HISTORY CONGRESS IN ENGLAND, 1913: PAPERS

 Returning to the proceedings of the Congress, let us see how theyreflected profound ‘sentiment and circumstance’ as they haddeveloped over 2,000 years and more. To take some general papersfirst in order of chronological focus, Eduard Meyer from Berlindelivered ‘a pleasant conversational lecture’ in English on‘Ancient History and Historical Research in the last Generation’.He began with the thesis that the centre of ancient history wasalways the civilisation of Greece and Rome, the first great epochof high human development, and that since then there had been
a continual growth down to his own time. There was more lifeand individualism, he said, in the early civilisation of Greece thanin that of Babylon or Egypt. Meyer dwelt at some length on thegreat advance in the knowledge of ancient history that had beenseen in recent years, illustrating his statement by the facts thatthirty years before next to nothing was known of Babylon; thatin 1873 he used to be told by his lecturer that the day of Egyptiandiscovery was nearly over; and finally, that the discoveries ofSchliemann were, so to speak, themselves become ancient history.The address was, in the main, a general review of recent advancesin this respect.Of two general papers with medieval emphasis, Professor N.Jorga’s considered ‘Les bases nécessaires d’une nouvelle histoiredu moyen age’. The scholar from Bucharest said that the historyof the Middle Ages, which was a recent creation of the science ofhistory, resulted from a permanent conflict between the newfactors brought in by the barbarians, the stubborn ideas of thenewcomers, and the ideas of Roman antiquity. The new systemthat must be adopted, which would give to the history of theMiddle Ages two characteristics which it had hitherto beenwanting, was to follow the Roman ideas, to mark theirinterpretation in the Germanic sense, and to show their realisationby the new forces. Henri Pirenne from Ghent took as his subject‘Les étapes sociales de revolution du Capitalisme du XIIe au XIXesiècle’. The Belgian professor showed how through the ages, fromthe twelfth to the nineteenth century, the pursuit of capitalismwas due not only to the desire to gain money for a living, but alsoto a thirst for the power which was the natural result of riches.Always it was intelligence that was the impelling power for thecreation of capitalism. In the thirteenth century the peasants weredriven to the towns by their poverty, and as they became richmerchants formed themselves into guilds. Then the artisans beganto combine against the merchants and developed protectionism,and having raised themselves to the position of capitalists formedthe nobility after a certain lapse of time. In the fifteenth centurycapitalists grew more common in the great towns, and in theeighteenth century came the age of the manufacturers, who intheir turn were absorbed into the ranks of the nobility. And alwaysthese par-venus, when they had raised themselves by the exerciseof their intelligence, and were able to retire from the struggle oflife, were converted into an aristocracy of financial proprietors,
of conservative instincts, in contrast to the radical views withwhich they were imbued when their class first began to rise inthe social scale.Also touching on the medieval period was Professor Geheim-rat O. von Gierke in a paper entitled ‘Zur Geschichte desMajoritätsprinzips’. The principle of the majority, though nowwidely spread, was not, he explained, self-evident. He limitedhis enquiry to the development of the principle in medieval andmodern German law. It was not, he said, recognised in the earliestGerman law, where unanimity, produced if necessary by force,was the ruling idea. But in the second half of the Middle Agesunanimity came to be reached by the prevalence of the views ofthe majority, and the corporate conception was gradually evolved,based on the fiction that the majority must legally be consideredthe whole.Perhaps the most general of the general papers was that ofProfessor Ernst Bernheim on ‘Die historische Interpretation ausden Zeitanschauungen’. He began by reminding his audience thatthe view that each epoch of time left its own peculiar stamp uponlife had been very gradually developed through the writings ofHegel and Comte. In historical interpretation it had not yet got sofar as to deal with the intellectual part of life from the point ofview of the various periods. Even when one was tolerably familiarwith them one could not enter as clearly as one would like intotheir influence on ideas, words, motives and results, so as tounderstand thoroughly the specific meaning of the variousevents—‘if, in fact, we want to clothe the dry bones of history withthe flesh of life.’22Between them, these general papers present us with more thana skeleton of the approaches to history assuming shape at thebeginning of the twentieth century, a shape also indicated by theaddresses of Bryce and Morley. There is in fact a body ofinterpretation from classical times through to modern, Eurocentricand evolutionary. Greece and Rome, vastly superior to Babylonand Egypt, passed the torch on with some added fuel from theBarbarians’, especially the Germans, who helped to establish earlydemocratic principles, while the ‘impelling power’ of capitalismwas accompanied by appropriate social adjustments. Here then,spelled out in brief, is the heritage of the paper givers from the‘European home’
Adding further flesh in various ways to the bones, by nomeans in every sense dry, of the general papers were those ofthe sections, which were nine in number: Oriental and Egyptolo-gical; Greek, Roman and Byzantine; Medieval; Modern—includ-ing Colonial, Naval and Military; Religious and Ecclesiastical;Legal and Economic; Medieval and Modern Civilisational;Archaeological and Prehistorical; Philosophical, Methodologicaland Ancillary. The sections, The Times suggested, were ‘a forcibleillustration of the modern tendency to specialization that it isin anyway possible for the assembled historians to choosebetween the bewildering variety of papers that is offered fortheir entertainment, if that is not too frivolous a word to use inthis connection’.23‘Entertainment’ was not too frivolous a word for the proceedingsof the sectional meetings perhaps, but the delights were rarefied,and indeed forcibly illustrative of a tendency towardsspecialisation. Only one section was deemed worthy by The Timesof description in larger type rather than smaller, and that was forcertain of its aspects only. They were well introduced by ProfessorC.W.Oman, who dealt with ‘A Defence of Military History’, urgingthat a general knowledge of military history was essential to allcitizens, and that the creation of an instructed opinion in thingsmilitary and naval was most necessary. Other-wise we were at theprey of cranks and sciolists posing as authorities. The ultimateresponsibility in high military matters rested with those who atpresent knew nothing of them.24On the opening day of the Congress, the Acting President DrWard had remarked that, on the occasion of their holding theCongress in the capital of the British Empire, he felt sure thatthe foreign as well as the British members would all wish to seecolonial and naval and military history conspicuouslyrepresented. Special practical importance had therefore beenattached to the proceedings at the Royal United ServicesInstitution where, in addition to the papers on these subjects,addresses given from the chair by General Robertson and SirGeorge Reid, and particularly by Prince Louis of Battenberg,the First Sea Lord, added greatly to the interest of the dailydiscussions, in the estimation of The Times. Admiral Prince Louisremarked that the Admiralty was very much alive to theimportance of the study of naval history in the service, andwould welcome a textbook on the subject. He went on to take
the opportunity of making an announcement which he thoughtmight be of interest to those who took an interest in the study ofnaval history. The present Board of the Admiralty, soon afterthey took office, had realised the desirability of a study of thetactics of the battle of Trafalgar, which for some years past hadbeen the subject of a great deal of discussion. At any rate it wouldbe gratifying to everybody to feel that the crowning achievementof the incom-parable naval hero of the country had beendefinitely and finally set at rest and would no longer be a subjectof discussion.25Had there been more French delegates present, there mighthave been less enthusiasm for a study of the tactics of the battleof Trafalgar. But, in fact, there appears to have been no overtdissension at the Congress, and any possibility of such wasreduced by the withdrawal of two papers from the ModernSection because of ‘their close bearing on contemporary politics’.On the other hand, reports in The Times on the sectional meetingsreinforce the impression gained from the general meetings andwelcoming speeches of strong prejudices at large amonghistorians in the spring of 1913. For example, Sir William Lee-Warner, in a discussion of the evolution of Indian history,considered the three stages through which the Indian peopleshad passed in the pursuit of freedom: under the Hindu priestcraft;under the sword of Islam; and under British law. The last of these,in the speaker’s view, ‘secured the public peace and defence ofIndia and abolished many evil customs, but, because of theguarantee of religious neutrality which it gave, could only makeslow headway against the enslaving tendencies of past centuries’.Another encomium of British law came from Professor H.Marczalion ‘Count Széchenyi and the Introduction of English Civilizationto Hungary’. In the Count’s own estimation on his first visit, thethree things to be learned from England were constitution, enginesand horsebreeding. It was the constitutional freedom of England,as opposed to the privileges of the nobility in Hungary, that mostappealed to him as the fulfilment of his own ideals of equalityand as the reason for England’s superiority to other countries.However, while the Count came to England also to study thescience of bridge-building and to secure engineers andsteamboats, he was always averse to the introduction ofindustrialism, and did not wish to put the reins of governmentinto the hands of a Kossuth, who had wanted to revive Hungary
by the agencies of industries and commerce. Professor Marczaliconcluded his paper by prophesying that Hungary would someday return to the doctrines of Count Széchenyi, ‘their great apostleof humanity and truth’, whose sympathy for England turned, ashe said, to Anglomania.26Most of the delegates at the Congress, of course, would havebeen happy to listen to such observations, since they themselveswere English. In large part, they would also have agreed that theBritish Raj had been a most progressive influence on India