1. At the very
outset it is worth saying that the authors contributing to this volume have
an extremely deep, detailed and subtly nuanced understanding of their subject
matter; the volume is a monument to scholarship in the best sense of that term.
Although it is not stated, and indeed Stefan Collini, in his introduction, explicitly
rejects the notion that these academics belong to a "school", there
are common threads running through these essays. Many of them seek to rescue
their subjects from misconceptions that have developed around them over the
years. Hence, David Lieberman's "Economy and Polity in Bentham's science
of legislation" sets out to demonstrate the points of difference between
Bentham's Utilitarianism and early 19th century Political Economy. Similarly,
Donald Winch explores the way that Dickens' character, Gradgrind, from the novel,
Hard Times (1854) developed into an emblematic hate-figure for social
historians on the political left. In the course of this essay he also demonstrates
how this process involved the conflation and misrepresentation of a number of
19th trends, including Political Economy and Utilitarianism.
This last point also leads to another key element within this work, the recovery
of lost aspects of British intellectual discourse. Jane Garnett discusses Ruskin's
engagement with the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon. This engagement was
motivated by a desire to humanize the rigors of Victorian Political Economy
by incorporating within it a consideration of the domestic economy, and the
social and psychological benefits produced within that sphere. The essay very
successfully demonstrates the complex nature of Victorian intellectual discourse,
and, also the multi-faceted role of ancient Greek philosophy as a source of
intellectual authority, in 19th century Britain.
E. J. Hundert's "ociability and self-love in the theatre of moral sentiments:
Mandeville to Adam Smith"' is a fascinating outline of the development
of the early 18th century world view. One of the strengths of this work was
the way that it demonstrated how a particular notion of the self developed,
and how it subsequently suffused society as a whole. Essentially, this was a
view of the self as divided between a public presence, and a private hidden
self. Within this view the individual garnered public acclaim by a conscious
performance, and display of virtue, which might, or equally might not relate
to their private motivations. The notion of, as T. S Eliot put it - "putting
on a face to meet the faces that we meet" -, has become such a widely accepted
feature of early 21st century life, that it is something of a revelation to
learn that there was a point at which the practice actually began.
2. Reviews of collections
of essays conventionally remark on the variable quality of the contributions,
and, of course, it is inevitable that such variations should occur. In this
case, though, I would reiterate that these variations are not in the area of
scholarship, which is uniformly high. In some cases, though, authors seem so
immersed in their subject matter, that their writing became rather dense and
impenetrable. Although, as I have suggested, the product of intense engagement
with the subject matter, this thickly textured delivery made it difficult for
this reviewer to appreciate the insights being offered, in some cases. It is
obviously invidious to single out individuals, although I hope my comments will
be taken as constructive criticism, but I did find Dario Castiglione's essay,
"'That noble disquiet': meanings of liberty in the discourse of the North",
rather less accessible than some of the other contributions. This was largely
because of its stylistic presentation.
Donald Winch's stimulating piece discusses how 20th century authors, specifically
the literary scholars, F. R. Leavis and Raymond Williams, and the historian
E. P. Thompson took up and expanded the critique of industrial capitalism developed
by figures like John Ruskin. In doing so, he contends, they perpetuated a bowdlerised
version of 19th century social, political and economic thought. Specifically,
they refused to engage with any figure, like, for example, James Mill, attempting
to positively interpret economic developments in the 19th century.
As with all the essays the depth of knowledge of the writings of the period
displayed in this work is extremely impressive. However, it did occur to me
that the emphasis placed on customs and sensibilities by figures like Williams
and Thompson could be seen as the product of the very particular role played
by literary criticism within British intellectual life. As long ago as 1969,
Perry Anderson argued, in his essay "Components of the National Culture"
, that in England, literary criticism acted as a substitute, in the inter-war
period, for an absent "totalising" Sociology. Given that literary
criticism is necessarily a discipline that focuses on sensibilites, then, if
Anderson's point is accepted it could be seen as inevitable that social critiques
from Leavis onwards would adopt this perspective. It is indeed possible to discern
the influence of Leavisite criticism in a wide variety of works. The popular
communist historian, A. L. Morton, author of A People's History of England
(1938), for example, contributed to Leavis' journal, Scrutiny in the inter-war
period. Richard Hoggart's, The Uses of Literacy (1957) was a very influential
social/cultural survey that drew heavily on the Leavisite heritage.
I hold no particular brief for this view of the role of literary criticism.
I simply raise it because it appeared pertinent to the issues raised in Winch's
piece. Donald Winch's essay is also significant in terms of its relationship
to the structure of the book as a whole. It is the only one that actually ventures
into the 20th century. This means that, if nothing else the dates given in the
title of the book - 1750-1950 - are slightly misleading. This in it self is
a minor criticism, what is more significant are those movements and individuals,
significant in the period under question- that are given no mention.
3. Socialism, in
all its manifestations is largely absent from these pages. Donald Winch, for
example, mentions, briefly, E. P. Thompson's biography of William Morris, but
makes no direct reference to his role or works in the late 19th century. This
is, perhaps, surprising given that Morris forms a direct bridge between Thompson
and John Ruskin. In his essay Winch presents Thompson as continuing a vein of
Romantic criticism of capitalism initiated, in part, at least, by Ruskin. Morris's
writings are peppered with positive references to Ruskin's works, and he clearly
saw himself as Ruskin's disciple. This absence is also strange given that Morris
also mobilised the works of Dickens against the depredations of capitalism and
its perceived ideology:
"Was it all [civilisation] to end in a counting house on the top of a cinder-heap,
with Podsnap's [a character from Dickens' novel, Our Mutual Friend] drawing
room in the offing, and a Whig committee dealing out champagne to the rich and
magarine to the poor in such convenient proportions as would make all contented
together, though the pleasure of the eyes was gone from the world, and the place
of Homer was to be taken by Huxley?" (William Morris, "How I Became
a Socialist" 1894).
Bentham and the Utilitarians appear at several points in the book, but Fabian
socialism is never mentioned, despite the fact that as long ago as 1932, G.
D. H. Cole referred to the Fabians' "new Utilitarian philosophy".
The Fabians were, like the utilitarians, greatly exercised by the need for expert
administrators to occupy key positions within society. In the 20th century,
as we have seen Donald Winch does refer to the works of E. P. Thompson, and
mentions his affiliations to the Communist Party. Despite this nobody in this
volume examines the reason why a significant number of young middle class, university-trained
figures espoused Marxism in the 1930s. This disloyalty amongst Britain's governing-class-in-the-making
was such a traumatic event that it continues to reverberate within British society
down to the present. This very day (5th March) the London Times carries
a major article accusing the recently dead Marxist historian, Christopher Hill,
of spying for the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Clearly, one cannot dictate the areas that academics investigate, that must
obviously be down to their individual interests; the point that I am making
is that, despite its title, this book does not provide readers with a survey
of British intellectual history from 1750 - 1950; rather, it provides some very
good essays on aspects of British intellectual history in that period. It is
important to acknowledge that a number of key areas are not dealt with.
4. In his "General
Introduction" Stefan Collini provides a very interesting outline of the
considerable academic achievements of Donald Winch and John Burrow. He also
outlines in some detail the development of the sub-discipline of Intellectual
History at the University of Sussex. Collini, as we have already seen rejects
the notion of a Sussex School of Intellectual History, but he does acknowledge
that the works produced by Winch and Burrow and other associated with Sussex
"perhaps evinced certain common qualities of approach and manner".
He goes on to argue that "...the informing spirit of much of this work
has been the attempt to recover past ideas and re-situate them in their intellectual
contexts in ways which resist the anachronistic or otherwise tendentious and
selective pressures exerted by contemporary academic and political polemic...".
It is always interesting to trace the development of one's discipline, but this
statement is tantalizingly vague, it implies, of course, that other practitioners
did not avoid these pressures. Nobody wants Collini to name names, but his introduction
would have been both more interesting, and useful, if he had given some indication
as to how the intellectual historians of Sussex saw themselves in relation to
their peers.
Similarly, Collini makes no attempt to relate the development of intellectual
history at Sussex to developments within the wider society. The body of work
contained in this volume demonstrates time and time again that ideas have a
living presence and impact within society at large. Intellectual history at
Sussex must surely be susceptible to the same processes of social location as
the works of Adam Smith? It may well be that practical considerations precluded
the inclusion of a longer more detailed account of these developments at Sussex.
Let us hope that it is on someone's list of future projects. Anyone tackling
such a task would also have to consider why these developments occurred at Sussex.
Collini tells us that "the ethos and the structure of Sussex in the late
1960s and early 1970s were favourable to innovation..." and that , as a
consequence, it was possible to establish intellectual history as a sub-discipline.
However, it must surely be important for the history of the discipline as a
whole to know what it was about the structure and ethos of Sussex, in specific
detail, that made possible this particular development.
These are all really carping criticisms for this is a very fine piece of work.
All British intellectual historians must buy and engage with this book. Indeed,
anyone involved in the study of 19th century Britain would do well to read it
as a corrective to the misconceptions and generalisations that occur in so many
standard texts. For the eager undergraduate the book provides many examples
of historical investigation of the highest quality, real benchmarks to measure
aspirations against. My own particular favourite is Richard F. Teichgraeber
III's "Adam Smith and tradition: the Wealth of Nations before Malthus".
This lucid account of the complex interplay of a variety of factors shaping
and re-shaping the public intellectual profile of Adam Smith's best-known work,
is a joy to read, and is an essay I look forward to exploring again with, I
am sure, continuing benefit.