Lewis Namier

In the modern era, British thinkers have made significant - indeed perhaps even disproportionate - contributions to our understanding of the workings of international relations. This book brings together eleven original essays by an inter-disciplinary team of historians, political theorists and international relations specialists that reconsider some of those contributions and their legacies. It aims to provide new insights into the work of thinkers from Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and Lewis Namier as well as to advance the study of the history of international thought.

This article attributes the relative lack of attention to the ‘public sphere’ in Geoffrey Holmes's work to the pervasive influence of Lewis Namier and the Namierite conception of political history. Holmes's British Politics can be understood as a product of what might be called the revisionist's dilemma. Because the main thrust of the argument of this work was to challenge the Namierite interpretation of the structure of politics in Anne's reign, Holmes could not fail but to replicate the structures of the original Namierite paradigm. Nevertheless, Holmes's demolition of the Namierite view of Augustan politics also opened up new possibilities for further research; it ultimately widened our understanding of the ‘political’ and it prepared the ground for the remarkable interdisciplinary dialogue between literary historians, intellectual historians, and political historians.

The article concludes with a discussion of how Holmes's successors began to build on his work in ways that can help explain why the Habermasian public sphere paradigm emerged to the foreground of current scholarship in a field where it had been ignored for three decades. Historians are now beginning to build a detailed post-Habermasian understanding of the ways in which the public sphere affected the structures of politics in later Stuart Britain. Work along these lines may well finally help explain the transformation of British politics from an age of Stuart revolutions to the age of Hanoverian oligarchy.

Immanuel Kant’ın insanlığın olgunluk çağına geçiş aşaması olarak betimlediği Aydınlanma, ‘bilmeye cesaret et!’ (sapare aude!) şiarıyla başlamıştı; ama, bildiği ya da bildiğini sandığı dünyaya yönelik gittikçe daha kibirli hale gelen bu özgüven, Fransa’da tarih sahnesine henüz çıkan ‘halk’ın (le peuple) devrimini, kısa sürede, çok genç ve çok hırslı hatiplerin teatral performanslarının liderliğindeki donsuz (sans-culotte) güruhların giyotin festivallerine dönüştürecektir. Edmund Burke, 1790 yılında, yani Kant’ın Aydınlanma Nedir Sorusuna Bir Yanıt adlı metni yayımlandıktan yalnızca altı yıl sonra, böyle bir devrime karşı çıktığı ve onun, çok daha büyük çaplı, yıkıcı ve soğukkanlı bir dönüşümün habercisi olduğunu duyurduğu aşağıdaki satırları yazdığında, henüz ne Fransa Kralı XVI. Louis idam edilmiş ne de Fransa Kraliçesi Marie Antoinette, vatana ihanetten ensest sapkınlığa kadar birçok suçlamadan ölüme mahkum edilerek Paris sokaklarında taşlanmış ve bir kutlama eşliğinde giyotinde can vermişti:

“O zaman veliaht eşi olan Fransa kraliçesini Versailles’da gördüğümden beri on altı ya da on yedi yıl oluyor ve onun zar zor dokunur gibi olduğu bu göz küresine daha nefis bir imgelem asla takılmamıştı. Onu ufkun hemen üstünde gördüm, henüz taşınmaya başladığı yüce kubbeyi dekore eder ve neşelendirirken––sabah yıldızı gibi; yaşam, görkem ve neşe dolu pırıldarken. Ah! ne devrim! ve o yükseliş ve o düşüşü duygusuz düşünmem için sahip olmam gereken ne kalp! (…) Yiğit adamların ulusunda, şerefli adamların ve şövalyelerin ulusunda ona rastgelen böyle felaketleri görmek için yaşamam gerektiğini hayal etmezdim. Onu hakaretle tehdit edecek bir bakışın bile intikamını almak üzere on binlerce kılıcın kınlarından fırlayacağını düşünürdüm. Ama şövalyelik çağı kapandı. Sofistlerin, ekonomistlerin ve hesapçılarınki kazandı ve Avrupa’nın ihtişamı sonsuza kadar söndürüldü. Rütbe ve cinsiyete yönelik o cömert sadakati, o mağrur teslimiyeti, o vakur itaati, esarette bile yüce bir özgürlük ruhunu canlı tutan kalbin o tabiiyetini asla, artık asla seyreylemeyeceğiz."

This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin’s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and what do we lose by dubbing his philosophy Jewish. The discussion will proceed as follows: after describing the conceptual tension (Section 1), I will examine Berlin’s discussion of nationalism and explain why comparisons between him and Hans Kohn as well as communitarian interpretations of him are incomplete and have limited merit. I will continue with a brief discussion of Berlin’s Jewishness and Zionism (Section 3) and explain why I define this position “Diaspora Zionism”. The two concluding sections will discuss Berlin’s place within a larger Cold War liberal discourse (Section 5) and why I find it problematic to see his political writings as part of a Jewish political tradition (Section 6).
Keywords: Berlin, Isaiah (1909–1997); Kohn, Hans (1891–1971); Namier, Lewis B. (1880–1960); Shklar, Judith N. (1928–1992); nationalism; communitarianism; Cold War liberalism; Jewish political tradition

I have uploaded a PDF of the final version of this article, as certain problems were introduced by the typesetters. Thearticle considers the impact of Lewis Namier's historical ideas on the writing of the history of eighteenth-century Britain. Pointing out that Namier studied law at Lwów University, and studied history privately with, among others, Stanisław Kot, it raises questions about the extent to which his view of British politics was derived from the pessimistic Cracow School of historians, who blamed the szlachta for the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It then compares Namier's structuralist analysis of British politics with studies of the politics of Poland-Lithuania, in particular during the reign of John Casimir, arguing that Polish historians, like Namier, perhaps downplay too much the role of ideas in politics, putting their faith in a Namierite claim that politics was ultimately decided by pure self-interest.

Prompted by the experience of the second world war, historian Lewis Namier described the undemocratic birth of modern republics in his 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (1944) and warned of the unintended consequences of nineteenth-century liberal ideals. On the process of nation-making, he wrote, “States are not created or destroyed, and frontiers redrawn or obliterated, by argument and majority votes;” rather, “nations are freed, united, or broken by blood and iron, and not by a generous application of liberty and tomato-sauce; violence is the instrument of national movements.” He reminded historians that forging national democracies had required men of influence and wealth, who were capable of combining their force to create a government and to defend it against imperial bayonets. Thus, if successful, the government of a democratic nation was composed of those who were victorious in seizing the political leadership of a new state and using its executive force to fight hostile forces—both from outside and within. While their final aim was a world without war, European liberals of the nineteenth century imagined that this end required a national government ready and willing to defend itself against armed invasion and domestic insurrection. It was common, for example, for liberal papers in Prussia to call for war against the Russian Empire in order to secure the success of democratic republics. Thus, already by 1848, the contest for democracy was bound up with the problem of executive force and raised difficult questions about the appropriate means to an end...

https://jhiblog.org/2018/03/07/the-problem-of-democracy-radical-political-traditions-in-the-revolutions-of-1848/

L. B. Namier fue, y aun es hoy, uno de los intelectuales y referentes académicos más importante en el mundo anglosajón. El hecho de que en el diccionario de Oxford de la lengua inglesa se reconocieran entradas como "namierismo" y "namierizar", nos da una muestra de la influencia y lo novedoso de su obra y sus aportaciones a la historiografía. Pero lo cierto es que tan importante fue su obra para la historiografía anglosajona como desconocida es ésta en España. Por lo nuevo de sus aportaciones acerca de la historia de Inglaterra, de Europa y del nacionalismo, L. B. Namier se merecía también un reconocimiento en las universidades españolas. Efectivamente, si tomamos como ejemplo el desarrollo de la política española en el seno del Consejo europeo, el juego de alianzas de los que formaron parte de los gobiernos españoles de F. González y José María Aznar, se puede mostrar como la finalidad personal, la amistad, los intereses privados y la psicología, también son elementos a tener en cuenta a la hora de analizar el por qué de las cosas, más incluso de las ideologías, tal y como L. B. Namier puso de manifiesto en su estudio del Parlamento británico en The structure of politics at the accesion of George III. Una obra tan importante, que aporta tantas novedades, que planteó una nueva explicación para toda la historia de Inglaterra durante el siglo XVIII.

The Polish-born Jewish-British essayist and historian Sir Lewis B. Namier (1888-1960) was a man of contradictions: an émigré from Eastern Galicia who became ardent British patriot and admirer of the British Empire, Namier was also a hawkish supporter of the Zionist movement. This chapter aims to draw the lines connecting the three strands in Namier’s work – the Jewish-Zionist, the central European, and the British-imperial – and to examine the way in which they were interconnected in the interwar years. The first section, ‘The Idea of Greater Britain’ looks at Namier’s immigration and early academic training at Balliol College, Oxford in pre-WWI years. In particular, it assesses the impact the early exposure to new colonial history and federalist imperial ideas had on him in subsequent years. The second section, ‘Meddling in the Middle’, focuses on Namier wartime activities and involvement at the Paris Peace Conference, and his close contacts with R. W. Seton-Watson’s ‘New Europe’ group and Tomáš Masaryk and his circle of supporters. Moving to the 1920s and 1930s, the third section ‘Third Empire or Third Temple?’ examines Namier’s Zionist activities and the way in which his enthusiastic endorsement of the forgotten scheme of turning Palestine into a British dominion was compatible with his earlier notions of liberal imperialism and views of national self-determination under the aegis of empire. In short, the chapter argues that Namier’s case can allow us to scrutinize the conventional wisdom which regards nations and empires as rivals or even sworn enemies, for it reveals instead close links between the making of empire and the construction of nationality in general, and, more specifically, the way in which the British Empire was imagined as the liberal incubator and protector of the Jewish national project.

[Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism]

The Polish-born Jewish-British essayist and historian Sir Lewis B. Namier (1888-1960) was a man of contradictions: an émigré from Eastern Galicia who became ardent British patriot and admirer of the British Empire, Namier was also a hawkish supporter of the Zionist movement. This chapter aims to draw the lines connecting the three strands in Namier’s work – the Jewish-Zionist, the central European, and the British-imperial – and to examine the way in which they were interconnected in the interwar years. The first section, ‘The Idea of Greater Britain’ looks at Namier’s immigration and early academic training at Balliol College, Oxford in pre-WWI years. In particular, it assesses the impact the early exposure to new colonial history and federalist imperial ideas had on him in subsequent years. The second section, ‘Meddling in the Middle’, focuses on Namier wartime activities and involvement at the Paris Peace Conference, and his close contacts with R. W. Seton-Watson’s ‘New Europe’ g...

Edmund Burke, 1790 yılında, Fransız Devrimi’ne karşı çıktığı ve onun çok daha büyük çaplı, yıkıcı ve soğukkanlı bir dönüşümün habercisi olduğunu duyurduğu Fransa Devrimi Üzerine Düşünceler adlı kitabını yazdığında henüz ne Fransa Kralı XVI. Louis ile Fransa Kraliçesi Marie Antoinette devrimin insanca icadı giyotinde can vermiş ne de Fransız Devrimi kendi çocuklarını tek tek öğüteceği Terör Dönemi’ne girmişti. Tedirgin edici bir kesinlikle Fransız Devrimi’nin aşırılıklarını ve nihai sonunu öngörebilmiş bu çalışma, Thomas Paine’in İnsan Hakları adlı kitabı başta olmak üzere, Aydınlanma düşüncesinin temel yapıtlarının ortaya çıkışını kışkırtmış; kısa sürede muhafazakâr siyasal felsefenin bir başyapıtına dönüşmüştür.

Saggio contenuto nel volume collettaneo "Bandiera ricucita Nazione lacerata. Pistoia e la III guerra d’Indipendenza. 150 anni (Atti del convegno di studi, Pistoia, 14 ottobre 2016)", a cura di T. Dolfi, “Quaderni di Storialocale”, Gli Ori, Pistoia, 2018, pp. 15-34.