Showing papers in "The American Historical Review in 1955"

The Meaning of Nationalism

Abstract: Project cbdoilproject.com has many thousands of free and legal books to download in PDF as well as many other formats. Site is a high quality resource for free Books books.It is known to be world's largest free PDF platform for free books. You have the option to browse by most popular titles, recent reviews, authors, titles, genres, languages and more.Download in PDF, and you can also check out ratings and reviews from other users.Best sites for books in any format! Take some advice and get your free ebooks in EPUB or MOBI format. They are a lot nicer to read. There are a lot of them available without having to go to pirate websites.

The Ethical Revolt Against Christian Orthodoxy in Early Victorian England

Abstract: NINETEENTH-century free thought (the Victorians generally called it "Rationalism") made its grand assault on Christian orthodoxy1 during the twenty years or so following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in I859. It was then that advanced theological liberalism, twice rebuked in the Court of Arches, was twice vindicated by the Privy Council, that Oxford and Cambridge were opened to nonsubscribers to the Thirty-nine Articles, that scholarly clergymen like Leslie Stephen, J. R. Green, and J. E. Thorold Rogers felt it a duty of conscience to resign their orders, and that such stalwart soldiers of truth as T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, G. J. Holyoake, and Charles Bradlaugh were marching from victory to victory. This was undoubtedly the climax of the story, but there is no need to rehearse it in detail. It is more worth-while to analyze the forces that lay behind it, and this will focus our attention on the two or three decades immediately preceding T859. The factors usually cited in explanation of the decline of nineteenthcentury orthodoxy are the rise of the concept of evolution as a scientific hypothesis in geology and biology, and of the "higher criticism" in Biblical scholarship. The prevailing impression seems to be (a) that, because Lyell and Darwin had shown that neither the origin of the earth nor the origin of man as described in Genesis can be reconciled with the findings of science, therefore thinking people became atheists or agnostics; and (b) that, because a number of German scholars had shown that neither the Old nor the New Testament can be taken at face value, therefore honest men had no recourse but to abandon Christianity altogether. Not only is this implausible on the face of it. It has also obscured the fact that the Victorian religious crisis was produced by a fundamental conflict between certain cherished orthodox dogmas (of which the infallibility of the

Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley

Abstract: W RITING in the Outlook of August IO, i9oi, just one month prior to the assassination of President William McKinley, the newspaper correspondent Francis H. Nichols noted that since the assassination of King Humbert of Italy by the anarchist Bresci the question had been many times asked in the United States as to whether the nation's government and the President were themselves secure from anarchist attack.1 Few though they were in number in the United States in the closing decades of the nineteenth century,2 the anarchists, as Nichols suggests, were viewed with alarm by the American community. Anarchism was regarded as "the most dangerous theory which civilization has ever had to encounter," and the anarchist ranks, it was thought, were filled by common criminals and psychopaths

Bismarck and German Nationalism

Abstract: THE Nazi revolution and the ruin which it brought have placed in doubt many of the previous assumptions of German historical thought.' Of the several problems for which new solutions must be sought one of the most important concerns the influence of Bismarck.2 Does he share responsibility for the growth of that inverted nationalism upon which Hitler rode to power and conquest? The question of Bismarck's nationalism has long been the subject of speculation and controversy. According to one school of interpretation, whose chief representatives were Heinrich Friedjung and Erich Brandenburg,3 he adopted a German national outlook early in his career, certainly after I85I when he became Prussian delegate to the German Bundestag in Frankfurt. This viewpoint has proved tenacious. Recently it appeared again in an article by Otto Becker published in the Historische Zeitschrift.4 Following the same tradition, A. 0. Meyer, author of the most recent biography, took an even more extreme position. To him it appeared axiomatic that the great Prussian Junker was motivated throughout his career by a German national patriotism which was as fundamental to his thought and action as his Lutheran faith and his monarchical loyalty.5 From the evidence, however, it is apparent that before i866 Bismarck gave his primary allegiance to the Prussian state and monarchy. Therefore, Max Lenz, Erich Marcks,6 and Friedrich Meinecke7 concluded that his con-

Intellectuals and Other People

Abstract: M v[ORE than a century ago Emerson called the scholar "the man of the ages." But the scholar, Emerson went on, "must also wish with other men to stand well with his contemporaries.... In this country the emphasis in conversation and of public opinion commends the practical man; and the solid portion of the community is named with significant respect in every circle." He added that the American people take a low view of "ideologies" and regard ideas as "subversive of social order and comfort."1 Both Europeans and Americans echoed this judgment. Certainly the scholar in America has traditionally held a lower place in common esteem than in Europe, even if a witty dean was guilty of exaggeration in remarking that in the Old World an ordinary mortal on seeing a professor tipped his hat while in America he tapped his head. In Emerson's day professors and their fellow intellectuals had not come to be regarded as a special group; they were not then, nor have