to prove a v­ iable Germanic linkage between the two p ­ eoples. Language is the ultimate test for substantiating an ethnic bond.13 The conclusion of Scott was that the Picts and Caledonians ­were in fact the same ­people. However, they ­were not of Germanic but of Celtic descent and ­were driven to the north of Scotland by the Roman



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peril.14 The faults of Pinkerton, Scott wrote, ­were that he wrote ­these words as a young, inexperienced researcher, and, as such, one should not be too critical of him.15 Scott himself, and this is his main relevance to the discussion, incorporated in his notable historical novel Ivanhoe (1820) another racial distinction that became a crucial ­factor in the national periodization of En­glish history. In Scott’s case, the decisive racial division that determined periodization was between the Anglo-­Saxons and the Normans. Hence, AD 1066 symbolized a monumental event in En­glish history: “the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-­Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned u ­ nder all the consequences of defeat. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility, by the event of the b­ attle of Hastings.”16 The differences between the races ­were exemplified through language, manners, class, and blood. The new noble aristocracy spoke Norman-­French, while the Anglo-­Saxons used their Saxon-­Germanic tongue. For Scott, language, it seems, was the main ­factor in distinguishing between races and classes. Scott’s influence may be regarded as pivotal since he inspired many ­later writers, both in Britain and abroad. Augustin Thierry (1795–1856), for example, ­adopted the narrative of Scott in explaining the clash between the local Anglo-­Saxons and their new Norman conquerors.17 The main convergence in Scott’s and Thierry’s narratives was between race, time, and class. History changed when a new race entered the islands, a race that denoted a new social order in which the Normans became superior over the Anglo-­Saxons. However, the physical aspect was not omitted from Scott’s description, and he quoted the poet James Thomson’s Liberty in the opening lines of his third chapter: “The German Ocean roar, deep-­blooming, strong, and yellow hair’d, the blue-­eyed Saxon came.”18 Scott thus offered a clear racial-­lingual boundary between the Anglo-­Saxons and the Normans. This boundary distinguished between two epochs in the history of ­England. The first stretched from the invasion of the Anglo-­Saxons u ­ ntil the Norman Conquest, while the second originated a­ fter AD 1066 and lasted ­until the pres­ent. The En­glish historian Sharon Turner (1768–1847) was another critic of Pinkerton’s ill-­treatment of the Celts. In his History of the Anglo-­Saxons (1799– 1805), Turner paved the way for a ­whole strand of nineteenth-­century Anglo-­ Saxon historiography. Scott himself, as he remarked in his preface to Ivanhoe,

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relied primarily on the scholarly efforts of Turner.19 Turner accepted the division in Eu­rope between the Celtic and Gothic/Germanic races. ­These races ­were distinguished through language.20 To ­t hese two dominant Eu­ro­pean races, Turner added the Slavonic race that inhabited the eastern parts of Eu­ rope. Among ­humans ­there are two types of nations, he asserted: the settled and the nomadic. The fact that the nomadic is characterized by constant movement and has left no written texts does not mean that ­these nations are more barbaric or savage. On the contrary, some of the nomadic p ­ eople contributed to the world far more than some of the settled nations. The ancestors of the En­glish belonged to the nomadic nations and included both the Celtic and the Germanic races. For Turner, the En­glish nomadic ancestry proved that ­these nations w ­ ere at least equal if not superior to the settled nations of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Turner, unlike several of his contemporaries (notably Pinkerton) and other l­ater scholars (such as Freeman and Stubbs), did not identify only one ethnic group as the source of the En­glish nation. Thus, both the Celts and Anglo-­Saxons formed the En­glish nation: “The Kimmerians [Cimmerians] and Kelts [Celts] may be regarded as our first ancestors, and from the German or Gothic nations who formed, with the Scythians, the second wave of population into Eu­rope, our Anglo-­Saxon and Norman ancestors proceeded.”21 Races existed, but this did not prove that the En­glish had descended from one sole race. The melting pot of history eventually amalgamated all t­ hese races into one group. Turner’s is a racial-­lingual periodization of a dif­fer­ent kind. Instead of identifying an enduring strug­gle between the races resulting in the ultimate victory of one, ­there was fusion. This does not mean that ­these races ­were not involved in vari­ous historical confrontations. In addition, one should not deduce that all the races that have gone into making the En­glish nation had an equal stature and impact. Turner therefore divided the periods according to the dif­fer­ent races and identified a distinction between the Celts, Anglo-­Saxons, and Normans. The Norman period should be separated from the earlier Anglo-­Saxon era by the fact that the Normans connected Britain with the Continent. They functioned as a bridgehead between the two spheres. Links had been established beforehand, yet the fact that the Normans developed their kingdom in Normandy on the coastal northwestern regions of Gaul and ­were deeply invested with the Continent enabled them to enhance the bond. The connections with Eu­rope reached their zenith during the Norman era, but the Anglo-­Saxons still had the most dramatic impact on the evolution of the En­glish nation. Furthermore, like the Anglo-­Saxons, all the ­great modern nations of Eu­rope belonged



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to the same Germanic race.22 ­These nations began to rise into their noble position during the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Anglo-­Saxons first sailed to the isles. Language, once again, testifies to the continuation between the Germanic tribes and the modern nations of Eu­rope. Nevertheless, and as in the case of Scott, physical attributions also denote some significance in Turner’s narrative. For instance, when illustrating the Celts, he wrote that the Britons ­were taller than the Gauls and the Romans: “Their hair was less yellow than that of the Gauls.”23 Further examples can be found for the usage of physical criteria as classifying race, yet, in Turner’s opinion, language still provided the main f­ actor for proving racial continuity and uniqueness. The main conclusion to be drawn from the writings of ­these modern “Anglo-­Saxon” scholars concerns their linkage between race and time. They divide En­glish history following the appearance of dif­fer­ent races in the isles. Therefore, the national history of ­England was, among other ­factors, a consequence of t­ hese racial alternations. Some or even most of t­ hese “Anglo-­Saxon” scholars belonged without a doubt to the “Germanic school.” For them, the wanderings of the Anglo-­Saxons and the founding of ­England ­were part of a ­great Germanic awakening that stormed across the Roman Empire. As I show, the En­glish Teutonic scholars of the second half of the nineteenth ­century divided the history of the isles into the period preceding the Anglo-­Saxon invasions (AD 449) and the period following. They identified a racial strug­gle between the newly arrived Anglo-­Saxons and the local Roman-­ Celtic society that resulted in the establishment of the En­glish nation. This perception of the racial difference between the autochthonic inhabitants and the succeeding Anglo-­Saxons became in fact a historical border between the time prior to the invasions, when ­England had not yet been established, and the following era, when the Germanic race had founded ­England. Hence, their comprehension of the founding era of En­glish history was partly through the prism of race. According to them, race was sometimes, though not always, the pillar of the nation. For Freeman, Stubbs, Green, and Bryce the construction of the community was dependent on its racial homogeneity and the alienation of other races.

The Germanic Origins of E ­ ngland The name “­England” itself, as Freeman emphasized, derived from the tribe of the ­A ngles (Anglii). This tribe, together with the Saxons and Jutes, invaded the isles during the fifth ­century. The native lands of ­these ­people w ­ ere regions of

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what is now northern Germany and Denmark. Freeman accentuated the preeminent national characteristics of t­hese tribes: “The conquerors who wrought this change w ­ ere our own forefathers.”24 The “Teutonic heritage” was not an exclusive assertion of Freeman, and, as John Burrow demonstrates in his A Liberal Descent (1981), it can be found in the writings of many other prominent Victorian scholars. Th ­ ese mid-­Victorian scholars a­ dopted the idea of the freedom of the En­glish ­people that was fixed already by their ancestors, the Germanic/Teutonic tribes.25 Stubbs also advocated this notion. The Constitutional History of ­England (1874–78) was one of the anchors of the “Teutonic heritage.” According to Stubbs, the four central monarchies of Europe—­Spain, Germany, E ­ ngland, and France—­were based on a Germanic institutional heritage. The German invasions destroyed part of the Roman system, and a clear dividing line separated the Roman era and the era of Germanic tribal dominance in the territories of the former Western Empire, ­later evolving into the g­ reat Eu­ro­pean powers.26 However, while in Gaul and Spain the central Roman influence was fused with the German ele­ment, in both Germany and E ­ ngland the Roman “effect” was suppressed and almost unnoticeable. In Germania, no invasion of another race occurred and ­there was almost a pure racial continuity founded upon the tribes. The conquerors of the isles, the Saxons, ­A ngles and Jutes, hardly inherited any laws from the Romans. In contrast to the Franks, their laws ­were mostly dependent on Germanic mores; in a sense, ­England became even more “Germanized” than Germany itself since it was much more “protected” from external Roman influences.27 The En­glish of t­ hese centuries ­were almost identical with the Germans, as described by Stubbs, himself following Tacitus’s Germania: “it is necessary to begin the story of the En­ glish civilisation by comparing the state of Britain in the fifth c­ entury with ­ ere that of Germany in the first.”28 In terms of language, the Anglo-­Saxons w hardly affected by Latin, and they maintained their pure Germanic language, as was also the case in Scandinavia. For this reason, when the Vikings invaded ­England during the ninth ­century they ­were quickly integrated into the existing society. This was also true for the Normans who, Stubbs argued, w ­ ere of similar German descent.29 For him, t­ here was a clear distinction between the Anglo-­Saxons and the local Britons-­Celts of the isles: “The En­glish are not aboriginal, that is, they are not identical with the race that occupied their home at the dawn of history. They are a p ­ eople of German descent in the main constituents of blood, character, and language, but most especially, in connexion with our subject, in the possession of the ele­ments of primitive German



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civilisation and the common germs of German institutions. This descent is not a ­matter of inference. It is a recorded fact of history, which ­those characteristics bear out to the fullest degree of certainty.”30 Stubbs stressed that, in contrast to the growing unity and influence between the Franks and the Gauls, “from the Briton and the Roman of the fifth c­ entury we [En­glish ­people] have received nothing.”31 The national history of E ­ ngland in the isles had commenced during the fifth c­ entury, but the birth of the “race,” a term used by Stubbs,32 had begun in the forests of Germany. The impor­tant point that Stubbs emphasized was that territory was not the foundation of the nation but only another manifestation of its character. In other words, the nation is dependent not on territory but rather on culture, law, and institutions. It is a dynamic entity moving from place to place while preserving its main features. Thus, the fact that the Anglo-­Saxons wandered westward to the isles did not alter their character, and a continuous history linked them to their Germanic origins. Green a­ dopted a similar idea. An Anglican clergyman and historian, Green was a friend of Stubbs, but was especially close to Freeman, as witnessed by the vast corpus of letters the two exchanged for a period of more than twenty years.33 For Green, the emergence of the En­glish ­people occurred in the northern lands of Germany along the Baltic Sea: “Engle [sic], Saxon, and Jute all belonged to the same Low German branch of the Teutonic ­family; and at the moment when history discovers them, they w ­ ere being drawn together by the ties of a common blood, common speech, common social and po­liti­cal institutions. Each of them was destined to share in the conquest of the land in which we live; and it is from the ­union of all of them when its conquest was complete that the En­glish ­people has sprung.”34 Green’s view, therefore, echoed the idea of Freeman that the origins of ­England ­were deeply rooted in the tribal and ancient territories of Germany. In his Short History of the En­glish ­People (1874), Green wrote that the En­glish ­people had belonged to the Germanic race and had maintained the po­liti­cal and social institutions as well as customs of the German ­people. The institution of the “freemen,” a term denoting the right to hold land, sustained their society. Thus, ­there was a close link between the members of the communities and the land.35 The village members met regularly in councils deciding on the guiding princi­ples of the community. A historical continuity existed between ­these councils and the En­glish constitution: “as their descendants, the men of a l­ater ­England, meet in parliament at Westminster, to frame laws and do justice to the g­ reat empire which has sprung from this ­little body of farmer-­commonwealths in

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Sleswick.”36 Green himself referred to ­these ­people as “En­glish.” Consequently, when he described their society and religion he spoke of “En­glish society.” The conquest of the isles was also titled as “the En­glish conquest.” Thus, for Green, ­these tribes had already been En­glish before invading Britain. The tribes, Green argued similarly to Stubbs and Freeman, gained a decisive victory against the Celtic Britons and became the dominant race in the isles: “the Briton had dis­ appeared from the greater part of the land which had been his own, and the tongue, the religion, the laws of his En­glish conqueror reigned without a rival from Essex to the Severn, and from the British Channel to the Firth of Forth.”37 Furthermore, the En­glish conquest was unique, and differed from other Germanic invasions, since it ruined all of Rome’s heritage. Following the conquest, a “purely German nation”—to use Green’s words—­emerged: “What strikes us at once in the new E ­ ngland is, that it was the one purely German nation that ­rose upon the wreck of Rome. In other lands, in Spain, or Gaul, or Italy, though they ­were equally conquered by German ­peoples, religion, social life, administrative order, still remained Roman. In Britain alone Rome died into a vague tradition of the past. The ­whole organ­ization of government and society dis­appeared with the ­people who used it.”38

The En­glish Question From the corpus of letters exchanged between Freeman and Green, the question concerning En­glish origins appears as far from trivial. ­There was a continuous debate on what could be termed “the En­glish question.” The correspondence focused on the question of the exact time in which the Jutes and Saxons could be referred to as “En­glish.” Green, as one of his letters to Freeman confirms, asserted that already before their invasion ­t hese tribal communities belonged ­under the general name of the “En­glish.” However, Green was still willing to follow the arguments of Freeman and Stubbs: “My own belief is that Engle is the older name of the w ­ hole folk. But I have no right to set myself against all you wise ­people on the point, and above all in a popu­lar book where I ­c an’t give my reasons. So I w ­ ill change m ­ atters as Stubbs and you wish, for the pres­ent.”39 This might seem to be a semantical ­matter of no ­great importance, since why should the title “En­glish” hold such significance? ­Here, however, is a fundamental example of the convergence of the theme “community” with that of historical time, or “periodization,” primarily b­ ecause, for t­hese scholars, the time when



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t­ hese tribes received their name was crucial for determining the “birth” of the nation. In another letter from Green to Freeman, sent three days ­after that just mentioned, Green reaffirmed his decision to concede to the opinions of Freeman, Stubbs, and Bryce:40 in his Short History he intended to refer to the Jutes and Saxons as En­glish only following their invasion of the isles. However, Green still required some clarification as to when exactly the tribes became known as “En­glish”: “As I told you, I made up my mind to yield to you [Freeman], Stubbs, and Bryce on the ‘En­glish’ question; and I have been ­going through my proofs resolving the word whenever it occurs into ‘Jute’ or ‘Saxon’ as the case may be. But I find I must have some rule to go by, and as yet I am without one. I find myself without any sort of guide as to the date when it becomes right to speak of a Jute or a Saxon as English-­men.”41 At this stage, Green summarized some of his main views concerning the time when the tribes had become En­glish. He admitted that he was a bit or even very confused regarding this issue. This is a noteworthy account, especially since it demonstrates how this question became prominent in the ideas of Stubbs, Freeman, as well as other scholars. W ­ ere the tribes “En­glish” already in the lands of Germany? Or only following their invasion of E ­ ngland in AD 449? Or maybe they w ­ ere still known u ­ nder the separate names Saxons and Jutes u ­ ntil the ninth c­ entury, when Egbert, king of Wessex, and l­ater Alfred the ­Great united them u ­ nder a collective name? Some even argued that they became “En­glish” only following the Norman Conquest: The old rule was to state that in 800 Ecgberht made A ­ ngle and Saxon into Anglo-­Saxon; and that in 1066 William made Anglo-­ Saxon + Norman into En­glishmen. Then came the Lappenberg era which took them as Anglo-­Saxon from the beginning till 1066, and then made Anglo-­Saxon + Norman into En­glishmen. Then came the early-­Freeman-­and-­Guest time in which the Anglo-­Saxon was wholly abolished, and En­glishmen w ­ ere held to have been in the beginning, are now, and ever s­ hall be. Now we have reached the late-­Freeman-­and-­Stubbs-­and-­High-­Dutchmen-­time in which En­glishmen are held not to have been in the beginning, but to have come into being when?42 ­These scholars strug­gled with a question of national identity. They claim an ancient continuity from the Germanic tribes living in west-­central Eu­rope

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during the Roman epoch down to the En­glish ­people. Yet the facts do not entirely comply with this perception, since the early sources did not name all the tribes as “En­glish.” This is not a minor issue since it can be argued that between the En­glish ­people and some of the old Germanic tribes t­here was no direct linkage but only a fragile or non­ex­is­tent or in­ven­ted genealogy.43 In the eyes of t­ hese scholars, the inability to trace E ­ ngland’s “original roots” endangered claims that E ­ ngland was a coherent and civilized entity before modern times. In addition, an ancient origin is impor­tant ­because, supposedly, the longer the history of the nation the greater the legitimacy it enjoys in the pres­ent. Therefore, it was critical to writers like Green, who attempted to illustrate the history of E ­ ngland, to prove or at least clarify when this community had been founded. While the ­A ngles testified through their name to a certain ancient En­glishness, the “prob­lem” arose with regard to the Saxons and Jutes: As to the only p ­ eople I ­really care about (for you know I was born the right side of the Thames) ­there is no difficulty. Thank God they always called themselves En­glishmen (for with Baeda’s “Angli” staring me in the face I w ­ ill have nothing to do with making imaginary differences between “Engle” [­Angles] and “En­glish,” making in other words one ­people out of a substantive, and another out of an adjective!). It is merely for ­those wretched Jutes and benighted Saxons that I am concerned. When on the pres­ent theory am I to take it that God gave them the grace to bear the name of En­glishmen?44 Freeman maintained that only from the time of Alfred the ­Great ­were the Anglo-­Saxons and Jutes named as “En­glish.” He even told Green that he would be most pleased if any evidence for an earlier usage of the term surfaced, but he was almost certain that none existed.45 Green, following his conversations with Freeman, deci­ded eventually to adopt in his book the term “En­glish,” mainly for ­after AD 449, in order “to express the after-­unity of the ­people at large, and our identity with them.”46 To conclude, the debate at hand was not artificial or formal but rather one of essence. It was, for t­ hese two scholars, about the question of national identity and w ­ hether t­ here was concrete evidence linking ­these tribal Germanic groups with the En­glish nation. Green embraced an educational role that was aimed to construct a certain early as well as continuous En­glish identity. As



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he stated in his letter to Freeman: “My only aim is to drive into my readers’ heads from the very opening that they are not reading about ‘furriners’ [foreigners].”47 It was less significant that the sources did not corroborate his opinion that the general title “En­glish” had not described t­hese tribal groups prior to their conquest of the isles. What ­really mattered for Green was to emphasize the vital connection linking the pres­ent En­glish ­people with their German ancestors. As for Green, although he might be perceived as another Whig historian with Teutonic affinities, this is only a partial explanation for his emphasis on the linkage between the Anglo-­Saxon tribes and the En­glish ­people. Bryce, already in 1883, a short while ­a fter Green’s death, commented that, despite Freeman’s influence, Green “did not belong in any special sense to what has been called Freeman’s school.”48 Freeman, indeed, resented the fact that Green, whom he regarded as his follower, did not continue his (Freeman’s) po­liti­cal and historiographical path.49 Green, Bryce asserted, followed the method of the ­great Herodotus (rather than Thucydides). He was imaginative, wished to tell a story, and was not especially “critical and philosophical.” Indeed, and in contrast to the more positivistic Freeman and Stubbs, he was sometimes attacked for his inaccuracies.50 Anthony Brundage classifies Green as a unique historian who departed from the Whig tradition through his adoption of a more social and cultural observation of history, thus setting him apart from conventional po­liti­c al labels.51 Historic developments, following Green’s method, include social aspects and not only po­liti­cal or military events. As Green puts it, in one of his letters to Freeman as well as in the first paragraph of his preface to the first edition of his Short History, ­there was more to history than “drum and trumpet.”52 Green himself was very much engaged with the social prob­lems of con­ temporary ­England. From 1861, ­after taking clerical vows, he served for almost a de­cade as a minister in London’s poor East End. His wish to assist the less fortunate derived from, among other t­ hings, the influence of the Christian Socialists.53 His historical approach should certainly be seen in light of his social activities. Following his rather more “social” historical method, he received the esteem of several key figures among the Christian Socialists. For instance, Thomas Hughes hailed him as “the first En­glish historian who had a proper conception of the true object of history.”54 Green diverged from other historians, who “have too often turned history into a mere rec­ord of the butchery of men by their fellow-­men.”55 Green also refused to divide history by reigns of kings, since this presented a dull narrative

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that might be boring to c­ hildren.56 Freeman referred to this in one of his letters: “You [Green] are writing a history in which you think good to divide wholly by periods.”57 Indeed, this method was fulfilled in Green’s Short History ­after he declared that he would write not the history of kings but the history of the En­glish ­people.58 Bryce, writing to Freeman in connection with Edith Thompson’s History of ­England (1873), commented on this “social,” less po­liti­ cal aspect of Green’s work:59 “J. R. G. [John Richard Green] would prob­ably say it [Thompson’s book] is too much a po­liti­cal history, and indeed a history of ­England’s foreign relations. This seems to be a fair criticism. But it is again very difficult in such narrow history to be ‘Social, eco­nom­ical and religious.’ ”60 Green did introduce several new notions into his historical writing. Yet this was not his sole distinction. Green, according to Freeman, became “Latinized,” especially ­after staying in Italy for extended periods of time.61 Freeman even accused him of “forgetting” his Teutonic origins and hating “En­glish ­things and Teutonic t­ hings in general.”62 He went so far as to define Green at one point as more “Southern than Teutonic.”63 Freeman, from his point of view, stayed “loyal” to Teutonic history. This loyalty was also apparent in the fact that, for Freeman, German history signified unity while in French history ­there is a fixed incoherence between antiquity and modernity. Furthermore, for Freeman, especially in the case of the Teutonic “race,” ­there existed a certain “Teutonic sphere” that sustained the ancestral Germanic languages, mores, and even racial purity.

The Fluidity of “Race” At this point, before delving further into the distinction between Freeman and Green, it is impor­tant to clarify what Freeman meant by the evocative and multilayered idea of “race.” Freeman, himself, was often engaged with the relation between “race” and “language.”64 It seems that over the years, Freeman altered his conception of the relationship between the two notions. As Simon Cook shows, during the 1870s Freeman argued that race merged language and biological inheritance. Consequently, Freeman stressed that the Anglo-­Saxon invasion had almost exterminated the autochthonic Britons. ­Later, in the 1880s, Freeman followed the younger generation of philologists who had begun to insist on separating race and language. At this stage, Freeman argued that the Britons had been ­adopted, culturally if not racially, into the dominant Anglo-­ Saxon community.65 For Freeman, the expansion of the Anglo-­Saxons had



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not ceased in the ancient past but, as Duncan Bell demonstrates, signified pres­ ent and f­ uture En­glish conquest of new territories, such as Amer­i­ca (see l­ater in the chapter). While ­these “En­glish entities” formed a natu­ral and integral part of the homeland, Freeman rejected the full territorial and cultural assimilation of other racial groups/colonies into ­England since this could “endanger” Anglo-­Saxon dominance.66 Freeman’s repetitive use of racial terminology leads many to perceive him as a crudely racist historian. C. J. W. Parker argues that the liberal and racial attitudes of Freeman merged and complied with his po­liti­cal and ideological dogma.67 Marilyn Lake follows this line of argument but also pres­ents the criticism of Freeman’s extreme Teutonic notions by his own contemporaries, like the British-­Australian historian Charles Pearson (1830–94). The latter, as Lake illustrates, argued that his controversy with Freeman turned on the point of w ­ hether any continuity had existed between the Romans/Celts and the En­ glish or w ­ hether the Anglo-­Saxons had been the only legitimate ancestors of the nation.68 A dif­fer­ent interpretation is presented by Vicky Morrisroe, who has used Freeman’s Comparative Politics (1873) to “rehabilitate” him, rescuing Freeman from his reputation as a simplistic racial and nationalistic historian. Morrisroe claims that Freeman, while employing a notion of race, mainly stressed lingual and institutional ­factors as constructing Aryan history and supremacy; “race” as “blood,” she argues, was not impor­tant for Freeman.69 G. A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin also argue that race denoted a cultural category. However, Bremner and Conlin argue, Freeman did not adopt a biological classification of race (through craniometry and such) since it could not validate racial purity.70 In most cases, as Morrisroe and Bremner and Conlin show, Freeman emphasized cultural and institutional rather than biological supremacy. As Max Müller told Freeman: “Race is built on sand—it may be very learned, but it w ­ ill not stand a breath of harsh criticism.”71 Freeman, following Müller’s advice, continued this line of argument in “Race and Language.”72 Nevertheless, it must be noted, that in other, although less common, incidents, Freeman also stressed “blood” as separating ­human communities. This is especially evident in his attitudes t­ oward several par­tic­u­lar groups: blacks,73 Jews,74 and Native Americans.75 In the context of the aims of the following discussion and in relevance to the w ­ hole book, the impor­tant point is that “race” was a rather fluid term. Sometimes, Freeman considered it as a fixed and essential criterion

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that prevented assimilation between communities. However, especially when it suited his argument, Freeman also identified several groups that had integrated into other races and had altered their racial classification. Hence, racial belonging could also be mutable. ­W hether acquired or innate, “race,” for Freeman, derived from an ancient past and was an essential building block of communities as it fused the past with the pres­ent. Perhaps most impor­tant, “race” signified a certain hierarchy that separated vari­ous groups and assigned the Aryans an innate supremacy.

Teutonic Versus Latin-­Celtic Concerning his own Teutonic stock, Freeman regarded it as representing a long historical racial purity and dominance. This dominance was not only in comparison to other non-­A ryan races but also in relation to other Aryan ­people, such as the Celts and Latins. As part of this supremacy, Freeman stressed the preservation of the ancestral Germanic languages as a testimony for the innate character and longevity of the Teutonic stock. Freeman’s position is illustrated in his discussions concerning Green’s never to be written “Short History of France.” As we ­shall see, Green’s preference for Latin culture was what perhaps led him to an interest in the history of France and in its links to Romanized Gaul. In a letter to Green (November 20, 1873), Freeman asserted that modern France had emerged in 987 when Hugh Capet was crowned as rex Francorum. As Freeman noted, some historians proposed alternative dates, such as AD 843 (the treaty of Verdun) or the crowning of Odo in 887. For Freeman, however, it was only with the coronation of Hugh Capet as the king of France in 987 that the land obtained its unique national identity and abandoned its “Roman and German” influences.76 The discussion between the two historians emerged in the wake of Freeman’s request that Green write a short history of France, as part of the former’s “Eu­ro­pean history series for schools.” Green, however, advocated a much earlier date for the foundation of France. He observed that the book in this series on Germany commenced at a much earlier date and, in general, expressed surprise ­toward Freeman’s stance in regard to France, especially since Freeman, as editor, had deci­ded that all the books in the series would begin in the ninth ­century. However, the narrative of Germany, written by James Sime and edited jointly with Freeman and William Ward,77 began in the early days of Arminius or, as Green defines it, “before the beginning of t­ hings.”78 Green’s



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response was ironic: “I thought all the Wee Works w ­ ere to start from 888, and lo, I behold Arminius and a host of prehistoric critters! I am sure your original plan was the right one, and I am sorry you h ­ aven’t stuck to it, and warned your Wee sub-­workers to stick to it. One sub-­worker [Green himself] at any rate doth hereby strike against any ‘overtime’ before 988.”79 Despite Green’s eventual declaration that he would comply with Freeman’s terms, in the end he did not write the book.80 It seems that the differences in opinion, as evidenced in their vast correspondence on the scope and dates of the book, led to this outcome.81 A very substantial conclusion, however, arises from this correspondence. According to Freeman, Germany and E ­ ngland possessed an ancient history linking them with the tribal communities of antiquity. France, by contrast, lacked this kind of history. Thus, a very fragile historical connection existed between the “modern” France of the tenth c­ entury onward and the Gauls, Romans, and Germans who had inhabited the same territory beforehand. Freeman, in fact, hardly identified the prior centuries as belonging to France’s national history. The explanation of Freeman’s opinion can be related to his tendency to epitomize Teutonic motifs as noble while belittling Celtic, Latin, and Semitic influences. He considered the Teutonic stock ancient and continuous, and other cultures and races less influential in history. On November 17, 1871, Green told Freeman that his love of Italy was not in conflict with his admiration of the Swiss po­liti­cal system: “I d ­ on’t feel that my love for freedom clashes with my love for Italy, or that one’s interest in liberty need sleep on this side of the Alps to wake so strenuously on the other.”82 This was a response to Freeman’s accusation that Green preferred Italian culture to the Teutonic culture of Switzerland. Green conceded that he acknowledged the democracy of cities like Florence as superior even to the Swiss model. While the Swiss depended on institutions and constitutions, the Florentine democracy was one of “man”—­namely, humane. Green, in what would have seemed to Freeman almost blasphemy, attested that the Teutonic model was narrow, since it only denoted the po­liti­cal aspect, while the Italian (Latin) one introduced a humanistic approach that included po­ liti­cal, economic, and cultural influences. In another letter, Green mocked Freeman, the ultra-­Teuton, for falling in love with the charms of Italy ­a fter they both visited Venice together: “Ah, cara Italia! I am afraid she takes the light a l­ittle out of other lands; to me our own history has seemed a shade narrow, aldermannic, unpoetic ever since I crossed the Alps. But even you, Teuto-­Teutonnicorum [my emphasis], yielded to the witchery of Venice and

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found your Capua in a gondola. Oh, how I triumphed on that memorable day!”83 In Italy, Green, the “­people’s historian,” found the historical verification of his general social approach. For him, society as a ­whole came to life in the city-­states of Italy. Green was curious about Freeman’s account of Switzerland and wished to learn more about its communities. In the meantime, he conceded only that Switzerland was a beautiful place situated on his way south, to Italy. Moreover, the model of Swiss cantons, as described by Freeman, sounded to him more Italian than En­glish. The implication of this statement is that Green believed that t­here w ­ ere some pos­si­ble Italian-­Swiss institutional influences and not necessarily a separate Teutonic po­liti­cal model. Freeman adored Switzerland and celebrated it as the birthplace of democracy and of Teutonic institutions. Swiss federal history, according to Freeman, was vital for the evolution of modern po­liti­cal systems, especially in modern Germany and Britain. Freeman was very interested in Swiss federalism and wished to write a ­whole book on the subject. Bryce, who knew of Freeman’s intention, advised him in 1864 not to focus only on the federal aspect but to also study general Swiss history.84 This advice was likely connected with two articles Freeman had published a short while before, in which he mainly concentrated on the unique federal character of Switzerland. In t­hese articles, entitled “The Landesgemeinde of Uri” (1863) and “The Landesgemeinden of Uri and Appenzell” (1864), Freeman, in what would turn out to be a very central notion of his historical understanding, illustrated the demo­cratic features of the Landsgemeinden.85 The latter ­were po­liti­c al assemblies held in a public open space. Freeman compared them to the Athenian ecclesia or the Roman comitia (depending on ­whether one attended Uri or Appenzell). Like an anthropologist living among tribesmen, Freeman briefed his readers on his fieldwork in the Swiss Gemeinde. He visited the cantons and through personal experience enriched his description of their po­liti­cal system. As he told Green, when he visited Switzerland he was “Federalizing in Berne.”86 By this, Freeman meant that he was discovering the federal institutions from first sight. He attended the National Council (Nationalrat), visited several Landsgemeinden, went to hear debates, and communicated with federal representatives and with the local ­people. The cantons that maintain the method of popu­lar assemblies pres­ent a unique case that was distinguished from other much larger cantons of the Swiss Federation. Freeman wrote that six cantons still preserve this ancient Teutonic demo­cratic tradition.87 Freeman choose Uri, since it had acquired a



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central place in the history of Swiss in­de­pen­dence. In Uri, especially in the months of the early summer of each year, the governmental system was presented through public gatherings and practices. At the heart of the system lay the Gemeinde, or commune. The individual received the opportunity to participate in the proceedings through hereditary rights, an institution comparable to ancient Athenian democracy. If an individual settled in another Gemeinde, he had limited ability to influence his new community. Freeman even explained this method to Green in relation to Oxford, a place they both knew very well: “a stranger goes and lives in Oxford, he is not only short from any share in port Meadow, but he has no vote for town, council, guardians . . . ​it is such a charming medieval relic.”88 In 1875, Freeman commented that he had heard a rumor while traveling in Normandy that the unique po­liti­cal system of Uri, the Landsgemeinde, was about to be abolished, “as they have done in Schwyz.” He was relieved to hear, however, that “die walsch Zung ist untru” (the French/Gallic tongue is false).89 The esteem Freeman showed for the ancient Swiss system is once again apparent. Furthermore, his aversion t­oward the French can also be seen in his comment that the Walsch/Welsch, or Gal-­Welsh language (in French, Welsh ­people are known as les Gallois, the Gauls), as Freeman referred to them on many occasions, should not be trusted.90 Freeman’s concerns ­were not only limited to Switzerland. Several years before, in an earlier trip to Normandy, he told Bryce of his concern regarding the growing usage of French by the locals: “I am more and more concerned of the extreme folly of the p ­ eople ­here in talking French. Why on earth did they forget their natu­ral Danish, to say nothing of the still earlier Saxon? It seems so absolutely ridicu­lous to hear the Gal-­Welsh jabber coming out of the fine Dutch carcases of so many of our Normans hereabout.”91 Bryce, himself, on an earlier visit to Switzerland had told Freeman that during his tour near Geneva he was disturbed by the growing Francophile affinities of the region: “Chamoni, thankfully not yet, let us hope never to be Gal-­Welsh, albeit the folk t­ here speak a tongue which is much more Gal-­Welsh than Italian.” Like Freeman, Bryce also “feared” the influ­ eople of Teutonic ence of the Gal-­Welsh.92 The Swiss and the Normans, as p descent, ­were corrupted by the language of the Gal-­Welsh and ­were forgetting their Germanic origins. The change of language could also mean an alteration in the character of the ­people, and both Freeman and Bryce feared such implications that meant the loss of German or even Teutonic identity.93 The significant point is that, according to Freeman, one could conclude that both the language and the ­people who spoke it w ­ ere unfaithful, as if t­here

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was a complete identification between the language and the nation or even the race. Freeman’s admiration of Teutonic Switzerland was also evident in his associations with certain Swiss scholars. When he toured Switzerland in 1871, he praised once again the Swiss po­liti­c al system while also mentioning the faculty of the Swiss historians: I have been several times in the Nationalrat and I am especially struck with the singular order . . . ​so unlike our ­house of commons . . . ​I have been talking also to some of their statesmen and scholars. The mass of historical learning in Switzerland is something prodigious, and its results are piled up as Alps on their wise men’s shelves. But to the outer world they are simply buried ­under bushes, b­ ecause it is only one or two like [Franz] Bopp who write books; other ­people write their essays—­most learned and elaborate ones—in the transactions of socie­ties which folk in general have no way of getting at.94 One Swiss scholar Freeman was in contact with was the writer and poet Alexander Baumgartner (1841–1910). In several of his letters, Baumgartner praised Freeman for his interest in Switzerland and stated that it was a pity Freeman had not visited his own canton of Glarus. In Baumgartner’s opinion, Glarus symbolized a prominent example of the Swiss federal system: “ours is the most lively and most primitive and republican and therefore the most in­ ter­est­ing of all, since e.g. any Ehrenmann may on the spur of the moment rise and ask for the word, which he cannot do in Appenzell.”95 According to Baumgartner, Freeman’s books had influenced him im­mensely, and, as a tutor of history, he depended on his books for teaching En­glish history to his pupils. To Freeman, Baumgartner also noted the parallel institutions between the Swiss and the En­glish, especially in terms of their governmental heritage. This affinity between Freeman and Baumgartner epitomizes the central point developed in the next chapter: a close relation among the scholars of the Teutonic realm was established in light of their belief in a shared past and pres­ent. The po­liti­c al entities rooted in cantons such as Uri represented, for Freeman, the most ancient republics in the history of the world, and they had remained unaffected for a long time: “they can be traced back as far as the ­people can be traced back at all.”96 It was not necessary to imagine the



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Germans of Tacitus, since communities like Uri and Unterwalden had preserved the same ancient modes of po­liti­c al engagement. In Uri, a genuine democracy thrived and enabled e­ very citizen to be involved directly in the po­liti­c al pro­c ess. The greatest deeds of kings and popes throughout history w ­ ere negligible compared to the historical force of the demos as seen in Uri. Th ­ ese ­people symbolized Swiss in­de­pen­dence and ­were the descendants of the heroes of the ­battles of Sempach and Morgarten.97 They ­were also the forerunners of the ­whole Teutonic race and therefore signified Teutonic as well as Swiss liberty. The “Eternal Democracy” was perhaps the most momentous term that Freeman used to define this po­liti­ cal tradition. The use of this term contains an inner meaning. Analogous to the “eternal city” of Rome (Roma eterna), and maybe even a contrasting example to the Roman heritage, the democracy of Uri was almost timeless and thus presented living proof for the unity of history of the Teutonic realm. It was exactly this antiquity that provided the Swiss Gemeinde and the Teutonic institutions their pres­ent authority. It also handed them supremacy over other communities, like ­those of the Italians, who did not belong to the Teutonic race. Hitherto, I have discussed how the formative period of the construction of the community was vital to historians like Freeman and Green. It was vital ­because the question w ­ hether the French nation had been a product of the tenth c­ entury or an evolution of earlier periods affected nineteenth-­century questions of identity and legitimacy. The superiority of the nation/race was engrained in the historical past, and if the past was characterized by grandeur, the pres­ent and ­future ­will be too. The continuum between modern En­gland/ Switzerland and the ancient communities of the past that Freeman identified could provide the nation with a power­f ul tool—­t he authority of time and heritage. The nation is akin to a ­family or individuals striving to validate their stature through genealogical ties and relationships that stretch back to distant and respected forefathers.98 The only difference between the individual and the nation is that the nation denotes a bigger unit and includes ties between multitudes. If nations are in real­ity only very big families, this means that t­ here are genealogical ties between all the nation’s members. ­People who are outside the group cannot become members out of their own f­ree ­will, but only through establishing blood links with the members of the f­amily (e.g., through marriage). Freeman and Green relied to some extent on the kinship theory of the nation. It seems that Green, especially in his writings in f­ avor of Italian/Latin

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culture, offered a dif­fer­ent, less ethnic or racial explanation. However, some of his arguments lead to a dif­fer­ent conclusion. For instance, in a letter he sent to Alexander Macmillan (1818–96), cofounder of the famous publishing com­ pany, Green submitted notes regarding Freeman’s General Sketch of Eu­ro­pean History (1872).99 From the content, it is evident that Green observed the friction between dif­fer­ent races as crucial to historical development: “Would it not be well to note that the strug­gle between Rome and Carthage was a war of races that it gave the Aryan, and not the Shemite [sic], the empire of the world? Freeman has done this in the case of the b­ attle of Chalons, a strug­gle for life and death between the Aryan and Thracian races. Why not in that of the ­battle of Zama?”100 Green included the Roman Empire as a vital part of the past glories of the Aryan race. Consequently, it is clear why Green noted the importance of Italian and even French cultures, since t­ hose continue the legacy of the Roman Empire. As I elaborate l­ ater in the book, the bond between the Aryan p ­ eoples was 101 usually defined by common linguistic characteristics. Thus, according to some, language proves that t­here is a unique Aryan race, which separates Aryans from other races like the Semitic ­peoples.102 Following this reading of the term, it is no won­der that in his letter to Macmillan, Green emphasized a certain linguistic structure that allegedly supported his argument regarding the clash between the Aryan and the Semitic races. He noted that in the names of Hasdrubal and Hannibal, the leaders of Carthage, one can identify the Hebrew word Baal [‫]בעל‬, which appears in the Bible and means god or master. This, he argued, proved the Semitic origin of Carthage and its strug­gle with Aryan Rome.103 Freeman also recognized the preeminence of the Aryans and the nations of Eu­rope over the Semites of the East. This superiority, he claimed, can be observed in the institutions and especially in the power of the popu­lar assemblies that thrived among the Greeks, Romans, and the Teutonic ­peoples. Consequently, when describing the Swiss Landsgemeinden, Freeman compared the vari­ous assemblies of t­hese Aryan p ­ eople and concluded that their unique po­liti­cal method had derived from their Aryan origin. Following his emphasis on language as the main common feature of the Aryan kinfolk, Freeman identified an even greater resemblance between the vari­ous Teutonic nations. It seems that the Teutonic subgroup was more impor­tant to Freeman and Stubbs than to Green. Freeman claimed that the German language and En­ glish had once been one and the same, and this could be seen in the similarities that existed between the two languages t­ oday. Together with t­ hese languages,



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Danish, Swedish, and Dutch also belong to the same Teutonic f­ amily. Th ­ ese nations, despite the relative differences between their languages, belong to the same ethnic group.104

Teutonic Scandinavia The English-­Teutonic scholars, as we ­shall see, argued that the Scandinavian nations ­were an organic part of their own Teutonic race. This Scandinavian kinship was established not only on language affinity but also on the close Scandinavian involvement with En­glish history as well as on their physical resemblance to the En­glish ­people. Bryce, in a letter to Freeman, expressed this idea of a special relation with Scandinavia. Yet in his case the admiration was mainly t­oward the physical appearance of the Scandinavians: “I love the northern places, and specially Norwegians, more than Swedes or Danes—­I suspect your Sicilian North men ­were chiefly from Norway. . . . ​They are still tall good-­looking fellows. The ­women not handsome, but with clear-­cut ­faces.”105 ­There was a reason why Bryce stressed to Freeman the resemblance of the Scandinavians to the Normans, who had conquered Sicily in the eleventh c­ entury. Freeman, as elaborated in Chapter 4, was very interested in the history of Sicily and argued for the common racial origin of the Normans, the Scandinavians, and the En­glish. Bryce also distinguished between the “superior” southern Scandinavians and the “inferior” races of the North: “In t­ hese high latitudes . . . ​especially about Tromso, a good many Lapps. The race is partly disappointing. . . . ​They are, albeit given to drinking when they have money in their pockets.”106 According to Bryce, the Lapps from Lapland, also known as the Sami ­people, ­were still superior to other more “primitive” races: “They are of the least repulsive of the primitive races—­superior to Red Indians and Polynesian, East Indian Todas.”107 Thus, Bryce ­adopted a hierarchy of races. He differentiated between the Northmen and the Lapps and then between the Lapps and other “inferior” races. Bryce was very interested in the region since the name “Goth” had been maintained in a region of southern Scandinavia: “For a long time I wished to visit the one place which preserved the name of the Goths, albeit ­there is l­ittle to show how its folks ­were ever connected with our men of Alarich and Theodorich.”108 Bryce doubted the alleged links between the Scandinavian p ­ eople and the Gothic tribes who had toppled the Western Empire. Yet, Bryce did refer to the Teutonic lords, Alaric and Theodoric, as “his men.”

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Freeman, conversely, observed a long-­lasting connection between his tribal forefathers and the Northmen of Scandinavia. Within the nations of Eu­rope, the Swedes and Norwegians, ­because of their geo­graph­i­cally isolated lands in the north, ­were said to remain the purest of all the Teutonic p ­ eople.109 For this reason, according to Freeman, as in the case of Stubbs, when the Vikings invaded the isles in the ninth c­ entury, they ­were easily assimilated with the ­ ngles, Saxons, and Jutes three local Anglo-­Saxons.110 Comparable to the A hundred years earlier, the Vikings ­were “­people of [their] own race,” worshiped the same gods, and, most impor­tant, understood the language spoken by most ­ ere not Christians, of the inhabitants of the island.111 Although the Vikings w and indeed ­were ­bitter enemies of the church, once they converted, their integration was immediate: “But when they had once settled in the land and had become Christians, their language and manners differed so l­ittle from ­those of the En­glish that the Danes and the En­glish soon became one ­people. ­There is no doubt a ­great deal of Danish blood in all the north and east of ­England, but the Danes and the En­glish did not remain as two separate nations in the way that the En­glish and Welsh did, so that the Danes may rather be said to have become another tribe of En­glishmen just like the ­A ngles and the Saxons.”112 ­Here a very impor­tant difference surfaces between the invasions of the Anglo-­Saxons and the Vikings. The former, when invading the island in the fifth ­century, encountered the Welsh. In contrast to the Vikings, who eventually merged a­ fter a severe but relatively short b­ attle with the local En­glish, the Anglo-­Saxons w ­ ere not integrated into the Welsh communities. Freeman echoed this argument repeatedly and maintained that hardly any Welshmen had remained in the En­glish parts of the country a­ fter the victory of the Anglo-­ Saxons. The separation between the En­glish and Welsh, he believed, was very clear from the early settlements of the isles. The question h ­ ere is why Freeman insisted on distinguishing so ardently between the En­glish and Welsh? Why did he place such an emphasis on ethnic singularity? First, Freeman wished to emphasize that ­there had been two dif­fer­ent races in the isles. The Welsh ­were and are Celtic, while the Anglo-­Saxons and, afterward, the Danes ­were and are of Teutonic stock. The prominence of the language as a ­factor of race arises again with regard to the Welsh. The meaning of the title “Welsh,” as Freeman explained, was ­those whose “tongue cannot be understood”—in other words, foreigners. It was a name given to the local Celtic ­people of E ­ ngland by the Germanic Anglo-­Saxons.113 The Anglo-­Saxons had a long and fierce confrontation with the Celtic ­people mainly b­ ecause, ac-



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cording to Freeman, they ­were and remain of a dif­fer­ent race: “They met with a degree of strictly national re­sis­tance such as no other Teutonic conquerors met with.”114 The strong local re­sis­tance led the invading tribes to a horrific revenge that destroyed ­every trace of the local inhabitants belonging to Celtic and Roman communities. The national pride of Freeman was playing a major role ­here. Above all, he wished to prove that the En­glish belong to the continental Teutonic f­ amily of tribes. In addition, the mighty re­sis­tance of the local ­people was glorified, since this reflected well on the strength and glory of his En­glish tribal ancestors who succeeded in conquering the isles. This also attested to the nature of the isles as a place that was and always ­will be difficult to conquer. Freeman reveled in the fact that the newcomers had hardly mingled with the autochthonic inhabitants, contributing to the formation of the En­ glish nation as the purest Teutonic nation. Dissimilar to vari­ous other barbarian ­peoples on the Continent, such as the Franks, who ­adopted many ele­ments from the Romans, the ancestors of the En­glish ­were the most savage of all the Teutonic nations. They ­were hardly influenced by the empire in their safe haven of northern Germany and could not find a common ground with the communities that a­dopted Roman ele­ments in Britain.115 This means that they remained separate from both Celtic and Roman cultures. However, especially following the Viking and then Norman invasions, other ethnic groups assimilated into the En­glish nation. Nevertheless, in comparison with other nations, ­England had preserved its Teutonic character in the most au­then­tic way. Freeman argued that his motive was to research the ethnic origins of ­England through the context of the broader developments in western Eu­rope during the fifth c­ entury: “If I am set in this chair [regius professor of modern history] to strive to show that Eu­ro­pean history is one unbroken chain, I am set in it also to strive to show that En­glishmen are En­ glishmen.”116 For this reason, Freeman argued that in the isles, Wales and Scotland had no justification or even need for in­de­pen­dence. They inhabited the same geo­graph­i­cal unit and had been dominated by the En­glish race for many years. Hence, ­there was no real necessity to advance any demands for their in­de­pen­dence. Ireland, however, embodied a dif­fer­ent case, since it was detached geo­graph­i­cally from ­England. Following this, Freeman, as seen in many of his letters, supported home rule for Ireland.117 In a letter to the Reverend William R. W. Stephens, who ­later edited Freeman’s Life and Letters (1895), Freeman drew the borders of his own homeland: “I have not bothered myself much with Ireland, Transvaal, and other unpleasant parts of the world. My creed is a ­simple one—­the kingdoms of ­England and Scotland, the

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dominion of Wales, the town of Berwick-­upon-­Tweed, and (two t­ hings which are often forgotten) the kingdom of Man and the duchy of Normandy). Th ­ ose 118 make up the extent of my geo­graph­i­cal patriotism.” It is evident through ­these quotations that Freeman also aspired to prove that the theory of the “unity of history” also applied in the case of his homeland, ­England. By separating the Anglo-­Saxon tribes from the Welsh-­Celtic ones, he demonstrated that the former belonged to a long and continuous ancestry of Teutonic descent. Although both nations belonged to the Aryan race, the Anglo-­Saxon/Teutonic stock was superior to the autochthonic Celtic inhabitants of the isles. The two stocks could hardly coexist. For a mutual and enduring existence one of the stocks must prevail. In the case of the isles, it was the Anglo-­Saxon dominance and the weakening of the Celtic character/ communities that allowed E ­ ngland to control Wales and Scotland. To conclude, it seems that Green promoted a rather “less Teutonic” narrative in comparison to Freeman, Stubbs, and Bryce. Freeman also named the Roman-­Italians, French, and, in fact, most of the western Eu­ro­pean nations, as Aryan. However, as illustrated, he identified several levels of “Aryanism.” Thus, the Teutonic En­glish and German ­were superior to the Latin p ­ eople, even though they all belong to the Aryan ­family. Stubbs also stressed the Teutonic roots. He belittled the role of the Roman Empire and its Latin descendants, while stressing the influence of the Teutonic nations especially on modern history. For this reason, he differentiated between the ancient and the modern periods. However, despite the distinctions between t­ hese historians, it appears that mainly Bryce, Freeman, and Stubbs amalgamate the notions of nation and race and regard language as a critical criterion in determining them. Ethnogenesis is another notion that arises from the scholars’ arguments. The shared ancestral community bonded the En­glish with other Teutonic communities. Accordingly, Freeman, Stubbs, and Bryce promoted the idea of a transnational Teutonic community. Switzerland and the p ­ eople of Scandinavia ­were part of ­these ­sister communities. Amer­i­ca, as discussed next, was another prime example of the transnational ethnogenesis community.

“Germanic” Amer­i­ca The ties of race and language—of “blood and speech,” a phrase coined by Freeman—­linked E ­ ngland with another Teutonic land, the United States of Amer­i­c a. The true ancestors of the American nation, as Freeman declared



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during his visit to Johns Hopkins University in 1881, had been the Anglo-­ Saxons and consequently the En­glish. The United States was, therefore, another Anglo-­Saxon entity originating from the Teutonic tribes. Th ­ ere was a gradual historical movement of the Teutonic nations westward, from their lands in Germany, to E ­ ngland and then across the Atlantic to the New World. The Teutonic movement carried and spread the idea of demo­cratic institutions. The institutions of seventeenth-­century Amer­i­c a had been even more “Teutonic” than t­ hose that remained in con­temporary ­England. A greater closeness persisted between American and ancient Anglo-­Saxon institutions and the former echo nativity that waned in the old E ­ ngland:119 “The old Teutonic assembly, rather the old Aryan assembly, which had not long died out in the Frisian sea-­lands, which still lived on in the Swabian mountain-­ lands, ­rose again to full life in the New E ­ ngland town-­meeting. ­Here we have, supplied by the New ­England States, a direct contribution, and one of the most valuable of contributions, to the general history of Teutonic po­liti­cal life, and thereby to the general history of common Aryan po­liti­cal life.”120 Herbert B. Adams (1850–1901), an American historian from Baltimore and Freeman’s friend, noted Freeman’s influence on his own historical understanding. Adams detected, following Freeman’s work, the close affinity between the Swiss Landsgemeinden and New ­England’s town meetings. Amer­i­ca, for both Adams and Freeman, continued the Teutonic traditions of ­England: “Amer­i­ca is not such a new world as it seems to many foreigners. . . . ​Historians like Mr. Freeman declare that if we want to see Old ­England we must go to New ­England.”121 Freeman’s visit to the United States, as Adams testified, was a ­great success.122 It contributed to the study of “local institutions,” inspiring Adams to edit a volume published u ­ nder this title. The volume included Adams’s own article “The Germanic Origins of New ­England Towns” (1882), which pointed to the mutual influences between the Germanic tribes, En­ glish communities, and American towns.123 Through reference to Green’s Short History, Adams argued for the kinship between the inhabitants of t­ hese two separate geo­graph­i­cal spheres: “The town and village life of New E ­ ngland is as truly the reproduction of Old En­glish types as ­those again are reproductions of the village community system of the ancient Germans. Investigators into American institutional history w ­ ill turn as naturally to the m ­ other country as the historians of ­England turn ­toward their older home beyond the German Ocean.”124 Federalism was a major component of this po­liti­cal heritage. Consequently, Adams urged Freeman to complete his book on federal government,

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as it is “the grandest idea in past politics and pres­ent history.”125 Adams also encouraged Freeman to stress the similarity between the northeastern American territories and the old Teutonic institutions: “territorial ­union and common dominion and national Mark. I am ­going to lead you up to the ager publicus. The Folkland of the U.S. from the town commons of New-­England which are ­after all but out-­giving wastes of old E ­ ngland.”126 Adams ­adopted the term Mark from the very influential works of Maurer. The term, discussed in the next chapter, broadly defined the shared public land, or ager publicus, of the ancient Germanic tribes. Adams, as well as many other scholars, placed the term at the heart of Germanic liberty since it was the cornerstone of the constitutions of first E ­ ngland and l­ater the United States. The German-­ Teutonic influence was not only explicit in Adams’s use of the term Mark but also in his adoption of the term Folkland, or, rather, Volkland, that, like Mark, retained a similar meaning as the “land of the ­people.” Adams’s use of certain German terms and theories is evident. Like some of his En­glish colleagues, he a­ dopted German historical scholarship and aimed to disseminate it among American scholars.127 Bryce also engaged in correspondence with Adams. Together with Freeman, he visited Adams in 1881 at his newly founded history department in Johns Hopkins University.128 In Bryce’s American Commonwealth (1888), discussing the unique American po­liti­cal system, he promoted the view linking a certain ancient po­liti­cal system with the American Constitution: “American Constitution is no exception to the rule that every­thing which has power to win the obedience and re­spect of men must have its roots deep in the past.”129 The American po­liti­cal system is founded on a method of direct democracy. This system resembles the direct democracies of Greece and Rome as well as the existing scheme of several Swiss Landsgemeinde (Bryce at this point refers to Freeman’s descriptions of the Swiss cantons).130 ­There was a direct institutional lineage connecting the Teutonic tribes, our “forefathers” (according to Bryce), with the En­glish settlers and the American Constitution: “they owed something also to ­those Teutonic traditions of semi-­independent local communities, owning common property, and governing themselves by a primary assembly of all f­ree inhabitants, which the En­glish had brought with them from the Elbe and the Weser, and which had been perpetuated in the practice of many parts of ­England down till the days of the Stuart kings.”131 Adams also identified a similarity between the American Pilgrims and their Teutonic ancestors. Both ­were part of the Teutonic migration waves, invading new lands, and annihilating the natives.132 With the word “natives,”



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Adams referred to both the ancient Britons, defeated by the Anglo-­Saxons, and to the American Indians, who perished in the wake of the Pilgrims’ advent. He thus a­dopted the theory of Freeman concerning the devastating impact of the Teutonic tribes on the native inhabitants of the lands in which they settled. The racial differences between the invading ­people and the “locals” w ­ ere clear. The invaders of the isles who l­ater immigrated to Amer­i­ca ­were obliged to demolish the autochthonic p ­ eople once again, as a necessary stage in the establishment of their new communities. Freeman and Bryce understood the current and f­uture potential of Amer­i­ca and wished to emphasize the institutional and even racial common ground between E ­ ngland and the northern part of the New World. They believed that through Anglo-­A merican collaboration the Anglo-­Saxon stamp on h ­ uman society would be strengthened. Thus, they urged the merger of the old E ­ ngland with the new one. As Freeman declared, ­after being described as a foreigner by an American scholar: “I am not of a foreign nationality, but of the same nationality [as you].”133

chapter 2

Roman Decline and Teutonic Rejuvenation The Racial German and En­glish Gemeinschaft of Scholars (1850–90)

­ ere is a g­ reat difference between nationality and race. Nationality Th is the princi­ple of po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence. Race is the princi­ple of physical analogy, and you have at this moment the princi­ple of race—­not at all of nationality—­adopted by Germany. —­Benjamin Disraeli

­There is an irony that t­ hese words w ­ ere uttered in 1848 by one of Freeman’s arch-­adversaries, the ­f uture prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. For Disraeli suffered from Freeman’s racial terminology, being named by him, especially in his private correspondence, a “Jew,” a term wielded with clear derogatory connotations.1 Freeman’s racial stereotyping arose in consequence of his opposition to Disraeli’s per­sis­tent support of British-­Ottoman connections, itself a product of his fear of Rus­sian dominance. As we have seen, the idea of the “Teutonic race” became central in the writings of Freeman, Green, and Stubbs, especially in their construction of an English-­Teutonic community. Note, however, that Disraeli, in the above quotation, characterizes the Germans as attributing physical traits to the term “race” in order to differentiate between nations.2 This provides us with a cue, for this chapter, in addition to further examining the discourse of the En­glish scholars who form the backbone of the book, explores also the attitudes of several German scholars to



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Teutonic history, their relations with the English-­Teutonic circle, and their concept of race. German scholars appear at this point in the narrative since the concern in this chapter is with the close bonds forged between them and some of their En­glish colleagues. ­These bonds arose through several friendships formed between En­glish and German scholars, relationships that w ­ ere themselves predicated on a shared concern to construct a common Pan-­Germanic identity for their respective nations. This i­ magined identity emphasized certain ethnic, racial, and cultural (linguistic and religious) commonalities. The Pan-­German community, as conceived by ­these scholars, incorporated a common myth of the Germanic tribal past while stressing certain unique cultural traits, such as the resemblance between the En­g lish and the German languages.3 The fundamental aspect of Pan-­Germanism hinged upon an i­ magined cultural ancestry that l­ater, especially from the 1850s, developed certain racial characteristics. Furthermore, when discussing this common historical-­cultural narrative, it should be noted that considerable familial links had existed between the En­glish monarchy and German principalities since the crowning of George I (1660–1727, originally of Hanover) in 1714. During the nineteenth ­century this continued with the marriage between Queen Victoria (who had a German ­mother and spoke fluent German) and her first cousin, Prince Albert (1819–61) of Saxe-­Coburg and Gotha. L ­ ater, the Princess Royal Victoria (1840– 1901), the eldest ­daughter of Victoria and Albert, married Frederick William of Prus­sia (1831–88), the f­uture emperor Frederick III.4 Despite ­these ties, or maybe ­because of them, some of ­these royal figures ­were accused of maintaining their allegiance to their original homeland.5 I ­will not aim to show that due to t­hese links the German or British scholars influenced each other directly in constructing a racial approach, since one cannot follow the exact evolution of an idea in any one scholars’ writings. However, I ­will exemplify the interpretation of ­t hese issues by the German scholars and the parallels and pos­si­ble differences with the concepts of their En­glish colleagues. The main theme is twofold, incorporating, in addition to the German comprehension of race and of community, the German scholars’ relations and attitudes ­toward E ­ ngland and their specific appreciation of En­glish scholars. I maintain that a close association connects t­ hese two parts of the theme. For all ­t hese scholars, the idea of the Teutonic community that had expanded from the wildernesses of northern Germany to the isles, was not only an entity rooted in the remote past but also part of pres­ent real­ity.

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Many scholars in both Germany and Britain w ­ ere also involved in po­liti­ cal, religious, and social activities. They acted as public officials, held religious posts, and wrote regularly for newspapers as public intellectuals. In ­England, this is witnessed in Freeman’s regular periodical columns (he wrote more than seven hundred articles for the weekly London newspaper the Saturday Review of Politics, Lit­er­a­ture, Science and Art Review), in the role of Stubbs as bishop of Chester and l­ater Oxford, and in Green’s social work in East London. In Germany (or among the German scholars), a similar mode of involvement is evident in the po­liti­cal and diplomatic roles of Barthold Georg Niebuhr and Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen and the participation of Max Müller in public affairs.6 Müller, for example, acted as an unofficial mediator between ­England and Germany, especially during the Franco-­Prussian War.7 Through such media, t­ hese scholars aimed, and sometimes w ­ ere able, to strengthen the bond between Germany and ­England and to form a thriving community that exchanged mutual ideas. Based on the published works together with examination of private correspondence, some hitherto unstudied, this chapter brings to light the construction of a shared community of scholars.

Con­temporary Views Connections between British and German scholars have been examined through several prisms. Charles McClelland’s The German Historians and ­England (1971) demonstrates that ­toward the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, the idea of E ­ ngland became almost an obsession for German historians who sought to find common ground between Germany and ­England.8 ­A fter the end of the Napoleonic Wars, argues McClelland, interest in En­glish scholarship and history among German historians declined.9 Johann M. Lappenberg wrote a pioneering book on Anglo-­Saxon E ­ ngland promoting the notion that the Anglo-­Saxon period had been the most prominent epoch in En­glish history.10 ­These tendencies, according to McClelland, ­were primarily racial and derived from the attempt by the German historians to connect their own “Germany/ies” with the achievements of the British Empire.11 A detailed account of the infiltration of German culture into the Victorian cultural scene appears in John R. Davis’s The Victorians and Germany (2007), which focuses on the cultural and religious links between Germany and Victorian ­England. Davis shows, for instance, how the Broad Church movement, which a­dopted liberal notions and fused High and Low



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Church tendencies, was influenced by German Protestantism.12 In terms of the study of history, Davis describes the intertwining connections woven between German and British scholars. Davis is more concerned with capturing wide-­ranging links than discovering the mutual relationships between the ideas of individual German and British scholars. For this reason, especially in regard to the Teutonic idea and periodization, t­ here is a need for further investigation.13 The mutual perceptions of German and En­glish historians are also vis­i­ ble in the work of Peter Wende, who concentrates mainly on two leading historiographical journals, the Historische Zeitschrift and the En­glish Historical Review.14 In both journals appear a handful of reviews of books and studies from Britain and Germany. The Germans, as Wende shows, w ­ ere in general interested in the works of French historians more than in those of the En­glish ones, while the En­glish ­were more intrigued by German than French work.15 Wende asserts that most British historians acknowledged the supremacy of German scholarship. The Germans themselves criticized the En­glish historians’ method, yet appreciated that, unlike most of their German counter­ parts, they ­were popu­lar outside the academic sphere.16 Wende, like Davis, while mentioning Freeman and Stubbs as the leading British historians, does not concentrate on the reviews of their work but rather focuses on the mutual links between the historians of the two countries. Fi­nally, we may note an essay on the influence of philology on British scholarship by John Burrow, who demonstrates the significance of scholars like Bunsen and Müller on the infiltration of this field into the En­glish academic sphere and, especially, into the studies of the En­glish scholars of the Altertumwissenschaft. Language, for ­t hese scholars, became the key to the understanding of humanity, history, and religion.17 As we s­hall see, such a racial-­linguistic bond was conceived by several scholars as linking Germany and ­England.

Lineage of Historians—­Early Influences In The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (1952), Duncan Forbes was the first to fully explore the influence of German scholarships on Liberal Anglican historians such as Thomas Arnold, Henry  H. Milman, and Arthur Stanley.18 The paragon of German scholarship in Britain during the 1820s was Barthold Georg Niebuhr, one of the most famous historians in the German-­speaking

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lands of the nineteenth ­c entury. Niebuhr, born in Schleswig-­Holstein to a f­ amily of Danish descent, was especially renowned for his research on the Roman Republic. Like many historians of his age, he became involved in politics, and from 1816 u ­ ntil 1823 he was the Prus­sian ambassador to Rome.19 In his Römische Geschichte (1827), he concentrated mainly on republican Rome, although he does make some reference to the ­later history of Rome.20 In regard to the transformation from antiquity to the ­Middle Ages and the theme of the fall of Rome, Niebuhr, following the dominant periodization, marked the fall with the deposition of the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus. In the third and last volume of his lectures on Rome, in the last chapter, ­after the description of the events preceding the year 476, he concludes: “So endigte das römische Reich (So ended the Roman Empire).”21 The l­ater ­great German historian of Rome Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) was, like Niebuhr, reluctant to write on the l­ater Roman Empire. Mommsen declared that Edward Gibbon had cast a large shadow over the Roman historians of Germany.22 Perhaps Niebuhr also feared Gibbon’s shadow; he certainly told the German-­ American scholar Francis Lieber (1798–1872): “If God ­will only grant me a life so long that I may end where Gibbon begins; it is all I pray for.”23 One of the most impor­tant contributions of Niebuhr was his separation of the mythical and the historical ele­ments of antiquity, a separation that resulted in the conclusion that many narratives, such as that which told of the foundation of Rome, ­were mere legends with no substantial historical proof. From this followed a new threefold periodization, applying, however, not to the ­whole of history but simply to its first stage, antiquity, which was now to be divided between mythische (mythic), Mittelalter (a m ­ iddle period), and ächthistorische (real historical), the last era. Poets such as Homer characterized the first period. Between the mythic and the real historical era, a transitional m ­ iddle age occurred. The last and most impor­tant period, due to its au­then­tic kernel, began in Greece and ­later in Rome with the “realistic” historians, such as Thucydides and Polybius, who had left detailed accounts of historical events. Thus, Niebuhr’s division was based on the quality of the knowledge preserved and the substantial difference between legends and ­ ere distinguished not only by historical evidence.24 For Niebuhr, periods w events but also by the sources and the historians who had lived in them. Niebuhr had a g­ reat interest in the history of the En­glish ­people, their politics, and their scholars. In a letter written in 1823 to the founding ­father of positivism, the French scholar Auguste Comte (1798–1857), he testified to his attachment to E ­ ngland:



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On that country, I have a right to form an opinion; I have a right to except against that of the En­glish, and to criticize it, as much as if the question related to my own country, and the opinion of my fellow-­countrymen respecting its state, for I know E ­ ngland as well as if I had been born t­ here. I was taught the language in my earliest childhood, and from the age of ten years I was in the constant habit of reading the En­glish journals; my f­ ather sent me t­ here to finish my studies, and to become acquainted with the po­liti­cal and civil life of a ­free p ­ eople, as well as to study rural economy, commerce, the application of chemistry to the arts, and lastly, finance. . . . ​I was as if naturalized ­there; and, ­after having quitted it, I continued to watch with the same interest the minutest details of its circumstances, and have followed its moral, po­liti­cal, and financial history.25 Niebuhr thus defined himself as virtually En­glish. This may also explain why most of the foreigners who visited Niebuhr in Bonn during the last de­ cade of his life w ­ ere En­glish. His prominent followers in Britain w ­ ere Connop Thirlwall, Julius Hare, and Thomas Arnold. It was Hare and Thirlwall who introduced Niebuhr to the wider British public through their translation of his work.26 In 1819, both men read Niebuhr in German while studying at Trinity College, Cambridge.27 In his letter to Comte, Niebuhr proceeds to argue that ­England had preserved its institutions and freedom since the ­Middle Ages down to the pres­ent. This uniqueness of E ­ ngland was noticed by Niebuhr due to his vast engagement with antiquity: “And the more I occupied all my leisure moments with researches into the history of the institutions and laws of the nations of antiquity, the more I was led to turn my attention to the history of E ­ ngland, among t­hose states, where the f­ree institutions of the m ­ iddle ages have maintained themselves for a more or less lengthened period, and where even impor­tant changes—as, for instance, in the tenure of property—­have been brought to pass in the course of their natu­ral development.”28 The history of ­England also showed a strong attachment to the institution of the (unwritten) En­glish “constitution.” Niebuhr, who lived u ­nder French occupation (1806–15) and consequently became a ­great advocate for the liberation and freedom of the Germanic lands, argued that true liberty is found within the En­glish nation and not with the French, who claim to be the “harbingers of liberty.” His resentment ­toward France was also evident in

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his attacks against French scholars. Niebuhr ardently criticized Guillaume de Sainte-­Croix (1746–1809) and regarded his study of Alexander the ­Great (Examen critique des anciens historiens d’Alexandre-­le-­Grand, 1775) as “a work very unsatisfactory to a German scholar, and [it] must be treated by us as if it did not exist. The ­whole work must be done all over again. As regards to the facts in the life of Alexander, we need not hesitate to follow Arrian.”29 Niebuhr, in vari­ous places, also made parallels between Greece of the fourth ­century BC and the condition of the German principalities during their war against Napoleonic France. For example, the widespread dismay in the German principalities following the defeats to France (Jena, 1806, and o­ thers) resembled the condition of the Greek city-­states ­a fter the destruction of Thebes by Alexander (335 BC).30 For Niebuhr, Rome and E ­ ngland converged. As he declared, it was during his stay in ­England that he deci­ded to write on Roman history: “I never could have understood a number of ­things in the history of Rome without having observed E ­ ngland. Not that the idea of writing the history of Rome was then clear within me; but when, at a ­later period, this idea became more and more distinct in my mind, all the observation and experience I had gained in E ­ ngland came to my aid, and the resolution was taken.”31 Conversely, Niebuhr learned more about what he deemed E ­ ngland’s true and noble essence from the study of the early Roman constitution and republic. For Niebuhr, most nations had a short life span. They withered away like ­human beings and did not fulfill their potential. Only two nations had escaped this fate: Rome in antiquity and ­England in modernity. Rome and ­England broke the vicious circle of time and managed to expand and prosper throughout long periods. As Niebuhr declared in his introduction to the lectures he held at Bonn: “In modernity, only the En­glish have endured like the Romans [die Engländer eben solchen Verlauf erlangt wie die Römer]; from a cosmopolitan point of view t­ hese two histories [of Rome and E ­ ngland] are the most impor­ tant.”32 In the introduction to Vorträge über römische Geschichte (1846–48), Niebuhr argued that dominant empires like Rome had integrated many nations that gradually became an integral part of the empire. Rome united the inhabited world u ­ nder its law, culture, and language. We, Niebuhr asserted, and by that he meant “his” Germanic tribal ancestors, would not have ceased to be barbarians without Rome.33 It is precisely this universal aspect of Rome and its continuing influence on world history long a­ fter its fall that characterized Niebuhr’s conception of the relationship between Rome and the Ger-



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manic tribes (germanischen Stämme). For him, the tribes, despite invading Rome, ­were nurtured from Rome’s heritage. Hence, t­ here was more cooperation and continuity than strife. In general, Niebuhr defined the national aspect rather vaguely. He stressed both universal and patriotic notions, as exemplified by his support of Prus­sia and its territorial aspirations. Perhaps, this patriotic-­universal dualism, as some scholars have suggested, linked him rather to the ideas of the Enlightenment than to the Romantic tendencies of the nineteenth c­ entury.34 As one of his descendants claimed in 1977, marking the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, Niebuhr could si­mul­ta­neously be defined as Danish, Prus­sian, and German, or simply as a citizen of the world.35 Nevertheless, a completely dif­fer­ent appreciation of Niebuhr is perhaps also pos­si­ble. As Martin Bernal claims, Niebuhr acted as a pillar of nineteenth-­ century racial thinking. For instance, Niebuhr, according to Bernal, argued that the source of the split between the patricians and plebeians in Rome had been a consequence of racial and not of class differences. Hence, the racial aspect determined the division into classes.36 The physical aspect of race, Bernal concludes, was crucial for Niebuhr’s definition of historical and pres­ ent communities.37 Niebuhr, however, when describing the patricians and plebeians or when referring to any other h ­ uman collective, did not use the term Rasse(n). Alternatively, when illustrating the plebeian-­patrician split he denoted ­these groups with the terms Stamm(-­ë), Tribus (tribe), and Stand(-­ë) (class).38 It seems, therefore, that within the con­temporary historical lit­er­a­ture ­there is a debate as to w ­ hether Niebuhr ­adopted a universal approach or rather a more racial-­hierarchical inclination t­ oward history. The point to note h ­ ere, however, is that while a narrative glorifying the early Germans as the shapers of medieval Eu­rope can indeed be discerned within his writings, it was not especially impor­tant to him but became crucial for his successors. This part of Niebuhr’s heritage also testified to the historical bond between Germany and E ­ ngland. Niebuhr’s historical method was initially seen in Britain with unfavorable eyes. For example, in the Quarterly Review of 1829, John Barrow launched a scorching attack on Niebuhr, presenting him as an ultraradical liberal thinker who had a destabilizing effect on his students.39 En­glish scholars, E. B. Pusey (1800–82) in par­tic­u­lar, regarded his critical approach to Roman history as dangerous, since criticism of classical texts would eventually lead to the criticism of biblical sources.40 Niebuhr’s attitude, however, found a counterpart in the work of Thomas Arnold. Arnold in fact learned German by reading Niebuhr’s Römische

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Geschichte. Following his reading of the book, Arnold declared that, like Niebuhr, his aim was to separate history from myth. Arnold, who met his German mentor in 1827, emphasized a specific national feeling, which he linked to a Pan-­Germanic ele­ment that was dominant in the modern age but absent in antiquity: “Half of Eu­rope, and all Amer­i­ca and Australia are German more or less completely in race, language, or in institutions, or in all.”41 According to Arnold, the Germans and the En­glish, together with the inhabitants of most of western Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca, belonged to a unified race ruling most of the modern world. Arnold, who traveled extensively, illustrated this on a visit to the Rhine on one of his tours. He considered the Rhine not just as a natu­ral boundary but also as a dividing line between two distinct cultures. As he wrote in his journal on June 9, 1828: The river itself was the frontier of the Empire—­the limit, as it ­were, of two worlds, that of Roman laws and customs, and that of German. Far before us lay the land of our Saxon and Teutonic forefathers—­ the land uncorrupted by Roman or any other mixture; the birth-­place of the most moral races of men that the world has yet seen—of the soundest laws—­the least violent passions, and the fairest domestic and civil virtues. I thought of that memorable defeat of Varus and his three legions, which for ever confined the Romans to the western side of the Rhine, and preserved the Teutonic nation—­the regenerating ele­ment in modern Europe—­safe and ­free.42 The defeat of the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9) was not only the victory of the Germans but also the triumph of ­England. It was “our forefathers,” as Arnold wrote, who had managed to repel the Romans and so preserved the f­ ree ele­ment of the German race. This defiance of Roman culture led eventually to the establishment of ­England, ­because, had the Romans conquered the German lands, the Anglo-­Saxons would never have crossed the channel centuries l­ater.43

Bunsen and the Establishment of the Community Arnold maintained a long and close correspondence with Niebuhr’s protégé Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen. The two met for the first time when Arnold visited Rome in 1827, for Bunsen served as the Prus­sian ambassador



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to the papal court a­ fter replacing Niebuhr in 1823. On March 20, 1831, Arnold wrote to Bunsen words of condolences on the death of his mentor. In this letter, he also noted the common interest of Germany and E ­ ngland to defy their common e­ nemy, France: “Germany w ­ ill never forget the glorious strug­gle of 1813, and ­will know that the tread of a Frenchman on the right bank of the Rhine is the worst of all pollutions to her soil. And I trust and think, that the general feeling in E ­ ngland is strong on this point, and that the ­whole power of the nation would be heartily put forth to strangle in the birth the first symptoms of Napoleonism. I was at a party in the summer at Geneva, where I met [Amédée] Thierry, the historian of ‘Les Gaulois’ and the warlike spirit which I perceived, even then, in the French liberals, made a deep impression upon me.”44 Bunsen stressed the importance of the Teutonic nations to world history. The tribes revitalized Eu­rope in the wake of the decaying Roman and Celtic eras. In this he went beyond his mentor Niebuhr, who identified the end of antiquity with the invasion of the tribes but was less focused on the Teutonic aspect. Bunsen was a key figure in the relations between German and En­glish scholars, and his connection with Thomas Arnold initiated the emergence of this scholarly community.45 From 1843, he occupied for over a de­cade the role of Prus­sia’s ambassador to St. James’s Court and became the main carrier of Niebuhr’s legacy in E ­ ngland. This legacy also included a prominent religious mission to unite the Lutheran and Anglican churches. Bunsen had commenced to implement this objective in 1841 when he began, with the blessing of his patron Frederick William IV, to manage the establishment of a Protestant British-­Prussian bishopric in Jerusalem.46 Bunsen is in fact one of the few Germans who have an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which points to his long-­lasting influence on the British scene.47 Bunsen promoted the notion of the unity of mankind. He traced, like many other scholars before him, the origin of mankind to the three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The Semitic race originated from Ham and Shem, while Japheth was the ancestor of the Aryans. The third race was that of the Turanians, and mainly included the nations of Asia. This race, even though associated with Nimrod, the grand­son of Ham, evolved in what Bunsen named the ante-­Noachian period.48 The differentiation into the Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian races was above all a consequence of language diversity. The language of Ham, spoken in ancient Egypt, was the primordial tongue of all the Semitic languages, whereas the Aryan/Ira­nian tongues derived from the Turanian f­ amily.49 The Semitic stock became the cradle of all mono­the­istic

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religions. The Aryan stock generated the leading po­liti­c al powers of history, beginning with Greece, Rome, and the Germanic tribes. Throughout history, even though they possessed dif­fer­ent characters, the two races have been indivisible and have, together, constructed universal history. The merger of the two races was best exemplified in one of Bunsen’s main subjects of inquiry—­ ancient Egypt. For him, Egypt had been the world’s first civilization and, together with the f­uture civilizations of Greece and Israel, had formed Chris­tian­ity. By underscoring Egypt’s antiquity, Bunsen entered the heightened mid-­nineteenth-­century debate concerning the “age of man.” Bunsen, although changing occasionally his opinion as to the exact beginning of Egyptian history, countered ­those who remained loyal to the perception that the origin of mankind was rather recent.50 The fact that Bunsen was a Lutheran devotee was, in his eyes, not contradictory to his perception of mankind’s “extreme antiquity.” Together with many other Egyptologists of the midcentury, he observed the Old Testament as presenting a rather flexible time line, dif­fer­ent from the popu­lar biblical chronology of Bishop Ussher and ­others.51 In the ancient Egyptian civilization the Semitic and Aryan ele­ ments converged since the origin of hieroglyphs cannot be directly linked to both the languages. It was thus through language that Bunsen classified races, and, as he testified, it was his attempt to research Romance and Scandinavian tongues that first led him to delve into the differences between races.52 As Suzanne Marchand observes, Bunsen in his posthumously published God in History (1868) somewhat neglected his earlier “Egyptomania.”53 Instead, he stressed the significance of Central Asia to the emergence of the Aryan and Semitic races as well as religions. In this early period, Abraham the Semite and Zarathustra the Aryan (active, according to Bunsen, around 3000 BC) had formed the early concepts of mono­the­ism.54 Bunsen asserted, however, in both God in History and his earlier Egypt’s Place in World History (Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, 1844), that the supremacy was still given to the Aryans as they “carried on the main stream of history.”55 The most noble among the Aryans w ­ ere the Teutonic tribes, which, as portrayed by Tacitus and Caesar, ­were ­free and in­de­pen­dent from their origin: “The Germans prized and cherished their freedom [Freiheit], and ­were at all times ready to sacrifice themselves for the common cause, and to follow the chieftains of their choice to b­ attle, so soon as the Assembly of the p ­ eople had declared for war. This was a ­people ­after Tacitus’s own heart. On the other hand, they ­were intelligent and susceptible of culture, consequently ­were destined to



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acquire ere long a most impor­tant influence on the f­uture prospects of the Empire.”56 Besides the concept of Freiheit, encountered repeatedly in the writings of many German scholars, the argument regarding the f­uture influence of the Germanic tribes on the Roman Empire and hence on the history of the world is most significant. For Bunsen, the German emergence marked the transition from antiquity to the ­Middle Ages. One of the most impor­tant of the unique traits of the tribes was their racial purity, and this had a rejuvenating effect on the course of history. The chief term Bunsen used was volksmäßigen Grund (ethnic foundation), which denoted the rise of a new epoch with an explicit uniqueness. This, according to Bunsen, was not only a po­liti­cal transformation but was also characterized by a rejuvenating racial aspect. The tribes w ­ ere not contaminated by the burden of time and brought a totally new spirit into world history: “with the advent of the thoroughly pure-­blooded Bactro-­A ryan Teutons, a new outgrowth of Humanity in religion, as in all ­else, should appear upon the theatre of the world. . . . ​The Teutonic tribes [Die germanischen Stämme] w ­ ere awakened by the Roman Empire and the Celts out of the slumber of national infancy [Schlummer der Völkerjugend aufgeweckt]. They stepped out into the arena of history fresh and unenfeebled; the g­ reat race-­day and its strug­gles lay before them.”57 The tribes possessed an inherent racial superiority over the Romans and Celts, and, as Bunsen told Ernst Moritz Arndt, the “distinction of race” among the Germans had made them equal the greatness of the Hellenes and superior to the Celts and Italians.58 In another letter to Arndt, Bunsen expressed his admiration for the Anglo-­Saxon race with even greater praise: “the fact instantly arrests our eye, that the Anglo-­Saxon race is that which has exhibited the greatest amount of creative and constructive energy, and, moreover, in a continually increasing ratio of importance to the history of the world at large.”59 Arndt, it is impor­tant to note, maintained close contacts and correspondence with Bunsen and even dedicated his book on the wanderings of Baron von Stein to him.60 Bunsen, Arndt, and Stein ­were all ­great admirers of the En­ glish nation, while, at the same time, they scorned France. Arndt’s memoirs ­were translated into En­glish in 1879 by Sir John Seeley (1834–95), regius professor of modern history at Cambridge.61 For Arndt and Bunsen, ­England and Germany w ­ ere of the same race. Both the En­glish and the Germans maintained their purity of race and did not incorporate new races into their realm. The Germanic tribes held their original lands and prevented other foreign races from infiltrating into their domain. The same racial “purity” was

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maintained ­after the Anglo-­Saxons conquered the isles and pushed the Celts to the periphery. In t­hese arguments three main themes converge: race, geography, and time; and in this convergence emerges into view a prominent example of “racial time.” Bunsen also acknowledged the contribution of the En­glish scholars to research into the Teutonic past. This field, he stated, had become rather neglected, except in Germany where the Grimm ­brothers delved into the origins of Teutonic my­thol­ogy, and in ­England, where several scholars also engaged with this theme: “How can we won­der, therefore, that, in the rest of Eu­rope, the greatest ignorance of ­these monuments, therefore of ancient Teutonic my­ thol­ogy in general, should still prevail; notwithstanding Sharon Turner’s praiseworthy efforts to open up t­ hese fields of research in E ­ ngland, and [John Mitchell] Kemble’s zealous imitation of him in the same direction.”62 ­There ­were indeed differences between the vari­ous tribes, but all ­were classified u ­ nder the generic name of “Germans.” Already in Tacitus it was noted, according to Bunsen, that “the German cantons of Switzerland, the Flemings, and the Hollanders, but also the Scandinavians, belong to the same stock with all the other tribes of historical Germany.”63 To this list, Bunsen added the Anglo-­Saxons who had invaded the isles. Initially t­ hese last tribes had been passed over, since in the age of Tacitus the “Germanic dominion” had not yet reached the isles. Bunsen, however, did not neglect the Anglo-­ Saxons and ­later wrote that even in his own days the Westphalian peasants and Teutonic En­glanders follow the same ancient “Germanic” way of life.64 In another letter to Arndt, Bunsen expressed his admiration of the Anglo-­ Saxon race in even more hyperbolic terms: “if we take a comprehensive survey of the development of the ­human mind and Christian nations during the last eleven centuries, the fact instantly arrests our eye, that the Anglo-­Saxon race is that which has exhibited the greatest amount of creative and constructive energy, and, moreover, in a continually increasing ratio of importance to the history of the world at large.”65 This letter, as in all the other letters to Arndt, focused on the threat posed to religious liberty in Bunsen’s and Arndt’s con­temporary Eu­rope following the turbulence of the 1848 revolutions. In ­these letters, Bunsen argued, through historical and theological explanations, in ­favor of liberal rights and their essential importance for Chris­ tian­ity. Toleration, for him, did not defy Christian beliefs but strengthened and approved them. One of the main clashes of the era concerned the tension between the nation’s effort to gain greater freedom and the attempt by the clergy to contain that desire and restrict other opposing religious beliefs.



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­ fter delving into the history of the Anglo-­Saxon race, he maintained that A their tolerance ­toward religious practices had been unpre­ce­dented. The Dutch, or, as Bunsen named them by their tribal name, the “West Frisians,” had revolted against Spanish dominion and religious fanat­i­cism and had become the first state in Eu­rope to adopt tolerance. Soon afterward, the “En­glish Anglo-­Saxons” had sunk the Spanish Armada and thereby brought an end to religious intolerance and oppression in both E ­ ngland and Holland. This mode of Anglo-­Saxon religious liberty continued in 1688 when the Stuarts ­were banished and the law of religious liberty became part of the constitution.66 For Bunsen, however, toleration was not always the rule of the Teutonic races. In other letters, he showed how, following their conversion to Chris­ tian­ity, the Teutonic races had persecuted their religious adversaries with even greater zeal than their heathen forefathers. A trace of their former barbarity, invoked in the letters between Bunsen and Arndt, can be observed in the martyrdom of Saint Boniface by the Frisians in AD 754.67 Yet Bunsen’s words suggest that even this event, which became a central theme in German history, paled in comparison to some of the atrocities that had been executed by the converted German nations. Nevertheless, despite t­ hese remarks, toleration in general developed as a central pillar of the Teutonic nations of Germany, ­England, and Holland. Several conclusions can be drawn from the discussion so far. Perhaps the most significant point is that Bunsen’s notions closely resembled t­hose held by several En­glish scholars in the same period. This school of thought thus crystallized into a community on the basis of certain shared notions of a common racial past. But it is by now also clear that this association of scholars sustained close personal connections as well as shared ideas. ­These historians knew of each other’s work and often also knew each other personally. As we have seen, Arnold valued his friendship with Bunsen and even dedicated his work on Rome to him. They ­were both influenced by Niebuhr, and, as Arnold stated, his decision to write on Rome developed ­a fter reading Niebuhr’s monumental work on the subject.

The Core of the Community Arnold had a vast influence on the historical method of Stubbs and Freeman, as Freeman attested in one of his lectures. Freeman, as discussed in the previous chapter, emphasized the superiority of the Aryans. Among the Aryan nations,

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the Teutonic p ­ eople, and especially the Anglo-­Saxons, w ­ ere the most distinctive group, since they have preserved their racial purity.68 The maintenance of the original state of the Anglo-­Saxons resulted from the fact that ever since their invasion of the isles from their north German homeland during the fifth ­century, they had maintained their Teutonic mores. As we have seen, Freeman and Stubbs proclaimed that even in the times of the Vikings, and ­later during the Norman invasion, the core Teutonic ele­ment was preserved, since the Vikings and Normans had also been of Teutonic descent. Freeman, Stubbs, and ­others ­were in contact with the followers of Bunsen and particularly with another famous “Oxfordian,” Max Müller. Thus, as I ­will now show, a community of scholars became a living real­ity. Stubbs, as illustrated, referred to language as one criterion for the purity of the Anglo-­Saxons. He merged the notions of race and language and identified them as dependent on each other. Freeman, correspondingly and as ­shall be demonstrated l­ater in greater depth, depended on language but also on race for proving the superiority of the West Eu­ro­pean Aryan nations. Freeman relied on the comparative method devised by Max Müller from the midcentury in essays such as Comparative Philology (1851) and Comparative My­thol­ogy (1856).69 According to this method, a primal Aryan linguistic community had been the source of all the Eu­ro­pean Aryan languages. When staying in Germany in 1872, Freeman wrote to the famous anthropologist E.  B. Tylor (1832–1917) concerning the method of “comparative politics” that he derived from him and Müller: “I have taken for my subject one which I think follows very well on Max Müller’s and yours, namely what, till I can find a better name, I call Comparative Politics. . . . ​W hat I want to do is to carry out the same line of thought which you and o­ thers have applied to the language, the my­t hol­ogy, and the customs of dif­fer­ent nations to their po­liti­c al institutions, and to show that the forms of government of the Aryan nations . . . ​a ll spring from a common source, an Urbrunnen.”70

Max Müller: The Supremacy of Language The German scholar Friedrich Max Müller was in close connection with Bunsen, as evident in a correspondence that includes numerous letters and lasts ­until Bunsen’s death in 1860.71 Müller spent most of his adult academic life in Oxford. In 1854 he was appointed full professor of modern Eu­ro­pean languages



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and l­ater in 1868 to the first Oxford chair of comparative philology.72 In 1878 Müller resigned his Oxford chair to manage the im­mense proj­ect of the Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910, 50 vols.). Müller’s “comparative method,” which made such an impact on scholars such as Freeman, was also the defining ­factor of the Sacred Books. In the case of the Books, the focus was on “comparative religion,” namely, the comparison between the religions and mythologies of “the East,” which l­ater, according to Müller, through the migration of ­people and their ideas, s­haped “the West.”73 Following Müller’s work on this series, but also due to his other scholarly achievements, he became very well known from the early 1860s. In 1886 Queen Victoria even wished to knight him, ­a fter Müller presented her the first twenty-­four volumes of the series. Müller, for his own reasons, declined, but ten years l­ater he was bestowed with a greater honor when he became a member of the queen’s Privy Council.74 Despite ­these recognitions, it must be noted that when Müller first arrived in ­England from Germany in 1846 he suffered ­great hardships. Bunsen, however, introduced him to the local society, offered patronage to his academic work, and assisted in sponsoring Müller’s first edition of the Rig-­Veda Samhita (1849).75 The ancient Indian text of the Rig Veda, Müller asserted, pointed to the philological but also religious source of the Aryan ­people.76 ­These Aryans (ārya), who appeared in ancient Indian texts like the Rig Veda, initially denoted the p ­ eople of northern India who had spoken Sanskrit.77 Müller, adopting the theory of the Ursprache (protolanguage), as well as Bunsen’s notion of the unity of humankind, linked the Aryans’ languages and religion with the Semitic languages and religions. Both the Semitic and Aryan languages had fought and eventually gained supremacy against the “language of Tur” (Turanians): “The Arian [sic]78 and Semitic languages occupy but four peninsulas of the primeval continent,—­India, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Eu­rope; all the rest belongs to the ­family of Tur. But the countries reclaimed by Shem and Japhet mark the high road of civilisation, and comprehend the stage on which the drama of ancient and modern history has been acted.”79 Müller attacked the Darwinian claim that humanity had been developed from a state of barbarism. He opposed Darwin by claiming that languages and men ­were in their purest state in their creation. He denounced the implication of the evolutionary theory that language had been only basic and crude in the beginning of humanity. For him, an impeccable language had existed at the origin of h ­ uman history, and since then a pro­cess of degeneration had occurred.80

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In light of this position, Müller was attacked by the renowned French scholar Ernest Renan (1823–92), who refuted Müller’s argument concerning an affinity between the Semitic and Aryan languages. An expert of Semitic languages, Renan expressed in books such as the History of the P ­ eople of Israel (Histoire du peuple d’Israël, 1887–93) the supposed supremacy of the Aryan languages: “The languages of the Aryans and the Semites differed essentially, though ­there w ­ ere points of connexity between them. The Aryan language was im­mensely superior, especially in regard to the conjugation of verbs.”81 On some occasions, also following the influence of Gobineau, Renan voiced explicit anti-­Semitic views. It is argued that Renan, in his hostility ­toward the Semites (and particularly the Jews), even went further than Gobineau. The latter, some argue, mainly due to his lengthy diplomatic missions in Persia, seemed to adopt (in comparison to Renan) a rather more subtle observation ­toward some of the “Oriental nations.”82 Müller, in any case, despised the linkage that Gobineau as well as Renan had made between language and race.83 Müller also accused Renan of criticizing him in an unfair manner.84 Müller even wrote a pamphlet against Renan, which, following the advice of Bunsen, was never published. In this pamphlet, Müller claimed that, unlike Renan, he did not fuse the physical traits of race with t­hose of language: “confusion between linguistic and ethnological race runs through all his [Renan’s] arguments.”85 Furthermore, Renan, according to Müller, had misinterpreted his argument, since the common origin of the Aryan and Semitic languages did not point to a shared racial origin: “I look upon the prob­lem of the common origin of language, which I have shown to be quite in­de­pen­dent of the prob­lem of the common origin of mankind.”86 When speaking of the “common origin” of mankind, Müller pointed to a certain racial-­physical origin separated from the question of the origins of language. However, as ­will be seen, Müller himself at times blurred the distinction between language and race and so stumbled into the same “confusion” as Renan. For Bunsen, despite his theory of the unity of humanity, a distinct difference still separated one race from the other. A certain supremacy, Bunsen believed, was still given to the Teutonic branch of the Aryan race. For Müller, as his criticism of Renan demonstrated and as several con­temporary scholars argue, the term “Aryan” comprised a distinctly linguistic meaning and did not refer to racial, physical differences between p ­ eoples.87 This may also be illustrated from one of Müller’s letters to Bunsen, where he tried to detach the physical study of race from the linguistic, and classified them u ­ nder two dif­fer­ent



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titles—­ethnology and phonology. Müller argued that scholars wrongly confused ­these two scientific pursuits, even though each denoted a dif­fer­ent field of research: one focused on the study of skulls, color of the skin, and additional physical characteristics, while the other concentrated on language. The linguist must not study the physical ele­ment and the researcher of physical traits must not study linguistic origins, since a specialized scholar must only delve into his subject of expertise: The physiologist should pursue his own science unconcerned about language. Let him see how far the skulls, or the hair, or the colour, or the skin of dif­fer­ent tribes admit of classification; but to the sound of their words his ear should be as deaf as the ornithologist’s to the notes of caged birds. If his Caucasian class includes nations or individuals speaking Aryan (Greek), Turanian (Turk), and Semitic (Hebrew) languages, it is not his fault. His system must not be altered in order to suit another system. Th ­ ere is a better solution both for his difficulties and for t­ hose of the phonologist than mutual compromise. The phonologist should collect his evidence, arrange his classes, divide and combine, as if no Blumenbach had ever looked at skulls, as if no Camper had mea­sured facial ­angles, as if no Owen had examined the basis of a cranium. His evidence is the evidence of language, and nothing e­ lse; this he must follow, even though it be in the teeth of history, physical or po­liti­cal.88 The Teutonic heritage of ­England was central to Müller’s discussions, especially in his correspondence with the En­glish “Teutonic circle.” The En­ glish Teutonic ele­ment derived primarily from the fact that it belonged to the Low German dialect. The physical expert can claim that the skulls of the ancient En­glish actually prove that the inhabitants of the island ­were Celtic and not Teutonic, but for Müller, as a philologist, language and language alone ­matters: “if e­ very rec­ord w ­ ere burnt, and e­ very skull pulverized, the spoken language of the pres­ent day alone would enable the phonologist to say that En­glish, as well as Dutch and Frisic, belongs to the Low German branch.”89 Hence, High German adjoined the Scandinavian languages and all together they formed the Teutonic f­ amily. This judgment of E ­ ngland’s origins was part of a broader argument, also including India, concerning the birthplace of the Aryan languages. Müller, as we have seen, mentioned the prominent researchers

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of the physical racial doctrine, which identified several prototypes of h ­ uman races. From his reading of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), who recognized five dif­fer­ent races, to Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) (three races) and James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) (seven races), he concluded that “it was felt that t­hese physiological classifications could not be brought to harmonize with the evidence of language.”90 Thus, no correlation existed between the spoken languages of ­people and their physical characters. Furthermore, a­ fter consulting the writings of the famed Wilhelm von Humboldt, Müller affirmed that even in terms of physical evidence one could speak not of races but of “va­ri­e­ties of men.”91 ­There was a physical unity of mankind identical to the rest of the natu­ral world, and hence “the common origin of the Negro and the Greek admits of as l­ittle doubt as that of the poodle and the greyhound.”92 From Müller’s letters, it can be concluded that he rejected the relevance of the core aspects of physical classification. Therefore, he strove to differentiate between languages and not between races. This is also evident in the notes he wrote for the first course of lectures he held on “comparative philology” at Oxford in 1851.93 In the original notes, l­ater published in several editions, he named seven subbranches that all belong to the Aryan f­amily of languages.94 Müller argued that one protolanguage was the source of all the Aryan languages. Consequently, a long-­lasting continuity existed from prehistoric times to modernity. Müller reaffirmed this notion in three lectures given in 1888. In his third lecture, Müller focused on the alleged connection between the language p ­ eople speak and their kinship to each other. In the same lecture, he also emphasized that throughout his academic ­career he had denied any linkage between race and language: “I have always . . . ​warned against mixing up t­ hese two relationships of language and the relationship of blood.”95 It is no coincidence that Müller wrote t­hese words to Freeman, since Freeman was prob­ably one of t­ hose scholars who, in Müller’s opinion, wrongly merged race and language. Despite this, Müller and Freeman, as we w ­ ill soon elaborate, saw eye to eye with regard to po­liti­cal issues such as the Franco-­ Prussian War and the “Eastern Question.” For instance, following a harsh review of Freeman’s work in one of the periodicals, Freeman wrote: “in this very fortnightly article, though chiefly aimed at me, ­there is firing at Max Müller also. Now I have learned so much of Max, and therefore feel so much thankfulness to him, that I could never speak of him without the deepest re­ spect, though I thought him never so wrong on any par­tic­u­lar point.”96



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A certain ambiguity, nevertheless, arises in Müller’s treatment of the term “race.” Although, race and language are no longer identical, at the beginning of history a closer bond had existed between the two: “Ethnological race and linguistic race are not commensurate, except in ante historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history. With the migrations of the tribes, their wars, their colonies, their conquest and alliances, which if we may judge from their effects, must have been much more violent in the ethnic than ever in the po­liti­c al periods of history, it is impossible to imagine that ethnological race and linguistic race should continue to run parallel.”97 The ambiguity is enhanced by the fact that Müller defined the ­people who spoke the Aryan tongues as belonging to the Aryan race. For example, in his Gifford Lectures, he referred several times to the Aryan tongue and race: “if we take the Semitic and the Aryan religions, any coincidences between them can be due to their common humanity only, except in cases where we can prove at a l­ater time historical contact between an Aryan and a Semitic race.”98 Only several pages ­later Müller states of the Aryan language in relation to the Semitic languages: “The utmost we can say is that ­there is an Aryan atmosphere pervading both philosophies, dif­fer­ent from any Semitic atmosphere of thought, that ­t here are certain deep grooves of thought traced by Aryan language in which the thoughts both of Indian and Greek phi­los­o­phers had necessarily to move.”99 Therefore, the physical ele­ment could be easily confused with the linguistic. Müller also spoke in the same lectures of Aryan and Semitic thought. Hence, language embedded a deep influence in the m ­ ental perceptions of p ­ eople. For him, it was the fusion of Aryanism and Semitism that formed Chris­tian­ity.100 Yet despite this fusion, Chris­tian­ity was mainly derived from Aryan thought: “the very life-­blood of Chris­tian­ity, is exclusively Aryan, and that it is one of the simplest and truest conclusions at which the ­human mind can arrive.”101 This dominance of the Aryans is also evident in other places within Müller’s writings: “In continual strug­gle with each other and with the Semitic and Turanian races, t­ hese Aryan nations have become the rulers of history . . . ​their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization, commerce and religion.”102 A similar remark could be easily attributed to Freeman, who has his share of statements glorifying the supremacy of the Aryan over other races. In 1870, when tension between France and Germany was at a height, Müller consistently defended the policy of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the En­glish public sphere. ­A fter the war broke out on July 19, 1870, he wrote five letters to the Times emphasizing mutual German and En­glish

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relations and the right of Germany to annex the territories of Alsace-­Lorraine. This belief in a special English-­German bond was a dominant theme throughout the letters: “­There need be no formal alliance between ­England and Germany. The two nations are one in all that is essential, in morality, in religion, in love of freedom, in re­spect for law. They are both hard workers, hard thinkers, and, when it must be, hard hitters too. In the ­whole history of modern Eu­rope Germany and ­England have never been at war; I feel convinced they never ­will be, they never can be. We have both our weak and our strong points, and we know it; but it is neither En­glish nor German to thank God that we are not like other p ­ eople.”103 With the heightened militaristic climate, Müller perhaps ­adopted a more nationalistic stance regarding Germany’s policy and its natu­ral Teutonic superiority. He conducted a long correspondence with William E. Gladstone hoping that the prime minister would support Germany’s effort in the war against France. However, Müller was to be disappointed, as Gladstone rejected the German annexation of Alsace-­Lorraine despite his extensive connections with German statesmen and scholars, including a personal friendship with Müller himself.104 Müller’s failure to convince Gladstone that ­Great Britain had to endorse the allegedly just German cause was expressed in a letter he  wrote to Freeman on November  12, 1870: “I am quite miserable about Gladstone—England ­will never have such an opportunity again—­now it is lost. . . . ​With Germany as a friend, the Black Sea question would have been solved amicably . . . ​now the sin is sinned.”105 Freeman himself, in the same November of 1870, wrote several letters to the newspapers in which he argued against the expansion of the “French Duchy” while supporting Germany’s entitlement to the Rhine: “The war on the part of Germany is, in truth, a vigorous setting forth of a historical truth that the Rhine is, and always has been, a German river.”106 Thomas Carlyle also joined Freeman in the same November and published a letter on the ongoing war (November  18, 1870). A lifelong supporter of German culture and Teutonic notions, Carlyle’s affinities w ­ ere obvious, especially in light of Germany’s victory at Sedan (September 1): “The German race, not the Gaelic, are now to be protagonist in that im­mense world drama.” Con­spic­u­ous, almost perpetual, differences separated the two nations, and it was France that almost always held the upper hand while tormenting Germany. Now, however, it was Germany’s time of glory: “That noble, patient, deep, pious and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become queen of the continent, instead of vapouring, vainglorious, gesticu-



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lating, quarrelsome, restless and over-­sensitive France, seems to me the hopefullest [sic] public fact that has occurred in my lifetime.”107 In his above letter to Freeman, Müller mentioned the “Black Sea question.” As we ­shall see (Chapter 4), from the early 1870s Freeman became obsessed with the “Eastern Question.” Freeman fiercely opposed the continuation of the alliance of ­Great Britain with the Ottoman Empire. As he told Bryce several years ­later, the Ottoman repression of the Slavonic race prevented the Slavonic communities from achieving pro­gress and escaping their miserable state: “Now I d ­ on’t say that Slavs could ever equal Dutchmen; but, poor dears, how can they improve, as long as they have the Turk over them?”108 Thus, the Teutonic nations ­were unmatched in their qualities, but other races such as the Slavs could improve if only they ­were liberated. Müller emphasized, in his letter to Freeman, that although the Liberal Gladstone was then in power, British policy in the East continued to take the same wrong path. Alas, Gladstone had not seized the moment and, instead of aligning with Germany and gaining its support for British interests in the East, had deci­ded to denounce Germany for its conduct in the war. The personal and the public spheres w ­ ere intertwined in Müller’s letter. He felt personally discouraged by Gladstone’s response and considered his position a grave strategic m ­ istake for G ­ reat Britain and for the f­uture of British-­German relations. In another letter to Freeman (November 27, 1870), Müller described Gladstone as cherishing “Roman and Romance sympathies” for France, with the result that he was “fully convinced in his heart that ­every German is a heretic . . . ​Protestant, a barbarian and a villain.”109 The terms “Roman” and “Barbarian” in Müller’s letter are not accidental. In Müller’s eyes, Gladstone, with his High Church beliefs, held that a cultural-­historical chasm had alienated the Teutonic and the Roman worlds. This was not only a strug­gle of ancient times. France of the Second Empire symbolized the Roman Empire and Catholicism while Bismarckian Germany represented the Germanic tribes and Protestantism. Müller’s perception of Gladstone’s views reflected his own understanding of the ancient Teutonic-­ Roman relations. Müller approved of the theory that a deep-­rooted animosity existed throughout history between French and German cultures, and he ­adopted such an explanation of current affairs even before the deterioration of the Franco-­Prussian relations. In this he again “joined forces” with the English-­ Teutonic circle. Müller emphasized the historic alliance between the Anglo-­ Saxon nations—an alliance retaining practical ramifications for the policies

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of both governments. Müller reaffirmed his belief in this blood bond years ­after when, a short time before his death, he published several letters in the German press supporting the British policy against the Boers in the Transvaal. By this, Müller disassociated himself from the public German support of the Boers in their strug­gle against British imperialism.110 In his opening remarks, he tried to raise the support of the German public for British policy by stressing their blood ties with the En­glish ­people: “Germans, instead of looking for true blood relations and allies for the f­ uture in E ­ ngland and Amer­i­ca, have sought for them in France and Rus­sia. They may look for a long time. I hope they ­will discover, before it is too late, that blood is thicker than ink, and that the Saxons of Germany, ­England and Amer­i­ca are the true, manly and faithful allies in all strug­gles for freedom in the ­future as in the past.”111

Charles Kingsley and Müller: The Collaboration of Teutonism and Protestantism Müller’s approach can also be noted in his association with another very prominent figure of this period, Charles Kingsley (1819–75), an Anglican clergyman, novelist, and regius professor of modern history at Cambridge between 1860 and 1869. From the 1850s, Müller and Kingsley exchanged multiple letters. Kingsley was related to Müller through marriage: his wife’s niece Georgina Adelaide Grenfell (1834/5–1916) married Müller in 1859 a­ fter long years of courtship by Müller, whose requests to marry Georgina had been refused again and again by her f­ather.112 ­A fter the final approval of their marriage, Müller sent Kingsley, who was deeply involved in the proceedings, the following words: “Can you believe it? I cannot, though I see her with my eyes . . . ​you are not angry with me? Do not let us think of the past—it was so dark and awful, and the world around us is so happy and bright . . . ​no cloud anywhere. . . . ​I long to see my dear new aunt, my old dear friend, Mr. Kingsley.”113 ­These words and the personal affinity between the two are significant, since it likely helped determine the evaluation of Kingsley’s work by Müller. In terms of worldview, Kingsley was an Anglican engaged with the Christian Socialists and a fierce opponent of the Tractarians and the Oxford movement.114 Bunsen and the German Prince Albert, another ­great supporter of Teutonic notions, admired Kingsley for his Protestantism.115 ­Because of his admiration of Kingsley, Prince Albert even nominated him to be the queen’s



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preacher in 1859. A year ­later, Albert also acted as Kingsley’s main advocate for his election to the post of regius professor in Cambridge.116 Bunsen, ­after reading several of Kingsley’s historical novels, praised him in an unpre­ce­dented way: “I do not hesitate to call t­ hese two works, the Saint’s Tragedy and Hypatia, by far the most impor­tant and perfect of this genial writer. In ­these more particularly I find the justification of a hope which I beg to be allowed to express—­that Kingsley might continue Shakespeare’s historical plays. I have for several years made no secret of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our ­century.”117 A religious Protestant-­A nglican affinity unified t­ hese scholars. Kingsley on the En­glish side and Bunsen and Müller on the German resented Roman Catholic and High Church inclinations.118 For instance, in a review (Macmillan’s Magazine, January 1863) of the anti-­Catholic History of ­England (1856–70) by James Anthony Froude (1818–94), Kingsley fiercely attacked Catholicism. Kingsley’s arrows ­were specifically directed ­toward the writings of the theologian John Henry Newman (1801–90), the famous founder of the Oxford movement.119 Newman, who in 1845 converted to Catholicism, testified that his doubts of the Anglican Church also developed in response to the 1841 English-­ Prussian accord concerning the establishment of the bishopric in Jerusalem (see above).120 Hence, Newman opposed the religious Anglican-­Lutheran bond that for figures such as Kingsley and Bunsen symbolized the shared affinity of the two nations against the tyranny of Rome. Kingsley, elsewhere, also attacked En­glish ­women who converted to Catholicism in punitive words and accused them of harming En­glish unity.121 In Germany, especially a­ fter the unification, t­here was a tendency for homogeneity around the Protestant Prus­sian ele­ments that w ­ ere the leading force in the unification pro­cess. This came at the expense of other groups that ­were ­under pressure to assimilate and caused strife, as can be seen in the Kulturkampf against the Catholics.122 For Kingsley, Catholicism and the Roman Empire ­were almost synonyms. For this reason, Kingsley and German scholars like Bunsen depicted the separation from the Catholic Church during the Reformation as the second awakening of the Germanic tribes against the tyranny of Rome. Already during the Reformation, Luther and his pre­de­ces­sors, as w ­ ill be discussed in the next chapter, spoke in similar terms and elevated the myth of the Germanic tribes as symbolizing the new forces of Protestantism. Catholic France of the nineteenth c­ entury signified another version of imperial Rome, and therefore the Anglican-­Protestant allies of ­England and Germany should, in Kingsley’s view, stand united in the face of the Roman oppressor.

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Müller and Kingsley converged in their shared insights concerning Protestantism and Teutonism. In a letter to Kingsley written in 1867, Müller wrote: “A man must dare to have friends, and dare to have enemies—­and so must a ­people. The natu­ral ally of ­England is Germany, that is to say, a united, sensible governed, protestant and Northern German. E ­ ngland and Germany ­will represent the Teutonic ele­ment in Eu­rope, with all that is good and bad in it; and, if united by common objectives, they ­will stand like a breakwater between the Romans and Roman Catholics in the West and South, and the Slavs and Greeks in the East and North.”123 Once more, though on this occasion before the Franco-­Prussian War, Müller connected E ­ ngland and Germany through their shared Teutonic heritage. Th ­ ese Teutonic nations are destined, as they had been in the past, to confront the Roman danger. The Roman “­enemy” was embodied both in the ancient empire as well as in its relatively “modern” heirs, the Catholic Church and the nations of France and Italy. The strug­gle with the Roman power commenced in antiquity and proceeded into the pres­ent. It runs through history and cannot be detached from it. From Müller’s letter, it is evident that the clash was not only against Rome but also against the Slavs and the Greeks. In a letter to the theologian and church historian Arthur P. Stanley (1815–81), Müller repeated t­ hese arguments: “What savages we are in spite of all ­these centuries. But surely the Teutonic race is better than the Latin and Slavonic, and the Protestants are better Christians than the Romans and the German cause is surely thoroughly righ­teous, and the French fully unrigh­teous.”124 The fact that the Slavonic and the Latin races ­were part of the Aryan race does not ­matter, since ­there was an inner hierarchy within the Aryan race also dependent on religious affinities. Consequently, due to their Protestant beliefs, the Teutonic nations of ­England and Germany w ­ ere superior to the Latin and Slavonic nations. The same ideas appeared in Kingsley’s The Roman and the Teuton (1864). Müller, due to his personal association with Kingsley, penned the preface for the second edition of this book. Kingsley’s book began with an allegory about the relations between Rome and the Germanic tribes; within a wood lived a group of ­children, who ­were nourished and subsisted from the surrounding nature. At some point, the provisions of the wood w ­ ere no longer sufficient and the c­ hildren wished to enter a nearby fenced garden inhabited by trolls. The c­ hildren relentlessly attempted to breach the fence, yet the trolls managed to scatter them. Some c­ hildren w ­ ere successful in their mission and settled in the garden. The ones inside the garden w ­ ere spoiled by its richness and wondrous provisions, even though they suffered from the trolls, and became corrupted



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by their way of life. The rumors from within the garden walls reached the ­children outside, a fact that only urged the ones outside to reattempt entry. Eventually the garden walls w ­ ere breached and the c­ hildren broke in. Nevertheless, once the abundance of the garden was in their hands, instead of remaining united, the c­ hildren, to the joy of the trolls, began to fight against each other and ­were divided into vari­ous factions. Consequently, all the spoils of the garden ­were lost, every­thing remained in ruin, and the ­children returned to the woods.125 The c­ hildren h ­ ere signify the Germanic tribes while the Roman Empire is represented by the trolls. The two are contrasted in terms of age as well as race. The tribes w ­ ere youthful and carried with them g­ reat vitality and freshness, but also recklessness. Rome was not only of a dif­fer­ent race but was old and corrupted and too accustomed to fortune and wealth, yet it had gained vast experience from years of dominance. With this fable, Kingsley launched his first lecture as a Cambridge professor. The primary interpretation of the fable is that the Teutonic tribes acted in a very irresponsible manner. Kingsley, despite his admiration of the tribes, still criticized them and wished his students to learn a lesson from the ill be­hav­ior of their ancestors. The tribes had nevertheless possessed a certain childish vitality, a promising potential, allowing them, if guided, to conquer the Roman world: “To-­day, I wish to impress strongly on your minds this childishness of our forefathers. For good or for evil they ­were ­great boys; very noble boys; very often very naughty boys—as boys with the strength of men might well be. Try to conceive such to yourselves, and you have the old Markman, Allman, Goth, Lombard, Saxon, Frank.”126 Diverse characteristics ­were attributed to the vari­ous tribes, which have been, as in the case of the Franks (France) and Visigoths (Spain), preserved ­until modern times. According to Kingsley, ­these definitions included certain truths with one glaring exception; his own Saxons-­English ­were not cruel.127 ­Because of their inherent racial superiority, Kingsley insisted that previous attempts by Gibbon and ­others to compare the Teutonic tribes with the “Red Indians” must be rejected. The Teutons have been in a constant state of growth and expansion: “proving their youthful strength and vitality by a reproduction unparalleled, as far as I know, in history, save perhaps by that noble and young race, the Rus­sian,” while the American Indians w ­ ere “a 128 decreasing race.” In addition, the modern Teutonic states and their creeds, as in the case of the unwritten En­glish constitution, are founded on Teutonic laws and customs, while the American Indians left no heritage. He concluded: “if Gibbon was right, and if our forefathers in the German forests had been

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like Powhattan’s p ­ eople as we found them in the Virginian forests, the Romans would not have been long in civilizing us off the face of the earth.”129 Kingsley ­here referred once again to his fable. He attempted to preserve the vitality of the tribes, while avoiding the corruptive effects of their transformation into rulers. Nevertheless, he wished to prevent their Romanization. The key notions ­here are t­ hose of survival and racial growth. The fact that the “Teutonic race” was not only able to survive the might of the empire but also to topple it verifies its racial predominance. The growth of the race, despite the unceasing dangers, just adds a numerical proof that integrates a natu­ral, physical prevalence, absent among other races.130 Kingsley, writing his book in 1864, was of course aware of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Before publishing his book, Darwin even sent the manuscript to Kingsley, among o­ thers, for a preliminary review. Kingsley’s response was very favorable, as he stated in a letter sent to Darwin.131 ­Later he reported to his friend and fellow Christian Socialist F. D. Maurice that in Cambridge “Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact.”132 Kingsley was also acquainted with Herbert Spencer, whom he met in the 1850s. Spencer, who also received Darwin’s manuscript, coined in 1864 the phrase “the survival of the fittest.” It is, therefore, probable that certain notions in Kingsley’s explanation of Teutonic survival ­were inspired by both Darwin and Spencer.133 The tribes, according to Kingsley, introduced a new vigorous era, which replaced the waning tyranny of Rome. The decaying Rome should not to be compared with the British Empire but with the con­temporary Ottoman and Chinese empires. In ­these empires, morality was absent while “cunning and force” held the upper hand. Their ill-­treatment of slaves, for instance, was unpre­ ce­dented in comparison to all other historical eras. Thus, Kingsley claimed, to compare the slavery of the blacks in the American South with t­ hose of Rome would be erroneous: “Roman domestic slavery is not to be described by a pen of an En­glishman. And I must express my sorrow, that in the face of such notorious facts, some have of late tried to prove American slavery to be as bad as, or even worse than, that of Rome. God forbid! Whatsoever may have been the sins of the Southern gentleman, he is at least a Teuton, and not a Roman.”134 The fact that the Southern slave traders ­were of Teutonic descent reflected an innate racial advantage. For Kingsley, this Teutonic aspect was also the main strength of the British Empire. The British Empire originated from the early Saxon settlers, who formed a safe haven of in­de­pen­dent Teutonic culture with no inner strug­gles of the kind that tore the other Teutonic nations apart.135



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Müller, as mentioned, wrote the preface to one of Kingsley’s books and thus showed his endorsement of the essence of the content, notwithstanding his reservations. The beginning of his preface, however, was not complimentary. He opened by stating that Kingsley’s lectures include many shortcomings. They are not critical, original, or derived from long academic research. Nevertheless, he declared, “I am not so blinded by my friendship to Kingsley as to say that t­ hese lectures are throughout what academical lectures o­ ught to be.”136 This may sound like a contradiction, but for Müller this was precisely Kingsley’s intention. As Kingsley himself declared, he was not pretending to teach history. Kingsley, Müller asserted, only desired to inspire his students. The apol­o­getic tone of Müller should not be surprising, since the publication of the first edition of the book brought harsh criticism. Freeman, interestingly, led the attack. In a scorching critique, Freeman argued that Kingsley was unsuitable for his professorship at Cambridge since he lacked sufficient academic tools and professional stature. One detail that Freeman became preoccupied with was that throughout The Roman and the Teuton Kingsley referred to the king of the Ostrogoths by the name of Dietrich, instead of Theodoric.137 Less than a year a­ fter Kingsley’s death, on November 25, 1875, Müller pleaded with Freeman not to judge the book too harshly: “the new edition of the Roman and Teuton to which my preface belongs, is not yet out, so please do not strangle the unborn baby. Kingsley was one of my oldest friends and my wife’s ­uncle. If you had known him, you could have understood why so many p ­ eople ­were devoted to him.”138 It might appear from this letter, as also from parts of his preface, that Müller “defended” Kingsley mainly b­ ecause of their personal ties. However, the notion of Teutonic supremacy, echoed throughout Kingsley’s book, was one Müller sympathized with. The perception that the Germans and the En­ glish ­were part of the same historic and ethnic community became increasingly prevalent among writers like Müller and Kingsley. However, as we ­will now see, this view was not only relevant to the perception of the past, but it helped form a pres­ent community of scholars.

Admiration and Criticism Reinhold Pauli, another German historian, also belonged to the same milieu of En­glish and German scholars. Pauli’s uniqueness, in comparison to Bunsen, Müller, and other German scholars, was that he devoted his main

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research to En­g lish history. Pauli, although rather neglected in current research, became in the nineteenth c­ entury one of the leading German historians writing on En­glish history. His preeminent work depicted the life of the most celebrated individual in the early history of E ­ ngland—­K ing Alfred 139 the ­Great. In a letter to Freeman, Bryce gave an account of his first ever meeting with Pauli, who left a ­great impression on him as an expert on En­glish affairs: “coming back through Tyrol we met with a certain Dr. Reinhold Pauli, Professor at Tubingen, author of a history of ­ England which you prob­ ably know. . . . ​He spoke En­glish perfectly and seemed . . . ​very familiar with the institutions.”140 ­Later, Freeman urged Bryce to introduce his work to Pauli, since Pauli could contribute to the positive reception of Freeman’s work in Germany: “Does he [Pauli] know anything about me? It might be no bad ­thing if he did. I ­don’t know ­whether my Hist. Vol. has been noticed in any of the German (as distinguished from Swiss) reviews, though I know it was sent to several of them.”141 In a subsequent letter, Freeman, following Bryce’s request, agreed to review Pauli’s work in one of the British periodicals. However, this approval came with a “price”: “I ­shall [be] very glad to do [review] Reinhold Pauli when I come back . . . ​you may as well introduce my Norman Conquest to Pauli. He may help it somewhat in Deutschland.”142 Eventually Freeman, as he told Bryce, received the praise and recognition of Pauli: “Many thanks for Pauli—­may I keep him? If not, how can I get another? That is the sort of ­thing one ­really values, though I hope I w ­ ill do something in the Zeitschrift also—­perhaps now it may be better for him and for anybody ­else to wait till vol. II is out . . . ​Ellis told me that he had read some high Dutchman judgment of me, that I was ‘ein sehr eingehender Mann’ [a very respectable man], which was very pleasant to know, but he could not tell me who it was or where or what about.”143 Pauli thus added, prob­ably following Bryce’s request, a positive review of Freeman in the relatively newly established Historische Zeitschrift, founded by Heinrich von Sybel in 1859. As Bryce wrote to Freeman: “The last number of Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift contains a review of the Norman conquest, Vol. I, by R. Pauli which seemed to me, as far as I could make out in the two or three minutes I had to glance at it, very satisfactory.”144 Freeman, despite the favorable view and recognition by Pauli, was unsatisfied with the fact that his books left a limited impression on the general German academic world. As he wrote to Bryce: “I find my books in several libraries, but I rather think Fed. Gov. is the better known of the two. [Historical] Essays seeing not at all—­



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notwithstanding Pauli’s review in Sybel—­which I am sorry for.”145 Bryce himself, like Freeman, albeit several years earlier, also criticized the German papers, since they lacked interest in foreign affairs as well as in En­glish politics. He himself considered writing something for a German newspaper to “give them more correct notions of our politics.”146 As it turned out, Pauli became the leading reviewer of works by En­glish historians, especially in the Zeitschrift.147 Among t­ hese reviews, as in that on Freeman’s Norman Conquest, several ­were dedicated to the works of Freeman and Stubbs. In his review of Freeman’s Historical Essays of 1872, Pauli praised Freeman’s interest in German history and politics: “In ­these pages ­there is often evidence for his [Freeman’s] basic German perception [germanistische Grundanschauung], his enthusiasm for German history [seine Freude auch an deutscher Geschichte] and the dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal changes between the federal and the centralized state [Einheitsstaat].”148 Pauli, writing the review a short time ­after the cessation of hostilities between Germany and France, supported Freeman’s stance that France championed a distorted historical narrative. One of the alleged French falsifications was that Charlemagne was a French-­born emperor and the ancestor of Bonaparte. Another fabrication allegedly proved that parts of Germany belonged historically to the natu­ral bound­a ries of France. In light of t­ hese misrepre­sen­ta­tions, France had acted violently for hundreds of years, a conduct defined by Pauli as the “Gewalthandlungen der Franzosen” (atrocities of the French).149 Pauli, in fact, accentuated Freeman’s approval of Germany’s historical right to the newly acquired territorial possessions of Alsace-­Lorraine. The positive view of Freeman continued also with the German Jewish historian Felix Liebermann (1851–1925), Pauli’s follower and another German historian of Anglo-­Saxon ­England. In an article written two years ­a fter Freeman’s death, Liebermann portrayed Freeman as a most prolific individual. Besides his vast knowledge of the history of antiquity and the M ­ iddle Ages, Freeman also held a well-­structured ideology that combined a strong ethical core with the love of freedom and of his fatherland.150 For him, politics and history w ­ ere welded, and for that reason Freeman should be valued for both his academic and general achievements. Yet, according to Liebermann, it was exactly this fusion between the po­liti­cal and the historical that made some of Freeman’s arguments problematic. In his introduction to a book about the Anglo-­Saxon assembly, or witenagemot, Liebermann argued that the ultranationalistic view of Freeman damaged his historical interpretations: “the historian of the Norman conquest was seduced by fervent patriotism and

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demo­cratic bias to vindicate the origin of parliament for the Old En­glish ­people alone.”151 Freeman ignored the significance of the witan in places outside ­England. Unlike Freeman, Liebermann noted in the same paragraph, both Stubbs and the historian of Anglo-­Saxon ­England John Mitchell Kemble (1807–57) presented the concept of the witan in far less nationalistic terms. In his review of Stubbs’s Constitutional History, Pauli stressed the role of the former as a bridgehead between the academic spheres of the two nations, a role previously fulfilled by the scholarship of Kemble: “Besides Kemble, no other En­glish historian was so involved in German scholarship.”152 Kemble, as Pauli rightly stated, was very much influenced by German scholarship and was an expert in German philology. He had studied with Jacob Grimm, and ­a fter his return to ­England retained close ties with him. He even married Natalie Auguste, the d ­ aughter of the German scholar Amadeus Wendt (1783–1836).153 Stubbs, like Kemble, and contrary to the suspicion of many of his contemporaries, became a ­great admirer of German scholarship. As he specified, “[I do] not believe that they [German historians] want to take from us anything . . . ​or that they want to engross to themselves by conquest the ­whole domain of historical knowledge. But I am sure that they have a ­great object to increase ­human knowledge . . . ​to perfect the instruments of historical study.”154 Freeman himself was rather more skeptical concerning German scholars. Stubbs prob­ably referred to him, when stating that several En­glish historians questioned the value of German scholarship. One major difference between the two was that Stubbs insisted on adopting the German historical method in full, while Freeman sought to preserve some of the “uniqueness” of En­glish historiography. In a remarkable passage, Freeman attacked the habit of holding ­every German book almost sacred. He advocated the in­de­pen­dence of En­glish scholars and emphasized their relative advantage over their German counter­parts: I only demand the right to keep our in­de­pen­dence, and to believe that on many m ­ atters of historical learning an Englishman—an En­glishman on ­either side of [the] Ocean—is better fitted to judge than a German. A Swiss or a Norwegian may judge of the workings of f­ ree constitutions in old Greece, in Italy, in any other land, ­because he, like the En­glishman, has daily experience of their working in his own land. But ­these t­ hings are mysteries to German professors, b­ ecause they are mysteries to German statesmen also.



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The German scholar simply reads in a book of ­things which we are always looking at and acting in. He therefore utterly fails to understand many t­ hings at Athens or Rome or anywhere e­ lse which come to us like our ABC. . . . ​A s [Leopold von] Ranke can make so ­little of En­glish institutions when he directly grapples with them, so [Ernst] Curtius and a crowd of other German scholars show in ­every page the lack of that practical understanding of f­ ree institutions which can be gained only by living among them.155 The ­free institutions of ­England, Switzerland, and Amer­i­ca granted their historians enhanced comprehension of their true meaning. This direct and intimate experience is vital for the historian, and one sometimes must live and grow within a certain historical phenomenon in order to perceive its true nature. For instance, the German historian and archaeologist Ernst Curtius (1814–96), despite his ­great knowledge of Greece, misinterpreted the real meaning of the Athenian assemblies, as perceived profoundly by the En­glish scholar George Grote (1794–1871).156 From Curtius, Freeman turned his focus to Theodor Mommsen, the man he described as the greatest of all living historians: a ­great scholar, acquainted with all fields of historical research, who wrote a masterpiece on the Roman Republic.157 This appreciation of Mommsen can be seen in an article entitled “Mommsen’s History of Rome.”158 In an appendix attached to his main article, Freeman identified three primary assets of Mommsen’s work. In terms of the knowledge of the facts, no scholar matched Mommsen; it is pos­si­ble to argue against Mommsen’s interpretation of the facts, but his learning was almost unpre­ce­dented. Furthermore, Mommsen wrote clearly and knew how “to tell a story,” a fact that distinguished him from Niebuhr, who “could not tell a story.” For t­ hese reasons, Mommsen replaced Niebuhr as the main authority for Roman history at Oxford.159 Nevertheless, Freeman deemed Mommsen’s book extremely dangerous. Among several other less crucial faults, the main fault of Mommsen was that he omitted from his Römische Geschichte the moral aspect that is crucial for ­every historian for distinguishing between right and wrong in history. In the eyes of Freeman, the fact that Mommsen did not judge the ethical implications of historical events and the deeds of individuals was highly problematic, especially b­ ecause Mommsen’s g­ rand stature prevented or hindered criticism of his judgments. Freeman also stressed that Mommsen, like Curtius, embraced this immoral vision of history since he never lived in a society with ­free

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institutions. In both articles, Freeman maintained that Mommsen supported the usage of force by the dominant powers in history while belittling the aspiration to defy them. For this reason, Freeman, despite his esteem for Mommsen, classified him as a “harmful” historian. In a letter to Bryce, while visiting Germany, he commentated that his criticism of Mommsen was not only his own opinion but reflected the observations of many German scholars: “I have been drinking beer with many professors . . . ​every­body that I have talked to seems to think of Mommsen as much as I do. . . . ​Waits [Georg Waitz], I take it, is the ­really ­great man.”160 Freeman himself was at times criticized by German historians. Pauli accused him of ignoring the work of some pivotal German historians, such as Lappenberg, who had already studied Anglo-­Saxon E ­ ngland in the 1830s. In addition, Pauli continued, Freeman did not implement key methods of German historiography. Th ­ ese methods, conceptualized especially by the likes of Leopold von Ranke and Johann Gustav Droysen, urged the historian to delve into the research of unintentional sources found principally in the archives. Freeman, it was argued, hardly consulted ­these types of sources and was known for his excessive reliance on his own library.161 Most of all, Pauli resented Freeman’s Historical Geography of Eu­rope (1881). As he complained in a letter to Stubbs: “His Historical Geography has been for years the stumbling-­block between us, as I had told him openly that I did not find much geography in the book, but rather a mess that had been made especially on German ­matters and a vague predilection for Slav and other barbarian stepchildren. . . . ​I rather expect that [The reign of ] William Rufus [1882] is more in his line, though radicalism and republicanism ­will continue to peep through the monarchical constellations of the twelfth ­century.”162 The unfavorable views of Pauli and Stubbs t­ oward some of Freeman’s views are far from surprising. While all three accentuated the shared Teutonic heritage of ­England and Germany, Stubbs and Pauli held conservative po­liti­cal views and, for instance, w ­ ere less keen on Freeman’s and Bryce’s foreign policy attitudes. Both Stubbs and Pauli supported a more conservative foreign policy, stressing the need to cooperate with the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. In another letter from Stubbs to Pauli, sent three days a­ fter Pauli’s death (of which Stubbs was then unaware), Stubbs expressed his disagreement with Freeman: “Yesterday was Trinity Monday, and at dinner I sat next to our friend E. A. F. [Edward Augustus Freeman]. But as he is at pres­ent furiously enraged against the Emperor of Austria, and as you know I have no Dalmatian proclivities, we w ­ ere not able to do much sympathy.”163



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In any case, it seems, especially from Pauli’s testimonials, that Stubbs’s stature, unlike Freeman’s, remained unscathed by any criticisms from his German colleagues. As Stubbs once remarked, his works ­were better received in Germany than in ­England: “I can only say that I hope my work has not been unworthy of Oxford, or of ­England. Judging from the reception accorded to it, I think I should say that it has met with more appreciative and intelligent reception in Germany than in E ­ ngland.”164 Stubbs integrated the German historical method and was considered a professional historian. In an obituary written by a German scholar, Stubbs’s qualities, together with t­hose of Freeman and Carlyle, ­were highly praised: “His professional friends, especially the Germans, whose nationality he, like Freeman and Carlyle, savored with ­great sympathy, greatly appreciated Stubbs’s research and work, and as a historian, he enjoys immea­sur­able fame as a result of his conscientiousness, diligence, and objectivity.”165 Following the reception of Freeman and Stubbs by German scholars together with their own assessment of German scholars, the conclusion must be that mutual appreciation thrived between t­ hese specific En­glish and German scholars. Yet ­there ­were also traces of criticism and suspicion. This, I maintain, does not shatter the argument that certain German and En­glish scholars ­shaped a shared community that exchanged thoughts directly and indirectly on the foundations of a mutual past and pres­ent. Within any community, and maybe as a sign of its strength, disagreements occur. ­These may actually testify to the fact that this was a flourishing intellectual community that included a variety of opinions. Thus, a common ground existed, and all the members of the community, despite their differences, argued for a joint Teutonic origin. Stubbs probed into the writings of many leading German scholars. The key figures among t­ hese, as Pauli noted following Stubbs, w ­ ere Georg Ludwig von Maurer and Georg Waitz (1813–86). In 1854, Maurer presented the concept of Markgenossenschaft (land companionships).166 He argued that the Mark signified a public shared land divided among the members of the tribe. Only with the adoption of Roman law had the idea of privately owned land arisen. Thus, before Roman law, ­there was no evidence of private owner­ship among the German tribes. Maurer based his thesis on ancient writers such as Caesar and Tacitus, who had mentioned that the tribes lacked any possession of private lands. Therefore, when Tacitus mentioned that the Germanic tribes possessed land, ager in Latin, he only meant public land, the ager publicus.167

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The impor­tant point about the Mark was that it symbolized the core of Teutonic society. The liberty and communal aspect of the Teutonic nations emerged from the Mark. Subsequently, the constitutional system of E ­ ngland had also originated from the marshlands and forests of Germany. For Stubbs, this meant that “the history of Germany is bound up with our national and natu­ral identity.”168 Rome, therefore, as in Kingsley’s position, remained detached from the Teutonic sphere. Stubbs was described by Freeman as the “Waitz of ­England.”169 This comparison resulted from the fact that Waitz’s magnum opus, the Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (1844–78), correlated with Stubbs’s Constitutional History.170 Stubbs’s book was published shortly ­after Waitz’s, and both authors studied the constitutional history of their own nations. Stubbs referred repeatedly to Waitz in his Constitutional History.171 It is also likely that Stubbs initiated his own research a­ fter reading Waitz, who concluded his first volumes of the Verfassungsgeschichte prior to Stubbs. It appears ­there was a methodological compatibility between the two authors in their works on the constitutions. In his eight-­volume work, Waitz presented the history of the growth of the German constitution since Roman times, relying heavi­ly on the Germania of Tacitus, till the modern era. He obviously embraced the Teutonic interpretation and linked the Anglo-­ Saxon branch with the early Germans. Waitz held close connections with Stubbs, and the two historians even met several times. A circle was formed around them, also including Pauli and his disciple Liebermann. The most famous scholar of constitutional history in E ­ ngland, Frederic William Maitland (1850–1906), could also be considered as part of this circle. Indeed, Maitland, like Stubbs, was influenced by German scholarship especially by the works of the jurists Otto von Gierke (1841–1921) and Rudolf von Gniest (1816–1895). However, Maitland did not endorse Stubbs’s or Waitz’s notions about the deep roots of the Teutonic law, from the village communities to modern Britain or Germany.172 It was a very complex task to trace the link between ancient Teutonic law and En­glish law: “We must not be in a hurry to get to the beginning of the long history of law. Very slowly we are making our way ­towards it. The history of law must be the history of ideas. It must represent, not merely what men have done and said, but what men have thought in bygone ages. The task of reconstructing ancient ideas is hazardous and can only be accomplished l­ittle by ­little. If we are in a hurry to get to the beginning we s­ hall miss the path. Against many kinds of anachronism we now guard ourselves.”173 Stubbs met Liebermann in the library of Göttingen University while visiting Waitz and Pauli.174 In a letter, written a short while ­a fter Pauli’s



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death, Stubbs accepted Liebermann’s request to dedicate an article to Pauli’s memory. Stubbs also told Liebermann about a certain ­future proj­ect he planned with Pauli and Waitz: “When I saw Waitz last year at Würzburg, he told me to correspond with you about it. But I am in total ignorance of Pauli’s plan of working; and, as I should be sorry to drop out of my share in the ­great work, I ­will ask you to keep me up to the mark in the way of information and preparation. Pauli, in his last letter, told me that he had a set of sheets of the early Anglo-­Saxon historians which he had prepared for Waitz, which sheets he would send me when he had an opportunity.”175 The “­great work” Stubbs mentioned was the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. This proj­ect had begun already in 1819, when Baron von Stein founded the Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, which included many prominent German scholars. In 1823 this became, u ­ nder the editorship of Georg Heinrich Pertz (1795–1876), the Monumenta Germanica Historica.176 The scholars of the Monumenta wished to define the scope of German national history and the geo­graph­i­cal range of German cultural influence. This became a national proj­ect promoted by the Prus­sian state, following its recognition that national history can function as a power­ful state tool. The fact that historians like Waitz, who replaced Pertz in 1873–74 as the editor of the Monumenta, w ­ ere also involved with state affairs contributed, of course, to this understanding. According to the historical vision of the Monumenta, all of Merovingian and Carolingian history belonged to German history. The implication with regard to the territorial influence was that historically the German sphere included vast parts of the territories of nineteenth-­century France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. Thus, tribes such as the Visigoths of Spain, the Frisians of the Netherlands, and the Lombard’s of Italy, ­were all “Germanized” by the Monumenta.177 While heading the Monumenta, Waitz commenced, together with Pauli, with a plan to merge Anglo-­Saxon history into the proj­ect. Stubbs, whom they regarded as a g­ reat authority on En­glish history, was asked to join the Monumenta. Following the request, Stubbs observed that this was a ­great honor and once again testified to the influence of German scholarship on the development of En­glish historical writing: “I may add that I believe that I owe to this the honour, and a very g­ reat honour I esteem it, of an invitation to take part as a fellow editor in the ­great series of German Historical Monuments, known for the last fifty years ­under the name of Pertz, which has now passed into the hands of a commission of which Dr. Waitz is the chief. I am proud indeed to be an instrument, in the humblest way, in repaying the debt which En­glish

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history owes to German scholarship.”178 The aim of incorporating Anglo-­ Saxon history into the Monumenta followed the proj­ect’s initial goal of researching Teutonic history. Eventually in 1885, Liebermann, who approached Stubbs in the above-­mentioned letter, edited together with Pauli the twenty-­seventh (1885) and l­ater the twenty-­eighth (1888) volumes of the Monumenta ­under the title Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus. Waitz, as managing editor, honored Stubbs in the preface of the 1885 volume by acknowledging his ­great contribution to the publication.179 The Monumenta became a German proj­ect including the study of many nations that w ­ ere all considered as belonging to Germany’s national history. Consequently, t­ here ­were constant connections between the scholars of “Teutonic Eu­rope.”180

Community of Teutonic Heritage This chapter has illustrated the emerging links between several En­glish and German scholars during the nineteenth c­ entury, beginning with the initial contacts between scholars such as Bunsen and Thomas Arnold and following the subsequent affinities between Kingsley, Müller, Pauli, Freeman, and Stubbs. Through personal ties and common ideas, a Gemeinschaft of En­glish and German historians became a real­ity. Their main source of inspiration emerged around the idea of a common Teutonic descent. It was believed that the restoration of a shared Teutonic past would overcome the particularistic differences between ­England and Germany through common racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious traits. Hence, the scholars i­magined a transnational community of Teutonic nations. This Pan-­German community was mainly aimed at countering the historical ­enemy of the Germanic tribes: Rome. The Roman Empire, despite its alleged fall in AD 476, continued to threaten the Teutonic world through its inheritors—­the Catholic Church and France. In the nineteenth ­century, with the conflicts between France and the German principalities and ­later the German state, the need to emphasize the common ground of Protestantism and Teutonism became crucial, since the German scholars sought to gain support for their po­liti­cal ­causes. A question, however, should be asked of the En­glish scholars. Why ­were they so keen to emphasize their Teutonic past? One pos­si­ble answer suggested by this chapter is that the creation of a Pan-­Teutonic community linking the En­glish and Germans enabled the En­glish scholars to define the natu­ral identity of the En­glish. With the Teutonic ­factor, they located the beginning of ­England in



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the Anglo-­Saxon invasions and identified France as the perpetual “other” of ­England and Germany. They also argued that the Celtic communities of the isles, especially the Irish, w ­ ere not fused with the Teutonic En­glish nation. This aspect was perhaps intensified with the growing debate over home rule in Ireland. In 1886 Gladstone proposed his First Home Rule Bill. Preceding the Government Bill and following its failure, the Irish question became central in the British po­liti­cal, cultural, and imperial discourses.181 In a book he edited on home rule, Bryce, a member of Gladstone’s cabinet, wrote: “For half a c­ entury or more no question of En­glish domestic politics has excited so much interest outside ­England as that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been elected.”182 Bryce and Freeman (see discussion of Freeman’s letter to Stephens in Chapter 1) supported Irish home rule also ­because they identified the Celtic and Catholic otherness of Ireland as hindering its complete integration into Britain: “she [Ireland] is not, ­either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-­fourths of the p ­ eople are Roman Catholics, one-­fourth Protestants. . . . ​Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many En­glish families have settled ­here and ­there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather En­glish than Irish.”183 Also by stressing the Celtic–­Teutonic distinction, t­hese scholars constructed a broad racial/ethnic/cultural Teutonic alliance in their search for “collective selfhood” and national identity. The argument about the Teutonic realm was part of a wider polemic that prevailed in Eu­rope during the nineteenth ­century concerning two linked issues: nationalism and borders. One can find its manifestation, among other places, in the controversy that developed not only between individual German and French scholars but also between the “German” and “Roman” schools of historiography. The German school maintained that subsequent to the invasions of the Germanic tribes, Eu­rope entered into a new era with unique and more meritorious characteristics; the Roman school argued that a continuum existed between the two periods since the tribes a­ dopted the Roman tradition and continued its heritage, the implication being that the Germanic tribes had made no unique contribution but only “carried” other traditions. The supposed Teutonic collective exclusivity belongs, therefore, to a broader debate, the dispute between the “Roman” and the “German” schools.

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The En­glish Teutonic circle can be placed, without doubt, on the side of the German school. For instance, many En­glish scholars supported Germany in the 1870–71 war against France. Yet, the En­glish circle did generate new ideas that distinguished it from the German school. One such idea was that of the “unity of history,” constructed by Arnold and l­ater elaborated in depth by Freeman and Bryce. This idea, in contrast to the “conservative” periodization of the German school, offered a new interpretation of the end of the Roman Empire. As w ­ ill be shown in the following chapters, this interpretation testifies to the unique periodization constructed by Freeman, Bryce, and Bury.

chapter 3

Racial History The Convergence of Race and Periodization

For many modern scholars, as well as for some scholars of the early modern age and Re­nais­sance, the fourth and fifth centuries marked one of the most significant watersheds in terms of historical periodization. ­These centuries ­were and are still considered by many as the time when the invasions of the barbarian tribes caused the fall of the Roman Empire.1 The fact that even before the invasions, Rome fought numerous b­attles against vari­ ous external forces threatening its stability had not dramatically influenced the common historical periodization. Already in 386 BC, Gallic forces had sacked the city of Rome. At the end of the second c­ entury BC, the Romans suffered devastating defeats by the Cimbri and the Teutons who managed to advance in their campaigns up to what is now northern Italy. At the beginning of the first ­century, ­under the rule of Augustus (r. 27 BC–­A D 14) and then Tiberius (r. AD 14–37), fierce ­battles had occurred in the Roman provinces of Germany between the Roman legions and the German tribes. ­Later, Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80) had to fight off the Marcomanni tribes that had posed a real threat to the Roman Empire for more than a de­cade. ­These vari­ous examples are but a small sample of the confrontations with the Germanic tribes, but they point to the constant conflict between the empire and the tribes. As mentioned before, t­ hese wars, which entailed the deep invasions of the tribes into the empire’s dominions and even into the city of Rome itself, ­were not considered by most eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century scholars as marking the end of antiquity. In a rather recent book, Ian Wood pres­ents the main views of modern historians on the beginning of the M ­ iddle Ages. Wood delves into the vari­ous

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views in chronological order from the seventeenth to the twentieth ­century. Like some of his colleagues and pre­de­ces­sors, Wood divides the views of the historians into three: the Germanist, Romanist, and Christian arguments.2 Dealing with t­ hese categories more extensively l­ ater, I w ­ ill ­here briefly recapitulate the main characteristics of each argument. The Germanist school emphasized the dramatic change that occurred ­after the invasion of the tribes. The Romanist school focused on Rome itself and observed a continuity between Rome and the barbaric kingdoms. While some of the historians who belong to this school identify a decline, this is mainly related to internal social, economic, and po­liti­cal prob­lems rather than with the invasion of the Germanic tribes. Besides t­ hese two arguments, another most significant occurrence in the fourth and fifth centuries was marked by the victory of Chris­tian­ity. When Clovis (AD 466–511), king of the Franks, was baptized to Catholicism and deserted his Arian beliefs, a ­union of sorts occurred between Rome and the Teutonic tribes. This marked a w ­ hole new age, defined by some as the “age of faith.” For many historians, this was the substantial development of the period since it overshadowed both the invasion of the tribes and the internal Roman prob­lems. Wood shows how individual scholars followed the Germanist, Romanist, or Christian explanations in accordance with their national, religious, and professional affiliations. However, and this is a central point, ­t here are many overlaps between the dif­fer­ent schools and sometimes their arguments merge. In the following discussion, I mainly focus on the Germanist, or Teutonic, school, or more accurately on the nineteenth-­century reception of the barbaric invasions. I do not intend to survey all the dif­fer­ent writers and approaches, but I examine rather w ­ hether and how the Germanic invasions influenced the periodization of antiquity in the writings of several German, British, and French scholars. The theme of periodization, I argue, although echoed in Wood’s book, contains certain significant aspects that deserve further research. The first aspect is what I have already defined as “racial time.” The Teutonic notions, as demonstrated in the previous chapters, created a community of scholars who argued that the common tribal Teutonic past justified a shared pres­ent between nations. In this chapter, however, the focus is on the question of how the perceptions of ethnicity and race, in par­tic­u­lar the alleged superiority of the Teutonic nations, defined the division of time. Thus, the pres­ent chapter connects the first part of the work, which has discussed scholars’ arguments about the racial dominance of the Teutonic nations, with the second part, which focuses on temporal periodization.



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Crucial to the following discussion is the notion of regeneration and degeneration. Gibbon, who, according to Wood, merged the Christian, Germanist, and Romanist narratives in one single work, saw the internal Roman prob­lems, the rise of Chris­tian­ity, and the invasion of the tribes as the c­ auses for the decline of Rome.3 In a famous passage, written in the final chapter of his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), he declared: “I have described the triumph of Barbarism and religion.”4 However, and conversely, the fusion between the Christian and the Germanist ele­ments in the works of Herder and, l­ater, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) depicted revival and not decline. In their view, the German tribes ­were tools in the hands of God as part of the Christian expansion throughout Eu­rope. This split between the regeneration and degeneration approaches points to another central aspect: notwithstanding this split, and as we ­shall see, most ancient, medieval, and modern writers adhered to the prevalent periodization of the fourth and fifth centuries.5 Thus, ­whether stressing decline or rejuvenation, most writers subscribed to the same historical scheme.

Early Perceptions: The Winning and Waning of Rome For two thousand years, many authors have tried to explain the secret of Rome’s power, the empire that ruled the Mediterranean basin for nearly a millennium. Polybius (202–120 BC), the famous Greek author of Roman history, portrayed in the sixth book of his Histories the development of ­Roman grandeur in his own second c­ entury BC. For him, the “compromising” Roman regime, which incorporated demo­cratic, aristocratic, and monarchic ele­ments, instilled in the republic the strength to proj­ect its power over most of the inhabited world (oikumene) in a course of a mere fifty-­three years (between 220 and 167 BC).6 The merging of the dif­fer­ent governing systems in Rome was manifested in the public meetings, which included a demo­ cratic kernel, the senate, which represented the ­will of the aristocracy, and the consuls, who spoke for the monarchy. Each of t­hese institutions had the power to restrain the ­others and thus established a balance between them. For example, the public meetings could restrain both the influence of the senate and that of the consuls ­because they wielded the power to approve or to override statutes and to decide w ­ hether to launch wars. In the Roman Republic a system of “checks and balances” therefore prevented abrupt change of regimes, coups (stasis), and instability. During the transitions between

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regimes, named by Polybius as “the cycle of regimes” (anacyclosis), one ruling system replaced the other: democracy led to a tyrannical democracy (ochlocracy, government by the mobs), monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, and fi­nally to oligarchy, and so forth. According to him, the dif­fer­ent ruling systems can be likened to living entities ­because they grow (anksesis), reach a peak (acme), and wither away (phtora). Despite Rome’s temperate rule, Polybius argued that it was destined to eventually wither away. When citing Scipio Aemilianus, the “destroyer” of Carthage, Polybius wrote that the “fall” of Rome, like other socie­ties, was inevitable: Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. A ­ fter being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, ­either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said: “A day ­will come when sacred Troy ­shall perish, And Priam and his p ­ eople ­shall be slain.” And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all t­ hings ­human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history.7 In the first c­ entury BC, Sallust (86–34 BC) depicted Rome’s f­ uture in somber colors. This writer, who was harmed by the republic’s decline, used the term inclinata res publica (the downfall of the republic), to describe the crisis of his era (Sallust, Epistula ad Caesarem, 10.1). In AD 410, the Visigoth ruler Alaric conquered the city of Rome. This conquest became the symbolic date for Rome’s decline, as it was the first time that a foreign army had invaded the city itself since the invasion of the Gauls in 386 BC. Following the invasion of the Visigoths, Augustine wrote his famous City of God (De civitate Dei contra paganos), in which he maintained that the cure for the distress of man could be found in the spiritual city of God and not among men. Like Augustine, other Christian writers of the same era, such as Orosius (ca. 375–418) and Jerome (346–420), claimed that Rome was forever lost. Jerome explained



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that Rome’s paganism had led to its downfall. In his commentary on the book of the prophet Ezekiel he also claimed that the conquest of the city in 410 symbolized the decline of the ­whole empire: “the bright light of all the world was put out . . . ​the ­whole world perished in one city” (preface, book 1).8 The fifth-­century Greek historian Zosimus also offered a detailed description of Rome’s decline. In the beginning of his essay (Historia Nova, book 1), he mentioned that while Polybius described the rise of Rome and its glory, he himself would illustrate its demise. Zosimus admitted that the downfall of Rome occurred in AD 410. However, he argued that the pro­cess of decline had already commenced in the first c­ entury BC, with the republic’s collapse. Among the reasons for the decline, he mentioned the worsening of the economic situation, the invasions of the tribes, and, especially, the forsaking of Roman religion and traditions. The tribal invasions w ­ ere also mentioned in the Historia Romana (14.2) of Paul the Deacon (720–799), who associated the fall of Rome with the Hunic, Vandal, and Ostrogothic invasions of the fifth ­century. Both Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the En­glish Nation (1.11), and the anonymous writer of the Franco-­Burgundian Passio sancti Sigismundi Regis, also pointed to the destruction of the tribes as causing the fall.9 In short, the linkage between the emergence of the barbaric tribes and the fall of Rome was central among ancient writers.

Tribal Degeneration and the Formation of the M ­ iddle Ages Several of the c­ auses for the downfall of Rome, mentioned by ancient writers, ­were also ­adopted by ­later ones. During the Re­nais­sance, attributing the destruction of the ancient world to the tribes became even more prominent. Petrarch (1304–74) claimed that the main reason for the collapse resulted from Rome’s incompetent rulers. Following the arrival of the tribes, the ­whole of Eu­rope was submerged into a dark and ignorant era. For Petrarch, Rome was the acme of h ­ uman civilization; therefore its occupation led to a dreadful abyss in the history of the world. Extrication from the darkness (tenebrae) engulfing the entire world ­will only occur when the greatness of Rome and its culture are fully realized again. In one of his essays, he even wrote that “what ­else, then, is all history, if not the praise of Rome.”10 In the fifteenth c­ entury, the Italian humanists stressed the splendor of Rome in comparison to the meagerness of the Germanic tribes. The historian Flavio Biondo (1392–1463), in his De­cades of History from the Deterioration of

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the Roman Empire (Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii), studied the disintegration that had taken place between the years 410 and 1453, the latter date marking the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans. Another Re­nais­sance historian, Leonardo Bruni (1369–1444), chose, similarly to Biondo, the fifth ­century as the end of the ancient era. Unlike Biondo, however, he identified AD 455 as the year of Rome’s fall, when the Emperor Valentianus III had been assassinated by his own foreign soldiers. According to Bruni, following the assassination, Odoacer managed to overthrow the last emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustulus. Mistakenly, Bruni attributed the fall of Romulus to the year 455 and not to 475/6. The “fall,” in any case, was still identified with the fifth c­ entury. Bruni continued and asserted that Italy “recovered” only centuries ­later, when his own fifteenth-­century society developed a thriving culture.11 The argument so far leads to the conclusion that the historical periodization crystallized during the Re­nais­sance derived from a certain negative perception of the ­Middle Ages. ­These fifteenth-­and sixteenth-­century Italian humanists regarded themselves as reconstructing the glory of Rome and thus considered the thousand years that had passed since the fall of Rome to their times as an inferior era in the history of humanity. The barbarian inferiority was manifested in all areas of life: in government, economics, and art. As the Re­nais­sance artist Filarete (1400–69) wrote: “Cursed be the man who in­ven­ ted this wretched Gothic architecture; only a Barbarian ­people could have brought it to Italy.”12 The idea that barbarians symbolized the end of the ancient period remained central also in the works of eighteenth-­century writers. For Gibbon, the moral decline from republican to imperial Rome was the main impetus that had put the decline of Rome into motion. Gibbon, like Zosimus, 1,400 years earlier, regards the first c­ entury BC as the period when Rome began to lose its glory, reaching its lowest ebb during the fourth and fifth centuries. ­A fter ­these centuries, the areas where the Roman Empire had thrived became wastelands, while the Eastern Empire, with its capital, Constantinople, survived u ­ ntil it was conquered by the Turks in 1453. Considering Gibbon’s attitude as to the failings of the imperial government, it is pos­si­ble to question his notable statement that the second c­ entury was “the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the h ­ uman race was most happy and prosperous.”13 Gibbon, however, explained that the worthy Antonine emperors had managed to conceal the shortcomings of the empire by their clever governing. But when, by the end of the second ­century, weak emperors



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like Commodus (AD 180–192) came to power, the empire suffered a lengthy crisis that, together with the rise of Chris­tian­ity, especially ­under Constantine, led to Rome’s fall. Gibbon, quite uniquely, merged what he considered as the negative impact of Chris­tian­ity and the invasion of the tribes and marked the fourth and fifth centuries as a devastating watershed for the classical traditions of the Greco-­Roman world. Many subsequent writers did not connect the two yet still acknowledged the invasions of t­ hese centuries as the beginning of the M ­ iddle Ages.14 Gibbon was perhaps influenced by Voltaire (1694–1778), who pointed to the religious controversies and the conquests of the barbarians as the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire.15 In his Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1756), he described how the Germanic tribes had ravished the Latin language, the ancient supreme culture, and the material grandeur of Rome: If we pass from the history of the Roman Empire to that of the ­peoples who destroyed it in the West, we feel like travellers who leave a splendid city to find themselves in thorny waste. Twenty barbaric dialects are the heirs of the beautiful Latin language, which was spoken from Illyria to the Atlas Mountains. Whereas up to that time, wise laws had ruled over half of our hemi­sphere, now t­ here are only savage customs. All the signs of civilization, amphitheatres, circuses, and the rest, which w ­ ere erected throughout the provinces, are destroyed and lie in ruins, overgrown by grass. The excellent roads, which had led from the capital itself to the distant Taurus, are covered by stagnant pools.16 According to many thinkers in the eigh­teenth c­ entury, Rome was identified with the ancient era po­liti­cally, culturally, and eco­nom­ically. Therefore, the collapse of the empire in the West during the fourth and fifth centuries symbolized the end of the ancient era. Citing Voltaire again: “A new order of t­hings began with the dismemberment of the Roman Empire in the West, which is called the history of the M ­ iddle Ages; barbarian history of barbarian p ­ eoples, who on becoming Christians did not become better for it.”17 This perception was dominant for many years. It led to the accepted historical periodization in which the invasions of the barbarians became a mythical and formative event that caused the M ­ iddle Ages, that terrible rift between antiquity and the modern world. Thus, the Scottish historian William Robertson (1721–93) could write: “In less than a ­century a­ fter the

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barbarian nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects of the knowledge and civility, which the Romans had spread through Eu­rope, dis­ appeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury, and are supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life can scarcely be contemplated as comfortable, w ­ ere neglected or lost.”18 This argument was still prominent during the nineteenth c­ entury. Many researchers emphasized that the ancient era ended with the arrival of the tribes and the collapse of Rome. One prominent example is found in the views of the famous French scholar and politician François Guizot,19 who named the period a­ fter the fall of the empire as “the barbarian era” in which colossal chaos occupied Eu­rope: “A veritable deluge of diverse nations, forced one upon another, from Asia into Eu­rope, by wars and migration in mass, inundated the Empire and gave the decisive signal for its fall.”20

The Noble Savage: Regeneration Together with t­ hose who maintained that the Germanic tribes had inflicted havoc all over Eu­rope, ­there ­were also prominent voices praising the tribes as one of the most vital and constructive forces in world history. The Germanic tribes ­were seen as the emblem of freedom and boldness. They freed the West from the “­dying” empire and heralded a new age, surpassing Rome. The invasions, therefore, ­were defined by many in the neutral and even positive term Völkerwanderung (wandering of p ­ eoples). In 1425, the first copy of Tacitus’s essay Germania (De origine et situ germanorum) was discovered in the monastery of Fulda, Germany.21 The essay, written at the end of the first ­century (ca. AD 98), became a very impor­tant source, since it supplies a unique ethnographic account of the ancient era. The book’s main importance, however, is not necessarily in depicting the Germanic tribes of the first ­century but in the modern reception of Germania in the West and the racial as well as national implications resulting from its rediscovery. For Tacitus, the Germanic tribes belonged to one ethnic group and hence reflected a unity. The tribes possessed common characteristics distinguishing them from other groups, such as the Romans: “The tribes of Germany are ­free from all taint of intermarriages with foreign nations, and . . . ​they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but themselves. Hence, too, the same physical peculiarities throughout so vast a population. All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. They are less able to bear



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laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure; to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them” (Tacitus, Germania, chap. 4).22 The fact that Tacitus distinguished the Germanic tribes based on their physical features is of major importance. Following this paragraph, a series of writers and even regimes, most notoriously the Nazis, argued for the racial uniqueness of the Germanic tribes and, more impor­tant, of the modern German Volk.23 Tacitus also testified to the freedom and equality prevalent among the tribes: “About minor ­matters—­the chiefs deliberate, about the more impor­tant—­the ­whole tribe” (Ger. 11). Thus, all the members of the tribe made decisions in a demo­cratic, communal manner. Tacitus added: “The chief fights for victory; his vassals fight for their chief” (Ger. 14). Nevertheless, alongside this praise, Tacitus mentioned the ferocity of the tribes, some of their bad customs and their yearning for war. When the tribes ­were not fighting against foreigners, they initiated ­battles among themselves (Ger. 14), or spent their time idly, without cultivating the land: “Whenever they are not fighting, they pass much of their time in the chase, and still more in idleness, giving themselves up to sleep and to feasting, the bravest and the most warlike ­doing nothing” (Ger. 15). Tacitus considered them as the most terrible of Rome’s enemies, responsible for Rome’s severest defeats: “German in­de­pen­dence truly is fiercer than the despotism of an Arsaces. What e­ lse, indeed, can the East taunt us with but the slaughter of Crassus, when it has itself lost Pacorus, and been crushed ­under a Ventidius?” (Ger. 37). In the wake of the “discovery” of Germania by German-­speaking thinkers at the beginning of the modern epoch, the perception of the vital strength of the Germanic tribes wandering into the realms of Rome developed greatly. Tacitus wrote three hundred years before the final fall of the Roman Empire. However, in the eyes of some of ­these scholars this was unimportant ­because the tribes causing the final demise of Rome ­were the descendants of the tribes described by Tacitus. Furthermore, ­these ancient Germanic tribes ­were also the ancestors of some of the kingdoms and nations of Eu­rope. Thus, this ancient Roman’s exaltation of the Germanic tribes carries a substantial weight in modernity. The acme of t­ hese discussions or arguments can be identified in relation to the rise of nationalism during the nineteenth ­century. But before addressing the historiographical discussion in the nineteenth ­century, I discuss briefly the myth of the “savage German” prior to the nineteenth ­century. In the sixteenth ­century, impor­tant developments took place in research into ancient Germanic history (deutsches Altertum). Essays w ­ ere written on the

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sites, customs, and history of the early Germanic tribes. In 1557, the Austrian Wolfgang Lazius (1514–65) observed that the Germanic tribes wandered all over Eu­rope (de gentium aliquot migrationibus) and that a connection existed between them and the Austrian king of the House of Habsburg.24 Other scholars, such as the German Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523), emphasized that the ancient Germanic tribes had symbolized the glorious past and pres­ent of the principalities of Germany. Hutten, one of the early theorists of German nationalism, based his essay on the won­ders of the Germanic hero Hermann (Arminius), the leader of the tribe of the Cherusci.25 Arminius led an attack against Publius Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Germania ­under the Emperor Augustus, and lost three Roman legions and his own life in the B ­ attle of the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9).26 The adoration of Hermann was based on the perception that the value of freedom as it manifested itself in his revolt against the Romans could serve as a symbol and model for the entire German ­people. Hutten, who lived at the time of the Protestant Reformation, defied the hegemony of the Roman papal church by glorifying ancient German history.27 Martin Luther, the initiator of the Reformation, also denoted the tribes as the ancestors of the Germans and the everlasting fierce enemies of Rome. Luther, in his Commentaries on Psalms, explained the meaning of the name Hermann, given to the brave German tribal leader: “For we find that our old Germans gave their princes and lords unusually fine names. . . . ​Herman[n], which the Latins have corrupted into Arminius, means ‘a man of the army,’ one who is strong in war and ­battle, who can rescue and lead his own ­people, and risk his life in ­doing it.”28 Luther was the first to call Arminius by the name of Hermann, the name given to the Germanic hero in modernity. Luther’s identification of the tribes as “our ancient German” ancestors resurfaces throughout his writings. A noteworthy aspect of his words was the linkage between the role of divinity in the Gothic invasion and in the Reformation. In both events the Germans became the messengers of the wrath of God against a corrupted Roman Empire. The Reformation, therefore, signified a second awakening of the German ­people. In fact, ­these two German awakenings construct a historical periodization. The Roman fall and the M ­ iddle Ages commenced with the Gothic conquest of Rome and concluded now, in Luther’s era, with the German’s second defiance against Catholic Rome. The German ­people remained throughout this long period one and the same, while the Roman Empire fell centuries ago: “­There is no doubt that the true



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Roman Empire, which the writings of the prophets foretold in Numbers 24[:17–19] and Daniel 2[:44], has long since been overthrown and come to an end, as Balaam clearly prophesied in Numbers 24[:24]. . . . ​That happened ­under the Goths, but more particularly when the Muslim empire arose almost a thousand years ago. Then eventually Asia and Africa fell away, and in time France and Spain. Fi­nally Venice arose, and nothing was left to Rome of its former power.”29 Despite the mention of the Goths as the initiators of the Roman decline, it was the Muslim invasion that Luther identified already in the sixteenth ­century as an even greater force to be reckoned with. Luther’s remark is impor­ tant since, even though most writers labeled the Germanic invasions as the cause of the Roman downfall, some noted the Muslim rise in conjunction with Rome’s demise. Protestant scholars, who mark the invasion of the tribes as a rejuvenating event replacing the corruption of Rome are faced with a perennial prob­lem. If a dramatic transformation had destroyed Rome during the wanderings, how was it pos­si­ble that Rome, through the church’s power, allegedly dominated the sphere for another thousand years? For this reason, many scholars, beginning with Luther, observed the Reformation as another phase of the wandering and as the event that symbolized the final fall of Rome. Thus, the seeds of the revolution had already been planted by the wanderings of the tribes, but Catholic Rome managed to recuperate, and only in the Reformation was Germanic freedom fi­nally attained.30 The need to consolidate ­these two events—­the invasions and the Reformation—­ resurfaces in the writings of many ­later historians as a central aspect of the debate over the significance of the tribes in history. This also sheds light on the theme of periodization. It is exactly t­ hese two events that are central in the ­triple division of time—­antiquity, ­Middle Ages, and modernity. For some, the first event initiated the ­Middle Ages, while the second ended them and marked the commencement of modernity. The main threads that connect ­these two formative events are Chris­tian­ity and Teutonism, or the merger of the two. As for Chris­tian­ity, a crucial transformation occurred in both events. During the invasions, the barbaric kingdoms converted, neglected Arianism and paganism, and disseminated Chris­tian­ity across Eu­ rope. In the Reformation, substantial parts of Eu­rope deserted Catholicism and returned to what Protestant thinkers defined as the original form of Chris­tian­ity. As for ethnicity, both developments ­were carried out by the

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Germanic ­people. For many German thinkers, ­those who promoted the disengagement from the Catholic Church ­were the descendants of ­those Germanic tribes who overthrew the Roman Empire. Hence, the two most dramatic events in the history of the world, which in fact determine historical periodization, ­were carried out by the same ­people.

The Formative Victory of Barbarism and Chris­tian­ity The Christian and Teutonic advents w ­ ere also linked in “modernity.” Indeed, Herder and Hegel, two of the most prominent German thinkers of the modern era, formed a fusion of Chris­tian­ity and Teutonism. For Herder, the demarcation line between antiquity and the ­Middle Ages was the migration of the tribes. For him, the Germanic p ­ eople had contributed the most to the establishment of the Eu­ro­pean kingdoms. They took the dominion from the Roman Empire and in d ­ oing so initiated such a transformation that the history of the world changed its course forever. The Roman Empire had become so degenerate by the end of the fifth c­ entury that it could no longer withstand the vitality of the Germanic tribes: “If the degenerate Rome [ausgeartete Rom] managed to rule the world, why is not pos­si­ble that ­those who are mightier would achieve similar control?”31 More generally, the notions of decline and regeneration in Herder’s argument can appear in e­ very epoch and within any civilization. They do not paint the w ­ hole history of the nation with a single color. Hence, t­ here is no such t­ hing as the happiest nation in history, since ­every nation has its era of prosperity and fortune.32 Alongside the greatness of the nations, t­here are also major imperfect historical moments, yet greatness is pos­si­ble even with ­these deficiencies. Thus, ­every nation has a period of decline, which eventually leads to its final demise.33 Each age may manifest growth, transformation, and progression (Fortgang).34 However, this does not mean that one civilization surpassed the other. It is essential for new civilizations to learn from former civilizations.35 Like an adult who must acknowledge the fact that he too was once a child lacking experience, so the succeeding civilizations need to acknowledge their early adolescent stages. The Greeks may have been the “cradle of humaneness,” but they ­were still dependent on the previous achievements of the Egyptians and Phoenicians. For this reason, the Greeks absorbed components of both cultures into their own, despite their belief that they in­ven­ted every­thing ex nihilo.36



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The maturity of humankind became eminent with the Romans. Their greatness was a consequence of their universalizing impact on the nations of the world: It was never the Romans’ main concern to compete with Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Orientals; but by putting every­thing that had preceded them to manly use, what a Roman world they created! The name [of Rome] bound p ­ eoples and parts of the world together that had never so much as heard of each other before. Roman provinces! In all of them, Romans trod: Roman legions, laws, ideals of propriety, virtues and vices. The walls that separated nation from nation w ­ ere broken down, the first step taken to destroy the national character of them all, to throw every­one into one mold called “the Roman ­people.”37 Since the influence of the Romans was so vast and imposing, their fall from power was a monumental event. History, in fact, “restarted” a­fter Rome. The tribes w ­ ere the ones who headed this revolution. If, beforehand, ­there was a clear linkage between the East, Greece, and Rome, suddenly the chain of history was broken, and time began to reset itself, carried on now by the Germans and Chris­tian­ity. The East and the Greco-­Roman world remained cohesive, while the tribes, Chris­tian­ity, and the M ­ iddle Ages represented another distinct phenomenon. This does not mean that ­there was no connection between the ancient civilizations and the Germanic tribes, since a “northern-­southern” world did develop.38 Still, the mutual common ground between Egypt, the Phoenicians, Greece, and Rome was far more substantial than the connection between the Romans and the Germanic kingdoms. The order and unity of the new world came from the power of Chris­tian­ ity ­because it had a civilizing impact on the tribes: “Indeed, ever since the barbarians themselves became Christians, it [Chris­tian­ity] gradually became the real order and security of the world . . . ​it tamed the rapacious lions and conquered the conquerors.”39 Herder saw the tribes as a tool in the hands of God: “I am speaking of a historical event, a miracle of the ­human spirit, and clearly an instrument of Providence!”40 Hegel, like Herder, also marked ­these centuries as the end of antiquity. Hegel identified the tribes and Chris­tian­ity as signifying rejuvenation and, for that, he is considered one of the “forefathers” of the Teutonic-­Christian

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periodization. In his Philosophy of History (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 1837), Hegel set out a nationalistic dogma based on the role of the Teutonic tribes in history. He defined three epochs that had dominated the world: the first, and the one representing “the childhood of history,” commenced with the civilizations of the Near East. Then the world transformed to its adolescence phase, where the formation of the body occurred ­under the Greek civilization.41 The next era of the Romans was that of maturity, when the universal goal surpassed individual needs. The last and most complete era was that of the Germans, which began ­after the fall of the Roman Empire. This era signified the old age of humanity, when the spirit of the world became harmonized once again with its source or body.42 Hegel defined this last era through the concept of Gemütlichkeit (good nature), which represented the purity of the heart among the early Germanic tribes. The German spirit was the freest, happiest, as well as the most superior. The history of the world, therefore, moves on a linear time line of pro­gress through civilizations and geo­graph­i­cal spheres: the “world travels from East to West, for Eu­rope is absolutely the end of history, Asia the beginning.”43 The notion of freedom is also transformed in between the periods of the world: in the East the “one is ­free”; in Greece and Rome, “some are f­ ree”; and in the German world all became f­ ree.44 The supreme po­liti­cal form was constitutional monarchy, since the world moved from the despotism of the East to the democracy and aristocracy of Greece and Rome, ­until it reached the monarchy of the German age. The thread of freedom linked the ancient Germans with the modern ones: “The ele­ment of freedom is the first consideration in their ­union in a social relationship. The ancient Germans w ­ ere famed for their love of freedom; the Romans formed a correct idea of them in this par­tic­u­lar from the first. Freedom has been the watchword in Germany down to the most recent times, and even the league of princes ­under Frederick II had its origin in the love of liberty.”45 For Hegel, the concept of fidelity was another feature of the German tribes. This kernel had been absent from the Greco-­Roman world. The ­free Germans followed voluntarily one of the prominent individuals in the group and bonded with him, while the Greco-­Roman rulers imposed firm control over the ­people, based on hierarchy and hegemony. ­These two pillars of freedom and fidelity construct the modern Eu­ro­pean states.46 Hegel held, in a notion similar to Herder’s, that God chose the Germanic tribes to carry Chris­tian­ity through history and spread it among the nations of the world. The tribes acted with ­great ferocity and barbarism and conducted



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multiple sins in the age of Clovis and ­under the Merovingian kings. It was exactly this character, which certainly was not ­free from faults, that made the tribes such worthy candidates for the dissemination of Chris­tian­ity. Both Herder and Hegel drew a definite line between the Romans and the Germans. However, t­here is a distinction between the two scholars. This distinction is very significant since the two together denote two main strands in eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century scholarship. For Herder, the Germanic tribes w ­ ere not the epitome of humankind. They may have represented a new, very dif­fer­ent period and determined the development of the Eu­ro­pean modern states, but they did not reflect the most noble stage of humanity. Hegel, in contrast, described the ­whole period from the fall of Rome ­until his own days as the “German epoch.” His own ­people and their spirit symbolized the apex of civilization; they represented the telos, since no other age would ever surpass them in the f­ uture. This signifies a g­ reat distinction between the two. Herder observed a world divided horizontally by nations, each with a certain spirit and uniqueness. For Hegel, the hierarchy between the nations in history was far more evident, and the Germanic nations stood at the highest echelon. The impor­tant implication, following Hegel, was that the emergence of Chris­tian­ ity and the ethnic Germanic tribes signified the beginning of a new era. This is a prominent example of how in modernity the religious and ethnic-­racial time merged. Hegel, by placing the Germans on top of the pedestal, reflected an emerging view among many German, French, and En­glish scholars. This periodization depended on a certain “racial time” and, hence, regarded the invasion of the tribes as a racial watershed that separated antiquity from the ­Middle Ages.

Roman Versus Germanic The dispute concerning the end of the ancient era between the German and the Roman schools arose partially as a result of the territorial-­national controversy between France and Germany. For many of the German Romanists, the fact that the tribes ­were depicted as the harbingers of freedom, commencing a new era in Eu­rope, proved the ancient kernel and authenticity of the German nation. For them, two historical events had defined the German nation since antiquity: German tribal in­de­pen­dence, as it was expressed in the re­sis­ tance to Rome, especially ­under the leadership of Arminius, and the Völkerwanderung during the fourth and fifth centuries.47 This enchanted vision of

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the German past became entwined with the main events of the nineteenth ­century: the wars of German liberation from Napoleon (1813–15) and, of course, the unification of Germany in 1871. The German-­French dispute in the nineteenth c­ entury led some representatives of the German school to attribute supreme importance to the tribes ­because they ­were the ones who had separated antiquity from the M ­ iddle Ages and thus influenced the ­f uture historical development. The Roman school, headed by Fustel de Coulanges, opposed this claim. Fustel de Coulanges himself combined in a very pronounced way the issue of periodization and the territorial-­national tendencies. The fact that he dismissed the importance of the Germanic tribes and regarded them as wild tribes who had spoiled the Roman heritage was related to his rejection of the German territorial claims of the nineteenth ­century, especially concerning Alsace-­Lorraine. Despite the tendency to pres­ent the Roman-­German strug­gle as a dichotomy and simply one part of the French-­German nationalistic controversy, it is impor­tant to note that the two schools stressed similar notions. In both nineteenth-­century France and Germany ­there was a revival of the ancient tribal myth. In France, especially ­under Napoleon III, ­t here was a glorification of the ancient Gauls led by Vercingetorix and their ­battles against Caesar. As mentioned, in Germany too, the revolt of the Germanic tribes against the Romans was deemed a courageous and noble act. Archaeology in both France and Germany, as Bonnie Effros shows, also played a crucial role in the reimagination of the tribes as the ancestors of the nation. The excavations and the study of burial sites and skeletons was sometimes injected with racial connotations, seen most prominently in the works of the Lindenschmit ­brothers (Wilhelm, 1806–48; and Ludwig, 1809–93).48 Thus, the ancient tribes became an impor­tant component in the historical national narrative of both countries. On both sides, an attempt was made to prove the possession of territories through certain historical, archaeological, physical, and cultural evidence. Hence, the i­ magined events of the past justified pres­ent real­ity. The return to the past as an authoritative source and the search for “ancient ancestors” caused the two sides to adore the b­ attles of their alleged ancestral forefathers against the Roman Empire. Most impor­tant, in both the Romanist and the Germanist schools, race played a central part in constructing the division of time as well as in the construction of their national communities. Thus, both schools spoke of a prominent racial aspect determining the periodization of history.



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The question is why, despite the monumental stature given to the ancient Gauls, a school of thought developed in France that also emphasized the lasting influence of the Roman Empire. The answer to this, I argue, derives from the historical narratives that took root in the research of t­ hose French and German thinkers who belonged to the dif­fer­ent schools. According to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, around 50 BC all the area of Gaul was conquered by his legions in spite of the fierce fighting of the autochthonic tribes. From the Roman conquest, Gaul remained u ­ nder Roman rule for about five hundred years u ­ ntil the arrival of the Germanic tribes. The Roman impact on Gaul was evident in physical changes, such as paved roads, construction of fortifications and institutions, as well as in cultural-­ideological influences. According to some scholars, like Augustin Thierry, a unique Gallic-­Roman society merging Roman and Celtic characteristics existed for many centuries ­after the Romans first came to Gaul. But in the fifth c­ entury, with the waves of Germanic invaders, t­ here began to abide in Gaul two dif­fer­ent communities signifying dif­fer­ent races and cultures: the Gallic-­Roman and the German. In some of his writings, Thierry observed that the Gallic-­Roman community had settled in towns and developed trade and culture, while in the countryside prevailed the illiteracy and ignorance of the wild Germanic tribes. The offspring of this superb Gallic-­Roman society ­were the third estate who led the French Revolution in 1789.49 Thierry, it should be noted, developed his ideas following his research on the Norman Conquest of the British Isles (Histoire de la Conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands, 1825). The confrontation between the two ethnic groups in Gaul resembled, at least as he saw it, the ­ ere confrontation between the Anglo-­Saxons and the Normans.50 The first w “the conquered,” and they represented for hundreds of years the lower echelons of the En­glish society, while the latter w ­ ere “the conquerors,” and they wielded the reins of government and possessed the land.51 This perception of a continuous ethnic-­territorial strug­gle in Gaul supported the periodization of the “Roman school.” Following the emergence of a Roman-­Gaulish society, the historical continuity of Gaul/France was not devastated by the arrival of the German tribes. Instead, it remained part and parcel of the French nation and defined its development ­until modernity. Based on this narrative, the Roman school could argue that t­ here had been a Roman-­ Gaulish continuity from antiquity to the M ­ iddle Ages and that, therefore, the German tribes had not played an impor­tant part in the transition between the two periods. In other words, the Roman Empire was not necessarily

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perceived as a conqueror ­because the Gallic-­Roman culture, which embraced au­then­tic Gallic traits, emerged from it. Thus, the Roman heritage had been an integral part of the national history of France, in contrast to the German tribes, which had not contributed to the economic and cultural development of modern France.

­Toward a New Periodization? In 1973, the famous Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano observed that since the eigh­teenth c­ entury the fall of Rome had become an obsession in historical research.52 As I have demonstrated throughout this chapter, numerous scholars indeed dedicated many words to this historic phenomenon. Some, as we have seen, defined the tribes and the fifth ­century in negative terms, ­others considered them as revitalizing Eu­rope. The “revitalizers” can be grouped as the “German school.” The perception of the tribes as ­either wild barbarians or harbingers of freedom did not influence the historical periodization, for in both perceptions the tribes ­were regarded as playing a very significant role since their emergence brought an end to Rome. Furthermore, the racial aspect became associated, especially in modernity, with the fall of the Roman Empire. For many of the scholars from the German school, race marked the ultimate proof of the decline of Rome and the rise of the Germanic kingdoms. Thus, during the nineteenth c­ entury, the “Roman school” began to strive to minimize the importance of the German tribes. The empire maintained its influence on Eu­rope, and the barbarian kingdoms a­ dopted vari­ous characteristics of Roman culture. Therefore, the historiographical dispute during the nineteenth c­ entury turned on the question of ­whether ­there had been continuity in the transition from antiquity to the M ­ iddle Ages (the Roman school) or ­whether t­ here was a rupture (the German school). As shown, this dispute branched out into racial, national, territorial, and cultural questions that ­were, in fact, related to the po­liti­c al confrontations of the nineteenth ­century between France and the principalities of Germany and, ­later, the united Germany. Throughout the ­century, most scholars a­ dopted the conventional periodization and placed the fall of Rome in the fifth c­ entury. It might have been expected that t­ hose who backed the notion of continuity would have also offered a dif­fer­ent periodization, other than the fifth ­century. For, if ­t here is continuity, why, according to the Roman school, did ­these centuries still epitomize the end of antiquity?



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I would like to suggest one pos­si­ble answer. While the dispute between the German and Roman attitudes was at its most ferocious, the “Roman” scholars mainly focused on the question of historical continuity and its prominent national aspect. Their study was not directed to pos­si­ble global explanations concerning dif­fer­ent historical periodizations. This internal scholarly view was focused primarily on refuting the German claims as to the uniqueness and contribution of the Germanic tribes. I suggest that this long-­ lasting national dispute formed a sort of smoke screen preventing scholars from arriving at new conclusions. The conventional periodization, hence, was awarded with a fixed, indeed almost sacred status. The above discussion sets the framework for the following chapters, which concentrate on several novel periodizations that ­were framed during the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury, namely the historical schemes of E. A. Freeman, James Bryce, and J. B. Bury. Th ­ ese scholars, I w ­ ill argue, did not follow the conventional periodization but constructed new interpretations for the transformation between antiquity and the M ­ iddle Ages. Despite Freeman’s, Bryce’s, and Bury’s innovative approaches, it was only in the twentieth ­century that several new periodizations became accepted within the academic sphere. The most famous such periodization was that constructed by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862–1935). In 1922, a few years a­ fter the end of World War I, Pirenne published an innovative essay entitled “Mahomet et Charlemagne.” The essay, l­ater published as a book, gave rise to a significant change in the accepted historical periodization. Pirenne claimed that antiquity ended not with the migration of the barbarians in the fourth and fifth centuries but with the Muslim conquests of the seventh c­ entury.53 During the era following the barbarian invasions, Pirenne claimed, no evidence for a massive transformation is to be found. Roman society, the Latin language, law, administration, and economy w ­ ere still prevalent in the Roman West. Pirenne did recognize the tribes as responsible for the collapse of imperial unity in the West, yet, in his eyes, the core structure of the empire and above all the unity of the Mediterranean remained intact. Thus, the po­liti­cal change that fragmented the Western Empire into several barbarian kingdoms did not establish an “iron curtain” in the Mediterranean. Roman economic and mercantile unity was maintained, and the Mediterranean remained the Roman mare nostrum.54 ­Until the Muslim conquests, the Mediterranean basin was the center of the ancient world, both commercially and culturally. However, with the arrival of the Muslims, the geographic connection between the dif­fer­ent parts of the Mediterranean was severed. Following this, the

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Christian, Eu­ro­pean center of gravity moved north, while Islam ruled most of the Mediterranean domains. The rapidity of the Arab conquests was attributed to their new religion. Unlike the Germanic tribes that ­were assimilated into Chris­tian­ity ­because they did not possess a strong faith, the Muslims countered Chris­tian­ity with their own strongly defined beliefs. The Arabs, as Pirenne writes, “broke the past” and transformed their new territories into Dar al-­Islam, the abode of Islam.55 The Arab conquests thus formed a new border in the Mediterranean, and the unity of the old Roman world was shattered. The Muslim influence was felt in the eastern, southern, and western parts of the basin, while the north was still ­under the grip of Byzantium.56 ­Until the publication of Pirenne’s thesis, most scholars—­although not all, as the following chapter ­will demonstrate—­considered the fourth and fifth centuries as the period of the fall of the Roman Empire.57 Pirenne, however, linked the Muslim conquest of the southern Mediterranean with the emergence of the Carolingian monarchy; as he famously asserted: “It is therefore strictly correct to say that without Mohammed, Charlemagne would have been inconceivable.”58

chapter 4

The Unique Historical Periodization of E. A. Freeman

It was from Arnold that I first learned the truth which ­ought to be the centre and life of all our historical studies, the truth of the unity of history. —­Edward A. Freeman

The idea of the “unity of history,” as Freeman ­later attested, first left its mark on him in 1842, when he was a student at Trinity College, Oxford. This was the year that he heard Thomas Arnold, then a regius professor of modern history, stressing the importance of unity to the perception of history.1 Exactly three de­cades ­later, Freeman summarized his thinking on this theme in a lecture at Cambridge University.2 ­Here he explained that the historical pro­cess was unified and coherent and not limited to par­tic­u­lar eras or phenomena. Traditions and, most impor­tant, po­liti­cal institutions intertwine throughout ancient and modern cultures. The idea of unity came to life through continuities of race, language, and religion. For Freeman, ­there was no such ­thing as a “dead” race or language or an obsolete civilization: the past was vividly alive in the pres­ent. One of the most vital aspects of all this was the apparent abolition of conventional divisions between antiquity, the M ­ iddle Ages, and modernity, and a related denial of the alleged superiority of certain periods, such as classical antiquity and the Re­nais­sance.3 Thus, as ­will be substantiated further below, Freeman revised historical periodization and embraced a long historical continuum. Subsequent to this argument, Freeman also wished to obliterate the artificial division in the historical curricula that separated the schools of

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ancient and modern history.4 He urged students to broaden their knowledge and not limit their specialization to a specific period or historical phenomenon.5 For Freeman, the idea of the unity of history was intended to eliminate false methodological separation and to foster the study of history “as a w ­ hole.”6 The idea of unity was indeed one of Edward Freeman’s most repeated refrains. It was pres­ent in his writings from the beginning of his academic ­career through to his last publication on The History of Sicily (1891). As shown earlier in the book and as seen in other recent studies, the main scholarly focus has been on Freeman’s approach to universal history, extreme “Whiggish” tendencies, contribution to the professionalization of history, and racial views.7 But while this recent research has paid much attention to Freeman’s thinking on the “unity of history,” it has largely passed over his simultaneous emphasis upon history’s ruptures and divisions.8 Freeman’s History of Sicily, for instance, despite its impressive size, has been somewhat neglected in con­temporary scholarly lit­er­a­ture.9 Therefore in this chapter, The History of Sicily ­will be discussed at length, for it pres­ents, unequivocally, Freeman’s intertwining of his idea of the unity of history with his use of periods. Freeman did not reject the use of periods. Time and again he a­ dopted periods in order to distinguish between dif­fer­ent historical changes. For Freeman, as also his mentor Arnold and many other Victorian scholars, history was divided into two main periods: antiquity and modernity. For most of ­these scholars, the watershed between the two was marked in the fourth and fifth centuries. The penetration of the Teutonic tribes into the Roman Empire together with the emergence of Chris­tian­ity as the sole religion of the empire signified the transformation of antiquity into modernity. Yet h ­ ere a g­ reat difficulty arises. The very idea of the “unity of history” seems at odds with a division between “antiquity” and “modernity.” How could Freeman argue for a unified historical pro­cess and at the same time acknowledge the division between periods? This chapter argues that, in most cases, the key to resolving this apparent tension is to be found in Freeman’s ideas of race. By “universal history” Freeman actually had in mind a racial continuity that had existed throughout the ages and linked the histories of certain nations or p ­ eoples. Within this racial history periods do exist, since certain fundamental po­liti­c al and religious changes—­such as the emergence of Chris­tian­ity and Islam—­had occurred; yet the racial f­actor determines ­these changes and links the past, pres­ent, and ­future. The Aryan race, which was at the center of Freeman’s concerns, had enjoyed one unified history, yet this unified period could be divided into



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several subdivisions. But the real division in history is primordial as well as innate and separates one race from another. Specifically, throughout almost all its history the Aryan race has waged a constant strug­gle against the Semitic one—­a strug­gle reaching its apex with the conquests of the Arab-­Muslim tribes. The strug­gle between Rome and the Teutonic tribes was, for Freeman, a very dif­fer­ent affair, the culmination of which was the merging of the tribes into the Roman Empire as opposed to their destruction of it. This very dif­fer­ ent outcome reflected the fact that the Romans and the Teutonic tribes belonged to the same Aryan race. Nevertheless, the Teutonic invasions of western Eu­ rope did give rise to a new period within universal Aryan history—­ modernity. Yet modernity was not detached from the previous ages of Rome and the Teutonic tribes; it was rather a fusion of Romanism and Teutonism. Through his idea of race, it is pos­si­ble to explain how Freeman combined the notions of unity and distinct periods. However, as this chapter also argues, ­there are some exceptions. Through the adoption of Chris­tian­ity, nations such as the Magyars, who belonged to the so-­called Turanian race, ­were still able to become part of the Aryan/Eu­ro­pean sphere and its history. More generally, Freeman identified several exceptional cases in which cultural and po­liti­cal changes could transform racial belonging and “break” the predetermined course of history. Furthermore, in his inner division of Aryan history, Freeman is constantly torn between historical continuum (unity) and historical rupture (periods). The source of this inconsistency, it is argued, was the fact that sometimes Freeman stressed the endurance of Roman heritage within Aryan history, while in other cases he identified its cessation and focused rather on the emergence of the Teutonic kernel. This deep-­rooted tension between Roman continuation and Roman “fall” led Freeman to constantly alter his opinion concerning the inner divisions of Aryan history. Therefore, and although it has been rather neglected in recent research, Freeman devised a unique periodization. He fiercely opposed several fixed historical dates and repeatedly attacked several “­imagined” and even “sacred” ones. To use Penelope J. Corfield’s argument regarding the mutability of periodization: “old labels and key dates for change regularly become outworn, especially as the accumulating evidence of history changes perspectives upon the past.”10 Freeman abolished the time-­honored date of AD 476 as marking the fall of Rome, pointing rather to several inconsistent events as symbolizing the end of antiquity and the beginning of modernity: “So it was with that other event of the latter half of the ­century [AD 476] in which so many have so strangely seen the end of the Roman Empire, the boundary line between

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ancient and modern history.”11 To a certain extent, especially concerning the history of Eu­rope, Freeman anticipated the call of scholars such as Pirenne (see Chapter 3), Geoffrey Barraclough (1908–84), and Garth Fowden to reform periodization.12

The Reception of Historical Unity Many of Freeman’s contemporaries associated him with the idea of the unity of history. For instance, J. B. Bury, in his preface to his famous edition of Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece: “Not the least impor­tant aspect of the Decline and Fall is its lesson in the unity of history, the favourite theme of Mr. Freeman.”13 For the prelate and historian Mandell Creighton, Freeman was the main representative of the unity theory.14 Freeman, nevertheless, admitted that his theory would bear fruit only ­after a long and laborious pro­cess: I have been told more than once, and in more shapes than one, since I began my work in this chair, that I have been waging a ­battle which t­ here is no need to wage, seeing it is already won. Nobody, I am told, disputes my doctrine, let me rather say Arnold’s doctrine, of the unity of history. I should be very glad to believe this; but I cannot see the signs of it. A l­ittle time back that doctrine had certainly not won for itself universal acknowledgement ­either in Oxford or elsewhere, and I am not vain enough to think that a lecture or two ­here can have carried this general conviction even throughout Oxford, much less throughout the w ­ hole world.15 Stubbs also took issue with Freeman’s “unity.” In his inaugural lecture as regius professor of modern history at Oxford, Stubbs claimed that antiquity was “dead,” while modernity resembled a living organism and included practical lessons: “Compared with the study of Ancient History it is like the study of life compared with that of death, the view of the living body compared with that of the skeleton.”16 Modernity, Stubbs continued, was a product of two developments: Chris­tian­ity and the dominance of the German tribes. The world progressed b­ ecause of the breach that occurred in antiquity. Chris­tian­ ity and the Germanization of Eu­rope did not reflect a negative pro­cess. Quite the reverse: “It is Chris­tian­ity that gives to the modern world its living unity and at the same time cuts it off from the death of the past . . . ​such an influence



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so wide in its extension, so deep in its penetration . . . ​so ancient in the past, and in the ­future eternal, could by itself account for the unity, the life of modern history.”17 Ecclesiastical history was intertwined with modern history and symbolized its most prominent manifestation. The second pillar of modernity was the Germanic heritage, described in Stubbs’s Constitutional History. ­These two pillars merged and formed modernity through the establishment of long-­lasting religious and po­liti­cal institutions. Green, in his first ever published article, reviewed Stubbs’s lecture in the Saturday Review.18 Green contested Stubbs’s opinion that ancient and modern history o­ ught to be divided, since marked periods w ­ ere merely an artifi19 cial invention. Following Freeman, Green supported the unity approach as originally introduced by Arnold. In light of Arnold’s influence on the Teutonic historians, it was not surprising that in the opening paragraph of his review of Stubbs, Green mentioned Arnold as the founder of the British historical discipline.20 The true meaning of the unity theory was that no real division existed between antiquity and modernity. H ­ uman beings, Green argued, construct clear marked periods for differentiating easily between communities and times. In fact, our own connection with the ancient world is similar to our linkage with the modern one: “The pre-­Christian world is not wholly dead to us, nor is the post-­Christian world in necessity wholly liv­ ngland might ing.”21 Although institutions of states such as Germany and E resemble the Christian Germanic sphere far more than the classical one, other states, such as Italy and France, had preserved many classical Roman features in their institutions and language. Freeman, himself, endorsed Green’s article, mainly b­ ecause he wished to include Green in the Saturday Review pool of writers. It seems, consequently, that Freeman also criticized Stubbs’s speech against his theory of the unity of history. At this stage, it should be noted, both Freeman and Stubbs had competed but a short while before for an Oxford regius professorship in modern history. Perhaps Freeman’s support of Green’s article, as well as his criticism of Stubbs, stemmed from his discontent with Stubbs’s nomination. Stubbs, in a letter to Freeman, responded to Green’s (and Freeman’s) criticism: I do not think that you and J. R. G. mean the same t­ hing when you talk about the unity of modern and ancient History. Stated as you state it, I do not object to it—­stated as he states, I do. I hold a religious unity, he a philosophical, and you, I suppose, an ­actual continuity; but he prob­ably would deny my religious unity al-

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though you might accept it as a fact; whilst I can quite admit your continuity, but deny in toto the ­Temple and Lessing Theory, which is what Green states, though it may not be what he holds. All I said, however, in the Lecture was that Modern History is the history of the Modern nations—­the Christianized barbarians.22 Stubbs thus differentiated between several “unities”: Green’s philosophical unity; his own religious unity; and the “­actual continuity” of Freeman. When referring to religious unity, Stubbs denoted a certain Christian unity that linked the “Christianized barbarians,” as he named them, with the era before the fall of Rome in the fifth c­ entury. Stubbs’s claim for his own consent with Freeman, I argue, is not only hinged on the endurance of Chris­tian­ity but also dependent on the unity of the Teutonic nations. Hence, Stubbs, like Freeman, mainly stressed the Teutonic historical dominance and unity. Green, unlike Stubbs, when speaking of philosophical unity, and as illustrated in his review of Stubbs, also identified a certain continuity of ideas among the Latin nations, from Republican Rome to the M ­ iddle Ages. Green’s argument may correspond with his general “Latin” affinity (see Chapter 1). In any case, Green maintained that the “unity of history” was also pertinent outside the Teutonic sphere. Several posthumous reviews of Freeman’s work confirm Freeman’s pessimism concerning the ­future of his doctrine. Frederic Harrison, despite a rather positive assessment of Freeman’s work in general, criticized Freeman’s own implementation of the unity theory. According to Harrison, although Freeman advocated continuous historical perception, he himself was mostly engaged with the study of par­tic­u­lar periods. Furthermore, unlike Freeman, what Harrison identified was not a complete analogy between the pres­ent and the past “but a development of the pres­ent from the past.”23 In response to this article, the medievalist J. Horace Round published a harsh criticism of both Freeman and Harrison. However, Round claimed that Harrison did not fully grasp Freeman’s theory. Freeman’s meaning was not that all periods should be studied equally, but that through meticulous study of specific periods certain tools could be acquired that would enable the historian to delve into less familiar periods.24 Freeman, in any case, perceived the spread of his method as his main task. All t­ hose who assured him of his accomplishment misunderstood the practical consequences of the theory. The dissenters still insisted on separating antiquity and modernity. Their claim was that the distinction simplified the work of the



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historian and any attempt to replace the conventional division would be too arduous. Freeman’s response to this claim was that e­ very g­ reat change in the thinking of mankind was achieved through a laborious effort. Most impor­ tant, the historian should not pledge his affinity to an erroneous system: “It ­will be found that ­there is no real con­ve­nience in keeping up arrangements which, however much trou­ble they may save, have the slight incon­ve­nience of being wholly inconsistent with any clear views of the history of the world. Meanwhile t­ here is nothing to be done but to show in ­every shape and at ­every opportunity how much is lost by a division which tempts the students of one period to try to begin where ­t here is no beginning, and which tempts the students of another period to make an end where t­ here is no ending.”25 Students who study a certain period should not restrict their interest to fabricated dates. They need to perceive history as a continuous narrative and abandon false distinctions that, for instance, separate ancient from medieval authors. Both “types” of authors, ancient as well as medieval, had written in Latin and preserved the legacy of Rome. Therefore, despite the alleged difference between the authors, they had belonged to the same cultural and po­liti­ cal sphere.26

Teutonic “Modernity” within Aryan History While Freeman, Stubbs, and Bryce (as w ­ ill be demonstrated in Chapter 5) w ­ ere not necessarily in harmony concerning the unity theory, they did belong, as described in the beginning of this book, to the same “Teutonic circle.” ­These scholars, as well as certain German scholars, became obsessed with the Teutonic origins of their nations.27 For Freeman, the Teutonic stock, which was part of the Aryan race, was stationed together with the Greeks and the Romans on the highest pedestal of ­human existence: “Now of all the branches of the Aryan ­family which have settled in Eu­rope, three have been, at dif­fer­ent times and in dif­fer­ent ways, the leaders of all the rest. The first w ­ ere the old Greeks; then the p ­ eople of Italy, or more truly the one Italian city of Rome; and lastly the Teutonic nations.”28 Teutonic supremacy was especially evident in what Freeman and other scholars defined as “modernity.” For Freeman, according to some of his writings, “modernity” had begun with the crossing of the Rhine at the end of December 406. This was not necessarily due to the tribes that crossed (Vandals, Suebi, and so on), since ­those tribes did not leave a long-­lasting mark on the continent, but ­these invasions led

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other tribes, such as the Franks and the Goths, to act in a much more audacious way against the Romans. This new attitude was represented in the most decisive event of the ­century, the invasion of Italy by Alaric the Goth in AD 410. This event, together with the previous crossing of the Rhine, triggered a chain reaction that eventually culminated in the Teutonic conquest of Gaul and Iberia.29 In 1885, in a letter to Bryce, Freeman even used the word “revolution” to describe the magnitude of the changes of this era, writing of “the revolution of 406–419, the beginnings (if any) of modern Eu­ro­pean history.”30 In short, Teutonism ushers in modernity. In ­England, the notion that the tribes had paved the way to modern Eu­ rope originated mainly in the writings of Thomas Arnold.31 For Arnold, only two periods existed in history: antiquity and modernity,32 and a real and substantial transformation had occurred in AD 476, when the Western Roman Empire fell and the Germanic tribes inherited the empire’s dominions. Arnold, who defined himself as a modern historian, argued that the modern age was the most complete age in history and that no other f­ uture age would replace it. As he saw it, “modernity” combined the heritage of Greece, Rome, Chris­ tian­ity, and the Teutonic race. Accordingly, in the modern age, when the entire world has already been explored, a new race can no longer emerge and open a new third age in the history of mankind. Such a situation contrasts with the Roman era, when the tribes east of the Rhine w ­ ere unknown to the Romans and eventually replaced Rome as the new vital force of modernity.33 ­Here, however, we meet the same difficulty we have already encountered with Freeman: how could Arnold, who devised the theory of unity, acknowledge a long historical continuum and, at the same time, formulate this straightforward historical periodization? One pos­si­ble answer is that Arnold’s identification of AD 476 as a dramatic watershed actually separated two cycles within one unified Western history: the complete cycle of Greece/Rome and the currently incomplete Teutonic cycle. Thus, the unity of history was, for Arnold, composed of two subdivisions or cycles, which “restarted” in 476.34 Nevertheless, this explanation contains a rather problematic kernel. Arnold, in his History of Rome, identified the high point of the de­cadence of Rome with the coronation of Charlemagne.35 Freeman himself testified to Arnold’s precise date of Roman decline. In one of his first ever published articles, Freeman was unable to place his fin­ger on the exact date of the “fall.” He was, however, certain that the “fall” had occurred long ­after the “in­ven­ted” date of 476: “The history of Rome dies away so gradually into the general history of the ­middle ages, that it is hard to say at what point a special Roman



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history should end. Arnold proposed to carry on his History to the coronation of Charles the G ­ reat. Something may doubtless be said for this point, and something also for other points, both earlier and l­ater.”36 Interestingly enough, when his article on Mommsen was republished in 1873 in his Historical Essays, Freeman added a new footnote.37 In the footnote, he confessed that when the article had first appeared he was still reluctant to accept the view of Arnold, yet now he had come to terms with him and supported his opinion that with the coronation of Charlemagne a new po­liti­cal entity had arisen. By name it was maybe Roman but in essence it reflected Germanic po­ liti­c al characteristics: “I now feel that Arnold was right, and that the coronation of Charles is the proper ending for a strictly Roman history. Before that point it is impossible to draw any line. The vulgar boundary of AD 476 would shut out Theodoric the Patrician and Belisarius the Consul. But when the Roman Empire practically becomes an appendage to a German kingdom, the old life of Rome is gone. The old memories still go on influencing history in a thousand ways, but the government of Charles was not Roman in the same sense as the government of Theodoric.”38 This footnote seems to ­settle the question of when Arnold, and following him Freeman, thought that the Roman Empire had ceased to exist. Nevertheless, it seems that in Arnold’s and especially in Freeman’s writings the question of t­hese conflicting dates was only partly solved. For instance, in a letter to Green, Freeman reaffirmed his opposition to the artificial date of AD 476, while offering another alternative date for the “fall”: “I made a sudden leap from Licinius and Sextius to Belisarius and Narses. I am most interested in the two ends of the story—­I say end—­for the Gothic War is r­ eally the end of that Rome. As far as I see, 476 made no practical difference h ­ ere at all; the events of the next age as 39 of the age before made a g­ reat deal.” It seems, thus, that the Gothic War of 553, following the conquest of Rome by the generals of the Eastern Roman Empire, denoted another optional date for Rome’s demise. At this stage, however, what is impor­tant to note is that, whereas Arnold ended his first cycle in the fifth ­century or with Charlemagne’s coronation, he still observed a certain unity of Western history divided by two periods. The division between the two periods was not hermetic. Several ancient ele­ments still flourished in “modernity,” and, correspondingly, certain modern aspects had already existed in “antiquity.”40 For example, while visiting the Rhine, Arnold wrote in his journal that during antiquity the Teutonic tribes had managed to preserve their distinctiveness in the face of Roman influence. Consequently, in “modernity,” ­after the Roman “fall,” they became the “regenerating ele­ment in modern Eu­rope.”41

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­Here it is in­ter­est­ing to note the divergence between Thomas Arnold and his famous son, the poet and literary critic Matthew Arnold (1822–88). In his lectures and ­later book On the Study of Celtic Lit­er­a­ture (1867) Matthew aimed to show the affinity between the Teutonic (Anglo-­Saxon) and the Celtic cultures. The two cultures s­haped the British Isles and must coexist: “I like variety to exist and to show itself to me, and I would not for the world have the lineaments of the Celtic genius lost.”42 This was dissimilar to his ­father’s stance, as Matthew recalled: “I remember, when I was young, I was taught to think of Celt as separated by an impassable gulf from Teuton; my f­ather, in par­tic­u ­lar, was never weary of contrasting them.”43 Matthew, very much influenced by Renan, asserted that beyond the known Germanic contributions to En­glish culture, the French-­Celtic ele­ment (“imported” especially from Brittany) must also be acknowledged. Hence, Matthew Arnold argued against the anti-­French inclinations of celebrated Victorians such as his own ­father and Thomas Carlyle.44 Freeman, the con­temporary of Matthew, ­adopted like Thomas (the ­father) prominent anti-­Celtic tendencies (Chapter 1). Freeman also cherished Thomas Arnold’s notion of a unified history separated by periods. For Freeman, the emergence of Teutonic “modernity” signaled a very impor­tant transformation that was still part of a unified Aryan history. The term “Aryan,” however, points to a divergence between Arnold and Freeman. In Arnold’s case the emphasis was not on the unity of Aryan history but of Western history. In his writings, he rarely if ever refers to the Teutonic p ­ eoples as part of a larger Aryan group. His emphasis is rather on what he called the “moral” links between Rome and the Germanic tribes, while disregarding any physical connections: “We derive scarcely one drop of our blood from Roman ­fathers; we are in our race strangers to Greece, and strangers to Israel. But morally how much do we derive from all three: in this re­spect their life is in a manner continued in ours; their influences, to say the least, have not perished.”45 Arnold did acknowledge a biological continuation in the case of the Teutonic nations; for example the En­glish descended from tribal Germanic ancestors: “Our En­glish race is the German race; for though our Norman ­fathers had learned to speak a stranger’s language, yet in blood, as we know, they ­were the Saxons’ brethren: both alike belong to the Teutonic or German stock.”46 Freeman, unlike Arnold, also repeatedly accentuated not only Western but also Aryan continuation between Greece/Rome and the tribes. This was a natu­ral, almost predestined evolution, which signified the progressive essence of Aryan civilization. According to Freeman, this Aryan endurance was an ultimate proof of his theory of unity.



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As a result of this natu­ral Aryan unity, Freeman even averred in his inaugural lecture (1884) that no periods exist within Aryan history. Therefore, the real beginning of “modernity” was found in the earliest histories of Aryan Eu­rope. Such a claim, Freeman declared, stood in stark contrast to the view of the German scholar Baron Bunsen who began modernity with the “call of Abraham,” and with ­others who identified “modernity” with the French Revolution: “We may well agree to draw a line between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern,’ if we hold our ‘modern’ period to begin with the first beginnings of the recorded history of Aryan Eu­rope. . . . ​­There alone can we find a real starting-­point; a line drawn at any ­later time is a mere artificial and unnatural break.”47 Freeman, thus, suddenly pres­ents a completely conflicting notion of “modernity.” If Freeman, indeed, identified “modernity” as equivalent to all Aryan history, then why, as we have previously seen, did he identify “modernity” as beginning in the fifth c­ entury? One pos­si­ble explanation was given by Freeman himself in his inaugural lecture. He clarified h ­ ere that he was obliged to follow certain rules of general history and adopt the “conservative” periodization that associated modernity with the wandering of the tribes.48 In short, due to constraints of the historical profession he was “forced” into a dif­fer­ent opinion. This, I argue, is only a partial explanation, since for Freeman the wandering of the tribes was not at all artificial. He identified two substantial developments that had transformed Eu­rope from the fifth c­ entury: the dissemination of Orthodox Chris­ tian­ity among the pagans and the planting of the Teutonic institutions as the foundation for the modern Eu­ro­pean states. Both of t­hese developments had originated in antiquity; however, their adoption among the Eu­ro­pean Aryan nations occurred in modernity. “Modernity” was not detached from antiquity, but rather founded upon it and fused Greek/Roman and Teutonic civilizations. Thus, Rome had maybe changed but had not ceased to exist. This converged with Freeman’s notion of the Teutonic dominance in modernity. The Germanic tribes w ­ ere the ones who received and carried on the torch from the Romans and the Greeks: “As the Roman everywhere carried Greece with him, so the Teuton everywhere carried Rome with him.”49 The tribes also passed this legacy into the f­ uture, and they w ­ ere the direct ancestors of the Eu­ro­pean Aryan powers and the moving force of modern history. Hence, the transformation from antiquity to modernity was pos­si­ble ­because the Teutons, like the Romans and Greeks, belonged to the same Aryan race. Therefore, although a dramatic change had been instigated with the migrations of the tribes, the Teutonic tribes just marked another stage of the unified Aryan history.

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The impor­tant role he ascribed to the Teutonic tribes in the making of modernity fitted into Freeman’s vision of the general historical grandeur of the Aryan race. All of the Aryan nations, he held, originated from one primal source. As Freeman confirmed in a letter to the anthropologist E. B. Tylor: “the forms of government of the Aryan nations—­I suspect one may safely go beyond the Aryan nations—­a ll spring from a common source, an Urbrunnen ­ ere unmatched in their elegance [original source/fountain].”50 The Aryans w and vitality. They ­were fundamentally superior and the natu­ral inheritors of Eu­rope: The original [Aryan] unity worked for ages before men knew anything of its being; it bound men together who had no thought what­e ver of the tie which bound them. The Gaul, the Roman, the Goth, had no knowledge of their original kindred. But that original kindred did its work all the same. It enabled Gaul, Roman and Goth, to be all fused together into one society, a society in which the Hun and the Saracen had no share. First and foremost, then among the common possessions of civilized Eu­rope, we must place the common possession of Aryan blood and speech. Throughout Eu­rope that which is Aryan is the rule; that which is not Aryan is the exception.51 Freeman’s perception of a historical racial and linguistic unity among the Aryans, which excluded other races, such as the Semites, is pivotal in his historical scheme. As w ­ ill now be discussed, it was especially evident in his view of the history of Sicily. Since antiquity, Sicily had been the conflict zone of the two races that dominated history: the Aryan and the Semitic. This racial b­ attle also signified an almost perpetual geo­graph­i­c al strife between the East and the West. Through Sicilian history, one can see how Freeman’s idea of race enabled him to adopt a certain historical continuum that also included an internal division into subperiods.

Sicily: The Historical “Racial” Battleground Bury, who could be considered as Freeman’s follower, published in 1892 two extensive reviews of Freeman’s History of Sicily.52 A short while before the



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publication of the reviews, he explained to Freeman that, while he himself was not an expert on Sicilian history, nevertheless he felt an urgent need to review the work.53 In his reviews, Bury remarked that the history of Sicily had always been regarded as fragmentary and lacking coherence, mainly ­because the island constantly passed from the possession of one conqueror to the next. Freeman, despite this alleged fragmentation of Sicilian history, argued that Sicily had a unified history: “Mr. Freeman, taking it as his text, created a completely new view of Sicilian history. He showed that Sicily has a drama of her own, and that her history has a unity beyond the mere geo­graph­i­cal unity. She is the land of historical cycles. Her early history foreshadows her l­ater history.”54 According to Bury, the greatest achievement of Freeman in this work was his production of a unified history of Sicily that was not attached to one period but reflected the entire history of the island. Indeed, in his History of Sicily, Freeman expressed his idea of the “unity of history” in the most explicit way. Sicily, for him, was the ultimate test case, and its historical unity was primarily established upon race. In antiquity, Carthage and Rome had fought over the control of the island. L ­ ater, during the ­Middle Ages, the Saracens conquered the island from Byzantium. Regardless of the date of the invasion, all the Western/Aryan conquerors of Sicily ­were linked to one another through race, as ­were all the Eastern/Semitic conquerors. The Normans signified another version of the Romans or Greeks, while the Saracens represented a new cycle of Carthage. Hence, Freeman acknowledged the existence of dif­fer­ent periods/rulers in the history of Sicily; yet t­hese periods came u ­ nder the roof of a unified Aryan or Semitic history: “Look at Sicily, the meeting-­place of the nations, the battle-­field of creeds and races, where the strife between Aryan and Semitic man has been since fought out in all its fulness. That wonderful cycle of events loses all its historic life, if we look at one fragment of it only; the strife with the Phoenician and the strife with the Saracen each loses half its meaning if e­ither is parted from the other.”55 In addition to his extensive History of Sicily, another, shorter book on the island’s history by Freeman was published posthumously. This book’s title, The Story of Sicily: Phoenician, Greek, and Roman (1892), signified the “racial changes,” from Semitic (Phoenician) to Aryan (Greco-­Roman), which Freeman stressed as defining the history of Sicily.56 While in his History of Sicily Freeman’s narrative continued u ­ ntil 300 BC, in The Story of Sicily he very briefly concluded with the Saracen conquest of Sicily (tenth and eleventh

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centuries), which marked “a wholly new period in the history of Sicily.”57 Although Freeman promised in his last sentence to continue his history of the Saracens in another volume, his death prevented him from ­doing so. However, his final remarks epitomize his argument concerning Sicilian and even world history. The Saracens gradually tore Sicily from the possession of Rome, Eu­rope, and Chris­tian­ity. Yet, during the eleventh ­century, Christian Eu­rope retaliated and the Normans regained control of the island. This Christian reconquista, Freeman asserted, exemplified another stage in the eternal strug­gle between the two distinct races and creeds: “In all this we have the old history of Sicily over again. The old strug­gle between Eu­rope and Africa, between Greeks and Semites, is fought over again, but it is this time made more keen by the religious opposition between Christendom and Islam.”58 Freeman claimed that even though the animosity between the two races had seemed to intensify following the emergence of Islam, the strug­gle between Semitic and Aryan “dogmas” had already materialized in the beginnings of Sicilian history: The strife of races was from the beginning made sharper by the strife of creeds. . . . ​On no soil has the strife of West and East, the strife which in its first days took the shape of the strife between Greek and barbarian, been carried on more stoutly. It showed itself in all its fulness as a strife of creeds when it took the shape of the g­ reat strife between Christendom and Islam. But it was a strife of creeds long before . . . ​Christendom and Islam came into being. . . . ​But in earlier days, before Aryan Eu­rope had ­adopted that Semitic faith [Chris­ tian­ity] which the Semitic man himself despised, the creed of Aryan Eu­rope was already worth fighting for, and well was it fought for on Sicilian soil. In days when no purer light had yet been given, it was already a crusade to strike a blow for Apollon by the shore of Naxos, for Athene on the island of Ortygia, against the foul and bloody rites of Moloch and Ashtoreth. This calling, as the abiding battle-­field of East and West, is the highest aspect of Sicilian history.59 The fact that even ­under dif­fer­ent religious beliefs, before the foundation of the two prevalent mono­the­istic doctrines, the Semites and Aryans ­were en-



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gaged in a strug­gle proved that ­there was an essential and innate difference separating the two races. Furthermore, for Freeman, the racial strife in Sicily testified to the general inferiority of the Semites. While the Aryans improved and developed throughout history, the Semites mostly brought de­cadence and misery: “But nations and cities of the Semitic stock change less in the course of ages than Greeks and Teutons. . . . ​They are set before us as ­bitter, gloomy, obedient to rulers, harsh to subjects, most ignoble in their panic fears, most savage in their anger, abiding in their purpose, taking no plea­sure in joy or grace. We thus see in them the Semitic nature in all its fulness, the nature of which never puts forth its full strength till the strength of any other ­people would have given way.”60 ­There ­were periods when the Semites achieved some worthy accomplishments in Sicily and in general: “At the time when the Phoenician settlements in Sicily and in other parts of Eu­rope ­were made they ­were undoubtedly steps in the path of pro­gress.”61 The Phoenician civilization, through the development of the alphabet, also managed to become “more Eu­ro­pean” in comparison to other barbarian entities. Yet, eventually, Freeman commented, “he [the Phoenician] still remained barbarian.”62 In short, the inherent brutal nature of the Phoenicians eventually surpassed their achievements. This racial strug­gle did not characterize the relations between the Greek “colonists” and the Sikel (Sicel) p ­ eople, who w ­ ere the autochthonic inhabitants of Sicily and awarded the island with its name. The Sicels and the Greeks, according to Freeman, belonged to the same Eu­ro­pean sphere and race. Therefore, the Sicels w ­ ere gradually assimilated into the superior Greeks. An utterly dif­fer­ent “encounter” came to pass between the En­glish settlers and the Native Americans: The Sikel was not as the Red Indian. The En­glish settler in Amer­ i­ca had to deal with savages of another race, another colour, whom no pro­cess of war or peace could turn into En­glishmen. Their fate was simply to die out before the advance of the more civilized ­people. The Greek settler in Sicily came across men far beneath him in all po­liti­cal and social advancement, but who ­were still Eu­ro­pe­ans like himself, kinsfolk who had simply lagged ­behind. The Sikel needed not to die out before the Greek; he could himself in course of time become a Greek, and could contribute new ele­ments to the Greek life of Sicily.63

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Thus, racial unity allowed integration and historical continuation between the Sicels and the Greeks. Due to racial differences, a similar assimilation was neither pos­si­ble between the Phoenician and Greek inhabitants of Sicily nor between the En­glish and the Native Americans. Concerning the En­glish and the Native Americans, Freeman a­ dopted a racial explanation based on certain physical-­biological characteristics. The main advantage of the barbaric p ­ eople within the Aryan race was their ability to learn and be integrated into the superior Aryan nations. Freeman even wrote in one of his footnotes that, contrary to the claim of François Guizot, the French historian and statesman who compared the American Indians with the Germanic invaders of Gaul, ­there is a ­great difference between the two, since “Aryans can at least be taught.”64 For Freeman, once the superior En­glish colonized a totally new and alien racial sphere (Amer­i­ca), they ­were destined to annihilate the inferior local races.65 Somewhat—if not entirely—­similarly, Freeman argued that following the invasion of the British Isles by the ­A ngles and Saxons, the native Celtic tribes had been expelled to the periphery (Wales, Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, and so on) by the superior Teutons.66 However, unlike the Semites or Native Americans, some of the Celts, being Aryan, had still managed to assimilate into the dominant race. In an article titled “Carthage,” Freeman had already asserted that many assumed that this kingdom “had drunk in something of the spirit of the West, and had almost parted com­pany with the barbaric kingdoms of Asia.”67 But in truth, Freeman argued, Carthage, unlike the ­great Aryan civilizations of Greece and Rome, had left no substantial legacy to modern Eu­rope.68 At this stage in his essay on Carthage, Freeman raised another point. While Carthage had hardly any influence on Eu­rope, other Semitic entities, such as the Saracens and the ancient Hebrews, had contributed to the formation of modern Eu­rope. Their influence, Freeman surprisingly observed, was equal to the impact of Greece and Rome: “It is truly wonderful how, while other Semitic races, the Hebrew and the Arab, have influenced the world on a scale equal to that of Greece and Rome. . . . ​The Saracen who swept away the younger Carthage has been our master in some ­things. The Phoenician who founded the elder Carthage has been our master in nothing.”69 Freeman’s recognition of this Semitic contribution is rather remarkable, especially when considering his numerous comments about the foul character of ­these specific Semitic nations. The above quote perhaps testifies that Freeman formed a rather composite and far from monolithic image of the Semites. However, this quote notwithstanding, Freeman’s general view of Semitic and in par­tic­u­lar Muslim



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history was very negative. This negative perception, as I now aim to show, adds another facet to our understanding of how, through race, Freeman reconciled his unity theory with his use of periods.

The Christian Aryan Sphere and Islamic Emergence Freeman wrote of a Christian Aryan unity that had stretched from the Atlantic to Mount Taurus and had remained intact a­ fter the arrival of the Germanic tribes.70 The main heritage of Rome continued in the church, where the “successor of the Fisherman still in very truth sits on the throne of Nero, and wields the sceptre of Diocletian.”71 The church was the true successor of the empire in the West. In Byzantium, the emperor was dominant and fought for the sake of the cross, while in the West the emperor was absent, so the bishop of Rome took his place.72 The church was a positive force and not a negative one. From the fourth c­ entury, Rome was unified u ­ nder the church and not divided by its growing influence, an approach that, in Freeman’s eyes, stood in contrast to Gibbon’s monumental theory about the destructive force of the church and the Germanic tribes.73 While Christian Aryan history was defined by pro­gress, law, and monogamy, the Muslim East, in contrast, was “stationary, arbitrary, polygamous and Mahometan.”74 The Saracens, like their Semitic Phoenician ancestors, retained several periods of fame and glory. The Arabs had succeeded in gaining in­de­pen­dence during the course of history. No other nation throughout history was as f­ ree as the Arabs, whose holy cities of Mecca and Medina w ­ ere never ­under the control of any foreign power.75 Furthermore, the first four caliphs had ruled relatively justly.76 However, according to Freeman, this was a rare exception and from the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty “we soon begin to hear of the same crimes, the same oppressions, which disfigure the ordinary current of eastern history.”77 Islam, for Freeman, was an opposite racial, ideological, and po­liti­cal force to the Christian Aryan sphere. For that reason, the rise of Islam in the seventh ­century transformed the Roman Empire and created a “new world order”: “it was indeed a moment for Mahomet and his Saracens to change the face of the world.”78 From then on, another cycle or period of racial strife between “Aryan and Semitic man” had begun, and the East together with parts of the West “became the possession of men altogether alien and hostile in race, language, manners and religion.”79 In short, the Islamic conquest of the

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seventh ­century ruined Roman unity. Through this observation, Freeman actually devised a unique periodization for the end of antiquity. This was distinct from the conventional periodization that identified AD 476 as marking the Roman “fall.”80 Even more impor­tant, the status Freeman awarded to the seventh ­c entury appears to “shatter” his own theory of historical unity. Freeman, indeed, identified the Muslim conquest as one of the most dramatic events in history. The Muslim conquest was unique since most former invasions had been carried out by nations that, like the Romans, ­were Aryan. For this reason, as explained above, the Teutonic tribes reinvigorated Rome rather than destroyed it. Following the Muslim invasion, however, Roman unity was lost forever. This event did not mean that Aryan history ceased to exist, but rather denoted the final transformation within Aryan history from Rome to the Teutonic nations. Once again, t­ here w ­ ere ruptures in time, but they exist ­under one unified racial history. The Saracen invasion primarily symbolized another stage in the ceaseless strug­gle between Aryan and Semitic races. In an article published in 1855, at the beginning of Freeman’s ­career, he already emphasized the differences between the East and the West. The article, entitled “Mahometanism in the East and West,” argued, as would History of Sicily thirty or so years l­ater, that an inherent difference had separated the East from the West since ancient times, long before Muhammad had begun to preach his creed among the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and even prior to Jesus’s wanderings in the Galilee and Judea: “The strug­gle which for so many centuries arrayed the Christian and the Mahometan against each other, was but the continuation, ­under altered circumstances, and with altered motives, of a strug­gle which had been waged for ages before the promulgation of ­either faith, and whose commencement has to be looked for in times far beyond the reach of au­then­tic history. It is the old internecine war between East and West, between despotism and freedom, between a progressive and a stationary social state.”81 Perhaps in this early publication Freeman’s theory of the unity of history was set out in public for the first time. As in vari­ous l­ater examples, Freeman spoke of historical unity differentiated by subperiods. Nevertheless, in this article the distinction was not between “Semitics” and “Aryans,” but between the despotism of the East and the tolerance of the West. The Western entities ­were the guardians of ideals and fought against the barbarity and tyranny of



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the East. In Freeman’s age, the main representatives of “eastern despotism” ­were the Ottomans. The Ottomans w ­ ere a con­temporary yet worse version of the Saracens who preceded them. The identification of the Turks as another expression of Eastern tyranny attests, once again, how Freeman ­adopted a certain unity of history within a par­tic­u­lar race and divided it into several cycles or periods. However, the main prob­lem was that, according to racial classifications, the Saracens and the Ottomans belonged to distinct races. The Saracens w ­ ere Semites, while the Ottomans ­were considered as Turanians and formed a distinct racial group. This group had originated in central Asia and also included the Magyars, Finns, and Bulgarians. Hence, the unity between the Saracens and Turks was mainly founded on Islam. Possibly for this reason, Freeman mainly emphasized not race but the continuous religious inheritance from the Saracens to the Turks. It seems, therefore, that Freeman’s theory of racial unity was not generalizable to all cases. Still, as seen above, a certain Eastern or Asian innate character, which was pre-­Islamic, linked the Saracens and l­ater the Turks with the ancient Eastern nations. This “Eastern character” was in many re­spects very similar to Freeman’s idea of racial unity, since it embedded a primal core that distinguished the Asian nations from the Western ones. Through this Asian background, the two races (Semitic and Turanian) joined forces and opposed the West, Chris­tian­ity, and the Aryans. A native Asian connection also existed between the Jews and the Turks. This, Freeman wrote, was the cause of Disraeli’s pro-­Turkish policy: “But we cannot sacrifice our ­people, the ­people of Aryan and Christian Eu­rope, to the most genuine belief in an Asian mystery. We cannot have ­England or Eu­rope governed by a Hebrew policy. . . . ​ Lord Beaconsfield is the active friend of the Turk. The alliance runs through all Eu­rope. Throughout the East, the Turk and the Jew are leagued against the Christian.”82 Freeman did not only associate the Jews and the Turks on the basis of religion, especially as the common enemies of Chris­tian­ity, but he also recognized them as sharing mutual “blood”: “But blood is stronger than ­water, and Hebrew rule, is sure to lead to a Hebrew policy. Throughout Eu­rope, the most fiercely Turkish part of the press is largely in Jewish hands. It may be assumed everywhere, with the smallest class of exceptions, that the Jew is the friend of the Turk and the ­enemy of the Christian.”83 The “fluidity” of race is most evident ­here. Sometimes, in explaining the long historical unity, Freeman promoted biology, while in other cases religion

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was brought to the forefront. The main lesson is that the theory of historical unity that connected the Saracens with the Turks was based on both “blood” and religion. Islam and Chris­tian­ity had been developed ­under the Saracen and Roman empires. Yet, l­ater the Turks and the Franks, the new forces of history, continued this religious and racial strug­gle with even greater zeal: But the East was to supply a further spectacle, exactly analogous to what had already taken place in the West. What the Roman Empire was to Chris­tian­ity, that of the Saracen was to Islam, its birthplace, its nursery, the vehicle of its extension to other nations, but not the power which should itself supply its most permanent or its most zealous devotees. When the two creeds waged the fiercest strug­gle, when the strife was most openly and consciously for the faith of each, when the Cross and the Crescent met in the most deadly conflict for the land held sacred alike by the votaries of both, the warfare was no longer between the Roman and the Saracen, but between their respective disciples, the Frank and the Turk.84 The strife, which had reached its apex during the Crusades, continued, according to Freeman, down to the nineteenth ­century. The occurrences in Freeman’s own era can further explain how and why he defined the Ottomans as a new cycle of Saracen aggression. In contrast to a British foreign policy that supported Ottoman interests, especially in the face of Rus­sian expansion, Freeman defined the Turks and not the Rus­sians as the archenemy. The prime example of this British support was apparent in the Crimean War, in which the British fought alongside the Ottomans against the Rus­sians. Nevertheless, this was not the only case, and for the most of the nineteenth c­ entury British governments maintained a similar foreign policy. For instance, during the 1870s the Turks fought and massacred insurgents and civilians in Bosnia-­ Herzegovina and Serbia. In 1876, the Bulgarians joined the mutiny against the Porte, and in response the latter commenced a bloodbath of Bulgarian communities, especially in the city of Batak. Despite this, Britain did not change its official stance ­toward the Eastern Question and maintained its support of the Porte.85 Following Gladstone’s criticism of the Porte’s massacre of thousands of Bulgarians during the so-­called “Bulgarian horrors” (April 1876),86 Freeman wrote harsh comments in the Times of London (September 8, 1876) against



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Ottoman atrocities: “Eu­rope is astounded to find that it has within its confines a race . . . ​capable of worse t­ hings than even the African or the Red Indian. . . . ​ The Bulgarian details are a new chapter in ­human nature—­new, that is to say, to t­ hose who happen not to be versed in Tartar or Turkish history.”87 In his third edition of The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1876), Freeman, following the news from the Balkans, wrote a ­whole new preface, which focused on the misdeeds of the Ottomans. Although he originally averred that his book would not include the Ottomans but only the history of their Saracen pre­de­ces­sors, most of the preface was dedicated to the former. Through the past history of the Saracens and the current policy of the Turks, Freeman came to the conclusion that the Ottomans and any other Islamic regimes could never be reformed. Furthermore: “Even ­under the very best Mahometan government, it is impossible that men of other religions than the Mahometan should have real po­liti­cal equality with Mahometans.”88 The intertwining between the developments of Freeman’s days and his view of the past is most explicit and can explain Freeman’s most renowned saying, that “history is past politics and politics are pres­ent history.”89 In any case, Freeman did follow the teaching of this saying, since he amalgamated the two spheres, the po­liti­cal and the historical. The Saracens, as illustrated, had separated the East from the West and had formed the division between the two parts of Christendom. ­L ater, and in a similar way, their Ottoman successors became another malicious force that prevented the Eastern Christian lands of Serbia, Greece, and so on from uniting with the rest of the Christian world. Thus, the theory of the unity of history fitted the proposed linkage between the Saracens and the Ottomans ­because of the long-­term religious, cultural, po­liti­cal, and racial affiliations that w ­ ere transmitted over the course of history. Religion and race bonded the Saracens and the Ottomans throughout history. Racial and religious differences prevented t­ hese nations from blending into Christian Aryan Eu­rope: “the Ottoman Turks still remain as they w ­ ere when they first came, aliens on Aryan and Christian ground.”90 However, the other nations of the Turanian race, contrary to the Ottomans, had been fused into Aryan and Christian Eu­rope through religious conversion: “The Bulgarians, originally Turanian conquerors, have been assimilated, by their Slavonic subjects. The Finnish Magyars have received a po­liti­cal and religious assimilation; their kingdom became a member of the commonwealth of Christian Eu­rope, though they still keep their old Turanian language.”91 ­These Turanian nations did not only enter the Christian sphere but became also an

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integral part of Aryan Eu­rope. In their case, the terms “Aryan,” “Eu­ro­pean,” and “Christian” ­were almost indistinguishable: “all the nations of Eu­rope belong to the one common Aryan stock. And ­those which do not, the earlier remnants, the ­later settlers, have all, with one exception [Turks], been brought more or less thoroughly within the range of Aryan influences. If not Eu­ro­ pean by birth, they have become Eu­ro­pean by adoption.”92 Thus, sometimes, through religious adoption, racial belonging could be transformed. More impor­tant, ­these nations did not have one unified racial history divided by periods. Instead of continuing their regular historical course, as part of the Turanian race, they became, through religion, part of the Aryan Christian nations. In his History of Sicily, Freeman mentioned another example of a nation that had “transformed” its intrinsic racial classification. Following the “discovery” of the Indo-­A ryan languages, the Persians ­were identified as primarily Aryans. This had awarded the Persians with an innate advantage over their neighboring non-­A ryan nations. Yet, over the course of history, following Semitic influences, Persia “switched sides” and became an essential part of the “Eastern” races.93 Therefore, like some of the Turanian nations that converted into Aryanism through their adoption of Chris­tian­ity, Freeman also provided an opposite example of an Aryan nation assimilating into the Eastern sphere. Predominantly, in relation to the Turanian Christian nations, Freeman regarded race and language as “fluid,” less than binding concepts (see Chapter 1). A more fixed definition would have undermined his anti-­Ottoman stance. While, the comparable ele­ment of race and language verified the ancient origins of the Aryans and their unified history, concerning the Turanians such comparability was problematic. In the opening paragraph of “Race and Language,” Freeman presented an incident in which several Magyar students came to the Turkish sultan in a quest to reinitiate the natu­ral racial and linguistic bond between the two nations. This act included symbolical and perhaps po­ liti­ cal implications. Despite religious and national differences, Hungary, through an alleged native bond, might acknowledge the Porte’s regional supremacy. This act, Freeman argued, was a product of the science of philology, which stressed the similarities between the Turkish and Hungarian languages.94 For Freeman, this example demonstrated the pos­si­ble vulnerability of the argument about the connection between race and language, since in some cases it could undermine his own po­liti­c al agenda. Freeman’s stance against the Ottomans and their control of the Christian countries might be weakened if such “artificial” links w ­ ere to be fostered. Alliances between



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nations such as Greece and Bulgaria, which confront a common e­nemy (Ottomans), could be endangered. While Chris­tian­ity bonded them, race could set them apart due to the fact that the Greeks ­were Aryans and the Bulgarians w ­ ere of Turanian origin. Freeman even stated in “Race and Language” that not all Aryans ­were necessarily part of the same “natu­ral ­family” and that many individuals had assimilated into the race: They [Aryans] may have been more like an accidental party of fellow-­travellers. And if we accept them as a natu­ral ­family, it does not follow that the vari­ous branches which grew into separate races and nations, speaking separate, though kindred, languages, w ­ ere necessarily marked off by more immediate kindred. It may be that ­there is no nearer kindred in blood between this or that Persian, this or that Greek, this or that Teuton, than the general kindred of all Aryans. For, when this or that party marched off from the common home, it does not follow that t­ hose who marched off together ­were necessarily immediate b­ rothers or cousins. The party which grew into Hindoos or into Teutons may not have been made up exclusively of one set of near kinsfolk.95 Following this, Freeman even suggested that supposedly it could be claimed that no Aryan race had ever existed, since it was never completely “pure.” Moreover, one could almost state that race was an invention altogether: “No living En­glishman can prove with absolute certainty that he comes in the male line of any of the Teutonic settlers in Britain in the fifth or sixth centuries.”96 This argument, however, was accentuated not b­ ecause Freeman regarded race as insignificant. Quite the reverse, Freeman strived to justify its adoption by discarding vari­ous objections against the notion of race. Therefore, he asserted that the understanding of race should be a “presumption of a community of blood.” No definite proof existed for “purity” of blood, yet it was assumed that races include some blood connections between most of their members. In the case of the Teutons, the supposed blood connections converged with their unique demo­cratic institutions and both define the long as well as unified history of the Teutonic race. To conclude, Freeman’s clarifications in “Race and Language” ­were mainly a reflection of the po­liti­cal and national conditions that existed in southeastern Eu­rope. According to him, ­these explanations ­were not required for western

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Eu­rope but vital for eastern Eu­rope. The difference between the two spheres was that in the West a pro­cess of integration had occurred between the locals and the invaders, while in the East this pro­cess had been absent. In the West, in many places, the Teutonic ele­ment converged with the Roman or the Celtic (they ­were all Aryan and Christian). However, the Christian Aryan nations of the East, together with the converted Turanian nations, ­were distinct from the Ottomans and could never merge with them. Following the religious distinction, the rules of “adoption and assimilation,” as named by Freeman, do not apply in eastern Eu­rope. ­These rules contain the idea that any individual/ community can join a certain dominant race and, ­after several generations, become an integral part of it. The po­liti­cal implication was that ­these Christian nations must gain full in­de­pen­dence from the Ottomans. Freeman altered his notions of race in light of certain po­liti­cal and thematic considerations. In most instances, race was for him the in­de­pen­dent variable that governed history. Through race, I have argued, Freeman’s use of periods did not necessarily undermine his theory of historical unity. Nevertheless, as his discussion on the Turanian Christian nations testifies, it was not all about race. Religion, in some cases, changed the unified course of racial history. This suggests that, according to Freeman, the Magyars or Bulgarians had retained two totally distinct histories: before and ­after their conversion to Chris­tian­ity. Hence, the “tension” between his unity of history and periods was not always resolved through race and with regard to the history of the Christian Turanian nations the “tension” remained unsettled. Freeman’s (and Arnold’s) theory of unity was not necessarily a comprehensive and coherent theoretical system that or­ga­nized all events ­under one set of definitive rules. Certain discrepancies, as seen above, surface in the idea of the unity. Even within the periodization of Aryan history ­there w ­ ere some uncertainties. Freeman named dif­fer­ent dates as marking the end of Rome (early fifth ­century; Muslim invasion; coronation of Charlemagne). In some places, he even dismissed any notion of the Roman “fall” and actually embraced a certain Roman continuum. Following ­these divergent accounts, Freeman could be and was criticized, since sometimes it seems that his views fluctuate and alter from one book to the next. He wavered between two dominant narratives: one stressed Roman-­Teutonic continuance while the other emphasized the Roman rupture. To a certain extent, Freeman’s fluctuation pres­ents another facet of the tension between his unity theory and use of periods. ­These divergent dates of Roman decline perhaps resulted from Freeman’s observation that the ending line of antiquity was a rather arbitrary or even



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artificial notion.97 Thus, the specific dates for the Roman “fall” w ­ ere less significant and the four centuries between the invasion of the Germanic tribes and AD 800 (Charlemagne’s coronation) denoted a “transitional stage” from antiquity to modernity. Another alternative is to distinguish between two notions: the end of antiquity and the beginning of modernity. One could argue that they both mark the same period, since the end of one is the beginning of the other. I maintain, however, that in Freeman’s writings ­these two concepts did not always converge. He acknowledged that the Teutonic tribes had symbolized the force that commenced modernity. Yet the coming of modernity does not necessarily mean that antiquity ended. The contrary was true, through Chris­tian­ity the tribes merged into the empire and invigorated it with a new life. Predominantly, this endurance was pos­si­ble since both the Romans and the Teutonic tribes belonged to the same Aryan race. In relation to the end of antiquity, as illustrated, the real split in the unity of the empire had materialized with the emergence of the Muslims, a foreign racial and religious power. The catalyst initiating the change was perhaps external (Muslims), yet the transformation was completed with Charlemagne. The latter established a German empire that continued the legacy of the Teutonic tribes and was totally detached from the Eastern Romans (Byzantium). The po­liti­cal and institutional distinction between the two Christian empires did not signify the termination of their shared Aryan history. Their innate Aryan bond resurfaced with all its vitality when the Aryan nations of eastern and western Eu­rope strug­gled with the Ottomans. Race, thus, determined the historical course of the Aryan nations.

chapter 5

Teutonism and Romanism James Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire

Freeman’s Teutonic unity enduring throughout modernity was also exemplified in the institutional legacy of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). The interest in the HRE had emerged in Freeman’s early writings. On November 19, 1865, Freeman told Bryce: “I have believed in the H.R.E. much as you do for years. Of course, it was [Francis] Palgrave who first set me ­really thinking.”1 James Bryce, as Freeman noted and as ­will be illustrated throughout this chapter, also accentuated the institutional Romano-­Teutonic legacy of the HRE. Bryce, born to a Presbyterian Ulster-­Scot ­family, engaged in both academic and po­liti­c al/diplomatic spheres throughout his long c­ areer. Following the conclusion of his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1862, he received a fellowship at Oriel College that lasted ­until 1889. It was at the beginning of his fellowship that Bryce began to write The Holy Roman Empire (1864), which would eventually be published to ­great acclaim.2 From 1870 and ­until 1893, Bryce was regius professor of civil law at Oxford University. At the beginning of his professorship, law and modern history ­were still incorporated ­under the same honorary degree, but in 1872, with Bryce’s support, law and modern history w ­ ere fi­nally separated. Bryce also enjoyed a thriving po­liti­cal ­career. He was first elected to Parliament for the constituency of Tower Hamlets in 1880, and in 1885 he moved to the constituency of South Aberdeen. In 1886 he was nominated by Gladstone to the role of undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, an appointment that lasted for only six months owing to the dissolution of the Liberal government. Bryce remained in Parliament u ­ ntil 1907, when he was appointed British ambassador to the United States, a role he filled ­until 1913.3 ­Later, upon returning to Britain at the outbreak of World



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War I, Bryce headed two of the most significant investigations of the war. One examined the German invasion of Belgium.4 The other, known by the generic title of the “Blue Book,” reported on the Armenian genocide of 1915.5 This chapter highlights the similarities between Bryce’s and Freeman’s historical perceptions. The two shared a mutual admiration of Teutonism (see Chapter 1) and both cherished the HRE, which they deemed the “institutional by-­product” of Teutonic supremacy. Bryce, as an expert in constitutional law, emphasized the institutional durability of the HRE and its central role in the shaping of the modern “West.”6 The chapter elaborates Bryce’s long-­term historical scheme and its likeness to Freeman’s exceptional periodization. Due attention, however, is also given to the differences in their views. One such was that, while employing a notion of historical longevity in his Holy Roman Empire, Bryce, or so I argue, did not fully accept Freeman’s unity theory, which was anchored on the innate racial supremacy of the Aryan race. Bryce, it w ­ ill be shown, although including “race” in his scheme, mainly stressed the endurance of Teutonic institutions.7 In exploring this difference, this chapter ­will also delve into Bryce’s mutable understandings of the concept of “race.” Freeman, although accepting the fluidity of any notion of “race,” remained loyal to the narrative supporting Aryan and Teutonic dominance. Bryce did implement racial explanations and usually adhered to the Teutonic narrative. Occasionally, however, mainly in the 1900s, he also voiced other, less enthusiastic perceptions of “race.”

The “Legacy” of Sir Francis Palgrave Before delving into Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire and his unique historical periodization, I return to the authority mentioned in Freeman’s letter—­Sir Francis Palgrave (1788–1861). Palgrave apparently retained a vast influence on the historical perceptions of both Freeman and Bryce. Palgrave, originally Cohen, was born to a Jewish ­family and converted to Anglicanism in 1823. As the first deputy keeper of the Public Rec­ords Archive, Palgrave was thoroughly engaged with historical and juristic themes.8 Two main themes dominated his historical writings: Romanism and Teutonism and Palgrave moved between the two, which he deemed the most significant forces in history. Freeman, as seen in the previous chapter, advocated a similar but not identical historical argument. He a­ dopted Palgrave’s notion of Rome’s endurance a­ fter AD 476: “The man [Palgrave] who discovered that the Roman Empire did not terminate in

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a.d. 476, but that the still living and acting imperial power formed an historical centre for centuries l­ater, merits a place in the very highest rank of historical inquirers.”9 In a letter to George Finlay (1799–1875), the historian of the Byzantine Empire, Freeman, once again, accentuated Palgrave’s influence on the insignificance of AD 476. However, on this occasion, Freeman also voiced certain criticisms: On Sir F. Palgrave’s Normandy and E ­ ngland. Are you up in his writings? I do not remember that ­either of you ever refers to the other; I am not sure that you would appreciate one another but you always go together in my mind. I make my historical system out of a ­union of you two. Between you, you work out the fact that the Roman Empire did not die in 476, but lived on as long as you please ­after. You do the East, which has been forgotten, he the West, which has been misconceived. But he does it only by hints and fragments, and in his pres­ent book, he has gone half wild in the form of his composition. I should rather like to write the history of the Western Empire myself; i.e. not so much the history of Germany or of Italy as the history of the Imperial idea.10 Palgrave, in Freeman’s eyes, was a pioneer in the study of the Western Roman Empire, yet he was also inclined t­oward certain exaggerations. This was especially evident in Palgrave’s overdramatization of Rome’s role in the shaping of modernity. As seen, it was Teutonism rather than Romanism that was for Freeman and his circle the dominant force of modern Eu­ro­pean and world history. Palgrave, as Roger Smith shows, initially (­until the late 1820s) argued for Teutonic dominance in the establishment of the Eu­ro­pean states and especially in the foundation of ­England.11 During ­these years, Palgrave, like his con­temporary, Thomas Arnold (Chapter  2), and John Mitchell Kemble, a pioneer of Anglo-­Saxon studies, was ­under the influence of German scholars, such as the Grimm ­brothers and the poet F. H. von der Hagen (1780–1856).12 However, from the 1830s Palgrave began to identify the Roman ele­ment as the most dominant carrier in the history of Eu­rope.13 This “Roman shift” is evident in Palgrave’s History of ­England (1831).14 In his introduction to The History of Normandy and ­England (1851), Palgrave commented that the Germanic tribes had perhaps ruined physical Rome but in fact they “humbly knelt before their Captive.”15 The tribes had embraced Rome’s culture and



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heritage: “This devolution of authority from Rome, this absorption of Roman authority by the Barbarians, this po­liti­cal, and more than po­liti­cal, this moral unity, this confirmation of a dominion which they seemed to subvert . . . ​is the ­great truth upon which the w ­ hole history of Eu­ro­pean society, and more than Eu­ro­pean society, Eu­ro­pean civilization, depends.”16 Rome, ruled by several emperors of foreign descent, absorbed “external” influences for centuries: “The Romans taught their Vassals to become their Lords. They educated Goth and Celt and Teuton and Iberian for the Imperial throne.”17 The Teutonic barbarians merged into Rome not only through po­liti­cal, institutional, and cultural influences but also through a racial fusion. The blending of races, however, was not equal and included a more dominant Roman/Latin character.18 For Palgrave, even the origins of the En­glish nation w ­ ere not to be found in the German woods but rather the Roman Capitol: “We have been told to seek in the Forests of Germany the origin of the feudal system and the conception of the Gothic aisle. We s­hall discover neither t­here. . . . ​Rome imparted to our Eu­ro­pean civilization her luxury, her grandeur, her richness, her splendour, her exaltation of h ­ uman reason, her spirit of ­free enquiry, her ready mutability, her unwearied activity, her expansive and devouring energy, her hardness of heart, her intellectual pride, her fierceness, her insatiate cruelty.”19 This intense pro-­Roman sentiment was, no doubt, at the bottom of Freeman’s belief, relayed to Finlay, that Palgrave “has gone half wild.” In another volume of his History of Normandy and of ­England, however, Palgrave intimated that Rome’s victory over the Teutonic tribes was far from decisive. In this passage, Palgrave, like many of his contemporaries, acknowledged the direct transfer of power from Rome to the Teutonic tribes: “The Teutonic races, succeeding as inheritors to the fierceness of the Roman Ea­ gle, have in the l­ater ages of the world been most fearfully predominant.”20 The key word ­here is “fearfully” ­because, in Palgrave’s view, the Teutonic conquest had devastating consequences for other, non-­ Teutonic tribes: “Gifted with mighty intellectual vigour, they reject, they punish all o­ thers and themselves, by their intolerant, fanatic, and contemptuous pride, which takes the sweetness out of their very kindness. Amongst the Teutonic tribes, none so deeply involved in guilt as the ‘Anglo-­Saxon race.’ ” The worst of the Teutonic tribes ­were Palgrave’s “own” Anglo-­Saxons: “In their treatment of the Celtic nations, they have exceeded all o­ thers in iniquity, even degraded Spain.”21 The ferocity, intolerance, and superior innate capabilities of the tribes stood in contrast to the unifying and universal character of Rome. While Rome integrated other cultures and races, the Teutons crushed them.

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A question, of course, arises concerning Palgrave’s remarks. His views on the Teutonic emergence contradict his argument that Rome, rather than the tribes, continued to shape Eu­ro­pean history, including ­England, during “modernity.” Despite ­these last quoted remarks and when considering the full scope of Palgrave’s writings, the inevitable conclusion is that Rome’s inheritance was the cornerstone of his historical scheme. Yet, to claim that Palgrave totally abandoned the Teutonic narrative is far-­fetched, and it seems that he ­imagined a certain unity between Rome and Teutonism. It is pos­si­ble, of course, that Palgrave’s narrative included certain inconsistencies, and therefore his scheme was not totally coherent. Hence, he sometimes interchanged between Roman and Teutonic narratives. In any case, it is impor­tant to note that the Teutonic scholars did not adopt Palgrave’s less favorable view of the Teutonic tribes. However, his emphasis on the insignificance of AD 476 was received as a seed and grew into the root of the periodization of both Freeman and Bryce. Palgrave’s periodization of world history was bound up in the famous prophecy of Daniel.22 From the very beginning of his general introduction to The History of Normandy and of ­England, he focused on the notion of the “fourth kingdom.” This term, injected with a religious meaning, appeared in the subtitle of the book’s introduction. Due to our ignorance of past ages, Palgrave wrote, we must depend on the holy scriptures. In this case, the prophecy of Daniel holds the key to historical understanding since revelation, Palgrave stressed, is the foundation of universal history.23 The four empires symbolize four consecutive world ages and include “all the history we know, all we ­really need to know, all we can ever ­really know.”24 According to Palgrave, the four monarchies had been Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Thus, Rome represented the last of the monarchies and the period from its establishment ­until Palgrave’s own days was in fact one single continuation of Roman dominance: “We, therefore, all live in the Roman world: the departed generations are not distinguishable in t­ hese reasonings from ourselves; the ‘dark ages’ and the ‘­middle ages’ are merely bights and bends in the ­great stream of Time.”25 The tribes, according to this perspective, preserved the essence of Rome and so did not commence a totally new period. In his History of the Anglo-­Saxons (1831), Palgrave even criticized the beacons of the eigh­teenth ­century, Robertson and Gibbon, for “missing” the linkage between the fourth monarchy/Rome and modern Eu­rope. Palgrave, however, did praise, in his succeeding sentence, the works of Jean-­Baptiste Dubos, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, and John Allen, who all recognized the continuous influence of



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Rome.26 Through the adoption of the four monarchies scheme, the coming of the Germanic tribes in the fifth ­century became less prominent. One long and unified historical period merged Rome with modernity. This vision, in effect, amounts to an earlier variation on Freeman’s “unity of history.” From our glance at Palgrave’s writings, several conclusions may be drawn. Primarily, it is obvious why Freeman named him a source of inspiration. Freeman cherished Palgrave’s innovative historical scheme, arguing for a certain historical unity and the continuance of certain Roman mores among the modern Teutonic kingdoms. Indeed, Palgrave’s “attack” on the false and artificial division of AD 476 became central to Freeman’s and—as now w ­ ill be discussed—­Bryce’s historical perception. But, to conclude, a major difference still separated Palgrave from the likes of Arnold and Freeman. While the latter, especially Freeman, regarded Teutonism as superior, Palgrave, in most cases, favored Rome’s heritage. For him, the “fourth empire” merged the two ele­ments, yet Romanism still prevailed.

Bryce: Imperial Unity from Augustus to AD 1804 Like Palgrave, Bryce stressed the fusion of Teutonism and Romanism. Unlike Palgrave, Bryce continued to regard Teutonism as a central component in the shaping of modernity. Together with Freeman, Bryce belonged to the Teutonic circle of scholars. But where Freeman founded his arguments on the alleged racial dominance of the Aryans, Bryce, primarily emphasized the juristic-­institutional inheritance of the Romano-­Teutonic civilization. While some scholarly attention has been given to Freeman’s historical method (see Chapter 4), Bryce’s historical scheme remains largely forgotten. ­There are, indeed, some studies focusing on Bryce’s prolific academic and diplomatic/po­liti­c al ­c areer, but his Holy Roman Empire, including his personal correspondence and notes on this work, have never been thoroughly studied, let alone examined in the context of what ­w ill be defined as his unique periodization.27 Freeman regarded Bryce as an authority on the history of the German lands. In a letter of October 22, 1864, he described Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire favorably.28 This was not so surprising since a year or so before it had been Freeman who had encouraged Bryce to submit an essay about imperial Germany to the Arnold Essay Prize competition.29 In his letter, Freeman mentioned two uncertainties regarding Bryce’s book: one concerning the style

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of reference (footnotes); and the other, Bryce’s “Germanism,” which was “better anyhow than a Gallicism.”30 Freeman’s words illustrate, once again, his aversion ­toward France/Celticism. More impor­tant, and like Freeman’s review of Mommsen (see Chapter 2), together with his re­spect ­toward Germany, Freeman also criticized German scholarship. His Teutonic affinity did not mean that he automatically approved of all German scholarship. For Freeman, since the En­glish ­were the purest of all the Teutonic nations, they o­ ught to preserve and cherish their original customs. It is also pos­si­ble that when Freeman criticized Bryce’s “Germanism” he was not yet sufficiently acquainted with German scholarship ­because his knowledge of German scholarship only developed ­later. This argument is corroborated by the fact that in the early 1860s Freeman acknowledged Bryce as an authority on German scholarship and asked Bryce to introduce him to vari­ous German books. When Bryce traveled in Germany in 1863 he wrote several letters to Freeman. The letters described con­temporary German studies on federalism and the system of the German Mark. Among many German works, Bryce mentioned the names of the scholars (mainly jurists) Karl Friedrich Eichhorn (1781–1854), Waitz, Grimm, and Maurer.31 Due to his German expertise, Freeman urged Bryce to pay him a visit in his ­house in Wales, so Bryce could assist him with the study of Germany.32 Freeman, as described earlier, while considering himself an En­glish expert on Swiss federalism, was e­ ager to acquire greater knowledge of German scholarship. Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire is a clear example of his affinity and expertise in the history of the German lands. The book pres­ents a very long history of the German-­Roman imperial idea and may be viewed as Bryce’s own interpretation of the “unity of history,” or at least his version of the link between antiquity and modernity. Already in the opening pages of the book he included a list of the emperors from Augustus (27 BC) down to the nineteenth ­century. In the first editions, the list concluded with the abdication of the last Holy Roman emperor, Francis II (ruled ­until 1806).33 However, in ­later editions, such as the sixth edition of 1904, the list ended with the German emperor William II.34 A long imperial continuum of almost two millennia had dominated western Eu­rope. In all editions, next to the name of Romulus Augustulus and the year AD 476, Bryce wrote: “End of the Western line in Romulus Augustulus. Henceforth, till a.d. 800, Emperors reigning at Con­ ntil stantinople.”35 According to Bryce, the West had merged with the East u the final division occurred when Charles I (the G ­ reat) restored the empire. For that reason, since the imperial lineage had continued in the East, Bryce pre-



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sented a list of the ruling emperors of Constantinople, beginning with Anastasius I (ruled AD 491–518) and ending with Irene’s removal of Constantine VI in the East (AD 797), which occurred almost parallel with Charles’s coronation in the West (AD 800). From this stage, the emperors of Byzantium ­were omitted from Bryce’s list and he names only the Western rulers. Thus, in AD 800, the East and the West fi­nally went their separate ways. This long endurance of imperial rule is also apparent in another list in the opening pages of The Holy Roman Empire, where Bryce lists the central events in the empire’s history from the b­ attle of Pharsalus, when Caesar became tribune for life (48 BC), to the war of 1871 between France and Germany.36 For Bryce, the tribal leaders who conquered the West in the fifth ­century had not become an integral part of the Roman Empire. Accordingly, Odoacer and Clovis and other barbaric chieftains ­were not included in Bryce’s imperial genealogy. Considering ­these tribal leaders merely as tribal kings, Bryce’s view on this issue was common, and, indeed, most scholars did not classify the Germanic barbarian rulers as continuing the imperial lineage. Freeman, in one of his early letters to Bryce, asked Bryce why he mentioned Odoacer as the king of Italy.37 Bryce in response wrote that this was an error, and in fact: “Odoacer was merely rex . . . ​not [rex] Italiae,—­I d ­ on’t know how that can have been in, ­unless it was copied from Gibbon when I just wrote the essay and never corrected ­after.”38 Freeman responded that the barbaric kings who had conquered Rome remained tribal kings without any additional title: “I cannot find that e­ ither Odoacer or Theodoric formally called himself king of Italy. They ­were kings, i.e., kings of their own ­people, and imperial lieutenants as well, but not territorial kings. You d ­ on’t find historical titles for ages.”39 Bryce did acknowledge the role of the tribes in the decline of the Western Roman Empire. In handwritten comments (ca. 1863) preceding the publication of his Holy Roman Empire, he argued that the tribes w ­ ere part of Western decline: they had damaged the po­liti­cal structure and inflicted general havoc. Yet, the tribes ­were only the symptom of a graver illness. The main cause of the decline, Bryce argued, was an internal financial crisis that harmed Rome for centuries. The crisis originated from inefficient governance and exhaustion of resources. In addition, t­here was a general “social feebleness,” evident in the absence of a true aristocracy, growing poverty, and want of troops.40 This conclusion was recapitulated thirty or so years l­ater in Bryce’s 1901 essay “The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India.” Referring generally to the de­cadence of empires in history, Bryce commented that empires die e­ ither from “disease” or “vio­lence.” In the case of Rome, it was a common ­mistake to single

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out “vio­lence”—­namely, the invasion of the tribes—as the sole reason for the fall.41 However, it was mainly the “disease” of the Roman economy that instigated the de­cadence. As Bryce describes the prob­lem in his Holy Roman Empire: The crowd that filled her [Rome’s] streets was composed partly of poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from po­liti­cal rights; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves, gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than their masters. Th ­ ere was no ­middle class, and no system of municipal institutions, for although the senate and consuls with many of the lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for centuries enjoyed no effective power, and w ­ ere nowise fitted to lead and rule the p ­ eople. Hence, it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent inroads of the Lombards had reduced the ­great families to beggary, the framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced.42 The “fall” was mostly a consequence of internal Roman anarchy. The tribes only gave the final blow. Interestingly, both in his early notes and in his 1901 essay, Bryce included the Teutonic and the Arab-­Muslim invasions as part of the same external “vio­lence.” For him, ­there w ­ ere two main barbarian waves: the northern wave of the Germanic and Slavonic tribes, on the one hand; and on the other, the eastern wave mainly including the Muslim hordes. Both waves lasted for several centuries and constantly threatened the empire ­until “the north [Teutonic] and the east [Muslims] ultimately destroyed Rome.”43 Yet again, for Bryce, it was mainly about the economy: “But the dissolution and dismemberment of the Western Roman Empire, beginning with the abandonment of Britain in a.d. 411, and ending with the establishment of the Lombards in Italy in a.d. 568, with the conquest of Africa by the Arab chief Sidi Okba in the seventh c­ entury, and with the capture of Sicily by Musulman fleets in the ninth, ­were ­really due to internal ­causes which had been for a long time at work.”44 Bryce’s views on Western Rome’s final destruction require further clarification. Did Rome ­really “fall” with the arrival of the invaders or, as Bryce stated in The Holy Roman Empire, had it been integrated with the Eastern Roman branch prior to Charles’s restoration? It seems that Bryce’s arguments ­were inconsistent. Bryce perhaps changed his opinion between the first appearance of his Holy Roman Empire (1864) and the publication of his Studies



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in History and Jurisprudence (1901). This, however, is not a satisfactory explanation, since in his new fourth edition of the The Holy Roman Empire (1901), he maintained his original narrative of an enduring Eastern and Western Roman unity. Thus, Bryce did not alter his opinion and another explanation is needed for this supposed inconsistency. Bryce, I argue, did acknowledge a certain physical destruction of the Western Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, which had forced it to unite with the Eastern Empire. In The Holy Roman Empire, Bryce stressed that following the tribal invasions, the imperial line had continued in Constantinople. The Western “destruction,” however, was both complex and gradual. In a letter to Freeman, Bryce chose to describe the Western collapse as “disintegration rather than destruction.”45 Most impor­tant, ­there was a continuation of the imperial notion in the Eastern Roman Empire. Furthermore, even the Germanic kingdoms ­adopted certain Roman mores and institutions. In a letter of 1862, where Bryce set down the fundamental notions of his ­future publication, he told Freeman that cooperation and ­union, rather than devastation, defined the relations between the Romans and Teutons: “I think of beginning with an attempt at changing the relation of Roman and Teuton in the fifth c­ entury: How to trace penetration of Romans from in Teutonic Kingdoms.”46 Bryce’s view was unique, since in place of constant strife between the two entities, he a­ dopted a less dichotomist approach. The tribes, hence, did not obliterate every­thing, and as Bryce emphasized ­later in his book, they had ­adopted Roman law, titles as well as some institutions. Most impor­tant, the tribes embraced Chris­tian­ity, the official Roman religion, while abandoning their ancient Aryan beliefs: But the idea of a Roman Empire as a necessary part of the world’s order had not vanished: it had been admitted by t­ hose who seemed to be destroying it; it had been cherished by the Church; it was still recalled by laws and customs; it was dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days when despotism was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant E ­ ngland the fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities, and before long began to call themselves imperatores and basileis of Britain.47

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Chris­tian­ity became the main force defining the longevity of the Roman Empire. Consequently, parallel to his list of emperors, Bryce introduced a list of the popes. The list included all the “bishops of Rome” from Petrus down to Pius IX (elected 1846).48 Hence, the church and the Holy Roman Empire marched side by side. The two institutions, despite years of rivalry, could not exist separately and both ­shaped Eu­rope. It was a gradual development, but eventually “Chris­tian­ity as well as civilization became conterminous with the Roman Empire.”49 The merger of state and church reached its zenith with Charles’s coronation at Rome. Following the coronation, the West once again merged with the church and empire: “The Frank [Charles] had been always faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian auxiliary. His ser­vices against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders, against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He was now unquestioned lord of Western Eu­rope.”50 From the reunification, both civilizations (Roman and Teuton), instead of engaging in conflict, fi­nally joined forces. For Bryce, one of the main c­ auses for the sustainability of the HRE was the comingling of Rome and Germany u ­ nder the roof of the church. Charles became the heir of Augustus, and subsequently t­ here was a “­union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modern history begins.”51 The restoration of Rome, as Bryce named this event, had been the most dramatic event in history. Other monumental events, such as the assassination of Caesar, the conversion of Constantine and the reformation of Luther w ­ ere significant, but stood in the shadow of Charles’s Roman restoration. The convergence of Teuton and Roman was only made pos­si­ble through the acts of Charles. Indeed, a transformation befell the empire with the invasion of the Teutonic tribes, but with the new emperor Rome regained its control of the West. Most impor­tant, Charles’s empire altered historical periodization as it carried a “new spirit” and marked the “end of decaying civilization.”52 A direct line linked the Roman Empire with the HRE. Still, from the coronation, a new era had commenced, which Bryce defined as the beginning of modernity. This last point is crucial for the discussion, since Bryce, as in the case of Thomas Arnold and Freeman, identified AD 800 as a monumental date. Like Freeman, Bryce also asserted that too much importance had been awarded to AD 476. Nevertheless, Bryce identified certain crucial developments that had begun in the fifth ­century, such as the integration of the



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Western Empire into the Eastern one: “To t­hose who lived at the time, this year (476 a.d.) was no such epoch as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men’s mind commensurate with real significance of the event. For though it did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its consequences ­were from the first g­ reat.”53 When visiting Aachen, the coronation site of thirty-­one Holy Roman emperors, Bryce stressed to Freeman the longevity of the imperial institution and the linkage between Charles, Otto III, and l­ater emperors: “The basilica at Aachen, the stone bright u ­ nder the dome inscribed Carlus Magnus, the sarcophagus where his bones lay, the marble chair in which Otto III formed his sitting . . . ​and in which e­ very king of the Romans was crowned till Ferdinand I, it is a singular building in e­ very way.”54 The cathedral in Aachen connected not only Charles and Otto, but also Charles and Ferdinand I (crowned in 1558), who w ­ ere separated by more than seven hundred years yet ruled the same political-­institutional entity. More impor­tant, from Charles, the heart of the empire moved to the north, into the German lands: “The Teutonic Emperors . . . ​in the seven centuries from Charles the ­Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done.”55 Bryce noted in his handwritten comments that the Carolingians had revived the Teutonic assemblies and that the empire had a Teutonic rather than French-­Celtic kernel. Teutonism, therefore, became the dominant ­factor in the empire: “The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of Eu­rope, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn has never faded and can never fade entirely from their name.”56 Bryce also used the term “race” to describe Teutonic prevalence. For that reason, he mocked the French claim that their own “Charlemagne” (rather than Charles or Carl) and his empire had been French. For Bryce, as seen in Freeman’s case, the French imperial claim was an absurdity. Charles’s empire was “Eu­ro­pean not French.” Due to their tribal Teutonic ancestry, which promoted the notions of freedom and equality, the German states “have been l­ittle more successful than their neighbours [France] in the establishment of f­ ree constitutions.”57 ­There was also an innate, rooted difference between the Teutonic and the Romano-­Celtic races. While the Teutons signified particularism, the RomanoCeltic races w ­ ere the carriers of universalism: “The tendency of the Teuton was and is to the in­de­pen­dence of the individual life . . . ​a s contrasted with Keltic and so-­c alled Romanic p ­ eoples, among which the unit is more completely absorbed in the mass.”58 Bryce, I argue, is ­here wavering between

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t­hese universal and particularistic tendencies. As shown, he admired the Teutonic contribution yet on many occasions praised Rome’s influence on world history, its homogeneous character, and its abolishment of racial differences. The empire, through law and culture, transformed gradually into a unified entity. A pro­cess intensified by the spread of Chris­tian­ity, uniting the empire ­under one religion and morality: “The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech and law, smote this feeling on its po­liti­cal side; Chris­tian­ity more effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are equal.”59 It was Chris­tian­ity and not paganism that formed the notion of ­human equality. This development benefited the “backward races” within the Roman territory b­ ecause they w ­ ere elevated to the “level of the more advanced 60 [races].” The HRE, which carried Roman law, religion, and notions to modernity, signified fusion rather than strife. No continuous conflict persisted between the Teutonic and Latin races. The empire, indeed, had suffered physical and po­liti­cal destruction following the tribal invasions, but it eventually remained intact and even prospered a­ fter the fifth c­ entury. Rome symbolized a utopian model of just governance, which due to its universal characteristics could never be demolished: Rome “was imperishable b­ ecause it was universal.”61 The ideas embedded within the empire ­were far more power­ ful than its military might. Paradoxically, when its po­liti­cal power diminished, its culture and values only became stronger: “When the military power of the conquering city had departed, her sway over the world of thought began . . . ​her language, her theology, her laws, her architecture made their way where the ea­gles of war had never flown. And with the spread of civilization have found new homes on the Ganges and the Mississippi.”62

The Roman and British Empires The Romano-­Teutonic civilization reached Amer­i­ca (Mississippi) and India (Ganges) through the expansion of what Bryce named the “En­glish race living ­ ere similarities and even on both sides of the Atlantic.”63 For Bryce, ­there w continuities between the Roman and British Empire (with its American ­sister nation), despite the thousand or so years that set ­these entities apart. Through this analogy, Bryce’s view of historical unity or the merger of antiquity and modernity becomes mostly evident. British rule in India, he asserted, was especially akin to the Roman control of the provinces.64 Rome was the only an-



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cient empire resembling modern empires. Naturally, some differences existed. Rome, a territorial power, conquered the lands bordering the Italian peninsula and gradually expanded to other areas. ­England, on the contrary, was a naval force, and its focus was on distant regions such as India, six thousand miles away. Yet, a few central resemblances still linked Rome and ­England. Neither empire had intended to conquer such vast lands, and both had advanced somewhat accidentally. But following their expansion, both civilized the “barbarous or semi-­civilized races,” as Bryce titled them, u ­ ntil the savage customs ­were neglected and the “old native life dies out.”65 Thus, Bryce viewed the civilizing mission of Rome and Britain as constructive, since it reinvigorated the life of the autochthonic inhabitants: “­There is an imperialism which is rash, boastful, and aggressive . . . ​and t­ here is also an Imperialism which is reasonable.”66 A certain enlightened imperialism, resembling John Stuart Mill’s vision, characterized the spirit of both empires.67 Apropos of the last point, Bryce did find a major distinction between the two empires. Britain, dissimilar to Rome, could never fully assimilate the Indians. This was due to major racial distinctions: “The relations of the conquering country to the conquered country, and of the conquering race to the conquered races, are totally dif­fer­ent in the two cases. In the case of Rome ­there was a similarity of conditions which pointed to and ultimately effected a fusion of the ­peoples. In the case of ­England ­there is a dissimilarity which makes the fusion of her ­people with the ­peoples of India impossible.”68 Rome, as detailed ­here and above, incorporated most of the races living within its territories. Several emperors had even been of non-­Latin origin. For this reason, the ­union of the Roman and Teuton even survived the physical devastation of Western Rome. Bryce also asserted, in a point that w ­ ill be reemphasized, that “race” played a totally dif­fer­ent role for the Romans: “­There was no severing line like this in the ancient world.”69 The Romans, he continued, had hardly engaged with other “dark races” (excluding the Egyptians and the Nubians). Even if they had more frequently encountered t­ hese races, it is probable that the Romans would have mixed with them. The Latins, as also seen in the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of South Amer­i­ca, had freely blended with members of other races. This was almost an innate character of the Latins, absent among the Teutonic stock: “the Romans would have felt and acted not like Teutons, but rather as the Spanish and Portuguese have done. Difference of colour does not repel members of ­these last-­named nations. Among them, ­unions, that is to say legitimate u ­ nions, of whites with dark-­skinned p ­ eople, are not uncommon,

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nor is the mulatto or quadroon offspring kept apart and looked down upon as he is among the Anglo-­A mericans.”70 Bryce criticized the conduct of his own Anglo-­A mericans. Discrimination against the “darker races” was the main source of slavery, which Bryce strictly opposed: “nothing did more to mitigate the horrors of slavery than the fact that the slave was usually of a tint and type of features not markedly unlike t­ hose of his master.”71 In his “Empire in India” essay, Bryce referred to the tendency of t­ hose of Teutonic stock as a force majeure ­because they could not resist their natu­ral aversion ­toward the “dark races”: “Now to the Teutonic ­peoples, and especially to the En­glish and Anglo-­A mericans, the difference of colour means a g­ reat deal. It creates a feeling of separation, perhaps even of a slight repulsion. Such a feeling may be deemed unreasonable or unchristian, but it seems too deeply rooted to be effaceable in any time we can foresee.”72 Bryce, therefore, attempted to “distance” himself from such a clear racial-­ physical typology, mainly ­because this contradicted his moral/Christian values. Religion could also bond or separate races. Chris­tian­ity was crucial in the ­union of the Teuton and Roman. Religion, in general, he wrote: “held together the Eastern Empire, originally a congeries of diverse races, in the midst of dangers threatening it from e­ very side for eight hundred years. Religion now holds together the Turkish Empire in spite of the hopeless incompetence of its government. Religion split up the Romano-­Germanic Empire ­after the time of Charles the Fifth. The instances of the Jews and the Armenians are even more familiar.”73 Race, nevertheless, was far more prevalent. In the Teutonic-­Roman civilization the minor racial variances allowed mixture, while in the case of the En­glish race in Amer­i­ca or India, racial hierarchy separated the “civilized” from the “barbarous”: “even if colour did not form an obstacle to intermarriage, religion would. Religion, however, can be changed, and colour cannot.”74 The “Blacks” in Amer­i­ca, for instance, despite their Chris­tian­ity, w ­ ere still treated unequally due to their dif­fer­ent physical features. To the Anglo-­Saxons, “race,” dissimilar to religion, included an inherent stamp that divided h ­ uman groups. Nevertheless, other examples in Bryce’s writings testify to explicit racial views. Despite his condemnation of the Anglo-­A mericans, “colour” or “blood,” it could be argued, was still very central to his approach.75 The fact that, even in his rather more universal argumentation above, he stressed the natu­ral distinction between the Latins and Teutons concerning their assimilation with the “dark races” points to a certain implementation of a racial reasoning that assumes that vari­ous innate f­actors characterized the conduct of races from the dawn of history. Another example of Bryce’s racial discourse appears at



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the end of his “Empire in India” essay. Rome, he maintained, had ­either integrated races with advanced civilization or stocks of “full intellectual force,” such as the Gauls and the Germans, who had been “capable of receiving her lessons, and of rapidly rising to the level of her culture.”76 Some races, following their inborn qualities, could be “advanced,” while o­ thers, like the Indians, had hardly any hope: “But the races of India ­were all of them far ­behind the En­ glish in material civilization. Some of them w ­ ere and are intellectually backward; ­others, whose keen intelligence and aptitude for learning equals that of Eu­ro­pe­ans, are inferior in energy and strength of ­will.”77 Race, together with religious/cultural differences, formed a barrier between the British and the Indians. In many other current examples the gap between the “civilized” and the “semi-­barbarous” was not as wide. For instance, the Siberians, Georgians, and Armenians, Bryce commented, w ­ ill most likely integrate with Rus­sia. A comparable example to the racial breach between the En­glish and the Indians was to be found in the American rule in the Philippines, where the “cultivation” of the autochthonic races ­will prob­ably never occur. Bryce, therefore, shared some of the racial views that he himself condemned. Like other scholars (such as Freeman and Kingsley), Bryce was a nineteenth-­century liberal scholar opposing slavery who, in the same breath, voiced racial sentiments. However, as I have argued before, despite Bryce’s usage of certain racial-­physical classifications, his approach also involved dominant universal tendencies. For Bryce, especially in comparison with Freeman, “race” was not especially crucial. While Freeman identified it as an in­de­pen­dent f­ actor signifying historical unity, Bryce thought that race was less dominant in antiquity. In the above statements, mainly from his “Empire in India” essay, Bryce expressed a mixed view: mostly criticizing racial explanations, yet, in some cases, also adopting them. In his Race Sentiment as a F ­ actor in History (1915), a lecture Bryce delivered six months ­after the outbreak of World War I, he voiced a more skeptical view ­toward “race.”78 In the essay, written eight years before his death, he asserted that although many considered “race” as pivotal, it was not a major ­factor in history. In Bryce’s Race Sentiment, which resembles his “Empire in India” essay, he repeated with greater clarity that in the ancient world “race” had mostly been ignored. During antiquity, it had been tribal and national sentiments, which ­were distinct from race, that determined relations between vari­ous groups, such as the Persians, Greeks, and Jews. Ancient civilizations had no consciousness of belonging to a dif­fer­ent race, and their strug­gles, dissimilar to Freeman’s perception, had not being founded on innate racial animosities.

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Even the Völkerwanderung of the Teutonic tribes had not been identified by the men of antiquity as signifying a racial conflict. Concerning this last idea, Bryce himself, it should be noted, still described the tribal invasions as a “gigantic Race Movement.”79 Thus, he did not dismiss the racial kernel altogether but only refuted the view of such contemporaries as Freeman that already in antiquity the “wanderings” had been regarded as part of a racial strife. When moving into the ­Middle Ages/early modernity, Bryce continued to downplay the significance of “race” in vari­ous conflicts. In his opinion, the lasting wars between the Turks and Christian Eu­rope w ­ ere chiefly founded on religious differences rather than race. Furthermore, the internal Eu­ro­pean rivalries of the eigh­teenth c­ entury, such as the conflicts between Spain and the Dutch or between France and Britain, w ­ ere not racial. The most in­ter­est­ ing example in Bryce’s 1915 essay arises in relation to his own British Isles. As previously mentioned, during the 1870s and 1880s Freeman, Stubbs, and even Bryce shared a common view concerning the racial conflict between the Anglo-­Saxons and the Celtic inhabitants of the isles. Due to this conflict, the Celts had been forced to migrate into the island’s periphery, that is, Wales and Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. In his 1915 essay, Bryce denied any such racial Teutonic-­Celtic strug­gle. Th ­ ere ­were some con­spic­u­ous religious differences between Ireland and ­England, yet the races mixed and even the Anglo-­Normans who settled Ireland became “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”80 In Ulster, Bryce’s homeland, ­there was less of a mixture between Lowland Scots and the Irish, but this, following Bryce’s general argument, was subsequent to religious and not racial differences. ­There is no such ­thing as racial purity among the “two nations of Ireland” since: “neither of such nations would consist wholly of Celtic, neither wholly of Teutonic blood.”81 In our own period, Bryce wrote critically, race became every­thing. Groups merge or separate based on racial classifications. The change commenced with the American and French revolutions, which had awakened the national sentiment among the masses. ­These national sentiments ­were soon colored with racial shades strengthened by the emerging scientific discourse about the distinction between Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian origins. The fault was also to be laid on the doorstep of poets and historians who “feed the flame of national pride.”82 History, Bryce warned, was easily manipulated and served the nation’s needs: “But the study of the past has its dangers when it makes men transfer past claims and past hatreds to the pres­ent.”83 The new racial phenomenon, following the words of the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, signified backwardness rather than pro­gress. In a footnote citing Heine once



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again, Bryce mocked the German exploitation of the famous Teutonic victory over Varus in the Teutoburg Forest. With t­ hese words, stated initially in a public lecture during the first months of World War I, Bryce detached himself completely from his former Teutonic affinity. If in the nineteenth c­ entury, as elaborated above, Bryce was part of the Teutonic circle of scholars, his anti-­ Teutonic as well as antiracial statements at the beginning of the war appear to mark his disassociation from his former Teutonic association.84 But, as I demonstrated before and w ­ ill further validate now, t­ here are earlier signs of Bryce’s more moderate Teutonism. Already in the first edition of The Holy Roman Empire (1864), Bryce expressed some less particularistic notions. For instance, in a claim that Freeman would never have countenanced, Bryce praised France for its imperial heredity. Although Bryce, like Freeman, attacked France for its appropriation of Charles’s legacy, he did admire France for cherishing Rome’s traditions: “No one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than ­those whom the ­Middle Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In the po­liti­cal character of the French p ­ eople, ­whether it be the result of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the Romans of the modern world.”85 As with his argument about the linkage between the Teutonic tribes and modern Germany, Bryce connected the ancient Gallo-­Roman past with the development of modern France. The Germans acquired their constitutions from the tradition of their Teutonic forefathers, while the imperialist traditions of France w ­ ere a result of the long Roman conquest in Gaul. Bryce, therefore, acknowledged France’s contribution to world history and stated his more “moderate” Teutonic notions from the 1860s. Indeed, like Freeman, Bryce acknowledged the dramatic influence of Teutonism. Unlike Freeman, he also recognized the contribution of other stocks, such as the Latins (France). In relation to this difference, both scholars, it ­will now be shown, also differed in their understanding of the unity of history.

Bryce View of Freeman’s “Unity of History” According to Bryce, he and Freeman, w ­ ere not in total consent regarding the “unity of history.” Subsequent to an anonymous review in the Pall Mall Gazette of his second volume of Historical Essays, Freeman complained to Bryce

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that the reviewer, prob­ably “a narrow sort of classical man,” did not comprehend their shared notion of the unity of history “and the lasting on of the empire.”86 Freeman, in other words, assumed that Bryce agreed with him on the theory of the unity. In addition, the anonymous reviewer of Historical Essays, Freeman complained, did not understand his (Freeman’s) sources of inspiration. They w ­ ere not, as mentioned in the review, Jacques-­Bénigne Lignel Bossuet, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, or Carlyle, but rather Palgrave and Sir John Seeley who “most likely he [the reviewer] has never heard of.”87 In the review itself, this “classical author” claimed that Freeman in his first volume on the ­Middle Ages did display originality. However, in the second volume, while focusing on the classical world, Freeman “lost his way.” The reviewer also recognized, correctly, that Freeman, following Thomas Arnold, “was fed upon Niebuhr,” stressing again the German scholar’s influence on Freeman (see Chapter 2). Concerning the unity theory and the long duration of the HRE, the reviewer claimed this was not an original argument of Freeman but had already appeared in the writings of historians such as Henry Hallam and Carlyle.88 Six days a­ fter Freeman’s letter to Bryce and nine days following the anonymous review, Bryce published his review of Freeman’s Historical Essays. In the review, Bryce did not fully accept Freeman’s unity theory: It is quite true, for instance, that all history o­ ught to be regarded as one, and as far as pos­si­ble studied as one, but ­there are limits to this possibility, and for many purposes ancient, medieval, and modern history may be treated of and worked out apart. Admirable ser­vice has been done in mediaeval history by men who knew very ­little ­either about Athens ­under Pericles or about Mas­sa­chu­setts ­under Governor Andrew. Mr. Freeman’s views are sometimes so broadly expressed on this ­matter that we feel inclined to ask him w ­ hether he finds that his ignorance of the early history of Egypt and Asia Minor—­countries which certainly had a ­great influence on Greece—­prevents him from understanding Homer and Herodotus.89 Thus, Bryce asserted that the division between periods may still possess a certain validity. Freeman, in response, continued to insist that he and Bryce shared a common view: “As for the unity of history, I can see no difference between what you say in the second paragraph of the article and what I say in the Rede lecture [Cambridge, 1872]. . . . ​I make ­here just the same limitations



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which you do.”90 Freeman, unlike Bryce, did not identify a unity or even an impor­tant connection between what he saw as two of the greatest civilizations in history: Egypt and Greece. As Freeman continued in his letter: “I confess my ignorance of Egyptian history: only is ­there any to be ignorant of? But I ­will not believe that Egypt had any effect upon Greece. Surely you ­don’t believe in Curtius’s Uinim or what­ever the name is.”91 Freeman referred to Ernst Curtius (1814–96), the German archaeologist and classicist, who asserted that Egypt and Greece had maintained contact since the arrival of the Uinim (Ionians) in Egypt.92 For Curtius, as well as for Baron Bunsen, some of the Ionians had settled in Egypt u ­ nder the pha­raohs. Thus, t­ here had been cultural exchanges between the two civilizations.93 Freeman and Bryce disagreed on ­whether a unified Egyptian and Greek history had ever existed. This difference, I claim, is embedded not only in the debate over the “unity of history” but also in the discussion of race. The debate regarding early Egyptian and Near Eastern influences on Greece became prominent from the eigh­teenth ­century. As Suzanne Marchand clarifies, the main question was when “real” history began: had it originated in Greece (West) or in the Orient?94 For Freeman, the debate had some prominent racial implications. If Greece borrowed from Egypt, then this indicated that the Aryan Greeks ­were not necessarily a “pure” race but had absorbed Semitic influences.95 For this reason, Freeman, in response to Bryce’s criticism, refuted Curtius’s theory. In a letter written eight years l­ater, Freeman was still preoccupied with this question and confessed to J. R. Green that the latest findings in the field had “shaken” his strong belief in the Aryan origin of Greek civilization: I sometimes get a ­little troubled as to any pos­si­ble influence of Egypt on Greek art. When I first learned t­ hings the old notion about Kadmos, Kekrops had come out, and [Archibald Henry] Sayce and the Hittites had not come in nor even [Austen Henry] Layard and the Ninevites. So we believed that every­thing Greek was original, pure Aryan—at most we learned our letters from the Jew’s cousin. I want to believe the same still, but all t­ hese new dodges puzzle me, and I ­don’t well know how to weigh them. But I ­don’t believe that isolated columns from Beni Hassan looking like Doric. . . . ​­There are plenty of accidental likenesses.96 Freeman, despite the new evidence, was still reluctant to admit any ancient associations between Eastern and Western civilizations. The main point

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is that the discourse over the unity of history was amalgamated with questions of race and the origins of humanity. Hence, for Freeman the unity of history did not necessarily designate the unity of humanity. On the contrary, and as demonstrated previously (Chapter 4), t­ here is for Freeman a unity of history but mainly within the same race. Bryce, however, seemed to be less opposed to the notion that Egypt and Greece shared some common history. While Bryce observed a pos­si­ble historical unity between Egypt and Greece, he denied Freeman’s claim that, following the coronation of Charles the G ­ reat, Rome had also endured in the East (Byzantium). For him, a­ fter AD 800 the Roman Empire only continued in the West u ­ nder the roof of the HRE. Hence, the Eastern Empire had not been Rome’s successor. On September 14, 1891, Bryce told Freeman: “As for the South Slavs I cannot agree with your view that Byzantium was the newest Rome—­It was always an inferior place in religion as well as in politics and all the churches that look to it seem to be practically quite dead. L ­ ittle as we may love the pope, he was 97 better than Panaroite Patriarchs.” This view also separated Bryce from the view of J. B. Bury, another Irish Protestant scholar who can be regarded as a follower of Freeman. Bury, who w ­ ill be the subject of the next chapter, a­ dopted and developed Freeman’s views about the infusion of Western Rome into the Eastern Empire. While Bryce identified no institutional longevity in the East, Bury acknowledged a religious, administrative, and legislative durability between the West and the East lasting u ­ ntil the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. Bury, however, was much closer to Bryce in his cautious perception of both “race” and Teutonism. Bryce, as seen most prominently in his Race Sentiment, became far less enthusiastic on ­these two themes. As mentioned, his skepticism t­oward “race” and Teutonism might be explained through the generational gap separating him from Freeman. Bryce, living thirty years ­after Freeman’s death, was a man of two distinct periods. Regarding the Teutonic narrative, during most of the second half of the nineteenth ­century Teutonism was at its height among Freeman, Bryce, and their circle. In the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century, however, Teutonism became more controversial, mainly due to the competition and deteriorating relations between Britain and Germany, reaching its lowest ebb in World War I. The naval arms race (Tripitz Plan of 1898) and the emergence of Germany as a new colonial power ­were at the heart of this competition. This was not only a competition over po­liti­cal, economic, or militaristic resources, but, as Jan Rüger shows, it was fused with cultural and symbolic meanings. For instance, in August 1890 Britain handed



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Germany, in exchange for Zanzibar and Wituland (eastern Africa), the North Sea island of Heligoland, a­ fter which Germany not only established Heligoland as a military bastion but also aimed to “Germanize” the island and to mark its (and not Britain’s) control of the “German Ocean.”98 As w ­ ill now be explained, although Bryce held a certain philo-­German stance u ­ ntil World War I, he may still offer an example of the transformation from Anglo-­German affinity to estrangement. ­Until the 1890s and even beyond he was an admirer of Germany, wrote on Teutonic themes, and promoted the connection between British and German scholars. This may be explic­itly observed in the association Bryce formed in the 1860s between the HRE and the newly established German state, which he admired: “Then suddenly ­there rises from ­these cold ashes a new, vigorous, self-­confident German Empire, a state which, although most dif­fer­ent, as well in its inner character as in its form and l­ egal aspect, from its venerable pre­de­ces­sor, is nevertheless in a very real sense that pre­de­ces­sor’s representative.”99 Just before the ­Great War, Bryce also argued that the Germans have the right to defend themselves against Rus­sian aggression, which was “rapidly becoming a menace to Eu­rope.”100 Even a­ fter the war commenced, Bryce, in a letter to his close friend the jurist A. V. Dicey (1835–1922), exonerated Germany from some share of the blame and claimed that ­Great Britain also held some responsibility for the war: “it is not on Germany that all the blame can fall, badly as she behaved. . . . ​ Why should ­England so far back as 1905–6 have made a special friendship with France and begun to cultivate a special hostility against Germany? . . . ​ Ever since 1906 we [Britain] have been working against her.”101 However, during the war, the general attitude of Bryce t­ oward Germany, especially following its conquest of Belgium, became more hostile. In a pamphlet he issued in 1916, he denied the assumption that Britain wished to weaken Germany ­because of the economic threat it posed. The real­ity, he claimed, was completely dif­fer­ent since Britain prospered due to its thriving trade with Germany. Britain, he stressed, stood for five core values: freedom, national self-­definition, respecting treaties, moral conduct, and peace.102 Bryce conceded that some ­people in Britain acted against ­these values.103 However, they w ­ ere few, especially in comparison with the barbarity displayed by Germany in the war. Its invasion of neutral Belgium ­violated all of Britain’s core values and for that reason the latter had no choice but to declare war. Bryce even chaired a committee that investigated German atrocities in Belgium, which eventually found the Germans guilty of war crimes.104 For Bryce, one of the last survivors of the Teutonic scholars, the war presented a

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fundamental dilemma. His adored Germany had become the mortal ­enemy of G ­ reat Britain, and the national British interests clashed with his sense of native kinship t­ oward Germany. Freeman and Stubbs, if they had lived to see the war, would have been faced with a similar cognitive dissonance. World War I thus eradicated almost any continuity with Bryce’s earlier Teutonic affinity. As illustrated, Bryce, a ­lawyer by profession, was keen on the judicial inheritance of Roman and Germanic law throughout history. For Bryce, and in distinction to Freeman, Teutonic dominance was primarily founded on ­free institutions, not on racial superiority. Concerning “race,” during most of the second half of the nineteenth ­century the term received growing scientific legitimacy following the rise of Darwinism and the alleged innate linkage between race and language.105 ­A fter 1900, however, as Simon Cook argues, many En­glish historians began to distance themselves from racial reasoning.106 For example, Bryce criticized racial perceptions in his 1915 Race Sentiment. As the next chapter ­will illustrate, Bury, like Bryce and in distinction to Freeman, also sought for institutional rather than racial reasons for the long imperial dominance.

chapter 6

The Illusion of Finality Bury and the Unity of the East

In this chapter I examine the ideas of J. B. Bury and explore how he departed from the “old” and even conservative perception of Rome, illuminating the shadowy history of the Eastern Roman Empire. I commence with the relationship of Bury to E. A. Freeman and, more specifically, the similarities and distinctions between the two scholars. As explained in the introduction, the reason Freeman, Bryce, and Bury are the protagonists of this book arises from their new periodization. They all devised a method that involved a departure from the accepted and almost sacred division between antiquity, the ­Middle Ages, and modernity. In previous chapters I have discussed the racial historical unity of Freeman and the enduring Roman-­Teutonic institutional scheme of Bryce. Bury, especially as distinguished from Freeman, hardly a­ dopted any racial reasoning in his writings. He did, however, develop Freeman’s fascination with the Eastern Roman Empire, or, as Bury named it, the l­ater Roman Empire. Bury signified a dif­fer­ent kind of late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century scholar. He brought a “scientific” method to history that mainly depended on Mommsen’s princi­ples, while departing from the literary approach of Victorian historians such as Thomas Babington Macaulay and his nephew G. M. Trevelyan.1 In addition to the positivistic aspect central in Bury’s writing, I ­will refer ­later in the chapter to Bury’s “flexibility,” which could denote a less scientific approach. Bury represents an in­ter­est­ing case study. On one hand, he was linked through personal connections and notions, such as the “unity of history,” to the En­glish Teutonic circle. On the other

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hand, as far as his Teutonic and racial inclinations are concerned, he was not an integral part of the circle.

Bury, Freeman’s Disciple? Between E. A. Freeman and J. B. Bury one can identify a ­viable link but also several major differences in both their general historical approach and their view of antiquity. Bury was, in some re­spects, a disciple of Freeman and was certainly vastly influenced by him. In 1893, Bury edited Freeman’s second edition of The History of Federal Government.2 ­L ater, in 1903, he edited Freeman’s Historical Geography of Eu­rope.3 Bury evidently approved of some of Freeman’s works. He also wrote in 1892 two very favorable reviews of Freeman’s History of Sicily (see Chapter 4). Following the review, Bury ironically assured Freeman that he expected no reward for his positive evaluation of the History of Sicily: “I have been thinking a good deal about you lately as I have been writing two notices of your Sicily . . . ​perhaps you may think me audacious to write on a subject which I have not had my own speciality . . . ​at all events my say ­will not be on the model of Isaac of York.”4 When Bury was in the midst of reviewing the third volume of the History of Sicily, he heard about the death of Freeman in Alicante, Spain.5 Therefore, he dedicated the first pages of the review to a general account and evaluation of Freeman’s work. Through t­ hese pages it is pos­si­ble to obtain a less formal and maybe more genuine view of both Bury and Freeman. This perhaps reflects the short time elapsing between the death of Freeman and the publication. Bury insisted that his opening remarks ­were not a eulogy. In some sense, he remained faithful to his promise. He reminded his readers that Freeman’s style had been criticized by many as “diffused,” by which he meant that Freeman used a lengthy, indirect style. Bury defended Freeman from his critics but conceded that Freeman’s style was unconventional. This stylistic issue aside, Bury’s praise for Freeman was notable in ­t hese pages. Freeman, according to Bury, had the ability to “awaken a sense of history” and alongside Bishop Stubbs must be regarded a beacon of En­glish historiography. Freeman’s central asset was the fact that he in­ven­ted the historical discipline that merges the study of geography and history. His work on Sicily was, of course, a prime example of this method. In a letter of 1892, Freeman had expressed his gratitude for Bury’s review of his History of Sicily: “I ­don’t know how to thank you enough for it. It is



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absurd to say that it is the best that has appeared: for t­ here has been no other of the same class nothing but newspapers. . . . ​You understand me as nobody ­else does. I specially thank you for what you say about my supposed diffuseness, and repetition. They just say it ­because it is the regular t­hing to say.”6 Bury’s appreciation of Freeman was also seen eleven years ­later, in 1903, when he gave his inaugural lecture as regius professor of modern history at Cambridge. He ­here painted Freeman as one of the ­great historians of ­England in the nineteenth c­ entury, especially since he advocated the notion of continuity in history through the idea of historical unity. Continuity was very significant, as it emphasized the importance of the w ­ hole historical pro­cess. Bury refuted the “eclectic view,” as he named it, that focused on certain periods in history while neglecting o­ thers ­because of their alleged insignificance.7 It is no coincidence that Bury recognized the ele­ment of continuity as the most valuable in Freeman’s work. As I ­will demonstrate, Bury, with some resemblance to Freeman and Bryce before him, partly ­adopted the notion that time borders do not exist in history, and, therefore, it was necessary to grasp the ­wholeness of history.8 As Bury stated, Freeman “broke down the venerable wall of partition between ancient and modern history.”9 Bury endorsed the unity of history since it broadened the perception of historians, enabling them to delve into less explored periods of history. For instance, the continuation of the Roman Empire meant that the centuries a­ fter the so-­called fall are also impor­tant for its understanding. Through the idea of unity, the primary common ground between Bury and Freeman is revealed. The former continued the latter’s research on the Eastern Roman Empire. The empire, conventionally regarded by historians, like Bryce, as an insignificant ­factor in the periphery of Eu­rope, came to be seen, following the work of historians like Freeman and Bury, a vital force in the historical development of Eu­rope, North Africa, and the East. Bury, for instance, dismissed Bryce’s argument that Charles’s coronation had in fact marked the movement of the imperial line from the East to the West. Bryce, it must be stressed, resented many of the Eastern emperors and described them as weak and evil.10 Bury offered an opposite interpretation. From AD 800, the empire was divided into two branches: the “true” Western Empire and the “true” Eastern Empire. U ­ ntil Charles’s coronation the empire had only endured in the East, but following the coronation the two empires had coexisted while each had claimed to be the “true” (au­then­tic) inheritor of Rome.11 Like Sicily, the l­ater (Eastern) Roman Empire, which even ruled Sicily for a certain period, had been the link that connected the East and West and functioned as a cultural, economic,

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and po­liti­cal hub. For both Freeman and Bury, the Roman Empire had also continued in the East.

George Finlay, the British “­Father” of the Eastern Roman Empire Bury as well as Freeman acknowledged (see previous chapter), another prominent historian prior to both who had delved into the Eastern Empire by way of a comprehensive method was George Finlay. According to Bury, Finlay had been forgotten even though he was one of the first scholars to identify the uniqueness of the East. To a certain extent, Freeman and Bury exalted Finlay’s stature and identified him as one of their major sources of inspiration. Finlay’s magnum opus was the history of Greece in seven volumes from the Roman conquest of 146 BC to the mid-­nineteenth ­century.12 The research focused on the history of Greece ­under “foreign occupation” and the first five volumes ­were alternatively titled by Finlay the History of Greece U ­ nder Foreign Dominion. The volumes revealed an almost cohesive phase stretching throughout the period when Greece was u ­ nder external occupation. This phase joined the revival of Greek in­de­pen­dence in the nineteenth ­century with the ancient age of Greek freedom before 146 BC. The Greeks, as Finlay noted, usually referred to their history without in­de­pen­dence as insignificant, since they regarded it as inferior to the glorious days of classical and Hellenistic Greece. Yet, Finlay asserted, this neglected period of Greek decay must be treated with greater esteem ­because a direct link connected modern Greece with its less celebrated history: The rec­ords of enslaved Greece are as much a portion of her national existence as her heroic poetry and her classic history. The p ­ eople who sent out a hundred colonies, and who fought at Salamis and Plataea, w ­ ere the ancestors of the men who fled before the Romans, and who yielded up their own land to be peopled by Sclavonians and Albanians. The ancient Greeks purchased foreign slaves to ­labour in their fields, the modern Greeks delivered up their own ­children to form the janissaries, who held them in a state of slavery. The modern Greeks turn with aversion from the study of their own history. They take no interest in the fortunes of their ancestors, but they claim an imaginary genealogy to connect their national existence with the extinct races of privileged aristocratic tribes, whose existence ceased as Paganism expired.13



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Finlay inspired Freeman and Bury, not only through his writings, but also b­ ecause he played an active role in the strug­gle for Greek in­de­pen­dence. He lived most of his adult life in Greece, wrote regularly on Greek issues for British newspapers and tried to stimulate public awareness concerning the Greek strug­gle for sovereignty. In all this, he anticipated the ideology that Freeman endorsed during the emergence of the “Eastern Question”—­the aid owed to the suffering Christians of the Ottoman Empire. Finlay and Freeman acted both as scholars and as public figures, thus operating in a similar method in the academic and the public spheres. They moved between t­ hese two spheres that, within their lives, constantly intertwined. Freeman and Finlay ­were similar in another re­spect. Finlay argued, as Freeman would l­ater, that the demise of Rome came with the Saracen invasions during the seventh ­century. According to Finlay, the Saracens wrought a major blow to the Eastern Roman Empire. ­A fter their conquest, the empire ceased to be Roman and had to lean on the Byzantine-­Greek component: “the Saracen conquests had severed from the empire all t­hose provinces which possessed a native population distinct from the Greeks, by language, lit­er­a­ture, and religion, the central government of Constantinople was gradually compelled to fall back on the interests and passions of the remaining inhabitants, who w ­ ere chiefly Greeks.”14 Evidence that Finlay’s stance functioned as the basis for Freeman’s thesis is suggested by the fact that Freeman dedicated his book on the Saracens to Finlay. In this book, as discussed in Chapter 4, Freeman explained how the Saracens had caused Rome to fall. Thus, the impact of Finlay on Freeman is notable.

The ­Later Roman Empire In the preface to his first book, A History of the ­Later Roman Empire (1889), Bury explained why he chose this par­tic­u­lar name as the volume title and rejected other pos­si­ble titles, such as “Byzantine Empire” or “Eastern Roman Empire”: ­ ere is no period of history which has been so much obscured by Th incorrect and misleading titles as the period of the l­ater Roman Empire. It is, I believe, more due to improper names than one might at first be disposed to admit, that the import of that period is so constantly misunderstood and its character so often misrepresented. For the first step t­ owards grasping the history of t­ hose centuries through which the ancient evolved into the modern

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world is the comprehension of the fact that the old Roman Empire did not cease to exist u ­ ntil the year 1453. The line of Roman Emperors continued in unbroken succession from Octavius Augustus to Constantine Palaeologus.15 A ­whole debate between Bury and his publisher, Alexander Macmillan, had preceded Bury’s previous argument about the true essence of the empire. As Bury told Macmillan, the reason he concluded his book at the beginning of the ninth ­century was that “it would be less indefensible, if the period [of the book] ­were from 800–1205  A.D., when ­there are rival empires in the West, and the empire of the East had become more Greek in character.”16 Bury, as a result, limited the scope of his study to the years when the unity of the Roman Empire had been more vis­i­ble. As he ­later stated: “­There was only one Roman Empire u ­ ntil 800—­that is just the year in which I stop.”17 Macmillan rejected Bury’s proposal to label the book by the general name of “Roman Empire” since, in the former’s view, it was not “distinctive enough.” Bury, in response, disputed the names Byzantine Empire or the French title “Lower Empire” (Bas-­Empire), since “they put out of sight the continuity of history and suggest a break between the Earlier Roman Empire and the ­Later Roman Empire, which never existed.”18 Furthermore, the term “Byzantine Empire” was a modern invention and never existed in antiquity, while the title “­Later Rome Empire, 395–800 A.D.,” which was eventually approved, denoted both the original name of the empire and the continuity between the earlier and the ­later Roman empires. In the book itself, Bury began by attacking the historians who detached the Roman Empire from the ­later Roman Empire. In his opinion, t­ here was no difference between the two: “and the historian who adopts one line of division cannot assert that the historian who adopts a dif­fer­ ent line is wrong. For all such lines are purely arbitrary. No Byzantine Empire ever began to exist; the Roman Empire did not come to an end ­until 1453.”19 Thus, he maintained that ­there had been many transformations in the Roman Empire, and the final collapse had occurred with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453: “­Every ­century of the Roman Empire differed from the preceding and from the succeeding, but the development was continuous; the Empire was still the Roman Empire, and I am not aware that it is usual to give a man a new name when he enters upon a new de­cade of life.”20 Freeman, as elaborated, was a very dif­fer­ent historian from Bury. He was considerably involved within po­liti­cal debates and retained very strong views



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especially on the foreign policy of the British government. He believed that his knowledge of history granted him capabilities not attained by ­others. He further felt an obligation to voice his views, since he had to act for the sake of society. Freeman was also a nationalistic writer who stressed the uniqueness of the En­glish ­people and their role in history. While Freeman, as demonstrated, located a major breach in antiquity during the times of the Saracen invasions of the seventh c­ entury, Bury drew the ultimate line in 1453, even though he accepted the tremendous changes that had occurred in the fifth ­century and around AD 800 with Charles I. Freeman, and h ­ ere it is pos­si­ble to locate the major difference between him and Bury, classified the Germanic or Aryan tribes as the ancestors of the En­glish ­people. Consequently, the En­glish and German nations belonged to one unified extended f­amily. Their racial origin determined their destiny as ­great nations. Bury, however, was less keen on racial connotations. The term “Aryan” was almost omitted from his writings, and he did not link the modern En­glish with the Germanic tribes. While Freeman esteemed the tribes repetitively, Bury, as I aim to demonstrate, ascribed to them fewer merits, and, alongside positive remarks, he referred to their barbarity. However, and this is an impor­tant clarification, although he was less Teutonic, he did acknowledge some aspects of the historical significance of the tribes. Bury also criticized Freeman for his racial tendencies and his attempt to construct a unified Aryan race based on the Indo-­Germanic tongues. In his prefatory note (1903) as editor of the third edition of Freeman’s Historical Geography, Bury “warned” readers with the following words: If Mr. Freeman ­were h ­ ere to edit this book himself he might have been induced to modify his language. It is his use of the word Aryan. Though “Aryanism” was, if I may say so, one of the pillars of his construction of history, I think he might have been induced to substitute the phrase “of Aryan speech” in many cases when he committed himself to “Aryan.” For the truth is that, in designating a ­people as Aryan, speech was his criterion, and the inference from Aryan speech to Aryan stock is invalid. How the Indo-­Germanic tongue spread is still an unsolved prob­lem, but it is certain that all the Eu­ro­pean p ­ eoples who spoke or speak tongues of this f­ amily are not of common race, and many of them prob­ably have very ­little “Aryan” blood.21

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­These words of Bury emphasize again the points raised in the first part of this book about the amalgamation between race/blood and language. As observed, Freeman and other scholars consistently conflated the Aryan tongues with the Aryan races. Bury noticed the term “Aryan” as problematic. Even if Freeman meant to refer to the Aryan languages, in many instances his use of the term “Aryan” was almost immediately linked to the racial discourse and not limited to a philological investigation. It is in­ter­est­ing to note that Bury, although far less keen on racial explanations, referred repeatedly in his History of the ­Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395 to A.D. 565) (1923) to his German con­temporary Otto Seeck (1850–1921), who implemented racial argumentation in his writings.22 Seeck, a famous historian of Rome, argued especially in his Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (6 vols., 1895–1920) that the extermination of the best (Ausrottung der Besten) had caused Rome’s fall.23 The civil as well as external wars of Rome since Augustus, he explained, had eliminated the noble strata that had led Rome to glory. Instead of the nobles, a group of degenerate men had risen to power and thus doomed Rome’s fate: “So wurden die spärlichen Keime, aus denen ein edleres Geschlecht hätte hervorwachsen können, wieder und wieder ausgetilgt, und die Rasse verschlechterte sich immer mehr.”24 Despite the fact that Bury identified Seeck as a ­great authority on late Roman history, he did not accept his theory that Rome fell due to the “elimination of the best.” In a chapter on the reasons for Roman decline, Bury wrote: “The depopulation of Italy was an impor­tant fact and it had far-­reaching consequences. But it was a pro­cess which had prob­ ably reached its limit in the time of Augustus. Th ­ ere is no evidence that the Empire was less populous in the fourth and fifth centuries than in the first. The ‘sterility of the ­human harvest’ in Italy and Greece affected the history of the Empire from its very beginning, but does not explain the collapse in the fifth ­century.”25

The “Decline and Fall”? Gibbon and Bury Another very impor­tant name that resurfaced in Bury’s review of Freeman’s History of Sicilty was that of Edward Gibbon. Bury compared the work of Freeman with that of Gibbon and it is obvious that both writers ­were highly significant for him. According to Bury, the History of Sicily was comparable to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the sense that both w ­ ere



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conceived around a very long time span. In addition, neither focused on only one nation but rather explored the fortunes of many nations.26 For Bury, the impor­tant conclusion was that Gibbon and Freeman tried to promote a continuous view of history that was not limited to one era but constituted a long historical pro­cess. Furthermore, it was not clear when Gibbon ­really marked the end of Rome in his Decline and Fall. The common argument, discussed previously, was that Gibbon observed the “end” of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, when Chris­tian­ity had arisen si­mul­ta­neously with the invasions of the barbarian tribes. This, of course, was a view that most scholars accepted. Nevertheless, ­there could be another interpretation. Gibbon concluded his enormous book with the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. If Gibbon held the view that the decline of the empire had been in the fifth c­ entury, why did he continue his magnum opus ­until the fifteenth ­century? Maybe Gibbon assumed that the Roman Empire had still maintained its trunk in the East while only its western branch fell. Therefore, a more appropriate method would have been to separate the book into two dif­fer­ent parts u ­ nder two titles. The first would be named “The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire” and the second “The Rise and Decline of the Eastern Roman Empire.” Bury indeed criticized Gibbon for marking the end of Rome in the fifth ­century: “No Empire fell in 476; that year only marks a stage, and not even the most impor­tant stage, in the pro­cess of disintegration which was ­going on during the ­whole ­century. The resignation of Romulus Augustulus did not even shake the Roman Empire; far less did it cause an Empire to fall. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Gibbon spoke of the ‘Fall of the Western Empire,’ and that many modern writers have given their sanction to the phrase.”27 Nevertheless, Bury observed that Gibbon was one of the only historians that, at least in the title of his work, anticipated Bury’s view of a continuation between West and East.28 However, “in reading the l­ater chapters [of the Decline] one is apt to forget what the title is.”29 In contrast to Gibbon, who placed emphasis on the Western fall, Bury was one of the first historians to delve into the history of the l­ ater period of Rome in a comprehensive manner. In his portrayal of Gibbon in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), Bury warned readers of the imbalanced character of the Decline and Fall.30 He divided Gibbon’s book into two parts. The first, the account from AD 180 ­until 641 (460 years) was detailed and based upon multiple sources and evidence. The second part, however, was lacking proof and details, although it described a much longer period, since it stretched from 641 u ­ ntil 1453. Moreover, Gibbon

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had wrongly portrayed the second period as a time of de­cadence and wretchedness. The greatness of the Eastern Empire and its function as “the bulwark of Eu­rope against the East” was absent from and almost unrecognized by Gibbon: “His eye rested only on superficial characteristics which have served to associate the name Byzantine with treachery, cruelty, bigotry and de­cadence.”31 The two opening chapters of Bury’s ­Later Roman Empire ­were dedicated to the Christian revolution of the fourth and fifth centuries. Chris­tian­ity, for Bury, had one foot rooted in the pagan past, while the other foot was stepping into the ­future, ushering in a new phase of history. Bury acknowledged the contribution but also the faults of Chris­tian­ity. The faith promoted the notion of friendship and the responsibility of the individual for the community. Chris­tian­ity also gave hope for salvation and elevated ­human life to a sacred degree, in contrast to pagans who participated in gladiatorial displays that disgraced h ­ uman lives. Bury considered the Chris­tian­ity of the first centuries a positive phase in the pro­gress of mankind. He accepted that the universal nature of Roman law had an opposing character to the particularistic and individualistic traits of the Christian religion. Yet he concluded that Chris­tian­ity should not be blamed for the end of the Western Empire: “And when we remember that in the East the Church allied itself closely with the imperial constitution, and that this ­union survived for many centuries, we must conclude that Chris­tian­ity did not contribute to produce what is loosely called the Fall of the Western Empire. Its spirit revolutionised the condition of the ­whole Roman world.”32 As he remarked at the end of his first chapter, only Gibbon together with Rousseau reckoned that the “cost [of Chris­tian­ity] was greater than the gain.”33 Bury agreed with the argument that his animosity t­ oward the church and especially the collision of the church with the ideas of the Enlightenment had prompted Gibbon to name Chris­tian­ity as the cause of the fall. The merger between his personal stance and his interpretation of the past w ­ ere not typical only to Gibbon. Other g­ reat historians throughout history have brought their ­personal, po­liti­cal, and cultural affiliations to the historical debate: “The indictment of the Empire by Tacitus, the defence of Caesarianism by Mommsen, Grote’s vindication of democracy, Droysen’s advocacy of monarchism.”34 Bury almost implies that Gibbon deliberately “forgot” to properly research the Roman East, since it had presented an “incon­ve­nient” opposite and positive example. According to Bury, Chris­tian­ity protected Rome and acted as a force that assisted in the creation of a vibrant empire and community in the East. Gibbon knew perhaps that by focusing on the “New Rome” he might



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reveal a constructive side of Chris­tian­ity that would not accord with his general resentment of the church.35 It should be noted that Bury’s view of Gibbon reflected a rather common interpretation that Gibbon was hostile ­toward Chris­tian­ity. This question, however, has recently been opened by research. Gibbon was perhaps more ambiguous in his view of religion and especially Catholicism than Bury and ­others have generally considered.36 As I ­will now show, ambiguity did not exist in the case of Bury, who was simply very hostile t­ oward Catholicism.

Bury’s Anti-­Catholicism ­ fter the constructive centuries of early Chris­tian­ity, the Catholic Church of A the West became, Bury insisted, the bitterest ­enemy of ­human pro­gress. Catholicism included an “ugly, inhuman side, from which the humanism of the ­fourteenth and fifteenth ­century revolted, manifested in extreme and grotesque asceticism, a sort of war with the instincts of humanity.”37 This anti-­Catholic tendency became prominent in Bury’s writings, especially during the 1910s, when he seemed to fuse his personal anti-­Catholic approach with his historical analy­sis. In works such as A History of Freedom of Thought (1913) and The Idea of Pro­gress (1920) Bury aligned himself with Gibbon as the ­enemy of the church.38 For instance, in his Freedom of Thought he praised Gibbon’s view of the inquisitors of the church, who “defended nonsense through cruelties.”39 Bury considered himself a pure rationalist. He wrote against the divine source of Chris­tian­ity and refuted its super­natural influence on history: “The success of Chris­tian­ity has depended upon the transformation of the original doctrines and upon the character and strength of the Christian organ­ization. The history of the Church is unique. So was the Roman Empire; so is the British Empire; and so are many other t­ hings. None of them is miraculous, or e­ lse they are all miraculous. And if they are all miraculous, Chris­tian­ity ceases to be privileged, and the argument from its success dis­appears.”40 The church, therefore, is mundane and comparable to other historical institutions. In Bury’s eyes, reason, and reason alone, not miraculous beliefs, must be the beacon of humanity: “­There is nothing for it but to trust the light of our reason. Its candle power may be low, but it is the only light we have.”41 The fundamental assumption in Bury’s History of Freedom of Thought was that religions had played an uncreative and even a destructive role throughout most of history. U ­ nder the oppressive rule of the Catholic Church, progressive,

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f­ ree, and innovative ideas ­were precluded, since ­people lacked the essential feeling of freedom and liberty. Nevertheless, it was not Chris­tian­ity alone that stood as a bulwark against the pro­gress of humanity but also the other two Abrahamic religions. Bury also attacked the Old Testament and the Jewish scriptures, which “reflect the ideas of a low stage of civilization and are full of savagery.”42 The pagan world, by contrast to the mono­the­istic religions, did not suffer from t­ hese limitations: “The Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression and an impor­tant condition of their freedom.”43 The liberty of the pagan world can also be seen in the policy of Rome, which tolerated a variety of religions and beliefs across the empire. When Chris­tian­ ity became widespread and many around the empire ­adopted it, several (but not many) Roman emperors began to persecute the Christian communities. Chris­tian­ity threatened religious freedom by denying the beliefs of other religions. The early Christians who promoted religious tolerance before becoming rulers abandoned this approach ­after coming to power. For them, salvation was pos­si­ble only through Chris­tian­ity and no other dogma could redeem the individual or the community.44 The Christian subjugation was almost innate in the religion, and it appears that Bury did not limit it to a specific period in history. Again, maybe subsequent to Bury’s ac­cep­tance of the long-­lasting effects of ideas in history, or perhaps following the notion of the “unity of history,” he characterized Chris­tian­ity as inflicting a destructive effect on the pro­gress of mankind throughout the ages. A certain difficulty arises from t­ hese statements of Bury. If Chris­tian­ity was, indeed, from its foundation the source of all this evil, how and why did Bury praise the constructive role of the church in its first centuries, an appreciation described above, in which Bury had defined the early church in his ­Later Roman Empire as a vital force in the reconstruction of the West following the destruction of the Germanic invasions? A partial but imperfect answer is that Bury formed a distinction between early Chris­tian­ity and the ­later Catholic dominance of the M ­ iddle Ages. He regarded early Chris­tian­ity as a composite era when the church had developed both positive and negative princi­ples. ­Later, however, real­ity altered, and the Catholic Church suffocated the voices of reason, pro­gress, and creativity. The Western church—­and h ­ ere Bury’s dif­fer­ent approach to Eastern Chris­tian­ity must be noted—­symbolized de­cadence. The darkness of the M ­ iddle Ages was lifted slightly during the thirteenth ­century, when the men of the Re­nais­sance endorsed the concept of f­ree



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thought: “The individual began to feel his separate individuality, to be conscious of his own value as a person apart from his race or country . . . ​and the world around him began to emerge from the mists of mediaeval dreams.”45 The Re­nais­sance men differentiated between religion and humanism, and in this their perception was unique. Nevertheless, Bury emphasized that they had not been enemies of religion. L ­ ater, with the sixteenth-­century Reformation, the repression of freethinking persisted. Both the Catholic and Protestant doctrines ­were intolerant, and the main development of this era was that “they replaced one authority by another. They set up the authority of the Bible instead of that of the Church, but it was the Bible according to Luther or the Bible according to Calvin.”46 However, the fact that the authority of the Catholic Church was challenged led, although this was not the intention of the Reformation, to the rise of rational and secular thinking. The significant change came only in the seventeenth c­ entury when the clash between religion and reason fi­nally erupted, reaching its most critical point in the nineteenth c­ entury. Bury observed that during this last c­ entury it had been proven that science and Chris­tian­ity could no longer coexist: “the Christian scheme based on the notions of an unscientific age and on the arrogant assumption that the universe was made for man, has no suitable or reasonable place.”47 Bury’s anti-­Catholic stance was fiercely refuted by the Anglo-­French writer and poet Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953). In his pamphlet Anti-­Catholic History: How It Is Written (1914), Belloc urged that the false authority of some “experts” like Bury who had exploited their academic position to attack the Catholic Church should not influence the public.48 While Bury painted the church as the source of all evil, Belloc pointed to the church’s contribution to the Roman Empire and defined it as “the soul of our Western civilization.”49 Belloc pointed to what he referred to as Bury’s multiple errors and inaccuracies. Bury’s greatest ­mistake, he argued, was shown by his vast generalizations, which testified to his misunderstanding of the atmosphere of the times he was writing about. For instance, to pres­ent the church as only about miracles and superstitions was to ignore the prolific works of church figures such as Thomas Aquinas.50 As discussed earlier, Bury did not regard the church as accountable for the fall of the Western Empire. Indeed, he presented the church as the core that had bonded the Eastern Empire a­ fter the calamities of the fifth c­ entury. Hence, at least in the very early centuries of Chris­tian­ity, before corruption and backwardness had ruined every­thing, Bury did recognize some positive ­factors in the new religion. In addition, following Bury’s view, and pertinent mainly to

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the West, it is probable that he too embraced the conventional ­triple division of history. The M ­ iddle Ages ­were no longer a time of g­ reat accomplishments but a period of decline and stagnation. In this period, Bury declared, “reason is in prison” and the long hands of the church had strangled freedom. Modernity, nevertheless, symbolized for him the emblem of pro­gress.

The Dominance of Modernity Bury’s The Idea of Pro­gress reaffirmed the notion that during the M ­ iddle Ages Chris­tian­ity had dominated the social sphere. Pro­gress became inconceivable, since the goal was the afterlife and not the enhancement of pres­ent society. Augustine of Hippo established the basis of this doctrine through belief in providence and original sin. Bury nevertheless asserted that the M ­ iddle Ages had ­shaped two impor­tant ideas that enabled the notion of pro­gress to be planted in modernity: the uniqueness of humanity and the idea of the universal or the ecumenical community.51 The transformation of history and the full enforcement of pro­gress came to life in the seventeenth ­century. Pro­gress and freedom went hand in hand. Once freedom became a real­ity, pro­gress followed. René Descartes was the most influential figure in this development. The transformation he initiated depended upon several conditions, which came to life in the seventeenth c­ entury: the breaking of the authority of the ancient, and even obsolete, thinkers, the recognition of the need to achieve improvement in the ­human condition and the establishment of science on solid foundations.52 Besides Chris­tian­ity and religion, Bury also attacked antiquity in The Idea of Pro­gress. In modernity (from the sixteenth ­century), he observed, men had begun to “rebel against the tyranny of antiquity.”53 He claimed that the ancient Greeks had lacked the idea of pro­gress. This was partly b­ ecause they did not possess sufficient evidence of the past and could not determine ­whether they had achieved substantial pro­gress. In addition, the Greeks developed the concept that the gods created a perfect world that would last for 72,000 solar years. However, as in any other living organism, once the world passed to the second half of its history it would be in a state of de­cadence.54 The fact that the Greek thinkers had recognized change as a symptom of decline and corruption further explains why pro­gress was not conceived in antiquity, especially since “time was regarded as the e­ nemy of humanity.”55 The concept of Moira (fate), dominant among the Greeks, also barred the emergence of any idea of pro­gress. For the Greeks, only the gods could control Moira, while



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the notion of “pro­gress” implied an ominous potential, for it suggested that ­human beings held an equivalent godly ability.56 Bury, despite specializing in antiquity and in the Christian early M ­ iddle Ages, preferred modernity. He identified with modern writers and defined figures like the French author Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) as agents of secularism and freethinking. Bury claimed that Fontenelle had been the first scholar to fully define the notion of pro­gress, since he had focused on the ­future. Fontenelle held that the achievements of any period w ­ ere dependent on the period itself and on existing circumstances, ­because throughout the ages ­there was no substantial change in the nature of humankind. Excessive admiration of the ancient scholars had raised a major obstacle to pro­gress. The fact that humanity was old did not mean that it was in decline. On the contrary, in modernity humanity had gained experience and knowledge that surpassed the ideas of the ancients. Bury supported this argument especially ­because of its secular leitmotif and the fact that it was founded upon an idea of nature.57 In his lecture “The Place of Modern History in the Perspective of Knowledge,” given at the Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis (1904), Bury announced explic­itly that modernity must be at the center of historical research.58 As distinguished from Hegel, who promoted the theory that mankind had fulfilled its destiny during modernity due to the supremacy of reason, Bury saw many ages in front of mankind. Thus, the end of history is yet to come: “Hegel thought that the final form of po­liti­c al constitution was something closely resembling the Prus­sian state, that the final religion is Chris­ tian­ity, that the final philosophy is his own.”59 ­There was no fixed model that humankind was bound to and the f­ uture pres­ents numerous possibilities. This argument, I assume, derived from the contingency theory of Bury, which holds that models cannot be applied to history ­because of its dominantly casual and random essence. The ­great advantage of modernity is that it pres­ents sufficient data and proofs that are not attainable in the research of antiquity and the ­Middle Ages. Modernity also sets a clear boundary to time. It ends in the pres­ent and, distinct from other historical periods, its termination point is not arbitrary but stands as a clear line. It is obvious why Bury, as a historian who elevated the importance of evidence, characterized modernity as the most vital asset for the understanding of the historical pro­cess. The richness of knowledge in modernity broadens the understanding of history in general. This does not indicate that history concludes with modernity; it only shows that we must begin from modernity and only then move to the past: “The

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interpreter of the movement of history must proceed backward, not forward; he must start from the modern period.”60

Historical Time Throughout The Idea of Pro­gress Bury illustrates how other scholars had conceptualized the division of time. It is useful to sketch several of t­ hese theories since they convey a deeper understanding of Bury’s scheme and how, through the notions of pro­gress and freedom, he endeavored to or­ga­nize historical time. Bury recognized Jean Bodin (1529/30–96) as one of the initiators of the new progressive thinking. He observed that Bodin had divided history into three periods. During the first era, the Near East dominated the earth (Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians). In the second era, the ­middle Mediterranean nations (Greece, Rome) ruled. The last era belonged to the nations of the North, which took the supremacy from Rome.61 Bodin also disapproved of the prevailing division of the four monarchies of Daniel and especially the German claim that the Holy Roman Empire was in fact the last of the four monarchies.62 As Bury remarked, Bodin’s division was akin to the thesis of Hegel that separated the Oriental, Greek-­Roman, and Germanic periods. Bodin denied that humanity was in constant decline from the days of the world’s golden age. He recognized the inventions of his own time as superior to t­hose of antiquity. Nevertheless, Bodin was not positive that f­ uture achievements would exceed the inventions of his own era, such as the compass and the printing press.63 Francis Bacon (1561–1626) also divided historical times into three: antiquity, a mid-­era that included Greece and Rome, and modernity (including the ­Middle Ages). For him, the improvement of the state of mankind in the world was the prominent goal of science, and through inventions the well-­ being of humanity was achieved. Bacon shattered the dominance of antiquity and asserted that it had signified only the beginning or youth of the world. For this reason, antiquity defined the time that elapsed u ­ ntil Bacon’s own age, since it represented history down to the days when inventions became practical for ­human beings. But, alas, Bacon, like Bodin, did not state that pro­gress would characterize ­future history, and both overlooked ­future evolution.64 For Bury, the theories of both writers ­were significant since they had departed from antiquity and concentrated on the achievements of humanity in ­later periods and especially in their own days. This demonstrated how a certain progressive pro­cess occurred in history. In addition, Bodin and Bacon separated religious



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time from “earthly” time, and by that usurped periodization from the sole control of the church.65 This, of course, appealed to Bury, and he saw both Bodin and Bacon as sources of inspiration. However, for him, their view lacked a central ­factor. To the “disappointment” of Bury, they did not recognize the continuing improvement of humanity. Bury disapproved of “locked” historical schemes that frame history according to a definite end, leaving no place for f­ uture developments or pro­gress. For him, history is open-­ended. Locked theories usually conclude in the pres­ ent or, more precisely, in the time when the writer operates. They ­were prevalent among both historians and phi­los­o­phers and seen, for instance, in the writings of both Comte and Hegel. Comte, through a set of ­triple laws that correspond with three periods, established the notion that the world had moved from a theological phase, which lasted ­until the fifteenth ­century, to its metaphysical phase. The latter ended with the French Revolution, and, a­ fter it, the world began its third and last phase. This last period bears the name the “positive age” and ­will be based upon laws proving that the “science of society is pos­si­ble.”66 Although Comte endorsed the progressive impetus, Bury dissociated himself from him. The reason for this was that, according to Bury, Comte’s third f­uture period was too well structured, as if no flexible or casual f­actors ­were in action and history/society is fixed upon strict and inevitable laws. It seems that the theory of the third Hegelian “German phase” did have some impact on Bury’s historical perception. In a very in­ter­est­ing passage from The ­Later Roman Empire he acknowledges the invigorating influence of the German spirit in the era a­ fter the collapse of the Roman West and l­ ater during the Reformation: The formation of in­de­pen­dent Teutonic kingdoms in the earlier period corresponds to the Reformation in the ­later; in both cases the German spirit produced a mighty revolution, and in both cases the result was a compromise or division between the old and the new. The Roman Empire lived on in south-­eastern Eu­rope, even as the Catholic Church lived on, confined to a limited extent of territory; and t­ here was a remarkable revival of strength, or reaction, in the fifth and sixth centuries at Constantinople, which, following out the parallel, we may compare to the Counter-­ reformation. And this analogy is not a mere superficial or fanciful resemblance; the same historical princi­ple is involved. Chris­tian­ity and the Re­nais­sance performed the same functions; each meant the

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transformation of the spirit of the Eu­ro­pean world, and such a transformation was a necessary precursor of the disintegration of Eu­ro­pean unity, w ­ hether po­liti­cal or ecclesiastical. In the strength of ancient ideas lay the strength of the Roman Empire; Chris­tian­ity was the solvent of ­these ideas, and so dissolved also the po­liti­cal unity of Eu­rope. In the strength of medieval ideas lay the strength of the Roman Church; the spirit of the Re­nais­sance was the solvent of medieval ideas, and therefore it dissolved the ecclesiastical unity of western and northern Eu­rope.67 Although Bury wrote this passage many years before he discussed Bodin and Hegel in The Idea of Pro­gress, passage and discussion correspond, especially in the significance they both attribute to the third and last North/ Germanic age of the world. Bury acknowledged the impact of the two “Germanic” revolutions that had occurred a thousand years apart. The beginning of the M ­ iddle Ages (or the end of Rome) and the beginning of modernity (or the end of the ­Middle Ages) ­were in fact a consequence of the same “German” need to regenerate the Eu­ro­pean world with new ideology. The Teutonic ele­ment thus included a significant historical kernel. Furthermore, following this passage and the reading of The Idea of Pro­gress, it appears, once again, that Bury accepted the conservative division of history into three periods. For him, and this is an impor­tant point, the division was mainly applicable to the West, since the East continued the Roman Empire and ­there was no time border between antiquity and the ­Middle Ages. However, even in regard to the West, Bury presented a more moderate approach that identified the shift from Rome to the tribes as a gradual and even natu­ral pro­cess.

The Tribal Role in the “Fall” Unlike Gibbon, Bury argued that the Teutonic invasions ­were not too destructive. Ever since the times of Arminius, the “savior of Germany” in the beginning of the first c­ entury, the Teutons had fought alongside the Romans, u ­ ntil they revolted and demanded greater rights, privileges, and especially land. The “invasions” ­were actually internal rebellions within the Roman sphere and not external threats. Like Freeman and Bryce, Bury represented Teutonic lords like Alaric, Odoacer, and Stilicho as formed by a fusion of both cultures: “­these Romanized Teutons formed a link between Romania and Germania.”68



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The Teutons even contributed to the course of Eu­ro­pean history, and as such ­were dissimilar to the external threat of the Huns and their leader Attila who sought to destroy, plunder, and exploit the empire.69 The “Germanization” of the Roman army was not a negative pro­cess, since the tribes had injected an invigorating energy to the decaying Roman system: “it was just the fresh German spirit which was able to give some new life to the old forms and throw some enthusiasm into the task of maintaining the Roman name of which they ­were r­ eally proud. And it was this co­a li­tion of Roman and German ele­ments in the army which made the dismemberment of the Empire in the West less violent than it might have been.”70 In The Life of St. Patrick (1905), his account of Ireland’s most prominent saint and of the infiltration of Chris­tian­ity into his homeland, Bury explained that the tribes had a ­great admiration for Rome: The observant student who follows with care the history of the expansion of Germany and the strange pro­cess by which the German kingdoms w ­ ere established within the Empire in western Eu­rope, is struck at e­ very step by the profound re­spect which the barbarians evinced for the Empire and the Roman name throughout all their hostilities and injuries. While they ­were unconsciously dismembering it, they believed in its impregnable stability; Eu­rope without the Empire was unimaginable; the dominion of Rome seemed to them part of the universal order, as eternal as the ­great globe itself. If we take into account this immea­sur­able reverence for Rome, which is one of the governing psychical facts in the history of the “wandering of the nations,” we can discern what prestige a religion would acquire for neighbouring ­peoples when it became the religion of the Roman p ­ eople and the Roman State.71 This fact had led the tribes to adopt and cherish Chris­tian­ity. Without the Roman recognition of Chris­tian­ity, the barbarians, so Bury claimed, would have never a­ dopted it as their faith: “Could a ­people find any more power­ful protector than the Deity who was worshipped and feared by the greatest ‘nation’ on earth? . . . ​It did not occur to them that the Eternal City had achieved her greatness and built her empire u ­ nder the auspices of Jupiter and Mars. . . . ​If the step taken by Constantine had been postponed for a hundred years, we should not find the Goths and the Vandals professing Chris­tian­ity at the beginning of the fifth ­century.”72

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This observation about the tribes reaffirms, to some extent, the ideas of another famous British historian. In the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury, Thomas Hodgkin (1831–1913), a banker by profession, wrote a work of eight volumes u ­ nder the title Italy and Her Invaders (1880).73 Bury reviewed the first four volumes. In his review, he distinguished between the two leading views of the role of the tribes in the pro­cess of the Western fall. The differentiation was a general one and was made between the student of the classical era and the student of general Eu­ro­pean history. The first admired the achievements and thinking of the Greco-­Roman world and regarded the period from classical Greece (500 BC) ­until the alleged fall as the most significant in the age of humanity. The student of Eu­ro­pean history, however, looked from the fall onward and did not regard it as a catastrophic phase but as a new beginning, which paved the way out of a decaying world: When he sees a Roman Augustus trifling with theological puzzles in a synod-­chamber, or beholds Rome herself ­under the mercy of a barbarian’s army, he murmurs, “But oh, the heavy change!” And soon, his interest unawakened by the d ­ oings of the Goths and Vandals, he turns back to t­ hose brighter ages in which the Goth did not yet trou­ble the shores of the Midland Sea, and the Vandal was still at rest in his northern home. . . . ​The student of ­Teutonic—or the wider student of European—­history starts with hope to elate from the same group of events, amid which the student of “Classical” history can hardly bear up against a feeling of weariness and depression. Where the one is benighted and knows that the end is near the other can see the dawn faintly quickening in the east, and knows that a long day is still before him. Where the classical student looks back to Pericles and Julius Cesar, the historical student looks forward to Charles and Frederick.74 Gibbon was the ultimate representative of the classical type since “he is ever looking back,” while Hodgkin symbolized the student of Eu­ro­pean history.75 For Hodgkin, the tribes represented an essential phase in the development of the g­ reat Eu­ro­pean M ­ iddle Ages and w ­ ere the carriers of a new ­future and life. Hodgkin did not deny that the tribes had inflicted a horrible chaos on the classical world. Yet, as Bury wrote, Hodgkin shed only the “tear of a conqueror” over the destruction of the empire.76 The titles of the two books reflect this variance in opinion: Gibbon spoke of “decline” while



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Hodgkin had pro­gress at the back of his mind when he concentrated on the tribes and their wanderings. The significant point is that Hodgkin’s view, despite his positive assessment of the tribes, did not alter the periodization of antiquity. And in this he followed most of the scholars in the wake of Gibbon. The fact that the tribes contributed to Eu­ro­pean civilization did not mean that they should not be blamed for the fall. On the contrary, their significance was in the fact that they conquered a decaying empire and ushered in a new and better historical phase. Bury, however, as I have shown, minimized the influence of the tribes. In his eyes, the fall of the West was almost a false concept. The invasions had not been as traumatic or dramatic as represented by most scholars. Bury referred to himself as a student of Teutonic history, in which he followed Hodgkin. He retained no interest in early Roman imperial history for he deemed this era unfruitful and uncreative: “from Augustus to Augustulus [AD 476], poverty of ideas, incapacity for hard thinking, and excessive deference to authority, characterised the Roman world.”77 Bury earlier voiced this view in an article in the Saturday Review, where he harshly attacked the early Roman Empire and claimed that, with the exception of the Roman law, from its inception by Augustus to the victory of Chris­tian­ity, ­there had not been even one worthy achievement attributable to the empire: “From the days of Augustus to the triumph of Chris­tian­ity they in­ven­ted absolutely nothing in po­liti­cal science or in finance, in warfare or in mechanics, in religion or in lit­er­a­ture or art. . . . ​In fact ­under the early Roman Empire the ­human mind sluggishly vegetated on its own past. Contrast this with the brain power which has operated in ­England during the pres­ent ­century and helped to transform the world.”78 Bury’s essay, as the last sentence demonstrates, compared the accomplishments of the Roman and British empires to conclude that the British Empire was far superior. The most impor­tant point for our discussion is that, by insisting on the insignificance of the early imperial period between the first Emperor Augustus and the last emperor of the West, Augustulus, Bury seemed to accept the regular periodization that terminated the Western Empire in AD 476. Therefore, it can be argued that, according to Bury, a new period had commenced a­ fter the fall of the West and that no real linkage existed between the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire. This also contradicted Bury’s own argument against Gibbon that “no Empire fell in 476.” Additionally, in his ­Later Roman Empire, Bury, despite arguing in the same book against the theory of the fall and in ­favor of continuation in the East, dedicated his third chapter to “Ele­ments of disintegration in the Roman

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Empire.”79 Bury noted several major c­ auses that had instigated the fall of the Roman Empire. The most crucial ele­ment had been the shortage in manpower. Anticipating the interpretation of Max Weber,80 Bury wrote (1889): “The most obvious ele­ment of weakness in the Roman Empire was the increasing depopulation. The vitality of a state depends ultimately on the ­people, and from the time of Augustus, who was obliged to make special laws to encourage reproduction, to the time of Marcus Aurelius the population steadily decreased.”81 The shortage in manpower became critical in times of war when the o­ wners of the small estates left their fields to fight, while most of the slaves still worked and preserved the large, rich estates. For this reason, the ­owners of the small and medium estates gradually became serfs. Th ­ ese evils in the Roman economic system ­were deep-­rooted. The original sin was a law issued by the plebiscite of Claudius in 218 BC. The law banned senators from investing their money in trade. The senators, who became wealthier and wealthier through the new acquisitions of Rome, now had no option but to invest their money in land. They gradually seized control of many small estates and worsened the conditions of the Roman ­free m ­ iddle class.82 The grain imported from the provinces also added to the prob­lems of the f­ree estates. The imported grain lowered the revenues of the estates since it was bought for a cheaper price than the local grain grown in Italy. The w ­ hole Roman system deteriorated since most of the citizens suffered from the same harsh conditions and poverty that led to depopulation. In response to this shortage of manpower, the empire incorporated barbarians into its administration. ­These barbarians together with their families, and in some cases even the ­whole tribe, ­were gradually assimilated into the Roman Empire. Eventually, ­because of this development, the empire collapsed: “The significance of t­ hese semi-­barbarians is that they smoothed the way . . . ​ for the invaders who dismembered the Empire; not being attached by hereditary tradition to Roman ideas and the Roman name, but having within them the Teutonic spirit of individual freedom, directly opposed to the Roman spirit of tyrannical universal law, they ­were not prejudiced sufficiently strongly in favour of the Roman Empire to preserve it, although they admired and partook of its superior civilisation.”83 ­These words seem to contradict the statement Bury makes several pages ­later that the Germanic communities, which integrated into the empire functioned as a “bridge” between the Roman and Germanic civilizations. Is t­ here any explanation for ­t hese apparent inconsistencies? When, if ever, did the empire fall, according to Bury? Was t­ here a continuation between the Eastern and the Western empires or ­were t­ here two separate entities?



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The fact that Bury discarded the “conventional” date of AD 476 (see the earlier discussion on Gibbon) did not mean that he thought that the Western Empire had not declined in the fifth c­ entury. On the contrary, he wrote several times in dif­fer­ent publications about the deterioration of the West. Yet, for him, unlike for other historians, the fall of the West did not signify the end of the empire. ­There was a clear distinction between the two parts of the empire. For Bury, the heart of the empire was positioned in the East. The civilization of the l­ater Roman Empire denoted a continuation of ancient Greece together with Rome.84 To a certain extent, in the East the fall had never occurred, and the empire just moved to the new metropolis in Constantinople, ­until its final fall a thousand or so years ­later. The inherent economic prob­ lems of the West w ­ ere at the root of its gradual fall. “Gradual” is a relative term h ­ ere, since the fall was not a consequence of a singular event, or even related to the occurrences of an entire c­entury, but must be attributed to structural faults of the Western system. Following this, Bury de-­emphasized the corrosive influence of Chris­tian­ity and barbarism, but elevated other reasons: depopulation, heavy taxation, the corruption of the Roman administration, and the demolishing of the small estates.

The Rise of the East The key question, and one of Bury’s ­great contributions, is why ­these prob­ lems did not affect the East. Why did the Eastern Empire survive and not suffer from a similar fate? If the decline during the M ­ iddle Ages originated from the role of Chris­tian­ity in restraining freedom, how could Bury claim that, in the same period, a thriving Christian culture existed in the Roman East? The East, as the West, should have also been bounded by the limitations of the church on freedom. Bury mentioned several basic reasons for the divergence. The principal one was that the foundation of the city of Constantinople, or the “new Rome,” bestowed a dramatic advantage to the East. The city operated as a hub merging East and West. The geographic location enabled Constantinople to grow as a new thriving center and, most impor­tant, to withstand the barbarian invasions. Before ravaging Rome, the barbaric tribes passed through the eastern parts with the clear aim of sacking the East, but the location of the city on the Bosporus, together with its high walls, prevented them from carry­ing out their intentions. The failure in the East drove dif­fer­ent tribal leaders, like Alaric the Goth and Attila the Hun,

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to select more “suitable” targets—­namely, the western provinces and the city of Rome.85 The East also embraced one united religion and developed a coherent national identity: “Chris­tian­ity and the influence of the Church acted as a cement.”86 In the West, inner strug­gles occurred due to religious and social variables. The Christians with their Catholic doctrine, the Germans with their Arian dogma, and the pagan Romans w ­ ere all thrown into the same pot. To this should be added that the East gained greater wealth than the West. In the Western Empire, as noted earlier, Bury identified a decline in f­ree land owner­ship that had harmed the socioeconomic conditions of the ­middle class. In the East, however, t­ here was a more equal “distribution of property” (see below). The East also enjoyed a population growth, while the population of the West underwent a decline.87 The capability of the Eastern emperors of the fifth ­century in comparison to the weakness of the emperors of the West signified another major advantage of the East. In the West, Germanic advisers assisted the Caesars, and the ranks of the army w ­ ere flooded with Germanic soldiers. The Eastern emperors, however, led an economic reform and managed to avoid the hazards of the West. As Bury argued, the latter disaster could have been prevented “if an Adam Smith had arisen” among the Western ­ ater Roman Empire, Bury made another clear distinction emperors.88 In his L between the two parts of the empire: The western suffered more than the eastern provinces, a fact which we must attribute primarily to a dif­fer­ent economic condition, resulting from a dif­fer­ent history. The distribution of property was less uneven in the East, and the social character of the p ­ eople was dif­fer­ent. For while the East was u ­ nder the more genial and enlightened rule of Alexander’s successors, the West was held by the cold hand of Rome. ­A fter the division of the Empire, 395 a.d., the state of the West seems to have become rapidly worse, while the East gradually revived ­under a government inclined to reform.89 One impor­tant notion evident in this passage is that the separation between the East and the West was already rooted in the Hellenistic era of the third and second centuries BC. The fact that the Greek East benefited a­ fter the death of Alexander from greater freedom, in contrast to the shackles of Rome, also testifies to the fact that Bury a­ dopted the theory of “unity in history.” That is to say, he observed a long linkage from the early split to the



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much ­later East-­West division in AD 395. Following this, another significant conclusion comes to light. Bury, despite attacking other historians for their arbitrary division of the past, handed us a similar method. A new era in the history of Rome began ­after Theodosius I (AD 347–395) died and his two sons, Arcadius (377–408) and Honorius (384–423), ruled the two halves of the empire. Bury, for this reason, also commenced his L ­ ater Roman Empire with the division of AD 395. The division marked a dif­fer­ent stage in Rome’s history, but it did not signify the end of Rome. The linkage between the East and the West still existed, and the fundamental change was that the center of gravity moved eastward. ­Until AD 800, sustainable relations between the two parts still endured. Bury demonstrated how the Germanic lords of the West had treated the Eastern Roman emperor as their superior lord. For instance, Theodoric invaded Italy u ­ nder the order of Zeno, the emperor of the East.90 In addition, Justinian managed to conquer vast parts of the West and tried to establish a unified empire. Justinian’s attempt did not last for many years, but it still indicated that the two empires w ­ ere not totally detached. This could also be proved through the joint issuing of laws by the two empires. Although Bury recognized the language split between the Latin West and the Greek East, he still maintained that ­these two parallel centers of control had not been totally divided: “The two parts are often loosely spoken of as if they ­were two distinct empires—­the Eastern and the Western. That is a ­mistake against which we must be on our guard.”91 The final separation between the two empires only followed five hundred years l­ater in AD 802 with the deposition of Empress Irene (deposed October 31, 802). This date also marked the point at which Bury concluded his ­Later Roman Empire. Thus, he did provide us with a termination date for the ­later Roman Empire. From AD 802 on, a totally new period had commenced, and Bury depicted its course in A History of the Eastern Roman Empire (1912).92 Bury’s justification for the division between the two periods was that in AD 800 a final split between East and West had occurred when Charlemagne was crowned emperor. Fi­nally, a worthy counterpart arose in the West, and the domination of the East was constrained. As mentioned, Bury actually accepted the periodization of Thomas Arnold, ­adopted ­later by Freeman and Bryce, that concluded antiquity with Charlemagne. For Bury, however, and h ­ere unlike Arnold, AD 800 symbolized only the absolute separation between the West and East; the final destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire would not occur u ­ ntil 1453. Bury presented a complex view of the transformation of Rome and of the ancient world. He stressed several historical developments that might be

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contradictory. Primarily, he acknowledged the destruction of Western Rome in the fifth ­century together with the continuation of the empire in the East. One can question how Bury conceived the era before and a­ fter the destruction as belonging to the same period. Furthermore, how, on the one hand, he could emphasize that the East and the West had maintained close links ­until the ninth ­century, yet, on the other hand, assert that the basic dissimilarities between the two had caused the West to fall and the Eastern Empire to linger.

The Rule of Contingency and the Merit of Inconsistency This comprehension of Bury’s interpretation of Roman history may also be traced in a dif­fer­ent place. In his writings, Bury promoted the notion that history was governed by contingencies. The casual, random, and thus unpredictable component determines the course of history, and therefore the ability to explain events is limited and cannot be dependent upon a broad theory or summarized by several general laws. Th ­ ere are so many variants in history. The roles of the individual, the psychological, the geo­graph­i­cal, the environmental, and other conditions, encompass a power to transform history’s path at any given moment. The evolutionary theory of Darwin was, as Bury admitted, the basis for this historical method, since he identified the randomness in nature also in history: The truth is that Darwinism itself offers the best illustration of the insufficiency of general laws to account for historical development. The part played by coincidence, and the part played by individuals—­ limited by, and related to, general social conditions—­render it impossible to deduce the course of the past history of man or to predict the f­ uture. But it is just the same with organic development. Darwin (or any other zoologist) could not deduce the ­actual course of evolution from general princi­ples. Given an organism and its environment, he could not show that it must evolve into a more complex organism of a definite predetermined type; knowing what it has evolved into, he could attempt to discover and assign the determining c­ auses. General princi­ples do not account for a par­tic­u­ lar sequence; they embody necessary conditions; but t­ here is a chapter of accidents too. It is the same in the case of history.93



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Contingencies, Bury added elsewhere, are the core of history and are what “make history so in­ter­est­ing and so baffling.”94 Some thinkers, as, for example, Hegel, explain events in history as dependent on a predestined course controlled by providence or attached to reason. Bury, however, supported the notion of chance created by the convergence and collision of in­de­pen­dent arbitrary ­causes or events. Several contingent events determined the ultimate fate of the Western Roman Empire. The invasion of the Huns into the realms of the Germanic tribes forced the latter to move into Roman territory. The Huns invaded the West ­because of in­de­pen­dent internal developments in the East. This means that the German tribes, even though they w ­ ere for centuries on the brink of entering the empire, eventually invaded only ­because of the external threat of the oncoming Huns. Bury added also the ill-­management of the Visigoth settlements, the weakness of the young emperor Honorius, and fi­nally and most impor­tant, the power of Stilicho, the Roman general of German origin and de facto emperor. For Bury, the dismembering of the West was a ­matter of contingency, since several in­de­pen­dent f­actors collided and converged u ­ ntil the empire fell.95 This contingency theory stood out from his previous publications of 1889, The ­Later Roman Empire, and 1900, “Rome and Byzantium.” In another l­ater book the History of the ­Later Roman Empire (1923), he argued that no sole and ­grand reason could explain the fall of the Roman Empire: “The truth is that the success of the barbarians in penetrating and founding states in the western provinces cannot be explained by any general considerations. It is accounted for by the ­actual events and would be clearer if the story ­were known more fully. The gradual collapse of the Roman power in this section of the empire was the consequence of a series of contingent events. No general ­causes can be assigned that made it inevitable.”96 This book, which mainly focused on the developments in the West, did not pres­ent coherent economic reasons for the Western destruction.97 Bury’s concern was rather to picture a domino effect that validated the operation of the accidental aspect in triggering the Western fall. The contingent occurrences that he identified as ruling history can also explain why Bury frequently altered his opinions. As one of his l­ater reviewers noted: “he was sometimes hasty in changing his own views, and to staid observers seemed inconsistent. But consistency as a virtue had no charm for him . . . ​and indeed its only value to a historian is as a check on over-­hasty conclusions. The subject-­matter of ­human history is so dominated by the bias of witnesses and the accidents of survival that without continual revision no pro­gress ­toward truth is pos­si­ble.”98 Some unexplained themes do appear

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within Bury’s arguments. However, as in the case of any scholar, and as illustrated also in the cases of Freeman and Bryce it is pos­si­ble to locate some contradictions, especially if a scholar publishes so prolifically. Furthermore, as Bury himself maintained, the obligation of the historian was to amend his views from time to time: “One of the most impor­tant ­things that ­people have to learn, and one of the hardest, is that consistency is not a reasonable rule of life. . . . ​How irredeemably dull ­people would be if they ­were all consistent, in thought, in speech, and in action! . . . ​The g­ reat charm of Mr. Gladstone as a politician is that he has made inconsistency a fine art. . . . ​For the false idea of consistency leads to the false idea of immutability, of never changing one’s mind. Perhaps one should rather count that year as misspent in which one has not modified all one’s opinions.”99 If the historian is a true follower of the scientific method, he must act accordingly and fluctuate in his views. Archaeological, archival, and any other new evidence must be the foundation of the historical analy­sis. Sometimes, as in this critical question of the fall of the empire, Bury, it seems, even presented two dif­fer­ent opinions within the same book. It may be that his emphasis on the contingency of history validated his own version of the unity of history. His universal rule of contingency is, therefore, derived from the fact that no in­de­pen­dent f­ actors govern the historical course. Unlike other historical methodologies, such as the Annales of the 1920s, which devised schemes in which history is controlled by in­de­pen­dent f­ actors, such as mentalités (Lucien Febvre, 1878–1956) or geography (Fernand Braudel, 1902–85), Bury only recognized “order” in the contingent ele­ment (disorder) of history. In other words, the contingency as the consistent core of history. His perception of Roman history also provides a glimpse into Bury’s unique historical method. Bury, unlike the ancient Greek historians Thucydides and Polybius, and the Cambridge professor of modern history John Seeley, did not believe that history was only for the teaching of practical lessons to statesmen: “the statesman of the pres­ent cannot employ the distant past to help his prognostications, ­because all decisive circumstances . . . ​must of necessity be dif­f er­ent.”100 For Bury, as mentioned in his most famous quote from his inaugural lecture, “history is a science, no less and no more.”101 This quote, which has garnered many critical comments, means that history is not an art or a kind of lit­er­a­ture that bears moral teachings but a science that can enrich us with factual accounts of the past.102 ­Here it must be asked how Bury asserted that history could be both scientific and contingent. One explanation is that Bury merely altered his position and followed once again his “rule of fluctuation.”



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He coined this quote in 1902, while his major writings on the contingent aspect of history w ­ ere written a de­cade or so ­later. In his St. Patrick, Bury revised, to a certain extent, his famous “scientific” statement: “In vindicating the claims of history to be regarded as a science or Wissenschaft, I never meant to suggest a proposition so indefensible as that the pre­sen­ta­tion of the results of historical research is not an art, requiring tact and skill in se­lection and arrangement which belong to the literary faculty.”103 ­A fter a lecture in 1909 on ancient Greek historians, Bury was asked if he had abandoned his view on the scientific kernel of the discipline of history. The question arose from the very dif­fer­ent portrayal of history that Bury had just presented in his lecture. Bury’s answer was that he would be unfaithful to his profession if he had not changed his opinion from time to time.104 Furthermore, as Doris Goldstein shows, for Bury the fact that history was contingent was exactly what made it scientific, since it was natu­ral and part of this world. The accidental, Goldstein points out, “was not outside the realm of cause and effect.”105 Bury, therefore, offered a scientific method for explaining contingencies in history and, for example, differentiated between what he called “pure” and “mixed” contingencies: the former being solely dependent on chance, while the latter merged chance and h ­ uman or prior inten106 tion. In other words, history is contingent in its unfolding, but retrospectively the historian can analyze it through scientific methods. From ­these arguments, several major peculiarities surface that separate Bury from other historians, including Freeman. First and foremost, concerning the teaching of practical lessons, Bury was not involved in the daily debates of the statesman. He was not writing regularly for the newspapers or voicing his po­liti­cal views on the public podium. Science and reason w ­ ere the key words for Bury, and in this he sustained the long tradition of German positivistic historians such as Ranke and Mommsen. ­These German historians developed a new method in the study of history. Ranke, following his famous dictum that history must be studied “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” focused especially on early modern Eu­rope. He stressed the importance of archival work in the understanding of historical real­ity. Mommsen a­ dopted a similar method by emphasizing that one of the keys for researching the Roman Republic was material evidence, especially Latin inscriptions. In his inaugural lecture, Bury praised Mommsen for his new method in historical investigation: “his greatness as a historian is to be sought far less in that dazzling work [History of Rome] than in the Corpus and the Staatrecht and the Chronicles.”107 Bury’s anti-­Catholic stance did not lead him to omit religious-­national tendencies from his writings. Consequently, his Irish Protestant origin was

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emphasized as part of his historical argumentation. One ­thing is certain, in contrast to his proud national pre­de­ces­sors, like Freeman and Stubbs and other Victorians who stressed a common Teutonic past, Bury had walked a long way from Teutonic and racial explanations. He did not detect an eternal link between the modern En­glish and the ancient Germanic tribes and was less than keen on the “special” connection of Britain and Germany.

Opposing Germany In 1914, a short while a­ fter the eruption of the ­Great War, Bury published a manifesto ­under the title Germany and Slavonic Civilization.108 The manifesto criticized the German government’s aggression and held it responsible for hostilities. The manifesto, also published in a shorter version as an article in the New York Times, refuted the German claims that the war was a strug­gle between Teutonic and Slavic “barbarism.”109 Bury took special issue with certain German “spokesmen,” as he called them, who had urged that the British had betrayed their historical and natu­ral allies by joining the Eastern-­ Slavonic barbarism led by Rus­sia. Bury began by showing the historic links between Rus­sia and Prus­sia that had been established and strengthened since the separation of Poland in 1772. ­These connections ­were intensified through the ­family connections between the czars and the Prus­sian monarchs. The policy of Prus­sia throughout the nineteenth c­ entury and especially u ­ nder Bismarck’s rule was to acquire new territories and to “Germanize” the areas u ­ nder its control, like Silesia. Th ­ ere was a convergence of interests regarding this Prus­sian policy, as the Rus­sians also wished to amplify their influence in Poland and in the Balkans. However, the century-­long cooperation between Germany and Rus­sia was harmed following the dissolution of the Three Caesars’ Alliance (Dreikaiserbund, 1887). Consequently, Germany feared that Rus­sia would now adopt liberal policies, especially in its Polish territories, which would also influence the Polish territories of Germany. In addition, the interest of the two nations concerning the Slavonic states u ­ nder the rule of the Ottoman Empire w ­ ere no longer compatible. Rus­sia, in general, according to Bury, became more and more “Eu­ro­pean.” He even quoted Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), the racialist Anglo-­German writer, to testify to this Eu­ro­pe­anization pro­cess: “I may refer to a writer, with most of whose views I disagree, but whose work, ‘Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts’ [1899], has enjoyed a large



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popularity in Germany. His subject is the ‘kultur’ of the ‘Germanic’ ­peoples, and among the Germanic ­peoples he includes the Slavs. . . . ​He means that the Slavs are one of the races which are b­ earers of what is commonly called ‘Western civilization.’ ”110 Bury relied on Chamberlain ­here to prove his point that even a “philo-­ Teutonic” writer regarded Rus­sia and the Slavs as part of Eu­rope and not as a foreign Eastern foe. A few months ­later, Bury’s reading of Chamberlain was revalidated by the latter himself. In a pamphlet titled Who Is to Blame for the War? (January 1915), Chamberlain wrote: “For my part, I disbelieve in the inborn antagonism of Slavic and Germanic races. . . . ​History does not confirm it, nor does my own observation.”111 Contrary to Bury’s scorching of Germany, Chamberlain’s pamphlet, aimed at “all the readers in neutral countries,” blamed ­England together with the other two states of the t­ riple entente (Rus­ sia and France) for the war. While Germany “represents the cause of higher civilization,” the entente members denote falsehood and despotism.112 In Germany, he asserted, the w ­ hole society is involved with the war efforts, whereas in ­England a general apathy rules. Hence, despite their racial kinship, a ­great difference separates Germany and ­England: “How widely contrasted, in this re­spect, are the conceptions of ­peoples racially so nearly related.”113 Interestingly, a month ­later (February 1915) Bryce also referred to Chamberlain in his Race Sentiment: “a recent able and very learned Anglo-­German writer (Houston Stewart Chamberlain), in his Foundations of the Nineteenth ­Century, argues that in the days of the old Monarchy Israel was already largely Canaanitish. Indeed, he hints that King David was prob­ably half an Amorite, which means for him an Indo-­European or Aryan, that is to say, in the last resort a German, since the German is the highest specimen of the Indo-­ European ­family.”114 Like Bury, Bryce aimed to show that even a racist thinker such as Chamberlain argued against racial purity. The prob­lem, of course, was that Chamberlain argued against Jewish purity, while stressing Aryan dominance even among the g­ reat kings of Israel. It seems that, unlike Bury, Bryce did not totally distance himself from Chamberlain’s theories. This perhaps points to a certain difference between the racial perceptions of Bryce and Bury. For the latter, returning to his 1914 manifesto, it was primarily Germany that had departed from Western values. The West, already from the beginning of the nineteenth c­ entury, fostered, albeit not flawlessly, the idea of nationalism as seen in the establishment of Greece, Bulgaria, and so on. Germany, however, never promoted this notion. On the contrary, it opposed it on many occasions

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and in this held a shared interest with the Ottoman and the Austro-­Hungarian empires. In that sense, Rus­sia belonged more to the West than did Germany.115 It is pos­si­ble that not only the war but also his Irish Protestant background turned Bury away from the Teutonic narrative. The Teutonic heritage was predominantly the “reserved territory” of several scholars, who wished to construct the En­glish community upon an ancient Germanic past. For Bury, Teutonism was less applicable. Remarks such as “our Germanic forefathers,” which reappear time and again in the writings of the English-­Teutonic circle of scholars, are absent in Bury. His Irish Protestant origin also explains why the strife with Catholicism was far more pertinent for him. As elaborated in this chapter, his “personal” anti-­Catholic opinions infiltrated his works, especially during the 1910s. Bury’s anti-­Catholicism might also illuminate his argument about the long continuation of the empire in the East. Bury stressed the way in which the Catholic Church prevented the development of the West during the M ­ iddle Ages, while depicting the opposing example of the Eastern revival. In the West, the grip of Catholicism was only broken with modernity, whereas in the East the imperial heritage and the Orthodox Church empowered development and prosperity. Bury attempted to refute the common notion that Catholicism had saved Rome ­after the fall. According to him, the contrary was true, and the East had saved Rome. The “illusion of finality,” the title given to this chapter, was the phrase Bury used to describe a common fallacy. E ­ very generation believes that its era fulfills the highest accomplishments in the history of the world and no following age can ever surpass its deeds since t­ here is no option for further pro­ gress. The finality appears also within religious circles that attribute to their faith the dichotomy of ­either imminent salvation or destruction. Pro­gress based on chance dominates history. For Bury, this made h ­ uman development less stable and much more fascinating. Bury, the scientific historian, considered by some as dull, attempted through his theory of contingency to transform the static perception of history. He tried to move beyond such entrenched patterns of thought and offer a new, less firm concept. This, as I have tried to portray, is not only seen in his writings on the philosophy of history but also in his new perception of a l­ater Roman Empire that thrived many years a­ fter its alleged fall.

epilogue

Values and Interests

Past is past not b­ ecause it happened to ­others but b­ ecause it forms part of our pres­ent . . . ​­because, in short, it is our past. —­José Ortega y Gasset

Construction of a shared English-­German past based on a common narrative was the primary objective of the English-­Teutonic scholars. Despite the monarchical (Hanoverian), religious (mainly Protestantism but also common Catholicism), and cultural (language) links between E ­ ngland and Germany, the attempt to construct a common narrative also faced certain difficulties since the vari­ous scholars committed to this objective still had to bridge a certain gap between two separated geo­graph­i­c al entities with (multiple) divergent interests. As argued in this book, one of the means for overcoming the distinctiveness of each entity was through the formation of a new time line, one that was not founded on particularistic aspects but on broader collective traits. Most of the scholars discussed, in par­tic­u ­lar, Freeman, Stubbs, and Kingsley, stressed the racial Teutonic past as a primary apparatus for merging the history of the two nations. Thus, they tried to pres­ent Teutonic history as an integral part of their nation’s “own” history. Their interpretation has relevance for the more recent historiographical debate surrounding the nature of Anglo-­German relations during the second half of the nineteenth ­century. Some, like Paul Kennedy, have stressed the hostility that prevailed between the two nations between 1860 and World War I.1 ­Others have challenged this negative and rather one-­dimensional perception of Anglo-­German relations.2 As demonstrated throughout this book, Freeman, Bryce, and Stubbs, that is, the En­glish-Teutonic scholars,

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expressed affinity with the Germans. This affinity derived from two main sources: shared origins—­the supposed Aryan and particularly Teutonic heritage, which was said to explain the cohesion of the two nations and was constructed on linguistic, racial, and religious characteristics. For t­hese scholars, this was a natu­ral and inherent structural bond. The other source was situational, the result of po­liti­c al contingency: the English-­German scholarly circle also originated following what Freeman and o­ thers observed as the shared po­liti­cal interests of the two states and the threat presented by France, their mutual ­enemy. France, as the menacing “other,” denoted Roman, Celtic, and Catholic characteristics. ­These characteristics, it was shown, contrasted the shared Protestant and Teutonic roots that formed the foundation of the Anglo-­German circle. Thus, two main and perhaps distinct forces coexisted in the English-­ Teutonic circle during the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury: one was based on cultural-­racial traits, the other founded on con­temporary po­liti­cal interests. Did the po­liti­cal interests hinge on the cultural-­natural link, or did maybe the geopo­liti­cal circumstances determine the development of a shared cultural-­racial sphere? Which of t­ hese forces was the dependent variable, and which in­de­pen­dent? It seems that the two ­were intermingled in the conception of the English-­Teutonic circle and that neither of them embodied a prior significance. In short, the common inherent values w ­ ere fused with the shared po­liti­cal interests of the two nations. As illustrated, t­ here is a generational shift between Freeman and Stubbs and Bryce and Bury in their l­ater years. While Germany was still an emerging nation, many British scholars supported it and ­were encouraged to exchange ideas mainly based on German academic methods. But ­toward the end of the ­century the impact of the Teutonic academic attraction seemed to wane, and an estrangement gradually developed between scholars of the two countries. Even Freeman, as described, came to resent some German influences during the 1880s.3 This generational shift, as illustrated, resulted from Germany’s rise to ascendancy as a significant world power and culminated, of course, in World War I. The changing attitudes in Britain ­toward Germany might explain Bury’s diminished Teutonic stance. Throughout his writings, he never showed g­ reat enthusiasm for the Teutonic narrative. He did value the tribes and their historical significance and was greatly influenced by the German historical method, as seen, for example, in his multiple references to the works of Otto Seeck. Yet, unlike Freeman, Bryce, and o­ thers, Bury did not identify the tribes



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as the mythical ancestors of the nation. For him, ­there was no acute conflict between British political interests and essentialist ideas of a shared Anglo-­ German past and pres­ent. In this he was distinct from the rest of the scholars discussed in this book. Bury’s perception of Germany was less dependent on the war or on a generational shift and more bound up in his aloofness from essentialist notions about the Teutonic race. The generational shift is also exemplified in the changing attitude of the Saturday Review. For many years the periodical promoted Anglo-­German relations and, indeed, became a central publishing platform for the Teutonic historians. During the 1890s, however, and in the context of German support of the Boers in their strug­gle against the British, the periodical a­ dopted an anti-­German stance. This stance is epitomized in an article borrowing from Cato the Elder’s saying “Carthago delenda est” (Carthage must be destroyed): “be ready to fight Germany, as Germania delenda est.”4 The article was a racial manifesto, an identification between the expansion of species in nature and the foreign relations of the world’s nations. If Britain wished to preserve its Anglo-­ Saxon racial superiority, the races that threatened it the most had to vanish. Comparable to nature, t­ hese w ­ ere the races that lived in the same habitat and ­were intent on expansion. France, one would assume, answered to this criterion, yet the author defined it an ally with a limited expansion interest. The real ­enemy was Germany, mainly ­because it was so akin to Britain in race and power. The two, therefore, could not coexist, and Britain, like Rome, had to annihilate its Carthage.5 Naturally, as seen in the case of Bryce (Chapter 5), World War I was a watershed that diminished almost any Teutonic inclinations. In an essay published in the Scottish Review ­toward the end of the war (summer of 1918), the author H. C. MacNeacail, a Scottish nationalist, described the transformation from Teutonic kinship to estrangement: “A few years ago, it was customary, in ­England and elsewhere, to ascribe the origins of the En­glish ­people and of En­glish culture to Germany. It was pointed out with perfect truth that Germany was the original home of the En­glish, that their language belonged to the group of languages styled Germanic or Teutonic, and that the po­liti­cal and social institutions of E ­ ngland had their birth in what many En­glishmen are now pleased to term the land of the Hun.”6 But with the eruption of hostilities between the two once-­friendly nations, “it was no longer the ‘correct ­thing’ to claim relationship with the German.” Instead, the author asserted, many in ­England began stressing their alleged Celtic roots.7 Why “alleged” roots? Since MacNeacail, who aimed to protect his own Scottish-­Celtic identity

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from “external” English-­Teutonic takeovers, concluded by stating that despite the war and the emerging Celtic attitudes in E ­ ngland, “Germany is the spiritual home of the En­glishman, and, on the w ­ hole, his anthropological home also, ­whether he now likes to admit the fact or not.”8 It must be noted that, at least ­until the ­Great War, and despite deteriorating relations, some En­glish scholars attempted to maintain a pro-­German view (see again Chapter 5 on Bryce). Even in 1914, on the eve of war, five Germans received honorary degrees at the University of Oxford. In the speech given at the ceremony, the words of the imperialist and fervent Teutonist Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) w ­ ere quoted: “the w ­ hole of humanity would be best served if the Teutonic ­peoples ­were brought nearer together.”9 H. S. Chamberlain carried his extreme Teutonism into the war and beyond. In 1910 the first En­ glish translation of Chamberlain’s Foundations received an enthusiastic introduction by Algernon Bertram Freeman-­Mitford, the first Baron (Lord) Redesdale (1837–1916). The book, selling over 200,000 copies worldwide between 1900 and 1930, received very positive reviews by John Bernard Shaw in the leftist Fabian News, as well as from other periodicals such as the Spectator.10 In his lengthy introduction, Lord Redesdale adhered to most of Chamberlain’s notions and especially to his main thesis concerning the supremacy of the Teutonic stock: “It is to the Teuton branch of the Aryan ­family that the first place in the world belongs, and the story of the nineteenth ­century is the story of the Teuton’s triumph.”11 As in the above-­mentioned article in the Saturday Review, Chamberlain also pointed to the glorious Roman victory against Carthage. Chamberlain’s conclusion in his book, together with Lord Redesdale’s l­ater introduction, was entirely dif­fer­ent: it was not that Britain must annihilate Germany, but that the Aryan race must defeat its Semitic adversary.12 If Rome had not burned Carthage to the ground, the Semitic race would have prevailed, and history would have been transformed: The least mercy shown to a race of such unparalleled tenacity as the Semites would have sufficed to enable the Phoenician nation to rise once more; in a Carthage only half-­burned the torch of life would have glimmered beneath the ashes, to burst again into flame as soon as the Roman Empire began to approach its dissolution. We are not yet ­free of peril from the Arabs, who long seriously threatened our existence, and their creation, Mohammedanism, is the greatest of all hindrances to ­every pro­gress of civilisation, hanging



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like a sword of Damocles over our slowly and laboriously rising culture in Eu­rope, Asia and Africa; the Jews stand morally so high above all other Semites that one may hardly name them in conjunction with ­these (their ancestral enemies in any case from time immemorial), and yet we should need to be blind or dishonest, not to confess that the prob­lem of Judaism in our midst is one of the most difficult and dangerous questions of the day; now imagine in addition a Phoenician nation, holding from the earliest times all harbours in their possession, monopolising all trade, in possession of the richest capitals in the world and of an ancestral national religion.13 Chamberlain echoed the words of Green (see Chapter 1) and especially Freeman (Chapter 4), who both underscored the Roman victory against Carthage as one of the climaxes of the perpetual animosity between the Aryan and Semitic races. Chamberlain, in fact, drew a “racial line” between Carthage and the ­later Islamic and Jewish civilizations. Freeman, as seen, also marked the Aryan-­Christian-­European conflicts against the Saracens of the seventh ­century and eventually against (his) present-­day Ottoman-­Turks as belonging to the continuous racial strife determining the course of history. Thus, although the Teutonic notion seemed to be less dominant by the beginning of the twentieth c­entury, Chamberlain, Lord Redesdale, and other Edwardian scholars (some already active in the Victorian age) cherished, at least ­until World War I, the Teutonism and racial historical perception of their Victorian pre­de­ces­sors. The article in the Saturday Review, as well as Chamberlain’s thesis, oscillated between past and pres­ent. In the case of the Saturday Review, the British Empire, like ancient Rome, must crush its strongest adversary, Germany/ Carthage, while in the case of Chamberlain the modern Aryan nations o­ ught to prevail over the Semitic race. ­These ideas reflect one of the central pillars of this book, the idea of the “unity of history.” This idea, I have argued, transformed the conventional periodization, presented new patterns, and constantly amalgamated con­temporary real­ity and ancient history. The En­glish Teutonic scholars, while not renowned for their innovative periodizations, nevertheless altered the historiographical debate about the end of antiquity. They created new historiographical approaches ­toward the Roman, Byzantine, and even Muslim past. Most of ­these scholars, excluding Bury, aimed to validate the historical dominance of the Teutonic race through vari­ous institutional, religious,

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and, most impor­tant, racial explanations. Race was a reoccurring theme throughout their writings, and its mergence with the concept of periodization was crucial in the construction of an au­t hen­tic English-­German Teutonic community. Race pointed to the founding of a complete and complex Teutonic civilization that had not copied and imitated other heritages and cultures but rather formed its own culture. This enabled certain scholars to rely on an in­ de­pen­dent historical identity that, together with other ideas and developments, assisted their reinvention and reimagination of their own communities in the nineteenth ­century. Small won­der many of them pointed to the Germanic tribes as their ancient forefathers. Their research into the past created a certain historical narrative, which served as a historical and moral foundation for the establishment of the community. This also led scholars to the conclusion that the Germanic heritage was not limited to the geo­graph­i­c al realm of the German principalities, ­because, already during the times of the tribes the Germanic spirit was prevalent in many places in Eu­rope. The deeper meaning of this definition is that the realm of the German race, language, and culture—­ and not the geography of the nineteenth ­century—­defines the bound­aries of a community that, as well as being au­then­tic, was large, power­ful, and destined to rule.

Notes

Works frequently cited have been identified by the following the abbreviations: BL British Library Bod. Bodleian Library, Special Collections HOS Freeman, History of Sicily HRE Holy Roman Empire JRLM John Rylands Library, Manchester LEAF Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman LJRG Letters of John Richard Green ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography RPA Rationalist Press Association SR Saturday Review of Politics, Lit­er­a­ture, Science, and Art THRE Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, 4th ed.

Introduction Note to epigraph: Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner et al., forward Hayden White, Cultural Memory in the Pres­ent (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 4. 1. Jack Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 12–23. 2. Isaiah Berlin, Selected Writings, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 337. Vis-­à-­vis this claim about the uniqueness of Hess, it is necessary to mention Lord Acton’s essay about the pres­ent and ­future influence of nationality written in 1862. See Lord Acton, “Nationality,” in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishna (London: Verso, 1996), 17–38. 3. For proto-­racist perceptions that had “thrived” already in antiquity, see: Benjamin H. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 2004). For proto-nationalism in antiquity, see Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997). 4. Throughout the discussion, I focus on the alleged Teutonic origin of the En­glish (not British) and their affinity with Germany. Some of the “Teutonic” scholars, such as James Bryce (Scotland) ­were indeed British rather than En­glish. However, they still emphasized the Teutonic kinship of the En­g lish nation, and, therefore, they w ­ ill be referred to as En­g lish scholars. Furthermore, although most of ­these figures ­were historians, I ­will, in most instances, label them “scholars,” especially since Bryce (jurisprudence) and Max Müller (philology) w ­ ere known as major figures in other fields of study.

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5. ­These are the words of Arnaldo Momigliano in his essay “Eighteenth-­Century Prelude to Mr. Gibbon,” cited in Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 2003), 152. 6. Jack Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth’s Antiquity (Reading, Mass.: Perseus, 2003), 4–8, 22. 7. Avi Lifschitz, Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 17–22. 8. Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Aryans and Semites, A Match Made in Heaven, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 137. 9. Tuska Benes, In Babel’s Shadow: Language, Philology, and the Nation in Nineteenth-­ Century Germany (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 9–13, 67; Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-­European My­thol­ogy as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 14–17. 10. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 42. 11. Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 2013), 148–50. 12. Lifschitz, Language and Enlightenment, 27. Even an expert philologist and ethnologist such as William Jones (1746–94), who was the first scholar to observe the similarities between Indian and Eu­ro­pean languages, argued that Adam and Noah had spoken a perfect language. Jones, however, admitted that he was unable to recover this primal language. See Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 51–52. 13. Lifschitz shows through his focus on the less studied 1759 prize contest on “language and mind” at the Berlin Acad­emy how the two contests w ­ ere, in fact, part of the same theoretical framework. See Lifschitz, Language and Enlightenment, 12, 178–87. 14. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Michael N. Forster, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 147. 15. Ibid., 153. 16. George L. Mosse, ­Toward the Final Solution: a History of Eu­ro­pean Racism (London: Dent, 1978), 47. 17. Benes, In Babel’s Shadow, 39–45. 18. Michael N. Forester, German Philosophy of Language: From Hegel to Schlegel and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 109–12. 19. Johannes Endres, Friedrich Schlegel-­Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2017), 218–24. 20. Chen Tzoref-­A shkenazi, “India and the Identity of Eu­rope: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 731–32. 21. Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (New York: German Historical Institute; Cambridge University Press, 2009), 61– 62; Robert Cowan, The Indo-­German Identification: Reconciling South Asian Origins and Eu­ro­ pean Destinies, 1765–1885, Studies in German Lit­er­a­ture, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2010), 120–22. Some studies do mark F. Schlegel as a proto-­racial thinker, merging between a hierarchy of languages and races. For example, Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Eu­rope, trans. Edmund Howard, Columbus Centre Series, Studies in the Dynamics of Persecution and Extermination (London: Chatto [and] Heinemann for Sussex University Press, 1974), 190–92.



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22. Arthur de Gobineau, The In­equality of ­Human Races, trans. by Adrian Collins (London: William Heinemann, 1915), 188–89. 23. Ibid. 24. Benes, In Babel’s Shadow, 197–99. 25. Mosse, ­Toward the Final Solution, 39. 26. John Crawfurd, “On Language as a Test of the Races of Man,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 3 (1865): 1. 27. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 178–87. 28. Chris Manias, Race, Science, and the Nation: Reconstructing the Ancient Past in Britain, France and Germany (London: Routledge, 2013), 23–40. 29. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 6. 30. Michael Banton, The Idea of Race (London: Tavistock Publications, 1977), 8. 31. The anthropologist James Hunt (1833–69) declared in 1863 that “hardly two persons use such an impor­tant word as ‘race’ in the same sense.” See James Hunt, Introductory Address on the Study of Anthropology Delivered Before the Anthropological Society of London, February 24th, 1863 (London: Trübner, 1863), 8; Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race, Studies in Social History (London: Routledge, 1971), xi; Vicky Morrisroe, “ ‘Sanguinary Amusement’: E. A. Freeman, the Comparative Method and Victorian Theories of Race,” Modern Intellectual History 10, no. 1 (2013): 29. In a recent book, Theodore M. Vial argues that “race” as well as “religion” have s­ haped our conception of Western modernity since the end of the eigh­teenth and beginning of the nineteenth c­ entury. Both terms, Vial subtly notes, “are concepts that are both so obvious and so slippery that it is hard to get a ­handle on them.” Despite their elusive character, Vial argues, when we do encounter ­t hese concepts we immediately identify them. See Theodore M. Vial, Modern Religion, Modern Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2, 10. 32. Banton, The Idea of Race, 8. 33. Aaron Garrett, “­Human Nature,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-­Century Philosophy, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 185. 34. Olender, Languages of Paradise, 44–46. 35. Garrett, “­Human Nature,” 187–92. 36. Robert Knox, The Races of Man (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 7. 37. Ibid., 9–10. 38. There is a vast debate on Darwin’s influence on the emerging racial discourse and on slavery, which he ardently opposed. See, for instance, B. Ricardo Brown, U ­ ntil Darwin: Science, ­Human Variety and the Origins of Race (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 99–148; Edward Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the Prob­lem of Grouping in the ­Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 2010), 97–111; Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery ­Shaped Darwin’s Views on ­Human Evolution (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009); Mosse, T ­ oward the Final Solution, 72–74. 39. Francis Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims,” American Journal of Sociology 10, no. 1 (1904): 1–25. 40. Jacques Le Goff, Must We Divide History into Periods?, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 2. 41. Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time, 32–38. 42. Bede referred to this as “anno igitur ante incarnationem Dominicam” (before the incarnation of the Lord), and “anno ab incarnatione Domini” (­a fter the incarnation). See

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Bede, “Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum,” in Historical Works, Liber quintus, trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), 2:xxiv. 43. Bede, The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 355–56. 44. Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time, 41–42; Buchwald and Feingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization, 115; James Barr, “Pre-­Scientific Chronology: The Bible and the Origin of the World,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143, no. 3 (1999): 379–87. 45. The mainstream of the Shia believes that the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-­Mahdi, who dis­appeared in the ninth ­century, is the Mahdi who ­will return from occultation and save the world from sin. 46. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and History (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1971), 107. 47. David Cannadine, The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 176–77. 48. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 33. 49. Ibid., 33n2. 50. Georg Ludwig von Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-­, Hof-­, Dorf-­und Stadtverfassung und der öffentlichen Gewalt (Munich: Christian Kaiser, 1854). 51. Andreas Alföldi, “The Moral Barrier on Rhine and Danube,” in The Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, 1949, ed. Eric Birley (Durham, ­England: University of Durham, 1952), 1. 52. Isaac, Invention of Racism, 3. 53. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation [Reden an die deutsche Nation], trans. and ed. Gregory Moore, Cambridge Texts in the History of Po­liti­cal Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 47. 54. Ibid., 109. 55. Ibid., 109–10. 56. ­Today, ­t here is an ongoing debate in Germany about the legacy of Arndt. In 1933, the newly elected Nazi regime named the University of Greifswald a­ fter Arndt and in honor of his racial legacy. The current students of the university are engaged in a campaign to eliminate Arndt from their university’s name. See “Uni Ohne Arndt,” accessed April 30, 2014, http://­ www​.­uniohnearndt​.­de​/­. 57. Some argue that Arndt did not emphasize the notion of racial purity even though he did advocate a racial argument. See Brian Vick, “Arndt and German Ideas of Race: Between Kant and Social Darwinisim,” in Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860): Deutscher Nationalismus—­ Europa—­transatlantische Perspektiven, ed. Walter Erhart and Arne Koch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007), 65–76. 58. Ernst Moritz Arndt and John Robert Seeley, The Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the Singer of the German Fatherland (Boston: Roberts B ­ rothers, 1879), 304. 59. Ibid., 105. 60. Ernst Moritz Arndt, Ueber Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache (Leipzig, 1813), 13. 61. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, “What Is the Third Estate,” in Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès: The Essential Po­liti­cal Writings, ed. Oliver W. Lembcke and Florian Weber, Studies in the History of Po­liti­cal Thought, vol. 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 48–49; Krzysztof Pomian, “Franks and Gauls,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions, ed. Pierre Nora and Lawrence  D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 55.



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62. Ian N. Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early M ­ iddle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 23–28. 63. Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race, 2–5, 63; Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 218–21.

Chapter 1 Note to epigraph: Edward A. Freeman, Old En­glish History for ­Children (London: Macmillan, 1869), 22. 1. Peter Mandler, The En­glish National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 86–87. 2. The term denotes the keenness of nineteenth-­century historians to research the alleged Teutonic history of their nations. The term is attributed to Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann. See Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 25. Nevertheless, the term was already used during the nineteenth ­century. For instance, the most notable Jewish historian of the nineteenth ­century, Heinrich Graetz, wrote a chapter with this term in the title. See Heinrich Graetz, “The Reaction and Teutomania,” in History of the Jews, ed. and trans. Bellla Löwy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1898), 5:510–35. 3. Oxford En­glish Dictionary, s.vv. “Anglo-­Saxonism,” “Saxonism,” and “Teuton,” accessed June 6, 2018, http://­w ww​.­oed​.­c om ​/­v iew​/­Entry​/­7608​?­redirectedFrom​=­A nglo​-­Saxonism#eid; http://­w ww​.­oed​.­com​/­view​/­Entry​/­171573#eid24350726; http://­w ww​.­oed​.­com​/­view​/­Entry​/­199961​ #eid​18732848. 4. Allen J. Frantzen and John D. Niles, eds., Anglo-­Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 1. 5. Reginald Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-­Saxonism in ­Great Britain Before 1850,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 3 (1976): 388–89; Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in En­glish History: Trojans, Teutons and Anglo-­Saxons (Montreal: Harvest House, 1982), 45–48, 89– 103; Billie Melman, “Claiming the Nation’s Past: The Invention of an Anglo-­Saxon Tradition,” Journal of Con­temporary History 26, nos. 3–4 (1991): 587; Howard Williams, “Anglo-­Saxonism and Victorian Archaeology: William Wylie’s Fairford Graves,” Early Medieval Eu­rope 16, no. 1 (2008): 51–52. Some Victorians, like Matthew Arnold, presented a unique fusion of the two identities; see discussion in Chapter 4; and Joep Leerssen, “En­glishness, Ethnicity and Matthew Arnold,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of En­glish Studies 10, no. 1 (2006): 64–66. 6. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-­ Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Eric P. Kaufmann, “American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: Anglo-­Saxon Ethnogenesis in the ‘Universal’ Nation, 1776– 1850,” Journal of American Studies 33, no. 3 (1999): 447–49. 7. Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 33. 8. John Pinkerton, A Dissertation on the Origin and Pro­gress of the Scythians or Goths: Being an Introduction to the Ancient and Modern History of Eu­rope (London: Printed by John Nichols for George Nicol, 1787), 90. Following Pinkerton, another famous Scotsman, Thomas Carlyle, continued to emphasize the difference between the Saxon Lowlanders and the Irish/ Celtic Highlanders. When put together with the ideas of Walter Scott, one could even claim that Scottish writers in­ven­ted the idea of English-­Saxonism. See Robert Young, The Idea of En­glish Ethnicity (Malden, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 30–31.

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9. Pinkerton, Origin and Pro­gress of the Scythians or Goths, 92. 10. Ibid., 189. 11. Pinkerton was in contact with Edward Gibbon, who presented a rather similar scheme about the significance of the fifth c­ entury. Gibbon wished Pinkerton to edit a book on the En­glish historians. However, the proj­ect was not implemented due to Gibbon’s death. See John Pinkerton, The Literary Correspondence of John Pinkerton, Esq. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 1:328–33; Sarah Couper, “Pinkerton, John [Pseuds. Robert Heron, H. Bennet] (1758–1826),” ODNB, accessed May 1, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​ .­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb9780198614128​-­e​-­22301. 12. Walter Scott, “Ancient History of Scotland,” in The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., vol. 20, Periodical Criticism, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: R. Cadell; London: Whittaker, 1835), 321. 13. Ibid., 325–32. 14. Ibid., 335–36. 15. Ibid., 327. 16. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe: A Romance (Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable; London: Hurst, Robinson, 1820), 1:4. 17. Wood, Modern Origins, 100–102. 18. Scott, Ivanhoe, 1:47. 19. Ibid., xiii–­x iv. 20. Sharon Turner, The History of the Anglo-­Saxons: From the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest, 6th ed. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836), 1:4, 25. 21. Ibid., 23. 22. Ibid., 79–85. 23. Ibid., 69. 24. Edward A. Freeman, The Historical Geography of Eu­rope (London: Longmans, Green; New York: Scribner and Welford, 1881), 1:97. 25. John W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the En­glish Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 26. William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of ­England in Its Origin and Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874–78), 1:2–3. 27. Ibid., 10–11, 58–59. 28. Ibid., 63. 29. Ibid., 8–11. 30. Ibid., 2. 31. Ibid., 3. 32. In most places when Stubbs mentions the term “race” it seems identical to “nation.” However, in some cases it does denote a certain kinship/blood relation between p ­ eople. See, for example, William Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, 6th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), 230. 33. Most of t­ hese letters have never been published. Even though Freeman exchanged a vast number of letters with Green, ­t here is only scattered evidence for this in Freeman’s edited letters. The reason for this was that a­ fter Green’s death, when his wife Alice continued his work and wished to publish his letters, Freeman refused to pass certain letters to her, since they exposed “secrets” about Green’s early life. In response, Alice also refused to send the numerous letters (from Freeman to Green) to Freeman’s ­family, and so they have never been published.



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­ oday, most of t­ hese letters can be found in the Freeman Archives, JRLM; and in the archive T of Jesus College, Oxford, where Green studied. See also Anthony Brundage, The ­People’s Historian: John Richard Green and the Writing of History in Victorian ­England, Studies in Historiography 2 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 154–56. 34. John Richard Green, A Short History of the En­glish ­People, rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1889), 2. 35. Ibid., 3. On the popularity of this book, see James Kirby, Historians and the Church of ­England: Religion and Historical Scholarship, 1870–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 15. 36. Green, Short History, 4. 37. Ibid., 10. 38. Ibid., 11. 39. Green to Freeman, March 21, 1876, in Letters of John Richard Green [LJRG], ed. Leslie Stephen (London: Macmillan, 1901), 431. Freeman’s argument can also be seen in another letter to Green. See Freeman to Green, March 14, 1876, JRLM, MSS FA1/8/57. 40. Green to Freeman, March 24, 1876, LJRG, 432. 41. Ibid., 431. 42. Ibid. 43. According to some scholars of nationalism, a similar “labeling prob­lem” does not apply to other nations, such as the Greeks, Jews, or Armenians who have preserved their names, traditions, and language from antiquity to modernity. Hans Kohn, for instance, mentions the Greeks and the Jews as possessing a distinct and ancient communal feeling. See Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History, rev. ed. (Prince­ton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1965), 11–12. L ­ ater, Anthony D. Smith also discusses the ancient kernel of ­t hese ethnic groups. See Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), 32–33. 44. Green to Freeman, March 21, 1876, LJRG, 432. 45. Freeman to Green, March 26, 1876, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/58a. 46. Green to Freeman, March 24, 1876, LJRG, 432–33. 47. Ibid. 48. James Bryce, Studies in Con­temporary Biography (London: Macmillan, 1903), 137. 49. Even in the obituary Freeman published ­a fter Green’s death he criticized him for not researching the Angevin dynasty. See Brundage, The P ­ eople’s Historian, 153. 50. Bryce, Con­temporary Biography, 149–59; Ian Hesketh, The Science of History in Victorian Britain: Making the Past Speak (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), 12–14, 36. 51. Brundage, The P ­ eople’s Historian, 4–5. 52. Green to Freeman, September 30, 1878, LJRG, 475; Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 306. 53. Stephen, LJRG, 51–60. The Christian Socialist movement was established in 1848 by F. D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, J. M. Ludlow, and Thomas Hughes. They ­were concerned about the social essence of Chris­tian­ity and in practice supported greater cooperation in the economy and relief for the lower social strata. The movement established cooperative workshops in London and published several journals such as Politics for the ­People and the Christian Socialist. See Bernard M. G. Reardon, “Maurice, (John) Frederick Denison (1805–72),” ODNB, accessed December 10, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​ .­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​-­1001732. 54. Edward R. Norman, The Victorian Christian Socialists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 147.

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55. Green, Short History, xvii. 56. Green to Freeman, October 30, 1873, LJRG, 364. 57. Freeman to Green, November 20, 1873, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/21a. 58. Green, Short History, xvii. 59. Freeman edited Thompson’s History of ­England as part of his Historical Course for Schools. See Edith Thompson, History of ­England, ed. Edward A. Freeman, Freeman’s Historical Course for Schools (New York: Henry Holt, 1873). Edith Thompson (1848–1929) was a historian. She met Freeman in 1867–8 and maintained lifelong connections with him. See Amanda L. Capern, “Thompson, Edith (1848–1929),” ODNB, accessed May  20, 2016, http://­ www​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​ -­64832. 60. Bryce to Freeman, May 15, 1871, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 172. 61. Stephen, LJRG, 215. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Edward A. Freeman, “Race and Language,” in Historical Essays: Third Series (London: Macmillan, 1879), 173–230. 65. Simon J. Cook, “The Making of the En­glish: En­glish History, British Identity, Aryan Villages, 1870–1914,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75, no. 4 (2014): 633–39. 66. Duncan Bell, “Alter Orbis: E. A. Freeman on Empire and Racial Destiny,” in Making History: Edward Augustus Freeman and Victorian Cultural Politics, ed. G. A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 230–35. 67. C. J. W. Parker, “The Failure of Liberal Racialism: The Racial Ideas of E. A. Freeman,” Historical Journal 24, no. 4 (1981): 825–46. 68. Marilyn Lake, “ ‘Essentially Teutonic’: E. A. Freeman, Liberal Race Historian; A Transnational Perspective,” in Race, Nation and Empire: Making Histories, 1750 to the Pres­ent, ed. Catherine Hall and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2010), 60–61. 69. Morrisroe, “ ‘Sanguinary Amusement,’ ” 27–56. 70. G. A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin, “1066 and All That: E. A. Freeman and the Importance of Being Memorable,” in Making History, 22–26. 71. Müller to Freeman, June 1, 1870, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/592. 72. Freeman, “Race and Language,” 183. 73. In a letter to the famous geologist and paleontologist Sir William Boyd Dawkins, Freeman described the “Blacks” as physically inferior, while referring to his own Aryan supremacy: “The r­eally queer ­thing is the niggers who swarm h ­ ere; my Aryan prejudices go against them.” See Freeman to Dawkins, October 15–16, 1881, in William R. W. Stephens, The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman [LEAF ] (London: Macmillan, 1895), 2:234. 74. “The Jews must be very nearly, if not absolutely, a pure race, in a sense in which no Eu­ro­pean nation is pure. The blood remains untouched by conversion; it remains untouched even by intermarriage. The Jew may be sure of his own stock, in a way in which none of the rest of us, Dutch, Welsh, or anything ­else, can be sure.” See Freeman, “Race and Language,” 230. 75. Edward A. Freeman and Arthur J. Evans, The History of Sicily from the Earliest Times (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891–94), 2:22–23. 76. Freeman to Green, November 20, 1873, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/21a.



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77. James Sime, History of Germany, ed. E. A. Freeman and A. W. Ward (London: Macmillan, 1874). 78. Green to Freeman, December 30, 1872, LJRG, 340. 79. Ibid. 80. Charlotte Yonge replaced Green as the author. Green was not Freeman’s first choice, and he approached him only a­ fter it became apparent that Mary Arnold, the grand­daughter of Thomas and nephew of Matthew, would not be able to finish the proj­ect. Yonge took over in 1874, but, due to Freeman’s “harsh” editing, it was only published in 1879. See Susan Walton, “Charlotte M. Yonge and the ‘Historic Harem’ of Edward Augustus Freeman,” Journal of Victorian Culture 11, no. 2 (2006): 238–41. 81. See, for example, Green to Freeman, October 30, 1873, LJRG, 365: “but you must judge for yourself w ­ hether you can bear to have ‘­Little France’ written on the same princi­ples on which I have written my E ­ ngland, and if you c­ an’t you had better give it over to Hunt.” 82. Green to Freeman, November 17, 1871, LJRG, 308. 83. Ibid., 333. 84. Bryce to Freeman, August 3, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 41. 85. Edward A. Freeman, “The Landesgemeinde of Uri,” SR 15, no. 396 (1863): 686–87; Edward A. Freeman, “The Landesgemeinden of Uri and Appenzell,” SR 17, no. 447 (1864): 622–24. 86. Freeman to Green, November 10, 1871, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/6a. 87. The six cantons Freeman named w ­ ere: Uri, Glarus, two halves of Unterwalden, and two halves of Appenzell. See Freeman, “Landesgemeinden of Uri and Appenzell,” 623. 88. Freeman to Green, December 18, 1871, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/7a. 89. Freeman to Bryce, October 8, 1875, Bod., MS Bryce 6, fol. 106. 90. The term Welsch in German has several meanings; it can denote the French-­Swiss language and ­people; the Latin language; or foreign ­people or language. In Proto-­Germanic it ­either referred to the Roman-­Celtic or Roman-­L atin ­people. See Oxford German Dictionary: German-­English, English-­German, ed. Werner Scholze-­Stubenrecht et al., 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 91. Freeman to Bryce, May 6, 1867, LEAF, 1:385. 92. Bryce to Freeman, September 20, 1871, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 173. 93. During the 1930s, Karl Keller-­Tarnuzerr, a Swiss racialist writer, advocated a Swiss-­ dominant ethnicity and unique ethnogenesis. See Oliver Zimmer, “ ‘A Unique Fusion of the Natu­ral and the Man-­Made’: The Trajectory of Swiss Nationalism, 1933–39,” Journal of Con­ temporary History 39, no. 1 (2004): 14–16. For a more recent discussion on dominant ethnicity and the supposed tension between the latter and modern civic values, see Eric P. Kaufmann, ed., Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (London: Routledge, 2004). 94. Freeman to Bryce, November 7–8, 1871, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 284. 95. Baumgartner to Freeman, September 24, 1873, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/20. 96. Freeman, “The Landesgemeinde of Uri,” 686. 97. ­These ­were two ­great ­battles in Swiss history. In the ­battle of Morgarten in 1315, near the famous mountain pass of that name, 1,500 Swiss soldiers defeated a much larger Austrian army led by Leopold I. The b­ attle of Sempach occurred seventy-­one years l­ater (1386). In this ­later b­ attle the old Swiss confederacy (Alte Eidgenossenschaft) was victorious against the Austrian troops of Leopold III. The two b­ attles symbolize g­ reat events in the establishment of the ­f uture Swiss federation.

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98. For instance, the genealogical list in the books of Luke (3:23–38) and Matthew (1:1– 17) link Jesus to King David, Abraham, Adam, and fi­nally to God. The list was supposed to prove that Jesus is a descendant of the messianic lineage of the ­house of David and hence the son of God. 99. Edward A. Freeman, General Sketch of Eu­ro­pean History, Historical Course for Schools (London: Macmillan, 1872). 100. Green to Macmillan, ca. 1872, LJRG, 319. The ­battle of Chalons was fought in the summer of AD 274 between the Roman emperor Aurelian and Tetricus, the Gallic emperor. The Roman army prevailed and brought an end to the Gallic empire. See John Drinkwater, “Maximinus to Diocletian and the ‘Crisis,’ ” in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 12, The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337, 2nd  ed., ed. Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, and Peter Garnsey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 52–53. 101. In Sanskrit ārya (Aryan) means “noble.” It was following the research of philologists like F. von Schlegel, who regarded the Arier as “our Germanic ancestors, while they ­were still in Asia,” that the term was first conceptualized by nineteenth-­c entury scholars. The exact implication of the term remained rather vague and scholars argued about its a­ ctual sense. For instance, the origin of the Aryans was much debated among nineteenth-­c entury historians, philologists, and anthropologists. Nevertheless, most scholars argued that it referred to the ­whole f­amily of the Indo-­Germanic ­people. In addition, the common view was that the Aryan lands of origin had been situated in Asia, somewhere between Iran and the Indian subcontinent. In a certain historical stage, t­hese p ­ eople had migrated to the West, and many of the nations of Eu­rope evolved from them. See Mosse, ­Toward the Final Solution, 39–45; Poliakov, Aryan Myth, 255–61; Sheldon Pollock, “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, New Cultural Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 86–91, 107–10. See also the discussion (Chapter 2) of Max Müller and this term. 102. As Henry Maine declared in his Rede lecture: “The new theory of linguistics has unquestionably produced a new theory of Race.” Cited in Christopher Hutton, “Race and Language: Ties of ‘Blood and Speech,’ Fictive Identity and Empire in the Writings of Henry Maine and Edward Freeman,” Interventions 2, no. 1 (2000): 60. 103. Green to Macmillan, ca. 1872, LJRG, 319. 104. Freeman, Old En­glish History for ­Children, 5–6. 105. Bryce to Freeman, August 6, 1891, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 307. 106. Ibid. In another letter, Bryce argued that the Finns ­were the noblest ­people of Scandinavia: “the most superior ­people which have written admirably both in Scandinavian and their own tongue; and are the calmest p ­ eople in Eu­rope.” See Bryce to Freeman, September 14, 1891, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 308. 107. Bryce to Freeman, August 6, 1891, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 307. 108. Bryce to Freeman, September 14, 1891, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 308. 109. Freeman, “Race and Language,” 209. 110. The term “Viking” appeared in En­glish for the first time in 1807. The Victorians actually “in­ven­ted” the term, and its first major use was in Walter Scott’s novel The Pirate. See Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-­Century Britain (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 3–4; Joanne Parker, “The Dragon and the Raven: Saxons, Danes and the Prob­lem of Defining National Character in Victorian ­England,” Eu­ro­ pean Journal of En­glish Studies 13, no. 3 (2009): 258.



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111. Freeman, Old En­glish History for ­Children, 91. 112. Ibid., 91–92. 113. Ibid., 1–3 114. Freeman, Historical Geography (1881), 1:96. 115. Freeman, Old En­glish History for ­Children, 26–28. 116. Edward A. Freeman, Western Eu­rope in the Eighth C ­ entury & Onward: An Aftermath (London: Macmillan, 1904), 3. 117. Ibid., 204–5. 118. Freeman to Stephens, May 30, 1881, LEAF, 2:228. 119. Edward A. Freeman, “An Introduction to American Institutional History,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Po­liti­cal Science 1, no. 1 (1883):15. 120. Ibid., 30. 121. Herbert B. Adams, “Methods of Historical Study,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Po­liti­cal Science 2, nos. 1–2 (1884): 22. 122. Adams, in a footnote, claimed that 163 p ­ eople participated in Freeman’s seminar. See ibid., 59n1. 123. Herbert B. Adams, “Germanic Origins of New ­England Towns,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Po­liti­cal Science 1, no. 2 (1882): 48–49. 124. Ibid. 125. Adams to Freeman, February 7, 1882, JRLM, MSS FA1/7/2. 126. Adams to Freeman, February 24, 1882, JRLM, MSS FA1/7/4a. 127. Herbert Adams himself was very knowledgeable in German scholarship and completed his PhD at Heidelberg in 1876. See John M. Vincent, “Herbert B. Adams: A Biographical Sketch,” in Herbert B. Adams: Tributes of Friends, with a Bibliography of the Department of History, Politics and Economics of the Johns Hopkins University, 1876–1901 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1902), 12–13. 128. Bryce, in one of his letters to Freeman, asked him for his view on Adams’s theory: “What did you think of Herbert B. Adams theory about New ­England town meetings, w ­ ere not new creating t­ here but perpetuations of something [that] still living . . . ​in E ­ ngland?” [sic]. See Bryce to Freeman, October 14, 1886, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 256. 129. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (London: Macmillan, 1888), 1:35. 130. Ibid., 2:33. 131. Ibid., 1:223. 132. Adams to Freeman, December 25, 1882, JRLM, MSS FA1/7/9c. 133. Freeman, “An Introduction to American Institutional History,” 21.

Chapter 2 Note to epigraph: Disraeli in a speech to the House of Commons on supply to navy, August  9, 1848, accessed February  12, 2015, http://­hansard​.­millbanksystems​.­com​/­commons​ /­1848​/­aug​/­09​/­supply​-­navy​-­estimates. 1. For instance, the term “Jew” can be seen in Freeman’s letter to Bryce, August 27, 1876, LEAF, 2:141: “Meetings to denounce the Turk and the Jew are getting common.” In another letter, to Edith Thompson, Freeman wrote: “How the Jews, Turks, and Tories do lie! . . . ​Still they need not lie, but I suppose with the ‘Jew’ at their head [Disraeli] they ­really cannot help it.” See Freeman to Thompson, December 24, 1876, LEAF, 2:144.

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2. It must be noted that Disraeli also developed a racial argument. See Simone Beate Borgstede, “All Is Race”: Benjamin Disraeli on Race, Nation and Empire (Zu­rich: Lit, 2011). 3. Some of ­t hese aspects appear in current definitions of the nation and of the ethnic community. For example, Anthony Smith’s definition of the “nation” and ethnos. Certain features, such as a shared homeland or a common economy, which appear in Smith’s definition, are absent from the Pan-­Teutonic community. See Smith, National Identity, 14–21. 4. Frank L. Müller, Our Fritz: Emperor Frederick III and the Po­liti­cal Culture of Imperial Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 30–35; John Ramsden, ­D on’t Mention the War: The British and Germans Since 1890 (London: L ­ ittle, Brown, 2006), 8–17. 5. Müller, Our Fritz, 43–47. During the 1860s, Britain and Prus­sia (as ­later Germany) ­were not only on good terms but also collided on several state m ­ atters. For instance, Britain harshly opposed the pact of Bismarck with Rus­sia, Britain’s greatest rival, concerning the pursuit of Polish insurgents in Prus­sian territory following the January 1863 uprising. See Frank L. Müller, Britain and the German Question: Perceptions of Nationalism and Po­liti­cal Reform, 1830– 63 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 192. 6. See the subsections on t­ hese individuals l­ater in this chapter. 7. Müller held direct correspondence with William E. Gladstone as well as with Otto von Bismarck’s personal secretary, Heinrich Abeken; see Lourens van den Bosch, Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 100–101. Müller was also the first president of the rather influential En­g lish Goethe Society; see John R. Davis and Angus Nicholls, “Friedrich Max Müller: The C ­ areer and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain,” Publications of the En­glish Goethe Society 85, nos. 2–3 (2016): 78–82. 8. Charles E. McClelland, The German Historians and ­England: A Study in Nineteenth-­ Century Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 9. Ibid., 4, 48–49. 10. Johann M. Lappenberg, Geschichte von E ­ ngland (Hamburg: F. Perthes, 1834). The book was l­ater translated into En­glish in several editions. See, for example, Johann M. Lappenberg, A History of ­England ­under the Anglo-­Saxon Kings, ed. Elise C. Otté, trans. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols. (London: G. Bell, 1881, 1894). 11. McClelland, The German Historians and E ­ ngland, 64–65. 12. John R. Davis, The Victorians and Germany (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 140–43. 13. For instance, in the case of Freeman, Davis correctly argues that Freeman identified the birth of E ­ ngland with the arrival of the Anglo-­Saxons. However, as I ­will demonstrate, to claim that Freeman saw the beginning of modernity in AD 407, when the Germanic tribes had entered the empire, is only partly true. Furthermore, the exact year of this crossing appear to be uncertain. See Bryan Ward-­Perkins, “407 and All That: Retrospective,” Journal of Late Antiquity 2, no. 1 (2009): 75–78. 14. Peter Wende, “Views and Reviews: Mutual Perceptions of British and German Historians in Late Nineteenth ­Century,” in British and German Historiography, 1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers, ed. Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 173–90. 15. Ibid., 174–75. 16. Ibid., 182–83. 17. John Burrow, “The Uses of Philology in Victorian E ­ ngland,” in Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark, ed. R. Robson (London: Bell, 1967), 199–200.



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18. Duncan Forbes, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952). 19. Gerrit Walther, “Niebuhr, Barthold Georg,” Neue Deutsche Biographie 19 (1999), accessed February 12, 2015, http://­w ww​.­deutsche​-­biographie​.­de​/­pnd118587773​.­html. 20. Barthold G. Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte (1827; Berlin: G. Reimer, 1853). 21. Barthold G. Niebuhr, Vorträge über römische Geschichte, an der Universität zu Bonn gehalten, vol. 3, Von Pompejus’ erstem Consulat bis zum Untergang des abendländischen Reichs (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1848), 346. 22. Theodor Mommsen, A History of Rome ­Under the Emperors, German ed., ed. Barbara Demandt and Alexander Demandt, trans. Clare Krojzl, ed. Thomas Wiedemann (London: Routledge, 1999), 21; Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise of Chris­tian­ity Through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen: Barkhuis, 2010), 24. 23. Francis Lieber, Reminiscences of an Intercourse with Mr. Niebuhr, the Historian, During a Residence with Him in Rome, in the Years 1822 and 1823 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), 63. 24. Gerrit Walther, Niebuhrs Forschung, Frank­furter Historische Abhandlungen 35 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993), 380–83. 25. Barthold G. Niebuhr, The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, with Essays on His Character and Influence, by the Chevalier Bunsen, and Professors Brandis and Lorbell, ed. and trans. Susanna Winkworth (New York: Harper, 1854), 432–33. 26. Burrow, “The Uses of Philology in Victorian E ­ ngland,” 183. 27. The college became a hub for German scholarship. See Davis, The Victorians and Germany, 119–20. 28. Niebuhr, Life and Letters, 433. In the same year that the letter was written, Niebuhr also published an essay entitled “Ueber E ­ nglands Zukunft,” which described the po­liti­cal possibilities and upheavals facing E ­ ngland. See Barthold  G. Niebuhr, Nachgelassene Schriften: B. G. Niebuhr’s nichtphilologischen Inhalts (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1842), 426–52. 29. Cited in Pierre Briant, The First Eu­ro­pe­an: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017), 266. 30. Ibid., 267. 31. Lieber, Reminiscences of an Intercourse with Mr. Niebuhr, 61. 32. See Niebuhr, Vorträge über römische Geschichte, vol. 1, Von der Entstehung Rom’s bis zum Ausbruch des ersten punischen Krieges (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1846), 2; my translation. 33. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, The History of Rome, vol. 1, trans. Julius Charles Hare and Connop Thirlwall, 4th ed. (London: Printed by J. Wertheimer for Taylor and Walton, 1847), xxxi. 34. Peter H. Reill, “Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the Enlightenment Tradition,” German Studies Review 3, no. 1 (1980): 9–26. 35. Robert James Niebuhr Tod, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, 1776–1831: An Appreciation in Honour of the 200th Anniversary of His Birth (Cambridge: Printed by Nicholas Smith at the University Library, 1977), 14. 36. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 303–5. 37. Niebuhr’s racist historical perception, Bernal argues, is evident in: Niebuhr, The History of Rome, 1:xxix–­x xx. 38. For larger units he a­ dopted Volk/Völker or Nation. See Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, 231–35.

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39. John Barrow, “Dr. Granville’s Travels: Rus­sia,” Quarterly Review 39, no. 77 (1829): 8–9. The attack on Niebuhr consisted of only two paragraphs but was responded to in a lengthy essay by Hare and can be considered as further evidence for Niebuhr’s influence on En­glish scholars. See Julius C. Hare, A Vindication of Niebuhr’s History of Rome from the Charges of the Quarterly Review (Cambridge: Printed by J. Smith, for John Taylor, 1829). 40. Norman Vance, “Niebuhr in ­England: History, Faith and Order,” in Stuchtey and Wende, British and German Historiography, 89–92. 41. Thomas Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History . . . ​, 4th ed. (London: B. Fellowes, 1849), 28. 42. Thomas Arnold and Arthur P. Stanley, Arnold’s Travelling Journals, with Extracts from the Life and Letters (London: B. Fellowes, 1852), 28. 43. Arnold added that alongside the German race, the Slavonic race that became dominant in the modern period, ­will have a greater effect in the ­future. See Arnold, Introductory Lectures, 28. 44. Arthur P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., Late Head Master of Rugby School and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, 2nd ed. (London: B. Fellowes, 1844), 1:406. 45. Evidence of the special connection between the two scholars can be discerned in a letter sent by Bunsen to Julius Hare upon the death of Arnold in 1842, as well as in a hymn Bunsen dedicated to the memory of Arnold. See Frances W. Bunsen, Memoirs of Baron Bunsen, Late Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of His Majesty Frederic William IV at the Court of St. James, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1869), 1:10–13. 46. Henry Smith, The Protestant Bishopric in Jerusalem: Its Origin and Pro­gress (London: B. Wertheim, Aldine Chambers, 1847), 41–53. 47. Susanne Stark, “Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias von (1791–1860),” ODNB, accessed December 11, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​ /­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​-­53760. 48. Christian C. J. Bunsen, Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, Applied to Language and Religion (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854), 1:21–23, 120. 49. Ibid., 190–91. 50. David Gange, Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822– 1922, Classical Presences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 24–29. 51. Ibid., 36. 52. Bunsen, Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, 1:3–4; Christian C. J. Bunsen, Egypt’s Place in Universal History: An Historical Investigation in Five Books, trans. Charles H. Cottrell (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848–67), 1:viii–­x. 53. Suzanne L. Marchand, “Dating Zarathustra: Oriental Texts and the Prob­lem of Persian Prehistory, 1700–1900,” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 1, no. 2 (2016): 236–37. 54. Christian C. J. Bunsen, God in History; or, The Pro­g ress of Man’s Faith in the Moral Order of the World, trans. Susanna Winkworth (London: Longmans, Green, 1868–70), 1:276–83. 55. Bunsen, Egypt’s Place, 1:xi; Christian C. J. Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte: Geschichtliche Untersuchung (Gotha: F. Perthes, 1844–57). 56. Bunsen, God in History, 2:392; Christian C. J. Bunsen, Gott in der Geschichte; oder, Der Fortschritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1857–58), 2:601. 57. Bunsen, God in History, 2:394; Bunsen, Gott in der Geschichte, 2:603–4.



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58. Christian C. J. Bunsen, Signs of the Times: Letters to Ernst Moritz Arndt on the Dangers to Religious Liberty in the Pres­ent State of the World, trans. Susanna Winkworth (New York: Harper & B ­ rothers, 1856), 170. 59. Ibid., 55–56. 60. Ernst Moritz Arndt, Meine Wanderungen und Wandelungen mit dem Reichsfreiherrn Heinrich Karl Friedrich von Stein (Berlin: Weidmann, 1858). 61. Arndt and Seeley, The Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt. 62. Bunsen, God in History, 2:406. 63. Ibid., 392. 64. Ibid., 405. 65. Bunsen, Signs of the Times, 55–56. 66. Ibid., 57–58. 67. Saint Boniface (672/5–­June 5, 754) was born in ­England and given the name Wynfreth. He was known for his missionary work on the Continent. L ­ ater he became the archbishop of Mainz and died as a martyr while on a missionary expedition among the Frisians. See Ian N. Wood, “Boniface [St. Boniface] (672 × 5?–754),” ODNB, accessed December 8, 2014, http://­w w w​.­o xforddnb​.­c om​/­v iew​/­1 0​.­1 093​/­r ef:odnb​/­9 780198614128​.­0 01​.­0 001​/­o dnb​ -­9780198614128​-­e​-­2843. 68. Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of ­England: Its ­Causes and Its Results (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1867–79), 1:16–17. 69. Friedrich Max Müller, Comparative My­thol­ogy: An Essay, ed. A. Smythe Palmer (1856; London: Routledge, 1909); notes by Max Müller for his first course of lectures on comparative philology, given at Oxford, 1851, Bod., MS Eng. d. 2353. 70. Stephens, LEAF, 2:57. 71. Evidence of this close relationship between the two scholars exists in the Bodleian. The collection includes 273 pages of correspondence. See Bod. MS German d. 22, Letters from Max Müller to Baron C. J. von Bunsen, in German, 1845–58. 72. R. C. C. Fynes, “Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900),” ODNB, accessed December 8, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​ -­1003518; Marchand, “Dating Zarathustra,” 235. 73. A very enlightening analy­sis of Müller’s Sacred Books and his implementation of the “comparative method” is to be found in Arie L. Molendijk, Friedrich Max Müller and the “Sacred Books of the East” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 122–42. 74. Ibid., 9. 75. Davis and Nicholls, “Friedrich Max Müller,” 73–74. 76. Marchand, “Dating Zarathustra,” 237. 77. The term had been also in use in Eastern Persia (Iran is the “land of the Aryas”). Müller, in an interpretation of the word Suispra (with a beautiful nose), from the Rig Veda also suggested that a physical difference separated the “long nose” Aryans of northern India from the “flat-­noses of the aboriginal races” (southern Indians). See F. Max Müller, “The Last Results of the Researches Respecting the Non-­Iranian and Non-­Semitic Languages of Asia and Eu­rope, or the Turanian F ­ amily of Languages,” in Bunsen, Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, 1:346; Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 13–14, 197; Davis and Nicholls, “Friedrich Max Müller,” 88. 78. T ­ oday, Arian (with an i) only signifies the ancient Christian sect of Arianism. 79. F. Max Müller, Letter to Chevalier Bunsen on the Classification of the Turanian Languages (London: A. & G. A. Spottiswoode, 1854), 224–25; Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, 31–32.

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80. Burrow, “The Uses of Philology in Victorian E ­ ngland,” 201; Olender, Languages of Paradise, 88–89. 81. Ernest Renan, History of the ­People of Israel, vol. 1, Till the Time of King David, trans. Joseph Henry Allen and Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (London: Chapman and Hall, 1888), 7. 82. Arthur de Gobineau, Comte de Gobineau and Orientalism: Selected Eastern Writings, Culture and Civilisation in the M ­ iddle East, ed. Geoffrey Nash, trans. Daniel O’Donoghue (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 7, 13. 83. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, “Roots, Races, and the Return to Philology,” Repre­sen­ta­tions 106, no. 1 (2009): 43–46. 84. The two scholars ­were rivals ­until the ­middle of the 1850s, but then a certain shift occurred, and Renan came close to Bunsen and Müller. See Joan Leopold, “Ernest Renan (1823– 1892): From Linguistics and Psy­chol­ogy to Racial Ideology (1840s to 1860s),” Historiographia Linguistica 37, nos. 1–2 (2010): 31–61. 85. Bod., Max Müller Papers, MS Eng. d. 2358, fols. 1–25, F. Max Müller, “Reply to Monsieur Renan’s Remarks” (London, 1855). 86. Ibid. 87. Athena S. Leoussi, “Myths of Ancestry,” Nations and Nationalism 7, no. 4 (2001): 475. According to Trautmann and ­later Van den Bosch and Arvidsson, some wrongly regarded Müller as the spiritual ­father of National Socialism. ­These studies argue that in the context of the nineteenth ­c entury it is wrong to assume that the term “Aryan,” following Müller’s definition, was similar in any way to the ­later perception of the Nazis. See Van den Bosch, Müller, 204–6; Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, 48; Trautmann, Aryans and British lndia, 172–78. 88. Originally, t­ hese words w ­ ere written in a letter to Bunsen (1854). L ­ ater, in 1891, Müller cited them in an article published in Science. See F. Max Müller, “Anthropology Past and Pres­ent,” Science 18, no. 451 (1891): 171. 89. Müller, Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, 90. 90. Ibid., 91. 91. Ibid., 92. 92. Ibid. 93. Notes by Max Müller, Bod., MS Eng. d. 2353. 94. The seven are Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic. See Müller, Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, 90. 95. F. Max Müller, Three Lectures on the Science of Language (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), 46. 96. Freeman to Bryce, July 22, 1885, Bod. MS Bryce 7, fol. 181. In another letter, Freeman told Bryce, “What reward should be given or love unto Max Müller? If Sir Jumbo is knight and C.B.D. Max must be made R.C.B. the least.” See Freeman to Bryce, May 2, 1886, Bod. MS Bryce 7, fol. 216. 97. Müller cited in Ralph A. D. Owen, “Christian Bunsen and Liberal En­glish Theology” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1924), 21–22. 98. F. Max Müller, Theosophy; or, Psychological Religion; The Gifford Lectures Delivered Before the University of Glasgow in 1892 (London: Longmans, Green, 1893), 62. 99. Ibid., 77. 100. Ibid., 447. 101. Ibid., x. 102. Cited in Van den Bosch, Müller, 206.



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103. Thomas Carlyle et al., Letters on the War Between Germany and France (London: Trübner, 1871). 104. Drey M. Schreuder, “The Gladstone–­Max Müller Debate on Nationality and German Unification: Examining a Victorian ‘Controversy,’ ” Historical Studies 18, no. 73 (1979): 561–62. 105. Müller to Freeman, November 12, 1870, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/596. 106. Edward A. Freeman, “Correspondence,” Pall Mall Gazette, November 28, 1870; see also an earlier opinion in the Gazette responding to a letter Freeman sent to the London Daily News: “The Peacemakers,” Pall Mall Gazette, November 22, 1870. 107. “Mr. Carlyle on the War,” Times (London), November 18, 1870; Catherine Heyrendt, “ ‘A Rain of Balderdash’: Thomas Carlyle and Victorian Attitudes ­Toward the Franco-­Prussian War,” Carlyle Studies Annual 22 (2006): 243–54. 108. Freeman to Bryce, May 12, 1876, Bod. MS Bryce 6, fol. 120. 109. Müller to Freeman, November 27, 1870, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/597. 110. Jan Rüger, “Revisiting the Anglo-­German Antagonism,” Journal of Modern History 83, no. 3 (2011): 589–91. On the Boer War as a turning point in Anglo-­German relations, see Harald Rosenbach, Das Deutsche Reich, Großbritannien und der Transvaal (1896–1902): Anfänge deutsch-­ britischer Entfremdung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), esp. chap. 7, 302–3. 111. F. Max Müller, The Question of Right Between E ­ ngland and the Transvaal: Letters, with rejoinders by Theodor Mommsen (London: Imperial South African Association, 1900), 1; my emphasis. 112. Georgina was also the niece of Charlotte Froude (Grenfell), the wife of the famous historian James Anthony Froude. See Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Müller (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974), 111–19; Molendijk, Friedrich Max Müller, 20–26. 113. Müller to Kingsley, August 1859, Bod., MS Eng. d. 2362, fols. 124–25. 114. The Oxford movement emerged in beginning of the 1830s through the activity of several Oxford scholars, headed by Henry Newman. The movement pointed to the similarities between the Roman Catholic belief and Anglicanism and strove to adopt sacramental worship. By turning to the notion of apostolic succession, Newman tried to demonstrate the lineage between the church of the first centuries and the Anglican Church. On the intellectual characters and roots of the movement, see: James Pereiro, Ethos and the Oxford Movement: At the Heart of Tractarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 71–83. 115. Linda Colley illustrates how during the eigh­teenth and beginning of the nineteenth ­century the significance of Protestantism was vital in the development of “Britishness.” This feeling defined the French, Celts, and Catholics as the ultimate “other.” See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, new ed. (London: Pimlico, 2003). 116. Norman Vance, “Kingsley, Charles (1819–75),” ODNB, accessed December 10, 2014, http://­w w w​.­o xforddnb​.­c om ​/­v iew​/­1 0​.­1 093​/­r ef:odnb​/­9 780198614128​.­0 01​.­0 001​/­o dnb​ -­9780198614128​-­e​-­59874. 117. Cited by Müller in his preface to Kingsley’s The Roman and the Teuton. See F. Max Müller, preface to The Roman and the Teuton: A Series of Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge, by Charles Kingsley (1864; London: Macmillan, 1891), xiii. 118. On the influence of the dif­fer­ent religious dogmas on the writing of history, see Kirby, Historians and the Church of E ­ ngland, 21–40. 119. Ian T. Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography, new ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 533–37.

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120. Ibid., 234–36. 121. Banton, The Idea of Race, 70. 122. ­There is a scholarly debate concerning the true essence of the Kulturkampf. The conventional view observes a clear dichotomy and constant strife between Protestants and Catholics. Oliver Zimmer, however, pres­ents a rather more ambiguous picture in which Chris­tian­ity was key in bridging the gap between the Protestants and Catholics as exemplified in the Corpus Christi pro­cessions in three German towns. See Oliver Zimmer, “Beneath the ‘Culture War’: Corpus Christi Pro­cessions and Mutual Accommodation in the Second German Empire,” Journal of Modern History 82, no. 2 (2010): 293–95. 123. Müller cited in Van den Bosch, Müller, 99. 124. Ibid. 125. Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton, 1–5. 126. Ibid., 5–6. 127. Ibid., 7–8. 128. Ibid., 8. 129. Ibid., 9. 130. The Teutonic ability to expand despite numerous perils resembles the miraculous experience of the Israelites in Egypt who became stronger and greater in numbers in the face of growing Egyptian oppression. See Exodus 1:12: “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” 131. Kingsley to Darwin, November 18, 1859, Darwin Correspondence Proj­ect, letter 2534, http://­w ww​.­darwinproject​.­ac​.­u k. 132. Charles Kingsley, Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life, ed. Frances Eliza Grenfell Kingsley (London: Henry S. King, 1877), 2:171. In another letter to Huxley the influence of Origin of Species is again noticeable. See Jonathan Conlin, Evolution and the Victorians: Science, Culture and Politics in Darwin’s Britain (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 108. 133. J. M. I. Klaver, The Apostle of the Flesh: A Critical Life of Charles Kingsley (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 246–48. 134. Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton, 19n1. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid., x. 137. Edward A. Freeman, “Mr. Kingsley’s Roman and Teuton,” SR 17, no. 441 (1864): 446–48. 138. Müller to Freeman, November 25, 1875, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/602. 139. Reinhold Pauli, König Aelfred und seine Stelle in der Geschichte ­Englands (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1851). 140. Bryce to Freeman, October 17, 1863, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 32. 141. Ibid. 142. Freeman to Bryce, April 7, 1867, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 148. 143. Freeman to Bryce, January 26, 1868, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 179. 144. Bryce to Freeman, October 14, 1868, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 129. 145. Freeman to Bryce, July 1872 [exact date unknown], Bod., MS Bryce 6, fol. 13. 146. Bryce to Freeman, October 14, 1868, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 128. 147. Wende, “Views and Reviews,” 176. 148. See Reinhold Pauli, review of Historical Essays, by Edward A. Freeman, Historische Zeitschrift 28, no. 1 (1872): 156; my translation.



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149. Ibid., 158. 150. Felix Liebermann, review of Historical Essays, by Edward A. Freeman, Historische Zeitschrift 72, no. 2 (1894): 295–300. 151. Felix Liebermann, The National Assembly in the Anglo-­Saxon Period (Halle a. S.: Max Niemeyer, 1913), 2. 152. Reinhold Pauli, review of The Constitutional History of ­England in Its Origin and Development, by William Stubbs, Historische Zeitschrift 33, no. 1 (1875): 128; my translation. 153. John D. Haigh, “Kemble, John Mitchell (1807–57),” ODNB, accessed December 11, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb-­978019​ 8614128​-­e​-­15321. 154. William Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History and Kindred Subjects (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887), 71. 155. Edward A. Freeman, The Methods of Historical Study: Eight Lectures Read in the University of Oxford in . . . ​1884, with the Inaugural Lecture on the Office of the Historical Professor (London: Macmillan, 1886), 289–90. 156. Heinz Kähler, “Curtius, Ernst,” Neue Deutsche Biographie, accessed February 12, 2015, http://­w ww​.­deutsche​-­biographie​.­de​/­ppn116766557​.­html. 157. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, 291–92. 158. Edward A. Freeman, “Mommsen’s History of Rome,” in Historical Essays: Second Series (London: Macmillan, 1873), 234–65. 159. Edward A. Freeman, “Mommsen History of Rome: Appendix from Saturday Review, March 28, 1868,” in ibid., 267. 160. Freeman to Bryce, July 9, 1872, Bod. MS Bryce 6, fol. 13. 161. Wende, “Views and Reviews,” 276–77; Hesketh, Science of History, 118. 162. Pauli to Stubbs, August 8, 1881, in William Stubbs, Letters of William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 1825–1901, ed. William Holden Hutton (London: Constable, 1904), 184. William Rufus, the book Pauli mentioned, was published by Freeman a year ­later. See Edward  A. Freeman, A. The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First: Making of Modern Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882). 163. Stubbs to Pauli, June 6, 1882, in Letters of William Stubbs, 185–86. 164. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, 32. 165. Ludwig Fränkel, “Zwei eben verstorbene anglikanische Bischöfe und Historiker,” Anglia—­Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 24 (1901): 398–99; my translation. 166. As Stubbs wrote when describing the Mark system: “The g­ reat authority on this is G. L. von Maurer, who has collected and arranged an enormous quantity of material on the subject.” See Stubbs, Constitutional History, 1:49n1. 167. Maurer, Geschichte der Mark, 93. 168. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, 70. 169. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, 289. 170. Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 8 vols. (Kiel: Schwers; Homann, 1844–78). 171. Stubbs mentions Waitz thirty-­t hree times in his Constitutional History. See James Campbell, “Stubbs, Maitland and Constitutional History,” in Stuchtey and Wende, British and German Historiography, 115. 172. Campbell, “Stubbs, Maitland,” 113–17. 173. Frederic William Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of ­England (1897; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 356. 174. Stubbs to Liebermann, June 4, 1883, in Letters of William Stubbs, 179–80.

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175. Ibid., 142. 176. Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Eu­rope (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 2002), 26. 177. Ibid., 28. 178. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, 32. 179. Reinhold Pauli and Felix Liebermann, eds., Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus saec. XII et XIII, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores in Folio, vol. 27 (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), vii. In this volume, to illustrate Stubbs’s contribution from the perspective of German scholarship, he is mentioned/referred to 149 times (Freeman, in comparison, only 4 times). 180. ­These connections created links not only among German and En­glish scholars but also among En­glish and other Eu­ro­pean ones. For instance, ­t hese links ­were evident in a book from 1886 entitled Sigfred-­Arminius and Other Papers, written by the Icelandic scholar Guðbrandur Vigfússon (or Gudbrand Vigfusson, 1827–89) and his En­glish colleague Frederick York Powell (1850–1904). According to Vigfússon and Powell, thanks to the hero Arminius, Germany and ­England crystallized: “Arminius the Cheruscan—­t he man, but for whose heroism and skill Germany would not now be Germany, nor ­England E ­ ngland.” See Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Sigfred-­Arminius and Other Papers, Grimm Centenary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), 6. However, many En­glish scholars, especially during the turn of the ­century but also before, took ­great interest in ancient Norse lit­er­a­ture (Icelandic sagas and such). This emerging interest offered a certain alternative to the alleged Germanic origin of the En­ glish ­people. For instance, the Victorian author and traveller Samuel Laing (1780–1868) wrote: “It is in ­these Saga, not in Tacitus, that we have to look for the origin of the po­liti­cal institutions of ­England.” This “Norse heritage” continued with the works of the Cambridge scholar Hector Munro Chadwick (1870–1947), who in his The Origin of the En­glish Nation (1907) argued that the Angli had been a “North Sea p ­ eople.” See Elizabeth Baigent, “Laing, Samuel (1780– 1868),” ODNB, accessed June  27, 2018, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­c om​/­v iew​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​ /­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​-­15891; H. Munro Chadwick, The Origin of the En­glish Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), 192–93, 205; Wawn, Vikings and the Victorians, 98–106. 181. Paul A. Townend, The Road to Home Rule: Anti-­Imperialism and the Irish National Movement, History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora (Madison, Wisconsin, 2016). 182. William E. Gladstone et al., Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question, ed. James Bryce, 2nd ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1887), 214. 183. Ibid., 218.

Chapter 3 1. This view is also advocated by con­temporary historians. For example, Bryan Ward-­ Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). In another book, Ward-­Perkins stresses the transformation of power from Rome to Constantinople: “Rome, by the early sixth c­ entury, was a city living on former, and now decaying, grandeur. Constantinople by contrast was a boom town.” See Bryan Ward-­Perkins, “Old and New Rome Compared: The Rise of Constantinople,” in Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, ed. Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27. At the same time, t­ here are substantial examples of opposing views, which examine the tribes



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in a dif­fer­ent, far less “destructive” light. The most influential example of the latter view is Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150–750 (1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1989); in his opening pages, Brown summarizes his thesis: The theme that ­will emerge . . . ​is the shifting and redefinition of the bound­a ries of the classical world a­ fter AD 200. This has l­ittle to do with the conventional prob­lem of the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’ The ‘Decline and Fall’ affected only the po­liti­cal structure of the western provinces of the Roman Empire: It left the cultural power-­house of Late Antiquity—­t he eastern Mediterranean and the Near East—­unscathed. Even in the barbarian states of Western Eu­rope, in the sixth and seventh centuries, as it survived at Constantinople, Rome was still regarded as the greatest civilized state in the world: and it was called by its ancient name, the Respublica. (19) 2. Wood, Modern Origins, 8; Guy Halsall, “Movers and Shakers: The Barbarians and the Fall of Rome,” Review Article, Early Medieval Eu­rope 8, no. 1 (1999): 131–45. 3. Wood, Modern Origins, 8; 13. 4. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury (1776, New York: Fred de Fau, 1906), 12:191. 5. For a detailed account of the narratives of the “fall” in the Re­nais­sance and l­ ater in the Enlightenment, see J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 6. On Polybius, including the question of ­whether he incorporated the four world empires scheme, see Doron Mendels, “The Five Empires: A Note on a Propagandistic Topos,” American Journal of Philology 102, no. 3 (1981): 330–37; Frank W. Walbank, Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8, 196. 7. Polybius, The Histories, trans. W. R. Paton, ed. Frank W. Walbank, Christian Habicht, and S. Douglas Olson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 38.22. 8. Jerome, The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. W. H. Fremantle, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-­Nicene ­Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Oxford: Parker; New York: Christian Lit­er­a­ture Com­pany, 1893). 9. Walter A. Goffart, Rome’s Fall and ­After (London: Hambledon, 1989), 114–21. 10. “Quid est enim aliud omnis historia quam Romana laus?” This quote of Petrarch is cited in an article by Theodor Ernst Mommsen, the grand­son of the famous Roman historian Theodor Mommsen and the nephew of Max Weber. Mommsen, who specialized in the study of Petrarch, claimed that Petrarch had in­ven­ted the term “The Dark Ages” in order to define the era a­ fter the downfall of Rome. See Theodor E. Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’ ” Speculum 17, no. 2 (1942): 236–37. 11. Bruni also stated that the destruction should not be perceived in a catastrophic way: “we should not be saddened by the t­ hings which happened then but rather rejoice for them. They are like the l­ abours of Hercules; he became more illustrious through them than he would have been without them.” Bruni quoted in Santo Mazzarino, The End of the Ancient World, trans. George Holmes (London: Faber, 1966), 82–83. 12. Filarte quoted in Alfons Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundations of Eu­ro­pean Civilization, condens. Erna Patzelt, trans. M. G. Beard and Nadine Marshall (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1937), 2. 13. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (1906), 1:99.

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14. The term “­middle ages” was incorporated into the major Eu­ro­pean cultures during the seventeenth ­century: medium aevum appeared in 1604, moyen âge in 1640, and Mittelalter in 1684. This, as Lynn Hunt comments, was part of the construction of the notion of pro­gress. Suddenly the scholars had to invent a concept that denoted a m ­ iddle stage, preceding the pro­ gress of their own time. See Lynn Hunt, Mea­sur­ing Time, Making History (Budapest: Central Eu­ro­pean University Press, 2008), 51. 15. ­There is an entire debate as to ­whether Gibbon and Voltaire held similar animosity against the church or, in other words, how “Voltairean” was Gibbon. See David Womersley, “Gibbon’s Religious Characters,” in History, Religion, and Culture: British Intellectual History, 1750–1950, ed. Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore, and Brian W. Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70–71. Voltaire wrote: “Two flails at last brought down this vast Colossus: the barbarians and religious disputes”; quoted in Frank W. Walbank, The Awful Revolution: The Decline of the Roman Empire in the West (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969), 14. 16. Quoted in Dopsch, Economic and Social Foundations, 4. 17. Quoted in Hunt, Mea­sur­ing Time, 52. 18. William Robertson, The History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1770), 1:15. Gibbon was inspired by Robertson’s work. Unlike Robertson, he did not only focus on western Eu­rope but also on the East and on Byzantium. See J. G. A. Pocock, “Edward Gibbon in History: Aspects of the Text in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” in The Tanner Lectures on ­Human Values, vol. 11, ed. Grethe B. Petersen (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), 296. 19. The French statesman and historian Guizot served as the minister of education (1832– 37), minister of foreign affairs (1840–47), and fi­nally as prime minister (1847–48). He was one of the prominent harbingers of the new order following the revolution of 1830. As minister of education, he introduced a revolutionary system by which the French p ­ eople received f­ree education from the state. This included lessons in national history from the times of the Gauls ­u ntil the new era. Guizot promoted the idea of a civilization governed by reason. See Ceri Crossley, French Historians and Romanticism: Thierry, Guizot, the Saint-­Simonians, Quinet, Michelet (London: Routledge, 1993), 81–82. 20. François M. Guizot and Henriette E. Guizot de Witt, History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848, trans. Robert Black (New York: Merrill and Baker, 1902), 1:105. 21. Already in 851, Rudolf von Fulda referred to the text in his Translatio Sancti Alexandri. ­L ater, in the ­middle of the sixteenth ­century, it reached Rome for closer examination by Cardinal Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the ­f uture pope Pius II. See Bonnie Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early ­Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 26; Joseph T. Leerssen, National Thought in Eu­rope: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 39. 22. Cornelius Tacitus, The Complete Works of Tacitus: The Annals; The History; The Life of Cnaeus Julius Agricola; Germany and Its Tribes; A Dialogue on Oratory, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, ed. Moses Hadas (New York: Modern Library, 1942). 23. ­There is an assumption that one of the Nurnberg laws (1936) prohibiting marriage between Aryans and Jews was inspired from this paragraph. See Christopher B. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s “Germania” from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 23. 24. He was the court historian of Ferdinand I; see The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 3, 1400–1800, ed. José Rabasa et  al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 309; Goffart, Rome’s Fall, 122.



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25. Ulrich von Hutten, Arminius (1529), in Ulrichs von Hutten Arminius, Herrmann, ein Dialog; und Georg Spalatinus, Geschichte des deutschen heerführers gegen die Römer, ed. Friedrich Frölich (Vienna: Doll, 1815). 26. The famous b­ attle was the theme of seventy-­t wo publications between 1809 and 1900; see Marchand, Down from Olympus, 158. 27. ­L ater writers, such as Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635–83), in his Großmütiger Feldherr Arminius, and Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), in Die Hermannsschlacht (1808), continued nurturing the tribal Germanic myth through the figure of Herman, whose character even inspired the foundation of a cult. For a detailed account of the “Arminius myth,” mainly dealing with the twentieth c­ entury, but also with the foundation of the myth in early modernity, see Martin M. Winkler, Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 56ff. 28. Martin Luther, “An Exposition of the Eighty-­Second Psalm,” trans. Charles M. Jacobs, in The Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1931), 4:307. 29. Martin Luther, Three Treatises, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, 2nd rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 100–101. 30. In the case of the Anglican historians, if one follows the controversial book of Herbert Butterfield, this was through the adoption of the Whig interpretation of history. The Whig historians ­adopted the idea of pro­gress and, due to the rule of the Catholic Church, they defined most of the ­Middle Ages as a de­cadent era preceding the progressive phase of post-­ Reformation Eu­rope. See Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1931), 12–13. 31. Johann G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, part 1, book 16 (1784; Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1842), 240; my translation. 32. Johann G. Herder, Another Philosophy of History and Selected Po­liti­cal Writings, ed. and trans. Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2004), 27. 33. Ibid., 25. 34. Herder incorporated this German term instead of adopting Verbesserung (pro­gress). See Olender, Languages of Paradise, 41. 35. Herder, Another Philosophy, 13. 36. Ibid., 19. 37. Ibid., 22. 38. Ibid., 33 39. Ibid., 38. 40. Ibid., 39. 41. Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 105–6. 42. Ibid., 107–9. 43. Ibid., 103. 44. Ibid., 104. 45. Ibid., 353. 46. Ibid. 47. Martin Thom, “Unity and Confederation in the Italian Risogimento: The Case of Carlo Cattaneo,” in Writing National Histories: Western Eu­rope Since 1800, ed. Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore (London: Routledge, 1999), 77. 48. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, 46–61.

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49. Augustin Thierry, The Formation and Pro­gress of the Tiers État, or Third Estate in France, trans. Francis B. Wells (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1859), 16–20. 50. Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of ­England by the Normans: Its ­Causes, and Its Consequences, in E ­ ngland, Scotland, Ireland, & on the Continent, trans. William Hazlitt, 7th Paris ed. (London: David Bogue, 1847). 51. The Italian historians Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873) and Carlo Troya (1784–1858) ­adopted this theory as to the ethnic and status strug­gle that develops between the conqueror and the conquered and applied it to the Lombard conquest of Italy. The Lombards enslaved the local community, did not manage to assimilate into it, and therefore failed in their strug­ gle against the Franks. See Thom, “Unity and Confederation,” 73–74; Ian Wood, “Barbarians, Historians, and the Construction of National Identities,” Journal of Late Antiquity 1, no. 1 (2008): 66–68. 52. Arnaldo Marcone, “A Long Late Antiquity? Considerations on a Controversial Periodization,” Journal of Late Antiquity 1, no. 1 (2008): 7–8n13. 53. Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, 11 ed. (Paris: Félix Alcan; Brussels: Nouvelle Société d’Éditions, 1937). 54. The British Isles offered a unique example since a dif­fer­ent culture evolved ­t here. See Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, trans. Bernard Miall (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 140–44. 55. Ibid., 152. 56. Ibid., 163–65. 57. Dan Diner, “Neutralisierung durch ‘Gesellschaft’—­Henri Pirennes ‘Muhammed und Karl der Große,’ ” in Gedächtniszeiten: Über jüdische und andere Geschichten (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003), 85–88; Garth Fowden, Before and ­After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 2014), 38–39. 58. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 234.

Chapter 4 Note to epigraph: Edward A. Freeman, The Office of the Historical Professor: An Inaugural Lecture Read in the Museum at Oxford, October 15, 1884 (London: Macmillan, 1884), 9. 1. Arnaldo D. Momigliano, “Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber,” Journal of Modern History 58, no. 1 (1986): 237. During the 1840s, Freeman was also attracted to the ideas of the Oxford movement. Momigliano argues that Freeman’s final detachment from the Oxford movement was due to Arnold’s writings, which “showed the young Freeman a way out” of Catholicism. See Arnaldo D. Momigliano, “Liberal Historian and Supporter of the Holy Roman Empire: E. A. Freeman,” in A. D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. G. W. Bowersock and T. G. Cornell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 199; Bryce, Con­temporary Biography, 264n. For the early influence on Freeman by both Arnold and the founder of the Oxford movement, John Henry Newman, also see G.  A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin, “History as Form: Architecture and Liberal Anglican Thought in E. A. Freeman,” Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 2 (2011): 306–8. 2. Edward A. Freeman, The Unity of History: The Rede Lecture Delivered in the Senate-­ House before the University of Cambridge on Friday, May  24, 1872 (London: Macmillan, 1872). 3. Ibid., 11, 43.



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4. Edward A. Freeman, Thoughts on the Study of History, with Reference to the Proposed Changes in the Public Examinations (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1849). 5. Herman Paul, “Habits of Thought and Judgment: E. A. Freeman on Historical Methods,” in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, 282–87. 6. In 1872, a syndicate at Cambridge suggested a revision of the historical tripos so to study ancient, medieval, and modern subjects so they “­will be placed before the student as a ­whole.” See “Report,” Cambridge University Reporter, December 18, 1872, 131–36. 7. Parker, “Failure of Liberal Racialism,” 825–46; Momigliano, “Liberal Historian,” 197– 208; Lake, “Essentially Teutonic,” 56–73; Walton, “Charlotte M. Yonge,” 226–55; Anthony L. Brundage and Richard A. Cosgrove, “Edward Augustus Freeman: Liberal Democracy and National Identity,” in British Historians and National Identity: From Hume to Churchill (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), 95–108. 8. Vicky Morrisroe shows that Freeman, heavi­ly influenced by Thomas Arnold and the comparative theories of Henry Maine, E. B. Tylor, and Max Müller, presented a meta-­historical view that identified the universal cycles of Aryan institutions and events. Yet while Morrisroe pres­ents a persuasive interpretation of Arnold’s and Freeman’s universal historical vision, she has ­little or nothing to say about the tension between Freeman’s idea of unity and his use of periods. See Morrisroe, “ ‘Sanguinary Amusement,’ ” 27–56. 9. The History of Sicily does receive some attention in a recent article by William Kelly; nevertheless, Kelley’s focus is on Freeman’s perception of the “Eastern Question” rather than on his periodization. See William Kelley, “Past History and Pres­ent Politics: E. A. Freeman and the Eastern Question,” in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, 126–28. 10. Penelope J. Corfield, Time and the Shape of History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 124. 11. Edward A. Freeman, The Chief Periods of Eu­ro­pean History: Six Lectures Read in the University of Oxford (London: Macmillan, 1886), 95; in this book, Freeman also took issue with Edward Gibbon’s periodization (74–76). 12. G. Barraclough, “Medium Aevum: Some Reflections on Mediaeval History and on the Term ‘The ­Middle Ages,’ ” in History in a Changing World (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955), 54–63 13. Bury, introduction to Gibbon, Decline and Fall, (1900), 1:xliv. 14. Creighton to Freeman, March 5, 1885, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/122a. 15. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, 190. 16. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, 15. 17. Ibid., 18. 18. John Douglas Cook founded the Saturday Review (SR) in November  3, 1855. This weekly newspaper incorporated both conservative and liberal writers. The paper did not state an official support of any of the religious factions (High, Broad, or Low Church). See Barbara  Q. Schmidt, “Cook, John Douglas (1808?–68),” ODNB, accessed December  5, 2014, http://­w w w​.­o xforddnb​.­c om​/­v iew​/­1 0​.­1 093​/­r ef:odnb​/­9 780198614128​.­0 01​.­0 001​/­o dnb​ -­9780198614128​-­e​-­6145. 19. John R. Green, “Professor Stubbs’s Inaugural Lecture,” SR 23, no. 592 (1867): 278–80. 20. Ibid., 279. 21. Ibid., 280. 22. Stubbs to Freeman, March 5, 1867, in Letters of William Stubbs, 149. 23. Frederic Harrison, “Historical Method of Professor Freeman,” Nineteenth ­Century 44, no. 261 (1898): 794.

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24. J. Horace Round, “Historical Research,” Nineteenth ­Century 44, no. 262 (1898): 1011–12. 25. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, 192. 26. Ibid., 194. 27. Burrow, A Liberal Descent, 113–22; Mandler, The En­glish National Character, 86–87. 28. Edward A. Freeman, History of Eu­rope, ed. J. R. Green, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1876), 9–10. 29. Freeman, Historical Geography, (1881), 88; Freeman, Western Eu­rope in the Eighth ­Century, 12–13. 30. Freeman to Bryce, June 14, 1885, Bod., MS Bryce 7, fol. 163. 31. Kemble, as shown earlier (see Chapter 2), and Francis Palgrave (1788–1861), as discussed in the next chapter, also wrote during the same years about the tribal contribution to modernity. However, Arnold linked the tribes with modernity in the most explicit way. See Arnold, Introductory Lectures, 1–60. 32. Already in the ­middle of the eigh­teenth ­century, Voltaire defined modern history as the era “since the decay of the Roman Empire.” See Dietrich Gerhard, “Periodization in History,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 3:477. 33. Arnold, Introductory Lectures, 23–31. 34. Morrisroe, “ ‘Sanguinary Amusement,’ ” 39. 35. Thomas Arnold, History of Rome, new ed. (London: B. Fellowes, 1857), 1:vii–­v iii; Thomas Arnold to Justice Coleridge, February 5, 1837, in Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 2:73. 36. Edward  A. Freeman, “Mommsen’s History of Rome,” National Review 8, no.  16 (1859): 315. 37. Freeman, “Mommsen’s History of Rome,” in Historical Essays, 237n. 38. Ibid. 39. Freeman to Green, April 24, 1881, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/95a. 40. Thomas Arnold, “The Social Pro­gress of States,” in The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold (London: B. Fellowes, 1845), 108–9; Forbes, Liberal Anglican Idea of History, ix. 41. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 2:377. 42. Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Lit­er­a­ture (London: Smith, Elder, 1867), 14. 43. Ibid., 16–17. 44. Leerssen, “En­glishness, Ethnicity and Matthew Arnold,” 70–74. 45. Arnold, Introductory Lectures, 26. 46. Ibid. 47. Freeman, The Office of the Historical Professor, 42. 48. Stephens, LEAF, 2:282–83. 49. Freeman, Chief Periods, 93. 50. Freeman to E. B. Tylor, July 20, 1872, in LEAF, 2:57. 51. Edward A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Eu­rope, Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London: Macmillan, 1877), 5; my emphasis. 52. Bury, who was much younger than Freeman, edited several of Freeman’s books (see Chapter 6). 53. Bury to Freeman, November 15, 1891, JRLM, MSS FA 1/7/51. 54. John B. Bury, “Art. II.—­Freeman’s History of Sicily [Vols. 1–2],” Scottish Review 19 (1892): 26–27. 55. Freeman, The Office of the Historical Professor, 35.



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56. Edward A. Freeman, The Story of Sicily: Sicily, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892). 57. Ibid., 353. 58. Ibid., 353–54. 59. Freeman, HOS, 1:11. 60. Ibid., 291. 61. Ibid., 301–2. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 2:22–23. 64. Ibid., 1:302n1. 65. The theory of Anglo-­Saxon expansion became popu­lar among American historians. The main “carrier” of this theory was Freeman’s friend Herbert Adams (see Chapter 1). See also Bell, “Alter Orbis,” 233–34; Stephens, LEAF, 2:181. Furthermore, for many British scholars, Amer­i­ca, as Duncan Bell demonstrates, became a new model for the ­f uture of the empire; see Duncan Bell, “From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought,” Historical Journal 49, no. 3 (2006): 755–59. 66. Freeman, Historical Geography (1881), 96; Theodore Koditschek, Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-­Century Visions of G ­ reat Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 241–45. 67. Edward A. Freeman, “Carthage,” in Historical Essays: Fourth Series (London: Macmillan, 1892), 3. 68. Ibid., 13. 69. Ibid., 14. 70. Edward A. Freeman, The History and Conquests of the Saracens, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1876), 14–17. 71. Freeman, “Mommsen’s History,” in Historical Essays, 236. 72. Stephens, LEAF, 1:156–59. 73. Freeman, Saracens, 21. 74. Ibid., 3. 75. Ibid. 76. Edward A. Freeman, “Mahometanism in the East and the West,” North British Review 23 (1855): 459. 77. Freeman, Saracens, 72. For Freeman’s view of the East, see Vicky Morrisroe, “ ‘Eastern History with Western Eyes’: E. A. Freeman, Islam and Orientalism,” Journal of Victorian Culture 16, no. 1 (2011): 25–45. 78. Freeman, Saracens, 30. 79. Freeman, Historical Geography (1881), 112. 80. For a l­ater original periodization, see Chapter 3; and Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 234. 81. Freeman, “Mahometanism,” 450. 82. Freeman, Ottoman Power, xix. 83. Ibid., xx. 84. Freeman, “Mahometanism,” 453–54. 85. Kelley, “Past History and Pres­ent Politics,” 120–23; Morrisroe, “ ‘Eastern History with Western Eyes,’ ” 30–32. 86. William E. Gladstone, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London: John Murray, 1876).

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87. Edward A. Freeman, “The Turkish Atrocities: Mr. Gladstone and the Turkish Empire,” Times (London), September 8, 1876. 88. Freeman, Saracens, x. 89. For a discussion on this saying, see Ian Hesketh, “ ‘History Is Past Politics, and Politics Pres­ent History’: Who Said It?, ” Notes and Queries 61, no. 1 (2014): 105–8; Herman Paul, “ ‘History Is Past Politics, and Politics Pres­ent History’: When Did E. A. Freeman Coin This Phrase?,” Notes and Queries 62, no. 3 (2015): 436–38. 90. Freeman, Historical Geography (1881), 17. 91. Ibid. 92. Freeman, Ottoman Power, 4. 93. Freeman, HOS, 2:166–67. 94. Freeman, “Race and Language,” 173–77. 95. Ibid., 190. 96. Ibid., 191. 97. Freeman, Chief Periods, 138–39.

Chapter 5 1. Freeman to Bryce, November 19, 1865, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 68. 2. James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (Oxford: T. & G. Shrimpton, 1864). The book has been published in fifty-­eight editions; subsequent references to editions of Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire (1864; 1871; 1873; 1904) ­w ill be cited as THRE with relevant publication details. 3. H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1927); Christopher Harvie, “Bryce, James, Viscount Bryce (1838–1922),” ODNB, accessed June  5, 2018, http://­w ww​ .­oxforddnb​.­com​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​/­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​-­3798; Edmund Ions, James Bryce and American Democracy, 1870–1922 (London: Macmillan, 1968); John T. Seaman Jr., A Citizen of the World: The Life of James Bryce (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006). 4. James Bryce, Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages Appointed by His Britannic Majesty’s Government and Presided over by the Right Hon. Viscount Bryce (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1915). 5. The Blue Books w ­ ere formal reports to the British Parliament, mainly but not solely on ­matters of foreign affairs; see James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916). Vari­ous studies focus on Bryce’s actions on behalf of the Armenian communities that suffered ­under the Turkish regime. See Oded Steinberg, “James Bryce and the Origins of the Armenian Question,” Journal of Levantine Studies 5, no.  2 (2015): 13–33; Michelle Tusan, “ ‘Crimes Against Humanity’: ­Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide,” American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (2014): 47–77. 6. James Bryce, Constitutions (New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch, 1905). 7. On “race” and the historic role of institutions in mid-­Victorian thought; see Peter Mandler, “ ‘Race’ and ‘Nation’ in mid-­Victorian Thought,” in Collini, Whatmore, and Young, History, Religion, and Culture, 234–36.



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8. David Evans, “Sir Francis Palgrave, 1788–1861: First Deputy Keeper of the Public Rec­ ords,” Archives 5, no. 26 (1961): 75. 9. Stephens, LEAF, 1:205; Freeman’s comments w ­ ere originally published in an article in the Edinburgh Review (1859). 10. Freeman to Finlay, January 25, 1858, in LEAF, 1:237. 11. Roger Smith, “Eu­ro­pean Nationality, Race, and Commonwealth in the Writings of Sir Francis Palgrave, 1788–1861,” in Medieval Eu­ro­pe­ans: Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Eu­rope, ed. Alfred P. Smyth (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 234–35. 12. Following his Teutonism and again like T. Arnold, Palgrave a­ dopted an anti-­French stance. See ibid., 237–38. 13. Ibid. 14. “I may, perhaps, be allowed to add my opinion, that t­ here is no pos­si­ble mode of exhibiting the states of Western Christendom in their true aspect, ­unless we consider them arising out of the dominion of the Caesars.” See Francis Palgrave, History of ­England, Anglo-­Saxon Period (London: John Murray, 1831), 1:ix; Michael Stuckey, “The Study of En­glish National History by Sir Francis Palgrave: The Original Use of the National Rec­ords in an Imaginative Historical Narrative,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2015): 1–27. 15. Francis Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of ­England (London: J. W. Parker and Son; Macmillan, 1851–64), 1:8. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 9. 18. Stuckey, “Study of En­glish National History,” 8. 19. Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of ­England, 1:34–35. 20. Ibid., 4:382. 21. Ibid. 22. It is significant that Stanley, Bunsen, Pusey, and many other of Palgrave’s contemporaries also ­adopted the four monarchies scheme from the book of Daniel. Pusey even dedicated nine lectures (­later published) to the book of Daniel, arguing that the four empires had been the Babylonian, Medo-­Persian, Greek, and Roman. Stanley considered Daniel’s scheme as the first attempt at a philosophy of history. See Forbes, Liberal Anglican Idea of History, 65; Edward B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet (1864; New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1885), 115; Arthur P. Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, new ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893–95), 3:39. 23. Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of ­England, 1:5. 24. Ibid., 7. 25. Ibid., 30. 26. Francis Palgrave, History of the Anglo-­Saxons, new ed. (London: W. Tegg, 1876), x. 27. For a short and excellent chapter that discuss Bryce’s treatment of “nationalism” also by referring to his Holy Roman Empire; see Casper Sylvest, “James Bryce and the Two F ­ aces of Nationalism,” in British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier, ed. Ian Hall and Lisa Hill (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 161–79. 28. Freeman to Bryce, October 22, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 13. 29. The essay won first prize and led to the publication of the The Holy Roman Empire; see Seaman, A Citizen of the World, 40–41. 30. Freeman to Bryce, October 22, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 13. 31. Bryce to Freeman, August 2, 1863, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 28.

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32. Freeman to Bryce, October 30, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 15. 33. THRE, 4th ed., rev. and enl. (London: Macmillan, 1873), xxvii. 34. THRE, new ed., enl. and rev. (London: Macmillan, 1904), xxix. 35. Ibid., xxii. 36. Ibid., xxxi–­lii. 37. Freeman to Bryce, October 22, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fol. 14. 38. Bryce to Freeman, October 28, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 50. 39. Freeman to Bryce, October 30, 1864, Bod., MS Bryce 5, fols. 15–16. 40. Bod., MS Bryce 345, notes (ca. 1863), possibly for The Holy Roman Empire (1864). 41. James Bryce, “The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India,” in Studies in History and Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 1:81–82. 42. THRE (1873), 274. 43. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 15. 44. Ibid., 81. 45. Bod., MS Bryce 345, notes (ca. 1863). 46. Bryce to Freeman, November 25, 1862, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 6. 47. THRE (1873), 44–45. 48. In his 1904 edition he also named Pius X (1903); see THRE (1904), xxix. 49. THRE (1873), 13. 50. Ibid., 47. 51. Ibid., 49. 52. Bod., MS Bryce 345, notes (ca. 1863). 53. THRE (1873), 27. 54. Bryce to Freeman, May 13, 1863, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 25. 55. THRE (1873), 287. 56. Ibid., 382. 57. Ibid., 380. 58. Ibid., 379–80. 59. Ibid., 92. 60. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 3. 61. THRE (1904), 419. 62. Ibid. 63. James Bryce, “Methods of Law-­Making in Rome and in E ­ ngland,” in Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 2:321. 64. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 1–4. 65. Ibid., 1. 66. Quoted in Seaman, A Citizen of the World, 174. 67. John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-­Intervention” (1859), in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–91), 21:118–21. W ­ hether Mill meant to impose civilization or ­adopted a more “tolerant imperialism” is a ­matter of debate; see Mark Tunick, “Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill’s Defense of British Rule in India,” Review of Politics 68, no. 4 (2006): 586–611. 68. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 63. 69. Ibid., 64–65. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 65–66. Bryce argued that slavery prevented any improvement in the condition of the African Americans, especially in the South, but since the victory of the North: “Free-



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dom has done for them [African Americans] in twenty-­six years more than any one who knew how slavery left them had a right to expect.” See James Bryce, “Thoughts on the Negro Prob­ lem,” North American Review 153, no. 421 (1891): 643. 72. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 64. 73. James Bryce, “The Action of Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces on Po­liti­cal Constitutions,” in Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 1:266–67. 74. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 67. 75. Bryce’s racial hierarchy was also mentioned earlier in relation to his views on the superiority of the southern Northmen of Scandinavia over the Lapps of the North; see John Stone, “James Bryce and the Comparative Sociology of Race Relations,” Race & Class 13, no. 3 (1972): 316 (especially footnote). This racial perception is also evident in Bryce’s correspondence with his friend, the famous phi­los­o­pher Henry Sidgwick; see Bart Schultz, Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe; An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 642–47. 76. Bryce, “Empire in India,” 75. 77. Ibid. 78. James Bryce, Race Sentiment as a ­Factor in History: A Lecture Delivered Before the University of London on February 22, 1915 (London: Published for the University of London Press, by Hodder & Stoughton, 1915). 79. Ibid., 13. 80. Ibid., 22. 81. Ibid., 23. 82. Ibid., 31. 83. Ibid. 84. Bryce, Alleged German Outrages. 85. THRE, (1871), 376. 86. Freeman to Bryce, April 13, 1873, LEAF, 2:67. 87. Ibid. 88. “Mr. Freeman’s Historical Essays,” Pall Mall Gazette, April 10, 1873. 89. James Bryce, “Freeman’s Historical Essays,” SR 35, no. 912 (1873): 521. 90. Freeman to Bryce, April 20, 1873, Bod., MS Bryce 6, fol.32. 91. Ibid. 92. Ernst Curtius, Griechische Geschichte (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1857), 1:37–38, 541–42. 93. Curtius and Bunsen, although identifying Egyptian influence, disagreed about the first appearance of the Ionians in Egypt. See ibid., 538–39. 94. Suzanne Marchand, “Where Does History Begin? J. G. Herder and the Prob­lem of Near Eastern Chronology in the Age of Enlightenment,” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 47, no. 2 (2014): 157–75. 95. Martin Bernal in his controversial Black Athena argues that due to racial reasoning, especially during the nineteenth ­century, the leading opinion was that Egypt had no influence on Greece; yet previously, in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries ­t here was recognition of Egyptian influence. For a lengthy, even harsh, criticism of Bernal’s book, see Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). For the most convincing criticism, see Suzanne Marchand and Anthony Grafton, “Martin Bernal and His Critics,” Arion 5, no. 2 (1997): 1–35. Bernal dedicated an entire book to answering some of his many critics. See Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics, ed. David Chioni Moore (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,

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2001). Several scholars, however, endorse some of Bernal’s arguments. For instance, the anthropologist Jack Goody even claims that the “breach” between the Aryan-­European culture and the East was not a consequence of nineteenth-­century racialism but had commenced already in the seventh ­century, following the Arab invasion. See Goody, The Theft of History, 60–65. 96. Freeman to Green, April 24, 1881, JRLM, MSS FA 1/8/95a. 97. Bryce to Freeman, September 14, 1891, Bod., MS Bryce 9, fol. 308. 98. Jan Rüger, Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Strug­gle for the North Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 87–104. 99. THRE (1904), 447. 100. Quoted in Trevor Wilson, “Lord Bryce’s Investigation into Alleged German Atrocities in Belgium, 1914–15,” Journal of Con­temporary History 14, no. 3 (1979): 370–71. 101. Quoted in Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 72. 102. James Bryce, The Attitude of ­Great Britain in the Pres­ent War (London: Macmillan, 1916). 103. Ibid., 23. 104. Bryce, Alleged German Outrages. 105. Already during ­t hese years, as argued in the case of Freeman (Chapter 4), and as Douglas A. Lorimer shows, “race” was not a fixed defined category among Victorian scholars. Thus, in many cases, t­ here was a mixture of scientific and cultural racism. See Douglas A. Lorimer, Science, Race Relations and Re­sis­tance: Britain, 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), esp. chap. 3. 106. Cook, “The Making of the En­glish,” 643–49.

Chapter 6 1. Linda Dowling, “Roman De­cadence and Victorian Historiography,” Victorian Studies 28, no. 4 (1985): 601–5; Hesketh, Science of History, 161–62. 2. Edward A. Freeman, History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, ed. John B. Bury, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1893). 3. Edward A. Freeman, The Historical Geography of Eu­rope, ed. J. B. Bury, 3rd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1903). Bury also edited an atlas that was attached to this book. See Edward A. Freeman, Atlas to the Historical Geography of Eu­rope, ed. J. B. Bury, 3rd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1903). 4. Bury to Freeman, November 15, 1891, JRLM, MSS FA1/7/51. Isaac of York is a character in in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. He is a Jewish moneylender who always expects a g­ reat return of favor/money. See Scott, Ivanhoe, 1:215–20. 5. John B. Bury, “Art. IV.—­Freeman’s History of Sicily, Vol. III,” Scottish Review 20 (1892): 301. 6. Stephens, LEAF, 2:453. 7. John B. Bury, An Inaugural Lecture: Delivered in the Divinity School, Cambridge, on January 26, 1903 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 22. 8. Interestingly, according to Bury, some events may disrupt historical continuity. In a very short chapter on the ­great plague of Justinian (AD 542), Bury argued that plagues sometimes define the bound­a ries between historical periods: “If we may speak of watersheds in



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history, this plague [AD 542] marks the watershed of what we call the ancient and what we call the medieval age.” See John B. Bury, A History of the ­Later Roman Empire: From Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.) (London: Macmillan, 1889), 1:399. 9. Bury, “Freeman’s History of Sicily, Vol. III,” 301. 10. THRE, (1871), 58; Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 2:507n2 11. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 2:508. 12. George Finlay, A History of Greece: From Its Conquest by the Romans to the Pres­ent Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, new ed., revised by author, ed. H. F. Tozer, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1877). 13. Ibid., 1:xvi. 14. Ibid., 352. 15. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1: v. 16. Bury to Macmillan, June 1, 1888, BL, Macmillan Archive, Add MS 55120. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:vi. 21. Freeman, Historical Geography (1903), vi–­vii. 22. Bury mentions Seeck forty-­seven times, more than Gibbon and Mommsen. See John B. Bury, History of the ­Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395 to A.D. 565) (London: Macmillan, 1923), vol. 1. 23. Otto Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (Berlin: Siemenroth & Troschel, 1897), 1:269ff. 24. Ibid., 289: “This way the sparse origins, from which a more noble ­family could have emerged, ­were extinguished again and again and the race worsened more and more” (my translation). In a recent article it has been argued that, according to Seeck, the growing Semitic influence had not necessarily “contributed” to the decline of the Roman race. See Eline Scheerlinck, Sarah Rey, and Danny Praet, “Race and Religious Transformations in Rome: Franz Cumont and Contemporaries on the Oriental Religions,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 65, no. 2, (2016): 230–32. 25. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1923), 1:309. 26. Bury, “History of Sicily I–­II,” 28–29. 27. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:vii. 28. As editor of The Cambridge Medieval History (1911–36), Bury wrote in his introduction to the fourth volume that “it was one of Gibbon’s ser­vices to history that the title of his book asserted clearly and unambiguously this continuity.” See John B. Bury, introduction to The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury, ed. H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney, vol. 4, The Eastern Roman Empire (717–1453)(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), vii. 29. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1:vi. 30. John B. Bury, “Gibbon, Edward,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Lit­er­a­ture and General Information, 11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 11:927–36. 31. Ibid., 935. 32. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:34. 33. Ibid., 16. 34. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (1906), 1: xlviii.

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35. As seen, for instance, in the end of his famous sixteenth chapter: “The church of Rome defended by vio­lence the empire which she had acquired by fraud; a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by the proscriptions, wars, massacres, and the institution of the holy office.” See Gibbon, Decline and Fall (1906), 3:87. 36. In his youth Gibbon for a short period even converted to Catholicism. Besides his negative comments in the Decline and Fall ­t here are also more neutral and even appreciative remarks. For example: “While that g­ reat body [Rome] was invaded by open vio­lence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and h ­ umble religion g­ ently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and fi­nally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol” (ibid., 2:1). For Gibbon’s ambiguity, see Brian  W. Young, “Preludes and Postludes to Gibbon: Variations on an Impromptu by J. G. A. Pocock,” History of Eu­ro­pean Ideas 35, no. 4 (2009): 421–22. 37. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:12. 38. John B. Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought (London: Williams and Norgate; New York: H. Holt, 1913); John B. Bury, The Idea of Pro­gress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (London: Macmillan, 1920). 39. Bury, Freedom of Thought, 51. 40. John B. Bury, “The Success of Chris­tian­ity,” R.P.A. Annual, 1915, 5. The Rationalist Press Association (RPA) was founded by Charles Albert Watts during 1884–85. The RPA and its journal fostered the publication of secular books and ideas. The organ­ization, now known as the Rational Association, still exists and publishes the New Humanist. See New Humanist, accessed February 22, 2014, https://­newhumanist​.­org​.­u k​/­. 41. John B. Bury, “Playing for Safety,” R.P.A. Annual, 1920, 19. 42. Bury, Freedom of Thought, 53. 43. Ibid., 24. 44. Ibid., 52. 45. Ibid., 72 46. Ibid., 77. 47. Ibid., 190. 48. Hilaire Belloc, Anti-­Catholic History: How It Is Written (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1914), 1–3. 49. Quoted in Bernard Bergonzi, “Belloc, (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre René (1870–1953),” ODNB, accessed November  30, 2014, http://­w ww​.­oxforddnb​.­c om​/­v iew​/­10​.­1093​/­ref:odnb​ /­9780198614128​.­001​.­0001​/­odnb​-­9780198614128​-­e​-­30699. 50. Belloc, Anti-­Catholic History, 19. It is no won­der that Belloc, following his unconditional support of the church, also attacked Gibbon despite adoring his literary skills. See Bergonzi, “Belloc.” 51. Bury, Idea of Pro­gress, 21–24. 52. Ibid., 66. 53. Ibid., 33. 54. Ibid., 9–10. 55. Ibid., 11. 56. Ibid., 19. 57. Ibid., 107–9. 58. John B. Bury, “The Place of Modern History in the Perspective of Knowledge,” in Selected Essays of J. B. Bury, ed. Harold Temperley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 43–59.



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59. Ibid., 50. 60. Ibid., 51. 61. Bury, Idea of Pro­gress, 38; Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Norton, 1969), 21–24. 62. Bodin dedicated a chapter to this issue, entitled “Refutation of Th ­ ose Who Postulate Four Monarchies and the Golden Age.” See Bodin, Easy Comprehension of History, 291ff.; Mario Turchetti, “Jean Bodin,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://­plato​.­stanford​.­edu​/­a rchives​/­fall2014​/­entries​/­bodin​/­. 63. Bodin, Easy Comprehension of History, 301–2; Bury, Idea of Pro­gress, 39–40. 64. Bury, Idea of Pro­gress, 52–57. 65. Yehoshua Arieli, “Modernity and the Prob­lem of Secularization” [in Hebrew], in History and Politics (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992), 153–54. 66. Bury, Idea of Pro­gress, 307. 67. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1:1–2. 68. John B. Bury, “Art. V.—­The Wandering of the Nations,” Scottish Review 21 (1893): 343. 69. Ibid., 345. 70. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:35. 71. John B. Bury, The Life of St. Patrick and His Place in History (London: Macmillan, 1905), 8–9. 72. Ibid., 9–10. 73. Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, 8 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880–99). 74. Bury, “The Wandering of the Nations,” 329–30. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., 331. 77. John  B. Bury, “Art. VII.—­Rome and Byzantium,” Quarterly Review 192, no.  383 (1900): 134. 78. John B. Bury, “The British and the Roman Empire,” SR 81, no. 2122 (1896): 645. 79. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1:25–36. For a similar assessment on the “dismembering” of Rome, see Bury, “The Wandering of the Nations,” 339. 80. In his 1896 book Die sozialen Gründe des Untergangs der antiken Kultur, Weber wrote that the shortage in slaves during the third ­century had been the cause of the Roman decline, since slaves w ­ ere the locomotive of the Roman economy. U ­ ntil the crisis, he argues, Rome developed several cap­i­tal­ist characteristics, but the slave shortage, combined with the termination of the Roman territorial expansion, generated a crisis that began the decay. See Max Weber, “The Social ­Causes of the Decay of Ancient Civilization,” in Max Weber, Essays in Economic Sociology, ed. Richard Swedberg (Prince­ton  N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1999), 138–53; John R. Love, Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the So­cio­log­i­cal Foundations of Roman Civilisation (London: Routledge, 1991), 233–37. 81. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1:25. 82. Bury, “Rome and Byzantium,” 136. 83. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1889), 1:33. 84. Bury, introduction to Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4 (1923), viii. 85. Bury, “Rome and Byzantium,” 147–49. 86. Ibid., 152. 87. Ibid., 146. 88. Ibid., 151. 89. Bury, L ­ ater Roman Empire (1889), 1:29–30.

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90. Bury, “The Wandering of the Nations,” 339. Zeno even nominated him to be a Roman consul, a patrician, and the head of soldiers (magister militum). See Maurice Dumoulin, “The Kingdom of Italy ­Under Odovacar and Theodoric,” in The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury, ed. H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 438–39. 91. John  B. Bury, The Invasion of Eu­rope by the Barbarians (1928; New York: Norton, 1967), 29. 92. John B. Bury, A History of the Eastern Roman Empire: From the Fall of Irene to the Accession of Basil I (A.D. 802–867) (London: Macmillan, 1912). 93. John B. Bury, “Darwinism and History,” in Selected Essays of J. B. Bury, ed. Harold Temperley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 38–39. 94. Quoted in Norman H. Baynes, A Bibliography of the Works of J. B. Bury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), 75. 95. For the contingent explanation for the fall, see John B. Bury, “Cleopatra’s Nose,” R.P.A. Annual, 1916, 16–23. The title follows the famous saying of Pascal: “had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter the ­whole face of the world would have changed.” 96. Bury, ­Later Roman Empire (1923), 311. 97. Several years a­ fter Bury, the Rus­sian historian Michael Rostovtzeff (1870–1952) argued that the tension and hostility between the Roman social classes had been the cause for the transformation of the “ancient world.” See Michael Rostovtzeff, “The Decay of the Ancient World and Its Economic Explanations,” Economic History Review 2, no. 2 (1930): 197–214. 98. William E. Heitland, “John Bagnell Bury and James Smith Reid,” Classical Review 44, no. 1 (1930): 38. 99. John B. Bury, “The Insurrection of ­Women: A Criticism,” Fortnightly Review 52, no. 311 (1892): 654. 100. Bury, “The British and the Roman Empire,” 645. 101. Bury, Inaugural Lecture, 7. 102. The famous British historian George Trevelyan, who was pres­ent at the lecture and ­later replaced Bury as regius professor at Cambridge, was one of the most vociferous opponents of this notion. For him, history was also an art and not only a science. See Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, new ed. (London: Granta Books, 2000), 37–39; Doris S. Goldstein, “J. B. Bury’s Philosophy of History: A Reappraisal,” American Historical Review 82, no. 4 (1977): 897; Hesketh, Science of History, 161–64. 103. Quoted in John P. Whitney, “The Late Professor J. B. Bury,” Cambridge Historical Journal 2, no. 2 (1927): 195. 104. Ibid., 192. 105. Goldstein, “J. B. Bury’s Philosophy of History,” 900. 106. Ibid. 107. Bury, Inaugural Lecture, 17. 108. John B. Bury, Germany and Slavonic Civilization (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1914). This manifesto became rather popu­lar and appeared also in Italian, French, Danish, and Dutch. See John B. Bury, La Germania e la civilta slava (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1914); John B. Bury, L’Allemagne et la civilisation slave (Paris: Payot, 1915). 109. John  B. Bury, “Says Germany’s Fight Is Selfish; Strug­g le of Teutonic Culture Against Slav ‘Barbarism’ a Myth, Dr. Bury Asserts,” New York Times, November 29, 1914, http://­query​.­nytimes​.­c om ​/­g st ​/­abstract​.­html​?­res​=­9901E1D71738E633A2575AC2A9679D9465 96D6CF.



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110. Ibid. 111. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Who Is to Blame for the War? (New York: German-­ American Literary Defense Committee, 1915), 9. 112. Ibid., 2. 113. Ibid., 4. 114. Bryce, Race Sentiment, 4–5. 115. Bury, Germany and Slavonic Civilization.

Epilogue Note to epigraph: José Ortega y Gasset, “History as a System,” in The Philosophy of History in Our Time: An Anthology Selected, and with an Introduction and Commentary by Hans Meyerhoff (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), 58. 1. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-­German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: Ashfield Press, 1980). 2. An excellent review of scholarship that testifies on the composite nature of the British-­ German relations can be found in Rüger, Revisiting the Anglo-­German Antagonism, 579–617. On the scholarly links between the two countries, see Heather Ellis and Ulrike Kirchberger, Anglo-­German Scholarly Networks in the Long Nineteenth ­Century (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 3. Davis, The Victorians and Germany, 188–89. 4. Biologist, “A Biological View of Our Foreign Policy,” SR 81, no. 2101 (1896): 120. 5. Ibid., 118–120. 6. H. C. MacNeacail, “Celt and Teuton in E ­ ngland,” Scottish Review 41, no. 90 (1918): 204. 7. Ibid., 205. 8. Ibid., 238. 9. Keith Robbins, Pres­ent and Past: British Images of Germany in the First Half of the Twentieth ­Century and Their Historical Legacy (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999), 28n24. 10. “The Foundations of the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Spectator, February 25, 1911, 18–19; Michael Biddiss, “Chamberlain, Houston Stewart (1855–1927),” ODNB, accessed June 5, 2018, http://­w w w​.­o xforddnb​.­c om ​/­v iew​/­1 0​.­1 093​/­r ef:odnb​/­9 780198614128​.­0 01​.­0 001​/­o dnb​ -­9780198614128​-­e​-­32349. 11. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth C ­ entury, trans. John. Lees, with an introduction by Lord Redesdale (New York: John Lane, 1910), 1:xiii. 12. Ibid., xxi–­x xii. 13. Ibid., 115–16.

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Index

Adam, 7, 8, 12, 196n12 Adams, Herbert B., 4, 47–49, 205n128, 221n65 Alaric the Goth, 43, 92, 116, 174, 179–80 Albert of Saxe-­Coburg and Gotha, Prince, 51, 72–73 Alexander the G ­ reat, 56, 180 Alfred the ­Great, 31, 32, 78 Allen, John, 138–39 Alsace-­L orraine, 70, 79, 104 Amer­i­ca, 4, 35, 46–49, 81, 146–48, 221n65. See also United States ancient history: modern history and, 111–14, 159; school of, 109–10. See also antiquity ­A ngles (Anglii), 2, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 44, 124 Anglican Church, 3, 59, 72–73, 211n114 Anglican historians, 53–54, 217n30 Anglo-­German relations, 21–22, 189–91 Anglo-­German scholars, 2, 3, 189–90. See also specific scholars Anglo-­Saxons/Anglo-­Saxonism, 2, 4, 17, 22, 24–29, 33, 35, 44, 47, 61–63, 71–72, 75, 191, 206n13; Amer­i­ca and, 47, 49, 221n65; Anglo-­Saxon assemblies (witenagemot), 79–80; Anglo-­Saxon historiography, 25–26; Anglo-­Saxon period, 52; Celtic ­peoples and, 27, 44–45, 62, 150; expansion of, 34–35; invasions by, 25, 27, 30, 34, 49, 86–87; language and, 28, 64; Monumenta Germaniae Historica and, 85–86; Normans and, 25, 105; racial purity and, 62, 64; Roman-­Celtic society and, 27; supremacy and, 46, 124; Teutonic heritage and mores of, 45–46; wanderings of, 26, 27, 29, 58; Welsh and, 44–46 anti-­Catholicism, 167–70, 185, 188 antiquity, 1, 3, 110, 172; ächthistorische (real historical), 54; Bury and, 170–71; M ­ iddle

Ages and, 4, 5, 7, 16, 61, 105–8, 174, 226n8; Mittelalter (a ­middle period), 54; modernity and, 5, 117, 119, 132–33, 140, 146–47, 193; mythische (mythic), 54; periodization of, 11–14, 54, 90, 99, 100–102, 104, 109, 110, 132–33, 157, 177, 181; separation of myth from history, 54, 58 anti-­Semitism, 66, 216n23 Aquinas, Thomas, 169 Arabs, 65, 108, 111, 125, 142, 225n95. See also Muslims archaeology, 23, 104 aristocracy, 19, 91, 92, 102 Armenians, 148, 149; Armenian genocide, 135, 222n5 Arminius (Hermann), 18, 36–37, 98, 103, 174, 213–14n180, 216n27 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 18, 61, 62, 198n56, 198n57 Arnold, Matthew, 118, 202n80 Arnold, Thomas, 4–5, 53, 55, 57–58, 63, 86, 109–10, 136, 152; anti-­French tendencies of, 118; Bunsen and, 58–59, 63; fall of Roman Empire and, 116–17; as found of British historical discipline, 113; Freeman and, 63, 117–18; History of Rome, 116–17; Matthew Arnold and, 118; on modernity, 116, 144; Pan-­Germanism and, 58; periodization and, 116, 181; separation of myth from history, 58; Stubbs and, 63; “unity of history” idea and, 88, 113, 116, 118, 132, 219n8 Aryan civilization and heritage, 42–43, 189–90; endurance of, 111, 118–20; progressive essence of, 118–19 Aryan history: modernity and, 115–20; periodization of, 110–11, 119, 120; shared, 133; unified, 118, 119–20, 219n8

254 Index Aryanism, 46, 69, 130, 163–64 Aryans, 36, 42, 47, 59–60, 65, 74, 99, 124, 127, 131–32, 150; as ancestors of En­glish ­people, 163; continuation of Greece/Rome and Teutonic tribes, 118–19; conversion to Chris­tian­ity, 119; Freeman on, 69, 119–20, 123, 135, 202n73; Islamic emergence and, 125–33; language and, 42–43, 59, 64–66, 68–69, 163–64; Semites and, 65–66, 111, 120, 125–27, 153, 187, 192–93; Sicily and, 120–25; supremacy and, 36, 42–43, 60, 63–64, 66, 69, 119–20, 123, 126, 135, 139, 187; unified history of, 110–11; unity among, 42, 120, 125 Asia, 59, 60, 65, 66, 101, 127 assemblies, 42–43, 47, 79–80, 145 Attila the Hun, 175, 179–80 Augustine of Hippo, 12, 92, 170 Augustus, Emperor, 6, 14, 89, 98, 140, 144, 164, 176, 177, 178 Bacon, Francis, 172–73 barbarian invasions, 99, 183; as beginning of ­Middle Ages, 94–96, 104; Constantinople and, 179–80; as racial watershed separating antiquity from M ­ iddle Ages, 103; Roman Empire and, 89, 95–96, 97 barbarians/barbarism, 4, 15–16, 91, 94, 102–3, 126–27, 186; “barbarian era,” 5, 96; Christianized, 99, 100–103, 114; Roman Empire and, 15, 16, 90, 93, 141, 179; as symbolizing end of ancient period, 94–96. See also barbarian invasions; Teutonic tribes Baumgartner, Alexander, 40 Bede, Venerable, 12, 93, 197n42 Belgae, 23, 24 Belgium, 85, 135, 155 Bell, Duncan, 35, 221n65 Belloc, Hilaire, 169 Berlin, Isaiah, 1–2 Bernal, Martin, 57, 225n95 the Bible, 7, 12, 13, 138, 168, 169. See also New Testament; Old Testament; specific books Biondo, Flavio, 93–94 Bismarck, Otto von, 69–70, 71, 186, 205n5, 206n7 blacks, 35, 202n73 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 68

Bodin, Jean, 172, 174 Boers, 72, 191 book of Daniel, 14, 138, 172, 223n22 British Empire, 72, 76; accomplishments of, 52, 177; Amer­i­ca and, 146–48, 221n65; India and, 146–48, 149; race and, 147–48; Roman Empire and, 146–51, 192–93; Teutonic heritage of, 76 British Isles, 2; Anglo-­Saxon invasion of, 45, 124; coexistence of Teutonic and Celtic culture in, 118; Norman Conquest of, 105; Viking invasion of, 44 British scholars, 53, 90. See also En­glish Teutonic scholars; specific scholars Britons, 9, 27, 28–29, 30, 34, 49 Broad Church movement, 52–53 Brown, Peter, 214n1 Bryce, James, 2, 4–7, 27, 31, 33–34, 38–39, 43, 71, 87, 107, 115, 134; as authority on German scholarship, 139–40; as British ambassador to United States, 134; Chamberlain and, 187; detached from Teutonic affinity, 151; downplays importance of AD 476, 138, 144–45; on Eastern Roman Empire, 159; foreign policy and, 82; Freeman and, 78–79, 82, 87, 116, 135, 139–40, 143, 151–56, 205n128; French imperial claim and, 145; generational shift and, 190–91; on German-­ British relations, 146–47, 155–56; “Germanism” of, 140; historical scheme of, 139; Holy Roman Empire (HRE) and, 134–56; imperial genealogy of, 139–46; inconsistent arguments of, 142–43, 184; interest in judicial inheritance of Roman and Germanic law, 156; on M ­ iddle Ages, 150; on modernity, 144, 150; opposition to slavery, 148; Palgrave’s influence on, 135–39; periodization and, 138, 139, 152–53, 157, 181; philo-­Germanism of, 155; on physical destruction of Western Roman Empire, 143, 146; on potential of Amer­i­ca, 49; praises France’s imperial heredity, 151; praises Rome’s influence, 146; race and, 43, 135, 147–50, 154, 156, 187, 224n71, 225n75; on role of Teutonic tribes, 146, 151; Romano-­Teutonic heritage and, 139, 146, 157; on significance of Charlemagne’s coronation, 159; on Teutonic lords, 174; Teutonism and, 46, 135, 151, 154–56, 191; as undersecretary of state for foreign affairs,

Index 134; “unity of history” idea and, 135, 140–41, 146–47, 151–56; on unity of mankind, 88; universal and particularistic tendencies of, 145–46; visits Aachen, 145; visits Johns Hopkins University, 48. See also Bryce, James, works of Bryce, James, works of: American Commonwealth, 48; “Empire in India,” 148, 149; The Holy Roman Empire (THRE), 6, 134, 135, 139–43, 151; Race Sentiment as a F ­ actor in History, 149–50, 154, 156; review of Freeman’s Historical Essays, 152–53; “The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India,” 141–42; Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 142–43 Buffon, Comte de, 10 Bulgaria/Bulgarians, 127, 128–29, 129, 131, 132, 187 Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias von, 2, 4, 52–53, 58–63, 64, 66, 72, 73, 86, 119; as ambassador to Rome, 58–59; on Anglo-­Saxons, 62–63; Arnold and, 58–59, 63, 208n45; “Egyptomania” of, 60; Egypt’s Place in World History, 60; France and, 61; God in History, 60; Müller and, 64–67; promotion of idea of unity of mankind, 59–60, 65 Burrow, John, 28 Bury, John Bagnell, 5, 6–7, 88, 107, 112, 120–21, 154, 156, 193, 226n8, 230n102; acknowledges “German spirit,” 173–74; anti-­Catholicism of, 167–70, 185, 188; antiquity and, 170–71; attack on Roman Empire in Saturday Review, 177; Bacon and, 172–73; Bodin and, 172–73, 174; Chris­tian­ity and, 167–70; contingency theory of, 171, 182–86, 188; continuity and, 159; departure from “old” and conservative perception of Rome, 157; diminished Teutonic stance of, 163, 190–91; disapproval of “locked” historical schemes, 173; En­glish Teutonic circle and, 157–58; “flexibility” of, 157; Freeman and, 157, 158–60, 163–64, 220n52; generational shift and, 190–91; German historical method and, 190; on German-­Russian relationship, 186–87; Gibbon and, 164–67; Hegel and, 173–74; on historical time, 172–74; historical unity and, 159; on history as science, 184–85; “illusion of finality” and, 188; inconsistent arguments

255

of, 178, 181–84; Irish Protestant background of, 185–86, 188; methodology and, 157, 184–85; periodization and, 157, 165, 181; preference for modernity, 171; pro­gress and, 167–70, 172–73; Protestantism and, 185–86; race and, 154, 163, 164; religion and, 185–86; on role of Teutonic tribes in fall of Rome, 174–79; on Roman history, 165, 184–85; “rule of fluctuation” and, 184–85; Rus­sia and, 186; as scientific historian, 157, 188; Teutonism and, 154, 174, 186, 188; “unity of history” idea and, 157, 159, 168, 180–81; unity of the East and, 157–88. See also Bury, John Bagnell, works of Bury, John Bagnell, works of: editor of Cambridge Medieval History, 227n28; editor of Freeman’s Historical Geography of Eu­rope, 158, 163; editor of Freeman’s second edition of The History of Federal Government, 158; Germany and Slavonic Civilization, 186; A History of Freedom of Thought, 167–68; A History of the Eastern Roman Empire, 181; A History of the L ­ ater Roman Empire, 161–62; History of the ­Later Roman Empire, 164, 183; The Idea of Pro­gress, 167, 170–72, 174; The ­Later Roman Empire, 166, 168, 173–74, 177–78, 180–81, 183; The Life of St Patrick, 175, 185; “The Place of Modern History in the Perspective of Knowledge,” given at the Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis, 171; reviews Freeman’s History of Sicily, 158–59, 164–65; “Rome and Byzantium,” 183 Byzantine Empire, 6, 7, 121, 133, 136, 141, 154, 161–67, 193. See also ­later Roman Empire Byzantium, 108, 125. See also Constantinople Caesar, Julius, 15, 60, 83, 104, 105, 141, 144 cantons, 40–41 Carlyle, Thomas, 70–71, 83, 118, 152, 199n8 Carolingians, 14, 85, 108, 145 Carthage, 42, 121, 124, 191, 192–93 Catholicism, 3, 6–7, 71, 73, 179, 188, 190; Bury’s hostility t­ oward, 167–70; Gibbon and, 167, 227–28n36, 227n35; Roman Empire and, 73, 125, 173–74, 180. See also anti-­Catholicism; Roman Catholic Church

256 Index Celtic/Gallic identity, 3, 21, 22–23 Celtic heritage, 22, 37, 45, 59, 118, 191–92 Celtic ­peoples, 2, 23, 24–30, 35–36, 45–46, 61, 87, 124, 132, 140; Anglo-­Saxons and, 44–45, 62, 150; Teutonic tribes and, 61, 87 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 186–87, 192–93 Charlemagne (Charles I; Carlos Magnus), Emperor, 79, 108, 133, 145, 151; coronation of, 116–17, 133, 141, 144, 154, 159, 181; restoration and, 140, 142, 144–145 Chris­tian­ity, 5–7, 13, 60, 62–63, 91, 111, 127, 169–70, 173–74, 177, 211n122; Aryans and, 69, 125–33; barbarism and, 100–103; Bury on, 166–70; civilizing impact of, 101; dissemination of, 99, 102–3, 119; early, 168; endurance of, 114; equality and, 146; formative victory of, 100–103; founding of, 12; freedom and, 179; as fusion of Aryanism and Semitism, 69; Gibbon and, 166–67; Hegel and, 171; HRE and, 144, 166–67; Islam and, 108, 122, 126, 128, 150, 192–93; modernity and, 100; Orthodox, 119; pro­gress and, 166, 167–68, 188; racism and, 148; rejuvenating effect on course of history, 101–2; rise of, 91, 95, 103, 110, 112, 227–28n36; Roman Empire and, 125, 143–44, 166–68, 175, 179, 180; Roman-­ Teutonic culture and, 146, 148; schism in, 129; Teutonism and, 100, 175; time and, 12; tolerance and, 168; triadic periodization and, 99; Turanians and, 129–31; universalizing impact of, 101, 114; Vikings and, 44; Western Roman Empire and, 166–67 Clovis, King, 90, 103, 141 community/communities (Gemeinschaft), 2, 3, 4, 13, 15–19, 22; common En­glish and German, 21–22; construction of, 17, 27, 41; definition of, 11; emergence and decline and, 4–5; land and, 15; language and, 8, 11; periodization and, 4–5, 30–31; “purity” of, 3; race and, 11, 27; religious time and transformation of, 13; transnational ethnogenesis, 46–49 Comte, Auguste, 54–55, 173 Constantine, Emperor, 95, 144 Constantinople, 94, 140, 154, 173–74; barbarian invasions and, 179–80; geo­graph­i­cal location protecting it from barbarian invasions, 179–80; as hub

merging East and West, 179; Ottoman conquest of, 94, 162, 165, 179; Roman Empire and, 140, 143, 179, 214n1. See also Byzantine Empire contingency theory, 182–86, 188 continuity, 5–6, 109, 114, 159, 226n8; historical unity and, 159, 165; periodization and, 106, 116, 120; vs. rupture, 106, 111, 132 Cook, Simon, 34, 156 Counter-­reformation, 173–74 Creighton, Mandell, 112 culture, 8–9, 16, 20, 106. See also specific cultures Curtius, Ernst, 81–82, 153, 225n93 Danes, 28, 43, 44 Daniel, 138. See also book of Daniel Darwin, Charles, 10–11, 65; On the Origin of Species, 10–11, 76; race and, 10–11, 197n38 Darwinism, 2, 65, 156, 182 Davis, John R., 52–53, 206n13 degeneration, 65, 91, 93–96 democracy, 102; Athenian, 39; direct, 48; in Florence, 37; in Roman Empire, 91–92; spread of, 47; Teutonic demo­cratic tradition, 38–39, 47; tyrannical (ochlocracy), 92 Disraeli, Benjamin, 50, 127, 205n1, 205n2 Dubos, Jean-­Baptiste, 138–39 the Dutch, 62, 63, 150 Dutch language, 43, 67 the East, 101, 102, 159; “Eastern character,” 127–28; rise of, 179–82; unity of, 157–88; vs. the West, 126–28, 129, 132, 140–41. See also Eastern Roman Empire the “Eastern Question,” 68, 71, 128, 161 Eastern Roman Empire, 7, 94, 117, 140–43, 148, 157–88; Chris­tian­ity and, 166–67, 169, 180; economic and demographic stability of, 180; emperors of, 180; end of, 181; geo­graph­i­cal location of, 179–80; Germanic lords and, 181; Gibbon on, 165–67; national identity of, 180; significance of, 159–60; wealth of, 180; Western Roman Empire and, 154, 159, 174, 177–81, 182, 188. See also l­ater Roman Empire

Index Edwardian scholars, 193 Egypt/Egyptians, 23, 26, 59, 60, 100, 101, 153, 172, 225n93, 225n95 Engels, Friedrich, 14–15, 19 ­England, 2, 20, 28, 41, 44, 47, 74; Anglo-­ Saxon invasion of, 25, 44, 86–87; Anglo-­Saxonism and, 191; Belgae in, 23; “birth” of, 31, 206n13; Celtic heritage in, 191; constitutional system of, 29–30, 55, 63, 84; defeat at Teutoburg Forest and, 58; En­glish law, 84; founding of, 27, 32; France and, 59, 190; Germanization of, 28, 30; Germany and, 17, 21–22, 37, 51–53, 61–62, 69–72, 74, 77, 86–88, 90, 186–87, 189–93; historical profession in, 4; idea of, 52; name of, 27; national identity and, 30–33; Niebuhr and, 54–56; Norman invasion of, 28, 31, 45; origins of, 21, 30–32, 67, 86–87; po­liti­cal heritage of, 40, 47, 55; po­liti­cal system of, 29–30, 40, 63, 84; racial composition of, 26; Rome and, 56, 146–47; Scandinavia and, 43; Teutonic dominance in foundation of, 136; university system in, 6; Viking invasion of, 28, 44, 45. See also British Empire; British Isles; G ­ reat Britain the En­glish, 23, 24, 30, 35, 47; Aryans as ancestors of, 163; conquest of Amer­i­ca by, 35; Danes and, 44; freedom of, 28; French-­Celtic heritage of, 118; Germans and, 28; Roman origins of, 28, 137–38; Teutonic heritage and, 27–34, 45, 46, 67, 86–88, 118, 188, 163, 186, 189–93; Teutonic notion and, 2–3; the Welsh and, 44–46 English-­German community of scholars, 16–17, 194. See also En­glish scholars; En­glish Teutonic Scholars; specific scholars En­glish history/historiography: importance of AD 1066 in, 25; national periodization of, 25; Norman invasion of, 25; racial periodization of, 27l ; “uniqueness” of, 80–81 En­glish language, 42–43, 51, 67, 191 En­glishness, 32 “the En­glish question,” 30–34 En­glish scholars, 2, 80–81, 213–14n180; Germanic themes and, 22; German scholars and, 4; national hierarchy and, 103; po­liti­cal, religious, and social activities of, 52; race and, 50–88, 156. See also En­glish Teutonic scholars; specific scholars

257

En­glish settlers, Native Americans and, 123, 124 En­glish Teutonic scholars, 4, 21–49, 51, 139, 155–56, 188, 189–90, 194, 195n4; alter historiographical debate about end of antiquity, 193; “Anglo-­Saxon” identity of, 4; Bury and, 157–58; cultural-­racial traits and, 190; German school and, 88; Müller and, 67–68, 71–72; new historiographical approaches created by, 193; obsession with Teutonic origins, 115; po­liti­cal interests and, 190; pro-­German views among, 192; race and, 194; Teutonic narrative and, 115, 189–91, 193–94 ethnicity, 16, 20; fall of Roman Empire and Catholic Church and, 99–100; language and, 42–43; perceptions of, 90; race and, 9–10, 20; time and, 90, 103. See also race Eu­rope: Africa and, 122; Christianization of, 112; Eastern Roman Empire and, 159; Germanization of, 112; Greco-­Roman contributions to, 124; Hebrew contributions to, 124–25; Saracen contributions to, 124–25; Semitic contributions to, 124–25; transformation of, 174; unity of, 174. See also Eu­ro­pean states; specific nations Eu­ro­pean states, 44; Christian Germanic heritage of, 113; construction of, 18–19; Roman Empire’s role in shaping, 136–39; Teutonic dominance and, 136; Teutonic institutions and, 119; two pillars of freedom and fidelity, 102. See also specific nations evolution/evolutionary theory, 65, 118–19, 182 federalism, 38–41, 47–48, 140 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 17–18 finality, illusion of, 157–88 Finlay, George, 136, 137, 160–61 Forbes, Duncan, 53–54 four monarchies scheme, 14, 138, 139, 172, 223n22 France, 14, 18–19, 39, 41, 56, 71, 74–75, 79, 85, 150, 191; anti-­French tendencies, 4, 61, 118, 140; archaeology in, 104; Bunsen and, 61; Catholicism and, 3, 73; Celtic/Gallic identity and, 3; discourse of race and time in, 18–19; emergence of modern, 36; ­England and, 3, 59, 150, 190;

258 Index France (continued) Gallo-­Roman heritage of, 151; Germany and, 3, 19–20, 59, 69–72, 79, 86, 103–4, 106, 141, 190; Green and Freeman on, 36–37, 140; imperial heredity of, 73, 151; imperialist traditions of, 151; Latinity of, 3; as menacing “other,” 190; Napoleonic, 56; Niebuhr’s resentment t­ oward, 55; as perpetual other of E ­ ngland and Germany, 86–87; revival of ancient tribal myth in, 104; Roman heritage of, 3, 42, 105, 106, 113, 151 Franco-­Prussian War, 3, 52, 68, 71, 74, 141 Franks, 18–19, 24, 28–29, 45, 75, 90, 116, 128, 144, 217n51 freedom (Freiheit), 60–61, 102, 103, 168–70, 172, 179 Freeman, Edward Augustus, 2, 4–7, 50, 53, 64, 79, 86, 107, 158, 185, 189–90, 221n65; acknowledges Semitic contributions to Eu­rope, 124–25; admiration of Teutonic Switzerland, 39–40; adoption of “conservative” periodization, 119; on Anglo-­Saxons/Celtic conflict, 150; anti-­Celtic tendencies of, 118; Arnold and, 63, 117, 118, 218n1, 219n8; Aryanism and, 42–43, 69, 119–20, 123, 135, 139, 163–64, 202n73; on Aryan unity, 120; on birth of ­England, 206n13; Bryce and, 78–79, 82, 87, 116, 135, 139–40, 143–44, 151–56, 205n128; Bury and, 157, 158–60, 220n52; community and, 41; continuity and, 159; criticism of Kingsley, 77; criticisms of German scholarship, 80–82; criticized by German historians, 82–83; on demarcation of modernity, 144; “Eastern Question” and, 71, 161; Eastern Roman Empire and, 160; emphasis on insignificance of AD 476, 138, 139; En­glish Teutonic circle and, 21, 24, 26–35, 43, 47–48; on ethnic origins of E ­ ngland, 45–46; on fall of Rome, 111–12, 125–26; Finlay and, 160–61; foreign policy and, 82, 163; on France, 36–37, 39, 140; French imperial claim and, 145; generational shift and, 190–91; German scholars and, 80–81; on Germany, 156; Green and, 113–14, 117; historical method of, 139; HRE and, 134; on impact of Teutonic invasions, 44–46, 49; inconsistent arguments of, 184; on Irish home rule, 45–46; on Italy, 37–38;

kinship theory of nation and, 41–42; Liebermann on, 79–80; “loyalty” to Teutonic history, 34; merging of race and language by, 68; methodology of, 114–15; on modernity, 119–20, 206n13; on Mommsen, 81–82; Müller and, 64, 68, 70–71; nationalism and, 79–80, 163; Northmen and, 44; obsession with Teutonic origins, 115; on Ottoman atrocities, 128–29; Palgrave’s influence on, 135, 138, 139; periodical columns by, 52; periodization and, 125, 132–33, 138, 144, 157, 181; on periodization of Aryan history, 111; po­liti­cal, religious, and social activities of, 52; po­liti­cal views of, 162–63; posthumous reviews of, 114–15; on potential of Amer­i­ca, 49; promotion of idea of unity of mankind, 88; race and, 35, 50, 110–11, 115, 123, 127–28, 130–32, 149, 153–54, 157, 163, 226n105; reception in Germany, 82–83; reliance on Müller’s comparative method, 64; reluctance to admit ancient associations between Eastern and Western civilizations, 153–54; reviewed in Pall Mall Gazette, 151–52; on “revolution of 406–419,” 116; on role of Teutonic tribes, 119–20; on rules of “adoption and assimilation,” 132; on Scotland, 45–46; Stubbs and, 84, 113–14; tension between unity and periods, 219n8; on Teutonic lords, 174; on Teutonic tribes, 42, 119–20; Teutonism and, 46, 50, 64, 135, 186; theory of unity and, 118–20; unique historical periodization of, 109–33; on “uniqueness” of En­glish historiography, 80–81; on United States, 46–47; “unity of history” idea and, 46, 109–10, 112–15, 118, 121, 126–27, 132, 135, 139, 151–56, 159, 219n8; use of racial terminology, 34–36; view of Islam, 125–26; visits Johns Hopkins University, 47, 48; on Wales, 44–46. See also Freeman, Edward Augustus, works of Freeman, Edward Augustus, works of: “Carthage,” 124; Comparative Politics, 35; General Sketch of Eu­ro­pean History, 42; Historical Essays, 79, 117, 151–53; Historical Geography of Eu­rope, 82, 158, 163; The History and Conquests of the Saracens, 129; The History of Federal Government, 158; The History of Sicily, 110, 120–25, 126, 130,

Index 158–59, 164–65, 219n9; “The Landesgemeinden of Uri and Appenzell,” 38–39; “The Landesgemeinde of Uri,” 38–39; Life and Letters, 45; “Mahometanism in the East and West,” 126; “Mommsen’s History of Rome,” 81–82; Norman Conquest, 78, 79; Old En­glish History for ­Children, 21; “Race and Language,” 35, 130–32; The Story of Sicily, 121–22; in Times of London, 128–29 Freeman-­Mitford, Algernon Bertram, Lord Redesdale, 192–93 French Revolution, 19, 105, 119, 150, 173 French scholars, 53, 90, 103, 105 Frisians, 63, 85 Froude, James Anthony, 73, 211n112 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa-­Denis, 5, 104 Gallia/Gaul, 18, 19–20, 24, 28, 36, 89, 105–6, 116, 124, 151, 190, 203n100. See also Gauls Gallo-­Romans, 18, 19, 105, 106, 151 Gauls, 18–19, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 37, 39, 92, 104, 105, 149, 203n100 Gemeinde, 38, 39, 41 Gemeinschaft, 2, 4, 21, 22, 50–88; admiration of, 77–86; community of Teutonic heritage, 86–88; con­temporary views of, 52–53; the core of the community, 63–64; criticism of, 77–86; establishment of the community, 58–63; lineage of historians—­early influences, 53–58. See also community/communities (Gemeinschaft) Gemütlichkeit (good nature), 102 Genesis, 7–8 geography, 15–17, 62, 184 German era, 102, 103 German heritage, 52–53, 194. See also Teutonic heritage German historical method, 83, 190 German history, 34, 85 Germania, 28, 98, 174–79 Germanic heritage, 39; Germanic institutional heritage, 28; “Germanic” Amer­i­ca, 46–49; Germanic law, 156; modern history and, 113; vs. Roman heritage, 103–6. See also Teutonic heritage Germanic (ancient) history (deutsches Altertum), sixteenth-­century developments in, 97–98

259

Germanic kingdoms, adoption of Roman mores and institutions by, 143; as “bridge” between Roman and German civilizations, 178 German(ic) language(s), 36, 42–43, 51, 69–72, 186, 191 “Germanic school,” 4, 27 Germanic tribes. See Teutonic tribes Germanist narrative, 11, 22, 90, 91, 104, 140 German nationalism, 97–98 German principalities, 51, 56, 98, 106, 139, 140 German Protestantism, 53 German-­Roman imperial idea, 140–41 German Romanists, 103 Germans, 37; En­glish and, 28; Slavs and, 187–88; Teutonic notion and, 2–3 German scholars, 2, 5, 80–82, 105, 115, 140, 213–14n180; En­glish scholars and, 4, 136; En­glish Teutonic scholars and, 4, 50–88, 136; Freeman and, 80–82; “genealogy of,” 4; German Teutonic scholars, 4; national hierarchy and, 103; periodization of antiquity and, 90; po­liti­cal, religious, and social activities of, 52; race and, 50–88; Stubbs and, 80. See also specific scholars German school of historiography, 87–88, 103–6 German spirit, 102, 173–74, 175, 178 Germany, 17–18, 20, 28, 36, 47, 74, 89; affinity of En­glish Teutonic scholars for, 189–90; archaeology in, 104; Bismarckian, 71; changing attitudes ­towards during World War I, 190–91; constitution of, 151; France and, 19–20, 55, 59, 69–72, 79, 86, 103–4, 106, 141, 190; Goths and, 23; G ­ reat Britain and, 17, 21–22, 37, 52–53, 59, 61–62, 69–72, 74, 77, 86–88, 90, 154–56, 187, 189–93; HRE and, 155; nationalism and, 187–88; opposing, 186–88; Polish territories of, 186; po­liti­cal system of, 38; Rome and, 28, 144; Rus­sia and, 186; territorial claims to Alsace-­Lorraine, 70, 79, 104; unification of, 73, 104 Gibbon, Edward, 54, 75–76, 91, 138, 199n11, 215n15, 216n18; Bury and, 164–67; Chris­tian­ity and, 167, 227–28n35–36; as “Classical” historian, 176; on Eastern Roman Empire, 165–67; The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 91, 94–95, 112, 125, 164–67, 176–77, 227–28n36, 227n28, 227n35; 125;

260 Index Gibbon, Edward (continued) portrayal by Bury in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 165; religion and, 166–67 Gladstone, William E., 70, 71, 87, 128, 134, 184, 206n7 Gobineau, Arthur Comte de, 9, 19, 66 Goody, Jack, 1, 225n95 Gothic invasions, 98–100 Goths, 23–24, 26, 43, 116, 175 ­Great Britain, 23, 72, 142, 147; the Continent and, 26–27; control over Scotland and Wales, 45–46; foreign policy of, 163; France and, 150; Germany and, 154–56; Ottoman Empire and, 50, 71; po­liti­cal system of, 38; Prus­sia and, 205n5. See also British Empire; E ­ ngland Greco-­Roman civilization, 101, 119, 176, 179 Greece, 14–16, 26, 56, 60, 81, 101–2, 124, 129–31, 172, 176, 179, 187; Aryan origins of Greek civilization, 153; democracy in, 48; depopulation of, 164; Hellenistic, 61, 180; in­de­pen­dence of, 160–61; as one of four monarchies, 138 Greeks, 42, 74, 100, 101, 115, 122, 123–24, 168, 170–71 Green, John Richard, 2, 4, 27, 29–39, 52, 113, 124, 153, 202n80; Freeman and, 113–14, 117, 200n33; historical practices of, 33–34; on Italy, 37–38, 42; kinship theory of nation and, 41–42; “Latinization” of, 34, 46; po­liti­cal, religious, and social activities of, 52; “Short History of France,” 36–37; Short History of the En­glish ­People, 29–30, 31, 33, 34, 47; Teutonic narrative and, 42, 50; “unity of history” idea and, 113–14 Grimm, Jacob, 62, 80, 136, 140 Grote, George, 81, 166 Guizot, François, 5, 96, 124, 216n19 Hallam, Henry, 152 Ham, 8, 59 Hare, Julius C., 55, 207n39, 208n45 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 91, 100–103, 171–74, 183 Heine, Heinrich, 150–51 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 8–9, 10, 91, 100–103 Hermann (Arminius). See Arminius (Hermann)

High Church, 52–53, 71, 73 historical unity. See “unity of history” idea historiography, 87–88. See also specific schools Historische Zeitschrift, 53, 78–79 history: archival work and, 185; as art and science, 230n102; as both scientific and contingent, 184–85; “Classical” vs. Eu­ro­pean, 176; class strug­gle and, 15; as continuous narrative, 115; as discipline, 1; end of, 171; Eu­ro­pean, 176; governed by contingencies, 182–86; Marxist schemes of, 14–15; material evidence for, 185; as open-­ended, 173; philosophy of, 223n22; as profession, 1, 4; race and, 6, 24; “restarted” ­a fter Rome, 101; scientific method and, 184–85, 188; six ages of, 12; socialist schemes of, 14–15. See also historiography; periodization; time Hodgkin, Thomas, 176 Holland, 63, 85. See also the Dutch Holy Roman Empire (HRE), 14, 134–56; as last of four monarchies, 172; longevity of, 152; marking end of decaying civilization, 144; Roman Empire and, 144–46; Romano-­Teutonic legacy of, 134, 135, 140–43, 146, 154. See also Byzantine Empire; Eastern Roman Empire; l­ater Roman Empire humanism, 37, 167, 168–69; Italian, 93–94 humanity: decline of, 172; ­f uture of, 171, 172, 173 (see also pro­gress); maturity of, 101; origins of, 7, 154; uniqueness of, 170. See also unity of mankind Huns, 93, 175, 183 imperial genealogy, 14, 140–41, 144, 162 imperial institutions, longevity of, 139–46 India, 9, 65, 67, 146–48, 149, 203–4n101, 209n77 Ireland, 2, 45–46, 124, 150; Belgae in, 23; home rule in, 87 Irene, Empress, 141, 181 the Irish, 23, 87, 150 Islam, 13, 107–8, 129, 192–93, 197n45; Christian Aryan sphere and, 125–33; Chris­tian­ity and, 108, 125–33, 150, 192–93; Freeman’s views of, 125–26; rise of, 110, 125–26; Roman Empire and, 125–26; Sicily and, 121–22

Index Israelites, 124–25; Teutonic tribes compared to, 211–12n130 Italy, 30, 34, 37–38, 41–42, 61, 74, 85, 94, 113, 116, 164, 178, 217n51 Japheth, 8, 59, 65 Jerome, 92–93 Jesus Christ, 12; birth of, 12, 13; lineage of, 203n98; Second Coming of, 12 Jews, 13, 66, 148, 193, 202n74; Aryans and, 216n23; Freeman on, 205n1; Freeman’s attitude t­ oward, 35; Jewish historians, 79–80; Jewish purity, 187; racial purity and, 202n74; Turks and, 127 Jutes, 2, 22, 29, 44; as En­glish, 30, 31, 32; invasion by, 27, 28 Kemble, John Mitchell, 62, 80, 136, 220n31 Kingsley, Charles, 72–77, 84, 86, 189–90, 201n53 kinship, 47, 68 Knox, Robert, 10 Koselleck, Reinhart, 1 Landsgemeinden, 38–39, 42, 47, 48 language, 6, 7–11, 20, 27, 191, 196n12; Anglo-­Saxons and, 64; Aryans and, 42–43; biological inheritance and, 34; character and, 39–40; community and, 8, 11; cultural and national variation and, 8–9; definition of, 11; divine origins of, 7, 8; Epicurean theory of, 7, 8; ethnicity and, 42–43; “fluidity of,” 130–31; Herder’s four natu­ral laws (Naturgesetze) defining, 8; as key to understanding humanity, history, and religion, 53; kinship and, 68; language diversity, 59; national identity and, 8–9; nation and, 40; origins of, 7–8, 9; race and, 9, 24–27, 34–35, 40, 42–47, 53, 60, 64, 66–69, 156, 163–64; real­ity and, 7–8; religion and, 65; supremacy and, 64–72; Teutonic tribes and, 42. See also specific languages Lappenberg, Johann M., 52, 82 ­later Roman Empire, 157–88. See also Byzantine Empire; Eastern Roman Empire Latin-­Celtic heritage, vs. Teutonic heritage, 36–43, 46

261

Latin nations, 36, 74, 114, 147–49 Le Goff, Jacques, 11 Liberal Anglican historians, influence of German scholarship on, 53–54 liberty, 102, 168. See also freedom (Freiheit) Lieber, Francis, 54 Liebermann, Felix, 79–80, 84–85, 86 Lindenschmit, Wilhelm and Ludwig, 104 Linné, Carl von (Linnaeus), 10 Lombards, 85, 142, 217n51 Luther, Martin, 12, 73, 98–99, 144, 169 Lutheranism/Lutheran Church, 3, 59, 60 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 157 Macmillan, Alexander, 42, 162 MacNeacail, H. C., 191–92 Magyars, 111, 127, 129, 130, 132 Maine, Henry, 204n102, 219n8 Maitland, Frederic William, 84 Mandler, Peter, 22 Marchand, Susan, 60, 153 Mark, 48, 83, 84, 140 Marx, Karl, 14–15, 19 Maurer, Georg Ludwig von, 15, 48, 83, 140 Maurice, F. D., 76, 201n53 Merovingian history, 85, 103 ­Middle Ages, 1, 3, 150, 176, 217n30; antiquity and, 4–5, 7, 16, 105–8, 174, 226n8; Chris­tian­ity and, 90, 168–70, 174; demarcations of, 89–90, 94–95, 103, 104, 109, 157; formation of, 93–96; genealogies of, 8; Germanist arguments on, 90; negative perceptions of, 94; as period of decline and stagnation, 170; pro­gress and, 170; Romanist arguments on, 90; transition to, 61; triadic periodization and, 99; tribal degeneration and, 93–96; use of term, 215n14 Mill, John Stuart, 147 Milman, Henry H., 53 modern history: ancient history and, 111–14, 159; ecclesiastical history and, 113; Germanic heritage and, 113; school of, 109–10; Voltaire on, 220n32. See also history modernity, 1, 10, 11, 110, 170; antiquity and, 5, 117, 119, 132–33, 140, 146–47, 193; Aryan history and, 119–20; as beginning with Charlemagne’s coronation, 144; Bryce on, 150; Bury’s preference for, 171;

262 Index modernity (continued) Chris­tian­ity and, 100, 112–13, 116, 188; combining heritage of Greece, Rome, Chris­tian­ity, and Teutonic tribes, 116; demarcations of, 5, 99, 109, 110, 117, 119, 132–33, 140, 146–47, 157, 171, 193, 206n13; dominance and, 170–72; endurance of Teutonic unity throughout, 134; French Revolution and, 119; as fusion of Romanism and Teutonism, 111; Germanic tribes and, 112; Greco-­Roman civilization and, 119; merging of religious and ethnic-­racial time in, 103; mono­the­ism and, 119; race and, 119–20, 150–51; Roman Empire and, 136–39; Roman Empire’s role in shaping, 136–39; social time and, 14–15; Teutonic tribes and, 100, 118, 119, 133, 139; Teutonism and, 115–16, 119–20; triadic periodization and, 99; two pillars of Germanic heritage and Chris­tian­ity, 112–13; as vital for understanding history, 171–72 Moira (fate), 170–71 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 106, 218n1 Mommsen, Theodor, 54, 81–82, 117, 140, 157, 166, 185, 215n10 monarchies, 13–14, 28, 91, 92, 102 mono­t he­ism, 59–60, 119, 168 Morrisroe, Vicky, 35, 219n8 Mosse, George, 8 Müller, Friedrich Max, 2, 4, 35, 52, 53, 64, 86, 195n4, 206n7, 209n84, 219n8; on Aryans and Aryan languages, 69, 209–10n87; attacked by Renan, 66; Bunsen and, 66–67; comparative method devised by, 64–65; defense of Bismarck, 69–70; En­glish Teutonic scholars and, 67–68, 69–72; Freeman and, 68, 70–71; French-­Germany animosity and, 69–72; Kingsley and, 72–77; letters to Times, 69–70; as mediator in Franco-­Prussian War, 52; nationalism of, 70; National Socialism and, 209–10n87; opposition to Darwinism, 65; at Oxford, 64–65; po­liti­cal and diplomatic roles of, 52; promotion of idea of unity of mankind, 65, 66, 68; race and, 68, 69; Roman Catholicism and, 73; supremacy of language and, 64–72; as unofficial mediator between E ­ ngland and Germany, 52. See also Müller, Friedrich Max, works of

Müller, Friedrich Max, works of: Comparative My­thol­ogy, 64; Comparative Philology, 64; first edition of Rig-­Veda Samhita, 65; Gifford Lectures, 69; manages Sacred Books of the East proj­ect, 65; preface for second edition of Kingsley’s The Roman and the Teuton, 74, 77 Muslims, 99, 107–8, 124–26, 133, 142, 161, 163, 193. See also Saracens Napoleon Bonaparte, 79, 104, 151 Napoleonic Wars, 3, 52, 56, 59, 104 nation, 1–3, 41, 106; definition of, 205n3; as dependent on culture, not territory, 29; emergence and decline and, 4–5; kinship theory of, 41–42; language and, 40; national hierarchy, 103; national identity, 8–9, 22, 30–33; national time, 20; periodization and, 2; race and, 20, 27, 46, 50; time line of, 20 nationalism, 1–2, 79–80, 187; Freeman and, 163; Germany and, 187–88; Hegel and, 102; “labeling prob­lem” and, 201n43; race and, 150–51; rise of during nineteenth c­ entury, 97 Native Americans, 35, 123, 124 Newman, John Henry, 73, 218n1 New Testament, 12–13 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 4, 52, 53–55, 57, 63, 81, 152, 207n37, 207n39; as ambassador to Rome, 59; resentment ­toward France, 55–56; on Roman history, 54, 56–58; Römische Geschichte, 54, 57–58; Vorträge über römische Geschichte, 56–57 Noachite scheme, 8, 59, 65 noble savage, 96–100 Norman Conquest, 25, 28, 31, 45, 79–80, 105 Normandy, 26–27, 39 Norman-­French, 25–28 Normans, 39, 43, 64, 118, 150; Anglo-­Saxons and, 25, 105; Sicily and, 121–22 Northmen, 43, 44, 225n75 Norway, 43, 44 Odoacer, 94, 141, 174 Old Testament, 12, 168 Olender, Maurice, 7–8 Ottoman Empire, 50, 71, 76, 82, 94, 127–32, 133, 148, 154, 161, 179, 186, 188 Oxford movement, 72, 73, 211n114, 218n1

Index paganism, 93, 99, 168, 180 Palgrave, Francis, 152, 220n31, 223n22; Bryce and, 138; emphasis on insignificance of AD 476, 135–39; “fourth empire” and, 139; Freeman and, 139; historical unity and, 139; History of E ­ ngland, 136; The History of Normandy and of ­England, 136–38; History of the Anglo-­Saxons, 138–39; HRE and, 134; “legacy” of, 135–39; notion of “fourth kingdom,” 138; periodization and, 138–39; Romanism and, 139 Pan-­Germanism, 20, 22, 51, 58, 86–88 Pauli, Reinhold, 2, 4, 77–80, 83–86 periodization, 1–2, 5–11, 16, 89–91, 94, 144, 177; arbitrary ending lines and, 132–33; Arnold and, 181; Bryce and, 138, 139, 152–53, 157, 181; Bury and, 157, 181; community and, 4–5, 30–31; concept transformed during nineteenth c­ entury, 2; conservative, 88, 119, 174; continuity and, 106, 116, 120; conventional, 106–7, 109, 157; Freeman and, 110, 138, 157, 181; methods of, 11–12; mutability of, 111; nation and, 2, 20; novel, 106–8, 109–33; Palgrave and, 138–39; pillars of, 11–15; po­liti­c al, 13–14; race and, 2, 7, 15, 17–18, 20, 24, 89–108, 125, 132; subperiods, 6, 126–27; territorial-­national tendencies and, 103–4; Teutonic-­Christian, 100–103; Teutonism and, 3–4, 53; transformation of conventional, 193; triadic, 5, 7, 98–99; “unity of history” idea and, 20, 125, 132, 219n8. See also specific periods Persia (Iran), 14, 23–24, 130, 138, 203–4n101 Petrarch, 93, 215n10 philology, 3, 9, 23, 34, 53, 80 Phoenicians, 100, 101, 123, 124, 125, 172, 193 physiognomy, 10, 27, 67–68 Picts, 23, 24 Pilgrims, 48–49 Pinkerton, John, 23–27, 199n8, 199n11 Pirenne, Henri, 107–8, 112 Polybius, 54, 91, 92, 93, 184 Powell, Frederick York, 213–14n180 pro­gress, 6–7, 102, 118–19, 125, 170, 172–73, 215n14, 217n30; based on chance, 188; Bury and, 167–70, 172–73; Catholicism and, 167–68, 188; Chris­tian­ity and, 166, 167–68, 188; Greeks and, 170–71; M ­ iddle Ages and, 170; religion and, 167–68, 170;

263

in seventeenth c­ entury, 170; Teutonic tribes and, 176–77 Protestantism, 3, 53, 72–77, 86, 185–86, 211n115. See also Protestant Reformation Protestant Reformation, 73, 98–100, 144, 169, 173–74; 217n30 Prus­sia, 57, 171, 186, 205n5 public land, shared, 48, 83 Pusey, E. B., 57, 223n22 race, 1–11, 27, 42, 57, 106, 127–28, 148–49, 194; ­a fter Darwin, 10–11, 197n38; British Empire and, 147; Bryce and, 135, 147–50, 154, 156; Bury and, 154, 163, 164; class and racial differences in, 57; climatic theories of, 10; community and, 11; as cultural vs. biological category, 35; definition of, 9–10, 11; emergence and decline and, 4–5, 15; En­glish Teutonic scholars and, 194; ethnicity and, 9–10, 20; fluidity of, 34–36, 127–28, 130–31, 132, 135, 226n105; Freeman and, 50, 110, 149, 153–54, 163, 226n105; geography and, 16–17, 62; language and, 9, 24–27, 34–35, 40, 42–47, 53, 60, 64, 66–69, 156, 163–64; as lineage, 10; Linné’s division of mankind into four races, 10; modernity and, 150–51, 196–97n31; Müller on, 69; nationalism and, 150–51; nation and, 20, 27, 46, 50, 200n32; perceptions of, 90; periodization and, 2, 7, 15, 17–18, 24, 26–27, 89–108, 125, 132; physical aspects of, 27, 50, 57, 67–68; racial alienation, 27; racial alternation, 15, 18; racial bound­a ries, 15–19; racial classifications, 11; racial continuity, 110; racial degeneration, 18, 19; racial discourse, 20; racial dominance, 35, 36, 44–46, 49, 76, 90, 103, 114, 119–20; racial fusion, 26, 137; racial hierarchies, 10, 22–23, 36, 42–46, 49, 57, 60, 61–62, 75–76, 115, 123, 225n75; racial historical unity, 89, 124, 126–27, 130, 157; racial terminology, 50; racial unity, 124, 126–27; religion and, 130, 132, 148; Roman Empire and, 147–48; Roman-­Teutonic civilization and, 137, 148; scientific theories of, 10–11; time and, 3–4, 11, 18–19, 27, 62, 90, 104; as type, 10; “unity of history” idea and, 121, 125, 154. See also racial purity; racial time; racism; specific groups

264 Index racial purity, 3, 18, 35–36, 61, 150; Anglo-­ Saxons and, 62, 64; Arndt and, 198n57; Aryans and, 131; Bryce and, 187; Freeman and, 153–54; Germanic tribes and, 61–62; Jews and, 202n74; language and, 64; Teutonic tribes and, 64, 131; “unity of history” idea and, 153–54 racial time, 1–20, 90, 103 Ranke, Leopold von, 81, 82, 185 reason, 6–7, 169, 170 Reformation. See Protestant Reformation regeneration, 91, 96–100 religion, 6, 20, 93, 127–28, 148–49; antiquity and, 11–13, 14; Bury and, 185–86; “comparative,” 65; Gibbon and, 166–67; humanism and, 168–69; “illusion of finality” and, 188; intolerance and, 167–69; language and, 65; modernity and, 196–97n31; periodization and, 2; pro­gress and, 167–68, 170; race and, 132, 148; racial belonging and, 130; reason and, 169; religious liberty, 62–63; religious unity, 114; time and, 11–13, 103; victory of, 91. See also religious time; specific religions religious time, 13, 103 the Re­nais­sance, 1, 93–94, 109, 168–69, 173–74 Renan, Ernest, 66, 118, 209n84 Rhine river, 15, 16, 18, 58, 59, 115–16, 117 Robertson, William, 95–96, 138, 216n18 Roman Catholic Church, 74, 86, 169, 217n30, 227n35; Bury’s criticism of, 167–70; ­Middle Ages and, 168–69, 174; pro­gress and, 167–68; Protestant Reformation and, 98–99; as true successor of empire in the West, 125, 173–74 Roman Empire, 14–15, 26, 41–42, 60, 84, 93–95, 101–2, 124, 128, 172, 177–79, 188, 193; Arab-­Muslim invasion of, 142; Arian dogma and, 180; Arnold on, 116–17; barbarians and, 15, 16, 89, 90, 93, 95–97, 115–16, 141, 179, 183; belittling of, 46; British Empire and, 146–51, 192–93; Bryce and, 140–43; Bury and, 184–85; Carthage and, 192–93; ­causes of downfall of, 93, 125; Chris­tian­ity and, 73, 125, 143–44, 166–68, 173–75, 179–80; civilizing mission of, 147; class in, 57, 230n97; continuation of, 111–12, 119, 132–33, 135–43, 159, 165, 174, 177–79, 188; “dark races” and, 148; decline of, 22, 59, 76, 91–97, 100, 116–17,

140–42, 164, 172, 175–79, 183, 227–28n36, 229n80; democracy in, 48, 91–92; depopulation of, 164, 178, 179, 180; economic prob­lems in, 178, 179, 180, 183; ­England and, 56, 146–47; fall/end of, 4–5, 14, 24, 27, 54, 86–88, 89–99, 106, 111–19, 125–26, 132–33, 138–39, 142–46, 159, 162, 165, 174–83, 188; Gauls and, 104, 149; German scholarship on, 54; Germany and, 144; Goths and, 23–24, 98–99; history “restarted” a­ fter, 101; HRE and, 144–46; Hunic imperial genealogy of, 14, 162; incorporation of barbarians into administration, 178; internal financial crisis in, 141–42; invaded by Visigoths, 92; Islam and, 125–26; Kingsley on, 73–74; “late,” 6; legacy in Italian and French culture, 42, 94; as maturity of humankind, 102; modernity and, 136–39; Müller on, 71; Muslim invasion and, 99, 161, 163; Niebuhr on, 54, 56–58; “old” and conservative perception of, 157; as one of four monarchies, 138, 223n22; Ostrogothic invasion of, 93; paganism and, 93, 180; race and, 147–48; religious and social variables in, 180; Re­nais­sance view of, 94; restoration of, 144; rise of, 93; as root of Gallic-­Roman culture, 106; Sicily and, 121; slavery in, 76, 229n80; “social feebleness” in, 141; taxation in, 179; Teutonic tribes and, 3, 17–18, 22, 50–88, 89–90, 98–106, 111, 116–18, 125, 133, 136–38, 141–46, 149–50, 174–79, 206n13; transformation of, 181–82; universal aspect of, 56–57, 162; Vandal invasion of, 93. See also Eastern Roman Empire; l­ater Roman Empire; Western Roman Empire Roman-­Gallic culture, 105–8, 151, 190 Roman heritage, 3, 45, 103–6, 111, 113, 125, 136–37, 190 Romanism/Romanist narrative, 4, 11, 90, 91, 104, 111, 134–56 Roman law, 83, 143, 156, 177, 178 Romano-­Celtic races, 145–46 Romans, 27, 29, 35, 37, 42, 45, 115–16, 132; Franks and, 19; Gauls and, 105, 203n100; Germans and, 103; Teutons and, 61, 143–46; universalizing impact of, 101. See also Roman Empire Roman school of historiography, 4, 5, 87–88, 103–7

Index “Roman” shift, 136–37 Roman system, destroyed in E ­ ngland, 28, 30 Roman-­Teutonic civilization, 13, 132, 136–39, 144, 146, 148, 157 Romulus Augustulus, Emperor, 13–14, 24, 54, 94, 140, 165, 177 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 8, 166 Rüger, Jan, 154 “rule of fluctuation,” 184–85 rupture, vs. continuity, 106, 111, 132 Rus­sia, 14, 50, 128, 149, 186, 205n5; Eu­ro­pe­a nization of, 186, 188; Germany and, 186 Saracens, 124–29, 161, 163; Ottomans and, 128–30; Sicily and, 121–22 Saturday Review, 113, 177, 191, 192, 193, 219n18 Saxons, 2, 22, 29, 44, 118, 124; as En­glish, 30, 31, 32; invasion by, 27, 28 Scandinavia, 20, 23, 28, 43–46, 62, 204n106, 225n75 Scandinavian languages, 60, 67 Schlegel, Friedrich, 8–9, 203–4n101 scholarship, ­free institutions and, 80–82 science/scientific method, 3, 157, 170, 172, 184–85 Scotland, 2, 24, 45–46, 87, 124 Scots, 23, 24, 150, 204n110 Scott, Walter, 23–27, 199n8 Scottish-­Celtic identity, 191–92 Scythians, 23, 24, 26 Seeck, Otto, 164, 190, 227n24 Seeley, John, 61, 152, 184 Semites, 42, 59–60, 125, 127, 130, 150; Aryans and, 65–66, 69, 111, 120, 125–27, 153, 187, 192–93; as generating mono­t he­istic relations, 59–60; Semitic influences, 37, 227n24; Sicily and, 120–25 Semitic languages, 59, 65–66, 69 Shem, 8, 59, 65 Sicily, 43, 121, 120–25, 142, 159–60 Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, 18–19 Sikel (Sicel) ­people, 123–24 slavery, 76, 148, 224n71, 229n80 Slavonic tribes, 26, 71, 74, 142, 207n43 Slavs, 74, 154, 186, 187–88 Smith, Adam, 180 Smith, Anthony, 205n3 Smith, Roger, 136

265

socialist history, 14–15 social time, 14–15, 20 space, 15–19. See also geography Spain/Spanish Empire, 28, 30, 63, 75, 85, 147, 150 Stanley, Arthur P., 53, 74, 223n22 Stein, Baron von, 61, 85 Stephens, William R. W., 45–46 Stilicho, 174, 183 Stubbs, William, 2, 4, 24, 26–31, 33, 44, 52–53, 80, 82–86, 112–15, 158, 189–91, 200n32, 213n179; on Anglo-­Saxons/Celtic conflict in British Isles, 150; Arnold’s influence on, 63; attitude ­toward Germany, 156; The Constitutional History of ­England, 28, 80, 84, 113; Monumenta Germaniae Historica and, 85–86; Teutonic narrative and, 42, 46, 50, 64, 186 Suebi tribes, 17, 115 Swedes, 43, 44 Switzerland, 20, 37–41, 46, 81, 203n97; democracy in, 38, 41, 48; as “Eternal Democracy,” 41; federal system in, 38–41, 140; po­liti­cal system of, 37–42, 47, 48, 140; Swiss cantons, 38–41, 48, 62 Tacitus, 19, 24, 28, 41, 60, 62, 83, 84, 96–97, 166 territory, 103–4, 106 Teutoburg Forest, defeat of Romans at, 58, 98, 151 Teutonic civilization, 41; Eu­ro­pean states and, 119; modernity and, 100, 115–20; race and, 194; Teutonic demo­cratic tradition, 38–39, 47, 178; Teutonic expansion, 17; Teutonic law, 84; Teutonic po­liti­cal model, 38 Teutonic community, 2–3, 46, 51, 87–88. See also Pan-­Germanism Teutonic dominance, 114, 119–20, 136–38, 156 Teutonic heritage, 28, 34, 37, 39, 42, 74, 76, 188, 189–90, 194; community of, 86–88; ­England and, 76, 83, 86–88, 90, 191; vs. Latin-­Celtic heritage, 36–43; obsession with Teutonic origins, 115; shared by ­England and Germany, 83, 86–88, 90. See also Teutonic civilization; Teutonism Teutonic lords, as fusion of Roman and Teutonic cultures, 174–79

266 Index Teutonic narrative, 2, 3, 5, 47, 53, 62, 64, 84, 90, 189–90; Bryce and, 135, 151, 154–55; Bury and, 174, 186, 188, 190–91; En­glish Teutonic scholars and, 189–91, 193–94; Freeman and, 186; generational shift and, 190–91; Palgrave and, 138; periodization and, 53; Stubbs and, 186; Victorian scholars and, 186 Teutonic nations, 71, 74, 90, 114, 118 Teutonic race, 15, 41, 50, 131; Romano-­Celtic races and, 145–46; supremacy and, 36, 46, 61–62, 70, 76–77, 115–16, 156. See also Teutonic dominance Teutonic tribes, 5, 16–18, 21–27, 31–32, 44, 51, 60, 62, 89, 103–6, 123, 142; as ancestors of En­glish ­people, 163; bad customs and warlike ferocity of, 97, 106; barbarism of, 4, 163; Bunsen on, 59; as carry­ing on torch of Greco-­Roman civilization, 119; Celts and, 61, 87; Chris­tian­ity and, 63, 101, 102–3, 108, 133, 143–44, 175; compared to Israelites, 211–12n130; compared to “Red Indians,” 75; continued dominance of Roman Empire and, 138; contributions to course of Eu­ro­pean history, 175; convergence with Romans and Celts, 132; crossing of Rhine river, 115–16; “dark races” and, 147–49; domination and, 76; embrace of Roman culture and heritage by, 136–37; evolutionary theory and, 76; as force commencing modernity, 133; freedom of, 60–61, 84, 96, 97, 103, 106, 117, 178; influence of, 173–74; invasion of Huns and, 183; language and, 42; modernity and, 112, 118, 119, 133, 220n31; negative perceptions of, 97, 106; particularism and, 145–46; periodization of antiquity and M ­ iddle Ages and, 61, 90, 103–6, 107; physical features of, 96–97; po­liti­cal heritage of, 47–48; pro­gress and, 176–77; Protestantism and, 73; racial purity and, 61–62, 64; as revitalizing Eu­rope, 22, 50–88, 96, 101–2, 106, 117, 126; rise of, 103; Roman Empire and, 3–5, 17–18, 27, 50–88, 89–90, 98–106, 111–18, 125, 133, 136–38, 141–46, 149–50, 174–79; shared public lands of, 48; significance of, 163; Slavs and, 186; as stage in unified Aryan history, 119; symbolizing glorious past and pre­sent of German principalities, 98; Tacitus’s characterization of in

Germania, 96–97; unity of, 96–97, 119, 134; Völkerwanderung (wandering of ­peoples) of, 15, 48–49, 98–99, 100, 119, 150. See also Teutonic race Teutonism, 3–6, 22, 86, 188; becomes more controversial in twentieth ­century, 154–55; Bryce and, 151, 154–55; Bury and, 154; Chris­tian­ity and, 100; diminished by World War I, 191–92; in E ­ ngland, 4, 189–93; German, 4; historical periodization and, 3–4; modernity and, 116, 139; Protestantism and, 72–77; “racial time” and, 3–4; Romanism and, 111, 134–56; triadic periodization and, 99. See also Teutonic narrative Theodoric the Patrician, 43, 77, 117, 181 Thierry, Augustin, 25, 105 Thompson, Edith, 34, 201n59, 205n1 Thucydides, 33, 54, 184 time, 2, 5–6, 15–19, 172–74; “borders of,” 1; Chris­tian­ity and, 12; classification of, 1; divisions of, 1, 90, 172–74; ethnicity and, 90; geography and, 62; historical, 172–74; historical unity of, 172–74; race and, 3–4, 11, 18–19, 27, 62, 90, 104; racial division of, 11; racial perceptions of, 3; religious division of, 11–13; religious vs. “earthly,” 172–73; social time, 14–15. See also periodization “time border,” between antiquity and ­Middle Ages, 4–5, 7, 16 tolerance, 62–63, 126, 168 transnational ethnogenesis communities, 46–49 Trautmann, Thomas, 8, 9, 209–10n87 Trevelyan, George M., 157, 230n102 Turanians, 59, 65, 69, 111, 127, 129–30, 132, 150 Turks, 94, 127, 128, 129–30, 150, 165, 205n1, 222n5. See also Ottoman Empire Turner, Sharon, 23–27, 62 Tylor, E. B., 64, 120, 219n8 tyranny, 92, 126–27 Ulster, 87, 150 United States, 20, 46–47, 76 “unity of history” idea, 5–6, 46, 109–10, 118–20, 127–28, 193; Arnold and, 113, 116, 118, 132; Aryan endurance and, 118–20;

Index Bryce and, 135, 140–41, 146–47, 151–56; Bury and, 157, 159, 168, 180–81; continuity and, 159, 165; Freeman and, 112–15, 118, 121, 126–27, 132, 135, 139, 151–56, 159; Green and, 113–14; origins of humanity and, 154; Palgrave and, 139; periodization and, 125, 132, 219n8; race and, 121, 125, 153–54; reception of, 112–15; Stubbs and, 112–14; subperiods and, 126–27; unity of mankind and, 154 unity of mankind, 59–60, 65–66, 68, 88, 154 unity of the East, 157–88 universalism, 145–46 universal history, 60, 110, 138, 219n8. See also “unity of history” idea Ursprache (protolanguage), 9, 65 Ussher, James, 12, 60 Vandals, 17, 93, 115, 175 Varus, 98, 151 Victoria, Queen, 51, 65, 72–73 Victorian En­glish culture, German culture and, 52–53 Victorian scholars, 28, 110, 118, 157, 186, 193, 213–14n180, 226n105

267

Vigfússon, Gudbrand, 213–14n180 Vikings, 28, 44, 45, 64, 204n110 Visigoths, 75, 85, 92, 183 Volk, 18, 97 volksmäßigen Grund (ethnic foundation), 61 Voltaire, 95, 215n15, 220n32 von Savigny, Friedrich Carl, 138–39 Waitz, George, 82, 83, 84–86, 140 Wales, 2, 45–46, 124, 150 Weber, Max, 178, 215n10, 229n80 the Welsh, 44–46, 203n90 the West: Western history, 116, 118; vs. the East, 126–29, 132–33, 140–41. See also Roman Empire; Western Roman Empire Western Roman Empire, 154, 159, 169, 177–81, 182. See also Roman Empire White, Charles, 10 William the Conqueror, 14, 25 Wood, Ian, 89–90, 91 World War I, 134–35, 149, 151, 154, 155, 187, 189–93 Zarathustra the Aryan, 60 Zosimus, 93, 94

A c k n o w l­e d g m e n t s

In the opening pages of his ninth chapter, focusing on the history of the Germanic tribes, Edward Gibbon wrote: “The subject [Germanic tribes], however vari­ous and impor­tant, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.” Indeed, if the ­great Gibbon observed the subject, already during the eigh­teenth c­ entury, as thoroughly researched and for that reason challenging, what could a relatively young researcher think 230 years ­later? However, through this proj­ect I learned that despite the prolific research on the subject, one could point to certain under-­researched paths by raising new questions. ­These questions focus mainly on the method in which ancient as well as modern narratives constructed the notions of community, race, and periodization among certain nineteenth-­century British and German scholars. This fascination with history, periodization, and modern nationalism, which derived prob­ably from the fact that I read too many Asterix books (a French comic series illustrating the adventures of a legendary Gaul fighting the Romans) in my childhood, led to a complicated, yet awarding, proj­ect. It was achieved thanks to the advice and support of many. First and foremost, I wish to thank Oliver Zimmer, who supported this proj­ect from the start and contributed to it im­mensely with his most constructive advice. I also wish to thank Simon Cook, who has become my mentor in recent years and is always helpful and generous. The assistance and friendship of many other colleagues must be noted: Ilya Afanasyev, Arjun Appadurai, Avishai Bar-­Asher, Neta Bar-­ Yoseph Bodner, Guy Beiner, Daniel and Chava Boyarin, Arie Dubnov, Ben Edsall, Yoni Furas, Abigail Green, Jonathan Gribetz, Rebekka Grossmann, Anna Gutgarts, Oded Heilbronner, Nimrod Hurvitz, Athena Leoussi, Avi Lifschitz, Suzanne Marchand, Paul Nolte, Steve Puttick, Sam Shearn, Nitzan Rothem, Claudia Rosenzweig, Jonathan Rubin, Eran Tzidkiyahu, Peter van der Veer, Marc Volovici, and Einar Wigen, who e­ ither read parts of this work or supported me with vari­ous scholarly, friendly, and professional advice.

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A c k now l­edg m ents

I also wish to thank my teachers and colleagues from my alma mater, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Ofer Ashkenazi, Yitzhak Brudny, Dan Diner, Gili Drori, Ruth Fine, Bianca Kühnel, Doron Mendels, Elisheva Moatti, Efraim Podoksik, Matthias Schmidt, and Atetet Zer-Cavod. The guidance, professionalism, and encouragement of my editor Damon Linker, and of Lily Palladino, Jennifer Shenk, and Gavi Fried from the University of Pennsylvania Press are truly cherished. Of course, the responsibility for the book contents rests solely on my shoulders. As a f­ather of three ­children, I must say that ­these last years ­were very challenging, and I could not have written this book without the help of certain individuals and awarding bodies. I wish to thank and cherish the Hubert H. Humphrey Center for Social Research, BGU and the Joint fellowship of the Freie Universität and the Hebrew University for awarding me with postdoctoral fellowships. I also wish to acknowledge the constant support of two centers at the Hebrew University: the Eu­ro­pean Forum and the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History. An im­mense contribution, through the support of the Polonsky foundation, was also given to me in my previous “home” at Lincoln College, Oxford. I also wish to show my greatest gratitude to the following foundations: the Anglo-­Israel, Anglo-­Jewish, and British Friends of the Hebrew University. I also wish to thank Cambridge University Press for allowing me to reproduce (Chapter 4) some parts of the following article Oded Y. Steinberg, “The Unity of History or Periods? The Unique Historical Periodization of E. A. Freeman,” Modern Intellectual History, 2018 (published by Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission). Several individuals deserve special thanks. Raymond and Sandra Dwek, David and Miriam Elbaz, and Carmella Elan-­Gaston, who ­were our guardians at Oxford and welcomed us as their own f­amily. I cherish their kindness and friendship, especially through the difficult, yet rewarding times we experienced. My parents Matti and Yael Steinberg always support and inspire me. Thanks to them I learned to ask questions and to be interested not only in the pres­ent but also in the past. Their encouragement and love are admired. I also wish to thank my b­ rother Rafi and his wife Rona, my s­ister Orly and her husband Menachem, and my ­sister Chen for their long-­and short-­distance love and care. My parents-­in-­law, Lisa and Charlie Harvith, deserve special thanks. Their constant assistance has been helpful to the utmost. Fi­nally, I wish to thank my f­amily: my wife, Rachel, is my beacon and without her endless care and love this proj­ect would have been unimaginable;



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my kids, Nadav, Ayala, and Carmel, give me magical moments e­ very day and remind me constantly about the impor­tant t­ hings in life. This proj­ect is dedicated to them and to the memory of my grand­mother Zita Kober and my brother-­in-­law Yair (Yaya) Harvith, who both passed away while we ­were in Oxford.