TOWARDS A NEW WORLD ORDER, 1962 AND AFTER

 A century on from that transformation and Romein’s birth, morethan thirty years after his death and the enunciation of hisformula, the role of the masses may not appear quite so active,while other transformations of at least equal, probably greater,significance have occurred. Without any intention to diminishthe worth of Romein’s contribution to the understanding of theprocesses of history, let us recall that the year of his death, 1962,was near the beginning of a decade of overall significancethroughout the world. Arguably, our own age does not beginbefore the 1960s, or, more precisely before the latter part of thatdecade. In an essay entitled ‘1968, Revolution in the World-System’ first published in the spring of 1989, ImmanuelWallerstein put forward six theses:1 The year 1968 brought a revolution in and of the worldsystem.2 The primary protest of 1968 was against US hegemony in theworld system (and Soviet acquiescence in that hegemony).3 The secondary, but ultimately more passionate, protest of 1968was against the ‘old left’ systemic movements (for example,against Stalinism).4 Counterculture was part of revolutionary euphoria, but wasnot politically central to 1968.5 Revolutionary movements representing ‘minority’ or under-dog strata need no longer, and no longer do, take second placeto revolutionary movements representing presumed‘majority’ groupsThe debate on the fundamental strategy of social transform-ation has been reopened among the antisystemic movements,and will be the key debate of the coming twenty years.Without entering into a debate with Wallerstein, or evenspelling out his six theses, we may note that even he wouldprobably want to make some reformulations in view ofdevelopments since the spring of 1989 when his essay was firstpublished, beyond his suggestion in 1991 that: ‘The regimechanges of 1989 were...the outcome of the latent, continuingrevolt of 1968.’27How much more, then, would Romein have wanted to reviseat least some of his views which now have even more of aperiod ring about them. Moving towards a conclusion, let usnote at least some of the developments unnoticed by him.Altogether, they make necessary an approach to world orderwhich he could not appreciate. This is neither a criticism noran excuse, just a bald statement of the fact that the world is ina constant state of flux, with each generation of historianstaking up new challenges regarding the distinctive feature oftheir discipline, the passage of time. Let us take one, but themost important, example of how significant circumstanceshave changed since Jan Romein’s death in 1962, the problemof the environment. To be sure, there was some awareness ofthese problems some years before 1962. In 1948, for example,Romein’s formula of transformation, A --> A(b) --> B(a) --> B,had been preceded by another, a ‘bioequation’ expressing‘certain relationships— almost universally ignored—that everyminute of every day touch the life of every man, woman andchild on the face of the globe’: C=B:E. Here, C indicates thecarrying capacity of any given area of land, that is its ability toafford food, drink and shelter. B stands for biotic potential, orthe ability of that land to produce plants, especially for food,but also for shelter and clothing. E indicates environmentalresistance, or limitations imposed by the environment. So, thecarrying capacity is the resultant of the ratio between the othertwo factors.This ‘bioequation’ was devised in 1948 by William Vogt,drawing on a number of earlier authorities stretching as far backas Malthus and Darwin. While his Road to Survival may not havemade the impact it deserved, later publications from RachelCarson’s Silent Spring of 1962 onwards did succeed in bringingan increasingly serious problem to wide public attention in theWestern world.28 Another book published in 1962, the year ofRomein’s death, and also very influential until it was overtakenby ever more activity in the global village, was Marshall McLu-han’s The Gutenberg Galaxy,29 in a sense doing for new electronicsounds and sights what Rachel Carson’s book did for ominoussilence and disappearance in nature.But Jan Romein could not have read it, nor could he havehad more than an inkling of the Cuba Crisis, the most seriouscrisis since 1945 because it took us closest to nuclear war. Hecould not have known that subsequent hopes for limitations ofnuclear and other armaments would be frustrated as vast stock-piles built up in the USA, USSR and elsewhere. He died beforethe Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’ and the escalation of theVietnam War, the events of 1968 and significant phases in theprocess of decolonisation, while the collapse of communism inEastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself must have beenbeyond his wildest flights of fancy. He may have had some ideaof the imminence of space travel, intercontinentaltelecommunication and the spread of computer use, but he couldnot have appreci-ated the full extent of the technological or thirdindustrial revolution which was about to bring a new meaningto his concept of the Common Human Pattern.In this chapter I have attempted to illustrate how the highhopes for universal history of Henri Pirenne and others afterthe First World War were dashed by developments in thefollowing decades. The approach has been individual ratherthan general. That is to say, representative figures, Tarle, Beardand Romein, have been taken into consideration rather than thework of their colleagues overall. Other members of the greatguild could have been selected: for example, from the UnitedKingdom alone, Toynbee, Carr and Barraclough. Each of theircareers provides much material pertinent to the discussion ofapproaches to world order.30 However, our choice was far fromrandom, for Tarle and Beard reflected developments in Europe’stwo outliers, the USSR and USA, while Romein did the samefor Europe itself. Between them their careers throw light on thepre-war and post-war years, clearly indicating that the terms ofthe pH test had radically changed. However much it might bedisguised by such concepts as ‘the English-speaking peoplesor ‘the Atlantic community’, the USA had indeed establishedhegemony in the world system; in other words it had becomethe ‘universal indicator’ to which Europe and the USSR wouldreact. And so, while taking notice of the fact that the globe hadin many ways shrunk, world order was still Western world order,and normally much more constitutional than revolutionary.

SOME APPROACHES TOWORLD ORDER, 1923–62

Was the Second World War a greater historical watershed than theFirst? To a considerable extent, the answer depends on generation.That is, older respondents would tend to say no, younger wouldprobably say yes. A further influence would be location. Forexample, few Japanese would fail to answer in the affirmative.There are other pertinent aspects of time and space: history doesprovide a seal of approval, partly because of some inherentveneration for maturity, partly because with the passage of the yearsthe wood becomes more distinguishable from the trees. Before theFirst World War, references to the Great War meant an earlierconflict. During and even after the Russian Revolution, there werereferences to the Great Revolution meaning the earlier, Frenchupheaval.1 As far as place is concerned, the Second World War wasmore completely a global affair, while the First was more centredon Europe. This was partly because in little more than two decades,the world had shrunk, with improvements in communications andtransport as well as armaments.In this chapter, continuing the historiographical survey of thetwentieth century begun in the previous chapter, we shall considersome of the observations of a further series of historians, whichwill take us from 1923 to 1962, when the shooting wars had beenfollowed by the Cold War, and when Western world orders wereat least beginning to make some accommodation for the rest ofthe globe. As before, constitutional and revolutionary orders,along with the pH test, continue for the most part to form abackground to the discussion, although occasionally coming tothe foregroundIn the spring of 1923, the Fifth International Congress of HistoricalSciences or Studies met in Brussels, Belgium, ten years almost tothe day after the Fourth Congress in London. A keynote addressentitled ‘On the Comparative Method in History’ was given byHenri Pirenne, who had spent some of the inter-vening period in aprisoner-of-war camp, and who began by recalling the earlier,happy experience in London. He remembered in particular theappeal of Lord Bryce for international agreement based onhistorical solidarity, and the decision to meet again in 1917 in StPetersburg.2 Alas, in 1917, civilisation was undergoing the mostterrible crisis ever, and all energies were devoted to its resolution.St Petersburg had become Petrograd, and the Russian Revolutionof 1917 made a Congress there impossible. Peace had ensued, buthad given the world neither security nor serenity. How manyproblems still had to be solved, exclaimed Pirenne, and how muchmoral and intellectual disar-ray could be observed, along withdisturbance of social and economic equilibrium. In spite of all theseand other difficulties, historians had resumed their pursuit of truthwith as much detachment as possible, in the spirit of Louis Pasteur,who had observed: ‘It is a question of fact, and I approach it withoutany preconceived idea. I can only yield to experience, whateverthe answer.’ And now, among these facts were all thoseaccumulated during the war, which had in general enlarged thenature of the subject.During the war, the belligerents had requisitioned for theiruse two sciences in particular—chemistry and history. One hadprovided explosives and gas, the other pretexts, justificationsand excuses. But their fate had differed: chemistry could servearmies and preserve its nature, even make precious discoveries,while history lost its essential qualities of criticism andimpartiality. This loss could always be found in time of war, yetto interpret princely genealogies and discuss treaties as underthe Ancien Régime was no longer enough: now the morale ofone’s own people had to be maintained by, among othermethods, academic attacks on the enemy. However, such workhad served only to demonstrate the lack of a scientific basis forthe excesses of nationalism, for racial theories. There was nosuch phenomenon as pure race, and various peoples haddeveloped at differ-ent rates not because of racial characteristicsbut because of different circumstances. This meant that at anygiven time the peoples of the world belonged to various stagesof development. Nevertheless, they all went through comparablestages, and the only way to understand their individuality wasto compare their experiences. Only in such a manner was itpossible to achieve scientific knowledge.This was a demanding task, and the objection would be raisedthat it was beyond any single individual historian. But no chem-ist could know all of chemistry, still less all of nature. Specialis-ation was therefore as necessary in chemistry as in history, but inboth from a point of view that was universal. The universalapproach to history had been established up to and during theeighteenth century, but romanticism and nationalism hadintroduced diversity in the nineteenth century. This was far frombeing an entirely backward step, since the search for local colourand differences between peoples had made history more ‘lively,picturesque and thrilling’ than it had ever been, at the same timeas the criticism of sources and enquiry into all branches of socialactivity—law, customs and economy, for example—had made thesubject richer and more precise. Deservedly, the nineteenth shouldbe called the century of history.However, this achievement must be considered scholarly ratherthan scientific. Apparently, as the field of history wid-ened, itsvision became narrower, ever shrinking as it approached thepresent, that is as nationalism and imperialism asserted themselves,and produced an exclusiveness in the approach to the past. Theconsequent lack of impartiality might be unwitting but it wascertainly fatal:The prejudices of race, politics and nationalism are toopowerful for man to escape if he does not place himselfoutside their grasp. To liberate oneself, it is necessary toraise oneself to the heights from which history appears asa whole in the majesty of its development, the passingpassions of the moment become calm and subside beforethe sublimity of the spectacle.3Pirenne claimed no originality for his views, and saluted themanner in which others had put them forward before the war;Henri Berr, for example, was still engaged in a great project begunin 1920 with the title ‘The Evolution of Humanity’.4 But Pirennebelieved it necessary to emphasise that the only way of arriving atthe desired destination was via the comparative method. That wasthe only way to allow history to free itself from the idols ofsentiment and become a science. History would also become ascience to the extent that it adopted for national history the pointof view of universal history. And as it did so, it would become notonly more exact but also more humane: ‘The scientific will go handin hand with the moral gain, and nobody will complain if it oneday should inspire in peoples, through showing them the solidarityof their destinies, a patriotism more fraternal, more aware (conscient)and more pure.’5Unfortunately, even tragically, as is well known, the hopes heldout by Pirenne were being dashed almost as he spoke. Indeed, itcould be argued that the impact of the First World War, the RussianRevolutions and their aftermaths were such that his address was avain appeal for historians to meet an impossible standard. Certainly,Pirenne himself appears to have surmounted the effect of his ownharrowing experiences, and could therefore be forgiven for daringto suggest that others might follow suit. Several historians indeeddid, but the sequel was not just a matter of personal choice, andsome brave souls were overwhelmed during the following inter-war years.In Western Europe, all too evidently, the aspirations of Pirenneas voiced in 1923 came to less than they might have done. Owingto the effect on historians and other individuals of thepersistence of ‘war guilt’, both levelled as a charge and stemmingfrom self-recrimination, and, later, of the gathering clouds of afurther great conflict, the hopes for a new European cosmo-politanism and for a wider outlook accommodating othercontinents were far from realised. And when we turn again toconsider Europe’s outliers in this new phase, we shall see that,for various reasons, both the USSR and USA were less involvedin Western civilisation than previously, for both internal andexternal reasons.Yet the picture is not all gloom. Pirenne himself persistedthrough the rest of his life, not only completing his multi-volumehistory of Belgium but also endeavouring to look outwards. Forexample, just before his death in 1935, he completed in draft astudy of the relationship of two great figures of the early MiddleAges, arguing that ‘without Mahomet, Charlemagne would havebeen inconceivable’. He enjoyed a close relationship with MarcBloch and other leading figures of the French Annales school.6Stemming in some ways from the ‘synthesis’ movement initiatedby Henri Berr in 1900, the Annales school did as much as anyother group during the inter-war period to point the way forward,struggling to overcome the restrictions of nationality andtradition.7 Even as Italy and Germany succumbed to dictatorship,some of their nationals managed to escape the strident chorus ofxenophobia, although they either fell prey to per-secution or wentinto emigration.8 No branch of Nazi historiography was aswarped as that dealing with the East, the land promised by theFührer as Lebensraum.9 And although some of Eastern Europeresisted the urge to respond in kind, intense nationalismdeveloped also in the alleged home of class-basedinternationalism, the USSR.E.V.TARLE AND THE USSR, 1923–48The ups and downs of academic life in the USSR from theincapacity of Lenin to the death of Stalin, 1923–53, are wellillustrated in the career of an individual whose earlier work wehave already referred to, E.V.Tarle. During the 1920s, he was ableto coexist with his Marxist colleagues, and, indeed, was electedto full membership of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in1927. But the reckoning came soon after. In 1928, he was due toattend the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslobut was withdrawn at the last moment. In the same year, he wasattacked as a ‘pseudo-Marxist’ and ‘economic-materialist’. In1930, he was arrested, and soon implicated in a ‘plot’ to restorethe monarchy. He spent five years in exile in Kazakhstan.However, in 1934, the pendulum of party favour swung back,and Tarle returned to energetic activity for another twenty yearsor so, collecting many honours on the way as well as undergoingfurther, if lesser, difficulties. Less an orthodox Marxist than asomewhat circumspect conformist, Tarle wrote patriotic historiesof the War of 1812 and the Crimean War, among many otherworks, too many to describe or even list.10Here, in consonance with one of this chapter’s basic aims,emphasis will be on the contemporary conflicts, the First andSecond World Wars, through to the Cold War. In 1927, Tarlebrought out a major study, Europe in the Age of Imperialism, 1871–1919, with a second, revised edition soon following in that, forhim, fateful year 1928. According to his opponents, in thisinterpretation of the origins of the First World War, Tarle madethree cardinal errors: he denied the intensification of the classstruggle during the years 1872–1914; he considered that Germanyrather than the Entente powers was responsible for the outbreakof hostilities in 1914; and he argued that, following the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 1918, German policy in the Eaststrengthened the resolve of the Entente in the West. For acombination of reasons, as much to do with Soviet foreign policyin 1928 as with deviations from Marxist or Leninist interpretationsof imperialism, Tarle’s analysis of the origins and immediatesequel of the First World War helped to bring about his personaltemporary downfall.11Tarle’s estimate of the impact of the war on Europe was lesscontroversial, or at least less central to the attack made on himin 1928 by his opponents. Certainly, in his view, the losses hadbeen enormous all round. Although there had been rhetoricalexaggeration in such phrases as ‘The end of Europe’ and ‘Theruin of the West’, the unvarnished truth could be seen inmortality figures. Leaving aside Turkey and the Balkans ingeneral and the massacre of the Armenians in particular,omitting civ-ilian losses resulting from the British blockade ofGermany and from influenza throughout Europe, concentratingindeed on the military losses of the major powers, the figuresshowed that two million Germans were killed or missing; thosenext worse affected were Russians, Austro-Hungarians andFrenchmen. As far as material losses were concerned, a far fromcomplete indi-cation could be given by figures for the internaland external debt of a number of powers, greater and smaller,in millions of dollars at the beginning and end of the war: theseindicated that payment for the war had been made by Russia,Germany, Britain, France and the USA, in that descending order.Of course, most of the US debt was internal, to its own citizens.As far as the European powers were concerned, the war was aneconomic catastrophe for victors and vanquished alike, and theywere all in various degrees of debt to the USA, sending $665million in interest across the Atlantic in 1920 alone. But the USAhad no interest in crippling Europe either financially inparticular or economically in general.Along with economic disaster went social dislocation. In somerespects there was reversion to passive attitudes known long before1914, in others widespread activity of a newer kind, especiallyamong workers. Governments feared that the comparative stabilityof the nineteenth century was an aberration, and that there wouldbe a reversion to instability, possibly in the form of a new revolution.But the apt observation was made that the situation was morerevolutionary than the people, and by about 1924 a kind of recoverywas noted in many parts of the continent, with some reassertionof European self-confidence and a comparative fall in Americandominance.12About twenty years later, this time discussing theconsequences of the Second World War, Tarle was far lessmoderate and objective in his tone. He began with a bolddeclaration of the importance of the Great October SocialistRevolution as the mightiest of the world-historical turningpoints experienced by humanity in many centuries. This madethe Soviet Union’s salvation of Europe and Asia all the moresignificant for those anxious to oppose the emergence of worldfascism and reactionary aggression. This was a far cry from theTarle of the earlier or even the later 1920s, now wanting toemphasise, for example, that at the Paris Peace Conference, theSoviet government was never referred to as such, but rather asthe ‘Maximalists’. After the Intervention had failed, Tarlesuggested, there ensued in America and Europe a period ofhangover after the immediate post-war excitment. On the onehand, none of the capitalist powers wanted any rival to secureeconomic advantages in its dealings with the Soviet Union. Onthe other hand, all those powers feared the consolidation of theUSSR, and consequently embarked on provocations, such as theinfringement of the immunity of Soviet embassies.These assaults became more serious in the 1930s, with therise of the fascist powers which the Western powers hopedwould do their dirty work for them. But the repulse of theJapanese at Khasan and Khalkin Gol in 1938–9 was followed bythe immediate frustration of Western hopes that Hitler wouldattack on the European flank. The French government impris-oned thousands of communists, and allowed the Nazis to occupyPoland without one shot fired on the Rhine, before its own quickcollapse in 1940. The treacherous invasion of the USSR by thefascist hordes was greeted by much of the Western press asanother certain victory for them. But, after the first deceptiveappearances confirming such a view, the scales fell from theireyes as the Red Army went from Stalingrad to Kursk and on toits great victory. First the Japanese, and then the Nazis and theAllies came to realise that the Soviet Union was strengthened,not weakened, by the Great October Socialist Revolution. TheAllies’ part in the Red victory was far from the ‘decisive’contribution claimed, while the much delayed D-Day crossingof the Channel was only finally undertaken due to fear of therapidity and completeness of that victory. Only now was it fullyrealised that, having crushed with an iron hand any possibilityof behind-the-lines activity by a ‘fifth column’, Soviet powerwas sufficiently developed to deal the mortal blow to Hitler andhis bandit forces.Advancing into Eastern Europe, the Soviet forces had clearedcountry after country not only of ‘the brown plague’, but also ofcenturies-old feudal oppressions and appalling spiritual poison.In particular, the abolition of the Prussian Junker class had effecteda profound social transformation and acted as a symbol of hopefor further progress. Meanwhile, in a reactionary policyculminating in the Truman Doctrine, the British and Americangovernments had been supporting the most anti-democraticpoliticians in Greece. Such evident suppression of popularaspirations had led only to greater unity among the Slav and non-Slav peoples of Eastern Europe and their stronger, united supportfor the only power that could save them from the fate suffered bythe Greeks, Spaniards and Indonesians. Similar unity and supportwere being demonstrated outside Europe by those who aspiredto self-realisation, the Indonesians and the Koreans, Indians andEgyptians.At the same time, the Soviet Union acted not only as protectorof democracy and independence, but also as a guarantor of worldpeace. Tarle asserted: ‘The possessors of money bags were seizedby a seductive illusion of invincibility.’ But their threats of thunderand lightning (so far only verbal) were breaking against thegranite wall calmly erected before them. They could not win thediplomatic struggle—for example, reject the argument that theSoviet Union as one of the victorious powers had the right toparticipate in the settlement of the question of the German Ruhr.Nor could they overcome the fact that the Soviet Union was theonly world power that was socialist, seeking prosperity withoutthe princes of the stock exchange and the kings of oil and steel,and opposing the draconian anti-worker legislation of the USAand its allies. Millions of workers throughout the world helpedto defend the USSR against the neo-fascists and transatlanticfollowers of Nazism.In the autumn of 1947, Tarle noted, there would be twosignificant anniversaries: 800 years since the founding of Moscowas capital of a great state, and thirty years since the transformationof that state into a socialist power. How many exciting comparisons,how many ideas were evoked by the thought of these happilycoincidental celebrations, among them the occasions during thecountry’s 1,100-year history, for example during the Napoleonicinvasion, when Russian military might had helped to save Europe.To be sure, at other times that same power had acted in a morethreatening manner. Undoubtedly, the Great October SocialistRevolution had produced a much greater power, exclusively forprogress. Concluded Tarle:The struggle for the preservation of peace between peoplesand for the social progress of humankind is now associatedthroughout the world with the image of Moscow, old andnew, and of a mighty world power of which the Kremlinis the heart and brain.13There can be no doubt that in the year 1947 the Kremlin waslooked upon throughout the world as the centre of the communistmovement, although from 1949 Red Russia was to be joined byRed China in the even more formidable Moscow-Peking axissymbolising hope for the world—or a threat, since in the Westespecially its strongest bastion, the USA, the spread ofcommunism was viewed in a manner diametrically opposed tothat of Tarle. Needless to say, the Cold War isolated historians inthe USSR as well as distorting historical analysis throughout theworld, and the fact that the West has been deemed the victor doesnot in itself mean that the Western range of interpretation iscorrect. Much the same might be said about the period betweenthe wars, the rise of Italian fascism and German Nazismcombining with the consolidation of Soviet power to produce aninternational climate in which objectivity was difficult, if notimpossible, to maintain, even in the more pluralist West, crushingthe hopes of Pirenne.A perspective on American academic life from after the First toafter the Second World War may be gained through anexamination of episodes in the career of Charles A.Beard. Likehis Soviet counterpart, E.V.Tarle, Beard was by no means a consist-ently orthodox figure, and was often at odds with theestablishment, although without such dire consequences. LikeTarle, too, Beard was a man of great energy in a wide variety offields, including the production of many books and articles.Neces-sarily, therefore, the following discussion will be highlyselective.Before 1917, Beard’s career ran along fairly normal lines,combining university teaching with social awareness andintellectual curiosity, the latter showing itself in the ‘New History’movement which he joined along with James Harvey Robinson.This called for a broadening of the subject in economic and otherdirections, while engaging the attention of the ‘common man’ aswell as the statesman. Then, although supporting the USA’s entryinto the First World War, he resigned from Columbia Universityover the issue of academic freedom to oppose government policy,and remained an independent scholar for most of the rest of hiscareer. His two best-known works were An Economic Interpretationof the Constitution, published in 1913, and The Rise of AmericanCivilization which he brought out with his wife and collaborator,Mary Ritter Beard, in 1927. A controversial figure, Beard wassubjected to many criticisms, including those visited uponE.V.Tarle (albeit in very different circumstances) of ‘economicdeterminism’ and ‘pseudo-Marx-ism’. Largely, on the constitutionBeard argued that there were two major property-based groups:the Hamiltonian for finance, industry and the city; and theJeffersonian for self-sufficiency, agriculture and rural life.American civilisation’s rise marked a triumph for Hamilton overJefferson, especially after the post-humous showdown of the CivilWar, but there was still some hope for Jefferson’s republican virtueupdated in an ‘industrial democracy’. The Crash of 1929 followedby the Depression of the 1930s turned Beard from a belief inscience and technology to a search for new explanations of thegreat economic calamity and new sources of historicalunderstanding. On the first count, he lost the belief he hadpreviously held (as for most of their careers, although not alwaysin the 1790s, had Hamilton and Jefferson) in international trade.His hopes that Franklin Roose-velt’s ‘New Deal’ wouldconcentrate on national planning were dashed even before whathe came to see as the betrayal of entry into the Second WorldWar. His last major work, President Roosevelt and the Coming of theWar, published in the year of his death, 1948, gave full rein to hissense of betrayal. As his death approached he was less than happyat the declaration of the Cold War, suspicious of the MarshallPlan and aghast at the Truman Doctrine.15At the end of 1933, Beard gave his Presidential Address to theAmerican Historical Association, ‘Written History as an Act ofFaith’, declaring:Having broken the tyranny of physics and biology,contemporary thought in historiography turns its enginesof veri-fication upon the formula of historical relativity—the formula that makes all written history merely relativeto time and circumstance, a passing shadow, an illusion.Upbraided by a colleague for his economic determinismoriginating in Marxism, for his alleged belief that To discover caus-ation is pure illusion: to offer any other interpretation than onebased on a bold philosophy is to leave history to be the prey ofprejudice’, Beard retorted:I cannot speak for others, but so far as I am concerned, myconception of the economic interpretation of history restsupon documentation older than Karl Marx, Number X ofthe Federalist, the writings of the Fathers of the Republic,the works of Daniel Webster, the treatises of Locke, Hobbes,and Machiavelli, and the Politics of Aristotle—as well asthe writings of Marx himself.In furtherance of his relativist beliefs, Beard developed aninterest in the work of German idealist historians, in particularFriedrich Meinecke. This provided the main theme of an article hewrote with Alfred Vagts in 1937, entitled ‘Currents of Thought inHistoriography’. They suggested that if Meinecke’s work didindeed enter controversy, its spirit was that of the elusive searchfor truth, and his concept of Historismus contained nothing of theopprobrious. Meinecke claimed that his Historismus was ‘one ofhe greatest spiritual revolutions which Occidental thought hasundergone’, overcoming the belief in the stability of human natureand even more in the power of human reason put forward by thenatural rights school since the later seventeenth century. Hisemphasis was on the unique: ‘each time...has its own style’; forhim: ‘The quintessence of historism consists in the replacement ofthe generalizing view of historico-human forces by anindividualizing view.’Setting out Meinecke’s position, Beard and Vagts both elaboratedand criticised it. Among the figures lighted on by Meinecke as hispredecessors were Montesquieu and Burke. He argued that TheSpirit of the Laws had helped to undermine the main weakness ofthe Enlightenment, which was its judgement of the past by thestandards of the present. Montesquieu had suggested that naturewas a force of feeling which should be given its own way, althoughhe did not resolve the contradiction between nature as moral causeand as physical cause, and fell some distance short of grasping theindividual character of the historical personality. For his part, Burkehad launched the strongest arguments against the FrenchRevolution as the consequence of natural rights, in favour of ‘saintsand knights’ and ‘pious endurance of the world as it is’.Comparing Meinecke’s 1936 two-volume work on Historismuswith his earlier studies, Beard and Vagts found the influence ofsociety and economy on idea and interest more closely indicated.At the same time, they criticised him for being more aware ofthis influence on those he disliked than on those he liked, andfor not making a proper distinction between the conditions inwhich French, British and German thought evolved. Hoistinghim with his own petard, they wrote that historism, as definedby Meinecke, was:an outgrowth of the bureaucratization of Germanintelligence, a function of the servitude imposed uponbusiness enterprise in Germany, where its developmentoccurred late, with the aid of only a small intelligentsiaand under the dominance of a military and civilbureaucracy. This bureaucracy, though out of sympathywith the rising capitalism on which it mainly lived, didnot greatly restrain the specific interests which finally gotcontrol of the Reich, namely, the heavy industries andlarge-scale agriculture.... Meinecke, the historian of StateReason, in truth, belongs to the penultimate generation ofhistorians who uphold and justify by history the rule ofthat bureaucracy and whatever may be behind it.However, historism would be different in Germany from othercountries:Neither the content nor the purpose nor the implemen-tation of American historiography can be the same as thatof historism in Germany or its counterpart in othercountries of Continental Europe, unless we are to believethat an encompassing social environment makes noimpress on written history.And so, having weighed up the alternatives, ‘the historian may, ifhe can, decide whether he desires to be a maker of history after thestyle of the Enlightenment or a victim of it in the manner of Rankeand Meinecke.’In conclusion, Beard and Vagts made a number of furtherobservations concerning currents of thought in historiography.Analogies with physics and biology, they suggested again, wereon the way out, allowing a return to history as actuality and to thehistorian’s subjective or psychological nature. As Croce amongothers had indicated, theory and practice tended to con-form toeach other, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding; in otherwords, neither theory nor practice existed in a ‘pure’ state. In suchcircumstances, each historian would develop a ‘scheme ofreference’, liberal, fascist, Marxist or other. While such labels weresometimes used too broadly, perhaps, it would be wrong to thinkthat each historian could develop a unique ‘scheme’. Equally, givenany ‘scheme’, there might be scrupulous and critical use of sourcesand facts and, so far, a degree of scientific exactness. Certainly, itwas impossible to return to the type of historism ‘under which thehistorian imagined himself able to know history as it had actuallybeen. That philosophy, for such it was while denying philosophy,has been wrecked beyond repair.’ At the same time, historians hadmoved on from the view that written history was exclusivelyconcerned with military, political and diplomatic events. They nowaccepted as integral parts of their province aspects of biologicaland psychological enquiry, for example ‘biometric investigationsof genius, character and family traits’. Indeed, ‘historiographypenetrates all specialities and reveals more clearly to them the allencompassing medium of history as actuality’. And so, to quotethe last words of Beard and Vagts at some length:Slowly it dawns in contemporary consciousness thathistoriography so conceived furnishes such guides togrand public policy as are vouchsafed to the human mind.They may be frail guides, but what else have we? Thepublic policy of each country turns in part upon the postureand trends of domestic events. On them historiographyso conceived must report. If its reports are meager,inaccurate, partial, haphazard, and marked by fear,negligence, and indifference, so much the worse for grandpublic policy. If they are full, accurate, comprehensive,systematic—the fruits of tireless industry and a boldconception of historical obligations—so much the betterfor grand public policy. Even when they repudiate it, denyit, and seek refuge in the dust of analytical philology,historians have a public responsibility: the kind of historythey write, whether good or bad, helps to make history inspite of their efforts to escape from the outcome of theirown labors. As the full-ness of their responsibility unfoldsin the consciousness of historians, historiography will risein the estimation of those who serve it and of the societywhich it serves, for weal or woe.16During the inter-war years 1923–41, the belief that historiansshould serve society was reflected in the pages of the AmericanHistorical Review, although few practitioners of the subject went asfar as states such as Wisconsin, which passed a law in 1923 thatthere should be no falsification in textbooks on such importantsubjects as the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Indeed,as the Second World War got under way warnings were givenagainst imposing such orthodoxies: let there be no repeat orcontinuation of the ‘America First’ slogans or ‘Red Scare’ excessesthat had impinged upon intellectual freedom after the RussianRevolution and First World War.There were distant echoes of the ‘Red Scare’ even in CharlesH.Haskins’s article of 1923, ‘European History and AmericanScholarship’. After noting that the Communist Manifesto had firstcome out in the revolutionary year of 1848, he observed: ‘twogenerations later Bolshevism appears in the lumber camps of thePacific Northwest’. But the main emphasis, if also inter-nationalist,was also more academic. Haskins affirmed:Young or old, Europe and America are now in the sameboat, along with the still older Orient, all common materialfor history. The historian’s world is one; let him interpretit as one, in relation both to scholarship and to the moldingof public opinion.At about the same time, however, reporting on the recentInternational Congress of Historical Sciences in Brussels, WaldoG.Leland pointed out that there had been poor attendance atexperimental sessions on American history, and that interest hadbeen greatest when there had been some connection with Europeanhistory. Five years later, at the Oslo Congress, the position hadchanged little if at all, J.F.Jameson observing that there was widerecognition of the political, economic and social strength of theUSA, but still little or no interest in American history.17Up to this point, virtually all the major contributions to theAmerican Historical Review had concerned what might be called‘Atlantic civilisation’ and its roots in the Middle East, althoughat the end of the 1920s ‘the still older Orient’—Chinese history —made an appearance. Presidential addresses and other broad-based articles considered such themes as law in history, socialpsychology and ‘The Newer Ways’. This last piece came in 1929from James Harvey Robinson, who said with some pride but alsoperhaps a tinge of regret that the ways of ‘New History’ whichhe and Charles Beard had advocated years previously had nowbeen accepted by many, even most of their colleagues. It was nowaccepted in principle that world history should be pursued onan objective basis.18But not many of them practised what was preached, andquestions still arose about the nature of objectivity. Soon, CharlesBeard was to give his famous answer in ‘Written History as anAct of Faith’, which he then enlarged and modified in ‘Currentsof Thought in Historiography’ co-written with Alfred Vagts. Inthe 1930s considerable attention was given to European currentsof thought, not only German but also Italian. Benedetto Crocewas pressed to visit the USA to enlarge upon his increasinglypopular views, but he regretfully declined the invitation. Insteadhe sent messages across the Atlantic, arguing against materialisticand racialist interpretations of history, and warning of a newJacobinism based on abstract concepts of humanity. He declared:‘In its eternal essence, history is the story of the human mind andits ideals in so far as they express themselves in theories and inworks of art, in practical and moral actions.’ Croce offeredencouragement for international co-operation towards realisticcommon aims.19A possible vehicle for such aspirations was the InternationalCongress of Historical Sciences meeting in Warsaw and then inKrakow, in August 1933. The American Historical Review’scorrespondent, Fred Morrow Fling, who had been in Oslo in 1928,feared that, although the Warsaw Congress was better attended, itwas even more chaotic. There was much confusion in meetingsand languages alike, with English coming third, after French andthen German, as a common means of communication. There werein fact few Germans present, Fling regretted, while the Russians inattendance concentrated on a section they had suggested, Histoiredes mouvements sociaux (sociaux actually meaning socialistes). Flingdid not mention American history, which presumably meant thatit was still conspicuous by its absence. Overall, he gave heavyemphasis to his conclusion that historical research was atomised‘at a time when humanity is perishing for a vision of history as a whole,which the historian alone can give’.20Just conceivably, although not very perceptibly, there wassome progress by the time of the last International Congress ofHistorical Sciences to meet before the outbreak of the SecondWorld War, in Zurich in 1938. As in 1923 in Brussels, theAmerican rapporteur on this occasion was Waldo G.Leland, whoindicated that of 1,185 registrations, 1,097 were from Europe,followed well behind by forty-nine from North America andseven from South America, nineteen from Asia, eleven fromAfrica and two from Australia. There was no representation atall from the Soviet Union, but some from Eastern Europe, wherethe location of the next Congress was to be decided in thefollowing year. And Prague turned out not to be the place forsuch a decision in 1939, nor 1943 the most appropriate year forthe proposed Congress.In 1938, the year which decided Prague’s fate, Leland notedmuch desire for peace and friendship, and, regarding theinternational crisis, ‘many interesting and some sensational ante-cedents and parallels...presented and discussed with animation’.At the end of the 1930s, as in ‘Educating Clio’, a report on the mostrecent American Historical Association meeting, there was muchinterest in what history could learn from other disciplines, and atleast some reflections of a wider international outlook. But, as theSecond World War was breaking out, overseas interest in US historywas still undeveloped, even in the USA’s main partner in theEnglish-speaking union, the United Kingdom; there, however,‘Public interest in the subject of America mounted after the collapseof France’ in 1940.21Arguably, the fall of France and its sequels in 1941, notablythe attack on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and on theUSA by imperial Japan, increased public interest in very nearlythe whole world. After 1945 concerned citizens everywhere tooka much wider view than was customary in the 1930s. But atwhat a price, and with what a downside—for the Second WorldWar was soon followed by the equally global Cold War.International conflict of whatever kind is not conducive toobjective historiography, which was pursued with greatdifficulty in the years following 1945.JAN ROMEIN AND THE COLD WAR, 1948–62Having examined the period up to 1948 through aspects of thecareers of E.V.Tarle and C.A.Beard, we will now approach thedual impact, at once broadening and distorting, of the Cold Waryears by considering, again in an overlapping manner, the lifeand some of the works of Jan Romein, a comparatively unknownDutch historian who lived from 1893 to 1962. This survey willalso provide a recapitulation of what has gone before, as we seehow three of Romein’s articles updated the arguments of hispredecessors.As a child at the turn of the century, Jan Romein often went toRotterdam Zoo, where he was especially attracted by an irrigationdevice in the hothouse of tropical plants. Consisting of twobuckets which filled and emptied alternately, the device taughtRomein that ‘motion in one direction prepares for a movementto the opposite, and even in such a way as to change at suddenand always unexpected moments’. As a student, he was deeplyaffected by the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was also muchinfluenced by Jan Huizinga’s Waning of the MiddleAges, published

SOME APPROACHES TO WORLD ORDER124two years later. It made him say to himself, ‘This is the way, andno other way, that I want to learn to write.’ In a lecture onHuizinga in 1946, Romein spoke of the combination in Waning ofunderstanding and vision. In another lecture in 1957 enlargingon this combination, he talked about ‘integral history’,encompassing: ‘psychology, philosophy, sociology, the arts,political science, economics, religion, the ways in which life,society, and human beings are viewed, the knowledge of all thesciences and literatures, and not least, the connections andinterrelationships among groups, families, and generations.’ Inorder to meet its challenges Romein argued that it was necessarynot to make a hierarchy of the subjects involved, or a centre withperipheries, but rather to adopt a ‘holistic’ approach, rendering avague, mystical idea such as ‘Spirit of the Age’ into a scientificinsight. Huizinga was ‘a seer’ but ‘no thinker’ and his work was‘many-sided’ rather than ‘inclusive’. Further guidance had to besought elsewhere, therefore, in a mature update of Romein’sexperience in Rotterdam Zoo—the dialectical process, operatingin totality as demonstrated by Karl Marx.22Calling himself a Marxist, and sometimes labelled aTrotskyist, Romein followed no party line, and had in fact moreor less given up party activity two years or more before hisformal expulsion from the Communist Party of the Netherlandsin 1927. His career held back to some extent by his ideologicaloutlook, he showed himself to be a staunch patriot in 1940 soonafter a belated appointment as associate professor in themunicipal University of Amsterdam in 1939. Although theGerman occu-pation had been imposed, he gave a lectureentitled ‘The Origins, Development and Future of DutchHistory’, concluding with the declaration: ‘Remember that youare scions of our beloved country; to be true to its ideals and donot flinch’. Interned for part of the war (like his non-politicalmodel Huizinga), Romein emerged in 1945 to be appointed afull professor, to continue work on Dutch and wider history,including the theory of history.Gaining a reputation in ‘Theoretical History’, Romein wasinvited to visit the USA to lecture on the subject. Unfortunately,his other reputation as a Marxist meant that he was refused avisa in 1949; he could therefore accept another invitation, tolecture in newly independent Indonesia instead. Two interlinkedcourses given there in 1951–2, one on Asian, one on Europeanhistory, encouraged him to develop a third line of thought inaddition to ‘integral history’ and Marxism, the ‘CommonHuman Pattern’.Two books were published from the courses that Jan Romeingave in Indonesia, Aera van Europa in 1954, and De Eeuw van Aziëin 1956. The first had a subtitle which translates as ‘EuropeanHistory as Deviation from the Common Human Pattern’, while inthe Preface to The Asian Century, an English version of the second,the author expressed his belief that in this deviation he had found‘the final cause of the temporary domination of Asia by theEuropeans’. His later years were largely devoted to a collaborativeenterprise, Part VI of the UNESCO History of Mankind,23 and on hislargest, although uncompleted work, The Watershed of Two Eras:Europe in 1900. The second of these brought him back, no doubt, tohis childhood memories of the irrigation buckets at Rotterdam Zoo.Certainly, they formed the introduction to a posthumouslypublished paper, ‘Change and Continuity in History: The Problemof “Transformation”’.From 1893 to 1962, Romein’s lifetime, a great transformationhad indeed occurred in Europe and the world. Against thatbackground, let us take a closer look at the evolution of his ideasthrough articles published in 1948, 1958 and 1964. The first ofthem, ‘Theoretical History’, was an outline of a course of studyintroduced at his suggestion to the University of Amsterdam in1945. Addressing the same sort of subject as Lamprecht, Berr andActon before the First World War, and Tarle, Pirenne and Beardafter it (as we have seen in earlier analysis), Romein consideredhis themes in a manner appropriate for the period following theSecond World War.His essay is divided into five parts. The first part brieflyexplains that the title was taken from the realm of science andseemed preferable to the alternative ‘historiology’ since thisimplied pure description, while ‘theoretical history’ made clearthat the emphasis was on explanation. The second part echoesCroce and other predecessors in its assertion that ‘the structureof even the simplest historical event originates in the mind of thehistorian, not in the facts which provide merely the material’.This had now become a commonplace, amounting to ‘the para-dox that a historian’s value lies primarily in what he knows aboutman, rather than in what he knows about the past’. In the thirdpart of his argument, Romein sets out to fix the frontiers oftheoretical history, and urges us to imagine them as forming thefollowing four sides to a central square: (a) theoretical history assometimes used in the eighteenth century to denote ‘hypo-thetical, ideal, conjectural, natural, or generalized history’; it fallsshort of the twentieth-century variety, because it, like (b)philosophy of history, soars beyond the discipline rather thanlodges within it; (c) is historical method in the sense of considering‘the nature of historical truth rather than the means of pursuingit, which is better thought of as technique’; and (d) separatestheoretical from practical history, the latter dealing with topicspossessing a time sequence and geographic unity, the former withtopics which are conceptual rather than temporal or spatial. Inother and simpler words, according to Romein, ‘theoretical historydeals with developments and concepts, and establishes its caseby comparing historical phenomena and developments indifferent periods and places.’Turning to the fourth of the five parts of his argument, Romeinlists a further series of salient features, the five provinces of theterritory of theoretical history. These are: (a) theoretical problemsand problems of method; (b) the study of the pattern and rhythmof history; (c) the breakdown of the past into periods andrecognition of the driving powers in history; (d) some topicsbeyond ordinary historiography; (e) the study of historiography.To look at them more closely, in particular at the questions thatthey pose: (a) How to retain the advantages of specialisationwhile eliminating the disadvantages? How to arrangeestablished facts into a pattern? Does objectivity exist, or ishistory dependent on subjectivity and value judgements? Andis history governed by laws, especially of causality? (b) Are thepatterns and rhythms of history to be explained in terms ofbiology or another science? Are there ages of integration anddisintegration, of progress and decline, or a mixture? (c) Howshould periods be organised, and should breaks between themoccur at peaks of development or at the ends of eras? How todefine terms such as romanticism or imperialism or, moredifficult, individualism? How to establish the relationshipbetween a leader, the masses and the environment, or betweenstate, society and individual? (d) How to organise comparativestudies of, say, dictatorship or revolution? or of the ever growingpower of the state? or of medieval myths, of the monarchy orthe papacy? or of historical phantoms? Of the last of theseRomein noted: ‘The phenomenon may be interpreted differentlyas the pursuit of phantoms from the past or as the projection ofpresent ideals into the past; in either case its appeal derives fromthe illusion that one’s daydream was at one time reality.’ Andhe cited Jan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, Arnold Toynbee’s A Studyof History and Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process amongexamples of what theoretical history could achieve, (e) Hereagain, best to quote Romein:In short, historiography is to the historiologist what thedocument is to the writer of history. Just as the latterorganizes his archival material, the former will acquire aswide as possible an acquaintance with historiographybefore starting in. The latter never tires of browsingthrough archives; the former is an indefatigable reader ofthe great book of history, for the tragedy of human triumphand defeat, of human endeavor and error, fascinates himas nothing else.The fifth and last part of ‘Theoretical History’ begins with theringing assertion that this subject fulfils a practical purpose. Toteach students what they themselves may find in books is notenough; nor is it enough to train them in historical research. Romeinsaw history as a triptych, with the left panel depicting historicalresearch, the right theoretical history, and both sides achieving theirfull meaning only from the centrepiece representing historiography.Concluded Romein in 1948:The writer of history, the research worker, and thehistoriologist should all three collaborate harmoniouslyin training young people to find in their profession thesatisfaction to which they are entitled—to which they areentitled because they have been born into a world whichthrough our rather than their fault has become so degradedthat one would wish to leave it, were it not for this veryopportunity to provide young people with the happinesswe older men have not found.24After 1948, in the short run the outlook became darker forold and young, men and women alike, and for Jan and AnnieRomein in particular. As already mentioned (p. 124), his Marxistassociations, however unaffiliated, were enough for him to bedenied entry to the USA in 1949. His alternative visit toIndonesia, however, was more than fruitful for his widerperspective, and, returning home to Amsterdam in 1952, he soonbegan to publish fresh thoughts about world history. These wereplaced before an international public in 1958 with thepublication of an article ‘The Common Human Pattern: Originand Scope of Historical Theories’.Here, Romein approached a theme to be found at least as farback as Montesquieu, but he concentrated for the most part onthe interpretations of professional historians. In the nineteenthcentury, he began, scholars argued that history was a sciencelike any other, and that they should therefore seek to enunciatelaws or at least establish systematic recurrence of phenomena.However, around 1900, a reaction against this assertion began,with a division made between natural and social science, andsome doubt being put forward about the inclusion of historyeven in the second category. So much did the reaction grow thatany historian who still discussed laws of history was generallylooked upon as a worker in a different field, a philosopher.Then, in the early 1930s, the pendulum started to swing inthe other direction. One reason was a shift in the definition ofnatural science, following the discovery of random movementswithin the atom and the popularisation of Einstein’s theory ofrelativity. While there was no support for reviving the oldanalogies between history and physics or chemistry, the feelinggrew that the discipline did require some kind of theoreticalbackground.What was theory? Basically, ‘a shorthand note of reality’, andas such necessarily ‘a simplification of reality’, one-sided, to anextent distorting and even erroneous. But, in answer to thequestion ‘what is scientific truth?’, a biologist had answeredearlier in the century ‘an error of today’, and there probably neverwould be in any science a theory wholly and permanently beyondquestion. Why was this so? There were three reasons: a naturaltendency for generalisation to lead to exaggeration; a desire tobroaden theory to cover possible objections; and, mostimportantly, the circumstance that the structure of reality wasalways too complex for full coverage. Thus, in science, theoriesthat were once central became eccentric or even obsol-ete. Theyhad served their purpose through stimulating fresh insights, andshould also be saluted as, for their time, ‘the highest peak ofhuman creative power’.Among historical theories or concepts, Romein selected forspecial mention the ideal-type, seen by Max Weber as ‘a rule withwhich to measure reality or a standard by which to gauge othermeasures’ (not ideal in the sense of approaching perfection). Hisown ideal-type, at least in preliminary form, was the theory ofthe Common Human Pattern (CHP), derived from earlierthoughts and from the Asiatic experiences of 1951 and 1952,‘gathered in the subconscious, unpredictably emerging and beingshaped by the cold air of reason’. This theory was ‘the summaryin one concept of a mass of separate characteristics of humanbehaviour which was valid everywhere in the world beforeEuropean development since the Renaissance diverged in themost fundamental respects’.Before describing them, Romein considered it necessary todispose of two misunderstandings: he did not mean to imply thatany culture which was not West European was primitive or thatWest European divergence from the CHP was in any way unsoundor regrettable, or anything other than just different. The CHP’scharacteristics could be described in two ways: in themselves or asmirrored in divergence. To take the latter first, it started with theGreeks, distinguished by ‘their objective attitude towards nature,by their rationalism, by their capacity for abstract thought as wellas for exact observation’. They were followed by the Romans,distinguished by ‘their gift for organiz-ation and its application tostate, society and technique’. The divergence could also be seen inChristianity which, unlike all other world religions, became achurch with ‘a consciously hierarchical, centralized and hence moreeffective form of organ-ization’. Then came the emergence of self-governing medieval cities, leading to an independent ‘middle class’between the upper and lower class. The Renaissance began withthe attempt to assimilate the classical heritage, but outstripped itwith ideas of individualism and progress. And the centralisednational state was also purely European in origin. Individualism,developed through Protestantism and other traits listed above,contributed towards the growth of capitalism, as did expansionbeyond Europe. Romein continued:Enlightenment is so essentially a completion of what theGreeks began and the Renaissance continued that it onlycan be imagined in the pattern of European divergence.The same applies to historism, the idea that man and hisinstitutions are historical categories originating fromsomething else and becoming something else; an ideawhich only can occur in a dynamic society.(On historism, see again the present chapter, pp. 117–20.) Suchdifferences led to revolutions, American, French and Russian aswell as the Industrial Revolution, and to imperialism, all workingto separate Europe from the CHP.Of what did this Common Human Pattern consist? Its mostremarkable characteristics were six in number, nature, life, thought,time, authority and work: nature—feeling part of it, knowing howto make use of it when necessary but not seeking to dominate it;life—accepting that it is essentially worthless, a transition to anotherexistence in the cosmic whole; thought—in images not concepts,concretely not abstractly, with much less interest in consciousorganisation, in church or state; time—‘but a succession of todays’,with no saving of time, or capital, or any conception of progress;authority—of the gods, the prince, the father, the teacher and thebook, either absolute or non-existent; work—a necessary evil, thevery word signifying worry and pain, and no work ethic or worshipas in the West.Understanding the CHP was not just a matter of erudition inRomein’s view; observation of life, especially through travel, wasalso necessary. Of course, closer study and inspection might revealfurther divergences from the CHP, which in any case had to beseen as an ideal-type concept, but meanwhile, the CHP could throwlight on social attitudes, cultural relations, economic problems andpolitical phenomena. For example, at its frontier, the BolshevikRevolution was characterised by the weak resistance of the oncedominant classes. Why was this? One common answer wasexemplified by the perceptive American journalist visiting Russiain the summer of 1917:The general attitude of the educated minority towards thetragic sweep of events was surprisingly often that of merebewilderment and a sort of passive melancholy, as if thestorm raging outside their pleasant drawing rooms andcountry houses were some untoward act of nature theywere powerless to affectThe submissiveness of the Russian bourgeoisie could becontrasted with the active resistance of the Finnish, a reflection ofthe fact that the former was less touched by divergence from theCHP than the latter. Furthermore, nobody wrote more pro-foundlyabout the two different attitudes to life and death than Leo Tolstoyin his story ‘Three Deaths’ (of a rich woman, a poor man and atree). Conceding that its value could be only relative, Romeinconcluded with an affirmation:I think that the theory of the Common Human Pattern istrue for us here and now and hence an instrument forreaching a better understanding of the relation betweenEast and West. And no man of good will will deny thatsuch understanding is essential to a better relation betweenthe two worlds; nor will he deny that this relationship isthe principal task of mankind in the present epoch.25The ‘present epoch’ of the late 1950s was not the same as that ofthe early 1900s, when European civilisation was seen far less as adeviation and much more as the main road of civilisation. Equally,while some of Romein’s truth lives on after him, it has been muchrefined through the completion of the process of decolonisationand its aftermath. For Romein’s death in 1962 came at a time whenperhaps the greatest transformation in human history was in fullswing. The nature of that transformation which included muchbesides decolonisation will be investigated below (pp. 134–7). Forthe moment, we will consider a by no means irrelevantposthumously published article on this very question, ‘Change andContinuity in History: The Problem of “Transformation”’,stemming from his childhood acquaintance with the dialecticalstructure of irrigation by bucket in Rotterdam Zoo, and thus endingwhere he began.An illustration selected from history was the transformation inEurope from about 1889 to the First World War, the theme of hislongest (and also posthumously published) book, The Watershed ofTwo Eras: Europe in 1900. This consisted of the disintegration of the‘modern’ worldview based on the thought of Descartes andNewton, and many other developments, political, economic, socialand cultural, on different levels of profundity and superficiality(see Chapter 3, pp. 78, 87). In order to make his view oftransformation as clear as possible, Romein managed to isolate anumber of types, from the more deliberate to the less conscious.The first of these was synthesis, which could be both crude andsubtle. Nearer the former end of the spectrum was the fashionableattempt in the USA to reconcile religion and Freudianism.Commenting with some memory of his own personal historyprobably not too far away, Romein wrote:The argumentation goes that both structures aim at savingsouls. In fact, this is only the trivial response to a situationin which one does not want to give up the benefits ofpsychiatric treatment, but is no more prepared to part withthat testimony of anti-communism which has become oneof the most important social functions of religion today.Towards the latter end of the spectrum was the synthesis ofAristotelianism and Platonism at the inception of modern thoughtfrom Copernicus to Newton—‘perhaps the most important andmost influential of all spiritual changes’.Sharp and constant criticism could become ‘more creative’ thanthe ‘creation’, as Oscar Wilde put it, and was most appropriatelyfound in Bible criticism, which had undermined literal acceptanceof the Word of God. This was the second type of transformation,while the third was ‘supplementation’ or ‘adaptation’. This couldbe more subtle and on occasion less deliberate than criticism orsynthesis, and could be illustrated from examples taken from thehistory of Marxism around 1900. Plekhanov in his short work TheRole of the Individual in History and Lenin in his What Is To Be Done?might not have strayed far from the thought of Marx and Engels,but both gave it a new slant, while Bernstein made a more consciousadaptation in his formulation of revisionism.Still more subtle and unconscious was a fourth type, the‘mistake’. This could be detected in ether-theory, which helpedto lead from classical to modern physics, and also in the ‘turnover’within positivism from objectivism towards psychologism. Butperhaps the clearest example was in painting, which, likeliterature, went through a phase ‘of turning away from the outsidetowards the inside’. Gauguin expressed in a nutshell how theImpressionists conveyed reality: ‘The art of painting is somethingthat merely consists of what our eyes are thinking.’ In additionto synthesis, criticism, supplementation and ‘mistake’, there weretwo further types of transformation. The fifth was theconsequence of intensification, for example the close attentiongiven to religion throughout the nineteenth century leading to‘sociology of religion’. The sixth was ‘transformation by accuracy’,the circumstance that ‘one degree of greater precision inestablishing facts would unsettle conclusions already reached,and that such uncertainty would create new problems’. Beyondthese types of transformation, there was a shift of emphasis, alife going beyond the razor’s edge, or old ideas necessarilyexpressing a new thought—‘on which it stumbles and which atbest it must drag along in its motion’.All these transformation types prompted the generalconclusion that the important quality shared by them was ‘a shiftof values: and, after all, values are the criteria of our thought andaction’. Of course, history was a bottomless discipline, but theproblem of ‘turnover’ could be usefully approached through acarefully used formula. The essence of the problem oftransformation was to be found in ‘the dialectical unity of twoseem-ingly absolute and completely irreconcilable opposites:continuity and change’. In fact, they were only relative opposites,like light and shadow. As far as a formula was concerned, suchdaring men as Lenin and Einstein had to start with the given:originality was to be found in the stream of continuity, but,equally, continuity could still be found in the stream of change.Putting his argument in the most compressed manner possible,Romein offered his own E = MC2: A --> A(b) --> B(a) -->B.The formula was to be explained in the following manner:A is a given value expressed in thought on a given date;(b) is an added value, added to A since A started to functionin a changing situation. The addition of (b) gives thereforea different emphasis to A. In the prolongation of thisprocess, the emphasis (b) tips the balance by becoming themain value B, whilst the former main value A is reducedto an accessory value (a). In the end, B may be receivingthe value of minus A, but this need not be so. At any rate Bwill always incorporate A, though A be dissolved.Insisting that his formula had only marked a modesttheoretical breakthrough, Romein nevertheless expressed thehope that ‘it would advance by a few steps towardsunderstanding the way dialectical motion in history goes, andtowards finding some sort of historical theory of evolution, orat least part of it’. In such a case, historical evolution wouldalso proceed a small step at a time, micro-processes leading tomacro-processes. For example, an infinite number oftransactions in capitalism led to the arrival at the end of thenineteenth century of imperialism — ‘a new type of bankingand monopoly; the great landslide in which, for the first time,the masses became part of the existing nations and couldinterfere in world development.