The Devil’s Broker by Frances Stonor Saunders

Frances Stonor Saunders has written a book that reads as smoothly and excitingly as fiction, but informs as skillfully as the best histories. This is a rare and difficult feat. It helps that her subject is John Hawkwood, an adventurous, villain, mercenary knight, in violent 14^th Century Italy. Still, she deserves credit: She wouldn’t have been the first historian to take a dramatic topic and wring all the moisture out of it, producing desiccated rags of paper.

Saunders presents an Italy riven by religious power, political corruption, superstition, mercenary violence, plague, famine and war. Brutal stuff. Between pages 10 and 20 is a frail, easily forgotten wave in the direction of the notion that this century wasn’t entirely savage. Repeatedly using Barbara Tuchman’s famous phrase “the calamitous century,” juxtaposed with cheery images of Chaucer and joyful peasants, Saunders takes an opportunity to distance herself from the more famous scholar of the 14^th Century against whom she will undoubtedly be compared.

But after this obligatory nod to balanced presentation, our historian dives back into her subject. Enter John Hawkwood, a minor noble’s son from Essex, recruited for adventure and profit in France, who rises to the leadership of the immense and famous White Company. While this mercenary provides the compass point around which the story revolves, he is merely a point in a wider circle of the environment described. Hawkwood’s progress from France to Italy, then up and down that peninsula, allows Saunders a context in which to depict historical development.

The primary theme that gets re-echoed throughout the book is that Hawkwood was a cold, greedy mobster; but he was no different from those of higher rank. Hawkwood’s services, largely composed of protection and pillage, were hired by two popes, one king, a couple of republics and countless respectable wealthy landowners. There are no heroes in this story. Our cast ranges from the morally questionable to the pathologically destructive.

Even those individuals depicted who do not have military or political power, are contaminated. Saint Catherine of Siena is anything but a saint. “Catherine’s joy at being splashed in the blood of a decapitated man—an experience she sought to prolong by not washing—suggests that she was now suffering from a full-blown neurosis” (Stonor, p. 197). Petrarch, though talented, is criticized as “an ornament of the Visconti court” which was known for its rapaciousness (Stonor, p. 136). The only player to escape the tainted brush is Chaucer, who is truly Saunders' touchstone in the book. He represents an incorruptible optimism that will not be beaten by the catastrophes which surround him.

Within such a story, it is difficult for an author to avoid the sensational. Stonor occasionally indulges in melodrama: “Thickset men who relished a noisy brawl in a tavern, a tussle over a whore, stole through the frozen nightscape with the lightness of ghosts” (Stonor, p. 21). But most of the time, the author is able to remain on point and continually informative. Given the subject, one should be surprised that she does not indulge more often.

The Devil’s Broker is a gift to historical writing. It is a template for scholars concerning how to compose engagingly and informatively. The readers who choose to embark upon this gallop through 14^th Century Italy will find themselves richly rewarded. The only regret will be the brevity of the journey as the read is a fast one.

Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Devil’s Broker. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2004.

For review of another book on this time period, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-distant-mirror-calamitous-14th.html

The European Revolutions, 1848 – 1851 by Jonathan Sperber.

The European Revolutions, 1848 – 1851, was designed as a textbook for early undergraduate and (optimistically) advanced high school students. As such, it does not contain intensely complex theory regarding the events. It is a basic depiction of the occurrences and major players of the period.  Some will find this approach refreshingly straightforward; a delineation of what happened without the haze of a historian’s pet theories and self-congratulatory mental gymnastics. Others will find the work unchallenging.

This is not to say that the portrayal is all action and no thought, like so many books on military battles. Sperber spends the first half of his book discussing the pre-revolutionary environment and the causes leading to the struggles of 1848. Those already familiar with living and working conditions in Early- to Mid-19^th Century Europe, who are reading primarily to inform themselves about the revolutionary years, will find this section tedious with no new information; they can skip directly to Chapter Three, “The Outbreak of Revolution.” These following chapters illustrate the rise of mass movements with particular attention to the varieties and structures of rebellious organizations.

Just about every reader of this review has grown-up within a representative form of democracy. Even those inured to the vicissitudes of history can find themselves discouraged by a story of flowering republics crushed under the military boot of autocratic kings. It was a dramatic burst of freedom and equally quick reversal. But Sperber does an excellent job of coddling the reader by discussing at length the groundwork laid by this continent-wide revolt. Post-1848 monarchs, while not required to draft a constitution, were seen as backward and faced importunate nagging from below if they did not. Press censorship was no longer a given strategy of conservative regimes. The process of organizing an opposition had been inculcated. Most importantly, people became acquainted with and accustomed to democratic notions. If seen as the first steps in a learning process that culminated, through persistent dedication, in our current period of widespread republican government, the bitter pill of this period will be swallowed in a spirit of more philosophical and sanguine remove.

I cannot say that The European Revolutions, 1848 – 1851 will be the most exhilarating read you’ve ever had (unless the period and events alone excite you), but it will be appropriately informative and clear.

Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848 – 1851. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2003.

For review of a book on prior causes & events resulting in the European Revolutions, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-age-of-revolution-1789-to-1848-by.html

The Rothschilds, Banking and Amorality. Reflections Inspired by Niall Ferguson’s "The House of Rothschild".

Reading Ferguson’s book, depicting the seemingly callous actions of the Rothschild banking establishment, has caused me to dally upon questions of morality. There are a couple of ways to approach moral questions. One is from the observer’s own narrow, personal traditions or perspective: The Rothschilds were (“evil,” “wrong,” “immoral,” whatever one’s favorite designation) because they violated the dictates of the observer’s moral code.  Another is from the perspective of the person performing the action in question: An immoral person knows the difference between helpful or harmful acts and chooses the harmful one. An amoral person simply has no moral compass in a situation and performs the actions that serve his or her ends. The first approach is designed to confirm one’s own moral stance. The second approach can lead to insight concerning the actions of another. So it is the second approach I will be employing. I realize that the question of whether the Rothschild business practices were immoral or amoral is a tiny bit of philosophical hair-splitting. The distinction is only useful as a way of understanding that banking house.

                                             

To the House of Rothschild, whatever made money for the company was acceptable. Whether they were providing a loan to the British government that helped abolish slavery in the empire (Ferguson, p. 230), or providing a loan requested by the Russian Empire to suppress Polish independence (Ferguson, p.246), the sole purpose was to make money. That the actions were helpful or harmful to humane ends (or “good” or “evil” for the more Judeo-Christian reader) did not enter into the equation. By this definition, Rothschild business practices were amoral.

But using this definition, almost all banks and large corporations are amoral. There’s no reason to single-out the House of Rothschild specifically, unless one has a personal motivation to vilify their bank. The Boeing Corporation doesn’t care if it sells jets to fly passengers or jets to bomb villages; it’s the selling that counts. Banks will loan money to newly liberated countries and to armies which kill the civilians of those countries. The only question is can the borrower repay the loan. The purpose of a capitalist endeavor is to make money. The companies who add moral considerations to their actions are so few as to be enigmatic, and most of them fail in the international capitalist marketplace.

Most of us, who are not involved in these business decisions, profit from them.  If you have a 401K, or any retirement plan invested in stocks, bonds and mutual funds, the success or failure of your retirement plan is based upon the actions of these amoral agents. It is unlikely that one would be willing to invest in a company where the primary motivation was not the desire to make money. Of course, there are so-called “socially responsible” investments. They comprise a tiny piece of the international market and are largely focused on ineffectual, relatively innocuous moral concerns, like recycling and “Green Building.” In that way, I suppose most modern companies and most modern people are as amoral as the House of Rothschild.

Ferguson, Niall. The House of Rothschild. Volume One. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1998.

For a book review of Ferguson's The House of Rothschild, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-house-of-rothschild-by-niall.html

The Age of Revolution 1789 to 1848 by Eric Hobsbawm.

Eric Hobsbawm is that rare combination of innovative thinker and immensely well-informed historian, whose writing enriches one’s understanding beyond the mundane communication of facts. He is the individual who coined the term “dual revolution” to describe that period in Europe between 1789 and 1848, when the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution combined to create dramatic social change.

To manage a discussion of two distinct and pervasive revolutions and their wide-ranging influences is a complicated task. Professor Hobsbawm accomplishes this labor by first narrowing the foci of each revolution to its starting point. After some initial words introducing the world of 1780, he discusses the inception of the Industrial in England, then the French Revolution in greater Paris. As the reverberations of these historical earthquakes emanate from their individual epicenters, Hobsbawm follows the cracking landscape to include the affected international areas.

It is a pleasure to read a history by a writer who has so thorough an understanding of his period. Hobsbawm examines his time frame from a wide variety of societal and cultural angles. Particularly rare are his book’s later chapters which look at the impact of the dual revolution upon fields as varied as art, religion and science. These digressions, from the pure politics and economics that mark most tomes about this period, are refreshing and insightful.

Few theories of history mesh in perfect comfort with the evidence. Our conceptions may be useful short-cuts to understanding an era, but life has a way of growing and acting beyond the boundaries we place for it. Hobsbawm’s theories are no exception. He has a difficult time inserting the USA into his equations. The historian’s claim that Andrew Jackson’s populist presidential victory was “part of” Europe’s “second wave of revolution [which] occurred in 1829-34” (Hobsbawm, p. 138) has only tenuous evidence to support it. His efforts to downplay the influence that the North American revolution had on Latin American liberation only serve to draw attention to the northern example (Hobsbawm, p. 76). Some South American leaders (e.g. Simon Bolivar) developed their revolutionary creed in Paris. Others were inspired by the thirteen colonies’ success; which provided a more accurate template for Latin colonial independence than did the French rebellion against monarchy. But these discrepancies do not detract from the upheaval caused by the dual revolution in Europe.

Some will refrain from reading this historian’s works because he has been called a “Marxist Historian.” What the reader needs to recognize is that a Marxist Historian is an entirely different organism from a Marxist Activist. A Marxist Activist seeks to overthrow the capitalist system and institute a collective ownership of property. A Marxist Historian is an individual who has a class-based analysis of history and discusses the evolution of relationships within and between classes over time. While there are occasional revolutionaries among them, Marxist Historians do not necessarily think that a communist system is the answer. Rarely do they support Soviet- or Chinese-style communism unless they have been employed by one of those states. The student of history may learn about different classes and their development without accepting collectivist propaganda.

One bewildering characteristic of this book is that Hobsbawm discusses developments leading to the outbreak of revolt in 1848, but he does not spend any time discussing the events of that continent-wide explosion. The Age of Revolution ends with “in 1848, the explosion burst” (Hobsbawm, p. 362). The historian’s next book in the series is entitled The Age of Capitalism. Throughout The Age of Revolution, there are references to 1848’s failure, but no details. I cannot begin to conjecture the reasons for this omission. It is as if one has created a play and left-out the final act.

Despite this missing piece, Hobsbawm presents a chronology of development from 1789 to 1848 that is unparalleled in depth and scope. It would be a shame to miss it. Two options that a reader has regarding the missing finale are 1) find another book and hope that it’s as insightful, or 2) supplement The Age of Revolution with an additional book. I have a time-saving suggestion for readers who really want to read Hobsbawm: I have now embarked upon Jonathan Sperber’s The European Revolutions, 1848-1851 (review to follow). It is a basic depiction of the events and players of those years without innovative analysis. If you have already read Hobsbawm, you can skip the first 104 pages (which will contain nothing new to you) and start with chapter three “The Outbreak of Revolution.” With just 155 pages to go, this will adequately illustrate the final act.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Revolution 1789 to 1848. New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1962.

For that review of Sperber's The European Revolutions 1848-1851, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-european-revolutions-1848-1851-by.html

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White.

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom is both a part of history and a book about history. In 1865, Andrew Dickson White was the founding president of Cornell University.  He conceived it as an institution that “should exclude no sex or color” and “should afford an asylum for science” (White, p. 13). Almost immediately, White and Cornell were attacked by administrators of sectarian colleges, who described the new university as irreligious and immoral. White responded with a series of lectures defending his university. These lectures grew into written thoughts which, over a period of thirty years, (interrupted by duties at Cornell and ambassadorships to Germany and Russia), became the work we have today. It was published in 1896.

White’s thesis was that “theology” was the villain in the struggle against science; not “religion.” In his chapter on astronomy, White states that misinformation and attempts to hamper science concerning heliocentric theory were “not the fault of religion; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion” (White, p. 153). While this attempt to divide theology and religion is the author’s tactic throughout the book, it is unclear if White truly believes what he is saying, or if he is strategically attempting to drive a wedge between religious leaders and the believing flock.

Regardless of his motivations, White’s reasoning is unsound even to an atheist like myself: Theology is the study of religion. Religion, in the Judeo-Christian sense, is a revelation by God to his followers. The chronicle of that revelation is the Bible. Any reader of the Bible can easily identify the verses that support the notion that the Sun travels around the Earth: 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:5, all clearly state this belief. It is not a matter of theological interpretation by church leaders, or the over-intellectualizing of medieval scholars; it is an aspect of revealed religious belief. But whether these wedge ideas were honest opinions of White’s, or just propaganda, is immaterial to the result. His generation of voices weakened the religious claim upon explanation of the physical world.

The structure of the book is simple. Each chapter is devoted to a scientific issue: Cosmology, Evolution, Geology and Archaeology, to name a few. Each example shows a consistent pattern by presenting Christian beliefs (identified by White as “theology”), presenting the scientific challenge, then showing the reaction of religious leaders. The response of religious leaders begins with threats, brutality and censorship, moves on to compromise and ends with the inevitable surrender of ground to science. This element of the book is methodical and well-documented, presenting a chronology of religious misunderstanding and the answers of science. With this evidence, White is most convincing.

The author concludes his tome with an attempt to drive the wedge deeper between leader and flock. He contends that “science in general has acted powerfully to dissolve away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic interpretation,” helping to purify the sacred texts of a confusing overlay (White, p. 500). This view places science on the side of religion and its followers, against interpreters of the Bible. What exceptionally bold misrepresentation: stating that science has done more for scripture than have Christian scholars and leaders. But it’s propaganda and one has to admire his temerity. More plausible are his chronologies, of science’s advance and religion’s retreat, concerning explanations of the physical world. In the end, it was writing like this which deftly slid between the grip of religion on the throat of science and dislodged it. We breathe more freely today, with unencumbered scientific study and fewer clerics administering universities, thanks to people like Andrew Dickson White.

White, Andrew Dickson. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

For review of a good general history of Western Science, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-scientists-by-john-gribbin.html

Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution by Joan Landes.

Professor Joan Landes has written a book that stands as a partial rebuttal to the notion of a public sphere as democratizing. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jurgen Habermas explained that, in 17^th Century Europe, the Monarchical State was the center of public attention. As capitalism took hold, the bourgeoisie began to create an arena for their voice. Through books, newspapers, periodicals, coffee houses, libraries, clubs, salons and a variety of other instruments, the new middle-class produced a competing locus of communication with that of the monarchy and aristocracy. Habermas calls this arena “the public sphere.” He expounds further that “informed public opinion began to function as a weapon in the battle against the arbitrary dictates, privileged corporations and secret practices of the absolutist state (Landes, p. 41).  Those favoring wider public participation in political discourse see this as a positive occurrence. Joan Landes cautions against overly optimistic conclusions. She offers evidence that in France, as this new sphere became more prominent, women were systematically excluded from it between 1750 and 1850.

Prior to the French Revolution, “women exercised a considerable degree of power” hosting salons (Landes, p. 22). Women were writing at this time as well and, while their efforts were excluded from most public media, they did have some limited avenues such as the “Journal des Dames” (Landes, p. 57). Additionally, aristocratic women had a social rank that permitted them both greater respect and access influential men. This permitted them the ability to advance the causes of petitioners. While these powers are notably circumscribed, they represent a greater influence than women were soon to have.

The French Revolution began promisingly enough. In 1789, Women were in the streets and “at the new centers of political communication…By the summer of 1791, women were participating avidly in clubs and popular societies … attending as spectators in the galleries of section assemblies, the national legislature and radical clubs,” taking part in demonstrations and signing petitions (Landes, pp. 106-118). But the author elucidates a trajectory beginning with demands that women attend to domestic duties and ending in 1793 with women being “banned from active and passive participation in the political sphere” (Landes, p. 147).

Men’s efforts to domesticate women in this context are hardly surprising. While vestiges of that impulse exist today, it was a prominent, Europe-wide cultural feature, in the late 18^th Century. Even an early feminist like Mary Wollstonecraft, who “insists that women can be educated rationally,” cannot envision a role for women beyond “good mothers and good household managers” (Landes, pp. 131-2). While 21^st Century individuals may have difficulty envisioning a time of such limits on women, their fate was inevitable after the upheaval of the revolution had passed. Women were reattached to the private sphere of the home, minus the aforementioned powers they had during the Ancien Regime. Ironically, French women had less influence under a republic than under a monarchy.

Landes exposes this irony with organized deftness. Some examples could have been improved: It was unnecessary to spend a full chapter on Rousseau. While he discussed women’s role at length, he was just one man and an iconoclastic one who did not represent the multiplicity of educated male opinions during the 1750s. A survey of enlightenment males, and their verbal justifications for repressing women, would have been more useful. Also, there is a ten page critique of a 20^th Century movie, “La Nuit de Varennes.”  Current cinema is not historical evidence, no matter how insightful the director. Discussion of a modern film, even one about the past, can be nothing more than movie talk. There are enough misogynist male historians who still harbor the outdated view that women are unfit for an evidence-based field, without a female historian supplying them with ammunition. Aside from these minor errors, Landes stays on point with ample evidence.

Women and the Public Sphere successfully challenges “the Revolution’s claim to universality” and the notion that the public sphere, immediately resulted in democracy for all. Landes concludes “for women today, the Revolutionary era has not yet ended” (Landes, p. 201). If we define revolution using its social meaning of changing society at its root, this is clearly true. Women have not yet achieved full equality; they are still less well-paid, less well-represented and less physically safe, than men. But what Landes does not discuss is that the innovations between 1750 and 1850 (an ethos favoring democratization, along with a public sphere to discuss it), place equality within reach. While these changes caused an initial setback for women, they also opened the floodgates for future advancement. Society began to accustom itself to liberty. Women experienced this change, and today employ the tool of the public sphere and the language of democracy in their struggle. In spite of earlier obstruction under a republic, women never stopped fighting for their share of freedom. I am quite certain that they won’t stop until it is attained.

Landes, Joan. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

For review of a book on the aftermath of the French Revolution in Europe, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-age-of-revolution-1789-to-1848-by.html

The Dictionary of American Political Bullshit by Stephen L. Goldstein.

Dr Stephen Goldstein is a politically progressive op-ed columnist, writing for the conservative audience of Florida’s “Sun Sentinel.” He does not shy away from a fight. Each week, his editorials are met with a flurry of reactionary anger and personal attack from the newspaper’s readership. Not all of the responses are articulate, but almost all are hostile. So when he decided to write The Dictionary of American Political Bullshit, no one should have expected him to be coy or evasive. Goldstein takes sides. While the format of the “dictionary” is sardonically arranged to mimic its more objective counterpart, complete with phonetic spelling, it rants polemically in favor of economic and social justice through a liberal-progressive bullhorn. For example:

“DEMOCRACY

(de.moc.ra.cy)  noun  [phonetic spelling] ßmy program cannot do justice to phonetic spelling

The Democratic Republic of the United States of America is dead…what masquerades as the American system of government today is a cynical perversion of its Constitution: a plutocratic, aristocratic, oligarchic mongrel” (Goldstein, p. 61). This is a fragment of a two-page definition, but you get the idea.

Dr Goldstein does raise social issues. “States’ Rights…is bullshit for bigotry, misogyny, racism, homophobia, miscegenation, and every other imaginable form of neo-Neanderthal hate” (Goldstein, p. 191). However, his main targets are corporate spokespeople, politicians and apologists for the wealthy. It is, after all, a book about the use of subterfuge and misdirection through language. These three forces are seen by the author as designers of a lexis for their own gain and power. “Globalization is the economic equivalent of having unprotected sex, a worldwide economic orgy pimped by a coalition of mega-money interests and their government enablers at the expense of ‘you and me brothers and sisters’” (Goldstein, p. 105). The author’s purpose is to expose the techniques of lying to the public that are used by these three agencies. He hopes to educate the public. In service to this aim, he is not squeamish about holding the feet of US citizens to the fire. “The Fourth of July should become a national day of penance for modern Americans’ indifference and inertia…It’s a gift to have a Declaration of Independence, an ingratitude not to live by it” (Goldstein, p. 94).

Yes it’s a rant, and it’s frequently funny. But it’s a funny rant with a goal: to enlighten the public about how they are snowed and to activate them to participate. The reader will enjoy agreeing, disagreeing, laughing with and rolling her eyes at, Goldstein’s many heated pronouncements. In the end, she will be a little wiser, a little less trusting and armed to take on the liars.

Goldstein, Stephen L. The Dictionary of American Political Bullshit. Ashland: Grid Press, 2014.

For a political novel by Stephen Goldstein, satirizing Ayn Rand, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/atlas-drugged-by-stephen-l-goldstein.html