Abstract
The crucial element, the irreducible factor in history is the human dimension. Without humanity, whether individual or en masse, the study of the past would properly belong to geology. Change, growth and development are dependent on many variables, all important, but inseparable from human decision-making. This emphasis on the human factor in history has been the touchstone of the theory that each historical event is unique — what some have called historicism. This theory cannot accommodate the comparative approach, while it is our contention that given certain similar historical conditions, different individuals have reacted in the same way although separated in time. From another perspective, the materialist interpretation of history has contributed much to our analysis and understanding of the past, but when it attempts to stress historical movements at the expense of individual contributions historical materialism leaves the field of objective inquiry and becomes dogma.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 305.
Keith Eubank, Munich (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963), pp. 18, 56.
See the revealing letter of the Duchess of Devonshire to Philip Francis, November 29, 1798, in The Francis Letters, by Sir Philip Francis, ed. by Beata Francis (New York, n.d.), II, pp. 437–438.
John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt. The Years of Acclaim (New York, 1969), pp. 575–603.
The Life of William Wilberforce, by his sons Robert Isaac and Samuel Wilberforce (London, 1838), II, pp. 92–93. The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919, Vol. I 1783–1815, ed. by A. W. Ward and G. P. Gooch (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 219–220.
Richard Pares, The Historian’s Business and Other Essays (Oxford, 1961), p. 126.
As quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters, 1931–1950 (London, 1954), p. 204.
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), p. 21.
Baldwin in fact went back to his vacation spot at Aix, leaving matters in the hands of Neville Chamberlain. Feiling, op. cit., p. 190.
Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin. A Biography (New York, 1970), passim. R. Bassett, “Telling the truth to the people: the myth of the Baldwin ‘Confession’,” The Cambridge Journal, II (November 1948), pp. 84–95.
Middlemas and Barnes, op. cit., pp. 947, 955, 1025.
The best biography of Addington is Philip Ziegler, Addington. A Life of Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth (New York, 1963).
This was in 1800 when food shortages were severe. Ziegler, op. cit., p. 75.
Ibid., pp. 71, 81.
In this “Upstairs-Downstairs” age, readers might enjoy one contemporary observation about the new government. “This Administration is as if the footmen were called up to the second [i.e., servants’] table” said someone to Lady Glenbervie. The Diaries of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenhervie, ed. by Francis Bickley (London, 1928), I, p. 169, February 14, 1801.
The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (1791’1811), ed. by the Earl of Ilchester (New York, 1908), II, p. 129, February 11, 1801.
Ibid., II, p. 130, February 26, 1801.
As quoted in George Pellew, The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon ble Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth (London, 1847), I, p. 361, March 25, 1801.
According to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, discussing the terms of the Amiens treaty of 1802. The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1820), XXXVI, p. 768, May 13, 1802.
Ibid., XXXVI, p. 85, November 3, 1801.
Ibid., XXXVI, p. 816, May 14, 1802.
Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury, ed. by his grandson, the third Earl (London, 1845), IV, p. 67, April 8, 1802.
Keith Feiling (1946), Iain Macleod (1962) and David Dilks’ is yet to appear.
According to Harold Nicolson Chamberlain had “the manner of a clothes-brush,” Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930’1939, Vol. I (New York, 1966), p. 345, June 6, 1938.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 201. It is equally untrue that Chamberlain had never flown in an airplaine before he went to visit Hitler. Ibid., p. 104.
D. C. Watt, Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (South Bend, 1965), pp. 83–99. Vansittart as quoted in Macleod, op. cit., p. 179.
Macleod, op. cit., p. 179.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 324.
Eubank, op. cit., p. 227: Letters of Admiral of the Fleet, The Earl of St. Vincent, ed. by David B. Smith (London, 1922), I, p. 283.
Even after the outbreak of war in 1939, Chamberlain still believed that Hitler had been sincere at Munich: “he had really meant what he signed and said; but he had changed his mind later.” See John R. Colville, Man of Valour. The Life of Field-Marshal The Viscount Gort (London, 1972), p. 118. Chamberlain made this declaration to the author of this biography.
As quoted in Sir Charles Petrie, Bt., Lord Liverpool and his times (London, 1954), p. 18.
Memoirs of the Public Life and Administration of the Right Honourable the Earl of Liverpool (London, 1827), pp. 80–81, 83.
Petrie, op. cit., p. 15.
W. R. Brock, Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism, 1820 to 1827 (Cambridge, 1941), pp. 4, 6.
[William Cobbett], “To the Rt. Hon. Lord Hawkesbury,” Cobbetfs Weekly Political Register, April 17, 1802, p. 399.
William Cobbett, Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Hawkesbury and to the Right Honourable Henry Addington on the Peace with Buonaparte, 2nd ed. (London, 1802), Letter IV to Lord Hawkesbury, October 19, 1801, p. 46.
Ibid., Letter IX to Lord Hawkesbury, November 4, 1801, p. 142.
Malmesbury Diaries, IV, p. 66, November, 1801.
As quoted in Memoirs of the Public Life, p. 174.
Parliamentary History, XXXVI, p. 767, May 13, 1802.
Eubank, op. cit., p. 65.
The Earl of Birkenhead, Halifax. The Life of Lord Halifax (London, 1965), p. 407. The author concedes that Halifax had “a certain sluggishness of imagination.” Ibid., p. 607.
F. S. Northedge, The Troubled Giant. Britain among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (New York, 1967), p. 489.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1938, I, pp. 85–86, as quoted in Christopher Thorne, The Approach of War, 1938–39 (New York, 1968), pp. 93–94. This conversation took place on October 12, 1938. Lord Halifax had already written to the British ambassador in Paris that German expansion in Central Europe was “a normal and natural thing.” Loc. cit.
Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence, 1781–1821 (London, 1917), I, p. 156, GLG to his mother, June 24, 1797.
The phrase was used by the French foreign ministry to indicate its displeasure over Malmesbury heading the peace mission in 1797. Ibid., I, p. 156. See also the essay on Malmesbury in Edmund B. D’Auvergne, Envoys Extraordinary (London, 1937), pp. 13–88.
Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, ed. by Charles Ross (London, 1859), II, p. 236, Marquis Cornwallis to Sir John Shore, April 17, 1794.
Ibid., II, p. 283, Marquis Cornwallis to Colonel Ross, January 27, 1795.
Ibid., II, p. 295, Cornwallis to Sir John Shore, October 12, 1795.
Ibid., II, p. 328, Cornwallis to Ross, December 15, 1797.
Ibid., II, pp. 283, 311, Cornwallis to Ross, January 27, 1795, November 1, 1796.
Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., preserved at Dropmore, vol. IV (London, 1905), pp. 369, 373–375, 393, 423, 440, 462, Marquis Buckingham to Lord Grenville, November 10, 12, 13, 23, December 25, 1798, January 14, February 1, 1799.
Cornwallis Correspondence, III, pp. 101, 102, Cornwallis to Ross, May 20, June 8, 1799.
Ibid., III, p. 56, Cornwallis to Ross, January 28, 1799.
Ibid., III, p. 148, Cornwallis to Ross, November 29, 1799.
Ibid., III, pp. 277, 292, Cornwallis to Ross, July 11, September 17, 1800.
Ibid., III, p. 382, Cornwallis to Ross, September 17, 1801.
For a discussion of Cornwallis’ habits at Amiens, see The Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson, ed. by Lady Jackson (London, 1872), I, p. 74, March 12, 1802. Sir George was the younger brother of Mr. Francis Jackson, British Minister in Paris at the time of the Amiens conference and himself an attaché in the French capital.
Margaret George, The Warped Vision. British Foreign Policy, 1933–1939 (Pittsburgh, 1965), p. 208.
Parts of this document are printed in Laurence Thompson, The Greatest Treason (New York, 1968), Appendix, pp. 270–274.
Cornwallis Correspondence, I, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, November I, 1788.
The Diaries of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenbervie, ed. by Francis Bickley (London, 1928), I, pp. 300–301.
Jones, Diary, p. 409.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 327.
Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (Boston, 1963), p. 79. See also the summary and evaluation of Sir Horace Wilson’s character, pp. 376–377.
Richard Gott, The Appeasers (Boston, 1963), Ibid., p. 377.
Wilson was in fact concerned about communism. See Thorne, op. cit., p. 15; Keith Robbins, Munich, 1938 (London, 1968), pp. 241, 301–302. For the Chamberlain-Wilson relationship, Gilbert and Gott, op. cit., pp. 55–57.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers bv, The Hague
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Presseisen, E.L. (1978). Portraits of Two Epochs. In: Amiens and Munich. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9718-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9718-9_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9720-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9718-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive