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The Idea of Conquest and Race-Thinking during the Restoration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

M. Seliger
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Extract

Racialism maintains that the hereditary character of physiological and psychological traits of groups of persons explains and consequently determines the historical and cultural fate of these groups. Nature predominates over nurture, whether nature is conceived in terms of biology or human spirit or in terms of both. The inherited characteristics of body and soul defy human manipulation to the extent that if you counteract the laws of racial uniqueness, the deterioration of group capacities will be inevitable. The effects of breaking the laws of racial causality attest to their validity; so do the results of the intentional effort to keep the race pure or improve it by opposite cross-breeding.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 1960 , pp. 544 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1960

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References

1 It has generally been accepted by scholars that Plato and Aristotle viewed politics under the aspect of the heredity of group characteristics. As regards the importance of the eugenic element, especially in Plato's philosophy, views are divided. The incentive for renewed controversy has been provided by Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, 1950)Google Scholar who convincingly argues that the two masters were fully fledged racialists. This is denied by Wild, J., Plato's Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar.

2 On this relationship in connection with racialism see Voegelin, E., “The Growth of the Race Idea,” Review of Politics (07, 1940), 284 fGoogle Scholar. and his Rasse und Staat (Tübingen, 1933)Google Scholar and Arendt, H., “Race-Thinking before Racism,” Review of Politics (01, 1944), 38 fGoogle Scholar. and The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951), p. 159Google Scholar.

3 Modern biological and genetic research not only rejects the possibility of inferring from corporal structure unto spiritual traits but questions also the traditional dichotomy between nature and nurture. To quote: “human ‘nature,’ or any biological ‘nature’ is quite powerless except when it interacts with some environment … the outcome of the interaction always depends upon both interacting variables.” (Dobshansky, Th., “The Biological Concept of Heredity as Applied to Man,” The Nature and Transmission of the Genetic and Cultural Characteristics of Human Populations, Papers presented at the 1956 Annual Conference of the Milbank Memorial Fund (New York, 1957), p. 12Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Barzun, J., Race, A Study in Modern Superstition (New York, 1938), pp. 112 fGoogle Scholar.

5 Hume, , Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, 2 vols. (1752)Google Scholar, Essay XII, “Of the Original Contract.”

6 On these writers see Thierry, A., Considération sur l'histoire de France (1840)Google Scholar; Simar, T., Etude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races (Bruxelles, 1922)Google Scholar; E. Carcassone, Montesquieu et le problème de la constitution française (n.d.); Barzun, op. cit.; and the same author's, The French Race (New York, 1932)Google Scholar. — The place of publication of all French works is Paris unless another is given in the text.

7 Barzun, , French Race, p. 250Google Scholar. I do not take exception to the contents of the views presented by Barzun, Simar, and other scholars but to their references to these views as race theories.

8 For the racialists see Schemann, L., Die Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften, 3 vols. (München, 1928–1931), I, 54Google Scholar; III, 19, 289, 305. It should be noted that the trust which scholars put in Schemann's renderings of the views of previous writers is unjustified considering his venomous opus major which admittedly serves the purpose of bringing home the melodramatic alternative: “Die Germanen oder die Nacht” (Ibid., I, 471). For the opponents of racialism see Simar, Th., op. cit., p. 76Google Scholar, who refers to Guizot in order to show how seriously French historians had been infected by the virus of German romanticism. This questionable proposition did not prevent Simar from stating that what passed as a race theory had been to the time of Gobineau nothing but a class theory (Ibid., 78). See also Arendt, , Review of Politics (01, 1944), 45, 47Google Scholar.

9 Thierry, Amédée, Histoire des Gaulois depuis les temps les plus réculés, 3 vols. (1844/5; 1st ed. 1828)Google Scholar. See my “Race-Thinking during the Restoration,” Journal of the History of Ideas (April, 1958), 273–282. There I have also commented on the racialist motives in Augustin Thierry's conception. In the present essay my concern in Augustin Thierry's writings and in those of other Restoration historians.

10 Thierry, A., Dix ans d'études historiques, 2 vols. (1834), II, 235–236Google Scholar and 216 respectively. In many instances I have been able to locate the first edition only at a later stage of my research. Where I have not used the first edition from the outset, the year of the edition used as well as that of the first edition are indicated. The views of the writers referred to are, therefore, those held during the Restoration. In the text I have used my own translations of the source material. As to Thierry's Dix Ans, I had to use Volume I of the 1857 edition of his complete works and Volume II of the 1846 edition.

11 As far as I know, only Monod, G., La vie et la pensée de Jules Michelet, 2 vols, (1923), I, 194Google Scholar, has clearly envisaged the question of the causal primacy of either conquest or race. He has, however, not cared to offer any proof for his cogent view that with Thierry, conquest and not “fatalitiés ethniques” was decisive. In his review of Thierry's Lettres sur l'histoire de France of the same year, Daunou, , Journal des Savans (1827), 716 f.Google Scholar, dealt with conquest as the primary cause in Thierry's interpretation. Racial causality is hardly meant when Daunou speaks of the importance attached by Thierry to the diversity of peoples’ idioms, habits, and interests. In Maguin, C., “Historians de la France: Augustin Thierry,” Revue des Deux Mondes (1841), 352 f.Google Scholar, the dichotomy in the interpretation of Thierry's views becomes apparent as conquest, and “la distinction des races” is likewise referred to. The same applies to the following works: Renan, E., Essais de morales et de critiques (1859), p. 119Google Scholar; Vacherot, E., “La science et la conscience,” Revue des Deux Mondes (1869), p. 206Google Scholar; Desjardins, A., Augustin Thierry (1863)Google Scholar; Vogel, J., Augustin Thierry (Blois, 1875), p. 267Google Scholar; Valentin, F., Augustin Thierry (1895), pp. 63, 95 f.Google Scholar; Gooch, G. P., History and Historians in the 19th Century (2nd ed., London, 1913), p. 171Google Scholar; Halphen, L., L'histoire de France depuis cent ans (1914), p. 24Google Scholar; Fueter, E., Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (3rd ed., Muenchen-Berlin, 1936), p. 450Google Scholar, and Thompson, J. W., A History of Historical Writings, 2 vols. (New York, 1942), II, 231, 368Google Scholar. Thierry, A. A., Augustin Thierry d'aprés so correspondance et ses papiers de famille (1922), pp. 50, 53, 75Google Scholar and passim continued the habit of referring indiscriminately to conquest and race. The same applies to Carroll, K. J., Some Aspects of the Historical Thought of Augustin Thierry (Washington, 1951), pp. 37 fGoogle Scholar. In Brunetiére's, centenary speech, Revue des Deux Mondes (1895), 474 f.Google Scholar, Thierry's sympathy for the conquered is said to have deterred him from believing “légèrement à la supériorité des vainqueurs” as if Thierry had ever tended to do so. Jubainville, D'Arbois de, Deux manières d'écrire l'histoire (1896), pp. 8, 95, 103, 107, 112 f.Google Scholar, dealt with the inadequacy of Thierry's theory of conquest and praised Fustel de Coulanges for having exploded the myth of race distinction (156 f.). What exactly he considers to be the relation between conquest and race in Thierry's interpretation, we do not learn. Julian, C., “Augustin Thierry et le mouvement historique sous la Restauration,” Revue de Synthèse Historique (1906), 137–8Google Scholar, referred to “la terrible théorie” of race distinctions, but obviously meant class distinction related to conquest. Similarly in his “L'Ancienneté de l'idée de nation,” Revue politique et littéraire, Revue Bleue (Jan. 18, 1913) and Extraits des historiens français du XIXe siècle (1922), p. xxvii. In spite of his definition of the term race, Simar, (op. cit., 75)Google Scholar failed to show how little there was in Thierry's approach to fit this definition and how much to contradict it. This, despite the fact that Simar clearly recognized how confused Thierry's conception of race was. Barzun, Even (“Romantic Historiography as a Political Force in France,” Journal of the History of Ideas (1941), 321Google Scholar, speaks of Thierry's “theory of racial isolation and conflict,” as does Stadler, P., “Politik und Geschichtschreibung in der Franzoesischen Restauration,” His torische Zeitschrift (1955), 284Google Scholar. Engel-Janosi, F., “Four Studies in French Romantic Historical Writing,” The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Baltimore, 1955), Ser. LXXI, No. 2, 104 f.Google Scholar, traces the emphasis on conquest in Thierry's first articles. He then relates this emphasis to the racial approach of the School of Say (p. 110). “The problem of the conquest in relation to the nature of the western nations, primarily to the racial factor” is accordingly viewed by Engel-Janosi as one of the great topics of Thierry's later historiography (p. 116). However, Professor Engel-Janosi has not yet dealt with this relationship.

12 Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands, 3 vols. (1825), IGoogle Scholar, v–vi.

13 Dix Ans, I, 290.

14 Lettres, p. 48.

15 Dix Ans, II, 208. The italics are mine.

16 Ibid., p. 205.

17 Conquête, I, 368.

18 Ibid., II, 399. The italics are mine.

19 Ibid., III, 427. See also II, 276, 368 and 21, 147, 274 respectively for both points of view. Cf. also Thierry's introduction to Carrel, A., Résumé de l'histoire d'Écosse (1825)Google Scholar. Here too Thierry speaks of the racially undifferentiated “hereditary passions of the great masses of men” (p. vii) which express themselves in the continuous struggle for political independence of the Scots against the English. Similarly, with regard to the perennial hostility between Highlanders and Lowlanders (p. x), which Carrel explained as stemming from their different stages of civilization (p. 19) and above all from “un grand intérêt présent et supérieur à tous les haines antécédentes: la possession des domaines” (p. 57).

20 Dix Ans, II, 283. The pertinacity with which Thierry clung to his theory of conquest appears distinctly also in the following instance. First, despotism in Spain is explained as having been the work of “rois de race étrangère.” Accordingly, the Spanish Revolution of 1820 should have been bloodless as there existed no “souvenirs d'hostilités intestines” among the Spanish classes themselves (Ibid., II, 287). This was written in 1820. In a note of later date Thierry acknowledged that these hopes had proved futile. But this did not affect his main thesis, because, he added, civil war had raged only in provinces “étrangères à l'Espagne proprement dite,” that is, where there was a case for repudiation of a former conquest. Thus Thierry made history fit his theory of conquest.

21 Lettres, p. 294.

22 Lettres, p. 206; Conquête, I, iv.

23 Conquête, I, ii. Desjardin, , op. cit., p. 5Google Scholar, overlooked this passage when he asserted that Thierry failed to notice that the Saxons had also been conquerors.

24 Dix Ans, II, 183 and 184. In this manner Thierry takes exception to Tracy's, Destutt de distinction between “gouvernement national et gouvernement special” and, in fact, falls back upon Condorcet's definition of despotism as a “fruit de la conquête… régne par le terreur.” Cf. Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (ed. by Prior, H. O., 1938), p. 35Google Scholar. Thierry does not mention Condorcet's or Locke's justification of resistance which is based on the identification of despotism and conquest. Cf. On Civil Government, Bk. II, Ch. VI.

25 Conquête, II, 352.

26 Ibid., III, 431.

27 Dix Ans, II, 239.

28 Conquête, I, vi.

29 Dix Ans, II, 239.: This is obviously directed against Boulainvilliers and Montlosier. On the latter's influence see Thierry, , Considérations, p. 170Google Scholar. See also F. Engel-Janosi, loc. cit., on the various influences which went into the making of Thierry's conception of the theory of conquest. One should not overlook that the return of the émigrés and their claims for restitution provided a fertile background which provided the theory of conquest a hectic lease of life. In addition, the identification of despotism and conquest in political philosophy should not be discounted. Thierry's occasional awareness of the purely ideological character of the theory appears also in his judgment of the discussion held in the council of officers after the battle of Naseby. What Cromwell's officers had in mind, said Thierry, had nothing to do with the historical origin of royal and seignorial prerogatives but with the officers' apocalyptic expectation of establishing a new order based on “la justice et le droit absolu” (Conquête, III, 409 f.).

30 Dix Ans, II, 240. All this is overlooked by those who, like Stadler, speak about Thierry's “Glaube an die ewige Notwendigkeit der rassischen Gegensaetze.”

31 Dix Ans, II, 136 and introduction to Carrel, , op. cit., pp. ii fGoogle Scholar.

32 Dix Ans, I, xii; II, 5, 216; Conquête, III, 325.

33 Conquête, III, 382.

34 See, for instance, on the Germans before and after the invasion, Conquête, I, 121 f., and Lettres, p. v. For other instances see Conquête, I, 146; II, 374; III, 1 f., 172, 292 and Lettres, pp. 133, 233.

35 Schemann, L., Gobineaus Rassenwerk (Stuttgart, 1910), p. 229Google Scholar. In spite of the praise which in his later work he bestowed on Thierry, (op. cit., I, 54Google Scholar; III, 289) he finally re-endorsed his earlier judgment (Ibid., III, 294).

36 Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution Française (1834, 1st. ed. 1818), p. 487. Similarly, Mignet, F.Histoire de la Révolution Française (London, 1910, 1st. ed. Paris, 1824), p. 346Google Scholar on the aristocracy created by Napoleon.

37 de Stael, Mme., op. cit., p. 71Google Scholar.

38 Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? (1882), p. 27.

39 de Stael, Mme., op. cit., p. 229Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 658.

41 Ibid., pp. 218–9.

42 Montesquieu's attitude remained sociological even in his dealings with the Germanic origin of liberty (De l'Esprit des Lois, Livre XI, ch. vi, 1.) and with the character of feudalism (Ibid., Livres XXVIII–XXX). Characteristically, national character was not dealt with under the item Race in the Encyclopédie but under the separate heading Caractère. Likewise, in the Dictionnaire classique de la langue française, par quatre professeurs de l'Université (1827)Google Scholar: national character was not considered as bound to biological facts but to the two specific eighteenth-century tenets, climate and long existing institutions. Jaucourt, who wrote the article caractère in the Encyclopédie, referred to “the admirable book of Tacitus” as showing the still recognizable character of the Germans, but he quoted Voltaire's Siècle to prove that it is “la coûtume qui fait tout.” Jaucourt also referred to the decisive role of passions, which, apart from those common to all men, “vary with times and places or the specific habits of each nation.”

43 Mignet, , op. cit., pp. 349–50Google Scholar and Thiers, , op. cit., III, 200Google Scholar.

44 Montgaillard, G. H., Revue chronologique de l'histoire de France, 2nd. ed. (1823), p. 460Google Scholar.

45 Lacretelle, J. G. D. (le jeune), Histoire de la Révolution Française, 8 vols. (1821–1826), II, 141 and VIII, 134Google Scholar.

46 de Montlosier, F. D., De la monarchie française depuis son établissement à nos jours, 7 vols., (1814–1821), I, 29Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., I, 16 f., 29; II, 125.

48 Ibid., I, 21.

49 Ibid., I, 8, 39.

50 Ibid., II, 85 f.

51 Ibid., I, 106. This view was shared by Guizot and later taken up by Bloch, Marc, La société féodale (1940), pp. 249 fGoogle Scholar. against v. Below's contention that feudalism was a specific phenomenon of the Germano-Roman world.

52 Ibid., I, 87.

53 Ibid., I, 269.

54 Simar, , op. cit., p. 73Google Scholar; similarly Hertz, F., Race and Civilisation (London, 1928), p. 6Google Scholar.

55 Thierry, , Considérations sur l'histoire de France (1840), p. 190Google Scholar, already drew attention to the fact that Montlosier had left behind Boulainvilliers' “simplicité de conviction.”

56 Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat? (1789), pp. 16–17. de Stael, Mme., op. cit., p. 658Google Scholar, therefore repeated Sieyès when she said that the Third Estate “a aussi maintenant les droits de conquête.”

57 Sieyès, , op. cit., pp. 17–18Google Scholar. Considering the grim irony of Sieyès, I fail to see why Simar, (op. cit., p. 33)Google Scholar holds that Sieyès regarded the Third Estate as a race apart, endowed with distinct racial qualities.

58 Montlosier, , op. cit., I, 150Google Scholar. My italics.

59 Op. cit., p. 12.

60 de Sismondi, C. L., Histoire des Français, 32 vols. (1821–1842), IV, 366Google Scholar; VII, 167, spoke of the “race of nobles” or of “two nations” to mark the social difference between barons and burghers, the racial “impurity” of whom he was most eager to point out. See also: Mignet, , op. cit., p. 346Google Scholar; Thiers, A., Histoire de la Révolution Française, 10 vols. (1834), 1st ed. 1823–1827), I, 142Google Scholar; Lemontey, P. E., Essai sur l'établissement monarchique de Louis XIV (Oeuvres, Vol. V, 368Google Scholar; (the Essai appeared in 1818); Monteil, A. A., Histoire des Française des divers états (10 vols., 1828–1844), I, 17Google Scholar and de Barante, P. B., Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne (13 vols., in 7 vols., 3rd. ed. 1825–1826), I, 61Google Scholar. For the use of the metaphor by Niebhur and Disraeli see Neff, E., The Poetry of History (New York, 1947), p. 230Google Scholar.

61 Du gouvernement de la France depuis la Réstauration et du ministère actuel (1820), p. 2f. Ch. Pouthas, , Guizot pendant la Restauration (1923), pp. 263 fGoogle Scholar. does not deal with the attempts to connect Guizot or the theorists of conquest in general with racialism. However, this should have alerted those who have subsequently referred to Guizot's supposed concessions to racialism. For they have not only ignored Pouthas' competent interpretation but also Thierry's discussion of pamphlets, Guizot's (Considérations, pp. 187 f.)Google Scholar. Thierry himself already explained — particularly in connection with Montlosier's views — that to speak of “la dualité nationale” implied “une phraséologie originale, qui substitue à l'idée de class et de rang, celle des nations diverses, qui applique à la lutte des classes ennemies ou rivales, le vocabulaire des migration des peuples” (Ibid., p. 179).

62 Essais sur l'histoire de France (1833, 1st. ed. 1823), p. 67; Histoire des origines du gouvernement representatif en Europe 2 vols. (1851), I, 143Google Scholar. This is Guizot's own edition of his Cours de 1820–22. Sismondi, , op. cit., I, 13, 115, 174, 353Google Scholar, differed from Thierry in that he did not draw the conclusion that the division of France was ethnical or national. Instead, he pointed out that the conquerors themselves had been a mixed race. When he described the result of the second invasion as the annihilation of “the remainder of the old and glorious nation of Franks” (III, 3), he meant here, as elsewhere, the mixture of peoples who bore the name “Francs,” that is, those who were free (II, 279).

63 Histoire de la civilisation en France, 5 vols. (Bruxelles, 1839, 1st ed., Paris, 1829–1832), II, 228 fGoogle Scholar.

64 Ibid., II, 387.

65 Ibid., II, 393.

66 Ibid., II, 394 and 396 respectively. Guizot and Montlosier held similar views concerning the duration of national differentiation. For Guizot's reference to Montlosier see Civ. Fr., IV, 198, 216. In, De la Féodalité des Institutions de St. Louis (1822), pp. 3, 28, 37, 206, Mignet also adhered to the view that in spite of certain advantages which fell to the conquerors the offices of state were open to all.

67 Thierry expressly explained the disruption of the Carolingian Empire in the light of the national uprising against Napoleon's rule (Lettres, 148).

68 Civ. Fr., III, 9.

69 Ibid., III, 28. This view is still prevalent. See Lot, F., La Fin du monde antique et le début du moyen-âge (1927), pp. 227, 411Google Scholar.

70 … “vom rassenhaften zum territorialen Recht.” Op. cit., III, 304Google Scholar. This is, doubtless, an intentionally misleading translation of Guizot's words: “les lois varient, non plus selon les races, mais selon les classes et les lieux.”

71 Ibid., II, 381 and 382.

72 Schemann, , op. cit., III, 294Google Scholar. Thierry's anti-Germanic attitude is surprising in one “der wie zum Hohn selbst den Namen Theoderichs fuehrt!” What an argument! Guizot is blamed because his attitude towards the Germans did not come straight from his heart (Ibid., III, 302). In short, Thierry's and Guizot's sympathy with non-Germanic elements is explained as utter onesidedness and political prejudice (Ibid., II, 302) resulting probably from their identification with the Revolution, “the counter-blow of Sieyès and company against the Germanic element” (Ibid., II, 382). The fact that Schemann blamed the two Frenchmen for their nationalism is highly characteristic in view of H. Arendt's insistence on the antinational tendency of German fascism and its forerunners.

73 Civ. Fr., III, 60.

74 Ibid., I, 235.

75 Ibid., III, 230.

76 Ibid., I, 224.

77 Civ. Eur., pp. 59, 60, 82; Civ. Fr., I, 315.

78 Ibid., I, 241. For this purpose Guizot relied on Tacitus as well as on Cooper, James Fenimore. Civ. Eur., p. 30Google Scholar and Civ. Fr., I, 214.

79 Civ. Fr., III, 209.

80 Civ. Eur., pp. 106–7.

81 He considered the laws of the Hebrews, Greeks, and of Charlemagne as pertaining to the same stage of development (Civ. Fr., IV, 292).

82 Gf. Pouthas, , op. cit., p. 239Google Scholar.

83 Cours, 1820–22, I, 16 f. and Origines du Gouvernement représentatif, I, 18 and leç. 13. In Des Assemblées Nationales en France depuis l'établissement de la monarchie jusqu'en 1614, 2 vols., 2nd ed., 1829Google Scholar, Henrion de Pansey nevertheless followed Montesquieu's views on the origin of “free governments” in Europe which were said to be established by the Nordic invaders (I, 89 f.). But he also explained the vicissitudes of liberty in Germany and elsewhere in political, social, and economic terms (I, 20, 63, 74, 103, 108, 135 and II, 220).

84 Civ. Eur., pp. 5 f.; Civ. Fr., I, 43 f.

85 Civ. Eur., p. 7.

86 Civ. Eur., p. 386; Civ. Fr., I, 9.

87 Ibid., I, 18.

88 Raynouard, F. J. M., Histoire du droit municipal, 2 vols (1829), II, 382Google Scholar.

89 Ibid., I, xlvii.

90 Leber, M. C., Histoire critique du pouvoir municipal (1828), pp. 3 fGoogle Scholar.

91 Cf. Barzun, , op. cit., pp. 112 fGoogle Scholar. and Thibaudet, A., Histoire de la littérature française de 1789 à nos jours (1936), pp. 64 fGoogle Scholar.

92 On this and on Amédée Thierry, who in his narration of events adhered much more to a sociological than to a racial interpretation, see my paper “Race-Thinking during the Restoration,” quoted above in note 9.

93 The most striking modern example of the fusion between the tenets of the theory of conquest as a class-theory and racialism is probably Gumplowicz's, L.Der Rassenkampf (1883)Google Scholar. His “simple formula” maintains: “Jedes maechtigere ethnische oder soziale Element strebt darnach das in seinem Machtbereich befindliche oder dahin gelangende schwaechere Element seinen Zwecken dienstbar zumachen” (Ibid., p. 161).

94 See my “Napoleonic Authoritarianism in French Liberal Thought,” Scripta Hierosolymitana, Vol. VII (forthcoming).