Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:19:51.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lord Acton and the plan of the Cambridge Modern History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Josef L. Altholz
Josef L. Altholz
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Centenary Essay
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 723 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The future editor of the New Cambridge Modem History acknowledged this with some ambiguity, calling it ‘a monument of a stage in English historical studies which may now be regarded not unfairly as a past stage’. Clark, G. N., ‘The origin of the Cambridge Modem History’, Cambridge Historical Journal, VIII, 2 (1945), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Emphasizing its importance for the teaching of history, he later said: ‘it was the most influential survey in the English language of the history of the five previous centuries as they appeared to the scholars of that time.’ ‘General Introduction’, New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, 1964), I, xviiGoogle Scholar. For his statement of the similarities and differences of the two histories, see ibid, xxxiii–xxxvi.

2 The phrase is that of an American, Andrew Dickson White, on the title page of his copy of Acton's Selected correspondence (1917). White also used the phrase in his Autobiography, 2 vols. (New York, 1905), II, 412.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Clark, , ‘The origin’, p. 50.Google Scholar

4 The story is told in ibid. pp. 57–64, and in Owen, Chadwick, Professor Lord Acton: the regius chair of modem history at Cambridge, 1895–1902 (Grand Rapids, 1995), pp. 26–30Google Scholar. The Press published a pamphlet, The Cambridge Modern History, an account of its origin, authorship, and production (Cambridge, 1907).Google Scholar

5 This was especially true in the United States. It gave rise to the ‘survey’ course in modern European history, itself defined by the standard textbook of Carleton Hayes (1915 ff.). Graduate education was largely shaped by William L. Langer's ‘Rise of Modern Europe’ series of volumes, begun in the 1930s. But perhaps Americans (who have no ancient or medieval history of their own) have a natural affinity for the ancient/medieval/modern division. The American Historical Review, founded in 1895, used that division in its book reviews from the first. I was reminded of this (and of much else) by the centennial issue of June 1995, especially pp. 856–7.

6 Arnold, Toynbee, A study of history, 2nd edn (London, 1935), I, 46–47.Google Scholar

7 The phrase was one of those incorporated in the preface to the first volume of the Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, 1902), p. vi.Google Scholar

8 What it would have been (a work of lesser scope than Toynbee imagined) is indicated in George, Watson, Lord Acton's History of liberty (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar. The personal reasons why it was abandoned were first made known by Gertrude, Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: a study in conscience and politics (Chicago, 1952), pp. 144–55.Google Scholar

9 Chadwick, , Professor Lord Acton, p. 27.Google Scholar

10 A facsimile edition was published by Cambridge University Press as Longitude 30 west (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar. It is included in Rufus Fears, J., ed., Selected writings of Lord Acton (Indianapolis, 1985), III, 675–86Google Scholar. Passages were included in Acton's letter to the contributors, dated ‘March 12, 1898,’ printed as an appendix to his Lectures on modern history, ed. Figgis, J. N. and Laurence, R. V. (London, 1906), pp. 316–18.Google Scholar

11 Georg, Weber, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte (originally published Leipzig, 1857), 2nd edn rev., 15 vols. (Leipzig, 1882–1889)Google Scholar. Ernest, Lavisse and Rambaud, Alfred Nicolas, Histoire générale du IVe siècle à nos jours, 12 vols. (Paris, 1893–1902).Google Scholar

12 Acton renounced anonymity, which had been the practice of periodicals (including his own) earlier in the century. The learned journals of the late period were all signed, a practice Acton utilized to give authority and credibility to his writers. Later in the letter, however, he acknowledged that new interpretations would test this credibility. His solution was the bibliographies, which would indicate the sources on which the chapters were based. The New Cambridge Modern History did not find this necessary.

13 A list of 120 authors whom Acton wished to approach was supplied in an appendix (not printed); about half are named in the letter. Acton wanted ‘English, American, and Colonial pens’, but he thought that ‘foreigners’ would be needed for certain topics. He expected that half of his names would have to be substituted for, and that half of those eventually invited would agree to write.

14 The letter will be analysed in the order of these five elements, rather than in the order in which it was written. As written, the structure is not readily evident, and I have found it necessary to disregard its order. Page citations within the letter are therefore omitted. The lack of organization may be due to the letter having been written without previous drafting and over a period of several days, a practice sometimes followed by Acton. This hypothesis is supported by the imprecise dating, ‘October 1896’.

15 Acton may also have been influenced by the generally unfavorable response to the ‘display’ of knowledge and references to writers in his inaugural lecture of 1895.

16 A lecture on the study of history (London, 1895)Google Scholar; reprinted in Lectures on modern history, pp. 1–28, 319–42 (footnotes).

17 A third feature in the inaugural lecture, as in the plan, was impartiality; but the treatment of this in the two documents is so different as to require that this be discussed separately and specially.

18 For Acton's knowledge of the ‘treasures of Galileo's tower’, see Owen, Chadwick, Catholicism and history: The opening of the Vatican archives (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

19 This was another passage directly incorporated into the preface to the Cambridge Modern History, I, V. The editors' reference to ‘the policy of concealment’ is also Actonian: ‘the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth’. This is from Acton's letter to the contributors to the Cambridge Modern History in 1898.

20 Lectures on modern history, I, 4.

21 In planning 240 chapters, Acton projected England (he never said ‘Britain’) for 40, France for 30 plus the volumes on the French Revolution and Napoleon, Germany for 35, America for a volume of its own. The role of America (and Americans) in Acton's plan is remarkable.

22 Lectures on modern history, p. 11.

23 Ibid. p. 12. The philosopher was Leibnitz.

24 John, Nurser, The reign of conscience: individual, church, and state in Lord Acton's history of liberty (New York, 1980), especially pp. 206–207 n. 40Google Scholar. This was originally a 1956 Cambridge dissertation. Nurser is the most successful explorer of the mass of Acton's notes for which his master Herbert Butterfield had such high expectations.

25 See Stephen, Tonsor, Quest for liberty: America in Acton's thought [The Acton Institute, occasional paper no. 1] (Grand Rapids, 1993).Google Scholar

26 Lectures on modern history, p. 32.

27 Cambridge Modern History, I, 2.

28 Review of Robert, Flint, Historical Philosophy in France, English Historical Review, X, 1 (01 1895), 108–3Google Scholar. Flint (1838–1910), professor of divinity at Edinburgh, wrote several books on the philosophy of history, including a significant study of Vico. (I am indebted to my colleague John Thayer for information on this subject.)

29 The bishop of Oxford was William Stubbs. The others represent different faiths or countries.

30 Lectures on modern history, p. 316.

31 Although Acton invariably said ‘men’, this was not to the exclusion of women, any more than his usage of‘England’ for Britain excluded Scots. Lady Blennerhassett wrote two chapters that Acton himself might have written (and wrote them much as Acton himself would have written). There were two other female contributors.

32 Lectures on modem history, p. 17.

33 Ibid. p. 18.

34 Ibid. p. 24. See the critique of this, upholding ‘imparitiality,’ in Lea's, H. C. review, American Historical Review, I (04 1896) II, 3517–18Google Scholar. Perhaps Acton's 1896 plan was influenced by Lea, whom he chose as a contributor to the Cambridge Modern History.

35 Acton, Essays on freedom and power, ed. Gertrude, Himmelfarb (New York, 1955), pp. 335–335Google Scholar. Acton was concerned only with public morality. Private morality (‘vice’ and ordinary crimes) did not concern him as an historian, though personally he was prudish. ‘Liberals think Persecution a crime of a worse order than adultery.’ ‘ In public life, the domain of History, vice is less than crime.’ Ibid. pp. 334, 340.

36 Ibid. pp. 342, 244. On this subject, see Owen, Chadwick, ‘Acton and Butterfield’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XXXVIII, 3 (07 1987), 386.Google Scholar

37 Himmelfarb, , Lord Acton, p. 153.Google Scholar

38 Acton subsumed economic history under the general history of periods and nations and political economy under the history of thought, and he projected a penultimate chapter on ‘socialism and economic conditions.’ He did not think of treating social history systematically.

39 Leslie Stephen is commonly credited with beginning intellectual history in England; but he acknowledged drawing his inspiration from Mark Pattison in Essays and Reviews (1860). At the same time as Pattison, Acton was writing intellectual history in articles in the Rambler, later the Home and Foreign Review.

40 The editors explicitly refused a plea ‘for a separate account of the development of the pictorial, plastic, and decorative art of the Renaissance’ in the first volume, saying that it ‘would have inevitably entailed a history of artistic progress during later periods,’ which ‘considerations of space’ forbade. Cambridge Modern History, I, vii.

41 New Cambridge Modern History, I, xvii.

42 Ibid. I, xxxiii. Clark misread ‘chart and compass’ as prescriptive.

43 Young, G. M., Victorian England: portrait of an age (London, 1936), p. 187.Google Scholar

44 New Cambridge Modern History, I, xxxiv.

45 Ibid. I, xxxvi.

46 Ibid. I, xxxiv.

47 This essay is concerned only with Acton's plan, not with its realization, which would require another study. We must, however, note the substantial faithfulness to that plan of Acton's successors as editors (A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero and Stanley Leathes). One set of changes was unavoidable: the failure of certain authors (Acton and Flint most obviously) meant the failure of their chapters as originally conceived. Acton also did not allow for deaths.

48 Cambridge Modem History, I, vii.