annoXIV_n2

2000
Year/Année XIV, no. 2, Dec. 2013
The European Journal/ Die Europäische Zeitschrift/
La Revue Européenne/ Revista Europea/ Rivista Europea
A case for the Enlightenment, ten essays
Preface
Why would someone want to write about
the Enlightenment again? My mundane
reason was that I had to write a syllabus
for a set of lectures meant for an audience
of the Senior Academy in Groningen.
Writing it I discovered that there are still
a lot of clichés attached to the Enlightenment, which obscure the true nature
of this eighteenth-century phenomenon.
The clichés are my reason to try to set the
record straight. Critics pro and contra
the Enlightenment base their arguments
mostly on a nineteenth-century interpretation of it. My ambition in the essays
which follow is to return to the eight-
eenth-century scene and try to interpret
the bearers of the Enlightenment in their
own words and ideas. Obviously this has
been done before and serious scholars usually are not the victims of the clichés, but
the clichés are very persistent and need to
be combated persistently. This becomes
particularly true in our time, when critics of the Enlightenment accuse it of being responsible for the global crisis we are
experiencing, while they mistake its true
nature. Perhaps I can offer a very modest contribution to the debate on its true
nature and make us ask what we still can
learn from the Enlightenment.
Many sympathetic readers have helped
me to clear my thoughts. Two friends
should be mentioned in particular. Roger
Emerson of the University of Western
Ontario and Bruce Kuklick of the University of Pennsylvania have corrected my
English and peppered my texts with their
remarks. Often when I sent them a text I
got it back the next day. I wish to thank
them both in the warmest terms; they
have helped me enormously in accomplishing my task. Recently Vincent Hope
went through the text again and corrected
some typos and irregularities. I am also
grateful to him.
F.L. van H.
What is the Enlightenment?
1
Nature, Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night.
God said, let Newton be, and All was Light
(Alexander Pope)
1. Introduction
The Enlightenment: we accept the label
without reflection. It suggests a closely
knit organization of philosophers and
literati who preached a consistent doctrine. And the amazing thing is that
there is such a unity, perhaps not of
doctrine but rather of purpose. The
Enlightenment is not so much a movement but a network of writers who
knew other writers personally or knew
about them. Granted we should speak
of Enlightenments rather than the Enlightenment. In the German speaking countries, in France, in Italy and
Great Britain the accents were different, but there is enough unity of effort
and purpose in the writings of certain
eighteenth-century authors to allow us
to speak of the Enlightenment.
There are scholars, who argue that there
was no Enlightenment in England,
but surely Pope’s Essay on Man is an
Enlightenment tract. The Scottish Enlightenment is an accepted notion and
so it should be for England as Roy Porter has made clear in his Enlightenment,
Britain and the Creation of the Modern
World.2 Voltaire was the first to notice
the English Enlightenment in his Lettres Philosophiques 3 and the message of
his English exile was that the Enlightenment really started in England. Pope
glorified Newton, because the man with
his theory of gravity provided the capstone in the new cosmological theory
which we call the scientific revolution
and Pope himself introduced a new
chapter to it: the study of man. That
study became the major preoccupation
of the Enlightenment philosophers.
There are many clichés connected with
the accepted image of the Enlightenment. One of them is that the writers
of the Enlightenment were first of all
rationalists. As always with clichés this
interpretation of the Enlightenment
message is not totally wrong, but it
misses the point. In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume gave two definitions
1
INDEX
F.L. van Holtoon
What is the Enlightenment?
p. 1
D. Fennell
The Real History of Europe
p. 6
R. Craig
A Woman Pirate?
p. 10
C. Steinhardt-Hirsch
Alessandro Magnasco
p. 11
M. Towsey
Book in Review: An Enlightened
Duke
p. 15
2. The End of the Enlightenment
When did it start? Hazard concluded
that Locke’s Essay and his two Treatises
started the systematic inquiry into the
possibilities of a secular morality and a
new form of politics.6 This is an attractive view. Rejecting innate ideas Locke
provided the formula for morality on a
the true message of Spinoza’s Ethics that
passion leads to reason and reason leads
to God.
Scholars such as Margaret Jacob and
Robert Darnton who have studied the
shady characters of Grub Street and their
counterparts on the continent have added an interesting chapter to eighteenthcentury studies, but it is not a chapter
that belongs to the history of the Enlightenment.9 For that was a movement
of the establishment and as I shall argue
in a next section it is wrong to regard it
as a radical movement that prepared the
road to the French Revolution.
When did the Enlightenment end?
The French Revolution abolished not
only the monarchy, but also the culture
of the salons and the Encyclopédie. In
France the years between 1750 and
1770 were the culmination of the Enlightenment when France was regarded as the centre of civilization. In the
seventies the mood changed in France
and elsewhere. In the expectation of
the convocation of the États Généraux
conversations became more political
and new people joined in. In Germany
and Britain it was the revolution itself
that constituted the clean break with
the past. Condorcet epitomized the
nature of the break. During the fifties
he was a man of the establishment. He
embraced the revolution (as the only
member of the Enlightenment) and his
Esquisse introduced the idea of progress
stating that mankind would progress to
perfection. The idea that mankind will
John Locke
secular basis and by participating in ecumenical protestant movement he infused
that secular morality with Christian values. That was what the Enlightenment
needed. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his Reasonableness of Christianity had a funneling effect, because ideas since 1680 converged
in his work and provided a platform
for the Enlightenment. Recently this
view was challenged by Jonathan Israel
who has made Spinoza the messenger
of a more radical Enlightenment with
emphasis on personal freedom and democracy. There are two problems with
this interpretation. How radical were
Spinoza’s ideas and how great was his
influence on eighteenth-century writers? My answer to the first question is
that Spinoza’s ideas
on democracy and
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and Western civilization.
to this conventional
of European and Western civilization.
and wrong interpretaTo purchase, please contact the bookselling trade or order online from Logos Verlag Berlin.
tion of Spinoza’s phi8
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of reason.4 Reason is first of all the instinct of logical deduction. That gift is
a useful tool, but – in his famous saying – “Reason is and ought only to be
the slave of the passions.”5 That is the
proper definition of reason, because the
passions motivate us to act and without
an understanding of our passions reason
cannot help us to use them in a useful
way. Secondly we have the capacity to
be reasonable and that involves an improper definition of reason, because being reasonable is the effect of a passion
and has nothing to do with our logical
instinct and everything with our sentiments. The Enlightenment is often
presented as The Age of Reason. In my
opinion The Age of Sentiment is a better
label. Sentiment became an exciting term
in the eighteenth century. Our feelings
move us to act and so it is essential that
we explore them and learn what causes
them. Sentiments provide the motives,
which make us act and learning about
them brings us to the threshold of morality and moral judgments. How can we
not see how important sentiment was to
the writers of the Enlightenment when
we read Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse?
The exploration of sentiment became
such a major preoccupation that Laurence Sterne wrote a satire – so at least I
think – on it in his Sentimental Journey.
In what follows I shall develop four
maxims:
We can argue when the Enlightenment
started, but not when it ended.
Though the objectives of the
Enlightenment are the same
everywhere in Europe there is
a great divide between Britain
and the continent which is
caused by the economic development of Britain.
A sense of balance manifested itself
in art, economics and politics,
because writers aspired to a
harmony of sentiments as the
outcome of this balance.
The writers of the Enlightenment
accepted the regimes under
which they lived. They wanted to reform the société des
ordres, not to abolish it. When
these reforms would be a success this would mean the end
of history.
A treatment of these maxims will provide my answer to the question: what is
the Enlightenment?
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2
To purchase, please contact the bookselling trade or order online from Logos Verlag Berlin.
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Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH· Comeniushof – Gubener Str. 47 · D-10243 Berlin
Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH· Comeniushof – Gubener Str. 47 · D-10243 Berlin
λογος
progress turned the idea of progress
into a theory.10
3. Enlightenment, Enlightenments:
Britain and the Continent
Two key-concepts of the Enlightenment are modernization and secularization.
a. Modernization in a contemporary
context means a process of change
driven by technological innovation,
as applied to the eighteenth-century it
concerns the well functioning of society, and the priority of this program of
eighteenth century modernization was
the development of agriculture. In this
respect Britain was in advance of most
European countries. The enclosures of
medieval open field villages and the
emergence of free tenants culminated
in an agriculture in which landlords on
their often vast estates cooperated with
farmers who acted as manufacturers by
investing capital in their agricultural
production.11 The landlords invested
in the infrastructure of their estates and
their tenants (the capitalist farmers) invested in equipment and new farming
techniques. The so-called agricultural
revolution was the basis of the growth
of industrial activities and commercial
expansion. Economists such as David
Hume and Adam Smith preached economic liberty and were severe critics of
monopolies. Economic actors should
be left to pursue their own interests,
but both authors added the important
proviso that the state should interfere in the economic process, when its
authority was in danger of being subverted. The ability of the Hanoverian
regime to maintain order was as much
part of the success of modernization in
eighteenth-century Britain as economic expansion itself.
On the continent modernization was
seen as a task of the central government. Freeing the peasants from feudal burdens was the first priority. The
Physiocrats in France looked with admiration at the British scene. They wanted to promote the existence of fermiers
at the expense of the overburdened
and unproductive peasants. With the
reforms they proposed they had two
objectives in mind, 1. Raising the agricultural productivity and 2. Reforming
the tax system. The latter objective was
of crucial importance, for the existing
system was oppressive and worse, ineffectual. In a brief moment of glory
Turgot as minister of finance seemed
to be able to realize their reforms. His
dismissal showed that the royal government was totally incapable of pursuing
any policies.
Observers have often wondered why
the French Revolution could so easily
blow away the cobwebs of feudalism,
but it may have been so that both
tenants and landowners came to regard the seigneurial dues as oppressive, because the modernization of
the rural economy was already taking
place, surreptitiously, and largely unobserved.
Reformers therefore supported the central governments in their efforts to free
the peasants. Hence the popularity of
“enlightened despots” such the Austrian emperors Joseph II and Leopold II,
Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of
Russia. Their policies were highhanded
and timid at the same time and did not
free the peasants. In Austria and Prus-
Pierre Bayle
sia the only significant, material product of the Enlightenment, was a new
and much needed civil and penal code.
In surveying the efforts at economic
reform we should realize that the political and social status quo was never
put in question. Reforms should take
place within what was called the “society of orders”. That statement applies
as well to Britain as countries on the
continent.
Modernization had older roots than
secularization. Max Weber traced the
start of the process to the beginning
of Western civilization. His thesis that
Calvinism promoted the emergence
of capitalism - the so-called ‘Weberthesis’ – is an important chapter in this
process. The discussion on how and if
Calvinism promoted capitalism is endless.Trevor Roper made a sensible remark in this respect:
In other words we must look
on the explanation of our
problem [the Weber-thesis],
not so much in Protestantism
and the expelled entrepreneurs as in Catholicism and
the expelling societies.12
Indeed modernizing tendencies were
fought tooth and nail while in protes-
3
tant countries the authorities favoured
or at least tolerated them. What made
the case of the Enlightenment special
was that secularization became the
main impulse of modernization.
b. Secularization meant finding the alternative to the prescription of Christian orthodoxy in regard to morality,
politics, economics, and history. The
secularization of morality came first.
All the writers of the Enlightenment
insisted that moral rules should be
made on earth and were not to be decided in heaven. Hume phrased their
claim as follows:
It is only experience, which
teaches us the nature and
bounds of cause and effect,
and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that
of another. Such is the foundation of moral reasoning,
which forms the greater part
of human knowledge, and is
the source of all human action
and behaviour.13
This claim earned writers the reputation of being atheists, but their situation was much more complicated than
this reputation suggests. Obviously
Hume’s saying was deeply offensive
to divines in Great Britain, because
it undermined the authority of their
priesthood. However, there were many
protestant clergymen – the latitudinarians in England and the moderates in
Scotland – who tacitly accepted it and
though squabbles between them would
suggest otherwise, they and their counterparts in other protestant countries
were the foot soldiers of the Enlightenment.
In France all philosophes were anticlericals and with good reason. The
sometimes cruel and always ridiculous
behaviour of the Catholic Church
merited their hostility, but the philosophes were not necessarily atheists. Voltaire wrote that he was not a Christian
but that he loved God as his friend.14
Voltaire could be called a deist and in
this respect he had many followers in
France.
The Encyclopédie which started to be
published in 1751 is the best example how all-encompassing the effort at
the secularization of knowledge was.
D’Alembert in his Discours Préliminaire divided knowledge in three
compartments: Mémoire, Raison and
Imagination. The second column of
knowledge contained all the useful
and scientific subjects. Biblical history,
l’histoire sacrée, was in the first column
and to add to its insult of neglect its
place in the first column indicated that
it was a thing of the past. Recently Pocock has added a new chapter to the
study of the Enlightenment. In volume
two of his series on Barbarism and Religion, he shows how Voltaire in his Essai sur les Moeurs created an alternative
to biblical history which found its last
and eloquent instalment in Bossuet’s
Histoire Universelle.15 Voltaire eliminated providence as the key-concept of
Bossuet’s history and replaced it by the
concept of moeurs. Including a discussion of Chinese and Indian civilization
in universal history, he wanted to show
how civilized manners reached its perfected form in his own time.
The contrast between Britain and the
continent (particularly France) meant
that Britain enacted modernization
and on the continent philosophers
talked about it. As to secularization
the conclusion must be that there is no
divide between Britain and the continent. The age of the Enlightenment
was not an anti-religious period, but
compared to the century that followed
many philosophers did not take religion very seriously and the theologians
who did, could not stop the secularization of morality, even in their own
ranks. Secularization, eighteenth-century style, scored the victory that the
case for Revelation became a question
of faith, not of evidence. Though many
nineteenth-century writers took religion much more seriously than their
eighteenth-century counterparts, they
could not escape this conclusion.
4. A Harmony of Sentiments
If I had to sum up the Enlightenment
in one word it would be balance. Balance is a key word in Du Bos and Reynolds’ aesthetic theories, balance is at
the centre of Montesquieu and Hume’s
political theories; balance is the input
of eighteenth-century moralists who
aspired to a balance of sentiments.
Sentiment to the eighteenth-century
observer is that psychical phenomenon
which is provoked by our confrontation with the outside world. Sentiments are the material of our moral
judgments and turn into passions
when they have been processed in our
soul. That processing is the reason why
Hume defined passions as ‘impressions
of reflection’.16 I quote Hume, because
I know his work best, but the attention
to sentiment was widespread among
eighteenth-century writers. Passions
had always been an important subject
in metaphysics, but in the eighteenthcentury reaching the goal of a balance
of sentiments became a major preoccupation of moralists.
The goal was important for aesthetic
and pragmatic reasons. Individuals
aspired to this balance of sentiments
and so they should, because as Hume
argued this balance was the only way
in which they could cooperate amicably and create a moral economy that
would maximize their pleasures.
One of the red herrings of the study
of Adam Smith is the so-called ‘Adam
Smith problem’. The German scholar
Skarzynski maintained that there is
an inconsistency in Smith’s thought
when we compare the altruistic tone of
Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and
the egoistic motivation which Smith
took for granted in his Wealth of Nations.17 However, there is no inconsistency. Smith said, in both works, that
if people were left to their own devices
they would cooperate for their mutual
benefit. The promotion of happiness,
being the outcome of this cooperation,
was an idea fundamental to the program of the Enlightenment. Helvétius
wrote in the preface of his De l’Esprit
D’Alembert
…qu’en lisants ces Discours,
on s’apercevra que j’aime les
hommes, que je désire leur
bonheur, sans haïr ni mépriser
aucun d’eux en particulier.18
Helvétius saw the clergy as the enemy
of well-being, but he was not an atheist. That is rather surprising, because
his formula for happiness is self-sufficient – not needing God’s intervention or command – but there was a
metaphysical residue which lifted the
experience of happiness to a higher
plane. The aesthetic lift was the second
goal of striving for a balance of sentiments leading to a harmony of sentiments. The sense of happiness is first
of all the consciousness that one’s soul
is in harmony.19 For many writers of
the Enlightenment there was the urge
to attribute this feeling of harmony to
a higher power, not to let this power
interfere in their lives, but accept it as a
metaphysical expression of this feeling
of happiness.
4
5. The End of History
Francis Fukuyama created quite a stir
when he introduced the concept of
The End of History. It meant that the
future would hold no surprises as long
as mankind would stick to certain simple (liberal) rules on how to cooperate.
Later Fukuyama had to confess that
he had underestimated the impact of
the Industrial Revolution which is still
causing a compound of unintended
effects which makes the world highly
unstable and volatile and is disrupting
the liberal paradise.
I use the term Enlightenment to indicate that the philosophers accepted
the society of orders in which they
lived as the final stage of civilization.
It could be reformed, but it was impossible to change its structure. That is a
surprising conclusion, because within
that structure there literally was no
place for many individuals, vagrants,
beggars, but also workmen in Paris or
London who lived there not being under control of the police and not being
registered. And the treatment of the
common man, who had a place in the
society of orders, was often brutal and
unjust. Hume called the press gang –
the sordid method of recruiting men
for the British fleet – peculiar. That is
hardly the comment of a man much
concerned with social justice. Voltaire’s
campaign for the rehabilitation of that
unfortunate draper Jean Calas who was
tortured to death protesting his innocence shocked everyone in France
and abroad, but Voltaire never put in
question the system of justice.20 Beccaria was successful in his plea for the
abolishment of torture as a technique
of interrogating suspects. He was less
successful with his idea of scrapping
the death penalty. The reaction to his
Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was part of that
humanitarian impulse that was older
and more universal than the movement
of the Enlightenment, but except when
focused on an unfortunate victim remained rather vague and unspecific.
In a future essay I shall argue that a
theory of progress was virtually absent
in the eighteenth century. The philosophers believed in reforming persons,
not in changing structures and institutions. The idea that human history will
inevitably lead to progress in the future,
was absent. That idea was launched in
Condorcet’s Esquisse, but that work is a
product of the French Revolution.
This is a controversial statement;
do let me explain what I mean by it.
David Spadafora has written a substantial book on The Idea of Progress
in Eighteenth-Century Britain 21 and
certainly there was an idea of progress,
also elsewhere in Europe. It meant that
people had the feeling that their lives
were much more civilized than those of
their ancestors. As to the explanation
on how they got there theories were not
so clear and decisive. The four stages
theory (explored by Ronald Meek22) is
an example of such a theory not well
worked out. Decisive is that there was
no expectation and hence no theory
(until Condorcet) that mankind must
progress, because that is mankind’s destiny.
Historians who have studied the Industrial Revolutions may find it easy,
with the wisdom of hindsight, to ask
how eighteenth-century philosophers
could be so blind as not to notice the
first signs of it and the vast potentiality
of reform that it would offer. However
they saw their world evolving out of
age old structures which brought their
restraints with them. The economic
cycle which Quesnay introduced in his
Tableau Économique was not primarily a recipe for economic growth, but
was in the first place a demonstration
for the better functioning of the rural
economy. Its main concern was not
the profitability of agriculture, but to
create the conditions for tax reform.
There was a sense of urgency in their
plans for reform. The Physiocrats and
their ally Turgot were fully aware that
the Ancien Régime would collapse if
the much needed reforms would not
be implemented. As indeed it did introducing the French Revolution.
It was not only that the eighteenthcentury philosophers did not see what
could replace the society of orders; they
also did not want to see it replaced.
The maintenance of authority was an
important goal in itself. Hume shared
this belief in authority with the Physiocrats:
In this sense [a system that
admits of a participation of
power within the rule of law],
it must be owned, that liberty
is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must
be acknowledged essential to
its very existence: and in those
contests, which so often take
place between the one and the
other, the latter may, on that
account, challenge the preference.23
Order is in the nature of
things according to Shakespeare:
The heavens themselves, the
planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority and
place
Insisture, course, proportion,
season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line
of order.24
All creatures have their fixed place in
the Great Chain of Being; Man has it
within society. Of course the Physiocrats and the British economists were
aware that some things within society will change, but that the Industrial
Revolution would change society out of
recognition was something they could
not see. Take Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations. He advocated not growth but
a stable economy (of which growth
could be a pleasant by-product). Take
his definition of the classical factors of
production. Labour fixed a man’s position in the social order, and became
a commodity of exchange. Resources
meant in the first place agricultural
produce that determined the wellbeing of society and was responsible
for the power relations within society.
could be an important legacy to us
amidst the predicament of credit crises.
On the long run we are not in the position to want more, but we can always
aspire to better things. That is how I see
the message of the Enlightenment to us,
if we decide to look for it.
F.L. van Holthoon
University of Groningen
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The series of papers will include the following subjects:
Preface
1. What is the Enlightenment?
2. The Networking of the Enlightenment
3. Deism, Prospect or Threat?
4. The Nature of Buffon
5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Outsider
6. Montesquieu and Hume on the Balance of Powers
7. Economics and the Science of Administration
8. De Sade, The Dark Side of the Mirror
9. The Idea of Progress and the End of
History
10. Back to the Enlightenment?
Condorcet
Endnotes
Agriculture became just one sector in
an industrial economy and the landed
society lost its political clout. Capital
was defined by Adam Smith as hoarded
labour, i.e. you must have it before you
can invest it. Afterwards capital got the
function of a credit facility and you
did not necessarily have to save in order to invest. You could speculate on
future yields. Sometimes someone set
a door ajar, looked into a future where
everything was in flux and quickly
closed a door on a nightmare which
could not possibly come true. Order
was more than a method to keep the
rabble at bay. It was a way of life.
The Enlightenment was, as I see it,
a movement within the established
classes. Talleyrand remarked that those
who had not witnessed the coming and
goings of the Ancien Régime did not
know how sweet life could be. That may
have been true for the upper classes, but
not for the common man. If only for
that reason we cannot retrace our steps.
However a harmony of sentiments
5
1 This is the first of the ten essays to appear in our journal. The next one, in the
June 2014 issue, will be “The networking
of the Enlightenment”.
2 See Bibliographical Notice.
3 Voltaire wrote his Lettres in England
where he was banished after a quarrel with
the chevalier de Rohan. Rohan ordered his
valets to give Voltaire a beating. When Voltaire brought a lawsuit against Rohan he
was put in the Bastille with the choice to
leave for England or stay there.
4 Reason as logical faculty Hume defines
as a “wonderful and unintelligible instinct
in our souls” [Treatise of Human Nature
(Oxford 1978: Clarendon Press), P.H. Nidditch ed., I, 3, xvi, 179; elsewhere [THN,
II, 3, iii, 417] he writes that the calm passion of reasonableness “is confounded with
reason by all those, who judge of things
from the first view and appearance.”
5 THN, II, 3, iii, 415; notice the ought.
6 P. Hazard, La Crise de la Conscience Européenne 1680-1715 (Paris 1961: Fayard).
7 P. Vernière, Spinoza et la Pensée Française
avant la Révolution (Paris 1954: PUF) dl.2,
526 en 608.
8 F.L. van Holthoon, “Spinoza and Hume,
Two Different Trajectories”, 2000. The European Journal, 2011, XII(1).
9 M.C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment.
Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans,
(London 1981: Allen & Unwin); R. Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old
Regime (Cambridge Mass. 1982: Harvard
UP). Many of the French revolutionaries
were respectable men with respectable careers before the revolutionaries, but they had
no entry to the salons of the establishment
and resented this fact.
10 Condorcet, Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l’Esprit Humain (1795).
11 See D. Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London 1965:
Everyman’s Library). Ricardo considered it
the normal of business that farmers would
invest capital, see ch. VI “On Profits”.
12 H.R. Trevor Roper, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, (London 1977:
Macmillan), 19.
13 D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford 2000: Clarendon Press), T. L. Beauchamp ed., 122.
14 P. Pomeau, La Religion de Voltaire, (Paris
1969: Nizet).
15 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion,
vol. 2, Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge 1999: Cambridge University Press).
16 D. Hume, THN, II, 1, I, 275.
17 W. von Skarzynski, Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph und Schöpfer der Nationaloekonomie, (Berlin 1878), discussed in D.D. Raphael & A.L Macfie, “Introduction”, Adam
Smith, The Theory of MoralSentiments, (Oxford 1976: Clarendon Press), 20ff.
18 Helvétius, De l’Esprit (Paris 1959: Editions Sociales), G. Besse ed., 69.
19 The search for happiness is “La recherche des équilibres” between the forces
of nature, society and reason, R. Mauzi
writes in L’Idée du Bonheur dans la Littérature et la Pensée Française au XVIIIIIème
Siècle (Paris 1960: Colin), 64.
20 In his Lettre sur la Tolérance (1763)
Voltaire described the judicial murder of
Calas, but a large part dealt with the persecution of the Huguenots and Voltaire’s focus was on intolerance not on justice. Calas
was a Huguenot and the rumour went that
his son wanted to convert to Catholicism
and that his father wanted to prevent this
by murdering his son. The rumour was untrue and Calas was manifestly innocent.
21 (New Haven 1990: Yale University
Press).
22 R. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble
Savage (Cambridge 1976: Cambridge University Press).
23 D. Hume, “Of the Origin of Government”, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
(Indianapolis 1987: LibertyClassics), E.F.
Miller ed., 41.
24 W. Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida”,
The Complete Works (London 1923: Collins), 758.
The Real History
of Europe
My first book, 54 years ago, was a travel
book that began its itinerary in Vienna.
In those days it was rare for Irish people to travel on the Continent let alone
write about any but its southern, Catholic parts. In the Preface, reflecting on
the relationship between the Irish and
modern Europe, I wrote: “We Irish are
regarded as an ancient people, but we
are also very young and new. The modern world has made itself without our
asking.” One of the respects in which
Europe has done this is in the work of
giving European history a shape. Between the seventeenth century and the
early twentieth, a standard narrative
was established which has remained
essentially unchanged. Irish historians,
involved defensively in domestic history, played no part in that work. So
if now, at this late stage, an Irishman
who is an ardent lover of Europe and
its history challenges Europe’s standard
manner of narrating that history, and
wants it somewhat differently done, it
should not be surprising.
I believe that Europe, like the
civilisations that preceded it which left
behind sufficient historical records—
like Rome, Greece, Babylon, Egypt,
China— deserves to have its story told
straightforwardly and as
truthfully as possible before
it, in turn, passes into
history. In this respect we
have not been served well
by those contemporary
historians who entitle their
books ‘History of Europe’.
If we are not presented
under that title with
an account of the land
and climate between the
Atlantic and the Urals,
and a story of what
happened in all of that
from prehistory to the
twentieth century—that
can happen, it happened a
few years ago in a big book
published in London—
we certainly have the
following
experience
regularly. We open the
book to an account of
something called in every
European language ‘The
Middle Age’ (in English,
eccentrically,
‘Middle
Ages’, but no matter).
6
Formally this is the start of the story
but its self-description says it is the
middle of it. Is the story to be told
perhaps in the manner of a modernistic
novel with the middle of the narrative
coming (clever!) before its first part? A
brief investigation finds that this is not
the case. The first chapters deal mainly
with Goths (Visi- and Ostro-), Vandals,
Huns, Avars and others, peoples with
whom Europe in no period, let alone
its middle one, had anything to do,
Nor, indeed, do these chapters appear
to be recounting the ‘middle age’ of any
history known to man..
The ‘middle age’ in question turns out
to be simply the way that orthodox
European historians name the thousand
years between the end of the Roman
Empire in the West in the 5th century and
the end of the first age of European history
around 1500. In the matter of serving
intelligibility or logic of the historical
narrative, they might as well have
called this stretch of historical time the
‘humpty-dumpty age’! Clearly, if we are
at this late stage to have a real history
of Europe, one which is in fact what it
purports to be, the first step will be to
get rid of the narrative boorishness that,
beginning with something called ‘The
Middle Age’, arrives after centuries of
extraneous narrative at the beginning
and first age of Europe.
Pressing also for removal is that
recurrent feature of the conventional
history of Europe that presents myths
as reality. Nothing wrong with myths in
themselves: they are a device by which
people who want to give
special importance and
meaning to an event,
prehistoric or historical,
do so figuratively rather
than literally. But they
are by definition not
history, not what a great
historian called wie es
eigentlich gewesen—‘as it
really was’.
Beginning in northern
Europe
in
the
eighteenth century, but
preponderantly in the
nineteenth, backwarddirected
historical
myth-making worked
powerfully. Its agents
were Protestants and
classical Liberals who,
having
created
or
accepted the myth of
Modernity and Progress,
wanted to show themselves and their era
as heirs to modernising and progressive
pioneers whose heads touched the sky;
men who by their action and their
minds liberated mankind from the
thraldom and darkness of the Pope,
the Catholic Church and clergy of
any hue, along with Superstition and
Tradition of all kinds. To this end,
as historians of Europe, or simply as
writers about that history, they created
a ‘post-medieval’ European history
that had been launched, liberatingly
for Europeans and mankind, by three
mythical events: ‘the Renaissance’, ‘the
Reformation’ and ‘the Enlightenment’.
As an endeavour by those who engaged
in it, it is understandable, but its
creations are useless to real history.
It is not true that, first in fifteenthcentury Italy, then in Europe generally,
there was a rebirth of high culture,
artistic achievement and intellectual
vigour after a long. dark period when
these were absent. It is not true that ‘the
Reformation’ was an event in European
history: that at a certain point in the
sixteenth century Europe rejected the
Pope and opted for a Protestant reform
of Christian faith and practice more in
keeping with the Gospel. And it is not
true that from the end of the seventeenth
century to the French Revolution,
leading European minds experienced a
degree of insight equivalent to that which
the Buddha achieved and which pious
Buddhists aspire to.
So it is necessary in the real telling of
European history to eschew a narrative
which presents or suggests those
untruths. Primarily this would be so as
to keep to the true story. But it would
also render more acceptable to the
rational reader a story that in narrating
the French Revolution must mention
its savagery, and in narrating twentiethcentury Europe must advert to the fact
that this great civilisation produced the
century most destructive of human life
in human history. In both instances a
story to be told in no moralistic vein
but simply to nourish and fortify
ourselves and future generations with
our true story.
It would begin as follows.
The First Age (c.1050 to c.1500 AD)
The name
The word ‘Europe’ originated in
an ancient Greek myth as the name
of a Phoenician princess whom the
supreme god Zeus, in the form of
a white bull, carried off from her
homeland to Crete. There in human
form he mated with her, producing
three noble sons who on their deaths
became the judges of the underworld.
In ancient Greek, and later, Roman
times, geographers used the word
to describe the western part of the
Eurasian land-mass stretching from
the Atlantic to somewhere in the
Caucasus or in what we now call
Russia. In the sense that came to
predominate—namely, a group of
culturally and politically distinct
peoples sharing a territory and a
common civilisation, something like
Ancient Greece but located in western
Eurasia—it began to take shape in the
7
eleventh and twelfth centuries AD.
The curtain-raiser
Three centuries earlier there had been
what might be called a curtain-raiser.
It was around the time that Islamic
civilisation, having absorbed the
high culture of ancient Greece and
Alexandria, was entering its golden
age under the Abbasid
Caliphate which ruled
from Afghanistan to
Spain. Of the Germanic
peoples
who
had
conquered most of the
territory that previously
formed the Western
Roman Empire, the
Franks, with their capital
in Paris, controlled the
largest area. In 771,
after centuries of warfare
among themselves and
with others, Charles, later
surnamed ‘the Great’
and in French called
Charlemagne, became
king and, following the
death of his co-ruling
brother,
sole
ruler.
During his reign, which
lasted until his death in
814, Europe had, so to
speak, a false start.
The Franks were Christians and
they imposed Christianity, by force
if necessary, on any people they
conquered; the death penalty for
paganism was abolished only in 797.
Twenty-four years before that, in
773, Pope Hadrian I had appealed to
Charles for help against the Germanic
Lombards who, established for two
centuries as rulers of most of Italy, had
occupied the city of Rome. Charles
entered Italy with an army, defeated
the Lombards, declared himself
their king and reaffirmed the Papal
sovereignty over central Italy which had
been guaranteed by his father Pepin
the Short. Most of Italy belonged
thenceforth to the Frankish realm.
Having established his capital at
Aachen in northwest Germany,
Charles extended Francia, as the realm
was called, beyond the Saxons and
Frisians to the border with Denmark.
He incorporated the Bavarians and
established a defensive march in
Austria. Defensively again, beyond
the Pyrenees, he fortified a Spanish
march to prevent the Islamic Moors,
who ruled most of Spain, from ever
again pushing north into Francia, as
they had done in 732 when Charles’
ancestor Charles Martel had repulsed
them at Poitiers. (It was from that
Charles that the dynasty was named
‘Carolingian’.) On Christmas Day,
800, in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned
Charles as “Emperor of the Romans“.
This action caused much displeasure
in the surviving Eastern Roman
Empire (called Byzantium by western
historians) which was ruled from
Constantinople, where the Empress
Irene was considered sole
Roman emperor. But some years
later Constantinople recognised
Charles as co-emperor.
Charles’ reign and that of his
son and successor Louis the
Pious were marked by a cultural
revival in which the Church was
the main agent, with its bishops
and abbots working under the
king-emperor’s patronage. As
the chief architect of this revival,
Charles was able to draw on the
intellectual resources not only
of Italy, but also of Christian
Ireland and of northeast
England previously christianised
by the Irish. The palace school
which he established was headed
by the English deacon, scholar,
and theologian Alcuin of York.
The practical emphasis was on
establishing, in place of many variants,
authentic texts of the Bible and of
religious rituals and on spreading
literacy, good Latin, and knowledge of
elementary mathematics.
Monasteries were encouraged to make
copies of patristic and classical Roman
writings, thus preserving them for
later centuries. This copying adopted
a beautiful new script, Carolingian
Minuscule, which became the basis of
the later printed alphabet. Additionally.
Charles established a regionalised
administration and improved the
economy by maintaining a degree
ot public order, building roads and
reforming the currency. In the palace
school and in court circles the term
‘Europe’ was current as a description
of Latin Christendom, which was
virtually identical with the Frankish
empire. A court poet described Charles
as ‘rex pater Europae’, king, father of
Europe.
After Charles’ death in 814, his son,
Louis the Pious, maintained the
empire in face of Viking attacks from
the sea. After his death with three sons
living, the process began which made
Charlemagne’s empire a mere curtainraiser for Europe; a false start rather
than its beginning.. Because Frankish
tradition imposed partible inheritance
among living sons, there was a
tripartite division of the realm. After
a brief civil war, Charles, Lothair and
Louis agreed in the Treaty of Verdun to
divide the empire into three kingdoms.
The divisions, longitudinal from north
to south, produced West, Middle and
East Francia. Lothair, as the eldest
and king of the middle kingdom, bore
also the title of emperor. Through
several subsequent generations, revised
partitions together with territorial
breakaways would transform West
Francia into the kingdom of France,
Europa and the bull
East Francia into the kingdom of
Germany, and erase Middle Francia
as an entity. At the same time, a
‘rebalkanisation’ into lordships of
various sizes and kinds was occurring.
In the latter part of Charlemagne’s
reign sea-faring warriors and traders
from Denmark and Norway, called
Vikings or Norsemen, had become an
aggressive presence in the North Sea
and North Atlantic. They travelled
in distinctive longships which had a
shallow draft that made them easy to
beach and usable in rivers as well as
on the sea. Their lightness made them
easily portable. In England, Scotland,
Ireland and northwest France, the
Vikings raided monasteries for their
treasures, often killing the monks.
Emboldened by the death of Louis
the Pious in 840 and the quarrels that
ensued, they attacked Rouen and, using
Charlemagne
8
the Seine as a highway, besieged Paris
until they were bought off with gold.
It would be the first of four attacks on
the city by the Norsemen. Ultimately
the West Frankish king Charles the
Simple, tired of buying them off, would
agree to yield to the Norseman
Rollo the territory thenceforth
called the Duchy of Normandy
on condition that he would be
baptised a Christian and guard
the estuaries of the Seine from
further attacks.
From Ireland, the Isle of Man
and eastern England to Iceland,
France and Scandinavia the
Vikings established a network
of trading settlements, often
trading in slaves, many of
whom they brought back to
their Scandinavian homelands.
This western trading network
was linked with an eastern
one, established mainly by
Swedes called Varangians, that
reached through the lands of
the Eastern Slavs to the Middle
East and Constantinople. In
the course of this eastern penetration a
principality called Rus after a Varangian
people was established in Kiev.
Converted to Orthodox Christianity,
it would ultimately, after an invasion
by the Mongols, become the Russian
zardom centred on Moscow.
In 924 the Frankish imperial title
had fallen vacant. Thirty-eight years
later, in Rome in 962, Pope John XII
crowned the German king Emperor of
the Romans, thereby initiating a quite
different story.
Making a secure space for Europe
Throughout the tenth century Viking
aggression, with attendant settlements,
continued
in the West. Both would continue well
into the eleventh century. For a time,
from 900 to 955, even more serious
disruption was caused by a Central
Asian people, the Magyars (also known
as Hungarians), who after a long
migration had settled in the Pannonian
Plain on both sides of the Danube and
raided westwards. Clearly, before any
new civilisation could be established,
stability must be restored.
The Magyars defeated a Bavarian
army and a Frankish army led by the
then emperor. In the following years
they made powerful looting raids
into Germany, through France as far
as Spain and into Italy. In 955 their
incursions into the West were stopped
by a decisive defeat at the Lechfeld
near Augsburg at the hands of Otto
I, Duke of Saxony and King of the
Germans. It was as a consequence
of this that Pope John XII conferred
on Otto the vacant Roman imperial
crown. Thereafter, the Magyars,
having withdrawn to their base
territory,
roughly
present-day
Hungary, concentrated on building a
Hungarian state. In 1001 their leaders
accepted Christianity, made Stephen I
their first king, and were confirmed in
their territory by the Pope.
About ten years before that, beginning
in Aquitaine and than spreading to other
parts of France and beyond its borders,
the Peace of God movement had
emerged. Bishops and abbots summoned
assemblies of villagers, lords and knights
to meet in the presence of saints’ relics.
The assemblies were made to swear to
keep the peace. the nobles to refrain from
killing unarmed clergy and civilian men,
women and children. As this movement
continued into the eleventh century it was
seconded by a Truce of God movement
which became one with it. The Truce of
God was a commitment to refrain from
fighting on holy days and on Fridays. In
Germany efforts were made to ensure
that the Emperor’s duty to maintain the
Landfriede or peace of the realm became
more fact than theory. In Anglo-Saxon
England similar efforts were made to
make the legally stipulated ‘king’s peace’
a reality. All these efforts failed to produce
decisive results, especially in France; but
they at least made commonplace the
doctrine that violence could not run
rampant and that there were ethical limits
to what powerful armed men might do.
A decisive reduction of wars among the
nobles had to wait until the summoning
of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in
1095 induced many knights and their
retinues to set out for Jerusalem.
In the course of the eleventh century
Viking maritime activity diminished
and gradually ceased. Many Vikings had
settled permanently abroad, merging
with the local Christian population
where such existed and in Iceland
founding a new Norse nation. Others
remained in Scandinavia to enjoy their
accumulated wealth. Christianity had
been making inroads there, and now
strong Christian monarchies emerged
in each of the three nations. The fact
that these nascent nation-states forbade
the enslavement of Christians removed
much of the incentive for trade. In
1066 the now French-speaking Norse
of Normandy invaded and conquered
England and established a ruling dynasty.
Growing in the form of Latin
Christendom was the community
of nation-states that would make
Europe. In 1095 even Scandinavia sent
contingents to join the first European
joint venture, the First Crusade.
Desmond Fennell
Dublin
A Woman Pirate?
Not on my Ship
The Strange Lives of Anne Bonny
and Mary Reed, Notorious Women
‘Pyrates’ of the 18th Century
The subject of women pirates in
caused to be cited. Here a little “pyrate”
the 18th century was not one of
background is in order.
which there was much written nor
Pirates have been around as long as
discussions entertained until later in
people have traveled the oceans as trade
the 18th century. Interestingly, only
routes. The name “pirate” comes from
in the later periods during the study
the ancient Greek word “peiráomai,”
of this “golden age of piracy” did
meaning “attempt;” i.e. an attempt
women appear in other than passing
to rob for personal gain. This form
comments, news clippings, trials,
morphed into “peirat’s,” meaning
or other similar
“brigand,”
and
categories.
The
from that to the
exception to this
Latin pirata, from
lack of interest
which we get the
was, however, one
modern
English
Captain
Charles
word for pirate.
Johnson in his
written
records
The Aegean and
and epic and the
Mediterranean
original publication
The
earliest
of 1724.
His
documented
book was titled, “A
instances of piracy
General
History
are the exploits of
of Robberies and
the “Sea People”
Murders of the
who
threatened
Most
Notorious
the Aegean and
Pirates.” Johnson
Mediterranean in
is believed by some
the 13th century
historians
and
BC. From that time
scholars to have
forward, pirating
been a pseudonym
took on a special
Mary Reed
for Daniel Defoe;
allure to those
others believe it
seafaring countries
to be one Charles
which sought to
Johnson (1679-1748), a playwright
enrich themselves at the expense of
author of The Successful Pirate. Defoe
others. Pirating was a tool of politics,
(1659-1731) was an English writer
in which countries fostered the use of
and journalist, considered by literary
“privateers” to seek out and plunder
historians as the father of the English
sea-going ships from other countries
novel, notably Robinson Crusoe.
or communities. Such pirates were
Whoever wrote the book, though,
commissioned by their own country to
seemingly had been a pirate, met with
prey upon ships of potential enemies
“pyrates,” or at least served as a sailor
to disrupt and degrade their enemy’s
to have captured the earliest written
capabilities.
mythological aspects of pirating
Pirate captains observed a degree of
during the “golden age of pirating” in
democracy in running their ships.
the 18th century.
For the most part, a pirate captain
In Johnson’s early records, he wrote of
was elected by the crew and could
two “women of the sea.” They were,
be subsequently voted out of his
respectively, named Anne Bonny and
command, sometimes resulting with
Mary Reed. To understand just what
his being put ashore or even killed.
unique event transpired and caused
The “Master or Quartermaster,” too,
both women to become noted as
was generally elected by the crew. It
pirates, one must first consider the
was the quartermaster’s responsibility
circumstances under which they were
to allocate provisions, select and
9
distribute the loot or booty, adjudicate
crew member differences, and
administer discipline. He, in most
cases, was the first to board a captured
ship. The captain, on the other hand,
had complete and total control over
the ship and its crew in the pursuit and
capture of another ship. The captain
could order punishment, but it was
the quartermaster who administered it.
Captain JACK, “Calico Jack” Rackhan,
was notorious for wearing calico design
clothing.
As with any type of organization,
to include pirates, a set of rules was
required to manage the pirate ships
and their crew. Here we see the earliest
process for equitable treatment and a
form of “meritocracy.” The first was
a set of rules. Beginning in the late
17th century, pirate organizations were
operating under a set of rules which
were originally called “Chasse-Parte”
or Charter Party, Custom of the Coast,
or Jamaica Discipline. Eventually these
rules came to be known as Articles
of Agreement or pirate code. These
rules varied from ship to ship but
were generally in keeping with the
distribution of loot among the ship’s
company and the compensatin of
injuries incurred in battle.
The sea a man’s domain
The famous pirates of history were
always men, but what about the women
with whom they associated? The sea has
generally has been thought of a “man’s
domain.” The cult of feminism did not
exist in the 18th century among the
female gender. Women on board ships
were in general considered bad luck for
the crews, but there were exceptions.
As most sea-going pirates would
believe “women were weak, reckless,
hysterical beings who distracted men
and brought bad luck to ships, calling
forth supernatural winds which sank
vessels and drowned men.”
The practice of bringing women
on board ships – wives for the most
part – was a practice employed in the
British navy, though not officially
sanctioned. Pirates in general found
their enjoyment of women in the
bars and pubs of the ports where they
entered, and would often spend their
entire sum of the loot which had been
obtained in a tryst of a day or two.
In the 18th century there are many
accounts of women taken aboard ships
having been taken as captives. There
were few of any documented cases of
women serving as pirates during this
period other than that described in
Captain Johnson’s book. In his book,
the author singled out but two women
for special attention, Mary Reed and
Anne Bonny. Both have become since
“pirate heroines” of sorts and for
additional analysis and scrutiny.
Anne and Mary
The first of these women pirates
was Anne Bonny. Anne was born an
illegitimate daughter of a distinguished
lawyer and the family maid in County
Cork Ireland, in 1702. Disowned by
her family, Anne was married early
in 1718 to a penniless sailor, John
Bonny, and together they made their
way to the island of New Providence
in the Bahamas. While in the Bahamas
Anne encountered the famous pirate
Captain “Calico” Jack Rackham. The
captain courted Anne causing her to
leave her husband and to join his ship.
Anne became pregnant, either by her
former husband or Calico Jack. When
the boy was born, Anne and her son
were taken to Cuba where she placed
Anne Bonny
the boy with friends and she then
returned to her new found lover. As
women were still frowned upon, Anne
initially dressed as a man to appease
the crew, but eventually her gender
was discovered and she became an
accepted member of Captain Jack’s
pirate crew.
Mary Reed shared her earlier life’s
experience with Anne as she, too, was
an illegitimate daughter of an English
sea captain. Born in England circa
1690, she was raised by her mother as
a boy and she wore boy’s clothing into
her teen-age years. As a “young man”
of thirteen, she found work onboard
a British man-of-war, subsequently
jumping ship and then joining the
English Army. Mary continued to
serve the military, eventually marrying
a fellow soldier. Following the death
of her husband, Mary departed
England on a Dutch vessel bound
for the Bahamas, only to be captured
10
by Captain Jack Rackham’s ship and
inducted into the world of piracy.
What is interesting for both Anne and
Mary is that both were able to remain
disguised as a man among the crews
for as long as they did. What then
transpired aboard Capt. Rackham’s
ship is still a mystery. Soon after her
capture, Mary dressed as a man, came
to Anne’s loving attention. At first
resisting her advances, Mary soon
confided in Anne her true gender and
as some sources indicate, became with
Anne, lesbian lovers. However, on
one occasion, soon after joining the
pirate ship, Mary was confronted with
a situation in which she found herself
in a duel with a member of the crew.
Mary won out killing her opponent.
Eventually as he was dying she revealed
herself to him as a woman much to his
astonishment.
Soon thereafter both women, now
well known in their gender to the
pirate crew, served alongside the other
pirates on board “fighting, screaming,
and cursing with the best of them.”
Calico Jack’s ship with his small crew
including Anne and Mary continued
their attacks on small ships sailing in
the Caribbean for the next several
months, all the time being hunted by
the Royal Navy whose mission it was to
eradicate piracy for the British crown
and its colonies.
The lives of both Anne and Mary
changed radically during the evening
hours of October 22. At that time their
ship was sailing in Dry Harbor Bay off
the northern coast of Jamaica. It was
identified by a ship commissioned by
the Governor of Jamaica to search for
and destroy pirate ships.
Rackham’s ship, called the William,
was stopped and the Captain asked to
identify himself. At this time, almost
all of the crew of the ship was drunk
in the hold. Above deck, the drunken
captain fired a cannon at the governor’s
ship causing an ensuing fight.
Rackham then chose to surrender.
Anne and Mary did not and instead
continued the fight. According to one
Captain Barnett of the governor’s ship,
“the women screamed, fighting like
hellcats as the shot their pistols and
swung their cutlasses, refusing to give
up peacefully.” Eventually overtaken,
the women and crew were taken to St.
Jago de la Vega to await their trials.
After approximately one month, on
September 28, 1720, both Anne and
Mary were brought to trial by an
Admiralty Court. Both pleaded not
guilty to the charges of piracy. The
court’s verdict was death be hanging.
At which time both Anne and Mary
informed the court “they were quick
with child.” The court then ordered
Fugit irreparabile tempus
Zeit und Zeitenwende
in den Gemälden Alessandro Magnasco‘s1
an examination which confirmed each
was indeed pregnant. The court upon
receiving this finding then sentenced
Mary to prison where she remained
until death. She died of either fever
or as a result of child-bearing, on
April 28th, 1721. Anne’s fate was far
different. In prison, her name came
to the attention of her father, William
Cormac, by now a prominent planter
in the Carolina colonies. Cormac is
believed to have used his political
influence and possibly money to secure
Anne’s release in the summer of 1720.
Records reveal a woman by Anne’s
name leaving Jamaica for Carolina.
There are other records which show
Anne Bonny marrying and having
seven more children, dying later in the
Carolinas at the age of 82.
With almost fairy-tale like lives, both
Mary Reed and Anne Bonny did
most certainly claim a small piece
of history with their escapades as the
most notorious female pirates of the
How different things
18th century.
have become today. Women of many
nations, cultures, and races, now serve
openly on both commercial as well as
military ships, worldwide, and have
caused to change the “superstitions of
man” that women bring evil and bad
luck to any ships on which they sail.
Robert Craig
Princeton, NJ
Sources consulted
Tamara J. Eastman & Constance Bond,
The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary
Reed Fern, Canyon Press, Cambria Pines
by the Sea (California, 2000;
Captain Charles Johnson, A General
History of the Robberies & Murders of
the Most Notorious Pirates” (Lyons Press,
2010);
Klausmann, Meinzerin, and Kuhn,
Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly
Roger”, Black Rose Books (Texas, 1997);
Bold in Her Britches: Women Pirates
Across the Ages, ed. Jo Stanley, (Harper
Collins, 1995);
David Cordingly, Women Sailors &
Sailors’ Women, (Random House, New
York, 2001).
Abstract
During the eighteenth century, the
concept of time changed gradually.
By the end of the century, time was
no longer an absolute model outside
the subjective perception of man.
Instead, the personal experiences
of time-lapse and time-stretching,
time-arrest and time-break began to
play an increasing role. Parallel to
these revolutionary changes in the
intellectual history of the concept
of time we find a direct response to
the new understanding of it in the
art of the Italian painter Alessandro
Magnasco (1667-1749). Born in
Genoa and working in Milan on the
eve of the Enlightenment, Magnasco
created a variety of cabinet pictures
in which he gave his north Italian
society a bizarre, non-conformist
view of their times in relation to
the past. From a unique visionary
perspective he reflected the decline
of the aristocracy, who had lost the
splendour and richness of earlier
times, as well as the abandonment by
God of the Christian life by showing
the emptiness and the desolation of
monastic existence.
The article examines this development
more precisely in three paintings by
the artist. It shows the innovative
role of Magnasco in the broader
context of eighteenth-century Europe
by demonstrating his relationships
with the Milanese Dramaturge
Carlo Maria Maggi and the great
Italian historian and philosopher
Giambattista Vico.
Im dritten Buch seiner Georgica entwirft der römische Dichter Vergil
am Beispiel des Lebens der Tiere das
literarische Bild vom Werden und
Vergehen jeglicher lebendigen Existenz. Der Bericht kulminiert in den
berühmten Worten, die in den Vergänglichkeitsvorstellungen der Frühen
Neuzeit zum Topos werden sollten:
„Aber inzwischen entflieht die Zeit,
entflieht unwiederbringlich“.2 Vergils
Zeitvorstellung war eingebettet in eine
wahrnehmbare Kosmologie, die dem
11
Rhythmus der Naturgesetze folgte und
dem Entwicklungsmodell von Entstehen, Wachsen und Vergehen unterworfen war. Im Wesentlichen war dieses
zyklische und physikalische Zeitmodell
ins Christliche gewendet bis in das späte 17. Jahrhundert hinein prägend für
die Zeitwahrnehmung der Menschen.
Noch in Isaac Newtons zentraler
Schrift Philosophiae naturalis principia
mathematica von 1676 wird die Kategorie der Zeit als eine Absolute charakterisiert, die gleichmäßig fließt und
sich durch Homogenität, Kontinuität
und Unendlichkeit auszeichnet.3 Demgegenüber zeichnet sich um die Wende
des 18. Jahrhunderts ein zunächst zaghafter, aber im Zuge der Entwicklung
immer deutlicher werdender Sinneswandel ab, in dem Zeit nicht mehr als
absolute Größe außerhalb der subjektiven menschlichen Wahrnehmung begriffen wird, sondern in dem die subjektiven Zeiterlebnisse wie Zeitraffung
und Zeitdehnung, Zeitstillstand oder
auch Zeitbrüche eine immer größere
Rolle zu spielen beginnen.4
Parallel zu diesen umwälzenden Veränderungen in der Geistesgeschichte lässt
sich in der Malerei des beginnenden
18. Jahrhunderts eine Reaktion auf das
neue Zeitverständnis ablesen, die in
Italien am deutlichsten im Werk Alessandro Magnasco‘s (1667-1749) nachzuweisen ist. Der in Genua geborene
und in Mailand tätige Künstler schuf
am Vorabend der Aufklärung eine
Vielzahl von Kabinettbildern, in denen
er der oberitalienischen Ständegesellschaft ein bizarres, nonkonformistisches Aussehen verlieh. In einer einzigartigen visionären Vorausschau reflektiert der Künstler darin den Verfall des
Adels, der den Glanz und Reichtum
früherer Zeiten eingebüßt hat, ebenso
wie die Gottverlassenheit des christlichen Daseins, dessen Leere sich in der
Trostlosigkeit mönchischen Daseins
widerspiegelt.5 Die Forschung hat sich
bisher bemüht, den Künstler stilistisch
in eine Genealogie zu Jacques Callot
und der lombardischen Schule des
Barock mit Morazzone, Cerano, Daniele Crespi zu bringen und ihn thematisch im späten Barock anzusiedeln.6
Demgegenüber wird hier erstmals der
Versuch unternommen, Magnasco‘s
Zeitverständnis an drei ausgewählten
Beispielen zu konkretisieren und seine
innovative Rolle im Italien der Voraufklärung deutlicher herauszuarbeiten.
In der Satire eines Adligen in Not von
ca. 1725 (Abb. 1) verdichtet Magnasco
die aktuelle soziale Situation des Mailänder Adels in der Darstellung eines
hageren Mannes, der trotz geflickter
Kleidung in stolzer und lässiger Haltung zugleich sein Standesbewusstsein
ausdrückt.7 Sein düsterer, von tiefer
Sorge durchzogener Gesichtsausdruck
bezieht sich unmissverständlich auf die
prekäre Lage, in der er sich befindet.
Die heruntergekommene, einfache Behausung ist statt mit kostbaren Möbeln
nur notdürftig mit hölzernem Mobiliar ausgestattet. Als Stütze dient dem
Edelmann ein einfacher Strohsack,
während die karge Mahlzeit in Form
von einem Bündel Rüben achtlos auf
einem niedrigen Holztisch verteilt ist.
Keine Kunstsammlung, kein kostbares
Geschirr, keine Prunkmöbel umgeben den Mann, lediglich der steinerne
Kamin im Hintergrund, an dem sich
eine Dienerin zu schaffen macht, und
ein kleines nachgedunkeltes Gemälde
dahinter, dessen Leinwand sich in Auflösung befindet, fungieren als Abglanz
vergangener Zeiten. Geblieben sind
ihm darüber hinaus zwei letzte Attribute des verlorenen Ruhmes: ein Degen, den er in seiner Linken hält und
ein am linken Bildrand angeschnittener Helm, dessen metallischer Glanz
in der dumpf-düsteren Atmosphäre
akzentsetzend wirkt. Die elegante Haltung des Mannes kulminiert in dem
würdevoll ausgerollten Pergament, das
den Stammbaum der Familie zeigt und
somit ein klarer Verweis auf die genealogische Vergangenheit ist. Die momentane, prekäre Lebenssituation wird
ins Ironische durch eine aus dem Dunkel auftauchende Figur im Rücken des
Adligen gewendet, die mit erhobener
Hand einen Spottgestus ausführt.
Die Bildzeit innerhalb des Gemäldes
wird durch diese Figur und die weibliche Figur im Hintergrund durchbrochen, weil sie die einzigen sind,
die eine Aktion ausführen und damit
dem ruhigen Sitzen des Adligen einen
Handlungsmoment entgegensetzen.
Der zeitlose Zustand, der seine ständische Legitimation aus der Vergangenheit bezieht, wird somit gestört
und insbesondere durch die spottende
männliche Figur in seiner existentiellen Schärfe markiert. Die Zeitstruktur
des Bildes oszilliert so zwischen einer
idealen Vergangenheit, deren Existenz
nur über die Relikte einer besseren Zeit
präsent ist und der erbarmungswürdigen Jetztzeit, in der das Zeitkontinuum
des Adligen massiv gestört erscheint.
Ein dynamisches Zeitmoment erhält
das Gemälde durch die charakteristische Pinselschrift Magnasco‘s, deren
exzessiver Einsatz von Weißhöhungen
zu flirrenden Lichtreflexen führt, die
wiederum die Farbmaterie in Bewegung versetzen. Es war insbesondere
diese Malweise, welche die zeitgenössischen Biographen faszinierte, weil
sie in dieser Konsequenz in der italie-
A. Magnasco, Satire über den Adligen in
Not, um 1725, Detroit, Institute of Arts
nischen Kunstlandschaft einzigartig
waren. Als „tocchi risoluti, e spediti di
gran macchia“ beschrieb Pellegrino Orlandi bereits 1719 diese Pinselschrift8,
eine Charakterisierung die der spätere
Biograph und Genueser Kunstschriftsteller Giuseppe Ratti 1769 weiter ausführte: „La sua abilità nel dipingere di
tocco non solo non ebbe addietro fra‘
nostri chi l’uguagliasse; ma neppure chi
la seguisse […] Le figure di questi […]
son fatte con rara maestría, e composte di veloci, e sprezzanti, ma artificiosi
tocchi, lanciati con una certa bravura,
che è difficile a spiegarsi, né può ben
immaginarla chi non la vede“.9
Es ist diese Bravour, die dem Gemälde
ein transitorisches Zeitmoment verleiht
und die Handschrift des Malers als Prozess in die Zeitstruktur mit einbezieht.10
Sieht man sich zuletzt die Lichtinszenierung des Gemäldes an, so ist ein
gewisser theatralischer Effekt nicht zu
übersehen, der die Deutung des Bildes
und dessen Funktion erschwert. Handelt es sich hier vielleicht gar nicht um
das Porträt eines verarmten Adligen,
trotz der unverkennbar porträthaften
Züge des Dargestellten, sondern um
eine Genreszene, deren Verbindungen
zum Theater zu suchen wären? Tatsächlich lassen sich inhaltliche Parallelen
zur Mailänder Theaterpraxis ziehen,
präziser gesagt zu den Komödien des
bedeutenden Mailänder Theaterdichters Carlo Maria Maggi, der bereits in
seinen Stücken Manco Male von 1695
12
und Il barone di Birbanza von 1696
Krise und Verfall der Mailänder Oberschicht satirisch aufs Korn nimmt.11
Die Moral der Stücke kommt am besten in den Versen aus Manco Male
zum Tragen, wo es heißt: „Es sind die
Vorfahren ein schöner Schmuck, aber
in der armen Behausung sind sie eitler
Wahn. Auch der Adel bezieht seinen
Glanz von den Goldstücken“.12
Maggi war mit seinen Stücken eine
einflussreiche Persönlichkeit in der
zeitgenössischen Mailänder Gesellschaft, deren politische Realität zu Beginn des Jahrhunderts von der spanischen Fremdherrschaft bestimmt war
und deren soziale Struktur von dem
Wettbewerb alter und neuer Adelsfamilien geprägt wurde.13 Er fand seine
Bewunderer und auch Beschützer in
der alteingesessenen Mailänder Familie
der Borromeo und wurde von dem Vater der italienischen Geschichtsschreibung, Lodovico Antonio Muratori,
sehr verehrt. Dieser zählte selbst zu den
frühen Stimmen eines aufgeklärten
Italiens. In diesem kulturellen Klima
bewegten sich auch die Auftraggeber
Magnasco‘s, die zwar aus dem höheren
Adel der Stadt stammten, sich aber zu
aufklärerischen Reformen bekannten.14
Wir können davon ausgehen, dass die
Gemälde Magnasco im Schutz dieser
mächtigen Familien entstehen konnten, denn die bissige Kritik an den
herrschenden Zuständen hätte wohl
kaum unter den aktuellen politischen
Umständen überleben können.15
Ein in diesem Sinne aufschlussreiches
Gemälde von 1740 findet sich heute in
Privatbesitz und zeigt den Niedergang
der Wissenschaften und Künste im
Lichte einer dekadenten Adelsschicht
(Abb 2.). Um das prächtige Himmelbett einer jungen Dame vertreiben sich
einige Edelmänner ihre Zeit mit Kartenspiel, während rechts durch die allegorische Darstellung ein Bruch in der
zeitlichen Bildstruktur zu erkennen ist.
Wir sehen die Personifikationen der
Wissenschaften und Künste am Boden
liegend, ihre Attribute sind zerstreut,
ein hinkender geflügelter Genius verlässt in Gestalt eines Bettlers die Szenerie, während der Esel der Ignoranz und
die Wildsau der Unzucht auf den Attributen der Künste und Gelehrsamkeit
herum trampeln. Im Hintergrund wird
eine weitere Wildsau auf einem Thron
von einer männlichen Figur beweihräuchert, während ein weiteres Tier
links im Bild in den Spiegel der Prudentia blickt und somit die Klugheit
ad absurdum führt. Die moralische
Aussage dieser Allegorie bricht in die
momentane Zeiterfahrung der dargestellten Gruppe hinein, ohne dass diese davon Notiz nehmen würde. Aber
gerade in diesem Kontrast wird die
demaskierende Aussage noch dichter.
wurde, vervollständigen die Spielrunlig, wir finden keinen Hinweis auf eine
Lag in dem zuerst betrachteten Gemälde. In der rechten Bildhälfte haben
wildwüchsige Natur. Stattdessen bilde eine gewisse Ambivalenz über der
sich die Damen des Hauses und die
den angelegte Wege ein geometrisches
Bildaussage, so besteht hier kein Zweijüngeren männlichen Mitglieder der
Ordnungssystem, dem sich die kleinen
fel über das Thema des Bildes. UngeFamilie versammelt. Ein Diener reicht
Dorfansiedelungen, Gehöfte und gröwöhnlich für die Zeitstruktur des Wereiner Dame eine Tasse, möglicherweißere Gebäudekomplexe eingliedern.
kes ist die Verschränkung von Genre
se mit dem Modegetränk Schokolade,
Die Landschaft entfaltet so ein tound Allegorie. Die Genreszene mit
ein junger Kavalier reinigt gerade sein
pographisches Identifikationsmuster
den spielenden Adligen gehört einer
Jagdgewehr und ganz rechts wendet
feudaler Herrschaft. Nicht zufällig
momenthaften Zeitebene an, während
sich ein Höfling elegant einem Hündist die Familie, deren Besitzungen im
die sie umgebenden Personifikationen
chen zu. Insgesamt ergibt sich das Bild
Hintergrund porträtiert sind, ganz nah
das Bildthema in eine überzeitliche
über eine entspannte Gesellschaft,
an den vorderen Bildrand gerückt. Als
Allegorie überführen. Zwischen diesen
welche die Früchte ihres Reichtums,
souveräne Besitzer des Territoriums,
extremen Polen entfaltet sich die Bilddie offensichtlich aus den feudalen
das durch eine hohe Mauer von ihrem
aussage als moralische Kritik an einer
Besitzungen stammen, genießt. Doch
schmalen Handlungsort getrennt wird,
dekadenten Oberschicht. Kompositiowie auch in den beiden zuvor betrachgehen sie ihren Vergnügungen nach.
nell wird der Bruch zwischen geschilteten Gemälden trügt auch in diesem
Die geographische Situation lässt sich
derter Wirklichkeit und symbolhafter
Spätwerk Magnasco‘s der erste Augenübrigens noch heute nachempfinden,
Welt über Gegensätze markiert. Der
schein. Vor der aktuellen historischen
denn die Landvilla der finanzkräftigen
geschlossenen Örtlichkeit des SchlafSituation des Genueser Adels, der sich
Genueser Aristokratenfamilie Saluzzo
zimmers links, die der Genreszene als
schon seit der zweiten Hälfte des 17.
hat sich bis heute in dem kleinen Ort
Handlungsort dient, steht die durch
Jahrhunderts sowohl politisch als auch
Albaro unverändert erhalten, selbst die
die große Bogenöffnung in die Tiefe
kulturell und wirtschaftlich in einem
Terrassensituation entspricht in etwa
geführte Kulissenarchitektur, in der
stetigen Niedergang befand, musste
der Wiedergabe in dem Gemälde (Abb.
sich das negative Bild einer verkehrten
die lebensnahe Schilderung als gesell4). Doch die topographische GenauigGeisteswelt frei entfaltet.
schaftliche Utopie erscheinen. Tatsächkeit in der Darstellung der Besitzungen
Auch bei diesem Bild dominiert der
lich hat der Künstler auch hier wieder
im Val Bisagno am Fuße der Genueser
Eindruck einer theaterhaften Szenerie,
zeitliche Brüche in seine Komposition
Hügel wird zugunsten einer symbolideren Künstlichkeit durch die unvereingebaut, die aus dem Gegensatz von
schen Markierung des Herrschaftsbeeinbaren Zeitstrukturen noch betont
statischen, in der Pose der Konversareiches verlassen. Oben rechts erscheint
wird. Wieder ließe sich
tion gleichsam einCarlo Maria Maggi als
gefrorenen
Beweintellektueller
Refegungsabläufen und
renzpunkt anführen,
dem ersten Eindruck
der in seinen Werken
einer momenthaften
immer wieder die VerErfassung des Augenderbtheit einer untäblicks resultiert. Die
tigen, aufgeblasenen
größte Eigentümlichund ignoranten Adelskeit des Bildes liegt
schicht kritisiert und
aber in der völlig fehdamit den moralischen
lenden IndividualisieAnspruch auf eine
rung der dargestellten
wahrhaftige Beziehung
Personen, die so klein
mit der eigenen Zeitgeerschienen, dass sie
nossenschaft erhebt.16
kaum als Porträts zu
Diese Rolle des Künsterkennen sind und
A. Magnasco, Verschwendung und Ignoranz zerstören die Künste und
lers als Chronist seiner
sich in dieser MiniaWissenschaften, um 1740, Privatbesitz
Zeit zeigt das ungeturhaftigkeit zu verwöhnlich breite Gelieren scheinen. Statt
mälde mit einer Abendgesellschaft in
das Wallfahrtsheiligtum der Nostra Sieine kraftvolle Gegenwärtigkeit zu enteinem Villengarten, in dem Magnasco
gnora del Monte, das in Wirklichkeit
falten, gebärden sich die Figuren wie
sich selbst in der Rolle des zeichnenden
in größerer Distanz zur kultivierten
ein traumverlorenes Puppentheater,
Beobachters darstellt, der die wahrgeEbene liegt, das aber als Grablege der
das in den vorgegebenen Gesten ihres
Familie eine bedeutende Rolle in dem
nommene Szene unmittelbar in sein
Standes gefangen zu sein scheint. Der
Gemälde übernimmt. Mit ihr wird
Skizzenbuch überträgt (Abb. 3). Auf
Statik der Szenerie entspricht auch die
die genealogische Legitimität in einen
einer villenartigen Terrasse entfaltet
Unbeweglichkeit der gesellschaftlichen
zeitlosen Machtanspruch überführt,
sich ein Panorama adligen Müßiggangs
Verhältnisse, in denen kein Raum zur
der über das gesamte Land und seine
vor der Kulisse einer klar eingegrenzEntwicklung geboten wird. Die RolBewohner gespannt wird. Die Famiten Landschaft. Ein schmaler Streifen
le des Künstlers im Bild erweist sich
lie, die sich ihrer Herrschaft sicher ist,
eines von Wolken durchsetzten blauen
auch hier, wenn auch ein wenig abgekann sich entspannt dem Kartenspiel
Himmels schließt diese geordnete Welt
schwächt in Hinblick auf die früheren
hingeben, Gäste empfangen und Konnach oben hin ab und verleiht ihr eine
Gemälde als eine weit über das neutrale
versation üben. In der linken Bildhälfte
Enge, die einen Kontrast zu der weitSchildern hinausreichend.17 Die Anonymität der Figuren, die hinter ihrem
erscheint das Oberhaupt der Familie,
läufigen Ebene bildet. Der Eindruck
ständischen Habitus zu verschwinden
in einen lässigen Morgenmantel geeines klar eingefassten Landschaftsdrohen, entlarvt ihre Existenz als blokleidet. Verschiedene Mitglieder der
bildes wird durch die Hügelkette im
ßes Ritual. Magnasco gelingt mit seiherrschenden Gesellschaft, darunter
Hintergrund und insbesondere durch
nen Gemälden ein Sittenbild seiner
auch ein Priester, der wohl mit der am
die hohe Horizontlinie verstärkt. In
Zeit, das trotz moralischer Anklänge
Boden ruhenden Sänfte herbeigetragen
dieser Kulturlandschaft ist nichts zufäl-
13
3 Isaac Newton, Mathematische Grundla7 Satire über den Edelmann in Not, um
nicht mit der gleichen scharfen Gesellgen der Naturphilosophie, hg. v. E. Dellian
1725, Detroit, Institute of Arts.
schaftskritik zu verwechseln ist, wie sie
(Hamburg 1988), Buch I, Scholium zu den
8 Pellegrino Orlandi, Abbecedario Pittorico
später Goya in seinen Gemälden anDefinitionen, S. 44. Vgl. Gregory Gilette,
(Bologna1719), S. 58.
schaulich machte. Die große BeliebtIsaac Newton’s philosophy of sacred space and
9 Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, Vite de‘ pittori,
heit der Gemälde Magnasco‘s bei hochsacred time. An Essay on the History of an
scultori ed architetti genovesi, hg. v. Raffaello
rangigen Auftraggebern und Sammlern
Idea, Lewiston et al. 2007.
Soprani (Bologna 1969), 2 Bde., Bd. 2, S.
aus Adel und Klerus spricht eher dafür,
4 Zur Diskussion des Phänomens Zeit in
155-157.
dass der Mailänder Künstler die Zeitder bildenden Kunst siehe vor allem: Alf10 Zur Vorgeschichte des Begriffs Bravur
umstände und die Zeitwahrnehmung
red Messerli, ‚Bilder verstehen so gut es
im italienischen Cinque- und Seicento
seiner Zeitgenossen subtil einzufassen
geht. Frühneuzeitliche Bildrezeption zwisiehe: Nicola Suthor, Bravura. Virtuosität
wusste. Zudem stand Magnasco zeitschen visueller Vorgabe und individuellem
und Mutwilligkeit in der Malerei der Frühen
lich am Beginn eines Epochenwandels,
Erwartungshorizont‘, in: Modernisierung
Neuzeit (München 2010).
dessen volle Ausprägung erst ein haldes Sehens. Sehweisen zwischen Künsten
11 Vgl. auch Franchini Guelfi, in: Aust.bes Jahrhundert später sichtbar wurde.
und Medien, hg. v. Matthias Bruhn/KaiKat. (Mailand 1996), S. 37.
Dennoch ist die Rolle des Künstlers
Uwe Hemken (Bielefeld 2008), S. 15612 Carlo Maria Maggi, Il Barone di Birals Neuerer in der Forschung zu we177. Zeitlichkeit in Text und Bild, hg. v.
banza Et Il Manco Male (Venezia 1708), S.
nig markiert worden.18 In den mit hoFranziska Sick/Christof Schöch, (Heidel119.
her psychologischer Einfühlung in die
berg 2007). Bilderzählungen-Zeitlichkeit
13 ‘Alessandro Morandotti, Magnasco a
menschliche Seele und präziser Beobim Bild, hg. v. Andrea von Hülsen-Esch/
Milano. La realtà della città e il panorama
achtungsgabe gemalten Genreszenen
Hans Körner/Guido Reuter (Köln 2003).
del collezionismo provato fra “vecchia” e
zeigt sich tatsächlich ein Bewusstsein
Gottfried Boehm, ‚Bild und Zeit‘, in: Das
“nuova” nobiltà’, in: Aust.-Kat. (Mailand
vom Wandel der Zeiten, der seine ParPhänomen Zeit in Kunst und Wissenschaft,
1996), S. 51-64, S. 52.
allelen am ehesten in den Überlegunhg. v. Hannelore Paflik (Weinheim 1987),
14Syamken, S. 47.
gen des bedeutendsten Rechts- und
S. 1-23. Hans Holländer, ‚Augenblick und
15 Zu den Auftraggebern Magnasco‘s geGeschichtsphilosophen Italiens, GiamZeitpunkt‘, in: Augenblick und Zeitpunkt.
hörten die Herzöge Colloredo, Gazzola,
battista Vico, findet. In seinem HauptStudien zur Zeitstruktur und ZeitmetaCarrara und Großherzog Ferdinand de
werk Scienza Nova von 1725 - einem
phorik in Kunst und Wissenschaften, hg. v.
Medici.
Werk, das die späteren französischen
Christian W. Thomsen/Hans Holländer
16 Vgl. FN 12.
Aufklärer Diderot und Rousseau maß(Darmstadt 1984), S. 7-22. Hans Hollän17 Der weniger bissige Ton des Gemäldes
geblich prägen sollte - entwickelte der
der, Augenblicksbilder. Zur Zeitperspektive
könnte an der Auftragssituation gelegen
Autor eine umfassende Theorie vom
haben, denn das Gemälde
Auf- und Niedergang ganwar mit seinem ungewöhnzer Zivilisationen.19 Nach
lichen
längsrechteckigen
Vico wurde der stetige
Format sehr wahrscheinlich
Fortschritt in zyklischer
für die private Ausstattung,
Weise unterbrochen. Auf
möglicherweise ein Möbel,
eine Kulminationsphase
der Familie geschaffen worder Entwicklung folgte in
den und sollte somit sehr viel
der Menschheitsgeschichstärker repräsentieren als eine
te immer wieder auch
moralische Botschaft vermitein Abstieg, der wiederteln. Franchini Guelfi, in:
um einen neuen Aufstieg
Ausstellungskatalog (Mailand
ermöglichte. Mit einem
1996), S. 37.
gewissen Geschichts- und
18 Im Wesentlichen konzenKulturoptimismus lag für
triert sich die Feststellung auf
Vico das entscheidende
A. Magnasco, Gesellschaft in einem Garten Albaros, um
die ungewöhnlichen IkonoPotenzial der menschli1745, Genua, Galleria di Palazzo Bianco
graphien, doch fehlt eine prächen Entwicklung in seizise Untersuchung des geiner Fähigkeit zur Ratio und zu ratiostesgeschichtlichen Kontextes im Hinblick
in der Malerei, in: ebd. (Darmstadt 1984),
nellem Handeln. Magnasco‘s Gemälde
auf die innovative Rolle, die Magnasco in
S. 175-197. Dagobert Frey, ‚Das Zeitproscheinen diesen Gedanken eine visuelle
der Malerei des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts
blem in der bildenden Kunst‘ (1955), in:
Entsprechung verliehen zu haben. Sie
einnahm. Am ehesten sind solche AnsätBausteine zu einer Philosophie der Kunst,
lassen sich damit in einen breiteren euze bei Franchini Guelfi zu finden, doch
hg. v. Gerhard Frey (Darmstadt 1976), S.
ropäischen Kontext am Vorabend der
bleiben ihre Überlegungen auf Italien be212-235.
Aufklärung verstehen.20
Claudia Steinhardt-Hirsch
Universität Graz
1 Bei dem Text handelt es sich um die
überarbeitete Fassung meines Vortrags gleichen Titels, den ich am 13. Internationalen
Kongress zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts am 27.07. 2011 in Graz gehalten
habe.
2 Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile
tempus,Vergil, Georgica III, 284.
5 Der Künstler ist in der Forschung bisher
wenig beachtet worden. Grundlegend sind
die Arbeiten von Oscar Mandel, The Art of
Alessandro Magnasco. An essay in the recovery of meaning (Florenz 1984), und Georg
Gerrit Syamken, Die Bildinhalte des Alessandro Magnasco 1667-1749 (Hamburg
1965). Einen guten Überblick über das
Schaffen des Künstlers bietet der Ausstellungskatalog Alessandro Magnasco 16671749 (Mailand 1996).
6 Syamken 1965, S. 148. ‘Fausta Franchini
Guelfi’, in: Ausst.-Kat. Mailand 1996, S.
18f.
14
schränkt.
19 Enrico De Mas, Time and Idea. The
Theory of History in Giambattista Vico
(Chicago, 1953).
20 Aus Platzgründen kann hier nicht auf
die Beziehungen zwischen Magnasco und
anderen europäischen Künstlern eingegangen werden. Eine vertiefte Analyse verdiente aber der thematische Vergleich mit den
etwa zeitgleichen Werken von William Hogarth, der zeigen würde, wie sehr der italienische Künstler in die aktuellen geistesgeschichtlichen Entwicklungen in Europa
involviert war.
Book in review
An Enlightened Duke: The Life of
Archibald Campbell (1682-1762), Earl
of Ilay, 3rd Duke of Argyll. By Roger L.
Emerson. Pp. xviii, 553. Kilkerran:
humming earth, 2013. £40. ISBN 978
1 84622 039 5.
Not many people living in Scotland,
or visiting the country, would be able
to tell you much about the bewigged
figure who adorns every Royal
Bank of Scotland banknote issued
since 1987. Even in the specialist
literature, Archibald Campbell, 3rd
Duke of Argyll and 1st Earl of Ilay
(1682-1761) generally appears as a
minor figure, a Scottish nobleman,
lawyer, businessman, and soldier
skilled in managing elections, but
relatively insignificant in the political
history of eighteenth-century Britain.
Roger Emerson’s latest book puts
to shame the complacent Anglocentrism of early Hanoverian political
historiography, offering for the first
time a richly textured – although
necessarily somewhat speculative
– account of a great political man
who underpinned Robert Walpole’s
ministry, helped put post-Union
Scotland on a sound economic and
social footing, and laid the foundations
for the Scottish Enlightenment.
Emerson’s achievement is all the more
remarkable because the subject of this
absorbing biography failed to leave
behind a convenient cache of personal
papers, ripe for discovery and analysis
by the modern historian. Ilay does not
seem to have published anything of
significance, while his family’s papers
at Inverary remain effectively closed
to historians, with no satisfactory list
of the manuscripts currently available.
Emerson makes the most of what can be
gleaned from the scattered remnants of
Ilay’s personal archive (amongst them,
a lone surviving library catalogue, the
sale catalogue of scientific instruments
dispersed by Ilay’s nephew and heir, the
3rd Earl of Bute, the sketchy diaries of
secretaries, and a series of incomplete
bank account ledgers at Coutts), but
overcomes the relative lack of direct
source material through his unrivalled
control of the primary and secondary
literature
on
eighteenth-century
Scotland, built up over at least thirty
years working on Archie and the
Scotland he helped create.
The book is separated into three
sections, with the two discernable
phases of Ilay’s political maturity
bookending a sequence of fascinating
chapters on his bookish, scientific,
botanical, and intellectual tastes. All
three sections revolve around one key
issue – the importance of the AngloScottish Union of 1707 to Scotland’s
present and future. Although much
of his day-to-day work was spent
recommending men for jobs in every
area of life so that political allies in
London could more easily control
Scotland, Ilay emerges from this first
full biography as an instrumental
figure in working out the practical
implications of the Union treaty of
1707. He remained constantly vigilant,
ensuring that Scottish issues were not
overlooked by an increasingly powerful
Parliament in Westminster. Though
keen to use the law to improve Scottish
society, Ilay sought to protect the
separate and distinct Scots legal system
from English encroachment, patiently
explaining differences in Scots law to
English peers when the House of Lords
sat in judgement on Scottish charges
– most notably when the unfortunate
Captain Porteous had to be tried for
murder because there was simply
nothing in Scots law comparable to
the English charge of ‘manslaughter’.
Even grubby deal-making over votes,
posts, and pensions had a fundamental
importance for post-Union Scotland,
taking the disposal of Scottish jobs
out of the hands of Englishmen only
interested in their constant jockeying
for power with fellow politicians.
By making himself indispensable to
Walpole and the Pelham brothers over
a formative and exceptionally long
period of time, Ilay was able “to change
the direction of Scottish culture” (98).
By Emerson’s conservative estimate, at
least 54,000 men owed their position
to Ilay and his supporters, the vast
majority of whom had been carefully
selected for their secular, scientific, and
improving outlook. His nominees came
to dominate the Scottish delegation in
15
both Houses of Parliament, the civil
administration in Scotland, the burghs,
the courts, the universities, the army,
the economic institutions, and the
church. Indeed, the Moderate party
in the Church of Scotland would not
have existed without Ilay’s promotion
of polite scholars like Hugh Blair,
William Robertson, John Home and
Adam Ferguson, while Ilay also laid
the platform for a string of successful
economic initiatives, not least the
Royal Bank of Scotland itself (founded
in 1727). Thus Emerson’s biography
of a single politician becomes the story
of how Scotland came to grips with
Union, emerging by the time of Ilay’s
death as one of the foremost cultural
powerhouses of Enlightenment Europe
– through stable politics, a polite
Kirk, profitable commerce, efficient
agriculture, productive manufacturers,
and pioneering universities.
But what is particularly striking here is
how far this public mission dovetailed
with the relentlessly improving tenor
of Ilay’s personal, intellectual and
business activities. His reading was
ruthlessly pragmatic (history books
helped him understand “what made
men tick” (115), and he was only
interested in scientific research that
could be put to practical use (“finding
new and better manures, better heckles
and bleaches, more effective ways of
promoting trade or educating Scots”
(132). His renovation of the family seat
at Inverary had a “public dimension”
(204), promoting the work of Scots
architects, engineers, and gardeners,
and bringing work to Highlanders
resentful after 1745, while even his
monumental book catalogue, the
Catalogue Librorum A.C.D.A. (1758),
was commissioned as “a make-work
project for the Foulis brothers whom
he had patronized in the past” (104).
Most dynamically, perhaps, Ilay set
himself up as a model landowner in
draining, improving, and cultivating
waste land around Whitton Park in
London and the Whim in Peebleshire.
At the latter, he even established “an
admired demonstration farm [which]
gave him credibility with improving
landlords” (242). Readers familiar with
Emerson’s earlier work will recognise
some of these facets of Ilay’s life, but in
pulling all of them together Emerson
makes a compelling case for Ilay as
the central figure in the emergence
of Enlightenment in Scotland. An
Enlightened Duke is a fascinating read,
and serves as a fitting culmination of
a pioneering career in eighteenthcentury Scottish studies.
Mark Towsey
University of Liverpool
Directory of Scholars
lignes, votre université, votre champ de recherche, votre e.mail ainsi
que votre adresse postale pour communications de la part du comité
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communication sur les activités que notre société va promouvoir
et notre revue (2.000. The European Journal: voir sur internet
tous les numéros précédents).
Cordialement
Vincenzo Merolle
in European Studies
Dear Colleague,
We are a little team of scholars working for the compilation of
a Directory of Scholars in European Studies, which has the aim of
boosting and systematizing the study of European history and of
contributing to the cultural and political union of our continent.
The Directory will be online, with free access, and will constitute
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the future of our civilization, promoting suitable cultural activities.
We would be happy should you agree to join our Directory, along
with the colleagues who have already given their assent. You should
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affiliation, field of interest, e.mail for further communications on the
part of the editorial board and of colleagues, and your postal address.
To your e.mail we will forward all the communications about the
activities that our society will promote and our journal (2.000.
The European Journal: see all the past issues on the internet).
P.S.: The Directory is now on the internet under www.
directoryeuropeanstudies.com. The e.mail address
is [email protected]; all the
correspondence should be sent to this address.
Directory of Scholars in European Studies
Editor: Vincenzo Merolle (Rome, ‘La Sapienza’), private office: viale
Grande Muraglia 301, 00144 Roma, e.mail [email protected]; coeditors: Andreas Golob (Graz), [email protected]; Andreas Golob
(Graz), [email protected]; Erhard Steller, Köln [email protected].
Editorial Board: Tatiana Artemyeva (St Petersburg), Riccardo Campa
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Editorial Associates: Federico Bonzi (Napoli), [email protected];
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[email protected] .
Yours sincerely
Cher/ère collègue,
Nous sommes une petite équipe d’universitaires qui travaillent
pour la compilation d’un Directory of Scholars in European Studies,
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Le Directoire sera en ligne, avec accès gratuit, et constituera
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000. The European Journal / La Revue Européenne
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16