History, empire, and Islam: E. A. Freeman and Victorian public morality 9781526135827

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General editors: Andrew S. Thompson and Alan Lester

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Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-​disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-​expanding area of scholarship.

History, empire, and Islam

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SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES ed. Andrew S. Thompson GENDERED TRANSACTIONS Indrani Sen

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EXHIBITING THE EMPIRE ed. John M. MacKenzie and John McAleer BANISHED POTENTATES Robert Aldrich MISTRESS OF EVERYTHING ed. Sarah Carter and Maria Nugent BRITAIN AND THE FORMATION OF THE GULF STATES Shohei Sato CULTURES OF DECOLONISATION ed. Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle HONG KONG AND BRITISH CULTURE, 1945–​97 Mark Hampton

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History, empire, and Islam E. A.  FR EEM AN AND V I C TO RI A N PUB LI C M OR AL I TY

Vicky Randall

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Copyright © Vicky Randall 2020 The right of Vicky Randall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS ALTRINCHAM STREET, MANCHESTER M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 3581 0 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Vintage World Map, 2015 © Michal Bednarek, bednarek-art.com Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

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For Martin

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C ONT E NT S

Acknowledgements—viii

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Introduction: ‘History is past politics, politics is present history’ 1 Part I – The West 1 The Norman Conquest (1867–​79)

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2 The Aryan race and Comparative Politics (1873)

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3 ‘I am no lover of Empire’: the critique of British expansionism

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Part II – The East 4 Islam and Orientalism in the History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856)

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5 The Great Eastern Crisis and the ‘Oriental conspiracy’

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6 Fear and guilt in the Ottoman Power in Europe (1877)

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Conclusion

188 Appendix—192 References—194 Index—211

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ACK NOWL E DGEMEN TS

Over the course of researching and writing this book I have incurred many debts, recorded here chronologically. The initial work for this book was undertaken when I was a research student at the University of Manchester, and I  would like to thank the following members of staff for their enthusiasm, support, and expertise: Professor H.S. Jones; Professor Bertrand Thaite; Professor Max Jones; and Dr Peter Nockles. I would also like to give special thanks to Professor Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge, for his comments and feedback which helped me to deepen my understanding of specific aspects of Freeman’s thought, most particularly in relationship to race. At the University of Manchester I benefited greatly from a thriving and friendly research culture, so thanks are also due to Dr Catherine Feely and Dr Mathew Adams, who were excellent drinking companions among many other things. A scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council supported the completion of the most significant stages of this research. I owe a great deal to the archivists who helped me access the Freeman Papers at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, and the papers of James Bryce at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Over the course of several summers, the archival staff offered their knowledge and guidance in navigating the materials. At the Universtiy of Gloucestershire, where I revised and completed this book, I  have been fortunate to have the help, support, and understanding of some brilliant colleagues. In no particular order, I  would like to express my gratitude to Dr Iain Robertson, Dr Anna French, Professor Melanie Ilic, Professor Neil Wynn, Dr Christian O’Connell, and Dr Erin Peters. The work that we do can have its challenges, but you have all been inspirational and encouraging. The friends I have made at the University of Gloucestershire have helped in no small part with the completion of this book, including Dr Will Large and Dr Tyler Keevil. To Lucy Tyler and Dr Michael Johnstone in particular –​it is a privilege to know and love you. To my parents, Sue and Paul, brother, Craig, and aunt, Jan, thank you. This book is for my husband, Martin, who has supported me throughout the process of writing and re-​drafting and has also acted as a reliable and excellent proof-​reader! All my love and appreciation, always. [ viii ]

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the journal Modern Intellectual History for permission to re-​use material which was originally published in an article titled ‘ “Sanguinary Amusement”:  E. A.  Freeman, the Comparative Method, and Victorian Theories of Race’ (2013) –​this material appears in a slightly altered form in Chapter 2 of this book. Similarly I would like to express my gratitude to the Journal of Victorian Culture which has given me permission to re-​present material which first appeared in an article titled ‘ “Eastern History with Western Eyes”: E. A. Freeman, Islam and Orientalism’ (2011). Some of the information included in this article re-​appears in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this work.

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1

INT R ODUC T IO N

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‘History is past politics, politics is present history’

‘History is past politics, politics is present history’ was the favourite saying of the historian and public controversialist Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–​92). Over the course of his career, Freeman produced thirty-​four historical works, and drew on his knowledge of the past to make frequent contributions to debates on contemporary affairs in the periodical press.1 Claiming to embody the objectivity of the new ‘professional’ historian while seeking attention as a ‘public moralist’, Freeman occupied a central, but ambiguous, place in Victorian intellectual life which has not been fully explored. The purpose of this book is to deepen our understanding of Freeman and his response to some of the pressing concerns of the later nineteenth century, including the nature of history, issues of race and imperialism, and confrontation with the Islamic East. In approaching Freeman, one of my aims is to situate his activities within the framework of ‘public moralism’ delineated by Stefan Collini.2 Public moralists were (almost exclusively) men who enjoyed prominence in Britain between 1850 and 1930, and claimed a ‘right to be heard’ on matters of national interest based on their general education. These ‘leading minds’ could pursue four types of public career:  they could secure an academic post in a university, become a Member of Parliament, write for the periodicals, or enter the legal profession and civil service.3 Freeman attempted to occupy all these roles, sometimes simultaneously, with varying degrees of success. ‘Public moralism’ also refers to a specific sensibility. Here, Collini identifies five characteristics: First, Victorian moralists exhibited an obsessive antipathy to selfishness … Secondly, they were intensely preoccupied with the question of arousing adequate motivation in the moral agent. Thirdly, they accorded priority to the emotions over the intellect as a source of action, and so

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addressed themselves particularly to the cultivation of the appropriate feelings. Fourthly, they tended to assume that our deepest feelings, when aroused, would always prove to be not just compatible with each other, but also productive of socially desirable actions. And finally, they betrayed a constant anxiety about the possibility of sinking into a state of psychological malaise or anomie.4

Dedicated to ethical ideals, Freeman persistently pointed the moral dimensions of a question and worried that any laxity would have dire consequences for the body politic. As a public moralist who collapsed the past into the present, and the present into the past, however, Freeman’s effectiveness as a historian and political campaigner was severely limited. A second aim of this book is to show that Freeman’s successes and failures, his philosophy of history, and view of the world were all inter-​ connected, and derived from the influence of the Liberal Anglican theologian and historian Thomas Arnold (1795–​ 1842). Freeman was deeply indebted to Arnold’s doctrine of the ‘Unity of History’, which maintained that European cultural development followed a repetitive pattern as each nation advanced from a state of ‘childhood’ to ‘manhood’ before recapitulating. Following Arnold, Freeman believed that the Western nations had completed this ‘life-​ cycle’ twice: as ancient civilisation had flourished before collapsing in 476 AD, so, he feared, the expansion of the modern state would lead to disaster because it would prove impossible to reconcile a growing population with the principle of democracy. As I will demonstrate, it was Freeman’s Arnoldian understanding of historical cycles, and his obsession with drawing parallels between the political events of the past and present, which accounts for the pervasive and urgent nature of his public moralism. Finally, I hope to reveal the contours of Freeman’s panoramic vision of universal history for the first time. While Freeman is often seen as a panegyrist to English progress and liberty, and as an arch-​racist who celebrated Aryan superiority, I suggest that his views were more complex than they seem. This is not an attempt to vindicate Freeman –​ his statements on race were often intemperate and, by our modern standards, disgusting. Rather, it is to show that Freeman used the idea of the continued existence of an Aryan race to reinforce the theory of the Unity of History. In line with Arnold’s teachings, Freeman defined ‘Aryan’ in terms of culture rather than blood, represented progress as cyclical rather than unilinear, and expressed doubts about European stability. Further, it is only when Freeman’s narratives on Western and Eastern history are juxtaposed that the centrality of Christianity to his view of European identity emerges and is bolstered by contrast with [2]

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Introduction

the Judeo-​Islamic Orient. Freeman’s account of progress and decline in Europe finds a counterpart in his view of the East, which serves at once to empower the Western ‘self’ while producing anxiety that contact with the ‘other’ posed a threat to Euro-​Christendom.

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The pursuit of a profession As there has been no detailed biography of Freeman since the publication of W.R.W. Stephens’ Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman (two vols, 1895), it will be useful to begin with a brief description of his early life, before charting his pursuit of a profession as a public moralist.5 Freeman was born in Harborne, Staffordshire, on 2 August 1823, the only son and youngest of five children born to John and Mary Anne Freeman.6 Orphaned before he was eighteen months old, Freeman was left to the care of his elderly grandmother and inherited an income of £600 a year from the family’s coal-​pit.7 In 1829 Freeman’s grandmother moved from Weston-​super-​Mare to Northampton where he attended a small school kept by the Reverend T.C. Haddon. Here, Freeman proved himself to be, in the words of his master, a ‘most remarkable pupil’, as he dedicated his time to the study of Roman and English history, and learnt Greek, Latin, and Hebrew before the age of eight.8 At the age of fourteen Freeman was sent to Cheam, a preparatory school in Surrey, and moved on two years later to a private tutor, the Reverend Robert Gutch, at Seagrave Rectory in Leicestershire. At Seagrave, Freeman was coached for an Oxford scholarship and enjoyed considerable intellectual freedom. He later recalled reading a book which excited his interest in Eastern history and exerted a long-​term impact on his thinking: W.C. Taylor’s History of the Overthrow of the Roman Empire, and the Foundation of the Principal European States (1836).9 Of the importance of this work, Freeman wrote: ‘I had already some dim notion of a Western Empire; from Taylor’s book I first learned that there was an Eastern Empire. I learned also what Saracens were. I learned that there were Sassanian Kings of Persia, Bulgarians also, and many things that have been good for me throughout life.’10 In November 1840 Freeman was beaten in the contest for a scholarship at Balliol by Matthew Arnold, but secured a place at Trinity the following June. While enjoying the High Church atmosphere of the College, Freeman had an undistinguished academic record. He failed to win the Ireland Scholarship for Latin in 1842 and 1844, he tried unsuccessfully, and more than once, for the Latin Verse Prize, and was also beaten in the competition for the Newdigate Prize for English verse. He graduated with a second-​class degree in literae humaniores, at Easter in 1845  –​a disappointment that was offset by his election [3]

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as Fellow of Trinity on 19 May. In the autumn of that year, Freeman began work on his submission for the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize, which was set on the question of ‘The effects of the Conquest of England by the Normans’.11 There is no evidence that Freeman was familiar with medieval sources before this point, but he worked hard on his research and writing for over six months.12 At forty-​six pages in length, his essay was the longest of fourteen received by the judges.13 While Freeman was, once again, beaten in the contest of 1846, he later recalled the outcome as fortuitous. ‘The Norman Conquest was a subject that I had been thinking about, ever since I could think at all’, he reflected in 1892, ‘I wrote for the Prize; I had the good luck not to get it. Had I got it, I might have been tempted to think that I knew all about the matter. As it was, I went on and learned something about Saxon language it’.14 In fact, Freeman went on to study the Anglo-​ and spent thirty years researching the events of 1066, resulting in his magnum-​opus: The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results (six vols, 1867–​79).15 The years 1845 and 1846 were also significant for Freeman’s career, as at this time he abandoned his plans to become either a clergyman or an architect and conceived his ‘great ambition … to get one of the History Professorships here [at Oxford]’.16 This aspiration was, however, frustrated for four decades. Freeman was an unsuccessful candidate for the Chair of Modern History at Oxford in 1858; the Camden Professorship of Ancient History in 1861; and the newly established Chichele Professorship in Modern History in 1862.17 Only in 1884, when the Regius Professor of Modern History, William Stubbs, became Bishop of Chester, was W.E. Gladstone able to overcome the objections of the Queen to the appointment of Freeman (who had once allegedly uttered the words ‘perish India!’)18 At the age of sixty-​one, however, the prospect of the Professorship had lost its attraction. Freeman confided to James Bryce that he had ‘no kind of anxiety for the Professorship (25 years ago I had a great deal), and it was only after a great deal of thought that I made up my mind to take it’.19 Suffering from gout and bronchitis, Freeman struggled to keep up with competing demands on his time and disliked the ‘whirl of Oxford, as Oxford is now’.20 He was disappointed to find that the Professorship gave him no voice in University affairs, while the wide intellectual range of his lectures made him ineffectual as a teacher. In March 1891 Freeman wrote, ‘I am thoroughly tired of this place and everything in it. It is all so disappointing and disheartening. I have tried every kind of lecture I can think of, and put my best strength into all, but nobody comes’.21 Second only to the ambition for a professorship in history was Freeman’s wish for a seat in Parliament. Believing that practical [4]

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Introduction

experience of government would give him an advantage in writing about past politics, Freeman also felt that his knowledge of history gave him a privileged perspective on current political questions. Having abandoned his youthful Toryism and High Church leanings, Freeman’s mature views closely aligned with those of the Liberal Party under Gladstone.22 As analysed by William C.  Lubenow, liberalism in this period was characterised by a commitment to making decisions according to the dictates of the individual conscience rather than the demands of the populace, to reforms which acknowledged ‘older restraints and loyalties’, and to actions that were tentative and considered.23 In common with Gladstone, Freeman was motivated by a deep sense of moral righteousness. He longed, Stephens writes, ‘to be able to raise his voice in the great council of the nation on behalf of the principles of civil and religious freedom, humanity, and justice. He was fully persuaded that the true honour and the highest interests of the country depended on strict adherence to these principles’.24 While Freeman refused to ‘surrender the independence of his conscience or of his reason to any party or to any leader, however eminent’, he cautiously advocated for liberal causes including the secret ballot, shorter parliaments, the extension of the franchise, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church.25 Standing for election twice as an independent Radical in Cardiff (1857) and Wallingford (1859) and, finally, as the Liberal candidate for Mid Somerset (1868), Freeman never achieved his dream of entering the House of Commons. For most of his career, then, Freeman did not hold a professional position and supplemented his income by writing for the periodicals. Freeman resigned his fellowship at Trinity when he married Eleanor Gutch, daughter of his former tutor, in 1847, so his only regular source of money was his £600 a year inheritance. According to Collini, an ‘upper middle-​class’ man with a family would need between £500 and £1,000 per annum to live comfortably in the later nineteenth century.26 On this estimate, Freeman’s inheritance would have been insufficient to maintain his wife, six children, and the large house, Somerleaze, in which they settled in Wells, Somerset, in 1860. Writing for the press, however, could bring as much as £25–​£50 for a longer piece, and Freeman was a prolific contributor to papers including The Saturday Review; The Edinburgh Review; The Quarterly Review; Macmillan’s Magazine; The Fortnightly Review; and The Contemporary Review.27 Freeman’s connection with the Saturday Review was particularly significant: a record of the articles he wrote for this weekly between 1860 and 1869 reveals that he published 723, the most in one year being 96 in 1862.28 Stephens suggests that Freeman earned ‘not less [5]

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History, empire, and Islam

than £500 a year’ from this work, which explains his anxiety at having to sever ties in 1878.29 As the Saturday Review supported the government’s policy of maintaining Ottoman rule in south-​eastern Europe, Freeman felt he could no longer be involved, due to ‘scruples of conscience in being connected with a paper which propagated what he held to be false and pernicious doctrine on a question of vital importance’.30 Working as a gentleman-​scholar in the countryside, there can be no doubting Freeman’s industry. Freeman read and wrote for an average of seven hours a day, the maximum being eleven.31 Labouring daily on several undertakings at set times, Freeman recorded in his journal the number of hours he dedicated to each project and noted those on which he spent a disproportionately long time.32 By this method, and with the help of his ‘historic harem’ –​a group of young female research assistants –​Freeman produced his voluminous works on history, and a lesser number of books on architecture, geography, and poetry.33 He also maintained a considerable personal correspondence with leading intellectuals including Bryce, J.R. Green, Henry Sumner Maine, Friedrich Max Müller, Goldwin Smith, and William Stubbs, sometimes writing as many as eighteen letters a day. In addition to his scholarly work, Freeman was active in his local community, taking on the roles of Justice of the Peace, Governor of the County Lunatic Asylum, Schools’ Guardian, and member of the Highways Board. He had considerable success leading various ‘crusades’, including campaigns against field sports, vivisection, and the Bulgarian atrocities.34 For his efforts on behalf of the Greeks, Serbians, and Montenegrins in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, Freeman was made a Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer, Member of the Order of Takova, and the Order of Danilo, respectively.35 There were academic awards, too, as the University of Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate in Civil Law in 1870. In an age of increasing specialisation and ‘professional’ objectivity, however, the prejudices and partialities which coloured Freeman’s interpretation of past and present politics appeared increasingly out-​ moded and were subject to mounting criticism.36 The letters he wrote in the last years of his life express his sense of isolation, rejection, and failure. “Tis years’, Freeman wrote to Bryce in December 1883, since you or Stubbs or [George] Cox  –​to name three only  –​have set foot in this house. It was not so always, and the change is very hard. I know not the reason of it. And as with one’s friends, so with the public in general  –​I  feel cast off; I  seem to have lost my position. For a long time past I  seem never to be mentioned but with contempt … I  don’t understand it and I don’t know where to turn.37

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Introduction

Freeman died, a somewhat bitter and disappointed man, on one of his frequent research trips abroad, in Alicante, Spain, on 16 March 1892.38

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Thomas Arnold, the Unity of History, and race In examining the prejudices and idiosyncrasies which hampered Freeman’s efforts to attain a respected professional status, it is necessary first to consider the influence of Thomas Arnold. Little has been written of Arnold as a historian, and the most important study of his work remains Duncan Forbes’ The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (1952).39 While there has been some commentary on the relationship between Arnold’s thought and Freeman’s, most notably in John Burrow’s A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (1981), the absolute centrality of Arnold to Freeman’s outlook and to all his activities has not been fully appreciated.40 Here I outline the way Freeman adopted Arnold’s ideas on morality, politics, and race, immediately on hearing him lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in 1841 and 1842.41 In his inaugural lecture, attended by the undergraduate Freeman, Arnold set out his opinions on the nature of history, articulating his belief that the study of the past would reveal the workings of God’s plan for humankind. The first point Arnold made which resonated with Freeman was that the proper focus of history is the state, and that states, like individuals, can be judged as good or bad according to the extent to which they are ethical. For Arnold, the life of an individual is pointless if it does not ‘tend to God’s glory and to the good of his brethren’, and every person ought to put a ‘moral object’ before any ‘external benefits’.42 Similarly, Arnold held that a state’s existence is meaningless if it is unfit for the ‘great purposes of God’s providence’ and fails to promote the well-​being of its citizens above economic and territorial considerations.43 ‘[S]‌uppose’, Arnold mused, that a nation as such is not cognizant of the notions of justice and humanity, but that its highest object is wealth, or dominion, or security. It then follows that the sovereign power in human life, which can influence the minds and compel the actions of us all, is a power altogether unmoral; and if unmoral, and yet commanding the actions of moral beings, then evil.44

In Arnold’s view, the state supersedes and embodies the life of the individual and, consequently, it has a greater responsibility to act morally. The state must have ‘a sense not only of the right or wrong of this particular action now commanded or forbidden, but generally of the comparative value of different ends, and thus of the highest end [7]

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History, empire, and Islam

of all’.45 The role of the historian, according to Arnold, is to extract a narrative from past events to show how some states have advanced this highest end, which ‘appears to be the promoting and securing a nation’s highest happiness’ but ‘is conceived and expressed more purely, as the setting forth God’s glory by doing His appointed work’.46 The second, and related, idea that Freeman took from Arnold’s lecture was that the study of the outward action of a state could reveal the condition of the ‘inner life’ of a nation.47 Arnold held that the character of the people is shaped by the institutions and laws of the state, so that ‘if these are faulty, the whole inner life is corrupted; if these be good, it is likely to go on healthfully’.48 As an example of how the historian might study the effects of institutions on national character, Arnold pointed to the significance of customs relating to property. For Arnold it was important to consider whether a society endorsed the principle of primogeniture or not, and to determine whether legislation favoured the ‘stability of property or its rapid circulation’.49 The question of property distribution was critical, in Arnold’s view, because ownership was educative: It calls forth … so many valuable qualities, forethought, love of order, justice, beneficence, and wisdom in the use of power, that he who possesses it cannot live in the extreme of ignorance or brutality; he has learnt unavoidably some of the higher lessons of humanity. It is at least certain that the utter want of property offers obstacles to the moral and intellectual education of persons laboring under it … Laws, therefore, which affect directly or indirectly the distribution of property, affect also a nation’s life very deeply.50

Noting the additional influence of science, art, and literature on ‘national virtue’, Arnold reiterated his belief that ‘perfection in outward life is the fruit of perfection in the life within us’.51 As such, the lessons that could be derived from examining the political, economic, and cultural arrangements of a nation, are of the utmost importance and constituted, in his opinion, ‘the noblest subjects of history’.52 Turning from the nature of history in general, to modern history specifically, Arnold began to expound his theory of the Unity of History which would influence Freeman for the rest of his life. According to Arnold, the ancients are always relevant as they are the founders of Western civilisation. For the last 1800 years, he observed, Greece has shaped the human intellect, while Rome has been the most important source of European systems of law, government, and social organisation.53 Nevertheless, he felt that there was a dividing-​ line between ancient and modern history, because ancient history is the ‘biography of the dead’ and modern history is the ‘biography of the [8]

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Introduction

living’.54 For Arnold, the collapse of Rome in 476 BC was followed by a reconstitution of the four great elements of national identity –​race, language, institutions, and religion –​which coalesced into a novel shape that the modern European nations had maintained ever since.55 While many elements of the ancient civilisation were preserved in this new world, other features were blended with them.56 Most significantly, Arnold contended, ‘[w]‌hat was not there [in antiquity] was simply the German race, and the peculiar qualities which characterize it. This one addition was of such power, that it changed the character of the whole mass’.57 While Arnold believed that humanity in general was unremarkable, he celebrated three races  –​the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton  –​ which had, over the course of history, ‘promoted God’s glory and man’s perfection’.58 The Germanic tribes had successfully passed on the riches of antiquity to the moderns and they, in turn, had restarted the cycle of progress from primitive to advanced civilisation. And yet, Arnold feared that modern history was ‘not only a step in advance of ancient history, but the last step; it appears to bear marks of the fulness of time, as if there would be no future beyond it’.59 Looking ‘anxiously’ around the world, he felt that there were no ‘new races which may receive the seed … of our present history into a kindly yet vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new, for a future period’.60 For this reason, the study of the past was vital for Arnold, as it explained why more progress had not yet been made, it showed the difficulties which had been encountered by earlier generations, and provided lessons on how such setbacks might be avoided in future.61 The modern European nations had an urgent responsibility to know history and to improve on it, and the conclusion of Arnold’s lecture took on an ominous tone: if there be any signs, however uncertain, that we are living in the latest period of the world’s history, that no other races remain behind to perform what we have neglected, or to restore what we have ruined, then indeed the interest of modern history does become intense, and the importance of not wasting the time still left to us may well be called incalculable … if our existing nations are the last reserve of the world, its fate may be said to be in their hands –​God’s work on earth will be left undone if they do not do it.62

The significance of Arnold to Freeman’s intellectual development cannot be over-​estimated. Giving his own inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in 1884, Freeman described how it was ‘with a special thrill of feeling that I  remember that the chair which I hold is his [Arnold’s] chair, that I venture to hope that [9]

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my work in that chair may be in some sort, at whatever distance, to go on waging a strife which he began to wage’.63 To him, Arnold was ‘that great teacher of historic truth, that great teacher of moral right’.64 While Freeman always regretted that ‘I was not one of his pupils or followers. I never spoke to him; I never heard him speak save with his official voice in the well-​filled Theatre’, he nevertheless felt ‘bound to honour him as my master in a sense in which I can honour no other’.65 It was from Arnold that he had first learned: what history is and how it should be studied … It was from him that I learned a lesson, to set forth which, in season and out of season, I have taken as the true work of my life. It was from Arnold that I first learned the truth which ought to be the centre and life of all our historic studies, the truth of the Unity of History. If I  am sent hither for any special object, it is, I hold, to proclaim that truth, but to proclaim it, not as my own thought, but as the thought of my great master.66

For Freeman, Arnold’s account of European history as a series of steps towards moral perfection was foundational. It was Arnold’s celebration of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons which inspired his own theory of an ‘Aryan’ race, whose development could be traced in the superior democratic institutions of the Western world. Similarly, it was Arnold’s emphasis on the dangers inhibiting indefinite progress that motivated his intensive activity as a historian and political agitator. Allowing his racial and political prejudices to compromise his scholarship, and his historical understanding to intrude on his assessment of current affairs, it becomes clear why Freeman failed as a public moralist. In his work as a historian Freeman was driven by an unstoppable compulsion to collect and exhibit the ‘facts’ of Aryan history. Compiling volume after volume on all aspects of European politics, and reiterating the same arguments over and over again, Freeman could not understand the frequent criticisms of this approach. ‘Why’, he wondered to Bryce, ‘should I not say the same thing 30 times if people forget it 30 times? … Max Müller prints the same page in one volume, which I never did. Only with me it is “horrible repetition” if I say a thing again, as having been forgotten or denied again’.67 Freeman’s ‘zeal for truth’ also led to the inclusion of unnecessary detail that swelled his volumes to an unmanageable length and severely limited his readership, while an obsession with language was the foundation of the charge of being a pedant, to which he was extremely sensitive.68 Determined to trace out the continuous lineage of European democracy, Freeman often manipulated his sources and launched unrestrained attacks on those who, like J.A. Froude, offered alternative interpretations of the past. Enraged by Froude’s emphasis on the Reformation as a significant break [ 10 ]

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Introduction

in English history, Freeman accused his rival of ‘consciously lying’ and described him as ‘the vilest brute that ever wrote a book’.69 Freeman’s sustained persecution of Froude, over the course of a vendetta that lasted twenty years, did much to damage his own reputation. In commenting on European development Freeman clearly had his favourite nations, ordering them hierarchically according to the extent to which they remained faithful to their democratic heritage. Inevitably, Freeman held that the English best embodied the Teutonic spirit of liberty. According to Freeman’s theory, the Anglo-​Saxons had carried a system of direct democracy from the Germanic woods to England, from which all subsequent institutions had grown. From this perspective, the later invention of representative government was celebrated as enabling a reconciliation between the ancient principle of political participation and the modern reality of a large population. As we have already seen, Freeman believed that Gladstonian Liberalism, with its emphasis on the extension of the franchise, was the most authentic expression of the Aryan sentiment in his own day, and he even backed a far-​fetched plan to elect the British politician the King of Greece.70 Next to the English, Freeman held that the Germans, Swiss, Danish, and Americans were the foremost representatives of the Teutonic race.71 On two trips to Switzerland in 1863 and 1864, for example, he marveled at ‘a land in which some of the most primitive Teutonic customs were preserved’ and, on witnessing the political operations of the Swiss cantons, he wondered ‘whether we are in the common world, or in some historical paradise of our own imagination’.72 For the Irish, Welsh, and French, on the other hand, Freeman had little sympathy, classifying them as Celts and, therefore, foreigners.73 Freeman’s position on international politics was also informed by his racial prejudices. During the 1864 war over the territories of Schleswig-​ Holstein, for example, Freeman supported the claims of the Danes against the aggressions of autocratic Prussia and Austria. Nevertheless, he felt that if the French tried to intervene in the matter, ‘it would almost be better to let Denmark pass under the yoke of those who are at least brother Teutons, than to let any more Teutons fall under Parisian bondage’.74 Similarly, during the Franco-​Prussian War of 1870–​ 71, Freeman firmly, even blindly, supported German expansionism, provoking Clements Markham to comment that ‘your letter gives me the impression that you defend this conquest only because it is perpetrated by Germans without regard to right and justice in the abstract’.75 Indeed, Freeman approved of the Prussian annexations of Alsace and Lorraine, confessing to his friend Edith Thompson that ‘I should like to cut up the whole Gal-​welshry [France] into bits, as its unity is clearly a standing menace to Dutchland [Germany] and the [ 11 ]

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world generally. For this it is vain to hope, but one might cut off some good slices at the sides’.76 Following the conflict and ultimate defeat of France with the ‘deepest satisfaction’, Freeman was exhilarated by the outcome of the war which saw, as Stephens relates, ‘the realization of one of his fondest dreams, –​a free united Germany’.77 For those he considered to be non-​ Aryan, Freeman entertained a deep and visceral hatred. His triumphant lecture tour of America in 1881–​82 was marred by the presence of ‘Niggers’ or ‘darkies’ who resembled ‘big monkeys dressed up for a game’ and who he described as ‘those hideous apes whom Darwin has clearly left unfinished’.78 It made Freeman ‘creep when I think that one of these great black apes may (in theory) be president’ and he concluded that America would be a grand land, ‘if only every Irishman killed a Nigger and was hanged for it’.79 Freeman referred to the Chinese as ‘filthy strangers’ and reserved the greatest antipathy for the ‘Semitic’ Turks and Jews.80 Following a meeting in Trieste with the solider and Orientalist Richard Burton in 1877 he commented that ‘he has killed more men than most people; but they were mainly Turks’, while in 1880 he wrote ‘I am yearning to … knock down a Jew, or anything that might be for the public good’.81 Freeman’s anti-​ Semitism found sustained and undiluted expression in his historical writings on the East, didactic works which were intended to provide a background to contemporary political issues. In 1876 Freeman’s historical, political, and racial views converged in his support of Gladstone and his condemnation of Benjamin Disraeli’s handling of the Eastern Crisis. Denouncing Disraeli on the basis of his Jewish background, Freeman argued that the ‘Hebrew’ Prime Minister had a natural sympathy for the Islamic Turks and was allied with them in their brutal oppression of the Christians of south-​eastern Europe. Freeman’s vociferous, almost hysterical, attacks on Disraeli were subject to the ridicule of his opponents and detracted from his otherwise well-​informed criticisms of British foreign policy. The extent to which Freeman’s approach to historical and current affairs had become out-​dated by the time of his death can be shown through a comparison with a lecture delivered by Lord Acton as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1895. Extolling the principle of impartiality, Acton argued that the historian must form ‘disinterested convictions … in the tranquil regions of the air, above the tumult and the tempest of active life’.82 ‘There is virtue in the saying’, Acton continued, ‘that a historian is seen at his best when he does not appear. Better for us is the example of [William Stubbs] who never lets us know what he thinks of anything’.83 It was in the course of this lecture that Acton uttered one of his most famous sentences: ‘History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on [ 12 ]

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opinions.’84 Articulating the new ‘professional’ standards, however, it was the medievalist John Horace Round who succeeded, almost single-​ handedly, in destroying Freeman’s reputation.

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Freeman’s reputation Freeman’s reputation, in his own day and since, has rested primarily on the estimation of his magnum-​opus, the monumental History of the Norman Conquest. While Freeman hoped these volumes would secure his status as a leading English historian, they provoked passionate criticism which has long obscured the significance of his scholarship. The first reviews of the Norman Conquest set the tone for much of what was to follow:  Freeman’s display of industry and learning was generally admired, but the work itself was judged overly long, stylistically awkward, and distorted by the author’s prejudices. C.W. Boase’s review of the third volume for The Academy in 1869 was typical. He complained that: The chief defect of the book before us is that the less important parts are given too great a length; insignificant Saxon or Norman names crowd the pages of the previous volumes even more than this:  before each battle there is a sort of Homeric Catalogue of the forces, in its place before the Battle of Hastings, but somewhat wearisome when the endless shifting to and fro of French or Norman or German policy repeats itself from year to year with little or no result, or influence on the main action.85

That same year, F.  Smith also commented sarcastically on the ‘bulkiness’ of the volumes.86 ‘Mr. Freeman’s English’, Smith wrote, ‘is always good and always harmonious, but he not infrequently gives us much more of it than is at all necessary’.87 Smith went on to question the integrity of Freeman’s approach, suggesting that his enthusiasm for the subject ‘brought with it the distorting or exaggerating powers of a mirage’ and led him ‘to accept a series of incidents as facts, when as a series they become incredible or impossible’.88 As for the narrative of the Norman Conquest itself, Freeman’s heavy emphasis on military history and constitutional details was received with hostility. An anonymous writer for the North American Review, for example, charged Freeman with an ‘absence of sympathetic imagination’ and described the work as ‘barren’ because it failed ‘to enter into the inner life of the nation and of special individuals’.89 The most damaging attack on the Norman Conquest, however, was that which was launched by Round after Freeman’s death in 1892. In a piece titled ‘Professor Freeman’ which appeared in the Quarterly Review, and in a series of three articles on ‘The Introduction of Knight [ 13 ]

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Service into England’ for the English Historical Review, Round savaged the work.90 Described by John Kenyon as a ‘meticulous scholar of … unamiable disposition’, Round used the minor errors of others to comprehensively discredit their work, and was quick to seize on, and exaggerate, Freeman’s faults.91 Listing Freeman’s factual mistakes in order to prove his ‘grave liability to error’, Round declared that ‘we have weighed it [the Norman Conquest] in the balance in which he weighed the works of others and we have found it wanting’.92 An entrenched Conservative, Round emphasised Freeman’s inaccuracies in order to cast doubt on the narrative of an ancient Anglo-​Saxon liberty which had developed without interruption into the nineteenth century. Describing Freeman’s democratic politics as ‘dangerous nonsense incarnate’, Round asserted that there was to be found in the Norman Conquest only the ‘fantasies of a brain viewing plain facts through a mist of moots and witan, we have what can only be termed history in masquerade’.93 In direct opposition to Freeman, Round presented the Conquest as a necessary corrective to the excessive liberty of the Anglo-​ Saxons whose institutions were quashed absolutely by the power of the Norman invaders. Following Round, several critics of Freeman poked fun at his pedantic, repetitive, and tedious style. Frederic Harrison, in his fictional dialogue ‘The History Schools’ (1894), presented a conversation between an Oxford tutor and a frustrated young history undergraduate who was trying, with little success, to read Freeman’s Norman Conquest.94 While the tutor defended Freeman’s ‘belief in contemporary documents, exact testing of authorities, scrupulous verification of citations, minute attention to chronology, geography, paleography, and inscriptions’, the student was not convinced.95 ‘I am not saying a word against accuracy’, he protested, ‘But all facts are not equally important, nor are all old documents of the same use. I have been grinding all this term at the History of the Norman Conquest, verifying all the citations as I  go along, and making maps of every place that is named. I have only got to the third volume, you know, and I don’t know now what it all comes to’.96 Preferring the literary style and readability of T.B. Macaulay and Froude, the undergraduate asks his master: ‘Has not this purism been a little overdone? … I remember that Freeman once told us he could not bear to speak of the Battle of Hastings, lest some one should imagine that it began on the seashore.’97 Referring to Freeman’s idiosyncratic use of the name ‘Senlac’ instead of Hastings, the undergraduate goes on to question his master: ‘why are we not to use the fine old English term, “Battle of Hastings” –​the only name given in the Tapestry, Guy of Amiens and the rest –​and are told we must always use, if we value truth, the term, “Battle of Senlac” –​a mere mythical phrase –​a piece [ 14 ]

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Introduction

of affectation’.98 Despairing of ever reaching Freeman’s sections on the Norman Conquest itself, the student muttered gloomily that ‘at this rate … I shall never get beyond Eegfrith and the other break-​jaw Old English sloggers’.99 Several decades after Harrison, Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman similarly mocked the ‘Freemanian’ approach in their satirical book, 1066 and All That:  A Memorable History of England comprising. All the Parts You Can Remember Including One Hundred and Three Good Things, Five Bad Kings, and Two Genuine Dates (1930).100 While Freeman is not mentioned explicitly, the authors clearly had his arcane spelling of old English names in mind when they wrote that, before the Norman Conquest, there was to be found in England: ‘Egg-​Kings … such as Eggberd, Eggbreth, Eggfroth, etc. None of them, however, succeeded in becoming memorable –​except in so far as it is difficult to forget such names as Eggbirth, Eggbred, Eggbeard, Eggfish, etc. Nor is it even remembered by what kind of Eggdeath they perished.’101 Freeman’s partisanship and nationalism is also the likely target when Sellar and Yeatman joke that the Anglo-​Saxons were known for ‘never fighting except against heavy odds’ and that, after 1066, England ‘was able to become top nation’.102 The extent to which Freeman was ridiculed has had a profound effect on modern assessments of his work. As Marjorie Chibnall explains, ‘the exaggerations of [Freeman’s] narrative and the bitterness of Round’s attack encouraged the growth of opposed historical camps of Anglo-​Saxonists and pro-​Normans and helped to distort some of the historical writings of the twentieth century’.103 It was only ‘after the onslaught on [Freeman’s] historical writing spear-​ headed by Round had subsided’, Chibnall continues, ‘[that] the solid basis of his work became appreciated by scholars’.104 From the middle decades of the twentieth century medievalists began to openly acknowledge their debt to Freeman. In 1943, for example, Sir Frank M. Stenton wrote that ‘as an introduction to the sources for the political history of the period [Freeman’s Norman Conquest] is of great and permanent value’.105 In his 1969 study M.E. Bratchel similarly viewed the Norman Conquest as a landmark piece of scholarship and regretted that the ‘fame of a remarkable and erudite man has suffered unduly for too long from the memory of the vitriolic assaults of Round’.106 Almost three decades later, Ann Williams wrote, in the ‘acknowledgements’ to her book The English and the Norman Conquest (1994), that ‘I owe a particular debt to E. A. Freeman, the pages of whose [History] provided unfailing aid and counsel’.107 Most recently, in 2016, Judith A. Green concluded her assessment of Freeman’s place within the development of medieval studies with the statement that ‘[s]‌tudents ignore Freeman at their [ 15 ]

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peril. As a tour de force, The History of the Norman Conquest is without parallel and has never been surpassed’.108 Interest in Freeman outside the ranks of specialist medieval scholars also began to grow from around the 1980s onwards (and most rapidly since 2010). It is increasingly recognised that Freeman was, as Robert E.  Lerner writes, ‘one of the most influential English historians of the Victorian era … The best publishers issued his books, the best journals gave currency to his opinions, and the best students echoed his judgments’.109 Freeman’s interpretation of English history, in particular, has drawn the attention of researchers into nineteenth-​ century thought and culture. For many, including Anthony Brundage, Richard Cosgrove, and Rosemary Jann, Freeman is a central figure in the transition from amateur/​literary historical writing to objective and professional scholarship located within the universities.110 Cosgrove, for example, uses the anatagonism between Freeman and Froude to exempify his argument that, when ‘the standards of historical scholarship altered, this circumstance created the perfect context to camouflage political arguments within the new criteria for accuracy’ as scholarly skirmishes often ‘masked underlying differences about the perceptions of the national past and future’.111 Burrow and Peter Mandler have agreed in seeing Freeman’s Norman Conquest primarily as a polemic. Viewed as a confident celebration of English progress, the Norman Conquest establishes Freeman’s place as both ‘the most Whiggish of all [the Victorian historians]’, and ‘the greatest nationalist historian of the nineteenth century’.112 Moving beyond the Norman Conquest, a number of scholars have been interested in Freeman’s racial views.113 Collini, Donald Winch, Burrow, and Mandler have cast light on the significance of the comparative method in Freeman’s formulation of the concept of Aryanism.114 Their work rightly emphasises the relative liberalism of this kind of cultural racism, especially in comparison to the biological theories advanced in France and Germany. In a similar vein C.J.W. Parker has demonstrated that Freeman’s views on race were ‘generous’ as he did not see ‘the physical purity of race’ as ‘an established fact [or] even a desirable possibility’ and was open to the possibility that non-​ Aryans could be adopted by, and assimilated within, Aryan nations.115 Nevertheless, Parker points out that ‘[h]‌aving postulated a superior race, Freeman fell to ridiculing and denouncing supposedly inferior races’.116 As such, his work demonstrates the ‘failure of liberal racialism’ in Britain.117 Hugh MacDougall has gone further to suggest that Freeman’s views on the pre-​eminence of the Anglo-​Saxons and his denigration of Irish, black, and Jewish people ‘led him at times to the extreme limits of racism’.118 From a slightly different angle, Arnaldo [ 16 ]

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Introduction

Momigliano has commented on the disruption caused by Freeman’s Aryanism within his scheme of universal history, and Duncan Bell has explored the relationship between Freeman’s view of antiquity and his response to contemporary plans to establish a federation of white, English-​speaking, nations.119 Meanwhile, Oded Y. Steinberg has argued that religion, alongside race, played an important role in Freeman’s representation of the past as a ‘battleground’ between Aryan and non-​ Aryan nations.120 The current state of ‘Freeman studies’ is well reflected in a recent volume of essays edited by G.A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin, titled Making History:  Edward Augustus Freeman and Victorian Cultural Politics (2016).121 This book offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of Freeman, particularly in relationship to his early life, interest in Church architecture, his historical method, and tour of America. By the nature of the collection, however, the approach to Freeman is wide-​ranging but fragmented, and there is a lack of detailed and sustained reading of his most important historical works. What is still needed, and what I  hope to do in this monograph, is to draw together the various strands of research on Freeman, to offer a clear exposition of the contexts in which he developed his ideas, and to comprehensively analyse his writing. In particular, I seek to elucidate the themes of Freeman’s volumes on the Orient which have languished in obscurity, and which must be integrated into any account of Freeman’s thought if it is to be interpreted properly.122

Outline of the book Examining Freeman’s commentaries on Western and Eastern affairs, this study is arranged into two parts, consisting of three chapters each. Chapter 1 focuses on Freeman’s conception of English national identity and offers a reasessment of the Norman Conquest and a related volume, The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (1872).123 Despite the emphasis placed on Freeman’s Norman Conquest by medievalists and historians of Victorian culture and ideas, understandings of this work are, in my view, still limited. At 4,363 pages in length it is unsurprising, as D.J.A. Matthew points out, that the Norman Conquest remains ‘one of the most cited but least read historical monuments written on any historical subject’.124 Pursuing a detailed textual commentary, I suggest that the narrative of Freeman’s magnum-​opus is more complicated than has commonly been assumed. I  demonstrate that Freeman’s theory of a Teutonic inheritance in England played a vital role in his work, enabling him to combine a traditional account of the popular origins of the ancient constitution [ 17 ]

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with a nineteenth-​ century ‘Whig’ narrative on the modernity of liberty.125 At the same time, however, Freeman’s description of the continuous progress of the English people was undermined by an Arnoldian view of the past which interprets history as a chain of cause and effect and connects all European nations in a series of cyclical movements towards freedom. I  will show that Freeman’s obsession with the Unity of History meant that his paean to English liberty was compromised by a recognition of the democratic tendencies of a wider Aryan race and by an emphasis on recurrence and repetition. Chapters 2 and 3 situate Freeman’s account of English history within the broader framework of his writing on Aryan development, analysing his now largely forgotten books, Comparative Politics (1873), The History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy (1863/​93), and Greater Greece and Greater Britain (1886).126 I begin by contextualising Freeman’s statements on Aryanism in relation to the research of the practitioners of the comparative method, Müller and Maine. It will be argued that Freeman’s intuitive acceptance of the comparative method was prepared by Arnold, as he sought to identify similarities in the institutions of ancient and modern Europe and to ‘prove’ the existence of an Aryan race based on a common democratic culture. Charting the advancing civilisation of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, Freeman’s celebration of Aryan continuity was tinged with Arnoldian anxieties about recapitulation, and this led him to fear the consequences of British imperialism and to critique contemporary plans for Imperial Federation. In constructing a model of universal history that was based on the existence of two permanently co-​existing, and mutually hostile, cultural groups –​Aryan and non-​Aryan –​Freeman expressed anxieties about contact between the West and the East. Chapter 4 turns to Freeman’s representation of Oriental ‘otherness’, considering the first of his two neglected studies of Eastern history, The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856).127 Here, Edward Said’s thesis that European representations of the Orient reflect the needs and ambitions of the West and reinforce a well-​ established discourse on Eastern inferiority provides an invaluable framework for interpreting the motivation, methodology, and narrative of Freeman’s work.128 Composing the Saracens in direct response to Britain’s support of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War (1853–​56), I argue that Freeman drew on the authoritative research of the Orientalists to depict the East as fundamentally distinct from the West and to demonstrate that the maintenance of Turkish rule in south-​eastern Europe was misguided. Contra Said, however, I suggest that Freeman’s account of the racial differences separating the Occident and the Orient overlaid, but did not displace, his traditional antagonism towards Islam. In the [ 18 ]

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Saracens Freeman reiterated a range of medieval stereotypes about Muhammad, Islam, and Muslim societies, to portray the Turks as backwards, barbaric, and despotic. Chapters  5 and 6 consider Freeman’s second volume on Oriental history, The Ottoman Power in Europe; Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (1877).129 In many ways, this work was a companion to the earlier Saracens, as both studies were motivated by Britain’s involvement in the affairs of the East and sought to convince the British public that the presence of the Turks within the boundaries of Europe was intolerable. In the Ottoman Power, however, there was a greater sense of urgency, as Freeman responded to Disraeli’s mishandling of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875–​ 78) by positing the existence of an ‘Oriental conspiracy’. Where there was a confident portrayal of Western power and superiority in the Saracens, Freeman’s tone in the Ottoman Power shifted and the volume was clearly written in a state of panic. Arguing that the ‘Jewish’ Disraeli was working with the Islamic Turk to undermine Euro-​Christendom, Freeman presented the history of the Ottoman Empire as a record of atrocious militarism and demanded that the Orientals be expelled from, rather than dominated by, Europe. Far from being a confident exponent of English or Aryan superiority, then, this study of Freeman aims to highlight the fears and doubts that pervaded his commentaries on Western and Eastern affairs. In foregrounding and explaning Freeman’s model of universal history in this way I by no means seek to defend him against the accusation of racism. Rather, I  want to show that his Aryanism served an historiographical function, and was not simply an expression of discrimination, prejudice, and hatred. Further, Freeman’s deep sense of the precarity of Western freedom meant that he cautioned against contact with the Islamic and non-​Aryan world in a way that might challenge our assumptions about the link between racism, chauvinism, and imperialism.

Notes See the appendix to the volume for a list of Freeman’s historical works. 1 2 Stefan Collini, Public Moralists:  Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–​1930 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1991). See also a brief treatment in H.S. Jones, ‘Historical Mindedness and the World at Large: E. A. Freeman as Public Intellectual’, in G.A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin (eds), Making History:  Edward Augustus Freeman and Victorian Cultural Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 293–​310. 3 Collini, Public Moralists, pp. 33–​50. 4 Ibid., p. 65. 5 W.R.W. Stephens, The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2 vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895).

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History, empire, and Islam 6 Two of Freeman’s sisters died: Mary Anne died aged fourteen on 25 November 1824, Emma died in April 1826. 7 Freeman’s father died of rheumatic gout on 21 November 1824; his mother died only four days later of consumption, on the same day as Mary Anne. 8 Letter from T.C. Haddon to Freeman, November 1883, quoted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 8. For Freeman’s youthful accomplishments in languages see ibid., p. 16. 9 W.C. Taylor, The History of the Overthrow of the Roman Empire, and the Foundation of the Principal European States (London: Whittaker, 1836). 10 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 27. 11 Ibid., p. 74. 12 Ibid., p. 74. 13 Ibid., p. 74. 14 E.A. Freeman, ‘Review of My Opinions’, The Forum (April, 1892) quoted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 75. 15 E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1867–​79). 16 Freeman to Samuel Wayte, 22 March 1846, quoted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 63. 17 In 1861 the Chair was vacated by Edward Cardwell and taken up by George Rawlinson. In 1858 the Chair was vacated by Professor Vaughan and taken up by Goldwin Smith. The Chichele Professorship in Modern History was established by All Souls College, Oxford, in 1862; Montagu Burrows was the first occupant. 18 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p.  279. The Queen had doubts over Freeman’s suitability for the position because she was concerned about a speech he had once made in which he had allegedly said ‘perish India’. Freeman always denied having said this, but see p. 156 of this volume for a phrasing very similar. Freeman was unaware of the Queen’s objections as he wrote to Bryce on 16 March 1884 that ‘It is strange that when Gladstone named me to the Queen five weeks back and more, there has been all this delay, I wish I knew the cause’. Freeman to Bryce, 16 March 1884, MSS. Bryce, 7/​188, Papers of James, Viscount Bryce, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 19 Freeman to Bryce, 7 March 1884, MSS. Bryce, 7/​125. 20 Freeman to Bryce, 7 March 1884, MSS. Bryce, 7/​125. 21 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 429. 22 Freeman’s mature religious position is unclear. He came under the influence of Tractarianism while at Trinity but later abandoned this. Thereafter, Freeman seems to have retained more general High Church leanings and attended church regularly. For more detail on Freeman’s religious opinions see James Kirby, ‘From Tractarian to Democrat: The Intellectual Formation of E. A. Freeman’ and Michael Ledger-​Lomas, ‘An Erastian Descent: History and Establishment in the Thought of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and E. A. Freeman’ both in Bremner and Conlin, Making History. 23 William C. Lubenow, Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815–​1914 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 1–​3. 24 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 208. 25 Ibid., p. 208. 26 Collini, Public Moralists, p. 36. 27 Ibid., pp. 39–​40. 28 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 257. 29 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 146. 30 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 146. 31 E.A. Freeman, Journal. The only extant volume of Freeman’s journal is that which runs from 3 September 1888 to 6 March 1892. Freeman Papers, John Rylands University Library Manchester (hereafter JRUL) Special Collections, EAF3/​8/​1. 32 Freeman, Journal, JRUL. 33 See Susan Walton, ‘Charlotte M.  Young and the “Historic Harem” of Edward Augustus Freeman’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 11, 2 (2006), pp. 226–​55. https://​ doi.org/​10.3366/​jvc.2006.11.2.226.

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Introduction 34 See Rob Boddice, ‘Manliness and the “Morality of Field Sports”:  E. A.  Freeman and Anthony Trollope, 1869–​ 71’, The Historian, 70, 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 1–​ 29. doi: 10.1111/​j.1540–​6563.2008.00201.x. 35 The King of the Hellenes made Freeman a Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Saviour in 1875. In 1877 he received the Order of Takova from the Prince of Serbia and the Order of Danilo from the Prince of Montenegro. 36 On ‘professionalisation’ and ‘specialisation’ in the humanities and sciences during the nineteenth century see, for example, Martin Daunton (ed.), The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); T.W. Heyck, The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1982); Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–​ 1886 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society, England since 1880 (London: Routledge, 1989). 37 Freeman to Bryce, December 1883, MSS. Bryce, 7/​93. 38 For Freeman’s research trips see William M. Aird, ‘ “Seeing Things With Our Own Eyes”: E. A. Freeman’s Historical Travels’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 85–​100. 39 Duncan Forbes, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1952). 40 John Burrow, A Liberal Descent:  Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 41 These lectures were subsequently published, see Thomas Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History [1842] fourth edition (London: B. Fellowes, 1849). 42 Ibid., p. 9 and p. 11. 43 Ibid., p. 30. 44 Ibid., p. 10. 45 Ibid., p. 11. 46 Ibid., p. 11 and p. 13. 47 Ibid., p. 10. 48 Ibid., p. 14. 49 Ibid., p. 19. 50 Ibid., p. 19. 51 Ibid., p. 14. 52 Ibid., p. 20 and p. 15. 53 Ibid., pp. 28–​9. 54 Ibid., p. 23. 55 Ibid., p. 25. 56 Ibid., p. 28. 57 Ibid., p. 27. 58 Ibid., p. 21. 59 Ibid., p. 28. Italics in the original. 60 Ibid., p. 29. 61 Ibid., pp. 31–​2. 62 Ibid., p. 31. 63 E.A. Freeman, On the Office of the Historical Professor: An Inaugural Lecture read in the Museum at Oxford (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), pp. 8–​9. 64 Ibid., p. 8. 65 Ibid., p. 8. 66 Ibid., pp. 8–​9. 67 Freeman to Bryce, 3 February 1884, MSS. Bryce, 7/​117. 68 Bryce described Freeman as having a ‘zeal for truth’ in his obituary of Freeman. See James Bryce, ‘Edward Augustus Freeman’, English Historical Review, 7 (1892), pp. 497–​509, p. 503. 69 Freeman accused Froude of ‘consciously lying’ in a letter to Bryce. Freeman to Bryce, March 1873, MSS. Bryce, 6/​201. Freeman’s description of Froude as ‘the vilest brute’ can be found in Herbert Paul’s Life of Froude (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons,

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History, empire, and Islam 1906), p. 153. On the dispute between Freeman and Froude see Anthony Brundage and Richard Cosgrove, The Great Tradition:  Constitutional History and National Identity in Britain and the United States, 1870–​1960 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 47–​9; Ian Hesketh, ‘Diagnosing Froude’s Disease: Boundary Work and the Discipline of History in Late-​Victorian Britain’, History and Theory, 47, 3 (2008), pp. 373–​ 95. doi:  10.1111/​ j.1468–​ 2303.2008.00460.x; and Ian Hesketh, ‘Fanatical Hatred or Brotherly Love? Rethinking E.  A. Freeman’s Feud with J.  A. Froude’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 255–​72. 70 Freeman to Green, 22 September 1878, JRUL EAF1/​8/​79a. On the plan to elect Gladstone the King of Greece see the correspondence between Freeman and George Finlay reprinted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, pp.  280–​4. On this episode see Clare A. Simmons, ‘The Claim of Blood: Gladstone as King of Greece’, Nineteenth-​Century Contexts, 13, 2 (1989), pp. 227–​ 37. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 08905498908583306. 71 For a detailed analysis of the various categories of race whch Freeman used and for his preferences see Theodore Koditschek, ‘A Liberal Descent? E. A. Freeman’s Invention of Racial Traditions’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 199–​216. 72 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 296. 73 For Freeman’s ‘Celtphobia’ see Michael Banton, The Idea of Race (London: Routledge, 1977), p.  26; T. F. Gossett, Race:  The History of an Idea in America [1963] (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 108–​ 10; and C.J.W. Parker, ‘The Failure of Liberal Racialism:  The Racial Ideas of E.A. Freeman’, The Historical Journal, 24, 4 (December, 1981), pp. 825–​ 46, pp.  832–​ 3. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ S0018246X00008220. 74 Ibid., p. 289. 75 Clements Markham to Freeman, September 1871, JRUL, EAF1/​7/​537. 76 Freeman to Edith Thompson, 22 August 1870, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 8. On Freeman’s friendship with Thompson see Amanda Capern, ‘Anatomy of a Friendship: E. A. Freeman and Edith Thompson’, Paragon Review, 6 (1997), available at www.hull.ac.uk/​oldlib/​archives/​paragon/​1997/​cpage.html. 77 Ibid., pp. 2–​3. 78 Freeman to Green, 26 December 1881, JRUL, EAFI/​8/​100b. For the Darwin quote see Freeman to Revd Pinder, 24 March 1882, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 255. 79 Freeman to Green, 26 December 1881, JRUL, EAF1/​8/​100b. 80 Freeman to Pinder, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 254. 81 Ibid., p. 154 and pp. 173–​4. 82 Lord Acton, A Lecture on the Study of History (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1895), p. 5. 83 Ibid., p. 31. 84 Ibid., p. 45. 85 C.W. Boase, ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, by E.  A. Freeman. Vol. III. The Reign of Harold to the Interregnum’, Academy, 1 (9 October 1869), pp. 20–​1, p. 21. 86 Anon. [F. Smith], ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results. By Edward A. Freeman, Vols. I and II’, Edinburgh Review, 130, 265 (July, 1869) pp. 186–​216, p. 198. 87 Ibid., p. 198. 88 Ibid., p. 195. 89 [Anon.], ‘Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest of England’, North American Review, 105, 217 (October, 1867), pp. 640–​4, p. 644. 90 J.H. Round, ‘Professor Freeman’ and ‘The Introduction of Knight Service into England’, English Historical Review, vi (1891) pp. 417–​43 and pp. 625–​45; vii (1892), pp.  11–​24. 91 John Kenyon, The History Men:  The Historical Profession in England since the Renaissance (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), p. 200.

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Introduction 92 J.H. Round, Feudal England:  Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelth Centuries (London:  Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1895), p.  xi and J.H. Round, ‘Professor Freeman’, Quarterly Review, clxxv (1892), pp. 1–​37, p. 37. 93 Round, Feudal England, p. 303 and p. 405. 94 Frederic Harrison, ‘The History Schools’, in The Meaning of History and Other Historical Pieces [1894] (London: Macmillan, 1900), pp. 118–​39. 95 Ibid., p. 121. 96 Ibid., p. 121. 97 Ibid., p. 123. 98 Ibid., p. 129. 99 Ibid., p. 125. 100 Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman, 1066 and All That:  A Memorable History of England comprising. All the Parts You Can Remember Including One Hundred and Three Good Things, Five Bad Kings, and Two Genuine Dates [1930] (Oxford: Clio Press Ltd., 1987). 101 Ibid., p. 8. 102 Ibid., p. 12 and p. 21. 103 Marjorie Chibnall, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 60. 104 Ibid., p. 60. 105 F.M. Stenton, Anglo-​Saxon England [1943] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.  702–​3. 106 M.E. Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest (Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell, 1969). 107 Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), p. ix. 108 Judith Green, ‘E. A. Freeman and His History of the Norman Conquest’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 239–​54, p. 254. 109 Robert E. Lerner, ‘Turner and the Revolt Against Freeman’, Arizona and the West, 5, 2 (Summer, 1963), pp. 101–​8, p. 102. www.jstor.org/​stable/​40167053. 110 See, for example, Anthony Brundage and Richard Cosgrove, British Historians and National Identity: From Hume to Churchill [2014] (Oxford: Routledge, 2016); and Brundage and Cosgrove, The Great Tradition; Richard Cosgrove, ‘A Usable Past:  History and the Politics of National Identity in Late Victorian England’, The Parliamentary History Yearbook (2008), pp.  30–​ 42. doi:  10.1111/​ j.1750–​ 0206.2007.00008.x; Rosemary Jann, ‘From Amateur to Professional: The Case of the Oxbridge Historians’, Journal of British Studies, 22, 2 (1983), pp. 122–​47; and Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985); Kenyon, The History Men; and Rosemary Mitchell, Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image, 1830–​1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 111 Cosgrove, ‘A Usable Past’, pp. 31–​2. 112 Burrow, Liberal Descent, p.  195 and Peter Mandler, The English National Character:  The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 43. 113 I have previously discussed Freeman’s racial views in V. Morrisroe [Randall], ‘ “Sanguinary Amusement”: E. A. Freeman, the Comparative Method and Victorian Theories of Race’, Modern Intellectual History, 10, 1 (2013), pp. 27–​56. https://​doi. org/​10.1017/​S1479244312000339. 114 Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-​ Century Intellectual History (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1983); and Mandler, English National Character. 115 Parker, ‘The Failure of Liberal Racialism’, p. 837. 116 Ibid., p. 840. 117 Ibid. 118 Hugh MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-​ Saxons (Montreal: Harvest House, 1982), pp. 100–​1.

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History, empire, and Islam 119 Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber’, Journal of Modern History, 58, 1 (1986), pp. 235–​46. www.jstor.org/​ stable/​1881571. See Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–​1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Duncan Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-​Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 120 O. Steinberg, ‘The Unity of History and Periods? The Unique Historical Periodization of E. A. Freeman’, Modern Intellectual History, 15, 3 (2016), pp. 1–​29. doi:10.1017/​ S1479244316000263. 121 Bremner and Conlin, Making History. 122 The only brief commentaries on Freeman’s works on the East are to be found in the following: Paul Stephenson, ‘E. A. Freeman (1823–​1892), a Neglected Commentator on Byzantium and Modern Greece’, The Historical Review, 4 (2007), pp. 119–​56. doi:http://​ dx.doi.org/​ 10.12681/​ hr.211; William Kelley, ‘Past History and Present Politics: E. A. Freeman and the Eastern Question’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp.  119–​ 39; and Steinberg, ‘The Unity of History’. I  have previously commented on these volumes in V. Morrisroe [Randall], ‘ “Eastern History with Western Eyes”: E. A. Freeman, Islam and Orientalism’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 16, 1 (2011), pp. 25–​45. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13555502.2011.554673. 123 E.A. Freeman, The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (London: Macmillan and Co., 1872). 124 D.J.A. Matthew, ‘The English Cultivation of Norman History’, in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 1–​18, p. 16. For a brief recent study see Brundage and Cosgrove, British Historians and National Identity. 125 I use the term ‘Whig’ in the same sense as Herbert Butterfield in his classic study, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1931). See Chapter 1. 126 E.A. Freeman, Comparative Politics: Six Lectures read before the Royal Institution in Jan. and Feb., 1873, with the Unity of History, the Rede Lecture read before the University of Cambridge, May, 1872 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873). E.A. Freeman, History of Federal Government (London: Macmillan and Co., 1863). This work was intended as part of a multi-​volume treatment of federal government extending from ancient Greece to contemporary America, but Freeman only ever finished volume 1 on Greece. J.  B. Bury subsequently found some unpublished material among Freeman’s papers after his death and reissued the book to include a new chapter on Italy and a fragment on Germany. See E.A. Freeman, History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, edited by J.B. Bury (London: Macmillan and Co., 1893). E.A. Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, and George Washington, the Expander of England. Two Lectures with an Appendix (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886). 127 E.A. Freeman, The History and Conquests of the Saracens, Six Lectures Delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (Oxford:  John Henry and James Parker, 1856). 128 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 129 E.A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Europe:  Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London: Macmillan and Co., 1877).

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PART  I

The West

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CHA P T E R ON E

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The Norman Conquest (1867–​79)

As noted in the Introduction, the Norman Conquest was Freeman’s magnum-​opus  –​ a work which absorbed his interest for over thirty years, and on which his contemporary and posthumous reputation has rested. While scholarly interest in the Norman Conquest is intensifying, the tendency is still to dissect, rather than to thoroughly examine, these volumes. What is needed is a more holistic approach. As Bratchel observed, fifty years ago, ‘Freeman’s five volume History … might almost be regarded as being as instructive for the student of the nineteenth as for the historian of the eleventh century. Few works demand so eloquently an understanding of the intellectual forces by which, and of the historic environment in which, they were produced’.1 Pursuing an analysis of the contexts for Freeman’s Norman Conquest, together with a detailed commentary on the content and themes of each volume, this chapter attempts a comprehensive re-​evaluation of his major work. I begin with a survey of the sources and historiographical traditions on early English history that emerged between the time of the Conquest and the later nineteenth century. This approach allows a fuller understanding of the materials and interpretations that were available to Freeman when composing his work. Assessing both the strengths and weaknesses of Freeman’s use of these sources, it will be seen that his scholarly ‘faults’ were the consequence of his determination to prove that the English constitution had developed continuously since the fifth century. While Freeman celebrated the English people, I show that his emphasis on race also enabled him to perform a complex act of historiographical synthesis. On the one hand, the concept of race enabled Freeman to combine a traditional belief in the Anglo-​Saxon origins of the English constitution with the new ‘Whig’ emphasis on the modernity of liberty, and thereby to produce an account of national exceptionalism. On the other, Freeman’s racial theory reinforced an older notion of the Unity of History inherited from [ 27 ]

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Thomas Arnold, and this fundamentally constrained his panegyric to the English nation. Representing the past as one long and unified chain of cause and effect, Freeman’s narrative establishes the monotony rather than the continuity of history and it culminates in recurrence and recapitulation rather than indefinite progress.

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Three historiographical traditions on the Norman Conquest ‘In the course of over nine hundred years’, writes Chibnall, ‘interest in the Norman Conquest has depended on the kind of information available to those  –​whether professional or amateur  –​who have studied and interpreted the history of the past’.2 Acknowledging the variety of accounts that have been advanced over the centuries, I here emphasise three historiographical traditions of writing on 1066 which Freeman incorporated into his own Norman Conquest. As we will see, the earliest English understanding of 1066 was shaped by the idea of an original Anglo-​Saxon freedom that had been destroyed by William the Conqueror. This myth of the ‘Norman Yoke’ first appeared in the fourteenth century and was vital during the Reformation (1532–​34) and English Civil Wars (1642–​51), when polemical writers used the past to contest contemporary religious and political changes. Following the Glorious Revolution (1688) a second distinct tradition emerged, as ‘Whig’ historians abandoned the idea of a lost Anglo-​Saxon democracy and argued that English liberty was a modern phenomenon that had nothing to do with the so-​called ‘ancient constitution’. Finally, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a third narrative developed which reflected the influence of Victorian racial theory. Classifying both the Anglo-​Saxons and the modern English people as Germanic ‘Teutons’ it was argued that this race had a unique capacity for freedom. Within this racial myth the Anglo-​Saxons took on a renewed significance as part of the story of England’s continuously developing liberty –​a liberty that had only been temporarily threatened by William. Almost from the moment of the Conquest itself, then, writers had set to work in an attempt to explain the causes and course of events. The immediate issue for contemporaries of the Norman Conquest was how to present the monarchical succession. Edward the Confessor died childless on 5 January 1066 and Harold Godwinson, who was crowned King the following day, had only a dubious title to the throne as the brother of Edward’s wife, Edith. Duke William, meanwhile, could advance the right of kinship as his great aunt, Emma of Normandy, was Edward’s mother. Whether William’s arrival in England in September 1066 was viewed as an [ 28 ]

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79)

invasion or a rightful reclamation of his throne was a matter of perspective and, as English writers went underground, Norman authorities began producing justifications of William’s actions. Among the earliest were William of Jumièges’ Deeds of the Dukes of the Normans (1070/​72), William of Poitiers’ Deeds of William Duke of the Normans and King of the English (c.1073–​74), and the Bayeux Tapestry (c.1077).3 These sources suggested that Edward had promised the crown to William before his death and that Harold had become a vassal to the Duke following his shipwreck and imprisonment in France in 1064. Harold was thus depicted as a perjurer of oaths, a usurper, and a tyrant, while William appears as the lawful successor who became King by the judgement of God. This line was generally followed by English historians and those of mixed parentage throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English People (c.1129–​54) was critical of the ferocity of the Conquest and presented the Norman invasion as the last of five ‘plagues’ sent to England by God (following the Romans, Picts, Scots, and Danes).4 This did not, however, prevent him from attacking Harold as an imposter and praising William for granting life and liberty to the conquered people.5 William of Malmesbury’s Deeds of the English Kings (c.1126–​35) similarly mourned the ‘melancholy havoc’ caused by the Conquest, but wrote favourably of the Normans who ‘revived, by their arrival, the rule of religion which had everywhere grown lifeless in England’.6 This ambiguity is also found in Matthew Paris’ The History of Saint Edward the King (1236–​46).7 As Rebecca Reader comments, Paris’ work ‘constitutes an oasis of pro-​English feeling’ as it is ‘rich in adulation of Anglo-​Saxon monarchy and pervaded by tacit criticism of Norman moral virtue’.8 Nevertheless, Paris was hostile to Harold, and included an illustration of Godwinson happily placing the crown on his own head, without religious sanction.9 Accompanying this image is a short piece of prose: ‘After the death of King Edward, who has no blood heir, Harold, born the son of Godwin and wrongfully crowned king of England … put Edward’s crown on his own head. He reigned only briefly.’10 In the acute economic crisis of the fourteenth century, historical narratives written in the renascent English language became increasingly critical of William and the Conquest, emphasising the humiliation and oppression which the native population had suffered ever since 1066. Thomas of Castleford, for example, writing c.1327, complained of English land being taken by ‘alien’ Normans: Fra Englisse blood Englande he [William] refte, Na maner soil with them he lefte … Dwelle they shall alls bondes and thralles, And do all that to thralldom falles.11

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The West

In Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle (completed before 1338), the author similarly identified himself with ‘the Inglis’ and argued that the Normans had put the people in ‘servage’ and caused great sorrow.12 The view of the Norman Conquest as detrimental became increasingly widespread in the sixteenth century. In this period, the idealisation of Anglo-​ Saxon customs and the negative view of the Conquest was propagated by scholars seeking to justify the Reformation as a recovery of ancient religious practices. John Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments [Book of Martyrs] (1559/​63), assembled a ‘motley array’ of extracts from early records and legends to support his thesis that a primitive church had existed in England and had flourished independently of Rome before 1066.13 While Foxe noted a deterioration of religion in the latter years of the Anglo-​ Saxon kings, he maintained that it was the arrival of the Normans and their commitment to Roman Catholicism that caused ‘the fresh flowering blood of the church to faint, and strength to fail, oppressed with cold humours of worldly pomp, avarice, and tyranny’.14 For Foxe, Roman Catholicism represented the ‘loosing out of Satan’, and the Reformation was a return to the original ‘church of Christ’.15 Matthew Parker, the second Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, also collected early English manuscripts and used these, in his De Antiquite Britannicae ecclesia (1572/​73), to argue that the English Church had historically been separate from Rome.16 During the Stuart period and the Civil Wars the myth of the ‘Norman Yoke’, as analysed by Christopher Hill, became central to polemical dispute.17 As Eric Evans notes, interest in Anglo-​Saxon legal and political institutions grew alongside ‘a vigorous, independent strain of egalitarian, radical patriotism, which depended upon ideas of dispossession by a ruling elite’.18 Radical reformers depicted the Anglo-​ Saxons as a freedom-​loving people, enjoying a primitive democracy that was subverted by the wholesale importation of Norman customs that became known by the label of feudalism. Gerard Winstanley, for instance, dedicated his work, The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652), to Oliver Cromwell. In it, he wrote that: ‘as kings, so the old gentry and the new gentry likewise, walking in the same steps, are but the successors of the Norman victory … why then should we not recover the freedom of our land again, from under that yoke and power?’19 While Radicals demanded the restoration of lost Anglo-​Saxon rights to the modern parliament, moderates believed in an ancient constitution which had survived the Conquest, and which could provide the basis for contemporary reform.20 Clare Simmons has shown that Royalists could also appeal to the Anglo-​Saxon past to denounce what they saw as the ‘Protectorate’s destruction of tradition’.21 Such was the motivation [ 30 ]

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79)

of William Somner’s Dictionarium Saxonico-​Latino-​Anglicum (1659) and Sir John Spelman’s Life of Alfred the Great (1678).22 In the years after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 controversies about the English past subsided. As Jann writes, ‘[t]‌he use of history as a polemical weapon during the religious and political controversies of the seventeenth century had so discredited it that … many held history in contempt as little more than “popular tale-​telling, aimless antiquarianism, or political propaganda” ’.23 Interest in the ancient constitution declined still further following the publication of Robert Brady’s Introduction to the Old English History (1684) and Complete History of England (1685), which presented incontrovertible evidence against the idea that Parliament had evolved from the democratic Witenagemot of the Anglo-​Saxons.24 Brady’s work demonstrated that the House of Commons did not emerge until the reign of Edward I  (1272–​1307), and even then it had not been ‘representative’ in any recognisable way.25 During the Enlightenment, thinkers such as John Locke moved away from historical documents altogether and located English liberty in a theoretical State of Nature and an abstract Social Contract.26 The shock of the French Revolution, on the other hand, led Edmund Burke to emphasise the constitutional changes which had taken place in England in 1688 and to praise the political wisdom of making ‘slow but well-​sustained progress’ towards freedom.27 Against the backdrop of the Great Reform Act (1832), Burkean ideas resulted in a self-​ congratulatory ‘Whiggism’ in which the guarantee of English liberty was no longer the ancient constitution but the ability of modern men to make necessary political changes. As described by Herbert Butterfield in his classic essay on The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), this approach was less a matter of political affiliation than the specific mindset of writers who ‘organized [their] scheme of history from the point of view of [their] own day’.28 In emphasising the significance and achievements of the ‘moderns’ the Whigs were interested in the medieval period only as a dimly lit prelude of things to come. As Butterfield explained, the Whig historians sought to impose a certain form upon the whole historical story, and to produce a scheme of general history which is bound to converge beautifully upon the present –​all demonstrating throughout the ages the workings of an obvious principle of progress, of which the Protestants and whigs have been the perennial allies while Catholics and tories have perpetually formed obstruction.29

From the Whig perspective, the middle ages were dominated by a spirit of religious and political despotism which was decisively [ 31 ]

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overcome during the Reformation and Glorious Revolution. Foremost among the works written in this tradition were James Mackintosh’s History of the Revolution in England in 1688 (1834) and Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James the Second (five vols, 1848–​61).30 For Macaulay, there was no English history before the time of Magna Carta (1215), and the overthrow of the Catholic Stuart dynasty in 1688 was the most significant event in securing the nation’s freedom.31 In Macaulay’s opinion the ‘Revolution settlement’ terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments … under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known … from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example.32

While the parliamentarians of the seventeenth century had seen themselves as restoring the lost Anglo-​ Saxon democracy, writers like Mackintosh and Macaulay presented them as the first in a line of innovators which stretched down to their own day. By the time Victoria came to the throne, then, the Anglo-​Saxons had been sidelined within the greater narrative of England’s freedom. As Burrow writes, ‘the mature Whiggism or, as it might now be more accurately called, Parliamentarianism, of Macaulay had … left “the ancient constitution” far behind’.33 Interest in the Anglo-​Saxons was to revive in England, however, as a result of German nationalism and Romanticism. As Jann explains, German intellectuals, reacting against the abstract systems of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, increasingly ‘endowed nations and people with the diversity, uniqueness, and complexity of personalities’.34 As for the example of England itself, many Prussian reformers shared Justus Moser’s belief that ‘self-​ government was essentially a Germanic system’ which had been carried by the Anglo-​ Saxons to England.35 Both the English and the Germans were thus understood to have descended from the same racial group and to share common characteristics, such as the love of democracy, which could be traced back to the life of the Teutonic tribes described in Tacitus’s Germania (98 AD). An infusion of the Romantic spirit into early nineteenth-​ century English writing is discernible in the works of Sharon Turner and Sir Walter Scott who were transitional figures, in Reginald Horsman’s analysis, ‘between the older idealization of Anglo-​ Saxon institutions, and the new racialism’.36 Turner’s History of the Anglo-​Saxons (four vols, 1799–​1805) returned to ideas of Anglo-​Saxon liberty and the primitive origins of parliamentary institutions, and [ 32 ]

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79)

expounded a belief in the Germanic ancestry of English civilisation.37 Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819/​20) subsequently went further in its ‘emphasis on personal, individual traits rather than on abstract institutional excellence’ and depicted the Anglo-​Saxons as honest, down-​trodden heroes, fighting against Norman tyranny.38 The Romantic shift quickened in the 1820s and 1830s as German philology began to receive attention in England, and the works of linguists and historians such as Benjamin Thorpe and J.M. Kemble began to popularise the idea that the English people, with their spreading empire, best realised the potential in the spirit of the Germanic tribes.39 The combination of Romanticism and racial rhetoric is most evident in Thomas Carlyle’s enormously influential On Heroes, Hero-​Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841).40 In these lectures Carlyle articulated a faith not only in the power of the heroic individual but also in the power of the Teutonic race, the destiny of which was to conquer at least half the world and to overcome the obstacles to progress posed by other races.41 Kemble’s Saxons in England (1849), meanwhile, emphasised the common blood of the Anglo-​Saxons and Teutons, and pointed to the supreme significance of the German tribes:  ‘dimly through the twilight in which the sun of Rome was set forever, loomed the Colossus of the German race, gigantic, terrible, inexplicable’.42 Between 1849 and 1850 there was even a short-​lived London magazine titled The Anglo-​Saxon which was dedicated to celebrating the ‘Teutonic’ tribe.43 The magazine claimed that ‘the inborn spirit’ of the Anglo-​Saxon race had ‘produced the germs which have unfolded into a civilisation more noble and grand than ever flourished in the capitals of Athens or of Rome’, and readers were asked to ‘be proud that we belong to the great Teutonic stock’.44 While Matthew Arnold could write mockingly of these ‘Teutomaniacs’, it is worth emphasising the fact that popular enthusiasm for the Anglo-​Saxons grew alongside, and was incorporated within, the work of historians who professed a serious commitment to objective scholarship.45 Among these were the triumvirate of scholars who G.P. Gooch labelled the ‘Oxford School’:  Stubbs, Green, and Freeman himself.46 In the first instance, as John R. Davis suggests, the preoccupation with Teutonism was intimately connected with the growing prestige of German historical scholarship and played a central role in the development of the discipline in Britain.47 The English public records, kept in the relatively inaccessible State Paper Office since 1578, were published in the form of the Rolls Series from 1857 in conscious imitation of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica which had begun to appear in 1826.48 Similarly, Stubbs, who dominated the study of medieval history, was heavily influenced by German scholars [ 33 ]

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including Georg Waitz and Reinhold Pauli.49 His work on the Rolls Series (1864–​89), his Select Charters (1870), and Constitutional History of England (three vols, 1873–​78), provided templates, as J.  Campbell notes, for the ‘forensic treatment’ of original documents ‘on which all later scholars have built’.50 Nevertheless, Stubbs’ Romanticism and nationalism was evident in his writing as he maintained, as his central thesis, that ‘the English are a people of German descent in the main constituents of blood, character and language, but most especially in the possession of the elements of primitive German civilization and the common germs of German institutions’.51 Asserting that ‘the polity developed by the German races on British soil is the purest product of their primitive instinct’, Stubbs argued that the Saxon element was the kernel from which British liberty had sprung.52 Green articulated another salient attribute of the Oxford School’s conception of history, the notion, as described by Jann, that ‘the professional’s highest responsibility was not to instruct or entertain the general public but to advance knowledge in the field’.53 Green expressed his belief in the ‘contribution’ to a geologist friend in 1862, writing:  ‘I think it is a great thing and one that “lifts one up forever”, to have labored with singleness of mind for knowledge. If I could advance History, if you could advance Science, by a single fact … I am sure we could both willingly lose all thought of ourselves, and be content to remain obscure, and it may be poor. But knowledge is great riches.’54 Green suffered neither obscurity nor poverty; his Short History of the English People (1874) was one of the best-​selling works of English history from that date until at least the 1920s, vying with Macaulay’s History of England for popular influence.55 Later extended into a four-​volume History of the English People (1877–​80), the work is characterised by the same commitment to ‘scientific’ study, co-​existing with a Romantic racialised nationalism, that typified the writings of Stubbs.56 Green valued manuscript sources, made innovative use of archaeological and geographical evidence, and aspired to infuse historical writing with professional rigour by establishing an Oxford Historical Society and planning the English Historical Review.57 His aim in writing the Short History was to produce ‘a book in which the great lines of our history should be fixed with precision’ and, in arranging ancient documentary fragments into their rightful order, to ‘put facts on a philosophical basis’.58 Nevertheless Green identified the nation as the central reality of history. Charting the progress of the innate Teutonic love of freedom that was the mainstay of English identity, Green insisted that these democratic instincts survived the invasions and found expression in the gradual constitutional reforms which ensured the well-​being of the entire people. [ 34 ]

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Of the three men who belonged to the Oxford School, Freeman best exemplifies the complex transformations in the historiography on the Norman Conquest, and in the discipline of history more generally, which had taken place by the nineteenth century. Freeman was the most vocal publicist for, and least successful practitioner of, the new scientific historical enterprise, as he pursued an exacting scholarship and a desire to educate the public which made the Norman Conquest both inaccessible and unpopular. Standing at the head of the popular enthusiasm labelled Teutomania, Freeman also re-​ articulated old ideas about the free institutions of the Anglo-​Saxons which had been abandoned following the excesses of the Reformation and Restoration. Expounding a racialised nationalism which far surpassed that of Green and Stubbs, and maintaining a commitment to older Arnoldian frameworks, Freeman’s claim to be a modern ‘objective’ historian is particularly problematic.

Making the Norman Conquest: methodology, style, and intellectual frameworks In writing his Norman Conquest Freeman clearly attempted to demonstrate his ‘scientific’ credentials while constructing a narrative that was shaped by his preoccupation with the themes of racial and political continuity. It is significant that, at the time Freeman composed the work, he did not hold an official position, and was isolated from the mainstream of academic life at his country home in Somerset. Freeman’s voluminous display of learning betrayed, as Susan Walton suggests, ‘an anxious neediness to belong within the ranks of the “scientific” historians, to claim membership of its rigorous manly guild … and to be revered as a serious academic who could deserve to be bracketed with his friend, the constitutional historian, William Stubbs’.59 Freeman’s authority as a historian depended on his ability to present himself as an expert whose concern with ‘facts’ was not, like that of commercial writers, subordinate to the pursuit of style or dramatic excellence. He believed that the success of such ‘amateur’ authors had encouraged the public to view history as a branch of literature and this meant that the level of ‘nonsense’ that was tolerated was far higher than in any other subject.60 Freeman even criticised his erstwhile protégé Green because he felt his Short History was strewn with ‘wild metaphors’, showed a ‘sublime contempt of punctuation’ and was, throughout, ‘a little too dashing, and too forgetful that facts should now and then be put in as well as pictures’.61 As Jann observes, Freeman was ‘among England’s earliest advocates of the cult of original research’ and the variety of materials he consulted [ 35 ]

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in preparation for the Norman Conquest was impressive.62 Freeman had a deep aversion to archival research, admitting to Bryce in 1873 that ‘I tremble at the notion of going to the Vatican library, I, who never in my life had any dealings with any library at all, save very slight ones with our Bodleian’.63 Nevertheless, Freeman fulfilled his commitment to accessing ‘real contemporary documents’ by stocking his private library with a collection of sources relating to early English history, including the four massive folios of the Domesday Book, the various texts and calendars published by the record commissioners, and the Rolls Series of chronicles and memorials.64 Declaring that ‘I wish no-​one to read me instead of my authorities’ it is clear, as Bratchel remarks, that Freeman ‘seriously attempted to judge the value of any conflicting evidence when compiling his narrative’ and ‘sincerely believed that he had presented all the evidence so that others could reach different conclusions should they so wish’.65 Freeman felt that his predecessors had been ‘too apt to catch at any statement which seemed at all to support their several theories, without always stopping to reflect whether such statements came from contemporary chronicles or charters or from careless and ill-​informed compilers three or four centuries later’.66 He consequently went to great lengths to ensure that the details of the Norman Conquest were correct, seeking the advice and criticism of experts in the field through private correspondence, and maintaining that ‘[t]‌he highest compliment one can receive is to have your book thoroughly read, appreciated and examined by a really competent scholar’.67 While Freeman’s strength lay in his knowledge of the narrative sources for early English history, he also stood out for his use of historical evidence of a different kind.68 Freeman fully conformed to his own model of a good historian, who must ‘go about and see places’.69 As he explained in his lectures on The Methods of Historical Study (1886), ‘the Historian must be a traveler, he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see too with his own eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city and take in, as far as a non-​technical eye can, all that is special about a battle-​field’.70 In preparing the Norman Conquest Freeman travelled in England, Normandy, and throughout France and was often accompanied by Green, or by his friend, the geologist Boyd Dawkins. While Green had used geographical study to recapture the immediacy of the past, Freeman believed that a familiarity with topography was necessary to avoid making mistakes. The man ‘for whom carelessness was a moral fault’ visited the battlefield of Hastings four times and claimed that no one could criticise his account of events without having a thorough knowledge of the ground.71 In his description of [ 36 ]

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the Battle of Hastings Freeman included an extensive description of the land. The ‘broken ground, alternating with hill and marsh’, the ‘peninsular shape’ of the English hill fort, and the ‘slopes greatly varying in their degrees of steepness’, were all, for him, important historical details.72 Freeman was no less meticulous in the case of lesser sites, such as the Fort of Domfront which was taken by William during his first campaign against the Angevins.73 Consequently, the narrative is strewn with mini-​travelogues, brief histories, and maps, which appear incongruous –​‘strangely out of place’, as Bratchel writes, ‘in a general history of the Conquest’.74 For all his attempts to be ‘scientific’, however, Freeman’s treatment of the sources for the Norman Conquest was distorted by his desire to be commercially successful, and by his racial and democratic prejudices. While Freeman attacked those who presented the past ‘in the guise … of fantastic legends’ and claimed he was ‘quite unable to make history out of my own internal consciousness’, he made a number of concessions to the literary mode in the Norman Conquest.75 In his account of the Battle of Hastings, for example, Freeman included a vivid description of the fall of Harold Godwinson: ‘William [the Conqueror] rose to his feet; he pressed straight to seek the man who had so nearly slain him. Duke [William] and Earl [Godwinson] met face to face, and the English hero fell crushed beneath the stroke of the Duke’s mace.’76 Or again, at the point when the English side was evidently losing the battle against the Norman army, Freeman dwelt on the courage of Harold’s men: ‘[m]‌any of the best and bravest of England had died but not a man had fled; the Standard still waved as proudly as ever; the King [Harold] still fought beneath it. While Harold still lived, while the horse and his rider still fell beneath his axe, the heart of England failed not, the hope of England had not wholly passed away.’77 Finally, the drama culminates in the death of Freeman’s hero, Harold, and the defeat of the English side: Harold had fallen, as his valiant brothers had fallen before him. And with the King the ensigns of his kingdom had fallen also … As ever in this age, everything turned on the life of one man, and the one man who could have saved England was taken from her. The men who fought upon the hill of Senlac may have been too deeply busied with the duty of the moment to look forward to the future chances of their country. But they knew at least that with their King’s death that day’s battle was lost.78

Having made an effort to appeal to popular tastes, Freeman was confused and disappointed when the Norman Conquest proved less successful than the volumes of either Froude or Green. ‘One thing that [ 37 ]

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puzzles me’, he wrote to Bryce, ‘is the seeming belief that Froude can tell a story and that I can’t. I believe that I can tell a story much better. Could he have done my battle stories in Vol. III? Besides that he would fight Senlac on a plain in Northumberland on a Monday in April & set the English on horseback & armed the Normans with axes’.79 Freeman’s antipathy towards Froude was severe, and Green deplored the scholarly ‘warfare’ between the two men which made it look ‘as if one famous writer was jealous of another famous writer’.80 Freeman, for his own part, claimed that Froude’s errors were deliberately provocative and that ‘he rushes on his fate like a bull at Seville’.81 While Froude was attacked by many of his contemporaries as ‘constitutionally inaccurate’, or ‘simply the most unveracious writer who ever profaned the calling of a historian’, it was not the latter’s research habits, but his view of politics and national identity which enraged Freeman.82 Froude linked English greatness to religious temperament, not constitutional accomplishment, and neglected political developments:  ‘it was not’, Burrow explains, ‘that he took no interest in constitutional questions, there was positive distaste’.83 Froude emphasised the significance of the sixteenth-​century break from Rome in the formation of the modern English identity and dismissed the medieval period as largely irrelevant. For Freeman, who held that the Germanic origin of the English people was the foundation of all English history, everything about Froude’s History of England (12 vols, 1856–​70) was anathema.84 Determined to demonstrate that the English people of the fifth century had retained their racial and political identity beyond 1066, and were therefore the same as the people of the nineteenth century, Freeman’s own treatment of the sources for English history was decidedly questionable. Entertaining an abiding hatred of the Norman invaders, he described his method of dealing with the medieval sources as that of reading an English authority and then turning to see ‘what is the Norman perversion of it’.85 In a letter to Stubbs, Freeman also referred to the relatively fair minded William of Malmesbury as ‘a lying, affected French scoundrel’ who he could barely bring himself to read, and he denounced William of Poitiers as the ‘mere laureate and flatterer of his patron; the Conqueror’.86 Freeman’s prejudices in favour of the integrity and excellence of the Anglo-​Saxon race similarly determined which of the interpretations advanced by modern scholars he accepted and which he did not. He refused, for example, to follow Sir Francis Palgrave in seeing a degeneration of the Anglo-​Saxon character before the Norman Conquest, and Carlyle’s description of ‘a gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering around in pot-​bellied equanimity’, did not make him think any better [ 38 ]

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of the man who had once called him an ‘affected ass’.87 Again, Freeman dismissed Augustin Thierry’s depiction of racial warfare between the Saxons and Normans continuing up to the eighteenth century, and asserted that the English race had entirely assimilated the Norman element within a century of the Conquest.88 Placing constitutional history at the centre of national identity, Freeman also seized on any Teutonic antecedent which could be portrayed as crucial to what the English people would become. Most importantly, and controversially, Freeman manipulated the chronicles and contradicted received scholarship to represent Harold Godwinson as a democratically elected English ruler. Unable to treat the Conqueror with much warmth, Freeman openly admitted his partiality towards Harold. Defending himself against the criticisms of Green, Freeman stated: ‘[w]‌e be bidden to love our enemies, but we be nowhere bidden to love them as well as our friends … So I think you are hard on me in the matter of William. You allow that I can be just to him. What more can you ask? You can’t expect him to be to me as Harold.’89 In the Norman Conquest Freeman went so far as to say that Harold, ‘the first and last King who reigned purely because he was the best and bravest among his people’, was a King ‘as lawful as any King –​I might almost say more lawful than any other King –​that ever reigned over England’.90 As Bratchel writes, ‘the description of Godwin whose “eloquent tongue could not always command a majority in the Meeting of the Wise”, might appear to be that of Gladstone rather than of the eleventh century Earl of the West Saxons’.91 While the tensions of the Norman Conquest reflect Freeman’s failed struggle for ‘scientific’ objectivity, his association of the Teutonic race with political democracy was also the source of, and solution to, a far more problematic attempt at historiographical synthesis. Following the publication of Brady’s research in the late seventeenth century, scholars had found it difficult to maintain the belief in the antiquity of Parliament. Once it was clear that the House of Commons did not emerge until the reign of Edward I, historians abandoned the claims for direct continuity between the ancient and modern constitution and stopped arguing that English institutions had originated spontaneously from the will of the people. As Burrow explains, If the first national act was Magna Carta, it was most obviously seen as an act of the feudal tenants-​in-​chief. The House of Commons was not, unfortunately, immemorial; it owed its origin, if not, except formally speaking, to the crown, then to Earl Simon de Montfort. The gentry in the House of Commons had preserved the constitution by their opposition to Charles I; a handful of Whig peers had saved it again by issuing the invitation to William of Orange. All this might have been done in the

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name of the nation and with its goodwill and support; it was harder to claim that, except very intermittently, it had been done literally by it.92

While Freeman could accept that the constitution was in large part the result of the actions of a few great men, his emphasis on race meant that he could also argue that such actions were the highest expression of the Teutonic capacity for liberty which had first been manifested in Anglo-​Saxon institutions. Any constitutional changes could be viewed as consolidations, and any revolutions could be disregarded because, underlying English political history, there remained, as Burrow points out, other ‘continuities and grounds of identity which had hitherto meant less:  continuities of language and race’.93 In linking racial and political concepts Freeman’s Norman Conquest can be seen as a response to the uncertainties of the middle decades of the century. As Cosgrove puts it, ‘[Freeman’s] success in uniting Anglo-​ Saxon superiority with constitutional destiny reassured his readers that the future of England was secure, in spite of the unsettling challenges of the 1870s and 1880s … In its Gladstonian guise, as portrayed by Freeman, the English constitution truly symbolized English national exceptionalism’.94 It is important to note, however, before turning to examine the narrative of the Norman Conquest in detail, that the interpretation of English history Freeman advanced was not merely the product of the intellectual anxieties fostered by decades of European revolution. At once scientific and Romantic, Freeman’s approach in the Norman Conquest was shaped by the Arnoldian theory of the Unity of History which articulated the idea of a universal process by which nations passed from ‘childhood’ to ‘manhood’ and connected all historical events in a continuous chain of cause and effect. Following Arnold, Freeman was fully convinced that ‘no language, no period of history, can be understood in its fulness, none can be clothed with its highest interest and its highest profit, if it be looked at wholly in itself, without reference to its bearing on those other languages, those other periods of history, which join with it to make up the great whole’.95 It was this faith in the Unity of History which determined Freeman’s representation of the English past as one unbroken continuum in which the people’s skill for self-​government was manifested in the evolution of democratic political institutions. But, as we will see, it was Freeman’s commitment to the philosophy of the Unity of History which also, simultaneously and consistently, undermined the otherwise complacent ‘Whig’ narrative of the Norman Conquest. Freeman’s view of history meant, firstly, that his celebration of England’s political development was disrupted by a sense of monotony, [ 40 ]

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and the lack of any explanatory framework. In an essay titled ‘The Continuity of English History’ (1860), Freeman admitted that: if we are asked for the causes of the contrast between the steady course of freedom in England and its fitful rises and falls in France, we have no universal formula of explanation. We can only say that the causes are many and various, and some of those which we should assign are perhaps rather of an old fashioned kind … National character, geographical position, earlier historical events, have had as much to do with the difference; but we believe that the personal character of individual men, and the happy thought, or happy accident, of some particular enactment has often had quite as much to do with it as any of them.96

As this passage suggests, while the doctrine of the Unity of History does not necessitate a denial that history has meaning, it does necessitate that this meaning is found only in a long succession of events and their fixed and inexorable results. Secondly, the Arnoldian concept of the Unity of History, which was established through making connections and seeking resonances between the institutions of one cyclical age and those of another cyclical age, meant that Freeman emphasised recurrence rather than continued progress.97 Freeman found that ‘in many things, our earliest institutions come more nearly home to us, and they have more in common with our present political state than the institutions of intermediate ages which at first sight seem to have much more in common with our own’.98 Finally, from the wider perspective of the Unity of History, the Teutonic race to which the Anglo-​Saxons belong emerges as only one branch of a much wider Aryan family, which also includes the ancient Greeks and Romans, and their descendants, the modern Europeans (see Chapter 2). As Burrow observes, from this point of view England was ‘inescapably peripheral’ and ‘even the Whig’s vaunting of England’s constitutional continuity was muted a little’.99

The dual narrative of the Norman Conquest This section attempts to disentangle the distinct, and not entirely compatible, historiographical traditions which Freeman incorporated within the Norman Conquest. On the one hand, Freeman’s focus on the inherent tendencies of the Teutonic race enabled him to effect an uneasy reconciliation between the old tradition which emphasised the popular, Anglo-​ Saxon, origins of the ancient constitution, and the new Whiggism which placed its faith in constitutional change-​in-​ continuity. On the other, Freeman was captivated by the Arnoldian concept of the Unity of History, which underpins the narrative of racial [ 41 ]

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and political continuity and compromises his celebration of English achievements. Exploring the central narrative points of Freeman’s Norman Conquest, I  demonstrate that the accounts of the Anglo-​ Saxon settlement of England, the Danish invasions, the coronation of Edward the Confessor, and the ‘election’ of Harold Godwinson, form the links in the chain of cause and effect leading up to the Conquest, and contribute to the overall story of the cyclical growth of English liberty. Freeman’s argument that the Anglo-​Saxons had an inherent capacity for self-​government was crucial to his assertion that England’s ancient constitution was ultimately the spontaneous creation of the people, rather than the construct of exceptional individuals. Freeman therefore dedicated a significant portion of his first volume to describing the ‘English’ and their political life as they first appeared in their ancestral German homeland, and attempted to demonstrate that the Teutonic constitution, out of which the English constitution would later develop, was democratic. Emphasising the natural capacity of the Germanic tribes for liberty, Freeman minimised the significance of monarchic and aristocratic elements which had been observed by earlier historians. Addressing the contentious question of whether or not the German tribes had kings, Freeman wrote vaguely that the people were ‘headed by a King, Ealdorman or other leader temporary or permanent, elective or hereditary’.100 While scholars such as Kemble had concluded that the idea of a king was ‘rooted in the German mind and institutions, and universal among some particular tribes’, Freeman equivocated, writing: ‘[i]‌n the days of Tacitus some of the Teutonic tribes had kings and others had not; in the time of Caesar it would seem that kingship was the exception and not the rule.’101 The tribes may therefore have had leaders or ‘chieftains’, but this did not compromise the essentially popular nature of the primitive constitution.102 Again, Freeman acknowledged the existence of a class of nobles, but presented the aristocracy as politically subordinate to the people: ‘there are men of noble birth’, he wrote, ‘whose noble birth, in whatever the original nobility may have consisted, entitles them to pre-​eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free and armed people, in whom the ultimate sovereignty resides’.103 In his account of the political life of the Teutonic tribes, then, Freeman attempted to demonstrate that the Anglo-​Saxons had an inherent capacity for self-​government and that this constitution, which would be transplanted and developed on English soil, was the organic creation of the nation. Having described the nature of the ancient constitution, Freeman is then concerned to discuss its removal from Germany to Britain. In [ 42 ]

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writing the history of the Anglo-​Saxon Conquest, early nineteenth-​ century scholars had described a slow and haphazard settlement, hindered by the hardy resistance and continued presence of the native races. Turner had noted, for example, ‘the slow progression of the Saxon conquests’ while detailing the manner in which ‘the Cynmry maintained the unequal conflict against the Anglo-​ Saxons with wonderful bravery’.104 Similarly, Kemble had written of the probability that the Saxons and Angles had begun to arrive in England as early as the second century and he appealed to the presence of the peasantry in England as evidence of how much ‘Keltic’ blood continued to subsist and mingle with that of the ruling Germans.105 Palgrave, too, portrayed the Conquest as a gradual settlement, through which certain older elements had survived. For him, it was the remnants of Roman law and government, not Welsh or Scottish populations, which the German barbarians discovered in Britain and incorporated into their regime.106 In making English racial identity the foundation of his argument for political continuity and progress towards liberty, Freeman advanced an interpretation of the Anglo-​Saxon Conquest of Britain which necessarily differed from those of earlier scholars. Rejecting the view of a piecemeal settlement, Freeman asserted that, ‘much learning and ingenuity have been spent, and … in many cases wasted, in attempts to show the untrustworthiness of the traditional account, by bringing forward proofs of Teutonic invasions … of an earlier date than that assigned by the chronicles’.107 To secure England’s Teutonic purity, Freeman presented the Anglo-​Saxon Conquest as a sudden, destructive, event. Directly contradicting Palgrave, Freeman argued that the settlement of the Teutons in Britain differed from the settlement of Germanic tribes elsewhere within the Roman Empire, because the ‘Roman occupation of Britain was, after all, very superficial’.108 Nor did Freeman allow for the survival of anything native, arguing that the Conquest ‘wiped out everything Celtic’.109 While Turner regretted such violence, for Freeman it was the means by which the Teutons, having migrated to Britain, ‘won for themselves a new name and a new national being, and have handed on to us the distinct and glorious inheritance of Englishmen’.110 By arguing that the Anglo-​Saxon Conquest of Britain swept away all pre-​ existing institutions and populations, Freeman ensured that England’s subsequent history can appear as a continuous process by which the Teutonic race developed an inborn tendency towards democracy. The old historiographical tradition which emphasised the popular origins of the ancient constitution, and the new Whiggism which placed its faith in constitutional change-​in-​continuity, were thereby reconciled. Having effectively established the racial and political basis on which the subsequent Whig narrative of continuity could be built, [ 43 ]

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Freeman now began to incorporate the second, Arnoldian, narrative, which represented all the events of early English history as part of a causal sequence leading up to 1066. It is the concern with the Unity of History which, first, shaped Freeman’s idiosyncratic account of the early consolidation of political power. Previous historians of Anglo-​ Saxon England, such as Turner, had argued that, even following the eventual subjection of the natives, the country remained marred by disunity, military upheaval, and vicious power struggles.111 Kemble similarly believed that there was no recognised or systematic power capable of governing the entire kingdom as one nation.112 Freeman, however, followed the implications of his view of a swift settlement, and asserted that the greater portion of England had become Teutonic and united in peace by the sixth century. This view was so unusual that it provoked a decidedly hostile response. Cox, for example, wrote that: The tolerably well-​defined supremacy of Egbert has led [Freeman] to discern in the English sovereignty of the ninth century an imperium alterius orbis rigidly defined and steadily maintained, and he sees throughout the whole history, from the coming of Aelle and Cerdic to the victory of the Norman William, a political development so far beyond which we believe the country to have reached.113

For Freeman, early centralisation was the necessary first link in a chain of cause and effect which culminated in the Conquest: the crown placed on one head was easily transferable to another, foreign head –​ first Danish, and then Norman. Freeman’s argument for centralisation, which is presented as the first development in a sequence leading to 1066, also reinforced the Whig narrative of England’s continued constitutional progress. While previous historians had noted a loss of liberty following the Anglo-​ Saxon Conquest, and had mourned the onset of feudalism, Freeman’s emphasis on continued racial integrity meant he could represent these changes as temporary setbacks. Kemble argued that, immediately following the settlement, the Anglo-​Saxons had organised society on a military basis and permitted war leaders to assume powers that were inconsistent with popular freedom.114 Where Kemble had seen the erosion of liberty as the consequence of continued warfare between the kings, Freeman posited an opposite explanation, asserting that it was the growth in the power of one central king which lessened the independence of the individual and regional. Where every man once had a right to attend the assemblies of his local mark, centralisation removed authority first from the mark to the shire, and then from the shire to the kingdom.115 While every freeman retained the right of appearing in the assembly of the kingdom in theory, distance meant [ 44 ]

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that this right gradually became ‘unreal or delusive’.116 Nevertheless, Freeman viewed the loss of local liberty as a necessary sacrifice because, from the perspective of England’s constitutional destiny, it led to the establishment of the principle of representation and to the formation of the Witan from which the modern Parliament was to develop. ‘Our free marks and shires’, Freeman concluded, ‘have gradually given way, but they have given way before the development of a real national life, before the establishment of a really national sovereignty’.117 If Freeman’s account of the Anglo-​Saxon settlement of England as an event which furthered national unity was unusual, his treatment of the Danish Conquest of England, which constituted the second link in the chain of cause and effect leading up to 1066, was quite unique. As one reviewer remarked of the first volume: The part most interesting and most novel to the student of English history is that which relates to the Danish invasion of England, and the character of the Danish kings. For the first time the story of Cnut, and of his sons Harold and Harthacnut, is told in such a manner as to bring out its historical relations and importance, and to give to the actors in it the habit and reality of life.118

Previous histories of early England, such as those of Turner and Kemble, had ended at the point of Danish invasion, while Palgrave had treated the Conquest briefly, noting only its military progress. For Freeman, following his monotonous sequence, the Danish Conquest, facilitated by Anglo-​Saxon centralisation, was an important link in his chain. Freeman made his point explicit, stating that the Danish Conquest was, ‘so to speak, the precedent for the Norman Conquest by William … The result of Swegen’s invasion showed that the crown of England, of England so lately united into a single kingdom, could be transferred by the event of war from the brow of a native sovereign to that of a foreign invader’.119 Already, by this early point in the Norman Conquest, some reviewers felt that Freeman was overstating, or overstretching, his narrative. The argument that Swegen’s Conquest led to the Conquest of Cnut and William was attacked by Cox who wrote that: surely we may, with quite as much truth, say that the conquests of Aelle and Cerdic made the conquest of Swend possible, and that the conquests of Aelle and Cerdic were in their turn rendered possible by the weakening of the Roman empire; and having said thus much we must go on to link the weakness of the empire with its overgrowth, and its overgrowth with the defeats of the Carthaginians and the Greeks, until the process loses all meaning unless we propose to write another essay on the education of the world.120

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If the Danish Conquest was made to fit into Freeman’s order of causality, it was also made to fit with the idea of continued racial integrity and the abiding Teutonic tendency towards popular, national, democracy. It was crucial for Freeman that the Danes, as the later Normans, were of the same stock as the Anglo-​Saxons of England: ‘first came the Danes themselves; then came the Normans, the descendants of Danish or other Scandinavian settlers in Gaul. In mere blood therefore the Normans were allied in different degrees to all the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain … conquerors and conquered were in truth kinsmen’.121 Freeman made much of the argument that Cnut quickly changed ‘into a prince, English in all but actual birth’.122 Having established that the Danes and the English were kin, Freeman advanced the novel argument that the reign of the Danish kings promoted national unity. As W. Hunt wrote: ‘the other and still more important result of the Danish Conquest, marked by Mr. Freeman, was the change in the position of the great earls … The common idea is that … the kingdom was virtually without any head, and was rapidly tending towards disunion’.123 Freeman instead argued that the authority of Cnut enabled him to further promote the consolidation of power, as the king divided the country between several chosen earls who were his direct representatives. The Danish Conquest of England, facilitated by Anglo-​ Saxon centralisation, led directly to the third event which, in Freeman’s analysis, prepared the way for the Norman Conquest. Englishmen were disgusted with the rule of Cnut’s sons, Harold and Harthacnut, and fell back on one of their own countrymen as their King. ‘But’, wrote Freeman, ‘the English King thus chosen proved to be, for all practical purposes, a Frenchman, and his French tendencies directly paved the way for the coming of William’.124 Palgrave, before Freeman, argued that the reign of Edward the Confessor marked the beginning of the Norman Conquest, noting that during his period of residence in Normandy Edward adopted the language and customs of that country and subsequently introduced such usages into England.125 Freeman similarly saw Edward’s coronation as initiating the Norman Conquest, writing ‘it is now that the Conquest actually begins … The foreign favourites of Eadward were in truth the advanced guard of William’.126 For Freeman, Edward’s rule, and the condition of England under that rule, was the immediate factor which suggested the idea of a conquest to William. If William entertained such an idea already, however, Freeman identified William’s visit to England as the event which convinced the Duke that his plan could succeed.127 The reign of King Edward was the direct consequence of the Danish Conquest which had been expedited by Anglo-​Saxon centralisation, [ 46 ]

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and it was the third important development in the lead up to William’s invasion. The reign of Edward was also integrated, once again, into Freeman’s Whig account of England’s continued development towards unity. It was during Edward’s reign that the House of Godwin rose to political importance, and it is through the actions of the Godwin family that Freeman maintained his narrative of England’s evolving national identity and Teutonic democracy, despite the King’s foreign sympathies. The House of Godwin becomes the symbol, and the means for advancement, of national identity as, when King Edward was failing in his role as head of the English, Earl Godwin led the patriotic reaction against the French infusion. When Edward was forced by popular opposition to relinquish his Norman sympathies, it was the same House of Godwin which grew to ‘the greatest height of power and dignity which a subject house could reach’ and helped unite England:  ‘four brothers … divided by far the greater part of England among them. The whole kingdom, save a few shires in the centre, was in their hands’.128 Upon the death of Edward the eldest son of Earl Godwin, Harold, would rise to a position of even greater importance as the consecrated King of England. While received scholarship held that Harold had, in the words of Palgrave, ‘no inherent right whatever to the inheritance of Edward’, Freeman cast Harold in a different light, as the ‘last of our native kings, the hero and martyr of our native freedom’.129 If Harold’s succession was the result of the national patriotism and democratic sentiment which had been growing among the people since the fifth century, Freeman nevertheless represented this event as the fourth and final link in the chain of cause and effect leading up to the Norman invasion. Since the Conquest itself, historians had understood that it was the reign of Harold which led to the reign of William. Palgrave was among those who argued that Edward promised the crown to his distant cousin William and that Harold had sworn to support the Norman claim before seizing the crown for himself, thereby breaking the dignity of the royal line and making the Conquest possible. Freeman wholeheartedly rejected this interpretation, and argued that Harold had only accepted the crown reluctantly because he feared that the only other native pretender  –​Edgar  –​was too young and weak to stand against the ‘mighty and wily Duke beyond the sea’.130 ‘The call of patriotism’, according to Freeman, ‘distinctly bade Harold not to shrink at the last moment from the post to which he had so long looked forward and which had at last become his own’.131 Harold, who recognised that his succession to the throne would not prevent but, in fact, guarantee a war with William, thus appears as the self-​sacrificing national hero. Reaching the climax of his narrative, Freeman depicted William’s invasion as an unmitigated foreign conquest and mocked the attempts [ 47 ]

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The West

of the chroniclers to establish the legality of the usurpation. Freeman observed that ‘the orthodox way of speaking under William was to look on the fight of Senlac as a sort of unhappy accident. The king had come to claim his crown, and he was so unlucky to be forced to overcome certain rebels and traitors before he could take possession of it’.132 For Freeman, the Conquest must be regretted as an event which threatened to wipe out English national identity and political institutions. It is from the death of Harold that Freeman marked ‘the overthrow, what we know to have been only the imperfect and temporary overthrow, of our ancient and free Teutonic England’.133 And so, the Conquest, too, takes its part in the story of England’s continuous racial and political existence, and the gradual progress towards national unity. Freeman was keen to stress that the Normans, like the Danes before them, were of the same race as the Anglo-​Saxons and this hastened the process by which the conquerors and conquered were ‘blended together’.134 For Freeman it was equally critical that the Conquest did not bring about any revolution in the laws, institutions, and administration of the country, and he declared that William, ‘[a]‌ lmost alone among conquerors … conquered neither to destroy nor to found, but to continue’.135 Most importantly, William’s arrival preserved national unity. Freeman perceived that before the Conquest two contradictory tendencies were at work in England as, while some steps were being taken towards centralisation in the hands of the King, England was also moving towards feudalism. Freeman argued that if these trends had been left to their own development, English history might have resembled that of France, as the kingdom would have fragmented into a number of independent principalities and the people, unable to resist the power of a despotic king, may only have been reunited by a monarch who held all in common subjugation.136 England was saved from this fate by William who took care that the king should never be sunk to the status of a lord and ensured that his own vassals should also be his subjects. Again, the Norman Conquest settled, with finality, the question of the division between North and South. William brought all the peoples together into a political entity under his sway so that ‘[f]rom his day no man doubted that England was a realm which none could tear asunder’.137

The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (1872) Of course, for one who believed in the Unity of History, the Norman Conquest itself must be viewed as only one significant episode in a greater historical process. In a further volume on The Growth of [ 48 ]

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79)

the English Constitution (1872) Freeman extended his narrative to demonstrate that, despite William’s Conquest in 1066, there were direct lines of continuity connecting the Anglo-​Saxons of the fifth century to the English people of the nineteenth century. In this work he expressed frustration that ‘the continuity of our national life is to many so hard a lesson to master’ and complained that ‘the continuity of our political life, and the way in which we have so often fallen back on the very earliest principles of our race, is a lesson which many find specially hard’.138 Combining an account of steady progress with an emphasis on cyclical recapitulation, Freeman’s aim here was to demonstrate, beyond dispute, that ‘the earliest institutions of England and of other Teutonic lands are not mere matters of curious speculation, but matters closely connected with our present political being’.139 In the Growth of the English Constitution Freeman picked up the thread of his causal sequence to argue that, following the Norman Conquest, the English people once again found a native king who could draw them all closer together, in the coronation of Henry II (1154–​89).140 The misgovernment of the Angevins, in turn, led to the reforms of Simon de Montfort which established the right of popular representation in the form of the House of Commons in 1265. By the end of the thirteenth century, then, the English constitution stood fully developed. ‘[T]‌he main elements of the English constitution’, Freeman contended, remain now as they were then. From that time English constitutional history is not merely an inquiry, however interesting and instructive, into something which has passed away. It is an inquiry into something which still lives; it is an inquiry into laws which … are in full force at this day. Up to the reign of Edward the First English history is strictly the domain of antiquaries. From the reign of Edward the First it becomes the domain of lawyers.141

In describing the events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, Freeman mourned the unhappy interlude of ‘the days of Tudor and Stewart despotism’.142 This period of ‘special trial’ was only overcome when ‘a few daring spirits in the Commons’ House’ showed James II (1685–​88) that ‘the power of his people was a greater power than his’.143 Freeman is careful to emphasise that ‘in the seventeenth century, just as in the thirteenth century, men did not ask for any rights and powers which were admitted to be new; they asked only for the better security of those rights and powers which had been handed on from days of old’.144 The people regained their freedom during the Glorious Revolution, by returning to the most ancient constitutional forms. [ 49 ]

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The West

Freeman’s belief in the Unity of History therefore issued in an interpretation of the past which was ultimately cyclical rather than progressive. ‘Wittingly or unwittingly’, Freeman asserted, ‘much of our best modern legislation has, as I  have already said, been a case of advancing by the process of going back … we have, as a matter of fact, gone back from the cumbrous and oppressive devices of feudal and royalist lawyers to the sounder, freer, and simpler principles of the days of our earliest freedom’.145 In Freeman’s analysis, England’s unwritten constitution, which balances power between the sovereign and the House of Commons, attained ‘the same objects which were sought to be attained by the elective kingship of our fore-​fathers’.146 It is for this reason that Freeman concluded in an Arnoldian vein: Without indulging in any Utopian dreams, without picturing to ourselves the England of a thousand years back as an earthly paradise, the voice of sober history does assuredly teach us that those distant times have really much that is in common with our own, much in which we are really nearer to them than to times which, in a mere reckoning of years, are far less distant from us. Thus it is that the cycle has come round, that the days of foreign rule have been wiped out, and that England is England once again.147

As we will see in the next chapter, when Freeman situated the Teutonic English within the wider family of nations he referred to as Aryan, these patterns of repetition and return emerge on a larger scale. In considering Freeman’s Comparative Politics (1873) it becomes clear that, for him, all Western history is made up of cycles, from the civilisation of ancient Greece, through the achievements of Rome, to the developments of modern European culture.

Notes Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 8. 1 2 Chibnall, Debate on the Norman Conquest, p. 3. 3 E.M.C. van Houts (ed.), The ‘Gesta Normannorum Ducum’ of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, 2 vols. Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–​95) and William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, The Deeds of William, edited by R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). While the date of these texts remains uncertain, I  follow those given in Antonia Gransden’s Historical Writing in England:  c.500-​c.1307 (London:  Routledge, 1996) and Frank Stenton’s The Bayeux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Study (London: Phaidon Press, 1957). 4 Henry Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, edited by D. Greenway, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1996). See also Chibnall, Debate on the Norman Conquest, p. 15. 5 Chibnall, Debate on the Norman Conquest, pp. 15–​16. 6 For this dating see R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury [1987] (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), p.  8. The History of the Kings of England, and of His Own Times by William of Malmesbury, transl. John Sharpe (London: Seeleys, 1854), pp. 233–​5.

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79) 7 Matthew Paris:  The History of St Edward the King, transl. Thelma S.  Fenster and Jocelyn Wogan-​ Browne (Tempe:  Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008). 8 Rebecca Reader, ‘Matthew Paris and the Norman Conquest’, in John Blair and Brian Golding (eds), The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 118–​47, pp. 140–​1. 9 For a treatment of this illustration see Judith Collard, ‘The Enthroned King in La estoire de seint Aedward le rei’, in Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks (eds), Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 121–​39. 10 Matthew Paris:  The History of Saint Edward the King, p.  106, n.  lxviii. See also Dresvina and Sparks, Authority and Gender, p. 135. 11 Thomas of Castleford, Chronicle, in An Old and Middle English Anthology, edited by Rolf Kaiser, third edition (Berlin:  Berlin-​ Wilmersdorf, 1958), pp.  364–​ 5, lines 31925–​6, 31935–​6. 12 Robert Mannyng, The Chronicle (completed before 1338), quoted in Chibnall, Debate on the Norman Conquest, p. 22. 13 Chibnall, Debate on the Norman Conquest, p. 29. 14 The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, edited by Josiah Pratt, fourth edition, 8 vols (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1877), vol. 4, p. 93. 15 Ibid., p. iv and p. 94. 16 Thomas Cramner can be counted as the first Protestant Archbishop. Matthew Parker, De antiquitate Britannica ecclesiae (London: J. Day, 1752/​53). The work was printed in 1752 and brought out in 1753, see John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), vol. 2, p. 181. 17 Christopher Hill, ‘The Norman Yoke’, in Puritanism and Revolution [1958] (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997) and The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution [1972] (London: Penguin Books, 1991). 18 Eric Evans, ‘Englishness and Britishness:  National Identities c.1790-​ c.1870’, in Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer (eds), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 229. 19 Gerard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652), available at www. marxists.org/​reference/​archive/​winstanley/​1652/​law-​freedom/​ch01.html. 20 See Janelle Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St Edward’s ‘Laws’ in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2001). 21 Clare A. Simmons, Reversing the Conquest:  History and Myth in Nineteenth-​ Century British Literature (London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 18. 22 Ibid., p. 18. 23 Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History, p. xvi. 24 Robert Brady, An Introduction to the Old English History (London: Samuel Lowndes, 1684) and A Complete History of England (London: Samuel Lowndes, 1685). 25 On the impact of Brady’s work see J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1680–​1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Robert Brady, 1627–​1700:  A Cambridge Historian of the Restoration’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 10, 2 (1951) –​published online, 2011, pp. 186–​204. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1017/​S1474691300002778. 26 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Awnsham Churchill, 1690). 27 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (London:  Penguin Books, 2004), p.  281. See J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution’, in Politics, Language and Time:  Essays on Political Thought and History (London: University of Chicago Press, 1972). 28 Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History [1931], available at www. eliohs.unifi.it/​testi/​900/​butterfield/​index.html. 29 Ibid. 30 James Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England in 1688 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1834) and T.B. Macaulay, The History of

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The West England from the Accession of James II, 5 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848–​61). 31 Macaulay, History of England, vol. 1, pp. 15–​16. 32 Ibid., p. 1. 33 Burrow, Liberal Descent, pp. 100–​1. 34 Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History, p. xxi. 35 Charles McClelland, The German Historians and England: A Study of Nineteenth Century Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 42–43. 36 Reginald Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 37, 3 (July–​September, 1976), pp. 387–​410, pp. 393–​4. www.jstor.org/​stable/​2708805. 37 Sharon Turner, The History of the Anglo-​Saxons, 4 vols [1799–​1805] second edition (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1807). 38 Ibid., p. 393. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1820). The book appeared in late December 1819, but all first editions carry the date 1820. 39 See H. Momma, From Philology to English Studies:  Language and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism’, p. 393. 40 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-​Worship, and the Heroic in History, six lectures, originally delivered in May 1840 and published in 1841 (London: James Fraser, 1841). 41 See Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism’, pp. 400–​1. 42 John Mitchell Kemble, The Saxons in England:  A History of the English Commonwealth Till the Period of the Norman Conquest, 2 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849), vol. 1, p.  5. See Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism’, p. 403. 43 See Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism’, pp. 407–​8. 44 The Anglo-​Saxon (London, 1849–​50), 1 (April, 1849), p.  163 quoted in Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-​Saxonism’, pp. 407–​8. 45 Matthew Arnold, letter to Miss Arnold dated 13 September 1860. Included in George W.E. Russell (ed.), Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848–​1888 [1895] (London: Macmillan and Co., 1994), vol. 1, p. 157. 46 G.P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1913), pp. 340–​58. 47 See J.R. Davis, The Victorians and Germany (Bern:  Peter Lang, 2007). See also Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (eds), British and German Historiography, 1750–​ 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 48 Stuchtey and Wende, British and German Historiography, p. 12. 49 James Campbell, ‘Stubbs, Maitland, and Constitutional History’, in Stuchtey and Wende, British and German Historiography, pp. 99–​123, p. 115. 50 J. Campbell, ‘Stubbs, William (1925–​1901), Historian and Bishop of Oxford’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), online edition October 2005, available at www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​363363, accessed 21 April 2016. William Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1870), and The Constitutional History of England, in its Origin and Development, 3 vols [1874–​78] third edition (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1880). 51 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. 1, p. 2. 52 Ibid., p. 10. Stuchtey and Wende, British and German Historiography, p. 15. 53 Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History, p. xxv. On J.R. Green see Anthony Brundage, The Peoples’ Historian:  John Richard Green and the Writing of History in Victorian England (London: Greenwood Press, 1999) and Brundage, ‘Green, John Richard (1837–​1883)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), online edition October 2005, available at www.oxforddnb. com/​view/​article/​1139, accessed 21 April 2009. 54 John Richard Green to W. Boyd Dawkins, 16 October 1862 in Leslie Stephen (ed.), Letters of John Richard Green (London: Macmillan and Co., 1901), p. 107.

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79) 55 Brundage, ‘Green, John Richard’. J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People (London: Macmillan and Co., 1874). 56 J.R. Green, History of the English People, 4 vols (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1877–​80). 57 See Doris Goldstein, ‘The Origins and Early Years of the English Historical Review’, The English Historical Review, 101, 398 (January, 1986), pp. 6–​19. www.jstor.org/​ stable/​571319. 58 Green, Short History. Green to A. Macmillan, quoted in Brundage, People’s Historian, p. 76, and Green to Freeman, 16 September 1873, in Stephen, Letters of Green, p. 359. 59 Walton, ‘Charlotte M.  Yonge and the “Historic Harem” of Edward Augustus Freeman’, pp. 227–​31. 60 E.A. Freeman, The Methods of Historical Study (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886), p. 86 and pp. 90–​1. On Freeman’s methods more generally see Herman Paul, ‘Habits of Thought and Judgement: E. A. Freeman on Historical Methods’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 273–​93. 61 Freeman to Green, 21 September 1873, JRUL EAF1/​8/​16a, and Freeman to Bryce, 24 August 1873, MSS. Bryce, 6/​50. Bodleian Library, Oxford. 62 Jann, ‘From Amateur to Professional’, p. 127. 63 Freeman to Bryce, 27 March 1881, MSS. Bryce, 7/​6, Bodleian. 64 Freeman to Bryce, 28 February 1866, MSS. Bryce, 5/​89, Bodleian. 65 Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 26 and p. 28. 66 E.A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1 [1867] third edition (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1877), p. xv. 67 Freeman to Bryce, 19 March 1865, MSS. Bryce, 5/​29, Bodleian. 68 See Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 28 and Aird, ‘Seeing Things With Our Own Eyes’. 69 Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 28. 70 Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, p. 314. 71 Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 28. 72 E.A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3 (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1869), pp.  444–​5. 73 Ibid., pp. 165–​6. 74 Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 29. 75 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. xvii and Freeman to Green, 11 February 1872, JRULM, EAF1/​8/​9a. 76 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, p. 485. 77 Ibid., p. 496. 78 Ibid., p. 500. 79 Freeman to Bryce, 10 April 1881, MSS. Bryce, 7/​12, Bodleian. 80 Green to Freeman (no date) in Stephen, Letters of Green, pp. 252–​3. 81 Freeman to Bryce, 6 March, MSS. Bryce, 5/​236, Bodleian. 82 Froude was described as ‘constitutionally inaccurate’ in H.  A. L.  Fisher, ‘Modern Historians and Their Methods’, Fortnightly Review, 56 (1894), p.  804. Froude was described as ‘the most unveracious’ by Goldwin Smith in a letter to James Bryce, dated June 1874. Both quoted in Cosgrove, ‘A Usable Past’, pp. 31–​2. 83 Burrow, Liberal Descent, p. 237. 84 J.A. Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 12 vols (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1856–​70). 85 E.A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 2 [1868] second edition (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1870), p. 4. 86 Frank Barlow, ‘Edward Augustus Freeman, Historian’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1093/​ref:odnb/​10146. 87 See Francis Palgrave, History of the Anglo-​Saxons (London: John Murray, 1831). Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 33.

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The West 88 Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans; its Causes, and its Consequences, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, & on the Continent [1825], transl. William Hazlett, 2 vols (London: David Bogue, 1847). 89 Freeman to Green, 11 February 1873, EAF/​1/​7, JRUL. 90 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, p. 576. 91 Bratchel, Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest, p. 35. 92 Burrow, Liberal Descent, p. 126. 93 Ibid., p. 108. 94 Cosgrove, ‘A Usable Past’, p. 35. 95 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 305. 96 E.A. Freeman, ‘The Continuity of English History’, in Historical Essays, 4 vols [1871] third edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875), first series, pp. 40–​53, p. 50. Freeman first published this essay in The Edinburgh Review (July, 1860). 97 E.A. Freeman, ‘Historical Cycles’. The article first appeared in the Saturday Review on 20 February 1869 but references here refer to the later re-​publication of the essay in Freeman’s Historical Essays. E.A. Freeman, Historical Essays, fourth series (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892), pp. 249–​58, p. 252. 98 Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, p. vii. 99 Ibid., p. 182. 100 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 84. 101 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. 1, p.  137 and Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 75. 102 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 75. 103 Ibid., pp. 80–​1. 104 Turner, History of the Anglo-​Saxons, vol. 2, p. 269. 105 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. 1, pp. 9–​10 and p. 21. 106 Palgrave, History of the Anglo-​Saxons, p. 77. 107 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 10. 108 Ibid., p. 20. 109 Ibid., p. 20. 110 Ibid., p. 21. 111 Turner, History of the Anglo-​Saxons, vol. 2, p. 255. 112 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. 2, p. 8. 113 [G. Cox], ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results. By Edward A. Freeman, Vols I and II’, Edinburgh Review, 130, 265 (July, 1869), pp. 186–​216, p. 188. 114 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. 2, p. 23. 115 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 98. 116 Ibid., p. 103. 117 Ibid., p. 96. 118 [Anon.], ‘Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest’, p. 644. 119 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, pp. 362–​3. 120 [G. Cox], ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England’, p. 196. 121 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 1, p. 149. 122 Ibid., p. 432. 123 W. Hunt, ‘Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest’, Contemporary Review, 9 (September/​December, 1868), pp. 405–​16, p. 409. 124 Ibid., p. 403. 125 Palgrave, History of the Anglo-​Saxons, pp. 329–​57. 126 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 2, p. 30. 127 Ibid., pp. 297–​9. 128 Ibid., p. 419. 129 Palgrave, History of the Anglo-​Saxons, p.  362 and Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 2, p. 37. 130 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, p. 24. 131 Ibid., p. 26.

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THE NORMAN CONQUEST (1867–79) 132 E.A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 4 [1871] second edition (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1876), p. 8. 133 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 504. 134 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 17. 135 E.A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 5 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1876), p. 55. 136 Ibid., p. 64. 137 Ibid., p. 65. 138 Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, pp. vii–​viii. 139 Ibid., p. vii. 140 Ibid., pp. 148–​50. 141 Ibid., pp. 90–​1. 142 Ibid., p. 104. 143 Ibid., p. 104. 144 Ibid., p. 104. 145 Ibid., p. 105. 146 Ibid., p. 150. 147 Ibid., p. 151.

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C HAP T E R TWO

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The Aryan race and Comparative Politics (1873)

In moving from an analysis of Freeman’s views on the Teutonic origins of English freedom to the wider context of his Aryanism, we must proceed with caution. Not only are Victorian attitudes towards race notoriously difficult to interpret, but the word ‘Aryan’ has connotations in the twenty-​first century which it did not have in the nineteenth. Analysing the only work to contain a systematic articulation of Freeman’s racial theory, the relatively obscure Comparative Politics (1873), I argue that his views were not idiosyncratic or extreme when judged by the standards of his own day. Freeman intended this book as a contribution to the comparative sciences, pioneered by Müller and Maine and anticipated by Thomas Arnold. In common with these writers, Freeman used the term ‘race’ to refer to cultural rather than biological characteristics. Where Müller and Maine identified similarities in the languages and legal institutions of the Europeans, Freeman followed Arnold in studying political institutions and conceptualised the Aryan race as a family of democratic nations. As we will see, Freeman’s focus on cultural identity meant he did not assign fixed characteristics to the Aryans and his apparent confidence in the superiority of the West was not unequivocal. Rather, an analysis of Comparative Politics exemplifies Peter Bowler’s point that racial ideas did not always lead to an ethnocentric belief in progress, and progressionist and cyclical views of history continued to exist in tension throughout the nineteenth century.1 It will be demonstrated that schemes of cyclical decline subsisting within overall accounts of Western advancement can be identified in the writings of Müller and Maine, but that Freeman’s Comparative Politics was based on an exposition of the ‘Rise and Fall’ typology of Arnold.2 Writing Comparative Politics in parallel with his volumes on the Norman Conquest, Freeman attempted to situate his narrative of Teutonic and English constitutional development within a broader account of Aryan [ 56 ]

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and European constitutional development. In Comparative Politics Freeman represented the history of ancient Greece and Rome, and the history of modern Europe, as two cycles –​connected by the mediation of the Germanic tribes –​in a single movement which culminated in the achievement of Aryan liberty. This achievement was the result, in Freeman’s analysis, of the successful adaptation of the ancient city-​ state model of democracy to the modern nation-​state, via the invention of representative government. For Freeman, as for Arnold, however, the dangers of recapitulation were always present, and the future progress of the Aryan race was by no means assured.

Victorian theories of race and the ‘Aryan’ concept Here I  briefly survey the main trends in nineteenth-​ century racial thinking, before examining the specific intellectual environment in which Freeman developed his views on Aryanism. Attitudes towards race changed considerably over the course of the nineteenth century, from a belief in the common kinship and equality of all human beings to the articulation of ideas of biological differentiation and eugenicist theories. In the middle decades of the century, when Freeman was working on Comparative Politics, the use of the term ‘race’ was particularly confused. As the President of the London Anthropological Society James Hunt complained in 1863 ‘hardly two persons use such an important word as “race” in the same sense’.3 It will be necessary, then, to carefully place Freeman within his own distinct milieu of learned academics who explored the Aryan concept in the context of comparative linguistics, jurisprudence, and politics. Importantly, the boundaries of discipline meant that these practitioners of the comparative method resisted both the conjectural speculations of Social Darwinism and the new discipline of Anthropology which was ‘struggling for legitimacy’ at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge at this time.4 Freeman and his contemporaries, then, can be positioned in the middle of a process by which racial attitudes might be said to have been ‘hardening’.5 Up until the middle decades of the nineteenth century, most thinkers continued to subscribe to the Biblical account which stated that all human beings had descended in common from a pair of original ancestors, Adam and Eve. Following Genesis 1:  5–​11 it was held that Noah’s three sons  –​Ham, Shem, and Japhet  –​were scattered across the earth by the Flood and became the progenitors of the various nations. While all the peoples of the world remained tied by bonds of kinship to the same family-​group, it was understood that they had been separated from one another by language when God [ 57 ]

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destroyed the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:  1–​9). This was the theory of ‘monogenesis’ which explained human differentiation in climactic and linguistic rather than genetic terms. It was a view to which leading scientists, linguists, and ethnologists adhered, including Sir Isaac Newton (1642–​1726/​27), Jacob Bryant (1715–​1804), and James Cowles Prichard (1786–​1848). From around 1860, however, the idea of common origins was increasingly disputed. As Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall observe, there was a new emphasis on the ‘fundamental heterogeneity of mankind, the natural differences between men, fixed by immutable biological laws’.6 Explanations of this shift have focused on various developments, most importantly the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and the almost simultaneous discovery of human remains alongside those of long extinct animals during the excavations at Brixham Cave (1858–​59). These events led to the questioning of the Biblical time-​frame which dated Creation to 4004 BC and produced fundamental changes in the way that the history of living forms was understood. Once it was accepted that evolution had taken place over the course of many hundreds of thousands of years, the languages spoken by human beings appeared as relatively modern phenomena of only superficial interest to the natural historian. As Thomas Trautmann explains, ‘[t]‌he effect of the suddenly expanding human timeframe was to disengage the study of race in the biological sense from the study of language … biology was now in charge of ethnological questions, philology supplying only supplementary findings over only the most recent period of human history’.7 In addition to the discovery of the antiquity of humanity, racial attitudes were shaped by a series of imperial crises, which shook the faith in the universal perfectibility of all peoples. These included the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the rebellion of Jamaican subjects at the Morant Bay colony in 1865, and the death of General Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi in Khartoum in 1885.8 At the close of the century, the unexpected difficulty faced by the British army during the Anglo-​ Zulu War (1879) and the First and Second Boer Wars (1880–​81 and 1899–​1902), led to fears about the potentially degenerate bodies of the military recruits and lent new urgency to the ‘condition of the working class’ question in England. As Ivan Hannaford writes, there seems to have been a growing consensus around the conclusion that, ‘[i]‌ f evolution and natural selection were the principles of natural existence and therefore applicable to social life, it must be true that the poor and the Negro were in their natural condition because of some deficiency in their physical and intellectual capacity’.9 Exemplifying this trend towards physiological classifications and eugenicist thinking [ 58 ]

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were works such as Robert Knox’s The Races of Men (1850 and 1862), Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius (1869), and Karl Pearson’s National Life from the Standpoint of Science (1901).10 While there is convincing evidence to suggest that biological-​essentialist modes of thought were becoming widespread in the later nineteenth century, it is important to note, with Mandler and Douglas A. Lorimer, that many Victorians resisted these stronger theories of race and that British views remained more liberal than those in France and Germany.11 This point is especially crucial when turning to consider the emergence of the ‘Aryan’ concept in England during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.12 In approaching this topic, a special effort has to be made to divest the term of the meanings it has now, and to recapture the ways in which Victorians first understood and used the word Aryan. As Trautmann writes: For us, as children of the twentieth century, the name Aryan has different, far more sinister connotations. Associated forever with the Nazi atrocities of the recent past, it continues in the present through racial hate groups who use it to evoke the full force of the racist idea: mental differences among races that are original and unchangeable; the superiority of whites; the preservation of racial purity of whites by separation from Jews, blacks, Asians, and others. Through these associations the name Aryan joins the memory of deeds that have defined for us the furthest extreme of human evil with one of the great and enduring intellectual accomplishments of modern times, the discovery of Sanskrit’s relation to the languages of Europe and through it the creation of historical linguistics … The long shadow of the death camps casts itself backward, darkening the aspect of nineteenth-​century linguistic and ethnological thought.13

As the passage from Trautmann suggests, the Aryan concept originated from linguistic research, specifically Sir William Jones’ identification of similarities between Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Persian.14 Presenting his findings to the Asiatic Society in 1786, Jones argued that each of these related languages had co-​descended from an original language –​now lost –​which must have been spoken in India.15 This group of languages was referred to as ‘Indo-​European’ and the categorisation connected white Europeans together with Indians in a way that suggested, in Trautmann’s words, a relationship of ‘love’ and ‘brotherhood’.16 Both Trautmann and Stefan Arvidsson have shown that it was only towards the end of the nineteenth century, once linguistic study was sidelined by physiological and biological research, that the term Aryan came to be associated with white racial supremacy.17 Between Jones’ discovery of the Indo-​European languages and the late Victorian racialisation of the Aryan concept, there was a phase of thought which provides the right context for considering Freeman’s [ 59 ]

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own views. This phase was at its height in Britain between 1860 and 1880 when, as James Turner writes, ‘[p]‌hilology reigned as king of the sciences, the pride of the first great modern universities’.18 At this time, the same developments which were producing the phenomenon of ‘Teutomania’  –​discussed in the previous c­hapter  –​were also leading some intellectuals to a broader consideration of the historical relationship between various groups of languages and peoples. ‘The word philology in the nineteenth century’, Turner explains: covered three distinct modes of research: (1) textual philology (including classical and biblical studies, ‘oriental’ literatures such as those in Sanskrit and Arabic, and medieval and modern European writings); (2) theories of the origin and nature of language; and (3) comparative study of the structures and historical evolution of languages and of language families … These three wide zones of philological scholarship, diverse in subject, shared likeness in method. All three deployed a mode of research that set them apart from the other great nineteenth-​century model of knowledge, Newtonian natural science. All philologists believed history to be the key to unlocking the different mysteries they sought to solve.19

As Turner suggests, the disciplines of philology and history were connected together, in the mid-​Victorian period, by the use of the comparative method. Employing this method, scholars analysed fragmentary surviving customs to reconstruct the distant past and drew parallels between peoples living in a primitive state in the nineteenth century and peoples living in a primitive state in earlier centuries. To contemporaries, this method seemed to open the possibility of penetrating the obscure process by which civilisation had developed and suggested, in the words of Collini, Winch, and Burrow, that the ‘map of learning [was] about to be re-​drawn in an exhilaratingly comprehensive and coherent way’.20 Playing a central role in the initiation of this ‘euphoria’ surrounding the potential of the comparative method was Freeman’s friend, the German émigré scholar Max Müller.21 As Professor of Modern European Languages at Oxford from 1850 and the first Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford from 1868 to 1900, Müller promoted scholarly interest in the languages and ‘mythoculture’ of the Indo-​ European peoples.22 He was also (probably) the first to use the term Aryan in English, deriving the word from the supposed self-​designation of the Indo-​Europeans –​ ārya. Next to Müller, as Collini, Winch, and Burrow write, ‘[t]‌ he acknowledged mentor of the generation dominated by the promise of the comparative method … was Sir Henry Maine. The extent and profundity of Maine’s influence among the intellectual class would be hard to exaggerate’.23 Building on the findings of Müller, [ 60 ]

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Maine applied the comparative method to the study of jurisprudence and argued that the development of the legal institutions of the Indians and Europeans were connected in a way that suggested a common Aryan origin. Captivated by the idea of an ancestral race, Freeman’s own attempt to apply the comparative method to politics, and to trace the constitutional development of the Aryans over time, was shaped by the investigations of Müller and Maine, but prepared by the philosophy of Arnold.

The range of the comparative method As the pioneer of comparative philology in England, Müller brought with him from Germany a rich tradition of Romanticism, idealism, and historicism. Particularly indebted to Johann Herder’s teaching that language revealed the evolution of human thought over time, Müller had also imbued an enthusiasm for ancient India from the writings of Friedrich Schlegel.24 In his early work, Languages of the Seat of War in the East (1854), Müller combined these insights and attempted to develop the research of Jones and Jacob Grimm into the shared grammatical structures of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.25 Identifying a range of words that were common to these languages –​such as God, father, mother, son, and cow –​Müller wrote that: though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slaves [sic], the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.26

Building on his genealogical classifications, Müller also began to articulate his theory that language was a gift from God, and that philological research could provide insight into the progress of human reason. ‘The history of words’, Müller contended in an idealist vein, ‘is the reflection of the history of the human mind … every Aryan word has a long tale to tell, if we had time to listen to it. How they wandered from one country to another; how they changed in form and meaning, according to the times in which they lived and grew up’.27 Müller went on to popularise these views in his Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered in a two-​part series at the Royal Institution in London in 1861 and 1863. These lectures, published in 1864, proved enormously successful and attracted such interested intellectuals as F.D. Maurice and John Stuart Mill, and important figures including Queen Victoria herself.28 N.J. Girardot is among those who have shown how Müller’s [ 61 ]

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subsequent stream of publications and high-​profile attacks on Darwin’s account of the brute origins of speech made him the first ‘ “celebrity” academician’ of the age –​‘mostly known for being known (and known he was “to the Many” as Vanity Fair in 1875 testified)’.29 Freeman was impressed by the findings of comparative philology and immediately struck up a personal correspondence with Müller, seeking expert technical advice over a number of years from the man he described as ‘ingenious’.30 While somewhat desperate in tone, a letter dated December 1875 indicates the depth of admiration Freeman felt for Müller and the significant role he played in disseminating the findings of philological research in England: My Dear Müller, I was quite taken aback about what I saw in the papers that you were going to leave England altogether. You gave me no such hint when you last wrote … I wish you would leave it alone, and stay here till you have made every Englishman know his Grimm’s Law. There are crowds of them who don’t … But if you must stick to Veda, can’t you do it in England? In a Chip you say that you can do it better in Oxford than anywhere else. Anyhow it will be a sin, if you leave England altogether without ever coming under the shadow of my roof. If you don’t go till April, you will have plenty of time.31

Thrilled at the potential of the comparative method to provide new insights in the disciplines of the humanities, Freeman declared, in the opening of his own Comparative Politics, that: The establishment of the Comparative Method has been the greatest intellectual achievement of our time. It has carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and confusion. It has brought a line of argument which reaches moral certainty into a region which before was given over to random guess-​work. Into matters which are for the most part incapable of strictly external proof it has brought a form of strictly internal proof which is more convincing, more unerring.32

Freeman went on to describe the successes of comparative philology more specifically, writing that, ‘[t]‌he Science of Language has been placed on a firm basis, from which it is impossible to believe that it can ever be dislodged’.33 Freeman felt that the evidences advanced by comparative philology were self-​convincing because they appealed to human intuition. ‘To many’, he wrote, it will come, not as something new, but as the fuller revelation of something towards which they have been feeling their way of their own heads … We see what kinds of words the various Aryan languages have in common … The inference as to the affinity of those languages to one

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another, and as to the condition of those who spoke them at the various stages of the great Aryan migration, is one which it is impossible to withstand.34

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Freeman also accepted Müller’s historicist argument that comparative philology had provided ‘evidences’ about the origin and development of human knowledge, the successive stages through which the various Indo-​ European peoples had passed, and the ideas which had been common to each stage. He demonstrated the point by paraphrasing Müller’s argument with reference to the word ‘mill’: It would be hard to believe, that by sheer chance, without any other connexion of any kind with each other, a large number of isolated nations separately made up their minds to call a mill a mill … With such facts before us, there is no withstanding the inference that all those languages were once one language, that the nations which speak those languages were once one nation, and that those nations did not part asunder till they were so far civilised as to have found out the use of mills, and of all other objects the names of which are common to the whole group of languages.35

For Freeman, comparative philology had revealed ‘the most important steps in the march of human culture that were taken while the Aryan nations were still a single people’ and illuminated the other steps that ‘were taken independently by different branches of the common stock, after they had parted off from one another’.36 It is clear that it was philology rather than physiology that provided the broad theoretical basis for Freeman’s idea of an Aryan race. In fact, it was Müller who directly encouraged Freeman to establish the Aryan concept on philological, not physiological, evidences. In a letter dated 1 January 1870, Müller wrote to Freeman:  ‘Let people classify blood as much as they like only let them use their own bottles for that, and not the bottles that were labelled for the purpose of bottling languages. I  confess that to my mind blood is an irrational and ungraspable quantity, but if people like to dabble in it, let them have their sanguinary amusement.’37 As Müller insisted in his lectures on The Science of Religion delivered in February and May of that same year, the linguistic proofs for a community of Aryan nations remained ‘independent of those physical elements, the blood, the skull, or the hair, on which ethnologists have attempted to found their classification of the human race’.38 Müller reiterated this position once again in his Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), writing that ‘Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language and nothing but language; and if we speak of Aryan race at all, we should know that it means no more than Aryan speech’.39 [ 63 ]

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In his definitive statement on the subject, an essay titled ‘Race and Language’ (1877), Freeman dutifully followed Müller and drew a distinction between the philological and ethnological sciences.40 ‘The science of the ethnologer’, he explained, is strictly a physical science. He has to deal with purely physical phenomena; his business lies with the different varieties of the human body, and specially, to take that branch of his inquiries which most impress the unlearned, with the various conformations of the human skull … The science of the philologer, on the other hand, is strictly historical … Its primary business, like the primary business of any other historical science is to deal with phenomena that do not depend on physical laws, but which do depend on the human will. The science of language is, in this respect, like the science of human institutions or of human beliefs. Its subject-​matter is not, like that of pure ethnology, what man is, but, like that of any other historical science, what man does.41

Freeman cautioned against confusing philological and physiological concepts because, while he accepted that the natural instinct may be to connect language with race, it would never be possible to definitively ‘prove’ the existence of such a relationship. He concluded that the furthest one could go was to ‘say that, though language is not an accurately scientific test of race, yet it is a rough and ready test which does for many purposes. To make something more of an exact definition, one might say that, though language is not a test of race, it is, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, a presumption of race’.42 Similarly, Freeman acknowledged that there was no proof that the Aryan family of nations was based on blood, writing that, ‘we cannot be absolutely certain that there was any real community of blood in the whole story … We may make a thousand ingenious guesses; but we cannot prove any of them’.43 Freeman allowed that the logical conclusion of such a line of thought was that there was ‘no such thing as race at all’, and reminded the reader that ‘the doctrine of race is essentially an artificial doctrine, a learned doctrine’.44 In an essay on ‘The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity’ (1892), Freeman once again prioritised linguistic categorisations and avoided a discussion of blood. He described his ideal nation as one ‘where a continuous territory is inhabited by a people united under one government, and all of them speaking the same language’, and underlined the fact that he was ‘satisfied with unity of language, and I say nothing about unity of race’.45 Although Freeman was deeply influenced by the pioneering work of Müller, he did not connect his own area of study in Comparative Politics primarily with investigations into language, but saw his project [ 64 ]

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as advancing another branch of enquiry in which ‘the Comparative Method is directly applied to the growth of culture itself’.46 In this context Freeman looked, above all, to Maine, and read, for the first time, his seminal Ancient Law (1861) and Village Communities in the East and West (1871).47 Maine had taken the idea that Sanskrit formed the root of all European languages and argued, by analogy, that there existed a common, primitive, form of Aryan social organisation that originated in India. Maine explicitly linked his own area of study with that of the philologists explaining, at the outset of Village Communities, that: The enquiry upon which we are engaged can only be said to belong to Comparative Jurisprudence, if the word ‘comparative’ be used as it is used in such expressions as ‘Comparative Philology’ … we shall examine a number of parallel phenomena with the view of establishing, if possible, that some of them are related to one another in order of historical succession … We take a number of contemporary facts, ideas, and customs, and we infer the past form of those facts, ideas, and customs, not only from historical records of that past form, but from examples of it which have not yet died out in the world, and are still to be found in it.48

Stimulated by the findings of comparative philology, Maine’s comparative jurisprudence approached India as a repository of a primitive form of Aryan law out of which the modern civilised form of Aryan law found in contemporary Europe had developed. The type of law which Maine identified as prevalent in India favoured communal over individual rights, and he argued that it was reflective of a primitive society in which the relationship between individuals was based on status. The type of law which Maine identified as prevalent in Europe favoured individual over communal rights, and he argued that it was reflective of a civilised society in which the relationship between individuals was based on contract. Consequently, in Ancient Law Maine famously observed that the external legal institutions of the Aryan race suggested that the overall shape of societal transformation had been a progression ‘from status to contract.’49 Insisting that all Indo-​European institutions were ‘formed on some common model and pattern’ and followed a similar course of development, Maine, like Müller, refused to speculate on the cause of this affinity due to the ‘depth of ignorance’ which surrounded the question of race.50 In demonstrating that India contained not only an Aryan language but ‘a whole world of Aryan institutions, Aryan customs, Aryan laws, Aryan ideas, Aryan beliefs, in a far earlier stage of growth and development than any which survive beyond its borders’, Maine’s [ 65 ]

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studies served to reinforce Freeman’s belief in the existence of an original family of nations based on culture.51 Maine had proceeded, like Müller, ‘by comparing together the analogous customs of various, often remote, ages and countries’ and had consequently been ‘led up to the root; he is led up to the original idea of which particular customs, ceremonies, and beliefs are but the offshoots’.52 While Freeman was increasingly convinced that there existed an Aryan community of language and culture, he nevertheless remained reluctant to offer an explanation, biological or otherwise, as to why or how this community had emerged. ‘We must content ourselves with saying’, Freeman maintained, ‘that certain groups have a common history, that they have languages, creeds, and institutions in common. We cannot say for certain what was the tie which brought the members of the original group together, any more than we can name the exact time and the exact place when and where they came together’.53 The discovery of the comparative method, while it was based on linguistic, legal, and historical evidences and could never yield scientific proof was, in Freeman’s view, ‘the great contribution of the nineteenth century to the advance of human knowledge’.54 The idea that it was possible to classify the external institutions of a people and so determine the existence of a unique cultural community and the level of its internal development over time was one, however, that Freeman first learnt, not from Müller or Maine, but from Arnold. As we have seen, Arnold believed that a state’s external political institutions reflected the condition of the ‘inner’ life of the nation which always developed from ‘childhood’ to ‘manhood’. If the institutions of a nation are such, Arnold asserted, that the mass of the people live in social and political ‘bondage’, it is likely that the nation is in the ‘childhood’ stage of its development.55 If the social and political institutions of a nation are such that the mass of the people enjoy political liberty, it is likely that the nation has entered ‘manhood’. Arnold cited Homeric Greece, ancient Gaul, and the feudal nations of Europe in the middle ages as historical examples of Western nations in their childhood. His examples of nations in their manhood included the period of Thucydides in Greece, the period of the Roman Commonwealth, and England since 1688.56 For Arnold, a comparative study of political institutions revealed that the process of development from primitive to advanced civilisation had taken place in both the ancient and the modern worlds. As such, he rejected the tendency to emphasise ‘certain artificial divisions, such as the accession of the different lines of kings, or an event like the restoration, which is rather a subdivision of one particular period, than the beginning or termination of a period in itself’.57 ‘In this manner’, [ 66 ]

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he argued, ‘we get no distinct notions of the beginning, middle, and the end of the history of a people, and often appeal to examples which are nothing to the purpose, because they are taken from a different stage of a nation’s existence from that to which they are applied’.58 Arnold passionately hoped that: We may learn … a more sensible division of history than that which is commonly adopted of ancient and modern. We shall see that there is in fact an ancient and a modern period in the history of every people; the ancient differing, and the modern in many essential points agreeing with that in which we now live. Thus the largest portion of that history which we commonly call ancient is practically modern, as it describes society in a state analogous to that in which it now is; while, on the other hand, much of what is called modern history is practically ancient, as it relates to a state of things which has passed away.59

Like the later practitioners of the comparative method such as Maine, then, Arnold believed that it was necessary to identify the level of development which a state had reached, and then to bracket this state with others which had reached a similar stage. In Arnold’s view, once nations were classified as ancient or modern according to the maturity of their political institutions rather than their chronology, the true outlines of the unified process by which civilisation had progressed could be discerned. Arnold maintained that Western history down to 476 AD represented a complete cycle in the progression of nations from childhood to manhood, to old age and decline. Western history after 476 AD represented an incomplete second cycle. As such Arnold drew analogies between the institutions of nations separated by space and time and asserted that there existed a community of culture which had been transmitted from one cyclical age to the next cyclical age by the conduit of the Germanic tribes. Denouncing theories of race based on the ‘supposed different extraction, and on the high purity and excellence of some particular races contrasted with the degraded state of others’ as ‘little better than monstrous’, Arnold was emphatic in his statement that ‘no beings exist in the world who enjoy a natural superiority over mankind’.60 For Arnold, the progress of the Western nations was understood to be shared, not because they had fixed characteristics that guaranteed their development, but because the modern Europeans inherited, and would continue to build on, the cultural achievements of the Greeks and Romans. It was Arnold’s comparative study of political institutions and his attempt to reveal the inner development of Western nations over time that prepared Freeman for an intuitive acceptance of the later comparative method and determined the scope of his own area of [ 67 ]

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study. It was under Arnold’s influence that Freeman, like Maine, moved beyond the study of language and into the realm of culture, into ‘Comparative Politics’ as he cautiously named the new subject.61 Freeman’s stated aim in Comparative Politics was to ‘claim for political institutions a right to a scientific treatment of exactly the same kind as that which has been so successfully applied to language, to mythology, and to the progress of culture’.62 Freeman would use the teachings of Arnold to develop the scholarship of Müller and Maine, and to demonstrate ‘that the Greeks, Italians and Teutons have a large common stock of institutions, institutions whose likeness cannot be otherwise accounted for than by the supposition of their common primitive origin’.63 This attempt to prove the existence of an Aryan race based, not on a community of blood, but on the shared political institutions of European nations was, in the words of Maine, ‘such a novelty’.64 It demonstrates the extent to which the principles of the comparative method and the Liberal Anglican philosophy of Arnold coincided and could be neatly integrated into an account of Western civilisation.

Historical cycles Because Freeman understood race in cultural rather than biological terms, he was reluctant to assign inherent biological characteristics to the Aryans, and this meant that his account of Western development was not unidirectional. In considering the Norman Conquest we have already seen hints that Freeman viewed history as a repetitive process, but in Comparative Politics this pattern of recurrence emerges more clearly. While Burrow notes Freeman’s ‘delight in restorations, his pleasure in cycles and recapitulation’, the fact that these cycles were interdependent with a cultural conception of race and were therefore also features in the work of Müller and Maine has not been acknowledged.65 Similarly, while Burrow suggests that Freeman’s obsession with repetition was inherited from the Liberal Anglican philosophy, he fails to appreciate the depth of that influence when he writes, ‘what excited [Freeman] was not transcendence but the cycle itself, eternal recurrence … History seems constantly engaged in an almost liturgical recreation or resurrection of itself’.66 In Comparative Politics Freeman fused the insights of the comparative method and the Arnoldian philosophy of history to demonstrate that the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, and of modern Europe, constituted two historical successions in a unified progression towards modern democracy. [ 68 ]

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In the writings of the two men among Freeman’s contemporaries who exerted the most direct influence on Comparative Politics, Müller and Maine, it is possible to discern a connection between the cultural conception of race and accounts of civilisation in which the development of Aryan nations is represented as cyclical on one level, while remaining progressive on another. Identifying Aryanism with language, Müller established a schema for the historical development of the Indo-​European nations which emphasised contingency rather than inevitable progress. In his Lectures on the Science of Language (1866), Müller asserted that the Aryan language had grown both by ‘phonetic decay’ and ‘dialectic regeneration’, so that the process constituted a series of cycles towards modernity.67 According to Müller, phonetic corruption was inevitable, and could only be resisted if words were kept alive by many dialectical groups, and if the tyranny of classicism was avoided.68 Müller was quick to assert, however, that degeneration was central to linguistic growth, as the historic decay of Latin issued in the birth of modern dialects such as French and Italian. While the new languages transcended the old, they inherited certain elements from their predecessors, so that there was an underlying unity to ancient and modern idioms.69 Developing his dictum ‘no reason without language, no language without reason’, Müller also argued for the continuity of Aryan history in idealist terms.70 As he wrote in The Science of Thought (1887): [It is commonly understood that] thought is often hide-​ bound in language, that its history is a constant struggle against effete words, that the record of its sufferings and diseases may be read in all mythologies, in all religions, and in all philosophies. It is in the development of thought as in every other development: the present suffers from the past, and the future struggles hard to escape the present. Thought is a constant birth, and language a constant cry of agony; yet there is always new thought springing from old thought, and living words rising from the ashes of dead words.71

At the very end of his career, in the Gifford Lectures he delivered between 1888 and 1892, Müller began to draw the various strands of his philosophy together to argue that language revealed the development of the human mind as it attempted to reach a communion with God. Once again, Müller understood this process to be cyclical on one level and progressive on another. In the series on Physical Religion (1890) Müller analysed the ancient Indian texts in the Rigveda (c.1500–​1200 BC), to explore why and how the Aryans had first invented theology. According to Müller, language at this time was infantile as the Aryans only possessed common ‘root’ words which expressed general concepts [ 69 ]

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and originated in the realm of everyday experiences.72 Such words were inadequate when applied to natural phenomena, and the mind had recourse to metaphors referring to human activity. In the hymns of the Veda, for example, the root *AG, ‘to move’, is applied to the natural phenomenon of the ‘quickly moving luminous appearances of fire’.73 This usage implied an agent and resulted in the idea of a god of fire, Agni, who is ‘the mover’ or the ‘one who lights’.74 By this same process, Müller speculated, the ancient Aryans created a whole pantheon of deities, including gods for the sky, sea, and earth. When humans no longer understood the meaning of these metaphors, Müller argued, they became petrified expressions and formed a degenerate kind of mythology. For Müller, however, such ancient Aryan mythologies were not an end in themselves but a ‘first step … in an unbroken chain of intellectual evolution’ by which ‘the concept of God [progresses] from the imperfect to the more and more perfect’.75 The primitive religions represented humanity’s earliest attempts to grasp the infinite based on the observation of nature alone and, while these creeds were necessarily flawed, they were the products of the universal belief in the divine which culminated in the doctrines of Christianity. Thus, Müller concluded the lectures with the statement that: I believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth, with a new feeling, with the conviction that they express not only the faith of the apostles or of œcumenical councils, but that they contain the Confession of Faith of the whole world, expressed in different ways, conveyed in thousands of languages, but always embodying the same fundamental truth. I call it fundamental, because it is founded in the very nature of our mind, our reason, and our language, on a simple and ineradicable conviction that where there are acts there must be agents, and in the end, one Prime Agent, whom man may know.76

Müller’s research on the Aryan race was highly influential on Maine. Like Müller, Maine believed that a nation’s institutions indicated the level of intellectual development that had been reached at any given point in human history, and he saw the unified development of Aryan law taking place through a series of three distinct cycles. In Maine’s analysis, the first cycle began with the most primitive form of justice, when the law was merely the pronouncement of a king. In the absence of an established code of law, the sovereign made judgements in a retroactive manner and treated each case on an individual basis. The authority of the king, Maine explained, was understood to be sanctioned by the gods, and his judgements were deemed legitimate because divinely inspired.77 For Maine, this form of jurisprudence [ 70 ]

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reflected the immaturity of human reason, when it was necessary to believe in ‘a divine influence underlying and supporting every relation of life, every social institution’.78 Over time, however, the assumed divinity of the king declined and the aristocracy emerged as the new rulers. Abandoning the assertion that each legal judgement came from the gods, the ‘juristical oligarchy now claim[ed] to monopolise the knowledge of the laws, to have the exclusive possession of the principles by which quarrels are decided’.79 At this point, Maine observed, the law became customary, although still unwritten. The final stage of this cycle is marked by the invention of writing, as the aristocracy moulded the customary law into a code and published this to the people.80 While the code offered protection from aristocratic abuses, it also constituted a permanent record of law which was only obeyed from tradition. If the people no longer feel the desire to improve the law, there is a danger that it will stagnate and this cycle of progress will be terminated. ‘When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code’, Maine explained, ‘there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development’.81 If the second cyclical stage is reached, the codified law is gradually, but covertly, adapted to suit a situation in which the feudal system is breaking down, and the primary unit of society is no longer the patriarchal family but the individual. In this transitional phase, changes took place discreetly as jurists used ‘legal fictions’ to ensure that the spirit rather than the letter of the law was applied, and that equitable judgements were achieved. With the beginnings of independent thought and the attempt at some legal reform, however, there were two distinct dangers. First, the practice of the law might develop too unpredictably and unevenly, and the legal system may begin to disintegrate.82 Second, the tacit agreement on the correct application of the spirit of the law may be established too effectively, hindering any further progress in real terms: ‘[a]‌time always comes’, wrote Maine, ‘at which the moral principles originally adopted have been carried out to all their legitimate consequences, and then the system founded on them becomes as rigid, as unexpansive, and as liable to fall behind moral progress as the sternest code of rules avowedly legal’.83 The final cyclical phase of society is marked by the invention of legislation, by which it becomes possible to make open changes to the law in a manner consistent with the rational, capitalist, contractual, society. However, the inherent danger was that democratic legislation may descend into anarchy or a tyranny of the majority, which assigns rights and duties according to factors other than the free agreement of all men. As evidence of this potential danger, Maine discussed the impact of Enlightenment philosophes who indulged in abstract theories about [ 71 ]

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universal man, and proposed that a new form of government based on a ‘Social Contract’ should be ‘effected at any apparent cost’.84 For Maine, such thinkers showed disdain for positive law and practical experience, and were directly responsible for the ‘grosser disappointments of which the first French Revolution was fertile’.85 The turbulent years of Revolution and Restoration in France demonstrated that popular legislation can be inimical to the maintenance of democratic government and free association, and may lead to an end of progress and a regression to status. If, then, Maine’s status-​to-​contract dictum claims to be a law, it is one based on the imagery of life-​cycles, and it points towards the potential decay of modern European civilisation. Basing his conception of race on culture rather than biology, Freeman, too, could accept that European historical development could be cyclical on a certain level while ultimately reflecting the uniform process by which Aryan civilisation had developed. In an essay titled Historical Cycles (1869), Freeman bemoaned how ‘hard [it is] to make people understand how many things go in cycles, how often history repeats itself, how much that seems to be innovation is really restoration’.86 Throughout all Freeman’s works there is a preoccupation with the recurrence of historical events and institutions. As Burrow remarks, Freeman’s emphasis on recapitulation served to impart to history a unity in the same way as figural interpretation acted as ‘the binding agent of history, bringing together Old and New Testaments, classical and Christian, religious and secular histories, into one eschatological story’.87 Yet, in Comparative Politics, Freeman advanced a narrative in which cycles subsist within an overall process of progress in a way which was not patristic, but strictly Arnoldian. As we have seen, Arnold taught that nations follow an internal life-​cycle from ‘childhood’ to ‘manhood’ which is indicated by their external political institutions. According to Arnold, following the German constitutional historian B.G. Niebuhr, nations faced particular dangers at various points in their progression which always arose from the difficulty of reconciling a numerous population with political representation.88 In the ‘childhood’ period of the nation’s existence, when the parental aristocracy ruled over and protected the infantile subjects, the danger arose when a portion of the commons had accumulated wealth, increased the level of their intelligence, and consequently demanded a share in the rights of citizenship. If a nation emerges from the dominion of the old aristocracy, it enters the ‘manhood’ stage and becomes ‘exposed to a somewhat different succession of struggles’.89 The political battle which now begins is the consequence of the nation’s unwillingness or inability to make every subject a citizen, and it is more ferocious than that between nobility [ 72 ]

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and wealth which characterised the period of childhood. The earlier struggle between the nobility and the richer commons had begun only when a level of equality had been achieved –​it was a contest between men who were really equal, to do away with a fictitious distinction. The conflict between the rich and the mass of the community, on the other hand, takes place only when real differences have reached the widest point of separation and the state is divided into the extremes of luxury and beggary.90 This struggle is one to establish equality within the body politic in its entirety and it is one from which, Arnold observed ominously, no nation had yet emerged successfully.91 While Arnold’s analogy between states and individuals carried the implication that the death of the nation is natural, he avoided this materialist and fatalist conclusion by pointing to the individual mind as the ultimate reality of history. This idea allows for progress because it asserts that the things of the mind are not lost forever with the destruction of the state but live on, recreated in the minds of future ages. For Arnold, the civilisations of Greece and Rome, and the civilisation of modern Europe, represented two distinct steps forward in the development of humanity. In this process, the Germanic race played a pivotal role. It was the Teutonic tribes who had transmitted the cultural achievements of the ancient period of civilisation to the Europeans of the modern period, bringing together the intellect of Greece and the laws of Rome with the moral and spiritual perfection of Christianity. Comparative Politics For Freeman, as for Arnold, it was necessary to study political institutions comparatively, in order to understand the Unity of History as a series of struggles to reconcile numbers with equality and democratic participation within the body politic. In the Norman Conquest and the Growth of the English Constitution, Freeman’s narrative focused on the process by which the English people secured their Teutonic and democratic inheritance. In Comparative Politics, however, the story of the Teutons appears as just one strand in the ‘mighty drama of European and Aryan history’.92 Here, the Teutons and the English take their place alongside the Greeks, the Romans, and their modern descendants in the West, as Freeman embarks on ‘this long history of civilized man which stretches on in one unbroken tale from the union of the towns of Attica to the last measure of progress in England or in Germany’.93 Freeman began his study of ancient and modern political institutions in Comparative Politics with a discussion of the ancient Greek form [ 73 ]

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of the city commonwealth. The unique achievement of the Greeks, the epitome of ancient political maturity, was the fullest realisation of the idea of the state as a city which accorded every citizen the right of involvement in the administration of the polis. In Freeman’s account, the Greek city-​state remained small because, in its conception, it was rooted in the original idea of the tribe, and citizenship was granted based on hereditary descent. The form of direct democracy developed by the Greeks was a system which, in Freeman’s view, ‘works up the faculties of man to a higher pitch than any other; it is the form of government which gives the freest scope to the inborn genius of the whole community and every member of it’.94 Freeman maintained that ‘Athens, in the days of her glory, the Athens of Perikles … truly … raised a greater number of human beings to a higher level than any government before or since’.95 However, such a form of government, in which each citizen has equal rights and responsibilities, is not likely to last because it is only viable on a limited scale. According to Freeman, ‘a people whose idea of political life does not go beyond the separate and independent city never can become a nation; it never can endure when the forces of a nation are brought against it’.96 Completing the cycle, Freeman observed that ‘[t]‌he Greek commonwealth grew, flourished, and decayed as a city, amazing the world perhaps alike by the splendour of the days of its greatness and by the long wretchedness of the days of its decay’.97 Rome conquered Greece but in so doing became Greece’s disciple, propagating the language and culture of the Hellenic race throughout the world. The Romans also built on the political achievements of the Greeks and expanded the state beyond the city through the adoption of the system of federalism. In Rome, Freeman observed, the towns were smaller than they had been in Greece and the people were more willing to join themselves together. Having never developed a deep commitment to the city-​ state, the Roman Empire, by its federal arrangement, retained the older ideas of the clan and the tribe to the end and, as such, made a closer approach to the concept of the nation. In expanding beyond the single city-​state, however, Freeman viewed the political history of the far-​flung Empire as an illustration of the law that the democratic system, which works well within a small polis, becomes despotic and oligarchic when applied to too great a territory. As the Roman Empire took in more and more allies and extended its franchise still further, popular government became impossible. If the moral of Greek history had been that an independent city-​state cannot defend itself against the might of a kingdom or a commonwealth, the moral of Roman history was, in Freeman’s view, that ‘if a single city aspires to universal domination, it may indeed become the seat of a [ 74 ]

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power which deserves to be called eternal but it can become mistress of the world only by the sacrifice of its own freedom’.98 Neither Greece nor Rome had, in the long term, been successful in reconciling numbers with equality and political participation  –​a problem which had been central to Arnold’s analysis of history. However, while the Roman Empire was destroyed, Freeman believed that the cumulative achievements of the ancients were not lost but were handed on to the modern age: ‘[t]‌he spell’, Freeman wrote, ‘which she [Rome] once threw over those who she conquered she now knew how to throw over those who conquered her … Wherever men speak her tongue, wherever men revere her law, wherever men profess the faith which Europe and European colonies have learned of her, there is Rome still’.99 The Germanic Teutons overthrew the Roman Empire but ‘were proud to continue her dominion in their own persons; they were proud to bear titles of her ancient rule, and step by step to adopt her speech and to forget the land and the race from which they sprang’.100 In a paragraph which reverberates with echoes of Arnold, Freeman declared that: never were the three races which have been foremost in European history brought more closely together  –​never did the magic power of Rome stand forth more clearly  –​never did she show herself more proudly as the historic centre, binding together the times before her and the times after her  –​than in the days when Greek and German, Byzantion and Aachen, disputed the heritage and the titles of the dominion which the local Rome had lost, but which was Roman still, into whatever hands it fell. Out of the union of Roman and Teutonic elements arose the modern world of Europe … Those days were the true Middle Ages, the days when the Roman and Teutonic elements of modern European life stood side by side.101

It is clear, from the narrative of Comparative Politics, that Freeman believed that the ancient constitution lived on, despite the cyclical decline of Greece and Rome, in the superior institutions of modern Europe. Examining the Teutonic conception of the state Freeman held that, while it was markedly different from the city-​state or commonwealths of the ancient world, it retained certain important elements of the earlier system. Applying the principles of the comparative method Freeman reiterated Arnold’s idea that the traditional divisions of historical study obscured the true nature of the past, arguing that: [I]‌f we read history as chronology requires us to read it, beginning with Greece, thence going on to the Roman conquerors of Greece, and thence to the Teutonic conquerors of Rome, we are, for many purposes of this

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enquiry, reading history backwards. We find the primitive conception of the State in an earlier form among the Italians than we find it among the Greeks … And we find it in a still earlier form among the Teutonic nations than we find it among the Italians.102

In terms of the political conception of the state, Freeman understood the notion of the state as a city to be a later notion than that of the state as a tribe. Freeman believed that the Teutonic state retained its original basis in the tribe to a far greater extent than Rome, and that the Roman state had retained its basis in the tribe to a greater extent than Greece. Teutonic political development had therefore been slower than in Rome or Greece, but, Freeman argued, ‘by never reaching to the highest civilization of one age, we have been able to reach to a yet higher civilization in another age. By never passing through the exclusive city stage, we have been better able to reach the national stage’.103 In the Teutonic lands, by a gradual and obscure process, shires were melting together into kingdoms and tribes into nations. Thus were formed those nations of Teutonic blood which settled within the Continental provinces of the [Roman] Empire … All the events of our history, election, commendation, conquest, all help in the work of fusion; till, instead of a system of isolated cities, instead of a single city bearing rule over subject cities and provinces, we have a political work more lasting than the other, more just and free than the other, the nation which knows no distinction among its members, and which gives equal rights to the dwellers in every corner of its territory.104

It was the fusing together of original ties into a higher political unit that led to the establishment of nations in the modern period which were so different from the Greek and Roman states. Yet modern European nations, in retaining the most primitive, tribal, element of political life, everywhere incorporated elements of the ancient Aryan civilisation.105 Having discussed the conception of the state, Freeman turned to examine the Teutonic experience of the ‘Assembly of the People’.106 As in the Norman Conquest, Freeman argued that the Teutonic primary assemblies died out naturally as the state expanded, as those citizens who were entitled to attend in theory were unable to exercise this right in practice. Where the democracy of the Roman Empire had been fatally undermined by this development, the modern Europeans had managed to escape the same terminal consequences. For Freeman, the unique achievement of the modern Western nation-​states, the single most important step which they had taken in the advancement of civilisation, and one which distinguished them absolutely from the [ 76 ]

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ancient Greeks and Romans, was their invention of ‘the happy device of representation’.107 Freeman described the process by which the old assemblies were replaced by representative assemblies in which each Estate or class of men in the body-​politic (typically the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons) is accorded a voice. In England, however, Freeman observed that the process differed from that on the Continent, as the primitive assembly did not vanish completely but merely shrank up into a narrow body. The old democratic Assembly, Freeman argued, lived on to become the aristocratic element, the House of Lords, in the new form of the constitution. Freeman maintained that the Lords were simply those among the members of the old Assembly –​that is, those among all free Englishmen –​who never lost the right of personal attendance. Alongside the body so formed another body gradually arose, in which those who had failed to keep the right of personal attendance made their appearance by representation. In most parts of modern Europe, then, ‘the old primary assemblies have gradually died out or have lingered on only in the form of survivals. The representative assembly is as much the natural form of free government for the greater society as the primary assembly is for the smaller’.108 It is consequently that ‘the life of a nation is less brilliant than the life of a city, but, for that very reason, the nation outlives the city’.109 Freeman concluded his Comparative Politics with a final justification of the notion of the Unity of History. ‘No one’, he hoped, who has followed me will deem that the institutions of ancient Greece and Italy are at all lowered from their place of dignity by being shewn to be the same in their origin, the same in many of their details, as the institutions of our own forefathers … It is enough if I have led any to look on the earlier forms of the institutions of our own people, on the kindred forms of the common institutions of their kindred races, not as something which is utterly passed and gone, not as something which is cut off from us by an impassable barrier of time and place, but as something which is still living, something in which we ourselves share, something of which we still reap the fruit, as a heritage which has descended to us from unrecorded times.110

A study of this volume, then, reveals a truth alluded to by Parker when he wrote that ‘Freeman worked out a comprehensive racial theory, ultimately Aryan rather than Teutonic’.111 Re-​articulating the Arnoldian philosophy, Freeman pushed beyond the comparative philology of Müller and the comparative jurisprudence of Maine to establish analogies between the political institutions of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons and to demonstrate the existence of an Aryan [ 77 ]

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race based on democratic culture. While a connection between cultural conceptions of race and a view of cycles subsisting within an overall process of progress can be discerned in the writings of both Müller and Maine, Freeman’s conception of the shape of Western development was ultimately informed by the teachings of Arnold. In Comparative Politics Freeman presented European history as a process by which the political heritage of the Greeks and Romans had been transmitted to the Teutonic tribes who had finally succeeded in accommodating a large population within the body politic through the invention of representative government. In common with Arnold, however, Freeman was apprehensive of the future. In his own day he saw that Britain’s movement towards imperial expansion threatened, once again, the precarious balance of numbers and citizenship that was necessary for liberty to flourish.

Notes 1 Peter Bowler, The Invention of Progress:  Victorians and the Past (Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, 1989). 2 Ibid., pp. 49–​71. 3 James Hunt, Introductory Address on the Study of Anthropology Delivered Before the Anthropological Society of London, February 24th, 1863 (London: Turner & Co., 1863), p. 13. 4 Anita Herle and Sandra Rouse (eds), Cambridge and the Torres Strait:  Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 1. Anthropology only became a subject that could be studied at Oxford as a ‘Supplementary Subject in the Natural Science Final Honour School’ in 1885. Anthropology was not available as a degree until ‘its involvement in Human Sciences in 1970 and Archaeology and Anthropology in 1992’. For this, and explanations of why Oxford resisted Anthropology, see Peter Rivière (ed.), A History of Oxford Anthropology (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 3. On the comparative method see Collini, Winch, and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics. 5 On Victorian attitudes to race see, for example, Edward Beasley, The Victorian Re-​invention of Race:  New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences (London:  Routledge, 2010); Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London:  Routledge, 1971); John Burrow, Evolution and Society:  A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1966); Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings:  Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–​1930 (London:  Cornell University Press, 2003) and Taming Cannibals:  Race and the Victorians (London:  Cornell University Press, 2011); Catherine Hall, Civilizing Subjects:  Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–​1867 (Cambridge:  Polity Press, 2002); Mandler, English National Character; Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-​ Nineteenth Century (Leicester:  Leicester University Press, 1978) and Science, Race Relations and Resistance:  Britain, 1870–​1914 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2013); and George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987). 6 Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 191.

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THE ARYAN RACE AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS 7 Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India [1997] (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004), p. 183. 8 On the impact of these events and their relationship to the emergence of ‘New Imperialism’ see, for example, Bernard Porter, The Absent-​Minded Imperialists:  Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004). 9 Ivan Hannaford, Race:  The History of an Idea in the West (Washington, DC:  The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 278. 10 Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1850); Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius:  An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869) and Inquiries into the Human Faculty and its Development (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883); and Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1901). 11 See Lorimer, Science, Race Relations and Resistance and Mandler, English National Character. 12 On the history of the Aryan idea see Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-​European Mythology as Ideology and Science (London:  University of Chicago Press, 2006); Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise:  Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1992); Leon Poliakov, Aryan Myth:  A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (New York: Basic Books, 1971); Dan Stone, Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002); Trautmann, Aryans and British India; and George Mosse, Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1978). 13 Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. 14. 14 See, for example, Michael J. Franklin, ‘Orientalist Jones’:  Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746–​1794 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 15 See Michael Palencia-​Roth, ‘The Presidential Addresses of Sir William Jones:  The Asiatick Society of Bengal and the ISCSC’, Comparative Civilizations Review, 56, 56 (Spring, 2007), pp. 21–​39. Available at https://​scholarsarchive.byu.edu/​ccr/​vol56/​ iss56/​4. 16 Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. 172. 17 Ibid., and Arvidsson, Aryan Idols. 18 James Turner, Philology:  The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. x. 19 Ibid., p. x. 20 Collini, Winch, and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, p. 209. 21 The most comprehensive work on Müller is Lourens van den Bosch’s Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to the Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 22 See Padma Rangarajan, Imperial Babel:  Translation, Exoticism, and the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), p. 99. 23 Collini, Winch, and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, p. 210. 24 Friedrich Schlegel, On the Language and Wisdom of India (Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, 1808), transl. H. H. Wilson (London: Ganesha Publishing, 2001). 25 Friedrich Max Müller, Suggestions for the Assistance of Officers in Learning the Languages of the Seats of War in the East (London:  Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1854). On the intellectual influences on Müller see his essay ‘My Predecessors’ in Last Essays (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1901), series 1, pp. 27–​62. 26 Müller, Languages of the Seats of War, p. 30. 27 Ibid., pp. 16–​20. 28 Van den Bosch, Max Müller, p. 85; see also Linda Dowling, ‘Victorian Oxford and the Science of Language’, Modern Language Association, 97, 2 (1982), pp. 160–​78, p. 160. www.jstor.org/​stable/​462185. Müller first delivered this series of lectures in 1861 and published them under the heading, Lectures on the Science of Language, in two volumes, in 1866. Here I use the 1885 edition. Friedrich Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1885).

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The West 29 N.J. Girardot, ‘Max Müller’s “Sacred Books” and the Nineteenth-​Century Production of the Comparative Science of Religions’, History of Religion, 41, 3 (February, 2002), pp.  213–​50, pp.  214–​15. www.jstor.org/​stable/​3176533. See also John R.  Davis and Angus Nicholls, ‘Friedrich Max Müller:  The Career and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 85, 2–​3 (2016), pp.  67–​97. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​09593683.2016.1224493. Müller delivered a series of three lectures critiquing Darwin, titled ‘Lectures on Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language’ at the Royal Institution in March and April 1873, subsequently published (London: Longmans Green, 1873). 30 Freeman described Müller’s work as ‘ingenious’ in a letter dated 23 November 1875, Freeman Papers, JRUL, Special Collections. 31 Freeman to Müller, 18 December 1875, Freeman Papers, JRUL EAF/​1/​7. Freeman here refers to Müller’s research into ancient Indian texts in the Rigveda (c.1500–​1200 BC). ‘A Chip’ refers to Müller’s collection of essays Chips from a German Workshop, 5 vols (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1867–​75). Italics in the original. 32 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 1. 33 Ibid., p. 1. 34 Ibid., p. 5. 35 Ibid., pp. 6–​7. 36 Ibid., p. 12. 37 Müller to Freeman, 1 January 1870, Freeman Papers, JRUL, EAF1/​7/​21a. 38 Müller delivered a series of four lectures to the Royal Institute in February and May 1870. These were later published under the title Introduction to the Science of Religion [1873] (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882), p. 82. 39 Friedrich Max Müller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888), p. 90. 40 E.A. Freeman, ‘Race and Language’, in Historical Essays, third series (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1879), pp. 173–​ 230. Originally published in the Fortnightly Review, January 1877. 41 Ibid., pp. 183–​4. 42 Ibid., p. 188, italics mine. 43 Ibid., p. 189. 44 Ibid., p. 191 and p. 181. 45 E.A. Freeman, ‘The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity’, in Arthur Silva White (ed.), Britannic Confederation (London:  George Philip & Son, 1892), pp. 31–​56,  p. 36. 46 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 13. 47 It is clear that Freeman had not previously read either of Maine’s works as Maine writes to Freeman on 15 July 1873: ‘I am not surprised that you have not read either of my books till lately’, Freeman Papers, JRUL, EAF/​1/​7. On Maine see R.C.J. Cocks, Sir Henry Maine:  A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1988); A. Diamond (ed.), The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine:  A Centennial Reappraisal (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1991); and G. Feaver, From Status to Contract: A Biography of Sir Henry Sumner Maine, 1822–​1888 (London: Prentice Hall Press, 1969). 48 Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Village Communities in the East and West [1871] third edition (London: Henry Holt & Co., 1876), pp. 6–​8. 49 H.S. Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas (London: John Murray, 1861), p. 170. Italics in the original. 50 Kenneth Bock, ‘Comparison of Histories:  The Contribution of Henry Maine’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16, 2 (1974), pp. 232–​62, p. 245. https://​ doi.org/​10.1017/​S0010417500007477. Maine, Village Communities, p. 14. 51 Maine, Village Communities, pp. 210–​11. 52 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 14. 53 Freeman, ‘Race and Language’, p. 192. 54 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 302.

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THE ARYAN RACE AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS 55 Thomas Arnold, ‘The Social Progress of States’, in The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold [1845] first American edition (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1846), pp. 306–​27, p. 306. 56 Ibid., pp. 307–​13 and pp. 316–​23. 57 Ibid., p. 306. 58 Ibid., p. 306. 59 Ibid., p. 325. 60 Thomas Arnold, ‘Christian Duty of Conceding the Roman Catholic Claims’ [1829], in Miscellaneous Works, pp. 160–​88, p. 177. 61 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 16. 62 Ibid., p. iii. 63 Ibid., p. iv. 64 Maine described Freeman’s application of the Comparative method as ‘such a novelty’ in a letter to Freeman dated 30 December 1871, Freeman Papers, JRUL, EAF/​1/​7. 65 Burrow, Liberal Descent, pp. 220–​1. 66 Ibid., p. 225. 67 Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. 1, p. 44. 68 Ibid., p. 52. 69 Ibid., p. 71. 70 Müller, quotation on the frontispiece of The Science of Thought (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1887). 71 Ibid., p. 617. 72 Friedrich Max Müller, Physical Religion, first delivered as the Gifford Lectures in 1890 and published in 1891 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898). Müller’s theory is articulated on pp. 115–​76. 73 Ibid., p. 126. 74 Ibid., p. 126. 75 Ibid., p. 336 and p. 364. 76 Ibid., pp. 364–​5. 77 Maine, Ancient Law, p. 4. 78 Ibid., p. 6. 79 Ibid., p. 12. Italics in the original. 80 Ibid., p. 15. 81 Ibid., p. 21. 82 Ibid., p. 76. 83 Ibid., p. 69. 84 Ibid., p. 88. 85 Ibid., p. 91. 86 Freeman, ‘Historical Cycles’, p. 252. 87 Burrow, Liberal Descent, p. 222. 88 For Arnold’s application of Niebuhr’s analysis of these dangers to the history of Rome see Thomas Arnold, The History of Rome [3 vols, 1838–​40], three volumes in one (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1868). 89 Arnold, ‘The Social Progress of States’, p. 322. 90 Ibid., pp. 323–​4. 91 Ibid., p. 322. 92 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 38. 93 Ibid., p. 38. 94 Ibid., p. 214. 95 Ibid., p. 215. 96 Ibid., p. 94. 97 Ibid., p. 125. 98 Ibid., p. 99. 99 Ibid., p. 44. 100 Ibid., pp. 48–​9.

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101 Ibid., pp. 49–​57. 102 Ibid., p. 100. 103 Ibid., p. 115. 104 Ibid., pp. 125–​7. 105 Ibid., p. 130. 106 Ibid., p. 190. 107 Ibid., p. 221. 108 Ibid., p. 222. 109 Ibid., p. 212. 110 Ibid., pp. 294–​5. 111 Parker, ‘The Failure of Liberal Racialism’, p. 826.

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‘I am no lover of Empire’: the critique of British expansionism

It is worth reiterating two aspects of Freeman’s racialised thinking before turning to consider his views on imperialism. First, Freeman presented English history as one chapter in a wider narrative of the progress of the Aryan race. The English were, for him, the foremost representatives of the Teutonic branch of an Aryan ‘family’ which also included the modern European descendants of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In this sense, Freeman’s nationalism was muted: as Burrow writes, Freeman ‘wanted to be a Whig on a European scale’ and he celebrated the shared political tendencies of the entire Aryan race.1 Second, Freeman’s account of Aryan development was not unilinear but cyclical. In Freeman’s analysis, liberty was always precarious due to the difficulty of securing an optimal-​size polity on the one hand, and the political participation of the citizenry on the other. It was Freeman’s preoccupation with the history of the Aryan race, understood in these terms, that informed his response to British imperialism. While scholars such as Hall, John MacKenzie, and Jeffrey Richards have suggested that the Victorians were ‘steeped in’ and obsessed by empire, Freeman’s writings support Bernard Porter’s alternative thesis that ‘Britons did not particularly take to their empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century  –​or took to it less enthusiastically, at any rate, than is often assumed’.2 Again, where Christine Bolt, Patrick Brantlinger, and Hall see a clear connection between later nineteenth-​ century racism, jingoism, and imperial expansion, Freeman’s attitudes exemplify Christopher Harvie’s point that ‘Racialism was far from being a reflex of Unionism  –​or Imperialism for that matter’.3 It was precisely because of his theory of the Aryan race, idealised as a brotherhood of liberty, that Freeman critiqued contemporary proposals for Imperial Federation and supported Home Rule for Ireland. It was precisely because of his theory of the Aryan race, understood as a [ 83 ]

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community vulnerable to recapitulation, that Freeman believed that imperial contact with India and the Middle East was dangerous. While many liberal intellectuals found their commitment to the progress of democracy consistent with the advocacy of British expansionism, Freeman was not among them.4 His world-​view was strictly European, and not imperial. ‘I am no lover of Empire’, Freeman once declared, ‘I am not anxious for my country to exercise lordship over other lands, English-​speaking or otherwise’.5

The Imperial Federation movement Until recently, historians of the British Empire have focused on the relationship between the metropole and the dependencies, particularly India and Africa. Similarly, research on the interplay between British national identity and the empire has emphasised the binary between the ‘self’ and the Oriental ‘other’. In a series of important studies, however, Duncan Bell has shown that a key aspect of imperial thought and activity from the 1860s to the 1890s concerned Britain’s white settler colonies in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa.6 Bell argues convincingly that the ‘Anglo-​Saxon’ empire should not be neglected if we are to fully understand ‘the languages through which the empire –​or, more precisely, the various socio-​political formations that composed the imperial system –​was imagined by its inhabitants and in particular by its ideological architects’.7 As Bell points out, ‘many, perhaps even the majority, of late Victorian British theorists of empire were concerned … with the projection and sustenance of a coherent sense of Britishness throughout the settler communities’.8 ‘Although they differed over the conceptual relationship between state, nation, and empire’, Bell continues, ‘for many imperialists Greater Britain was bound intimately by commonality of race, institutions, sensibility, and citizenship. The demand for a global polity was one aspect of the belief in –​or fantasy of –​a global (national-​racial) identity’.9 Shifting the focus from India and the scramble for Africa to the significance of ‘Greater Britain’, Bell places the movement for Imperial Federation between Britain and the settler colonies at the centre of the history of imperialism in the later nineteenth century. A detailed analysis of these proposals for Imperial Federation provides a useful context for, and entry-​point into, understanding Freeman’s thinking on British expansionism in a way that debates on India and Africa could not. It might be expected that Freeman, a proponent of Aryan unity, would support schemes for bringing the white settler colonies into a consolidated political organisation with Britain. His passionate rejection of these plans is, therefore, instructive. [ 84 ]

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The movement for Imperial Federation in Britain was a response partly to domestic developments and partly to anxiety about the future position of Britain in a world of intensifying competition.10 Throughout the nineteenth century there was a growing sense that the trend was towards the dissolution of the empire. Not only had America become independent and successful, but other constituent parts of the empire seemed to be following the same trajectory. By 1860 representative self-​government had been granted to Canada; Newfoundland; Nova Scotia; New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island; New Zealand; New South Wales; Tasmania; South Australia; Victoria; and Queensland. The belief that the British Empire would be dismantled was further stimulated by the attitudes and actions of Gladstone as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Colonial Secretary, and four-​times Prime Minister. Over the course of his career Gladstone made speeches on the financial burdens of imperial responsibility, critiqued the imperial adventures of his opponent Disraeli, disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland, and advanced the cause of Irish Home Rule. In his third Midlothian Speech of November 1879, Gladstone summarised his principles as securing ‘good government at home’, acknowledging the ‘equal rights of all nations’, and avoiding ‘needless and entangling engagements’ abroad.11 The disintegration of the empire became a source of anxiety for many who feared that Britain’s security and position in the world would be undermined. For some, the onset of democracy and the extension of the franchise posed a problem, as it was widely held that the working class was hostile to imperialism and would vote against the interests of empire. This difficulty might be compounded by the sense that the empire provided an important outlet for emigration from Britain at a time of explosive population growth, persistent poverty, and potentially concomitant ‘degeneration’. As Cecil Rhodes wrote in a letter of 1895: ‘In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.’12 Coupled with nervousness about domestic stability, was a worry about the economic and military might of Britain’s rivals. As Bell explains, the movement for Imperial Federation ‘was driven in part by the perceived need to theorize and construct a bulwark against the encroachment of a powerful set of global challengers, most notably Germany, the United States, and Russia. As such it illustrates the disquieting effect that the impending loss of great power status had [ 85 ]

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on a generation of thinkers’.13 For proponents of Imperial Federation, consolidation and integration was vital, as the British nation-​ state without the colonies would be vulnerable in a future that seemed set to be dominated by an ‘ever-​ decreasing number of mammoth omnicompetent polities’.14 Emerging in response to these interlocking concerns, the beginnings of the Imperial Federation movement can be dated to January 1871 when the Contemporary Review published the first of two articles on the subject. Both were written by Edward Jenkins, a Canadian expatriate, former member of the Colonial Society, and future Liberal MP for Dundee (1874–​80). The first article, titled ‘Imperial Federation’, appeared in the January issue, and sounded a note of panic. Jenkins warned his readers that the empire was in danger  –​ threatened by politicians who were unable to exercise effective control over the movement of events. ‘This is the period of Drift’, Jenkins asserted, as the country was being ‘[s]‌wept along by wind and current’ and ‘political and social tendencies appear to be escaping from our governance and to be manoeuvred by fate’.15 The nation’s leaders were ‘Driftwood politicians; sweeping on before the breath of popularity –​with no stern, proud principles to rule their motions’.16 Consequently, Jenkins wrote, ‘Drifting is clearly recognised as a thing of the age. Drifting into war, drifting into a conference, drifting into danger, drifting into Church and State controversy, drifting to imperial dissolution’.17 In Jenkins’ view there was an urgent need for a specific plan for the future of the British Empire, and for strong ‘captains’, such as himself, who could steer a determined course through the coming ‘cyclone’.18 In the remainder of this article, and in the follow-​up piece ‘An Imperial Confederation’ in the April edition, Jenkins sketched out his proposal for securing imperial unity.19 Setting out the meaning of the phrase ‘Imperial Federation’, Jenkins explained that this would entail an arrangement with a dual aspect, changing in appearance when seen from two distinct vantage points. For Jenkins these divisions, reciprocal but distinct, are ‘(1) the Imperial and (2)  the local aspects of Federalism’.20 From the point of view of the central organising power of the union, there would be one entity  –​the Empire  –​in which the metropole and the colonies would have a shared responsibility for the conduct of imperial affairs. From the basis of each individual colony, however, there would be another entity –​ the Federation –​ within which each province would retain a certain degree of autonomy in the management of purely local affairs. Thus, Jenkins established the definition and aim of Imperial Federation to be: [ 86 ]

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The doctrine of a legislative union, in the form of a confederation, of each subordinate self-​governing community which is now included in the British Empire. To preserve that empire intact, on the ground that such a policy is not only imperial but dictated by the selfish interest of each constituent; to combine in some flexible and comprehensive system the great concourse of subordinate states whereof our empire is composed, for the benefit of all; and lastly, to confirm to every individual member of the Imperial Community those rights and privileges to which he is born –​rights and privileges justly inalienable from himself or his children.21

In determining which of the separate dominions would enter this new federation, Jenkins was clear that he was referring to the white settler colonies, rather than the dependencies, of Britain. It was expedient, desirable, and possible to unite Britain with the Canadian, Australian, and South African colonies, as the people shared a community of race, citizenship, language, and religion. In addition, the laws and institutions of the colonies had been carried to these lands by settlers from the ‘mother country’, so there existed ‘bases of union in the similarity, greater or less in degree, of their forms of government’.22 India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), on the other hand, would be excluded, as ‘[i]‌n these places a very small proportion of a superior race rules by pure moral and physical force an inferior people’.23 Also exempt were Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, the Straits Settlements, Labuan, Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands, Bermuda, Ascension, St. Helena, West Africa, and Norfolk Island in the Pacific. In Jenkins’ opinion these places were simply ‘stations for trade and various Imperial purposes’.24 As Jenkins acknowledged, his plans for Imperial Federation would involve a fundamental transformation of the existing political system. It would be necessary, most importantly, to establish a new ‘senate’ or ‘parliament of representatives’ in London.25 In this senate, members from every colony would meet to discuss and to determine, by majority vote, issues relating to the empire as a whole.26 Such issues might include the regulation of trade and commerce; criminal law; currency and coinage; military and naval service; and defence.27 Meanwhile, local legislatures in the colonies might concern themselves with regional questions such as direct taxation within the province; municipal institutions; railways, canals, and telegraphs; and the management of schools, hospitals, prisons, and charities.28 Asserting that there were only two alternative futures for the colonial British Empire –​federation or disintegration  –​Jenkins nevertheless declined to elaborate on his ideas in further detail. He felt that ‘at present it is for the Federalist simply to show his doctrine to be reasonable, his suggestion to be prima-​facie practical, his system to be desirable, and to demonstrate [ 87 ]

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that it deserves to be made the subject of united conference and negotiation’.29 Jenkins’ call for ‘conference’ and ‘negotiation’ was realised in July 1871, when a meeting was held at Westminster Palace to discuss closer imperial union and the question of federation. Further support for Jenkins’ idea came from Fraser’s Magazine, then under the editorship of Froude. Two articles on ‘Great Britain Confederated’ were published anonymously and consecutively in July and August 1871. These pieces were written in the form of a pseudo-​ conversation between two people (an interviewer and an interviewee), at a hypothetical point in time when Imperial Federation had been adopted. When asked why Imperial Federation had been established, the interviewee explained that ‘[f]‌ or several previous years the relations of the different parts of the Empire had been unsatisfactory’ and that some public fi ­ gures –​in Britain and the colonies –​had begun discussing the possibility of dismembering the Empire.30 ‘At length’, however, the country had woken up, ‘as from a hideous nightmare’ because ‘influential men took up the question, and showed to the people of Great Britain the precipice on which the Empire tottered’.31 The conversation subsequently moved on to the question ‘What was the immediate effect of Federation?’ to which the interviewee responded, emphatically, that Great Britain federated had become powerful and rich, far surpassing the might of Germany which had once seemed to pose a threat. In addition, federation had increased free trade and minimised the potential for war. Imperial Federation had been so successful, according to the respondent, that now ‘[e]ven the United States Republic desires to enter the Federation, and will probably do so’.32 The movement for Imperial Federation which Jenkins had initiated continued to build momentum throughout the 1870s. Further contributions to the theory and design of a potential federation came from the newspaper The Colonies, which featured a correspondence in 1873 ‘in which the possibilities of the formation of a great British Union [were] very vigorously and elaborately discussed’.33 Subsequently, schemes for Imperial Federation were presented by Charles W. Eddy at the Social Science Meeting in 1874 and by Francis de Labilliere at the Royal Colonial Institute in 1875.34 In 1876 Frederick Young’s edited collection on the Imperial Federation of Great Britain and her Colonies appeared and included letters from high profile men on the subject including de Labilliere, the Duke of Manchester, and the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt. Hon. William Fox. The schemes discussed in this volume were various, ranging from the idea of creating a new Imperial Chamber that would govern the whole commonwealth down to a plan for sending colonial delegates as advisors to the Privy [ 88 ]

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Council.35 At the end of the decade the Westminster Review featured an article on ‘The Federation of the English Empire’ in three instalments in 1879, and this was followed, in 1880, by a piece titled ‘Imperium et Libertas’ which strongly advocated ‘imperial federated democracy’.36 It was in the 1880s, however, that the Imperial Federation movement really took off under two of its most influential advocates:  John Robert Seeley and Froude. In 1883 Seeley, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, published two courses of his lectures in the form of a book, The Expansion of England, which proved enormously successful (more than 80,000 copies were sold in the first two years and it remained in print to the 1950s).37 Seeley’s thesis, stated in the first lecture and elaborated thereafter, was that the central tendency of English history was ‘the simple and obvious fact of the extension of the English name into other countries of the globe, the foundation of Greater Britain’.38 For Seeley, ‘Greater Britain’ –​that is, Britain and the white settler colonies  –​formed an actual state, not an empire. The peoples and territories within Greater Britain were united, he explained, by the same ties which hold any state together: ‘community of race, community of religion, community of interest’.39 As such, the expansion of England was unprecedented in the annals of world history, as the ‘colonies do not resemble the colonies which classical students meet with in Greek and Roman history, and our Empire is not an Empire at all in the ordinary sense of the word’.40 Greater Britain consisted, according to Seeley, not of ‘a congeries of nations held together by force, but in the main of one nation, as much as if it were no Empire but an ordinary state’.41 For Seeley, then, the bases for a successful federation were already in place, and all that would be required would be to establish a formal political union. While Seeley did not outline any specific proposals for what the new constitutional structure of an Imperial Federation might look like, his admiration for the United States suggests, as Bell points out, that he would favour a ‘supra-​parliamentary organisation’, a ‘United States of Great Britain’.42 For Seeley, the example of America demonstrated that a federal union across great distances and encompassing many millions of people was a practical possibility and ‘robust reality’.43 Countering the traditional argument that federal government was too weak to hold territories together, Seeley asserted that ‘[t]‌he type of future state is shown in the United States, which has spanned a whole mighty continent from east to west, and has emphatically refused to submit to disintegration’.44 Froude similarly took inspiration from America when arguing in favour of closer imperial union in his book Oceana, or England and her Colonies (1886).45 Observing the United States, Froude felt a mixture of [ 89 ]

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envy, pride, and admiration, as the Americans had not only ‘reproduced’ England in a ‘new sphere’ but were now ‘a generation before us in the growth of democracy’.46 They had demonstrated that ‘democracy does not mean disunion’, and their nation was now more complete and more successful than ever.47 Froude was convinced that the people living in Britain and the people living in the colonies were the same people and that, following the example of the United States, they ought to strive towards unity and greatness.48 ‘We, if we all please’, he argued, can unite as [the Americans] have united, can be knit together in as firm a bond, and hold the sea sceptre as lords of Oceana in so firm a grasp that a world combined in arms would fail to wrest it from us. As the interests of America forbade division, so do ours forbid it. United, we shall all be great and strong in the greatness and strength of our common empire, and the British nation will have a career before it more glorious than our glorious past … Let it be understood among us, as it is among the Americans, that we are one –​though the bond be but a spiritual one –​ that separation is treason … and all is done.49

While Froude believed in fostering the unity of ‘Oceana’, he held that this would grow organically, without any need for formal plans of Imperial Federation. He argued that, just as nature does not make a plant, flower, or man, by design, but begins from a seed which is then left to develop, so the unionists must allow the form of organisation to shape itself.50 ‘All of us’, he concluded, are united at present by the invisible bonds of relationship and of affection for our common country, for our common sovereign, and for our joint spiritual inheritance. These links are growing, and if let alone will continue to grow, and the free fibres will of themselves become a rope of steel. A federation contrived by politicians would snap at the first strain … Were Oceana an accepted article of faith, received and acknowledged as something not to be called in question, it would settle into the convictions of all of us, and the organic union which we desiderate would pass silently into a fact without effort of political ingenuity.51

Such vague notions about union did not go unopposed. In his early work, The Empire (1863), the historian Goldwin Smith had pointed out some of the technical difficulties of attempting to govern over colonies which had already been granted self-​government. ‘To give a nation a Parliament of its own’, he argued, ‘is to give it independence. Two Parliaments under the same crown never have produced, and never can produce, anything but clashing of interests, contradictions of policy, discord and confusion; and, at last, angry separation’.52 In a later volume, Commonwealth or Empire (1900), Smith derided the advocates of Imperial Federation for ‘dreaming’ and critiqued the [ 90 ]

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lack of precision and practicality in their proposals.53 ‘We have never been told’, he complained, ‘how the Parliament of the Empire is to be composed; what are to be its functions; how its edicts and requisitions are to be enforced; what are to be its relations to the British Crown and Foreign Office; or by what tribunal its constitution is to be interpreted and preserved’.54 Smith wanted to see an end to this ‘chimerical ambition’ and hoped, instead, that ‘[t]‌he colonies, following each of them its own destiny, will become free nations, the genuine glory of their parent’.55 More impassioned than Smith, but entirely in support of his views, was Freeman.56 In a private letter to Smith, Freeman approved his colleague’s criticism of this ‘Imperial Federation nonsense’ and expressed ‘delight’ in reading Smith’s arguments  –​which kindled in him ‘the old feeling of fellowship and fighting in the same cause’.57 Freeman was equally unreserved in writing disapproving letters to those who supported the plans for Imperial Federation. To his friend, the respected scholar of jurisprudence and Liberal MP, Bryce, for example, Freeman wrote the following passage of chastisement: Imperial Federation seems to be, not an intelligible proposal which one deems unjust or inexpedient, and therefore argues against, but a mere heap of vague, meaningless, and contradictory phrases, pure and mere babble in short … it has puzzled and bothered me more than anything for a long time to see your name mixed up with such stuff.58

In public, as in private, Freeman campaigned against the plans and emerged as the most vociferous, pedantic, and well-​informed critic of Imperial Federation.

Freeman’s History of Federal Government (1863) and critique of Imperial Federation Freeman was arguably the most well-​ informed critic of Imperial Federation as his opinions were based on decades of historical research into federalism as a form of government. He had begun to study this topic in the early 1850s, with a view to writing a multi-​ volume work on the subject.59 Freeman started his History of Federal Government on 12 February 1861 and the first, and only, volume was published on 5 February 1863.60 Covering the history of federalism in ancient Greece, Freeman had intended to supplement this volume with additional instalments on the federations of ancient Italy; the medieval Confederation of the Swiss Cantons; the United Provinces of the Netherlands, 1579–​1795; the federation of Germany since 1648; and the United States of America, 1778–​1862.61 This project was never [ 91 ]

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completed, however, as Freeman abandoned it in favour of his work on the Norman Conquest, which began in 1865.62 Still, the History of Federal Government vol. 1 was considered to be authoritative, and those interested in the question of Imperial Federation for Britain frequently consulted the work. Jenkins, whose articles had initiated the movement, for example, wrote that Freeman had produced a ‘splendid and elaborate review of federal government’ which was likely to ‘become the textbook of Federalism for a long time to come’.63 In defining the meaning of the term ‘federalism’, Jenkins found that ‘Mr Freeman’s definition is so clear that I cannot do better than transcribe it’.64 Freeman, however, felt that Imperial Federalists such as Jenkins had entirely missed the point if they believed his work could assist them in shaping and implementing their proposals. In the History of Federal Government, Freeman dedicated a significant portion of the work to warning that federalism was only suitable and workable in very specific circumstances. Federalism, he wrote: is a more delicate and artificial structure than either of the others [the city-​state and the nation-​state]; its perfect form is a late growth of a very high state of political government; it is, even more than other forms of government, essentially the creation of circumstances, and it will even less than other forms bear thoughtlessly transplanting to soils where circumstances have not prepared the ground for it … even its warmest admirers could hardly wish to propagate it, irrespective of circumstances, throughout the whole world in general.65

For Freeman, federalism is only appropriate as a constitutional framework when there is some degree of commonality between the member states –​a ‘community in origin or feeling or interest’ –​which allows the constituents to be able to work together ‘up to a certain point’.66 However, these commonalities must not rise to the level of perfection and identity which would allow the members to be fused together for all purposes. ‘Where there is no community at all’, he maintained, ‘Federalism is inappropriate; the Cities or States had better remain wholly independent … Where community rises into identity, Federalism is equally inappropriate; the Cities or States had better sink into mere Counties of a Kingdom or Consolidated Republic’.67 In the correct circumstances, federalism can be tried, but to be a true federation it must meet some very particular conditions in the design of its constitution. In an important passage in the History of Federal Government, Freeman explained that: The name of Federal Government may … be applied to any union of component members, where the degree of union between the members

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surpasses that of mere alliance, however intimate, and where the degree of independence possessed by each member surpasses anything which can fairly come under the head of merely municipal freedom. Two requisites seem necessary to constitute a Federal Government in its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of the members of the Union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only … Thus each member will fix for itself the laws of its criminal jurisprudence, and even the details of its political constitution. And it will do this, not as a matter of privilege or concession from any higher power, but as a matter of absolute right, by virtue of its inherent powers as an independent commonwealth … Each member is perfectly independent within its own sphere; but there is another sphere in which its independence, or rather its separate existence, vanishes … The making of peace and war, the sending and receiving of ambassadors, generally all that comes within the department of International Law, will be reserved wholly to the central power.68

This ideal, Freeman acknowledged, is ‘so very refined’ that it has rarely been achieved in the history of the Aryan race.69 The only federations which have really met  all these conditions were, in Freeman’s estimation, the Achaian League of 281–​146 BC, and the United States of America since 1778.70 Again, Freeman pointed out that even when the conditions for federalism were present, and a constitution is adopted that truly meets the definition of federal government, this form of government is necessarily a comparatively weak one and the likelihood is that a federation will disintegrate. ‘It is hardly possible’, Freeman wrote, that a man can feel the same love for an ingenious political creation as he may feel for a single great nation or for a single city-​commonwealth … A  Federal Union, in short, must depend for its permanence, not on sentiment but on the reason of its citizens. If circumstances remain as they were at the time of its formation, if the particular degree of union which it secures is found to be practically better than either closer union or more complete independence, a Federal Government may well be as permanent as any other. If circumstances change, if it be found that either consolidation or separation is desirable, then the Federal Union, essentially a compromise, may be found to have worked well as a system of transition.71

If circumstances change, the members of the federation may well find it expedient to transform themselves into a consolidated state. Having already delegated a large portion of their rights to a common government, the several states could easily go a step further and invest that common government with even more extensive rights. Alternatively, previously weak states within the federation may gain [ 93 ]

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in strength and feel that they would now prefer complete independence from a league which restrains them. If the citizens also think that their state has been wronged by the Union, then the idea of independence will easily arise and will be relatively straightforward to carry out into practice compared, for example, with the effective secession of an English county which, in Freeman’s opinion, is ‘something too ludicrous to think of’.72 Bearing the above points in mind, it is possible to turn to Freeman’s critique of the proposals for transforming the British Empire into an Imperial Federation. On the first head, that of sufficient  –​but not too much  –​commonality between the member states, Freeman found himself exasperated when considering the question of Imperial Federation. Noting that several different terms seemed to be in use, Freeman wondered whether ‘ “Greater Britain,” “Imperial Federation,” “Federation of the English-​speaking People,” mean one thing or two or three?’73 If the term ‘Greater Britain’ has the same meaning as the ‘British Empire’, Freeman observed that the United States of America would not come within this description. If, on the other hand, ‘Greater Britain’ meant the ‘Federation of the English-​speaking people’ then ‘the people of the United States of America surely form so large a part of the English-​speaking people that a federation which is meant to take in all the branches of that people is strangely imperfect if it leaves out a branch so great and so fruitful as that which has spread the English tongue from Ocean to Ocean’.74 Again, if the phrase ‘Greater Britain’ is equivalent, not to the federation of the English-​speaking people but to the ‘British Empire’, then there was a different difficulty, as ‘the Empire is patched up of men of every race and speech under the sun’.75 India, in particular, posed a problem in Freeman’s analysis of Imperial Federation as India ‘may indeed be looked on as the head and front of the Imperial power of Britain’ but ‘it can hardly be looked on as itself a Greater Britain’.76 ‘Does the Imperial Federation take in India or not?’ Freeman demanded to know.77 If the answer was no, then Freeman confessed that he had difficulty in seeing how the Imperial Federation would be imperial  –​ considering that India was the only part of the dominions over which the Queen held the title ‘Empress’. ‘It would be a strange thing’, Freeman argued, ‘if, in forming the Queen’s dominions into an Imperial Federation, her one Imperial possession should be the only part of her dominions which is left out’.78 Alternatively, if India was included, then Freeman had equal difficulty in seeing how the Imperial Federation would be a federation  –​ considering that there were few commonalities between the British, the Canadians, the Australians, and the South Africans on the one hand, and Indians on the other. ‘If … the Empire of India is taken into the Federation’, Freeman wrote, [ 94 ]

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then we may be allowed to ask, how the Federation of which the Empire of India is a part will be a Federation of the English-​speaking people or a Federation at all. The area and population of the Empire of India are so great that, in its federal aspect, as the state or canton of India, it will hold a place in the Imperial Federation of Greater Britain at least as overwhelming as Prussia now holds in the Imperial Federation of Germany. Where would Great Britain be, where would Australia or Canada or South Africa be, alongside of such a yoke-​fellow? It will be a serious question in such a case what is to become of the white-​skinned, European, Christian minority, outvoted, as it must always be, by millions on millions of dark-​skinned Mussulmans and Hindoos who can hardly be reckoned among the English-​speaking people … I feel certain that not a few of those who talk about Imperial Federation … ever [stop] to think what the words they use, if they imply anything, really do imply.79

On the second point, on the constitution of a true federal government, Freeman also viewed the proposal for Imperial Federation as problematic and nonsensical. Freeman quickly dispensed with the argument advanced by the Imperial Federalists that Britain and the colonies already formed a kind of federation, albeit imperfect. ‘To speak of changing an imperfect federation into a perfect one gives a false idea of the case’, Freeman asserted: ‘[w]‌hat is really proposed to be done is not to change a lax confederation into a closer one or an imperfect confederation into a perfect one. It is to bring in federation, as a perfectly new thing, where at present there is no federation, but its opposite, subjection’.80 The existing relationship between Britain and the colonies in no way meets the definition of federalism. As Freeman explained, ‘[a]ll the elements of federation are wanting. There is no voluntary union of independent states, keeping some powers to themselves and granting other powers to a central authority of their own creation. There is instead a number of dependent bodies, to which a central authority older than themselves has been graciously pleased to grant certain powers’.81 ‘I shall doubtless be told’, he continued, ‘that the colonies can alter their criminal law, their marriage law, and a crowd of other laws, which a municipality at home cannot alter. But why? The colonies can do all these things, simply because Parliament has given them the power to do them’.82 As Freeman pointed out, in relationship to his definition of federation, federal government requires each member state to give up certain powers to a central body which will act, not on behalf of any particular state, but on behalf of the federation as a whole. Up until this time in British history, the Parliament of Great Britain –​consisting of the monarch, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons –​had been a sovereign assembly ‘which knows no superior on earth and which [ 95 ]

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knows no limit to the range of its powers’.83 If Great Britain entered into a federation, together with her colonies, then the Parliament of Great Britain would lose this sovereignty. When fully considered in practical terms, Freeman believed that few would wish Britain to become less independent than at present, and he noted that no power in the history of the world had ever willingly sacrificed its sovereignty to join a federation under similar conditions. ‘As a matter of fact’, he explained, no real Federation was ever formed in this fashion … the chief Federations of the world have been formed in quite another way. A number of small states, in face of some greater power that threatened them, each needing the help of its fellows against the common enemy, have agreed, while still keeping each one its separate being, to become one state for all purposes that touch their relations to other powers … this small self-​ lowering is more than outweighed by the far greater security that it gains for preserving independence in any shape. It is quite another case when a great power … is asked to come down from its place, to rank for the future simply as one member alongside of its own dependencies, even though most of these dependencies are its own children. For this, it must be remembered, and nothing else, is what Federation really means. And it is what no ruling power on earth has ever yet consented to, and what we may suspect that no ruling power ever will consent to.84

No ruling state had ever admitted its subject states into a federal relationship with itself. More commonly, the ruling state absorbed the subordinate states into its own nationhood. This was what happened in ancient Rome, and in the union of England with Scotland and Ireland. If Britain absorbed her colonies in this way, however, the colonial legislatures would necessarily have to be abolished and the colonies would send members to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in fair proportion to their number. Freeman doubted whether the colonies would relinquish the limited self-​government they currently enjoyed in return for this arrangement. If it was suggested, however, that the colonial Parliaments would be preserved, and that members for the colonies would also be represented in Westminster, then another set of problems would arise. If the affairs of the colonies were discussed in the colonial assemblies, but the affairs of the United Kingdom were discussed in an assembly in which colonial representatives could vote, then, Freeman pointed out, ‘the mother-​country will in truth become dependent on the colonies’.85 Even if it was countered that the colonial Parliaments would settle the affairs of the colonies, the Parliament of the United Kingdom would settle the affairs of the United Kingdom, and that the new colonial members who join the United Kingdom in its imperial aspect would only be allowed to vote in Westminster on [ 96 ]

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imperial affairs, then the confusion would be endless: how would the distinction be drawn? On the third point, the likelihood of a federation to disintegrate, Freeman reiterated his belief that Imperial Federation was a paradox and impossible in the first place, but suggested that Britain might achieve a successful and sustainable co-​operation with the colonies –​ if the British Empire was destroyed. Freeman believed the very term ‘Imperial Federation’ was illogical. ‘On the principle that language was given man to conceal his thoughts’, Freeman wrote, ‘ “Imperial Federation” is surely the wisest name ever thought of. On any other principle it is surely the most foolish. For it is absolutely without meaning; it is a contradiction in terms. “Empire” implies the rule of some person or power over some other; “federal” implies the union of certain powers or communities, on presumably equal terms’.86 ‘Where there is Empire’, Freeman asserted, ‘there is no brotherhood; where there is brotherhood, there is no Empire’.87 If, then, Imperial Federation was not possible, and the only alternatives remaining for the future of the British Empire were disintegration or continued subjection, Freeman was in no doubt what the best option would be. ‘The sentiment is possibly unpatriotic’, he wrote, but I cannot help looking on such a lasting friendly union of the English and English-​speaking folk as an immeasurably higher object than the maintenance of any so-​called British empire … It is a question which as yet one cannot do more than whisper; but would ‘disintegration’ be too dearly bought, if it carried with it the perfect independence of the United States of Australia, and a greater chance than we now have of keeping the lasting good will of the United States of America?88

Greater Greece and Greater Britain Freeman was clear, then, that federalism was a form of government that was appropriate only in specific circumstances; that the constitution of a federation must maintain a careful balance between self-​ government and the centralisation of power; and that federations were liable to disintegrate. Freeman was equally clear that the relationship between Britain and her colonies was not, and never could be, one of Imperial Federation. Always conscious of the old Arnoldian problem of reconciling numbers with equality and political participation within a state, Freeman was also anxious about the potential dangers that British expansionism might pose to already-​existing and hard-​won liberties. Having set out his thinking on these issues in terms of principles and terminology, Freeman turned to ancient Greece to explore a potential [ 97 ]

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Aryan blueprint for the future organisation of relations between the British metropole and the English-​speaking colonies. In this project, he found an ally in Gladstone. Both Freeman and Gladstone’s interpretation of the issues surrounding British colonialism were shaped by reading two works in particular:  George Cornewall Lewis’ Essay on the Government of Dependencies (1841) and George Grote’s History of Greece (12 vols, 1846–​56).89 In his Essay Lewis reviewed the history of ancient Greece to show that ‘[t]‌he promotion of successful colonisation is … one of the best means of advancing and diffusing civilisation, and raising the general condition of mankind’.90 Nevertheless, he demonstrated that the Greeks had established colonies which were allowed to develop in complete independence from their homeland. As such, he argued that ‘there is nothing in the colonial relation which implies that the colony must be a dependency of the mother-​country’.91 Comparing Greek and English models, he implied that England might benefit by ‘voluntarily recognis[ing] the legal independence of such of its own dependencies as were fit for independence’.92 For Lewis, a dominant country such as England ought ‘to promote colonisation for the purpose of extending its trade rather than its empire, and without attempting to maintain the dependence of its colonies beyond the time when they need its protection’.93 In addition to Lewis’ essay, Freeman and Gladstone drew on Grote’s History of Greece. In this work they found a vision of a form of political existence which enabled both the development of strong and flourishing independent polities, and the establishment of intimate bonds between similar peoples across a considerable geographical space. Throughout his History, Grote underlined the fact that the various Greek peoples were incapable of coming together in a fully consolidated state. ‘Nothing short of force’, he wrote, ‘will efface in the mind of a free Greek the idea of his city as an autonomous and separate organization’, and it was only the might of ‘all-​conquering Rome’ that had succeeded, finally, in establishing a ‘melancholy unity of subjection’.94 Despite their commitment to the small city-​ state, however, the Greeks were drawn closer together from the time of Peisistratus (561–​ 527 BC) onwards. For the next two centuries, the conflicting tendencies towards political isolation and cultural assimilation grew. As Grote explained: Taking the two centuries now under review, then, it will appear that there is not only no growing political unity among the Grecian states, but a tendency even to the contrary  –​to dissemination and mutual estrangement. Not so, however, in regard to the other feelings of unity capable of subsisting between men who acknowledge no common

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political authority –​sympathies founded on common religion, language, belief of race, legends, tastes and customs, intellectual appetencies, sense of proportion and artistic excellence, recreative enjoyments, &c. On all these points the manifestations of Hellenic unity become more and more pronounced and comprehensive, in spite of increased political dissemination, throughout the same period.95

The growing sense of common sentiment and sympathy between Greek and Greek found many forms of expression. As the Olympic games continued to expand, new cultural and religious celebrations were also established, including the pan-​Ionic Delian Festival and the Pan-​Hellenic festivals of Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea. These events created a strong feeling of unity, according to Grote, as ‘[t]‌he festival was originally local, but friendship or communion of race was shown by inviting others, non-​residents, to partake in its attractions’.96 For Grote this ‘[r]eciprocal frequentation of religious festivals’ was the ‘standing evidence of friendship and fraternity among cities not politically united’.97 In addition to the festivals, Grote emphasised the importance of advances in art and science in fostering a sense of pride and unity among the Greeks. ‘[E]xtra-​political Hellenism’, in Grote’s view, was encouraged by ‘men of genius, poets, musicians, sculptors, architects … the gradual expansion of science, philosophy and rhetoric’.98 It was these achievements which ‘caused the social atoms of Hellas to gravitate towards each other, and … enabled the Greeks to become something better and greater than the aggregate of petty disunited communities’.99 In Grote’s overall narrative, the only attempt to establish a formal political relationship between the Greeks appears as fateful. Grote related how the growing threat of the Persian Empire led to the creation of the Delian League in 478 BC. This confederation united states from the Aegean, Chalcidice, the Hellespont and the Bosporus, together with the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians, under the leadership of Athens. For the first two decades of its existence, the League worked well, as members attended regular congresses on the island of Delos and each contributed to a central treasury to fund the building of ships. In its inception, then, Grote wrote: [W]‌e have … in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences  –​not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Aegean sea, regulated by a common superintending authority.100

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As Athens grew in power and strength, however, the leading city-​ state moved the treasury from Delos to Athens and began to dictate the affairs of the confederation. In this way, the Delian League was transformed into the Athenian Empire. According to Grote’s analysis, it was Athenian imperialism which aroused the jealousy of Sparta, led to the Peloponnesian War (431–​404 BC), and produced a chaotic situation which was easily exploited by the conquerors Philip II and Alexander the Great. Both Freeman and Gladstone were impressed by the descriptions of the spread of Greek colonisation and civilisation which they found in the pages of Lewis and Grote. ‘Gladstone’s speeches on overseas colonies’, H.C.G. Matthew observes, ‘were in substance and sentiment adapted from Lewis’ Essay’ as ‘he was led … from Greek history to an important conclusion: local independence and responsible government were of vital importance to a colony’.101 Similarly, when Gladstone read Grote’s History, starting in March 1847, he would have seen the relevance of magna Grecia for modern Britain.102 As Paul Knaplund explains: During the middle years of the nineteenth century the publication of Grote’s History of Greece revealed to Englishmen how remarkably close, long, and enduring had been the ties between the Greek cities and their western colonies, despite the non-​existence of political control on the part of the parent states. To minds such as Gladstone’s, filled with admiration for the glories of Greece, it was an alluring thought that England should take the place in the modern world which Greece had occupied in antiquity. And they believed that in the administration of the colonies, Britain might well follow the example of Hellas.103

The importance of Lewis and Grote in shaping Gladstone’s thinking on imperial matters can most clearly be seen in a speech on ‘Our Colonies’ which he delivered to the Mechanics’ Institute of Chester in 1855. In this speech Gladstone marvelled at the process of Greek colonisation.104 The Greeks, he observed, were ‘a people that lay in a nutshell’  –​an ‘insignificant tribe’ which had expanded with great energy into the Peloponnesus, the Greek islands, Asia Minor, and Sicily.105 Their method of colonising was particularly admirable, in Gladstone’s opinion, because it was based on the principle of freedom and self-​government.106 As Gladstone went on to explain, the ‘[c]‌olonies were founded from Greece, not by the action of government, not by the meeting of cabinets or the acts of ministers, but by the spontaneous energy of the members of the community themselves, who went forth to those spots in the globe where they thought they could do better for themselves’.107 [ 100 ]

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As the Greeks planted new colonies they carried with them a love of the homeland, and the laws, religions, manners, languages, and institutions of their metropolis.108 Greek colonisation, then, saw ‘the creation of so many mirrors in which the parent Greece was thrown back upon herself, and the immense prosperity of those states was due to this  –​that those colonies were founded in perfect freedom’.109 Precisely because the ‘mother-​ country’ never interfered in the affairs of the colony and there was no direct political or administrative connection between the two, the colonies grew strong and independent while retaining a sense of union in ‘heart and character’ with the metropolis.110 From the history of the Greeks Gladstone drew the lesson ‘that the unity of action and affection, and the great increase of influence and of power which followed upon the extension of their race, was best obtained by abstaining from any attempt at interference with them [the colonies], and by allowing the colony to grow and thrive under the light and warmth of the sun of heaven’.111 Turning to modern British colonialism, Gladstone made the implications of his reading of ancient Greek history explicit. Gladstone divided the history of British imperialism into four ages: the golden, silver, brazen, and iron age. For Gladstone, the golden age of British expansion was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the metropolis was so preoccupied with affairs at home that the colonies were effectively left to fend for themselves. This was the period during which, in Gladstone’s analysis, British colonialism most closely approximated Greek colonialism. As he explained: [T]‌he colonies at that period were left practically in the enjoyment of a freedom almost as complete, for every practical purpose, as that which the Greek colonies formerly enjoyed … The great point … was, that under both systems [English and Greek] the colonies had freedom, and that freedom produced its effects –​first, a wonderfully rapid growth of greatness and prosperity; and second, the utmost warmth of attachment and affection to the mother country.112

During the silver age –​the decades immediately preceding the American War of Independence –​this policy of ‘ “wise and salutary neglect” ’ was unfortunately reversed, and British politicians began to look at the colonies as a source of income.113 The attempt to impose taxes led to the rebellion of the American subjects who had come to associate the name of England with oppression. The third age, the brazen age, began, in Gladstone’s account, in 1783 and came to an end around 1840. This period was marked by the ‘incessant interference’ of Downing Street in the affairs of the colonies, in the form of tariffs, crown revenues, and [ 101 ]

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standing armies.114 The colonies had responded, in turn, by protesting and demanding greater powers of self-​government or independence. The final age, his own, was one which Gladstone saw as pivotal, a time in which it was necessary to ‘make a transition from misfortune and from evil, almost in some cases one would say from madness and from crime, back to the rules of justice, of reason, of nature, and of common sense’.115 The British people must finally recognise a truth that the Greeks had already understood, that freedom was necessary for a sense of harmony and fraternity to flourish. ‘Experience has proved’, he counselled, that if you want to strengthen the connexion between the colonies and this country  –​if you want to increase the resemblance between the colonies and this country –​if you want to see British law held in respect and British institutions adopted and beloved in the colonies, never associate with them the hated name of force and coercion exercised by us, at a distance, over their rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom –​let them not feel any yoke upon their necks –​let them understand that the relations between you and them are relations of affection; even in the matter of continuing the connexion, let the colonists be the judges, for they are the best judges as to whether they ought to continue to be with you or not.116

For Freeman, as for Gladstone, reading Lewis’ Essay and Grote’s History left a deep impression. In the History of Federal Government, Freeman cited Lewis as an authority several times and felt honoured at the latter’s interest in his book. As he wrote to Finlay on 26 April 1863: ‘I hope you got my first volume of Federal Government … I know that it is approved by many of those for whose approbation I care most. It must have been about the last thing which Sir Cornewall Lewis was at work at; I  had some correspondence with him about it … What a loss his death is; just when one could least afford to lose a real scholar and critic.’117 As for Grote, Freeman lauded the historian’s ‘unwearied research, his clearness of vision, his depth and originality of thought’.118 In Freeman’s opinion, Grote’s History of Greece was ‘one of the glories of our age and country’ and he declared that ‘to read the political part of Mr. Grote’s history … is an epoch in a man’s life’.119 In a lecture he published under the title Greater Greece and Greater Britain (1885), Freeman followed Lewis, Grote, and Gladstone, in celebrating the political independence of the ancient Greek colonies. The Greek colony, Freeman noted, was ‘a city, a free city, a city that knew no lord, that knew no ruling city, a city furnished from the first with all that was needed for the life of a Greek commonwealth, a city free and independent from its birth’.120 While no political connection remained between the mother-​country and the colony, still, [ 102 ]

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[T]‌he love, the reverence, due to a parent was never lacking. The tie of memory, the tie of kindred, the tie of religion, were of themselves so strong that no tie of political allegiance was needed to make them stronger. The sacred fire on the hearth of the new city was kindled from the hearth of its mother; the parent was honoured with fitting offerings; her citizens were welcomed as elder brethren when they visited the younger city.121

Taking the example of the relationship between Corinth and the colony of Syracuse, Freeman observed that the Syracusan citizens did not identify as Corinthians but remembered that they were the children of Corinth. The Corinthians, for their part, made no claim of authority or superiority over the Syracusans, but were always ready to assist the Syracusans if they were needed. ‘The mother-​city steps in alike’, Freeman explained, ‘when Syracuse is pressed by foreign enemies and when she is torn by domestic seditions. She acts as a mediator between Syracuse and her foes’.122 As Freeman pointed out, this ‘friendship’ was not confined to Corinth and Syracuse, but ‘is the common tie which binds Greek metropolis and Greek colony to one another’.123 In such an arrangement, there can be no conflict, no war of independence, because the colony is free from the very beginning. Modern colonisation, however, has followed a different pattern. For Freeman it was clear that the British kingdom would expand in a way that diverged from the Greek city-​state, precisely because it was a kingdom. Where the Greeks were obsessed with the city-​state idea and established new independent city-​states, the British are the subjects of a kingdom and remain part of that kingdom. The British colonist, Freeman argued, is ‘tied and hampered’ by allegiance to their sovereign and, on arriving in a new land, can do nothing other than declare it to be a part of their monarch’s territory.124 This relationship in which the colony was held in subjection to the metropolis was the logical result, in Freeman’s analysis, of the theory of political life which the founders of those settlements carried with them from Britain. ‘The theory of an allegiance which could never be cast aside’, Freeman concluded, ‘obliged their settlements to become provinces, dependencies, whatever name is chosen, of the motherland’.125 It was no less a necessity of the case, however, that the time would come when this dependence was no longer tolerated by the colony. In British history, unlike Greek history, Freeman observed, ‘we see lands whose independence, instead of growing from the beginning with the good will of a watchful parent, has been won by the sword from the grasp of a parent who strove to keep her children in subjection’.126 It was from a reading of ancient Greek history, then, that Gladstone and Freeman derived their opposition to British expansionism. Both men rejected the proposals for Imperial Federation, critiqued Disraeli’s [ 103 ]

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imperialism, and showed little interest in British involvement in India or Africa. At the same time, both Gladstone and Freeman tried to advance the cause of Home Rule for Ireland and supported the idea of self-​government for the colonies. For Gladstone, it was desirable that the colonies should be granted independence, as this would enable a sense of friendship between the metropolis and the colony to flourish. Freeman shared this dream, hoping that the British Empire would be dissolved to allow for the formation of a looser association based on mutual affection. Such a sympathetic and emotional union would advance the cause of freedom in each constituent state and would therefore remain faithful to the democratic heritage of the Aryan West. Regretting the fact that British people had the ‘cry of “Empire” daily dinned into our ears’, Freeman wished to replace the ‘confused babble about a British Empire’ with a higher notion of ‘brotherhood’.127 ‘Cannot our old Hellenic memories teach us’, Freeman asked: that brotherhood need be none the less near, none the less enduring, between communities whose political connexion has been severed … may it not be that England herself may be expanded by the very cutting short of her dominion? I shall hardly see the day; but some of you may see it, when the work of Washington and Hamilton may be wrought again without slash or blow, when alongside the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America, the United States of Australia, the United States of South Africa, the United States of New Zealand, may stand forth as independent homes of Englishmen, bound to one another by the common tie of brotherhood, and bound by loyal reverence, and by no meaner bond, to the common parent of all.128

The Unity of Aryan History In rejecting the project of Imperial Federation as misguided, Freeman cautioned against any potentially dangerous deviation from the traditional political norms of ancient and modern Europe. He favoured, instead, the formation of a loose commonwealth of Aryan nations based on the model of ancient Greek colonialism. As his friend Bryce noted in his obituary of Freeman in 1892: He disliked all schemes for drawing the colonies into closer relations with the United Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they should sever themselves from it, as the United States had done. This view sprang, partly from his feeling that they were very recent acquisitions, with which the old historic England had nothing to do, partly also from the impression made on him by the analogy of the Greek colonies. He appeared to think that the precedent of those settlements showed the true and proper relation between a ‘metropolis’ and her colonies to be

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not one of political interdependence, but of cordial friendship and a disposition to render help, nothing more.129

Emphasising the concept of an Aryan ‘brotherhood’, Freeman’s view of the history and potential future of the West was also shaped by the teachings of Arnold. Following Arnold, Freeman believed that the democratic achievements of Europe could only be secured if a balance was maintained between the size of a population and the participation of the citizenry in the workings of the state. It was for this reason, too, that he preferred a system of independent nation-​states with representative governments and resisted the impulse towards British expansionism. In embracing Arnold’s doctrine of the Unity of History, Freeman also transfigured it in a way that bifurcated his world-​view. Obsessed with the European heritage, Freeman had a tendency to speak of the Unity of the History of the Aryan race  –​a process of development which emerges as separate from the isolated existence of non-​Aryans. This shift in Freeman’s understanding of the Unity of History can be seen most clearly in the Rede Lecture he delivered at Cambridge in 1872 and published the following year.130 Freeman began the lecture on ‘The Unity of History’ by reiterating the achievements of the comparative method. He described once again how the discovery had [O]‌pened to its votaries a new world, and that not an isolated world shut up within itself but a world in which times and tongues and nations which before seemed parted poles asunder, now find each one its own place, its own relation to every other, as members of one common primeval brotherhood … it has broken down the middle wall of partition between kindred races and kindred studies; it has swept away barriers which fenced off certain times and languages as ‘dead’ and ‘ancient’; it has taught us that there is no such thing as ‘dead’ and ‘living’ languages, and ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ history.131

But, almost immediately, the idea of historical unity becomes a belief in Aryan unity:  ‘Let us come to history more strictly so-​ called’, Freeman announced, ‘to the history of our own quarter of the globe and our family of nations. The history of the Aryan nations of Europe, their languages, their institutions, their dealings with one another, all form one long series of cause and effect, no part of which can be rightly understood if it be dealt with as something wholly cut off from, and alien to, any other part’.132 Freeman makes the transition easily, and seemingly unconsciously.133 In another passage he declared that: Looking then at the history of man, at all events at the history of Aryan man in Europe, as one unbroken whole … we shall soon see that those branches of history which are too often set aside as something

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distinct and isolated from all the others do not lose but gain in dignity and importance by being set free from the unnatural bondage, by being brought into their natural relation to other branches of the one great study of which they form a part.134

The simple insertion of the phrase ‘at all events’ is enough to transform a discussion of unified humanity into a discussion of Aryans only.135 For this reason, Arnaldo Momigliano views Freeman’s writings as exemplifying the ‘disruption that racism caused inside the unity of history’.136 As Momigliano explains, the universal historian always ‘isolates and defines certain types of events and tries to make their appearance or disappearance meaningful. By giving more importance and therefore more attention to certain types of events than to others he will provide his own universal history with a characteristic line of development’.137 Traditionally, such lines of development could include the succession of a golden age by a silver age, of polytheism by monotheism, of one empire by another empire, of slavery by feudalism.138 In the nineteenth century, however, universal historians began to move away from the ‘commonly accepted conventions of their literary genre’.139 ‘Far more than in previous centuries’, Momigliano writes, [The universal historians] recognised the possibility that their typology, rather than providing criteria for the description and classification of successive ages of mankind, would lead to the partition of mankind into several co-​existing groups or races, each with its own permanent features … Universal history as a history of co-​existing human groups –​that is, a history of concurrent and competing permanent groups, each with its own permanent characteristics  –​seems to be a new feature of the nineteenth century.140

In moving on to situate Freeman’s histories of Europe in relationship to his neglected Orientalist works, the next part of this book will demonstrate that his understanding of the Unity of Aryan History led him to picture world-​historical development as a contest between the West and the East. As we will see, Freeman’s narratives on European history –​which celebrated the achievements of the English within the context of a wider Aryan race and emphasised the cyclical nature of development  –​find a counterpart in his depictions of the East as at once inferior and threatening.

Notes 1 Burrow, Liberal Descent, p. 185. 2 Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Music: Britain, 1876–​1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 324 and p. 525 and Porter, Absent-​Minded Imperialists,

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‘I am no lover of Empire’ p. 283. See also, Hall, Civilizing Subjects and John MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). 3 See Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race; Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–​1914 (London:  Cornell University Press, 1990); Dark Vanishings; Taming Cannibals; Hall, Civilizing Subjects; and Christopher Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism:  University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy, 1860–​86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p. 222. 4 For the relationship between liberalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century see Theodore Koditschek, Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-​Century Visions of a Greater Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire:  A Study in Nineteenth-​ Century British Liberal Thought (London:  University of Chicago Press, 1999). 5 Freeman, ‘The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity’, p. 56. 6 See Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain; Reordering the World; and Victorian Visions of Global Order. 7 Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, p. 24. 8 Ibid., p. 24. 9 Ibid., p. 25. 10 For additional treatments of this same subject see, for example:  Michael Burgess, ‘Imperial Federation: Continuity and Change in British Imperial Ideas, 1869–​1871’, New Zealand Journal of History, 17, 1 (1983), pp. 60–​80, available at www.nzjh. auckland.ac.nz/​document.php?wid=1125; Michael Burgess, The British Tradition of Federalism (London:  Leicester University Press, 1995); John Kendle, Federal Britain:  A History (London:  Routledge, 1997); Ged Martin, ‘Empire Federalism and Imperial Parliamentary Union, 1820–​1870’, Historical Journal, 16, 1 (1973), pp. 65–​92. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S0018246X0000371X; Ged Martin, ‘The Idea of “Imperial Federation” ’, in Ronald Hyman and Ged Martin, Reappraisals in British Imperial History (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 121–​38. 11 W.E. Gladstone, ‘Third Midlothian Speech’, in Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December 1879 (Edinburgh:  Andrew Elliot, 1879), pp. 115–​16. On Gladstone’s attitude towards imperialism and colonialism see H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1809–​1898 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 374–​ 413 and Richard Shannon, Gladstone:  Heroic Minister, 1865–​1898 (London:  Penguin Books, 1999). 12 Letter from Cecil Rhodes, quoted in William Simpson and Martin Jones, Europe, 1783–​1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 237. 13 Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, p. 2. 14 Ibid., p. 246. 15 Edward Jenkins, ‘Imperial Federalism’, Contemporary Review, 16 (January, 1871), pp. 165–​88, p. 165. 16 Ibid., p. 165. 17 Ibid., p. 165. 18 Ibid., p. 166. 19 Edward Jenkins, ‘An Imperial Confederation’, Contemporary Review, 17 (April, 1871), pp. 60–​79. 20 Jenkins, ‘Imperial Federalism’, p. 167. 21 Ibid., p. 167. 22 Jenkins, ‘An Imperial Confederation’, p. 72 23 Ibid., p. 71. 24 Ibid., p. 71. 25 Jenkins, ‘Imperial Federalism’, p. 183. 26 Ibid., p. 183. 27 Ibid., pp. 186–​7. 28 Ibid., pp. 187–​8. 29 Jenkins, ‘An Imperial Confederation’, p. 64.

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The West 30 Anon, ‘Great Britain Confederated:  New Chapter to be Added to the Old School Books for the Rising Generation of the Twentieth Century’, Fraser’s Magazine, New Series, vol. 4, July 1871, p. 109. 31 Ibid., p. 111. 32 Ibid., p. 113. 33 As recorded in Frederick Young (ed.), Imperial Federation of Great Britain and Her Colonies (London: S. W. Silver and Co., 1876), p. xvii. 34 C. W. Eddy, ‘The Best Means of Drawing Together the Interests of the United Kingdom and the Colonies’, Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, vol. vi (1874–​ 75) and Francis Labilliere, The Permanent Unity of the Empire (London:  Unwin Brothers, 1875). 35 Young, Imperial Federation. 36 [Anon.], ‘The Federation of the English Empire’, Westminster Review, no. ccxx (April 1879), pp.  147–​52; no. ccxxi (July 1879), pp.  22–​9; and no. ccxxii (October 1879), pp. 153–​62. [Anon.], ‘Imperium et Libertas’, Westminster Review, no. ccxxiii (January 1880), pp. 43–​52, quoted in Kendle, Federal Britain, p. 183. 37 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, Two Courses of Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1883). This figure is taken from Mira Matikkala, Empire and Imperial Ambition:  Liberty, Englishness and Anti-​Imperialism in Late Victorian Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), p. 149. 38 Seeley, Expansion of England, p. 8. 39 Ibid., p. 11. 40 Ibid., p. 51. 41 Ibid., p. 51. 42 Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, p. 108. 43 Seeley, Expansion of England, p. 75. 44 J.R. Seeley, ‘Introduction’, in Her Majesty’s Colonies (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1886), p. xi. 45 J.A. Froude, Oceana, or England and Her Colonies (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886). 46 Ibid., p. 357. 47 Ibid., p. 357. 48 Ibid., p. 15. 49 Ibid., p. 356. 50 Ibid., p. 357. 51 Ibid., pp. 393–​5. 52 Goldwin Smith, The Empire, a Series of Letters Published in ‘The Daily News’, 1862, 1863 (London: John Henry and James Parker, 1863), p. 155. 53 Goldwin Smith, Commonwealth or Empire, a Bystander’s View of the Question [1900] (London: Macmillan and Co., 1902), p. 63. 54 Ibid., p. 63. 55 Ibid., p. 80. 56 For a study of Freeman in relationship to the Imperial Federation Movement see also Duncan Bell, ‘Alter Orbis: E. A. Freeman on Empire and Racial Destiny’, in Bremner and Conlin, Making History, pp. 217–​38. 57 Freeman to Smith, 19 August 1888, in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, pp. 383–​4. 58 Freeman to James Bryce, 16 December 1886, in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 357. 59 This date is a rough calculation based on Freeman’s statement, in the preface to the History of Federal Government that his first volume ‘is the first instalment of a scheme formed long ago, and it represents the thought and reading of more than ten years’. Freeman, History of Federal Government, p. x. 60 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 256. 61 Ibid., p. 258. Fragments on Italian federalism (and a short piece on Germany) were found among Freeman’s papers after his death. Subsequently, J. B. Bury collected the fragments and added these to what existed from the original published volume to form a new edition of the work: The History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy by Edward A. Freeman, edited by J.B. Bury (London: Macmillan and Co., 1893).

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‘I am no lover of Empire’ 62 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 256. 63 Jenkins, ‘An Imperial Confederation’, p. 70. 64 Ibid., p. 71. 65 Freeman, History of Federal Government, pp. 89–​90. 66 Ibid., p. 109. 67 Ibid., p. 109. 68 Ibid., pp. 2–​4. 69 Ibid., p. 4. 70 Ibid., p. 6. 71 Ibid., p. 114. 72 Ibid., p. 115. 73 Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, p. 47 74 Ibid., p. 41. 75 E.A. Freeman, ‘George Washington, the Expander of England’, in Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, p. 84. 76 Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, pp. 41–​2. 77 Ibid., p. 48. 78 Ibid., pp. 48–​9. 79 Ibid., pp. 49–​51. 80 E. A.  Freeman, ‘Imperial Federation’, appendix to Greater Greece and Greater Britain, p. 120. 81 Ibid., p. 117. 82 Ibid., p. 119. 83 Ibid., p. 52. 84 Ibid., pp. 55–​6. 85 Ibid., p. 126. 86 Freeman, ‘The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity’, p. 45. 87 Freeman, ‘George Washington, the Expander of England’, p. 102. 88 Ibid., pp. 142–​3. 89 George Cornewall Lewis, An Essay on the Government of Dependencies [1841] with an introduction by C. P. Lucas (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1891). George Grote, A History of Greece; from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great, 12 vols (London: John Murray, 1846–​56). 90 Lewis, Essay on the Government of Dependencies, pp. 227–​8. 91 Ibid., p. 173 and p. 228. 92 Ibid., p. 228 and p. 324. 93 Ibid., p. 324. 94 George Grote, History of Greece, vol. 4 [1847] third edition (London: John Murray, 1851), p. 68. 95 Ibid., p. 71. 96 Ibid., p. 72. 97 Ibid., pp. 72–​3. 98 Ibid., p. 136 and p. 135. 99 Ibid., p. 136. 100 George Grote, History of Greece, vol. 5 [1849] second edition (London: John Murray, 1851), pp. 361–​2. 101 Matthew, Gladstone, p. 74. On the influence of Lewis on Gladstone see also David William Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone:  Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain (Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 106–​7. 102 David Bebbington, ‘Gladstone and Grote’, in Peter John Jagger (ed.), Gladstone (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 157–​77, p. 158. On Grote’s influence on Gladstone see also Deryck M. Schreuder, ‘Gladstone’s “Greater World”: Free Trade, Empire and Liberal Internationalism’, in Roland Quinault, Roger Swift, and Ruth Clayton Windscheffel (eds), William Gladstone:  New Studies and Perspectives [2012] (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 267–​93, esp. p. 281. 103 Paul Knaplund, Gladstone and Britain’s Imperial Policy (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1927), pp. 12–​13.

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The West 104 W.E. Gladstone, Our Colonies, an Address Delivered to the Members of the Mechanics’ Institute, Chester, November 1855 (London:  John W.  Parker & Son, 1855). 105 Ibid., p. 11. 106 Ibid., p. 11. 107 Ibid., p. 11. 108 Ibid., p. 12. 109 Ibid., p. 12. 110 Ibid., p. 12. 111 Ibid., p. 12. 112 Ibid., p. 12. 113 Gladstone quoting Edmund Burke, ibid., p. 14. 114 Ibid., p. 17. 115 Ibid., p. 21. 116 Ibid., pp. 20–​1. 117 Freeman to Finlay, 26 April 1863, in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 287. The letters Freeman refers to here are not included in Stephens’ Life and I  have not found them among Freeman’s papers held at the John Rylands University Library. 118 E.A. Freeman, ‘Grote’s History of Greece’, The North British Review, 25 (May, 1856), pp. 141–​72, p. 172 119 Ibid., p. 172 and E.A. Freeman, ‘The Athenian Democracy’, in Historical Essays, second series (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1873), pp. 107–​60, p.  150, originally published in the North American Review in January 1858. 120 Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, p. 27. 121 Ibid., p. 29. 122 Ibid., p. 31. 123 Ibid., p. 31. 124 Ibid., p. 34. 125 Ibid., p. 37. 126 Ibid., p. 36. 127 Freeman, ‘George Washington, the Expander of England’, p. 84. 128 Ibid., p. 92. 129 Bryce, ‘Edward Augustus Freeman’, p. 502. 130 Freeman, Comparative Politics. 131 Ibid., p. 302. 132 Ibid., p. 304. 133 Momigliano, ‘Two Types of Universal History’, p. 236. 134 Freeman, ‘Rede Lecture, The Unity of History’, in Comparative Politics, pp. 310–​ 11. Italics mine. 135 Momigliano, ‘Two Types of Universal History’, p. 238. 136 Ibid., p. 236. 137 Ibid., p. 235. 138 Ibid., p. 235. 139 Ibid., p. 235. 140 Ibid., p. 235.

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PA RT II

The East

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CHA P T E R FOUR

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Islam and Orientalism in the History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856)

Best known as a historian of England and Europe, Freeman had an enduring interest in the Orient which has been largely overlooked by modern scholars. Writing in 1877, Freeman reflected that he had ‘read, thought, and written’ about the East ‘for many years’ and that the subject had been ‘through life my chief secondary object of study’.1 As noted in the Introduction, Freeman became aware of Oriental history when he read William Cooke Taylor’s History of the Overthrow of the Roman Empire as an adolescent. In the pages of this book he would have found discussions of the life of Muhammad, the nature of Islam, and the conquests of the Arab Muslims (or ‘Saracens’) in India, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe. Freeman’s own work on this topic, The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856), was his first volume on a historical subject, and it was published when he was just thirty-​three. Based on a series of six lectures he delivered at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh the previous year, Freeman produced his Saracens ‘under the idea that a brief sketch of the principal facts of Mahometan history might be acceptable to a considerable class of readers’.2 His hope, stated in the preface, was that ‘[t]‌here may be some advantages in a treatise composed, not by a professed oriental scholar, but by one who looks at Eastern history with Western eyes, and who is therefore naturally inclined to give most attention to those parts of his subject which, in the way either of connexion or contrast, possess some bearing upon the history of the West’.3 As Freeman openly admitted that he approached the Orient from the point of view of a European and consciously constituted the East in relationship to the West, this chapter positions his work within the discourse of Orientalism identified by Edward Said. While Said’s thesis that Europeans consistently depict the East as ‘other’ will be applied in my reading of the Saracens, it is necessary to challenge Said’s assertion that religious [ 113 ]

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prejudices were displaced by racial prejudices in nineteenth-​century representations of the Orient. Various narratives about Islam were in circulation during the Victorian period, ranging from the ‘conciliatory’ to the ‘confrontational’, and these writings provide an important context for interpreting the themes of Freeman’s volume. Considered within the framework of Said’s thesis on Orientalism, I  show that Freeman exploited the East according to contemporary exigency and portrayed the Orient as Europe’s inferior ‘alter-​ ego’. Composed in direct response to Britain’s support of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War, Freeman’s aim in the Saracens was to demonstrate that Arab-​Islamic governments could not be tolerated because they are despotic and incapable of reform. In constructing his narrative of ‘otherness’ Freeman articulated his belief that Western history formed a unity and asserted that this development remained separate from the concurrent but static existence of the East. In the Saracens, then, Freeman’s view of the precarious and cyclical development of Aryan Europe finds a foil in an East that emerges as distinct from, and actively hostile towards, the West. Detailing the rise and conquests of the Islamic Caliphate, Freeman presented history as the record of dangerous power struggles between two incompatible groups, an ‘old internecine war between the East and the West, between despotism and freedom, between a progressive and a stationary social state’.4 Here, as elsewhere, however, Freeman prioritised the role of culture over biology in shaping the fortunes of nations, past and present. In the Saracens, Freeman deployed a litany of traditional stereotypes about Islam to denounce Muslims as backwards, inherently violent, and antagonistic to progress.

Said, Orientalism, and Islam To analyse Freeman’s Saracens it is helpful, first, to consider the formation of Orientalism as a discourse. In his seminal book, Orientalism (1978), Said argued that a prejudice against the Orient has distorted European writings on the East for over 2,000  years. In Said’s definition, ‘Orientalism’ refers both to the discipline of Western scholarship on the East which was established in the academies from the eighteenth century and, more fundamentally, to the mind-​ set with which all Europeans always approach the Orient.5 ‘Orientalism’, Said declares, ‘is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident” ’.6 According to Said, European accounts of the East are always incomplete, distorted, and misplaced accounts, even if the individual observer intends to be truthful to the ‘real’ meaning of [ 114 ]

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the Orient. Unable to free their minds from various ideas, prejudices, and fantasies about the Orient, Western Orientalists consistently assume, and serve to reinforce, a regular series of distinctions between Europe and the East. Said traces this discourse of ‘otherness’ back to the ancient world. He observes, for example, that in Aeschylus’ The Persians (472 BC) and Euripides’ The Bacchae (405 BC) two of the most significant and influential qualities associated with the Orient in the European imagination already appear.7 As Aeschylus connected the Persian Empire with feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster, and Euripides presented Asia as defeated and remote, the idea of a powerful and articulate Europe and a subjugated and distant East was established.8 In the second century BC, as travellers from the West moved more extensively into the East, Said argues that one clear division between the Occident and the Orient gave way to smaller ones. The Orient came to be subdivided into lands previously known, visited, and conquered, and lands not previously known, visited, and conquered.9 The advent of Christianity then completed the setting up of ‘main intra-​Oriental spheres’ which represented a ‘vacillation’ between familiar Orient and novel Orient.10 In Said’s analysis, it is this vacillation which gives the innumerable Western encounters with the East some unity.11 Rather than judging phenomena either as completely new or as completely well known, a ‘median category’ emerged which enabled the individual to view things seen for the first time as versions of a previously known thing.12 Said uses the West’s confrontation with Islam as an example of this process: Islam came to be judged as a fraudulent version of Christianity in order to mute its threat, impose familiar values, and reduce the pressure on the mind by accommodating things to itself as either ‘ “original” or “repetitious” ’.13 The idea of Islam as a misguided version of Christianity is one which Said sees as intensifying throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods. Muhammad himself is always represented as the ‘imposter (familiar, because he pretends to be like the Jesus Europeans know) and always the Oriental (alien, because although Muhammad is in some ways “like” Jesus he is, after all, not like him)’.14 Thus onto the character of Muhammad in the middle ages there was heaped a bundle of attributes which were seemingly ‘logically’ derived from his doctrinal impostures. Because Muhammad was viewed as the disseminator of a false revelation, he also became the epitome of lechery, debauchery, sodomy, and a whole array of negative traits.15 Most significantly, Said argues, there grew up a notion that Islam had not changed since Muhammad’s first pronouncements in the seventh century and that this stasis had spread, via the dictates of [ 115 ]

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the Qur’an, into every facet of Muslim society. The idea that Muslims had suffered an ‘arrested development’ reinforced, in Said’s analysis, the idea of the East as separated in worldly circumstance and historical development from the West.16 While Said sees Western encounters with Islam as crucial in the genesis of Orientalism, he argues that at the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, certain secularising developments were tending to diminish the sense of religious antagonism.17 The first of these tendencies was the opening up of the Orient beyond Islamic territories.18 Said argues that, as knowledge about the Orient ‘expanded further East geographically and further back temporally’, a considerable dissolution of the Biblical framework took place.19 Secondly, there was a growth in knowledge about seemingly ‘alien’ and ‘exotic’ peoples and a new willingness to deal directly with Oriental source material.20 Said sees, in the work of eighteenth-​century historians like George Sale (1697–​ 1736), an ability to confront the Orient’s peculiarities with some detachment. There was, therefore, a new ‘capacity for dealing historically (and not reductively as a topic of theology)’ with non-​European and non-​Christian cultures.21 The third factor was the growth of a sense of sympathetic identification with regions and cultures not one’s own.22 Giambattista Vico (1668–​1744), J.G. Hamann (1730–​88), and Herder (1744–​1803), were among those who believed that all cultures were internally coherent and bound together by a spirit which an outsider could penetrate by an act of historical sympathy. The final new element which led to the secularisation of Orientalism, in Said’s account, was the impulse to classify nature and man into categories which multiplied the possibilities of designation and meant that ‘race, colour, temperament, character, and types overwhelmed the distinction between Christians and everyone else’.23 Said warns, however, that the rise of ‘modern Orientalism’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should not be seen as a transformation in the Orientalist discourse. While there was a ‘release of the Orient generally, and Islam in particular, from the narrowly religious scrutiny by which it had hitherto been examined (and judged) by the Christian West’, Said nevertheless sees no break in the continuity, constancy, or coherence of European thought.24 Orientalism continued to be based on the idea of an unchanging and inferior East, but it was now adapted to secular ideas. In particular, writes Said, ‘theses of Oriental backwardness, degeneracy, and inequality with the West most easily associated themselves … with ideas about the biological bases of racial inequality’.25 Writing on the East was therefore accommodated to new structures of thought as modern Orientalists established themselves as the central authority on the East and, in articulating their Orientalist [ 116 ]

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discourse, put into circulation a mode of representation by which the East would henceforth be spoken for.26 In imposing a ‘muteness’ on the East, the modern Orientalist not only excluded a potential dialogue between the Orient and the Occident, but also prevented any critical exchange among Europeans that could lead to different and disparate views on the Orient.27 As material for study or reflection, the East, according to Said, now ‘acquired all the marks of inherent weakness and became subject to the vagaries of miscellaneous theories that used it for illustration’.28 For Said, it is the consistency in the European production of images of the ‘silent Other’ which meant that Orientalism could be easily implicated in the West’s domination of the non-​Western world.29 As ‘European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self’, so the hegemony of the West over the East was established, and so European imperial power gained its rationale.30 In short, Orientalism became a ‘style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’.31 Before applying the above thesis to Freeman’s Saracens, it is important to address Said’s assertion that concern with Islam declined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of secularisation and racialised thinking. As Bernard Lewis argues, the spread of rationalism and free-​thinking during the Enlightenment actually led to an intensification in European interest in Islam, as secular writers commented on the faith as an oblique means of criticising Christianity.32 Edward Gibbon, for example, praised Islam in his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (six vols, 1776–​89).33 His discussion of Islam as a religion with a purely human founder, with few dogmas, without priesthood, church, or schism was a vehicle for polemic directed against the teaching of the divinity of Christ, the various ecclesiastical accretions of the Church, and the emergence of factions within Christianity.34 As Lewis writes, Gibbon was significant as he was among the first to represent ‘the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the Church, but as a part of human history, to be understood against the backdrop of Rome and Persia, in the light of Judaism and Christianity, and in complex interplay with Byzantium, Asia, and Europe’.35 Albert Hourani similarly believes that secularisation promoted European interest in Islam, because, ‘[i]‌f Islam was regarded as purely human, it could at least attract the interest of the new secular culture which was concerned with human things as such, which took all knowledge for its province [and] studied the multiplicity of existing things’.36 In the latter part of the eighteenth century and into the [ 117 ]

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nineteenth century, writers were particularly interested in Muhammad and could portray the Prophet with a degree of sympathy. Nathan and Thomas Alcock suggested, in their book The Rise of Mahomet (1796), that the Prophet may not have been a conscious imposter, but may have been genuinely overcome by his own religious enthusiasm:  ‘[e] nthusiasm’, they wrote, ‘may cause a man to deceive himself, and take his own fancies and conceptions for divine suggestions. This probably was the case with Mahomet’.37 The Penny Cyclopaedia went further in 1839 and characterised the Prophet as a quiet, brave, and liberal man, who was noble and simple in his dealings. This entry for Muhammad included the statement that, ‘the religious enthusiast is compelled to act according to the overpowering suggestions of his imagination, which he easily persuades himself to be the inspiration of Heaven’.38 The Encyclopaedia Britannica wrote likewise of Muhammad in 1842, and suggested that ‘[i]f he cannot be freed from the reproach of having deceived men by attributing to himself a divine mission which he had not received, it may perhaps be conceded that the end which he contemplated gives to his imposture a character less odious than would otherwise belong to it’.39 Thomas Carlyle’s lecture on ‘The Hero as Prophet’ in On Heroes, Hero-​Worship, and the Heroic (1841) exemplifies the shift in attitudes which Philip Almond describes as ‘one from Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad a fraud and charlatan, to Islam as an authentic expression of religion and its founder a man of sincerity and genuine piety’.40 Carlyle could accept that Muhammad was a genuine prophet, explaining that ‘[w]‌e have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one’.41 Carlyle also considered that in some sense Muhammad was inspired, writing that ‘such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this wild Arabian soul … he called it revelation … who of us may yet know what to call it?’42 Modifying the argument that Islam was a religion spread by the sword, Carlyle argued that however and whenever an idea is spread, the very fact of its spreading must prove that it is worth something: ‘I care little about the sword’, he announced, ‘I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer and fight … very sure that it will, in the long-​run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered’.43 As Clinton Bennett demonstrates, this growing tendency towards objectivity and sympathy among secular writers led, in turn, to a renewal of Christian thought about Islam.44 There emerged, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a ‘conciliatory’ school of thinkers who attempted to re-​evaluate their attitudes towards the rival religion [ 118 ]

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within theological frameworks.45 The Reverend Charles Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled (2 vols, 1829)  was among the earliest Christian works to approach Islam in this ‘impartial and dispassionate’ manner.46 In Forster’s view, Islam had a providential purpose, and he referred to God’s promise in Genesis 17 that Abraham and his two sons –​Isaac and Ishmael –​would be the founders of great nations. Forster recounted that Abraham’s legitimate son Isaac became the progenitor of the Jews, while his spiritual successor, Jesus Christ, founded the ‘one true religion’, Christianity.47 Abraham’s illegitimate son, Ishmael, on the other hand, went into Arabia, and his descendant Muhammad established the ‘spurious faith of the Koran’.48 While Islam is a false religion, according to Forster, its appearance in the seventh century was in accordance with God’s prophecy, and the teachings of Muhammad served to counteract the corrupt form of Christianity which was then prevalent in Arabia.49 As Muhammad’s preaching led to the reformation of the customs of the East, Islam became the ‘reviver of knowledge and restorer of civilization’ and ‘claimed and merited a comparison with Christianity, in its peaceful influences on mankind’.50 Forster’s conciliatory arguments were developed further by the leading Liberal Anglican F.D. Maurice in his Religions of the World and their relations to Christianity (1847).51 Maurice set out to survey all the world religions, to demonstrate that each creed emanated from an authentic belief in something greater than man, and to show that the differences between the systems were incidental and superficial.52 Maurice followed Forster in viewing Islam as a ‘Divine visitation’, and maintained that Muhammad was a true Prophet because he proclaimed the fundamental principle:  ‘ “God verily is, and man is his minister, to accomplish his will on earth.” ’53 As Muslims emphasise the idea of an active and living God, Islam has had a continuously important function in recalling the faithful to ‘the One’.54 Insisting that Islam must be respected as a vital religion based on true doctrines, Maurice suggested that Jews and Christians would do well to imbibe something of the Muslim ‘zeal’.55 A final example of the new tendency among Christians to view Islam as a sincere expression of faith is Reginald Bosworth Smith’s Mohammed and Mohammedanism (1874).56 For Smith, the actions of the Prophet at every stage of his career demonstrate that he was a man of ‘truthfulness’ who was ‘passionately impressed with the reality of his divine mission’.57 Smith also refuted the common arguments that Islam is a barrier to progress and learning, that Muslims are uniquely violent, and that the Qur’an is the source of practices such as polygamy. The spread of Islam, Smith pointed out, initiated a ‘golden age’ across the Arabic world, during which the sciences of algebra and [ 119 ]

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chemistry were invented, philosophy was refined, and the practices of agriculture and astronomy were greatly advanced.58 While these positive changes were wrought by military conquest, Smith argued that the wars waged by Muslims were no different in practice than those prosecuted by Christians.59 As for polygamy, Smith observed that this custom was already established in Arabia before the time of Muhammad and could not have been swept away by even this most ardent reformer. Consequently, Smith asserted that ‘[i]‌t is not fair to represent polygamy as part of Mohammadenism any more than it is fair to represent slavery as part of Christianity’.60 Smith closed his study of Islam with arguments in favour of greater accommodation between Christianity and the rival religion, which share a common belief in one God, in prophets and holy books, and in practices such as almsgiving, prayer, pilgrimage, and fasting.61 Neither the new strand of Liberal Anglican theology nor the conciliatory attitude towards Islam went uncontested, and reactionary polemics emerged with increasing frequency and intensity in Britain from the 1850s. William Muir’s Life of Mahomet (four vols, 1861)  returned to the traditional idea of Islam as a Satanic force. ‘It is incumbent upon us’, Muir wrote, ‘to consider the question from a Christian point of view, and to ask whether the supernatural influence, which appears to have acted upon the soul of the Arabian Prophet, may not have proceeded from the Evil One and his emissaries’.62 Where Christ had resisted Satan’s temptations, and refused to use his divine powers to establish a kingdom on earth, Muhammad was ‘beguiled’ by the devil and fraudulently used the name of God in the service of his own personal needs and desires.63 Pursuing a career of ‘[a]‌mbition, rapine, assassination, [and] lust’ Muhammad used military force to aggrandise his position at Medina, to conquer Mecca, and to spread his false and intolerant creed throughout the world.64 Perhaps the most vociferous attack on Islam came from a Christian missionary in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Reverend William St. Clair-​ Tisdall’s Religion of the Crescent (1895) dropped all pretence of objective scholarship and pursued a comprehensive denunciation of Islam as a ‘puerile’, ‘vile’, and ‘loathsome’ faith.65 The main defects of Islam, Tisdall argued, derived from the Muslim conception of God as an arbitrary tyrant who must be obeyed.66 In Tisdall’s analysis, the idea of the will of God, as expressed in Arabic, conveys a sense of ‘fancy or whim’, and a sin is defined simply as an act which contravenes Allah’s purpose.67 As such, there is no morality in Islam, as Muslims behave in the manner dictated by the Qur’an only because they fear Allah or seek a future reward. ‘Neither in the Arabic itself nor in any other Muhammadan language’, Tisdall contended, ‘is [ 120 ]

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there a word which properly expresses what we mean by conscience’.68 For Tisdall, the performance of rituals as a result of a sense of ‘duty’ or ‘superstition’ negates any true piety, and makes Islam a system of ‘hypocrisy’ which is ‘slavish, mechanical, unspiritual’.69 In Tisdall’s opinion, Muhammad is the ‘Antichrist’ and the existence of Islam cannot be tolerated as it deforms both the spiritual and the temporal realm.70 According to Tisdall, Muhammad is the enemy of Christianity because he rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the occurrence of Christ’s Crucifixion. As such, Tisdall declared that ‘Islam as a religion is not true, it has not come from GOD … it does not reveal GOD, in his His Divine Fatherhood, in His Love, His Justice and His Holiness. It does not show Man what his own original nature was, nor reveal to him what sin is and how to escape it’.71 In the temporal, as in the spiritual domain, Islam has had deleterious effects, as it means that the people are ruled by a despotic Caliph, and that polygamy and slavery are endorsed.72 Islam is thus a ‘curse to humanity’ which must be eradicated, and Tisdall concluded his work with a passage that combined religious enthusiasm and imperialist intent: God grant that even these few Lectures … may be used of Him to stir up in the hearts of some among us in Christian England something of the zeal and devotion of our Crusading forefathers … Then, wearing the Cross in our hearts and not only on our breasts, we shall go forth conquering and to conquer; and the Crescent shall soon fade before the glory of our returning Lord.73

Contrary, then, to Said’s thesis that interest in Islam declined in the nineteenth century and that modern Orientalism was secular and racialised, the Victorian period saw a proliferation of works on Muhammad and the Qur’an. Encouraged by the increasing tendency among secular writers to view the Arab-​Islamic world objectively and sympathetically, the Liberal Anglicans attempted a reconciliation between Christianity and Islam, and reactionary theologians revived traditional stereotypes about the ‘religion of the crescent’. While responses to Islam were rich and varied by the time Freeman came to write the Saracens, his Orientalist account of Eastern ‘otherness’ was imbued with a hostility towards Islam that positions him firmly within the ‘confrontational’ school of thought.

Reading the Saracens as an Orientalist text Setting Islam aside for the moment, Said’s idea that Western writers exploit the East according to the needs of the Occident and contribute to an Orientalist discourse of ‘otherness’ is borne out when considering [ 121 ]

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the motivations, methodologies, and narrative of Freeman’s Saracens. Immediately, in the opening pages of the book, it becomes clear that Freeman was not writing as a disinterested scholar but intended the work as an intervention in contemporary affairs. ‘In days like these’, he admitted, ‘and especially with a subject such as this, it is impossible to avoid all reference to recent events’.74 Composed during the Crimean War, Freeman’s lectures on the Saracens were an attempt to guide British thinking on the latest re-​ opening of the so-​ called ‘eternal Eastern Question’.75 The ‘Eastern Question’ had first been raised when the Ottomans were defeated by the Russians in the Russo-​Turkish War of 1768–​74. With the decline of the once great Ottoman Empire, the issue arose as to what ought to be done with its territories –​a problem which had shown a dangerous potential to stir up the territorial ambitions of, and rivalries between, the Great Powers. From at least the 1830s Britain had been locked in an escalating power struggle with Russia, as British policy centred on maintaining the independence of the Ottoman Empire, and with it the balance of power in Europe which had been established by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. Russia, on the other hand, had been encroaching into territories bordering on the Ottoman Empire since the time of Peter the Great (1682–​1725) and wanted to secure access to trade in the Mediterranean through the Straits. In addition, the Russians claimed affinity with the Orthodox Christians living in Ottoman territories, who were understood to be persecuted by their Muslim rulers. When Tsar Nicholas I demanded a protectorate over the twelve million Orthodox Christians living within the Ottoman Empire and sent troops into the Danubian principalities to pressure Sultan Abdülmecid I (1839–​61), a Russo-​Turkish war which would implicate Britain became inevitable. The Ottomans declared war on Russia on 4 October 1853 and, following failed attempts to settle the dispute, Britain entered the conflict in support of Turkey on 28 March 1854. Freeman took an active interest in the Crimean War from the beginning and wrote a number of letters to the Spectator on the subject.76 In the first of these letters, dated 29 October 1853, he declared that he was in favour of British intervention and argued that, if a choice had to be made between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the latter was the lesser evil.77 Freeman’s views on this point reflect the popular Russophobia in Britain around the time of the war’s outbreak which was, in part, a manifestation of the anxieties provoked by Russian expansionism and the potential threat this posed to British trade routes to Egypt and India.78 Nicholas I  was also seen as a reactionary ruler, having crushed the rebellion of his Polish subjects in 1831, urged the Prussians not to adopt a liberal constitution during the revolutions [ 122 ]

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of 1848, and helped the Habsburgs supress an uprising in Hungary in 1849. As Winfried Baumgart writes, the British press portrayed the Tsar as an enemy to liberty abroad and an upholder of serfdom at home, while the Sultan ‘was eulogised as the paragon of tolerance and freedom and as the victim of the Russian bear’.79 Freeman did not go so far as to claim that the Turkish government was in any way admirable, but he did make a practical assessment of the Russo-​Turkish conflict based on his desire to see the formation of independent Christian states south of the Danube. He felt that the admission of a powerful Russian influence into these regions could postpone the creation of such states indefinitely. Supporting the Ottoman Empire was therefore justified, to save the Christians of south-​eastern Europe from falling under the still stronger despotism of Russia.80 As Stephens notes, however, Freeman’s opinion changed as the war went on and he ‘ended in the conviction that it had been unjust from the beginning’.81 Freeman explained the causes of this shift in his attitudes in the Spectator on 16 April 1855. While he still held that the Slavs, Bulgarians, and Greeks had nothing to gain from exchanging Ottoman rule for Russian rule, he now believed that the difference between the two powers was not great enough to justify the sacrifice of thousands of English soldiers.82 In another piece, written in August of the same year, he pointed out that Russia had rejected a compromise solution offered by the Sultan at the Conference of Vienna, held in an effort to avoid the conflict in 1853. At this point, Freeman argued, ‘the war had entirely changed its character. From being a war in defence of Turkey, it had become a war of aggression against Russia, because Russia would not guarantee the independence of the Ottoman Empire’.83 For Freeman, this was the crucial point. He believed, as Stephens explains, that ‘to insist on a guarantee for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was an act of deliberate wickedness, as it meant a guarantee to perpetuate the Sultan’s oppression of his European subjects’.84 In an article titled ‘Mahometans in the East and West’ for the Edinburgh Review around this time, Freeman expressed his bewilderment that anyone, ‘however convinced of the necessity of maintaining “the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire” really thinks it desirable that odious religious and national distinctions should be preserved in any case, least of all that Christians of any sect, however corrupt, should be simply as a Christian, placed in a position of inferiority to the infidel’.85 It was true that the Sultan had promised amendment and reform in his administration of the subject provinces, but Freeman felt that neither ‘the fact of our present alliance’ nor ‘our genuine good will for the regeneration and development of our ally’ should ‘blind us to the fact that the voice of all history tends to show [ 123 ]

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that regeneration and development cannot fail to be attended with difficulty and danger’.86 While the Treaty of Paris which ended the Crimean War had already been signed when Freeman’s Saracens was published, he continued to fear that Britain’s alliance with the Ottoman Empire had ‘enkindled in some minds an abstract love for the Mahometan creed which requires to be backed by some very questionable historical propositions’.87 Freeman’s aim in the Saracens was to provide an overview of the origins and history of the Islamic states, to demonstrate that Muslims and Muslim societies were incapable of reform. The message of the Saracens was simply that the Ottoman Empire, like all the earlier Caliphates, was an irrevocably inferior and barbarous power, whose presence in Europe should not be tolerated. In composing the Saracens Freeman turned, as Said would suggest, not to Oriental sources, but to the volumes of Western scholars which constituted the Orientalist discourse. As Freeman was motivated to write the Saracens by contemporary political exigency the volume was composed, as he admitted, ‘rather quickly’.88 Stephens relates that ‘he did not begin to write [the lectures] till August [1855], and had a great deal of other work on hand at the same time, but, being full of his subject, he composed with rapidity and ease. They were published in the succeeding year’.89 The speed with which Freeman wrote meant he had been restricted in his use of sources and, having little time to study the wealth of primary Oriental material held at Oxford, had been forced to ‘get up the story how I  might from a private library which had been collected without any special reference to the subject’.90 Freeman was also unable to utilise important works of European Oriental scholarship which had not been translated into English. As he admitted to Finlay, ‘I ought to have read [Gustav] Weil [‘s History of the Caliphs] but have not … a long German book takes one a long time to get through’.91 Freeman’s access to source material was further limited by his self-​confessed lack of technical ability as an Orientalist. ‘Mine’, he told Finlay, ‘is a purely exoteric and Western view. I learned a little Hebrew years back, which enables me now and then to see the meaning of an Arabic name; that is all my oriental scholarship’.92 As the work of a non-​professional, the Saracens contains no references to primary Oriental material apart from the chronicle of Abu’l-​Fida (672–​ 732) on the life of the Prophet, which had been translated into Latin by Jean Gagnier in 1723.93 Neglecting primary materials, Freeman relied, instead, on two sources which are generally recognised as landmarks of British scholarship on the Orient. The first was Simon Ockley’s History of the Saracens (1708, 1718, and 1757).94 Ockley was a pioneer in his attempt [ 124 ]

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to write a continuous history of the Arabs in English, and his work was based largely on then unpublished manuscript materials. While Ockley’s History of the Saracens is noteworthy for the preference he gave to Muslim over Christian writers and was meticulous in its dating and chronology, it did not fail, as P. Holt observes, to ‘follow common form’ in incorporating various prejudices about Eastern societies and cultures.95 In the preface to the History, for example, Ockley described the Arab conquests as ‘that grievous calamity’.96 He also asserted that knowledge of Arab history was desirable, ‘[n]‌ ot only because they have had as great Men, and perform’d as considerable Actions, as any other Nation under Heaven; but what is more concern to us Christians, because they were the first Ruin of the Eastern Church’.97 In Ockley’s view, Muhammad was ‘the great Imposter’ who was driven by ‘ambition and lust’ and who ‘had no shame in avowing that his chief pleasures were perfumes and women’.98 The second major Orientalist work that Freeman was dependent on was Sale’s Koran:  Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed (1734).99 This translation displayed an enlightened and objective attitude, was unrivalled in its accuracy, and was preceded by a long ‘Preliminary Discourse’ which formed a compendium of information then available on the origins, doctrines, and sects of Islam. Again, however, Sale’s account is distorted by his Western perspective as he followed his predecessors in condemning the Arabs as a nation who ‘seem to have been raised up on purpose by GOD, to be a scourge to the Christian Church, for not living answerably to that most holy religion which they have received’.100 In relying on the ‘charming pages of Ockley’ and the authoritative narrative of Sale, Freeman therefore gathered factual information for the narrative of the Saracens and would have encountered traditional Christian misconceptions of the East which, according to Said, were prevalent within the early Orientalist tradition.101 Freeman also drew material from modern Orientalist works in a way that supports Said’s thesis that supposedly neutral scholarship on the East was, in fact, a means to dominate the Orient by inferiorising it. The modern works which Freeman consulted included Major David Price’s Memoirs of the Principal Events of Mahommedan History (three vols, 1811–​21); Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia (two vols, 1815); Mountstuart Elphinstone’s History of India:  The Hindu and Mahometan Periods (1841); and Washington Irving’s Lives of Mahomet and his Successors (1850).102 Of these authors, Elphinstone, Price, and Malcolm all served in the British East India Company. Both Elphinstone and Malcolm held the post of Governor of Bombay in the years 1819–​27 and 1827–​30 respectively and wrote their works for the official purpose [ 125 ]

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of collecting information on areas which were becoming important in British diplomacy. In Elphinstone’s work, Freeman would have found an array of stereotypes about the East, including references to ‘grievous despotism’, to rulers who were ‘ignorant’, ‘capricious’, and ‘cruel’, and to societies that were ‘superstitious’ and ‘debauched’.103 Similarly, in Malcolm’s History of Persia Freeman would have come across common Orientalist themes. Malcolm had found Persian history ‘depressing’ because he saw in it only ‘barbarous despotism’ with little hope of progress.104 According to Malcolm, the worst symptoms of Persian decay were the debased morality and the ‘grossest sensuality’ of the people.105 Malcolm described the Persians as an ignorant and ‘vain-​ glorious nation’, with a culture that was characterised by ‘pomp and display’.106 The narrative of Freeman’s Saracens undoubtedly reflected, and contributed to, an Orientalist discourse based on the fundamental distinction between the West and East. At the outset, however, it is important to recognise with Keith Windschuttle that the European sense of self is not always established through comparison with other cultures.107 Responding to Said, Windschuttle contends that:  ‘[a]‌lthough they have long distinguished themselves from the barbarians of the world, Europeans do not primarily draw their identity from comparisons with other cultures’.108 The sense of ‘self’ comes, rather, from the West’s own heritage: Europeans identify themselves as joint heirs of Classical Greece and Christianity, each tempered by the fluxes of Medieval Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-​ Reformation, the Enlightenment and Modernism. In other words Western identity is overwhelmingly defined by historical references to earlier selves, rather than by geographical comparisons with others. To claim otherwise is to deny the central thrust of Western education over the past one thousand years.109

In the first few paragraphs of the Saracens Freeman set out his views on Western identity, which were based on the idea of the unity of European history which he learned from Arnold. ‘In studying the records of Greece, of Rome, of medieval Europe’, Freeman wrote, ‘we are studying the history of our own predecessors, of men and women whose direct influence we carry about with us to the present day. From the days when art and civilization and freedom first sprung into being in their native soil of Hellas to the last event recorded by the contemporary chroniclers of our own stirring and eventful age, all are but links in one great chain’.110 For Freeman, the Aryan nations were unified by their common language and institutions, by [ 126 ]

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their inheritance from the Roman Empire, and by their conversion to Christianity. Western society is, consequently, characterised by several salient characteristics: It is a system governed by law. It admits of every form of political constitution but in all, despotic or democratic, written law and not an arbitrary will is at least supposed to be the rule. Again, in domestic life monogamy has been with very few exceptions, the immemorial custom of every western nation; and women have, with a rather more numerous list of exceptions, been regarded as the equal partners of the other sex. Again for many centuries past, it has been distinguished as a system which assumes the Christian religion as an integral portion of its being.111

Connecting the progressive and liberal tendencies of the European nations with the prevalence of the Christian faith, Freeman asserted that ‘the immemorial habits of the European nations prepared them in many respects for the reception of the Gospel; while its character, as a system purely of religion and morals, was no impediment to the European mind in its career of progress’.112 Christianity, Freeman contended, has only ever taught the general obligations of justice and mercy, and does not prescribe any particular political form or any kind of civic jurisprudence. Freeman held that, ultimately, it was the flexibility of Christianity which meant that Western history has been ‘essentially the history of progress’.113 Reflecting his understanding of the history of European civilisation as cyclical on one level and developmental on the other, he stated that ‘[t]‌here have been some times of real, and more of apparent retrogression; but as a whole, the system of Western society has gone on steadily developing for nearly three thousand years’.114 As such, Freeman felt that ‘[a]ll western history is interesting; all western history is instructive. The records of some ages and of some countries are of course far more interesting and instructive than others, but none are absolutely without a charm and a lesson’.115 It is clear, then, that for Freeman, Europe’s own past  and Christian heritage is crucial in shaping his cultural conception of Western identity. Again, Western writers do not always draw unfavourable contrasts between Europe and the Orient, and Freeman acknowledged that the East has not always been inferior to the West. He explained that, in fact, the East was at first far advanced on the West: The East contained mighty empires, of vast power and great external splendour, with a sort of civilization, a sort of art, a sort of science, while the West was shrouded in a darkness which neither history nor tradition can penetrate. Egypt and Assyria probably contained palaces and temples, regular monarchies and organized priesthoods, while wild

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beasts or naked savages roamed over the future sites of Athens and Rome and Florence and London.116

Freeman could not, however, accept that the contemporary East was in any way equal to modern Europe. He asserted that ‘[w]‌hile the West has been progressive the East has been stationary. If we may trace the germs of modern European society in our first glimpses of infant Hellas, we may see the empire of Ninus or of Nabuchodonosor reproduced in every essential feature of the court of any modern oriental despot’.117 The distinction which Freeman perceived between the historical development of the East and West was so sharp that he asserted that the ‘[r]‌ise and progress of the great Mahometan nations forms a subject which possesses an interest of its own, of a character altogether different from that of almost any other portion of history’.118 Freeman saw arising in Oriental history ‘a certain sameness and monotony which we do not find in the history of any western country’.119 Where, in the study of European history, he believed it was possible to draw instructive analogies between events of widely distant ages and countries, Freeman observed that, in the East, ‘analogy rises well nigh to identity; instead of the gradual development of political systems we find only the personal substitution of ruler instead of ruler, of dynasty instead of dynasty, of nation instead of nation’.120 Because an Eastern people ‘never looks farther than effecting a personal change in the tyrant, while the tyranny remains untouched’, Freeman asserted that ‘[t]he great mass of events in oriental history is summed up in one brief and typical narrative in the Hebrew Scriptures –​“The people who followed Omri were more than the people who followed Tibni. So Tibni died and Omri reigned” ’.121 Freeman concluded, in typical Orientalist vein, that ‘there are large portions of oriental history which are alike unprofitable and well nigh impossible, to be remembered … The mind refuses to be burthened with the genealogies, or with the massacres, of the countless series of unknown princes and unknown dynasties which flit across the canvas in dazzling and perplexing succession’.122

Islam and the Arab-​Islamic world Purposefully representing the Orient as ‘other’ to demonstrate that Britain’s support of the Ottoman Empire was misguided, Freeman’s denunciation of the East in the Saracens was based, not on racial differentiations, but on religious prejudices. In the context of the various approaches to Islam that were current in the nineteenth century, Freeman’s account of the life of Muhammad and the spread of Islam can be classified as both ‘traditional’ and ‘confrontational’ [ 128 ]

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and can be most instructively compared with that of John Henry Newman. Both men delivered historical lectures on the East in response to the Crimean War: where Freeman’s lectures were collected as the Saracens, Newman’s lectures, originally delivered at the Catholic Institute in Liverpool during October 1853, were eventually published in Historical Sketches, vol. 1, subtitled The Turks in Their Relation to Europe (1872).123 For both men, Christianity and Islam subsist as fundamentally incompatible forces, and the history of the establishment of the Islamic Empire by the Saracens was the primary vehicle through which to demonstrate this fact. The rise of Islam as a militant force which clashed with Europe on its own soil was, in Newman’s view, the story of the historic battle between ‘Christ in the West, and Satan in the East’, between the ‘land of civilization and the land of barbarism’.124 Freeman explicitly approved of this interpretation, writing: ‘[a]‌s Dr Newman says, his [the Muslim’s] victories –​except when gained over fellow Mahometans –​ have always been at the expense of the Christian’.125 For Freeman, this struggle was a ‘deadly opposition between two creeds’ that would never end because Islam and Christianity could never co-​ exist.126 The two religions, in Freeman’s account, share so much in common that the contest between them resembles the ‘hatred of kinsmen’.127 ‘Such’, he continued, ‘has for centuries been the deadly opposition between two creeds, which alike inculcate the worship of One God, and which teach, to a great extent, the practice of the same duties, and reverence for the same ancient religious associations’.128 For Newman and Freeman, an analysis of the history of the Islamic states would serve to demonstrate that British foreign policy was wrong because the religion of the Turks meant they were incapable of reforming their own government or according any real degree of equality to their Christian subjects. As the barbaric and inferior ‘others’ the Turks are presented in the Saracens and Historical Sketches as permanent obstacles to civilisation in Europe. A consideration of the scope of Freeman and Newman’s lectures suggests something of the traditional Christian attitude with which they approached Islam. As Muhammad Al-​Da’mi explains, Western writers tend to identify Arab national history with the advent of Islam, in contradiction to the Muslim belief that the spirit of Islam is part of the unbreakable historical continuity of the Arabic peoples.129 The Western perspective makes the advent of Islam appear to be a ‘surprise’ phenomena that was secular but ‘revolutionary’ in its effects. Freeman’s Saracens, in covering ‘the history of the establishment of Mahometanism and of those Mahometan nations which could lay any claim to civilization or historical importance’, typifies the Western [ 129 ]

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view of Arab nations and Arab history as beginning with Islam.130 Newman similarly neglected pre-​Islamic Arabian history and held that Islam was essentially a consecration of the principle of nationalism.131 ‘It must be recollected’, Newman wrote, ‘that a national and local faith, like the Mahometan, is most closely associated with the sentiments of patriotism, family honour, loyalty towards the past, and party spirit; and this the more in the case of a religion which has no articles of faith at all, except those of the Divine Unity and the mission of Mahomet’.132 Equating Islam with the beginning of Arab nationhood, Freeman and Newman represented the teachings of Muhammad as affecting an unprecedented secular revolution. In common with other European writers, this meant that they were unable to take Islam seriously as a spiritual movement. As Al-​Da’mi explains, for Muslims the messenger of Allah, the chosen prophet, is an infallible man whose very statements and behaviour (the hadith and sunnah) are revelations equal and complementary to the Qur’an.133 He is Islam personified. However, both Freeman and Newman entertained the idea that the Prophet was simply a fraud who was driven by lust and political ambition to establish his Islamic state and to pursue territorial expansion. Freeman set himself the following questions regarding Muhammad:  ‘Was the man who effected, in his own day, so great a reform, an Imposter? Was his whole career one of sheer hypocrisy? Was his Divine Mission a mere invention of his own, of whose falsehood he was conscious throughout?’134 In addressing these subjects Freeman was, at first, able to give the impression that he was a calm and objective inquirer into Islam. He conceded, for example, that ‘[i]‌f the whole was an imposture, it was an imposture utterly without parallel, from its extraordinary subtlety, and the wonderful long-​sightedness and constancy which one must attribute to its author. Whether persecuted or triumphant … his lofty spirit never deserted him for a moment’.135 Freeman was also willing to accept that Muhammad, at least in the early part of his career, was moved by the ‘noblest intentions’ and that he ‘fully believed in his own mission’.136 Nevertheless, he went on to contend that Muhammad’s success eventually corrupted him, that his ‘confidence in his own teachings … is by no means inconsistent with some alloy of conscious imposture’, and that ‘he may have been open to the charge of self-​delusion’.137 As the narrative of the Saracens progressed, Freeman was unable to conceal his contempt for the Prophet who, he asserted, ‘has been of a truth the Antichrist, the False Prophet, the Abomination of Desolation’.138 For Freeman, Muhammad was, among other things, ‘that illiterate camel-​driver from Mecca’, an ‘adroit and consummate hypocrite’, ‘a destroyer in the general history of the world’, ‘voluptuous’ [ 130 ]

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and ‘impulsive’.139 Muhammad is most blameworthy because, according to Freeman, ‘[h]‌e did not sufficiently examine into the true nature of Christianity … A little more inquiry and Mahomet might have proved a Christian missionary’.140 Asserting that Christianity is the highest and truest form of religious expression to which all systems of faith must necessarily tend, Freeman argued that: had Mahometanism only preceded Christianity, it might have been accepted as another step towards it; the mosque might have been an appropriate and friendly halting-​place between the synagogue and the church. As it is, Mahometanism, coming after Christianity, has proved its deadliest enemy. Its claim to be to Christianity what Christianity was to heathenism is belied by the fact that this supposed reformed and developed Christianity is in fact a retrogression, denying nearly all those points on which Christianity is a reformed and developed Judaism.141

Freeman’s final judgement was that ‘[Muhammad] was of a truth the very Antichrist, and his followers are justly branded with the name of Infidel’.142 For Newman, Islam similarly has no divine, revealed, or absolute status. In relation to other systems of faith Newman argued that Islam stood somewhere between Paganism and Christianity. In his analysis, all the features of Islam that differed from Christianity were copied from Paganism and all the Islamic doctrines which agree with Christian teachings were taken directly from Christianity. As Newman put it:  ‘the being of one God, that fact of His revelation, His faithfulness to His promises, the eternity of the moral law, the certainty of future retribution, were borrowed by Mahomet from the Church’.143 In adopting certain elements of Christianity, however, Muhammad had also deformed them, and Newman listed the ways in which Islam is detrimental to its followers. He criticised Islam’s ‘sternness, its coldness, its doctrine of fatalism, even the truths which it borrowed from Revelation, when separated from the truths it rejected, its monotheism untempered by mediation, its severe view of the divine attributes, of the law, and of a sure retribution to come’.144 As followers of a rival and degenerate religion, Muslims appear, in Newman’s Historical Sketches, as ‘tools of the Evil One, and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not witnesses of God’.145 The denial of the status of divine revelation to Muhammad’s teachings is associated with the traditional argument that the spread of Islam can be due only to the use of the sword. Comparing the propagation of Christianity and Islam, Freeman acknowledged that both religions were aggressive and proselytising, and that each was [ 131 ]

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‘jealous and intolerant’ of the other.146 Nevertheless he believed there was a crucial difference between Christian and Muslim missionaries: The one is commanded to go and teach all nations; if charged to compel them to come in, yet that compulsion must be purely moral, for the same voice has said, that all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. The other assumes that forbidden weapon as its chosen means of conversion; its preachers are warriors, its school of disputation is the field of battle. The one calls on the infidel to repent and believe, and so avoid the wrath to come, the other forces on him the immediate temporal alternative of ‘Koran, Tribute, or Sword’.147

Newman, too, maintained that violence is central to Islam and he conceived the faith as one in which ‘the soldier is the missionary, the soldier is the martyr also’.148 As such, Islam provides an outlet for the martial energies of the barbarous Turks: ‘[i]‌t has given an aim to their military efforts, a political principle, and a social bond’, he wrote, ‘[i]t has laid them under a sense of responsibility, has moulded them into consistency, and taught them a course of policy and perseverance in it’.149 Although Muslim thinkers also regard Islam as a revolution, their notion of Islam is that of an inexhaustible movement which resists ethical and spiritual degeneration wherever it appears.150 In arguing that the spread of Islam constituted a secular revolution, however, both Freeman and Newman believed that it was soon exhausted and would have been a temporary and transitory phenomenon if it was not for the sword. It was this understanding of enervation that was the principal factor shaping their idea of the Orient as inferior, backwards, and despotic. Freeman accounted for all the perceived ills of Oriental society by reference to the long-​term consequences of the ‘insufferably dull’ Qur’an.151 While Islam may have alleviated ‘the great evils’ of despotism and polygamy, still, in the very act of reforming these customs, Muhammad had ‘sanctioned and stereotyped them’.152 For example, where ‘[t]‌he old despots of Nineveh or Babylon knew no law but their own will, and recognized no responsibility to God or man, the new legitimate Mahometan despot claims to be the Caliph or Representative of the Prophet’.153 Far from making the new despot more responsible, to Freeman ‘it is clear that the institution of despotism is thereby established and consecrated. His will is indeed bridled by the precepts of the Koran and the exposition of its commentators; but the existence of this check effectually precludes the existence of any other’.154 The result of Islamic teaching on this point has been permanent: no Mahometan nation has attained, or ever can attain to constitutional freedom while the same man is Pope and Caesar, while the same volume

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is Bible and statute book, there is no choice but despotism or anarchy. The individual Caliph or Sultan may be got rid of when his yoke has become unsupportable, but the institution of an irresponsible Caliph or Sultan can only be got rid of when the creed of Mahomet is got rid of also.155

Connected, in Freeman’s account, with the existence of purely arbitrary power was polygamy. Freeman felt that Muhammad’s teachings on polygamy would always act as an obstacle to reform. ‘This is one of the cases’, he explained, ‘in which the first step is everything. The difference between one and two wives is everything; that between four and four thousand is comparatively nothing. See to how Mahomet’s own precept is observed. His followers have found it much easier to remember that he allowed four wives than that he allowed only four’.156 According to Freeman, then, ‘Islam, in stereotyping and investing with higher claims the old despotic traditions which had always been the curse of the Eastern world, at once debarred its proselytes from all social and political progress’.157 Where the establishment of Islam had led to an initial improvement in the customs of despotism and polygamy, Freeman believed that in some respects Muhammad’s teachings and practices had proven to be a ‘retrograde step’ even for the ‘heathens’.158 The doctrine of ‘fatalism’, for example, had been ‘pernicious to the last degree’.159 For Freeman, fatalism ultimately becomes ‘a mere excuse for stupid and listless idleness; submission to the divine will is held to render all human exertion superfluous’.160 In respect to the innovations within Arabic society and culture which Islam had brought about, Freeman asserted that this religion constituted a permanent impediment to any further change. ‘A Mahometan nation’, Freeman argued, accepts a certain amount of truth, receives a certain amount of civilization, practices a certain amount of toleration. But all these are so many obstacles to the acceptance of truth, civilization, and toleration in their perfect shape. The Muslim has just enough of all on which to rest and pride himself, and no longer feel his deficiencies. Bring a tribe of savage heathens within the Mahometan pale, and their immediate gain is immeasurable. But then you shut out the hopes of still greater gain. Left in their heathen and savage state, they would be far more likely to accept complete truth and civilization. Hence it is that Christianity and Mahometanism have been more directly antagonistic to each other than any form of heathenism.161

Newman similarly viewed Islam as a faith which is inconsistent with progress and modernity. For Newman, Islam is ‘as congenial to the barbarian as Christianity is congenial to the man civilized’ and [ 133 ]

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while ‘Christianity … is the religion of civilization’, Islam ‘subserves the reign of barbarism’.162 Newman dwelt on what he considered to be the Islamic attitude towards the arts and sciences, to make the religion appear as reactionary and antagonistic towards human creativity and knowledge. Newman stated that: Their religion forbids them [Muslims] every sort of painting, sculpture, or engraving, thus the fine arts cannot exist among them … They have scarcely any notion of medicine or surgery; and they do not allow of anatomy. As to science, the telescope, the microscope, the electric battery, are unknown, except as playthings. The compass is not universally employed in the navy, nor are its common purposes fully understood. Navigation, astronomy, geography, chemistry, are either not known, or practised only on antiquated and exploded principles.163

Newman takes up two other fields of intellectual activity which he believed were forbidden to Muslims, arguing that Muslims do not have the freedom of legislation because their laws are ‘unalterably fixed in the Koran’ and asserting that the ban on usury in Islam underlies an absence of Muslim thinking on economic matters.164 For Newman, Islam not only paralyses human understanding but, inevitably, leads to fatalism –​a misconceived version of submission which encourages ‘a barbarian recklessness of mind both in special seasons of prosperity and adversity, and in the ordinary business of life’.165 In both the Saracens and Historical Sketches, then, it is ultimately Islam which accounts for the backwardness of Muslim societies and necessitates that world-​historical development will always be a contest between the West and the East.

Contemporary implications Having demonstrated that religion is the cause of the barbaric ‘otherness’ of the Arab-​Islamic nations, both Freeman and Newman turned to the question of the contemporary Ottoman Empire and argued that British support of Turkish rule in south-​eastern Europe was misguided. Towards the end of the Saracens Freeman professed his astonishment that ‘[t]‌here are those in our own day who assuredly need the lesson, that a Mahometan government, to become really tolerant, must cease to be Mahometan’.166 Claiming that he had, to his own satisfaction, been fair in his treatment of the Prophet and his disciples he maintained that the only conclusion that could be reached was that ‘Mahometanism is essentially an obstructive, intolerant system’.167 In his final analysis, he viewed Islam as a perpetual barrier in Europe to the attainment of that most cherished Aryan attribute: democratic [ 134 ]

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freedom. ‘Islam’, he concluded, ‘has founded mighty empires, it has reared splendid palaces, it has accumulated libraries of countless volumes. But it has done nothing for man in his highest capacity, as the citizen of a free state’.168 Freeman believed that because of Islam the Ottoman Empire, like all other Caliphates before it, would never be able to reform itself or admit Christian subjects to a position of equality with Muslim subjects. As such, the Ottomans were effectively stealing from the people of south-​ eastern Europe and removing them from their Christian and democratic heritage. For Freeman there could not be a ‘sadder sight’ than the ensign of ‘him who in deed, though not in will, has been the Antichrist’ established within the limits of what once was Christendom: ‘in vanished Carthage, in Alexandria, in Byzantium, in the Holy City itself’.169 Freeman’s most cherished hope was ‘to see the Cross gleaming upon the dome of St Sophia … to see peace preserved around the Holy Sepulchre by other means than the scimetar of the Infidel’.170 He ended the Saracens with a plea to the reader, asking, ‘let not the individual Christian have to recognize a Mahometan master as his sovereign. So long as a government remains Mahometan, so long must it be intolerant at home; so long will it only be restrained by weakness from offering to other lands the old election of “Koran, Tribute, Sword” ’.171 For Freeman, then, the only moral course of action for the British government was to work towards removing the rule of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. For Newman, too, the Turk is evidently incapable of any real reform. He concluded that: If civilization be the ascendancy of mind over passion and imagination; if it manifests itself in consistency of habit and action, and is characterised by a continual progress or development of the principles on which it rests; and if, on the other hand, the Turks alternate between sloth and energy, self-​confidence and despair … if they think themselves, notwithstanding, to be the first nation upon earth, while at the end of many centuries they are just what they were at the beginning –​if they are so ignorant as not to know their ignorance, and so far from making progress that they have not even started, and so far from seeking instruction that they think no one fit to teach them –​there is surely not much hazard in concluding, that, apart from the consideration of any supernatural intervention, barbarians they have lived, and barbarians they will die.172

The presence of the Turks within Europe should not be tolerated, according to Newman, because they ‘are simply in the way. They are in the way of the progress of the nineteenth century’.173 Concerned that the Ottoman Empire ‘has in its brute clutch the most famous countries [ 135 ]

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of classical and religious antiquity’, Newman urged the necessity of putting an end to Turkish power.174 The Ottoman Empire, Newman states:

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having no history of itself, is heir to the historical names of Constantinople and Nicea, Nicomedia and Caesarea, Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineveh and Babylon, Mecca and Bagdad, Antioch and Alexandria, ignorantly holding in possession one-​half of the whole world. There it lies and will not die, and has not itself the elements of death, for it has the life of a stone and, unless pounded and pulverized, is indestructible.175

Newman’s hope was that the barbarians would ‘be surrounded, pressed upon, divided, decimated, driven into the desert by the force of civilization’.176 While Freeman and Newman were in the minority in urging the British government to end its alliance with the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War, their denunciation of the Turks as a barbaric presence in Europe found greater resonance during the Great Eastern Crisis which began two decades later. In the summer of 1876, news broke that the Ottomans had committed atrocities in Bulgaria, and this led to a public outcry in Britain against the violence which the Muslim rulers had used to suppress the rebellion of their Christian subjects. In the course of this Crisis –​the subject of the next c­ hapter –​ popular Islamophobia combined with anti-​Semitism and focused on the person of the ‘Jewish’ Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli.

Notes 1 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. xxi. 2 Freeman, Saracens, p. v. 3 Ibid., p. v. 4 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p. 450. This article was written for the Edinburgh Review, c.1854–​55. Quotes and references here are from the copy of this article which is held in the Freeman archive at John Rylands University Library. EAF 2/​2/​14. 5 Said, Orientalism, p. 2. 6 Ibid., p. 2. 7 Ibid., p. 56. 8 Ibid., pp. 56–​7. 9 Ibid., p. 58. 10 Ibid., p. 58. 11 Ibid., p. 58. 12 Ibid., pp. 58–​9. 13 Ibid., p. 59. 14 Ibid., p. 72. 15 Ibid., p. 62. 16 Ibid., p. 106. 17 Ibid., p. 52. 18 Ibid., p. 116.

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HISTORY AND CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS 9 Ibid., p. 120. 1 20 Ibid., p. 117. 21 Ibid., p. 120. 22 Ibid., p. 118. 23 Ibid., p. 120. 24 Ibid., pp. 120–​1. 25 Ibid., p. 121. 26 Ibid., p. 122. 27 Edward W. Said, ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 89–​107, p. 93. doi: 10.2307/​1354282. 28 Said, Orientalism, p. 152. 29 Said, ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, p. 93. 30 Said, Orientalism, p. 3. 31 Ibid., p. 3. 32 Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 33 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776–​89). 34 Lewis, Islam and the West, pp. 96–​7. 35 Ibid., p. 98. 36 Albert Hourani, ‘Islam and the Philosophers of History’, Middle Eastern Studies, 3, 3 (1967), pp. 206–​68, p.  214. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​00263206708700074. See also Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 37 Nathan Alcock and Thomas Alcock, The Rise of Mahomet (London: G. Sael, 1796). 38 Penny Cyclopaedia (London: Charles Knight, 1833), p. 302. This quote is taken from Philip Almond, Heretic and Hero: Muhammad and the Victorians (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1989), p. 18. 39 Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 14 (Edinburgh: A & C Black, 1842), p. 31, quoted in Almond, Heretic and Hero, p. 15. 40 Philip Almond, ‘Western Images of Islam, 1700–​ 1900’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 49, 3 (2003), pp. 412–​ 24, p.  412. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ 1467–​8497.00295. 41 Carlyle, ‘The Hero as Prophet’, in On Heroes, p. 38. 42 Ibid., pp. 51–​2. 43 Ibid., p. 55. 44 Clinton Bennett, Victorian Images of Islam (London: Grey Seal, 1992). 45 Ibid. 46 Charles Forster, Mahometanism Unveiled, 2 vols (London:  J. Duncan, 1829), vol. 1, p. 4. 47 Ibid., p. 73. 48 Ibid., p. 73. 49 Ibid., pp. 80–​2. 50 Ibid., p. 99. 51 F.D. Maurice, The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity (London:  John W.  Parker, 1847). For a comprehensive study of Maurice’s religious thought see Jeremy Morris, F. D.  Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 52 Maurice, Religions of the World, p. 25. 53 Ibid., p. 23. 54 Ibid., p. 23. 55 Ibid., p. 33. 56 Reginald Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (London:  Smith, Elder & Co., 1874). 57 Ibid., p. 75 and p. 105. 58 Ibid., p. 157. 59 Ibid., p. 157. 60 Ibid., p. 174. 61 Ibid., p. 112.

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The East 62 William Muir, The Life of Mahomet, 4 vols (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1861), vol. 2, p. 90. 63 Ibid., p. 96 and p. 92. 64 Ibid., p. 95. 65 William St. Clair Tisdall, The Religion of the Crescent, or Islam: Its Strength, its Weakness, its Origin, its Influence (London: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1895), p. 47. 66 Ibid., pp. 59–​61. 67 Ibid., p. 82. 68 Ibid., p. 62. 69 Ibid., pp. 69–​76. 70 Ibid., p. 169. 71 Ibid., p. 221. 72 Ibid., pp. 195–​200. 73 Ibid., p. 125 and p. 233. 74 Freeman, Saracens, p. ix. 75 For the Eastern Question see M. S. Anderson, The Eastern Question 1774–​1923 (London:  Macmillan, 1966); Gerald Clayton, Britain and the Eastern Question (London: London University Press, 1971); and A. L. Macfie, The Eastern Question, 1774–​1923, revised edition (Oxford: Routledge, 1996). 76 See Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, pp. 148–​53. 77 Ibid., p. 149. 78 On Russophobia in Britain at this time see Hugh Cunningham, ‘The Language of Patriotism, 1750–​1914’, History Workshop Journal, 12, 1 (October, 1981), pp. 8–​33. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​hwj/​12.1.8; and David M. Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War (London: Routledge, 2013). 79 Winfried Baumgart, The Crimean War, 1853–​1856 (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 15. 80 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 149. 81 Ibid., p. 150. 82 Ibid., p. 151. 83 Ibid., p. 152. 84 Ibid., p. 152. 85 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p. 450. 86 Ibid., p. 450. 87 Ibid., p. 450. 88 Freeman to George Finlay, letter dated 1 September 1856, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 233. 89 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 204. 90 Freeman, Saracens, p. vi. 91 Freeman to Finlay, 1 September 1856 in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 233. 92 Ibid., p. 233. 93 J. Gagnier, Ismael Abu’l-​feda, de vita, et rebus gestis Mohammedis (Oxford:  e Theatro Sheldoniano, 1723). 94 Simon Ockley, History of the Saracens, sixth edition (London:  Henry G.  Bohn, 1857). The first volume of Ockley’s History was published in London in 1708 and titled The Conquest of Syria, Persia, and Aegypt by the Saracens. The second volume, to which the title The History of the Saracens was first given, appeared ten years later. The whole was reissued under this title in 1757 after the author’s death. It was prefixed with a section on The Life of Mohammed. 95 Bernard Lewis and P. Holt (eds), Historians of the Middle East (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 298. 96 Ockley, History of the Saracens, p. xvi. 97 Ibid., p. xvi. 98 Ibid., p. 79 and p. 63. 99 George Sale, The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Muhammed [1734] fifth edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860). 100 Ibid., p. 26.

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HISTORY AND CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS 101 Freeman, Saracens, p. 101. 102 David Price, Memoirs of the Principal Events of Mahommedan History … from Original Persian Authorities, 3 vols (London:  Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811, 1812, 1821); John Malcolm, History of Persia (London: John Murray, 1815); Mountstuart Elphinstone, History of India:  The Hindu and Mahometan Periods [1841] fifth edition (London:  John Murray, 1866); and Washington Irving, Lives of Mahomet and His Successors (London: George Routledge & Co., 1850). 103 Elphinstone, History of India, p. 215, p. 348, p. 398, p. 545, and p. 600. 104 Malcolm, History of Persia, vol. 2, p. 359 and p. 391. 105 Ibid., p. 401. 106 Ibid., p. 410. 107 Keith Windschuttle, ‘Edward Said’s “Orientalism Revisited” ’, New Criterion, 17, 5 (January, 1999), online, available at http://​ontology.buffalo.edu/​smith/​courses01/​ rrtw/​Windschuttle.htm. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Freeman, Saracens, p. 1. 111 Ibid., p. 2. 112 Ibid., p. 2. 113 Ibid., p. 1. 114 Ibid., p. 1. 115 Ibid., p. 5. 116 Ibid., p. 3. 117 Ibid., p. 3. 118 Ibid., p. 1. 119 Ibid., p. 4. 120 Ibid., p. 4. 121 Ibid., pp. 4–​5. 122 Ibid., p. 5. 123 John Henry Newman, Historical Sketches, Vol. 1. The Turks in their Relation to Europe. Originally delivered as a series of lectures before the Catholic Institute of Liverpool in October 1853 and published in 1872, new edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908). 124 Ibid., p. 87 and p. 25. 125 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p. 478. 126 Ibid., p. 450 and p. 473. 127 Ibid., p. 450. 128 Ibid., p. 456. 129 Muhammad Al-​Da’mi, Arabian Mirrors and Western Soothsayers:  Nineteenth-​ Century Literary Approaches to Arab-​Islamic History (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002), p. 186. 130 Freeman, Saracens, p. 8. 131 Newman, Historical Sketches, p. 226. 132 Ibid., p. 226. 133 Ibid., p. 186. 134 Freeman, Saracens, p. 56. 135 Ibid., p. 57. 136 Ibid., p. 58. 137 Ibid., p. 59. 138 Ibid., p. 55. 139 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p.  449; Freeman, Saracens, p.  7 and p. 59. 140 Freeman, Saracens, pp. 62–​3. 141 Ibid., p. 61. 142 Ibid., p. 63. 143 Newman, Historical Sketches, p. 87. 144 Ibid., p. 72.

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The East 145 Ibid., p. 88. 146 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p. 467. 147 Ibid., p. 467. 148 Newman, Historical Sketches, p. 89. 149 Ibid., p. 73. 150 Al-​Da’mi, Arabian Mirrors, p. 186. 151 Freeman, Saracens, p. 190. 152 Ibid., pp. 67–​8. 153 Ibid., p. 68. 154 Ibid., p. 68. 155 Ibid., p. 68. 156 Ibid., p. 69. 157 Freeman, ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p. 464. 158 Freeman, Saracens, p. 69. 159 Ibid., pp. 69–​70. 160 Ibid., pp. 69–​70. 161 Ibid., p. 70. 162 Newman, Historical Sketches, p. 203, p. 202, and p. 199. 163 Ibid., pp. 187–​8. 164 Ibid., p. 188. 165 Ibid., p. 199. 166 Ibid., p. 243. 167 Freeman, Saracens, p. 246. 168 Ibid., p. 246. 169 Ibid., p. 247. 170 Ibid., p. 247. 171 Ibid., pp. 247–​8. 172 Ibid., p. 206. 173 Ibid., p. 222. 174 Ibid., p. 220. 175 Ibid., p. 220. 176 Ibid., p. 228.

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The Great Eastern Crisis and the  ‘Oriental conspiracy’

It was during the Crimean War that Freeman first concluded that supporting Turkish rule in south-​ eastern Europe was an act of ‘deliberate wickedness’, as it meant facilitating the oppression of Christian subjects by a Muslim government.1 In his first volume on Eastern affairs, The History and Conquests of the Saracens, Freeman had used the past to argue that the Islamic faith meant that Muslim rulers would always be despotic, that Muslim societies would always be ‘backwards’, and that Muslims could never live on equal terms with Christians. While the Ottoman Sultan, Abdülaziz (1861–​ 76), had since made promises to emancipate his non-​ Muslim subjects and to integrate them more fully into Turkish society, Freeman held that this commitment to reform amounted to little more than ‘waste paper’.2 For two decades following the end of the Crimean War and the publication of the Saracens he watched on, with increasing frustration, as ‘ambassadors of various nations’ continued ‘remonstrating and reproving, advising and exhorting the Turk to redeem his promises, but all to no purpose’.3 The opportunity for Britain to change course and help free south-​ eastern Europe from Turkish rule arrived, in Freeman’s opinion, with the Great Eastern Crisis. Beginning with the Slavic revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1875, the Crisis escalated with the Turkish massacre of 15,000 Bulgarians in 1876 and the outbreak of the Russo-​ Turkish War the following year. As Disraeli consistently refused to intervene in the conflicts, Freeman’s assessment of the situation became increasingly hysterical. In this chapter I  examine Freeman’s private correspondence, public speeches, letters to the national press, and leadership of the ‘Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation’, as he condemned British foreign policy as ‘unrighteous’, ‘a national shame’, and ‘the greatest of evils’.4 In particular, I focus on the way in which Freeman’s antagonism towards the Islamic Turk was mirrored in his vitriolic [ 141 ]

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assaults on Disraeli who he constituted as a Jew. At the height of the Crisis, Freeman published his second volume on Eastern history, The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877), which contained a systematic exposition of his theory that there existed an ‘Oriental conspiracy’. From Freeman’s paranoid and anti-​ Semitic perspective, it seemed clear that the ‘Jewish’ Disraeli was allied with the Islamic Turk in a deliberate plot to destroy Euro-​Christendom.

Islam’s ‘strange secret-​sharer’ In the introduction to Orientalism Said muses that, ‘by an almost inescapable logic, I have found myself writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-​ Semitism. That anti-​ Semitism and, as I  have discussed it in its Islamic branch, Orientalism resemble each other very closely is a historical, cultural, and political truth’.5 ‘Orientalism and modern anti-​Semitism’, Said contends, ‘have common roots’.6 While Said does not pursue this line of thought extensively in Orientalism, it is useful when considering Freeman’s belief in an ‘Oriental conspiracy’. Before analysing the Islamophobia and anti-​ Semitism which motivated Freeman’s Ottoman Power, and came to focus on Disraeli, I  trace the parallel development of Orientalism-​ about-​Muslims and Orientalism-​about-​Jews. Developing Said’s proposition, Bryan S.  Turner argues that the ‘critique of Orientalism has not taken notice of the ironic connection between these two forms of racism, namely against Arabs and against Jews’.7 ‘The study of Orientalism’, he continues: must also include an analysis of anti-​Semitism. In the West, the negative view of Islam is part of a larger hostility towards Semitic cultures. If Caliban represents one formative figure in the evolution of European notions of Otherness, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice presents another. There has been a general anti-​Semitism in Europe, in which antagonism to Jews has often accompanied hostility to Muslims … There are in fact two discourses of Orientalism for Semites, one relating to Islam and the other to Judaism.8

According to Turner, Europeans have always insisted on the distinctiveness of Christianity in relationship to the two other Abrahamic faiths. It is ‘[p]‌recisely because Judaism and Islam shared so much in common’, he explains, that ‘they had to be separated culturally by a discourse of ethnic and moral difference from the Christian tradition’.9 The idea of Muslim ‘otherness’, Turner observes, is largely derived from ‘the doctrine of Islamic failure and decline’.10 As in Freeman’s Saracens, Western observers tend to view the Qur’an as the [ 142 ]

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The Great Eastern Crisis

source of Eastern ‘backwardness’. It is believed that, because Muslims act in accordance with the dictates of Muhammad, Islamic societies are unable to progress beyond the socio-​cultural and political norms of the seventh century. The idea of Jewish ‘otherness’, meanwhile, is largely derived from the notion that the Mosaic revelation had been corrupted by the Jews who had introduced ritualism and nationalism into their faith. Euro-​Christian writers, Turner suggests, have used the concept of rabbinical interpolation to depict Judaism as a parochial religion that is unable to progress towards reason and universality. In portraying Muslims as idle fatalists seeking future erotic rewards in paradise, and Jews as a ‘pariah status group’ who had wandered from their homeland into Europe, the West has, according to Turner, ‘oriented its collective identity between two negative poles –​the lazy, sensual, violent Arab and the untrustworthy, greedy Jew’.11 James Pasto has also responded to Said’s suggestion that there exists a dual Orientalist discourse, asserting that Western scholars have frequently studied Islam and Judaism as a ‘context or foil’ for understanding Christianity.12 From the Enlightenment onwards, Pasto contends, there has been an assumption that the Christian West has the authority to define the Islamic and Jewish past, and that there is an immutable difference between Christianity and Islam and Christianity and Judaism. In the same way as Europeans associate the Qur’an with the enervation of Muslim societies, they also use the Old Testament to position Jews as stationary. As Pasto writes: Modern Christian scholarship on Judaism began with the study of the ‘Old Testament’. This designation is strictly Christian, and both the term and its modern study are to some degree inseparable from an earlier Christian ideology of succession which situates Christians as the true Israel of the present and Jews as the false Israel of the past. The temporal dislocation of Jews is created by the invention of a Christian Time in which Jesus stands as the starting point, both temporally and socially. Judaism is situated on the pre-​Jesus side of the temporal line, where its significance lies only in its function as precursor and preparation for Jesus and the Gospel. This implies the necessary demise of Judaism, which is henceforth articulated as a religion out of time, an essence without history.13

The very idea of an ‘Old’ Testament is, then, an ‘ “allochronic device” used to displace Jews in the new, Christian Time’.14 Moreover, Pasto maintains, ‘[t]‌his Christian allochronic theology persisted into the post-​ enlightenment period, where it was articulated within new notions of progress and universal time’.15 According to Pasto, the narrative of Orientalism-​ about-​ the-​ Jews was closely linked to politics and power, as Said would suggest. In [ 143 ]

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representing Judaism as ‘other’, Europeans were also able to depict Jews as inferior in order to dominate them. Jesus, it was believed, had taken ‘the positive Hebraic tendencies  –​universalism, prophetism, spontaneity, feeling –​and fashioned them into a religion of essential freedom’.16 The ‘Pharisees and Talmudic rabbis’, on the other hand, had taken ‘the negative tendencies –​particularism, legalism, formalizing, conceptualizing  –​and produced a religion of essential constraint’.17 Christianity therefore appears as the completion and perfection of the Mosaic revelation, and Judaism is relegated to the status of a ‘ “remnant of a primitive time … which one should not merely restrict but completely wipe out” ’.18 The only means by which the Jewish condition might be improved, according to this analysis, was through the conversion of Jews to Christianity and their assimilation within the European nation-​state. As Pasto argues, ‘[t]‌he creation of authoritative Time went together with the creation of the authoritative Space, in this case the Space of the new nation-​state; and the ideological subordination of Jews in Time served the institutional subordination of Jews in Space’.19 Khaldoun Samman shares this view that Jews were segregated from Europeans, first temporally and then spatially. As he remarks of the Orientalist tradition, ‘[w]‌hat is most telling … is how European Christians position contemporary Jews into the time of the “Old” Testament … [L]ike the Arabs and Muslims, Jews, too, belong to a childhood age to which European Christians, standing in as the adults, pronounce the Other as stuck in a period preceding the great rupture represented in the coming of a new society by the figure of Jesus Christ’.20 For Samman, the implication of modern anti-​Semitic thought is clear: For these [Western] thinkers, Jews living in their midst were imagined as having no historical development and no change since the Old Testament days, and, although they might live in the Occident, their true origin continues to belong to the Orient, from which they were imagined to have come. Indeed, one can argue that spatially isolating Jews into ghettos was rationalized on the basis that they were in a space (Europe) and time (modernity) not authentic to who they ‘really’ were.21

Importantly in terms of the analysis of this chapter, Samman points out that Jews can also see themselves as separated in their worldly and spiritual circumstances from Euro-​Christendom and take pride in their distinctive Jewish heritage. This certainly was true in the case of Disraeli, whose glorification of his ‘Jewish’ and ‘Oriental’ identity provoked an intense anti-​Semitic reaction that became a more [ 144 ]

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generalised expression of hatred for the Anglo-​Jewish community in the mid-​Victorian period. In agreeing with Said that ‘recent scholarly literature has underestimated the importance of orientalism-​about-​the-​Jews in the annals of orientalism as a whole’, Ivan Davidson Kalmar nevertheless rejects the idea that the dual-​Orientalist discourse on Jews and Muslims was in some sense a ‘secret’.22 Focusing directly on Disraeli, Kalmar has shown that, in common with many other writers, he openly emphasised and romanticised the connection between Judaism and Orientalism.23 Brantlinger similarly points out that Disraeli’s Orientalism is at odds with Said’s interpretation of him as a contributor to the Western narrative about Eastern ‘otherness’. ‘Three qualifications of Said’s argument seem necessary’, he writes: first, Disraeli’s Orientalism was less a unified ideology than a mixture of changing, often contradictory ideas, attitudes, and poses; second, it was mainly positive rather than negative (that is, it celebrated rather than denigrated things Eastern); and third, Disraeli was himself (as he insisted throughout his career) a hybrid character –​both English and Jewish, and usually willing to play his Oriental cards.24

In his person, in his writings, and in his political career, Disraeli deliberately expressed and conflated his identities as a Christian and Jew and an Englishman and Oriental. One of his early biographers, George Buckle, hinted at these complexities when he wrote that, despite being baptised into the Church of England at the age of twelve: The fundamental fact about Disraeli was that he was a Jew. He accepted Christianity, but he accepted it as the highest development of Judaism. He had inherited from his father [Isaac D’Israeli] a profound interest in English history, literature, society and tradition, which his own reading and experience had deepened. But he seemed throughout his life never to be quite of the nation which he loved, served, and governed … ‘No Englishman’, writes Greenwood, ‘could approach Disraeli without some immediate consciousness that he was in the presence of a foreigner’.25

A formative moment in the development of Disraeli’s distinctive self-​image and world-​view came with his tour of the Holy Lands and the Ottoman Empire in 1830 and 1831. It was on this trip that Disraeli first conceived what David S. Katz has described as an ‘obsession with all things Eastern, and his belief that he and his family were members of a superior Semitic-​Jewish-​Arabic-​Oriental race’.26 Travelling through the East, Disraeli corresponded with friends back home, and expressed his wonder at the ‘magnificence of Oriental life’ and the scenes of dervishes, sheiks, and camels he encountered in Turkey.27 In a letter to Edward Bulwer on 27 December 1830, Disraeli wrote: [ 145 ]

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I confess to you that my Turkish prejudices are very much confirmed by my residence in Turkey. The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy … To repose on voluptuous ottomans, and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection, to court the air in a carved caïque [boat] by shores which are a continual scene and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb, is, I  think, a more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-​rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.28

As Robert Blake observes, ‘[Disraeli] had fallen in love, as many Englishmen were to do after him, with the alien yet curiously hypnotic civilization of the Muslim world. Every further stage in his journey consolidated the strange love affair’.29 Disraeli’s experiences in the Ottoman Empire, moreover, exerted a long-​lasting influence on his political outlook. The ‘experience of the roué and dandy of 1830–​1831’, Blake suggests, ‘were to affect the attitude of the Prime Minister and statesman nearly half a century later at the Congress of Berlin’.30 Katz picks up on this point, focusing on the significance of the time Disraeli spent with the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Reşid Mehmed Pasha (1829–​33), and the Wāli of Egypt and Sudan, the great reformer Mehmet Ali Pasha (1805–​48). Listening to these rulers express their commitment to the ‘political amelioration’ of their countries and admiring what he thought might be ‘the healthy seeds of a popular government’ in the East, Disraeli’s sense that the Ottoman Empire was worth preserving would have momentous consequences.31 In the East, according to Michael Polowetzky, Disraeli ‘learned that he no longer had to think of himself merely in terms of being different from the other people he lived with; he was not required to define his personality only by what he was not … Disraeli now finally embarked on a fascination with Judaism which would last for the rest of his life’.32 Indeed, on his return home, Disraeli began to present himself in ways that emphasised his Jewish-​Oriental-​Arabic features. As Kalmar notes, in Disraeli’s preface to his edition of his father’s Curiosities of Literature (1848) he claimed that he had descended from Sephardi Jews in Muslim-​ruled Iberia.33 Given that his family roots were actually in Cento, Italy, it seems that Disraeli was searching for an additional level of ‘exoticism’ which would not have come from the truth that his grandfather had arrived in England from Christian-​dominated Western Europe.34 Disraeli also fashioned his appearance to look more Eastern, augmenting his ‘olive-​ coloured’ skin-​ tone with hair which, Buckle notes, he ‘kept perennially as black as coal’ even in old age.35 One acquaintance of Disraeli reported that he deliberately styled his hair [ 146 ]

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into ‘un-​English curls’ by wrapping wet strands tightly into a yellow bandanna and allowing it to dry.36 Disraeli’s ‘pro-​Semitic bravado’ can be most clearly seen, however, in his ‘favourite’ and ‘most “Jewish” ’ book Tancred; or the New Crusade (three vols, 1847).37 Disraeli’s novel charts the eponymous hero’s pilgrimage to the Holy Lands and excursion through the Middle East, as he becomes increasingly persuaded of the spiritual and moral superiority of the Orient over the Occident.38 On this expedition, Tancred begins to believe that Christianity in Europe is faltering and unable to protect the people from the harmful effects of modernity, including the increasing class divides, the rise of individualism, the endless demands of work, and the growth of barren materialism. ‘[E]‌nlightened Europe is not happy’, Tancred muses, when in Syria, ‘[i]ts existence is a fever, which it calls progress. Progress to what?’39 Tancred becomes convinced that the Orient is a kind of paradise, characterised by religious vitality and peaceful co-​existence among men and women of all ranks. The East, Tancred proclaims, is a ‘land of divine deeds and divine thoughts!’40 On reflection he concludes that this is not surprising because ‘Asia is the only portion of the world which the Creator of that world has deigned to visit, and in which he has ever conferred with man’.41 Mount Sinai and Mount Calvary are, for Tancred, the two Middle-​Eastern sites on which the Judeo-​Christian tradition was founded. As God descended on Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments to Moses in Egypt, so the son of God had sacrificed himself for humanity on the cross of Calvary outside Jerusalem. Throughout the novel, Disraeli blurred the distinctions between Christianity and Judaism, and asserted the primacy of the latter. As Heidi Kauffman explains, ‘Tancred deploys a Jewish discourse that draws from the historical relations of Jewish and Christian traditions as [Disraeli] imagines Christian culture to be the offspring of a Jewish fountainhead. In this sense, Christian culture is not defined against a Jewish other but as a product of Jewish origins’.42 It is significant that Disraeli makes Tancred, an Englishman and a Christian, fall in love with a Jewish woman, Eva, who lives in Bethany (al-​Eizariya), as their exchanges reinforce the notion of a shared historical and religious heritage in the East. Eva, enquiring about Tancred’s faith, aligns Jesus with Judaism, remarking that ‘He is your God. He lived much in this village. He was a great man, but he was a Jew; and you worship him’.43 Eva has read and admired the New Testament but will not consider converting to Christianity because the Church is divided. She would prefer, she explains, to ‘remain within the pale of a church older than all of them, the church in which Jesus was born and which he never quitted, for he was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jew; as became [ 147 ]

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a Prince of the House of David, which you do and must acknowledge him to have been’.44 Tancred agrees with this interpretation and also sees Christianity as an extension of Judaism. He tells his Lebanese companion, Emir Fakredeen, that: [Jesus is] the descendant of King David as well as the son of God. But through this last and greatest of their princes it was ordained that the inspired Hebrew mind should mould and govern the world. Through Jesus, God spoke to the Gentiles, and not to the tribes of Israel only. That is the great worldly difference between Jesus and his inspired predecessors. Christianity is Judaism for the multitude, but still it is Judaism.45

Tancred’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land reinvigorates his Christianity, and his sense of his own identity, by Orientalising it. Tancred believes that the ‘Arabian principles’ of the ‘old world’ could also be used to revivify the faith of Europe more generally and reunite the Christian and Jewish people.46 As he explains to Eva, when she asks what the Orient can do for Europe:  ‘Save it,’ said Tancred.  ‘We cannot save ourselves; what means have we to save others?’  ‘The same you have ever exercised –​divine truth. Send forth a great thought, as you have done before  –​from Mount Sinai, from the villages of Galilee, from the deserts of Arabia –​and you may again remodel all their institutions, change their principles of action, and breathe a new spirit into the whole scope of their existence.’47 In closing the novel with Tancred’s proposal of marriage to Eva, Disraeli evoked the idea of establishing mutual sympathy between the Christian and Jewish people whose ‘united destinies’ might advance ‘the sovereign purpose’.48 Maintaining a life-​long love of Turkey and the Middle East and yearning for a reconciliation between Europe and the Orient, Disraeli’s enthusiasms would be tested by the Great Eastern Crisis which occurred thirty years after Tancred was published. As the Prime Minister of Britain when the rebellions against Turkish rule began in eastern Europe in 1875, Disraeli’s response to the escalating problems in the Ottoman Empire was viewed critically by the public, through the lens of his own Orientalism.

The Great Eastern Crisis, 1875–​78 Freeman, who would emerge as Disraeli’s most virulently anti-​ Semitic opponent was, by coincidence, touring historical sites in the [ 148 ]

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Balkans at the time of the insurrections against the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in Herzegovina in July 1875 the disturbances quickly spread throughout Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro over the course of the next year. In a series of private letters written in October 1875, Freeman compared the condition of lands under the occupation of Turkey with territories controlled by Austria, observed the course of the rebellions, and described his encounters with refugees from Herzegovina. Throughout, Freeman saw only evidence of what he had long suspected:  the Turk was a barbarian and the Islamic faith guaranteed Muslim violence towards Christians. Beginning his tour of the territories in eastern Europe that were under Austrian rule, Freeman wrote to his wife that ‘[w]‌ild as it is, the land is as safe as the most civilized lands; robbery is utterly unheard of … They are a fine race here … Sunday all the people were about, and they seem quiet and well-​behaved’.49 Similarly, he reported to Maine that he had ‘been up into Montenegro, seen the prince, walked about unhurt among pistols and yataghans, and mourned only that they were so idle, while there was so much Turk-​slaying to be done within a stone’s throw. They are noble fellows to look at, mighty civil, and the head men quite civilized. The land is now safe as any part of Europe’.50 Having seen something of these regions Freeman described to his daughter Florence his experience of crossing the border into Turkish-​ controlled Herzegovina: mark the difference between Christendom and paynimrie [i.e. heathendom]. The road is very good as long as you are in the Austrian territory, and gets bad as soon as you cross the Turkish frontier … Presently, a convoy of about 400 Turkish soldiers [appeared], such ugly, ragged dogs, and many of their officers not much better … but they did us no harm … So we got to Trebinje, and I saw for the first time Mosques (ugly), and minarets (pretty), and a bazaar with the Turks lolling in their shops; also tents as in war-​time. The bazaar seemed to me like a wild beast show with the fronts of the cages taken off; the hyenas might have sprung on us if they had chosen. We did not stay long.51

Unimpressed, Freeman made a quick return to ‘Ragusa, Christendom and civilization’.52 Ragusa, he related, was ‘full of refugees from Herzegovina, poor, half-​starved creatures’.53 As Stephens notes, Freeman’s support for the revolt was intensified by being an eyewitness to its outbreak and to some of the devastation which followed.54 Freeman had seen, Stephens writes, ‘some of the refugees, the destitute women, children and aged people, who had escaped from their merciless destroyers … He could “bear witness”, he said, “to the sight, as the saddest which his eyes had ever looked upon … it was [ 149 ]

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a people in beggary, it was a nation which stretched out its hand for food” ’.55 On arriving back in England, and for the following three years, Freeman campaigned tirelessly to raise money and collect clothes for the refugees. As he told his friend Bryce, in a letter of December 1875, ‘I simply beg everybody that I see or write to … with this formula that the smallest gift is not despised, and that for the largest we can find a use’.56 No doubt Freeman was encouraged in his efforts by his continued correspondence with aid-​ workers such as Adelaine Irby, who was living among the refugees and attempting to provide food, shelter, hospitals, and schools. In her letters to Freeman, Irby sent graphic accounts of Turkish cruelty. In April 1876, for example, she related that the Turkish forces were ‘beginning to set up crosses to crucify the Christians alive’.57 Meanwhile, the soldiers were going through ‘the villages robbing and plundering and they burnt the churches … To finish this persecution the tithe was collected from the people, on those who could not pay it was inflicted an old Turkish punishment, i.e they were seized and fastened to a bough and with their heads secured on the ground … where they had to remain the whole day, and in the evening cold water was poured on them’.58 In the same letter, Irby told Freeman about a series of increasingly violent atrocities that had taken place, writing: [T]‌he women and children dare not go out in the streets or even be seen in the enclosures round their huts. I asked him [an informant] the names of women who he said had been shamefully ill treated in his own town … and on what occasion. He told me the names of the women who within the last few days had been dishonoured by Turks on their way to or from church. He told me the names of two peasants who had been killed, and another who had been beaten almost to death in the fields outside the town. In one of these instances complaint was made to the Turkish authorities who did nothing. But the Musslamans were so furious at the complaint having been made that they satisfied their temper by shamefully ill-​treating the wife of the murdered man. Finally, last Sunday, we heard from some Bosnians who had come … of a frightful massacre of fugitives on the borders … They told us that seventy out of a band of fugitives had been killed by the Turks … The Turkish soldiers plundered the murdered bodies for coin and clothing.59

Irby sent updates on the situation to Freeman and he sent her financial and material aid.60 It seems that he also suggested some sort of scheme for evacuating refugee children to Britain, as she wrote:  ‘[w]‌e know no children whom we could have risked sending or taking to England to be adopted. Besides, we should have been at once accused of kidnapping’.61 [ 150 ]

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Freeman maintained a similar relationship with Dr Humphrey Sandwith, stationed in Belgrade, who sent him ‘the most interesting letters’.62 He reported on the ‘violation of women, of people roasted alive and the flesh of children thrust into the mouths of peasants etc etc.’.63 Sandwith counted himself among the few Europeans ‘who have seen genuine Turkish warfare, villages simply blackened ruins with poultry and pigs wandering about and the dogs tearing at the remains of the inhabitants. It is a disgusting sight to see our friend the dog digging his teeth into human remains’.64 Sandwith gave a detailed account of the brutal actions of the Turks in a letter dated 3 September 1876: I am witnessing scenes such as I  have read of in the bloody records of the Middle Ages, and I ask myself if I am really living in the nineteenth century. Before and around me are blazing villages, the smoke overhanging miles of country on this clear calm day … Around me are crowds of woe … forlorn peasantry who have barely escaped with their lives from their cherished homes now in full blaze … More than this I hear stories of deeds almost too foul and hideous to repeat [of a young girl]. Outrages, dishonour and brutality of the foulest kind were not enough, her ravishers actually cut out large strips of skin and flesh from her back and left her frightfully mutilated. She was found some hours afterwards by Servian [sic] troops and they gently carried her into one of the field hospitals where she lingered four days and quietly died … A day or two before I arrived there three wounded men were caught by the Turks, tied to tresses and slow fires lighted under them.65

Freeman raised around £5,000 for the refugees and strongly expressed his view in public that England should now end its alliance with the Ottoman Empire and help free the subject peoples.66 In an article he wrote in October 1876 for the British Quarterly Review, titled ‘The Turks in Europe’, Freeman argued that the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire was an anachronism.67 He observed that, over the course of twenty years, many things had changed for the better, including the abolition of slavery in America and the deposition of tyrants such as Napoleon III in France. And yet, he wrote: [T]‌here is one corner of Europe where all that was said twenty years ago may be said over again with perfect truth. There is one land in discussing whose affairs now there is nothing else to be done but to set forth the same truths which were set forth twenty years ago. The Turk still reigns in the New Rome [Constantinople], as he reigned twenty years ago; and, as he was a Turk twenty years ago, he remains a Turk still.68

Freeman went on to attack the language of diplomats who had spoken about using ‘moral pressure’ in order to quieten the insurgency and avoid any further ‘complications’.69 For Freeman it was clear that [ 151 ]

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so long as the Ottoman Empire survived there would always be ‘complications’ and ‘disturbances’, because the Turks were incapable of reform.70 The Christians of south-​eastern Europe had decided to free themselves from oppression or die trying, and it was now up to the British government to decide which of these outcomes it preferred.71 The actions of Disraeli gave Freeman little cause for optimism that the right decision would be made. On 13 May 1876, Russia, Austria-​ Hungary, and Germany issued the Berlin Memorandum, which demanded that the Ottoman Empire suspend its use of arms against its subject peoples for two months and threatened military action if negotiations for reform failed at the end of this time. Disraeli refused to co-​operate with this note as he believed that the three imperial courts were trying to use the initiative to destroy the Ottoman power and resolve the Eastern Question in their own favour.72 In the same month an insurrection broke out in Bulgaria and the Turks crushed it with exemplary ruthlessness. An estimated 15,000 Bulgarian men, women, and children were massacred and over 70 villages, 200 schools, and 10 monasteries were destroyed.73 When the London Daily News broke the story on 23 June 1876 Disraeli responded by claiming that reports of the massacre were exaggerated and insisted in Parliament that the British government could not act based simply on ‘coffee-​house babble’.74 This was an unfortunate phrase, and it did much to stir the public agitation on the atrocities and to provoke extreme antagonism towards Disraeli himself.

The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation and anti-​Semitism While insurrection and massacre were, as Freeman pointed out, far from unusual within the Ottoman Empire, the reports of the Bulgarian atrocities provoked a uniquely intense response in Britain.75 There began a series of widespread public protests which became known as the ‘Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation’, and which Freeman described in an article on ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Crisis’ for the Contemporary Review. ‘The news’, he wrote, stirred up a sublime national emotion such as has had few parallels. Men came together as if to deliver their own souls, as if their hearts could not rest within them till their tongues had spoken. They came, as it were, to wash their own hands clean from the deeds of which they had just heard the tale. It seemed as if the common earth and the common human nature had received a defilement, which it needed some rite of lustration to wipe from the consciences of all mankind. Never was any movement

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more spontaneous, more heartfelt, and as it seemed more universal … In a mighty fit of national repentance, the people of England declared that they would no longer be the abettors of the foulest tyranny the world has ever seen.76

Here Freeman expressed two sentiments which R.T. Shannon and Jonathan Parry see as characteristic of the whole movement.77 The first was a sense of guilt and complicity. Shannon argues that the peculiarity of agitation in Britain on a massive scale is obviously explicable in terms of the fact that the British government alone had supported the Turks.78 The second sentiment was that of public moralism. During the course of the atrocities agitation the principle of ‘virtuous action’ was consistently applied to the state. Canon H.P. Liddon, for example, defined patriotism as ‘the feeling which we have about our relatives’: We wish our relatives to be good men in the first instance, and then successful men, if success is compatible with goodness. I  cannot understand how many excellent people fail to feel thus about their country too; it would seem to me that exactly in the proportion in which we realise the fact that a nation is only a very overgrown family … will be our anxiety that this country should act as a good man would act; and that patriotism consists in wishing this.79

Freeman agreed in viewing the question as one of duty and morality, not only of the people but of the state. He was particularly incensed by a dispatch sent by Sir Henry Elliot, the British ambassador at Constantinople, to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Derby, on 4 September 1876.80 In this note, Elliot insisted that the necessity of preventing change in the Ottoman Empire, which might be detrimental to British interests, was ‘not affected by the question of whether it was 10,000 or 20,000 persons who perished in the suppression’.81 Freeman passionately repudiated this stance and declared that ‘these things degrade us among nations as a nation’.82 For him, ‘[t]‌he true patriot is he who seeks the highest welfare of his country, and who holds that the real welfare of his country is inseparable from right dealing. He will be zealous for the outward glory, dignity, and interest of the nation, but only so far as they are consistent with justice and honour’.83 Freeman felt the need of ‘atoning for a great national sin of our own’ and urged the people to ‘say frankly that we have wronged our brethren, and that we will undo the wrong that we have done’.84 The extent to which Freeman was preoccupied with affairs in south-​ eastern Europe is evidenced by his personal letters from this time. ‘My correspondence’, he wrote to Boyd Dawkins, ‘is cosmopolitan’.85 [ 153 ]

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The second post to-​day brought me six things which I will arrange thus:-​ By Stamps

By Nations

By Religions

1 German

2 English

3 Orthodox

1 Servian [sic.]

1 Greek

1 English Church

1 Austrian

1 Servian

1 Jew

2 English

1 German

No Papists86

1 Megyar

1 Russian

In addition to his private correspondence, Freeman wrote innumerable letters to the public press on the Eastern Question, and published articles in various periodicals which denounced the Turk as an ‘Asiatic barbarian’ who was engaged in the perpetual ‘work of blood and lust’.87 While Freeman’s language was attacked by critics as ‘high-​wrought’ and ‘hysterical raving’ his intensity was not unusual, as a brief glance at the newspapers of this time demonstrates.88 The Reverend Malcolm MacColl described Turkish rule as a ‘withering blight’, Archibald Forbes called the Turks ‘Barbarians pure and simple’, and Colonel Wavell saw the Ottomans as having ‘a weak and pathetic character’ only distinguished by ‘their passive hatred of the Christian world, combined with an intense dislike of all change’.89 Edwin de Leon was even more emphatic: The Turk has ever been and still is an animal … While other newer nationalities have advanced, his has retrograded; and when his empire shall have passed away, no traces of his occupation … will be left behind him, save the domes and minarets of his mosques and turbaned gravestones. For he has originated nothing, improved nothing, spared nothing that could not be destroyed. War and the harem have equally divided all the time he has spared from sensual sloth, and the fumes of tobacco and hasheesh.90

Freeman was also heavily involved in the agitation meetings which began on 27 July at Willis’s Rooms in London. At that meeting, Freeman delivered a well-​ received and decisive speech which carried the assembly to endorse the principle of full autonomy for the Christians of Turkey.91 The Saturday Review gauged the incendiary atmosphere of the meeting. The ‘well-​dressed mob’ at Willis’s Rooms, it wrote, was in a state of ‘high Christian excitement’, and was working up a feeling of popular anger which might possibly, and unfortunately, dictate the future course of British foreign policy.92 Beginning on a theme it maintained consistently throughout the agitation, the Review argued that such meetings were, by their nature, incapable of rational [ 154 ]

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thought.93 Freeman eventually broke with both the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette because, as he told Green, he did not ‘wish for fellowship with anyone who still maintained the evil cause’.94 From modest beginnings in Willis’s Rooms, the agitation grew into a national movement. ‘In less than six weeks’, Shannon observes, ‘nearly five hundred demonstrations throughout Great Britain, mainly city or town meetings, addressed to the Foreign Office expressions of abhorrence at the atrocities. Compelling universal attention, extorting recognition and respect from the Foreign Office, even imposing upon Disraeli, for a time, considerations of a possible new point of departure in his Eastern policy’.95 Crucially, the agitation drew the attention of Gladstone.96 The publication of Gladstone’s pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, on 5 September 1876, provided a critical focal point for the campaign.97 Selling 40,000 copies within the first few days, the book marked, as Nazan Çiçek notes, the high point in the ‘manifestation of Turcophobia in late Victorian Britain’.98 Gladstone employed the language of ‘honour’, ‘duty’, ‘compassion’ and ‘shame’ in his righteous condemnation both of the atrocities and the ‘deplorable’ inaction of the British government.99 ‘We learn with astonishment and horror’, he wrote, ‘that, so far as appears, we have been involved, in some amount, at least, of moral complicity with the basest and blackest outrages upon record within the present century’.100 The Ottomans had committed ‘crimes and outrages so vast in scale’ and so ‘unutterably vile’, as to prove beyond doubt that they were incapable of governing their Christian subjects.101 While Gladstone did not advocate immediate independence for the subject lands he believed that steps must be taken towards securing the safety of the people and the practical self-​government of the provinces involved.102 ‘It is not yet too late’, he argued, but it is very urgent, to aim at the accomplishment of three great objects, in addition to the termination of the war, yet (in my view) inextricably associated with it. 1. To stop the anarchical misrule … the plundering, the murdering, which, as we now seem to learn, upon sufficient evidence, still desolate Bulgaria. 2. To make effectual provision against the recurrence of the outrages recently perpetrated under the sanction of the Ottoman Government, by excluding its administrative action for the future, not only from Bosnia and Herzegovine [sic], but also, and above all, from Bulgaria; upon which at best there will remain, for years and for generations, the traces of its foul and bloody hand.

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3. To redeem by these measures the honour of the British name which, in the deplorable events of the year, has been more gravely compromised than I have known it to be at any former period.103

For Gladstone, as for Freeman, the state had a moral duty to uphold right and to punish wrong. As Gladstone put it in his pamphlet Lessons in Massacre (1877), the actions of the people and the representatives of Britain must teach the Ottomans that atrocities would not be tolerated and must convey the message, ‘ “You shall not do it again” ’.104 Next to Gladstone, Freeman was the most widely known of the agitation leaders. As Shannon points out, his prestige is indicated in the order of precedence given in the ironic dedication of an anonymous pamphlet, Revelations from the Seat of War (1877), which acknowledged: The Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone Mr. E. A. Freeman ‘The Times’ and ‘Daily News’ The Ritualists And Political Dissenters And all Crusading Philanthropists, English and Russian.105

It was, however, W.T. Stead, the editor of The Northern Echo, who took on the role of organisational leadership and whose efforts resulted in the formation of a ‘National Convention on the Eastern Question’, inaugurated on 8 December at St James’ Hall, Piccadilly.106 The meeting had a significant impact, and The Times admitted that ‘we have never known any association for a political object which has obtained support over so large a part of the scale of English society’.107 But those who supported the government’s foreign policy took exception to Freeman’s speech in particular. Not content with denouncing ‘our barbarous ally’ Turkey, Freeman had attacked the ‘Turcophiles’ in England: ‘Would they’, he thundered, ‘fight to uphold the integrity and independence of Sodom?’ And then followed the concluding passage: We are told that English interests demand it, that our dominion in India will be imperilled, that the civilized world will crumble into atoms, if a Russian ship should be seen in the Mediterranean. If it be so then I say, perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India, rather than we should strike a blow or speak a word on behalf of the wrong against the right. But I need hardly answer fallacies which have been answered a thousand times already. Look at the map: the path to India does not lie by Constantinople.108

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Minister himself.109 Disraeli’s Orientalism, as typified by writings such as Tancred, now became the basis of the charge that he was a ‘crypto-​Jew’ who was ‘obsessed by an un-​Christian, Old Testament, Oriental thirst for revenge’ and ‘nurtured dreams of Semitic glory’.110 It was repeatedly alleged that Disraeli’s continued support for Turkey was motivated by the opportunity to attack Orthodox Russia and the Christians in the Balkans.111 Goldwin Smith, for example, drew attention to what he perceived to be an ‘element originally Eastern’, which has ‘made us sensible of its presence in the West. For the first time perhaps Europe has had occasion to note the political position and tendencies of Judaism’.112 In fact, Smith argued, if England was drawn into the Russo-​Turkish conflict on the side of the Ottoman Empire, the nation would be implicated in a ‘Jewish war, a war waged with British blood to uphold the objects of Jewish sympathy, or to avenge Jewish wrongs’.113 As the Crisis escalated, Britain’s national ‘mission’ came to be presented in terms of a struggle between Christianity and Orientalism, good and evil, and Disraeli was derided as ‘ “Ben Ju-​Ju”, the Jewish prime minister’.114 To the Reverend Chester, writing in the Sheffield Independent in September 1876, Disraeli was the ‘Jew Earl, Philo-​ Turkish Jew and Jew Premier’.115 In Richard Burton’s opinion Disraeli was ‘in nature as in name, a very Hebrew of Hebrews’, a ‘very Moses in the House of Lords’.116 The notion that Disraeli was an alien, Wohl explains, carried the implication that the Prime Minister was a ‘traitor’, ‘anti –​rather than simply un-​English’.117 As Liddon wrote, ‘as long as Lord Beaconsfield [Disraeli] is Prime Minister we are not safe. His one positive passion is that of upholding Asiatics against Christian Europeans’.118 Evoking the mythology of the ‘wandering Jew’, Bryce wrote that Disraeli was ‘born in a foreign country’ and raised ‘amid a people for whose ideas and habits he has no sympathy and little respect’.119 He was an outsider, ‘accustomed to observe things from with-​out’, who ‘has not grown up under the conventional morality of the time and nation’, and was ‘not … really an Englishman’.120 Gladstone’s attack on Disraeli’s policy also had an anti-​Semitic strain. As Peter Cain notes, the editor of The Nineteenth Century had to remove a passage from an article written by Gladstone, in which he referred to Disraeli as ‘that alien’ who wished ‘to annex England to his native East and make it the appendage of his Asiatic empire’.121 The persistence of traditional anti-​Semitic stereotypes is shown, again, in the way Disraeli was depicted as a conjurer or wizard, who used magic to hypnotise the English public so that they would support his foreign policy.122 The Spectator, for example, asked its readers to contemplate ‘[t]‌his great Israelite magician [who] appears and with his [ 157 ]

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wand transforms the whole political horizon’.123 Disraeli, it continued, has ‘a half-​belief in the cabalistic sorcery, with all its wild spiritual machinery’, and employs a ‘strange talisman’ to achieve ‘victories over … typical Englishmen till they become the most plastic of all materials’.124 In Smith’s view, Disraeli was a ‘contemptible trickster and adventurer’ who ‘couldn’t help it because he was a Jew. Jews are no good anyhow’, while to Carlyle, he was ‘a superlative Hebrew conjurer, spellbinding all the great Lords, great parties, great interests of England’.125 Disraeli had somehow diverted the nation from its moral mission and the choice before Englishmen was clear, according to a correspondent to Public Opinion:  ‘Shall we prefer worshipping that little yellow god with huge nose and cunning eye, round whose head thin curls cluster and around whose heavy-​lipped mouth a smile of satisfaction reigns? Or shall we follow the dictates of Christianity?’126 Of all Disraeli’s detractors Freeman was perhaps the most extreme.127 To him, Disraeli was a Jew and a traitor, Asiatic and anti-​Christian. In letters he rarely referred to Disraeli by name:  he was, simply, ‘The Jew’, ‘Dirty Jew’, the ‘traitorous Jew’, ‘the veritable Jew’, ‘the haughty Jew’, and the ‘abominable Jew’.128 In the press he consistently reiterated the idea of Disraeli as an Oriental foreigner. ‘The charge against Lord Beaconsfield’, he wrote of Disraeli, ‘is that he has never become an Englishman, that he has never become an European, that he remains the man of Asian mysteries, with feelings and policy distinctly Asiatic’.129 ‘Lord Beaconsfield’, he continued, ‘is true to his creed of Asian Mysteries. He seeks his models among the ancient worthies of his own people. Truly he looks to Abraham as his father and unto Sarah that bore him … He recalls too at least one exploit of his great ancestor in the zeal with which he flies to the help of the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah’.130 Freeman held that ‘[t]‌he whole talk of Lord Beaconsfield, the slandering of Servia [sic], the bragging against Russia, is the talk of an Asiatic’.131 Freeman also invoked the idea of Disraeli as magician, arguing that the Cabinet had caved in to the ‘arch deceiver’, with his love of ‘surprise and mischief’ and his ‘Semitic instinct’.132 It had consequently become ‘the Jew Government’ following a ‘Hebrew policy’.133 Freeman moved beyond a personal attack on Disraeli to an indictment of the Tories and English Jews in general. He frequently referred to the existence of a ‘Mahometan Tory mind’ which: would have us believe that it has no love for the Turk in himself, that it seeks to uphold him only because he is in some mysterious way profitable to British interests, and because, in Mahometan Tory morality, any wickedness may be upheld by which British interests may be in any

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way profited. Yet the inherent love of the Turk, that is the inherent love of oppression, the inherent hatred of national rights, shows itself plainly enough in the frantic joy with which the fashionable prints rush at any chance of whitewashing the Turk or of blackening his victims.134

Believing that England was ‘Jew ridden’ and perceiving himself to be engaged in a fight ‘against the devil and his angels, Jewish and Turkish’, Freeman insisted that there could be ‘no peace’ in England ‘with Jews, Turks … liars, and the whole synagogue of Satan [at] Hughenden [Disraeli’s house]’.135 This medieval vision of the Jew as the devil’s agent finds expression in his letters to a number of correspondents: ‘the preservation of the Jews as a separate people’, he speculated, might be ‘as an instrument of Satan to buffet all other people’.136 He also wrote to Bryce about ‘the Jews’ firm allegiances to the Devil’.137 In assessing Freeman’s interventions in the Great Eastern Crisis, R.W. Seton-​ Watson rightly observed that his ‘crude overstatement of a good case tended to obscure the undoubted fact that Freeman … had made many valuable contributions to the history of the Near East alike in ancient and in modern times and knew more of the Eastern Question than any person in England’.138 But, if the suggestion is that Freeman’s scholarly works were free from vitriol, an examination of the Ottoman Power proves otherwise.

The Oriental conspiracy: two ‘others’ in the Ottoman Power In fact, the Ottoman Power opens with a lengthy elucidation of Freeman’s paranoid conspiracy theory:  Disraeli, by virtue of his Jewish descent, was a foreigner, and was allied with the Islamic Ottoman Empire in an attempt to execute the downfall of European Christendom. While Freeman’s account of the Jew as an ‘alien’ or an ‘Asiatic in Europe’ runs parallel to his narrative regarding the barbarism of the Turk, his ‘two discourses for Semites’ do not merely resemble each other but are inextricably linked, in a way that complicates Said’s understanding of modern Orientalism. Far from being predicated upon secular ideas and driven by the perceived strength of Europe vis-​à-​vis the East, the two ‘others’ in the Ottoman Power are bound together by Freeman’s belief in an anti-​Christian alliance which poses a dangerous and immediate threat to the West. Published in April 1877, the Ottoman Power contains the same themes and lack of restraint as Freeman’s correspondence and articles for the press. At the time of its composition the atrocities agitation itself had dwindled. However, the escalation of hostilities between [ 159 ]

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Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which would culminate in the Russo-​ Turkish War (1877–​78), had brought the crisis to its height and meant that the controversy regarding the direction of British foreign policy had taken on a renewed urgency. Freeman freely admitted that he composed the Ottoman Power in response to contemporary exigency and would survey the growth, nature, and decline of the Empire to ‘give us lessons for the present’.139 He would argue from ‘what has happened to what is likely to happen’, and do everything he could to convince the British public and the government that: The one work to be done is to put the enslaved lands on the same level as the liberated lands. So to do is the dictate of right; so to do is the dictate of interest. As long as any Christian land remains under the Turk, there will be discontents and disturbances and revolts and massacres; there will be diplomatic difficulties and complications; in a word, the ‘eternal Eastern Question’ will remain eternal. From the experience of the past I infer that the only way to settle that question is to get rid of the standing difficulty, the standing complication, the standing cause of discontent and revolt and massacre, namely the rule of the Turk.140

The Turk, he mused, repeating the theme of Oriental otherness, ‘is something strange, abnormal, contrary to the general system of Europe, something which keeps that system always out of gear … The Turk in Europe, in short, answers to Lord Palmerston’s definition of dirt. He is “matter in the wrong place” ’.141 Freeman felt that this history, which would demonstrate the evils of maintaining the alliance with the Ottoman Empire, was particularly necessary because the British public was in danger of being deceived by a Prime Minister whose motives were far from transparent. Not for the first time he suggested that Disraeli may be engineering the Russian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in order that ‘a thousand opportunities may be found for picking a quarrel’ with Russia.142 ‘Every step’, he cautioned ominously ‘must be watched’.143 Reiterating his fears and prejudices, Freeman warned his reader that: There is another power against which England and Europe ought to be yet more carefully on their guard. It is no use mincing matters. The time has come to speak out plainly … it will not do to have the policy of England, the welfare of Europe, sacrificed to Hebrew sentiment. The danger is no imaginary one. Every one must have marked that the one subject on which Lord Beaconsfield, through his whole career, has been in earnest has been whatever has touched his own people. A  mocker about everything else, he has been thoroughly serious about this … 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.144

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Disraeli, Freeman continued, ‘is the active friend of the Turk’.145 But the extent of ‘the alliance runs through all Europe’.146 Thus: Throughout the East, the Turk and the Jew are leagued against the Christian … The Jew is the tool of the Turk, and is therefore yet more hated than the Turk … There is all the difference in the world between the degraded Jews of the East and the cultivated and honourable Jews of the West. 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.147

Freeman thus perceived European Christendom as distinct from, and threatened by, both its Jewish and Muslim ‘other’. The Ottoman Power, then, can be viewed as a ‘sequel’ to the Saracens as both works were motivated by the Eastern Question and both depicted the Orient as ‘other’. In producing ‘two discourses for Semites’, however, the next chapter explores the ways in which Freeman’s Eastern volumes differ. The belief in the existence of an Oriental conspiracy imbues Freeman’s Ottoman Power with a sense of urgency which is lacking in the Saracens, as he emphasises Britain’s ‘guilt’ in maintaining Islamic oppression in Europe and enjoins the British public to act in the immediate defence of Western Christendom.

Notes 1 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 152. 2 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 105. 3 Ibid., p. 105. 4 E.A. Freeman, ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, Contemporary Review (August, 1877), pp.  481–​510, p.  496; E.A. Freeman, ‘The True Eastern Question’, Fortnightly Review, 24, 18 (December, 1875), pp. 747–​ 69, p.  747; and Ottoman Power, p. xi. 5 Said, Orientalism, pp. 27–​8. 6 Ibid., p. xviii. 7 Bryan S. Turner, ‘Postmodernity and Cosmopolitanism and Identity’, in Eliézer Ben Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg (eds), Identity, Culture and Globalization (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 527–​43, p. 533. 8 Ibid., pp. 533. 9 Ibid., p. 534. 10 Ibid., p. 533. 11 Ibid., p. 534. 12 James Pasto, ‘Islam’s “Strange Secret Sharer”: Orientalism, Judaism, and the Jewish Question’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40, 3 (July, 1998), pp. 437–​ 74, p. 439. www.jstor.org/​stable/​179271. 13 Ibid., p. 440. 14 Ibid., p. 440. 15 Ibid., pp. 440–​1. 16 Ibid., pp. 443–​4.

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The East 7 Ibid., p. 444. 1 18 Ibid., pp. 453–​4. 19 Ibid., p. 461. 20 Khaldoun Samman, The Clash of Modernities:  The Islamist Challenge to Arab, Jewish, and Turkish Nationalism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 56. 21 Ibid., p. 57 22 Ivan Davidson Kalmar, ‘Benjamin Disraeli, Romantic Orientalist’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47, 2 (April, 2005), pp. 348–​71, p. 349. www.jstor.org/​ stable/​3879308. 23 Ibid., p. 352. 24 Brantlinger, Taming Cannibals, p. 92. 25 George Earle Buckle, in succession to W.F. Moneypenny, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 6 vols, 1910–​20, vol. 6 (London: John Murray, 1920), p. 635. 26 David S. Katz, The Shaping of Turkey in the European Imagination, 1776–​1923 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 127. 27 Disraeli to his father, Isaac D’Israeli, 25 October 1830, included in Home Letters Written by the Late Earl of Beaconsfield in 1830 and 1831, edited by Ralph Disraeli (London: John Murray, 1885), p. 87. 28 Disraeli to Edward Bulwer, 27 December 1830, Benjamin Disraeli Letters:  1815–​ 1834, vol. 1, edited by J.A.W. Gunn, John Matthews, Donald M. Schurman, and M.G. Wiebe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp. 107–​8. 29 Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966), p. 31. 30 Ibid., p. 31. 31 Disraeli to Isaac D’Israeli, 25 October 1830, in Disraeli Letters, Letter 101, pp. 165–​ 72, and Disraeli quoted in Katz, Turkey in the European Imagination, p. 144. 32 Michael Polowetzky, Jerusalem Recovered: Victorian Intellectuals and the Birth of Modern Zionism (Westport: Praeger, 1995), pp. 34–​5. 33 Kalmar, ‘Disraeli, Romantic Orientalist’, p. 356. 34 Ibid., p. 356. 35 Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, p. 635. 36 Ibid., pp.  635–​ 6. Kalmar describes Disraeli’s curls as ‘un-​ English’ in ‘Disraeli, Romantic Orientalist’, p. 358. 37 The phrase ‘pro-​ Semitic bravado’ is taken from Kalmar, ‘Disraeli, Romantic Orientalist’, p. 358. David Cesarani calls Tancred Disraeli’s ‘most “Jewish” book to date’ in Disraeli: The Novel Politician (London: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 108. Disraeli told his friend Benjamin Jowett that Tancred was his favourite among his own novels in 1877. See Moneypenny and Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 3, p. 48. 38 Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: Or, the New Crusade, 3 vols [1847]. My references are to the New Edition (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1871). 39 Disraeli, Tancred, p. 224. 40 Ibid., p. 309. 41 Ibid., p. 421. 42 Heidi Kauffman, English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-​Century British Novel:  Reflections on a Nested Nation (University Park:  Pennsylvania University Press, 2009), p. 83. 43 Disraeli, Tancred, pp. 188–​9. 44 Ibid., p. 190. 45 Ibid., p. 427. 46 Ibid., p. 290. 47 Ibid., p. 309. 48 Ibid., p. 486. 49 E.A. Freeman to Mrs Freeman, 9 October 1875, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, pp. 98–​100. 50 Freeman to Maine, 12 October 1875, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 100.

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The Great Eastern Crisis 51 Freeman to Miss Florence Freeman, 17 October 1875, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 127. 52 Ibid., p. 128. 53 Ibid., p. 128. 54 Ibid., p. 101. 55 Ibid., pp. 101–​2. 56 Freeman to Bryce, 19 December 1875, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 129. 57 Miss Adelaine Irby to Freeman, 8 April 1876, JRUL, EAF1/​2/​135. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Freeman’s financial aid is acknowledged, for example, in Irby to Freeman, 28 February 1877, JRUL, EAF1/​2/​142; 4 April 1879, JRUL, EAF/​1/​2/​145; 8 March 1879, JRUL, EAF/​2/​148; and 17 January 1880, JRUL, EAF1/​2/​149a. 61 Irby to Freeman, April 1879, JRUL, EAF1/​2/​145. 62 Freeman to Bryce, 1876, MSS Bryce, Bodleian, 5/​127. 63 Dr Sandwith to Freeman, December 1876, JRUL, EAF1/​2/​178a and 178b. 64 Sandwith to Freeman, August 1876, JRUL, EAF/​2/​179. 65 Sandwith to Freeman, 3 September 1876, JRUL, EAF/​2/​181a, 181b. 66 On the relief effort more generally see Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain, 1870–​1914 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2013). Gill estimates that, in total, £250,000 was raised for those affected by the Balkan wars –​see p. 75. 67 Freeman, ‘The Turks in Europe’, British Quarterly Review (October 1876), JRUL, EAF2/​2/​133. 68 Ibid., p. 29. 69 Freeman quoted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 107. 70 Ibid., p. 109. 71 Ibid., p. 109. 72 On Disraeli’s policy see Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question 1875–​ 1878 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Richard Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963); and Marvin Swartz, The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: The Macmillan Press, 1985). 73 See Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876, p. 22. 74 See Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century:  Setting the Precedent (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 152. 75 See E.A. Freeman, ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Question’, The 510, p.  490 and Shannon, Contemporary Review, 30 (February, 1877), pp. 481–​ Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, p. 22. Shannon has produced the following list of Christians massacred in Turkey in the nineteenth century at the instigation or by the contrivance of Turkish authorities: 1822

Greeks, especially in Chios

50,000

1850

Nestorians and Armenians, Kurdistan

10,000

1860

Maronites and Syrians, Lebanon and Damascus

12,000

1876

Bulgarians, Bulgaria

15,000

1894

Armenians, Armenia, Sassum

120,000

1896 Armenians, Constantinople 2,000   76 Freeman, ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Question’, pp. 490–​2.

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The East 77 Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–​1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The relationship of the Eastern Question to wider imperial policy is also considered in Leslie Rogne Schumacher, A ‘Lasting Solution’: The Eastern Question and British Imperialism, 1875–​1878, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 2012. 78 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, p. 26. 79 Henry Parry Liddon to C.T. Redington, 13 January 1879 reproduced in J.O. Johnston, Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1904), p. 228. 80 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 123. For Freeman’s opinions on Lord Derby and Sir Henry Elliot see also Ottoman Power, pp. 231–​7. 81 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 123. 82 Freeman, ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, p. 483. 83 Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 124. 84 Freeman, ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Question’, p.  495 and Freeman, ‘The Eastern Question in its Historical Bearings’, an address delivered in Manchester to the National Reform Union, 15 November 1876, p. 22. JRUL, EAF2/​ 2/​136. 85 Freeman to Boyd Dawkins, December 1876, reproduced in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 124. 86 Ibid., p. 125. 87 Freeman, ‘The English People in Relation to the English Question’, p. 511. 88 Freeman, ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, p. 485. For a detailed analysis of the press coverage of the affairs of the East in general see Paul Achterlonie, ‘From the Eastern Question to the Death of General Gordon: Representations of the Middle East in the Victorian Periodical Press, 1876–​1885’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 28, 1 (May, 2001), pp. 5–​24. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13530190120034530. 89 Malcolm MacColl, ‘Some Current Fallacies about Turks, Bulgarians, and Russians’, Nineteenth Century, 2 (1877), pp. 831–​42, p. 837; Archibald Forbes, ‘The Russian, the Turks and the Bulgarians: At the Theatre of War’, Nineteenth Century, 2 (1877), pp. 561–​82, p. 571; and Arthur Henry Wavell, ‘A Russian Account of the Seat of War in Asiatic Turkey’, Macmillan’s Magazine, 36 (1877), pp. 251–​6, p. 252. 90 Edwin De Leon, ‘Notes on the Turk’, Fraser’s Magazine, 94, 14 (1876), pp. 686–​97, p. 690. 91 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, pp. 47–​8. 92 Ibid., p. 48. 93 Ibid., p. 48. 94 Freeman to Green, 22 September 1878, JRUL, EAF1/​8/​79b. 95 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, p. 49. 96 Cameron Whitehead has shown that Gladstone had no previous knowledge of, or interest in, Bulgarian affairs. See Cameron Whitehead, ‘Reading Beside the Lines:  Marginalia, W.  E. Gladstone, and the International History of the Bulgarian Horrors’, The International History Review, 37, 4 (2015), pp. 864–​86. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​07075332.2014.974652. 97 For an extended study of Gladstone’s involvement in the Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation see Matthew, Gladstone, pp.  253–​87 and Ann Pottinger Saab, Reluctant Icon:  Gladstone, Bulgaria and the Working Classes, 1856–​ 78 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 98 For the sales figures of the pamphlet see John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1904), vol. 2, p. 552. Nazan Çiçek, ‘The Turkish Response to Bulgarian Horrors: A Study in English Turcophobia’, Middle Eastern Studies, 42, 1 (January, 2006), pp. 87–​102, p.  87. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​00263200500399579. 99 William E. Gladstone, ‘Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East’, in Bulgarian Horrors and Russia in Turkistan, with Other Tracts [1876] (London:  Elibron Classics, 2005), pp. 11–​52, p.  14. Gladstone described the action of government as ‘deplorable’, p. 22.

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The Great Eastern Crisis 100 Ibid., p. 13. 101 Ibid., pp. 16–​17. 102 Gladstone quoted by Matthew, Gladstone, p. 273. 103 Gladstone, ‘Bulgarian Horrors’, pp. 11–​52. 104 William E. Gladstone, Lessons in Massacre; Or, the Conduct of the Turkish Government in and about Bulgaria Since May, 1876 (London:  John Murray, 1877), p. 80. 105 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, p. 81. 106 On Stead and his involvement in the campaign see Grace Eckley, Maiden Tribute: A Life of W. T. Stead (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2007). 107 R.W. Seton-​Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London: Macmillan and Co., 1935), p. 112. 108 Speech reprinted in Stephens, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 113. Italics in the original. 109 Anthony Wohl, “ ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi”: Disraeli as Alien’, Journal of British Studies, 34, 3 (July, 1995), pp. 375–​411, p.  377. https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​386083. See also Anthony Wohl, “  ‘Ben-​ JuJu”:  Representations of Disraeli’s Jewishness in the Victorian Political Cartoon’, Jewish History, 10, 2 (Fall, 1996), pp. 89–​134. www. jstor.org/​stable/​20101269. Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion:  ‘The Jewish Question’ & English National Identity (London:  Duke University Press, 1995), especially pp. 174–​234. 110 For the suspicions aroused by Disraeli’s novels see Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​ Ben-​ Dizzi’, p. 381–​2 and Ann Pottinger Saab, ‘Disraeli, Judaism, and the Eastern Question’, The International History Review, 10, 4 (November, 1988), pp. 559–​78, p.  562. www.jstor.org/​stable/​40105925. Wohl describes the idea that Disraeli had an ‘Old Testament, Oriental thirst for revenge’, in ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 390, ‘crypto-​ Jew’ and ‘dreams of Semitic glory’ are quotes from Wohl in ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 382. 111 Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 390. 112 Goldwin Smith, ‘England’s Abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey’, Contemporary Review, 31 (1878), pp. 617–​18, quoted by Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 390. 113 Ibid., p. 390. 114 Ibid., p. 378. 115 The Reverend Greville Chester, quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (8 September 1876), p. 363. This reference is taken from Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 378. 116 Richard Burton, Beaconsfield:  A Mock-​Heroic Poem and Political Satire (1878), p. 23 and p. 6. This reference is included in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 378. 117 Ibid., p. 393. 118 Quoted in ibid., p. 393. 119 James Bryce, ‘Lord Beaconsfield’, The Century Illustrated Magazine, 2 (March, 1882), pp. 729–​44, p. 733. This quote is included in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 395. 120 Bryce, ‘Lord Beaconsfield’, p. 741, quoted in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 395. 121 Peter Cain, ‘Radicalism, Gladstone, and the Liberal Critique of Disraelian “Imperialism” ’, in Bell, Victorian Visions of Global Order, pp.  215–​38, p.  220. Shannon also discusses this incident in Gladstone, p. 221. 122 Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 404. 123 Spectator (20 July 1878), p. 915, quoted in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 404. 124 Spectator (2 November 1878), p. 1357, quoted in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 404. 125 Goldwin Smith quoted by Alan Davis, Anti-​ Semitism in Canada:  History and Interpretation (Ontario:  Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1992), p.  68 and Thomas Carlyle quoted in Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli:  Earl of Beaconsfield (New  York:  Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. 84–​5, and Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 404. Carlyle also called Disraeli a ‘cursed old Jew, not worth his weight in cold bacon’, quoted in Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, p. 85. 126 Public Opinion (6 September 1876), pp. 359–​60, quoted in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 405. 127 Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 397.

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The East 128 See, for example, letters from Freeman to Green, 27 June 1875, JRUL EAF1/​8/​ 35a; 28 January 1877, JRUL, EAF1/​8/​62; 4 October 1878, JRUL, EAF1/​8/​80; and 21 March 1880, JRUL, EAF1/​8/​96b. 129 E.A. Freeman, ‘Present Aspects of the Eastern Question’, Fortnightly Review, 118 (October, 1876), pp. 409–​23, p. 415. 130 Ibid., pp. 415–​16. 131 Freeman, ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, pp. 494–​5. 132 Ibid., p. 495. 133 Ibid., p. 495. 134 Ibid., p. 493. 135 Freeman described England as ‘Jew ridden’ in ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, p. 493, and referred to the ‘synagogue of Satan’ in the same article, p. 495. He described himself as fighting ‘against the devil and his angels’, in Freeman to Bryce, 22 October 1876, MSS. Bryce, 6/​125–​126. 136 Freeman quoted in Wohl, ‘Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi’, p. 405. 137 Freeman to Bryce, 8 April 1877, MSS. Bryce, 6/​137. 138 Seton-​Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question, p. 113. 139 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. ix. 140 Ibid., p. x. 141 Ibid., p. xvii. 142 Ibid., p. xxi. 143 Ibid., p. xxi. 144 Ibid., pp. xvii–​xix. 145 Ibid., pp. xix–​xx. 146 Ibid., pp. xix–​xx. 147 Ibid., pp. xix–​xx.

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CHA P T E R SIX

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Fear and guilt in the Ottoman Power in Europe (1877)

While Freeman’s second major work of Oriental history, The Ottoman Power in Europe, was published twenty-​one years after the first, he nevertheless wished the book ‘to be taken as in some sort a companion to my lately reprinted History and Conquests of the Saracens’.1 Freeman felt that the Ottoman Power complemented the approach and subject matter of the earlier Saracens because ‘[n]‌either pretends to be an account of the whole branch of the subject’.2 ‘In both’, he explained, I deal with Eastern and Mahometan affairs mainly in their reference to Western and Christian affairs. The Ottoman Turks have had, at least for some centuries past, a greater influence on Western and Christian affairs than any other Eastern and Mahometan people. Their history, from the point of view in which I look at it, is therefore a natural completion of my former subject.3

Although there are clear parallels between Freeman’s Saracens and the Ottoman Power, he described his ‘former little book’ as primarily historical and saw the latter as ‘political rather than historical’.4 Because the Saracens had consisted of a set of lectures read before the Philosophical Society at its own request, Freeman had felt that ‘it would have been obviously out of place to do more than point the political moral of the story in a general way’.5 Still, in tracing out the basic currents of Oriental history, Freeman argued that Islam posed a barrier to progress, that Muslim rule over Christians should not be tolerated, and that British support of the Ottoman Empire was misguided. By comparison, Freeman wrote the Ottoman Power in political circumstances which he believed required urgent action, as his suspicions mounted that the ‘Jewish’ Disraeli was conspiring with the Ottomans against Europe. While Freeman continued to represent the Islamic East as inferior to the Christian West, the deprecating tone of the Saracens is replaced by a rhetoric of fear and guilt in the Ottoman [ 167 ]

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Power. Recounting the historic encroachment of the Ottomans into Europe, Freeman called for a reversal of British foreign policy –​urging his country to join Russia in a ‘Holy War’ against ‘[t]‌he union of the Jew and the Turk’.6

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Ottophobia/​Ottomania Before approaching Freeman’s Ottoman Power it is necessary, here, to briefly consider the history of British representations of the Ottoman Empire. As a kind of ‘sub-​genre’ of writing on Western Orientalism more generally, there is now an emerging body of literature which focuses specifically on this issue. Perhaps the most comprehensive survey is that of Asli Çırakman, who has studied British and continental European encounters with Turkey between the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1456 and the end of the eighteenth century.7 Based on her reading of a wide range of travelogues, diaries, pamphlets, and histories from this period, Çırakman disputes Said’s claim that Europeans have always constituted the East as an inferior and opposite ‘other’. ‘The unilinear development of Orientalism as described by Said is questionable’, she writes, since the homogeneity of images of the Orient as all declarative, self-​ evident and dramatically inferior to a European equivalent cannot be established. It is, rather, possible to discern a proliferation of different arguments on how to approach the Orient or Ottomans in this case, among the intellectuals and other writers of the West. There seems to be no consensus on the image. On the contrary there appears to be a dispute to settle about the image of the Ottomans.8

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Çırakman explains, Western observers produced a variety of discourses about the Turks, as they ‘emphasised both the admirable and frightening aspects of Ottoman greatness’ and expressed sentiments ranging from ‘sympathy, admiration, amazement and anxiety to fear and hatred’.9 The features of Turkish life which attracted most attention were the nature of the government of the Sultan and his deputies, the treatment of Christian subjects by Muslim rulers, the military prowess of the Turkish standing army, and the Janissary –​an elite corps of soldiers made up of Christian slave children who were converted to Islam. Çırakman has shown that Western commentators also reflected on the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire and noted that disunity among the Christian powers had made them vulnerable to Turkish encroachments and conquest. According to Çırakman, then, ‘Europe was on the defensive and divided with respect to the Ottomans … [ 168 ]

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Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could not and did not imagine themselves as a united, superior and self-​sufficient territory, which could provide a basis for Orientalist thinking as Said assumes’.10 As examples of this variegated discourse in Britain during the early modern period, Çırakman cites Richard Knolles’ The General Historie of the Turkes (1603); George Sandys’ A Relation of a Journey (1615); Henry Blount’s Voyage into the Levant (1634); and Francis Osborne’s Political Reflections upon the Government of the Turks (1656).11 In the texts of the Enlightenment, however, Çırakman perceives a ‘certain discontinuity and transformation in the identification of the Turks’.12 Where earlier narratives had been ‘diversified and detailed’, in the eighteenth century these accounts ‘acquire a rather holistic, simplistic and authoritative tone’.13 In Çırakman’s analysis, this shift is explicable in terms of two factors: the decline of the Ottoman Empire as a threat to Europe following the failed Siege of Vienna in 1683, and the emergence of Enlightenment a-​priori rationalism. Rather than seeing the weakening of the Turkish power as the result of complex historical, social-​political, and economic developments, the demise of the Ottoman Empire was attributed, Çırakman writes, to ‘imagined ahistorical, fixed, and essential qualities of Turkish social and political life’.14 In particular, following Baron de Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748), it was common to associate hot climates with despotism, and to see despotism as the cause of the apparent fatalism, cruelty, and self-​destruction of Oriental states. As European thinkers celebrated the Enlightenment ideals of good government, the rule of law, and the progress of the arts and sciences, the Ottoman Empire became a ‘foil against which to display Western accomplishments’.15 In the eighteenth century, Çırakman observes, the ‘Turkish image’ invokes a certain contempt, even hatred, which was expressed in a condescending and arrogant manner through an emphasis on the themes of decline and corruption of the empire. The observations and analyses of this period convey an a priori sense of superiority, self-​confidence and an engagement in self-​promotion, rather than curiosity and genuine interest in observing the Ottoman way of life.16

As examples of this simplistic approach to the Ottoman Empire in England during the Enlightenment, Çırakman cites Aaron Hill’s A Full and Just Account of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1709); Lady Elizabeth Craven’s Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789); William Hunter’s Travels in the Year 1792 through France, Turkey and Hungary to Vienna (1796); and William Eton’s A Survey [ 169 ]

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of the Turkish Empire (1798).17 Significantly, it was in the middle of this period that the Earl of Crawford, John Lindsay, first introduced the idea of the Ottoman Empire as the sick man of Europe: ‘[I]‌t became an overgrown body’, he wrote of the Turkish power in 1769, ‘full of distempers, enfeebled with its own bulk, and sick at heart’.18 Moving into the nineteenth century, it is possible to discern a polarisation in British attitudes towards Turkey as narratives that expressed ‘Ottophobia’ co-​existed with a new vogue of ‘Ottomania’.19 Focusing on the preoccupation of the Romantic poets with the Ottoman Empire and the East more generally, Andrew Warren argues that the ‘High Romantic’ poets (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey) displayed a patronising attitude towards the East and used the Orient merely as an exotic backdrop for their imaginative dramas.20 Representative of this kind of work is Southey’s tedious epic Thalaba the Destroyer (two vols, 1801).21 As Peter Cochran notes, Southey was an Orientalist who ‘denied any value to Eastern poetry, religion, or ethics’, and ‘wrote poems about the East on behalf of the East, in the imperialist conviction that it couldn’t write them about itself; that it couldn’t make sense at all, indeed, unless a westerner wrote about it’.22 Conversely, the poetry of the ‘Young Romantics’ (Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats) was imbued with an enthusiasm and admiration for the Ottoman Empire and the Orient.23 Byron’s five ‘Turkish tales’ –​ The Giaour (1813); The Bride of Abydos (1813); The Corsair (1814); Lara (1814); and The Siege of Corinth (1816) –​ were inspired by his travels in the Ottoman Empire in 1809–​11. Throughout his ‘tales’ Byron showed sympathy for his Muslim protagonists and demonstrated detailed knowledge and understanding of Turkish society and culture. Meanwhile, Gerard Cohen-​Vrignaud positions Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam (1818) within a tradition of ‘Radical Orientalism’ by which nineteenth-​ century writers used their depictions of the Ottoman Empire to critique the self-​satisfaction and Eurocentrism of their age and country.24 Most useful to an understanding of Freeman’s Ottoman Power, however, are the sophisticated analyses of Muhammed Al-​ Da’mi. Emphasising the fluidity of British and Anglo-​American representations of the East during the nineteenth century, Al-​ Da’mi demonstrates that judgements about the Ottoman Empire varied according to the problems or debates which concerned the author.25 He compares the works of Carlyle, Irving, and Burton, which emphasised the virtuous qualities of Muhammad and the attractive features of Oriental life, to the contemporaneous accounts of Macaulay and Newman, which denigrated the Arab-​Islamic world and the Ottoman Empire. While [ 170 ]

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Al-​ Da’mi supports Said’s contention that modern Europeans often approach the East from a position of strength and assumed superiority, he points equally to a certain residual fear. As Al-​ Da’mi explains, these narratives reflected a complex, but coherent, European tradition of misrepresentations and stereotypes: This was a tradition which stretched back to the very time when Western Christendom became aware of Islam. It was one of the paradoxes of the age of the Industrial Revolution that the West obtained many of its basic ideas of Islam from the Middle Ages which were commonly conceived as Europe’s mediocre ‘dark ages.’ Regardless of the modifications and the new objective perspectives of a ‘hegemonic’ Western thought, the essential leitmotifs and stock images taken up by many Victorians did not radically deviate from the patterns outlined by their medieval predecessors. But behind all these stock ideas and misconceptions was one visceral feeling that survived from the Middle Ages to the present day, namely:  fear. Rooted in the early Arab conquests, and welling up from the crusades, this fear could always be found at the back of the Western mind … The collective archetypal fear distorts a number of Western treatments of Arab-​Islamic history.26

As we will see, the narrative of Freeman’s Ottoman Power contains contradictory statements about the Turks which reveal his own persistent anxieties about confrontation with the ‘other’. Charting the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks’ successful military campaigns against the European powers, Freeman nevertheless insisted on the backwardness and inferiority of the Ottomans throughout. Similarly, in documenting the failures and defeats of the Turks in the nineteenth century, Freeman maintained that the Ottomans continued to pose a threat to contemporary Euro-​ Christendom, even as their Empire declined.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire The main narrative of the Ottoman Power begins with a lengthy disquisition on the distinctions between the European nations and the ‘Jew’s ally’, the Islamic Turk. According to Freeman, all European countries share three things in common. First, the ‘chief nations of Europe belong to one branch of the human family … all the nations of Europe belong to one common Aryan stock … If not European by birth, they have become European by adoption’.27 Second, the European nations are geographically close to one another, and this has enabled them to add to the ties of race a sense of a shared common history. Third, and most importantly, the Europeans have a common religion: ‘[b]‌esides being Aryan and Roman, Europe is also Christian’.28 [ 171 ]

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Taking up the theme of the Saracens, Freeman asserted that it is ‘the common faith’ which has exerted the most significant influence on European development.29 Reiterating the argument of the earlier volume, Freeman maintained that it is the flexibility of Christianity, which prescribes no political or civil precepts, and allows its followers to work out for themselves how best to apply its moral teachings, that has promoted the progress of the European nations.30 Freeman acknowledged that European countries have not always had national governments and that most of them had their beginning in conquest, but he pointed out that each came to have a coherent identity and internal unity over time. Given this fact, he went on to ask the question why, after five hundred years, ‘has the Turk failed to assimilate the people of the land, and why have the people of the land failed no less to assimilate the Turk?’31 Addressing this problem, Freeman found that while ‘the European nations, with the smallest exceptions, belong to the Aryan stock … the Turks belong to the Turanian stock’.32 Had this been the only point of distinction, however, he held that it would not have been enough to stop the Turks from adapting to European customs and lifestyles. The second characteristic which Freeman saw as uniting the European nations was their shared historical and cultural heritage, but ‘in all these memories, and in all that comes of these memories, as the Turks have no share by inheritance, so neither have they ever won any share by adoption’.33 Freeman then identified the third difference, ‘the great point which makes it altogether impossible for the Turks really to become an European nation. They cannot become an European nation, as long as they remain Mahometans; and there is no known case of any Mahometan nation accepting any other religion’.34 Returning once again to the thesis advanced in the Saracens, Freeman argued that Islam prevents Muslim governments from according any real rights or liberties to the followers of other religions. The Qur’an, Freeman explained, bids true believers to fight against the infidels until they embrace Islam or submit to paying tribute. Crucially the Qur’an, unlike the Bible, contains social and political as well as moral laws, and therefore the Muslim attitude towards rival faiths can never change: ‘the abiding subjection and degradation of the Christian are’, he contended, ‘matters of religious principle’.35 The Turks, who arrived in Europe as ‘Mahometan invaders’, cannot mix with the people they conquered and will always remain distinct from them.36 The Christians, for their part, can never reconcile themselves with the Ottomans and forget the fact that they had been conquered because ‘the rule of the Mahometan Turk is not, and cannot be, a national government to any of his Christian subjects’.37 The south-​ eastern Europeans, Freeman [ 172 ]

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concluded, are not members of a legitimate political state, but are forever vanquished slaves who are held in a condition of unnatural bondage by the Sultan.38 Having suggested that the Ottomans are imposters in Europe, Freeman is concerned, in the next section of his volume, to use the history of the rise of the Turkish Empire to substantiate this claim. He intended to demonstrate that the Ottomans had ‘made conquests; but they have never legitimated their conquests in the way that other conquerors have’.39 He would ‘trace out the leading features in the history of the Ottoman power in Europe, how it began, how it rose to greatness’ and show ‘more fully what the Ottoman Turks have done in the European lands in which they are encamped’.40 In charting the process by which the Abbasid Caliphate (750–​1258 CE) was first infiltrated by the Turks of the House of Seljuk (1038–​1152) and then supplanted by the Ottoman Empire in 1299, Freeman asserted that the success of the Turks was due largely to the religious schisms which had destabilised both the Arab-​Islamic and the Byzantine empires. Beginning with the early history of the Arab-​Islamic world prior to the arrival of the Turks, Freeman followed historians such as Andrew Crichton in praising the cultural achievements of the Muslim peoples. In his History of Arabia, Ancient and Modern (1833), Crichton had described the Abbasid Caliphs as ‘eminently liberal and humane’ and ‘not more distinguished for their warlike prowess than for their love and encouragement of science’.41 Crichton also acknowledged that the Arabic people were learned in comparison to the Europeans: It was at a period when ignorance and barbarism overspread every part of the Western World, that literature and philosophy found an asylum in the schools of the Saracens. Unlike the Goths and Huns they became the instructors and enlighteners of the countries they had conquered … The literature of Greece, such as it was in the days of Pericles, required the slow growth of nearly eight centuries of progressive cultivation. The same period elapsed between the foundation of Rome and the age of Augustus. In France, the reign of Louis XIV., the brilliant era of wit and genius, was 1200  years subsequent to that of Clovis. But among the Saracens, such was their enthusiasm for learning, that little more than a century elapsed from the period of their deepest barbarism to the universal diffusion of science over the vast extent of their dominions.42

Freeman had similarly celebrated the achievements of the ‘golden age’ of Islam in the earlier Saracens, observing that, under the second Abbasid Caliph Almanzor (754–​75 CE), the Arabic people had ‘ceased to deserve the old stigma of illiterate barbarian’.43 Baghdad, indeed, had become ‘the dwelling-​place of art, science, literature and philosophy’.44 ‘[A]‌mong no people’, he wrote, [ 173 ]

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has literary excellence, after their own standard, ever been held in higher honour. It is no less clear that, for several ages, the Saracens, above all, the Spanish Saracens, were considerably in advance of the western nations of Christendom, in astronomy, medicine, logic, and most of the useful and ornamental arts. Their science was of course child’s play compared with what we should now call by that name, but it was far superior to anything in contemporary England, France, or Germany.45

In Freeman’s view, however, it was this very predilection for the intellectual and the controversial that led to the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate, as religious quarrels produced divisions and disintegration within the empire. The late Abbasids, ruling over an extensive territory, were increasingly challenged by rival dynasties who claimed to be the only true successors of Muhammad. Relinquishing control over large parts of their provinces, the Abbasids were replaced by the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco (in 788); the Umayyad dynasty in Al-​ Andalus and Maghreb (929); and the Fatimid dynasty in Algeria (909), Tunisia (948), and Egypt (969). Adding to this turmoil, a dissident group –​the Carmathians –​was founded in 899 and established a utopian republic in Al-​Hasa (eastern Saudi Arabia). The Carmathians relaxed the duties of ablution and fasting; admitted the use of wine; and protested against the worldly pomp of the Caliphs. As time went on, and the power of the Caliphs declined still further, religious contention broke out in Baghdad itself, between the ‘rigid’ and the ‘lax’ parties. Finally, in 930, the Carmathians shocked the Arab-​Islamic world by attacking Mecca and Medina and massacring pilgrims. According to Freeman, it was the religious upheavals of the ninth century which caused the decay in the public spirit of the Arabian peoples and enabled foreign elements to penetrate the heart of the Caliphate. In the Ottoman Power Freeman picked up the narrative where he had left off in the Saracens and described the process by which the Turks infiltrated the Arab-​Islamic states. ‘The Turks’, Freeman explained, first ‘appear under the Caliphs as slaves, as subjects, and as mercenaries’.46 The Seljuk Turks gained Baghdad in 1055 when the Caliph, al-​Qa’im (1031–​75), was unable to put down a rebellion led by the Turkish slave Basasiri. Meanwhile, the Mamluk army –​consisting largely of Turkish slave-​warriors –​gradually transformed itself into a ruling military caste in Persia and Egypt. Over time, then, the weak Caliphs of the late Abbasid period were reduced to nominal sovereigns and the Turkish princes of the House of Seljuk emerged as the ‘practical masters’ wielding real authority.47 In common with Gibbon, Freeman expressed admiration for the early Seljuk princes.48 Writing of Tughril Beg (1037–​63), for example, Gibbon had described a ruler ‘of power and renown’ who was ‘conspicuous by his zeal and faith’ and distinguished [ 174 ]

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in his ‘ambition’ and ‘valour’.49 Freeman agreed that Tughril Beg, followed by Alp-​Arslan (1063–​72) and Malek Shah I  (1072–​92), were men who were ‘not only great conquerors, but great rulers after the Eastern pattern. They had many of the virtues which are commonly found in the founders of dynasties’.50 Nevertheless, the Seljuk Turks ‘were a ruder and fiercer people than the Saracens’ and, as they invaded eastern Europe in the latter part of the eleventh century, they oppressed and persecuted the Christians. ‘It was the increased wrong-​ doings of the Turks’, Freeman argued, ‘both towards the native Christians and towards pilgrims from the West, which caused the great cry for help which led to the crusades. There were no crusades as long as the Saracens ruled; as soon as the Turks came in, the crusades began’.51 Contemplating the effects of the First and Second Crusades (1096–​99 and 1147–​49), Freeman represented the victories of the Christian nations over the Muslims as ultimately pyrrhic. The Europeans succeeded in weakening the Seljuk power and the eastern Roman Emperors won back a great part of the land including Nicaea, Antioch, and Jerusalem. This process, however, proved to be highly disruptive in both the West and the East, as ‘all the powers of Europe and Asia seemed to be putting on new shapes’.52 Freeman observed that, by the thirteenth century, the eastern Roman Empire was divided between Byzantine Greeks and Latins, so that instead of a unified territory there ‘was now only a crowd of states … [n]‌one of them were very great, and most of them at enmity with one another’.53 At the same time, the Arab-​Islamic Empire fragmented, and the Seljuk Turks surrendered to the Mongols in 1243. Freeman observed, however, that ‘the blow which seemed the most crushing of all, the overthrow of the Caliphate by the Moguls, was part of a chain of events which brought on the stage a Mahometan power more terrible than all that had gone before it. We have now come to the time of the first appearance of the Ottoman Turks’.54 The Ottoman Turks under Ertugrul (died c.1280) had aided the Seljuk Sultans against the Mongol forces and received land in return in 1230 and 1231. From this point, the Ottomans strengthened their position, taking control of north-​western Anatolia and the Balkans in the early fourteenth century. As Freeman explained: Partly at the expense of the Greeks, partly at the expense of other Turkish Emirs or princes, Ertoghrul and his son Othman or Osman gradually grew in power. Warriors flocked to the new standard, and Othman became the most powerful prince in Western Asia. From him his followers took the name which it has ever since borne, that of Osmanli or Ottoman.55

Some earlier historians, such as James Surtees Phillpotts in his Causes of the Success of the Ottoman Turks (1859), had admired the [ 175 ]

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first Ottoman Sultan, Osman I  (1299–​ 1326), for his ‘extraordinary genius’, and his ‘boldness and independence’.56 Freeman, on the other hand, began his account of the rise of the Ottoman Empire with a warning:  from the very inception of the Empire, he cautioned, ‘[w]‌e must be prepared … to find … much that is utterly repulsive to our modern standard, much that is cruel, much that is foul’.57 Freeman focused on the Janissary, established in the reign of Osman’s son Orhan (1326–​61), as the most striking example of the callous nature of the Ottomans.58 During the nineteenth century, the Janissary had been the subject of detailed analysis by, for example, Edward Upham, who had described the system in his History of the Ottoman Empire (1829). Upham had noted that Orhan ‘formed a corps of young Christian renegades, who, torn in infancy from their parents, and made to suffer hardship and fatigue, being placed under severe masters, upon seeing a certain advancement in reward for their docility and courage, were soon trained to service, and became the flower of the Turkish horsemen’.59 Phillpotts had similarly commented on the ‘wonderful efficacy of this remarkable institution’.60 ‘The institution of the Janissary force’, Phillpotts continued, must not be considered as a system of mere cruelty and intolerance. The records of the age tell us that it was an usual occurrence for Christian parents to voluntarily bring their sons to the press-​gang of the Janissaries, in order that in due time they might be enrolled in their ranks, while the high offices which were thrown open to these proselytes of Mahometanism brought renegades in numbers to the Sultan’s court.61

Freeman, on the other hand, condemned the Janissary unreservedly and lamented how: The deepest of wrongs, that which other tyrants did as an occasional outrage, thus became under the Ottomans a settled law. A fixed proportion of the strongest and most promising boys among the conquered Christian nations were carried off for the service of the Ottoman princes. They were brought up in the Mahometan faith, and were employed in civil or military functions, according to their capacity. Out of them was formed the famous force of the Janissaries, the new soldiers, who, for three centuries, as long as they were levied in this way, formed the strength of the Ottoman armies. These children, torn from their homes and cut off from every domestic and national tie, knew only the religion and service into which they were forced, and formed a body of troops such as no other power, Christian or Mahometan, could command … While the force founded by Orkhan lasted in its first shape, the Ottoman armies were irresistible.62

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who were really Greeks, Slavs, and other conquered nations’.63 ‘The Ottoman power’, Freeman argued, ‘was the power, not of a nation, but simply of an army’ which proceeded to ‘swallow up Greeks, Servians [sic], and all other nations, bit by bit’.64 In his account of the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, then, Freeman tried to demonstrate that the Turks had no claim to rule in the territories which had once belonged to the Islamic Caliphate and the eastern Roman Empire. Exploiting the turmoil caused by years of religious disputes, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks had established themselves ‘as an army of occupation in the lands of other nations’.65 In Freeman’s analysis, the Ottomans were merely an ‘invading horde’, a ‘gang of robbers’ who are ‘strangers everywhere’.66

The expansion and decline of the Ottoman Empire Having outlined the history of the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, Freeman next turned to a discussion of the expansion of the Turkish dominion from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and to its subsequent decline. In this section of the work Freeman emphasises the barbarism of Ottoman rule and dwells on the plight of the Christian subjects whose liberties and civilisation have been repressed. Freeman also drew attention to the nature of the Ottoman advance which, in his opinion, was facilitated by the divisions between the Christian powers. Freeman’s narrative clearly contained a warning to his readers: if modern Europeans do not abandon their quarrels and if Protestant Britain does not join forces with Orthodox Russia then the otherwise inferior Turks may finally succeed in overwhelming, and then destroying, Euro-​Christendom. In his analysis of the growth of the Ottoman Empire, Freeman depicted the history of the Turks as violent and destructive. Here, Freeman’s account is in direct contrast to that presented by Phillpotts. ‘Besides the wonderful efficacy of their military organization and the talents of their Sultans’, Phillpotts wrote, The whole tenor of their legislation was much in advance of that of the European powers in general … It is curious … that a nation popularly considered to have consisted of unenlightened barbarians should have been so far in advance of us in some of the points which we consider as the distinguishing features of modern European civilization. Every advantage of free-​trade was allowed to the foreign merchant who traded to the Turkish sea-​ ports. A  system of municipal government was established throughout their dominions. A  religious toleration beyond the spirit of the age was carried out towards the Christian population of their kingdom.67

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‘Toleration of creed’, according to Phillpotts, ‘was given to the conquered Christians, and even in the days of Othman, equal protection was dealt out alike to Greek and Turk, Christian and Mahometan. This tolerant and enlightened system induced numbers of the Christians who dwelt on the borders of the Ottoman Empire to exchange their hard position as Hungarian serfs, for that of Rayas [subjects] under the Turks’.68 In the Ottoman Power Freeman argued against such an interpretation of the willingness of Christians to put themselves under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and declared that ‘this fact has often been made a strange use of by the partisans of the Turks’.69 Freeman maintained that it was only the Protestants of Hungary who welcomed the Sultan to escape the persecution of the Catholic kings of Austria. ‘It was no wonder’, in his opinion, ‘that the Protestants preferred the alliance, and even the sovereignty of the Sultan to the rule of a Catholic sovereign. No doubt the contemptuous toleration which the Turk gives to his Christian subjects was better than actual persecution, and men who were actually persecuted might well think that they gained by becoming his subjects’.70 Still, he maintained, ‘this does not prove that the Turk is, or ever was, really tolerant; as toleration is now understood in the West. Their toleration was always contemptuous, or at most politic’.71 Denying that the Ottoman Sultans were tolerant, Freeman also rejected the idea that they were enlightened, and focused on the notoriously bloody rule of Bayezid I (1389–​1402) who was ‘the first to begin his reign with the murder of a brother out of cold policy’.72 Bayezid, nicknamed ‘The Lightening’, devoted much of his reign to military campaigns. In the West, Bayezid conquered the remaining territories of the former Byzantine Empire; dealt harshly with Christian vassals in the Balkans; massacred Christian knights at Nicopolis (1396); and conducted a brutal eight-​year siege of Constantinople (1394–​1402). Meanwhile, in the East, Bayezid waged an unrelenting series of wars against rival Islamic states, using fatwas and slave-​soldiers to counteract the unpopularity of these conflicts among his own Muslim subjects.73 For Freeman, the rule of Bayezid was marked by ‘plundering expeditions’ and ‘ravages’ and it was the first to reveal the true barbarity of the Turks.74 ‘Under him’, Freeman announced, ‘that foul moral corruption which has ever since been the distinguishing characteristic of the Turk came for the first time into its black prominence. Other people have been foul and depraved; what is specially characteristic of the Ottoman Turk is that the common road to power is by the path of the foulest shame’.75 According to Freeman it is during the reign of Bayezid that: the best feature of the Mahometan law, the almost ascetic temperance which it teaches, passes away, and its worst features, the recognition of

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slavery, the establishment of the arbitrary right of the conqueror over the conquered, grew into a system of wrong and outrage of which the Prophet himself had never dreamed. Under Bajazet the Turk fully put on those parts of his character which distinguish him, even more than other Mahometans, from Western and Christian nations.76

Freeman continued with an account of the advance of Turkish power under Murad II (1421–​ 51) and Mahomet II, known as ‘The Conqueror’ (1444–​46 and 1451–​81). Earlier writers such as Upham had admired Mahomet II as ‘the most artful, most courageous, and most persevering conqueror … in all respects a very extraordinary man’ and had emphasised his learning and ‘sharp and apprehensive wit’.77 In his History of Modern Europe, from the Fall of Constantinople (four vols, 1861) Thomas Dyer had also described Mahomet II as ‘eminently distinguished as a political administrator’ and pointed out that ‘[i]‌t was he who first reduced the political usages of the Ottomans into a whole, or code’.78 In Freeman’s analysis, however, this Sultan was ‘the ideal of his race, the embodiment in their fullest form of Ottoman greatness and Ottoman wickedness … the three abiding Ottoman vices of cruelty, lust, and faithlessness stand out in him’.79 Freeman related that his first act was the murder of his infant brother, how he then overthrew the last remnants of independent Roman rule and sovereign Greek nationality, and fixed the northern and western frontiers of his empire. ‘The New Rome’, mourned Freeman, so long the head of the Christian and civilized world, became the seat of Mahometan and barbarian rule. The Sultan took the place of a long line of Caesars. And the great church of Saint Sophia, the most venerated temple of the whole Eastern Church, the seat of Patriarchs and the crowning-​place of Emperors, has been, from Mahomet’s day to our own, a mosque for Mahometan worship.80

Freeman observed that the Christians had since been in bondage to the Turks with only one way of rising out of that state, namely by embracing the religion of their conquerors. But in defiance of all temptations and oppressions, the mass of the people clave to their faith … they have endured to live on as bondsmen in their own land, under the scorn of foreign conquerors … In this state of abiding martyrdom they have lived, in different parts of the lands under Turkish rule, for two, for four, for five hundred years. While the nations of Western Europe have been able to advance, they have been kept down under the iron heel of their tyrants. And because they have not been able to advance as the nations of western Europe have advanced, men in western Europe are not ashamed to turn round and call them degraded and what not, as though we should be any better if we had lived under a barbarian yoke for as many ages as they have lived.81

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Freeman was keen to emphasise the way in which Christian disunity had, like the earlier divisions of the Arab-​Islamic Caliphate, promoted the success of the Ottoman Empire. In Freeman’s view, nothing had helped the Ottomans of the fifteenth century as much as the dissensions between the Roman and Orthodox Churches, the members of which ‘could not be got heartily to act with one another’.82 Indeed, Freeman recalled that ‘[m]‌any of the Greeks said that they would rather see the Turks in Saint Sophia than the Latins, and they lived to see it. And the Latins, with a few noble exceptions, could never be got to give any real help to the Greeks. All this illustrates the law that the quarrels of near kinsfolk are the most bitter of any’.83 Having thoroughly established their dominion in Europe, the Ottomans turned their attention to the Middle East. Under the rule of Selim (1512–​20), called ‘the Inflexible’, a most important development took place  –​‘Syria and Egypt were added to the Ottoman dominion, and the Sultan added to that secular title the spiritual authority of the Caliphate’.84 While the line of Caliphs of the Abbasid House had come to an end when Baghdad was taken by the Mongols, a nominal Caliphate, which had no temporal power, had continued to exist in Egypt. The last of these ‘phantom’ Caliphs had relinquished their spiritual title to Selim, and from that point all orthodox Muslims came to acknowledge the Ottoman Sultans as their religious leaders.85 Freeman’s treatment of the next reign, that of Suleiman ‘the Magnificent’ or ‘the Lawgiver’ (1520–​66), is brief as he purposefully avoided commentary on the long reign of a Sultan who was generally celebrated for his clemency; his reforms of education, taxation, and criminal law; and encouragement of the arts.86 Noting simply that Suleiman was ‘a good prince according to his light’, Freeman represented his reign as marking the beginning of the end of Ottoman power.87 ‘Several of the later Sultans’, Freeman wrote, were men of vigour and ability; but the succession of great rulers which … had gone on without a break from Othman to Suleiman the Lawgiver, now stopped. The power of the Sultans over their distant dominions was lessened, while the power of the Pashas grew. The discipline of the Ottoman armies was relaxed, and the courts of most Sultans became a scene of corruption of every kind.88

For Freeman, the decay of the power of the Sultans did not afford the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire any direct or immediate relief because, as in all despotisms, there had been more chance of justice and mercy from the ‘head despot’ than from his subordinates.89 ‘In such a state of things’, Freeman observed, grinding local oppression at the hands of a crowd of petty tyrants takes the place of the equal, if stern, rule of the common master of all. Under

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such grinding local oppressions, lands were untilled, houses were uninhabited, the population of the country sensibly lessened. But, as the demands both of central and of local rulers did not lessen, the burthens of those who survived were only made the heavier. Such … has been the general state of things in South-​eastern Europe since the decline of the empire began.90

Ending his account of the Ottoman Sultans with Suleiman, and noting only that subsequent reigns were short and usually anarchic, Freeman side-​stepped any discussion of Selim III (1789–​1807) who was frequently praised for his enlightened reform of the feudal system and tolerance towards Christian subjects. E.S. Creasy had described the rule of Selim III in his History of the Ottoman Turks (two vols, 1856), noting that: The spread of knowledge and the advancement of education amongst all classes of his subjects, were earnestly encouraged by Selim III … Selim … showed favour and patronage to the establishment of schools throughout his dominions. It was especially among the Greeks that new educational institutions sprang up, and old ones regained fresh energy under the Sultan’s auspices:  and when it was found that the revolutionary party among the Greeks availed themselves of this intellectual movement to excite their fellow-​countrymen against the Turks, Selim, instead of closing the Greek schools and printing-​offices, established a Greek press at Constantinople.91

Freeman focused, instead, on the hope of the Christians that they would achieve liberation. In Freeman’s analysis, the prospect of freedom was first raised by the remission of the tribute children and the dissolution of the Janissary in 1826. As long as Christian children were enslaved as soldiers, Freeman argued, it was impossible for the subject nations really to rebel as ‘their best strength was taken from them’.92 ‘From the time when it ceased’, however, ‘even when there was no actual improvement in their condition, there was the beginning of hope’.93 A second factor which raised the aspirations of the subject peoples of south-​eastern Europe was the advance of the West at the expense of the Turks. Every success gained by any Christian power against the Ottoman Empire, Freeman observed, improved the spirits of those who were under the ‘yoke’ and, being constantly at war with Venice, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, the Turks grew increasingly weak.

The necessity of a ‘Holy War’ Having charted the Turks’ bloody expansion and subsequent decline due to external wars, Freeman dedicated the penultimate chapter of the Ottoman Power to an overview of the various attempts of [ 181 ]

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the Christian subjects to overthrow Turkish rule in the nineteenth century. Throughout this chapter, Freeman celebrated the bravery of the south-​eastern Europeans and emphasised the continued brutality of the Turks and their inability to reform. Attempting to invoke in his readers a sense of guilt that they had been complicit in condemning the subjects of the Ottoman Empire to their enduring bondage, Freeman called for a ‘Holy War’ to drive the Turkish invaders out of Europe once and for all.94 Freeman began this part of the work by recounting the history of the first effort of the Christian people to free themselves, during the Serbian Revolution (1804–​15). The Serbians were supported by Russia who secured, in 1812, certain provisions which were intended to make Serbia a tributary state, free from Turkish interference in its internal affairs. But, as Freeman relates it, the Turks did not fear Russia and so attacked and conquered Serbia again the following year. The consequences were dire: The old tyranny was brought back. The Turk did after his wont; every deed of horror which is implied in the suppression of an insurrection by Turkish hands was done in the suppression of the insurrections of Servia [sic]. When Belgrade submitted the Turks promised to put no man to death. Turk-​like they beheaded and impaled the men to whom they had promised their lives. Men still live who remember seeing their fathers writhing on the stake before the citadel of Belgrade.95

Only at the conclusion of the Second Serbian Uprising (1815–​17) did Milos Obrenović succeed in freeing the land. Still, affairs dragged on as various agreements were made with the Turks but none were fully carried out, and formal independence was delayed until the Hatt-​i-​ humayan (declaration) of 1830. Freeman then discusses the Greek Revolution or War of Independence (1821–​32). Here, he drew significant parallels between the reaction of the Ottomans to the Greek uprising and the reaction of the Turks to the Bulgarian revolt of 1876. ‘The Turk’, Freeman wrote, ‘wherever he was strong enough did exactly as he did last year. Fifty years and more ago men were shocked by the story of the massacres of Chios, Kassandra, and Cyprus, just as we have been shocked by the story of the massacres of Bulgaria’.96 Freeman drew an unfavourable comparison between the virtuous response of Britain to the Greek massacres, and the contemporary response to the Bulgarian atrocities. The actions of Englishmen such as Lord Byron, Lord Cochrane, General Gordon, Captain Hastings, and Sir Richard Church, who gave themselves to the Greek cause, Freeman wrote, ‘should be remembered in days like ours, when Englishmen sell themselves to the service of the barbarian’.97 [ 182 ]

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Freeman similarly thought that the actions of the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, in support of the Greeks could be instructively contrasted with the ‘alien’ Disraeli’s support of the Turks. ‘Mr. Canning’, he recalled, did not write and tell the Turk to suppress the insurrection; he did not forbid any help to be given to the victims of the Turk; he did not think that the liberation of Greece lay beyond the range of practical politics. He saw well enough that there were difficulties; but he knew that human duty chiefly takes the form of overcoming difficulties. In short, he was a man and an Englishman, with the heart of a man and an Englishman, and he acted as such.98

Freeman celebrated Canning’s alliance with Russia and his determined confrontation with Mahmud II (1808–​39)  –​a ‘wild beast [who] would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his jaws’.99 He also delighted in the way that three European powers, representing the three branches of Christianity –​Orthodox Russia, Catholic France, and Protestant England  –​came together at the Battle of Navarino (November 1827) to destroy the Ottoman navy and begin the process of securing Greek independence.100 Such a united Christian front, Freeman believed, is needed once again to challenge the pretensions of the Ottoman Empire. But, unfortunately, the men who succeeded Canning ‘could not understand his spirit or walk in his steps. Such was the wise and generous policy of England under a great minister; such was the way in which she fell back under smaller men’.101 Moving on to an account of the ‘great events’ of the last two years and in proposals for practical action, Freeman increasingly employed language which suggested that the recent revolts against the Ottoman Empire were part of a religious war between Christianity and Islam.102 Thus, Freeman observed that, beginning with the uprising in Herzegovina in 1875, the sword of the Lord was drawn, as it was drawn of old by Gideon against the tyrant of Midian, by the Macabees against the tyrant of Syria. And from that day to this the sword of the Lord has not been sheathed. With the praises of God in their mouths and a two edged sword in their hands, the champions of their faith and freedom have stood forth to be avenged of the heathen.103

Freeman similarly asserted that the people of England now had a moral duty to act in support of their Christian brethren in the Balkans.104 Reiterating the themes of his earlier articles he declared that, ‘I am old-​fashioned enough to believe that there are such things as right and wrong, and to believe that right is to be followed, and that wrong is to [ 183 ]

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be avoided, in the affairs of nations as well as in the affairs of private men. I  assume that nations as well as individuals owe a duty alike to God above and to man below’.105 According to Freeman, England, more than any other nation in Europe, had committed a ‘great sin’.106 England had ‘left the lamb in the jaws of the wolf, with no safeguard except the wolf’s promise not to bite the lamb’.107 For her own supposed interests England has ‘doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage’.108 But England has, in Freeman’s view, mistaken her interest as, every kind of law, the law of honour, the law of the land, the law of morals, the law of religion, all say that a man who has done wrong must redress that wrong. They all say he must redress it, even if it be against his interest to redress it. And the higher forms of teaching would go on to tell him that it was in any case his real interest to redress it. They would tell him that the approbation of his own conscience, the esteem of other men –​the law of religion would add the approval of his Maker –​ are worth more than any sacrifice that he might make by doing right.109

For Freeman, it was now necessary ‘to take up the righteous cause, to undo the wrong that we have done, to wipe away the tears that we have made to flow, to burst asunder the chains that we ourselves have riveted’.110 ‘Our thoughts’, Freeman urged, must go back to the days when crusades were still crusades, before the warriors of the cross had turned aside from their work to storm Zara and Constantinople, or to become the tools of papal vengeance either on emperors or on so called heretics. We should go forth with the pure zeal of the great assembly of Clermont; we should put the cross upon our shoulders with the cry of ‘God wills it’ on our lips and in our hearts.111

Closing his volume with some practical proposals for dealing with the Turks, Freeman maintained that, above all, Christian solidarity was essential. For Freeman, the situation of contemporary Europe vis-​à-​vis the Turks was comparable to that of the latter days of the Saracenic and Eastern Roman Empires. The modern Europeans –​like the Arabs and Byzantines –​are superior to the Turks in civilisation and military strength but are currently divided among themselves on religious lines. As the factions within the Caliphate allowed the Ottomans to supplant the Abbasids, and as the divisions within the medieval Christian world facilitated Turkish expansion into Europe, so contemporary hostilities between Protestant Britain and Orthodox Russia might undermine the West’s ability to withstand the threat posed by the Judeo-​Islamic alliance. In Freeman’s analysis, the safest option would be to remove the Turks from Europe entirely and to secure national independence for the Christian subjects in south-​ eastern Europe.112 He admitted [ 184 ]

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that, if it was ‘a matter of feeling … a matter of historic memory’, he would wish to see ‘the cleansing of the New Rome, the chasing of the barbarian from the throne of the Caesars, the driving out of the misbeliever from the mighty temple of Justinian’.113 However, ‘in a calmer view’ Freeman was willing to compromise, to concede that ‘if the essential freedom of the Greek and Slavonic lands can be purchased by letting the barbarian still linger on a little while within the bounds of Constantinople, let that sacrifice be made’.114

Notes 1 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. vii. 2 Ibid., p. vii. 3 Ibid., p. vii. 4 Ibid., p. viii. 5 Ibid., p. ix. 6 Ibid., p. xx. 7 Asli Çırakman, ‘From Tyranny to Despotism: The Enlightenment’s Unenlightened Image of the Turks’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 33, 1 (February, 2001), pp. 49–​68. www.jstor.org/​stable/​259479; and From the ‘Terror of the World’ to the ‘Sick Man of Europe’: European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth (Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002). 8 Çırakman, From the ‘Terror of the World’, p. 17. 9 Ibid., p. 3. 10 Ibid., p. 21. 11 Richard Knolles, The Generall History of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of that Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie (London:  Adam Islip, 1603); George Sandys, Relation of a Journey begun An:  Dom:  1610 (London:  W. Barrett, 1616); Henry Blount, Voyage into the Levant (London: Printed by I.L. for Andrew Crooke, 1636); and Francis Osborne, Political Reflections upon the Government of the Turks (London: printed by J.G. for Thomas Robinson, 1656). For British representations of the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period see also Anders Ingram, Writing the Ottomans:  Turkish History in Early Modern England (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 12 Çırakman, From the ‘Terror of the World’, p. 2. 13 Ibid., p. 18. 14 Çırakman, ‘From Tyranny to Despotism’, p. 59. 15 Ibid., p. 59. 16 Ibid., p. 3. 17 Aaron Hill, A Full and Just Account of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire in all its Branches (London:  John, Mayo, 1709); Lady Elizabeth Craven, Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople in a Series of Letters … (London:  G. G.  J and J.  Robinson, 1789); William Hunter, Travels in the Year 1792 through France, Turkey and Hungary to Vienna (London:  Printed by J. Davis, for B.  and J.  White, 1796); and William Eton, A Survey of the Turkish Empire (London:  T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1798). 18 Quoted in Çırakman, From the ‘Terror of the World’, p. 164. 19 See Roderick Cavaliero, Ottomania:  The Romantics and the Myth of the Islamic Orient [2010] (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). 20 Andrew Warren, The Orient and the Young Romantics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2014). 21 Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, 2 vols [1801] second edition (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809).

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The East 22 Peter Cochran (ed.), Byron and Orientalism [2006] (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), pp. 16–​17. 23 Warren, The Orient and the Young Romantics. 24 Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam (London: C and J Ollier, 1818). Nigel Leask has interpreted Shelley as an Orientalist in the sense described by Said in his study British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). However, I  find Gerard Cohen-​ Vrignaud’s analysis more convincing in Radical Orientalism:  Rights, Reform, and Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 25 Muhammed A. Al Da’mi, ‘Orientalism and Arab-​Islamic History:  An Inquiry into the Orientalist’s Motives and Compulsions’, Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), 20, 4 (Fall, 1998), pp. 1–​11. www.jstor.org/​stable/​41858264. Al-​Da’mi, Arabian Mirrors. 26 Al-​Da’mi, Arabian Mirrors, p. 4. 27 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 4. 28 Ibid., p. 7. 29 Ibid., p. 9. 30 Ibid., p. 10. 31 Ibid., p. 23. 32 Ibid., p. 52. 33 Ibid., p. 53. 34 Ibid., p. 55. 35 Ibid., p. 60. 36 Ibid., p. 69. 37 Ibid., p. 71. 38 Ibid., p. 72. 39 Ibid., p. 84. 40 Ibid., p. 85. 41 Andrew Crichton, The History of Arabia, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols [1833] (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834 edition), vol. 2, p. 12 and p. 11. 42 Ibid., pp. 60–​1. 43 Freeman, Saracens, p. 120. 44 Ibid., pp. 120–​1. 45 Ibid., pp. 190–​1. 46 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 91. 47 Ibid., p. 91. 48 Ibid., p. 92. 49 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [6 vols, 1788–​89], new edition in 8 vols (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1840), vol. 7, pp. 182–​3. 50 Freeman, Ottoman Power, pp. 91–​2. 51 Ibid., p. 92. 52 Ibid., p. 98. 53 Ibid., p. 98. 54 Ibid., p. 99. 55 Ibid., p. 99. 56 James Surtees Phillpotts, The Causes of the Success of the Ottoman Turks (Oxford: T & G Shrimpton, 1859), p. 15 and p. 18. 57 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 102. 58 Ibid., p. 103. 59 Edward Upham, History of the Ottoman Empire, from its Establishment, till the Year 1828, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Constable & Co., 1829), vol. 1, pp. 78–​9. 60 Phillpotts, Ottoman Turks, p. 12. 61 Ibid., pp. 12–​14. Thomas Henry Dyer had also emphasised the fact that Christians volunteered themselves for the ‘celebrated corps’ of the Janissary. See Dyer, The History of Modern Europe, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Close of the Crimean War in 1857, 4 vols, 1861–​64 (London:  John Murray, 1861), vol. 1, pp.  6–​7. 62 Freeman, Ottoman Power, pp. 103–​4.

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FEAR AND GUILT IN THE OTTOMAN POWER (1877) 63 Ibid., p. 104. 64 Ibid., p. 104. 65 Ibid., p. 104. 66 Freeman, ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, p.  494, ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Question’, p. 515, and Ottoman Power, p. 105. 67 Phillpotts, Ottoman Turks, p. 20. 68 Ibid., pp. 8–​9. 69 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 128. 70 Ibid., p. 128. 71 Ibid., p. 129. 72 Ibid., p. 111. 73 For an account of the reign of Bayezid I  see Dimitris J. Kastristis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–​ 1413 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 74 Freeman, Ottoman Power, pp. 110–​11. 75 Ibid., p. 111. 76 Ibid., p. 111. 77 Upham, Ottoman Empire, p. 217. 78 Dyer, History of Modern Europe, from the Fall of Constantinople, p. 8. 79 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 114. 80 Ibid., p. 115. 81 Ibid., p. 121. 82 Ibid., p. 124. 83 Ibid., p. 124. 84 Ibid., p. 125. 85 Ibid., pp. 125–​6. 86 See André Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent [1989] (first English edition; London: Saqi Books, 2005). 87 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 127. 88 Ibid., p. 131. 89 Ibid., p. 140. 90 Ibid., p. 140. 91 E.S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks: From the Beginning of their Empire to the Present Time, 2 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1856), vol. 2, pp. 332–​3. 92 Freeman, Ottoman Power, p. 141. 93 Ibid., p. 141. 94 Ibid., p. 167. 95 Ibid., pp. 172–​3. 96 Ibid., p. 178. 97 Ibid., p. 180. 98 Ibid., p. 182. 99 Ibid., p. 182. 100 Ibid., p. 183. 101 Ibid., p. 183. 102 Ibid., p. 216. 103 Ibid., p. 217. 104 Ibid., p. 250. 105 Ibid., p. 250. 106 Ibid., p. 252. 107 Ibid., p. 260. 108 Ibid., p. 260. 109 Ibid., p. 257. 110 Ibid., pp. 265–​6. 111 Ibid., p. 266. 112 Ibid., p. 279. 113 Ibid., pp. 279–​80. 114 Ibid., p. 280.

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Conclusion

This book has attempted a reinterpretation of Edward Freeman, analysing his activities as a historian and political campaigner, and positioning him as a leading public moralist of the Victorian age. Previous scholarship on Freeman has tended to dissect his output, focusing on his celebration of English history and his Aryan racialism, and representing him as a confident proponent of the Whig historiographical tradition which celebrated Western progress. In my opinion, this approach privileges some of Freeman’s ideas above others and gives only a partial perspective on his broader intellectual concerns and world-​view. While no study of Freeman can be fully comprehensive given the prolific nature of his writing, I  have pursued a thematic treatment of his most important works and the contexts in which they were produced. Paying attention to his famous dictum ‘history is past politics, politics is present history’, I have been particularly interested in exploring the intersections between the themes of his historical volumes and his involvement in various public controversies, including his critique of the Imperial Federation movement, leadership of the Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation, and attack on British foreign policy in relationship to the ‘Eastern Question’ during the Crimean War and Great Eastern Crisis. The first part of this book sought to draw out the full extent and implications of Thomas Arnold’s influence on Freeman’s intellectual development. As an undergraduate, Freeman had heard Arnold lecture on the ‘Unity of History’ and had been deeply impressed by his idea that the historian should study political institutions comparatively in order to reveal the process by which nations had progressed from ‘childhood’ to ‘manhood’. For Arnold, this movement was cyclical. As ancient Greece and Rome had reached political maturity before declining, they had passed on their achievements, via the Germanic tribes, to the modern Europeans who repeated the pattern of civilizational advancement. I  have shown that it was Arnold’s philosophy which [ 188 ]

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Conclusion

shaped Freeman’s conception of the historic development and identity of the West. Similarly, it was Arnold’s belief that states had a duty to act morally and to perfect God’s plan for humanity before the imminent ‘end of days’, that shaped Freeman’s redemptive view of past and present politics and accounts for the urgency with which he engaged with contemporary debates on the nature of history, issues of race and imperialism, and the Islamic ‘other’. An understanding of the importance of the Arnoldian framework in Freeman’s thought allowed, first, for a reassessment of his best-​ known work, the Norman Conquest. In Chapter  1, I  demonstrated that the connections Freeman made between race and politics served a specific historiographical function. The idea of a Teutonic race which had steadily developed its tendencies towards democracy over time enabled Freeman to reconcile the traditional assertion that the English constitution was Anglo-​ Saxon in origin and the Victorian Whig narrative that emphasised the modernity of English freedom. As a powerful account of English national exceptionalism, however, the narrative of the Norman Conquest was underpinned, and undermined, by the Arnoldian philosophy which viewed the past as a long chain of cause and effect and united all European nations together in a series of cyclical movement towards modernity. Freeman’s celebration of English progress was consequently muted by a recognition of the democratic tendencies of a wider Aryan race and constrained by his emphasis on recurrence and repetition. The contradictory shapes of Freeman’s conception of the European past were elucidated further in Chapter 2, by analysing his Comparative Politics. Through a comparison with the works of Müller and Maine, I underlined the fact that Freeman’s focus on cultural identity meant that he did not assign fixed characteristics to the Aryans and that, consequently, he emphasised the constant struggle of that race to develop the level of its civilisation. I  also made it clear, however, that it was under Arnold’s influence that Freeman moved beyond the study of language and law to a comparative study of Aryan political institutions, and constituted the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, and of modern Europe, as two sucessions in a unified process culminating in the achievement of democratic freedom. In Chapter 3, I  explored Freeman’s sustained and vocal critique of proposals for Imperial Federation against the backdrop of his History of Federal Government and Greater Greece and Greater Britain. I  suggested that Freeman’s concern with Aryan ‘brotherhood’ based on a system of representative democracies led him to attack British expansionism and to produce a type of historical universalism that issued in anxiety regarding Aryan contact with the non-​Aryan world. [ 189 ]

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History, empire, and Islam

In the second part of this study I  sought to demonstrate the importance of Freeman’s neglected volumes on the Orient and to examine the relationship between his view of the West and the East. Focusing on the essential ‘interestedness’ of Freeman’s Orientalism, Chapter 4 situated the History and Conquests of the Saracens in the context of the Crimean War and maintained that he produced the work to persuade his readers that British support of the Ottoman Empire was misguided and dangerous. Drawing instructive comparisons with the polemical writing of John Henry Newman, I  explored the ways in which Freeman constituted the Orient as ‘other’ by advancing a ‘traditional’ and ‘confrontational’ critique of Islam. For Freeman, as for Newman, the East was irrevocably barbaric and despotic because the Qur’an posed a permanent barrier to reform and prevented the degree of civilisation attained by Muslims from ever progressing beyond the seventh century. While Freeman undoubtedly believed that the Ottoman Empire was ‘backwards’, the presence of the Turks in Europe still provoked a sense of guilt and fear in him. These feelings intensified during the Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation which I examined in Chapter 5, and found full and forceful expression in his volume on the Ottoman Power in Europe, which was the subject of Chapter 6. Freeman was convinced that the threat to the West remained, even while the Ottoman Empire declined, because British policy was in the hands of the ‘Jewish’ Disraeli whose Oriental sympathies made him the ally of the Turk in a conspiracy to infiltrate and overthrow European Christendom. In re-​examining Freeman’s life and works I have engaged with, and suggested the need to complicate, current understandings of Victorian theories of race. While scholars like Catherine Hall have argued that scientific discoveries and British encounters with colonial subjects led to a ‘hardening’ of racial attitudes in the later nineteenth century, Freeman’s idea of race implies that biological determinism was not all-​ pervasive in the Victorian era. Following the historicist and philological impulses of the practitioners of the popular comparative method, and under the influence of Arnold, Freeman was reluctant to speak in terms of physiology and maintained that the analogies which could be drawn between the institutions of all European nations proved merely their common origin in a primitive Aryan homeland, possibly located in India. Again, while Christine Bolt is among those who have assumed that the conceptual frameworks provided by evolutionism led to a confidence in British supremacy, Freeman’s writings suggest that racial ideas did not necessarily issue in an ethnocentric belief in progress and did not always transform Victorian interpretations of the past. Freeman’s cultural conception of race was inextricably associated [ 190 ]

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Conclusion

with the older Liberal Anglican philosophy of history, which was not unilinear. Contrary to the assumption that there is a link between the rise of racial theory and the rhetoric and ambitions of British imperialism, I have argued that, in Freeman’s case at least, the Aryan concept meant that he was largely uninterested in colonialism. Concerned with the unified process by which Western civilisation had precariously developed, and maintaining that an understanding of the progress and decline of ancient Aryan nations was critical to an assessment of contemporary questions, Freeman’s world-​view was a European one, not an imperial one. Studying the successes and failures of Greek and Roman imperialism, Freeman believed that European advancement would best be secured by retaining ancient liberties through a system of independent nation-​states and democratic governments. It was this conclusion which formed the basis of his attack on Imperial Federation and of his argument for the necessity of Home Rule in Ireland. Again, I  have shown that Freeman’s theory of an Aryan race meant that his scheme of universal history was not based on the traditional classification of the successive ages in the history of mankind but pursued a typology based on the classification of permanently co-​ existing and mutually hostile cultural groups. It was for this reason that, when Freeman did address the question of sustained European contact with non-​European races, it was to issue stark warnings of the dangers posed to Western civilisation by the despotic and barbaric East. Finally, my study of Freeman has highlighted the persistence of traditional religious preoccupations in the modern representation of Europe’s ‘others’. While Said asserts that such perspectives were replaced wholesale, from the eighteenth century onwards, by secular racial ideas and confident imperial designs, an analysis of Freeman’s thought exemplifies the argument of Hourani, Lewis, and Bennett, who maintain that an interest in the Qur’an continued into the nineteenth century. Far from empowering the European self-​ image, Freeman’s account of the Islamic ‘other’ is one that is suffused with fear and paranoia. Viewing European development as unstable and cyclical, and constituting history as a battlefield between East and West, Freeman believed that the Judeo-​Islamic Orient had the potential to destroy civilisation.

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A P P E NDIX

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Freeman’s published historical works (in chronological order). Thoughts on the Study of History (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1849). History and Antiquities of St. David’s, with William Basil Jones (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1856). History and Conquests of the Saracens (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1856). History of Federal Government (London: Macmillan and Co., 1863). Old English History for Children (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869). History of the Cathedral Church of Wells (London: Macmillan and Co., 1870). The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1867–​79). Historical Essays, four vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871–​92). General Sketch of European History (London: Macmillan and Co., 1872). The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (London: Macmillan and Co., 1872). Comparative Politics: Six Lectures read before the Royal Institution in Jan. and Feb., 1873, with the Unity of History, the Rede Lecture read before the University of Cambridge, May, 1872 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873). History of Europe (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875). Historical and Architectural Sketches (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876). The Ottoman Power in Europe; Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London: Macmillan and Co., 1877). Short History of the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880). Subject and Neighbour-​Lands of Venice (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881). Historical Geography of Europe, two vols (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1881 and 1882). An Introduction to American Institutional History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1882). Lectures to American Audiences (London: Trübner, 1882). The Reign of William Rufus, two vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1882). English Towns and Districts (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883). Some Impressions of the United States (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1883). On the Office of the Historical Professor:  An Inaugural Lecture read in the Museum at Oxford (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884). Chief Periods of European History (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886). Greater Greece and Greater Britain, and George Washington, the Expander of England. Two Lectures with an Appendix (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1886). The Methods of Historical Study (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886).

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Appendix

Fifty Years of European History and Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain (London: Macmillan and Co., 1887). William the Conqueror (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888). Sketches from French Travel (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1891). History of Sicily from the Earliest Times, four vols (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1891–​94). Volume four was edited by Mr A.J. Evans. Sicily: Phoenician, Greek, and Roman (London: Fisher Unwin, 1892). History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, ed. J.B. Bury (London: Macmillan and Co., 1893). Studies of Travel (Greece and Italy), two vols, ed. Miss F. Freeman (London: Fisher Unwin, 1893). Studies of Travel (Normandy and Maine), ed. Miss F. Freeman (London: Fisher Unwin, 1897).

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R E F E R E NCES

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Unpublished archival material Freeman Papers, John Rylands University Library, Deansgate, Manchester. Letters from Freeman to: J.R. Green and Freidrich Max Müller. Letters to Freeman from:  J.R. Green; Adelaine Ibry; Henry Sumner Maine; Clements Markham; Friedrich Max Müller; Dr Humphrey Sandwith; and William Stubbs. Freeman Journal, 3 September 1888–​6 March 1892. The handbook to the Freeman papers is available at: https://​archiveshub.jisc. ac.uk/​search/​archives/​ff80b607–​86b2–​303e-​906e-​d8ab77c8cdca. The Papers of James Bryce, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Letters from Freeman to Bryce.

Works by Freeman ‘The Athenian Democracy’, in Historical Essays, second series (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873), pp. 107–​60. Comparative Politics:  Six Lectures read before the Royal Institution in Jan. and Feb., 1873, with the Unity of History, the Rede Lecture read before the University of Cambridge, May, 1872 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873). ‘The Continuity of English History’, in Historical Essays, 4 vols [1871] third edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875), first series, pp. 40–​53. ‘The Eastern Question in its Historical Bearings’, an address delivered in Manchester to the National Reform Union, 15 November 1876, p. 22. JRUL, EAF2/​2/​136. ‘The English People in Relation to the Eastern Question’, The Contemporary Review, 30 (February, 1877), pp. 481–​510. Greater Greece and Greater Britain, and George Washington, the Expander of England. Two Lectures with an Appendix (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1886). ‘Grote’s History of Greece’, The North British Review, 25 (May, 1856), pp. 141–​72. The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (London: Macmillan and Co., 1872). ‘Historical Cycles’, in Historical Essays, fourth series (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892), pp. 249–​58. The History and Conquests of the Saracens, Six Lectures Delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (Oxford:  John Henry and James Parker, 1856). History of Federal Government (London: Macmillan and Co., 1863).

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References

History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, edited by J.B. Bury (London: Macmillan and Co., 1893). The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1867–​79). ‘Mahometans in the East and West’, p.  450. This article was written for the Edinburgh Review c.1854–​55. John Rylands University Library. EAF 2/​2/​14. The Methods of Historical Study (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886). On the Office of the Historical Professor:  An Inaugural Lecture read in the Museum at Oxford (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884). The Ottoman Power in Europe; Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London: Macmillan and Co., 1877). ‘The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity’, in Arthur Silva White (ed.), Britannic Confederation (London: George Philip & Son, 1892), pp. 31–​56. ‘Present Aspects of the Eastern Question’, Fortnightly Review, 118 (October, 1876), pp. 409–​23. ‘Race and Language’, in Historical Essays, third series (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879), pp. 173–​230. ‘The Relation of the English People to the War’, Contemporary Review (August, 1877), pp. 481–​510. ‘The True Eastern Question’, Fortnightly Review, 24, 18 (December, 1875), pp. 747–​69. ‘The Turks in Europe’, British Quarterly Review (October, 1876), JRUL, EAF2/​ 2/​133.

Secondary sources related to Freeman [Anon.], ‘Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest of England’, North American Review, 105, 217 (October, 1867), pp. 640–​4. Anon. [Smith, F.], ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results. By Edward A. Freeman, Vols. I and II’, Edinburgh Review, 130, 265 (July, 1869), pp. 186–​216. Barlow, Frank, ‘Edward Augustus Freeman, Historian’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), online. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​10146. Boase, C.W., ‘The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, by E.  A. Freeman. Vol. III. The Reign of Harold to the Interregnum’, Academy, 1 (9 October 1869), pp. 20–​1. Boddice, Rob, ‘Manliness and the “Morality of Field Sports”:  E. A.  Freeman and Anthony Trollope, 1869–​71’, The Historian, 70, 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 1–​29. doi: 10.1111/​j.1540–​6563.2008.00201.x. Bratchel, M.E., Freeman and the Victorian Interpretation of the Norman Conquest (Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell, 1969). Bremner, G.A., and Conlin, Jonathan (eds), Making History: Edward Augustus Freeman and Victorian Cultural Politics (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Bryce, James, ‘Edward Augustus Freeman’, English Historical Review, 7 (1892), pp. 497–​509. Capern, Amanda, ‘Anatomy of a Friendship:  E. A.  Freeman and Edith Thompson’, Paragon Review, 6 (1997), available at www.hull.ac.uk/​oldlib/​ archives/​paragon/​1997/​cpage.html. Carruthers Sellar, Walter, and Yeatman, Robert Julian, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England comprising. All the Parts You Can Remember Including One Hundred and Three Good Things, Five Bad Kings, and Two Genuine Dates [1930] (Oxford: Clio Press Ltd., 1987). Harrison, Frederic, ‘The History Schools’, in The Meaning of History and Other Historical Pieces [1894] (London: Macmillan, 1900), pp. 118–​39. Lerner, Robert, E., ‘Turner and the Revolt Against Freeman’, Arizona and the West, 5, 2 (Summer, 1963), pp. 101–​8. www.jstor.org/​stable/​40167053. Momigliano, Arnaldo, ‘Two Types of Universal History:  The Cases of E.  A. Freeman and Max Weber’, Journal of Modern History, 58, 1 (1986), pp. 235–​ 46. www.jstor.org/​stable/​1881571. Morrisroe [Randall], V., ‘ “Eastern History with Western Eyes”: E. A. Freeman, Islam and Orientalism’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 16, 1 (2011), pp. 25–​ 45. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13555502.2011.554673. Morrisroe [Randall], V., ‘  “Sanguinary Amusement”:  E. A.  Freeman, the Comparative Method and Victorian Theories of Race’, Modern Intellectual History, 10, 1 (2013), pp. 27–​56. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S1479244312000339. Parker, C.J.W., ‘The Failure of Liberal Racialism:  The Racial Ideas of E.A. Freeman’, The Historical Journal, 24, 4 (December, 1981), pp. 825–​ 46. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S0018246X00008220. Steinberg, O., ‘The Unity of History and Periods? The Unique Historical Periodization of E. A. Freeman’, Modern Intellectual History, 15, 3 (2016), pp. 1–​29. doi:10.1017/​S1479244316000263. Stephens, W.R.W., The Life and Letters of Edward A.  Freeman, 2 vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895). Stephenson, Paul, ‘E. A. Freeman (1823–​1892), a Neglected Commentator on Byzantium and Modern Greece’, The Historical Review, 4 (2007), pp. 119–​ 56. doi:http://​dx.doi.org/​10.12681/​hr.211. Walton, Susan, ‘Charlotte M.  Young and the “Historic Harem” of Edward Augustus Freeman’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 11, 2 (2006), pp. 226–​55. https://​doi.org/​10.3366/​jvc.2006.11.2.226.

Other primary sources Acton, Lord, A Lecture on the Study of History (London:  Macmillan and Co., 1895). Alcock, Nathan and Alcock, Thomas, The Rise of Mahomet (London:  G. Sael, 1796). Anon., ‘The Federation of the English Empire’, Westminster Review, ccxx (April, 1879), pp. 147–​52; ccxxi (July, 1879), pp. 22–​9; and ccxxii (October, 1879), pp. 153–​62.

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Hunt, W., ‘Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest’, Contemporary Review, 9 (September/​December, 1868), pp. 405–​16. Hunter, William, Travels in the Year 1792 through France, Turkey and Hungary to Vienna (London: Printed by J. Davis, for B. and J. White, 1796). [Huntingdon] Henry Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, edited by D. Greenway, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Irving, Washington, Lives of Mahomet and His Successors (London:  George Routledge & Co., 1850). Jenkins, Edward, ‘An Imperial Confederation’, Contemporary Review, 17 (April, 1871), pp. 60–​79.   ‘Imperial Federalism’, Contemporary Review, 16 (January, 1871), pp. 165–​88. Kemble, John Mitchell, The Saxons in England:  A History of the English Commonwealth Till the Period of the Norman Conquest, 2 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849). Knolles, Richard, The Generall History of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of that Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie (London: Adam Islip, 1603). Knox, Robert, The Races of Men:  A Fragment (Philadelphia:  Lea & Blanchard, 1850). Labilliere, Francis, The Permanent Unity of the Empire (London:  Unwin Brothers, 1875). Lewis, George Cornewall, An Essay on the Government of Dependencies [1841] with an introduction by C.P. Lucas (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1891). Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government (London: Awnsham Churchill,  1690). Macaulay, T.B., The History of England from the Accession of James II, 5 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848–​61). MacColl, Malcolm, ‘Some Current Fallacies about Turks, Bulgarians, and Russians’, Nineteenth Century, 2 (1877), pp. 831–​42. Mackintosh, James, History of the Revolution in England in 1688 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1834). Maine, H.S., Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas (London: John Murray, 1861).   Village Communities in the East and West [1871] third edition (London: Henry Holt & Co., 1876). Malcolm, John, History of Persia (London; John Murray, 1815). [Malmesbury], The History of the Kings of England, and of His Own Times by William of Malmesbury, transl. John Sharpe (London: Seeleys, 1854). Maurice, F.D., The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity (London: John W. Parker, 1847). Muir, William, The Life of Mahomet, 4 vols (London:  Smith, Elder, and Co., 1861). Müller, Friedrich Max, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888). Müller, Friedrich Max, Chips from a German Workshop, 5 vols (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1867–​75).

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Seton-​Watson, R.W., Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London: Macmillan and Co., 1935). Shannon, Richard, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963).   Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865–​1898 (London: Penguin Books, 1999). Simmons, Clare, ‘The Claim of Blood:  Gladstone as King of Greece’, Nineteenth-​Century Contexts, 13, 2 (1989), pp. 227–​ 37. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​08905498908583306.   Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth-​Century British Literature (London: Rutgers University Press, 1990). Simpson, William, and Jones, Martin, Europe, 1783–​1914 (London: Routledge, 2000). Stenton, F.M., Anglo-​Saxon England [1943] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).   The Bayeux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Study (London: Phaidon Press,  1957). Stocking, George W., Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987). Stone, Dan, Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002). Strype, John, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821). Stuchtey, Benedikt, and Wende, Peter (eds), British and German Historiography, 1750–​1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Swartz, Marvin, The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: The Macmillan Press, 1985). Thomson, R.M., William of Malmesbury [1987] (Woodbridge:  Boydell Press, 2003). Trautmann, Thomas, Aryans and British India [1997] (Yoda Press: New Delhi, 2004). Turner, Bryan S., ‘Postmodernity and Cosmopolitanism and Identity’, in Eliézer Ben Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg (eds), Identity, Culture and Globalization (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 527–​43. Turner, James, Philology:  The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). van den Bosch, Lourens, Friedrich Max Müller:  A Life Devoted to the Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Warren, Andrew,The Orient and the Young Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Whitehead, Cameron, ‘Reading Beside the Lines: Marginalia, W. E. Gladstone, and the International History of the Bulgarian Horrors’, The International History Review, 37, 4 (2015), pp. 864–​ 86. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 07075332.2014.974652. Williams, Ann, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995). Windschuttle, Keith, ‘Edward Said’s “Orientalism Revisited” ’, New Criterion, 17, 5 (January, 1999), online, available at http://​ontology.buffalo.edu/​smith/​ courses01/​rrtw/​Windschuttle.htm, accessed 26 September 2019.

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Wohl, Anthony, ‘ “Ben-​JuJu”: Representations of Disraeli’s Jewishness in the Victorian Political Cartoon’, Jewish History, 10, 2 (Fall, 1996), pp. 89–​134. www.jstor.org/​stable/​20101269.   ‘  “Dizzi-​Ben-​Dizzi”: Disraeli as Alien’, Journal of British Studies, 34, 3 (July, 1995), pp. 375–​411. https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​386083.

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INDE X

Abbasid Caliphate 172–3, 184 Acton, Lord 12–13 Aeschylus 115 Africa 84 Alcock, Nathan and Thomas 118 Al-Da’mi, Muhammad 129–30, 170–1 Almanzor, Caliph 172 ancient history 8–9 Anglo-Saxon, The (magazine) 33 Anglo-Saxons 189 democracy 11, 14, 28, 32 freedom 28 idealisation of 30–3 settlement of England 43–5 significance 28 anti-Semitism 136, 142, 142–8, 157–9, 190 Arab-Islamic world 128–34 Arnold, Matthew 3, 33 Arnold, Thomas 7–12, 56, 72–3, 75, 78, 126, 190 comparative method 66–8 focus on the state 7–8 Freeman on 9–10 and national character 8 and race 9 Unity of History doctrine 2, 8–9, 28, 40–1, 41–2, 44–5, 105, 188–9 Arvidsson, Stefan 59 Aryan history 10–11 Unity of 104–6 Aryan law 65–6, 70–2 Aryan mythologies 70 Aryan superiority 2 Aryanism and the Aryan concept 16–17, 50–78, 83, 191 comparative method 61–8 comparative philology 61–6 and Comparative Politics 73–8 connotations 56 historical cycles 68–73 and theories of race 57–61

Assembly of the People 76–7 Athens 74, 100 Australia 84, 85, 87 Baghdad 172–3 Baumgart, Winfried 123 Bayeux Tapestry 29 Bayezid I, Sultan 178–9 Bell , Duncan 84, 85, 89 Bennett, Clinton 118, 191 Berlin Memorandum, the 152 Blake, Robert 146 Boase, C.W 13–16 Bolt, Christine 190 Bowler, Peter 56 Brady, Robert 31, 39 Bratchel, M.E. 15 Bremner, G.A. 16 British East India Company 125–6 British expansionism, critique of 83–106, 189 ages 101–2 comparison with ancient Greece 97–104 and Greater Britain 84, 89, 94 Imperial Federation movement 83, 84–97 and the Unity of Aryan History 104–6 British Quarterly Review 151 Brundage, Anthony 16 Bryce, James 104–5 Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation 141–2, 152–9, 190 Burrow, John 7, 16, 39–40, 41, 72 Burton, Richard 12, 157 Butterfield, Herbert 31 Byron, Lord 170 Campbell, J. 34 Canada 84, 85, 87 Canning, George 183

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Index

Carlyle, Thomas 33, 38–9, 118, 158 centralisation 44–5, 46 Chibnall, Marjorie 15, 28 Christianity 2, 127, 129, 131, 132–3, 133–4, 143, 172 Çiçek, Nazan 155 Cochran, Peter 170 Collini, S. 1–2, 5, 16 Colonies, The 88 comparative method, the 60, 61, 61–8, 75–6 comparative philology 61–6 Conlin, Jonathan 16 constitutional history, and national identity 39–40 Contemporary Review 86 Cosgrove, Richard 16 Cox , G. 45 Creasy, E.S. 181 Crichton, Andrew 172 Crimean War 122–4, 136, 141, 190 Crusades, the 175 cultural identity 56 Çýrakman, Asli 168–70 Danish Conquest of England 45–6 Darwin, Charles 58, 62 Davis, John R. 33–4 Dawkins, Boyd 36 de Labilliere, Francis 88 de Leon, Edwin 154 degeneration 85 Delian League 93, 99–100 democracy 10–11, 14, 28, 32, 39, 74, 76–7, 134–5 Disraeli, Benjamin 12, 85, 136, 142, 152, 155, 183, 190 depiction 157–8 imperialism 103–4 Orientalism 145–8 Ottoman policy 160–1, 167 Dyer, Thomas 179 Eastern Question 122, 152 Eddy, Charles W. 88 Edinburgh Review 123 Edward the Confessor, King 46–7

Elliot, Sir Henry 153 Elphinstone, Mountstuart 125–6 English Civil Wars 28, 30–1 equality 75 eugenicist thinking 58–9 Euripides 115 Evans, Eric 30 federal government, critique of 91–7 federalism, history of 91–7 feudalism 48 Forbes, Archibald 154 Forbes, Duncan 7 Forster, the Reverend Charles 119 Foxe, James 30 France 48 Franco-Prussian War (1870) 11–12 Fraser’s Magazine 88 freedom 28, 134–5 Freeman, Edward Augustus aid work 150–1 American lecture tour 12 antipathy towards Froude 38 on Arnold 9–10 awards 6 career 1, 3–7 correspondence 6, 91, 102, 153–4, 159 criticism of 13–16 crusades 6 death 7 debt to Arnold 2, 7–12, 68, 105, 126, 188–9, 190 early life 3–4 education 3 effectiveness 2 ethical ideals 2 favourite nations 11 great ambition 4 hatred of the non-Aryan 12 historic harem 6 income 5–6 interest in the Orient 113 journal 6 marriage 5 moral righteousness 5 notion of the state 76

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Index

obituary 21n68, 104–5 position on international politics 11–12 prejudices and partialities 6–7, 38–9 press contributions 5 public moralism 1 published historical works 192–3 racial theory 27–8 racism 12, 16–17 Rede Lecture (1873) 105–6 religious position 20n22 reputation 13, 13–17 research assistants 6 ridiculed 15 status 1, 15–16 strength 36 view of history 40–1 vision 2–3 working hours 6 see also individual works Freeman, Eleanor (nee Gutch) 5 Freeman’s works Comparative Politics 50, 189 aims 56, 68, 73 background 56–7 comparative method 62–8, 75–6 historical cycles 68–73 narrative 73–9 opening 62 ‘Continuity of English History, The’ 41 ‘English People in Relation to the Eastern Crisis, The’ 152–3 Greater Greece and Greater Britain 189 Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times, The 48–50, 73 Historical Cycles 72 History and Conquests of the Saracens 113–36, 141, 167, 190 account of the life of Muhammad 128–33

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aims 113, 114 on the Arab-Islamic world 128–34 background 113–14 contemporary implications 134–6 on Islam 128–34 and Orientalism 114–21 Orientalist reading 121–8 sources 124–6 History of Federal Government 91–7, 189 History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy 24n126 History of the Norman Conquest of England, The 27–48, 68, 73, 92, 189 approach to 27–8 criticism 13–16 dual narrative 41–8 emphasis on race 27 the fall of Harold Godwinson 37 Freeman’s prejudices 38–9 historiographical traditions 28–35, 41–8 intellectual frameworks 38–41 methodology 35–7 partiality 39 reception 37–8 research 4, 35–6 sources 37 status 27 strengths and weaknesses 27 style 37 view of history 40–1 Methods of Historical Study lecture 36 Ottoman Power in Europe, The 142, 167–85 anti-Semitism 142, 145–8 expansion and decline of the Ottoman Empire 177–81 and Holy War 181–5 Oriental conspiracy 159–61

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Index

Freeman’s works (cont.) proposals 184–5 rise of the Ottoman Empire 171–7 ‘Physical and Political Bases of National Unity, The’ 64 ‘Race and Language’ 64 French Revolution 31, 32, 72 Froude, J.A. 10–11, 16, 21–2n69, 37–8, 88, 89, 89–90

Hill, Christopher 30 historical cycles 2, 68–73 history, focus of 7–8 Holt, P. 125 Holy War 181–5 Horsman, Reginald 32 Hourani, Albert 117–18, 191 House of Lords 77 Hunt, James 57 Hunt, W. 46

Galton, Francis 59 Genesis 57–8 German nationalism 32–3 Gibbon, Edward 117, 174–5 Girardot, N.J. 61–2 Gladstone, W.E. 4, 5, 12, 85, 98, 100–2, 103–4, 155–6 Glorious Revolution, the 28, 32, 49 Great Eastern Crisis, the 12, 141–2, 148–61 Bulgarian atrocities 152–9 Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation 141–2, 152–9, 190 the Oriental conspiracy 142, 159–61 great power status 85–6 Great Reform Act 31 Greater Britain 84, 89, 94 Greece, ancient 8–9, 10, 73–4, 75, 76, 93, 97–104, 189, 191 Greek Revolution or War of Independence 182–3 Green, John Richard 34, 35, 36, 37–8 Green, Judith A. 15–16 Grote, George 98–100, 102 Gutch, the Reverend Robert 3

imperial crises 58 Imperial Federation movement 83, 84–91, 189, 191 critique of 91–7 India 84, 94 international politics 11–12 Irby, Adelaine 150 Ireland, Home Rule 83, 85, 104, 191 Irving, Washington 125 Islam 115–21, 125, 128–34, 134–6, 141, 172, 191 anti-Semitism 142–5

Haddon, the Reverend T.C. 3 Hall, Catherine 58, 83, 190 Hamann, J.G. 116 Hannaford, Ivan 58 Harrison, Frederic 14 Hastings, Battle of 14–15, 36–7 Henry of Huntingdon 29 Herzegovina 183

Janissaries 176–7 Jann, Rosemary 16, 31, 32, 35–6 Jenkins, Edward 86–8 Jones, Sir William 59 Kalmar, Ivan Davidson 145, 146 Katz, David S. 145, 146 Kauffman, Heidi 147 Kemble, J.M. 33, 43, 44–5, 45 Knox, Robert 59 language 61–6, 69–70 legislation, invention of 71–2 Lerner, Robert E. 16 Lewis, Bernard 117, 191 Lewis, George Cornewall 98, 100, 102 liberty 83 Liddon, Canon H.P. 153, 157 Lindsay, John 170 linguistic research 59, 69–70 Locke, John 31 Lorimer, Douglas A. 59 Lubenow, William C. 5

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Index

Macaulay, T.B. 14, 32 McClelland, Keith 58 MacColl, the Reverend Malcolm 154 MacDougall, Hugh 16 MacKenzie, John 83 Mackintosh, James 32 Magna Carta 32, 39 Mahomet II, Sultan 179 Maine, Sir Henry 56, 60–1, 65–6, 68, 70–2, 78 Malcolm, Sir John 125–6 Mandler, Peter 16, 59 Mannyng, Robert 30 Markham, Clements 11 Matthew, H.C.G. 100 Maurice, F.D. 61, 119 Mill, John Stuart 61 Momigliano, Arnaldo 16, 106 Montesquieu, Baron de 169 moral perfection 10 Moser, Justus 32 Muhammad 115–16, 118–19, 120, 121, 128–33 Muir, William 120 Müller, Max 10, 56, 60, 61–6, 66, 68, 69–70 national character 8 National Convention on the Eastern Question 156 national identity 9, 48, 84 and constitutional history 39–40 national mission 157 national unity 48 nationalism 83 nations, maturity 66–7 New Zealand 84 Newman, John Henry 129–30, 131, 133, 133–4, 134, 135–6, 190 Nicholas I, Tsar 122–3 Niebuhr, B.G. 72 Norman Yoke, the 28, 30 North American Review 13 Northern Echo, The 156 Ockley, Simon 124–5 Oriental conspiracy, the 142, 159–61

Orientalism 113–14, 114–21, 159, 168, 190 and anti-Semitism 142–5 Disraeli’s 145–8 Saracens as 121–8 otherness 121–2, 134, 142–3, 145, 160, 191 Ottoman Empire 122–4, 128, 134–6, 141, 146, 190 attempts to overthrow 181–5 British representations of 168–71 Bulgarian atrocities 152, 152–9 Christian bondage 179–81 Christian massacres 163n75 comparison with Europe 171–2 expansion and decline of 177–81 Freeman on 151–2 Great Eastern Crisis 149–52 rise of 171–7 as the sick man of Europe 170 tolerance 178 Ottomania 170 Ottophobia 170 Oxford School, the 33–5 Oxford University 4 Paganism 131 Palgrave, Francis 43, 45, 46 Pall Mall Gazette 155 Paris, Matthew 29 Parker, C.J.W. 16 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury 30, 77 Parry, Jonathan 153 Pasto, James 143–4 patriotism 47, 153 Pauli, Reinhold 34 Pearson, Karl 59 Penny Cyclopaedia 118 Phillpotts, James Surtees 175–6, 177–8 philology 60, 61–6 physiological classifications 58–9 political continuity 43–4 political institutions, maturity 66–7 political participation 75 Polowetzky, Michael 146 Porter, Bernard 83

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Price, David 125 public moralism 1–2 Public Opinion 158 race Arnold and 9 cultural conception of 68–9, 72, 190–1 emphasis on 27 theories of 56, 57–61, 190 racism 12, 16–17 Ragussis, Michael 156–7 Reformation, the 28, 32 Rendall, Jane 58 representation 77 representative assemblies 77 representative government 11 Restoration, the 31 Revelations from the Seat of War (1877) 156 Rhodes, Cecil 85 Richards, Jeffrey 83 Roman Catholicism 30 Romantic poets 170 Romanticism 32–3, 34 Rome, ancient 8–9, 10, 74–5, 96, 189, 191 Round, John Horace 13–14 Russia 122–4, 160, 182, 183, 184 Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) 160 Said, Edward 113–14, 114–17, 121, 124, 125, 142–5, 159, 168, 171, 191 Sale, George 116, 125 Samman, Khaldoun 144–5 Sandwith, Dr Humphrey 151 Saturday Review 5, 6, 154–5 Schlegel, Friedrich 61 Schleswig-Holstein War (1864) 11 Scott, Sir Walter 32, 33 Seeley, John Robert 89 Selim III, Sultan 181 Seljuk Turks 173–4 Sellar, Walter Carruthers 15 Senlac 14–15 Serbian Revolution (1804–15) 182

Seton-Watson, R.W. 159 Shannon, R.T. 153, 156, 163n75 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 170 Simmons, Clare 30 Smith, F. 13 Smith, Goldwin 90–1, 157, 158 Smith, Reginald Bosworth 119–20 Social Contract 31, 72 Social Darwinism 57 Somner, William 31 South Africa 84, 87 Spectator 122, 123, 157–8 Spelman, Sir John 31 state, the 7–8 Stead, W.T. 156 Steinberg, Oded Y. 16 Stenton, Sir Frank M. 15 Stephens, W.R.W. 3, 5–6, 123, 124, 149 Stubbs, William 4, 12, 33–4, 35 Suleiman ‘the Magnificent’ 180–1 Switzerland 11 Tacitus 42 Taylor, W.C. 3, 113 1066 and All That (Sellar and Yeatman) 15 Teutons and Teutonism, the 9, 10–12, 18, 28, 32, 33–4, 39–40, 41–4, 46, 49, 50, 56–7, 68, 73, 75–7, 83, 189 Thierry, Augustin 39 Thomas of Castleford 29 Thompson, Edith 11–12 Thorpe, Benjamin 33 The Times 156 Tisdall, William St. Clair 120–1 Trautmann, Thomas 59 Turcophiles, attack on 156–7 Turcophobia 155 Turner, Bryan S. 142–3 Turner, James 43, 44, 45, 60 Turner, Sharon 32–3 Umayyad dynasty 174 United States of America 12, 89–90, 93, 94

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Unity of History doctrine 2, 8–9, 27–8, 40–1, 41–2, 44–5, 50, 77, 105, 188–9 universal history 106, 191

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Vico, Giambattista 116 Victoria, Queen 20n18, 94 Vrignaud, Gerard Cohen 170 Waitz, Georg 34 Walton, Susan 35 Warren, Andrew 170 Western society, characteristics 127 Westminster Review 89

Whiggism 31–2, 189 William of Jumièges 29 William of Malmesbury 29, 38 William of Poitiers 29, 38 William the Conqueror 28–9, 47–8 Williams, Ann 15 Winch, Donald 16 Windschuttle, Keith 126 Winstanley, Gerard 30 Wohl, Anthony 156–7 Yeatman, Robert Julian 15 Young, Frederick 88

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