[lit-ideas] Fruitful comparisons of Roman and British Empires?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 09:02:49 -0700
The Historum member Speranza quoted wrote, ""Trouble is (as with all such
comparisons) Roman historians probably don't know enough about the British
Empire, and modern historians certainly don't know enough about the Roman
Empire, to make really fruitful comparisons.
50 (ish) years ago, E. H. Carr wrote that he'd love to see a study of how Roman
imperialism served as a model for British. I'm not aware that anybody has taken
up his challenge in a major publication (correct me if I'm wrong), but it would
be interesting."
Is that really true? If it is, i.e., that no Roman or British Empire historian
is in a position to make a "fruitful" comparison, then perhaps the Foreword to
Mattingly's Imperialism, Power, and Identity provides a clue as to why that
might be. Hitchner wrote, "But with the breakup of the European empires after
World War II, assessments of Roman imperialism began to shift." Hitchner
applauds Mattingly's call "to replace the outdated imperial-age concept of
Romanization in favor of an approach emphasizing the insights provided by
postcolonial studies . . ."
Reading E. H. Carr's words, I wonder just what "fruit" a comparison of the two
Empires might produce, or more specifically, what Carr thought it might
produce. Wikipedia tells us Carr devoted much of his life to a study of the
Soviet Union. He wanted Britain to become more Socialistic in order to be a
better fit with the Soviet Union. Maybe someone who has actually read Carr
could add to that. And just how much of a Marxist was Carr? Had he read
Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism? And if so, what did he
think of it? I found this comment in a Wikipedia article on Carr's view of
history: "Carr made a division between those who, like Vladimir Lenin and
Oliver Cromwell, helped to shape the social forces which carried them to
historical greatness and those who, like Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon, rode
on the back of social forces over which they had little or no control."
And then this: "In this section of the book Carr talks about causation in
history. He believed that everything that happened in this world happened
because of cause and effect. Carr holds on to a deterministic outlook in
history and firmly believes that events could not have happened differently
unless there was a different cause." Does that make sense? How can something
be deterministic if the effects can change as causes do? Doesn’t determinism
mean (oh ye philosophers) that causes and effects can be no other than what
they have been and will be?
On the other hand, he drafted a new preface to his What is History which
includes the following: “For his planned second edition, Carr authored a new
preface, which was posthumously found among his papers. In this short text, he
contrasted what he saw as the optimism of the 1960s, when he originally
authored the text, with the pessimism of the 1980s, when he was putting
together the second edition. The former, he argued, was marked by the
dissolution of the British Empire, the economic recovery of France, Germany and
Japan following the destruction of the Second World War, the boom of world
stock markets, and the process of de-Stalinization in the USSR and
de-McCarthyization in the USA. The latter, he felt, was characterised by the
economic crisis, mass unemployment, resumed intensity of the Cold War and the
increasing power of Third World nations.
“Carr then rejects this pessimism, seeing it as nothing more than the elite
opinion of Western Europeans and North Americans whose position as global
superpowers has rapidly declined since the 19th century. The rest of the world,
he reasons, has reason to be optimistic as standards of living are being
raised. He furthermore argues that the "standard-bearers" of this pessimistic
western view are the intellectuals, who are themselves an elite. He does
however exempt the role of "dissident intellectuals" – a category into which he
classes himself – whom he believes reject such mainstream intellectual
theories.”
Carr’s views presented in the penultimate paragraph are dated but in the
previous one seem interesting – unless they are dated as well. Who are the
pessimistic intellectuals? The ones that come to mind probably wouldn’t have
been familiar to Carr by the time he wrote, e.g., Samuel P. Huntington and
Victor Davis Hanson have been pessimistic about the diminution of the West’s
position in the world. And would Francis Fukuyama be a “dissident
intellectual” for being optimistic about the spread of “Liberal Democracy.”
Lawrence
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From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hope and Glory
http://historum.com/european-history/37164-british-empire-vs-roman-empire-5.html
"Trouble is (as with all such comparisons) Roman historians probably don't know
enough about the British Empire, and modern historians certainly don't know
enough about the Roman Empire, to make really fruitful comparisons.
50 (ish) years ago, E. H. Carr wrote that he'd love to see a study of how
Roman imperialism served as a model for British. I'm not aware that anybody
has taken up his challenge in a major publication (correct me if I'm wrong),
but it would be interesting."
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- » [lit-ideas] Fruitful comparisons of Roman and British Empires? - Lawrence Helm