Europe: Early Modern and Modern
nine authors with twenty or more entries in the index
(in order of frequency, Michel de Montaigne, Jean
Bodin, Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Richard
Hooker, Paolo Sarpi, Galileo Galilei, Miguel de Cervantes, and Torquato Tasso), and an outer circle of
fifteen authors with five or more entries (Thomas
Hobbes, Ben Jonson, Fernando Botero, Robert Bellarmine, Justus Lipsius, William Shakespeare, Hugo
Grotius, Tomasso Campanella, Pierre Charron, René
Descartes, Guillaume Du Vair, Paolo Paruta, Ignatius
Loyola, Pierre Bérulle, and Johannes Kepler). The
complete absence of references to Jacob Boehme,
Gabriel Naudé, Constantijn Huygens, and Martin
Opitz should be registered, together with the virtual
omission of Juan Huarte and Jan Amos Comenius.
The concentration on a few English, French, and
Italian writers is all the more odd because Bouwsma's
aim is not to chart originality or achievement but
rather to reveal what might be called the structures of
thought of the culture and the principal changes in
those structures over three generations. Some of his
paragraphs read rather like the commonplace books
that became so fashionable in this period, since one
quotation on a given topic follows another with relatively little comment. For this purpose, a wider range
of authors might have been still more useful, in order
to show that certain attitudes were widespread.
The structure of the book is an original one, and to
my mind it works. Attracted by, and at the same time
critical of, the traditional whig, triumphalist, Actonian,
or vulgar-Burckhardtian interpretation of the periodBurckhardt himself was more ambivalent than his
followers—Bouwsma has divided his essay into two
parts. The first half, more or less traditional, is organized around the theme of liberation: the liberation of
the self, of knowing, of time, of space, of polities, and
of religion. Liberation leads to or is associated with
crisis, crisis with anxiety, and anxiety with the search
for order, which is the main theme of the second half
of the book: the reordered self, order in society, order
in religion, order in the arts, and so on. The second
half of the book also includes a chapter provocatively
entitled "The Decline of Historical Consciousness,"
claiming that "historical composition" lost its "vitality"
in the age not only of Sarpi and Enrico Caterino Davila
but also of the rise of a pan-European antiquarian
movement exemplified by Etienne Pasquier, John Selden, Ole Worm, and many other scholars.
The concern with crisis and decline is emphasized by
the book's title, playing with the title of the first
English translation of Johan Huizinga's Autumn of the
Middle Ages (1924). It is a considerably more original
theme than "liberation," although Bouwsma might
have mentioned, at least in his bibliography, the
collection of essays edited by Jean Lafond and André
Stegmann, L'automne de la Renaissance, 1580-1630
(1981). He might also have referred to Roland
Mousnier, who in a once-famous French textbook
organized his account of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries around the notions of crisis and order.
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1443
Bouwsma emphasises the point that liberation and the
search for order occurred simultaneously. This has the
advantage of allowing him to paint the portrait of an
age without assuming its homogeneity, but the disadvantage of obscuring the kind of cultural changes that
were taking place, let alone why. Every now and then,
the author makes perceptive remarks about change,
about secularization, about routinization, or about the
shift in the principles of order "from hierarchy to
balance." The pity is that he does not allow himself to
develop these points at any length.
It is impossible to review a book of this size on such
a vast subject without being conscious of what is not
there, without wishing, for example, that voices from
more European countries could have been heard or
that more had been done to situate the authors quoted
in their social environments. Whole areas of debate
during the period have been virtually omitted, notably
witchcraft and what Antoine de Montchrétien (who is
never mentioned) called "political economy," even
though Bouwsma's favorite thinker Bodin wrote on
both topics. All the same, a two-hundred-page survey
of European thought over nearly a century is bound to
make sacrifices, and in defense of Bouwsma's choice it
can be said both that he has a clear story to telt and
that he tells it convincingly. There are a number of
slips of the pen, or perhaps the keyboard, but nothing
that cannot be put right in a second edition.
PETER BURKE
University of Cambridge
PHILIP BENEDICT, GUIDO MARNEF, HENK VAN NIEROP,
and MARC VENARD, editors. Reformation, Revolt and
Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555-1585.
Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van
Wetenschappen. 2000. Pp. 298.
This collection of essays compares the French wars of
religion and the Dutch Revolt, two lengthy and violent
struggles in late sixteenth-century Europe. While each
involved a complex mix of religion and polities, the
outcomes were very different: the establishment of an
independent and Calvinist state in the northern Netherlands, and the relegation of Calvinists to a tolerated
minority in an emphatically Catholic and unified
France. This essay collection is the result of a conference held in Amsterdam in October 1997, sponsored
by the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences. Fourteen
historians, drawn equally from specialists in French
and Dutch history, were invited to write paired essays
on seven themes or problems common to both conflicts: the dynamics of Calvinist militancy; the situation
of the nobility; political culture and mobilization;
Catholicism and resistance to the Reformation; middle
groups and their polities; the response of the monarchy; and the move from localized militancy to sustained military insurrection.
These fourteen stimulating but relatively brief essays
are preceded by an introduction by Philip Benedict
and an overview by Nicolette Mout of the recent
OCTOBER 2001
1444
Reviews of Books
historiography of the French wars of religion and the
Dutch Revolt. Since it is impossible to comment here
on the arguments of all fourteen essays, I will focus on
a few general insights and issues.
Comparative insights certainly emerge from these
paired essays. The essays of Mark Greengrass and
James Tracy, for example, make clear that the financial
resources of the French Protestants rested on a shakier
foundation than those of the Dutch Calvinists. This
difference helps to explain why the French Protestants
repeatedly made peace with the French crown while
the Dutch Calvinists were able to persevere.
Perhaps because comparable sources are not always
available, however, or because of a predisposition
among scholars to pursue lines of inquiry set by
traditional French and Dutch historiography, several
essays spoke to different aspects of a topic, making
direct comparisons difficult. While Jean Marie Constant and Henk van Nierop both address the role of the
nobility, Constant focuses on the Protestant nobility,
their number and strength, the reasons for their conversions, and their political ideas. Van Nierop analyzes
all nobles in the Netherlands and their role in the
revolt.
In general, I gained a clearer comparative understanding of the conflicts by considering the essays as a
whole rather than as paired sets. For example, one
important difference that surfaced across a range of
essays was that religion seems to have played a greater
role in the French wars of religion than in the Dutch
Revolt. Several essays on the French conflict reflect a
recent trend among scholars to emphasize that religious concerns played a central role that was fundamentally revolutionary. Benedict's article on early
French Calvinist militancy, which examines Protestant
pamphlets on the eve of the wars and early Protestant
militant actions, argues persuasively that Protestant
goals were destabilizing and involved "a Church order
and a Christian community reformed according to the
purity of God's word" (p. 50). Marc Venard's article on
Catholic resistance to the French Reformation, summarizing recent research, convincingly argues that the
vigorous popular Catholic reaction against the Protestants, which provoked violent riots, was motivated by
their outrage at attacks on traditional Catholicism,
especially attacks on its holy relics and images and the
Eucharist.
Similarly, Denis Crouzet argues in his article on
Calvinist political mobilization in the 1560s and early
1570s that ultimately a revolutionary religious message
lay at the heart of early Protestant political discourse.
There were two major themes in early Protestant
literature about political resistance: one rested the
right of resistance on constitutional and legal foundations; the other stressed the need to "obey the divine
wil!" and "allowed for the possibility that a Prince of
the blood or even. . . ordinary subjects might be called
by God to be the agent of providential intervention"
(p. 113). In a complex yet compelling argument, he
proposes that Protestants used political arguments in
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
pamphlets tactically to attract as much support as
possible—but that nonetheless religious considerations were paramount.
By contrast, the role of religion seems often overshadowed by political considerations in the Netherlands, and in one essay the idea of a popular religious
movement is actively rejected. For example, political
concerns are predominant in van Nierop's article on
the nobility and the Dutch Revolt, where he argues
that the nobility's role in the revolt was key but that the
central issue was constitutional: the nobles challenged
Philip II's increasingly absolutist policy toward them.
They were also concerned about religion but primarily
to end the repression of heresy insisted upon by Philip
and his representatives. The question was never, as in
France, whether the country as a whole would adopt
Protestantism.
In my view, the most controversial essay (and the
most poorly edited) is Joke Spaans's essay, which looks
at the resignation of Dutch Catholics in the face of the
revolt and the suppression of their church. Drawing on
recent studies of the English Reformation by Christopher Haigh and J. J. Scarisbrick, she questions how
widespread popular support for Protestantism really
was in the Netherlands and argues instead that a
political reformation was imposed from above. She
does not believe in the possibility of popular reformations from below. Drawing on recent discussions of
confessionalization, she argues that neither Catholics
nor Protestants of that time could be expected to carry
on a popular revolt or reformation against lawful
authority because a lengthy process of confessionalization was necessary before a strong confessional identity could be established. Hence, Dutch Catholics
cannot be viewed as "uninspired and wishy-washy" (p.
160) for passively submitting to the state. They may, in
fact, be more the norm. Spaans's article underscores
the need for more studies of Dutch Catholic religious
life on the eve of the Reformation. Although she is
right that Tridentine Catholicism was different from
earlier sixteenth-century Catholicism, surely Catholics
of mid-century had some sense of religious identity.
Why would Catholics need a process of confessionalization before initiating revolt? Historians need better
to identify key elements of Dutch Catholic spirituality.
Furthermore, Spaans's argument against popular
reformations from below ignores the very ample evidence of them in Germany and the strong popular
support for the Reformation in France. For both
countries, there bas been widespread research into
their pre-Reformation religious life. It may turn out
that there was not a popular reformation in the
Netherlands, but that does not prove its impossibility
elsewhere. I would also argue, based on my study of La
Rochelle, that popular religious support need not
always come from a full-fledged confessional identity
but may stem instead from people's identification with
elements of a new religion that resonate with their own
experience. In the case of La Rochelle, the Rochelais
were not particularly noted for Catholic devotion. Yet
OCTOBER 2001
Europe: Early Modem and Modern
Protestantism, with its doctrines invoking freedom
from ecclesiastical authority, appealed powerfully in
large part because it meshed well with the Rochelais'
longstanding traditions of independence from both
political and ecclesiastical authority.
Overall, these essays offer a wealth of recent scholarship on the French wars of religion and the Dutch
Revolt. If they do not always provide direct comparisons, they do make clear avenues for future research.
JUDITH PUGH MEYER
University of Connecticut
PAUL MICHAEL KIELSTRA. The Polities of Slave Trade
Suppression in Britain and France, 1814-48. New York:
St. Martin's. 2000. Pp. xiv, 388. $69.95.
Paul Michael Kielstra has produced a thorough analysis of the interactions of abolitionism, polities, and
diplomacy surrounding British and French attempts to
repress the slave trade—but not slavery, a topic he
purposefully excludes—in the post-Napoleonic period.
Beginning with the settlements of 1814-1815, the
author shows how Britain was able to impose the
abolition of the slave trade upon France but not the
right to search suspected slavers that was Britain's
preferred means of combating the slave trade. The
weak and ineffective legislation passed by the Restoration government of Louis XVIII against the slave
traffic, however, was insufficient to stop the illicit
French trade, which actually grew in the early 1820s,
despite London's efforts to pressure Paris and to
revive an anti-slave trade movement in France. Only in
the late 1820s did the latter two factors finally succeed
in influencing Charles X's government to pass and
enforce more stringent legislation. This amounted to a
first step that eventually led to the eradication of the
illicit French traffic after the more cooperative July
Monarchy of Louis Philippe agreed to mutual search
conventions in 1831 and 1833. For the duration of the
1830s, the two powers cooperated fully in their suppression polities, France even taking the lead at times
in extending agreements to other nations. But the
Egyptian crisis of 1840 and the subsequent souring of
cross-Channel relations led to a serious dispute in
1842, when France refused to ratify the new, fivepower mutual search agreement that it had originally
proposed. Only in 1845 was the thorny matter finally
resolved by replacing the existing search agreements
with mutual commitments for joint Anglo-French
cruising off the slave toasts. Kielstra's comprehensive
analysis clearly demonstrates that, throughout the
period 1814-1848, slave trade issues constituted an
important element in both British and French diplomacy.
One might debate whether it is really possible in any
analysis to isolate the slave trade from the question of
slavery itself. Nevertheless, this study does offer more
detail than any before it on the complicated dealings
between London and Paris over slave trade issues.
Kielstra affords his readers a blow-by-blow narrative
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 1445
not only on slave trade repression diplomacy but on
the internal pressures influencing it. His book provides
the best account yet of the way in which British
abolitionists weighed upon successive Cabinets in slave
trade matters. Consequently, Kielstra's work is a veritable gold mine for any expert on the nineteenthcentury slave trade who wishes to know the behindthe-scenes maneuvering and lobbying of pressure
groups in Britain and France, the internal government
debates and planning, and the intricate fashion in
which slave trade repression decisions were made,
implemented, and negotiated by both countries. The
author's other important contribution is his debunking
once and for all of the still-lingering assumption that
France did not make serious efforts to suppress the
slave traffic after 1815, and especially after 1830.
Otherwise, hardly any of Kielstra's work is interpretively new or historiographically different. Despite
desperate attempts to split hairs over minor issues and
make revisions here and there, almost all of this book
simply fleshes out and adds to what experts on the
nineteenth-century slave trade, like David Eltis for
Britain or Serge Daget for France, have already said. It
provides more information than earlier studies, but in
so doing it also often overwhelms the reader with
unnecessary detail about what one clerk reported to
another, rendering this book a very tedious read
despite the author's felicitous style, and reminding one
of the sort of diplomatie history produced in the early
twentieth century that drove the founders of the
Annales school to distraction. Like much old-time
diplomatie history, this study is very thoroughly researched, making more extensive use of archives,
private papers, memoirs, and secondary sources published prior to 1990 than any previous book in its field.
It is regrettable, though, that secondary material published over the last decade is largely neglected, for only
five sources listed in this work's extensive bibliography
appeared after 1990, and only two after 1992. As a
result, this study fails to avail itself of many recent
contributions that could have informed it on numerous
relevant developments, such as Howard Temperley's
White Dreams Black Africa: The Antislavety Expedition
to the Niger (1991). Kielstra's book, then, strongly
resembles an exquisitely researched Ph.D. thesis--:out
of which he admits it arose—that was refurbished but
not completely updated before its publication. It also
has the disadvantage of being encumbered by some
eighty-three pages of endnotes that are so erudite and
difficult to decipher that the author himself suggests in
his preface that they be ignored by anyone but intrepid
scholars. Despite these reservations, however, this
remains an impressive piece of traditional scholarship
that elucidates many points in Anglo-French slave
trade diplomacy. It should please and edify any expert
on the questions of nineteenth-century slave trade
repression and diplomatie history.
LAWRENCE C. JENNINGS
University of Ottawa
OCTOBER 2001