Return of a forgotten historian
Douglas Johnson
THE HISTORY OF CIVILISATION IN EUROPE by Francois Guizot, translated by William Hazlitt, edited by Larry Siedentop Penguin Classics, £8.99, pp. 255 Guizot was minister of Foreign Affairs in France from 29 October 1840 to 26 September 1847 when he officially became Prime Minister (although in practice it was he who had all the time been the directing force of the government). Maurice Couve de Murville was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1 June 1958 to 10 July 1968, when, like Guizot, he became Prime Minis- ter. Thus, in June 1965 he had served as Foreign Minister for seven years, thereby breaking Guizot's record, and becoming the longest serving Minister for Foreign Affairs since the Revolution. In order to commemorate this distinction his col- leagues presented him with a prize, which was a first edition of Guizot's Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe.
This was a doubly significant gesture because Couve de Murville is married to a descendant of Guizot and, like him, they are Protestants. But above all, said Couve, showing a rare enthusiasm, this is one of the greatest works of French history — a statement echoed by Larry Siedentop, the editor of this English translation of the work. In his stimulating and perceptive introduction he says that this is the most intelligent general history of Europe ever written. Both these 20th-century judgments themselves echo Sainte-Beuve who simply said that Guizot was the greatest professeur d'histoire' that France had ever known.
This leads Larry Siedentop to ask the natural question. How was it that by the end of the 19th century, and until very recently, Guizot's historical work had largely dropped out of sight? One can put the question another way. How is it that Guizot is so neglected that in Paris there is only an obscure appendage to a street called 'Villa Guizot' usually and typically known as the 'Impasse Guizot', whilst Thiers, for example, has both his street and his square, eminently placed by the thoroughfare named after Victor Hugo? No one would suggest that Thiers was the greater historian. Guizot himself, when he had been ill and when a friend enquired if he was feeling better, replied that he was much better. 'Look,' he said, 'I am reading novels', and he held up a volume of Thiers' History of the Revolution. The late Sir Denis Brogan, not an admirer of Guizot, always countered this story by telling how Disraeli, when asked if he was the first Prime Minis- ter to have written novels, replied that Guizot had written novels, although he had entitled them Meditations on Christianity).
Siedentop suggests that it was because of his political career that Guizot fell out of favour as an historian. People saw him as the obstinate and foolish man who had not withstood the revolution of 1848. This is undoubtedly true, although it is ironical that his History of the English Revolution remained a set-book for the Oxford special subject on the English Civil War, it being said that, in addition to its historical quali- ties, the author was someone who had a special knowledge of revolutions.
But the question should be framed in a wider sense. Guizot was not alone in being forgotten (although as the historians showed that the Orleans monarchy was particularly corrupt and reserved for an unattractive bourgeoisie, he was probably the most despised). Michelet was dismissed as a romantic and Benjamin Constant, Victor Cousin, Mignet Thierry and many others passed into oblivion. Tocqueville was the exception. This was because they were all dominated by the preoccupations of the period in which they lived: they had to bring an end to the Revolution without resuscitating the old regime; they had to reconcile authority with liberalism, philo- sophical discourse with the realities of gov- ernment, the sovereignty of reason and the aspirations of the multitude. These search- ings were otiose to those who simply assumed republicanism. Events had over- Do we always have to use the company car?' taken the historians and the philosophers and events are always right.
But the world after Hitler and Stalin is nearer to the world after Robespierre and Bonaparte. And when Guizot chose to take the whole history of European civilisation as the subject of his Sorbonne lectures, then he is speaking to us now.
Every one of those lectures (each form- ing a separate chapter in this book) is a model of clarity and analysis. It also pre- sents his determined view of the subject, insisting that his history is not simply the history of institutions, social practices and the production of wealth, it is also the development of 'man itself, with his facul- ties, sentiments and ideas. History is the story of the interplay of these two aspects, and as he begins his lectures with the fall of the Roman Empire, he analyses feudalism both in terms of authority and property relations and in terms of the families who possess the fiefs and the surrounding popu- lations. Thus, in the one case he highlights the development of the feudal family and a sense of heredity and ownership; and in the other a hatred and a resentment.
The other characteristic of European civilisation, as described by Guizot, was its diversity. Outside Europe, other forms of society are dominated by unity and simplic- ity, sometimes monotony. Religious society existed in a simple form, with the clear pre- ponderance of a simple principle. But in Europe, all the possible principles of reli- gion have existed. European civilisation, in all its forms, contains confusion and con- flict. One of the most striking of European phenomena was the rise of the Third Estate, a class which was neither the clergy nor the aristocracy and which rose from a lowly position, where it was weak and exploited, to a position where it absorbed and transformed all around it.
Naturally, not all historians would agree with this analytical approach. 'Narrative', he said in the second lecture, 'is not our present business.' Some historians would claim that narrative should always be the business of the historian. We can see the importance of this analysis today. There was a time when historians required the theoretical background of Marx (who was an admirer of these lectures). Then they moved to a situation where they claimed that they had to use the documents or that they had to investigate what men and women believed at the time. But now one looks increasingly to the type of analysis which Guizot used. And whatever the details, such analysis has its value.
Thus Penguin is to be congratulated on having produced this fine volume. Siedentop's notes are very helpful and he has adjusted Hazlitt's translation in certain ways. When it first appeared, the reviewer in the Athanaeum welcomed it. 'It has an Index, a thing indispensable. It is worthy to be put on the library shelves at once.' While regretting the absence of an index one can only echo this statement.
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