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Is National History

Obsolete?

-The New History


andtheOld

.,7.

:\1

'

Gertrude Himmelfarb
."Happy 1s the naaon that has no lustory.':' That adage, familiar
from at lcast the eighteemh cenrury, 1S an ambtguous trtb~
ure to those small nations that have been sparcd the sufferings exacted
'by history as the price of greatness. Today 1t is not oniy !ustory that IS
idistrusted~ it 15 the very idea of the nation. For some historians the
imotto mght be revised to read, "Happy is the hisrory that has no
I

Thc avcrs10n to nanonal history is p<trt of tbe avers1on to polit:tcal


'!ustory, the !ustory that has traditional!y defined the nation. As politics
:has been taken out o f hstory, so attempts are being made to take the
:nauon our of hstory. Local hstory has t!us effect, by cmphas!Zmg
what s disti.nctive to the 1ocality rather than what 1s conunon to the
cowttry as a whole. 2 So does wversal history, by ernphastzing what is
common to the worid (or to "cvilization") rather than what is distmcM . .
tive tO a particular coum:ry. 3 Se does social history, by focusing on
categories othcr than the nation-ciass, race, ethniciry, farnily, women,
childrcn. 4 In some cases thc nation rcmams rhe tacit framework of
srudy, even though it impinges littie or nor at al1 on the substance of
the work~ in others thc rejection of nauonal history is more aggresSlVC,
wth ofi:en equivocai results. Hstorians who are hosrile to Westem
nations and to the very tdea o f natlonaliry m the W est are ofi:en well
ldisposed to the militant nanonalism of some of thc cmergrng nations
'of the Th1rd Worlds And Mmts are obliged to tolerare a iargcr
measure of natlonality than they nght like. Almost a ccnrury and a
!

_,,

The Belknap Pms of

Harvard Univetsity P1ess


Cambridge, Massmhmetts
and Londcn, Engifmd

'
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~nanon."

121

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Is Nammal History Osuletcl 123

\,nu

half since the Cummmzist Manifestu swpped thc prolctarlat of


trace of national charactd' and predkted the disappearance of ali
tional diffi:rcnces and antagonisms,"6 Marxist historians still
nccessary to retain a nanonal structure in their work, if only to
modatc the class struggle that takes place within each nation.
Evcn so conservative a tlunker as Michad Oakeshott denies natio:nat:
iry as an orgamzmg pnnctple in the writing ofhistery, for thc

the nation-srare, and interdisciplinary hisrory because tts allicd disci-

reason that he denies any other '(pracricalu or "present-minded"

rather than causes. The reader would then be free to make "whar links
he thinks fir for hunself," thus liberanng htmself, in effcct, from the
ryranny o f the histortan. Only thts kind o f lustory, Zeldin declares, ts
10
worthy of bemg called "total hiStory."

ofunderstanding the past. "Wc may be offered 'A Hisrorv .oflFrancc:'"


Oakeshott says, "but only if its author has abandoned thc en;ga~;errtcnt\
of an histonan m fuvour of that of an ideologue ora mythologist
we find in it an identity-La Natifm or La Frmzce-to which
diffcrences that compose the srory are attributed."7 Yet it may

significant that the exarnple he uses is F rance rather than England; one .
wonders whether he would have refected quite as emphatically the idea
o f a "History of England."

The Frenchness ofFrance


It 1s, m fact, the author of a history of France who has boldly called for.
thc elinunation of nationaliry in the wnting of history. Thcodore Zel- :
din owes Jus repuranon to highly acclaimed (and explicldy orled) na-
tional histories: the rwo-volume Fra1lce 1848-1945 and, more recenrly,
The French. 8 One would think h e had a stakc in the idea o f the nation.,
at leasr as ir applied to France. Ycr he has been forthrighr m reJecting
that idea, both as a hisroncal reality and as a meaningful un1t m the
writing ofhistory. His rejeetion ofnattonality is ali the more provoca-

plines (sodology, economics, geography, and the othcr s?dal sciences_)


mpose ther own rcstrictlve categories and causal ~cJatmnsh1ps. The

historiao, Zeldin concludes, will bc truly liberated ory whcn he adopts


the rechmquc of pomtillismt, brcaking down rhc phcnomcna ofhtstory
into the smallest, most dementary units-the mdividual actors In hJstory-and then conncctmg thosc uruts by mcans of tjuxtaposiaons''

If the Atmalstes may be sad to ~'strucruralize" history, Zcldin proposes to "deconstruct" ir. He spclled out the implicanons ofhts theory
in 1976, shorrly before the second volume of hts France appcared.
More rccently he repeated hts nd.ictrnent of convennonal hstof'l(,

focusing on the ryranny of naoonality. The occaston was a book wzth


the provocative titlc T/Je English Wor/d.u "A national perspective,"
Zeldin assures us, "cannot be sustamed in htstoncal srudy much
Jonger." It has survivcd thus far only becausc of mertia and the

"difliculty of developmg a satisfacrory alremanve." There ts no such


thing as "nativnal dentity'' because nanons are not, contrary to ~e
common imprcssion, "distinct entltles." ''Ali our mstm~ telJ us ~ar
there is something different between a Gcrman and an ltallan. but then
ali our mson:ts tell us thar the earth is fiar." In rhe course of disabusmg
himsclf of such pnm.ltive instincts, thc histonan will correct the other

disromons of traditionallsrory: the emphasts on polittcal rather than


social insorunons, on formal relig1ous creeds rather than the "hidden

beliefs of the masses," on public lives rather than privare lives, on htgh

tive because tt goes together with a reJeetion of the other categores

culrure rather than popular culture, on men rather than womcn and

that have traditionally defined hisrory: chronology, causauon, and collectivity-the latter induding class and sooety as well as naoonality.
The release of social history from the bonds of policies, Zeldin has
argued, is only the first srep m tts liberation. For tt is still m thrall to
other no less oppressve "tyrannies": the tyranny of time (manifested in
the evoiunonary as well as the chronological approach ro lsrory), the
tyrarmy of soctal class, and the ryrarmy of causation. 9 Even those two

aduits rather rhan JUVenilcs, even (at rlus pomt Zeldin goes beyond the
now fmiliar critique of the new hsronan) on classes rathcr than mdividuals. A truly Jiberared lustory, he msJSts, musr be rorally rndividualisnc and atom1stic-not national, not economic, not social, but
"pcrsonal" lustory. "It is only by reconstructlllg our ptcrure of society

from the bottom upwards, srarnng with the mdividuals who are tts

plinary lusrory, have the unforrunate effect of strengtheriing the old

atoms, that wc can grasp the complex1ty that lies bchmd thc national
stcrcotypcs." 12 Thc individuais hc proposcs to resurrcct, howcver, are
not thosc familiar in traditional historv. Cntic1zing one essaytst for

tyrannies: comparacive history because lt perpetuares the catcgory of

making too much of Shakespeare's contribuoon to nanonal culture,

proud innovatons of recent rimes, cornparauve h1srory and intcrdisci-

124 The NewHisrory aud tbe 0/d


Zeidin protests that Shak.espcarc reprcscnts only a ''moment" in
glish history; hc was an excepcional rather than a represcntative
"Whar proporrion ofEnglish pcople who have livcd since hJS day
apprcciatcd ar cvcn undcrswod him?" 13

As if to anncipate the obv1ous objecnon, Zeldin remarks in passin1g'


that although he h1mself has written national lustory, he no
.
thinks ir "a sensible thng to do today.n 14 For thc sakc ofhis own
d'ocuvre, one hopes that it was a scnsible tlung to have donc in 1973 .
and 1977 when thc two volumes o f that work were published. The

itself, France 1848-1945, s conspcuously polirical as weU as national,


the dates having a purel)' polirical connotarion. The subritles of the
volumes, however-Atn.bition, Love and Politics) and bztellect, Tnste tmd
A>IXI<~-are clisnncrive!y social.
The first volume opens with a scries of d1apters on vanous occupa'" .
oons and professons (doctors, notanes, indusrralists, bankcrs, bu~
reaucrars, peasants, workers), using the familiar kinds of stanstics.
graphs. and ''impressionisnc" evdence to arrive at the usual kinds of
genera!izarions. The second parr, on mamagc and morais, children and
women, also draws on a rrux of litcrary and statistical matcnal and offers even more sweeping generalizanons. ("The family, as organised
m Francc m these years, , . was a powerfu! institution which resisted
change wth remarkable vtality.") 1s And the third " a social analysiS
of the polincal groups and tendencies prorninent m the penod- ..
Republicanism, Bonaparnsm, Raclicalism, Socialism. The volume is an .
unpressive work of research, a mine of informauon on thc most var1ed
subjecrs. But it is also less comprehensve and systcmatic than one
nughr expccr. Ir is, for exarnple, notably cavalier abour rime, a singie
paragraph often including starisncal and anecdotal evidence rangmg
throughout the whole of the century (and somerimes before and beyond it). This is, indeed, its most consptcuous mcthodologicaJ "nnovanon," resembling somethmg like the pomtillistc method Zeldin was
!ater to recornmend m arder to subvcrt the tyranny of rime.
The book i$, however, an unregenerate work o f national history, not
only in defining its SUbject as France, but also n findng that sub1ecr a
s1gnificanr umt of srudy. Thc: discussion of politicai parues, for exampie, condudes that there is more consensus among thcm than the
parry labels nught suggest. "Therc is much to be said," Zeldin mterjecrs, "for writing the history of Frcnchmen not m terms of what

Is Nattonal History Obsoiete? 125


divides them but ofwhat unires them." 16 The mtroducrion, to be sure,
probably wntten (as is oftcn the case) aftcr the book was fimshcd, does
have mtimations of Zeidin's !ater stricturcs. "One must firsr get away
from rhc nationalist perspective, which still unconsciously dommatcs
much wnting: onc should not Wlquestiomngly assume that Francc was
onc nation m this penod, sirnply because thc French Revolution prC)-daimed 1t to be so." The corrcctive proposed by Zelclin ar thiS point IS
that France be seen as "composed of a large variety of groups wluch
had livcs of their own." 17 (Groups-not, as m his larest manifesto,
individuais.) This antinationalist thes1s, howcver, 1s contradicred in d1e
opening paragraph of the mtroducnon, where Zeldin expresses the
hope that his book will show "how the Frcnch cliffercd from other
nanons m thiS penod," 18 and m the final paragraph, whcrc hc iooks
forward to the discusston m thc followmg volume of how Frenchmen
treated forcigners and ''how thcy evo1ved thctr scnse o f national identity n the process." 19
Thc second volume begins with a chapter on 1ust tlus subJcCt, "The
Nauonal Idcntiry." Although thc intcnt is deady to cast doubt on the
idea of a disrmctivc Frcnch identlty, thc cvidcncc and the logic of
thc argument are often equivocai. The book starr.s wrth an account
of an nspecror of educanon m 1864 v!Slnng a village school m the
mountains of the Lozre and puttmg to the children rwo quesoons:
"In what country IS thc Lozre Situared~" and "Are you English or
Russtan?" Not a singlc child could answer etther qucsoon. "Tht.S,"
Zclclin comments, "was rn onc of thc remeter pans o f F rance. but the
mcdent illustrates how Frcnchmen only gradually became aware of
what tt was thar distingmshed them from other mcn. " 20 The rcader
might be more tmpresscd by the fact that m 1864 m that backward
rcgwn there wcre villagc schools and vistting mspectors than that the
children failed to answer those questions. (One wondcrs whethc::r thcy
would not have respondcd more intelligcntlv had thc qucstions becn
differentiy worded: "Is the Lozre m France?" and "Are you French o r
English?")*
ThJS first chaptcr typifics Zeldin's mode of argument as wcU as h1s
.. Simil~~ taks ~f abys~a.J ignor.mcc cm.matc from

C\'C!'Y

Tbt Condzt:on o[TIJ~ Englllb IVorkw Clms m Englrmd,

coumry at thc ame. Engels, m


pass:.gc from rhc Childrcn'~

Cites a

Employmcnt Comm1ss,on Rcpon of 18-!:3 on d1c cducauon of thc poor. Askcd who Tc:sus
Chnst was, one child idenri.fic:d him as Adam, anothcr as an a-posr.k, and ver a.nothcr as "a
k~g ofLondon a Jong orne ago." (CoUecud Workr (Nrn York, 1975- j, rv, 4!0._)

Is Natumal Hiftury Obsoletel 127

126 The New Hiftury 4nd the 0/d

thess. The opening anccdote about the schoolchildten contams


proof that this bit of evidence was at ali typical; indeed onc
suppose that ir was not, since this was such a remate part of France.
The cpsode s ncverthelcss taken to il\ustrate thc fact that Frenchmcn
only gradually became aware of "what t was that disunguished them
from other men." Conceding that they did, f only gradually, arnve at a :.~~~:t
sense of their nationality, Zeldin goes on to suggest that that idcntity
was artificially conttived. "1be French nation had to be created"-by,
he mplies, the bourgeoisie and the politicJans. Even then the French
concinued ro have "profound differences about what communal life
mvolvcd," and "diversity was an essential part of tbeir sodety."21 They
also had different theories about the bass of French nationalirycivi.lization, race, culture, language. Each of these factors, moreover~
was itself a compound of diversJty. The common language was spoken,
but m different dialects; the supposedly common hentage was belied
by the number of foreigncrs and naturalizcd dtizens in the country;
and arnong the masses especially, local and rcgionai loyaities were
strong. 22
The mtent ofthe argument s cvidcnt, iftheiOgiC Js lcss than compel
ling. Here, as throughout the book, more IS unplied than is demon
st:ated. And whar s dcmonstrated-the fact of diversity, for ex~
arnplc-does not disprove cither the facr or the idca of nationai ..
idennty. To think of oneself as Parsan or provmaal does not preclude
thinking of oneself as French. lndeed, the first may rcinforce the sec
ond: one may bclieve thatParis (ar thc provncc) as the case may be) is
the "true" France. So roa wlrh diffcrences of party, class, religion~
educanon. culture, taste. Nanonai identity does not rmply nanonal
homogeneity. On the contrary, t JS preCJSeiy the fact that people are
hetcrogeneous m so many other respects that makes .their identity in
this one respect ali the more significam.
Nor does it belie the sense of naoonai idcntiry to say rhat It was
weakcr at one rime than at anothcr or that it manifested Itsclf diffcrently over the course ofnme. A sense of nauonal identity, like a sense
of rdigioSlt)' or ethnicty, has a history. Bur it is predsely ths h!Storical
dimens10n that is blurred here. If the childten of the Lozi:re werc so
dcfecttve tn thetr scnsc:: of Frcnchness in 1864, IS it not possibJe that
they bccarne less so as thc educanonai systcm rmproved (a powerful
national sysrem of educanon, as Jt happened), or as social and geo
graphcal mobility began ro be felt even n that backwarer ofFrance, or

as nationalism and patriotism affected the young men and therr


families who were dtawn nto one and then another world war? And if
thc French nation was "crcated," when exactly (or evcn approximareiy)
did that happen? We are roid that the word "nanonalism" was firsr
used in France..m-1798, althcagh the idca was much older (as was, of
course, la patrie). But we are not told whar significance~ if any, to
attach to clus dare o r any others, o r, for that matter, to thc dares in thc
titlc. To say that Zeldin Js as casual about dates as about statlstlcs does
not mean that he gets them wrong-only that he uses them willfully,
shfting back and forth in time, pckmg up one theme hcre and another
there, with little attcmpr ro relate thcm chronoiogiCaUy or evcn 1ogtcally.
It may bc that ali of clus is mrentionai, smce chronological. and
1ogcai conne:ttons are as arbicrary, m ZeJdin's scheme of th.ings; as
nanonaiity. "What then does French history add up to?" the last chap
ter opens.23 Not to very much, it would appear. Thus far, we are told,
inrellecruals have donc the adding, have rnade sense of thc "chaos o f
daily life" by rmposmg upon Jt the1r caregorics and conccpts-"thc
glue that makes cvents hold together." Zeldin proposcs to ren-.ove that
glue.
Thc:: first aun of thts book has bcen to separa te thc gluc from the cvents,
the myths from rhe rcaliry, to distmgulsh whar was said from what was
done, to conrrast what acrually happencd with what peopic thought was
happcrung. Once thc facrs are allowcd ro come loose, tt 1s possibie ro
think agam about the pattems tmo which they rnight fall. :z.;

Some ofthe glue, Zeldin adnuts, the myths abour reaiity, are dues to
the reairy Itsclf. But they are also rmslcading, he mSISts, if, like the
politican's myths, they g1ve undue unportancc to polincal or legislative evcnts in the lves of the people or if, like the h!Stonan's myths,
they ytcld ro the "tyrannies" of causation, chronology, dass, nanonality. Again it IS the strategy ofpomtillisme that he recommcnds to clinunate these illusory constructs and connecoons and to reduce the com
plexJties of h!Stoty to their most elcmentary forms, the melucrabie
rca1ity of individuais.

In the first volume o f Fmnce 1848-1945, Zeldin liberares hilllself from


the t:yranny of rradinonal hJStory only to fali v1ctun to the ryranny of
social history. In the second volume he begms to libcratc himsclf from

128 The New Himlry and the Old

the tyranny of social hisrory by abandoning the convencional social :..


groups and subjects and wanderng more freely from topic to topc.
place to place, time to time. The finshcd canvas, however, rurns out to
bc more impressionisric than pomtillist~. His more recent book., The
French, comes closc:r to the Iatter. If hc does not entirely succeed m ,
creating a "liberanon history" (on ifi{i;odel o f "liberation theology"),
ir may be because there IS a lirrut to what hstory (like thcology) can
tolerare by way of liberation.
Ir is ironc, although not aitogether surprsing, to tind on the Jacket
of Tbe Frenc/1 a blurb describmg the author as "the world's foremosr
authority on frendmess" 25 -ironic because 1t s not only the polincal
category of"France" but also the social category of'~Frenchness" that --
Zeldin now denies. From hs "microscopic', or "post-pluralist" perspecrive, there are no distincnve natmnal characteristics attriburable
ether to France as a whole or to particular groups of Frcnchmen.
There are only inclividuais (one cannot even cal! them inclividuai
Frenchmen), each ofwhom is uruque and unpreclictable. "Inclividuals,
like atoms, are made up of masses of parudes struggling inside them,
and there is more random behaviour and free chmce in them than the
group srereotypes allow ." These mclividuais, who have so little in common wth others of ther own nationaliry or class that any gencralization is of the narure of a "stereotype/ are nevertheless said to have
much in common with mclividuais the world over, at least m the
"westem world. ""6 The book condudes w1th the self-portrait o f a
"French" smger:
Catholic by my mothcr
Moslem by my fathc:r
A little Jc:wish by my son
Buddhist on princ1ple
Alcoholic by my unde
Ncurooc by my grandmother
Qasstess

br long~fdr shame

Depraved by my grandfathc:r

Royalist by my mothcr
Fatalist by my brothcr
Commumst by my father
MatXlst by urutatlon
Athe!St, O thanks to God
Athe!St, O thanks to God. 27

Is Natw11al History Obsokte? 129

Because ali Frenchmen are atypical, thcy can only be described anecdorally and bographically. This is the method now adopted by Zelclin.
his anecdotes and biograph1cal sketches appearing under such chapter
headings as "How to Lave Thcm~" "How to Compete and Ncgonatc
with Them," '1How to Apprectate Their Tastc." Thc faccnous ntlcs
have the effect of mockmg the wha1c enterpnse of generalizatton~ as
well as avoding the usual catcgories offamily, sex, dass, rcgion, occu~
pation, generation. When statistics do appear, they are undocumcmcd
(except for general bibliographical references ar the cnd o f the book),
"), 23 and disbelittled ("these figures, for what they are wonh
counted on the ground.s that averagcs and gencralizanons are mcanmg~
less bccause there are always devtarions from the average and excep~
tions to the gencralization.
The first part of the book, "Why It Is Hard to Mcet an Average
French Person," recalls the feeble gag about the Amencan farnily w1th
2.7 children, the third child iacking a limb and part of h!S face. After
compiling a statistca1 composite that has the average Frenchman
spencling half lus nme alone, buying a newspaper oncc every thrce
days, rraveling by bus once every eleven days and by train once a
month, buying a par of blue Jeans once every two ycars and a plasnc
bag every day, spending one day in hospital every su months and
gomg to court once every four ycars, residing in a town of rwenry
thousand inhab1tants and dymg of heart rrouble ar the age of siXrymne, Zeldin condudes: "In pracricc, of course, the perfectiy avcrage
Frenchman ts a rariry."29 One does not have to be a quanntative historian to protest this parody of the srarisncal method, and one IS
cmbarrasscd to point ou r that thc very idea of an averagc, so far from
asswrung a smgle homogeneous rypc, assumes heterogeneity, with
individuais falling abovc and below thc average in one respcct or an~
other.
Much of the book 1s clirected against exactly tlus presumpnon of
homogene1ry. "The first aim of th1s book," the openmg paragraph
armoWiccs~ "is, to show why people still believe they can sum up the
French ma phrase or an ep1grarn, and whar absurdincs follow." 30 And
the final cbapter rcm.inds us of the futiliry of trvmg ''to dcscribe a
nanon of 54 rnillion, stillless one of 220 million, m a smglc phrasc, ro
aruibute to alltts inhabttants identtcal moral qualines. " 31 Thc idca that
nanonaliry stands or falls on the abiliry to charactenze a nauon m a
single phrase or ep1grarn, or to attribute ident1cal qualines, moral or

Jo

130 The New Hirtury Rlli tile Oi

2>f"

""'"

Is Ni!tmml History Obsoietcl 131

physcal, to 54 million or 220 million people, is as much a caricature of .,.


the concept of nationality as the caricature of the berer-wearing
-~
Frenchman that Zeldin goes to some pains to dispute. Yet even that
'li
beret is more suggestivc than he admts. Until 1923, he teUs us, the
!i
beret was wom only by thc Basques. lt then sudderuy bccamc a Frcnch
1:
fashion. "almost a national unifonn,, so that within rcn years 23 mil----_;_
lion wcre being manufaeturcd, virtually one for evcry Frenchman. 32 In
"fz
the l950s the fashion began to decline, and roday less than a nllion a ~
~
ycar are sold. Onc does no r wanr to makc too much {as Zeldin !umself
does) of the beret as the symbol, stillless the subsrance, of naoonality.
~
But even thiS trivial c:xamplc teUs against him, for in refuring the
~
stereotype, he confirms some gcneralizations that sound suspiciously
.
like srcreotypes: firsr m assgrung the bcret nttially to the Basques, "
then in making it ahnost a "national wliform" for several dccadcs,
finally in regisrering a decline of saies rhar stillleaves it a more impor.--;:tant commodity in France rhan in any orher country .*
Nor is rhe evdence of changc as compeUing an argument agamsr rhc
dca of nanonality as Zcldin supposes. Too many ofhis examples bclie
his thess, for they suggest that some gcneralizations. while no longer
true, were once true, o r as true as gcneralizations (or avcrages) ever
are. If everyrhing else has a lusrory-if dynasnes, regimes, and polincal
it_systems rise and fll, if modes of producnon and consumption, dass
attirudes and relations, soaai mores and cultural values change over rhe
course of time-rhen nationality roo, wluch partakes of ai] rhese and
much elsc, must have a hstory. And changes in rhc character, spirir, or
srrength of nationality do not negare rhc idea and realty of narionality
any more than economic changes negare rhe dea and realty of rhe
economy, or polirical changes the idea and rcalry of rhc poliry, or
sexual and domesnc changes the idea and realiry of sexuality and rhe
family.
Zeldin cannot tive up to htS brave thests, not oruy because he has
- raken as his subject preciscly the enrity he demes, "the French.'' but
because he repeatedly, if UOWittingly, tesrifies to rhe realiry of rhar

entity. Sometimes it lS hs own informants who betray h1m by insisting

Richard Cobb, cxt.Stemialist histonan p.u c..cdlc:ncc, suggcsrs tlm a history of Francc
from 1930 to 1944 could take as 1ts ritle "'L'Age du Bret/' thc: bcrct beconung in thc ycars
uncter thc: Vichy regu-nc: thc: "c:mblc:m of mor.U rcgOlc:r.lnon," thc: '<visib!c: affirm.luon of ta
frnnat."' (Cobb, Frrnd1 and Gr:n1lll11!, G&mlli1:S a.nd Fmuh: A Pmonal J1JittpmatJon of
Frana unda Two Oaup~UwnJ, 1914-191811940-1944 [Hanovcr, N.H., 19811, pp. 174175.)
.

upon their Frenchness. AlbertJacquard, described as a "member ofthc


internacional scientific community" who has "devoted himself to atracking racial prcjudicc," declares C'vchemcntly~" according to Zei-

din): "I feel very French, vcry Parstan. I do nor feel ar homc clscHc and his family spcnt some time at Sranford Universtty,
where he was better paid than at horne, lived more comforrably, did
more intercstrng work, foW1d American sc1cntists far more generous
wirh thcir idcas than hs French colleagues, and judgcd Francc, compared wtth America, ro bc "appallingly competinve and unfricndly."
Yet he and lus fmily "did nothmg but dream ofretummg to F rance,"
and he hirnself d.iscovered that "he needed to bc a Frcnchman. " 33
Here, as throughour the book, Zeldin makes the kind of generaliza
tions that hc would bc quick ro criticJ.Ze in othcrs as cvidcnce of na~

w~.crc."

tional stereotypes.
Hc 1s, of course, not the typ1cal French workcr. 34
In France one must not JUSt cat and drink., but talk aiso. 35
No foretgner should ever mock the Frcnch languagc, first bccausc hc

does not undcrstand ir propcrly, and secondly becausc

lt

has divine

status in Francc. 36

But very few French Jcws have

emigra~ed.

. The unpnnt of French

rulrure~ the attractions of French life are roo great. 37

That is why no life can bc full nnril

Jt

has a small French elemcnt in 1t. 38

Perhaps n Zeldin's next book he will finally be ablc to carry out lus
agenda ,;_,d write a htstory so rhoroughly atonuzed and pcrsonalized
thar it will be rid of all those tyraruues that have rradioonally dorru
nared ir. One can unagme what such a liberared work willlool< likc: a
coUecoon, perhaps, of vignettcs, biographtcal or autobtograp!ucal, m
no particular temporai or spatai arder, largely if not exclustvely conccmcd with pnvate mattcrs. One can unagmc such a work-but it lS
not easy to thmk of it as a work of h.istory. Wharever it might be~ lt
would surely descrve to appear under a new name, liberared nor only
from the old categories and concepts but also from rhe assoctations and
expectattons evoked by the very word "lusrory."
Although few lustonans subscribe to the whoie of Zeldin's agenda,
whtch would dinunate among orher thmgs dass, cause, and chronol

Is Natwm Histury Obsoletel 133

132 The Nr:w Histury aud tbe 0/d

ogy, many sympathze with that.part ofit having to do with nationality. And many more, not prepared to abandon that conccpt entirely,
are inclined to be suspicious o f ir, both because nationality suggests thc ,.
importancc, if not thc primacy, of poltica! history and because ir raises
the even more distasteful specter of natronalism. lt s curious that
lustonans, rathcr than malting the k.nds of dcfininons, discrmunations,
and qualifications that would serve to distingush berween a scnse of
national idennty and an deology ofnationalism, or between a civilized
nationalism and a barbarous one, should adopt the unbistorical srrat
egy o f impcaching thc vcry idea o f nationality, and with It the idca o f
rhe nation as an organzmg principie in the srudy of history.
It was no benighted politicallustonan, but the father of social hisrory, Marc Bloch, who said., during World War II: "I was bom in
France. I have drunk o f the waters o f hcr culrure. I havc made her past
my own. I breathe frcely only in her climate, and I havc dane my best,
with othcrs, to defend hcr interests." 39

The Englishness ofEngland


"The Englishness ofthe English Novel"-nnder that ntic Q. D. LeavJS
shorrly before hcr death sununed up a lifenme of srudy of that genre.
In Its heyday, she wrot"' thc English novel reflected (and also contributed to) the "positive moral lifc" that was the distmctive quality o f the
"English character" and o f "English nanonal life." I f the novel was
currently ma state of decay, t was not only because of the subvcrsive
dfect of "Francophile snobs" and "Bloomsbury crincasters," but, more
important, because the English character and nanonallife had come
nndcr thc nf!uence of new instirutions of popular culrure which could
not sustain that high moral conunittnent.40
Literary critics have been so mtent on disparagmg the literary canon,
the "Great Tradition" that supposed.ly embodied that moral

sensibil~

Ity-mdeed, so deristve of the very idea of a literarure defined by any


moral sensibility-they have paid littie attention to anothcr provocaave fearure of that canon: the assurnption that there ever was such a
thing as an English character or national life. It has rcmaned for the

ncw hisronan to challenge tlus assurnpuon togcther wth. aJl the other
clitrst, moralisuc, consensual assurnptions goveming tradiuonal lus-

tory. And to challcnge it~ moreovcr~ as a relativeiy recent ''historical

i.nnovation," an "invcntcd trad.ition" thar arosc for ideological rcasons


and has been perperuated as an instrument o f '~social engineering. ,.; 1

Were it not for thiS latest fashion in historiography, two largc, lav
ishly illustrated volumes, Tbe Oxford Illu.rtrated Histmy of Bntam and
Tbe Englisb World: History, Cbarnaer, and Peopie, might takc thcir
placc among the more worthy coffee-tablc books of ourrune. 42 As it is,

thcy have a special interest tor the hiStonan. The editors of these
collaboraove volumes, themselves distinguished histortans, are well
aware that the o1d truisms are the new "problematJCS 1 '' that ideas once
so familiar as to rcquirc no argumcnts are now pnme subjecrs for
revisiomst intcrprcranons:B Perhaps on1y cditors so dstmgmshed
could have the couragc to rcsst thc ryranny of thc ncw, to reaffirrn
truisms that happen to be truc in prcfercnce ro theories notabic ch1cfiy
for thc1r novelty. One o f thcsc trwsms is thc idea that rherc 1s such a
t.hmg as a character, sp1rir, or trad.ition that makes o f English fustory
somcthng more than a succession of disparate cvcms (as Zeld.in's
pointillismc would havc it), and somethmg othcr than French history,
o r German history, or any othcr national htstory. 44
The foreword tr The Oxfmd I/lmtrated History opens: "The disrmctiveness, even uniqucncss, of the Bricish as a people has 1ong bccn
taken for granted by foretgn observers and naove commentators
alike." Kenneth Morgan goes on to c1te forcign observers rangmg

from Venetian arnbassadors in the fifteenth century to Volt;ure in the


etghtecnth and Tocqueville m the nineteenth, and nativc commen-

tators as diverse dcologically as Churchill and Orwell45 It IS not easy,


Morgan concedes, to define that distmctlveness, and some o f the older

definitions can no longer be acceptcd nncritiCally. The ide a o f a


seamless web of history-a peacefu!, progressivc connnuiry of parlia-

mentary insnrunons and rnlc oflaw-is as fancfu! as the Goiden Age


attributcd ar one time or anothcr to some earlicr penod. Ir is ali the
more fnciful whcn the subjcct ofthat hlstory xs not EngJand but, as m
this voJwnc, Britain, so that the h1storian is obliged to mcorporatc imo

lus narrauve thc disparate, voiatile, often VIOient iustoncs of Wales,


Scotland, and Ireland.
Morgan, himsdfthe author ofa hisrory ofWales, IS more insistem
than most hstonans on thc category of nBritish" history, and more

sensitive than most to the difficuloes mhercnt m that category. Hc ts

134 The Nw Histgry and the Old

also convmced, howcvcr, that it is the "pressing and fascinating" task


o f the h1storian to try to undcrstand the "essencial reality of the British
experience.""6 "And yet,1' he observes toward the cnd ofhls foreword,

aft.cr rcmarking on some ofthc difficultics ofthis cntcrprisc, 11 a rcading


of these chaptcrs may also Ieave the dear impression that, howevcr
elusiYe u1 defirution, the scnse of Brinshness always survived in the
post-Roman and post-Norman periods.'>47 Beneath the surface of each
period he sees a continuty that bears out Macau!ay's unage of a "pre-

servmg revolution,,., a socal cohesiveness that has withstood the most


drarnatic economic and political changes, and a deeply rooted patriotism that has characterizcd evcn rhe great disscnters-the Levellers,
Defoe, Cobbett, Morris, Tawney, Orwdl-who were profoundly cntICal of thc social and polincal insutuuons o f the1r orne but who shared
"an almost reli graus sensc of the civilizcd essencc of their country and
Its people, the1r hisroty and desuny. '"'
"And yet''-this is the repcated refram of one chaptcr after another
(ofi:cn of one paragraph afi:er another), as each contributor finds in his
particular pcriod the conunwry that underlies change, the consensus
that survives dissent. These are no Wlug historians inspred by some
idcalized VICW of progress, but modcn., h1ghJy profess10nal histonans
addressmg thc1r subjects clispassionardy, nonideologically, and cmergmg wh.h some varant of the same "essenual rcality.J' Even that most
traumatic event of British Iustory, "1066 and All That.,'J provides cvidence of "a much htgher degree of contmuty m econorruc, poliocal,
and social organization than is often supposed. "'19 So it s in each
succeed.ing period. The dcvelopment of rcpresentative nstitutions in
the Middle Ages "has to be set within a framework of underlying
social conunuty."so The political and admirustrauvc mnovations of the
Tudors (thc "Tudor Revoluuon m Govcrnment," as G. R. Elton has
called it) were in fact a "quest for poliucal stability. " 51 Elizabeth's reign
represented a strivng for the "perpetuai preservation of concord,"
while Jarnes I's markcd thc "growth of polincal srability" and the
''lessening of religtous passions."52 The Civil War was a "perioci of
major cxperment ... yet a remarkable arnount was !e fi: untouched. " 53
The English Rcvolution was not much of a poliu cal and social revolution; thc real transformation was n the "intellecrual values", of the age
as exprcssed by Locke.54
And so on to the early cighteenth ccntuty, when Walpole and

Ir Natiom Hirtury Obsoiete? 135


Pelharn contributed to the "stability of the political scene," and the
latter part of the ccntury when Pitt hdped clispel the "specraclc of
political nsrability'' by cnactlng major economic and adnurustrative
reforms in a contcxt of "polincal conservatism.':ss Justas thc c1gh~
teenth-century "p1utocracy'' was crucial to the "social stability" of that
pcrod, so the surv1val of "prc-mdustrJal elites" m the following century providcd a srabilizing element during a orne o f industralizauon. 56
And just as a "tcnacious" relig10n managcd to endurc through thc
scicntific age, so the "axioms of Blackstone and Burke,-cononuity,
the division of powers, thc "intcrpcnetration" of goverruncnt, economy, and socicty-compiemcnted and mitigated the doctrmcs of cJasscal economics.57 Latc~nneteenth-centu.ry Bntain (with the exccpuon
of Irdand} remained a "society of remarkabie arder and balance" m
sp1te of the tcnsions of industrial and social change~ and the cnsts of
the First World War led not, as some expccted, to the "d.issolunon" of
liberal democracy but to thc dissolunon ofthe ''clements of conflicr." 58
In 1945~ ata "rare moment m1ts history,,., Britain appeared ro present
a 1'spectadc of discontinuny and d.isjunct.Ion," bur ''in fact onc phasc of
continwty was to be followed by another."59 Indeed, thc whole of the
rurbulent twcnoeth ccntury, w1th Its rwo wor1d wars, the massivc
depress1on of the tlurues, and thc soCial turmoil of the sevenncs,
changed the "surface" of Britain but not 1ts "underlying geology," so
that today the country remams "an organic, closely-kn..i.t soctety, capabie of sclf-rcnewal," and thc people continue co exhibu "an mnate
tolcrance and gentleness, a respect for individuality and eccentncity, a
rejection of coercion and uniformity"-and~ mos r lmportanr, a "decp
scnse of the!I !usrory., (In film and televiSlon thar scnse of history 1s
rransmuted mto a ('mystique of anc1ent identity.") 60
Thcse clicra, selected from six hundred pages of text and scrung
together m ths fush10n, sound like an unrelieved paean of pra~se such
as even Macaulay nught havc found e.xcessive. In the book Itself each of
these assertions s much qualified. There are, afi:cr all, rwo sides to every
"ycr" equatmn, and all of the contributors scrupulously presem the
evidence of change as well as continwty, of clissent as well as conscnsus. To bc sure, thc:y are able to do so only wtth.m scvere limitatlons of
space, and th1s ttself is a source of unw1tting clistortton. The need to
comprcss a ccnrury or more mro a .'Hngle chaprer nece:ssarily rcsults rn a
foreshortening of the "yct" equation, an overly smplitied v1ew of the

136 The N<W Hirtory atui the 0/d

"essential reality." The very proccss of abridgment and gcneralization


inevitably imposes a pattem on history, a sense of unity and meaning
thar s obscureci, perhaps even belicd, in a more deralled and complicatcd accounr. And yet, a.nd yet-taking all these consderatJons and
qualifications into account, the readcr of this volume, like the editor,
must bc Impressed by the theme that emerges from thc book as a
wholc: the historcal continuiry that bctokens somcthng like a naoonal
identity or character.
Whar is Jess evident !S the nationality to whch that dentiry of
character pertams. The chaprer on the !ater Middle Ages concludes
wth a quoration from the English deiegarion to the Council of Consrance (convened in 1414):
Whether a natlon be understood as a people marked off from others by
blood relationship and habit ofunty, or by peculiartics oflanguage (the
most sure and positi\e sign and essence of a nation in divme and hwnan
law) ... or whether a natlon bc underst~ as 1t shou!d be, as a territory
equal to that o f the French natton, England is a reai nation. 61

The author of tlus chaprer commenrs that the delegares "spoilr therr
poliucal case by adding that Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were part o f
the English nanon. " 62 It s no r ele ar whether h e is rebuking them for
speaking of the "English nanon" rather than the <'Briosh nation," or
,;;hethcr he 1s qucsoorung whether any rubnc could, ar that rime,
comprehend such diverse cnones as Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England-whether, in short., there was the "sense ofBrtishness" that the
editor deduces from ths history, or only a '1sense of Englishness."

The E11glish W orld has no such problem. The operaove word m the
ritle, and throughour mosr of thc book, ts "English," and the sub1ecr is
unarnbiguous: "Thc Englisimess of England," as the mrroductory
chaprer is encitled. Far from making any daims for Britam as a
significant historical unir, the book rejecrs any such idea. The chaprer
on "The Uniry of the Kingdom" has as lts mam theme thc disunry of
thc kmgdom, the parnal mrcgratlon of Scorland and thc dramaoc
failure of unificanon w1th lrcland. Only m the chapters on thc "First
Bntish Emptre, (thc scttlemenrs m the Ncw \-Vodd) and the "Sccond

Bntish Empue" (lndia, Africa, and Ausrralia) does Brirain come mro
tts own; with thc abandonmcnt of those emp1rcs, attcntton reverrs to
England and thc English.

Is Nat:onni Himry Obsoi<tel 137

!f the book is more modest n rhis respccr, 1t is bolder in another.


Prccisely bccause t is uncncurnbcred by thc rest of Britain, it can
pursue more energeocally the idea of a disrmctively "English Worid"
with its own "Hisrory, Characrcr, and Peopfe." The introducuon
opens with Churchill's veiled warning to Ribbenrrop, rhe German
ambassador, on thc cve ofthc--war: "England 1s a cunous counrry and
few fore1gners can Wldersrand her mnd": and lt concludcs with the
hope thar the readcr will gan a better understanding o f "the narure o f
English CJVlizaaon and of irs Impacr upon the resr of thc world.'>63
Those who are suspiCJous of the very idea of an English "mind" will
not be reassured by thc rcfcrence to an English "civilization"-a dis~
tmctivc anel, It may be surnused, supenor cvilizatJon.
Edited by Lord Blake, the author of an 1mporranr btography of
Disraeli and of a h1story of the Conservaovc Parry, and formerly a
Conservaove member o f Parliarnent, the volume rrtight be thoughr ro
refiect the polincal disposoon of the ediror-were 1t nor for the fact
that its contriburors ndude h1storians of quite differem polittcai conVIctlons. Nor ts th1s the celebratory volume its phystcai appearancc
rrught lcad one to suppose. Thc editor~ as well as the contributors, are
roo learned and soplllsncared for thar.
While making much of the mdividualism that he regards as the mosr
endunng and valuable fearure of the EngEsh character, Blake aiso
exposes some of the less endemng, and no less endunng, aspecrs of i:hat
mdividualism. There was, for cxarnple, the peculiar English custam
(commenred upon by the Veneaan ambassador to the courr ofHenry
VII) ofboarding our chldrcn ar the age of seven ore1ghr as servanrs or
apprennces for as long as CJghr years, afrer whJCh they would make
the1t own way w1th the hep of the1r parrons more often than of the1r
parents. The ambassador was assurcd that dus was dane so rhat children would learn better manners than they nughr at home; but he
lumself was convinced that ir was because the parems wouJd be better
servcd by srrange childrcn, and at less cost smce strangers need not be
fed as well as family. The sysrem, Blake remarks, prefigures the boardmg schools of modem nmes-the pracoce, sriil common arnong rrtiddle-dass and upper-class Englsh farnilies, of sending boys of "tcddybear age" away from homc for three-quancrs of thc ycar (and~ until
recenrly, o f releganng little girls to the carc o f nanntes and govemcsscs). It was a system conduc1ve to much aJlXIety and nsecunty. Bur t
was also conductvc, Blake observes, to thc soctal mobility that was so

138 The New Hist<Jty and the 0/d

Is Naticnal History Obsoletel !39

much more prevalent n England than on the Connnent-a mobility


both upward and downward for younger sons sent out into the world
to seek their fortunes. 64
Other comributors cite other manifestations of individualisrn and

the hundred years from 1621 to 1721. Lawrcnce Stone has pointed
out, the English had the repuration of beng "thc most ficklc and
volatile peoplc in the westcrn world." H e cites the comcmporary sayng: "An Englishman by his continued stirringofthe fire shows that he

social mobility: the absence of a castc system or "nobiliry of blood"

never knows when a thing s well.'l66 But tius was thc perod when

(the grandson of a duke might be a plan Mister, and knights are


exduded from the House of Lords), the bestowal of titles fr public
scrvtce, the ntcrmarrage of money and btrth and of mercantile and
landed wealth: Still others find England more distncnve n its response
to change. habirually disposed to preserve the old n thc midst of the
new. "England's green and plcasam land," Richard Muir ponts out,

~-.-~ . - England'' parliarncmary instirutions and tradiuons werc bcng forged.

was never quite destroyed even after the radical transformation

brought about by the Industrial Revolunon. The villages n some parts


of northem England are still ser out n a f.tslon that IIUght date from
the Conquest~ privare houses continue to CXIst, and to be cherished, in
the heart of the metropolis; and the passton for flowers and gardens
defies both urbanizanon and mdustrialization. "Throughout thts
story," Muir remarks, "the landscape historian is confronted by the

rwo key themes of ls calling: connnuity and change." 6s


As m Tbe OxfordiitumatedHistury, thc dual theme of connnwty and
change ts echoed throughout the book. But tt takes on a specal meanmg here because o f the themauc orgamzation o f Tbe Englisb W orld. In
addinon to the contnuity and change that coexist m any onc period,
the book testifies to the contnuity and change that characterze each
aspect oflstory-landscapc history, for cxarnple, as much as polincal,
econornic, social, cultural, or religious hisrory. Moreover, the contnuny and change spill over from one reaim to another. so that a
continuity of onc k.ind may be seen to facilitare or mitigare a changc of
anothcr.

One of the staple qucstions m modem h.tstory ts why it was Engiand


rather than any other country that had thc distnction of bemg the
'ttirst mdustral nation." Thc answcr is to be found not only m the

usual facts adduccd by the econornic h.tstonan-the availability of capttal, technological innovanons, natural resources, thc growth of population-but also in England's umque polity, society, culrurc, and reli-

By 1721 or thercabouts tt had entercd the petiod of "polirical stability"


so well described by J. H. PlumbP Its Parliarnent, likc its economy,
was peculiarly accommodating and adaptablc, capabic of embracmg
the ncw without abandoning the old-of democratizmg thc House of
Commons, for exarnple, while rctanmg thc House ofLords, and evenrually "meritocracizmg'' the House ofLords, ar Jcast m parr (always m
parr), by crearmg lifc pcerages in place of hereditary orles.
The conjunction of contnwty and change explams thc ability of the
English to tolerare, indeed thrive on~ contrad.ictions and anomalies.
Blake's characterzation ofthc English tradition as 11 libertarian ndividualism" srrikes a wrong note precisely because it is toe ngorous, too
consistent; 68 one wants a formula rhat will combine mdividualism and

tradiuon,libcrty and commumty. Asa Briggs quotes Tocquevillc's puzzlemcnt over one o f thc many contradictiJns tn the English charactcr:

"I cannot completely understand how the spirit of assoctation and the
sprrt of <xcluson carne to bc so highly dcvclc.ped m the sarne peoplc,
and often to be so inttmately combined." Tocqueville,s examples were
clubs that were cohesive for thcir members and cxdusive rn rclation to

nonmembers, and familics that "divide up when thc birds are able to
!cave the nest." Indeed, he took that amalgam of assoaanon and dissoctaton to be the essenual fearure of England's polity as well as
soaety.69 Brggs finds a strnilar penchant for comranness m the enthusiasm for and reststance to technologtcal change, n the amb1valence
toward moneymaking even ar the hetght of the Indusrrial RcvoJunon
, and arnong the mos r cnterpnsing mdustrialists, m the connnued
pronunence of the aristocracy and gentty well mto the nineteenth
century, in an 'open society" that 1s acutdy class~conscious, n an es-

tablished church that ts tolerant and latirudinartan. And so too thosc

gton. Pc:rhaps the most s1gnificant fact about the first mdusmal narion

other disparate, even contradictory, qualities assoctatcd wtth England:


mdividuality and dcfc:rencc, ecccntncity and confomuty, seculansm

ts that tt was also the oldest parliarnenrary nauon, thus providing the
polincal stability and harmony esscnaal to econoiiUc progrcss. Durmg

and evangelicalism, idealism and materialism.


To be sure, one can make too much of the nattonal gemus for

140 The New Histoty arul the 0/d

compromsc and complicarion that makcs it possiblc to assimilare so


much divcrsity, and to doso n a sprit ofmoderanon and civility. In .
1955 Geoffrey Gorer paid tribute to the English people as "among
the most pcaccful, gentlc, courteous and ordcrly populations that thc
cxvilized world has evcr secn": he was espectally 1mpressed. by the . -_
-.
70
football crowds that werc "as ordcrly as church meeongs." In v1cw of .
recent events tls would appear to be a singuiarly unforrunatc cxampic.
Today "football hooliganism, is a subject of acute dismay for ~porrs
71
fns and o f scholarly intercst for sociologists and social psychologists.
Yet by and large, and compared wtb other peoplcs, the generalizanon
has some merit. Briggs reminds us of the rots of 1736, 1768, and
1780, wluch gave London the reputation at the time of being more
turbulent than Paris. 72 That repurarion, howevcr, hardly surv1ved the
French Revolurion of 1789-or 1830, or 1848, or 1870. Even by
nonrevolutionary stanards, riots in England were not ali that riorous,
as another histortan has observed: "A nation which commemorates
10th May, 1768, whcn about half a dozcn notcrs were killed, as thc
'massacre' of St. George's Fields, 15th August, 1819, when eleven
people were killed, as the 'massacre' ofPeredoo. and 13th November~
1887, when no one was killed, as 'Bloody Sunday/ measures lt;:. public
violence by hgh standards."73

The English W 11rld has provoked the sharpest, most sustained attack on
the "ryranny" o f nanonal hisrory .74 As it happcns, that critique (in the
Times Literary Sttpplement} was followcd by a much shortcr re\>Jcw of
Arthur Bryant's Spirit of Engltmd. Tlus book was curtly dism1sscd:
"Th1s 1s patriotic history, not objectivc history." Patriotic history, thc
revewer went on to say, is f ar less common n England than, for
example, In RusSia or Argentina; indced, Bryant IS "almost Its only
exponent m England. " 75 One IS tempted to add that if sueh iustory IS
less conunon m England, tt is in part because the d.istrusr of patrloosm
IS more common. And tt is tlus discrusr that contributes to the arumus
against national hiStory. National iusrory has bccn idcntified w1th patriotic, or nationalist. history, just as the idea of nanonality has becn
identified w1th the ideology of nanonalism.
Lord Acton unplicitly distmgwshcd bctwcen nattonality apd nanon~
alism when he differentiated the tv/O ideas of nattonaliry: thc old idea
wluch regarded nationality as "an essenoal, but not a supreme dement

Is National Histary Obsoietci 141


in determmng the forms of the state," and the modem idea wh1ch
makcs it supreme, almost identical with the state-thc first bemg a
warrant for liberty, the second an invtation to tyranny76 Ir is nationalIty In thc sccond scnsc that hc hopcd would be rcndcrcd obsolcrc by
the progress of civilization. HThc process of civilization depcnds on
transcending Naoonality , .. lnllucnccs wh1ch are accidcntal y1eld to
those which are rational."77 Whatevcr the fate of naoonality, Acton
had no doubt of the reality ofi'natonai character''~ "Nobody doubts it
who knows schools or armies. 1178
Since Acton1S time wc have wuncssed the most debascd and brutal
exhibitions of nationalism, so that now it requires a specia1 exerCise o f
precsion and'prudence to distmguish between a natural, proper, lcgmmate sense of nationality and a pathologtcal, tyranmcal, evcn murdcrous nationalism. Dunng the Second World War, George Orwell was
movcd to reassert thc simple truth that mtellecruaJs, above all progressive-minded intellectuais, had managed to forgct or deny: ''Yes, thcre tS
somethmg distincnve and recogmzable m English civilizanon." Only
m England, he added, were mtdlccruals "ashamed of their own
nauonality. " 79
Therc ts anothcr truth that rhe war has taught us: thc precariousness
of the kind of civilization rcpresenred by England and its unpotence
whcn confrontcd with the most vtrulcnt form of nauonalism. F ar from
''transcending" nationality, as Acton thought., civilization more often
reflccts it. Whatever other circurnstances affecr the lcvd of ctvilizauon
of a people-Its geography, rechnology, econom1cs, religmn, polincs-something rem= that IS not accounted for, some qualiry that IS
not redudble to anythmg clsc, some fcature that, on the avcragc and
over the long run, distinguishes one people from another. For want o f
a better word, that quality may bc identified as "nanonaliry."
Naoonaliry m rlus sense IS a iustoncal fact; nationalism, a polincal
ideology. It may be.. as Elie Kedourie has said, that "nanonalism 1s a
doctrme inventcd in Europc at thc beginnng of the nneteenth cenrury.J'80 But thc nauon-state and the sensc of nauonality antedated that
doctnnc by several centunes. Onc does not have to subscribc: to the
doctrinc of nationalism in its usual forms-national sclf-determinauon~ or national asseruvcncss, or national aggrand.izemcnt-to acccpt
the fact of the nation as a histoncal entity (in thosc umes and places
where It was such an ennry), and the facr of nationaliry as the sense

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;~.~'

tonalism (and like the nation itself), has a hlstoty, changing ovcr the ::c;;,
course of time and vatyng from place to place, even taking different
furms at the same tune and place-providing thc impulsc, for cxamplc,
behind Little Englandism as well as impcrallsm, behnd Iiberalism as - _;:;:
well as conservatism.
It was John Stuart Jvlill, England's foremost philosopher of liberalism and mdividualism, who nsisted on the unportancc of nationality
and thus of national histoty:
A portion o f mankind ma y be said to construte a Nationality i f they are
umted among themsdves by common sympathies which do nor exist
between them and any others-which make them co"{}perate with each

other more wiUingly than with other peopl~ desire to be under thc same
governmcnt, and desire that lt shou!d be governmc:nt by thc:mselves ar a
portion of themsclves exdusively. This feeling of natonality may have
becn gcneratcd by various causes. Sometl.mes ir is the etfect of idennty o f

race and descent. Community of language, and commwty of religion,


greatly contribure to it. Geographicallimits are one ofits causes. But the
strongest of al1 is idenoty of politcal amecedents: the posscssion of a
national hrstory, and consequc:nt community of rccollcctions~ collcccive
pride and humiliation, plcasure and regret, connccted with the samc
ncidenrs in the past.81

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