HIS10070: THE MAKING OF MODERN EUROPE 1500-2000

2023-2024

“No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general public as history.”

– Johan Huizinga (1872-1945)

This course will explore the making of modern Europe by surveying half a millennium of
history, from 1500 to 2000. It will investigate the major landmarks in Europe's social,
political, and economic development: the expansion of Europe into the Americas, the breakup
of a single Western Christendom into competing religious communities, witchcraft, the
industrial revolution, the rise of democracy, European Imperialism, war in the modern world,
and the end of empires.

Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989

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CONTENTS

3 Structure of the Course

5 Glossary

6 Analysing Primary Sources

10 Sample Exam Essay Questions

11-80 Seminar Information – Set Reading and Course Documents

81-87 Select Course Bibliography

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Structure of the Course

Lectures will be in delivered every Wednesday at 2.00 p.m. in Theatre L in the Newman
Building.

WEEK 2 Introductions (SW)

WEEK 3 Reformation (SW)
WEEK 4 New Worlds (SW)
WEEK 5 Witchcraft (SW)
WEEK 6 Industrial Revolution (SW)
WEEK 7 The Rise of Democracy (MJ)
WEEK 8 READING WEEK
WEEK 9 European Imperialism (MJ)
WEEK 10 War in the Modern World (MJ)
WEEK 11 Cold War (MJ)
WEEK 12 End of Empires (MJ)

Professor Sandy Wilkinson (SW) sandy.wilkinson@ucd.ie

Dr Mark Jones (MJ) mark.jones@ucd.ie

Tutors

In the first instance, questions and queries might best be addressed to your designated tutor.

Dr Angelika Hansert angelika.hansert@ucd.ie

Professor William Mulligan william.mulligan@ucd.ie
Dr David Nicoll david.nicoll@ucd.ie
Lior Tibet lior.tibet@ucd.ie
Dr Conor Tobin conor.tobin1@ucd.ie
Dr Thomas Tormey thomas.tormey@ucd.ie
Professor Sandy Wilkinson sandy.wilkinson@ucd.ie

If you have any exceptional issues which you feel cannot be dealt with by your tutor, please
contact the course coordinator, Professor Sandy Wilkinson sandy.wilkinson@ucd.ie (J107,
Newman)
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Seminars

The weekly seminars are designed to develop key skills relevant and essential to the study of
history. Sometimes these skills will be discussed explicitly and sometimes they will be
developed implicitly through engaging in general historical discussion and analysis of
primary source materials. Please come prepared to participate and engage in all seminar
activities. This means reading all primary sources as well as the set secondary reading for
that week. Seminars are intended as a place for lively discussion and informed debate. If
you cannot attend a seminar due to illness or other extenuating circumstance, please
email your tutor at the earliest opportunity.

Assessment

There are three assessed components for the course.

1) 20% seminar contribution

2) 80% 2-hour examination

20% Seminar Contribution

In this module participation and engagement means: i) attendance and active engagement in
weekly seminars. Attendance is recorded. ii) preparation for class: completion of reading and
research tasks prior to the session. 20% of your grade for this module will be based on your
contribution.

A range: Excellent participation is defined as consistent, well-informed contributions to

seminar discussions over the course of the semester.
B range: Good participation is defined as periodic, well-informed contributions to seminar
discussion over the course of the semester.
C range: Satisfactory participation is defined as responding to questions from peers and the
module coordinator, but failing to initiate discussion or volunteer views and analysis in
seminar discussions.
D range: Very good attendance, but showing inability to participate in seminar discussions
due to lack of knowledge/failure to respond to questions.

80% Examination (2 hours)

A two-hour examination will be held at the end of the module and is worth 80% of your
overall grade. You will be required to write two essays, incorporating primary source
analysis. One essay will cover the early modern period (roughly 1500-1800) and one will
cover the later modern period (roughly 1800-2000).
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Glossary

Textbooks

Textbooks offer an introduction to a subject and are consciously written and structured for
this purpose. One example of this type of work is Norman Davies, Europe: A History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Such books are marketed almost solely at students
at degree level. Textbooks should normally be used to introduce yourself to a subject before
using specialist monographs and articles to deepen and broaden that understanding.

Monographs

The Greek word mono means single and graphos writing. A monograph is a detailed written
study of a single specialised topic. Unlike textbooks, monographs are aimed primarily at
those who already have some understanding of a field. A monograph usually brings new
light to the subject; it will normally contain breakthrough research – for instance Jennifer
Wellington, Exhibiting War. The Great War, Museums, and Memory in Britain, Canada and
Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Articles

Articles are usually around 8,000 words in length and appear in specialist scholarly journals,
such as The Historical Journal or Past and Present. In order for an article to be accepted for
publication in a journal, it is usually reviewed by two or three leading specialists in a field (a
process called peer review). Articles treat specific topics in history. They are aimed at
scholars in the field and at undergraduates seeking to develop a more richly textured
understanding of a subject. Articles can be found in the periodicals section of the library.
Many if not the vast majority can also be found and viewed online at
http://www.ucd.ie/library/ Try the One Search function
http://ucd.summon.serialssolutions.com/#!/ or go to the left menu drop down box and select
e-journals.

Primary Sources

There are many different types of primary sources upon which historians rely to explore the
past. Examples include archaeological evidence, visual images (works of art, maps),
chronicles, letters, pamphlets and books, official documentation (reports, government
statistics), radio and television broadcasts. Crucially, a primary source is something that was
produced at or around the time of the events to which it relates. So, the Declaration of
Independence (1776) is a primary source. A monograph looking at the Declaration of
Independence is a secondary source.
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Analysing Primary Sources

Most of you will be used to reading, and perhaps relying upon, secondary sources (those
written by historians, drawing upon primary evidence), in order to gather information.
Modern secondary works might, for example, contain an up-to-date summary of the
perceived narrative of the events with which they are dealing, and a detailed analysis of the
importance and/or context of those events. But historians draw their information from a wide
variety of primary sources, which might include archaeological evidence, chronicles, letters,
maps, art, music, or official documents, produced at or around the time of the events to which
they relate. A vital part of studying history at degree level is developing your own ability to
use the primary sources.

Obviously documents have to be used with particular care. A contemporary source is not
necessarily more accurate than a secondary work: contemporary materials can be just as
misleading, self-serving or naïve as any other historical comment. Even today you would not
necessarily regard a politician’s memoirs as the most accurate judgement on her or his own
career, and documents from other periods must also be read with a sceptical eye. But
contemporary documents can bring us closer to the (often very different) mind-set of the
period we are studying, and for this reason alone they are extremely valuable.

This collection will hopefully make you aware of the sheer variety of documentation
available. The documents which follow include examples of a wide range of different types
of evidence. Each period of history produces its own particular range of surviving
documentary materials. You may like to consider how the chance elements of survival and
destruction affect and distort our understanding of an historical period or an historical subject.

How do I undertake a document analysis?

Ask yourself: what do I need to know about this document? First of all, what type of
document is it? Is it a polemical tract, a philosophical treatise, a letter, a report, etc? What do
you know about the author and the circumstances in which the document was written? You
must be able to state clearly that you understand the type of source with which you are
working.

Once you have established a document’s nature, you should turn your attention to the
historical context in which it arose. Is it a response to a particular event? Does it reflect the
views of one side of that event? What important background do we need to know in order to
make sense of this source?

Following the identification of type and context, you should turn to the document itself.
What is important about the source as you read it? Is it the use of classical or biblical
imagery? You should attempt to understand the structure of the text. Does it naturally break
down into sections, as is sometimes the case – though not always. What does the author want
the reader to take from the text? A particular argument? If so, what is it? You should work
through the document systematically explaining its development. Do not be afraid to make
connections between the specifics of textual analysis and broader context. Be imaginative!
Think about possible connections and explanations. The work of historians is to think again
about the source; we have to learn to listen rather than shout at the evidence.
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Finally you should say something about the broader significance of the document. Perhaps
there is a certain irony in the text or some twist in the tale? The end of your analysis allows
you to stand back and make some general remarks about the document, its author or authors,
and the context. The work of historians consists both in attention to detail and in making
broader statements based on those details. If we cannot speak generally then it really is a case
of lots of trees and no forest.

General Guidance for Examination Essays

Introduction

This is a summary of some ideas on the correct approach to preparing and writing history
essays. It should be stressed that this is not a magic formula which must be followed to the
letter. It is, instead, a set of guidelines which it is hoped will help students to gain more from
their written work.

Reading

(i) General Points

• Never leave your research or exam preparation until the last minute. If you do you will
almost certainly be unable to get hold of the necessary books.
• Use bibliographies provided and/or consult your tutor in order to decide which books
you should read
• Make use of the Short Loan and Reserve system.

(ii) Using a critical approach

Adopt a basic attitude of suspicion of everything you read. This goes for both primary and
secondary sources. It may be fairly disconcerting to realise that history does not deal with
hard facts, that there is no text book to which you can turn to find the truth about what
happened in a given period. Appreciating this fact is, however, another key aspect of studying
history at this level.

• You must learn to question all primary source materials that you read, and to accept
that different secondary works may well give different accounts of both the narrative
and analysis of an event.
• This does not mean that you can casually challenge the view of any historian. Clearly,
if you wish to question the perceived norm you must have evidence to support your
case.

(iii) How much?

Reading one book is NEVER going to be enough! If you are approaching a new subject you
might wish to start by reading a condensed summary of the basic information in perhaps one
or two general text books. At best this will give you an understanding of the bare bones of a
topic and, sometimes, a summary of some of the historical problems involved. Be wary,
however, of over-generalisation and out-of-date approaches. Then move on to consult at least
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two or three more specific secondary works. This may include what appear to be very
daunting historical tomes, but do not be put off. Learn to maximise your productivity by
reading selectively and skimming. With a basic understanding of a topic you ought to be able
to identify what sections you should read by using the contents page and index. Also try to
read primary sources in translation wherever possible to develop a greater understanding of a
subject. This may help you to begin to form your own opinions and to question the
approaches of current historians.

(iv) Note taking

Once you have isolated a section or chapter which you need to read you should collect your
information through an effective note taking process.

• Read a paragraph or thematic section and then write down what you think were the
most important points made, summarising both evidence and approach. This should
help you to avoid unconscious plagiarism.
• Then fill in any gaps in detail by re-reading specific bits of the text. Always note down
page numbers as you go along, so that you can refer to sections in your revision and
can reference the evidence you use in an essay where necessary.

Writing

(i) Focusing on the question

Perhaps the most important thing to do in an essay is to answer the question. This may sound
very simple and obvious. However, there are a number of points you must bear in mind:

• An essay question, whether set as an exercise on its own or in an examination, will ask
you to focus upon one particular area of a topic and to pursue a line of argument.
NEVER answer a question by writing everything you know about a subject! You must
instead tailor your knowledge to the job in hand.
• In order to avoid irrelevance, you must first isolate what is being asked. Read the
question very carefully. Analyse the meaning of each word and then write down a
summary of which areas you will need to examine.
• In order to write an effective answer you will usually need to come to some sort of
conclusion about a topic. This is not a call for dogmatism. Your decisions can be
multiple or relative, but try to force yourself to come to a verdict.

(ii) Structure

Once you have decided what a question is asking you must create an effective structure in
which to place your argument. At a basic level a structure requires you to include an
introduction and a conclusion and to order your material so that your argument progresses in
a logical manner.

• Before you start writing always work out an essay plan. As a bare minimum this
should contain a brief list of the themes which you will cover and headings for the
paragraphs within each theme. Make sure that the order in which you deal with things
has a logical basis.
• An effective structure should enable you to avoid repetition within your essay.
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• Once you have established a structure stick to it. Do not ramble and do not jump from
one topic to another.
• Establishing an effective structure can be a tricky business, so do not rush this aspect
of essay writing. Be prepared to review and alter your structure after a first draft if it
proves ineffective.

(iii) Substance

To write an effective essay you will need to marry the use of evidence and analysis. It is no
good having page after page of fact with no interpretation or comment, or vice versa. Of all
the areas of essay writing this is probably the one in which there is most variation in
approach. Try to ensure, however, that you make use of both fact and theory in your answer.
One approach is to illustrate every theme or idea you express with one or two pieces of
detailed evidence. Basically, try to avoid just giving a long list of dates, or simply writing a
vague and generalised answer.

(iv) Your input

Writing degree-level history essays is not about regurgitation. It is generally agreed that the
difference between a passable essay and a first-class piece of work is the amount of original
thought and input which the student includes. Writing an essay is not supposed to be a form
of worship in which various historical textbooks are venerated. Although you must always
back up your arguments with evidence, you should assume, until proven otherwise, that your
mind is as good as anybody else's.

(v) Style Guide

You will not be required to reference in the examination, but it is nonetheless important to
acknowledge the arguments of others (e.g. As Michael Brown has argued…).

Key points

• Question everything you read

• Collect as much information as time allows from as wide a range of primary and
secondary sources as possible
• Always answer the question
• Construct an orderly and effective argument which makes use of both evidence and
analysis
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SAMPLE EXAM ESSAY QUESTIONS

In the examination, you will answer one question from Section A (early modern) and one
question from Section B (late modern). Each question will be preceded by a short gobbet (an
extract) of an historical document chosen from one of the set documents in this handbook.
Your exam essays should use the set primary source and any other primary and secondary
materials you have read to answer the question set.

Some sample questions are given below (they will each be preceded in the exam in
December 2023 by a short primary source extract taken from this handbook).

SECTION A

1. The German Reformation was the result of the determined efforts of a single, heroic
individual. Discuss.

2. Internal political weakness best explains why the Aztec Empire fell so quickly and
completely to the might of the Conquistadors. Discuss.

3. Was witch-hunting woman-hunting? Discuss.

SECTION B

4. Economic and social transformation accounts for increased popular participation and
the expansion of the suffrage in Europe between 1789 and 1918. Discuss.

5. What factors drove European imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century?

6. Is total war a useful concept to analyse the history of warfare between 1914 and 1945?

7. Why did the Cold War remain ‘cold’ in Europe?

8. The Second World War signalled the demise of European overseas empires and the
beginning of decolonisation. Discuss.
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Seminar Schedule

Term Week 2 *your week 1*: Introductions

Required reading

Sacha Colob, “Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid,” in Psyche 4 August
2021.

Discussion of the Colob article and skills training: seminar etiquette, research techniques,
note taking, and writing.
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Week 3: Reformation

Set Reading

Chapter 5 of Andrew Pettegree’s Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002),
available on Brightspace.

Skills Component

What difficulties might I face in finding research materials?

What is an adequate bibliography?

How do I put a bibliography together?

Primary Documents

1.The Death of Pope Alexander VI

But now at the height of his greatest hopes (so vain and fallacious are men’s thoughts), the
Pope, who had gone to dine in a vineyard near the Vatican to escape the heat, was suddenly
carried back to the apostolic palace, dying, and soon after him, his son was brought in, also on
the brink of death. The following day, which was the eighteenth of August 1503, the body of
the dead Pope was borne according to custom to the Church of Saint Peter: black, swollen,
and hideous to behold, most manifest signs of poisoning, but Valentino’s life was spared
because of the vigour of his youth, and because he had immediately used powerful and
suitable antidotes to poison, although he remained seriously ill for a long time. It was always
believed that this episode was the result of poison, and the most widespread rumour was that
the affair had taken place in the following way: that Valentino had determined to poison at
that selfsame dinner Adriano [Castellesi], the Cardinal or Corneto, in whose vineyard they
were supposed to dine (because it is clear that both father an son had frequently and
habitually made use of poison, not only to take revenge against their enemies and secure
themselves against suspicions, but also because of their wicked greed to despoil the wealthy
of possessions, both amongst the cardinals and other members of course, heedless of the fact
that they had never been harmed in any way by these people, as had been the case with the
very rich Cardinal of Sant’ Angelo; and equally heedless of the fact that they had been on the
very closest terms of friendship with some of them, and that others, like the cardinals of
Capua and Modena, had been their more useful and faithful counsellors).

Thus it was bruited about that Valentino had prepared in advance certain falcons of wine
infected with poison, which he consigned to a steward unaware of the plot, commanding him
not to give them to anyone. But by chance it happened that the Pontiff, before the dinner
hour, became thirsty as a result of the overwhelming heat and asked that some drink be
brought him, and because the supplies for the dinner had not yet arrived from the palace, the
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steward, who believed that the most precious wine had been set aside for his keeping, gave
the Pope the wine to drink which Valentino had sent ahead; and that Valentino, arriving while
his father was drinking, began similarly to drink of the same wine.

All Rome thronged with incredible rejoicing to see the dead body of Alexander in Saint
Peter’s, unable to satiate their eyes enough with seeing spent that serpent who in his
boundless ambition and pestiferous perfidy, and with all his examples of horrible cruelty and
monstrous sensuality and unheard-of-avarice, selling without distinction sacred and profane
things, had envenomed the entire world. And nevertheless he had been exalted by the most
unusual and almost perpetual good fortune from early youth up to the last days of his life,
always desiring the greatest things and always obtaining more than he desired. A powerful
example to confound the arrogance of those who, presuming to discern with the weakness of
human eyes the depth of divine judgments, affirm that the prosperity or adversity of men
proceeds from their own merits or demerits: as if one may not see every day many good men
unjustly vexed and many depraved souls unworthily exalter; or as if, interpreting it in another
way, one were to derogate from the justice and power of God, whose boundless might cannot
be contained within the narrow limits of the present, and who – at another time and in another
place – will recognize with a broad sweep, with rewards and eternal punishments, the just
from the unjust.

Translation of passage from Francesco Guicciardini, La historia d'Italia (Firenze: Lorenzo

Torrentino, 1561)

2. John Colet’s Convocation Sermon, 1512

The Church – the spouse of Christ – which He wished to be without spot or wrinkle, is
become foul and deformed. As saith Isaias, “The faithful city is become a harlot”; and as
Jeremias speaks, “She hath committed fornication with many lovers,” whereby she has
conceived many seeds of iniquity, and daily bringeth forth the fouleth offspring. Wherefore I
have come here today, fathers, to admonish you with all your minds to deliberate, in this your
Council, concerning the reformation of the Church……..As I am about to exhort you,
reverend fathers, to endeavor to reform the condition of the Church; because nothing has so
disfigured the face of the Church as the secular and worldly way of living on the part of the
clergy. I know not how I can commence my discourse more fitly than with the Apostle Paul,
in whose cathedral you are now assembled: ‘Be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye
reformed in the newness of your minds, that ye may prove what is good, and well pleasing,
and perfect will of God. This the Apostle wrote to all Christian men, but emphatically to
priests and bishops: for priests and bishops are the lights of the world’.

3. Dr Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (31 October, 1517) were nailed to the doors of
Wittenberg Castle Church. The theses were originally posted up in Latin but can be found
below in translation. The posting of such arguments was a common practice by Faculty and
Students of the new University of Wittenberg who wanted to invite debate on particular
issues.
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Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be
discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master
of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place.
Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may
do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole
life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and
satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does
not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the
true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which
he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.

6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and
by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved
to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would
remain entirely unforgiven.

7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and
bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing
should be imposed on the dying.

9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes
exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve
canonical penances for purgatory.

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one
of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.

12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as
tests of true contrition.

13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules,
and have a right to be released from them.
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14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with
it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to
constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the
assurance of safety.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit,
that is to say, of increasing love.

19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of
their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it.

20. Therefore by "full remission of all penalties" the pope means not actually "of all," but
only of those imposed by himself.

21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's
indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;

22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they
would have had to pay in this life.

23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is
certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest.

24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that
indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalty.

25. The power which the pope has, in a general way, over purgatory, is just like the power
which any bishop or curate has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish.

26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of
the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.

27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul
flies out [of purgatory].

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be
increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend
of Sts. Severinus and Paschal.

30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full
remission.
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31. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys
indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare.

32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves
sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that
inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;

34. For these "graces of pardon" concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction and
these are appointed by man.

35. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who
intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia.

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even
without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the
Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are
granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for they are, as I have said, the declaration
of divine remission.

39. It is most difficult, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to
commend to the people the abundance of pardons and [the need of] true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and
cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them].

41. Apostolic pardons are to be preached with caution, lest the people may falsely think them
preferable to other good works of love.

42. Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be
compared in any way to works of mercy.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a
better work than buying pardons;

44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does
not grow better, only more free from penalty.

45. 45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and
gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation
of God.

46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to
keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on
pardons.
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47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of
commandment.

48. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires,
their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.

49. Christians are to be taught that the pope's pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust
in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God.

50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he
would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the
skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his
own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even
though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold.

52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay,
even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent
in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others.

54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is
spent on pardons than on this Word.

55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are
celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is
the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a
hundred ceremonies.

56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not
sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ.

57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not
pour out such treasures so easily, but only gather them.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always
work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church's poor, but he spoke
according to the usage of the word in his own time.

60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church, given by Christ's merit, are that
treasure;

61. For it is clear that for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases, the power of the
pope is of itself sufficient.
 18

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of
God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes
the last to be first.

65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish
for men of riches.

66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men.

67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are known to be truly
such, in so far as they promote gain.

68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the
piety of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all
reverence.

70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest
these men preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the pope.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed!

72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be
blessed!

73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any art, contrive the injury of the traffic in
pardons.

74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to
contrive the injury of holy love and truth.

75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had
committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God -- this is madness.

76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of
venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.

77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is
blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope.

78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces
at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I.
Corinthians xii.

79. To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers
 19

of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. The bishops, curates and theologians who allow such talk to be spread among the people,
will have an account to render.

81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to
rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of
the laity.

82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the
dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of
miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the
latter is most trivial."

83. Again: -- "Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why
does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since
it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?"

84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man
who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and
do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?"

85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse
abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still
alive and in force?"

86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the
richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money
of poor believers?"

87. Again: -- "What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those
who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?"

88. Again: -- "What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a
hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions
and participations?"

89. "Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does
he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?"

90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve
them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies,
and to make Christians unhappy.

91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these
doubts would be readily resolved; nay, they would not exist.

92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and
there is no peace!
 20

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Cross, cross," and there is
no cross!

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through
penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than
through the assurance of peace.
 21

Week 4: New Worlds

Set Reading

Andrew Pettegree, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, chapter 12. Available on Brightspace

Primary Sources

1. The first voyage of Christopher Columbus and the origins of Spain’s overseas empire.
Columbus's journal of his first voyage to America has been lost. However, we do have an
accurate abstract of the journal compiled by Bartolomé de las Casas in the 1530s. Las Casas
was an historian and Columbus's biographer who had access to the original journal of the
voyage. The writer is Las Casas, but at times he quotes Columbus’ own words.

(Columbus wrote:)

I left the city of Granada on the twelfth day of May in the same year of 1492 on Saturday, and
I came to the town of Palos, which is a seaport, where I fitted out three vessels very well
suited for such exploits (the Santa Maria of 100 tons, the Nina of 60 tons, and the Pinta of
about 40 tons); and I left the said port, very well provided with supplies and with many
seamen, on the third day of August of the said year, on a Friday, half an hour before sunrise;
and I took the route to Your Highnesses' Canary Islands.

[Throughout the voyage, Columbus had trouble with his crews and the inferior materials used
in the construction of his caravels; the writer of the journal reported...]

Monday, 6 August.

The rudder of the caravel Pinta became loose, being broken or unshipped. It was believed that
this happened by the contrivance of Gomez Rascon and Christopher Quintero, who were on
board the caravel, because they disliked the voyage. The Admiral says he had found them in
an unfavourable disposition before setting out. He was in much anxiety at not being able to
afford any assistance in this case, but says that it somewhat quieted his apprehensions to
know that Martin Alonzo Pinzon, Captain of the Pinta, was a man of courage and capacity.
Made a progress, day and night, of twenty-nine leagues.

Thursday 6 September

Having taken on water, wood and meat, he finally made sail from the island of Gomara. The
Admiral learned that there were three Portuguese caravels cruising about looking for him –
this must have been because the King of Portugal was angry that the Admiral should have
served the King and Queen of Spain.
 22

[On the outward journey they enjoyed good weather but Columbus expected trouble with the
crew and took precautions]

Sunday 9 September

This day the Admiral calculated that we had run 19 leagues but he decided to record less than
this number so that the crew would not be terrified and disheartened if the voyage was of long
duration.

Sunday 16 September

The Admiral says that on the day and ever afterwards, they met with temperate breezes so
that there was great pleasure in enjoying the mornings, which only lacked the song of the
nightingales. He says that the weather was like April in Andalusia.

Wednesday 10 October

Here the people could bear no more. They complained of the length of the voyage. But the
Admiral cheered them up in the best way he could giving them high hopes of the advantages
they might gain. He added that, however much they might complain, he had to go to the
Indes, and that he would go on until he found them with the help of our Lord.

Thursday 11 October

The crew of the caravel Nina saw signs of land, and a small branch covered with berries.
Everyone breathed afresh and rejoiced at these signs. The land was first seen by a sailor
named Rodrigo de Triana.

Friday 12 October

These vessels were hove to, waiting for daylight. They arrived at a small island called in the
language of the Indians, Guanahani [San Salvador or today Watling Island]. Presently they
saw naked people. The Admiral went ashore in the armed boat, with Martin Alonzo Pinzon,
and Vicente Yanez, the captain of the Nina. The Admiral took the royal standard. Having
landed, they saw very green trees, and many streams of water, and fruits of many kinds. The
Admiral called to the others that they should bear faithful witness that he, in the presence of
all, had taken possession of the island for the King and for the Queen.

Here follow the actual words of the Admiral: ‘They appeared to me to be a race of very poor
people. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them even the women. All whom I saw
were youths, none more than 30 years of age. They are very well made with handsome
bodies, and very good faces. Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hair of a horse’s
tail. They paint themselves black but are the colour of the Canary Islanders neither black nor
white. They neither carry nor know anything of weapons, for I showed them swords, and
they cut themselves through ignorance. They would make good, intelligent servants, for I
observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they could easily
become Christians as they appear to have no religion.

In these islands, I have not found any human monsters, as many expected; on the contrary,
among all these people, good looks are highly valued. They are not Negroes, as in Guinea but
 23

have flowing hair; they are not born where the force of the sun’s rays is excessive. In these
islands where there are high mountains, the winter is bitterly cold but they endure it through
habit and with the help of food mixed with many and excessively hot spices. Thus I have
found no monster.’ These are the words of the Admiral.

[After visiting several small islands, Columbus reached Cuba on 28 October and spent 12
days exploring the coast and trying to make contact with local rulers. Columbus described
what happened in a letter written on his return to Spain]

When I reached Cuba I followed the coast westward, and because it was so extensive I
thought it must be the mainland of China. Since there were neither towns nor villages on the
seashore, but only hamlets where people fled immediately, I continued on the same course
thinking that I could not fail to find great cities and towns. At the end of many leagues, I saw
that there was no change except that the coast was bearing northwards, which I wished to
avoid, since winter was already beginning. I retraced my path as far as a certain harbour
[Puerto Gibara] known to me. And from that point, I sent two men inland to learn if there
were a king or great cities. They travelled for three days and found an infinite number of
small hamlets and people without number, but nothing of importance.

[He was disappointed at not making contact with the Great Khan of China but wrote a very
favourable description of his discoveries]

Without doubt, there is in these lands a vast quantity of gold, and the Indians I have on board
do not speak without reason when they say that in these islands there are places where they
dig up gold, and wear it on their necks, ears, arms, legs, the rings are very large. There are
also precious stones, pearls, and an infinity of spices...There is also a great quantity of cotton
and I believe it would sell well here in the cities of the Great Khan (which will be discovered
without doubt) without sending it to Spain.

2. Cortés and the Conquest of the Aztecs: The Conquistador’s first impressions of
Tenochtitlan.

[NOTE: Cortés’ expedition into the Gulf of Mexico had been planned and in part financed by
Diego Velàzquez who probably contemplated a trading and slaving reconnaissance. The idea
of an independent campaign of conquest was Cortés’own. It involved, of necessity,
repudiating the authority of Velàzquez and reporting the outcome of the campaign directly to
the Crown, in the hope that success would be rewarded with confirmation and support. This
was the purposes of the five cartas-relaciones which Cortés sent to the Emperor from New
Spain between 1519 and 1526. The first of the five, indeed, is largely an ex-parte account of
Cortés’differences with Velàzquez, and an ingenious – not to say unscrupulous – attempt to
justify Cortés’ mutinous behaviour. The other four describe Mexico and narrate the course of
the conquest. ]

[The second letter to Charles V was first printed in Seville in 1522; it has been through many
subsequent editions]

[...]Before I begin to describe this great city and the others already mentioned, it may be well
for the better understanding of the subject to say something of the configuration of Mexico, in
 24

which they are situated, it being the principal seat of Moctezuma's power. This Province is in
the form of a circle, surrounded on all sides by lofty and rugged mountains; its level surface
comprises an area of about seventy leagues in circumference, including two lakes, that
overspread nearly the whole valley, being navigated by boats more than fifty leagues round.
One of these lakes contains fresh and the other, which is the larger of the two, salt water. On
one side of the lakes, in the middle of the valley, a range of highlands divides them from one
another, with the exception of a narrow strait which lies between the highlands and the lofty
sierras. This strait is a bow-shot wide, and connects the two lakes; and by this means a trade
is carried on between the cities and other settlements on the lakes in canoes without the
necessity of traveling by land. As the salt lake rises and falls with its tides like the sea, during
the time of high water it pours into the other lake with the rapidity of a powerful stream; and
on the other hand, when the tide has ebbed, the water runs from the fresh into the salt lake.

This great city of Temixtitlan [Mexico] is situated in this salt lake, and from the main land to
the denser parts of it, by whichever route one chooses to enter, the distance is two leagues.
There are four avenues or entrances to the city, all of which are formed by artificial
causeways, two spears' length in width. The city is as large as Seville or Cordova; its streets, I
speak of the principal ones, are very wide and straight; some of these, and all the inferior
ones, are half land and half water, and are navigated by canoes. All the streets at intervals
have openings, through which the water flows, crossing from one street to another; and at
these openings, some of which are very wide, there are also very wide bridges, composed of
large pieces of timber, of great strength and well put together; on many of these bridges ten
horses can go abreast. Foreseeing that if the inhabitants of the city should prove treacherous,
they would possess great advantages from the manner in which the city is constructed, since
by removing the bridges at the entrances, and abandoning the place, they could leave us to
perish by famine without our being able to reach the main land, as soon as I had entered it, I
made great haste to build four brigatines, which were soon finished, and were large enough to
take ashore three hundred men and the horses, whenever it should become necessary.

This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other places for
buying and selling. There is one square twice as large as that of the city of Salamanca,
surrounded by porticoes, where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand souls, engaged
in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords,
embracing the necessaries of life, as for instance articles of food, as well as jewels of gold and
silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, precious stones, bones, shells, snails, and feathers. There are
also exposed for sale wrought and unwrought stone, bricks burnt and unburnt, timber hewn
and unhewn, of different sorts. There is a street for game, where every variety of birds in the
country are sold, as fowls, partridges, quails, wild ducks, fly-catchers, widgeons, turtledoves,
pigeons, reed-birds, parrots, sparrows, eagles, hawks, owls, and kestrels; they sell likewise the
skins of some birds of prey, with their feathers, head, beak, and claws. There are also sold
rabbits, hares, deer, and little dogs [i.e., the Chihuahua], which are raised for eating. There is
also an herb street, where may be obtained all sorts of roots and medicinal herbs that the
country affords. There are apothecaries' shops, where prepared medicines, liquids, ointments,
and plasters are sold; barbers' shops, where they wash and shave the head; and restaurateurs,
that furnish food and drink at a certain price. There is also a class of men like those called in
Castile porters, for carrying burdens. Wood and coal are seen in abundance, and braziers of
earthenware for burning coals; mats of various kinds for beds, others of a lighter sort for
seats, and for halls and bedrooms.
 25

There are all kinds of green vegetables, especially onions, leeks, garlic, watercresses,
nasturtium, borage, sorrel, artichokes, and golden thistle; fruits also of numerous descriptions,
amongst which are cherries and plums, similar to those in Spain; honey and wax from bees,
and from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as the sugar-cane; honey is also extracted
from the plant called maguey, which is superior to sweet or new wine; from the same plant
they extract sugar and wine, which they also sell. Different kinds of cotton thread of all
colours in skeins are exposed for sale in one quarter of the market, which has the appearance
of the silk-market at Granada, although the former is supplied more abundantly. Painters'
colours, as numerous as can be found in Spain, and as fine shades; deerskins dressed and
undressed, dyed different colours; earthen-ware of a large size and excellent quality; large
and small jars, jugs, pots, bricks, and endless variety of vessels, all made of fine clay, and all
or most of them glazed and painted; maize or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of
bread, preferred in the grain for its flavour to that of the other islands and terra-firma; patés of
birds and fish; great quantities of fish---fresh, salt, cooked and uncooked; the eggs of hens,
geese, and of all the other birds I have mentioned, in great abundance, and cakes made of
eggs; finally, everything that can be found throughout the whole country is sold in the
markets, comprising articles so numerous that to avoid prolixity, and because their names are
not retained in my memory, or are unknown to me, I shall not attempt to enumerate them.

Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it exclusively,

and thus the best order is preserved. They sell everything by number or measure; at least so
far we have not observed them to sell anything by weight. There is a building in the great
square that is used as an audience house, where ten or twelve persons, who are magistrates, sit
and decide all controversies that arise in the market, and order delinquents to be punished. In
the same square there are other persons who go constantly about among the people observing
what is sold, and the measures used in selling; and they have been seen to break measures that
were not true.

This great city contains a large number of temples, or houses, for their idols, very handsome
edifices, which are situated in the different districts and the suburbs; in the principal ones
religious persons of each particular sect are constantly residing, for whose use, besides the
houses containing the idols, there are other convenient habitations. All these persons dress in
black, and never cut or comb their hair from the time they enter the priesthood until they
leave it; and all the sons of the principal inhabitants, both nobles and respectable citizens, are
placed in the temples and wear the same dress from the age of seven or eight years until they
are taken out to be married; which occurs more frequently with the first-born who inherit
estates than with the others. The priests are debarred from female society, nor is any woman
permitted to enter the religious houses. They also abstain from eating certain kinds of food,
more at some seasons of the year than others.

Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of
architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded
by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families. Around the interior
of the enclosure there are handsome edifices, containing large halls and corridors, in which
the religious persons attached to the temple reside. There are fully forty towers, which are
lofty and well built, the largest of which has fifty steps leading to its main body, and is higher
than the tower of the principal tower of the church at Seville. The stone and wood of which
they are constructed are so well wrought in every part, that nothing could be better done, for
the interior of the chapels containing the idols consists of curious imagery, wrought in stone,
with plaster ceilings, and wood-work carved in relief, and painted with figures of monsters
 26

and other objects. All these towers are the burial places of the nobles, and every chapel in
them is dedicated to a particular idol, to which they pay their devotions.

Three halls are in this grand temple, which contain the principal idols; these are of wonderful
extent and height, and admirable workmanship, adorned with figures sculptured in stone and
wood; leading from the halls are chapels with very small doors, to which the light is not
admitted, nor are any persons except the priests, and not all of them. In these chapels are the
images of idols, although, as I have before said, many of them are also found on the outside;
the principal ones, in which the people have greatest faith and confidence, I precipitated from
their pedestals, and cast them down the steps of the temple, purifying the chapels in which
they had stood, as they were all polluted with human blood, shed ill the sacrifices. In the
place of these I put images of Our Lady and the Saints, which excited not a little feeling in
Moctezuma and the inhabitants, who at first remonstrated, declaring that if my proceedings
were known throughout the country, the people would rise against me; for they believed that
their idols bestowed on them all temporal good, and if they permitted them to be ill-treated,
they would be angry and without their gifts, and by this means the people would be deprived
of the fruits of the earth and perish with famine. I answered, through the interpreters, that they
were deceived in expecting any favours from idols, the work of their own hands, formed of
unclean things; and that they must learn there was but one God, the universal Lord of all, who
had created the heavens and earth, and all things else, and had made them and us; that He was
without beginning and immortal, and they were bound to adore and believe Him, and no other
creature or thing.

I said everything to them I could to divert them from their idolatries, and draw them to a
knowledge of God our Lord. Moctezuma replied, the others assenting to what he said, AThat
they had already informed me they were not the aborigines of the country, but that their
ancestors had emigrated to it many years ago; and they fully believed that after so long an
absence from their native land, they might have fallen into some errors; that I having more
recently arrived must know better than themselves what they ought to believe; and that if I
would instruct them in these matters, and make them understand the true faith, they would
follow my directions, as being for the best. Afterwards, Moctezuma and many of the principal
citizens remained with me until I had removed the idols, purified the chapels, and placed the
images in them, manifesting apparent pleasure; and I forbade them sacrificing human beings
to their idols as they had been accustomed to do; because, besides being abhorrent in the sight
of God, your sacred Majesty had prohibited it by law, and commanded to put to death
whoever should take the life of another. Thus, from that time, they refrained from the
practice, and during the whole period of my abode in that city, they were never seen to kill or
sacrifice a human being.

The figures of the idols in which these people believe surpass in stature a person of more than
ordinary size; some of them are composed of a mass of seeds and leguminous plants, such as
are used for food, ground and mixed together, and kneaded with the blood of human hearts
taken from the breasts of living persons, from which a paste is formed in a sufficient quantity
to form large statues. When these are completed they make them offerings of the hearts of
other victims, which they sacrifice to them, and besmear their faces with the blood. For
everything they have an idol, consecrated by the use of the nations that in ancient times
honoured the same gods. Thus they have an idol that they petition for victory in war; another
for success in their labours; and so for everything in which they seek or desire prosperity,
they have their idols, which they honuor and serve.
 27

This noble city contains many fine and magnificent houses; which may be accounted for from
the fact, that all the nobility of the country, who are the vassals of Moctezuma, have houses in
the city, in which they reside a certain part of the year; and besides, there are numerous
wealthy citizens who also possess fine houses. All these persons, in addition to the large and
spacious apartments for ordinary purposes, have others, both upper and lower, that contain
conservatories of flowers. Along one of these causeways that lead into the city are laid two
pipes, constructed of masonry, each of which is two paces in width, and about five feet in
height. An abundant supply of excellent water, forming a volume equal in bulk to the human
body, is conveyed by one of these pipes, and distributed about the city, where it is used by the
inhabitants for drink and other purposes. The other pipe, in the meantime, is kept empty until
the former requires to be cleansed, when the water is let into it and continues to be used till
the cleaning is finished. As the water is necessarily carried over bridges on account of the salt
water crossing its route, reservoirs resembling canals are constructed on the bridges, through
which the fresh water is conveyed. These reservoirs are of the breadth of the body of an ox,
and of the same length as the bridges. The whole city is thus served with water, which they
carry in canoes through all the streets for sale, taking it from the aqueduct in the following
manner: the canoes pass under the bridges on which the reservoirs are placed, when men
stationed above fill them with water, for which service they are paid. At all the entrances of
the city, and in those parts where the canoes are discharged, that is, where the greatest
quantity of provisions is brought in, huts are erected, and persons stationed as guards, who
receive a certain sum of everything that enters. I know not whether the sovereign receives this
duty or the city, as I have not yet been informed; but I believe that it appertains to the
sovereign, as in the markets of other provinces a tax is collected for the benefit of the cacique.

In all the markets and public places of this city are seen daily many labourers waiting for
some one to hire them. The inhabitants of this city pay a greater regard to style in their mode
of dress and politeness of manners than those of the other provinces and cities; since, as the
Cacique Moctezuma has his residence in the capital, and all the nobility, his vassals, are in
constant habit of meeting there, a general courtesy of demeanour necessarily prevails. But not
to be prolix in describing what relates to the affairs of this great city, although it is with
difficulty I refrain from proceeding, I will say no more than that the manners of the people, as
shown in their intercourse with one another, are marked by as great an attention to the
proprieties of life as in Spain, and good order is equally well observed; and considering that
they are barbarous people, without the knowledge of God, having no intercourse with
civilized nations, these traits of character are worthy of admiration.

In regard to the domestic appointments of Moctezuma, and the wonderful grandeur and state
that he maintains, there is so much to be told, that I assure your Highness I know not where to
begin my relation, so as to be able to finish any part of it. For, as I have already stated, what
can be more wonderful than a barbarous monarch, as he is, should have every object found in
his dominions imitated in gold, silver, precious stones, and feathers; the gold and silver being
wrought so naturally as not to be surpassed by any smith in the world; the stone work
executed with such perfection that it is difficult to conceive what instruments could have been
used; and the feather work superior to the finest productions in wax or embroidery. The
extent of Moctezuma's dominions has not been ascertained, since to whatever point he
despatched his messengers, even two hundred leagues from his capital, his commands were
obeyed, although some of his provinces were in the midst of countries with which he was at
war. But as nearly as I have been able to learn, his territories are equal in extent to Spain
itself, for he sent messengers to the inhabitants of a city called Cumatan (requiring them to
become subjects of your Majesty), which is sixty leagues beyond that part of Putunchan
 28

watered by the river Grijalva, and two hundred and thirty leagues distant from the great city;
and I sent some of our people a distance of one hundred and fifty leagues in the same
direction.

All the principle chiefs of these provinces, especially those in the vicinity of the capital,
reside, as I have already stated, the greater part of the year in that great city, and all or most of
them have their oldest sons in the service of Moctezuma. There are fortified places in all the
provinces, garrisoned with his own men, where are also stationed his governors and collectors
of the rents and tribute, rendered him by every province; and an account is kept of what each
is obliged to pay, as they have characters and figures made on paper that are used for this
purpose. Each province renders a tribute of its own peculiar productions, so that the sovereign
receives a great variety of articles from different quarters. No prince was ever more feared by
his subjects, both in his presence and absence. He possessed out of the city as well as within
numerous villas, each of which had its peculiar sources of amusement, and all were
constructed in the best possible manner for the use of a great prince and lord. Within the city
his palaces were so wonderful that it is hardly possible to describe their beauty and extent; I
can only say that in Spain there is nothing equal to them.

There was one palace somewhat inferior to the rest, attached to which was a beautiful garden
with balconies extending over it, supported by marble columns, and having a floor formed of
jasper elegantly inlaid. There were apartments in this palace sufficient to lodge two princes of
the highest rank with their retinues. There were likewise belonging to it ten pools of water, in
which were kept the different species of water birds found in this country, of which there is a
great variety, all of which are domesticated; for the sea birds there were pools of salt water,
and for the river birds, of fresh water. The water is let off at certain times to keep it pure, and
is replenished by means of pipes. Each specie of bird is supplied with the food natural to it,
which it feeds upon when wild. Thus fish is given to the birds that usually eat it; worms,
maize, and the finer seeds, to such as prefer them. And I assure your Highness, that to the
birds accustomed to eat fish there is given the enormous quantity of ten arrobas every day,
taken in the salt lake. The emperor has three hundred men whose sole employment is to take
care of these birds; and there are others whose only business is to attend to the birds that are
in bad health.

Over the polls for the birds there are corridors and galleries, to which Moctezuma resorts, and
from which he can look out and amuse himself with the sight of them. There is an apartment
in the same palace in which are men, women and children, whose faces, bodies, hair,
eyebrows, and eyelashes are white from their birth. The emperor has another very beautiful
palace, with a large court-yard, paved with handsome flags, in the style of a chess-board.
There are also cages, about nine feet in height and six paces square, each of which was half
covered with a roof of tiles, and the other half had over it a wooden grate, skilfully made.
Every cage contained a bird of prey, of all the species found in Spain, from the kestrel to the
eagle, and many unknown there. There was a great number of each kind; and in the covered
part of the cages there was a perch, and another on the outside of the grating, the former of
which the birds used in the night time, and when it rained; and the other enabled them to
enjoy the sun and air. To all these birds fowls were daily given for food, and nothing else.
There were in the same palace several large halls on the ground floor, filled with immense
cages built of heavy pieces of timber, well put together, in all or most of which were kept
lions, tigers, wolves, foxes, and a variety of animals of the cat kind, in great numbers, which
were fed also on fowls. The care of these animals and birds was assigned to three hundred
men. There was another palace that contained a number of men and women of monstrous
 29

size, and also dwarfs, and crooked and ill-formed persons, each of which had their separate
apartments. These also had their respective keepers. As to the other remarkable things that the
emperor had in his city for his amusement, I can only say that they were numerous and of
various kinds.

He was served in the following manner: Every day as soon as it was light, six hundred nobles
and men of rank were in attendance at the palace, who either sat, or walked about the halls
and galleries, and passed their time in conversation, but without entering the apartment where
his person was. The servants and attendants of these nobles remained in the court-yards, of
which there were two or three of great extent, and in the adjoining street, which was also very
spacious. They all remained in attendance from morning until night; and when his meals were
served, the nobles were likewise served with equal profusion, and their servants and
secretaries also had their allowance. Daily his larder and wine-cellar were open to all who
wished to eat or drink. The meals were served by three or four hundred youths, who brought
on an infinite variety of dishes; indeed, whenever he dined or supped, the table was loaded
with every kind of flesh, fish, fruits, and vegetables that the country produced. As the climate
is cold, they put a chafing-dish with live coals under every plate and dish, to keep them warm.
The meals were served in a large hall, in which Moctezuma was accustomed to eat, and the
dishes quite filled the room, which was covered with mats and kept very clean. He sat on a
small cushion curiously wrought of leather. During the meals there were present, at a little
distance from him, five or six elderly caciques, to whom he presented some of the food. And
there was constantly in attendance one of the servants, who arranged and handed the dishes,
and who received from others whatever was wanted for the supply of the table.

Both at the beginning and end of every meal, they furnished water for the hands; and the
napkins used on these occasions were never used a second time; this was the case also with
the plates and dishes, which were not brought again, but new ones in place of them; it was the
same also with the chafing-dishes. He is also dressed every day in four different suits, entirely
new, which he never wears a second time. None of the caciques who enter his palace have
their feet covered, and when those for whom he sends enters his presence, they incline their
heads and look down, bending their bodies; and when they address him, they do not look him
in the face; this arises from excessive modesty and reverence. I am satisfied that it proceeds
from respect, since certain caciques reproved the Spaniards for their boldness in addressing
me, saying that it showed a want of becoming deference. Whenever Moctezuma appeared in
public, which is seldom the case, all those who accompanied him, or whom he accidentally
met in the streets, turned away without looking towards him, and others prostrated themselves
until he had passed. One of the nobles always preceded him on these occasions, carrying three
slender rods erect, which I suppose was to give notice of the approach of his person. And
when they descended from the litters, he took one of them in his hand, and held it until he
reached the place where he was going. So many and various were the ceremonies and
customs observed by those in the service of Moctezuma, that more space than I can spare
would be required for the details, as well as a better memory than I have to recollect them;
since no sultan or other infidel lord, of whom any knowledge now exists; ever had so much
ceremonial in his court.

Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1520cortes.html
 30

3. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias (Sevilla:

Sebastián Trujillo, 1552). Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies.

The Indies were discovered in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety-two. In the
following year a great many Spaniards went there with the intention of settling the land. Thus,
forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land, the first so claimed
being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola, which is six hundred leagues in
circumference. Around it in all directions are many other islands, some very big, others very
small, and all of them were, as we saw with our own eyes, densely populated with native
peoples called Indians. This large island was perhaps the most densely populated place in the
world. There must be close to two hundred leagues of land on this island, and the seacoast has
been explored for more than ten thousand leagues, and each day more of it is being explored.
And all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people; it is as though God had crowded
into these lands the great majority of mankind.

And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most
devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and
to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and
peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome.
These people are the most devoid of rancour, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people
in the world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure
heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up
in the enjoyments of life's refinements, are no more delicate than are these Indians, even those
among them who are of the lowest rank of labourers. They are also poor people, for they not
only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not
arrogant, embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers in the
desert can scarcely be more parsimonious, scanty, and poor. As to their dress, they are
generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their
shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They have no beds, but
sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called bamacas. They are very
clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to
receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a
godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith, they are so insistent on
knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and on observing the divine cult
that, truly, the missionaries who are here need to be endowed by God with great patience in
order to cope with such eagerness. Some of the secular Spaniards who have been here for
many years say that the goodness of the Indians is undeniable and that if this gifted people
could be brought to know the one true God they would be the most fortunate people in the
world.

Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who
immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved
for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during tla! past forty years,
down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing,
afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and
most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that
this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more
than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.
 31

The island of Cuba is nearly as long as the distance between Valladolid and Rome; it is now
almost completely depopulated. San Juan [Puerto Rico] and Jamaica are two of the largest,
most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated. On the northern
side of Cuba and Hispaniola he the neighbouring Lucayos comprising more than sixty islands
including those called Gigantes, beside numerous other islands, some small some large. The
least felicitous of them were more fertile and beautiful than the gardens of the King of
Seville. They have the healthiest lands in the world, where lived more than five hundred
thousand souls; they are now deserted, inhabited by not a single living creature. All the
people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of
Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they
sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those
who had escaped being slaughtered , for a good Christian had helped them escape, taking pity
on them and had won them over to Christ; of these there were eleven persons and these I saw.

More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the
same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100
leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people.

As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, even including Aragon and
Portugal, containing more land than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem, or more than
two thousand leagues, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts,
have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can
estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal
actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men,
women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of
the slain is more like fifteen million.

The common ways mainly employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who
have gone there to extirpate those pitiful nations and wipe them off the earth is by unjustly
waging cruel and bloody wars. Then, when they have slain all those who fought for their lives
or to escape the tortures they would have to endure, that is to say, when they have slain all the
native rulers and young men (since the Spaniards usually spare only the women and children,
who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast), they
enslave any survivors. With these infernal methods of tyranny they debase and weaken
countless numbers of those pitiful Indian nations.

Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians
have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very
brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in
mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause
of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek
and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than
beasts. And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say
"than beasts" for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say
instead like excrement on the public squares. And thus they have deprived the Indians of their
lives and souls, for the millions I mentioned have died without the Faith and without the
benefit of the sacraments. This is a well known and proven fact which even the tyrant
Governors, themselves killers, know and admit. And never have the Indians in all the Indies
committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many
times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighbouring nations.
 32

For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the
Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise
up against them....
 33

Week 5: Witchcraft

Set Reading

Julian Goodare, “Women and the witch-hunt in Scotland,” Social History 23, no. 3 (October
1998): 288-308. This is not on Brightspace, so you will need to try and find it using the UCD
Library Catalogue, One Search, or Google Scholar. If you run into trouble, approach a
friendly librarian.

Primary Sources

1. A Handbook for witch hunting. Henricus Institoris and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus
Maleficarum (Speyer: Peter Drach, 1487)

Others again have propounded other reasons why there are more superstitious women found
than men. And the first is, that they are more credulous; and since the chief aim of the devil
is to corrupt faith, therefore he attacks them. See Ecclesiasticus xix: He that is quick to
believe is light-minded, and shall be diminished. The second reason is, that women are
naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied
spirit; and that when they use this quality well they are very good, but when they use it ill
they are very evil.

The third reasons is that they have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from their
fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know; and since they are weak, they find
an easy and secret manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft. See Ecclesiasticus as
quoted above: I had rather dwell with a lion than a dragon than to keep house with a wicked
woman. All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. And to this may be added
that, as they are very impressionable, they act accordingly.

There are also others who bring forth yet other reasons, of which preachers should be very
careful how they make use. For it is true that the Old Testament and Scriptures have much
that is evil to say about women, and this is because of the first temptress, Eve, and her
imitators; yet afterwards in the New Testament we find a change of name, as from Eva to Ave
(as S. Jerome says) and the whole sin of Eve is taken away by the benediction of Mary.
Therefore preachers should always say as much praise of them as possible.

But because in these times this perfidy is more often found in women than in men, as we
learn by actual experience, if anyone is curious as to the reason, we may add to what has
already been said the following: that since they are feebler both in mind and body, it is not
surprising that they should come more under the spell of witchcraft.

For as regards the intellect, or the understanding of spiritual things, they seem to be of a
different nature from men; a fact which is vouched for by the logic of the authorities, backed
by various examples from the Scriptures. Terence says: Women are intellectually like
 34

children…And Proverbs xi, as it were describing a woman says: As a jewel of gold in swine’s
snout, so is a fair woman without discretion.

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal
abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first
women, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is a rib of the breast, which is bent as it
were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect
animal, she always deceives…And it is clear in the case of the first woman that she had little
faith; for when the serpent asked why they did not eat of every tree of Paradise, she answered:
Of every tree, etc…-lest perchance we die. Thereby she showed that she doubted, and had
little faith in the word of God. And all this is indicated by the etymology of the word; for
Femina comes from Fe and Minus, since she is weaker to hold and preserve the faith…

Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently
quicker to abjure her faith, which is the root of witchcraft.

And as to her other mental quality, that is her natural will; when she hates someone whom she
formerly loved, then she seethes with anger and impatience in her whole soul, just as the tides
of the sea are always heaving and boiling. Many authorities allude to this cause.
Ecclesiasticus xxv: There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman. And Seneca (Tragedies,
VIII): No might of the flames or of the swollen minds, no deadly weapon is so much to be
feared as the lust and hatred of a woman who has been divorced from the marriage bed.

2. Witchcraft in Scotland

Agnes Sampson…was taken and brought to Holyrood house before the king’s Majesty and
sundry other of the nobility of Scotland, where she was straitly [rigorously] examined; but all
the persuasions which the king’s Majesty used to her with the rest of his council might not
provoke or induce her to confess anything, but stood stiffly in the denial of all that was laid to
her charge. Whereupon they caused her to be conveyed away to prison, there to receive such
torture as hath been lately provided for witches in that country.

And forasmuch as by due examination of witchcraft and witches in Scotland it hath lately
been found that the devil doth generally mark them with a privy mark, by reason the witches
have confessed themselves that the devil doth lick them with his tongue in some privy part of
their body before he doth receive them to be his servants; which mark commonly is given
them under the hair on some part of their body whereby it may not easily be found out or
seen, although they be searched. And generally so long as the mark is not seen to those
which search them, so long the parties that hath the mark will never confess anything.
Therefore by special commandment this Agnes Simpson had all her hair shaven off in each
part of her body, and her head thrawn [bound around and twisted] with a rope according to
the custom of that country, being a pain most grievous, which she continued almost an hour,
during which time she would not confess anything, until the devil’s mark was found upon her
privities; then she immediately confessed whatsoever was demanded of her, and justifying
[confirming] those persons aforesaid to be notorious witches.
 35

Item, the said Agnes Simpson was after brought again before the king’s Majesty and his
council, and being examined of the meetings and detestable dealings of those witches, she
confessed that upon the night of Allhollon Even [Halloween], she was accompanied as well
with the persons aforesaid as also with a great many other witches to the number of two
hundred; and that all they together went to sea each one in a riddle or sieve, and went in the
same very substantially with flagons of wine, making merry and drinking by the way in the
same riddles or sieves, to the kirk of North Berwick in Lothian; and that after they had
landed, took hands on the land and danced…

Item, the said Agnes Sampson confessed that the devil being then at North Berwick kirk
attending their coming in the habit or likeness of a man, and seeing that they tarried over
long, he at their coming enjoined them all to do a penance, which was that they should kiss
his buttocks in sign of duty to him; which being put over the pulpit bare, everyone did as he
had enjoined them. And having made his ungodly exhortations, wherein he did greatly
inveigh against the king of Scotland, he received their oaths for their good and true service
towards him, and departed; which done, they returned to sea, and so home again…

Moreover, she confessed that at the time when his Majesty was in Denmark, she, being
accompanied with the parties before specially named, took a cat and christened it, and
afterward bound to each part of that cat the chiefest parts [biggest bones] of a dead man, and
several joints of his body; and that in the night following the said cat was conveyed into the
midst of the sea by all these witches sailing in their riddles or sieves, as is aforesaid; and so
left the said cat right before the town of Leith in Scotland. This done, there did arise such a
tempest in the sea as a greater hath not been seen…

Again it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause of the king’s Majesty’s ship, at
his coming forth of Denmark, had a contrary wind to the rest of his ships then being in his
company, which thing was most strange and true, as the king’s Majesty acknowledgeth; for
when the rest of the ships had a fair and food wind, then was the wind contrary and altogether
against his Majesty. And further, the said witch declared that his Majesty had never come
safely from the sea, if his faith had not prevailed above their intentions.

Excerpt from News From Scotland, a printed account of the trial of witches accused of
attempting to drown James VI as he sailed home from Denmark in 1591.

3. A sceptical voice. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London: [Henry

Denham for William Brome], 1584).

A further confutation of witches miraculous and

omnipotent power, by invincible reasons
and authorities, with dissuasions from such fond credulitie.

If witches could doo anie such miraculous things, as these and other which are imputed to
them, they might doo them againe and againe, at anie time or place, or at anie mans desire;
for the divell is as strong at one time as at another, as busie by daie as by night, and readie
enough to doo all mischeefe, and careth not whom he abuseth. And in so much as it is
confessed, by the most part of witchmoongers themselves, that he knoweth not the cogitation
 36

on mans heart, he should (me thinks) sometimes appeere unto honest and credible persons, in
such grosse and corporall forme, as it is said he dooth unto witches: which you shall never
heare to be justified by one sufficient witnesse. For the divell indeed entreth into the mind,
and that waie seeketh mans confusion.

The art always presupposeth the power; so as, if they saie they can doo this or that, they must
shew how and by what meanes they doo it; as neither the wiches nor the witchmoongers are
able to doo. For to everie action is required the facultie and abilitie of the agent or dooer; the
aptness of the patient or subject; and a convenient and possible application. Now the witches
are mortall, and their power dependeth upon the analogie and consonancie of their minds and
bodies; but with their minds they can but will and understand; and with their bodies they can
doo no more, but as the bounds and ends of terrene sense will suffer; and therefore their
power extendeth not to doo such miracles, as surmounteth their owne sense, and the
understanding of toehrs which are wiser than they; so as here wanteth the virtue and power of
the efficient. And in reason, there can be no more virtue in the thing caused, than in the
cause, or that which proceedeth of or from the benefit of the cause. And we see, that ignorant
and impotent women, or witches, are the causes of incantations and charmes; wherein we
shall perceive there is none effect, if we will credit our owne experience and sense unabused,
the rules of philosophie, or the word of God. For alas! What an unapt instrument is a
toothless, old, impotent, and unweldie woman to flie in the aier? Truelie, the divell little
needs such instruments to bring his purposes to passé.
 37

Week 6: The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution

Set Reading

Many textbooks will offer you a broad introduction to the key elements of the industrial
revolution. The set reading for this week is something a little different – an overview of how
historians have looked at working class history over the past century.

Emma Griffin, ‘Working Class History’ in History Today, 65/2 (2015) available at
http://www.historytoday.com/emma-griffin/working-class-history

Group Presentation

Reconstruct a contemporary debate between those in favour of industrialisation and those

who are more sceptical of its benefits.

Primary Sources

1.The Spinning Jenny

2. To the Merchants, Clothiers and all such as wish well to the Staple Manufactory of
this Nation.
 38

[This petition by workers in Leeds (a major centre of wool manufacture in Yorkshire)

appeared in a local newspapers in 1786. They are complaining about the effects of machines
on the previously well-paid skilled workers.]

The Humble ADDRESS and PETITION of Thousands, who labour in the Cloth Manufactory.

SHEWETH, That the Scribbling-Machines have thrown thousands of your petitioners out of
employ, whereby they are brought into great distress, and are not able to procure a
maintenance for their families, and deprived them of the opportunity of bringing up their
children to labour: We have therefore to request, that prejudice and self-interest may be laid
aside, and that you may pay that attention to the following facts, which the nature of the case
requires.

The number of Scribbling-Machines extending about seventeen miles south-west of LEEDS,

exceed all belief, being no less than one hundred and seventy! and as each machine will do as
much work in twelve hours, as ten men can in that time do by hand, (speaking within bounds)
and they working night-and day, one machine will do as much work in one day as would
otherwise employ twenty men.

As we do not mean to assert any thing but what we can prove to be true, we allow four men to
be employed at each machine twelve hours, working night and day, will take eight men in
twenty-four hours; so ~ that, upon a moderate computation twelve men are thrown out of
employ for every single machine used in scribbling; and as it may be sup', posed the number
of machines in all the other quarters together, t nearly equal those in the South-West, full four
thousand men are left l-; to shift for a living how they can, and must of course fall to the
Parish, if not timely relieved. Allowing one boy to be bound apprentice from each family out
of work, eight thousand hands are deprived of the opportunity of getting a livelihood.

We therefore hope, that the feelings of humanity will lead those who l, have it in their power
to prevent the use of those machines, to give every discouragement they can to what has a
tendency so prejudicial to their fellow-creatures.

This is not all; the injury to the Cloth is great, in so much that in Frizing, instead of leaving a
nap upon the cloth, the wool is drawn out and the Cloth is left thread-bare.

Many more evils we could enumerate, but we would hope, that the sensible part of mankind,
who are not biased by interest, must see the dreadful tendency of their continuance; a
depopulation must be the consequence; trade being then lost, the landed interest will have no
other satisfaction but that of being last devoured.

We wish to propose a few queries to those who would plead for the further continuance of
these machines:

Men of common sense must know, that so many machines in use, take the work from the
hands employed in Scribbling, - and who did that business before machines were invented.

How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families; - and what are
they to put their children apprentice to, that the rising generation may have something to keep
 39

them at work, in order that they may not be like vagabonds strolling about in idleness? Some
say, Begin and learn some other business. - Suppose we do; who will maintain our families,
whilst we undertake the arduous task; and when we have learned it, how do we know we shall
be any better for all our pains; for by the time we have served our second apprenticeship,
another machine may arise, which may take away that business also; so that our families,
being half pined whilst we are learning how to provide them with bread, will be wholly so
during the period of our third apprenticeship.

But what are our children to do; are they to be brought up in idleness? Indeed as things are, it
is no wonder to hear of so many executions; for our parts, though we may be thought illiterate
men, our conceptions are, that bringing children up to industry, and keeping them employed,
is the way to keep them from falling into those crimes, which an idle habit naturally leads to.

These things impartially considered will we hope, be strong advocates in our favour; and we
conceive that men of sense, religion and humanity, will be satisfied of the reasonableness, as
well as necessity of this address, and that their own feelings will urge them to espouse the
cause of us and our families -

Signed, in behalf of THOUSANDS, by

Joseph Hepworth Thomas Lobley

Robert Wood Thos. Blackburn

3. Women Miners From Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Vol. XVI, pp. 24,
196.

In England, exclusive of Wales, it is only in some of the colliery districts of Yorkshire and
Lancashire that female Children of tender age and young and adult women are allowed to
descend into the coal mines and regularly to perform the same kinds of underground work,
and to work for the same number of hours, as boys and men; but in the East of Scotland their
employment in the pits is general; and in South Wales it is not uncommon.

West Riding of Yorkshire: Southern Part - In many of the collieries in this district, as far as
relates to the underground employment, there is no distinction of sex, but the labour is
distributed indifferently among both sexes, except that it is comparatively rare for the women
to hew or get the coals, although there are numerous instances in which they regularly
perform even this work. In great numbers of the coalpits in this district the men work in a
state of perfect nakedness, and are in this state assisted in their labour by females of all ages,
from girls of six years old to women of twenty-one, these females being themselves quite
naked down to the waist.

"Girls," says the Sub-Commissioner [J. C. Symons], -regularly perform all the various offices
of trapping, hurrying [Yorkshire terms for drawing the loaded coal corves], filling, riddling,
tipping, and occasionally getting, just as they are performed by boys. One of the most
disgusting sights 1 have ever seen was that of young females, dressed like boys in trousers,
 40

crawling on all fours, with belts round their waists and chains passing between their legs, at
day pits at Hunshelf Bank, and in many small pits near Holmfirth and New Mills: it exists
also in several other places. 1 visited the Hunshelf Colliery on the 18th of January: it is a day
pit; that is, there is no shaft or descent; the gate or entrance is at the side of a bank, and nearly
horizontal. The gate was not more than a yard high, and in some places not above 2 feet.

" When I arrived at the board or workings of the pit I found at one of the sideboards down a
narrow passage a girl of fourteen years of age in boy's clothes, picking down the coal with the
regular pick used by the men. She was half sitting half lying at her work, and said she found it
tired her very much, and 'of course she didn't like it.' The place where she was at work was
not 2 feet high. Further on were men lying on their sides and getting. No less than six girls out
of eighteen men and children are employed in this pit.

"Whilst I was in the pit the Rev Mr Bruce, of Wadsley, and the Rev Mr Nelson, of
Rotherham, who accompanied me, and remained outside, saw another girl of ten years of age,
also dressed in boy's clothes, who was employed in hurrying, and these gentlemen saw her at
work. She was a nice-looking little child, but of course as black as a tinker, and with a little
necklace round her throat.

"In two other pits in the Huddersfield Union I have seen the same sight. In one near New
Mills, the chain, passing high up between the legs of two of these girls, had worn large holes
in their trousers; and any sight more disgustingly indecent or revolting can scarcely be
imagined than these girls at work-no brothel can beat it.

"On descending Messrs Hopwood's pit at Barnsley, I found assembled round a fire a group of
men, boys, and girls, some of whom were of the age of puberty; the girls as well as the boys
stark naked down to the waist, their hair bound up with a tight cap, and trousers supported by
their hips. (At Silkstone and at Flockton they work in their shifts and trousers.) Their sex was
recognizable only by their breasts, and some little difficulty occasionally arose in pointing out
to me which were girls and which were boys, and which caused a good deal of laughing and
joking. In the Flockton and Thornhill pits the system is even more indecent: for though the
girls are clothed, at least three-fourths of the men for whom they "hurry" work stark naked, or
with a flannel waistcoat only, and in this state they assist one another to fill the corves 18 or
20 times a day: I have seen this done myself frequently.

"When it is remembered that these girls hurry chiefly for men who are not their parents; that
they go from 15 to 20 times a day into a dark chamber (the bank face), which is often 50
yards apart from any one, to a man working naked, or next to naked, it is not to be supposed
but that where opportunity thus prevails sexual vices are of common occurrence. Add to this
the free intercourse, and the rendezvous at the shaft or bullstake, where the corves are
brought, and consider the language to which the young ear is habituated, the absence of
religious instruction, and the early age at which contamination begins, and you will have
before you, in the coal-pits where females are employed, the picture of a nursery for juvenile
vice which you will go far and we above ground to equal."

Two Women Miners

From Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Vol. XV, p. 84, and ibid., Vol. XVII, p.
108.
 41

Betty Harris, age 37: I was married at 23, and went into a colliery when I was married. I used
to weave when about 12 years old; can neither read nor write. I work for Andrew Knowles, of
Little Bolton (Lancs), and make sometimes 7s a week, sometimes not so much. I am a
drawer, and work from 6 in the morning to 6 at night. Stop about an hour at noon to eat my
dinner; have bread and butter for dinner; I get no drink. I have two children, but they are too
young to work. I worked at drawing when I was in the family way. I know a woman who has
gone home and washed herself, taken to her bed, delivered of a child, and gone to work again
under the week.

I have a belt round my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and
feet. The road is very steep, and we have to hold by a rope; and when there is no rope, by
anything we can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys and girls in the pit I
work in; it is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet where I work, and the water
comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs; it rains in at the roof
terribly. My clothes are wet through almost all day long. I never was ill in my life, but when I
was lying in.

My cousin looks after my children in the day time. I am very tired when I get home at night; I
fall asleep sometimes before I get washed. I am not so strong as I was, and cannot stand my
work so well as I used to. I have drawn till I have bathe skin off me; the belt and chain is
worse when we are in the family way. My feller (husband) has beaten me many a times for
not being ready. I were not used to it at first, and he had little patience.

I have known many a man beat his drawer. I have known men take liberties with the drawers,
and some of the women have bastards.

Patience Kershaw, age 17, Halifax: I go to pit at 5 o'clock in the morning and come out at 5
in the evening; I get my breakfast, porridge and milk, first; I take my dinner with me, a cake,
and eat it as I go; I do not stop or rest at any time for the purpose, I get nothing else until I get
home, and then have potatoes and meat, not every day meat.

4. Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of the Manufacturers (London, 1835)

[Andrew Ure (1778-1857), a professor at the University of Glasgow, keenly

understood the advances that came with the system of manufacturing. Here he
represents the views of the manufacturers whose wealth derived from the ownership of
factories.]

This island is pre-eminent among civilized nations for the prodigious development of
its factory wealth, and has been therefore long viewed with a jealous admiration by
foreign powers. This very pre-eminence, however, has been contemplated in a very
different light by many influential members of our own community, and has been even
denounced by them as the certain origin of innumerable evils to the people, and of
revolutionary convulsions to the state.

If the affairs of the kingdom be wisely administered, I believe such allegations and
fears will prove to be groundless....
 42

The blessings which physio-mechanical science has bestowed on society, and the
means it has still in store for ameliorating the lot of mankind, have been too little
dwelt upon; while, on the other hand, it has been accused of lending itself to the rich
capitalists as an instrument for harassing the poor, and of exacting from the operative
an accelerated rate of work. It has been said, ... that the steam-engine now drives the
power-looms with such velocity as to urge on their attendant weavers at the same rapid
pace; but that the hand-weaver ... can throw his shuttle and move his treddles at his
convenience. There is, however, this difference in the two cases, that in the factory,
every member of the loom is so adjusted, that the driving force leaves the attendant
nearly nothing at all to do, certainly no muscular fatigue to sustain, while it procures
for him good, unfailing wages, besides a healthy workshop gratis: whereas the non-
factory weaver, having everything to execute by muscular exertion, finds the labour
irksome, makes in consequence innumerable short pauses, separately of little account,
but great when added together; earns therefore proportionally low wages, while he
loses his health by poor diet and the dampness of his hovel.... The constant aim and
effect of scientific improvement in manufactures are philanthropic, as they tend to
relieve the workmen either from niceties of adjustment which exhaust his mind and
fatigue his eyes, or from painful repetition of efforts which distort or wear out his
frame. At every step of each manufacturing process described in this volume the
humanity of science will be manifest....

… The Factory system … may claim England for its birthplace. The mills for
throwing silk, or making organzine, which were mounted centuries ago in several of
the Italian states … contained indeed certain elements of a factory, and probably
suggested some hints of those grander and more complex combinations of self-acting
machines, which were first embodied half a century later in our cotton manufacture by
Richard Arkwright…. But the spinning of an entangled flock of fibres into a smooth
thread, which constitutes the main operation with cotton, is in silk superfluous; being
already performed by the unerring instinct of a worm, which leaves to human art the
simple task of doubling and twisting its regular filaments. The apparatus requisite for
this purpose is more elementary, and calls for few of those gradations of machinery
which are needed in the carding, drawing, roving, and spinning processes of a cotton-
mill.

When the first water-frames for spinning cotton were erected at Cromford … about
sixty years ago, mankind were little aware of the mighty revolution which the new
system of labour was destined … to achieve … in … British society … [and] the
world at large. Arkwright alone had the sagacity to discern, and the boldness to predict
in glowing language, how vastly productive human industry would become, when no
longer proportioned in its results to muscular effort, which is by its nature fitful and
capricious, but when made to consist in the task of guiding the work of mechanical
fingers and arms, regularly impelled with great velocity by some indefatigable
physical power. What his judgment so clearly led him to perceive, his energy of will
enabled him to realize with such rapidity and success, as would have done honour to
the most influential individuals, but were truly wonderful in that obscure and indigent
artisan....

The principle of the factory system then is, to substitute mechanical science for hand
skill, and … for the division or graduation of labour among artisans. On the handicraft
plan, labour more or less skilled was usually the most expensive element of
 43

production.... but on the automatic plan, skilled labour … will, eventually, be replaced
by mere overlookers of machines. … The grand object therefore of the modern
manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to reduce the task of his
work-people to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity, - faculties, when concentrated
to one process, speedily brought to perfection in the young. In the infancy of
mechanical engineering, a machine-factory displayed the division of labour in
manifold gradations - the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workmen in
the order of skill: but the dexterous hands of the filer and driller are now superseded
by the planning, the key groove cutting, and the drilling-machines; and those of the
iron and brass turners, by the self-acting slide-lathe....

It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery to
supersede human labour altogether, or to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry
of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained
artisans. In most of the water-twist, or throstle cotton-mills, the spinning is entirely
managed by females of sixteen years and up-wards. The effect of substituting the self-
acting mule for the common mule, is to discharge the greater part of the men spinners,
and to retain adolescents and children....

Steam-engines … create a vast demand for fuel; and, while they lend their powerful
arms to drain the pits and to raise the coals, they call into employment multitudes of
miners, engineers, shipbuilders, and sailors, and cause the construction of canals and
railways. Thus therefore, in enabling these rich fields of industry to be cultivated to the
utmost, they leave thousands of fine arable fields free for the production of food to
man, which must have been otherwise allotted to the food of horses. Steam-engines
moreover, … fabricate cheap goods, and procure in their exchange a liberal supply of
the necessities and comforts of life produced in foreign lands.

Improvements in the machinery have a three-fold bearing:

1st. They make it possible to fabricate some articles which, but for them, could not be
fabricated at all.

2nd. They enable an operative to turn out a greater quantity of work than he could
before, - time, labour, and quality of work remaining constant.

3rd. They effect a substitution of labour comparatively unskilled, for that which is more
skilled.
 44

Week 7: The Rise of Democracy

Set Reading

Jonathan Sperber. Revolutionary Europe 1780-1850 (Harlow: Routledge, 2017), 270-91.

Available on Brightspace.

Primary Sources

1. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789

Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789

The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that
the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities
and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the
natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly
before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and
duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power,
may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and
may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based
hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the
constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes
and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following
rights of man and of the citizen:

Articles

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only
upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible
rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual
may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the
exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other
members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined
by law.

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented
which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by
law.
 45

6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally,
or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects
or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all
dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without
distinction except that of their virtues and talents.

7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to
the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be
executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in
virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.

8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary,
and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and
promulgated before the commission of the offense.

9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be
deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall
be severely repressed by law.

10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views,
provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of
man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be
responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These
forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of
those to whom they shall be entrusted.

13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the
cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in
proportion to their means.

14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to
the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and
to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.

15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers
defined, has no constitution at all.

17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except
where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on
condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.

Source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp
 46

2. ‘Forwards and Backwards,’ a poem by Kathinka Zitz-Halein on the revolutions of

1848)

“Forwards! Call the apostles of light

Let us be torches of truth and right.
Backwards! Howl the men of the dark
Hid from the brightness of the spark.

Forwards we struggle and forwards we strive

The will to action keeps us alive.
Backwards, if safety and wealth you prefer
Back to the darkness of things as they were.

Forwards! the eagles call as they fly

On proud wings towards sun in the sky.
Backwards! Whimper the owls as they glide
Back to the holes that they cower inside.

Forwards! History will always show

That freedom’s the noblest prize we know.
Backwards! Go feed your guts, not your heads
And you will raise salves in your children’s beds.

3. Gustav LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Scarcely a century ago the traditional policy of European states and the rivalries of sovereigns
were the principal factors that shaped events. The opinion of the masses scarcely counted, and
most frequently indeed did not count at all. To-day it is the traditions which used to obtain in
politics, and the individual tendencies and rivalries of rulers which do not count; while, on the
contrary, the voice of the masses has become preponderant. It is this voice that dictates their
conduct to kings, whose endeavour is to take note of its utterances. The destinies of nations
are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in the councils of princes.

The entry of the popular classes into political life -- that is to say, in reality, their progressive
transformation into governing classes -- is one of the most striking characteristics of our
epoch of transition. The introduction of universal suffrage, which exercised for a long time
but little influence, is not, as might be thought, the distinguishing feature of this transference
of political power. The progressive growth of the power of the masses took place at first by
the propagation of certain ideas, which have slowly implanted themselves in men's minds,
and afterwards by the gradual association of individuals bent on bringing about the realisation
of theoretical conceptions. It is by association that crowds have come to procure ideas with
respect to their interests which are very clearly defined if not particularly just, and have
arrived at a consciousness of their strength. The masses are founding syndicates before which
the authorities capitulate one after the other; they are also founding labour unions, which in
spite of all economic laws tend to regulate the conditions of labour and wages. They return to
assemblies in which the Government is vested, representatives utterly lacking initiative and
 47

independence, and reduced most often to nothing else than the spokesmen of the committees
that have chosen them.

To-day the claims of the masses are becoming more and more sharply defined, and amount to
nothing less than a determination to utterly destroy society as it now exists, with a view to
making it hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal condition of all
human groups before the dawn of civilisation. Limitations of the hours of labour, the
nationalisation of mines, railways, factories, and the soil, the equal distribution of all
products, the elimination of all the upper classes for the benefit of the popular classes, &c.,
such are these claims.

Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the contrary, are quick to act. As the result of their
present organisation their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are
witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and
sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace
the divine right of kings.
…

Universal symptoms, visible in all nations, show us the rapid growth of the power of crowds,
and do not admit of our supposing that it is destined to cease growing at an early date.
Whatever fate it may reserve for us, we shall have to submit to it. All reasoning against it is a
mere vain war of words. Certainly it is possible that the advent to power of the masses marks
one of the last stages of Western civilisation, a complete return to those periods of confused
anarchy which seem always destined to precede the birth of every new society.

Up to now these thoroughgoing destructions of a worn-out civilisation have constituted the

most obvious task of the masses. It is not indeed to-day merely that this can be traced. History
tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilisation rested have lost
their strength, its final dissolution is brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds
known, justifiably enough, as barbarians. Civilisations as yet have only been created and
directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for
destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves
fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the
future, an elevated degree of culture -- all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves,
have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising. In consequence of the purely
destructive nature of their power crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution
of enfeebled or dead bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the
masses that bring about its downfall. It is at such a juncture that their chief mission is plainly
visible, and that for a while the philosophy of number seems the only philosophy of history.

Source: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BonCrow.html

4. The Times on votes for women

The following appeared in an editorial in The Times, February 29, 1908, 9

 48

Women have within the last century shown a capacity for education undreamed of before; they
have made a name for themselves in science and literature; and have amply proved their
capacity for work as organizers and wise counsellors in municipal affairs. But these admissions
by no means help to prove that women, as women, are qualified to take responsibility for
governing this great State and its Empire. When women talk about women’s successful exercise
of the franchise in some Australasian States, in Finland, or in some States of the Union, they
seem to forget that in all these cases, with due respect be it said, the problems of government
approximate far more to municipal questions than those with which this country has to deal. It
is true that if women could point to any serious grievances from which they suffer owing to
their lack of the franchise in England, there might be something more to be said, but their very
dependence, which is not political but natural, gives them in many ways a privileged position.
Even some of the ardent ladies who beard [boldly challenge / confront] policemen would,
perhaps, not be so ready so to act were they not instinctively aware that their sex protects them
from the rough handling which men would receive in such case. This is not meant in any
derogation to them or to their courage, much the reverse; but it simply points to the fact, which
even they cannot get over, that they are women and cannot expect the same hard knocks that
men receive, though no doubt they receive knocks of another kind.

The fact brutally resolves itself to this. Society ultimately depends on force. Happily force is
not constantly employed, but, until the world becomes very different from what it is, it must
always be latent. What the majority in any age think to be right and just must be impressed on
the minority who do not agree with them by the belief that in the last resort they would fight to
maintain their ideas. A society largely governed by women, as this would be if we had adult
and universal suffrage, could not have this sanction for its internal laws, or for the external
policies of peace and war which it might adopt. If women gave us laws, they would have to
persuade men to enforce them, and men would not do this unless they also approved of them.
And, after all, there is every indication that this is what most women feel. A certain number of
ladies whose names are now well known have recently multiplied themselves at meetings and
demonstrations all over the country, but they have certainly not proved that any considerable
number of their sex agree with them. On the contrary, from the number of ladies who write to
protect against their views one may suspect that the contrary is the case. Gladstone wisely
pointed out on a former occasion that no such extension of the franchise would be tolerable
unless the beneficiaries really desired it. If the matter could be put to the vote of the sex, it
would probably be found that the vast number of women who realize that one of their most
absorbing duties in life is to bear and to educate good citizens for their country, and that they
need not for that reason give up their own education or their own womanly pride, would still
feel that it is the man’s function to order and to guard the State in their joint interest and in the
interest of the family dependent on them. And for the widows and unmarried women Pericles’s
advice still contains much truth – “And if I am to speak of womanly virtues … let me sum them
up in one short admonition. To a woman not to show more weakness than is natural to her sex
is a great glory, and not to be talked about for good or evil among men.”
 49

WEEK 8 – READING WEEK (NO LECTURE OR SEMINARS)

 50

Week 9: European Imperialism

Set Reading

A. G. Hopkins, “Overseas Expansion, Imperialism, and Empire, 1815-1914,” in T. C. W.

Blanning, ed., The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: OUP, 2000): 210-40. Available on
Brightspace.

Suggested Reading

Christopher Andrew, A. S. Kanya-Forstner, “The French ‘Colonial Party’: its Composition,

Aims, and Influence, 1885-1914,” Historical Journal, 14, no. 1 (1971): 99-128.
Dennis Judd, “Diamonds are forever? Kipling’s Imperialism,” History Today, 47, no. 6
(1997): 37-43.
Peter Cain, “Capitalism, aristocracy and empire: some classical theories of imperialism
revisited,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35, no. 1 (2007): 25-45.

Primary Sources

1. Kipling, ‘The White Man’s Burden’

This infamous poem was written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), one of the most popular
British writers of the age of imperialism. In 1907 Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Kipling is best known for his work about India – where he grew up - but this poem was prompted
by the American takeover of the Philippine Islands from Spain in 1898.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

 51

Take up the White Man's burden--

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain

To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead.

 52

Take up the White Man's burden--

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought he us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloke your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Have done with childish days--

The lightly proferred laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years

 53

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.html

2. Jules Ferry, On French Colonial Expansion: Speech to French Chamber of Deputies,

28 March 1884
Ferry was twice prime minister of France, from [1880-1881, 1883-1885]. He is especially
remembered for championing laws that removed Catholic influence from most education in
France and for promoting a vast extension of the French colonial empire.

The policy of colonial expansion is a political and economic system ... that can be connected
to three sets of ideas: economic ideas; the most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and ideas of
a political and patriotic sort.

In the area of economics, I am placing before you, with the support of some statistics, the
considerations that justify the policy of colonial expansion, as seen from the perspective of a
need, felt more and more urgently by the industrialized population of Europe and especially the
people of our rich and hardworking country of France: the need for outlets [for exports]. Is this
a fantasy? Is this a concern [that can wait] for the future? Or is this not a pressing need, one
may say a crying need, of our industrial population? I merely express in a general way what
each one of you can see for himself in the various parts of France. Yes, what our major
industries [textiles, etc.], irrevocably steered by the treaties of 18601 into exports, lack more
and more are outlets. Why? Because next door Germany is setting up trade barriers; because
across the ocean the United States of America have become protectionists, and extreme
protectionists at that; because not only are these great markets ... shrinking, becoming more and
more difficult of access, but these great states are beginning to pour into our own markets
products not seen there before. This is true not only for our agriculture, which has been so
sorely tried ... and for which competition is no longer limited to the circle of large European
states … Today, as you know, competition, the law of supply and demand, freedom of trade,
the effects of speculation, all radiate in a circle that reaches to the ends of the earth … That is
a great complication, a great economic difficulty; ... an extremely serious problem. It is so
serious, gentlemen, so acute, that the least informed persons must already glimpse, foresee, and
take precautions against the time when the great South American market that has, in a manner
of speaking, belonged to us forever will be disputed and perhaps taken away from us by North
American products. Nothing is more serious; there can be no graver social problem; and these
matters are linked intimately to colonial policy.

Gentlemen, we must speak more loudly and more honestly! We must say openly that indeed
the higher races have a right over the lower races … I repeat, that the superior races have a right
 54

because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races … In the history of
earlier centuries these duties, gentlemen, have often been misunderstood; and certainly when
the Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery into Central America, they did not fulfil
their duty as men of a higher race … But, in our time, I maintain that European nations acquit
themselves with generosity, with grandeur, and with sincerity of this superior civilizing duty.

I say that French colonial policy, the policy of colonial expansion, the policy that has taken us
under the Empire [the Second Empire, of Napoleon 1111, to Saigon, to Indochina [Vietnam],
that has led us to Tunisia, to Madagascar-I say that this policy of colonial expansion was
inspired by... the fact that a navy such as ours cannot do without safe harbors, defenses, supply
centers on the high seas … Are you unaware of this? Look at a map of the world. Gentlemen,
these are considerations that merit the full attention of patriots. The conditions of naval warfare
have greatly changed … At present, as you know, a warship, however perfect its design, cannot
carry more than two weeks' supply of coal; and a vessel without coal is a wreck on the high
seas, abandoned to the first occupier. Hence the need to have places of supply, shelters, ports
for defense and provisioning … And that is why we needed Tunisia; that is why we needed
Saigon and Indochina; that is why we need Madagascar … and why we shall never leave them!
… Gentlemen, in Europe such as it is today, in this competition of the many rivals we see rising
up around us, some by military or naval improvements, others by the prodigious development
of a constantly growing population; in a Europe, or rather in a universe thus constituted, a
policy of withdrawal or abstention is simply the high road to decadence! In our time nations
are great only through the activity they deploy; it is not by spreading the peaceable light of their
institutions … that they are great, in the present day. Spreading light without acting, without
taking part in the affairs of the world, keeping out of all European alliances and seeing as a
trap, an adventure, all expansion into Africa or the Orient-for a great nation to live this way,
believe me, is to abdicate and, in less time than you may think, to sink from the first rank to the
third and fourth.

3. John Hobson’s analysis of imperialism

John A. Hobson (1858-1940), an English economist, wrote one the most famous critiques of
the economic bases of imperialism in 1902.

The close of the third quarter of the century saw Europe fairly settled into large national States
or federations of States, though in the nature of the case there can be no finality, and Italy
continued to look to Trieste, as Germany still looks to Austria, for the fulfilment of her manifest
destiny. This passion and the dynastic forms it helped to mould and animate are largely
attributable to the fierce prolonged resistance which peoples, both great and small, were called
on to maintain against the imperial designs of Napoleon. The national spirit of England was
roused by the tenseness of the struggle to a selfconsciousness it had never experienced since
"the spacious days of great Elizabeth." Jena made Prussia into a great nation; the Moscow
campaign brought Russia into the field of European nationalities as a factor in politics, opening
her for the first time to the full tide of Western ideas and influences.

Turning from this territorial and dynastic nationalism to the spirit of racial, linguistic, and
economic solidarity which has been the underlying motive, we find a still more remarkable
movement. Local particularism on the one hand, vague cosmopolitanism upon the other,
yielded to a ferment of nationalist sentiment, manifesting itself among the weaker peoples not
 55

merely in a sturdy and heroic resistance against political absorption or territorial nationalism,
but in a passionate revival of decaying customs, language, literature and art; while it bred in
more dominant peoples strange ambitions of national "destiny" and an attendant spirit of
Chauvinism. .

No mere array of facts and figures adduced to illustrate the economic nature of the new
Imperialism will suffice to dispel the popular delusion that the use of national force to secure
new markets by annexing fresh tracts of territory is a sound and a necessary policy for an
advanced industrial country like Great Britain … It was this sudden demand for foreign markets
for manufactures and for investments which was avowedly responsible for the adoption of
Imperialism as a political policy … They needed Imperialism because they desired to use the
public resources of their country to find profitable employment for their capital which
otherwise would be superfluous …

Every improvement of methods of production, every concentration of ownership and control,

seems to accentuate the tendency. As one nation after another enters the machine economy and
adopts advanced industrial methods, it becomes more difficult for its manufacturers, merchants,
and financiers to dispose profitably of their economic resources, and they are tempted more and
more to use their Governments in order to secure for their particular use some distant
undeveloped country by annexation and protection.

It is this economic condition of affairs that forms the taproot of Imperialism. If the consuming
public in this country raised its standard of consumption to keep pace with every rise of
productive powers, there could be no excess of goods or capital clamorous to use Imperialism
in order to find markets: foreign trade would indeed exist … Everywhere the issue of
quantitative versus qualitative growth comes up. This is the entire issue of empire. A people
limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy have the choice of improving to the
utmost the political and economic management of their own land, confining themselves to such
accessions of territory as are justified by the most economical disposition of a growing
population; or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread their power and energy
over the whole earth, tempted by the speculative value or the quick profits of some new market,
or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition, and ignoring the political and economic wastes
and risks involved by this imperial career. It must be clearly understood that this is essentially
a choice of alternatives; a full simultaneous application of intensive and extensive cultivation
is impossible. A nation may either, following the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put
brains into agriculture, develop a finely varied system of public education, general and
technical, apply the ripest science to its special manufacturing industries, and so support in
progressive comfort and character a considerable population upon a strictly limited area; or it
may, like Great Britain, neglect its agriculture, allowing its lands to go out of cultivation and
its population to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in its methods of education and in
the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may squander
its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of
investment in distant corners of the earth, adding millions of square miles and of unassimilable
population to the area of the Empire.

The driving forces of class interest which stimulate and support this false economy we have
explained. No remedy will serve which permits the future operation of these forces. It is idle to
attack Imperialism or Militarism as political expedients or policies unless the axe is laid at the
 56

economic root of the tree, and the classes for whose interest Imperialism works are shorn of the
surplus revenues which seek this outlet.

Not only does aggressive Imperialism defeat the movement towards internationalism by
fostering animosities among competing empires: its attack upon the liberties and the existence
of weaker or lower races stimulates in them a corresponding excess of national self-
consciousness. A nationalism that bristles with resentment and is all astrain with the passion of
self-defence is only less perverted from its natural genius than the nationalism which glows
with the animus of greed and self-aggrandisement at the expense of others. From this aspect
aggressive Imperialism is an artificial stimulation of nationalism in peoples too foreign to be
absorbed and too compact to be permanently crushed.

While producing for popular consumption doctrines of national destiny and imperial missions
of civilisation, contradictory in their true import, but subsidiary to one another as supports of
popular Imperialism, it has evolved a calculating, greedy type of Macchiavellianism, entitled
"real-politik" in Germany, where it was made, which has remodelled the whole art of diplomacy
and has erected national aggrandisement without pity or scruple as the conscious motive force
of foreign policy. Earth hunger and the scramble for markets are responsible for the openly
avowed repudiation of treaty obligations which Germany, Russia, and England have not
scrupled to defend. The sliding scale of diplomatic language, hinterland, sphere of interest,
sphere of influence, paramountcy, suzerainty, protectorate, veiled or open, leading up to acts
of forcible seizure or annexation which sometimes continue to be hidden under "lease,"
"rectification of frontier," "concession," and the like, is the invention and expression of this
cynical spirit of Imperialism. While Germany and Russia have perhaps been more open in their
professed adoption of the material gain of their country as the sole criterion of public conduct,
other nations have not been slow to accept the standard. Though the conduct of nations in
dealing with one another has commonly been determined at all times by selfish and short-
sighted considerations, the conscious, deliberate adoption of this standard at an age when the
intercourse of nations and their interdependence for all essentials of human life grow ever closer
is a retrograde step fraught with grave perils to the cause of civilisation.

From John A. Hobson, Imperialism (1902; London: Allen and Unwin, 1948)
Source: http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Hobson/hbsnImp1.html
 57

Week 10: War in the modern world

Set Reading

Stig Förster, “Introduction,” in Stig Förster, Roger Chickering, eds, Great war, total war
(Cambridge: CUP, 2000): 1-15. Available on Brightspace.

Evaluate https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/home.html reading at least two articles

which interest you particularly, and comparing similar entries in Wikipedia. What are the
differences in the reliability of the research in these different kinds of articles?

Suggested Reading

Omer Bartov, “Soldiers, Nazis, and war in the Third Reich,” Journal of Modern History, 63,
no. 1 (1991): 44-60.
Heather Jones, “As the Centenary Approaches: the Regeneration of First World War
Historiography,” Historical Journal, 56, no. 3 (2013): 857-78.
John Horne, Alan Kramer, “German ‘atrocities’ and Franco-German opinion 1914: the
evidence of German soldiers’ diaries,” Journal of Modern History, 66, no. 1 (1994): 1-33.

Primary Sources

1. French Declaration of War on Austria (1792)

The outbreak of war in April 1792 set off a quarter century cycle of warfare on a European
scale (latterly under Napoleon). War would also, in the short term, radicalise the policies of
the French government. The French absolute monarchy had been dismantled by the 1789
Revolution. Although there was an elected legislature, the National Assembly, in 1792, Louis
XVI still ruled as a constitutional monarch. The outbreak of war with the Austria of Francis I
in 1792 would be followed by the proclamation of the French Republic, the execution of Louis,
and the Reign of Terror. Second among the 'several European powers' mentioned below was
Prussia, which joined Austria in the war against revolutionary France. Who are the 'French
rebels' that Vienna is accused of affording protection? Does this document suggest new
justifications for war?
Source: John Hardman, The French Revolution, pp. 140-41

The National Assembly, deliberating at the formal request of the King, considering that the
Court of Vienna, in contempt of the treaties [of alliance, dating from the 1750s], has
continued to afford open protection to French rebels, that it has instigated and formed a
concert with several European powers against the independence and security of the French
nation;

That Francis I, King of Hungary and Bohemia [and ruler of Austria], has by his notes of 18
March and 7 April last refused to renounce this concert;
 58

That despite the proposal made to him in the note of II March 1792 that both nations should
reduce the troops on their frontiers to their peace-time effectives, he has continued and
augmented his warlike preparations;

That he has formally infringed the sovereignty of the French nation by declaring his intention
of supporting the claims of the German princes with possessions in France (to whom the
French nation has consistently offered compensation [for loss of feudal privileges]);

That he has sought to divide French citizens and arm them against each other by offering the
malcontents a support in the concert of powers;

Considering, finally, that this refusal to reply to the last despatches of the King of the French
leaves him with no further hope of obtaining the redress of these various grievances by an
amicable negotiation and is tantamount to a declaration of war, decrees that this is a matter of
urgency.

The National Assembly declares that the French nation, faithful to the principles enshrined in
the Constitution 'not to undertake any war with a view to making conquests, and never to
direct its forces against the liberty of any people', is only taking up arms in defence of its
liberty and independence; that the war it is obliged to conduct is not a war of nation against
nation but the just defence' of a free people against the aggression of a king;

That the French will never confuse their brothers with their real enemies; that they will
neglect nothing to alleviate the scourge of war, to spare and preserve property and to visit all
the suffering inseparable from war on those alone who conspire against her liberty;

That the French nation adopts in advance all foreigners who, abjuring the cause of her
enemies, come to range themselves under her banners and devote their efforts to the defence
of her liberty; that it will even facilitate their establishment with all the means at its disposal.

Deliberating at the formal request of the King, and having decreed that this is a matter of
urgency, decrees war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia.

2. The Bryce Report on Alleged German Atrocities in 1914 in Belgium.

PART I
THE CONDUCT OF THE GERMAN TROOPS IN BELGIUM

Although the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1839 to which
France, Prussia, and Great Britain were parties, and although, apart altogether from any duties
imposed by treaty, no belligerent nation has any right to claim a passage for its army across the
territory of a neutral state, the position which Belgium held between the German Empire and
France had obliged her to consider the possibility that in the event of a war between these two
Powers her neutrality might not be respected. In 1911 the Belgian Minister at Berlin had
requested an assurance from Germany that she would observe the Treaty of 1839; and the
Chancellor of the Empire had declared that Germany had no intention of violating Belgian
neutrality. Again in 1913 the German Secretary of State at a meeting of a Budget Committee
Or the Reichstag had declared that "Belgian neutrality is provided for by international
conventions and Germany is determined to respect those conventions." Finally, on July 31,
 59

1914, when the danger of war between Germany and France seemed imminent, Herr von
Below, the German Minister in Brussels, being interrogated by the Belgian Foreign
Department, replied that he knew of the assurances given by the German Chancellor in 1911,
and that he "was certain that the sentiments expressed at that time had not changed."
Nevertheless on August 2 the same Minister presented a note to the Belgian Government
demanding a passage through Belgium for the German army on pain of an instant declaration
of war. Startled as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific war cloud had risen on
the eastern horizon, the leaders of the nation rallied round the King in his resolution to refuse
the demand and to prepare for resistance. They were aware of the danger which would confront
the civilian population of the country if it were tempted to take part in the work of national
defence. Orders were accordingly issued by the civil governors of provinces, and by the
burgomasters of towns, that the civilian inhabitants were to take no part in hostilities and to
offer no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might be furnished for severities, the
populations of many important towns were instructed to surrender all firearms into the hands
of the local officials. [Copies of typical proclamations have been printed in L'Allemagne et la
Belgique, Documents Annexes, xxxvi.]

This happened on August 2. On the evening of August 3 the German troops crossed the frontier.
The storm burst so suddenly that neither party had time to adjust its mind to the situation. The
Germans seem to have expected an easy passage. The Belgian population, never dreaming of
an attack, were startled and stupefied.

LIEGE AND DISTRICT

On August 4th the roads converging upon Liege from northeast, east, and south were covered
with German Death's Head Hussars and Uhlans pressing forward to seize the passage over the
Meuse, From the very beginning of the operations the civilian population of the villages lying
upon the line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors of war. "On
the 4th of August," says one witness, "at Herve" (a village not far from the frontier), "I saw at
about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans; these were " the first German
troops I had seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car.
The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about 30 yards
away. The young men, being afraid, ran off and then the Germans fired and killed one of them
named D ..." The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and
pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighbourhood, to the indiscriminate shooting of
civilians of both sexes, and to the organised military execution of batches of selected males.
Thus at Herve some 50 men escaping from the burning houses were seized, taken outside the
town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet west of Herve, 40 men were shot. In one household alone
the father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly
outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About August 4," says one
witness, "near-Vottern, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about
nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other,
as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as they tried to escape."

The burning of the villages in this neighbourhood and the wholesale slaughter of civilians, such
as occurred at Herve, Micheroux, and Soumagne, appear to be connected with the exasperation
caused by the resistance of Fort Fleron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle
to Liege. Enraged by the losses which they had sustained, suspicious of the temper of the
civilian population, and probably thinking that by exceptional severities at the outset they could
cow the spirit of the Belgian nation, the Germa n officers and men speedily accustomed
themselves to the slaughter of civilians. How rapidly the process was effected is illustrated by
 60

an entry in the diary of Kurt, a one year's man in the 1st Jaegers, who on August 5th was in
front of Fort Fleron. He ill ustrates his story by a sketch map. "The position," he says, "was
dangerous. As suspicious civilians were hanging about-- houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were cleared, the
owners arrested (and shot the following day). Suddenly village A was fired at. Out of it bursts
our baggage train, and the 4th Company of " the 27th Regiment who had lost their way and
been shelled by our own artillery. From the point D.P. (shown in diary) I shoot a civilian with
rifle at 400 metres slap through the head, as we afterward s ascertained." Within a few hours
Hoffman, whilst in house 3, was himself under fire from his own comrades and narrowly
escaped being killed. A German, ignorant that house 3 had been occupied, reported, as was the
fact, that he had been fired upon from that house. He had been challenged by the field patrol,
and failed to give the countersign. Hoffman continues: "Ten minutes later, people approach
who are talking excitedly--apparently Germans. I call out 'Halt, who's there ?' Suddenly rapid
fire is opened upon us, which I can only escape by quickly jumping on one side-- with bullets
and fragments of wall and pieces of glass flying round me. I call out 'Halt, here Field Patrol.'
Then it stops, and there appears Lieutenant Ramer with three platoons. A man has reported that
he had been shot at out of our house; no wonder, if he does not give the countersign." The entry,
though dated August the 5th, was evidently written on the 6th or later, because the writer refers
to the suspicious civilians as having been shot on that day. Hoffman does not indicate of what
offence these civilians were guilty, and there is no positive evidence to connect their slaughter
with the report made by the German who had been fired on by his comrades. They were
"suspicious" and that was enough.

The systematic execution of civilians, which in some cases, as the diary just cited shows, was
founded on a genuine mistake, was given a wide extension through the province of Liege. In
Soumagne and Micheroux very many civilians were summarily shot. In a field belonging to a
man named E . . . . 56 or 57 were put to death. A German officer said: "You have shot at us."
One of the villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and said: "If you think these people fired,
kill me, but let them go." The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their
corpses were seen in the field that night by another witness. One at least had been mutilated.
These were not the only victims in Soumagne, The eye-witness of the massacre saw, on his
way home, 20 bodies, one that of a young girl of 13. Another witness saw 19 corpses in a
meadow.

At Blegny Trembleur, on the 6th, some civilians were captured by German soldiers, who took
steps to put them to death forthwith, but were restrained by the arrival of an officer. The
prisoners subsequently were taken off to Battice and five were shot in a field. No reason was
assigned for their murder.

In the meantime house burners were at work. On the 6th Battice was destroyed in part. From
the 8th to the 10th over 300 houses were burnt at Herve, while mounted men shot into doors
and windows to prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

At Heure le Romain on or about the 15th of August all the male inhabitants, including some
bedridden old men were imprisoned in the church. The burgomaster's brother and the priest
were bayoneted.

On or about the 14th and 15th the village of Vise was completely destroyed. Officers directed
the incendiaries, who worked methodically with benzine. Antiques and china were removed
from the houses, before their destruction, by officers, who guarded the plunder revolver in hand.
The house of a witness, which contained valuables of this kind, was protected for a time by a
 61

notice posted on the door by officers. This notice has been produced to the Committee. After
the removal of the valuables this house also was burnt.

German soldiers had arrived on the 15th at Blegny Trembleur and seized a quantity of wine.
On the 16th prisoners were taken; four, including the priest and the burgomaster, were shot. On
the same day 200 (so-called) hostages were seized at Flemalle and marched off. There they
were told that unless Fort Flemalle surrendered by noon they would be shot. It did surrender
and they were released.

Entries in a German diary show that on the 19th the German soldiers gave themselves up to
debauchery in the streets of Liege, and on the night of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took
place in the streets, beginning near the Cafe Carpentier, at which there is said to have been a
dinner attended by Russian and other students. A proclamation issued by General Kolewe on
the following day gave the German version of the affair, which was that his troops had been
fired on by Russian students. The diary states that in the night the inhabitants of Liege became
mutinous and that 50 persons were shot. The Belgian witnesses vehemently deny that there had
been any provocation given, some stating that many German soldiers were drunk, others giving
evidence which indicates that the affair was planned beforehand. It is stated that at 5 o'clock in
the evening, long before the shooting, a citizen was warned by a friendly German soldier not
to go out that night.

Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known with certainty. - The Rue
des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de l'Universite and the Quai des Pecheurs were
systematically fired with benzine, and many inhabitants were burnt alive in their houses, their
efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot, while trying to escape,
before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liege Fire Brigade turned out but was not allowed
to extinguish the fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of civilian
corpses to the Town Hall. The fire burnt on through the night and the murders continued on the
following day, the 21st. Thirty-two civilians were killed on that day in the Place de l'Universite
alone, and a witness states that this was followed by the rape in open day of 15 or 20 women
on tables in the square itself.

No depositions are before us which deal with events in the city of Liege after this date.
Outrages, however, continued in various places in the province.

For example, on or about the 21st of August, at Pepinster, two witnesses were seized as hostages
and were threatened, together with five others, that unless they could discover a civilian who
was alleged to have shot a soldier in the leg, they would be shot themselves. They escaped their
fate because one of the hostages convinced the officer that the alleged shooting, if it took place
at all, took place in the Commune of Cornesse and not that of Pepinster, whereupon the
Burgomaster of Cornesse, who was old and very deaf, was shot forthwith.

The outrages on the civilian population were not confined to the villages mentioned above, but
appear to have been general throughout this district from the very outbreak of the war.

An entry in one of the diaries says: "We crossed the Belgian frontier on 15th August 1914 at
11.50 in the forenoon, and then we went steadily along the main road till we got into Belgium.
Hardly were we there when we had a horrible sight. Houses were burnt down, the inhabitants
chased away and some of them shot. Not one of the hundreds of houses were spared. Everything
was plundered and burnt. Hardly had we passed through this large village before the next
 62

village was burnt, and so it went on continuously. On the 16th August 1914 the large village of
Barchon was burnt down. On the same day we crossed the bridge over the Meuse at 11.50 in
the morning. We then arrived at the town of Wandre. Here the houses were spared, but
everything was examined. At last we were out of the town and everything went in ruins. In one
house a whole collection of weapons was found. The inhabitants without exception were
brought out and shot. This shooting was heart-breaking as they all knelt down and prayed, but
that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and
slept for ever." ["Die Einwohner wurden samt und sonders herausgeholt Imd erschossen: aber
diese Erschiessen war direkt herzzerreisend wie sie alle knieben und beteten, aber dies half kein
Erbarmen. Ein " paar Schafsse krackten lmd die fielen racklings in das grufne Gras und
verschliefen frummer."]

Source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brycere.asp

3. Directives for the Treatment of Political Commissars (“Commissar Order”) (June 6,

1941)

That Hitler did not see the pending invasion of Russia as a conventional war of territorial
conquest was clear, not least from the following “Commissar Order” of June 6, 1941. As early
as the 1920s, Hitler had identified the Soviet Union as the Bolshevist command centre of the
alleged Jewish world conspiracy. His intention now was to crush this supposed racial-
ideological archenemy of the German Volk through a war of annihilation that would involve
the extermination of the Jews as well as the decimation and enslavement of “inferior” Slavic
peoples. The following order, the so-called Commissar Order, which instructed the German
military leadership – in clear violation of international law – to engage in the systematic
persecution and murder of Soviet political commissars, sealed the cooperation of the
Wehrmacht with the annihilation campaign of the SS. Hitler’s formal repeal of the order on
March 6, 1942 – partly an attempt to accommodate the opposition of some military
commanders – did not change anything about the way Germany conducted war during
“Operation Barbarossa.”

High Command of the Armed Forces Fuehrer Headquarters, 6 June 1941

WFSt. (Armed Forces Operational
Staff) Department L (IV Q)
(“Intelligence”)
No 44822/41 Top Secret for general
officers only
In addition to the Fuehrer’s decree of 14 May regarding Military jurisdiction in the
“Barbarossa” zone (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces/Armed Forces Operational
Staff/Department L (IV Q) (Intelligence) No 44718/41, (Top Secret, for General Officers only),
the enclosed “directives for the treatment of political commissars” are being transmitted
herewith:
You are requested to limit the distribution to Commanders in Chief of Armies or of Air
Commands, respectively, and to inform the Junior commanders by word of mouth.
The Chief of the Supreme Command
Of the Armed Forces
By Order.
Signed: Warlimont
 63

12
Enclosure to Supreme Command of the Armed Forces/Department L IV Q (Intelligence)
No. 44822/41 Top Secret
For General Officers only.
Directives for the treatment of political commissars.
When fighting Bolshevism one can not count on the enemy acting in accordance with the
principles of humanity or International Law. In particular it must be expected that the treatment
of our prisoners by the political commissars of all types who are the true pillars of resistance,
will be cruel, inhuman and dictated by hate.
The troops must realize:
1.) That in this fight it is wrong to trust such elements with clemency and consideration in
accordance with International Law. They are a menace to our own safety and to the rapid
pacification of the conquered territories.
2.) That the originators of the asiatic-barbaric methods of fighting are the political commissars.
They must be dealt with promptly and with the utmost severity.
Therefore, if taken while fighting or offering resistance they must, on principle, be shot
immediately.
For the rest, the following instructions will apply:
I. Theatre of Operations.
1) Political commissars who oppose our troops will be dealt with in accordance with the “decree
concerning jurisdiction in the “Barbarossa” area”. This applies to commissars of any type and
position, even if they are only suspected of resistance, sabotage or instigation thereto.
Reference is made to “Directives on the behavior of troops in Russia.”
2) Political commissars in their capacity of officials attached to the enemy troops are
recognizable by their special insignia – red star with an inwoven golden hammer and sickle on
the sleeves – [ . . . ]. They are to be segregated at once, i.e. while still on the battlefield, from
the prisoners of war. This is necessary in order to deprive them of any possibility of influencing
the captured soldiers. Those commissars will not be recognized as soldiers; the protection
granted to prisoners of war in accordance with International Law will not apply to them. After
having been segregated they are to be dealt with.
3) Political commissars who are not guilty of any hostile act or are not suspected of such will
remain unmolested for the time being. Only in the course of a deeper penetration into the
country will it be possible to decide whether they are, or should be handed over to the
“Sonderkommandos”. The latter should preferably scrutinize these cases themselves.
As a matter of principle, when deliberating the question of “guilty or not guilty”, the personal
impression received of the commissar’s outlook and attitude should be considered of greater
importance than the facts of the case which may not be decisive. 3
4) In cases 1) and 2) a brief report (report form) on the incident is to be submitted:
a) to the Division (Ic) (Field Intelligence Officer) by troops subordinated to a Division.
b) to the Corps Command or other respective Commands, as follows (Ic) by troops directly
subordinated to a Corps Command, an Army High Command or the Command or an Army
group, or Armored Group.
5) None of the above mentioned measures must delay the progress of operations. Combat troops
should therefore refrain from systematic rounding-up and cleansing measures.
II. In the Rear Areas.
Commissars arrested in the rear area on account of doubtful behavior are to be handed over to
the “Einsatzgruppe” or the “Einsatzkommandos” of the SS Security Service (SD) respectively.
III. Restriction with regard to Court Martials and Summary Courts.
The Court Martials and Summary Courts of regimental and other commanders must not be
entrusted with the carrying out of the measures as under I and II.
 64

Distribution:
Sector Staff Silesia 1st copy
Army Group B 2nd copy
Sector Staff East Prussia 3rd copy
High Command 18th Army 4th copy
Sub-sector East Prussia I 5th copy
Fortress Staff Blaurock 6th copy
High Command 4th Army 7th copy
Sector Staff Staufen 8th copy
Labor Staff Gotzmann 9th copy
High Command 11th Army 10th copy
High Command 2nd Army 11th copy
Chief Construction Group South 12th copy
Fortress Staff 49 13th copy
Fortress Staff Wegener 14th copy 4
Armoured Group 4 15th copy
High Command of Army in Norway 16th copy
Army High Command/ Adjutants Office 17th copy
Army C.i.C.
Army High Command/ Adjutants Office 18th copy
Army General Staff
Army High Command/ Department: 19th copy
Foreign Armies East
Army High Command/ Operational 20th copy
Section (without OKW decree)
Army High Command/ Quartermaster- 21st copy
General (without OKW decree)
In reserve copy 22-30

Source: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English58_new.pdf
 65

Week 11: Cold War

Set Reading

Klaus Larres, “International and Security Relations within Europe,” in Mary Fulbrook, ed.,
Europe since 1945 (Oxford: OUP, 2001): 187-239. Available on Brightspace.

Suggested Readings

Michael Cox, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “The tragedy of American Diplomacy: Rethinking the
Marshall Plan,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 7, no. 1 (2005): 97-134.
Charles Maier, “The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe,” Journal of Cold War Studies,
7, no. 1 (2005): 168-74.
Diethelm Prowe, “Kohl and the German Reunification Era,” Journal of Modern History, 74,
no. 1 (2002): 120-38.
Jeremi Suri, “‘Developed Socialism’: the Soviet Thaw and the Crucible of the Prague Spring,
1964-1972,” Contemporary European History, 15, no. 2 (2006): 133-58.

Primary Sources

1. Post-war Europe

Speech Delivered by General George Marshall at Harvard University on June 5, 1947

Marshall was the US Secretary for State during the early years of the Cold War. Facing
growing Communist movements in western Europe, especially France and Italy, and fearing
the extension of Soviet power throughout the whole of the continent, the United States offered
economic aid to all European countries. The Marshall Plan has been credited with fuelling
western Europe’s postwar boom and preventing the establishment of one-party states in France
and Italy; but it has also been criticised for dividing Europe in two, being unncessarily
aggressive towards the Soviet Union, and only having had a limited impact on European
economic recovery.

I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to
all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous
complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it
exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation.
Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is
hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples,
and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote
peace in the world.
 66

In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe, the physical loss of life, the
visible destruction of cities, factories, mines, and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has
become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious
than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy. For the past 10 years conditions
have been highly abnormal. The feverish preparation for war and the more feverish
maintenance of the war effort engulfed all aspects of national economies. Machinery has fallen
into disrepair or is entirely obsolete. Under the arbitrary and destructive Nazi rule, virtually
every possible enterprise was geared into the German war machine. Long-standing commercial
ties, private institutions, banks, insurance companies, and shipping companies disappeared,
through loss of capital, absorption through nationalization, or by simple destruction. In many
countries, confidence in the local currency has been severely shaken. The breakdown of the
business structure of Europe during the war was complete. Recovery has been seriously
retarded by the fact that two years after the close of hostilities a peace settlement with Germany
and Austria has not been agreed upon. But even given a more prompt solution of these difficult
problems, the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a
much longer time and greater effort than bad been foreseen.

There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always
produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This
division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time it is threatened with
breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with
the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery is lacking or
worn out. The farmer or the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase.
So the sale of his farm produce for money which lie cannot use seems to him an unprofitable
transaction. He, therefore, has withdrawn many fields from crop cultivation and is using them
for grazing. He feeds more grain to stock and finds for himself and his family an ample supply
of food, however short he may be on clothing and the other ordinary gadgets of civilization.
Meanwhile people in the cities are short of food and fuel. So the governments are forced to use
their foreign money and credits to procure these necessities abroad. This process exhausts funds
which arc urgently needed for , reconstruction. Thus a very serious situation is rapidly
developing which bodes no good for the world. The modern system of the division of labor
upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.

The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign
food and other essential products-principally from America-are so much greater than her
present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social,
and political deterioration of a very grave character.

The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European
people I n the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The
manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their
products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.

Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances
arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy
of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do
whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without
which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against
any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should
 67

be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and
social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not
be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may
render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is
willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the
United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other
countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups
which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will
encounter the opposition of the United States.

It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its
efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there
must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation
and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever
action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for
this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on
its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come
from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European
program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The
program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all, European nations.

An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding
on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be
applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness
on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed
upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.
Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947marshallplan1.html

2. The Brezhnev Doctrine

In response to the efforts, early in 1968, of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, under the
leadership of Alexander Dubcek, to introduce a number of reforms, including the abolition of
censorship, the Soviet Union adopted a policy of combating "anti-socialist forces". The polict
became known as "Brezhnev Doctrine".
Dubcek's movement, known as the "Prague Spring," was suppressed in an invasion. In
November 1968, speaking before Polish workers, that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev gave the
following justification.

In connection with the events in Czechoslovakia the question of the correlation and
interdependence of the national interests of the socialist countries and their international
duties acquire particular topical and acute importance.

The measures taken by the Soviet Union, jointly with other socialist countries in defending the
socialist gains of the Czechoslovak people are of great significance for strengthening the
socialist community, which is the main achievement of the international working class.

We cannot ignore the assertions, held in some places, that the actions of the five socialist
countries run counter to the Marxist-Leninist principle of sovereignty and the rights of nations
to self-determination.
 68

The groundlessness of such reasoning consists primarily in that it is based on an abstract, non-
class approach to the question of sovereignty and the rights of nations to self-determination.
The peoples of the socialist countries and Communist parties certainly do have and should have
freedom for determining the ways of advance of their respective countries.

However, none of their decisions should damage either socialism in their country or the
fundamental interests of other socialist countries, and the whole working class movement,
which is working for socialism. This means that each Communist party is responsible not only
to its own people, but also to all the socialist countries, to the entire Communist movement.
Whoever forget this, in stressing only the independence of the Communist party, becomes one-
sided. He deviates from his international duty.

Marxist dialectics are opposed to one-sidedness. They demand that each phenomenon be
examined concretely, in general connection with other phenomena, with other processes. Just
as, in Lenin's words, a man living in a society cannot be free from the society, one or another
socialist state, staying in a system of other states composing the socialist community, cannot
be free from the common interests of that community.

The sovereignty of each socialist country cannot be opposed to the interests of the world of
socialism, of the world revolutionary movement. Lenin demanded that all Communists fight
against small nation narrow-mindedness, seclusion and isolation, consider the whole and the
general, subordinate the particular to the general interest.

The socialist states respect the democratic norms of international law. They have proved this
more than once in practice, by coming out resolutely against the attempts of imperialism to
violate the sovereignty and independence of nations. It is from these same positions that they
reject the leftist, adventurist conception of "exporting revolution," of "bringing happiness" to
other peoples. However, from a Marxist point of view, the norms of law, including the norms
of mutual relations of the socialist countries, cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, and in
isolation from the general context of class struggle in the modern world. The socialist countries
resolutely come out against the exporting and importing of counterrevolution. Each Communist
party is free to apply the basic principles of Marxism Leninism and of socialism in its country,
but it cannot depart from these principles (assuming, naturally, that it remains a Communist
party).

Concretely, this means, first of all, that, in its activity, each Communist party cannot but take
into account such a decisive fact of our time as the struggle between two opposing social
systems-capitalism and socialism. This is an objective struggle, a fact not depending on the will
of the people, and stipulated by the world's being split into two opposite social systems. Lenin
said: "Each man must choose between joining our side or the other side. Any attempt to avoid
taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco."

It has got to be emphasized that when a socialist country seems to adopt a "non-affiliated"
stand, it retains its national independence, in effect, precisely because of the might of the
socialist community, and above all the Soviet Union as a central force, which also includes the
might of its armed forces. The weakening of any of the links in the world system of socialism
directly affects all the socialist countries, which cannot look indifferently upon this.

The antisocialist elements in Czechoslovakia actually covered up the demand for so-called
neutrality and Czechoslovakia's withdrawal from the socialist community with talking about
 69

the right of nations to self-determination. However, the implementation of such "self-

determination", in other words, Czechoslovakia's detachment from the socialist community,
would have come into conflict with its own vital interests and would have been detrimental to
the other socialist states. Such "self-determination", as a result of which NATO troops would
have been able to come up to the Soviet border, while the community of European socialist
countries would have been split, in effect encroaches upon the vital interests of the peoples of
these countries and conflicts, as the very root of it, with the right of these people to socialist
self-determination.

Discharging their internationalist duty toward the fraternal peoples of Czechoslovakia and
defending their own socialist gains, the U.S.S.R. and the other socialist states had to act
decisively and they did act against the antisocialist forces in Czechoslovakia.

From Pravda, September 25, 1968; translated by Novosti, Soviet press agency. Reprinted in
L. S. Stavrianos, TheEpic of Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1971), pp.465-466.

Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1968brezhnev.html

3. Kohl on German Re-Unification

Helmut Kohl had been Chancellor of the Federal Republic since 1982. In 1989, he, like other
leaders in the west, were taken by surprise as the Soviet Union withdrew from eastern Europe
and the communist regimes collapsed. In this extract, he shows his appreciation for both the
domestic and foreign policy factors, which shaped the process of German reunification. Lauded
at the time, he now stands criticised of rushing the process and creating unncessary difficulties
in the newly united Germany and throughout Europe.

My most crucial experience in the process of German unification was my visit to Dresden on
December 19, 1989. When I landed with my entourage on the bumpy concrete runway of the
Dresden-Klotzsche airport, it suddenly became clear to me: this regime is finished. Unification
is coming!

Thousands of people were waiting for us at the airport; a sea of black, red, and gold flags
fluttered in the cold December air – among them was an almost forgotten white and green
Saxon state flag. When the airplane came to a halt, I descended the staircase and saw [Hans]
Modrow waiting for me about 10 yards away with a hardened expression on his face. I turned
to Rudolf Seiters, minister of the chancellery, and said: “That’s it. It’s in the bag.”

Tens of thousands lined the streets as we drove into the city: entire workforces had come out;
entire school classes were standing there, cheering us on. Banners read: “Kohl, Chancellor of
the Germans” and “The Federal State of Saxony Welcomes the Chancellor.” Modrow, who sat
next to me in the car, seemed very self-conscious. In front of the Hotel Bellevue we were
completely surrounded by a sea of people. People kept shouting “Helmut, Helmut,” “Germany,
Germany,” or “We are one people,” but they also shouted that I should address them.

I had not actually planned to give a speech, but at that moment it was clear to me that I had to
talk to the people. Wolfgang Berghofer, Dresden’s mayor at the time, suggested that I speak in
front of the ruins of the Frauenkirche. As I climbed the stairs to the wooden rostrum, I could
feel the great hopes and expectations that the people had pinned on me. I gave them warm
 70

regards from their fellow citizens in the Federal Republic of Germany. Those words alone
brought cheers from the crowd. I gestured to show that I wanted to continue speaking. It got
very quiet. I then continued:
“The second thing I would like to convey is a word of acknowledgment and admiration for this
peaceful revolution in the GDR. It is the first time in German history that people have
demonstrated in a spirit of nonviolence, with seriousness, earnestness, and solidarity, to build
a better future. For that I give all of you my most heartfelt thanks.” Again there was thunderous
applause, and then it got very quiet as I continued to speak. I said it was a demonstration for
democracy, for peace, for freedom, and for the self-determination of our people, and then I
went on: “And dear friends, for those of us in the Federal Republic, self-determination also
means that we respect your opinion. We do not want to – and will not – impose our will on
anyone else. We respect your decision regarding the future of the country. [ . . . ] We will not
abandon our compatriots in the GDR. And we know – and let me say this amidst the enthusiasm
that I am so pleased to experience here – how difficult this path to the future will be. But let me
also shout out to you: Together we will succeed on this path to Germany’s future.”
I then informed the hundred thousand who had gathered of the results of my talks with the GDR
minister presidents, and I said that by this spring we wanted to conclude an agreement on a
treaty community between the Federal Republic and the GDR. And that close cooperation in
all areas was also planned.”

“We especially want to cooperate as closely as possible in the economic area, with the clear
goal of improving living conditions in the GDR as quickly as possible. We want the people
here to feel comfortable. We want you to be able to stay in your homes and find good fortune
here. It is crucial that the people in Germany can come together in the future, that freedom of
travel in both directions is guaranteed. We want the people in Germany to be able to meet
wherever they want.”

I had the impression that the people assembled in front of the Frauenkirche were already
looking toward a unified Germany. It was this prospect that filled them with enthusiasm, not
so much the results of my negotiations. So while there was a surge of applause when I spoke
of the free elections that were about to take place in the GDR, the enthusiasm that followed my
mentioning of the prospects that would thereby open up was absolutely indescribable:

“You will have a freely elected government. Then the time will come for what I have called
confederative structures, that is, joint government committees, so we can live in Germany with
as much common ground as possible. And let me also say on this square, which is so rich in
history, that my goal – should the historical hour permit it – remains the unity of our nation.
And, dear friends, I know that we can achieve this goal and that the hour will come when we
will work together towards it, provided that we do it with reason and sound judgment and a
sense for what is possible.”

In order to keep the enthusiasm on the square from going overboard, I spoke very matter-of-
factly of the long and difficult path to this common future, just as I had done in Berlin on
November 10th: “We, the Germans, do not live alone in Europe and in the world. One look at
a map will show that everything that changes here will have an effect on all of our neighbors,
those in the East and those in the West. There is no point if we fail to acknowledge that many
of our neighbors view this path with concern and some even with fear. Nothing good can come
of fear. And still, as Germans we must say to our neighbors: In view of the history of this
century, we understand some of these fears. We will take them seriously. For us, that means
we wish to represent our interests as Germans. We say “yes” to the right to self-determination,
 71

which all peoples in the world should have, also the Germans. But, dear friends, this right to
self-determination only makes sense for the Germans if we do not lose sight of the security
needs of others. We want to enter a world with greater peace and greater freedom, which sees
more cooperation with each other than opposition against each other. The house of Germany,
our house, must be built under a European roof. That must be the goal of our policies.
…

But, dear friends, true peace is not possible without freedom. That is why you are fighting and
demonstrating for freedom in the GDR, and that is why we are supporting you, and that is why
you have our solidarity … Now it is up to us to continue peacefully along this path in the time
ahead of us, to proceed with patience, sound judgment, and together with our neighbors. Let us
work together toward this goal, let us help each other in a spirit of solidarity. From here in
Dresden, I send my greetings to all our compatriots in the GDR and the Federal Republic of
Germany.”

In closing, I called out to the crowd: “God bless our German fatherland!” I was deeply moved,
so it was very hard for me to conclude my speech. What would happen now? But the people
remained calm; however, no one made any move to leave the square. Then something happened
that signaled to everyone that it was time to go. An elderly woman climbed onto the podium,
embraced me, started to cry, and said quietly: “We all thank you!” The microphones were all
still on and everyone could hear it. Then the people started to disperse. Exhausted and happy
we hurried through the cordon of people to the cars that brought us back across the Elbe River.

Long after midnight, we walked to Hotel Bellevue, where I invited our small delegation to
come to my room for a drink. Together we made a preliminary assessment of the last few hours,
and I said once more, “I think we’ll do it; we’ll get unification. It’s rolling. I don’t think it can
be stopped anymore, the people want it. The regime is definitely finished.”

Source: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=3236
 72

Week 12: The End of Empires

Set Reading

Selections from Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L.J. Butler, Crises of Empire:
Decolonization and Europe's Imperial States, 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
Brightspace.

Gillo Pontecorvo (dir.), The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Film clips available on Brightspace

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (1945)

After the defeat of Japan in 1945, France, the old colonial power, tried to reclaim its colonies
in Indochina - i.e. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. But France faced opposition, which it had
been able to beat down before the war, from a nationalist political party. This party, the
Vietnamese Communist Party, had been founded in Paris in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh (1890
1969 - the name is a nom-de-guerre), a man from a poor family who had nevertheless been
able to acquire an education in Paris. Ho expanded his political base in 1941 when he
founded a broader nationalist coalition, the Viet Minh (Vietnamese League for Independence)
. The Viet Minh fought a guerilla war against both the Japanese and the Vichy French forces
- making the Viet Minh an ally of the United States at that time.

Looking for recognition from the United States and other Western countries, Ho and his
colleagues proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945. Instead of
supporting the Republic, the West recognized French claims. The first Indo-China War was
fought with the French from 1946 to 1954 and resulted in the division of Vietnam in South
and North Vietnam. By the mid 1960s, France, weakened also by its colonial war in Algeria,
was no longer a force in the region and the United States, already a supporter of South
Vietnam, became the chief backer of the southern Republic of Vietnam. The situation was not
stable, and eventually resulted in the Second Indo-China War, known in the US as the
"Vietnam War".

The following document is an object lesson in the use of Enlightenment ideals, and 19th
century nationalism, by colonized peoples.

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of
America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from
birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
 73

The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen
also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and
have equal rights."

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-
citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the
North, the Center, and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent
our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they
have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and
devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They
have monopolized the issuing of banknotes and the export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our
peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly
exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese Fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish
new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended
knees and handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the
Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that from the end of last
year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri province to the North of Vietnam, more
than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation. On March 9, the French troops
were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered showing
that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span of five years, they
had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before March 9, the Vietminh League urged the French to ally
themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French
colonialists so intensified their terrorist activities against the Vietminh members that before
 74

fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and
Caobang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a
tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese putsch of March 1945, the Vietminh
League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese
jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had
become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national
sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the
French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our
people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won
independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic
regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the
present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole
Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character
with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on
behalf of Vietnam and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired
in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the
bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Tehran and San Francisco have
acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to
acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eight years, a
people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last
years, such a people must be free and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and
independent country-and in fact is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined
to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order
to safeguard their independence and liberty.

Ho Chi Minh, "Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,

" Selected Writings (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1977), pp. 53-
56. (http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html)
 75

The Schumann Declaration, Paris, 9 May 1950

On 9 May 1950, the declaration made in the salon de l’Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry
by the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, marks the decisive starting point for
European integration. (Source: Selection of texts concerning institutional matters of the
Community from 1950 to 1982. Luxembourg: European Parliament - Committee on
Institutional Affairs, 1982. 561 p. p. 47-48)

“World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to
the dangers which threaten it. The contribution which an organized and living Europe can bring
to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. In taking upon herself
for more than 20 years the rôle of champion of a united Europe, France has always had as her
essential aim the service of peace. A united Europe was not achieved and we had war.

Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through
concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. The rassemblement of the nations
of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany. Any
action taken must in the first place concern these two countries.

With this aim in view, the French Government proposes to take action immediately on one
limited but decisive point. It proposes to place Franco-German production of coal and steel as
a whole under a common higher authority, within the framework of an organisation open to the
participation of the other countries of Europe. The pooling of coal and steel production should
immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a
first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have
long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most
constant victims.

The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France
and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. The setting-up of
this powerful productive unit, open to all countries willing to take part and bound ultimately to
provide all the member countries with the basic elements of industrial production on the same
terms, will lay a true foundation for their economic unification. This production will be offered
to the world as a whole without distinction or exception, with the aim of contributing to raising
living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements. Europe, with new means at her
disposal, will be able to pursue the realisation of one of her essential tasks: the development of
the African Continent.

In this way there will be realised simply and speedily that fusion of interests which is
indispensable to the establishment of a common economic system; it may be the leaven from
which may grow a wider and deeper community between countries long opposed to one another
by sanguinary divisions. By pooling basic production and by instituting a new higher authority,
whose decisions will bind France, Germany, and other member countries, this proposal will
lead to the realisation of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable
to the preservation of peace.

To promote the realisation of the objectives defined, the French Government is ready to open
negotiations on the following bases:
 76

(1) that the task with which this common higher authority will be charged will be that of
securing in the shortest possible time the modernization of production and the improvement of
its quality;
(2) the supply of coal and steel on identical terms to the French and German markets, as well
as to the markets of other member countries;
(3) the development in common of exports to other countries;
(4) the equalization and improvement of the living conditions of workers in these industries.

To achieve these objectives, starting from the very different conditions in which the productions
of member countries are at present situated, it is proposed that certain transitional measures
should be instituted, such as the application of a production and investment plan, the
establishment of compensating machinery for equating prices, and the creation of an
amortization fund (fonds de réconversion) to facilitate the rationalization of production. The
movement of coal and steel between member countries will immediately be freed from all
Customs duty, and will not be affected by differential transport rates. Conditions will gradually
be created which will spontaneously provide for the more rational distribution of production at
the highest level of productivity. In contrast to international cartels, which tend to impose
restrictive practices on
distribution and the exploitation of national markets, and to maintain high profits, the
organization will ensure the fusion of markets and the expansion of production.

The essential principles and undertakings defined above will be the subject of treaties signed
between the States and submitted for the ratification of their Parliaments. The negotiations
required to settle details of their application will be undertaken with the help of an arbitrator
appointed by common agreement. He will be entrusted with the task of seeing that the
agreements reached conform with the principles laid down, and, in the event of a deadlock, he
will decide what solution is to be adopted.

The common higher authority entrusted with the management of the scheme will be composed
of independent persons appointed by the Governments on an equal basis (sur une base
paritaire).
A chairman will be chosen by common agreement between the Governments. The authority’s
decisions will have executive force in France, Germany, and other member countries.
Appropriate measures will be provided for means of appeal against the decisions of the
authority.

A representative of the United Nations will be accredited to the authority, and will be instructed
to make a public report to the United Nations twice yearly, giving an account of the working
of the new organisation, particularly as concerns the safeguarding of its specific objects.
The institution of the higher authority will in no way prejudge the methods of ownership of
enterprises. In the exercise of its functions the common higher authority will take into account
the powers conferred upon the International Ruhr Authority and the obligations of all kinds
imposed upon Germany, so long as these remain in force.”

Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, delivered to a Conservative Association

meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968.
 77

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to

do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.
One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have
occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be
real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current
troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all
politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.
Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even
for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it
probably wouldn't happen."
Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and
the object, are identical.
At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most
unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who
knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.
A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary
working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.
After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I
wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this
government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three
children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with
family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or
20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."
I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I
stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?
The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow
Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament,
that his country will not be worth living in for his children.
I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he
is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout
Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to
which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.
In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million
Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official
figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office.
There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to
seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of
Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth
and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will
be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.
As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in
England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase.
Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates
the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians
to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or
minimised lie several parliaments ahead.
The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask:
"How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited,
bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an
 78

alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to
whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.
The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping,
or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers
are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.
It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving
from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional
families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000
dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-
descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own
funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the
purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen.
Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary,
even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a
further 25,000 dependants per annumad infinitum, without taking into account the huge
reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for
fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for
settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary
legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.
I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth
citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving
their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of
their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would
otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants.
I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the
immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the
prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the
national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the
total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.
Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's
policy: the encouragement of re-emigration.
Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose
either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the
manpower and the skills they represent.
Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at
present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can
find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the
determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could
appreciably alter the prospects.
The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as
citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference
made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class
citizens" and "second-class citizens." This does not mean that the immigrant and his
descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be
denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-
citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive
for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.
There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who
vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be
 79

leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after
year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or
archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over
their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong.
The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the
immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming.
This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk
throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who
propose and support it is that they know not what they do.
Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in
Britain and the American Negro. The Negro population of the United States, which was
already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and
were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they
have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to
Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and
another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the
vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.
Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or
from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and
always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's.
But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and
opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For
reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on
which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to
obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their
plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to
apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the
native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told
them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be
established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect
them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the
agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.
In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or
three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find
ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but
what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people,
writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their
address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of
Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or
reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which
is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is
something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine.
I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:
“Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now
only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her
husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset,
into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put
something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one
 80

house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion.
Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.
“The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use
her 'phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any
stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the
chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always
refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week.
“She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had
a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she
could get were Negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this
country." So she went home.
“The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can.
Immigrants have offered to buy her house - at a price which the prospective landlord would
be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid
to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she
goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They
cannot speak English, but one word they know. "Racialist," they chant. When the new Race
Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong?
I begin to wonder.”
The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to
realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration." To be integrated into a population
means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.
Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour,
integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the
Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many
thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and
endeavour is bent in that direction.
But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of
immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.
We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of
background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of
the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their
numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally
bear upon any small minority did not operate.
Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests
in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the
exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the
population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has
been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The
words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not
mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present
government:
'The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be
regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to
accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or
should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism
is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.'
All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to
say it.
 81

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill
is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant
communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their
fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the
ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like
the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the
Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is
coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In
numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.
Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to
demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would
be the great betrayal.
 82

Select Course Bibliography

The following are suggestions. Look too for articles in reputable journals (the more recent
the better).

PART A - THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

PLACES TO START

Kümin, Beat. The European World, 1500-1800. An Introduction to Early Modern History.
New York: Routledge, 2009.
Pettegree, Andrew. Europe in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Reformation

Bagchi, David. “Printing, Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the Age of Martin Luther.”
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. 31 Aug. 2016; Accessed 6 Sep. 2022.
http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199340378-e-269
Cameron, Euan, The European Reformation. Oxford, Clarendon 1991.
Crofts, Richard A. “Printing, Reform, and the Catholic Reformation in Germany (1521-
1545).” The Sixteenth Century Journal 16, no. 3 (1985): 369–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2540224.
Dixon, Scott (ed.). The German Reformation: the essential readings. Oxford, Blackwell,
1999.
McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction. Oxford, Blackwell, 1988.
Oberman, Heiko A. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. New Haven and London, Yale
University Press, 1989.
Pettegree, Andrew. Europe in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. The relevant
chapters can be found on Brightspace as assigned reading.
Pettegree, Andrew (ed.). The Early Reformation in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992. See the introduction especially.
Pettegree, Andrew. Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Pettegree, Andrew and Matthew Hall. “The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration.”
Historical Journal 47, no. 4 (2004): 1–24.
Scribner, R. W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German
Reformation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Scribner, R.W. The German Reformation. London, Macmillan, 1986.
Sparn, Walter. “Preaching and the Course of the Reformation.” In The Transmission of Ideas
in the Lutheran Reformation, edited by Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, 173-183. Dublin,
Irish Academic Press, 1989.
 83

New Worlds

A good starting place is Camilla Townsend’s overview of the Conquest of Mexico for Oxford
University Press in 2011, connect via http://library.ucd.ie/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2214696

Cieza de León, Pedro de. The discovery and conquest of Peru: chronicles of the New World
encounter. Durham N.C., Duke University Press, 1998.
Columbus, Christopher. The Diario of Christopher Columbus's first voyage to America,
1492-1493 / abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas ; transcribed and translated into
English, with notes and a concordance of the Spanish, by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley,
Jr. London, University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Elliott, J.H. The old world and the new 1492-1650. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1992. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.01971.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Columbus. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992.
Greenblatt, Stephen (ed.), New World Encounters. Berkeley and Oxford, University of
California Press, 1993.
Jones, E.L. The European Miracle. Environments, economies, and geopolitics in the history
of Europe and Asia. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
McAlister, Lyle N. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Parry, J.H. The Age of Reconnaissance. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02781
Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of possession in Europe's conquest of the New World, 1492-1640.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.01808

Witchcraft and Magic

Briggs, Robin, Communities of belief: cultural and social tension in early modern France.
Oxford, Clarendon, 1989.
Briggs, Robin. Witches & neighbours: the social and cultural context of European
Witchcraft. London, Harper Collins, 1996.
Clark, Stuart. “King James's Daemonologie: witchcraft and kingship.” In The Damned Art:
Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, edited by Sydney Anglo, 156-181. London, Routledge,
1977.
Clark, Stuart. Thinking with demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe.
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Goodare, Julian. “Women and the witch-hunt in Scotland.” Social History 23, no. 3 (1998):
288-308.
Goodare, Julian. “The Aberdeenshire witchcraft panic of 1597.” Northern Scotland, 21
(2001): 17-37
Goodare, Julian (ed.). The Scottish Witch Hunt in Context. Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 2002.
Larner, Christina. Enemies of God: the witch-hunt in Scotland. London: Blackwell, 1981.
Larner, Christina. Witchcraft and religion: the politics of popular belief. Oxford: Blackwell,
1984.
Levack, Brian. The witch-hunt in early modern Europe. London, Longman, 1995.
 84

Levack, Brian. “The Great Scottish witch-hunt of 1661-1662.” Journal of British Studies 20,
no, 1 (1980): 20-108.
McLachlan, Hugh V. and J.K. Swales. “Witchcraft and anti-feminism.” Scottish Journal of
Sociology, 4 (1980): 141-186.
MacDonald, S.W. “The Devil's mark and the witch-prickers of Scotland.” Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine 90, no. 9 (1997): 507-511.
MacDonald, S.W. “The witch doctors of Scotland.” Scottish Medical Journal 43, no. 4
(1998): 119-122.
McDonald, S.W. & A. Thom. “The Bargarran witch trial: a psychiatric reassessment.”
Scottish Medical Journal 41, no. 5 (1996): 152-158.
Maxwell-Stuart, Peter G. Witchcraft in Europe and the New World 1400-1800. Basingstoke,
Palgrave, 2001.
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Occult." In Reformation Europe: A Guide
to Research, edited by Steven Ozment. St Louis, Center for Reformation Research, 1982.
Monter, William (ed.). European Witchcraft. London, Wiley, 1969.
Monter, William. "European Witchcraft: A Moment of Synthesis?" Historical Journal 31, no.
1 (1988):183-85.
Monter, William. “The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects.”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2, no. 4 (1972): 435-51.
Roper, Lyndal. “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination.” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 16 (2006): 117-41.
Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the devil : witchcraft, sexuality, and religion in early modern
Europe. London: Routledge, 1994.
Rowlands, Alison. “Witchcraft and Old Women in Early Modern Germany.” Past and
Present 173 (2001): 50-89.
Salmon, J. H. M. "History without Anthropology: A New Witchcraft Synthesis." Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 19, no. 3 (1989): 481-86.

See also http://www.hist.unt.edu/web_resources/witchcraft_bib.pdf

The Industrial Revolution

Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009),
SLC
Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (London, 1968) GEN 330.942
Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures (London, 1985), GEN 338.0942/BER
Crafts, Nicholas F. R. British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford,
1985). GEN 330.942
Crafts, N.F.R. ‘Industrial Revolution in England and France: Some Thoughts on the Question
‘Why was England First?’ in Economic History Review (1977).
Daunton, Martin, Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-
1850 (Oxford, 1995) GEN 330.942/DAU
Hartwell, R. M. The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth. London, 1971
SLC2/STORE 330.942/HAR & GEN 330.942
Hudson, Pat. The Industrial Revolution (London, 1992). GEN 330.942/HUD &
SLC2/STORE 330.942/HUD
Jacob, Margaret. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York, 1997)
GEN 509/JAC
 85

Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial

Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, 1969.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.01145
Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. Rev. ed. New York,
1961. GEN 330.942/MAN

See also http://www.oup.com/us/pdf/economic.history/industrial.pdf

PART B (THE MODERN WORLD)

INTRODUCTORY TEXTS (ONLINE)

Berger, Stefan, ed. A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789-1914. London:
Blackwell, 2006: particularly useful for background on empire and democracy.
Best, Anthony, Hahnimäki, Jussi M., Maiolo, Joseph, Schulze, Kirsten, eds. International
History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. London: Routledge, 2015: particulary useful
chapters on the two world wars, the Cold War and decolonization.
Fulbrook, Mary, ed. Europe since 1945. Oxford: OUP, 2000.
James, Harold. Europe Contested. From the Kaiser to Brexit. London; Routledge, 2020:
particularly useful for warfare, the Cold War, and decolonization.

The exchange between Kershaw and Smith will provide important context for the seminar
discussions on warfare, the Cold War, and decolonization. They are also a good example of
historical debate, of teasing out evidence and its significance for particular questions.

Kershaw, Ian. “War and Political Violence in Twentieth Century Europe.” Contemporary
European History, 14, no. 1 (2005): 107-23.
Smith, Steve. “Comment on Kershaw.” Contemporary European History, 14, no. 1 (2005):
124-30.
Kershaw, Ian, “Reply to Smith.” Contemporary European History, 14, no. 1 (2005): 131-4.

The Rise of Democracy

GOOD PLACE TO START (ALL ONLINE)

Fitzsimmons, Michael P. “The Principles of 1789.” In A Companion to the French
Revolution, edited by Peter McPhee, 74-90. London: John Wiley, 2012.
Garrard, John. “The democratic experience.” In A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe,
1789-1914, edited Stefan Berger, 149-63. London; Blackwell, 2006.
Gemie Sharif. “Revolutions and revolutionaries: Histories, concepts, and myths.” In A
Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789-1914, edited by Stefan Berger, 125-136.
London: Blackwell, 2006.
Purvis, June Crawford, Elizabeth, Stanley Holton, Sandra. “Did Militancy Help or Hinder the
Granting of Women’s Suffrage in Britain?” Women’s History Review, 28, no. 7 (2019): 1200-
34.
Phillips, John A. and Wetherell, Charles. “The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political
Modernization of England.” American Historical Review, 100, no. 2 (1995): 411-436.
 86

OTHERS
Baycroft, Timothy, and Hewitson, Mark. What is a nation? Europe, 1789-1914 (Oxford:
OUP, 2006): 940.28/BAY
Bayly, C.A. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, especially 139-47, 247-83. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2004. 909.8/BAY
Breuilly, John. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: MUP, 1993. 320.54/BRE
Burleigh, Michael. Earthly Power: Religion and Politics in Europe from the Enlightenment to
the Great War. London: Harper, 2006. 282.4/BUR
Clark, Christopher. “Germany 1815-1848: Restoration or pre-March?” In German History since
1800, edited by Mary Fulbrook. London: Arnold, 1997.
Davis, John A. Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy. London:
Macmillan, 1988.
Hoppen, K. Theodore. The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846-1886. Oxford: OUP, 1998.
Laven, David and Lucy Riall, eds. Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration
Europe. Oxford: Berg, 2000.
Laven, David. “Law and Order in Habsburg Venetia 1814-1835.” Historical Journal, 39, no. 2
(1996): 383-403.
Lyons, Martyn. Post-revolutionary Europe, 1815-1856. Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2006, especially
chs.7 and 14.
Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The rise of classes and nation-states, 1760-
1914. Cambridge: CUP, 1993, chs 11-14.
Parry, Jonathan. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1993, ch. 5
Riall, Lucy. The Italian Risorgimento. State, Society, and National Unification. London:
Routledge, 1994.
Rich, Norman. The Age of Nationalism and Reform, 1850-1890. New York: Norton, 1977,
especially chapters 2-3.
Sperber, Jonathan. Revolutionary Europe, 1780-1850. Harlow: Routledge, 2017.
Tombs, Robert. France 1814-1915. London: Longman, 1996.
Zimmer, Oliver and Len Scales, eds. Power and the Nation in European History. Cambridge:
CUP, 2005), Parts III and IV: 940/POW

Imperialism

GOOD PLACE TO START (ALL ONLINE)

Bell, Duncan. “Empire and Imperialism.” In The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century
Political Thought, edited by Gareth Stedman Jones, Gregory Claes, 864-92. Cambridge:
CUP, 2013.
Benton, Lauren. A Search for Sovereignty. Law and Geography in European Empire2, 1400-
1900. Cambridge, CUP, 2009.
Darwin, John. “Imperialism and the Victorians: the Dynamics of Territorial Expansion.” The
English Historical Review, 112, no 447 (1997): 614-642.
Gallagher, John, Ronald Robinson. “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” Economic History
Review, 6, no. 1 (1953): 1-15: a classic article, much contested and often revisited.
Hopkins, A.G. “The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt,
1882.” Journal of African History, 27, no. 2 (1986): 363-91.
 87

Trotha, Trutz von. “Colonialism.” In A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789-

1914, edited by Stefan Berger, 432-447. London: Blackwell, 2006.

OTHERS
Baumgart, Winfried. Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial
Expansion, 1880-1914. Oxford: OUP, 1982. 325.32/BAU
Cain, P. J., and Hopkins, A. G. British Imperialism: Innovation and expansion, 1688-2000.
London: Longman, 2002)
Darwin, John. The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-system, 1830-
1970. Cambridge; CUP, 2009
Fieldhouse, D. K. Colonialism, 1870-1945. London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981:
325.3/FIE
Geyer, Dietrich, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860-
1914. Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987: 947.08/GEY
Gifford, Prosser, Louis, William Roger, eds. France and Britain in Africa: Imperial rivalry
and colonial rule. New Haven: Yale UP 1971: 960/GIF
Lieven, D. C. B. Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals. London; John Murray, 2000:
947/LIE
Mommsen, Wolfgang. Imperial Germany, 1867-1918. London: Arnold, 1995: 943.08/MOM
Mulligan, William. “Decisions for Empire: Revisiting the Occupation of Egypt, 1882.”
English Historical Review, 135, no. 572 (2020): 94-124.
Nettelbeck, Amanda. Indigenous Rights and Colonial Subjecthood. Protection and Reform in
the Nineteenth Century British Empire. Cambridge: CUP, 2019.
Pitts, Jennifer. A Turn to Empire. The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France.
Princeton: PUP, 2006: 325.342/PIT.
Porter, Andrew. European imperialism, 1860-1914. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1994:
325.32/POR
Porter, Andrew, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century.
Oxford; OUP, 1999: 942/OXF
Porter, Bernard. The Absent-Minded Imperialists. Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain.
Oxford: OUP, 2004: 942.08/POR
Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003 edn.

War
GOOD PLACE TO START (ALL ONLINE)
Black, Jeremy. The Age of Total War, 1860-1945. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.
Chickering, Roger and Stig Förster. “Are we there yet? World War II and the Theory of Total
War.” In A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937-1945,
edited by Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, Bernd Greiner, 1-16. Cambridge: CUP, 2004).
Jones, Heather. “As the Centenary Approaches: the Regeneration of First World War
Historiography.” Historical Journal, 56, no. 3 (2013): 857-78.
Mulligan, William. “Total War: A Review Article.” War in History, 15, no. 2 (2008): 211-
221.
Segesser, Daniel. “Controversy: Total War.” 1914-1918 online: https://encyclopedia.1914-
1918-online.net/article/controversy_total_war
 88

Strachan, Hew. “Essay and Reflection: On Total War and on Modern War.” International
History Review, 22, no. 2 (2000): 341-70.

OTHERS
Beckett, Ian. The Great War, 1914-1918. Harlow: Longman, 2001: 940.3/BEC
Bell, David. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare.
London: Bloomsbury, 2007: 940.27/BEL
Bernstein, Alvin, Murray, Williamson, and Knox, MacGregor, eds. The Making of Strategy.
States, Rulers, and War. Cambridge: CUP, 1994: 355.4/MUR
Black, Jeremy. Introduction to Global Military History: 1775 to the Present Day. London;
Routledge, 2005.
Blanning, T. C. W. The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802. London; Arnold, 1996:
944.04/BLA
Boemeke, Manfred, Chickering, Roger, and Förster, Stig, eds. Anticipating total war. The
German and American experiences, 1871-1914. Cambridge: CUP, 1999: 355.033043/BOE
Chickering, Roger, and Förster, Stig, eds. The Shadows of Total War. Europe, East Asia, and
the United States, 1919-1939. Cambridge: CUP, 2003: 355.03304/CHI
Chickering, Roger, Förster, Stig, and Greiner, Bernd, eds. A World at Total War: Global
Conflict and the Politics of Destruction. Cambridge: CUP, 2005: 950.53/CHI
Cox, Mary E. Hunger in War and Peace. Women and Children in Germany, 1914-1924.
Cambridge: CUP, 2019.
Feldman, Gerald. Army, Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914-1918. Princeton: PUP, 1966:
943.08/FEL
Jackson, Ashley. The British Empire and the Second World War. London: Hambledon, 2006
Jones, Heather. Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War. Cambridge: CUP,
2013.
Mosse, George. Fallen Solders: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: OUP,
1990
Steiner, Zara. The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919-1933. Oxford:
OUP, 2007: 940.5/STE
Weinberg, Gerhard. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: CUP,
1994
Wellington, Jennifer. Exhibiting War. The Great War, Museums, and Memory in Britain,
Canada, and Australia. Cambridge: CUP, 2017.
Winter, Jay, Robert, Jean-Louis, eds. Capital Cities at war: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914-
1919. Cambridge: CUP, 1997: 940.3/CAP

The Cold War

GOOD PLACE TO START (ALL ONLINE)

Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko. The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War. New
Haven: Yale UP, 2008.
Cresswell, Michael and Marc Trachtenberg. “France and the German question, 1945-1955.”
Journal of Cold War Studies, 5, no. 3 (2003): 5-28.
Deighton, Anne. “Constructing a Cold War Peace.” Diplomatic History, 25, no. 1 (2001): 141-7.
Gaddis, John Lewis. “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International
System.” International Security, 10, no. 4 (1986): 99-142.
 89

Reynolds, David. “Probing the Cold War Narrative since 1945: the case of Western Europe.”
In The Cold War. Historiography, memory, and representation, edited by Konrad H. Jarausch,
Christian F. Ostermann, and Andreas Etges, 67-82. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin/Boston,
2017.
Spohr, Kristina. “German Unification: Between Official History, Academic Scholarship, and
Political Memoirs.” Historical Journal, 43, no. 3 (2000): 869-888.

OTHERS

Buchanan, Tom, Europe’s Troubled Peace, 1945-2000. Oxford: Wiley, 2006.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War. London: Penguin, 2007: 327.73/GAD
Hitchcock, William. The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent
since 1945. London: Profile, 2004: 940.55/HIT
Hogan, Michael. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the reconstruction of Western
Europe. Cambridge: CUP, 1987: 338.9173/HOG
Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. London: Heinemann, 2005:
940.55/JUD
Maier, Charles. Dissolution. The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany.
Princeton: PUP, 1997: 320.943/MAI
Maier, Charles, ed. The Cold War in Europe. New York: Markus Wiener, 1991: 327/MAI
Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. London; Penguin, 1999:
940.5/MAZ
Nation, R. Craig. Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917-1991.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992.
Pittaway, Mark. Eastern Europe 1939-2000. London: Arnold, 2004
Sarotte, Mary. 1989. The Struggle to Create a New Post-Cold War Europe. Princeton: PUP,
2014.
Stone, Dan. Goodbye to all that? The story of Europe since 1945. Oxford: OUP, 2014: 940.55
STO
Swain, Geoffrey and Swain, Nigel. Eastern Europe since 1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003:
949/SWA
Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace. The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-
1963. Princeton: PUP, 1999: 940.55/TRA

The End of Empires

Places to start
Duara, Prasenjit, ed. Decolonization. Perspectives from Now and Then, 1-18 (an introduction
to a wide variety of readings). London: Routledge, 2004.
Darwin, John. The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830-
1970, 556-648. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.
Darwin, John. “Diplomacy and Decolonization.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, 28, no. 3 (2000): 5-24.
Elkins, Caroline. “Looking beyond Mau Mau: Archiving the Violence in the Era of
Decolonization.” American Historical Review, 120, no. 3 (2015): 852-868. Part of a special
 90

issue about decolonization and archives, this article reflects upon how states shape the
archival record to produce positive narratives of the state’s history.
Manela, Erez. “Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the
Revolt against Empire.” American Historical Review, 111, no. 5 (2006): 1327-51.
Connelly, Matthew. “Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during
the Algerian War of Independence.” American Historical Review, 105, no. 3 (2000): 739-69.

OTHERS
Alexander, Martin S., Evans, Martin and Keiger J. F. V., eds. The Algerian War and the
French army, 1954-62 : Experiences, Images, Testimonies. London: Frank Cass, 2002.
Buettner, Elizabeth. “‘Going for an Indian’: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of
Multiculturalism in Britain.” Journal of Modern History, 80, no. 4 (2008): 865-901.
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000
Elkins, Caroline. Legacy of Violence. A History of the British Empire. London: Bodley Head,
2022
Elkins, Caroline and Susan Pedersen, eds. Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century.
London: Routledge, 2005.
Chamberlain, M. E. The Longman Companion to European decolonisation in the twentieth
century. London: Longman, 1998
Garavini, Giuliano. After Empires. European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge
from the Global South, 1957-1986. Oxford: OUP, 2012
Nasili, Minayo. “Citizens, Squatters and Asocials: The Right to Housing and the Politics of
Difference in Post-Liberation France.” The American Historical Review 119, no. 2 (2014): 434-
459.
Thomas, Martin. Empires of Intelligence. Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 194.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.