WRB—June 2023 History and Classics Supplement

It seems safe to say we’re in the midst of an anti-Tacitean craze

[Despite its ever-so-promising launch in April, many and various circumstances prevented this supplement from making its way to the e-presses last month. This failure was regrettable, particularly following the April edition’s rash promise of a themed May edition. —JDR] [Yes. —Chris] [We attempt to remedy this with an unusual bifurcation: The first half of the supplement will deliver on the promised May theme—empire, imperialism, and colonialism—and the second will round up June’s releases. —JDR]

Act 1: Empire, &c. 

[That’s my favorite Wilco song. —JDR]

Journal entries:

• In February, Peter Wilson’s study of the military rise of the German Empire (Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500) got its American release. The Journal has a lengthy summary review from William Anthony Hay:

  Germans, the story goes, have long shown a predisposition to aggressive war, though many reasons for their belligerence have been advanced over the years: a fear of encirclement, a lack of easily defended borders, a hostile neighborhood, the burdens of balance-of-power leadership. For many, Germany is a kind of caricature: a nation that was unified in the late nineteenth century by militant Prussia (bristling with soldiers and discipline) and that, in the twentieth, launched two world wars that ended in total defeat.

  In Iron and Blood, Peter Wilson, a professor at Oxford, is eager to widen our perspective and avoid simple determinism or reductive stereotype.

  From the Foreign Affairs mini-review: “This astonishingly ambitious and detailed 900-page study of militaries in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland is not for the faint of heart.”

• Philip Stern’s Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (May) examines the royal charter companies (and, in what we suspect might be a bit of conflating things that aren’t the same, private modern corporations) that drove British imperial expansion. In a group review for the Journal, Tunku Varadarajan:

  England’s “portfolio colonialism” came into existence through royal charters, by which the sovereign doled out juicy commercial advantages to those who petitioned for them. These plums ranged from exemptions from duties and taxes to the prerogative to claim territory overseas in the name of the crown (as Gilbert did in Newfoundland). The terms could be audacious, Mr. Stern observes, allowing companies to run all sorts of enterprises over “ill-defined geographic spaces insouciantly superimposed over indigenous sovereignty.” Breathtaking claims to territory or jurisdiction resulted in assertions of rights to “sacrosanct” private property that were enforceable in British courts. The charters redrew the maps of the world.

• A new book by Stefan Rinke on the clash of two empires, Spanish and Aztec, focuses on the fall of Tenochtitlan in particular (Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan, June). It appears to be pretty hard on the Spanish; the Aztecs seem to get off pretty lightly, considering the whole human sacrifice thing. 

Side hustle:

• In The American Conservative, Bruce Gilley—no stranger to controversy—took on one of the most beloved pieces of anticolonial history, Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost (1998). Hochschild and Gilley followed with a pointed exchange of letters. Who doesn’t love drama?

• Also in The American Conservative, Jude Russo [Hey! That’s the name of this supplement’s editor! —JDR] [Alright, calm down. —Chris] wrote a somewhat left-handed but positive treatment of Nigel Biggar’s evaluation of the British Empire (Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, May):

  The truth is its own reward. Setting the record straight is per se a worthy endeavor. But what is, for Biggar, the point? His is not an idle self-esteem campaign for Britons and Commonwealth residents of colonial descent. It is here that Colonialism runs aground. Biggar is no nostalgist; he concedes that, while empire worked for Britain and her subjects, at least for a time, that time has passed. He argues that anti-colonial thinkers are challenging Britain’s successor, the “liberal international order” under American hegemony, which he accepts as a force for good.

• Speaking of Hochschild, the man himself has a review in our New York–based sister publication about American history “projects” (The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum, 2021–2023; The 1619 Project, 2023) [Stay tuned for WRB’s launch of the 1994 Project, named for the year several epoch-changing editors landed on this mortal coil. —JDR] [American History Y. —Chris]:

  The most notable thing about the 1776 Curriculum, however, is what is not in it. Its view of American history is all politics and no economics. It praises the right to vote (conceding that it took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to fully enforce that right), trial by jury, and the separation of powers. All these, of course, are splendid principles, but they do not take account of the fact that ever more power is not political. Today Walmart has nearly twice as many employees as the entire active-duty US military. Washington lobbyists outnumber members of Congress roughly twenty to one (that’s just the registered lobbyists), and they often take a hand in drafting laws. Many state governments reliably bow to the power of major industries: petrochemicals in Louisiana, for instance, or coal in West Virginia. For a century and a half, economic power has been increasingly concentrated in corporate empires and the families who own them. A study a few years ago found that the three richest Americans possessed more wealth than the poorest 160 million, and the disparities since then have only grown. It’s a far cry from “all men are created equal.”

From the front lines:

• Thomas Madden at the New Criterion describes this study of the Ottoman golden age (The Lion House: The Coming of a King, November) as “not quite history but not quite fiction,” but gives it the thumbs up anyway:

  Suleiman’s reign had no shortage of powerful women. Indeed, it marks the beginning of what historians refer to as the “Sultanate of Women.” Suleiman’s mother, Hafsa Sultan, exerted great influence before her death in 1534, as did Mahedrevran, the mother of Suleiman’s elder son. And no one, save the sultan himself, had more power and influence than Hurrem, who became Suleiman’s closest and most beloved counselor. Defying centuries of tradition, Suleiman married Hurrem, and she bore him six children. Hurrem had such power over her husband that many suspected her of employing witchcraft. The reader will turn nearly half this book’s pages, though, before finding Hurrem, and only a smattering of those that follow refer to her, the extraordinary marriage, or the intrigues of the harem. De Bellaigue’s Hurrem is a schemer, like everyone else. But she remains hidden behind the latticework screens of the inner palace and therefore plays only a minor, mysterious role.