Men and Their Histories: Civilizing Subjects
Author(s): Catherine Hall
Source: History Workshop Journal, No. 52 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 49-66
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289747
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Fig. 1. Charles Kingsley in Roman mode.
Bust by Thomas Woolner (1825-92),1875.
Men and Their Histories:
CivilizingSubjects
by Catherine Hall
In 1860CharlesKingsley,celebratedauthoranderstwhileChristiansocialist,
gave, and published,his inaugurallecture as Professorof Modem History
at the University of Cambridge.1His subject was 'The Limits of Exact
Scienceas Opposedto History'and he took the opportunityto attackthose
historianswho assertedthe importanceof social laws to an understanding
of history.History,Kingsleyinsisted, was first and foremost a moral practice, and historywas the story of great men. If the young gentlemen who
had gatheredto listen to him wished to understandHistory,he suggested,
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they mustfirsttry to understandmen andwomen.'ForHistoryis the history
of men and women',he told them, 'and nothingelse'.2Kingsley'sstrictures
provokeda sharpresponsefromEdwardSpencerBeesly,just appointedas
Professorof ModernHistory at UniversityCollege. His stinging,if somewhat long-winded,thirty-two-pagecritiqueof Kingsley,concludedwith the
judgementthat:
The lecture is a bad one, from the title-pageto the conclusion- bad in
conceptionandin execution,in argument,in style,andeven in grammar.3
Let me use this clash between two significantmid-Victorianpublicmen to
explore, in a very preliminaryway, how the historicalimaginationand historical thinking in Britain have been rooted in what I describe as the
'grammarof difference':the multipledifferencesassociatedwith the hierarchiesof class, of race and of gender,alwaysarticulatedthroughrelations
of power. I say preliminarybecause it is a new development for me to
addressthe historyof the disciplinein its nineteenth-century,as opposedto
its late twentieth-centuryform. The occasion of my inaugurallecture as
Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University
College London seems an appropriatemoment.
As a student I was fed and watered by Marxisthistorians,especially
Rodney Hilton, and learned of grand historicalnarratives,of causes and
determination,of the transitionfromfeudalismto capitalism,of the division
of labourin manufacturingand modernindustry,of class and class conflict,
of the politicsof history.LessonswhichI hope neverto forget.But 1968and
its consequencesbegan to disruptthose paradigms.The Britishtraditionof
feministhistory,withinwhichI proudlycount myself,was powerfullyinfluenced by that school of historywriting,but also made itself in antagonism
to it, insistingon the importanceof gender,of sexuality,of emotionalityand
subjectivity,of the home and the domestic,of the privatesphereas a site of
history making,of gender as well as class as an agent of antagonismand
change.
Feministhistoryitself expandedand diversified:it became embroiledin
the debates over theory and history,poststructuralismand language,race
and difference,whichcame to dominatethe late 1980s.Entangledas I was
in the troubled politics of feminism and race I encounteredwhat James
Baldwindescribesas the chargedand difficultmomentwhen the white man
confrontshis own whitenessand loses 'the jewel of his naivete'.Whiteness
carrieswith it authorityand power,the legacy of having'madethe modern
world', of never being 'strangersanywherein the world'. White women
carry this legacy in different ways from those of men, but they carry it
nonetheless.The white constructionof 'the African',the black man or the
black woman, depends on the productionof stereotypeswhich refuse full
human complexity.When the black man insists, wrote Baldwin, 'that the
white man cease to regardhim as an exotic rarityand recognizehim as a
Men and theirHistories
51
human being', then that difficultmoment erupts and the naivete of not
knowingthat relationof power is broken.4The universalhumanismof the
left and of the women'smovement,the assumptionthat we all unproblematicallybelieved in racialequality,had allowed me to avoid the full recognition of the relationsof power between white and black, the hierarchies
that were encoded in those two paradigms.To dismantlethose screenswas
not simplya matterof personalwillpower(thoughthat is necessarilya part
of the process):rather it was somethingwhich became possible in a particular conjuncture,the postcolonial moment, a moment of crisis for the
whole culture.As SalmanRushdiewrote in 1982,
I want to suggestthat racismis not a side-issuein contemporaryBritain;
that it's not a peripheralminorityaffair.I believe that Britainis undergoing a critical phase of its postcolonial period, and this crisis is not
simply economic or political. It's a crisis of the whole culture, of the
society'swhole sense of itself.5
The postcolonialmomentis the time when it becomes clearthat decolonizationhas not resultedin total freedom.It wasthe time whenthe new nations
which had become independentbegan to recognizethe limits of nationalism, and in the old centres of empire the chickenscame home to roost:in
the case of Britainin the shape of those once imperialsubjectswho 'came
home'. While first-generationmigrantsfelt compelledfor the most part to
makethe best they couldof the inhospitablemother-country,theirchildren,
born here, made very differentclaims. At this point of transition,argues
Simon Gikandi, the foundational histories of both metropolitan and
decolonizednationsbegin to unravel:this was, and is, a disjunctivemoment
when 'imperiallegacies' come 'to haunt English and postcolonialidentities'.6In the metropolethis was the momentwhen second-generationblack
Britons asked what it meant to be black and British,when black feminists
asked who belonged and in what ways to the collective 'we' of a feminist
sisterhood.How inclusivewere those humanistvisionsthat white feminists
took for granted? The idea of the unity of black and white could not
simply be taken for granted:its founding assumptionsneeded radicalreexamination.At the same time the Powelliteformulationsas to the threat
to 'our island race' had passed into the commonsenseof Thatcherismand
conservatism,provoking more explicit racial antagonisms.Race was an
issue for Britishsociety in new ways by the late 1980s.Racial thinkinghas
been there for a very long time, but the bringingof it to consciousness,the
making explicit of the ways in which the society is 'raced', to use Toni
Morrison'sterm, is anothermatter.7
It is the 'racing'of Englishnesswhichhas preoccupiedme for the last ten
years. Race, it became clear to me, was deeply rooted in English culture.
Not alwaysin formswhichwere explicitlyracist,but as a space in whichthe
English configuredboth their relationto others and to themselves.Racial
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thinkingwas a part of the everyday,part of English commonsense.The
work which I did in the 1980s,in collaborationwith Leonore Davidoff, on
the nineteenth-centurymiddleclass,had focusedon the centralityof gender
to middle-classculture.8It had not reflectedon the national,in the sense of
what was peculiarlyEnglish, or the imperialaspects of this culture.Class
and gender were indeed crucialaxes of power, constitutingand differentiatingmen and women in crosscuttingand complicatedways.But questions
of race and ethnicitywere also always present in the nineteenth century,
foundationalto Englishformsof categorizationandrelationsof power.The
vocabularyof Englishmen and women,whetherthey knew it or not, was a
racializedvocabulary,for supposed racial characteristicswere always an
implicitpart of their categorizations.This was part of being English.
The time of empire,andhere I am talkingof nineteenth-centuryempires,
was the time when anatomiesof differencewere being elaborated:differences of class, of race, of religion,of gender and sexuality.These elaborations were the work of culture,for the categorieswere discursiveand their
meaningshistoricallycontingent.The languageof class emerged as a way
of makingsense of the new industrialsociety in Britain of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.The languageof 'separatespheres'
became a commonway of talkingabout and categorizingsexual difference
in this sameperiodof transition.It was colonialencounterswhichproduced
a new category,race,the meaningsof which,like those of class and gender,
have alwaysbeen contested and challenged.The Enlightenmentinaugurated a debate aboutracialtypes and naturalscientistsbeganto make a new
objectof study,that is, the humanrace.They labouredto producea schema
out of the immensevarietiesof humanlife. On the one handwerethose who
operated within a Christianuniversalismwhich assumed that all peoples
were the descendantsof Adam and Eve and that the differencesbetween
peoples could be explainedby the differencesof cultureand climate.But
this did not mean that all were equal:white people, it was widely thought,
were more advanced,more civilizedthanothers.Given the rightconditions
those who lived in less developedcultureswould be able to advance.Many
indigenouspeoples, however,were seen as destinedfor extinction.On the
other hand were those who focused on the notion of permanentphysical
differenceswhich were inheritedand which distinguishedgroupsor races
of people one from another.In the context of evolutionarythinking,classificatory racial schemes which involved hierarchies from 'savagery' to
'civilization',with white Anglo-Saxonsat the apex, became common.But
these two discourses,of culturaldifferentialismand of biological racism,
were, as StuartHall has argued,not two differentsystemsbut 'racism'stwo
registers'anddiscoursesof both were often in play,the culturalslippinginto
the biologicaland vice versa.9
The apparentlybinaryoppositions,between men and women, between
black and white, between working-classand middle-class, constituted
through processes of differentiationwhich positioned their subjects as if
Men and their Histories
53
such divisionswere natural,were constantlyin the making,in conflictsof
power.As FrederickCooper and Ann Stoler argue,the most basic tension
of empirewas that 'the othernessof colonizedpersonswas neitherinherent
nor stable; his or her difference had to be defined and maintained'.This
meantthat 'a grammarof differencewas continuouslyandvigilantlycrafted
as people in colonies refashionedand contestedEuropeanclaimsto superiority'.10The constructionof this 'grammarof difference'was the cultural
work of both colonizer and colonized, and it has been the 'grammarof
difference'of the colonizerwhichhas been the focus of my recent work.1"
How then, does this connect to the makingof the disciplineof history
and its writing?
History was in itself intended to be a civilizingsubject.In John Stuart
Mill's definition of civilizationhe contrastedcivilizationwith barbarism.
Barbarismwas characterizedby savagetribeswanderingacrossthe land,by
the absence of commerce,manufacturingand agriculture,by individuals
fendingfor themselves,by no institutionsof law,administrationor employment.Civilization,on the otherhand,meantdense populationsin townsand
villages which were rich in commerce, manufacturingand agriculture,
humanbeings acting together for common purposesand relyingon social
arrangementsratherthanstrengthfor theirsafety.Civilization,he believed,
had advancedmost speedilyin Europe, and especiallyin Great Britain.'It
is only civilizedbeings',he thought,'who can combine':savagesand slaves
were incapableof acting in concert. England'sjoint stock companies,its
associationsand societies, its TradeUnions and benefit societies, its newspapers,whichenabled'eachto learnthat othersare feeling as he feels' and,
therefore,could 'form a collective will', all these markedits high level of
development in the scale of civilization. But there were problems:the
middle classes were too preoccupiedwith makingmoney, public opinion
was not sufficientlywell-grounded,too many books were produced too
quickly and not properlyread, individualswere becoming lost and insignificantin the crowd and being reduced to a form of moral effeminacy.
Facedwiththese dangersMill arguedfor the importanceof intellectualsand
of education.The existing universitieswere failing to produce men with
critical minds, rather they were encourging the adoption of received
opinions.Educationmust be about the creationof intellectualpower and
the love of truth,conductedin a spiritof free inquiry.Historycould play an
importantpart in this for it provided,'the recordof all great thingswhich
have been achievedby mankind'andmadepossiblean understandingof the
'pliabilityof nature'and the vast effects which could be achievedby good
guidanceand endeavour.12
The lessons of historyhad the potential to improvethe readingpublic,
Britishsubjects.They could learnof the differencewhichmen could make,
how nature could be shaped and progress increased. But furthermore
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historywould teach those Britishsubjectshow to civilize and improvethe
subjectsof empire. As scholarsof Mill have observed,throughouthis life
he used his knowledge of India, acquiredfrom his employment,like his
father before him, in the East India Company,to provide negative analogies by reference to which readerscould think about Britain or the West
more generally.13Medieval Europe and India provided the contrast
between those who were ready for liberty and those who were not. Despotismwas a legitimatemode of governmentfor dealingwith barbarians,if
the end was their improvementand the means were justifiedby actually
effectingthose ends. In elaboratingthe distinctionsbetweencivilizationand
barbarismMill was providingthe bedrock of the liberal imperialimagination and of historywriting.
In 1857, Harriet Martineauwas to take up his challenge and use the
weapon of historyin an attemptto educatethe Britishpublic.The context:
the First IndianWarof Independence,universallyknown in Britainas the
'IndianMutiny',when Indiansoldiersin the Britisharmyseriouslythreatened imperialpower with terribleconsequences.Martineauwas a committed studentof politicaleconomy,who had long seen it as her responsibility
to popularizethose doctrinesand educate throughher writing,a feminist
who was part of the tradition of 'imperialfeminism' first identified by
AntoinetteBurton,a convincedmesmerist,andincreasinglyassociatedwith
the new doctrineof positivism.14
Already establishedas a historicalwriter,
Martineauwas stronglyinfluencedin this period of her life by the French
positivist philosopher, Auguste Comte. Positivismprovided, as Royden
Harrisonhas argued,'a theory of knowledge,a philosophyof history,and
a programmeof social and politicalaction'.15A new scientificunderstanding of society,closely associatedwith evolutionaryideas of progress,would
afforda basisfor secureand demonstrably-correct
moraljudgements.Intellectualswere to play an importantpart in the strugglefor a better world.
Free inquirywas vital and no beliefs could be entertainedunlesswarranted
by availableevidence.
Martineauspeedily produceda volume with 'a humble aim':to explain
'whatour Indianempireis, how we came by it, and what has gone forward
in it since it firstbecameconnectedwith England'.The book's title, British
Rule in India; a Historical Sketch, was as succinct as its contents. Only 'bulky
works' were currentlyavailable,she noted, and she hoped that her brief
sketch would teach 'the English people the broad facts of Anglo-Indian
Thiswouldenable them to act in an informedway andcontribute
history'.16
to the formationof a collectiveopinionas to how Indiashouldnow be ruled.
In this way they would civilizethemselvesand others.The book was serialized in the Daily News throughout1857, as Brenda Quinn has noted, thus
securinga wide audience.17
Martineau'shistory of India contributed to the construction of the
'grammarof difference'of the Englishin the late 1850s.The 'highdesigns'
of 'the lordsof humankind'were elaborated,alongwithwhatshe saw as the
Men and their Histories
55
necessarycritique.18For it was essential to acknowledgethat Britainhad
made mistakesand not alwaysgovernedwell. A majorfailurehad been an
inadequateunderstandingof the characterof the 'natives'.Only througha
better understandingcould an improvedsystemof rule emerge.Martineau
set out to provide a 'recordof the great things achievedby mankind',and
'the vast effects whichcould be achievedby good guidanceand endeavour',
as Mill had recommended.She told the stories of great men, of Clive and
of Hastings,the transformationsthey had wrought,yet the faultlinesthey
created. To the East India Companybelonged the credit of introducing
Great Britain and Hindostan to each other, and bridgingover the gulf
between civilizationand barbarism.But it had been the historicmissionof
the middle class to defeat the power of monopoly,and open India to free
trade. Once railways and canals, steam communication and electric
telegraphs,'our arts and modes of life, belonging to a different stage of
civilization'crisscrossedthe country,'MusselmanprideandHindoo apathy'
were doomed:progress,Martineaubelieved,meaningWesterncivilization,
was both inevitableand desirable.19
A long-time supporter of anti-slavery,Martineau,like Dickens, had
been deeply disturbedby her first encounterwith both free and enslaved
black men and women in the U.S. Yet as Cora Kaplan has argued, her
ambivalenceabout racialdifferenceand its relationto liberalismfractured
her discourse.20BritishRule in India is caughtin the logic of racism'stwo
registers, that of cultural differentialismand biological racism.At some
points Martineau'semphasis was on a common humanity,the 'essential
ideas and feelings which are commonto all races in all times'. Thus in one
moment Hindu women are the same as other 'matronsand maidens':but
at another,in a much-utilizedtrope of both nineteenth-centuryand twentieth-centurywestern feminist thinking, the gender practices of Indian
society, whether the Hindu practice of widow-burningor the Moslem
harem,were seen as evidence of a low level of development.21The two registers were producedin similarways in her commentarieson Indiansensibilities. For example, evidence was cited that, 'the inhabitants of our
Asiatic territoriesare just as humanin their admirationof great personal
qualities ... as the men of Europe and America. But this was juxtaposed
with an insistence on the 'peculiarities'of 'imaginative and credulous
Asiatic peoples', and a belief in the distinct stages of development from
Hindu, characterizedby immutability,patience,indolence and stagnation,
to Moslem, characterizedby greater energy, to British, the last a clearly
'superiorrace'.22Martineau'sconfidentcharacterization,despite the fact
that she had never set foot in India, of the 'peculiar'characteristicsof the
'Rajpoots',those warriorswho had been for so long, as she put it, 'the perplexity of plain witted Englishmen'spoke volumes about English stereotypes of imaginedothers. 'Rajpoots'were 'men with no faith but plenty of
superstition,servile to power and diabolicallyoppressiveto helplessness,
lackingaffectionsor morality,smooth in languageand manners,yet brutal
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in grain'.23At one and the same time Martineaubelieved that a very long
processof seculareducationwould make civilizationpossible,that middleclass 'natives'could be educated, and that there was a 'bottomlesschasm'
between Asiatic and European races, a chasm which had been fully
revealed by the mutineersand whichit would never be possible to cross.24
So, grammarsof differencewere part of the fabricof historywriting.But
whatthen of Mr Kingsleyand MrBeesly? In the early1860shistorywas not
yet establishedas a discipline.In the universitiesit was a poor sisterto the
classicsand it was not until the late 1860sthat Stubbsin Oxfordand Seeley
in Cambridge(who had himself been the professorof Latin at University
College) began the systematicrethinkingof historicalresearchand teaching.25The appointmentof Kingsleyto Cambridgewas a sign in itself of the
absence of any notion of professionalhistorian.(Fig. 1) He was born in
1819,to a clericalfatherand a motherwho came from a long line of white
West Indians.Educatedat King'sCollege London and then in Cambridge,
where he took a first in classics,he followed in his father'sfootsteps and
becamea clergyman.In the 1840shis sympathyfor the workingmanled him
to Christian socialism. His first novels, Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1851),
expressedhis horrorat the 'conditionof England'and he developed a lifelong preoccupationwith sanitationand cleanliness.26In the late 1840s he
lecturedin English at Queens College, an institutionestablishedto teach
'all branchesof female knowledge',but entirelyrun by men.27
Kingsleywas not interested,as his friendMax Mullernoted, in detailed
historicalresearchbut he was deeply interested in the historicalimagination.28Carlyle'sTheFrenchRevolutionwas a constantreferencepoint for
him throughouthis life and by 1860he had alreadypublishedtwo historical
novels, Hypatia (1853) and WestwardHo! (1854).29The Queen had greatly
liked Two Years Ago (1857), a novel written, as was Westward Ho!, in the
context of the Crimean War, and Kingsley, previously unwelcome on
account of his erstwhileradicalpredilections,was invited to Buckingham
Palace and later proposed as Regius Professorat Cambridgeand tutor to
the Princeof Wales.30Criticaljudgementson Kingsley'swritingwere never
lacking:Carlyle thought Alton Locke 'a fervid creation left half chaotic'
while George Eliot, with characteristicwisdom,noted that 'Kingsleysees,
feels and paints vividly, but he theorises illogically and moralises
absurdly'.31Miller, when writing the preface to the posthumous new
edition of Kingsley'shistory lectures at Cambridge,The Roman and the
Teuton, commented that his writing was always immediate, never the
productof long reflectionor research.Yet he inspiredgreatenthusiasmand
loyalty amongst his listeners and readers:'few men', he judged, 'excited
wider and strongersympathies'.32
Kingsley'sinauguralwas centred on human beings and their actions,
alwayswithin a frameworkof Christianprovidentialism:for history,in his
Men and theirHistories
57
definition,was God educatingman. Metaphorsfrom science, he argued,
were inadequateto the task of explainingthe humanheart.Historywas not
the story of the masses, and could not be discernedthroughthe operation
of laws of development.It was great men, men of genius, whose actions
decided the course of historyand left their stampupon 'whole generations
and races'.33Prior to his appointmentKingsley'shistorywritinghad been
fictional:and it was this work which was to last. (Thoughit has to be said
that I have had little success in getting historystudentsto read him!) His
historicalimaginationwasvivid.Bredon tales of his WestIndianforefathers
he loved the romance of the sea, the adventuresof Drake, Raleigh and
Admiral Rodney, epic tales of gallant Englishmenconqueringthe world.
His immensely-popularWestwardHo! (reprinted37 times by 1997) was
written to inspire patriotism, and was dedicated to Rajah Brooke, an
authoritariancolonizer who had violently exerted his power in Sarawak
againsttroublesome'natives'.34
By 1860Kingsley'searlyradicalopinionshad given way to a muchmore
instinctualconservatismwith strongechoes of Carlyle.Men mustbe led by
those who knew better than themselves.The 'truestbenevolence'mightbe
'occasionalseverity':a doctrine particularlypertinent to 'lesser races'.35
Whilethe centralproblemto be addressedwas a lack of civilizationboth at
home and abroad,'at home' had crucialadvantages,for ProtestantAngloSaxon men were the bravest and the best. (Kingsley seriously doubted
whether a Roman Catholic country would ever be fit for constitutional
government- which points to the limits of whiteness and the hierarchies
inscribedwithin it.)36Centrallypreoccupiedwith questions of manliness
and femininity,Kingsleywas a passionate husband,whose vision of connubialbliss was somewhatakin to Milton'sAdam and Eve, and a passionate believerin 'separatespheres'.Men and womenwere naturallydifferent
andit was men'staskto act in the world,women'sto be.37His fictionalhero,
Amyas,in that paeon of praiseto Anglo-Saxonmasculinity,WestwardHo!,
'neverthoughtabout thinkingor felt aboutfeeling':from childhoodhe had
dreamtof going to sea and fightingthe Spanish,he was a symbol,with his
long fair curls,
of brave young Englandlongingto wing its way out of its islandprison,
to discover and to traffic,to colonise and to civilise until no wind can
sweep the earthwhichdoes not bear the echoes of an Englishvoice.38
The 'islandprison',as Gail Lewis has pointed out, carriesthe unconscious
knowledgeof the lacksembodiedin Englishnessand the islandhome, lacks
whichare recastas the civilizingimperative,to discover,to traffic,to colonize and to dominate,sweepingthe earthwith Anglo-Saxonism.39
Kingsley's
fictionalvillainin the almostunreadableTwo YearsAgo (Queen Victoria's
favourite)was an effete and narcissisticpoet who lived off the relativesof
his unfortunateand neglected,yet ever-loving,wife.40While supportiveof
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At
'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A
Fig. 2. Edward Spencer Beesly.
Pencil drawing by Sydney Prior (1842-1922), 1889.
Men and theirHistories
59
the extension of female educationand medicaltrainingfor women, Kingsley was stronglycriticalof the women'smovementand what he saw as the
'abnormal'andunfemininebehaviourof some of its adherents.The position
of women, he believed, shouldbe improvedby men.41
Kingsleyhad a lifelong interest in questionsof race and their historical
significance.In the late 1840s he was planning a lecture on Edward the
Confessor.It was to focus on 'the rottingof the Anglo-Saxonsystem'and
the inabilityof the Saxon mind to innovate. The Anglo-Saxons,a female
race,required'impregnationby the greatmale race,the Norse'.42It was this
mix of male and female races which made the English unique. His conviction as to the importanceof intermingling,so that the so-calledstronger
races could improvethe weaker,markedhim off from the protagonistsof
racialpuritysuch as Robert Knox, who believed that interracialsex would
resultin degeneration.
Kingsley's Cambridgelecture provoked Beesly (Fig. 2) to a spirited
critique of this vision of history.Beesly, born in 1831, and only recently
down from Oxford, was appointed to the chair of history in University
College in 1860.43Such a positionguaranteedneithermoney nor influence,
for studentshad to be won to lectures,and historywas regardedas a poor
relation to the more weighty subjects.44Beesly, however, started as he
meantto go on andused his positionas a base fromwhichto intervenemore
effectively in the public world. A child of evangelicalism,he had been
moved by the revolutionsof 1848and the radicalismof Cobdenand Bright.
Throughhis Oxfordtutor,RichardCongreve,he came underthe influence
of Comte,who was to inspirehim for the rest of his life. His positivismwas
more fully fledgedthan that of Martineauand he became convincedof the
historicaldestinyof the proletariat.Increasinglyscepticalof the progressive
nature of the bourgeoisie,he saw workmenand women as the two great
oppressed sections of society. It was the historicaldestiny of workmen,
organizedin trade unions and guided by intellectuals,to moralizecapitalism and utilizewealth for the good of all. Along with a smallgroupof likeminded men, the 'priesthood of positivism', as Royden Harrison has
described them, he began to work in the London labour movement,
identifyinghimself with the cause of bricklayers,masons, carpentersand
printers.45
Beesly'splain-spokenattackon Kingsleyin the FortnightlyReviewbegan
with a critique of Oxbridge as the last bastion of an outmoded view of
history:the new modernhistorywas being ignoredand Kingsley'sappointment markedthe old establishment'srefusalto recognize'anyfresh step in
human knowledge'.46Kingsley'sperformancewas 'feeble, confused and
pretentious'.It was not enough to vividly depict the features of a bygone
age, as the celebrated author had shown he could do: history had now
become a science and Kingsley had taken on the misguidedmission of
attemptingto demolishit. Beesly arguedthatmodernhistoryshouldbe cultivated scientifically,not as an exact mathematicalscience whichof course
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it could never be, but with a view to discoveringand verifyingthe 'general
tendencyof social evolution'and 'the continuousand unlimitedprogressof
humanity'.Martineauwas congratulatedas one of the new modern historians,along with Mill. 'The first duty of the historian',he insisted, 'is to
trace the successivestages of existencethroughwhichman has passed,and
to connect each with the correspondingstate.' Great men did not make
history:rather they were the embodimentof the mentalityof the time.47
Beesly wasin partattackingliteraryhistorians,withtheir'warm,sensational
colouring',and he insistedon a carefuluse of sourcesin the interestsof a
sustainedsocial analysis.48In his own teachinghe liked to lectureon 'wide
fields and long periodsof history',to look at patternsand trace change,to
representthe historyof the West 'as a continuousand naturalevolution'.49
The analogywith what was to become Marxisthistoriographyis clear.
Kingsleyand Beesly were to clash swordsfurther:both men were active
in the publicworldof politicsand letters,and both seem to have enjoyed a
fight. Kingsley,W. R. Greg remarked,remindsus of nothingso much as a
war-horse,while the Pall Mall GazettedescribedBeesly as a man who was
'alwaysfoamingat the mouth'.50Both were convincedof the importanceof
historicalwritingas an interventionin the present,and both wrote history
as part of a largerlife. While Kingsleyscornedcosmopolitanismand those
who saw themselves as 'citizens of the world', Beesly was a committed
internationalistand believed that it was in Francethat the proletarianspirit
wouldfirstbe fullymanifested.51
They took oppositesides in relationto the
American Civil War, for Kingsley was a fervent supporterof the South,
deeply admiringwhat he saw as the Southernchivalricspirit.He did not
supportslavery,but neitherdid he supportthose enslavedmen and women
who hadbeen freed.Muchfamilymoneyhadbeen lost as a resultof emancipation in the West Indies, he told his friend Tom Hughes, and he had no
intentionof contributingfurtherto aid freedmen.52His sentimentalaccount
of the fate of an escaped woman of mixed-race,a 'quadroon'in contemporaryparlance,in Two YearsAgo is remarkablein its ambivalence.Her
double nature, the result of her mixed blood, had a 'strongside of deep
feeling, ambition, energy and intellect rather Greek in its rapiditythan
English in sturdiness'.This coexisted with her 'weak side, of instability,
inconsistency,hasty passion, love of present enjoyment ... tendency to
untruth'.53Yet Kingsleyallows her to marrya white Americanat the end
for the stronger Anglo-Saxon would ensure the survival of the fittest.
Beesly, meanwhile,was a passionatesupporterof the North:'the cause of
labouris one all over the world',he arguedto a packedmeetingof London
trade unionists, with both Mill and Marx present. The 'negro slaves of
America', he argued, 'are infinitelybelow you in intelligence,in organisation, and in social position', but they were still workmenand part of the
same struggle: hierarchiesof race were crosscut with the solidarity of
labour.54
In 1865,in the wake of the rebellionat MorantBay in Jamaica,Kingsley
Men and theirHistories
61
and Beesly found themselves once again on opposite sides. Liberals,led
by Mill, had been quick to condemn the brutal repression of the rebels,
instigated by Governor Eyre, when four hundred had been killed. They
called for government action. Their main support came from working
men, particularlythose who were involved in the struggle for parliamentary reform. Conservatives,led by Carlyle, were to rally to Eyre's
support.Kingsleyfound himself unwittinglyin the eye of the stormfor he
was staying with Lord Hardwickein Southamptonin August 1866, when
Eyre arrivedback from Jamaica.Local supportersorganizeda dinnerfor
Eyre and congratulatedhim on the 'firmness and determination'of his
conduct;he had 'saved a colony' and ensured that the white population
was not massacred.Kingsleywas prevailedupon to speak and despite his
acknowledged ignorance of the details as to what had happened in
Jamaica,he celebratedEyre's 'Englishspiritof indomitableperseverance,
courage and adventure' alongside his good nature, his understandingof
humanbeings, and his knowledge of the managementof men. Relying on
a recent article by his brother Henry, which provided a most favourable
account of Eyre's earlier years as an explorer in Australia,he concluded
that Eyre possessed, 'in a very high degree that English spirit which had
carried the Anglo-Saxon tongue round the world and had made us the
father of the United States and the conquerorsof India'. On leaving the
banquet the guests were dismayedto be met by a large demonstrationof
'roughs' who were less appreciativeof Eyre's actions, while respectable
workingmen were gatheredin the VictoriaRooms, protestingthe disgrace
of the dinner.Kingsleywas shocked to find himself the butt of the radical
press and offended both friend and foe since he retiredwounded,leaving
Carlyleand Ruskin disgustedby his cowardiceand denouncinghim as an
unworthy protagonist of the 'muscularChristianity'he had espoused.55
The 'harshschool of facts' had taughtKingsley,he wrote in 1866,that the
doctrinehe once enthusiasticallyfollowed, that 'all men are born into the
world equal, and that their inequality,in intellect or morals,is chargeable
entirely to circumstances'was wrong. Mill was a man he greatly admired
but he got some things seriouslywrong. His mistake:'to disparage,if not
totally deny,the congenitaldifferencesof characterin individuals,and still
more in races'. 'There are congenital differences and hereditarytendencies', Kingsleywas now convinced, 'whichdefy all education.'Irish Celts
were unfit for self-government,negroes, though he was 'no slaveholderat
heart', he did not like.56
Beesly, meanwhile,was an enthusiasticsupporterof the JamaicaCommittee which campaignedto make Eyre accountable.But his take on the
eventswas particular.The issuewas a labourissue,he insisted,as in the case
of the South. 'The emancipationof the blacks',he argued,'left all the land
in the possession of the whites, a lazy, vicious, bankruptclass, filled with
hatredfor their late slaves ... They complainthat the free negroeswill not
work.But the truthis that the employerwill not, or rathercannot,pay him
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decent wages... .'57This had been at the root of the rebellion. But Beesly
was quite ready to disassociatehimself from the stereotypeof anti-slavery
in Carlyle'sderogatoryterm. Born
enthusiasts,the 'nigger-philanthropists'
in 1831he was not of the generationwho had been shapedby anti-slavery:
ratherhe belongedto that next generationwho saw themselvesas havinga
less sentimentalandmorerealisticattitudeto the capacitiesof blackpeople.
'I protest I am no negro-worshipper',said Beesly:
I don't consider a black man a beautifulobject, and I daresayhe sings
psalmsmore than is good for him. Some negroes may be men of ability
and elevated character,but there can be no doubt that they belong to a
lower type of the humanrace thanwe do, and I shouldnot like to live in
a countrywhere they formed a considerablepart of the population.But
there is no reasonwhy the negro shouldworkcheaperfor us becausehe
is ugly.If a white labourerhas a rightto put a price on his labour,so has
the black labourer.58
Beesly's analysiswas a class analysis:but crosscutwith, one mighteven say
undercutby, racial thinking.Black men were lesser, but should have the
same rightsto properwages for their labour.In the last analysis,as Engels
might have put it, the strugglein Jamaicawas the same as the strugglein
England:a strugglebetween capitalistsand the proletariat.But there was
never a last analysis,only the continualplay of hierarchiesof differencein
relationsof power.
In Beesly's hands history was representedas a struggle over class, if
alwaysundercutwith race. Womenmightbe understoodas oppressed,but
theirhistoricalmomenthadnot come.Beeslywasto marryEmilyCrompton,
a historianherself.He assuredMarxthat his wife fully sharedhis political
and social views, and that his marriagewould lead to no dilution of his
political opinions.59Yet his historicalwritingreproducedtraditionalsplits
between domesticatedheroines and wicked women who used their sexuality to ensnaremen, and, as my colleague Negley Harte has documented,
he was to oppose the entryof womento UniversityCollegeboth as students
and as teachers.60For Beesly it was class which provided the motor of
history.A series of essays that he publishedbetween 1865 and '67, on the
Roman republic,underlinedthis analysis.An enthusiasticrepublicanwho
neverthelessbelieved that the Roman empire had marked a progressive
stage in the evolutionarydevelopment of history, he was determinedto
rescue Catiline,a republicanreformer,from the unjustverdictof history.It
was Cicero, Beesly believed, that arch-literaryhistorian,whose 'carefully
cooked narratives'had defamed Catiline and been taken as the truth.
Cicerowas alwaysa friendto those in power and a man who believed that
clever writingand eloquent speakingwere the key virtues.Catiline,Beesly
maintained,had had the supportof the populaceand the peasantry,'groaning under an infamousgovernment':despite this he was defeated and the
Men and theirHistories
63
corruptoligarchyhad survived.61Cicero's mendaciousaccount had been
repeatedfor centuries,Beesly wantedto put the recordstraight.Historywas
not simplystories of great men as Kingsleyhad argued:humblemen had a
rightto have their stories told too. 'Historyhas alwaysbeen written... by
the rich or their friends.Rulerswho have deceived that class have suffered
accordingly.But how would contemporaryhistory look', he wrote with
extraordinaryprescience,'if recordedby an Irishpeasant or a Spitalfields
weaver?'62
Marx was relativelyimpressedby Beesly's essay, he told Engels. 'Professor Beesly has an article on Catiline in the FortnightlyReview a few
weeks ago justifyinghim as a revolutionary',he wrote. 'There'sall sorts of
uncriticalstuff in it (as you'd expect from an Englishman,e.g. he's wrong
on Caesar'sposition at that time), but the intense rage at the oligarchyand
the "respectable"is nice. Also his digs againstthe respectableEnglishdull
litterateur.'63
(Manyyears later Beesly, writingabout Marx,observedthat
they had alwaysbeen good friends.'I am sure that he consideredme to be
a well-meaningperson- whichwas more than he was willingto allow with
regardto most people who differedwith him.')64Beesly's thirdessay in the
series, a defence of the malignedEmperorTiberius,was firstdeliveredto a
meeting of working-classreformersin Bradfordin March1867, at a time
when agitationfor parliamentaryreformwas still linked with attemptsto
bringEyre to justice. Once againBeesly found an opportunityfor a swipe
at Kingsley:both his rotten politicsand his rotten history.On this occasion
he rammedthe lessons of historyhome to his audience:Rome had suffered
from 'thatworstof all governments,the monopolyof powerby a privileged
class'.'Sucha hordeof blood-suckersandextortionersneverbeforeor since
fastened on a set of oppressedpeople.' But the people rose, led by Caesar,
their tribuneand championagainstthe nobility.The people carriedCaesar
to power so that he could establish something like equality. 'Instead of
relyingupon oratory,and agitation,andstreetdemonstrations,andmonster
meetings,they carrieda sharpsword.'65
Fourmonthslater,when the 1867ReformAct was on its way to becoming law,Beesly was workingon a six-pointprogrammewhichwould secure
a satisfactory legal settlement for Trade Unions. His mentor Comte
regardedthe free operationof TradeUnions as of muchgreatersignificance
than suffrage.At the same time Beesly was petitioningin favourof Fenian
politicalprisoners,alongwithBright,andraisingunpopularquestionsabout
the conductof the armyin Irelandand Jamaica.But it was his speech on
the Sheffieldoutrages,whenmurdershadbeen committedby a tradeunionist in the contextof a tradedispute,thatmost seriouslyoffendedrespectable
opinion and led to attemptsto remove him from UniversityCollege.66At a
large London meeting in July 1867 Beesly argued that 'a trades union
murderwas no better or worse than any other murder'.'During the last
twelve months',he continued,in referenceto his supportfor the prosecution of GovernorEyre:
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he had subscribedhis money and given whatother assistancehe could to
bringa greatmurdererto justice- a murdererwhose handswere red with
the blood of not two or three victimsbut of more than four hundred.
Yet the wealthy classes in Englandhad supportedEyre; they had encouraged murder.Why was it expected that London workmen should 'take
blameor shamefor themselvesfor whathad been done at Sheffield'?67
Why
was there one set of values for the richand anotherfor the workers?These
commentsprovokedoutrageand for a month it looked as if Beesly would
lose his job for he was denouncedas unfitto teach young men, but he survived and remainedin post until 1893.68Kingsley,meanwhile,gave up his
appointmentin favourof more lucrativeprefermentin the Church.
In 1863 Kingsley published The Water-Babies,perhaps now his bestknown work. Not a history,of course, but part of his body of writingand
thinking. It is a lyrical evocation of the wonders of nature, and an argument for the coexistence of evolutionarythinking with Christianity.It is
replete with a grammarof difference, from 'the most beautiful little girl'
under the snow-whitecoverlet, whose cheeks were almost as white as the
pillow, and whose hair was like threadsof gold, to the 'ugly,black, ragged
figure, with bleared eyes and grinningwhite teeth', the dirty little black
ape who has to be washed clean, Tom.69It reminds us of the pervasive
nature of hierarchiesof difference and the relations of power constituted
through them. History writing, whether fictional or scholarly, aimed to
civilize: it would educate British subjects and prepare them to civilize
others in the empire. In its mappingsof difference, whether of class, of
race, of gender or sexuality, it was engaged in the constitution of new
subject positions, as patriotic Britons, responsible and progressive
workers, domesticated women, or those who were colonized. It configured a world in which nation and empire were intimatelyconnected and
in which race was a criticaldeterminantshapingan English sense of self.
Unpicking this concept of civilization and attempting to grasp its deep
and complex relation to Englishness,is, I suggest, part of the work of creating a more egalitarian world, and this is a task in which history continues to have a central place.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
This is the text of an inaugural lecture, delivered at University College London on 18 January
2001.
1 I first came across this lecture in T. B. Wiseman's most interesting essay, 'E. S. Beesly
and the Roman Revolution', published in Gareth Schmeling (ed.), Qui Miscuit Utile Dulci.
Festschrift Essays for Paul Lachlan MacKendrick, Illinois, 1998. Thanks to my colleague
Michael Crawford for giving me this essay when I was first appointed to UCL.
Men and their Histories
65
2 Charles Kingsley, 'The Limits of Exact Science as Applied to History', The Romans and
the Teutons, London, 1864, p. xi.
3 Edward Spencer Beesly, 'Mr. Kingsley on the Study of History', WestminsterReview
New Series 19: 2, April 1861, pp. 305-36, p. 336.
4 James Baldwin, 'Stranger in the Village' (1953), reprinted in Notes of a Native Son,
Harmondsworth, 1995, pp. 151-65.
5 Salman Rushdie, 'The New Empire within Britain', Imaginary Homelands: Essays and
Criticism 1981-1991, London, 1991, p. 129.
6 Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism,
New York, 1996, p. 17.
7 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, New York,
1993, p. xiv.
8 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
Middle Class 1780-1850, London, 1987.
9 Stuart Hall, 'The Multi-cultural Question', in Barnor Hesse (ed.), Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions, London, 2000, p. 223.
10 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures
in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley CA, 1997, pp. 34, 37.
11 Civilizing Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination 1830-1867,
Cambridge, 2002, elaborates the arguments which are summarized in this lecture about the
centrality of empire to Englishness.
12 John Stuart Mill, 'Civilization' (1836), reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions.
Political, Philosophical and Historical, 4 vols, London, 1859, vol. 1, pp. 165, 170, 171, 185, 203.
13 M. I. Moirs, D. M. Peers and L. Zastoupil (eds), John Stuart Mill's Encounter with India,
Toronto, 1999. See particularly Alan Ryan's 'Introduction', pp. 4-5 and Lynn Zastoupil's
'India, John Stuart Mill and "Western" Culture'.
14 Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography with Memorials by M. W.
Chapman, 3 vols, London, 1877; Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History. British Feminists,
Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915, Chapel Hill NC, 1994.
15 Royden Harrison, 'E.S. Beesly and Karl Marx',International Review of Social History
4, 1959, pp. 22-58, p. 23.
16 Harriet Martineau, British Rule in India; a Historical Sketch, London, 1857, pp. v-vi.
17 Brenda Ann Quinn, 'India in the Making of Liberal Identities: the case of Mary
Carpenter and Harriet Martineau', University of Essex PhD, 2000, p. 138.
18 Martineau's epigraph on the titlepage is Goldsmith's,
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by,
Intent on high designs.
19 Martineau, British Rule in India, pp. 242, 244.
20 Cora Kaplan, "'A Heterogeneous Thing": female childhood and the rise of racial
thinking in Victorian Britain', in Diana Fuss (ed.), Human, All Too Human, New York, 1999.
21 Martineau, British Rule in India, pp. 54, 337-41.
22 Martineau, British Rule in India, pp. 54, 337-41.
23 Martineau, British Rule in India, pp. 211-2.
24 Martineau, British Rule in India, pp. 355, 296.
25 N. B. Harte, One Hundred and Fifty Years of History Teaching at University College
London, University College London, 1982.
26 Charles Kingsley, His Letters and Memories of His Life edited by his wife, 4 vols,
London, 1901; Susan Chitty, The Beast and the Monk. A Life of Charles Kingsley, London,
1974.
27 Ray Strachey, The Cause. A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain
(1928), London, 1978, pp. 61-2.
28 Max Muller wrote the preface to a new edition of The Roman and the Teuton, published
after Kingsley's death in 1875. Preface p. xi. The copy in UCL library was presented to the
College by Rose Kingsley, one of Kingsley's daughters.
29 Kingsley, Letters and Memories, vol. 1, p. 55.
30 Chitty, The Beast and the Monk, p. 204.
31 The Beast and the Monk, pp. 133, 171.
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32 Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton, p. vii.
33 Kingsley,'The Limitsof ExactScience',p. xxxvii.
34 CharlesKingsley,Westward
Ho! (1854),Collins,London,n.d. On Brookesee Kingsley,
Letters and Memories, vol. 1, p. 231.
35 Kingsley, Letters and Memories, vol. 1, p. 231.
36 Letters and Memories, vol. 3, pp. 248-9.
37
38
39
40
See, for example,Lettersand Memories,vol. 1, pp. 196-7.
Kingsley,WestwardHo!, pp. 16-17.
Personalcommunication,15 Jan.2001.
CharlesKingsley,TwoYearsAgo (1857),London,1900.
41 Kingsley, Letters and Memories, vol. 3, pp. 92-3.
42 Chitty, The Beast and the Monk, p. 115.
43 RoydenHarrison,'E. S. Beesly and KarlMarx'.
44 W. P. Ker, Notes and Materialsfor the History of University College, London, University
CollegeLondon,1898.
45 Harrison,'E. S. Beesly and KarlMarx',pp. 23-4.
46 Beesly, 'Mr.Kingsleyon the Studyof History',p. 302.
47 'Mr.Kingsleyon the Studyof History',pp. 311, 334.
48 EdwardSpencerBeesly, 'Ciceroand Clodius'(1866),reprintedin Catiline,Ciceroand
Tiberius,London,1878,pp. 39-40.
49 Ker, Notes and Materials, pp. 36-7.
50 Chitty,TheBeastandtheMonk,p. 171;RoydenHarrison,'E. S. Beesly andKarlMarx',
p. 37.
51 Kingsley, Letters and Memories, vol. 1, p. 208.
52 Letters and Memories, vol. 3, p. 265.
53 Kingsley, Two YearsAgo, p. 139.
54 Beesly's speech in St JamesHall is reprintedin full in Royden Harrison,Before the
Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics 1861-1881, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1965,
pp. 72-7.
55 BernardSemmel,TheGovernorEyreControversy,London,1962,pp. 93-4, 113.
56 Kingsley,Lettersand Memories,vol. 3, pp. 248-9, vol. 4, p. 265.
57 The Bee-Hive Newspaper, 25 Nov., 1865.
58 As previousnote.
59 Royden Harrison,'ProfessorBeesly and the Working-class
Movement',in Asa Briggs
and John Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History (1960), 2 vols, London, 1967, vol. 1,
pp. 205-41, p. 232.
60 See, for example,Beesly'saccountof Agrippinain Catiline,Clodiusand Tiberius,esp.
p. 133;N. B. Harte, 'The Admissionof Womento UniversityCollege London.A Centenary
Lecture',UniversityCollegeLondon,1979.
61 Beesly, Catiline, Clodius and Tiberius, pp. 39-40, 28.
62 Catiline, Clodius and Tiberius, pp. 129-30.
63 Marxto Engels,19 Aug. 1865.Citedin Wiseman,'E. S. Beesly and the RomanRevolution',p. 382.
64 Harrison,'E. S. Beesly and KarlMarx',p. 32.
65 Beesly, Catiline,Clodiusand Tiberius,pp. 87-8, 90. On Kingsleysee especiallythe
footnote on p. 95.
66 Harrison,'E. S. Beesly and KarlMarx',pp. 37-9.
67 The Bee-Hive Newspaper, 6 July 1867.
68 Ker, Notes and Materials.
69 CharlesKingsley,TheWater-Babies
(1863),London,n.d. pp. 25, 26.