Texts and Contexts in Intellectual and Cultural History
Tutor: Dr Rachel Hammersley, B351, ext.7278,
Office Hour: Friday 15.00-16.00 (B351)
Lecture: Tuesday 13.00-13.50, A5
Representations session: Thursday 14.00-15.50, C133
Seminar: Friday 16.00-17.50, Russell Building Room 3
Course Description
Traditionally intellectual history has tended to focus on the history of political
thought, with the emphasis being placed on works by the ‘great’ political
thinkers from Plato to Marx and beyond. While this course does follow one
aspect of this approach, in centring on key texts, it offers a broader perspective in
two key respects. First, by extending the range of texts studied beyond the
traditional canon to include: works in the history of political thought by less
well-known thinkers such as James Harrington and Gerrard Winstanley;
unconventional ‘texts’ such as constitutional documents and works that
originally appeared as newspaper articles; and texts that are of a scientific,
literary, or artistic nature – rather than just those that are purely political.
Secondly, we will be looking not just at the texts themselves, but also at the
contexts in which they were written and published, and against which they
should be read.
The chronological range of the course stretches from the mid-17th through to the
late 20th Century. This is a long period to cover in a relatively short space of time.
Consequently, you are not expected to gain a full understanding of the entire
period (or even of the individual events covered) during the course, rather the
emphasis should be on understanding the key texts for each week and the
background to their composition and dissemination.
As you will notice, many of the events on which we will be focusing are
revolutions of one kind or another. The nature of revolutions and the role that
ideas and intellectuals play within them will be an underlying theme that will
run throughout the course. This theme will help to provide continuity and ought
to make it possible for us to draw interesting contrasts and comparisons as the
course progresses.
Course Aims and Outcomes
Aims:
- You will be introduced to a ‘long’ period of history stretching from the English
Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century up to the late twentieth century and
the Revolutions of 1989.
- You will gain knowledge of a number of key texts in intellectual and cultural
history and will learn something of the circumstances in which those texts were
written and published.
- You will be introduced to a variety of genres of text from political treatises
through to music and film. In this way you will gain some awareness of the
advantages and disadvantages of the different kinds of sources used by
intellectual and cultural historians.
- You will be introduced to the notion of historical debate and will be encouraged
to engage critically with the views of historians.
Outcomes:
- You will develop an ability to analyse and summarise texts. These will
primarily be works of political thought, but some attention will also be paid to
paintings, literature etc.
- You will develop the ability to express your ideas in oral form – both through
general class discussion and through individual and group presentations.
- You will learn to work in a group – by preparing for and delivering group
presentations.
- You will build on your essay writing skills (including bibliographic and
referencing skills) and will work on developing a sustained argument in written
form.
Teaching
With the exception of week 1 and week 10 of the spring term, there will be a
lecture, a representations session and a seminar each week.
In the lecture, the topic for the week will be introduced to you and you will be
given some sense of the key events and issues involved.
The representations session provides an opportunity to focus in much more
detail on a particular source, issue or debate. You may, for example, analyse
some key documents in detail, look at visual sources relating to the topic, or
discuss an important historiographical debate.
In the seminar you will be able to draw on what you have read during the week,
as well as on what you have learnt in the lecture and representations session. The
lectures will usually centre around discussion of the texts themselves.
Assessment
This course is assessed by a combination of assessed coursework and unseen
exam.
Altogether you will be expected to produce three pieces of formal coursework.
They should take the form of essays of 1,500-2,000 words in length.
They should be submitted to the school office by 4pm on the following dates:
Wednesday 4 February
Wednesday 25 February
Wednesday 28 April
Two copies of each piece of course work must be submitted and should be
accompanied by a cover sheet which can be collected in advance from the school
office.
There will be an opportunity in week 10 of the spring term for you to meet
individually with the tutor to discuss your first two coursework essays.
The unseen exam will take place towards the end of the summer term.
Reading List
A Note on the Reading:
It is essential that you come to the seminars in a position to discuss the texts and
the issues surrounding them. This requires that you have done some reading
beforehand. Each week you should aim to read the introduction to that week’s
seminar in the reading list, the text that you are allocated, and at least one
secondary item – preferably the one in the study pack. Remember that many of
the texts are available on the internet as well as in the University Library. When
searching for sources on the internet HYPERLINK "http://www.google.co.uk"
http://www.google.co.uk is a good place to start.
Spring Term
Week 1: INTRODUCTORY MEETING
There will be no lecture or representations session this week, but there will be an
introductory seminar. At the seminar we will discuss the content and aims of the
course. and reading lists will be distributed. We will also engage in some
preliminary discussions on ‘texts and contexts’ and on ‘revolutions’. The seminar
will probably last about an hour.
Week 2: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
The ‘English Revolution’ is one of the most important events in British history.
The period between 1640 and 1660 witnessed: a bitter civil war which set the two
components of the government (King and Parliament) against each other; the
first public trial and execution of an English King in history; and the first and
only English republic. Owing to its importance this period has generated a huge
amount of historical debate. Historians cannot even agree on the label that
should be given to the period. In the lecture we will consider some of the labels
that historians have used and the debates that they have generated. This period
also saw the emergence and development of a number of new ideas. In the
representations session we will explore some of these ideas by focusing on The
Putney Debates. These ‘debates’ took place in St Mary’s Church, Putney in the
autumn of 1647. Present were members of the General Council of the New Model
Army, including both officers (such as Oliver Cromwell) and ordinary soldiers.
Their discussions ranged over such fundamental issues as whether the monarchy
and the House of Lords should be abolished and who should be given the right
to vote. In the seminar we will continue our consideration of the ideas of the
English Revolution by examining and discussing texts by James Harrington and
Gerrard Winstanley.
Lecture
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘The English Revolution?’
Representations
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘The Putney Debates’
Discussion of ‘An Agreement of the People’.
Please make sure you have read this document before coming to the
session and bring your copy along with you.
‘The Putney Debates’ – BBC Radio Programme. It would be helpful if you have
already looked at the extract from the Putney Debates, detailed below, before
coming along to the session.
Core reading
‘An Agreement of the People (1647)’, in D. Wootton (ed.) Divine Right and
Democracy (Harmondsworth, 1986) pp. 283-285. This document also
appears in S.R. Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the
Puritan Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford, 1906), pp. 333-335 (in study
pack)
‘The Putney Debates: The Debate on the Franchise (1647)’, in D.
Wootton (ed.) Divine Right and Democracy (Harmondsworth, 1986) pp.
285-317 (in study pack)
D. Wootton, ‘From rebellion to revolution: the crisis of the winter of
1642/3 and the origins of civil war radicalism’, English Historical Review
(1990), and also reprinted in R. Cust and A. Hughes (eds.), The English
Civil War (London, 1997) pp. 340-356 (in study pack)
J. Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992)
pp.8-68.
G. Winstlanley, A New-Yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie (1650) in
Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart
England, ed. D. Wootton (Harmondsworth, 1986) pp.317-333.
Topics for discussion
How revolutionary was the English Revolution?
To what extent was it an English revolution?
How important was religion in causing and prolonging civil war?
What was the significance of the Putney Debates in the context of the English
Revolution?
Why is the English Revolution such a huge topic of historiographical
debate?
Further reading
Revolution or Rebellion?
G.E..Aylmer, Rebellion or Revolution? England, 1640-1660 (Oxford, 1986)
B. Coward, ‘Was there an English Revolution in the Middle of the Seventeenth
Century?’, in C. Jones, M. Newitt, L.S. Roberts, Politics and People in
Revolutionary England (Oxford, 1986) pp. 9-39
C. Hill, ‘A Bourgeois Revolution?’ in J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), Three British
Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), and also reprinted in C.
Hill, People and Ideas in 17th Century England (Brighton, 1986)
A. Hughes, ‘The English Revolution of 1649’, in D.Parker (ed.), Revolutions and the
Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991 (London, 2000)
B. Manning, ‘The outbreak of the English Civil War’, in R. H. Parry (ed.), The
English Civil War and After, 1642-1658 (London & Basingstoke, 1970)
B. Manning, The English People and the English Revolution 1640-1649
(London, 1976 1991)
J. Morrill, B. Manning, & D. Underdown, ‘What was the English Revolution?’,
History Today 34 (1984), and also reprinted in P. Gaunt (ed.), The English
Civil War (Oxford, 2000) pp. 14-32
I. Roots, The Great Rebellion, 1642-1660 (1966)
L. Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London, 1972), pp. 47-147
The Wars in British, European, and Imperial Perspective
D. Hirst, ‘The English Republic and the Meaning of Britain’, The Journal of
Modern History 66: 3 (1994) pp. 451-486, and also reprinted in
Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c.
1534-1707 (1996) pp.192-219
J. P. Kenyon and J. H. Ohlmeyer (eds), The Civil Wars: a Military
History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638-1660 (1998)
S. Pincus, ‘England and the world in the 1650s’, in John Morrill
(ed.), Revolution and Restoration: England in the 1650s (London, 1992)
J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The Atlantic Archipelago and the War of the Three Kingdoms’, in
B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c. 1534-1707 (1996)
J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in
European Context (Cambridge, 2000), esp. ch. 1. That chapter is also
reprinted as ‘England’s Troubles’ in R. Malcolm Smuts (ed.), The
Stuart Court and Europe (1996), pp. 20-38
The Religious Context
W. Hunt, The Puritan Moment: the Coming of Revolution in an English County (1983)
P. Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: the structure of a prejudice’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes
(eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England, (1989), and also reprinted in R. Cust
and A. Hughes (eds), The English Civil War (London, 1997)
J. Morrill, ‘The religious context of the English Civil War’, Transactions of
the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 34 (1984), and also reprinted in R.
Cust and A. Hughes (eds), The English Civil War (London, 1997)
B. Reay & J. F. Macgregor (eds.), Radical Religion in the English Civil War (1984)
N. Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution’, in Conrad Russell
(ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London & Basingstoke, 1973),
and also reprinted in R. Cust and A. Hughes (eds), The English Civil War
(London, 1997)
K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an EnglishVillage: Terling, 15251700 (1995 edn), chs 5-7
The Ideas of the English Revolution: Levellers, Diggers, and Republicans
A. Bradstock (ed.), Winstanley and the Diggers 1649-1999 (London, 2000)
H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, ed. C. Hill (Nottingham,
1961)
C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During The English Revolution
(Harmondsworth, 1972 1975)
M. Mendle (ed.), The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, The Levellers, and The
English State (Cambridge, 2001)
A. Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen: The General Council of the Army and its Debates
1647-1648 (Oxford, 1987)
B. Worden, ‘James Harrington and the Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656’ and
‘Harrington’s “Oceana”: Origins and Aftermath, 1651-1660’ in D. Wootton (ed.),
Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society 1649-1776 (Stanford, 1994) pp.82110 and 111-138.
Week 3: JOHN LOCKE AND 1688
In 1688, Parliament asserted its sovereignty, by choosing William of Orange, the
Protestant ruler of Holland and the son-in-law of James II, to be King. The
invitation, bringing an army to England to claim the throne by force if necessary.
In practice, since he knew he would be unable to fight against the Parliament and
the Dutch, James II escaped to France. The lack of bloodshed that characterised
the change of regime is part of the reason why it has come to be know as "the
Glorious Revolution."
The Convention Parliament summoned by William passed a Declaration of
Rights and offered the crown to William and Mary, on condition that they agreed
to respect English law. This offer was accepted, bringing to an end the long
struggle between Parliament and monarch, and establishing, in consequence, the
supremacy of Parliament and constitutional law in England.
Parliament passed a Bill of Rights, which obtained the consent of King William
and Queen Mary in 1689. Its main provisions were:
The pretended power of suspension or execution of laws by regal authority,
without consent of Parliament, is illegal.
The pretended power of dispersion with, or execution of laws by regal authority,
as it had been assumed and exercised recently, is illegal.
Levy of money for, or to the use of the crown, by pretence or prerogative,
without grant of Parliament for longer time, or in any other manner than the
same is illegal.
It is the right of the subjects to petition the King.
The raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom, in time of peace,
without the consent of Parliament, is against the law.
The election of members of Parliament ought to be free.
The freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in parliament ought not to be
impeached or questioned in any court or place, out of Parliament.
Excessive bail ought not to be required nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel
and unusual punishments inflicted.
Jurors should be duly empaneled and returned.
Finally, for redress of all grievances, and for amendment, for strengthening and
preserving laws, Parliament ought to be summoned as frequently as possible.
The crown was then bestowed upon William and Mary jointly. In case of default
of offspring, succession fell to James’s daughter Anne and her offspring. One
major question about 1688 is the extent to which it represented a watershed in
English history? Another is whether it inaugurated a peculiar form of
government, more suited to commercial society than any monarchy, or indeed
republic, as traditionally conceived? This section of the course deals with the
nature of 1688 by comparing what actually happened with a text once generally
assumed to have justified it: the second of John Locke’s Two Treatises of
Government.
Lecture
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Locke and 1688?’
Representation
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Laslett on Locke and 1688’
Read Peter Laslett’s introduction to John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, the
section entitled ‘Two Treatises on Government and the Revolution of 1688’
(Cambridge, 1960, 1967, 1988) (the article was originally published in the
Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. xii, no. 1, March 1956, 40-55).
Answer the following question: How does Laslett’s reinterpretation of Locke
influence our understanding of 1688?
Core Reading
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (any edition): Second Treatise.
Robert Filmer, Patriarcha (various editions)
H. Trevor-Roper, ‘Epilogue: The Glorious Revolution’, in The Anglo-Dutch
Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact, ed. J. I. Israel (1991)
(in study pack)
R. Ashcraft, ‘Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government’,
Political Theory (1980) (in study pack)
Topics for discussion
What changed in 1688? Why was it necessary to focus on continuity of regime
rather than revolutionary change?
What were Locke’s politics? To what extent should he be described as a Whig?
How did the Revolution shape subsequent politics? How did Locke’s text shape
subsequent politics?
What was the link between 1688 and the development of commercial society?
Further Reading
General works on the period
J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783 (1989)
E. Cruikshanks ed., Ideology and conspiracy: aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759 (1982)
B.W. Hill, ‘Executive monarch and the challenge of parties, 1689-1832: two
concepts of government and two historiographical interpretations’, Historical
Journal (1970) pp.379-401
G. Holmes, The making of a great power. Late Stuarts and early Georgian Britain,
1660-1722 (London, 1993)
J. Hoppit, A land of liberty? England 1689-1727 (Oxford, 2000)
J.P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution, 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary
2nd edition (1986)
M. Kishlansky, A monarchy transformed: Britain 1603-1714 (1996)
J. Miller, ‘The potential for absolutism in later Stuart England’, History (1984)
pp.187-207
E. Neville Williams (ed.), The Eighteenth-Century Constitution, 1688-1815,
Documents and Commentary (1960)
F. O’Gorman, The long eighteenth century. British political and social history 16881832 (London, 1997)
The Glorious Revolution
B. Bevan, King William III: Prince of Orange, the first European (1997)
E. Cruickshanks, ed., By force or by default? The revolution of 1688-1689 (Edinburgh,
1989) pp.82-109
E. Cruickshanks, The Glorious Revolution (2000)
H.T. Dickinson, ‘How revolutionary was the Glorious Revolution of 1688?’
British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies (1988) pp.125-143
H.T. Dickinson, ‘The eighteenth-century debate on the “Glorious Revolution”’,
History (1976)
H.T. Dickinson, ‘The eighteenth-century debate on the sovereignty of
parliament’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 189 (1976)
M. Goldie, ‘Edmund Bohun and the Jus Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 16891693’, Historical Journal (1977)
M. Goldie, ‘The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688-1694’, History of Political Thought
(1980)
O.P. Grellet, J.I. Israel, and N. Tyacke (eds), From Persecution to Toleration: The
Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (1991)
H. Horwitz, ‘The 1690s revisited: recent work on politics and political ideas in
the reign of William III’, Parliamentary history (1996) pp.361-377
J.I. Israel, The Anglo-Dutch moment: essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world
impact (Cambridge, 1991)
D.L. Jones, A parliamentary history of the Glorious Revolution (London, 1988)
J.R. Jones (ed.), Liberty secured? Britain before and after 1688 (Stanford, 1992)
J. Miller, ‘The Glorious Revolution: contract and abdication reconsidered’,
Historical Journal (1982) pp.541-555
J.G.A. Pocock, Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (1980)
L.G. Schwoerer, ‘Celebrating the Glorious Revolution, 1689-1989’, Albion,
Volume 22, Number 1 (1990)
L.G. Schwoerer, ‘Press and Parliament in the Revolution of 1689’, Historical
Journal, (1977)
L.G. Schwoerer, ‘Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89, American Historical
Review, (1977)
L.G. Schwoerer, ‘Women and the Glorious Revolution, Albion, Volume 18,
Number 195 (1986)
L.G. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights (London, 1981)
L.G. Schwoerer, The revolution of 1688-1689. Changing perspectives (Cambridge,
1992)
T.P. Slaughter, ‘”Abdicate” and “Contract” in the Glorious Revolution’, Historical
Journal, (1981)
T.P. Slaughter, ‘”Abdicate” and “Contract” Restored, Historical Journal, (1985)
W.A. Speck, ‘The Orangist conspiracy against James II, Historical Journal, (1987)
pp.453-462
W.A. Speck, Reluctant revolutionaries: Englishmen and the revolution of 1688
(Oxford, 1988)
J. Spurr, ‘The Church of England, comprehension, and the Toleration Act of 1989,
English Historical Review (1989)
J.R. Western, Monarchy and revolution. The English state in the 1680s (London, 1985)
John Locke
R. Ashcraft and M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Locke, revolution principles and the formation
of Whig ideology’, Historical Journal (1983)
R. Ashcraft, Revolution politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1989)
M. Goldie, ‘Hobbes and Locke on toleration’, in M.G. Dietz (ed.), Thomas Hobbes
and Political Theory (1990)
M. Goldie, ‘John Locke’s Circle and James II’, Historical Journal (1992)
I. Harris, The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in its Intellectual Setting
(1994)
L.G. Schwoerer, ‘Locke, Lockean Ideas, and the Glorious Revolution’, Journal of
the History of Ideas (1990)
Week 4: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The late eighteenth century has been referred to as ‘the age of the democratic
revolution’. For many the American Revolution (1776-1787) is one of the
archetypal revolutions, which provided a model for those that followed.
However, some historians have suggested that, in fact, the American Revolution
was not particularly revolutionary at all and that America’s break with Britain is
better viewed as an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process. In the
lecture you will be provided with a basic introduction to this event. In the
representations session we will look at some of the key documents of the
American Revolution in greater detail. Though the Declaration of Independence,
drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, is often seen as the decisive document of
the American Revolution, it is the Constitution of 1787 that was of truly
revolutionary significance. The American Revolution also provides an interesting
case-study for exploring the complex interrelationship between ideas and events.
In order to explore this issue, we will focus in the seminar on Paine’s Common
Sense and on the Federalist-Anti-Federalist debate.
Lecture
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘The American Revolution, 1776-1787’
Representations
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘The Documents of the American Revolution’
Close reading of some of the key documents of the American Revolution:
The Declaration of Independence 1776
The Articles of Confederation 1781
The US Constitution1787
Core Reading
The Declaration of Independence 1776 (in study pack)
The Articles of Confederation 1781 (in study pack)
The US Constitution 1787 (in study pack)
T. Paine, Common Sense (various editions)
Publius [J.Madison, A. Hamilton, and J.Jay], The Federalist Papers (various
editions) Numbers: 1, 6, 9, 10, 14, 47-51, 67-69, 78.
C. Bonwick, ‘The American Revolution 1763-91’ in D.Parker (ed.), Revolutions and
the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991 (London, 2000) pp.68-87 (in
study pack)
Topics for Discussion
What arguments does Paine employ to urge Americans to break the link with the
English monarchy?
What natural or 'inalienable' rights do Paine and Jefferson believe to be
universal? How are such rights discovered and protected?
Why does Madison, in Federalist Papers 10 believe that the formation of factions is
inevitable, dangerous, yet capable of solution?
Is America’s break with Britain best characterised as a revolution or as a process
of evolution?
Explain the success of the American constitutional experiment when compared
with the failures of the French ones after 1789.
Further Reading
General Books on the American Revolution
C. Bonwick, The American Revolution (Basingstoke, 1991)
J.P. Greene (ed.), The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution, 1763-1789
(Greenwood, 1979)
J.P. Greene & J.R. Pole (eds.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the American Revolution
(Cambridge – Massachusetts and Oxford, 1991)
E.S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789, Third Edition (Chicago, 1992)
G.S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill – North
Carolina, 1969)
G.S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992)
The Political Thought of the American Revolution
J.O. Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
(Cambridge – Massachusetts, 1992)
B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge –
Massachusetts, 1967)
A. Gibson, ‘Ancients, Moderns, and Americans: The Republicanism-Liberalism
Debate Revisited’, History of Political Thought, Volume XXI, Number 2 (2000)
pp.261-307.
R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and
America, 1760-1800, Vol. I, (Princeton – New Jersey, 1959)
G.S. Wood, ‘Democracy and the American Revolution’ in J. Dunn (ed.),
Democracy: The unfinished journey, 508BC to AD 1993 (Oxford, 1992) pp.91-105
Thomas Paine
G. Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston, 1989)
E. Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (Oxford, 1976)
J. Keane, Tom Paine: a political life (London, 1995)
M. Philp, Paine (Oxford, 1989)
The Constitution, Federalists and Anti-Federalists
S. Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in
America, 1788-1828 (Chapel Hill – North Carolina, 1999)
D. Epstein, The Political Theory of the Federalist (Chicago, 1984)
I. Hampsher-Monk, ‘”Publius”: The Federalist’ in I. Hampsher-Monk, A History of
Modern Political Thought: Major Political Thinkers from Hobbes to Marx (Oxford,
1992)
M. Jensen, The Making of the American Constitution (Princeton – New Jersey, 1964)
G.S. Wood, ‘Framing the Republic’ in B. Bailyn et al., The Great Republic. A History
of the American People, 3rd Edition, Volume 1, Part II, pp.210-371
Week 5: THE PUBLIC SPHERE
During the eighteenth century, and over a longer period according to some
historians, a new category emerged in politics. This has been called the public
sphere. Because the king's business was supposedly hidden from scrutiny, only a
private sphere existed in the early modern world, for a long time. However, with
the eighteenth century, came the growth of media like newspapers, literary
societies, Masonic lodges, coffee houses, which all served to enable ideas to
spread and be discussed. These institutions played a part in creating a public
sphere that served as a forum for discussion of politics as well as other subjects.
This added a new player to the political game: public opinion. The latter was
conceived of as impartial, as a tribunal which could render judgement on public
events and issues. The division between public and private had existed in ancient
Rome, but was now revived in a form that became a commonplace of political
reference by the nineteenth century. According to Habermas, the public sphere is
necessary for the proper functioning of democracy (and he wrote his influential
book in 1962 to show that by then it had been invaded and undermined by
advertising). Transparency in the public sphere was a prerequisite of modern
politics. This topic therefore deals with this area of studies and the lecture
explains the concept and its historiography.
Lecture
Dr Peter Campbell, 'The public sphere'
Representations
Dr Peter Campbell
The public sphere came into existence through a number of institutions. Some
have argued that the state played a role, through its propaganda. Habermas
stressed coffee houses, art galleries (the Salons from 1737) and the press. We will
consider the role of these in creating this apparently impartial tribunal of public
opinion, and see how transparent and bourgeois it really was.
Core reading
J. Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a
category of bourgeois society, (trans T. Burger, Cambridge Mass, 1989) first 100 pp.
K. Baker, 'Public opinion as political invention' in his Inventing the French
Revolution, (Cambridge, 1990) pp.167-199 (in study pack)
H. Chisick, ‘Public opinion and political culture in France during the second half
of the eighteenth century’, English Historical Review, cxvii, 470 (February 2002)
pp.48-77
T. Munck, The Enlightenment, a comparative social history, 1721-1794, (London,
2000), chapters 4 and 5.
Mona Ozouf, 'Public opinion at the end of the old regime', Journal of Modern
History, 60, 1988, pp.1-21.
A J. de la Vopa, 'Conceiving a public: ideas and society in Eighteenth-century
Europe', Journal of Modern History, 64, 1992, pp. 79-116 jstor
Topics for discussion
What is the difference between public and private spheres?
How did the public sphere come into existence?
Does it have any 'real' institutional basis?
What role did the bourgeoisie play?
What role did the state play?
What politcal effects can you discern that depended on the invention of this new
category?
Further reading
A Farge, Subversive words: public opinion in eighteenth-century France, (Cambridge,
1994)
D.Castiglione and L. Sharpe, eds, Shifting the boundaries: transformation of the
languages of public and private in the 18th century (Exeter, 1995) esp article by
John Brewer, 'This, that and the other'.
R. Van Dulmen, The society of the Enlightenment: the rise of the middle class and
Enlightenement in Germany (London, 1992)
R Harris, A patriot press: National politics and the London Press in the 1740s (Oxford,
1993)
James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (New
Approaches to European History Series.) (Cambridge, 2001) ordered for lib.
T.C.W. Blanning, The culture of power and the power of culture: old regime Europe,
1660-1789 (Oxford, 2002)
J.A.W. Gunn, Queen of the world: opinion in the public life of France from the
renaissance to the revolution, (Studies in Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 328,
1995)
T. Crow, Painters and public life in 18th century Paris, (New Haven, 1985)
Week 6: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
It is tempting to see the French Revolution as a replication of the NorthAmerican Revolution, fifteen years on. Both culminated, after all, in the creation
of republics in large states. The French, however, believed that they were doing
something new. From their perspective, North America was fortunate in being a
society abundant in land and relatively meagre in population. It was easier to
establish a popular government where the majority of the people had the
opportunity to purchase land: the most stable evidence of having a stake in the
country. Furthermore, excepting slaves and the indigenous native populations,
North America was a society less divided than France. Perhaps most
distinctively of all, the United States lacked an established church and enjoyed at
this time a tolerance in matters religious which was the envy of many European
philosophes. It was a very different matter to establish popular government in an
ancient and absolute monarchy, ruling a society divided into legally distinct and
potentially antagonistic orders, with Catholicism the established state religion.
The Catholic Church was also a dominant force in education, popular culture,
and political communication.
When these differences are taken into
consideration it becomes clear that the French Revolution was, at least at the
outset, more ambitious than the American Revolution. It entailed a social
transformation of society in addition to the creation of a new political order. The
central events in these respects were the transformation of the Estates General
into a National Assembly founded on national sovereignty in June 1789, the
abolition of feudalism on the night of 4th August, the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen, which established civil and political liberties, and the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, which demanded that clergymen sign an oath of
allegiance to the new state.
The Revolution began with a series of momentous outpourings of popular
feeling, called Journées by the revolutionaries, of which the most famous is the
storming of the Bastille. Although the Revolution appeared to enjoy the support
of the entire nation, the flight of the émigres began with the leading aristocrats of
the court. Trickle became flood when the revolutionaries in Paris alienated
priests, feudal landowners, and exponents of alternate conceptions of
government. When Louis XVI refused to accept the loss of monarchical
sovereignty, attempting to flee France in 1791, the revolutionaries accepted that
the logic of their ideas was not to retain a mixed government but to establish an
altogether new form of government in Europe: a modern republic which was
intended to be the most egalitarian, commercial and popular state in history. Fear
of opposition to absolute monarchy spreading to other states in Europe, allied to
concerns about the resurrection of French imperial ambition, caused the
Revolution to be opposed by neighbouring European states almost from the
outset. The result of such opposition was the beginning of civil war in France in
1790 and international war in 1792. War became Terror in 1793, when members
of the Jacobin Club, led by Robespierre, defined ideas about citizenship so
exclusively as to entail the imprisonment and murder of their opponents.
Lecture
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Paine and the French Revolution’
Representation
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘What was ‘the French Revolution’?
Reflect on the meaning of the following quotations:
1.
‘The plan of this pamphlet is very simple. We have three questions to ask: 1st.
What is the third estate? Everything. 2nd. What has it been heretofore in the
political order? Nothing. 3rd. What does it demand? To become something. We
shall see if these answers are correct. Then we shall examine the measures that
have been tried and those which must be taken in order that the third estate may
in fact become something. Thus we shall state: 4th. What the ministers have
attempted, and what the privileged classes themselves propose in its favour. 5th.
What ought to have been done. 6th. Finally, what remains to be done in order
that the third estate may take its rightful place.’
Emmanuel Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (January, 1789).
2.
‘The representatives of the French people, organised in the National Assembly,
considering that ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are
the sole causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, have
resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred
rights of man, in order that such declaration, continually before all members of
the social body, may be a perpetual reminder of their rights and duties; in order
that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power may
constantly be compared with the aim of every political institution and may
accordingly be more respected; in order that the demands of the citizens,
founded henceforth upon simple and incontestable principles, may always be
directed towards the maintenance of the Constitution and the welfare of all.
Accordingly, the National Assembly recognises and proclaims, in the
presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of
man and citizen.’
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 27 August, 1789.
3.
‘What is called a republic is not any particular form of government. It is wholly
characteristical of the purport, matter or object for which government ought to be
instituted, and on which it is to be employed, res-publica, the public affairs, or
the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing. It is a word of good
original, referring to what ought to be the character and business of government;
and in this sense it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which has a base
original signification. It means arbitrary power in an individual person; in the
exercise of which, himself, and not the res-publica, is the object.’
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (Part Two), 1792.
4.
‘Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilisation, and all the good
things which are connected with manners, and with civilisation, have, in this
world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the
result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of
religion…But the age of chivalry is gone - That of sophisters, œconomists, and
calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that
proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.’
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791).
5.
‘We have seen men shut their eyes to the causes of the French Revolution, we
have seen those who tried to persuade themselves that any revolutions and
conspiratorial sect before this Revolution was but a chimera… We shall state
that everything in the French Revolution, including its most terrifying crimes,
was foreseen, premeditated, planned, resolved. Everything was the work of the
most abominable villainy.’
Abbé Baruel, Memoirs which serve as a history of Jacobinism, 1798.
Core reading
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man. Part Two (any edition)
Emmanuel Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (any edition)
‘The debate between Sieyès and Paine (in M. Sonenscher, ed., Sieyes Political
Writings (Indianapolis, 2003) pp.163-173 (in study pack)
Topics for discussion
Was Paine right to argue that the French and American Revolutions were related
phenomena?
How far did the French Revolution exemplify a ‘democratic’ revolution?
What, according to Paine, were the necessary principles of the French
Revolution? How far did the events of 1789-90 conform to these principles?
Was Paine’s republicanism compatible with monarchy?
Why did the French Revolution generate such intense ideological opposition?
What were the intellectual consequences of the French Revolution?
Further reading
The French Revolution
K. M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1990).
A. Cobban, ‘The myth of the French Revolution’, in Cobban, Aspects of the French
Revolution (1968)
A. Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (2nd edn, 1999)
W. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989)
W. Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1999)
J. Dunn, ed. Democracy: An Unfinished Journey, (Oxford, 1992) essays by Dunn and
Fontana.
F. Furet, Revolutionary France (London, 1988).
F. Furet & M. Ozouf, A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (London, 1990)
J. Hardman, The French Revolution Sourcebook (1999), pp. 109-21; 179-82
C. Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (Harmondsworth,
2002)
G. Kates (ed.), The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies
(London, 1998)
F. Venturi, The End of the Old Regime, 2 vols. (New Jersey, 1991), vol. 2.
Thomas Paine
G. Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston, 1989)
E. Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (Oxford, 1976)
J. Keane, Tom Paine: a political life (London, 1995)
M. Philp, Paine (Oxford, 1989)
Emmanuel Sieyès
K.M. Baker, ‘Sieyes’, in Furet and Ozouf, A Critical Dictionary of the French
Revolution, pp.313-323
K.M. Baker, ‘Representation redefined’, in his Interpreting the French Revolution,
pp.224-251
M. Forsyth, The Political Thought of the abbé Sieyes (Leicester, 1987)
Week 7: BENJAMIN CONSTANT AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Having survived civil and international war for almost a decade, the French
Revolution ended with Napoleon Bonaparte’s prolonged coup d’état which began
in November 1799 and culminated in his being crowned Emperor by Pope Pius
VII in December 1804. The immediate result was France’s military supremacy,
creating the first fears for a hundred years of universal monarchy. Bonaparte
famously crowned himself, signalling his supremacy over the Catholic Church in
matters of state. At the same time he agreed a concordat with the Church that reestablished their control over education. Bonaparte presented himself as a
reformer, introducing the Code Napoleon of rational civil law, and organising
plebiscites that he claimed gave his rule democratic legitimacy. At the same time
his censorship and police system was legendary, and the Continental System
designed to prevent competition from goods (especially British goods) from
beyond his Empire, inaugurated a decade of hardship and commercial crisis for
the peoples of Europe. The central question facing students of Napoleon is
whether his reign represented a return to political normality. In the garb of a
Roman Emperor he can he seen as the rightful heir to Louis XIV and as such
another example of absolute monarchy. This view certainly fits with the history
of his demise. The failed invasion of Russia in 1812 and the dogged opposition of
the British ultimately led to the defeat of Bonaparte in the ‘battle of the nations’
at Leipzig in October 1813. The ‘Hundred Day’s’ was Bonaparte’s swan song,
and Waterloo allowed the Congress of Vienna to settle the map of Europe by
invoking the principle of legitimacy, in the hope of bringing peace after a
quarter-century of war.
An opposed view sees Bonaparte not as the
representative of the traditional model of monarchy, but as the harbinger of a
new kind of rule, premised on popular patriotism, rational bureaucracy and the
tight control of political and popular culture. In short, Bonaparte can be seen as
someone who managed to tie together the tradition of monarchical authority
with the principle of republican patriotism and nationalism. For the British, what
was so frightening about him was that he appeared to have managed to create a
fiscal-military state not unlike their own. Writers and commentators across
Europe were reassesing the French Revolution, and trying to explain why it had
failed in its aim of establishing a peaceful republic characterised by moral
rectitude. The writings of the Swiss Protestant Benjamin Constant illustrates the
attempt to develop a liberal political philosophy in the context of the wreck of the
French Empire and British supremacy.
Lecture
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Constant’s Politics and the First French Empire’
Representation
Dr Richard Whatmore
Read Benjamin Constant ‘The Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty of the
Moderns’ in Political Writings, ed. and trans., B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), pp.
307-28 (in study pack). Consider the question: What did Constant mean by the
liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns?
Core reading
Benjamin Constant, ‘The Spirit of Conquest’ from ‘The Spirit of Conquest and
Usurpation and their Relation to European Civilisation’, in Political Writings, ed.
and trans., B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988)
Benjamin Constant, ‘Usurpation’ from ‘The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation
and their Relation to European Civilisation’, in Political Writings, ed. and trans.,
B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988) pp. 85-148 (in study pack)
Benjamin Constant, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty of the Moderns’,
in Political Writings, ed. and trans., B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988) pp.307-328 (in
study pack)
Topics for discussion
What did ‘usurpation’ mean to Constant?
How far were Constant’s writings a commentary on the First French Empire?
To what extent was Bonaparte’s Empire a return to normal politics in the
aftermath of the Revolution?
Explain why Constant saw himself as a ‘liberal’ in politics?
How did Constant evaluate democracy?
Was Constant a republican or a monarchist? How far is this distinction relevant
to early nineteenth-century political life?
Further Reading
Nineteenth-Century France
J. Bury, France, 1814-1940, 5th edition (London, 1985)
A. Cobban, A History of Modern France, 2nd edition (Harmondsworth, 1965)
Volumes 2 and 3
S. Hazareesingh, Political Traditions in France (Oxford, 1994)
D. Sutherland, France 1789-1815 (London, 1985)
R. Tombs, France 1814-1914 (London, 1996)
Napoleon Bonaparte
G. Ellis, Napoleon (London, 1997)
M. Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (London,
1994)
J. Tulard, Napoleon (London, 1985)
D.G. Wright, Napoleon and Europe (London, 1987)
Benjamin Constant and Liberalism
B. Fontana, Benjamin Constant (1991)
B. Fontana, The Invention of the Modern Republic (1994)
S. Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (1984)
A. Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (1984)
E. K. Bramsted (ed.), Western Liberalism (1978)
R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (1977)
G. de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (1925)
Ryan, The Idea of Freedom (1979)
L. Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Week 8: KARL MARX AND THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
There were many different types of socialism, from Robert Owen’s idea of smallstate utopias of labour, which William Cobbett famously derided as
‘parallelograms of paupers’, to Saint-Simon’s ‘new Christianity’, but, in the ‘black
decade’ of the 1840s, socialists began to pin their hopes on a revolution in social
relationships which would be led by one of the most conspicuous members of
modern society: the proletarian. Left Hegelians in Germany and French radicals
such as Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, began to reinterpret modern
history by portraying commercial society as a war between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat rather than being characterised by conflict between the people and
the owners of land. Their expectation, formulated by Marx in the early 1840s,
was that socialist forms of production, characterised by co-operation and
communal labour, would replace the capitalist practices which masked the
exploitation, immiseration and alienation of the majority of the population.
Indeed, the revolution was perceived to be inevitable, guaranteed by the ‘iron
laws’ of world historical development. These laws, in Marx’s view, could be
empirically validated by the new science of historical materialism. The result,
led by the most impoverished class of all, the proletariat, would be a revolution
in which ‘the expropriators will be expropriated’, creating a new world of
industriousness, equality, and fraternity. When first published in the Communist
Manifesto such ideas appeared to prefigure an era of radical political innovation,
foreshadowing by only months the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848. But after
the bourgeoisie failed to hold on to political power, and in more advanced
industrial nations the proletariat failed even to attempt to overthrow capitalism,
Marx was faced with the problem of explaining a series of political events that
did not accord with the optimistic theory of history outlined in the Communist
Manifesto.
Lecture
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Marx’s politics and the revolutions of 1848’
Representation
Dr Richard Whatmore, ‘Marx and the politics of the 1840s’
Reflect on the meaning of the following quotations:
1.
‘Reader, be reassured that I am not an agent of discord or an instigator of
sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I reveal the truth which we try in
vain to prohibit; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This apparently
blasphemous proposition - ‘Property is theft’ - would, if our assumptions
permitted us to understand it, be seen as a lightning rod against the coming
thunderbolt; but too many interests and prejudices stand in the way.
Unfortunately, philosophers will not change the course of events, and destiny
will be fulfilled despite prophecy. In any case, must not justice be done and our
education completed?’
Proudhon, What is Property? (1840).
2.
‘True, it must be owned, we for the present, with our Mammon-Gospel, have
come to strange conclusions. We call it a Society; and go about professing openly
the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather,
cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ‘fair competition’ and so forth, it is a
mutual hostility. We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment
is not the sole relation of human beings; we think, nothing doubting, that it
absolves and liquidates all engagements of man. ‘My starving workers?’
answers the rich Mill-owner: ‘Did not I hire them fairly in the market? Did I not
pay them, to the last sixpence, the sum covenanted for? What have I to do with
them more?’ Verily Mammon-worship is a melancholy creed, When Cain, for his
own behoof, had killed Abel, and was questioned. ‘Where is thy brother?’ he too
made the answer, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Did I not pay my brother his
wages, the thing he had merited from me?’
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, 1843.
3.
‘Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a
corresponding political advance of that class.…in the period of manufacture
proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a
counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great
monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of
modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern
representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state
is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.
4.
‘The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class,
is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition of capital is wage
labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.
The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie,
replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary
combination, due to association. The development of modern industry,
therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie
produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces,
above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are
equally inevitable.’
Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.
5.
‘Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under
circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited
circumstances with which they are directly confronted. The tradition of the dead
generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living. And, just when
they appear to be engaged in the revolutionary transformation of themselves and
their material surroundings, in the creation of something which does not yet
exist, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they timidly conjure up the
spirits of the past to help them; they borrow their names, slogans and costumes
so as to stage the new world-historical scene in this venerable disguise and
borrowed language. Luther put on the mask of the apostle Paul; the Revolution
of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman republic and the Roman
empire; and the revolution of 1848 knew no better than to parody at some points
1789 and at others the revolutionary traditions of 1793-5. In the same way, the
beginner who has learned a new language always retranslates it into his mother
tongue: he can only be said to have appropriated the spirit of the new language
and to be able to express himself in it freely when he can manipulate it without
reference to the old, and when he forgets his original language while using the
new one.’
Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852.
6.
‘In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their
material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises
a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines
their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive
forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations
within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then
begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead
sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In
studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the
material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an
individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness
must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict
existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.
No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is
sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never
replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have
matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets
itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always
show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its
solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad
outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production
may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of
society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic mode of the
social progress of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual
antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals; social
conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois
society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The
prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.’
Marx, Preface, A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, 1859.
Core reading
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (any edition). (in study pack)
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Surveys from Exile
(Middlesex, 1992)
Tilly, 'The people of June' in R. Price, ed, Revolution and Reaction, (1975) (in study
pack)
Topics for discussion
What was the role of the proletariat in Marx’s theory of revolution?
Explain why Marx’s analysis of history was the foundation of his political ideas.
According to Marx, what would be the result of a proletarian revolution?
How did Marx expect the revolutions of 1848 to proceed?
How did Marx explain the failure of his expectations concerning the revolutions
of 1848?
Did Marx alter his view of bourgeois society after 1848?
What was the role of intellectuals in the 1848 revolutions?
Further reading
General
E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution
A. de Tocqueville, The Recollections (London, 1947) pp. 1-231
Karl Marx
Karl Marx, The German Ideology (any edition).
Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850
Karl Marx & F. Engels, Revolution and Counter Revolution
S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968).
T. Carver, ‘Communism for Critical Critics? The German Ideology and the
Problem of Technology’, History of Political Thought, 11, no. 1 (Spring, 1988), 12936.
G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, 1986), chs. 1-2.
D. McLellan, Karl Marx. His Life and Thought (London, 1973).
E. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols, vol. 1.
1848
Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 edited by Roger Price (1996) also early
edition (better) as R. Price, ed, 1848 in France, (1975)
P. Amman, 'The changing outline of 1848', American Historical review, 1963, 68,
pp. 938-53
P. S. Jones, The 1848 Revolutions (1981)
A. Korner 1848 :a European revolution? :international ideas and national memories of
1848 (2001)
L. O'Boyle, 'The democratic left in Germany, 1848', Journal of Modern History
(1961) on JSTOR.
John Saville 1848 :the British state and the Chartists (1987)
W.H. Sewell, 'Property, labour and the emergence of socialism in France 17891848, in J. Merriman, ed., Consciousness and class experience in nineteenth-century
Europe (1979)
M.L. Stewart-McDougall, The artisan republic :revolution, reaction and resistance in
Lyon 1848 (1984)
Week 9: DARWIN AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
The word ‘Revolution’ is not only used in a political context. It has also been
used to describe other kinds of dramatic change – for example the Industrial
Revolution and the Scientific Revolution. The latter will be our focus for this
week – and, in particular, the impact of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. In
the lecture Darwin’s work will be set in the context of earlier scientific
revolutions and we will begin to explore the question of how and why Darwin’s
discoveries were seen to be revolutionary. In the representations session we will
consider some of the opposition to Darwin and in particular some contemporary
caricatures that ridiculed Darwin and his ideas. In the seminar we will focus on
the text itself and will think, among other things, about whether a scientific text
can be analysed in the same way as a political one.
Lecture
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘Evolution and Revolution: Charles Darwin and The
Origin of Species’
Representations
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘Caricatures of Charles Darwin’
Core Reading
C. Darwin, The Origin of Species (many editions) (chapter in study pack)
R.J. Halliday, 'Social Darwinism: a definition', Victorian Studies, 14 (1970-1). pp.
389-405 (in study pack)
Topics for Discussion
Why were Darwin's ideas so shocking to his first readers?
Is it appropriate to describe a scientific discovery as revolutionary?
How did a biological theory mutate into an ethical and social theory?
Further Reading
Scientific Revolutions
L. Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution (London, 1999)
M.C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1988)
T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962)
D.C. Lindberg and R.S. Westman, Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution
(Cambridge, 1990)
R. Porter and M. Teich, The Scientific Revolution in National Context (Cambridge,
1992)
S. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1992)
Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution
G. Beer, Darwin’s Plots: evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and
nineteenth-century fiction (London, 1983)
P. Bowler, Darwinism (New York, 1993)
P.J. Bowler, Charles Darwin: the man and his influence (Cambridge, 1996)
J.W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: a study in Victorian social theory (Cambridge,
1966)
M. S. Helfand, 'T.H. Huxley's "Evolution and Ethics": the politics of evolution
and the evolution of politics', Victorian Studies, 20 (1977), pp. 159-77
R. Keynes, Annie’s box: Charles Darwin, his daughter and human evolution (London,
2002)
R. M. Young, 'Malthus and the Evolutionists: the common context of biological
and social theory', Past & Present, 43 (1969), pp. 109-41.
Social Darwinism
J.H. Beckstram, Darwinism applied: evolutionary paths to social goals (Westport,
1993)
P. Dickens, Social Darwinism: linking evolutionary thought to social theory
(Buckingham, 2000)
Peter Gay, The Cultivation of Hatred (1995), esp. pp. 39-68.
M. Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945: nature
as model and nature as threat (Cambridge, 1997)
T.H. Huxley, ‘Evolution and Ethics’ in Evolution and ethics, and other essays
(London, 1894) and in J.S. Huxley (ed.), Evlution and ethics, 1893-1943 (1947)
Week 10: INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS
There will be no lecture, representations session or seminar this week, but
arrangements will be made for you to meet individually with the tutor to discuss
your progress during the term and, in particular, your two essays.
Summer Term
Week 1: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The Russian Revolution was undoubtedly one of the defining events of the
twentieth century. It also holds a pivotal place within this course. We will be
examining the Russian Revolution both in terms of what it has in common with
earlier revolutions we have studied, as well as laying the foundations for the
sessions next term on totalitarianism, and the Cold War. In the lecture and
seminar we will focus on political texts by three of the key players in the Russian
Revolution: Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. We will examine those texts and consider
how they responded to and shaped events. In the representations session we will
focus on the role and response of intellectuals to events in Russia through a
viewing and discussion of the film Dr Zhivago.
Lecture
Beryl Williams, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Representations
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘Film: Dr Zhivago’
Core Reading
Lenin, What is to be done? (various editions available)
Lenin, The State and Revolution (various editions available)
Trotsky, ‘The Art of Insurrection’, Chapter VI in The History of the Russian
Revolution, Volume 2: The Attempted Counter-Revolution (London, 1933)
Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (various editions available)
B. Williams, Lenin (Harlow, 2000)
B. Williams, ‘The Battle on a Cultural Front’, in B. Williams, The Russian
revolution, 1917-1921 (Oxford, 1987) (in study pack)
Topics for Discussion
What, according to Lenin, 'was to be done'?
What role were intellectuals to play in Lenin’s system?
How far were Lenin's ideas derived from Marx?
Why did the Russian Revolution generate such intense ideological opposition?
What were the intellectual consequences of the Russian Revolution?
Further Reading
The Russian Revolution
E. Acton, Rethinking the Russian Revolution (London, 1990)
O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. (London, 1996)
S. Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (Oxford, 1994)
R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution 1889-1919 (London, 1990)
C. Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and their Revolution, 1917-21
(London, 1996)
H. Shukman, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution (Oxford, 1994)
Lenin
N. Harding, Leninism (London, 1996)
S. Philips, Lenin and the Russian Revolution (Oxford, 2000)
R. Service, Lenin: a biography (London, 2002)
D. Volkogonov, Lenin, Life and Legacy (London, 1994)
Stalin
A. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives (London, 1998)
R. Conquest, The Great Terror: a reassessment (London, 1990)
D. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (London, 1991)
Trotsky
I. Deutscher, Trotsky, the Prophet Armed (London, 1954)
B. Knei Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Oxford, 1978)
D. Volkogonov, Trotsky The Eternal Revolutionary (London, 1996)
The role of intellectuals
C. Claudin-Urondo, Lenin and the Cultural Revolution (Hassocks, 1977)
H. Gunther (ed.), The Culture of the Stalin Period (Basingstoke, 1990)
L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Volume 2. (Oxford, 1978)
P. Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: the intelligentsia and power (New York, 1990)
C. Read, Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia (London, 1979)
C. Read, Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia (London, 1990)
J. Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York, 1919)
Week 2: TOTALITARIANISM
The first half of the twentieth century was marked by the existence of totalitarian
regimes (most notably Hitler’s German and Soviet Russia) and by opposition to
them. Our focus this week will be less on the totalitarian regimes themselves
than on the responses to them both from within and from outside. In the
representations session we will listen to and discuss the music of Dmitri
Shostakovich in an attempt to establish what it can tell us about the Soviet
regime. The texts on which we will focus in the seminar are all novels. Thus this
week’s topic will also raise questions about the use of music and literature as
historical sources.
Lecture
Professor Donald Winch, ‘Responses to Totalitarianism in the 20th Century’
Representations
Dr Rachel Hammersley, ‘The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich’
Core Reading
A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon (various editions)
G. Orwell, 1984 (various editions)
G. Orwell, Animal Farm (various editions)
G. Orwell, ‘Arthur Koestler’ and ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ from The Collected
Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (Harmondsworth, 1970) (in study
pack)
Topics for Discussion
'The sin of nearly all left-wingers from 1933 onward is that they have wanted to
be anti-Fascist without being anti-totalitarian.' Was Orwell trying to put things
right in Animal Farm? Was his charge a fair one?
Is Animal Farm a lament for a revolution that went wrong or a denunciation of all
revolutions?
Why does Rubashov in Darkness at Noon confess to something he knows to be
false?
What can the music of Dmitri Shostakovich tell us about the Soviet regime?
Further Reading
General Works on Totalitarianism
H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London, 1958)
J.J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (London, 2000)
J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London, 1961)
S. Tormey, Making Sense of Tyranny: interpretations of totalitarianism (Manchester,
1995)
The Soviet Union
A. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (Harmondsworth, 1970)
M. Amis, Koba the Dread (London, 2002)
S. & B. Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? Second Edition (London,
1937)
The Stalin-Wells Talk; Verbatim Record and Discussion by G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells,
and J. M. Keynes (London, 1934)
George Orwell
B. Crick, George Orwell; A life (Harmondsworth, 1992)
G. Holderness et al, George Orwell (Basingstoke, 1998)
S. Ingle, George Orwell: a political life (Manchester, 1993)
D.J. Taylor, Video Recording: The Real George Orwell – South Bank Show (2003)
R. Williams, George Orwell: a collection of critical essays (Englewood Cliffs, 1974)
Arthur Koestler
D. Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: the homeless mind (London, 1998)
J. Calder, Chronicles of Conscience: a Study of George Orwell and Arthur Koestler
(Secker, 1968)
Dmitri Shostokovich
Masterworks video – Shostokovich’s 5th Symphony (2002)
R. Bartlett (ed.), Shostokovich in Context (Oxford, 2000)
P. Fanning, Shostokovian Studies (Cambridge, 1995)
C. Norris, Shostokovich: the man and his music (Lawrence and Wishart, 1982)
Week 3: THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Spain, which did not participate in either of the World Wars, had a twentiethcentury history which was effectively counter-cyclical to that of the rest of
Europe. There was dictatorship, that of General Miguel Primo de Rivera between
1923 and 1929, when democracy was being tried elsewhere and Republican
government between 1931-9 (the “Second Republic”) when the general shift was
to, or towards, fascism. It was a military revolt against this Republic which
occasioned the Spanish Civil War. The focus of the lecture will be on the causes
of the Civil War. The gradual polarization between left and right during the 2nd
Republic will be traced. The representation (Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom)
and the seminars will be on the Civil War and artistic responses to it. The film is
concerned with the divisions amongst the Republican supporters, principally
between communists and anarchists, which culminates in the “May days” of
1937 in Barcelona: a civil war within the civil war which precipitates the fall of
the socialist Prime Minister Largo Caballero and his replacement by Juan Négrin,
also socialist but more prepared to collaborate with communists to ensure the
survival of the Republic.
Lecture
Dr James Thomson, ‘The causes of the Spanish Civil War’
Representation
Dr James Thomson, Showing of the film Land and Freedom of Ken Loach (this will
serve to introduce the issue of the political divisions within the Republican ranks
which contribute to its failure)
Core reading
G. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (various editions)
G. Esenwein & A. Shubert, Spain at War, chs 10, 11
E.J. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, pp 156-63
M. Siedman, “The Unorwellian Barcelona”, European History Quarterly 20 (1990),
pp 163-80 (in study pack)
Topics for discussion
How was the course of the Spanish Civil War influenced by foreign intervention?
What were the aims of Britain, France, Italy, Germany the USSR in the conflict?
Why did the Spanish Civil War provoke such strong responses among artists and
writers across Europe?
Why did poetry flourish in the Spanish Civil War?
What impact did his participation in the Spanish Civil War have on the
development of George Orwell’s political views?
Why did Orwell lose faith in what was happening in Spain?
Why was Picasso’s Guernica so potent a symbol of the war?
Further reading
General
J. Alvarez Junco & A. Shubert (eds), Spanish History since 1808, ch 16
M. Blinkhorn, Democracy and Civil War in Spain
R. Carr, Modern Spain, chs 8-9
R. Carr, Spain, 1808-1975, chs 15-16
S.M. Ellwood, The Spanish Civil War
G. Esenwein & A. Shubert, Spain at War
G. Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939
P. Preston, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War
R Radosh (et al), Spain Betrayed, pp 171-207
F.J. Romero Salvadó, Twentieth Century Spain, ch 5
H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War
R.H. Whealey, “Foreign Intervention in the Spanish Civil War” in R Carr (ed) The
Republic and the Civil War in Spain
A Viñas, “The financing of the Civil War” in P Preston (ed) Revolution and War in
Spain, pp 266-82
Britain, France, Ireland
M. Alpert, ‘The Spanish Civil War and the Mediterranean’, in R Rein (ed), Spain
and the Mediterranean
T. Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War, (Oxford, 1997)
J. Edwards, The British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-9, (1979)
E. Moradiellos, "The Allies and the Spanish Civil War" in S Balfour & P Preston
(eds), Spain and the Great Powers
E. Moradiellos, "The Origins of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War:
Anglo-Spanish Relations in early 1936", European Historical Quarterly (1991), 339
E. Moradiellos, "British political strategy in the face of the military rising of 1936
in Spain", Contemporary European History July 1992
G Stone, “The European Powers and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-9” in R Boyce &
E Robertson (eds), Paths to War, pp 199-232
G. Stone, "Britain, Non-Intervention and the Spanish Civil War", European Studies
Review 9 (1979)
G. Stone, "Britain, France, and the Spanish Problem, 1936-9" in D Richardson & G
Stone (eds) Decisions and Diplomacy
R.A. Stradling, "Battleground of Reputations: Ireland and the Spanish Civil War"
in P Preston & AS Mackenzie, The Republic Besieged
R Veatch, “The League of Nations and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-9”, European
History Quarterly 20 (1990), pp 181-205
USSR
E.H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War, (Macmillan, 1984), includes
documents
D. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War
D. Cattell, Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War
I. Maisky, Spanish Notebooks
D. Smyth, ‘”We are with You”: Solidarity and Self-Interest in Soviet Policy
Towards Republican Spain, 1936-9’ in P. Preston & A.S. Mackenzie, The Republic
Besieged
A. Viñas, ‘Gold, the Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War’, European Studies
Review 9 (1979) and in M. Blinkhorn (ed), Spain in Conflict
Fascist Powers
J. Coverdale, Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War
C. Leitz,’Nazi Germany's Intervention in the Spanish Civil War and the
Foundation of HISMA/ROWAK’, in Preston & Mackenzie, The Republic Besieged
C. Leitz, ‘Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, 1936-1945’, in S. Balfour and P.
Preston (eds), Spain and the Great Powers
C. Leitz, ‘Hermann Goring and Nazi Germany's Economic Exploitation of
Nationalist Spain, 1936-9’, German History 14 (1996), 21-37
S.G. Payne, ‘Fascist Italy and Spain, 1922-45, in R. Rein (ed), Spain and the
Mediterranean since 1898
P. Preston, ‘Mussolini's Spanish Adventure: From limited risk to war’, in Preston
& Mackenzie, The Republic Besieged
P. Preston, ‘Italy and Spain in Civil War and World War, 1936-43’, in Balfour and
Preston, Spain and the Great Powers
I. Saz, ‘Fascism and Empire: Fascist Italy against Republican Spain’, in R Rein
(ed.), Spain and the Mediterranean since 1898
D. Smyth, "Reflex reaction: Germany and the onset of the Spanish Civil War" in P
Preston (ed), Revolution and War in Spain
R. Whealey, Hitler and Spain
Painters and Poets of the Spanish Civil War
W.H. Auden, ‘Spain’ (various editions)
A. Blunt, Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (Oxford, 1969)
V. Cunningham, The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse (Harmondsworth,
1980)
D. Mitchell, Britten and Auden in the thirties (London, 1981)
F.D. Russell, Picasso’s ‘Guernica: the labyrinth of narrative and vision (London, 1980)’
George Orwell
George Orwell, Orwell in Spain (Harmondsworth, 2001)
B. Crick, George Orwell: a life (Harmondsworth, 1980)
C. Norris ed., Inside the Myth: Orwell (London, 1984)
M. Shelden, Orwell: the authorised biography (London, 1991)
D.J. Taylor, Orwell: the life (London, 2003)
Week 4: SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY
For many nineteenth-century observers and political participants, socialism and
democracy were virtually synonymous. Whether expressed in the forms of
utopian socialism, revolutionary communism or social democracy, socialists the
world over were animated by the idea of putting into practice dreams of radical
democracy initially held out by upheavals of the French Revolution. Needless to
say, the Russian Revolution of 1917 marked a dramatic turning point in socialist
thought and practice, as the Soviet Union became the world’s first testing ground
for building a fundamentally new socialist society from the ruins of world war
and revolution. Socialist ideals and ideology were also revised along the way, as
Marxist thought was “updated” to suit Soviet historical conditions and power
relations. How Leninism – and later Stalinism -- shaped the political fate of the
Soviet Union (and in particular Eastern Europe after 1945) is the main topic of
discussion this week. As such the principal theme will be the ever-changing
relationship between state socialism and democracy, paying special attention to
the Eastern European experience from the late 1940s through the 1980s.
Lecture
Dr. Paul Betts, “Socialism and Democracy in Eastern Europe”
Representations:
“Unrest in the East Bloc”
**Discussion of Legters and Stokes primary source extracts; please be sure to
read and bring this material with you to class
Core Reading
Eastern Europe: Transformation and Revolution, ed. L. Letgers (1992), pp. 147-164,
235-247
G. Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe
since 1945 (1991), pp. 44-50, 100-107, 122-149 (for the representations session);
pp.150-80 (for the seminar)
Topics for discussion
In what ways is socialism democratic?
To what extent were Eastern European countries Stalinized after 1945?
What animated the occasional upheavals in the East Bloc from the late 1940s
through the 1980s?
Further Reading
M. Almond, Decline without Fall: Romania under Ceausescu (1984)
N. Ascherson, The Polish August (1984)
T.G. Ash, Solidarity (1984)
G. Augustinos, The National Idea in Eastern Europe (1996)
A. Baring, Uprising in East Germany: June 17, 1953 (1972)
M. Boll, Cold War in the Balkans (1984)
R.J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the 20th Century (1994)
R. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (1997)
R. Daniels, Soviet Communism from Reform to Collapse (1995)
N. Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (1981)
N. Davies, Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland (1984)
A. Dedijer, History of Yugoslavia (1979)
Dwbkowski, History of Poland (1999)
F. Furet, The Illusion of the Past (1995)
S.R. Graubaud, Eastern Europe and Central Europe (1991)
H-G Heinrich, Hungary (1983)
J. Hoensch, A History of Modern Hungary, 1867-1994 (1996)
K. Jarausch, Dictatorship as Experience (1999)
T. Kososi and E. Wnuk-Lipinski, Equality and Inequality under Socialism (1983)
H. M. Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 (1986)
J. Krejki, Czechoslovakia, 1918-1992 (1996)
J. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History (1996)
C. Maier, ed., The Cold War in Europe (1991)
V. Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of Demise (1999)
G. Merritt, Eastern Europe and the USSR (1991)
A.J. Prazmowska, Eastern Europe and the Origins of World War II (2000)
S.P. Ramet, ed., Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture and Society since 1939 (1998)
D. Rugg, Eastern Europe (1985)
K. Schneider, The GDR: History, Politics, Economics and Society (1978)
J. Steele, Eastern Europe since Stalin (1999)
Czechoslovakia, ed. N. Stone (1988)
P. Summerscale, Eastern European Predicament: Changing Patterns in Poland,
Czechoslavakia and Romania (1983)
G. Swain and N. Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945, pp.1-118.
K. Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceausescu’s Romania (1991)
A. White, Restalinization and the House of Culture (1990)
Week 5: THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Few recent historical events have generated as much international interest and
attention as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Even so, this colourful
episode often enjoys only cursory treatment in European history surveys and
intellectual history programmes. This session is thus designed to introduce
students to the momentous changes leading up to the events of 1989, as well as to
discuss how they have radically reshaped the map of Eastern Europe and the
wider world. No less important is that the dismantling of the Berlin Wall has
become a new pivot in recent retrospectives of the past century. To be sure,
historians are at odds about how to interpret or narrate these events. Was the
collapse of the Berlin Wall simply the fall of communism, the liberation of the
Second World, the “end of history,” or perhaps the most fitting bicentennial
tribute to the “spirit of 1789?” This week’s lecture and readings will address
these broader themes, paying special attention to how the Revolutions of 1989
have inspired new ways of rewritings the 20th century past.
Lecture
Dr. Paul Betts, “The Revolutions of 1989”
Representation
Dr. Paul Betts, “Goodbye to What?”
Discussion of Fukuyama, Hobsbawm and Judt extracts
Please be sure to read and bring these documents to class
Core Reading
F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), pp. xi-xxii, 39-52.
E. Hobsbawm, “Goodbye to All That,” in After the Fall, ed. Robin Blackbourn
(1991), pp. 115-125.
T. Judt, “1989: The End of Which Europe?” in The Revolutions of 1989, ed.
Vladimir Tismaneanu (1999), 165-180.
S. N. Eisenstedt, ‘The Breakdown of Communist Regimes’ and T. G. Ash, ‘The
Year of Truth’ – both reprinted in The Revolutions of 1989, ed. V. Tismaneanu
(1999) pp.89-124.
Topics for discussion
Were the Revolutions of 1989 revolutionary?
To what extent did the Revolutions of 1989 represent the real conclusion of
World War II?
What is the contemporary legacy of these events for Germany and Central
Europe?
Further Reading
B. Ackermann, The Future of Liberal Revolution (1998)
T. G. Ash, The Magic Lantern (1993)
I. Banac, Eastern Europe in Revolution (1992)
R. Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (1991)
R. Darnton, Berlin Journal (1992)
K. Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform (1990)
M. Glenny, The Rebirth of History (1990)
M. Glenny, The Fall of Yugloslavia (1993)
S.R. Graubaud, Eastern Europe and Central Europe (1991)
S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (1994)
K. Jarausch, The Rush to Unity (1994)
L. Letgers, Eastern Europe: Transformation and Revolution (1992)
C. Maier, ed., The Cold War in Europe (1991)
G. Merritt, Eastern Europe and the USSR (1991)
A.J. Prazmowska, Eastern Europe and the Origins of World War II (2000)
T. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land (1995)
J. Rothschild, Return to Diversity (1993)
T. Simms, Eastern Europe in the Postwar World (1993)
G. Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism (1993)
The Revolutions of 1989, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu (1999)
Germany United and Europe Transformed, ed. P. Zeelikov and C. Rice (1995)