The current stress of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party on the necessity of “seeking truth from facts” and the accompanying more liberal attitude to research have led to a re-vitalisation, as in other areas, of the study of party history. The portrayal of Mao Zedong in a more fallible light and the ending of the overemphasis on his role in the Chinese Revolution have led to the study, or re-study, of aspects of Chinese communist history in which Mao was not directly, or only marginally, involved, and to evaluations, or re-evaluations, of the contribution of other communist leaders. The contemporary view that the concept of “two-line struggle” has been overstressed in past historiography, particularly during the Cultural Revolution decade, has also helped historians in China to provide a more “objective” account of the role of other key figures. Differences of opinion no longer have to be castigated as outright opposition nor do later “failings” by individuals necessarily lead to a search by historians to expose a “counter-revolutionary” past throughout.

Die Gemütsverfassung derer, die am Abend des 4. August 1914 – nach jener denkwürdigen Sitzung des Deutschen Reichstags, in der die sozialdemokratische Fraktion geschlossen für die Kriegskredite stimmte – in der Wohnung Rosa Luxemburgs zusammenkamen, könne man sich denken. Aber während etwa Karl Liebknechts folgende Kämpfe gegen die Parteiinstanzen in einem „nach dem Krieg erschienenen Briefwechsel” dokumentarisch festgelegt seien, unterrichte uns über Rosa Luxemburgs Leben in der ersten bitteren Zeit nach jenem 4. August „kein Brief, kein einziges Dokument” schrieb etwa zwei Jahrzehnte später Henriette Roland Holst in ihrer Biographie der toten Freundin. Daß solch ein Brief von Rosa Luxemburg sich ausgerechnet in dem Nachlaß ihres Landsmanns Troelstra finden könnte, jenes langjährigen Führers der holländischen Sozialdemokratie, den sie, selbst auf dem radikalen Flügel der holländischen Arbeiterbewegung stehend, fortgesetzt befehdet hatte, dürfte ihr kaum in den Sinn gekommen sein.

There are three good reasons at the present time to try to arrive at an historical model to explain the development of anti-Jewish stereotyping and prejudice, and in this way, provided it is worked out at a sufficiently high level of abstraction, at an historical model of racism.

The first reason is that both the Netherlands and its neighbours are increasingly faced with racism and that for a good line of action it is necessary to collect all kinds of knowledge. Moreover, it is desirable that historians prove willing to co-operate by making their particular contribution to this collection of knowledge. The second reason is that in contemporary thinking about history a tendency seems to have made itself felt that considers the narrative element of history as the only true activity of the historian, so that a hypothetical-deductive, one might say Popperian, approach to the past seems to be wrong. Although I do not want to enter into a methodological discussion, which I am glad to leave to my friend P. H. H. Vries, who has very capably formulated a point of view that I subscribe to, my intention is to show the usefulness of an abstract, partially mathematical, model in this article. By the way, in the framework of an article it is impossible to present an extensive test of the predictions of the model by means of source material. It can only be hinted at. This article is not non-narrative because I want it to be non-narrative, but because of lack of space. A full exposition would need a book. I shall only present in summary what I hope is the logical argument that lies at the basis of the model.

Recently there has been great interest in the re-organization of work and its effects on labor relations during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, particularly in the metal-working and machine industries. Studies of this issue have generally been framed in terms of technological advances in the steel industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, the exigencies of the market during and after the Great Depression of the late nineteenth century, and the efforts of skilled labor to defend its position on the shopfloor. In France and elsewhere the importance of national and international arms sales before 1914 made the armaments industry one of the main arenas of these developments. Until mid-century the defense industry and the business of defense had been under state control in France. Largely for economic reasons, however, the Third Republic turned over increasing amounts of defense contracting, especially in shipbuilding, to private industry. The Etablissements Schneider at Le Creusot, the Compagnie des Aciéries de la Marine at Saint-Chamond and other large private firms established themselves as profitable arms manufacturers. National and foreign government contracts for weaponry encouraged these companies to make large capital investments, to rationalize work to permit greater managerial control, and to develop authoritarian paternalist systems of labor management.

There is a real need to integrate local and national approaches to the study of Chartism. The inadequacies of the pioneering studies of the national movement certainly revealed the need to return to the local roots of the movement. However, the pattern of local studies largely established by the important volume of Chartist Studies edited by Asa Briggs has had some unfortunate consequences. The attempt to provide a comprehensive account of Chartism in a given locality, and cover the entire period from 1838 to 1848, has often precluded extended examination of key issues. Such matters as the relationship between Chartism and other forms of popular protest, Chartist ideology and tactics, the relationship between the Chartists and the middle class, and the whole cultural and organisational dimension of Chartism have only recently begun to receive detailed analysis. There has been a marked tendency for one of the most remarkable aspects of Chartism, the extent to which diverse localities were united in a national movement, to be obscured. Indeed it is evident that many historians returned to the local roots of Chartism without adequate assessments of Chartist ideology, tactics, national organisation and national leadership. Some important recent work has done much to enhance our understanding of such matters. A more meaningful assessment of how events in the localities interacted with the national movement is now possible.

Obwohl die Studie von Alphons Silbermann im Hinblick auf ihre Methode kritisiert wurde, läßt sich als eines ihrer Ergebnisse festhalten, daß die Abwesenheit einer rechtlichen und sozialen Diskriminierung der jüdischen Bevölkerung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland durchaus noch kein Verschwinden negativer Vorurteile gegen Juden und Judentum bedeutet. Silbermanns Erhebungen deuten auf einen beträchtlichen,, latenten Antisemitismus” hin, nämlich das Fortleben einschlägiger Stereotypen, Fehlinformationen, biologischer Klischees. Ähnliches hat eine Analyse von Meinungsfragen für Österreich ergeben.

In den Kreisen Paderborn, Büren, Warburg und Höxter des Regierungsbezirkes Minden der preußischen Provinz Westfalen wurde den Juden im Jahre 1836 durch eine Kabinettsordre Friedrich Wilhelms III. der Erwerb bäuerlicher Grundstücke verboten. Diese Kabinettsordre vom 20. September 1836 mit dem Titel: „Wegen Beseitigung der aus der Ansiedlung der Juden auf dem platten Lande und deren Verkehr mit den Landbewohnern bäuerlichen Standes entsprungenen Mißverhältnisse” bestimmte:

1. Die Juden dürfen in den genannten vier Kreisen bäuerliche Grundstücke nur dann erwerben, wenn sie dieselben selbst mit jüdischem Gesinde bewirtschaften.

2. Schuldverträge zwischen Bauern und Juden können von diesen nur dann gerichtlich eingeklagt werden, wenn sie vor einem Richter am Wohnort des Schuldners aufgenommen worden sind. Die Aufnahme in das Schuldregister ist bei Verdacht von Wucher zu versagen.

Seit der großen Wanderungsbewegung im späten Mittelalter konzentrierte sich die Masse der aschkenasischen Juden auf dem Gebiet der alten polnischen Republik. Mit den Teilungen gelangten sie unter die Herrschaft dreier verschiedener Mächte, die weitaus meisten unter die Rußlands, das 1815 gemäß den Beschlüssen des Wiener Kongresses aus Teilen der annektierten Gebiete ein autonomes Königreich Polen (fortan kurz: Königreich) schuf. Für das gesamte russische Reich wurde das Niederlassungsrecht der Juden auf den sog. Ansiedlungsrayon beschränkt, der im wesentlichen die ehemals polnischen Gebiete, einschließlich des Köningreichs, umfaßte. 1865 lebten im Königreich über 700000 Anhänger des judaischen Glaubens; bis 1885 war diese Zahl auf beinah 1, 1 Millionen gestiegen, wobei nach den offiziellen Angaben das Tempo des Wachstums der jüdischen das des Wachstums der christlichen Bevölkerung übertraf. U.a. war das auf den Zustrom aus den östlichen Teilen des Ansiedlungsrayons ins Königreich, wo den Juden 1862 die formale Gleichberechtigung gewährt worden war, zurückzuführen. Seit den achziger Jahren nahm der Zustrom durch die neuerliche Einengung des Ansiedlungsrayons noch zu.

The anti-Semitism of the mid-nineteenth-century French socialists has often been cited. Charles Fourier saw the Jews as the incarnation of commerce: parasitical, deceitful, traitorous and unproductive. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon attacked the Jews even more violently, declaring the Jew the incarnation of finance capitalism and “by temperament an anti-producer”. The Fourierist Alphonse Toussenel argued in Les Juifs rois de l'époque that finance, that is to say, Jews, were dominating and ruining France, while Auguste Blanqui sprinkled his correspondence with remarks about Jewish usury and “Shylocks”, and in a general anticlerical critique blamed the Jews for having given birth to Catholicism, an even greater evil than Judaism. In the late 1860's Gustave Tridon, who was a close follower of Blanqui, wrote a book entitled Du Molochisme juif, in which he also attacked the Jews on anti-religious as well as racial grounds, in addition to using the usual economic terms of disparagement.

Karl Kautsky's views on the Jewish question are of great import precisely because they are Kautsky's. In the years following Engels' death, Kautsky was the leading orthodox Marxist theoretician, executor of Marx's literary estate, editor of Die Neue Zeit, and a prolific author of popular Marxist tracts. It was Kautsky who drafted the theoretical part of the Erfurt Program of 1891, and Kautsky who wrote the classic rebuttal to Bernstein. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that an entire generation of socialists around the world were taught Marx through Kautsky. There is a sense in which Kautsky's views on the Jewish question were even more influential than were his views on other matters. For Kautsky was perceived as an authority on the Jewish question even by many Marxists who were, or eventually became, sharply critical of his views on other questions.

Der moderne Antisemitismus beginnt nach einer Konvention der Historiker im Deutschen Kaiserreich um die Mitte der siebziger Jahre des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Als Anhaltspunkt für diese Datierung dient u.a. eine Serie von Artikeln in der deutschen Familienzeitschrift Die Gartenlaube: ihr Autor, Otto Glagau, beschuldigte die Juden, durch unehrliche Spekulationen den Sturz der Aktienpreise von 1873, der für ihn ein Börsenschwindel war, herbeigeführt zu haben.