1. A concern with causation characterized both the political thought
and the historical writing of the Scottish Enlightenment
(1). It implied that no theory of the social institutions
or of the forms of government would be satisfying unless it provided a
viable account of how they were brought about. As far as historiography
was concerned, it meant that mere narrative would not be enough, and a
collection of facts or a detailed account of events should be supplemented
with a more "philosophical" critical outline of their causes.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the problem of causation
loomed over the whole historical writing and thinking of William Robertson
(2). When his biographer Dugald Stewart, speaking of
the History of Charles V, remarked that Robertson had succeeded
in tracing "a meridian [...] through the vast map of time",
and in exhibiting to the mind "a line of reference [...] for marking
the bearings of those subordinate occurrences, in the multiplicity of
which its powers would have been lost", he was just referring to
the explicatory powers of a causative reasoning, which brought clearness
and a rational drift to the historical narration (3).
The aim of this paper is to try to reconstruct the role played by causative
reasoning in the historiographical practice of Robertson. Rather than
discussing his abstract method for classifying causes, I will therefore
focus on a number of textual strategies whereby Robertson’s concern
for an understanding of causes can be seen in its performative and operational
aspect.
The rest of this paper is divided as follows. In the next section I will
sketch out the various shapes taken by the languages of historical causation
and unintended consequences in the historical writings of Robertson. In
the two following sections, I will focus on one particularly remarkable
instance of his theory of historical causation, and I will comment on
the textual relationship between historical narrative and critical analysis
of causes. Subsequently, I will turn to the presence of a language of
the unintended consequences. This is a case in point of Robertson’s
approach to historical causation. As the pattern of unintentionality underlying
the course of history called for the exercise of special skills and the
acquisition of unprecedented social knowledge on the part of the historian,
I would also like to argue that the assessment of the causes of unpredicted
effects was the main field for the display of a philosophical kind of
history.
Lastly, in the final section I will draw some conclusions.
2. Robertson articulated his vocabulary of historical causation and unintended
consequences in three main branches, namely those of Providential arguments,
the stadial history of manners, and the political history of prudence
and the public interest. It can be said that each of these languages presented
a different set of causes. The Providential discourse was founded on the
role the divine will supposedly played in the shaping of history. The
history of manners was concerned with social and economic causes, or with
historical factors we would now call cultural. Political history tended
to explain history in terms of the dynamics and results of the struggle
for power within the ruling élites.
These three different historiographical languages also framed alternative
patterns of historical periodization. Providential history staged the
intervention of God against a very long-term background, one would be
tempted to say against an immemorial and eternal time. The history of
manners adopted a long-term perspective. The confrontation between kingship
and feudal aristocracy in Scotland, and the ultimate demise of the latter
which coincided with the rise of the commercial age, for example, spanned
more than two centuries in Robertson’s narrative, from the later
Middle Ages to the British Union of 1707. Political history, on the contrary,
focused on a middle-, and often a short-term chronological range, witnessed
by the reign-by-reign arrangement of narrative, and by the annalistic
device of constantly reminding the readers (top or side of the page) of
the year in which the events narrated took place.
Let us briefly look at the ways in which Robertson conceptualised the
problem of historical causation in each historical genre, beginning with
Providential history.
The first appearance of a providential argument in Robertson’s writings
occurred in a sermon on The Situation of the World at the Time
of Christ’s Appearance that he gave to the Society for the Propagation
of Christian Knowledge in Edinburgh in 1755. Although we should bear in
mind that, given its different rhetorical nature, this sermon does not
necessarily throw light on the role played by Providence in the historical
writings, we can suppose that some of its conclusions had an influence
on Robertson’s historical thought. He maintained here that only by
the time the Roman Empire had come to conquer the Mediterranean world
and to unite it in a single system of language, manners, and laws, the
communicative conditions for the apostolic mission were created. He restated
the providential connection between the birth of Christ and the consolidation
of the empire under Augustus that had been established in the Patristic
literature, by Eusebius, Origene and Augustine among others (4). Robertson showed a similar interest
in connecting the providential Revelation of the Word to the political
and commercial situation of the Roman world. The moral meaning of such
a timing for the providential origin of Christianity was that the new
religion could thus "check [...] the pernicious effects of despotic
unlimited power" (5).
3. In both the History of Scotland and Charles V providential
arguments are widely used, notably in the context of an account of the
origins and progress of the Reformation (6).
John Knox is called "the instrument of Providence for advancing the
Reformation" (HS, II.35), and in front of such a revolution
as the Reformation even "historians the least prone to credulity
and superstition" can not but admit the operation of Providence (HC,
II.78).
In accordance with a conception of Providence that was already very clear
in the sermon of 1755, Robertson did not endorse a miracolous explanation
of the progress of the Reformation. Robertson’s God did not intervene
in the course of history as an absolute ruler, but acted as a constitutional
monarch, refraining from changing the course of human events with His
arbitrary lightning bolts, and delegating authority to the laws of nature
and society, letting them handle everything. It was for this reason that
Robertson dwelled instead on the political and cultural causes which brought
about the sixteenth-century religious revolution (7). He referred to the grievances against the power
of the clerics, the immorality of the clergy, the exorbitant wealth of
the Church, the inalienability of the land usurped by the clergy, the
benefits gained through the invention of printing, the revival of ancient
political theory with its emphasis on civic liberty, as causes of the
Reformation (HS, I.119-29, 156-57; HC, II.101-20, 205-06,
324-25, 337, 421-27). Robertson went as far as professing that he would
not be concerned with the discussion of "Papist" theological
doctrines because they belong to the domain of ecclesiastical historians;
he would confine himself to the "influence of political causes"
(HC, II.120). And the political dimension of the Reformation came
to the fore when Robertson reconstructed the conflict between Charles
V and the German princes, a struggle in which religious interests are
always linked to the acquisition of power and to the reason of state.
The second language of historical causation to be found in Robertson’s
writings is connected to what we may call a history of manners, and it
frequently took the shape of a stadial conception of history. Like all
the other exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment, Robertson was drawn
to the concept of manners by the example of Voltaire, and he repeated
the typically Scottish concern for a history of manners that was mainly
related to the shifting settlements of property. In one of the end-text
notes published in the section of "Proofs and Illustrations"
to the View, Robertson proceeded to the reconstruction of four
stages in the legal titles to ownership of the land: total independence,
allodial property, feudal vassallatic and beneficial property and feudal
hereditary property (View, 213-27). A stadial conception of society
was often sketched out by the Scots (Robertson, who famously said in the
History of America that "in every enquiry concerning the operations
of men when united together in society, the first object of attention
should be to their mode of subsistence" (HA, I.324), did not
however stated explicitly a "four stages theory of history").
But it should always be borne in mind that no stadial history in the true
sense of the word was ever fully developed in the Scottish Enlightenment.
When, for want of a better word, I refer to a stadial history or a stadial
conception of history, it should be understood that I mean less a sequential
reconstruction of the history of society than a very powerful set of allusions
to a certain mechanics of social and historical change (8).
4. It is fair to say that Robertson went an unprecedentedly long way
in accommodating a history of manners within the boundaries of philosophical
history (9). Robertson’s exercises in
the history of manners are contained in the View (whose aim is
said to be an account of two "revolutions in the manners of European
nations. The first [...] occasioned by the progress of the Roman power;
the second by the subversion of it", View, 1), in books IV
and VII of the History of America (dealing respectively with the
North American tribes and with the place of the Mexican and Peruvian empires
in the scale of civilization), and in the Appendix to the Disquisition
on the Knowledge that the Ancients had of India, which was composed
first and subsequently postponed to the narrative account of European
trade with India from antiquity to the rise of the Portoguese commercial
empire.
The concept of manners came to have a very powerful influence on the whole
question of historical causation (Hume once referred to manners as a "general
cause" in history (10). We will see
presently how the language of the unintended consequences as well hinged
on the history of manners and property.
The third language of historical causation I will be dealing with, is
embodied in a rather traditional understanding of the requirements of
the narrative of political history. For the purposes of this paper, it
is particularly important to point out that the narrative of political
history was for Robertson strictly connected to an analysis of the motivations
of historical characters (11). It shows yet another philosophical aspect of the
historiography of Robertson, linked to a Tacitean representation of the
hidden causes of human action (12). In framing a theory of historical
characters and their motivations, Robertson faced a long-standing prejudice,
according to which eye-witnesses only would be able to penetrate the meaning
of the actions of historical actors. Dr. Johnson pointed out exactly this
alledged limitation of Robertson’s point of view, when he remarked
that "Robertson paints; but [...] you are sure he does not know the
people whom he paints" (13). Not being
an insider (as Tacitus, Guicciardini or Clarendon had all been), he would
necessarily be unable to judge the actions of people he did not know.
By relying on a science of human nature, the Scots believed they could
overcome that limitation. Since passions are tendentially uniform, the
behaviour of the statesmen of the past could be reconstructed and judged
accordingly. To be faithful and impartial, a historian needed not write
contemporary history. Robertson felt he could penetrate the character
of Charles V or Cardinal Ximenes with no less psychological and moral
accuracy than Tacitus had shown in painting the mind of a Tiberius. This
attitude helped to transform the traditional humanist language of the
sinews of power into a more sophisticated picture of the interplay between
ruling passions and considerations of the public interest. Although this
language was not incompatible with the sentimental approach to history
and with the morally exemplary character that civic humanism required
of history, it would not have been possibile without the scientific anatomy
of the passions set forth in the Humean science of human nature. An account
of the motivations working behind the façade of human actions depended
on an accurate definition and a precise differentiation between apparently
undistinguishable similar passions.
5. In this paper I will mainly focus on the relationship between history
of manners and political history in the writings of Robertson. As we have
seen, although Providential history was for Robertson a distinct and autonomous
genre of historical writing, when it came to questions of historical causation
he often did nothing else than couch a secular account in a Providential
language. It has accordingly seemed appropriate to leave Providence aside,
and concentrate on manners and politics. Let me therefore briefly enumerate
some of the differences between these two discourses.
The history of manners was about social groups and it focused on patterns
of collective behaviour, while the humanist language of political history
was predominantly concerned with the ruling passions of historical characters
and their effects on public phenomena. Consequently, the history of manners
(especially when it was expressed in a stadial language) dealt with structural
changes, while the language of political history was mainly concerned
with a process of decision-making. Moreover, while a history of manners
was tendentially comparative and aiming at generalizations, political
history was more évenementielle, and more strictly concerned with
the particular and the unrepeatable.
Ultimately, history of manners and political history can be traced back
to two alternative theories of passions. Self-love and the pursuit of
private interest have an overriding importance in the history of manners,
especially in its Scottish version, which was mainly concerned with the
patterns of the acquisition of property, in a legal and materialistic
sense. Mandeville’s remarks on the role of self-liking and emulation
in the struggle for social power and wealth (14), Hume’s insights into the social function of
pride (15), and Smith’s theory of the relationship between social
vanity, self-improvement and the distinction of ranks (16),
should however warn us not to forget that things were much more complex.
The humanist conception of passions underlying political history is founded
on a much more elusive and heterogeneous set of passions and motivations.
They may go from the pursuit of power to the acquisition of glory, from
the fanatical search for religious conformity to the care for the welfare
of one’s own subjects; they may be utterly selfless or narrowly egoistical.
This complexity is one of the main reasons why it is extremely difficult
to account for the patterns of historical causation and the language of
the unintended consequences that can be found in the political history
inherited by Robertson from the Renaissance.
These general differences between political history and the history of
manners also account for the different types of arguments founded on the
unintended consequences, that we find as we shift from one historical
genre to the other. The language of the unintended consequences was deeply
rooted in both genres. In the case of the history of manners, it tended
to be concerned with the unexpected growth of public benefits out of the
pursuit of private interest by the members of a social class (17). In the case of political history it took
a different shape. The language of the unintended consequences was there
embodied in a study of historical characters and the weight that motivations,
passions and the fickleness and volatility of human behaviour might carry
on public events and the pursuit of the public interest
(18). Although the rationale of these two different
applications of the idea of the unintended consequences could not be greater,
in the historical writings of Robertson there was scope for their fruitful
cooperation: they were therefore not contradictory, but complementary.
6. Robertson’s most elaborate treatment of historical causation
is certainly the justly celebrated survey of the several causes of progress
contained in the first section of the View of the Progress of Society
in Europe. The View itself is a preliminary critical analysis
preceding the historical narration of the reign of Charles V. It is a
sweeping account of a number of transformations which occurred in the
manners and political systems of medieval Europe. Because of its role
as a conjectural history of the rise, progress and demise of the feudal
system, Robertson did not consider it necessary to observe a "chronological
accuracy", but chose to focus on the "mutual connection and
dependance" between the different causes (View, 22). For its
explicatory role the View can be compared to the preliminary study
of the Scottish ancient constitution that Robertson put in the opening
book of the History of Scotland. He believed that only after clearing
the ground of any fable regarding mythical origins, and after providing
a general framework of interpretation, could a traditional historical
narration begin.
Robertson lists ten major causes or clusters of causes that brought about
the rise of the European modern system of States after the fall of the
Roman Empire. They are causes of different species — political, legal,
commercial, cultural (interestingly, none of the causes mentioned by Robertson
falls within the domain of the Providential conception of history). By
so doing, Robertson wanted to convey the sense of the complexity and interdependence
of the causes of civilization. Hume had been one of the first to realise
it when he remarked that "we cannot reasonably expect, that a piece
of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation, which is ignorant
of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected" (19).
Among the causes mentioned by Robertson, the forming of cities into communities,
corporations, or bodies politic, the granting to them of municipal jurisdiction,
and the acquisition by cities of civil liberty and political power were
prominent. The rise to prominence by the cities was considered a fundamental
step towards civlization by virtually all Enlightenment authors. Voltaire
had emphasized much the same point in the Essai sur le mœurs,
and Robertson will take the presence of cities as a crucial test on the
degree of civilization of the Mexican and Peruvian empires (20).
Moreover, Robertson maintained that the Crusades had been a cause of progress
because they had enlarged the views of the crusaders while they were travelling
through many different countries and encountering different manners, and
they had been a boosting factor for the progress of trade and commercial
intercourse between peoples (21).
We should note that in the case of the Crusades, as in that of the Reformation,
Robertson put forward a mainly social and political, not theological and
providential, framework of explanation. This is a confirmation of the
prevailingly secular (although, on this issue, rather disturbingly imperialistic
and ethnocentric) outlook of his historical thought.
7. Another cause of progress was the enfranchisement of farmers from
the yoke of feudal dependency and the rise of a class of independent husbandsmen,
a process which he had learnt to appreciate through Hume and Smith, and
to which I will come back later in this paper.
This exercise in historical sociology on the causes of the rise of civil
and commercial society was to become very influential in the British and
European political thought and historiography of late-eighteenth and early-ninenteenth
century. Although not much of it is original (Robertson is profoundly
indebted to Montesquieu, Hume and Smith), it is fair to say that he succeeded
in realising the most powerful and complete overview of the subject. It
is the combination of acute insights and enjoyable narrative that gave
the View the status of a classic it was to retain for a long time.
However we should also note that Robertson brought together a mishmash
of different and sometimes incompatible sets of causes. He was aware of
this, and warned that he was about to set forth "a succession of
causes and events which contributed, some with a nearer and more conspicuous,
others with a more remote and less perceptible influence, to abolish confusion
and barbarism, and to introduce order, regularity, and refinement"
(View, 21-22). Some of these causes are marked by an endogenous
process of generation, like the enfranchisement of the cities and the
abolition of feudal servitude. Others are characterised by a distinct
external, and sometimes utterly accidental origin, like the revival in
the knowledge and study of the Roman law, dependent on the accidental
finding of a copy of Justinian’s Pandects in Amalfi in 1137. Some
of them occur in the heartland of the European medieval civilization,
while others (the Crusades, the progress of commerce) are linked to the
attempts at commercial and military conquests pursued by some European
medieval powers. Robertson emphasized the feedback between internal changes
of the medieval world and the transformations brought about by events
occurring on its boundaries. Moreover, the ten causes discussed by Robertson
are located over a very long period of time. He is dealing with a process
spanning the period from the "ultimate point of depression"
at the beginning of the eleventh century (22)
(View, 21) to the beneficial effects of the progress of commerce
on the threshold of the discovery of America.
This picture of historical causes is also characterised by some internal
flaws. For instance, Robertson put together the rise of the spirit of
chivalry and the progress of commerce, although they are grounded on very
different, and actually contrasting sets of passions (the former being
founded on gallantry and altruism, while the latter is based on self-love
and the pursuit of private interest), and they took place in very different
historical moments. From this discussion is also absent the consolidation
of monarchical sovereignty which is treated in the second section of the
View, and which, according to Robertson, presided over the rise
of the modern European system of States at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. It is not clear whether Robertson considered this process as
an effect of the ten causes discussed in the first section, or as an element
to be ranked alongside them as a preparatory moment of the sociopolitical
settlement of modern Europe.
Robertson’s aim in the first section of the View was to provide
a description of the multifaceted and irreducibly complex character of
historical causation. This is proved by the fact that he refrained from
giving overriding importance to any cause, and was more concerned with
emphasizing their "mutual connection and dependance". But how
could one, on the basis of such a complex and multifarious framework,
write a historical narrative that could be otherwise than untidy and rambling?
However, separating them did not mean sealing them off. It is true that
Robertson was aware of the different purposes embodied by these different
kinds of historical writing. The analysis of causes in the View,
for example, could dispense with chronological accuracy because what Robertson
aimed at there, was more a framework for periodization than a detailed
reconstruction of a succession of events. It is not by chance that broad
political and historical concepts as the "middle ages", the
"Renaissance", or the "commercial age" were forged
just in such a context. Yet, the articulation between the different components,
if we consider his historical works on the whole, was very elaborate.
The interpretative picture settled by the View, even if it was
not explicitly picked or conjured up in the rest of the history of Charles
V, was always present in the background, and certainly oriented the readers
— something which Robertson certainly had predicted and wanted.
Hume had indicated the way for an integration of historical narration
and representation of manners; but it was Robertson who got to the bottom
of it. This is what Dugald Stewart meant when he said that Robertson had
succeeded in blending "the lights of philosophy with the appropriate
beauties of historical composition" (23).
What was at stake in Robertson’s writings was not simply a more advanced
way of integrating and making compatible narrative history and history
of manners. Since Voltaire, this had been only one aspect of the attempt
to join narrative and philosophy. The fact is that philosophical history
transformed narrative itself. While acknowledging that the History
of Charles V was in many respects a conventional humanist history
dealing with exploits of kings, war and diplomacy, Nicholas Phillipson
has rightly pointed out that "nevertheless Robertson’s narrative
was also penetrated with the historiographical categories of conjectural
history" (24).
This is also apparent in the case of causative reasoning. In terms of
historical composition, this problem can be defined as the dilemma of
how to make analysis of consequences and consecutive order of narration
coincide? Certainly, a broad and far-reaching analysis like that of the
first section of the View could only be carried out by dispensing
with chronology and replacing temporal succession with conceptual anatomy.
Nevertheless in smaller-scale cases, notably in the treatment of the causes
of the Reformation, both in the History of Scotland (I.119-29)
and the History of Charles V (II.101-14), Robertson has been able
to mix a critical discussion of causes and a chronological account of
events.
9. I would now like to turn to the presence of a language of unintended
consequences in the historical writings of Robertson.
It should be said at the outset that the issue of the unintended consequences
can not be limited to historical writing, as it carries a wider significance,
involving the meaning of Robertson’s whole activity, not only as
a historian, but also as a Church leader, a University administrator and
a public literary figure. The public and intellectual career of Robertson,
as it has been reconstructed in a number of remarkable studies, was characterised
by a firm faith in the role of human agency, and in the capacity of individuals
to build a lasting consensus and a peaceful society. As a prominent member
of the Moderate party within the Kirk, and as a University teacher (and
eventually Principal of the University of Edinburgh) Robertson committed
himself to steering a conciliatory course of action which would appeal
to good sense. Together with his fellow-Moderates, Robertson believed
that "there can be no Society, where there is no Subordination"
(25). He stood for a civil liberty tempered by authority,
and for a government that enforced discipline and order. In such a society
there was room for religion as a civilizing factor. The mission of the
minister of the Kirk was to lead and enlighten the people. The Moderates
promoted an alliance between the clergy, the nobility and the gentry to
promote the enforcement of the new patronage law, which according to Robertson
would result in the selection of a superior type of minister. The Moderate
ideology brought together the Christian teachings of morality with the
Stoic encouragement to the "warmth of virtue" and the civic
concerns for public virtue. Their main political aim was to create a moral
and social consensus to the commercial society and the Hanoverian regime,
and replace with it the private interest which was such a weak and shaky
foundation of commercial society. In the political discourse of the Moderates
the residual civic moralism of the Old Whig tradition was combined with
the constitutionalism of Montesquieu in order to build what has been described
as a Whig-Presbyterian conservative ideology (26).
The purpose of conciliation, dialogue and consensus was wrapped in a language
of politeness (27). Indeed, in the
policy of moral and rhetorical persuasion pursued by the Moderates in
a number of sermons, addresses and historical writings, the etymological
origin of politeness appears very clearly: their task was to rub and smooth
off corners, to polish manners and sooth differences.
It is known that the ideology of the Moderates was reflected in Robertson’s
historical discourse. The History of Scotland has been decribed
as an attempt to conciliate the principles of the Enlightenment with the
Presbyterian legacy, and to mark a middle ground between scepticism and
enthusiasm (28). The activity of Robertson as a
historian has been linked to the fashioning of an Anglo-British identity,
that led the Scottish Whig historians to subvert the foundation of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century Scottish historical thinking
(29). The moderate and conciliatory stance of Robertson’s
political thinking has left an enduring mark on his very historical language.
The core of his claim to impartiality lay in his dialogical integration
of diverging positions into a single narrative (30).
Narrative history was accordingly conceived by Robertson as a "means
to conflict harmonisation" (31).
10. All these remarks lead to emphasize the confidence in human agency
and the commitment to an authorial control over history. However, they
do not mean that Robertson was not interested or did not believe in the
explicatory power of the language of the unintended consequences. This
is in part due to the fact that, by the time Robertson composed his works,
the language of unintentionality had become a commonplace of Scottish
historical discourse.
The role of this language in Robertson’s historical writings has
recently been cast in doubt. According to Karen O’Brien, Robertson
was "uneasy about the moral implications of the Scottish notion of
unintended consequences in human affairs", because he believed that
the kind of history in which that language was deployed accorded "too
limited a place to the role of human intervention in history". Robertson
opposed a conception of history as an "arena of moral choice",
in which there would be scope for rational human agency, to a conception
of history that emphasized the gap between the "natural course of
things" and the power of human volition. O’Brien sees a profound
difference between a narrative history, centered around the idea of moral
and authorial responsibility, and a stadial history, founded on the materialist
language of unlooked-for-by-products, and "always overshadowed by
the Mandevillian spectre of morally nihilist satire" (32).
The Achilles’ heel of O’Brien’s interpretation is that
her distinction between narrative and stadial history seems to be a little
too rigid (at least as far as Robertson is concerned). Firstly, by so
doing one would be in danger of collapsing the distinction between a stadial
conception of society (often characterised by the progress from hunting
to shepherding, from farming to commerce) and the principle of the unintended
consequences in which that stadial process could be expressed. Although
closely connected, they were by no means the same. Indeed there is evidence
(Hume’s History of England being the most notable example)
of the principle of the unintended consequences being lavishly used in
works, which in other ways did not set forth a stadial interpretation
of history. Secondly, it is arguable that both the principle of the unintended
consequences and a stadial conception of history could be accommodated
within the narrative body of a historical work.
An appeal to the unintended consequences, moreover, was not in itself
a sign of Mandevillian moral nihilism. While retaining Mandeville’s
evolutionary approach to the growth of social relationships, the Scots
tried to "polish" his political thought. Hume and Smith faced
Mandeville’s challenge and were at pains to show the legitimacy of
private interests and the inherent contradiction that lay in calling "vice"
a "public benefit" (33). By the time Robertson started
his career as a historian, the core of the social theory of the Fable
of the Bees had been taken on board in the much more sophisticated
theory of justice and political economy of Hume and Smith, while the provocative
"private vices, public benefits" program had been marginalized
to the role of the brilliant, but vague formulation of a paradox: it seems
fair to say that, although Mandeville remained a threat in the opinion
of theologians and austere moralists, there was no Mandevillian ghost
that could give sleepless nights to a serious and sophisticated political
thinker like Robertson.
11. Certainly there could still be a rather sharp opposition between
the didactic and pedagogical approach to moral philosophy endorsed by
the Moderates and based on the Stoical teaching of Francis Hutcheson,
and the analytical and scientific approach of Hume and Smith. But this
did not mean that Robertson could not appeal to either of them, depending
on what the circumstances suggested to be the best course of action. Eclecticism
was the main characteristic of Robertson’s thought: he was no original
thinker (in the words of Alexander Carlyle, he was "addicted to the
translation of other people’s thought" (34),
and he was quite willing to make use of any conceptual tool he found available
to improve his work.
Adam Ferguson, another member of the Moderate literati of Edinburgh, managed
to combine his whig and presbyterian ideology and his Stoico-christian
providentialism with probably the most eloquent, and certainly the most
famous, endorsement of the principle of the unintended consequences. And
Adam Smith, although himself not a Moderate, did not find it strange to
share most of their political and moral views even if he was the theorist
of the invisible hand.
I am therefore persuaded that we can go in search of the application of
the language of the unintended consequences in the historical writings
of Robertson without necessarily postulating that its use put in jeopardy
his moral and authorial commitment to moral virtue and political responsibility,
nor that it had to be divorced from the narrative side of his histories
(35).
As early as 1755, before the publication of his first historical work, the History of Scotland (1759), Robertson was already using to the language of the unintended consequences to explain the nature of the historical process. This occurred in the review of the History of Peter the Great Emperor of Russia, by Alexander Gordon of Auchintoul, published in the Edinburgh Review. In pure Voltairean fashion, Robertson remarked that "the attempt of Peter the Great towards civilizing that vast Empire, of which he was the Sovereign, is perhaps the most singular and interesting object that the history of mankind presents to the view of a Philosopher". Robertson was struck by the example (previously occurred only in the Greek city-states) of a ruler and lawgiver who could single-handedly set in motion a vast process of modernization and civilization. The size of his empire and the lack of any previous discipline in the people rendered the achievement of Peter the Great even greater than that of the archaic Greek lawgivers: "the Czar of Muscovy is the first man who, unenlightened by science, and uninstructed by example, conceived the vast design of civilizing sixteen millions of savages, and who, by operations the most amazing and adventrous, introduced armies and fleets, commerce and science, into an Empire where they were all unknown". The Czar was a "benefactor to mankind", much above the destructive character of a conqueror or the petty intrigues of an ambitious politician, and his actions would have deserved greater praise than the historians had so far accorded him. In the light of his grand achievement, even some negative features of his character ("the vices of the man, the violence of the tyrant, and even, on some occasions, the fierceness of the Barbarian") could be excused. Indeed, "perhaps even these defects contributed towards the success of his undertaking; and with less impetuosity, and greater gentleness of disposition, with more refinement, and a nicer sense of decorum, he might have left his grand enterprize at a farther distance from perfection" (36).
12. These considerations by Robertson confirm, in an Anglophone context,
the exemplary character of the Russian experience for the eighteenth-century
theory of civilization (37). Great
men were no longer appreciated for their military exploit or for their
conquering enteprises, but for their capacity to bring commerce, arts
and sciences, and a more rational administration to their people. Underlying
this view, there was an idea of civilization grounded on foundation of
cities, economic reform, agricultural improvement, bureaucratic modernization
— all the components of a leap forward from a backward to a modernized
society. It is easy to understand why the Scots should be sympathetic
to such an agenda of improvement, and Robertson’s remarks are in
tune with the contemporary French debate (38).
Interestingly, Robertson is here already moving away from the idea of
the civilizing achievement of a sovereign towards the concept of the evolutionary
progress of the society, made possible by the concurrence of favourable
historical circumstances. This is why it is difficult to determine whether
Robertson is here speaking the language of political history, or of the
history of manners? At first sight, the achievements of Peter the Great
may belong to political history (or perhaps, we may say, to political
myth). Here we have an absolute ruler who sets out to reform the institutions
of his State and to improve the society over which he lords. The figure
of Peter towers over the historical scene, and it is his sovereign will
which alone can dramatically change the circumstances of his people.
But some key-words of the history of manners and of a stadial conception
of society appear in Robertson’s text. Peter is not simply giving
laws to his subjects, but also undertaking a "design of civilizing"
his people. They, in their turn, are called by Robertson "sixteen
millions of savages". Russia must be in a savage state as no firm
right to private property is established there.
Is Peter a lawgiver, or a civilizer who helped a society move from one
historical stage to the next? How much of his achevement hinged on the
stadial circumstances of pre-modern Russia? If we focus on the picture
of the history of manners Robertson is giving us, the achievement of Peter
may not seem as striking as it appeared. In the context of a savage or
barbarous society, the revolutionary success of a single individual gifted
with power and charisma is not exceptional, indeed it is almost predictable
(39).
The ambivalence of this historical example is strengthened by the idea
of Robertson, according to which Peter the Great is an exceptional type
of ruler, a virtually unique example, at least within the modern age.
The development of civilization is in fact usually embodied in a process
of unintended consequences: "commerce, learning, the art of war and
polished manners, have penetrated into most nations by degrees, and have
owed their establishment more to the casual operation of undesigned events,
than to the regular execution of any concerted plan" (40).
The ambiguity of Robertson’s judgment on the achievements of the
Czar is an early proof of the complex relationship between sovereign will
and the unintended progress of society. We will presently see other examples
of it.
Some years before the publication of his first historical work, Robertson
was therefore already subscribing to the language of anticontractarianism
and unintended consequences which he may have learnt to appreciate while
attending the lectures on jurisprudence that Adam Smith delivered in Edinburgh
in 1748-50 (41). It is also already
clear that, even at such an early stage, Robertson was moving away from
the historical discourse in which he had been trained by Charles Mackie:
the theme of the unintended consequences does not seem to be prominent
in the courses that Mackie did in the University of Edinburgh (42).
13. The History of Scotland, Robertson’s first major work,
was not shaped by this stadial and conjectural language. It is best described
as a political history whose main purpose was ideological, as Robertson
rejected the Buchananite aristocratic ideology and set forth a modern
Whig account of the constitution. Similarly, he substituted a philosophical
and moderate account of the Scottish Reformation for the more traditional,
again Buchananite, Presbyterian approach (43).
Although the language of the unintended consequences is alien to this
context, it makes an appearance in the History of Scotland. And
although it is not an explicit statement, and is relegated to a passing
remark, it indicates revealing similarities. Opening up a comparative
perspective on the state of England at the middle of the sixteenth century,
Robertson commented on the policy of Henry VIII and remarked that "the
vices of this Prince were more beneficial to mankind, than the virtues
of others. His rapaciousness, his profusion, and even his tyranny, by
depressing the ancient nobility, and by adding new property and power
to the Commons, laid the foundation of the British liberty" (HS,
I.98-99). Robertson was here implicitly comparing the successful attempt
to abolish the feudal servitude carried out by the English kings, with
the resilience of baronial power in the Scottish constitution. Robertson
gave several reasons why the balance of power in Scotland still inclined
to the side of the nobles (HS, I.19-37). Although he believed that
the power of the aristocracy was to a certain extent beneficial to the
people, as it put in place principles which "tended to their security
and advantage" and prevented any "act of arbitrary power"
(44) (HS, II.249-50), it also clearly meant that
Scotland would not be able to set out on a course of improvement and modernity
(45). The rise of civil liberty which elsewhere had
been helped by strong and centralised monarchies, in Scotland, because
of the weakness of the sovereigns and the power of the factious barons,
could only be brought about by the Union of 1707 and the commercial progress
which finally destroyed the privileges and the political authority of
the feudal nobles (HS, II.253-54).
The story had been different in England, where the struggle between the
feudal lords and the sovereigns was fought and won by the latter in the
second half of the sixteenth century. However, the rise of the Commons
and the establishment of civil liberty that followed the demise of the
feudal property were an unintended consequence of the kingly policy. In
the History of Scotland, as we have seen, Robertson spoke (in unmistakably
Mandevillian and Humean terms) of benefits to mankind generated by the
vices of Henry VIII. In Charles V, he enlarged his comments on
the topic, this time bringing more clearly to the fore the unintentional
character of the effects of Tudor policy: "Henry VIII, probably without
intention, and certainly wthout any consistent plan, of which his nature
was incapable, pursued the scheme of depressing the nobility, which the
policy of his father Henry VII had begun" (HC, III.440-41).
Robertson is referring to a familiar account of the gradual increase in
the power of the Commons which was related to a monarchical policy of
centralisation of sovereignty and of fragmentation of feudal property.
This transformation occurred in three phases. In the late Middle Ages
the monarchy favoured the creation of a new nobility, more loyal to the
sovereigns. Henry VII’s legislation against nobiliar rents was a
further destabilizing factor for baronial power (View, 101-03).
Finally, by making available a large quantity of land, Henry VIII’s
dissolution of the monasteries produced the conditions for the rise of
a new class of owners.
14. The Scots all emphasized that the establishment of civil liberty and
the rise of the Commons were unintended consequences of the Tudors’
policy (46). In the same year as Robertson
published his seminal insights on the matter in the History of Scotland,
Hume dealt with the problem in a very similar way in the History of
the House of Tudor. Interestingly, Robertson proved himself even more
radical than Hume on the question of the role played by intention in the
process. Hume had saved some ground for the intentional action of Henry
VII, and said that he probably "foresaw and intended this consequence,
because the constant scheme of his policy consisted in depressing the
great, and exalting churchmen, lawyers, and men of new families, who were
more dependant on him" (47). Robertson, on the other hand, both in the History
of Scotland and in his subsequent treatment of the subject in Charles
V, did not seem to be prepared to concede it to Henry VII and Henry
VIII. It was not through enlightened self-interest that Henry VIII accomplished
the depression of the nobility, but through the unpredicted outcome of
his blind rapaciousness and tyrannical aspirations.
The demise of feudalism brought about by the early Tudors policy is a
textbook-case of a stadial conception of history at work. But it also
raises a question, that is rarely asked by the historians but is nonetheless
crucial: if they did not intend to promote the rise of the Commons and
the establishment of civil liberty while they relentlessly pursued the
"depression of nobility", what then were the early Tudors up
to? They must have had expectations, and Robertson refers to it when he
remarks that, although there was not any "consistent plan",
Henry VIII pursued a "scheme" first undertaken by his father.
We are here clearly in a context of political history, grounded on the
politics of kingly ambition and the pursuit of glory, and on the language
of the reason of State and the acquisition of power. Without such resort
to political history, Robertson would not have been able to account for
the motives underlying a pattern of behaviour with the most far-reaching
consequences. Political history could not be dispensed with, if the early-modern
revolution in the manners was to be understandable.
The View of the Progress of Society in Europe (1769) spectacularly
displayed the explicative powers of conjectural and stadial history. It
compensated for its lack of originality with a wide range of topics, a
finely balanced textual arrangement, and an unprecedentedly elaborate
scholarly apparatus of "proofs and illustrations". It dealt
with a large-scale transition from a feudal to a commercial society, spanning
several centuries and encompassing the whole of Europe (with brief incursions
in the Middle East and Turkey), and was an appropriate place to show the
resources of the language of the unintended consequences. The View
was one of the first texts in which the recently forged stadial theory
could be displaced onto the actual historical ground.
It has been recently argued that "what is missing from ‘A View’,
as a piece of Scottish stadial history, is any sense that the post-feudal
sixteenth century is the unlooked-for-by-product of medieval man’s
individual appetites and drives" (48).
This would be due to the fact that Robertson, in describing the waning
of the Middle Ages, adopted a distinctively Voltairrean tone and attempted
to save the intentional action of social groups in the growth of modern
society. As I have already said, however, the adoption of a moral stance
does not seem to be a reason sufficient enough to discard the use of the
language of the unintended consequences: this latter was morally neutral,
and could be combined with the most different attitudes to the growth
and feasibility of modern society, as the examples of Mandeville and Rousseau,
Hume and Ferguson make clear.
15. The View reveals a profound sensitivity to the issue of the unintended consequences. When Robertson overviews the total change undergone by Europe around the end of the sixth century and the establishment of the barbarous states which would subsequently give rise to the feudal system, he remarks that it is "in the obscurity of the chaos occasioned by this general wreck of nations" that "we must search for the seeds of order, and endeavour to discover the first rudiments of the policy and laws now established in Europe" (View, 11). Furthermore, while introducing his multi-layered causal analysis of the growth of social order and regular government, he speaks of causes "with a nearer and more conspicuous, others with a more remote and less perceptible influence" (View, 21). Throughout the text of the first section of the View phrases referring to the unpredicted character of the historical process proliferate. Robertson speaks of the "beneficial consequences" of the Crusades, "which had neither been foreseen nor expected" (View, 25-30). He observed that laws, subordination and polished manners, after growing in the cities, "diffused themselves insensibly through the rest of society" (View, 36) (49). And he acknowledged the "imperceptible progress of juster sentiments concerning government, order, and public security" (View, 47).
The unintended consequences do not explain the whole of the View
of the Progress of Society in Europe, let alone the ensuing narrative
of the reign of Charles V.
In the View Robertson emphasized the role played by the cooperation
between sovereigns and municipalities in bringing feudalism to an end
(50). He focused on the intentional and purposive
action of collective and institutional groups, in a way reminiscent of
Ferguson’s method and qualifying the issue of the unintended character
of their actions. Absolutist and centralized monarchies played a pivotal
role in this process. The second section of the View was accordingly
devoted to chartering the progress of monarchical power in the fifteenth
century (View, 83-121). The French sovereigns, strengthened by
the acquisition of the Continental territories previously in the hands
of the English and by the heavy losses suffered by the French nobility
during the wars with England, started the process of consolidation. The
policy of Charles VII and Louis XI was crucial in this transition. The
submission of the feudal nobility and the consolidation of monarchical
power spread rapidly to England, Spain, the Habsburg German empire and
the Ottoman Empire. Before the establishment of parliamentary assemblies
to counterbalance the power of the sovereigns, monarchical authority was
unlimited to an unprecedented degree; the institution of standing armies
liberated the sovereigns from their dependence on their baronial allies,
and helped improve the technology of warfare; higher taxation and an increase
in public revenues gave the monarchs the economic basis of power that
they needed to feed an increasingly centralized administration of the
State and their armies. The new military and economic power made possibile
for the monarchs to engage in wars of conquests (which were utterly impossibile
for the feeble and factious feudal armies), and this was only one of the
factors that brought about a new European balance of power in the shape
of a system of increasingly interdependent national States.
16. Robertson was here covering a territory which had already been charted,
although from a different perspective, by Francesco Guicciardini. There
are some striking general analogies between Robertson’s treatment
of this issue in the History of Charles V and Guicciardini’s
approach in the Storia d’Italia. Guicciardini came to realize
that the causes of the early sixteenth-century Italian political crisis
and of the failure of the political project of the ottimati could
not be understood from the narrow point of view of city-state politics.
Italian politics ought to be included in a much broader political context,
as Italy had become the battlefield for a conflict between new territorial
monarchies. The rise of new political entities such as the French and
the Habsburg monarchies called for the adoption of a new political thought
and of a new historiography: the Peninsula must be the new object of historical
narrative, not out of national conscience, but because it is the theatre
of the new European politics of the balance of power.
On all of this Robertson thoroughly agreed with, and can be regarded as
a follower of, Guicciardini, whom he called "the most sagacious,
perhaps, of all modern historians" (View, 132)
(51). But, with the hindsight he enjoyed from his eighteenth-century
vantage-point, Robertson added a broader periodization based on the history
of manners, whereby he was more able to account for the transformation
in monarchical power at the turn of the fifteenth century.
The second section of the View of the Progress of Society in Europe
is therefore part and parcel of the history of the reign of Charles V.
The narrative volumes would otherwise be unintelligible, or we would not
be able to account for the transformation Robertson brought to the framework
of humanist history (52). The history of manners shapes political
history. Moreover, it helps bring to the fore an underlying language of
the unintended consequences.
For all his emphasis on the willing actions of the monarchs, it is not
clear whether Robertson conceived the growth of the European modern balance
of power as an intentional and predictable outcome of their policy. Some
clues seem to indicate that this was not the case. Robertson attributed
to the sovereigns of this period a lack of strategic understanding of
the requirements of the new system of the balance of power. He explained
it with the transitional character of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
history, the time when a "monarchical moment" paved the way
to a more stable, and to Robertson more familiar international political
system. The gradualism implicit in a history of transitions is by no means
equivalent to the acknowledgment of the appearance of unintended consequences.
However, it suggests the lack of rationally constructed courses of actions
and leaves open the door to an unintentional reconstruction of the rise
of modern political institutions.
This consideration is strengthened if we look at the set of motivations
which Robertson attributed to Charles V, which he took as highly representative
of the conduct of absolute monarchs in the transitional phase of European
history.
Charles may not have undertaken the creation of a universal monarchy
(53), but he was driven by an insatiable ambition of
conquest and "his desire of being distinguished as a conqueror involved
him in continual wars, which exhausted and oppressed his subjects, and
left him little leisure for giving attention to the interior police and
improvement of his kingdoms, the great objects of every Prince who makes
the happiness of his people the end of his government" (HC,
III.419). Charles always acted for wholly secular and political considerations
(as becomes an emperor), and despite the "specious veil of religion"
under which he usually covered the real motives of his actions, he seemed
"but little under the influence of religious considerations"
(HC, II.298).
17. In the case of Charles V, we are facing a historical player whose actions are motivated by a rather narrow-minded and self-centered interest (which did not take into account the welfare of his subjects), which however helped promote the shaping of an European political system which, according to Robertson, would ultimately spread benefits and advantages for all. But, on the textual evidence provided by Robertson, one would find it difficult to argue that the promotion of civilization was intended by the likes of Charles V.
The History of America was quite literally founded on an unintended
consequence. Being the result of a mere mistake and of a fanciful and
inaccurate prediction, the discovery of America was neither expected nor
intended by the Genoese navigator who thought he would reach India by
sailing westward and open a new and more profitable commercial route.
In this epoch-making event all the components of the historiographical
language of unintentionality were stretched: the discovery of America
was the product of chance and depended in its turn on the "fortunate
discovery" (HA, I.35) that led to the invention of the compass;
it was an achievement that went beyond (and actually contradicted) the
intentional aims of Columbus; it provoked a conquest and colonization
which ultimately, according to Robertson, had beneficial consequences
despite the self-serving interests that caused them.
The lack of predictability was, at an even deeper level, a typical characteristic
of the encounter between two alien cultures. The radically unprecedented
situation in which the conquerors and their Amerindian counterparts found
themselves compelled Robertson to revise some of his beliefs about what
was worth being related in history. He showed how such a socially marginal
character as doña Marina, the native who became Cortes’ interpreter,
could play a crucial role in the events that led to the conquest of the
Mexican empire; the lesson that Robertson drew from this episode was that
in the history of the New World, "great revolutions were brought
about by small causes and inconsiderable instruments" (HA,
II.12). Historical actors were players in a context which it was dangerous
to compare with anything familiar in European history, and this meant
that the historian should be more vigilant than ever of the historical
power of unintentionality (54).
The principle of the unintended consequences is endorsed in the History
of America in a way which at first sight is reminiscent of Mandeville’s
argument. Let us consider the motivations that underlay the expeditions
of the Spanish adventurers in the New World. In both the cases of Cortes
and Pizarro, Robertson maintained that they amounted to a mix of religious
enthusiasm and spirit of adventure united with avarice (HA, II.10,
150). Once they established the first contact with the natives and received
the gifts of cotton, gold, and silver, the sight of such opulence, "instead
of satisfying, increased the avidity of the Spaniards" (HA,
II.14). The conquerors were Mandevillian individuals driven by irrational
appetites such as vanity and the desire to hoard precious metals. Thier
delusive ideas were grounded on the mistaken mercantilist principles which
equated wealth with gold. Robertson attempted to distinguish between the
"rude conquerors of America", whose superstitious pursuit of
gold had led them to neglect the long-term consequences of their actions,
and the Spanish monarchy which set up colonial institutions intended to
advance her wealth and glory (HA, II.226).
18. But the Spanish colonial empire was founded on a mistaken principle
of political economy. Following Smith, Robertson devoted book VIII of
the History of America to a critique of the mercantilist principles
which regulated the politics of the Spanish colonies (55).
Instead of putting in place policies which favoured agriculture, commerce
and trade, the Spanish colonies were established for the extraction of
gold and silver, a decision which guaranteed short-term prosperity to
the Spanish mother-country, but did not achieve lasting and long-term
beneficial consequences (HA, II.387-88, 391-92). On the contrary,
it unleashed an inflationary trend which ultimately would destroy the
power of Spain. When in the 1760s Charles III’s minister, Campomanes,
masterminded a reform of the colonial system inspired by the economic
discourse of free-trade, it was too late and Spain had long become a marginal
player in the European balance of power (HA, II.414-34).
The "private vices" of the conquistadores and the self-serving
policy of the Spanish crown did not usher, in the American case, any "public
benefit". Robertson severely criticized the Spanish colonial empire
from a free-trade and humanitarian point of view, for its utter destruction
of two ancient and worthy civilizations, the inhumane treatment of the
American Indians and the slaves, the superstitious program of forced mass-conversions,
the errors of economic policy, and the maladministration of the colonies.
However, he was aware that America was important in the creation of an
international commercial system, and in the Disquisition of India
he put the issue in a more global context: he contended there that the
coincidence of the discovery of America and the opening of a new route
to the Indies through the Cape of Good Hope was a "singular circumstance"
worthy of observation, as, without the gold and silver of the American
mines, the European nations would not have been able to afford the increase
in the consumption of luxuries from India which the easier communication
now made possible (DI, 209-11). Although Robertson did not say
it in so many words, the first world system of commerce clearly appeared
to him as an unintended consequence of quite distinct and competitive
enterprises.
In Robertson’s works the history of manners did not replace, but
rather completed political history. One might say that the history of
manners generated and at the same time regenerated political history.
The history of manners generated political history, because when the insights
of the stadial conception are displaced onto the actual historical ground,
the problem of power and sovereignty is also raised. We have seen that
the change of manners promoted and exploited by the first Tudors or by
Charles V would not have been comprehensible without a framework of political
history.
But political history was regenerated by the history of manners, as the
latter set political events and processes in a broader periodization scale,
took into account a wider range of causes, and showed the close link between
government and manners.
As I have tried to show in this paper, the language of the unintended
consequences featured prominently both in the history of manners and political
history. This theme has been probably too much neglected in the recent
scholarship on the political and philosophical histories of the Scottish
Enlightenment (56). I believe that the writings of
William Robertson are a case in point for the pervasive presence of such
a language.
Robertson’s whole ability as a historian, his capacity for sweeping
and wide-ranging accounts of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires,
his acute awareness of the relevance of small details and paradoxical
outcomes for the writing of history, could not be explained if we did
not appreciate the importance of the language of the unintended consequences
for his historical thought.
* I would like to thank Guido Abbattista and Nicholas Phillipson for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. Many thanks to Janey Lambie for helping me with my English. I have made use of the following editions of the works of Robertson (references are given directly in the text, with abbreviation of title followed by volume and page number):
HS: The History of Scotland, first edition, 2 voll. (London, 1759);
View: A View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, first volume of:
HC: The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, first edition, 3 voll. (London and Edinburgh, 1769);
HA: The History of America, first edition, 2 voll. (Edinburgh, 1777);
DI: An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India (1791), second edition (London and Edinburgh, 1794).
1 See C. J. Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997), 54-60, 77-87.
2 D. Womersley, "The historical writings of William Robertson", Journal of the History of Ideas, 47, (1986): 497-506, is a remarkable study of the issue of historical causation from a perspective of literary criticism.
3 D. Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of William Robertson, D.D. (London and Edinburgh, 1802), 89.
4 The Situation of the World at the Time of Christ’s Appearance, in The Works of William Robertson, 12 voll. (London, 1996), vol. XI, 16-17 (original pagination).
5 Ibidem, 24.
6 Robertson’s belief in the workings of Providence earned him the criticism of Hume, who complained about the "Godly Strain" of the History of Scotland: Hume to Hugh Blair (25 Mar. 1766), in The Letters of David Hume, 2 voll., edited by J.Y.T. Greig (Oxford, 1934), vol. II, 31. In a letter to Robertson (Feb. or Mar. 1759), Hume wrote that a reader of the Tudor volumes of his History of England would have had "the pleasure of seeing John Knox and the Reformers made very ridicolous": Letters of Hume, vol. I, 300.
7 It has been maintained, although in a not entirely persuasive way, that Robertson’s interpretation of the Reformation should be linked to a Knoxian tradition: see M. Fearnley-Sander, "Philosophical history and the Scottish Reformation: William Robertson and the Knoxian tradition", Historical Journal, 33, (1990): 323-38. The limit of this interpretation is that the prophetic-apocalyptic dimension of Knoxian political thought is absent from Robertson’s moderate discourse. Robertson’s appeal to Providence is more aptly traced back to the inspiration of the Arminian theology and to the sinergy between human and divine will: see J. Smitten, "The Shaping of Moderation: William Robertson and Arminianism", Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 22, (1992): 281-300. More recently Nicholas Phillipson has shown in a remarkable essay the pivotal role played by a re-defined natural theology in the development of Robertson's historical writing: N. Phillipson, "Providence and progress: an introduction to the historical thought of William Robertson", in William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, edited by S. Brown (Cambridge, 1997), 55-73.
8 The best treatment of the variety of stadial theories (embodied in two-, three- and four-stage models, as well as in both a linear and a cyclical conception of historical time and development) is in M. L. Pesante, "La teoria stadiale della storia e l'analisi economica: Adam Smith", Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 29 (1995): especially 249-51.
9 This is what Burke meant when he paid tribute to Robertson, telling him "you have employd Philosophy to judge on Manners, and from manners you have drawn new resources for Philosophy": Edmund Burke to William Robertson (9 June 1777), inThe Correspondence of Edmund Burke, edited by T. Copeland et al., 10 voll. (Chicago, 1958-78), vol. III, 351.
10 D. Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 voll. (Indianapolis, 1983), vol. IV, 384.
11 Compare N. Phillipson, "Introduction: William Robertson as historian", in The Works of William Robertson, vol. I, especially xlvii.
12 On Tacitus in eighteenth-century Britain, see: H. Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Ideal in English Literature (London, 1983), 249-66. On a Scottish reading of Tacitus, see: M. S. Phillips, "Adam Smith and the history of private life. Social and sentimental narratives in eighteenth-century historiography", in The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain. History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500-1800, edited by D. R. Kelley and D.H. Sacks (Cambridge, 1997), especially 323-25. See also: P. Burke, "A survey of the popularity of ancient historians, 1450-1700", History and Theory, 5, (1966): 135-52. For useful comments: M. S. Phillips, "Reconsiderations on history and antiquarianism: Arnaldo Momigliano and the historiography of eighteenth-century Britain", Journal of the History of Ideas, 57, (1996): 297-316.
13 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, 6 voll., edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged by L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), vol. III, 404. Earlier, Boswell had praised Robertson, "in whose History we find such penetration — such painting". But Johnson had replied that Robertson "draws from fancy", so much so that one "must look upon Robertson’s work as romance". Johnson went as far as saying that he preferred Goldsmith’s Roman History to the "verbiage of Robertson" (see vol. II, 237). This must be one of the greatest blunders that Dr. Johnson has ever made.
14 See, D. Castiglione, "Excess, frugality and the spirit of capitalism: readings of Mandeville on commercial society", in Culture in History. Production, Consumption and Values in Historical Perspective, edited by J. Melling and J. Barry (Exeter, 1992), especially 167-70.
15 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised edition by P. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 357-65.
16 A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford, 1976), I.iii.2.
17 It should be remembered that Providential history has been often considered as a precedent of several eighteenth-century endorsements of the principle of the unintended consequences. This is the case of the social thought that eventually resulted in Mandeville’s theory of "private vices, public benefits" and in Smith’s invisible hand, on which see J. Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia, 1972). Eighteenth-century historical thought has also been said to amount to a secularization of the providential theology of history, and Vico’s unintentional provvidenza legislatrice can be said to share some of the features Robertson later ascribed to Providence; see: K. Löwith, Meaning in History (Oxford, 1949) and A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination (Princeton, 1986), 202-89.
18 David Allan has argued that the Scottish debate on unintended consequences had Calvinist and Stoic roots: see his Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment. Ideas of Scholarship in Early Modern History (Edinburgh, 1993), 211-17. Here I would like to consider another set of antecedents, concerned with the intellectual legacy of the Renaissance political historiography.
19 D. Hume, "Of refinement in the arts" (1752), in Id., Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by E. F. Miller, revised edition (Indianapolis, 1987), 270-71.
20 Voltaire, Essai sur le mœurs et l'esprit des nations, 2 voll., edited by R. Pomeau (Paris, 1963), vol. I, 776-79. W. Robertson, HA, book VII.
21 In the Disquisition on India he enlarged these comments and dwelled on the beneficial consequences of the Crusades for the commerce with India (DI, 132-49). Horace Walpole praised Robertson for the "perfect novelty" of this idea: see Walpole to Robertson (20 June 1791), Robertson-Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 3944, f. 61v.
22 Compare D. Hume, The History of England, vol. II, 519.
23 D. Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of William Robertson, 139.
24 N. Phillipson, "Providence and progress: an introduction to the historical thought of William Robertson", 61.
25 Reasons of Dissent in the Inverkeithing Case (1752), in The Works of William Robertson, vol. XII: Miscellaneous Works and Commentaries, edited by J. Smitten, 33.
26 R. B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment. The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1985). See also the seminal essay by I. D. L. Clark, "From Protest to Reaction: the Moderate Regime in the Church of Scotland, 1752-1805", in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, edited by N. Phillipson and R. Mitchison (Edinburgh, 1970), 200-24. For a wider perspective, see J. G. A. Pocock: "Clergy and commerce: the conservative Enlightenment in England", in L'età dei Lumi. Studi storici sul Settecento europeo in onore di Franco Venturi, 2 voll. (Naples, 1985), vol. I, 525-62; "Settecento protestante? L’illuminismo riconsiderato", Quaderni storici, 32 (1997): 315-37. On Montesquieu’s influence in eighteenth-century Scotland, see R. B. Sher, "From Troglodytes to Americans: Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment on liberty, virtue, and commerce", in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649-1776, edited by D. Wootton (Stanford, 1994), 368-402.
27 N. Phillipson: "The Scottish Enlightenment", in The Enlightenment in National Context, edited by R. Porter and M. Teich (Cambridge, 1981), 19-40; "Adam Smith as civic moralist", in Wealth and Virtue. The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (Cambridge, 1983), especially 198-202; "Politics, politeness and the anglicization of early eighteenth-century scottish culture", in Scotland and England, 1286-1815, edited by R. A. Mason (Edinburgh, 1987), 226-46.
28 R. B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 106.
29 C. Kidd, Subverting Scotland's Past. Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689-c.1830 (Cambridge 1993).
30 J. Smitten, "Impartiality in Robertson's History of America", Eighteenth-Century Studies, 19 (1985): 56-77.
31 K. O’Brien, "Robertson’s place in the development of eighteenth-century narrative history", in William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, 75.
32 K. O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment. Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge, 1997), passim (quotations at 141, 147, 140, 148). Compare K. O’Brien, "Between Enlightenment and stadial history: William Robertson on the history of Europe", British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 16 (1993): 53-63.
33 D. Hume, "Of refinement in the arts", 280; A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII.ii.4. For the intellectual context of Mandeville in the Scottish Enlightenment, see: M. M. Goldsmith, "Regulating anew the moral and political sentiments of mankind: Bernard Mandeville and the Scottish Enlightenment", Journal of the History of Ideas, 49 (1988): 587-606; E. Lecaldano, Hume e la nascita dell'etica contemporanea (Rome-Bari, 1991), 229-38; E. J. Hundert, The Enlightenment's Fable. Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge, 1994), 82-86.
34 The Autobiography of Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, 1722-1805, edited by J. Hill Burton (London and Edinburgh, 1910), 299.
35 The presence of a "principle of the heterogeneity of ends" is discussed in P. Moore, The Nature of Theoretical History and Its Applications in the Works of William Robertson, Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1975, especially 36-77. But, as she has focused on the "theoretical history" (a label invented by Dugald Stewart and perhaps not wholly appropriate in the case of Robertson), she has not grasped the importance of the unintended consequences for historical narrative.
36 Edinburgh Review, no. 1 (Jan. to Jul. 1755), 1-9, reprinted in W. Robertson, Miscellaneous Works and Commentaries, 49-58 (quotations at 49, 50, 56).
37 For what follows I rely on the conceptual framework developed by Gianluigi Goggi in his "Diderot et le concept de civilisation", Dix-huitième siècle, 29 (1997): 353-73. For an earlier sketch of his model, see G. Goggi, Le mot civilisation et ses domains d’applications, 1757-1770, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 346 (1996): 363-67.
38 In 1755 Voltaire’s Histoire de l’empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand had not yet been published (it appeared in 1760 with the date of 1759). But of course the contrast between the delusive and short-lived dreams of conquest of Charles XII of Sweden and the rational and lasting civilizing project of Peter the Great had already been pictured by Voltaire in his Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède (1731): see Voltaire, Œuvres historiques, edited by R. Pomeau (Paris, 1957), 68-77 (much of this text was added in 1739), 125-26, 161-62; and compare F. Diaz, Voltaire storico (Turin, 1958), 89-93. It is not known whether Robertson read the history of Charles XII?
39 On the authority of the chiefs in a pastoral society, see: A. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein (Oxford, 1978), LJ (A), IV.1-58; J. Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771), edited by J. V. Price (Bristol, 1990), 140-75.
40 W. Robertson, Miscellaneou Works, cit., p. 49.
41 On Robertson’s probable attendance see, I. S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995), 105-06. On Adam Smith’s lectures’ pioneering treatment of the "law of the heterogeneity of ends", see D. Forbes, "‘Scientific Whiggism’: Adam Smith and John Millar", Cambridge Journal, 7 (1954): 643-70, especially 644-45.
42 Mackie however seems to have been interested in questions of historical causation. He defined the causarum et eventum collatio as one of the aims of history. Moreover, he once distinguished two kinds of universal history: the first consisting in a simple narration ab origine mundi, the second in a discussion of "causas [...] et alias ut hodie vocant circumstantias", after the example of the particularis historia: see C. Mackie, Lectures and Papers, 1719-1753, Edinburgh University Library, MS La.II.37, ff. 63r and 90v respectively.
43 See C. Kidd, "The ideological significance of Robertson’s History of Scotland", in William Robertson and the Expaansion of Empire, 122-44.
44 See J. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985), 79-80.
45 See C. Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, 180-84.
46 Compare: C. J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge, 1994), 142-76 (on Hume and Smith); D. Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics. An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge, 1978), 70-102; D. Forbes, "‘Scientific’ Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar": especially 663-70 (on Millar).
47 D. Hume, The History of England, vol. III, 77.
48 K. O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, 140.
49 The "silent or insensible revolution" in the manners, a phrase used also by Hume, was a key-word in the eighteenth-century language of the unintended consequences.
50 The chapter on Robertson in G. Falco, La polemica sul Medio Evo (1933), new edition edited by F. Tessitore (Naples, 1974), 155-90, remains a very good treatment of this whole process.
51 Unsurprisingly, Robertson relied heavily on Guicciardini in CharlesV. Guicciardini’s name is one of the most recurrent in the footnotes to the narrative volumes of that work. However, this did not hinder Robertson from disagreeing with Guicciardini on some factual points, as in the case of the account of the publication of the Indulgences.
52 Robertson’s debt to the Renaissance historiography was so great that untrained readers could mistake his history of Charles V for a traditional political biography; this happened to monsignor Caetani, writing to Robertson from Rome (10 December 1779), who simply referred to Robertson’s "vita di Carlo V": Robertson-MacDonald Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 3943, f. 109r.
53 On the eighteenth-century language and critique of universal monarchy, see J. Robertson: "Universal monarchy and the liberties of Europe: David Hume's critique of an English Whig doctrine", in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, edited by N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner (Cambridge, 1993), 349-73; "Gibbon's Roman Empire as a universal monarchy: the Decline and Fall and the imperial idea in early modern Europe", in Edward Gibbon and Empire, edited by R. McKitterick and R. Quinault (Cambridge, 1996), 247-70.
54 On Robertson as a historian of the New World, see: D. A. Brading, The First America. The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge, 1991), 432-41; D. Armitage, "The New World and British historical thought: from Richard Hakluyt to William Robertson", in America in European Consciousness 1493-1750, edited by K. O. Kupperman (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 52-75. On his method in the History of America, see M. Duckworth, "An eighteenth-century questionnaire: William Robertson on the Indians", Eighteenth-Century Life, 11 (1987): 36-49.
55 "None of your friends [...] will profit more by your labours than I. Many of your observations concerning the Colonies are of capital importance to me. I shall often follow you as my Guide and instructor", William Robertson to Adam Smith (8 Apr. 1776), in The Correspondence of Adam Smith, revised edition, edited by E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (Oxford, 1987), 192. On the eighteenth-century transformations of the language of empire see A. Pagden, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500- c. 1800 (New Haven and London, 1995), chaps. 5-7.
56 R. Hamowy, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1987) is a notable exception. But unfortunately Hamowy has limited himself to an orthodox Hayekian definition of the principle of the unintended consequences and to an exploration of its relevance to the Scottish social theory and political economy. By so doing, he has failed to appreciate the wider implication and intellectual context of the language of the unintended consequences and its deeply rooted presence in historiography.