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Modern Europe
during the mid-eighteenth-century debates on the nature of electricity. An author's religious faith and
libidinous expressions had little impact on the reception accorded his writings.
Ampere tried to ignore politics, and Hofmann shows
that politics barely intruded into his life. The narrative
leads us to conclude, more generally, that political
change had little effect on the scientific community
between 1804, when Ampere moved to Paris as tutor
of analysis in the Ecole poly technique, and 1836, the
year of Ampere's death. French savants suffered the
afflictions of cupidity, avarice, pride, and jealousy,
much as women and men did generally, but the
Acadernie des sciences in this period seems to have
been as apolitical as the Royal Society of London had
been in its founding years. Ideas here transcend the
circumstances of their generation. Readers will find
this biography a strong antidote to the claim by some
social theorists that all natural knowledge is nothing
other than social relations. When postmodernist historians of science have been shamed into silence, this
book, careful in its appeal to evidence and generous in
its acknowledgment of precedent, will be seen as a
harbinger of a return to historical reason and clarity.
LEWIS PYENSON
University of Southwestern Louisiana
HUGH CLOUT. After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside
of Northern France after the Great War. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 1996. Pp. xviii, 332. $69.95.
The reconstruction of France following the Great War
offers a tantalizing opportunity to study the Third
Republic in action. Before the war, the ten northeastern departments of the devastated region had produced seventy-four percent of the coal, eighty-one
percent of the iron, sixty-three percent of the steel, and
eighty percent of the textile products of France. In
spite of this concentration of industry, nearly ninety-six
percent of the land in the war zone was dedicated to
farming and to forestry, and the region was a primary
producer of wheat, sugar beets, and livestock. Additionally, the war made refugees of more than 2.7
million of the region's 4.8 million inhabitants. Rapid
restoration of the economic and social fabric of the
region was not only a moral and political necessity but
also a tremendous opportunity for modernization,
innovation, and reform.
How did the French state approach the challenge?
What were the goals and objectives of reconstruction?
And how was the process of reconstruction organized
to achieve them? Was there a plan? If so, who
developed it, and what issues shaped its development?
What was the relationship between public and private
initiative? What were the results? And what is the
legacy of 1918 to 1945?
Unfortunately, any attempt to bring some order to
the story of the complex activities and achievements of
French reconstruction, whether rural or industrial, can
only be incomplete. Many questions must remain
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
unanswered due to the absence of ministerial records,
the lack of any comprehensive reports or any photographic documentaries, and the ambiguities and inconsistencies of available statistical data. Departmental
archives are not an alternative, because floor-to-ceiling
documents remain uncatalogued or because privacy
laws make them confidential without the permission of
living family members. Consequently, a tantalizing
topic becomes a frustratingly elusive one, and Hugh
Clout must be content with offering "a reasoned
introduction" based on the works of contemporary
observers.
Clout, who is a geographer, begins his study by
defining the war zone and the magnitude of the
devastation. He then divides the process of reconstruction into two phases. The first, which he labels the
emergency phase, began soon after the war started in
1914 and concluded in October 1921. Characterized by
direct state intervention through the Office of Agricultural Reconstitution, this phase focused on clearing
the land of shells and debris, rebuilding communication and transportation systems, and replacing and
repairing equipment. Hindered by the absence of a
unifying plan, by bureaucratic red tape, and by shortages of labor, credit, and materials, this phase aroused
considerable criticism among the sinistres whose property had been damaged or destroyed.
Direct state intervention gave way to private initiative in October 1921, marking the beginning of rural
reconstruction proper and of the second phase, which
concluded in 1931. The work of this phase was led by
communal cooperatives, of which there were 2,160
representing 2,602 communes by October of 1922.
"Although tantalizingly little is known" about how
these cooperatives worked, they provided the small
property owner with much-needed expertise, influence, and coordination. Ultimately, they were responsible for the reconstruction of nearly two-thirds of the
war-torn settlements.
The dominant theme of rural reconstruction was to
"restore the familiar." The sinistres' haste to rebuild
their homes, reestablish their farms, and restore their
land subverted most good intentions for amelioration
and modernization. The shortage of labor, credit, and
materials also favored rebuilding with cautious practicality, so that village improvements were often limited
to widening a road and providing the school with a
proper playground. But the fact is that most villagers
preferred that their commune retain its prewar character and picturesque qualities. The touted benefits of
consolidation were more than offset by sentimental
attachments to ancestral lands, by suspicions that large
landowners or one's neighbors might receive greater
benefit, and by fears that one would end up with
reallocated land riddled with shells and other war
debris.
Although Clout's conclusions only reaffirm those of
contemporary observers such as William MacDonald
(Reconstruction in France [1922]) and Edmond Michel
(Les dommages de guerre en France et leur reparation
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1998
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Reviews of Books
[1932]) his work provides valuable information about
the process of restoring rural France and is distinguished by excellent maps and solid data. It also offers
an interesting complement to Richard Kuisel's Capitalism and the State in Modem France (1981); Thomas
Grabau's Industrial Reconstruction in France after
World War I (1991); and J. Favier's Reconstructions et
modernizations: La France apres les ruines, 1918-1945
(1991).
THOMAS W. GRABAU
Nebraska Wesleyan University
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM. The Career and Legend of
Vasco da Gama. New York: Cambridge University
Press. 1997. Pp. xxiii, 400. $59.95.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam has become a leading historian
of Portuguese activities in the East, especially India,
during the early modern period. In the course of less
than a decade he has written five books and has edited
five others. His most recent contribution is a reexamination of the career of Vasco da Gama (1469-1524)
and of the myths that have arisen, from the sixteenth
century to the present, demonstrating that he was, as
one well-known historian asserted in 1970, "one of the
greatest argonauts of Modern Times" (p. 363). Indeed,
as recently as a decade ago, a poll revealed that 58.8
percent of the Portuguese consulted considered him to
be the most admired figure in their history.
One of the virtues of this impressively researched
book, which is based on archival sources in Portugal,
Spain, and Italy, and on the extant literature in nine
languages, is that it makes use not only of the older,
often myth-creating literature of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century but especially of the abundant
recent scholarship, particularly in French and Portuguese, concerning the court of Portugal, its major
factions, and its most conspicuous agents overseas
between the 1490s and the 1520s. Another is the
author's analysis of the evolution of competing myths
concerning the characters and achievements of the two
arch rivals, Vasco da Gama and Afonso de Albuquerque, whose descendants and admirers, including major
chroniclers and nationalist writers, perpetuated the
exploits of their heroes. The elaborately textured
chapters are complemented by four maps and thirty
illustrations, but the book lacks a glossary or an
adequately analytical index.
Subrahmanyam's Vasco da Gama is far from a
heroic figure. He began life as a minor noble who may
(or may not) have been born in the southern coastal
town of Sines. It is not at all clear why this landsman
was selected by Manuel the Fortunate (1495-1521) to
lead a modest expedition of four ships to the pepper
emporium of Calicut (1497-1499), nor is it apparent
why he was not also appointed to command the next
expedition to the East, one headed by an even more
obscure figure, Pedro Alvares Cabral, best known for
his surprise discovery of a portion of the Brazilian
littoral (1500). Vasco da Gama did return to India in
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1502-1503, when he bore the exalted, Columbusinspired title of Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia,
and India, and again in 1524, when, as the Count of
Vidigueira, he became Portuguese India's second viceroy, the first to die on Indian soil. The figure that
emerges-when we actually glimpse him-from these
pages is that of an irascible, arrogant, uncompromising
leader who was preoccupied with enhancing his own
estate and that of his clientele, a merciless killer of
unfortunates who seemingly opposed his ambitions on
land and sea in the East, a spendthrift who practiced
petty economies at the expense of subordinates, and,
in general, a figure hardly deserving of admiration.
Given the relative paucity of uncontaminated
sources, Subrahmanyam's portrait of Vasco da Gama
may be as reliable as that of any other scholar who
preceded him. (For the most part, he successfully
mutes his criticism of others whose views he does not
always share, save for his unnecessary and unfortunate
attack on the octogenarian Vitorino Magalhaes Godinho, a leading and often inspirational Portuguese
scholar since the 1940s.) I do have several concerns
with this outstanding volume, however. The first is that
it contains numerous digressions that will interest
specialists but will weary all but the most intrepid
general readers. There are long sections of chapters
where Vasco da Gama is wholly or largely absent.
Second, the author occasionally reaches beyond his
evidence to assert as fact what is really only inference
(as, for example, his assertion that Vasco da Gama lost
the court's favor during the years 1505-1518 because
of his uncles' misdeeds in the Indian Ocean. Here is a
classic instance of the sort of post hoc propter hoc
reasoning we were all taught to avoid.) Third, while
Subrahmanyam successfully strips away many mythological encumbrances from the famous Argonaut, he
fails to provide his reader with a distillation of his own
view of the real Vasco da Gama. Nevertheless, this is
an outstanding, provocative biography, and this reviewer eagerly awaits Subrahmanyan's promised studies of Dom Francisco da Gama, Vasco's descendant
and an equally controversial viceroy of Portuguese
India.
DAURIL ALDEN
University of Washington
BRENDAN SIMMS. The Impact of Napoleon: Prussian
High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the
Executive, 1797-1806. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xiii, 390. $69.95.
At Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, Napoleon's armies
vanquished Prussia, setting the stage for the so-called
Prussian reform era, the meaning of which historians
have debated for two centuries. Brendan Simms has at
least two major purposes in his book about Prussia in
the Napoleonic era. The first is to depict Prussian
diplomacy in the years immediately preceding the
infamous defeat. His other goal is to refute the work of
scholars who find explanatory connections between
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1998