France in the 17th Century: The Consolidation of Power

The development of the French state as an absolute monarchy was the first step in an historical process that was to lead to more than a century of conflict, at times on a global scale. The result was a change in the geo-political order that has had ramifications down to the present day.

Repercussions of the Reformation
The Protestant Reformation had profound and long lasting consequences for
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Years War which had begun with Protestant-Catholic antagonism and dynastic politics within the Holy Roman Empire. The pan-European conflict saw interventions in support of the Protestant cause against the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs; three decades of continually shifting alliances saw German Liberties pitted against the Emperor, Protestant against Catholic, Lutheran against Calvinist, Jesuit against Capuchin, United Provinces against Spanish Netherlands, Denmark against Sweden and, most decisively, Bourbon against Hapsburg. In 1635, France had only recently consolidated Catholic supremacy after almost seventy years of religious confrontation with Calvinist sectarianism. But the First Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, threatened by the Austrian and Spanish presence on his borders, chose chauvinist expediency over religion and sided with Protestant interests. And religion was further subordinated to the needs of the state as Richelieu worked towards the concentration of power in the institution of the monarchy, underwritten always by the principle of the divine right of kings.

The Peace of Westphalia determined the future shape of German-speaking Europe while creating a Protestant stronghold in the north that included a Dutch Republic independent from Spain. With the acquisition of Alsace, France was strengthened at the expense of the Empire. But the Peace of Westphalia did not by any means put an end to hostilities. For a further thirty years, until the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678 provided a breathing space, the belligerents continued in a confusing series of coalitions. England, always watchful of the European balance of power and with more than a sideways glance at her commercial interests, now lent her weight variously in the confrontations that centred, for the most part, on the Low Countries: on occasion supporting the Dutch Republic but more often allied against a burgeoning mercantile threat. Nijmegen brought respite from conflict, amongst other things allowing France to pursue territorial expansion in the Americas, Asia and Africa. This was of no small significance for the century to come; but the period between the Peace of Westphalia and the Treaty of Nijmegen saw events that were of equal, if more subtle, consequence. These events revolved around the nature of Church and State, not the least of the many factors that placed England and France on a collision course long before the outbreak of the Seven Years War.

 Mazarin and the Frondes
In France, Cardinal Mazarin had assumed the role of First Minister following the death of Richelieu in 1642 and had presided over the minority of Louis XIV after his accession at the age of five in 1643. Mazarin continued the policies of his predecessor, externally in opposing Hapsburg ambitions and internally in increasing the power of the Crown, not least at the expense of the great territorial magnates. These policies resulted in the civil disorders known as the Frondes, which developed in the last years of the Thirty Years War and encouraged Mazarin to seek a resolution to that conflict. The initial impulse of the Frondes was to protect the ancient feudal liberties from royal infringement, to defend the rights of courts of appeal (Parlements) and particularly the right of the Parlement of Paris to veto the decrees of the monarch. The first pressure on these liberties had come from extended and increased taxation to cover war expenditure. The initial Fronde Parlementaire placed Mazarin in direct conflict with the Parlement of Paris, which was supported by the Paris mob and the nobility. The Peace of Westphalia allowed the French armies under their great general Condé to return and place Paris under siege, ending the insurrection. The second Fronde, the Fronde des nobles, was in essence a confused struggle for power, influence and patronage by discontented nobles, who now included Condé, with support from a Spain that had been at war with France since that country’s intervention in the Thirty Years War. The second Fronde saw Mazarin briefly in exile on two occasions before returning unopposed in 1653.

The most significant result of all this turmoil was Mazarin’s further movement towards absolutism in order to consolidate the authority of the Crown and minimise dissent. The end of the Franco-Spanish War in 1659 (following the crucial involvement of an English contingent on the French side) resulted in the return of the last Frondeurs and their forgiveness by and reconciliation with Louis XIV and Mazarin. When Louis began his personal reign after the death of his mentor two years later, he was well versed in the political thinking of Richelieu and Mazarin and remained always conscious of the threat that had been presented by the Frondes. His reign, the longest of any European monarch, allowed more than adequate time for the fulfilment of the Cardinals’ absolutist aspirations. Henceforward Louis worked deliberately to establish the monarch as the totemic personification of the state, summarised succinctly in his forceful pronouncement to the Paris Parlement in 1655, “L’etat, c’est moi”.

Louis XIV: The Consolidation of Power
Reconciliation with Condé and the Frondeurs removed a potential internal threat; and the appointment of Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller of Finances, his more efficient taxation regime and his aggressive economic development policies, saved France from impending bankruptcy. These were preconditions for an agenda of radical reforms, many of which aimed at eroding feudal institutions and the power of the nobility. The army was transformed by a programme of modernisation that attacked the privileges of the traditional military aristocracy and created a professional and disciplined armed force capable of sustaining France as a major European power through the disputes of the latter part of the century. Equally important was the series of ordinances aimed at rationalising the fragmented and localised legal system, culminating in the Code Louis which regularised civil procedure throughout the whole of France and transferred responsibility for the register of civil records from the church to the state. More significant still was the fundamental reorganisation of the civil administration: Louis strengthened his power by the creation of a new bureaucracy where the high offices of state were no longer occupied by grandees pursuing vested interests.

In all of this Louis, like many rulers before or since, recognised that the realisation of an ideal state, of whatever complexion, requires a centralised authoritarian regime capable of imposing its political vision. This requirement dictated a new relationship between the secular power and the church. Traditional limitations on papal authority in France were to increase as Louis further subordinated the church to the crown. Nevertheless, the king was determined that France should remain, above all, a Catholic realm, perpetuating the unique relationship between the monarchy and the Gallic church whereby the latter imparted a sacral status to kings who were obliged by their coronation oath to defend French Catholicism. To this end (and partly to mollify the Pope) Louis imposed new restrictions on the Protestant Huguenots, eventually revoking the Edict of Nantes that had allowed them a degree of religious and political freedom and, in Louis’s eyes, was an unwanted reminder of royal weakness. Henceforward monarchy, state and church were one and the dogma of divine kingship and divine right was given its definitive form.

Versailles: Seat and Symbol of State
The ultimate symbol of the state as unified edifice was the Palace of Versailles, which had seen its major development phase after the Treaty of Nijmegen. In 1682 Louis removed the royal court from Paris to the former hunting lodge. In doing so he ensured that the national focus was firmly on himself rather than on the Capital or the citizenry. As importantly, the nobility and the military establishment, always potential sources of subversive cabals, were separated from their localised power bases, brought under close observation and immersed in the isolated and leisurely distractions of courtly life. But Versailles was as much an idea as an architectural tour-de-force or an instrument of political control. The Palace was at the hub of Louis’s extensive patronage of the arts: the court’s painters, sculptors and composers were famed across Europe; and classical French literature flourished under a king who was confident enough in his power to afford his protection to such contentious writers as Molière and Racine. France, in the meantime, had gained territory on the Rhine that helped secure its borders; and colonial expansion was proceeding at a pace. Versailles, in all its glittering splendour, was the embodiment of national aspiration and the emblem of French prosperity and power, a magnificent theatre for the conduct of state affairs and an intimidating setting for the reception of foreign dignitaries. The French court inspired awe, envy and imitation in other European powers.

Above all, Louis XIV and Versailles emerged as the quintessential manifestation of French nationhood that was to reverberate down the centuries. If a nation is the de facto expression of accumulated historical events, national self-consciousness is the repository of an accumulated and residual mythology that can be adapted and exploited at need. The perception of French cultural superiority that stems from Louis and Versailles persisted and was an ingredient in the colonial administrations that introduced French institutions and values to their subject peoples. The conviction of French pre-eminence and the legendary legacy of Versailles resonated with Bonaparte and de Gaulle (the Revolution that brought Napoleon to power had more than a passing similarity to the Frondes. His Code Napoleon was based on the Code Louis and through his conquests transformed the legal systems of much of Europe). Louis and Versailles created and gave substance to the notion of ‘La France’, a notion that was arguably (and ironically) to be best articulated by Eugène Delacroix in his 1830 Revolutionary painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ (Louvre). The Sun King joined Charles Martel, Charlemagne, St Louis and Joan of Arc in France’s national pantheon.

                         

The 1680s saw France reaching the height of her power, to the growing concern of her neighbours. The War of the League of Augsburg that began in 1688 failed in its aim of curtailing French ambition and ended, towards the close of the century, with a settlement that gave France a permanent frontier on the Rhine. European anxieties persisted and were to surface once more as a new century brought the spectre of a continental monolith through the threatened union of Bourbon and Hapsburg. And 1688 had been a pivotal year across the English Channel, where the Glorious Revolution had marked the threshold of what some historians have labelled the Second Hundred Years War. The roots of this renewal of ancient enmity lay forty years before, towards the end of the Thirty Years War, when schism upon schism brought radical changes to the English Church and State.

Recommended reading: The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 / Tim Blanning (for review and more books, go to the Europe Page of the History Unlimited Bookshop).Europe and the world. The potent ingredient of religious fervour added a new compulsion to age-long struggles for political ascendancy and territorial gain. The Religious Wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries devastated the countries in which they took place and one of the many complex outcomes was the rise of the nation state as a political force and the decline of the sometime hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. In the words of Bertrand Russell: “The important aspect of Protestantism was schism, not heresy, for schism led to national Churches, and national Churches were not strong enough to control lay government”. Even in some Catholic countries, Church was made subservient to State. And, often, veneration of the State assumed the aspect of a secular religion that could be as virulent a source of hatred as sectarian discord.

The Thirty Years War

Captain Cook's Voyages

Question: What did James Cook accomplish?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Captain James Cook (1728-1729) was a great navigator, surveyor and cartographer, who was the first to map the coastline of Newfoundland (1763-1766) and went on to make three famous voyages to the South Pacific. He was the first known European to circumnavigate New Zealand, navigate the eastern coastline of Australia, and make contact with the Hawaiian Islands.

His first Pacific voyage (1768-1771), commissioned by the Royal Society, was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun from the island of Tahiti. He went on to map the entire coastline of New Zealand and from there sailed west to reach the south eastern coast of Australia.

His second voyage (1772-1775), again for the Royal Society, was in search of the theoretical southern continent of Terra Australis. During this voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a high southern latitude and was one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. Discoveries included South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Landfalls on his return journey included the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu. This voyage dispelled the myth of Terra Australis, but ironically, Cook came close to discovering Antarctica.

The third voyage (1776-1779) had the principal purpose of searching for the North West Passage. After calling at Tahiti he headed north, passing and making landfall on the Hawaiian Islands en route to the west coast of America. On this voyage he mapped most of the North West coast of America for the first time, from Oregon to the Bering Strait, filling in many of the gaps left by Spanish and Russian exploration. Finding the Bering Strait impassable, Cook sailed back south, calling at Hawaii. After a month's stay, and shortly after leaving the islands, he was obliged to return to carry out repairs to one of his ships. Cook was killed during an altercation with the islanders on 14 February 1779.

Cook is important in that he increased knowledge of considerable portions of the globe, thus assisting further exploration and the extension of trade. During his voyages he claimed new territories for Britain and opened the door to the eventual colonisation of Australia, New Zealand and other newly discovered regions. His journals were completed after his death by Captain James King and published on the return to Britain of the last expedition.

Essential reading:

‘The Journals of Captain Cook’

Other Recommended Reading:

'New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration' by Peter Whitfield

The British Empire

Question: How did Britain become a colonial power?
Answer:

The British Empire was largely an accidental thing, the result of diverse impulses often satisfied in despite of the mother country. Britain’s expansion into the world at large began in the Americas with opportunist adventurers and speculative joint-stock expeditions, often supported by arbitrary land grants from the Crown that were scarcely capable of cartographic definition. Chartered colonies followed, but for many years the interest of the home government in overseas settlements was spasmodic. Colonial settlements grew haphazardly: by sectaries seeking religious freedom (or the freedom to practise religious intolerance); by Utopian experiments; by opportunist land grabbing; by governments seeking to rid themselves of anti-social or dissenting elements of the population. All of this was scarcely a formula for cohesion amongst the colonials or between the colonies and the homeland. That cohesion was supplied by commercial interests rather than by idealism or dissent.

Britain was not Persia or Macedon or Rome, driven by territorial imperatives to expand its land borders. Britain was an island nation that had, by the days of colonial acquisition, abandoned its territorial claims in France. Extra-continental settlement and trade allowed Britain to keep pace with its European neighbours, with the homeland as the economic hub; and imperial adventures added new dimensions to Britain's tactical adjustments to the European balance of power, necessary to avert potential threats to the state. Commercial efforts were encouraged by the issue of royal charters to trading companies; and as new lands, as far away as the Pacific, came within the European purview, pre-emptive settlement was considered a necessary precaution. A new curiosity, part of the wider Enlightenment, had stimulated exploration and scientific research: the primary purpose of James Cook's first voyage, commissioned by the Royal Society, was to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti; his last voyage included navigation of the west coast of North America in search of the North West Passage. (And the voyage that carried Darwin to the Galapagos some fifty-five years later was first and foremost a mapping and geological expedition on behalf of the Admiralty.) These and many more exploits boosted national pride in maritime heritage and expertise, an experise that was crucial the defense of the Realm and the Empire. When conflict with France in the Seven Years War led directly to the loss of the American colonies of the ‘First Empire’ merchant venturers had already laid the foundations of a second, especially in India and Africa.
 

Empires grow through the need to source and secure commodities, to protect markets for consumables and to defend the trading routes that service this two-way traffic. The embryonic ‘Second Empire’, essentially maritime, developed as a network of remote and widely scattered enterprises with extended lines of communication. Trading stations, and the staging posts required to service and secure the shipping lanes, created defensive exclusion zones through alliances with or oppression of local tribes and rulers. The territorial base expanded through necessity. But as borders extend, so do the resources required to defend them. Private armies increased the ambition and arrogance of the ex-patriate societies and abuses escalated, watched with growing concern by a home government whose attitude to Empire was more and more informed by a liberal paternalism underscored with civilising fervour and nonconformist religiosity. Intervention was called for, and for reasons that ranged from external threat to private greed to maladministration and corruption, Britain became, almost by default and sometimes reluctantly, a major colonial power.

The acquisition of empire was not universally welcomed. Taxation to support imperial adventures was seen by some as public subsidy of private ambition. Political power blocs emerged from the collaboration of colonial administrations with military cliques. Communication with the outposts of empire was slow and unreliable, and expansionist escapades were carried out without reference to government. At home the influence of imperial/military cliques increased and became inextricable from the military and political establishment. It is interesting to speculate how a fragile British democracy might have evolved had not the High Command been substantially discredited during the Great War.

The British Empire survived the aftermath of a war that had swept away other, older, empires; indeed, overseas responsibilities increased through League of Nations mandates to administer Ottoman territories in the Middle East. But the seeds of separatism had been planted at home and abroad, and unrest was quelled, sometimes brutally, by anachronistic rearguard actions. The Second World War was the watershed. Education in the services had produced a better informed soldiery; and long years away from home had reduced the willingness of a citizen army, maintained by protracted conscription, to police an empire that was seen as increasingly irrelevant to a modern state with a newly elected socialist government. Events in India, Palestine and elsewhere found Britain as the unhappy arbitrator between opposing factions and there were aberrations, in Suez and in British territories in Africa and the Middle East, when backward-looking politicians tried to reassert Britain’s role on the world stage. But, in spite of a substantial conservative element and a school curriculum that looked to Empire as an integral part of the national myth, the long dismemberment had begun – whether or not it was welcomed by territories that felt threatened by more powerful neighbouring states, or by minorities at risk from their co-nationals.

A good recent book is by Lawrence James: "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire".

For much more, go to the History Unlimited British Empire page.

Origins of American English

Question: How European accents turn into American accents?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Briefly:

Settlers from the British Isles originated from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Within each of these source regions there were (and are) a number of sub-regional accents. In America, people from these source regions settled in different permutations. In the colonial period the concentrations of populations were somewhat isolated from each other, and from the motherland. Where variations of accent exist, there is a tendency for differences to dissolve over time, with the most prominent accent having the most influence. So that America not only developed, generally, a distinctive mode of speech, but American regions developed their own variants, depending on the population mix.

 And there's more! Continuing waves of settlement and immigration have brought in influences from other languages. These influences include the adoption of loan words (how many Spanish words, for example, are in common use in the USA today?) and the application of non-English syntax (sentence construction) to spoken and written English. The influence of Dutch, German, Spanish, French syntax, etc., on American English is very apparent in different areas of the USA, depending on patterns of settlement; perhaps the best example is the influence of Yiddish, Irish or Italian on the New York vernacular.

So that there is no such thing as an 'American accent' any more than there is any such thing as an 'English accent'. Boston American differs from New York American, Texas American differs from West Coast American, and so on. In the same way West Country English differs from the dialects of the North East, or London, or the Midlands. And even within the British Isles there are distinctions where non-English languages have lent words and syntax to English, creating colourful and expressive regional variations; as an instance, consider the influence of the 'Celtic' languages of Wales, Scotland and Ireland on the spoken word.

The English language is continually enriched by contact with its neighbours.

For a good readable account of the development of English to its current status as a global medium of communication, see ‘The Adventure of English’ by Melvyn Bragg. Or for very serious study (at considerable cost) invest in the 'The Cambridge History of the English Language'.

More titles on the English language can be found on the England page of the History Unlimited Bookshop.

The Origins of Accounting

Question: Where did accounting originate?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Many historians argue that 'accounting', in the form of 'tallies', was the precursor of written language in all civilisations. The need to keep permanent records of transactions, commodities, tax receipts, etc., prompted ancient civilisations to adopt various media, most often clay, and devise appropriate writing tools. A primary example was the use of a reed stylus to produce wedge-shaped (cuneiform) markings on clay tablets that evolved in the Sumerian civilisation of Iraq around 3,400 BCE.

With many early tally systems, items were ennumerated with simple strokes rather than mumeric characters. What was initially required was a way of denoting the items being recorded. This led to the development of pictograms and ideograms - simple symbols representing these items. In many languages these pictograms evolved into characters representing sounds that could be used in combination to form words, whether as alphabetic or syllabic scripts. Ideograms combined with text were the key to the decipherment of Cretan Linear B by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, who demonstrated that the language was an early form of Greek. These scholars were able to develop values for individual characters by comparing textual content with the pictographic symbols.

Scripts, alphabets and syllabaries could spread through cultural diversion, regardless of the original language or the languages that adopted them. Cuneiform, for example, was dispersed from Mesopotamia throughout the Middle East and was adapted for the Akkadian, Hittite and Elamite languages and many more. This pattern was repeated with most early scripts, and these early forms of writing gradually developed (in most cases) to more easily used forms, especially as new media (papyrus, parchment, etc.) allowed a more flowing cursive style.

So that 'accounting' was one of the earliest skills and markers of civilisations and led directly to the development of written language.

A good account of the early archaeology and decipherment of ancient texts for the general reader is 'Voices in Stone' by Ernst Doblhofer. Although first published in 1957, this remains a classic account of some of the most important discoveries in the area of ancient languages. ‘The Man Who Deciphered Linear B’ is a (much more) recent biography of Michael Ventris.

History Essentials

Question: What kind of present would you get for a history major?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker


In my opinion there are five essentials for the study of history at a higher (or any?) level. These are listed below. Of course some of these resources can now be found online, but books make for a special (and portable) gift that implies some thought on the part of the giver. And not all internet sources are reliable!


1. A good dictionary. Students will come across many unfamiliar words and terms, especially in the more specialized areas of historical study. Dictionaries vary considerably in coverage and price, but the edition below is a good compromise and includes 12 months' access to Oxford's premium online dictionary and thesaurus service, ‘Oxford Dictionaries Online’, updated regularly with the latest developments to words and meanings.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary

2. Comparative chronological tables. Too often historical subjects are so tightly focused that students are left unaware of the full contemporary picture. Chronological tables allow students to relate their subject to other world events and to a wider timeframe, and provide an opportunity to discover or consider causal linkages that may be beyond the scope of the syllabus. My well-thumbed standby is the Hutchinson series, which is categorized usefully into broad historical epochs.


The Hutchinson Chronology of World History
1. Prehistory-1491 AD: The Ancient & Medieval World
2. 1492-1775: The Expanding World
3. 1776-1900: The Changing World
4. 1901-Present Day: The Modern World


3. A good encyclopedia. Always a useful quick reference work and a more detailed complement to a dictionary. And a print title may often be more reliable than some well known internet resources! Again, my well used standby is from Hutchinson. The 2005 edition should soon be available from Amazon. Click on the title to be informed when the title is in stock.

The Hutchinson Encyclopedia 2005

4. A current world Geographical Atlas. Geography is one of the key determinants of history. Climate, topography, geology, political and economic factors are frequently at the core of historical causation. Times Books is a well known publisher of good quality Atlases. Two differently priced options are given here.

The Times Universal Atlas of the World
The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World


5. A recent Historical Atlas of the region(s) being studied. Useful source for the distribution and movements of peoples and for changes in political boundaries over time. An Historical Atlas will help avoid confusion of geographical with political entities – as, for example, Greece, Germany and Italy, which had long been recognised as geographical definitions, did not achieve political unity and statehood until the 19th Century. My own ‘Times Atlas of European History’ has very useful marginal notes covering the major events that led to changes to the European map. Unfortunately this seems to be out of stock on Amazon, but follow the link for used copies from Amazon-approved sellers.

The Times Atlas of European History

There is also a huge range of history titles on the main History Unlimited web site.

History of Archaeology

Question: Where did archaeology originate?
Best Answer – Chosen by Voters


Interesting question.

 Early archaeological endeavours were prompted by curiosity or treasure seeking, without the benefits of scientific method. It could be argued that in Europe the first impulse towards methodical historical exploration came with the Italian Renaissance, which saw a revived interest in the texts and artifacts of the Classical past and produced a neo-classical revival in the arts and architecture. The early 15th Century scholar Ciriaco Pizzecolli (1391-1453) recorded his findings on ancient artifacts and buildings during his travels around the Mediterranean and is sometimes known as the ‘father of archaeology’.

 The influence of the Renaissance spread to other parts of Europe, and with it the awakening of scientific curiosity and fascination with the past. In England, for example, interest in ancient sites had been in evidence at least as far back as the Middle Ages, quite often in association with local myth and legend. But in the 16th Century a new spirit of scientific enquiry was personified in such eminent polymaths as Dr John Dee (1527-1608) and Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Within the limits of existing knowledge and technology the ground had been laid for a methodical approach to archaeology.

 The iconic site of Stonehenge figures largely in early explorations, with excavations carried out in the early 1600s by the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, Dr William Harvey (1578-1657) and the architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652). The English antiquarian and writer John Aubrey (1626-1697), who left an unfinished two volume collection of ‘Wiltshire Antiquities’, was one of the first to produce a plan of Stonehenge, in 1666, and discovered and named the ‘Aubrey Holes’. Interest in Stonehenge and the surrounding sites continued, but the most prominent figure was William Stukeley (1687-1765) who conducted serious fieldwork at Stonehenge, producing his first detailed plans in an unpublished manuscript of 1724 and his principal accounts of Stonehenge and Avebury in 1740-1743. His 1724 manuscript has recently been published in a facsimile edition: ‘Stukeley's Stonehenge, 1721-1724’ edited by Aubrey Burl and Neil Mortimer.

 By the middle of the 18th Century, on the cusp of the Enlightenment, similar investigations into the prehistoric past were under way elsewhere in the UK, mostly by enthusiastic amateurs. In many cases the mutilation of archaeological sites far outweighed the knowledge gained. But it has to be acknowledged that such early excavations were, perhaps, a necessary first step towards the development of the discipline. At the same time, and less usefully, prehistoric sites provided a blank sheet for fantastic speculation that confused time periods or served to buttress the wishful thinking of fervid imaginations. Even today, prehistory seems to be regarded as fair game for plausible constructs, unsupported by hard evidence!

 The 19th Century saw the beginnings of the modern scientific approach to historical and archaeological research, not least through the work of German scholars. Even so, archaeological method was still in its infancy and amateurs outnumbered the practitioners of an emerging profession. But it was mainly these amateurs, often accomplished self-publicists, who created the momentum for what followed through romantic accounts of adventure and discovery. Most notable was Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) who, with ‘a copy of Homer in one hand and a spade in the other’ claimed discovery of Troy at a site that had been under excavation by the British archaeologist Frank Calvert for some 20 years. Schliemann went on to excavate at Mycenae, discovering among other things a magnificent gold ‘Mask of Agamemnon’. Some of Schliemann’s claims were not particularly well founded and he left damage enough to make subsequent archaeology problematic, but his work captured the imagination of the world and stimulated new generations of archaeologists. After Schliemann, archaeology entered its high period which has continued down to the present day.

 This is, necessarily, a very brief summary of the development of archaeology. For more on 19th and early 20th Century archaeology you might like to follow up on Henry Rawlinson, Austen Henry Layard and Leonard Woolley in the context of Mesopotomia; Howard Carter (the tomb of Tutankhamen), and Flinders Petrie in Egypt; and Arthur Evans, who excavated the ‘Palace of Minos’ at Knossos. A range of relevant titles is available from the Ancient World and Prehistory pages of the History Unlimited Bookshop.

 My personal interest in archaeology was stimulated by two books which I was fortunate enough to stumble across in my youth. The first was ‘Gods, Graves and Scholars’ by CW Ceram, which has classic accounts of some of the most important digs in the history of archaeology. The second was ‘Voices in Stone’ by Ernst Doblhofer, which is an equally fascinating account of the decipherment of ancient texts and languages.

A History of History

Question: Are historians of ancient history more honest and unbiased than the historians of modern history?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Narrative and analytical history (as opposed to simple chronicles) has been written for different reasons at different times. Although it is dangerous to generalise, you might like to consider the following.

The father of Western European history was the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 BCe – c. 425 BCe). Herodotus regarded history as a source of moral teaching and included a number of moralising diversions in his 'Histories' of the Persian Wars. Although his immediate successor as an historian, Thucydides (c 460 BCe - c 395BCe), introduced a much more scientific approach to the writing of history in his 'Peloponnesian Wars', a good number of (mainly Roman) classical historians perpetuated the tradition of drawing moral lessons from history and their writing was skewed to this purpose. Most often the intention was to draw unfavourable comparisons between the Rome of their day and the glory of an earlier time; but there were also Roman and Greek writers whose recording of contemporary or near contemporary events were designed to promote political or personal agendas (or both!). So that the distortion of history has existed from the earliest times.

By the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Europe consisted mainly of barbarian enclaves (during the so-called Dark Ages) that left the fringes of Empire seperated from Rome. Christianity, sometimes in heretical form and already established in some barbarian tribes, endured. And in the far west the surviving monasteries of Wales, Ireland and Brittany served as a conduit that preserved and transmitted traditions of scholarship and memories of a civilised past via Scotland and northern England to a mainland Europe that was being Christianised and restored from the south. History became the business of the Church, and the Church the business of history.

But scholarship was perverted into a sterile scholasticism that lacked curiosity, intellectual rigour and dynamism. In the 7th Century, as the great population movements subsided, an increasingly powerful papacy reached out across the barbarian divide to the remote Christian communities in the west. A united Church imposed its orthodoxy on pagan or heterodox enclaves and provided the institutional framework for a re-invented Empire, soon to be dubbed Holy Roman. Henceforward the Church was to assume a monopoly of learning, based for the most part on scholasticism and with the aim of creating a literate and educated clergy capable of promoting and justifying dogma.

There were occasional departures into pseudo-history in the Middle Ages, for example in Norman England, where native legends and foundation myths were commandeered by a new and alien elite in order to claim some kind of legitimacy. And the Rennaissance generated a new fascination with the classical past and a new understanding of scientific process.

But it was not until the Enlightenment of the 18th / 19th Centuries that historians began to attempt an objective approach, although not untinged with philosophical speculation. Edward Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' was the first major milestone of modern historiography. The 19th Century saw the emergence of a truly scientific approach to history, especially in Germany; but here and elsewhere history was sometimes used to further nationalistic and chauvinist agendas.

1848, the ‘Year of Revolutions’, had brought pressure to bear in many quarters. The century had seen the growth of separatism, triggered by maladministration and corruption, in the quest for self-determination and democracy and in some cases with the added ingredient of socialist political theory. New nation states were created, and emerging nationalist movements proliferated through the propaganda of aspiring political classes and by the usual methods: the distortion and re-invention of history, the stimulation of patriotic fervour without regard to historical political geography, the creation of folkish ‘heritage’, the fomentation of ancient grudges, the incitement of hatred towards neighbours.

The use of history as a propaganda tool persists on the outer fringes of Western writing and even more so in regions of the globe where political conflicts or the clash of ideologies are current. And, more generally:

All important historical writing is revisionist and subjective (however much the historians think otherwise), and all writers, whatever their period, will choose their own points of focus. The wider the reading, the more the reader will be exposed to differing perspectives and opinions, and the better will he/she be able to form their own view of whatever passes for historical reality.


A recent (2007) and absorbing account of the development of historiography is ‘A History of Histories’ by John Burrow. Purchase from Amazon here, or go to History Unlimited for a detailed review and entry to the web site.