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Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
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First published 2002 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2002 by Taylor & Francis.
Augmented version of an issue of Daedalus, Winter 2000, copyright © 2000
by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001057459

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Multiple modernities / Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, editor.

p. cm.
Originally published as an issue of Daedalus, winter 2000.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0926-5 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Civilization, Modern—20th century. 2. Civilization, Modern—1950-
3. Social change. 4. Civilization, Modern—Philosophy. 5. Comparative
civilization. I. Eisenstadt, S. N. (Shmuel Noah), 1923- II. Daedalus.

CB427 .M76 2002

909.82—dc21
2001057459

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0926-1 (pbk)

Contents Preface v

vii Preface
S.N. Eisenstadt
1 Multiple Modernities
Björn Wittrock
31 Modernity: One, None, or Many?
European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition
Johann P. Arnason
61 Communism and Modernity
Nilüfer Göle
91 Snapshots of Islamic Modernities
Dale F. Eickelman
119 Islam and the Languages of Modernity
Sudipta Kaviraj
137 Modernity and Politics in India
Stanley J. Tambiah
163 Transnational Movements, Diaspora,
and Multiple Modernities
Tu Weiming
195 Implications of the Rise of “Confucian” East Asia
Jürgen Heideking
219 The Pattern of American Modernity
from the Revolution to the Civil War
Renato Ortiz
249 From Incomplete Modernity to World Modernity

261 Index

v
vi Multiple Modernities
 Preface vii

Preface

T
HE TERM “MULTIPLE MODERNITIES” is not one in common
usage today. There is no way of knowing whether it will
ever achieve the renown or instant recognition that cer-
tain other more hyperbolic phrases like “the end of history” and
“the clash of civilizations” have managed to secure in these last
years. Yet, as will be evident, the authors are criticizing many of
the prevailing theories about the character of contemporary
society while questioning whether traits commonly described as
“modern” do in fact accurately and fully render the complexity
of the contemporary world. In contrast to the words of scholars,
politicians, and publicists who have eyes only for the “global
village,” who prate constantly about the universal triumph of
democracy and the free market—purportedly the most charac-
teristic institutions of our day—this volume may be read as an
effort to go beyond such superficial and simplistic formulations.
In effect, this study is intended to challenge many of the
conventional notions of how the world has changed over time,
in this century predominantly, but in earlier periods as well. In
reminding us of how much the political, social, and economic
theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, still persua-
sive until very recently, have lost credence in recent decades, it

vii
viii Multiple Modernities

asks a more fundamental question about whether we are at all

confident that we understand contemporary cultures. Do we, in
fact, give sufficient attention to them? In abandoning the social
scientific typologies, once so popular, that purported to tell us
how societies differ, have we failed to replace them with others
of equal persuasiveness? In short, one of the more characteristic
pretensions of our time may be that we claim to understand and
know the contemporary world when we are in fact largely
ignorant of its complex character. In too many instances we
appear to be extrapolating from what now exists to imagine
what must inevitably be. If this is indeed our situation, it is
imperative that we reconsider the character of modernity, recog-
nizing that just as many of the bold theories about economic
and political development, fashioned in the immediate post–
World War II period, are now very justifiably discarded, so
those that today command public attention may also soon be.
S. N. Eisenstadt, in many ways the principal architect of the
study, opens with the bold assertion that the idea of “multiple
modernities” needs to be seen as a refutation of theories of
modernization prevalent in the 1950s, which assumed that all
industrial societies would one day converge, and that such con-
vergence was already proceeding. The “classical” sociological
analyses of Marx and Durkheim, and, to a certain extent, of
Weber, all posited what Eisenstadt terms a “cultural program of
modernity,” which had its origins in Europe but was expected in
time to become universal. Yet as societies modernized in the
immediate postwar period, Eisenstadt sees that the “homogeniz-
ing and hegemonic assumptions of this Western program of
modernity” were not realized. In many non-Western societies,
all distinctively and undeniably modern, there was little disposi-
tion to imitate the West, or indeed to praise its qualities. In
short, for Eisenstadt, “modernity” and “Westernization” are
not identical; they were wrongly perceived as such in the years
after the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.
Björn Wittrock, no less interested in describing the varieties of
modernity, believes that the United States ought not to be taken
as the measure that is used to determine the success or failure of
other societies seeking to prove themselves modern, wishing to
achieve what is still thought to be that enviable status. Today,
 Preface ix

when there appears to be an overwhelming wish to equate

modernity with a liberal market economy, with free trade, it is
important to recognize how rarely have such policies and prac-
tices been common. In the political sphere, Wittrock reminds us,
virtually no European state before very recent times could claim
to be democratic, as we now define that term. If modernity,
then, is equated with phenomena of this sort, its history has
been an exceedingly brief one. For Wittrock, European moder-
nity was not simply “a package of technological and organiza-
tional developments”; it was intimately linked to a political
revolution, to an equally important transformation of the na-
ture of scholarly and scientific practices and institutions. As he
explains, although philosophical and political groups might dif-
fer, they all acknowledged “the idea that agency, reflexivity,
and historical consciousness might help construct a new set of
institutions,” committed to new notions of citizenship, of the
rights that inhered in such a new status.
Wittrock’s essay leads very naturally to a consideration of
what may be the most significant event of our times—the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union and the eclipse of Marxist Commu-
nism in many parts of the world. Johann Arnason, believing that
Soviet Communism was unquestionably “modern,” that those
who choose not to see it as such are mistaken, asks whether it
may not be best understood as “a distinctive but ultimately self-
destructive version of modernity, rather than a sustained devia-
tion from the modernizing mainstream.” In short, the Soviet
experiment needs to be seen as a “failed modernity,” and the
reasons for its failure need to be understood. Those who habitu-
ally looked for signs of growing convergence between the capi-
talist and communist worlds, who imagined that they discov-
ered significant data when they were able to point to compa-
rable levels of industrialization, urbanization, and the spread of
education in the Soviet Union, never considered how much any
really successful modernity depends also on kinds of self-ques-
tioning and self-defining that were never common in the Soviet
experience.
If Arnason, like other of his colleagues in this book, is empha-
sizing the unique features of modernity in different institutional
and intellectual settings, it becomes important to consider those
x Multiple Modernities

who live outside the West who, in Nilüfer Göle’s words, “reflect
on modernity from its edge, from a non-Western perspective.”
In providing what she calls “snapshots of Islamic Modernities,”
Göle is considering recent developments in Turkish society, where
earlier in the century Kemal Attaturk appeared to have suc-
ceeded in converting its people to secular values and forms. The
revival of Islam in Turkey, and indeed the growth of what may
be called Islamism, is a subject of more than passing interest to
the world’s mass media, but the phenomenon, as treated by
those principally concerned with international affairs, is gener-
ally considered in purely political terms. Göle knows that its
cultural significance may be no less great. In recognizing that
Islamism must be seen as a repudiation of certain of the basic
premises of Western modernity, not least the idea of inevitable
progress and individual emancipation, Göle asks whether the
Islamic movement, properly understood, does not really consti-
tute a critical reevaluation of modernity.
Dale Eickelman’s essay on “Islam and the Languages of Mo-
dernity” reminds us that Western intellectuals habitually dis-
missed the possibility of a distinctive Muslim modernity, differ-
ent from that of the West. Daniel Lerner, decades ago, saw the
Middle Eastern societies as facing “the stark choice of ‘Mecca
or mechanization.’” The two could not be married. The Islamic
religion, for most observers outside the Muslim world, seemed
to be one in which there was no chance of a “civil society” being
created. Today, in Iran, particularly among the young, Eickelman
tells us, new ideas are germinating, in which “politics and reli-
gion are subtly intertwined, and not always in ways anticipated
by Iran’s established religious leaders.” The views held by Göle
in respect to the changes in religious belief in Turkey are seen to
be applicable also to what is happening in Iran, a very different
kind of Muslim society. If, as Eickelman argues, personal au-
tonomy for both men and women is growing, then the tradi-
tional, almost canonical idea of earlier development theorists,
that religion is a barrier to certain kinds of beliefs, needs to be
revised.
To move from a consideration of the predominantly Islamic
world of the Middle East to the predominantly Hindu world of
India—many forget that India has a Muslim population of over
 Preface xi

a hundred million, not to speak of the many who adhere to

other religions—is to understand why the concept of multiple
modernities is so compelling. India is incontestably modern, but
as Sudipta Kaviraj makes very clear, that modernity is neither
Western European nor American. While its religious diversity
contributes to giving it features increasingly common in many
parts of the world, and while India has a very large middle
class—some estimate its size to be two hundred million or more
in a population of over a billion—and while those privileged by
wealth enjoy all the pleasures and comforts provided by mate-
rial consumption, including frequent and extensive travel both
in the country and abroad, these are not features of modernity
that much concern Kaviraj. Nor was India’s modernity simply
created at the moment of its independence, when it ceased to be
part of the British Empire. The originality of Kaviraj’s argument
lies in the emphasis he chooses to give to the importance of the
colonial experience for India, a colonial experience very differ-
ent from that common in other parts of Asia or Africa.
Stanley Tambiah, having been long interested in ethno-na-
tionalist movements and ethnic conflicts, as well as transnational
migrations, writes about the new diaspora of the twentieth cen-
tury. His essay, which might have borne the title “Multiple
Modernities in an Era of Globalization,” is concerned with
three “flows”—the flow of people, capital, and information—
which have done so much to change the character of nation-
states and have exacerbated conflict in many societies. Provid-
ing a demographic portrait of the world today, Tambiah shows
why the voluntary migration of individuals is so crucial to
societies that would otherwise lack the labor necessary for their
development. While involuntary migration—caused by political
turmoil—figures in his account, as does migration within the so-
called developing world, his major concern is with Europe and
North America, regions that have absorbed tens of millions of
migrants in recent decades. How, then, have these migrants
been incorporated? Tambiah contrasts what he calls the “as-
similation, exclusion, and integration” practices of individual
societies, but his chief concern is with multiculturalism. His
purpose is to analyze and explain the cultural and political life
of several of these diaspora communities.
xii Multiple Modernities

Tu Weiming, in his study of the rise of “Confucian” East

Asia, is concerned with the operation of traditions in the mod-
ernizing process and the relevance of non-Western civilizations
to the self-understanding of the modern West. In his words, he
is seeking “to move beyond three prevalent but outmoded ex-
clusive dichotomies: the traditional/modern, the West/the rest,
and the local/global.” Accepting that the overwhelming number
of East Asian intellectuals knew that Confucianism, in its clas-
sical form, like the religious beliefs of other axial-age civiliza-
tions, was outmoded, he asks whether the ideas propagated by
Hegel, Marx, and Weber about modernity still have resonance.
Each of them believed that the modern West, for all of its
shortcomings, was the only place where meaningful progress
could be made, and took for granted that modernization would
lead to “homogenization.” In such a world, cultural diversity
could not possibly survive. For those who accepted these ideas,
it seemed almost inconceivable that Confucianism or any other
non-Western spiritual tradition would ever intervene to help in
the modernizing process. Yet, in Tu’s view, that opinion proved
to be mistaken, not least in East Asia.
Jürgen Heideking, in seeking to describe and analyze the pat-
tern of American modernity that developed in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, is in fact considering conditions much
studied by American scholars preoccupied with the country’s
colonial and early republican origins. How Americans became,
almost overnight, in Gordon Wood’s words, “the most liberal,
the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the
most modern people in the world,” and how this was accom-
plished “without urbanization, without railroads, without the
aid of any of the great forces we usually invoke to explain
‘modernization,’” is what Heideking seeks to explain. Not sur-
prisingly, he sees great significance in the American Revolution,
but also in a “distinct pattern of modernity, rooted in the colo-
nial past and influenced by European Enlightenment thought.”
The discourse with the mother country, with its accompanying
criticism of many of Europe’s institutions, reflected a desire to
achieve an identity different from that of Europe, and came to
be increasingly important.
However North American modernity—particularly that of the
United States—is defined, that of Latin America is very substan-
 Preface xiii

tially different. Indeed, Renato Ortiz raises the question of whether

it is possible to speak of a single Latin America; for him, the
concept of Latin Americas is much more appealing. The colonial
period of Latin American societies, like that which followed
their independence early in the nineteenth century, cannot be
compared with that of India or the states of the Middle East in
this century or earlier. There are no “ageless” traditions in Latin
America. Instead, we have a story of European conquest, fol-
lowed by the disaggregation of indigenous societies, with misce-
genation and religious syncretism becoming common. In Latin
America, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the evolutionary
thinking of August Comte were required to confront existing
conservatism and traditional Catholicism. With the establish-
ment of many nation-states, Spain and Portugal lost their pre-
eminence, and other countries, France and England initially, the
United States more recently, came to be important for them.
While some in these new societies came to favor what they
called the Americanization of Latin America, others preferred
what they saw as the “spiritual” qualities of Europe, and argued
for Europeanization. In the nineteenth century, while the great
objective of many of these societies was to industrialize, that
purpose was realized only in the twentieth century, and not
everywhere. Today, globalization provides the rationale for much
of Latin American development, but the consequences of the
new international consumers’ economy—created almost two cen-
turies ago—are by no means clear for these many states.
In this collection of essays, there is much that is intended to
make us reflect on whether the contemporary world is being
properly perceived, whether its diverse cultures are understood,
whether a concentration on the superficial evidences of moder-
nity, particularly as they reveal themselves in the more conven-
tional representations of urban life—surface impressions mostly—
do not conceal major differences between societies that are
indeed being transformed by globalization, but are in no sense
becoming identical. The immediate post–World War II confi-
dence that the West was providing the models that all societies
that aspired to peace and prosperity would in time adopt has
been eroded. If many of the essays provide “snapshots” that
refute the kinds of conventional wisdom that exists for those
xiv Multiple Modernities

who see only the “global village,” whose concern is mostly with
what the Internet is doing to change life, it will have served its
purpose. The theories of the past about modernity require sub-
stantial revision, if only because the reality of the present is so
different from what was prophesied, and indeed from what was
imagined to be possible.
Multiple Modernities ought to be read in conjunction with
Public Spheres and Collective Identities. Three scholars, Shmuel
Eisenstadt, Björn Wittrock, and Wolfgang Schluchter, are again
to be thanked for all that they did to make this study on Early
Modernities possible. A great debt is owed the institutions—
Swedish, Israeli, German, Hungarian, and English—who helped
in various ways to launch the study, to support it in its many
phases. It is a pleasure now to express our gratitude also to the
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities for its support of
this project and especially for the help it gave in the publication
of this book. A meeting of the authors in Jerusalem last summer
was made possible through the generosity of the Van Leer Jerusa-
lem Institute. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help given by
Dr. Ilana Silver on that occasion. Finally, a very sincere thanks
goes to Dr. Seng Tee Lee of Singapore. He provided the funds
that allowed us to proceed when we were uncertain of securing
other financial support.

STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD
 Multiple Modernities 1
S. N. Eisenstadt

Multiple Modernities

T
HE NOTION OF “multiple modernities” denotes a certain
view of the contemporary world—indeed of the history
and characteristics of the modern era—that goes against
the views long prevalent in scholarly and general discourse. It
goes against the view of the “classical” theories of moderniza-
tion and of the convergence of industrial societies prevalent in
the 1950s, and indeed against the classical sociological analyses
of Marx, Durkheim, and (to a large extent) even of Weber, at
least in one reading of his work. They all assumed, even if only
implicitly, that the cultural program of modernity as it devel-
oped in modern Europe and the basic institutional constella-
tions that emerged there would ultimately take over in all mod-
ernizing and modern societies; with the expansion of modernity,
they would prevail throughout the world.1
The reality that emerged after the so-called beginnings of
modernity, and especially after World War II, failed to bear out
these assumptions. The actual developments in modernizing
societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic assump-
tions of this Western program of modernity. While a general
trend toward structural differentiation developed across a wide
range of institutions in most of these societies—in family life,
economic and political structures, urbanization, modern educa-
tion, mass communication, and individualistic orientations—the
ways in which these arenas were defined and organized varied

S. N. Eisenstadt is Rose Issacs Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Hebrew Univer-

sity of Jerusalem.

1
2 S. N. Eisenstadt

greatly, in different periods of their development, giving rise to

multiple institutional and ideological patterns. Significantly, these
patterns did not constitute simple continuations in the modern
era of the traditions of their respective societies. Such patterns
were distinctively modern, though greatly influenced by specific
cultural premises, traditions, and historical experiences. All de-
veloped distinctly modern dynamics and modes of interpreta-
tion, for which the original Western project constituted the
crucial (and usually ambivalent) reference point. Many of the
movements that developed in non-Western societies articulated
strong anti-Western or even antimodern themes, yet all were
distinctively modern. This was true not only of the various
nationalist and traditionalist movements that emerged in these
societies from about the middle of the nineteenth century until
after World War II, but also, as we shall note, of the more
contemporary fundamentalist ones.
The idea of multiple modernities presumes that the best way
to understand the contemporary world—indeed to explain the
history of modernity—is to see it as a story of continual consti-
tution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs.
These ongoing reconstructions of multiple institutional and ideo-
logical patterns are carried forward by specific social actors in
close connection with social, political, and intellectual activists,
and also by social movements pursuing different programs of
modernity, holding very different views on what makes societies
modern. Through the engagement of these actors with broader
sectors of their respective societies, unique expressions of mo-
dernity are realized. These activities have not been confined to
any single society or state, though certain societies and states
proved to be the major arenas where social activists were able to
implement their programs and pursue their goals. Though dis-
tinct understandings of multiple modernity developed within
different nation-states, and within different ethnic and cultural
groupings, among communist, fascist, and fundamentalist move-
ments, each, however different from the others, was in many
respects international.
One of the most important implications of the term “multiple
modernities” is that modernity and Westernization are not iden-
tical; Western patterns of modernity are not the only “authen-
 Multiple Modernities 3

tic” modernities, though they enjoy historical precedence and

continue to be a basic reference point for others.
In acknowledging a multiplicity of continually evolving mo-
dernities, one confronts the problem of just what constitutes the
common core of modernity. This problem is exacerbated and
indeed transformed with the contemporary deconstruction or
decomposition of many of the components of “classical” models
of the nation and of revolutionary states, particularly as a con-
sequence of globalization. Contemporary discourse has raised
the possibility that the modern project, at least in terms of the
classical formulation that held sway for the last two centuries, is
exhausted. One contemporary view claims that such exhaustion
is manifest in the “end of history.”2 The other view best repre-
sented is Huntington’s notion of a “clash of civilizations,” in
which Western civilization—the seeming epitome of modernity—
is confronted by a world in which traditional, fundamentalist,
antimodern, and anti-Western civilizations—some (most nota-
bly, the Islamic and so-called Confucian groupings) viewing the
West with animus or disdain—are predominant.3

II

The cultural and political program of modernity, as it developed

first in Western and Central Europe, entailed, as Björn Wittrock
notes, distinct ideological as well as institutional premises. The
cultural program of modernity entailed some very distinct shifts
in the conception of human agency, and of its place in the flow
of time. It carried a conception of the future characterized by a
number of possibilities realizable through autonomous human
agency. The premises on which the social, ontological, and po-
litical order were based, and the legitimation of that order, were
no longer taken for granted. An intensive reflexivity developed
around the basic ontological premises of structures of social and
political authority—a reflexivity shared even by modernity’s
most radical critics, who in principle denied its validity. It was
most successfully formulated by Weber. To follow James D.
Faubian’s exposition of Weber’s conception of modernity:
Weber finds the existential threshold of modernity in a certain
deconstruction: of what he speaks of as the “ethical postulate that
4 S. N. Eisenstadt

the world is a God-ordained, and hence somehow meaningfully

and ethically oriented cosmos. . . .”

. . . What Weber asserts—what in any event might be extrapo-

lated from his assertions—is that the threshold of modernity may
be marked precisely at the moment when the unquestioned legiti-
macy of a divinely preordained social order began its decline.
Modernity emerges—or, more accurately, a range of possible
modernities emerge—only when what had been seen as an un-
changing cosmos ceases to be taken for granted. Countermoderns
reject that reproach, believing that what is unchanging is not the
social order, but the tasks that the construction and functioning
of any social order must address. . . .

. . . One can extract two theses: Whatever else they may be, mo-
dernities in all their variety are responses to the same existential
problematic. The second: whatever else they may be, modernities
in all their variety are precisely those responses that leave the
problematic in question intact, that formulate visions of life and
practice neither beyond nor in denial of it but rather within it,
even in deference to it. . . .4

The degree of reflexivity characteristic of modernity went

beyond what was crystallized in the axial civilizations. The
reflexivity that developed in the modern program not only fo-
cused on the possibility of different interpretations of core tran-
scendental visions and basic ontological conceptions prevalent
in a particular society or civilization; it came to question the
very givenness of such visions and the institutional patterns
related to them. It gave rise to an awareness of the possibility of
multiple visions that could, in fact, be contested.5
Such awareness was closely connected with two central com-
ponents of the modern project emphasized in early studies of
modernization by both Daniel Lerner and Alex Inkeles.6 The
first recognized among those either modern or becoming “mod-
ernized” the awareness of a great variety of roles existing be-
yond narrow, fixed, local, and familial ones. The second recog-
nized the possibility of belonging to wider translocal, possibly
changing, communities.
Central to this cultural program was an emphasis on the
autonomy of man: his or her (in its initial formulation, certainly
 Multiple Modernities 5

“his”) emancipation from the fetters of traditional political and

cultural authority. In the continuous expansion of the realm of
personal and institutional freedom and activity, such autonomy
implied, first, reflexivity and exploration; second, active con-
struction and mastery of nature, including human nature. This
project of modernity entailed a very strong emphasis on the
autonomous participation of members of society in the constitu-
tion of the social and political order, on the autonomous access
of all members of the society to these orders and to their centers.
From the conjunctions of these different conceptions arose a
belief in the possibility that society could be actively formed by
conscious human activity. Two complementary but potentially
contradictory tendencies developed within this program about
the best ways in which social construction could take place. The
first, crystallized above all in the Great Revolutions, gave rise,
perhaps for the first time in history, to the belief in the possibil-
ity of bridging the gap between the transcendental and mundane
orders—of realizing through conscious human agency, exercised
in social life, major utopian and eschatological visions. The
second emphasized a growing recognition of the legitimacy of
multiple individual and group goals and interests, as a conse-
quence allowed for multiple interpretations of the common good.7

III

The modern program entailed also a radical transformation of

the conceptions and premises of the political order, the constitu-
tion of the political arena, and the characteristics of the political
process. Central to the modern idea was the breakdown of all
traditional legitimations of the political order, and with it the
opening up of different possibilities in the construction of a new
order. These possibilities combined themes of rebellion, protest,
and intellectual antinomianism, allowing for new center-forma-
tion and institution-building, giving rise to movements of pro-
test as a continual component of the political process.8
These ideas, closely aligned with what were emerging as the
defining characteristics of the modern political arena, empha-
sized the openness of this arena and of political processes, gen-
erally, together with a strong acceptance of active participation
6 S. N. Eisenstadt

by the periphery of “society” in questions of political import.

Strong tendencies toward the permeation of social peripheries
by the centers, and the impingement of the peripheries on the
centers, led, inevitably, to a blurring of the distinctions between
center and periphery. This laid the foundation for a new and
powerful combination of the “charismatization” of the center
or centers with themes and symbols of protest; these, in turn,
became the elemental components of modern transcendental
visions. Themes and symbols of protest—equality and freedom,
justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity—became central
components of the modern project of the emancipation of man.
It was indeed the incorporation of the periphery’s themes of
protest into the center that heralded the radical transformation
of various sectarian utopian visions into central elements of the
political and cultural program.
From the ideology and premises of the political program of
modernity and the core characteristics of modern political insti-
tutions, there emerged three central aspects of the modern po-
litical process: the restructuring of center-periphery relations as
the principal focus of political dynamics in modern societies; a
strong tendency toward politicizing the demands of various sec-
tors of society, and the conflicts between them; and a continuing
struggle over the definition of the realm of the political. Indeed,
it is only with the coming of modernity that drawing the bound-
aries of the political becomes one of the major foci of open
political contestation and struggle.

IV

Modernity entailed also a distinctive mode of constructing the

boundaries of collectivities and collective identities.9 New con-
crete definitions of the basic components of collective identities
developed—civil, primordial and universalistic, transcendental
or “sacred.” Strong tendencies developed toward framing these
definitions in absolutist terms, emphasizing their civil compo-
nents. At the same time, connections were drawn between the
construction of political boundaries and those of cultural collec-
tivities. This made inevitable an intensified emphasis on the
territorial boundaries of such collectivities, creating continual
 Multiple Modernities 7

tension between their territorial and/or particular components

and those that were broader, more universalistic. In at least
partial contrast to the axial civilizations, collective identities
were no longer taken as given, preordained by some transcen-
dental vision and authority, or sanctioned by perennial custom.
They constituted foci of contestation and struggle, often couched
in highly ideological terms.

As the civilization of modernity developed first in the West, it

was from its beginnings beset by internal antinomies and con-
tradictions, giving rise to continual critical discourse and politi-
cal contestations. The basic antinomies of modernity consti-
tuted a radical transformation of those characteristics of the
axial civilizations. Centered on questions unknown to that ear-
lier time, they showed an awareness of a great range of tran-
scendental visions and interpretations. In the modern program
these were transformed into ideological conflicts between con-
tending evaluations of the major dimensions of human experi-
ence (especially reason and emotions and their respective place
in human life and society). There were new assertions about the
necessity of actively constructing society; control and autonomy,
discipline and freedom became burning issues.
Perhaps the most critical rift, in both ideological and political
terms, was that which separated universal and pluralistic vi-
sions—between a view that accepted the existence of different
values and rationalities and a view that conflated different val-
ues and, above all, rationalities in a totalistic way. This tension
developed primarily with respect to the very concept of reason
and its place in the constitution of human society. It was mani-
fest, as Stephen Toulmin has shown in a somewhat exaggerated
way, in the difference between the more pluralistic conceptions
of Montaigne or Erasmus as against the totalizing vision pro-
mulgated by Descartes.10 The most significant movement to
universalize different rationalities—often identified as the major
message of the Enlightenment—was that of the sovereignty of
reason, which subsumed value-rationality (Wertrationalität), or
substantive rationality, under instrumental rationality (Zweck-
8 S. N. Eisenstadt

rationalität), transforming it into a totalizing moralistic utopian

vision.
Cutting across these tensions, there developed within the pro-
gram of modernity continual contradictions between the basic
premises of its cultural and political dimensions and major insti-
tutional developments. Of particular importance—so strongly
emphasized by Weber—was the creative dimension inherent in
visions leading to the crystallization of modernity, and the flat-
tening of these visions, the “disenchantment” of the world,
inherent in growing routinization and bureaucratization. This
was a conflict between an overreaching vision by which the
modern world became meaningful and the fragmentation of
such meaning by dint of an unyielding momentum toward au-
tonomous development in all institutional arenas—economic,
political, and cultural. This reflects the inherently modern ten-
sion between an emphasis on human autonomy and the restric-
tive controls inherent in the institutional realization of modern
life: in Peter Wagner’s formulation, between freedom and con-
trol.11

VI

Within modern political discourse, these stresses have been

manifest in the intractable contention between the legitimacy of
myriad discrete individual and group interests, of different con-
ceptions of the common good and moral order, and the totalistic
ideologies that flatly denied the legitimacy of such pluralities.
One major form of totalistic ideology emphasized the primacy
of collectivities perceived as distinct ontological entities based
on common primordial or spiritual attributes—principally a
national collectivity. A second has been the Jacobin view, whose
historical roots go back to medieval eschatological sources. Central
to Jacobin thought was a belief in the primacy of politics, in
politics being able to reconstitute society, transforming society
through the mobilization of participatory political action. What-
ever the differences between these collectivist ideologies, they
shared a deep suspicion of open, public discussion, political
processes, and (especially) representative institutions. Not sur-
prisingly, they shared strong autocratic tendencies.
 Multiple Modernities 9

These various stresses in the political program of modernity

were closely related to those between the different modes of
legitimation of modern regimes—between, on the one hand,
procedural legitimation in terms of civil adherence to rules of
the game, and, on the other, “substantive” modes of legitima-
tion, relying above all, in Edward Shils’s terminology, on vari-
ous primordial, “sacred,” religious, or secular-ideological com-
ponents.12 Parallel contradictions developed around the con-
struction of collective identities, promulgated by new kinds of
activists—the national movements.

VII

Of special importance among these activists were social move-

ments, often movements of protest. They transformed, in the
modern setting, some of the major heterodoxies of the axial
civilizations, especially those heterodoxies that sought to bring
about, by political action and the reconstruction of the center,
the realization of certain utopian visions. Most important among
the movements that developed during the nineteenth century
and the first six decades of the twentieth were the liberal, social-
ist, or communist movements; they were followed by two oth-
ers, fascist and national-socialist, building on nationalist preju-
dices. These movements were international, even where their
bases or roots lay in specific countries. The more successful
among them crystallized in distinct ideological and institutional
patterns that often became identified with a specific state or
nation (as was the case with Revolutionary France and, later,
with Soviet Russia), but their reach extended far beyond na-
tional frontiers.13
The contestations between these movements and others—reli-
gious, cooperative, syndicalist, or anarchist—were not simply
ideological. They all took place within the specific confines of
the modern political arena; they were affected as well by the
modern political process, especially the continuing struggle over
the boundaries of the realm of the political.
Patterns of contention between these social actors developed
in all modern societies around poles rooted in the antinomies
inherent in the specific cultural and political programs of mo-
10 S. N. Eisenstadt

dernity. The first was the extent of the homogenization of major

modern collectivities, significantly influenced by the extent to
which the primordial, civil, and universalistic dimensions or
components of collective identity became interwoven in these
different societies. The second pole reflected a confrontation
between pluralistic and universalizing orientations.
These clashes emerged in all modern collectivities and states,
first in Europe, later in the Americas, and, in time, throughout
the world. They were crucially important in shaping the varying
patterns of modern societies, first within territorial and nation-
states, generating within them differing definitions of the pre-
mises of political order. They defined the accountability of au-
thority relations between state and civil society; they established
patterns of collective identity, shaping the self-perceptions of
individual societies, especially their self-perception as modern.
As these contestations emerged in Europe, the dominant pat-
tern of the conflicts was rooted in specific European traditions,
focused along the rifts between utopian and civil orientations.
Principles of hierarchy and equality competed in the construc-
tion of political order and political centers. The state and civil
society were seen as separate entities by some. Collective iden-
tity, very often couched in utopian terms, was differently de-
fined. The variety of resulting societal outcomes can be illus-
trated by the different conceptions of state that developed on
the continent and in England. There was the strong homogeniz-
ing “laicization of” France, or, in a different vein, of the Lutheran
Scandinavian countries, as against the much more consocia-
tional and pluralistic arrangements common to Holland and
Switzerland, and to a much smaller extent in Great Britain. The
strong aristocratic semifeudal conception of authority in Britain
contrasted with the more democratic, even populist, views in
other European countries.14
In the twenties and thirties, indelibly marked by the tensions
and antinomies of modernity as they developed in Europe, there
emerged the first distinct, ideological, “alternative” moderni-
ties—the communist Soviet types, discussed in this issue by
Johann Arnason, and the fascist/national-socialist type.15 The
socialist and communist movements were fully set within the
framework of the cultural program of modernity, and above all
 Multiple Modernities 11

within the framework of the Enlightenment and of the major

revolutions. Their criticism of the program of modern capitalist
society revolved around their concept of the incompleteness of
these modern programs. By contrast, the national or nationalis-
tic movements, especially of the extreme fascist or national-
socialist variety, aimed above all at reconfiguring the bound-
aries of modern collectivities. They sought to bring about a
confrontation between the universalistic and the more particu-
laristic, primordial components of the collective identities of
modern regimes. Their criticism of the existing modern order
denied the universalistic components of the cultural program of
modernity, especially in its Enlightenment version. They showed
less missionary zeal in transcending purely national boundaries.
Yet, significantly, though they repudiated the universalistic com-
ponents of the cultural and political program of modernity, they
sought in some ways to transpose them into their own particu-
laristic visions, attempting to present these visions in some semi-
universalistic terms—of which, paradoxically, race might be
one.
By the middle of the century, the continual development of
multiple modernities in Europe testified to an ongoing evolu-
tion. As Nilüfer Göle observed, one of the most important
characteristics of modernity is simply its potential capacity for
continual self-correction. That quality, already manifest in the
nineteenth century, in the encounter of modern societies with
the many problems created by the industrial and democratic
revolutions, could not, however, be taken for granted. The de-
velopment of modernity bore within it destructive possibilities
that were voiced, somewhat ironically, often by some of its most
radical critics, who thought modernity to be a morally destruc-
tive force, emphasizing the negative effects of certain of its core
characteristics. The crystallization of European modernity and
its later expansion was by no means peaceful. Contrary to the
optimistic visions of modernity as inevitable progress, the crys-
tallizations of modernities were continually interwoven with
internal conflict and confrontation, rooted in the contradictions
and tensions attendant on the development of the capitalist
systems, and, in the political arena, on the growing demands for
democratization. All these factors were compounded by interna-
12 S. N. Eisenstadt

tional conflicts, exacerbated by the modern state and imperialist

systems. War and genocide were scarcely new phenomena in
history. But they became radically transformed, intensified, gen-
erating specifically modern modes of barbarism. The ideologization
of violence, terror, and war—first and most vividly witnessed in
the French Revolution—became the most important, indeed the
exclusive, citizenship components of the continuation of mod-
ern states. The tendency to such ideologies of violence became
closely related to the fact that the nation-state became the focus
of symbols of collective identity.16 The Holocaust, which took
place in the very center of modernity, was the extreme manifes-
tation and became a symbol of its negative, destructive poten-
tial, of the barbarism lurking within its very core.

VIII

In the discourse on modernity, several themes developed, none

more important than the one that stressed the continual con-
frontation between more “traditional” sectors of society and the
so-called modern centers or sectors that developed within them.
So, too, there was an inherent tension between the culture of
modernity, the modern “rational” model of the Enlightenment
that emerged as hegemonic in certain periods and places and
others construed as reflecting the more “authentic” cultural
traditions of specific societies. Among the bearers of ideologies
of traditional authenticity, and within the more traditional sec-
tors of certain societies, there developed also an enduring am-
bivalence to modern cultures and their putatively universalistic,
exclusivist premises and symbols and a continual oscillation
between cosmopolitanism and localism. These themes devel-
oped first within Europe itself; they continued, though in a
different vein, with the expansion of modernity to the Americas
and (especially) to Asian and African countries.

IX

The first radical transformation of the premises of cultural and

political order took place with the expansion of modernity in
the Americas. There, distinctive modernities, reflecting novel
 Multiple Modernities 13

patterns of institutional life, with new self-conceptions and new

forms of collective consciousness, emerged. To say this is to
emphasize that practically from the beginning of modernity’s
expansion multiple modernities developed, all within what may
be defined as the Western civilizational framework. It is impor-
tant to note that such modernities, Western but significantly
different from those in Europe, developed first not in Asia—
Japan, China, or India—or in Muslim societies where they might
have been attributed to the existence of distinct non-European
traditions, but within the broad framework of Western civiliza-
tions. They reflected a radical transformation of European pre-
mises.
The crystallization of distinct patterns of modernity in the
Americas took place, as Jürgen Heideking’s essay shows, through
a confrontational discourse with Europe—especially with En-
gland and France. While it was not common to couch these
arguments in terms of differing interpretations of modernity,
they were indeed focused on the advantages and disadvantages
of institutional patterns that developed in the United States,
distinctly different from those in Europe. Moreover, in this
discourse the major themes relating to the international dimen-
sion of modernity were clearly articulated. Such confrontations
became characteristic of the ongoing discourse about modernity
as it expanded through the world. While this was also true of
Latin America, there were important differences between the
Americas, especially between the United States and Latin America.
In Latin America, “external”—even if often ambivalent—refer-
ence points remained crucial, as the essay by Renato Ortiz in
this volume makes clear. The enduring importance of these
reference points, above all in Europe—Spain, France, and En-
gland—and later the United States, were critical to the self-
conception of Latin American societies. Such considerations
became gradually less important in the United States, which saw
itself increasingly as the center of modernity.

The variability of modernities was accomplished above all through

military and economic imperialism and colonialism, effected
14 S. N. Eisenstadt

through superior economic, military, and communication tech-

nologies. Modernity first moved beyond the West into different
Asian societies—Japan, India, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, Viet-
nam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia—to the Middle Eastern
countries, coming finally to Africa. By the end of the twentieth
century, it encompassed nearly the entire world, the first true
wave of globalization.
In all these societies the basic model of the territorial state and
later of the nation-state was adopted, as were the basic premises
and symbols of Western modernity. So, too, were the West’s
modern institutions—representative, legal, and administrative.
But at the same time the encounter of modernity with non-
Western societies brought about far-reaching transformations in
the premises, symbols, and institutions of modernity—with new
problems arising as a consequence.
The attraction of many of modernity’s themes and institu-
tional forms for many groups in these societies was caused first
by the fact that it was the European (later the Western) pattern,
developed and spread throughout the world by Western eco-
nomic, technological, and military expansion, that undermined
the cultural premises and institutional cores of these ancient
societies. The appropriation of these themes and institutions
permitted many in non-European societies—especially elites and
intellectuals—to participate actively in the new modern univer-
sal (albeit initially Western) tradition, while selectively rejecting
many of its aspects—most notably that which took for granted
the hegemony of the Western formulations of the cultural pro-
gram of modernity. The appropriation of themes of modernity
made it possible for these groups to incorporate some of the
Western universalistic elements of modernity in the construction
of their own new collective identities, without necessarily giving
up specific components of their traditional identities (often
couched, like the themes of Western modernity, in universalis-
tic, especially religious terms). Nor did it abolish their negative
or at least ambivalent attitudes toward the West. Modernity’s
characteristic themes of protest, institution-building, and the
redefinition of center and periphery served to encourage and
accelerate the transposition of the modern project to non-Euro-
pean, non-Western settings. Although initially couched in West-
 Multiple Modernities 15

ern terms, many of these themes found resonance in the political

traditions of many of these societies.17

XI

The appropriation by non-Western societies of specific themes

and institutional patterns of the original Western modern civili-
zation societies entailed the continuous selection, reinterpreta-
tion, and reformulation of these imported ideas. These brought
about continual innovation, with new cultural and political
programs emerging, exhibiting novel ideologies and institutional
patterns. The cultural and institutional programs that unfolded
in these societies were characterized particularly by a tension
between conceptions of themselves as part of the modern world
and ambivalent attitudes toward modernity in general and to-
ward the West in particular.
In all these societies, far-reaching transformations took place.
These transformations, shaped in each society by the combined
impact of their respective historical traditions and the different
ways in which they became incorporated into the new modern
world system, are admirably interpreted in Sudipta Kaviraj’s
essay. He analyzes the impact of Indian political traditions and
of the colonial imperial experience in shaping the distinctive
features of modernity as they crystallized in India. Similar analyses
of China or Vietnam would indicate the specific modes allowing
for “alternative,” revolutionary universalistic notions of the
modern program of modernity to spring forth from their
civilizational contexts. The case of Japan is different; there, the
conflation of state and civil society, the weakness of utopian
orientations, the absence of principled confrontations with the
state among the major movements of protest, and the relative
significance of universal and particular components all contrib-
uted to the creation of a modern collective identity different
from that of all other societies.18

XII

The multiple and divergent instantiations of the “classical” age

of modernity crystallized during the nineteenth century and
16 S. N. Eisenstadt

above all in the first six or seven decades of the twentieth into
very different territorial nation- and revolutionary states and
social movements in Europe, the Americas, and, after World
War II, in Asia. The institutional, symbolic, and ideological
contours of modern national and revolutionary states, once
thought to be the epitome of modernity, have changed dramati-
cally with the recent intensification of forces of globalization.
These trends, manifested especially in the growing autonomy of
world financial and commercial flows, intensified international
migrations and the concomitant development on an interna-
tional scale of such social problems as the spread of diseases,
prostitution, organized crime, and youth violence. All this has
served to reduce the control of the nation-state over its own
economic and political affairs, despite continuing efforts to
strengthen technocratic, rational secular policies in various are-
nas. Nation-states have also lost a part of their monopoly on
internal and international violence, which was always only a
partial monopoly, to local and international groups of separat-
ists or terrorists. Processes of globalization are evident also in
the cultural arena, with the hegemonic expansion, through the
major media in many countries, of what are seemingly uniform
Western, above all American, cultural programs or visions.19
The ideological and symbolic centrality of the nation-state, its
position as the charismatic locus of the major components of the
cultural program of modernity and collective identity, have been
weakened; new political, social, and civilizational visions, new
visions of collective identity, are being developed. These novel
visions and identities were proclaimed by a variety of new social
movements—all of which, however different, have challenged
the premises of the classical modern nation and its program of
modernity, which had hitherto occupied the unchallenged center
of political and cultural thinking.
The first such movements that developed in most Western
countries—the women’s movement and the ecological move-
ment—were both closely related to or rooted in the student and
anti-Vietnam War movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
They were indicative of a more general shift in many countries,
whether “capitalist” or communist: a shift away from move-
ments oriented toward the state to movements with a more local
 Multiple Modernities 17

scope and agenda. Instead of focusing on the reconstitution of

nation-states, or resolving macroeconomic conflicts, these new
forces—often presenting themselves as “postmodern” and
“multicultural”—promulgated a cultural politics or a politics of
identity often couched as multiculturalism and were oriented to
the construction of new autonomous social, political, and cul-
tural spaces.20
Fundamentalist movements emerged somewhat later within
Muslim, Jewish, and Protestant Christian communities and have
managed to occupy center stage in many national societies and,
from time to time, on the international scene. Communal reli-
gious movements have similarly developed within Hindu and
Buddhist cultures, generally sharing strong antimodern and/or
anti-Western themes.21
A third major type of new movement that has gathered mo-
mentum, especially in the last two decades of the twentieth
century, has been the particularistic “ethnic” movement. Wit-
nessed initially in the former republics of the Soviet Union, it
has emerged also in horrific ways in Africa and in parts of the
Balkans, especially in former Yugoslavia.
All these movements have developed in tandem with, and
indeed accelerated, social transformations of the most impor-
tant kind, serving to consolidate new social settings and frame-
works. To mention just two of the most important, the world
now sees new diasporas, especially of Muslims, Chinese, and
Indians, some analyzed in this issue by Stanley J. Tambiah.
Following the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russian minorities
have emerged as vocal forces in many of the successor states of
the Soviet Union and in the former communist East European
countries.
In these and many other settings, new types of collective
identity emerged, going beyond the models of the nation- and
revolutionary state and no longer focused on them. Many of
these hitherto “subdued” identities—ethnic, local, regional, and
transnational—moved, though in a highly reconstructed way,
into the centers of their respective societies, and often into the
international arena as well. They contested the hegemony of the
older homogenizing programs, claiming their own autonomous
place in central institutional arenas—educational programs, public
18 S. N. Eisenstadt

communications, media outlets. They have been increasingly

successful in positing far-reaching claims to the redefinition of
citizenship and the rights and entitlements connected with it.
In these settings, local concerns and interests are often brought
together in new ways, going beyond the model of the classical
nation-state, choosing alliances with transnational organizations
such as the European Union or with broad religious frameworks
rooted in the great religions of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or
the Protestant branches of Christianity. Simultaneously, we see
a continuing decomposition in the relatively compact image
offered by belief systems concerning styles of life, defining the
“civilized man”—all connected with the emergence and spread
of the original program of modernity.22 No one can doubt that
significant and enduring shifts are taking place in the relative
position and influence of different centers of modernity—mov-
ing back and forth between West and East. This can only pro-
duce increased contention between such centers over their de-
gree of influence in a globalizing world.23

XIII

All these developments attest to the decomposition of the major

structural characteristics and the weakening of the ideological
hegemony of once-powerful nation-states. But do they signal the
“end of history” and the end of the modern program, epito-
mized in the development of different so-called postmodernities
and, above all, in a retreat from modernity in the fundamental-
ist and the communal religious movements, often portrayed by
themselves as diametrically opposed to the modern program?
A closer examination of these movements presents a much
more complex picture. First, several of the extreme fundamen-
talist movements evince distinct characteristics of modern
Jacobinism, even when combined with very strong anti-Western
and anti-Enlightenment ideologies. Indeed, the distinct visions
of fundamentalist movements have been formulated in terms
common to the discourse of modernity; they have attempted to
appropriate modernity on their own terms. While extreme fun-
damentalists promulgate elaborate, seemingly antimodern (or
rather anti-Enlightenment) themes, they basically constitute
 Multiple Modernities 19

modern Jacobin revolutionary movements, paradoxically shar-

ing many characteristics (sometimes in a sort of mirror-image
way) with communist movements of an earlier era.24 They share
with communist movements the promulgation of totalistic vi-
sions entailing the transformation both of man and of society.
Some claim to be concerned with the “cleansing” of both. It is
the total reconstruction of personality, of individual and collec-
tive identities, by conscious human action, particularly political
action, and the construction of new personal and collective
identities entailing the total submergence of the individual in the
community that they seek. Like communist movements they
seek to establish a new social order, rooted in revolutionary,
universalistic ideological tenets, in principle transcending all
primordial, national, or ethnic units. In the case of earlier com-
munist regimes, the proclaimed goals were to produce collectivi-
ties of “workers” and “intellectuals” that would embrace all
mankind; in the case of Islamic fundamentalist regimes, the
realm of Islam, as a new conception of the ummah, transcends
any specific place, having broad and continually changing yet
ideologically closed boundaries. Both the communist and the
fundamentalist movements—mostly, but not only, the Muslim
ones—are transnational, activated by intensive, continually re-
constructed networks that facilitate the expansion of the social
and cultural visions proclaimed by these groups. They are at the
same time constantly confronted with competing visions. In all
these ways, both their movements and their programs constitute
part and parcel of the modern political agenda.
There are, of course, radical differences in the respective vi-
sions of the two types of Jacobin (the communist and the funda-
mentalist) movements and regimes, above all in their attitudes
to modernity and in their criticism. In their analysis of the basic
antinomies of modernity, and in their interpretation and rejec-
tion of different components of the cultural and political pro-
grams of classical modernity, Muslim fundamentalists share, as
Nilüfer Göle’s essay shows, a preoccupation with modernity. It
is their major frame of reference.25
20 S. N. Eisenstadt

XIV

Attempts to appropriate and interpret modernity in one’s own

terms are not, however, confined to fundamentalist movements.
They constitute part of a set of much wider developments that
have taken place throughout the world, as Dale Eickelman’s
essay shows with respect to Muslim societies. Continuing the
contestations between earlier reformist and traditional religious
movements that developed in these communities, the tensions
inherent in the new modern program, especially between plural-
istic and universal values, are played out in new terms. Between
utopian and more open and pragmatic attitudes, between mul-
tifaceted and closed identities, they all entail an important, even
radical, shift in the discourse about the confrontation with
modernity, in reframing the relationship between Western and
non-Western civilizations, religions, and societies.26
It is possible to identify significant parallels between these
various religious movements, including fundamentalism, with
their apparently extreme opposites—the various postmodern
movements with which they often engage in contestation, argu-
ing about hegemony among the different sectors of society.
Thus, within many of these “postmodern” or “multicultural”
movements, there have developed highly totalistic orientations
manifest for instance in different programs of political correct-
ness. Ironically, because of their great variety and their more
pluralistic internal dynamics and pragmatic stance, we have also
seen certain “postmodern” themes emerge within fundamental-
ist movements. Beyond this paradox, these movements share an
overarching concern about the relationship between the identi-
ties they promulgate and the universalistic themes promulgated
by other hegemonic programs of modernity, above all the rela-
tionship between their purportedly authentic identities and the
presumed Western, especially American cultural hegemony on
the contemporary scene. Significantly, fear of the erosion of
local cultures from the impact of globalization has led these
movements to be suspicious of the emerging centers of a global-
izing world, giving rise yet again to a continuous oscillation
between cosmopolitanism and various “particularistic” tenden-
cies.27
Other documents randomly have
different content
number for each corps,—that each corps, for instance, receives fifty.
But that is not what the author of the bordereau meant. He meant
that each corps receives a definite number, a number known in
advance, enabling it to be determined whether all the copies are
returned. But he did not know the proper word. It is such an error as
a professor would point to as a proof that his pupil did not know
French, or was a foreigner.
“Now, Captain Dreyfus writes perfectly correct French. There never
are any mistakes of phrase in his letters. Take this, for instance: ‘J’ai
légué à ceux qui m’ont fait condamner un devoir,’ etc. It is impossible
to find a better phrase than that; and so it is throughout. If it were a
schoolboy’s copy, the teacher would write ‘Very good’ in the margin. I
have sought in vain for an error of this sort in Captain Dreyfus’s
letters. But in Major Esterhazy’s such errors swarm. In a letter in
which he struggles against financial troubles, he says: ‘Telles et
telles personnes doivent avoir conservé toutes traces de cette
affaire.’ This phrase, instead of toutes les traces imaginables is one
that occurs in the famous Uhlan letter: ‘Je ferai toutes tentatives pour
aller en Algérie.’ It is a phrase peculiar to Major Esterhazy.
“The writing of the bordereau, without the shadow of a doubt, is that
of Major Esterhazy. The orthographical habits are his habits, and, as
regards choice of words, it is quite impossible that Captain Dreyfus
should have written the bordereau, while, on the contrary, it is
perfectly natural that Major Esterhazy should have written it.”
This ended the day’s proceedings.

Ninth Day—February 16.

At the opening of the session the court rendered a decree denying
the motion of M. Clemenceau that a magistrate be appointed to
further examine Mme. de Boulancy regarding the contents of the
letters from Major Esterhazy, basing the denial on the ground that
the witness had already declined to specify the contents of the
letters, and that therefore it would be fruitless to question her further.
The witness-stand was then taken by General de Pellieux, who
made the following statement:
“I recognize that, of all the fac-similes that have appeared, that
published by ‘Le Matin’ most resembles the bordereau, but I wish to
point out an essential difference. The bordereau is written on both
sides of thin paper and in pale ink, the writing on the back being
much darker than the writing on the front; consequently, when the
bordereau is photographed, the photograph necessarily shows
something of the back as well as the front, so that, to print these fac-
similes, it has been necessary to remove the traces of the writing on
the back by some photographic practice with which I am not familiar.
The defence absolutely rejects all the expert testimony made by
sworn experts who have had the originals before them, and admits
all expert testimony made by experts who have seen only fac-similes
or photographs. The defence has even tried to turn into ridicule the
testimony of sworn experts, and has brought to this bar some
professional experts, but especially amateur experts, even a dentist;
and, further than that, it has brought here—a fact which I leave the
jury to judge—a foreigner, a foreign lawyer.
“When M. Mathieu Dreyfus wrote his letter to the minister of war, he
said: ‘I accuse,’—and in that respect he showed himself a
forerunner,—‘I accuse Major Esterhazy of being the author of the
bordereau.’ I sent for M. Mathieu Dreyfus, and he asked for an
expert examination of the bordereau. I pointed out to him that he
rejected the first expert testimony based on an examination of
originals, and I said to him: ‘Will you accept the second?’ He did not
answer, and I concluded that, if the expert examination proved
unfavorable, he would ask for still others, which he did. The
bordereau was found insufficient; so they had another document in
reserve, the dispatch. There has been testimony to show how far this
document is from being authenticated, and any government that had
prosecuted an officer on the strength of such a document would
have covered itself with ridicule. So, when M. Picquart insisted that
Major Esterhazy should be prosecuted and arrested on the strength
of this simple document, he was separated from the war department.
And I think that he was treated very indulgently.
“Much has been said of the writing of the bordereau, but its contents
have not yet been referred to. I ask your permission, then, to take
this bordereau, which has just been shown to me, and examine,
point by point, whether it was possible for Major Esterhazy to
procure the documents that were mentioned in it.”
M. Labori.—“I ask that Colonel Picquart, who is now present at the
hearing before M. Bertulus in the matter of the complaint against the
Speranza forgery, be summoned to court to hear the testimony of
General de Pellieux.”
The Judge.—“Go on, General.”
M. Labori.—“I ask permission to offer a motion. I ask for the
presence of Colonel Picquart here.”
The Judge.—“You have not the floor. Go on. General.”
General de Pellieux.—“I pretend to prove here, documents in hand,
that the officer who wrote the bordereau is an officer of the war
department, an officer of artillery, and, furthermore, a licentiate. I ask
for a copy of the bordereau as it appeared in ‘Le Matin’.”
M. Labori.—“I ask you to send for Colonel Picquart. I protest against
the absence of Colonel Picquart.”
The Judge.—“I will send for Colonel Picquart when I get ready.”
M. Labori.—“That is understood. Well, I point that out to the jury.”
The Judge.—“Point out what you like.”
M. Labori.—“I intend to do so. You think to turn the course of the
debate, because General de Pellieux is here alone.”
The Judge.—“I have told you that you have not the floor. Do not
oblige me to take measures. Go on, General.”
General de Pellieux.—“I thank you, Monsieur le Président.
“The bordereau contains this item: ‘A note on the hydraulic check of
120, and the way in which this piece is managed.’ This is the
expression of an artillery officer. In speaking of this piece an artillery
officer says ‘the 120.’ An infantry officer would never say that. He
would say ‘the piece 120.’ Moreover, the artillery guard their secrets
very carefully. Although I have been chief of staff of an army corps, I
am not acquainted with the hydraulic check of the piece 120. It has
been said that this knowledge would have been acquired at the
manœuvres. It is absolutely impossible to see the operation of this
piece at the manœuvres, and I, who was present at the manœuvres
of 1896 and 1897, am unfamiliar with it. Furthermore, this paragraph
must refer to a report that exists in the war department on the way in
which this hydraulic check has behaved in experiments. Only an
officer of the war department could have given information on this
point. No infantry officer ever saw the piece 120 fired. Though I have
been present at firing lessons, I never saw it fired.
“The bordereau contains also a note concerning troupes de
couverture, and I call your attention to the second paragraph: ‘The
new plan of mobilization involves some modifications.’ How could an
infantry officer in garrison at Rouen have known anything about the
troupes de couverture? It has been said that Esterhazy, being a
major, was in possession of his regiment’s plan of mobilization. True,
but in the plans of mobilization of regiments, especially of regiments
that have nothing to do with couverture, there is no compromising
detail. These plans simply specify the measures to be taken to make
the regiment ready for transportation. The regiment does not know
even where it is going. Deposited in the colonel’s office are what are
called fiches. These fiches of transportation give only a point of
departure and a point of arrival. At the point of arrival the regiment
receives new fiches from a staff officer sent by the minister of war,
and only there does it learn its final destination. Consequently Major
Esterhazy could not possibly have given any detail regarding troupes
de couverture. His regiment did not furnish such troops, and the
regiments that do could give details only concerning the hour of their
departure. And how could Major Esterhazy know anything of a new
plan in progress of elaboration? Such a thing could have been
known only to an accomplice in the war department.
“Thirdly, the bordereau contains a note on a change in artillery
formations. How could Major Esterhazy have known anything about
that? There is no artillery garrisoned at Rouen.
“Fourth, the bordereau contains a note relating to Madagascar.
Gentlemen, the bordereau is certainly not of earlier date than March
14, 1894, since it speaks of a document that did not appear until
March 14, of which I shall speak directly. It is certainly of earlier date
than September 1, at the time at which it was seized. Well, at that
time it was known only in the war department what part the land
forces were to take in the Madagascar expedition. The question was
not agitated until the 16th or 17th of August, 1894. These details,
then, must have been given by an officer of the war department;
Major Esterhazy at Rouen could not possibly have known of
preparations for an expedition in which a part of the land forces
would participate.
“I come now to perhaps the most serious point,—‘the note
concerning the manual of artillery campaign practice, March 14,
1894.’ This manual has never been in the hands of an infantry
officer. A very few copies were sent to artillery regiments. It is hardly
known to the officers in the war department, except those of the third
division,—the artillery division. Major Jamel had it in his drawer in the
war department, and it was at the disposal of the incriminated officer
whom I refuse to name here. There has been an endeavor to prove
that Major Esterhazy once had this manual in his hands, and for that
purpose an appeal was made to the testimony of a Lieutenant
Bernheim, who happens to be an Israelite, and who came to testify.
This officer was obliged to admit that he did not communicate the
manual to Major Esterhazy; that what he communicated was an
artillery regulation regarding siege pieces,—a regulation which
anybody can buy, which does, indeed, contain interesting details
regarding the firing of such pieces and something about the firing of
all other pieces, and which Major Esterhazy had made use of in
preparing a lecture on artillery to be delivered to his regiment. And
right here I ask permission to relate an incident. M. Picquart sent for
a certain Mulot, Major Esterhazy’s secretary, presented to him a
firing manual, and said: ‘This is the document, is it not, that you
copied?’ Mulot answered: ‘Not at all. I copied extracts from a firing
manual, but it was a much larger manual than that, containing the
rules for firing certain pieces.’ Whereupon M. Picquart said to him:
‘Your recollection is not very exact. Go home and think about the
matter, and, when you have thought about it, write to us. You belong
to the reserves, and, if you need any permits, apply to me, and I will
see that you get them.’
“Now, gentlemen, I am coming to the end. What is left of the
scaffolding that has been constructed? Not much, in my opinion; and
yet on it rests the infamous accusation that the council of war
acquitted a guilty party in obedience to orders. Gentlemen, I have
not a crystal soul; I have a soldier’s soul, and it revolts against the
infamies heaped upon us. I say that it is criminal to try to take away
from the army its confidence in its chiefs. What do you think will
become of this army on the day of danger,—nearer, perhaps, than
you think. What do you think will be the conduct of the poor soldiers
led by chiefs of whom they have heard such things said? It is to
butchery that they would lead your sons, gentlemen of the jury. But
M. Zola will have won a new battle, he will write a new ‘Débâcle,’ he
will spread the French language throughout the universe, throughout
Europe from whose map France has been wiped.
“One word more. Much has been said of revision. Revision—and I
shall not be contradicted by my comrades—is to us a matter of
absolute indifference. We should have been glad, had Dreyfus been
acquitted. It would have proved that there was no traitor in the
French army. But, gentlemen, what the council of war of 1898 was
not willing to admit was that an innocent man should be put in
Dreyfus’s place, whether Dreyfus was guilty or not. I have done.”
M. Labori.—“I ask the floor.”
The Judge.—“What question do you wish to ask?”
M. Labori.—“I appeal to Article 319 of the code of criminal
examination, which says that ‘after every deposition the court shall
ask the accused if he wishes to answer what has been said against
him, and that the accused and his counsel shall have a right to
question the witness through the court, and to say against him and
his testimony anything that may be useful for the defence of the
accused.’ I ask the floor.”
The Judge.—“What questions?”
M. Labori.—“I ask the floor to say against the witness and his
testimony anything that may be useful for the defence of the
accused.”
The Judge.—“You have the floor only to ask questions.”
M. Labori.—“I have the honor, by virtue of Article 319 of the code of
criminal examination, to ask that the floor be accorded me, and I
offer the following motion.”
General de Pellieux.—“Can I retire, Monsieur le Président?”
The Judge.—“You may sit down.”
M. Labori.—“I have the honor to ask the court to be good enough to
wait until my motion is ready.”
The Judge.—“You have the floor.”
M. Labori offered a formal motion that the court accord the floor to
the counsel for the accused, in conformity with Article 319 of the
code, and asked for the floor in order to speak in support of his
motion.
The Judge.—“You have the floor.”
M. Labori.—“Gentlemen, you have just heard, not a deposition, but
an argument. It is the argument of the staff, which sends General de
Pellieux here, not to give explanations, but to throw into the debate,
speculating on the generosity of a great people” ...
At this moment there was an uproar in the court-room, which led M.
Labori to say, interrupting himself: “I pay no attention, but I judge of
the reach of my blows by the protests that they call from my
enemies.”
The Judge.—“M. Labori, pay no attention to what takes place in the
audience. You talk to everybody except the court.”
M. Labori.—“I answer the protests which the court does not
suppress, and I add that I have here a letter that one of my confrères
has just passed to me, which says: ‘M. Labori, lawyers are prevented
here from making any manifestation. Why, then, are infantry and
artillery officers allowed to openly applaud?’ I resume. I was saying
that they speculate on the generosity of a great people which
confounds persons with principles, which identifies chiefs, who are
only fallible men, with the flag that we all respect and that no one has
a right to monopolize, no more General de Pellieux than I. As a
soldier, I owe respect to General de Pellieux, because he is my chief.
I am a soldier, as he is, and on the day of battle my blood will be as
good as his, and I declare that, though I may have fewer stripes, I
shall not show less resolution or less courage. Every time that the
advocate of the war department shall ask the floor at the beginning
of the day’s hearing, in order to make an impression on the men of
good faith whose names the newspapers of the Rue Saint
Dominique print every evening as a sort of intimidation,—I say that
every time that the advocate of the staff shall come to this bar to
throw himself into the balance, not as a witness, but as a sort of pillar
of support, the attorney-general’s silence proving inadequate,—I say
that, immediately afterward, the defender of M. Zola, whatever his
fatigue, whatever his emotion, whatever his sadness, will rise, and,
though this trial should last six months, he will struggle until the light,
which is becoming more brilliant every day, which at first was only a
gleam” ...
The Judge.—“This has no relation to your motion. I am going to
deprive you of the floor.”
M. Labori.—“If you deprive me of the floor, Monsieur le Président, it
will be said that General de Pellieux was allowed to speak here for
half an hour, and that I was not permitted to answer him. I await your
decision.”
The Judge.—“You have the floor, but in support of your motion. Let
us have done with it.”
M. Labori.—“If this expression, ‘Let us have done with it,’ indicates
that I am disagreeable to the court, I am very much grieved; but I
have no desire to have done with it. I want the light. Entrusted with
the defence of Emile Zola, I will go to the last extremity to get it. I
assure you that you do not excite me at all. I ask only for a moment’s
rest, and will then speak to the end with tranquillity.”
The Judge.—“You speak of all sorts of things. That is why we shall
come to no end, and you have not said a word regarding your
motion.”
M. Labori.—“I am saying something now of greater consequence
than my motion.”
The Judge.—“But we are not here to hear all these things. This is the
first time that I witness such a struggle.”
M. Labori.—“Because it is the first time that there has been
maintained, in the name of the law, a judicial error which must come
to light,—which will come to light in a few days, if it does not today.
General de Pellieux has said: ‘Innocent or guilty.’”
The Judge.—“According to Article 311 of the code of examination, I
tell you that you must explain yourself with moderation.”
M. Labori.—“Will you tell me, Monsieur le Président, what expression
has fallen from my lips that was lacking in moderation?”
The Judge.—“Everything that you say.”
M. Labori.—“Pardon me, I do not accept your warning, unless it is
made more precise.”
The Judge.—“I repeat that this incident has now taken up ten
minutes. Develop your motion simply.”
M. Labori.—“If you ask me to be moderate, and ask me in terms that
resemble a warning or a censure, and if you do not tell me why you
inflict this censure upon me” ...
The Judge.—“Will you speak in support of your motion?”
M. Labori.—“But, Monsieur le Président, do you hold to what you just
said?”
The Judge.—“I have no account to render to you.”
M. Labori.—“Very well. This observation made, it is agreed that not
one of my words can be reprimanded or blamed, and I continue.
Article 319 declares that the witness, no matter how many stripes he
may wear, cannot have the upper hand of the defence. M. de
Pellieux is not the accused party here. If he were, he would have the
same right that we have, and, if he were the complainant against the
accused on behalf of the public, he could take the floor. But he is not.
The staff has said to itself that it has in General de Pellieux a
distinguished orator, and so it sends him here every day to begin the
hearing with an argument against such portions of the
demonstrations and evidence of the day before as seem
overwhelming. Well, I say that, if ever Article 319 is to be applied,
this is the time for it.”
The court retired for five minutes, and then rendered a decree
refusing the floor to the counsel for the defence for the purpose for
which he asked it, on the ground that it was the duty of the court,
according to Article 270 of the code of criminal examination, to
exclude everything that would needlessly prolong the trial.
M. Labori.—“I ask that Colonel Picquart be heard.”
The Judge.—“He is not here.”
M. Labori.—“I know it, but his place is here. I ask that he be sent for,
and confronted with General de Pellieux.”
The Judge.—“He will come when he is free.”
M. Labori.—“Yes, at five o’clock tonight, when the hearing is over.”
The Judge.—“We will send for him soon.”
M. Labori.—“At once. I will ask no other question until he is
summoned.”
But, in spite of this, Colonel Picquart was not heard, the witnesses
that were called to the bar in the meantime occupying the rest of the
session. The first was M. Scheurer-Kestner, who appeared in order
to contradict some points in the testimony of the expert,
Teyssonnière.
“M. Teyssonnière,” said M. Scheurer-Kestner, “made an incredible
blunder when he said that I showed him on Sunday, July 11,
specimens of Esterhazy’s handwriting. It is a monstrous error, for on
July 11, when M. Teyssonnière came to see me,—and we have not
met since,—I had never heard the name of Esterhazy.”
M. Teyssonnière.—“I thought that Esterhazy’s name was mentioned.
At least I found it on my notes.”
M. Labori.—“What notes?”
M. Teyssonnière.—“The notes that I take daily.”
M. Labori.—“How could you have found the name of Esterhazy on
your notes at a time when nobody was thinking about it? Your
conversation with M. Scheurer-Kestner was in July, and it was on
November 17 that M. Mathieu Dreyfus pronounced Esterhazy’s
name for the first time in denouncing him to the minister of war. Now,
M. Teyssonnière, ‘La Libre Parole’ publishes this morning an article
in which it is said that M. Scheurer-Kestner and M. Trarieux tried to
get you to modify your opinions. Are you in any way connected with
the publication of this article?”
M. Teyssonnière.—“Yes.”
M. Labori.—“The article contains a letter written to you by M.
Trarieux. Who gave the letter to that newspaper?”
M. Teyssonnière.—“I did.”
M. Labori.—“M. Trarieux, keeper of the seals, secured your
restoration to the list of experts, after your name had been stricken
from it. You have a way of showing gratitude that is peculiar to
yourself.”
M. Teyssonnière.—“M. Trarieux in his testimony committed errors
concerning me which I will qualify as lies. I did not go in search of
him. I was sent to him.”
M. Labori.—“Have M. Scheurer-Kestner and M. Trarieux brought any
pressure to bear upon your conscience?”
M. Teyssonnière.—“No.”
M. Labori.—“Well, then, be off.”
M. Trarieux.—“Pardon me. I should like to know on what point M.
Teyssonnière pretends that I lied. He cannot say. He admits that I
took an interest in him at the time when his name was stricken from
the list of experts, and now he covers me with odious slander, and
pretends that I drew him into some trap to get him to modify his
conclusions as an expert.”
M. Teyssonnière.—“I have not said that.”
M. Trarieux.—“Then why do you carry a letter to ‘La Libre Parole,’ if
not to permit that journal to publish it with venomous insinuations? I
will not rest quiet under these calumnies. Never did I ask anything of
you. It was you who wanted to force your opinions upon me.”
M. Trarieux then produced a letter from M. Teyssonnière in which he
insisted on coming to show him his report in the Dreyfus case, and to
scientifically prove the guilt of the condemned man.
M. Labori.—“Why did General de Pellieux declare that we reject the
official experts, while appealing to foreigners and dentists? Why!
when the staff experts are questioned by us, they preserve an
obstinate silence. Could not General de Pellieux loosen their
tongues? It is not words that we want, but reasons. What answer,
indeed, can be made to men like M. Louis Havet, M. Molinier, or the
director of the Ecole des Chartes? I fancy that you will not disdain
these men as dentists. You think that you have said all when you
have cried: ‘Good jurors, we shall have war.’ War? Who here is
afraid of it? Not you or I, General de Pellieux. But we are entitled to
know whether our chiefs are worthy of us. Then let them fear neither
discussion or light. I ask that General de Pellieux be confronted with
M. Meyer.”
The court gave its consent, and M. Labori put this question to
General de Pellieux: “Will you explain your statement that the fac-
simile ‘Matin’ was a forgery?”
General de Pellieux.—“I maintain that among the fac-similes
reproduced by the journals there are some that singularly resemble
forgeries.”
M. Paul Meyer.—“But what interest had ‘Le Matin’ in committing a
forgery in 1896, when nobody was thinking of Major Esterhazy?”
General de Pellieux.—“I have always said that the reproduction
made by ‘Le Matin’ was the least imperfect of all. It is not the same
with the fac-similes that have appeared in certain pamphlets.”
M. Meyer.—“I have made no use of those. But the resemblance,
according to ‘Le Matin’s’ fac-simile, between Major Esterhazy’s
writing and the writing of the bordereau is undeniable.”
General de Pellieux.—“You have never seen the original of the
bordereau.”
M. Meyer.—“I have seen the ‘Matin’ fac-simile, the fidelity of which
has been admitted by M. Bertillon. That is sufficient for me. No one
called your word in question, my general, but you are lacking in the
power of observation. As for your experts, you perhaps will permit
me to say that I do not consider myself beneath them in point of
intelligence. The president of the civil court asks me to select most of
them. Do you think that, if I had selected myself, he would have
blackballed me? I prefer an expert examination made by myself from
a fac-simile, to an expert examination made from an original by
people whom I do not know.”
M. Meyer then asked General de Pellieux to procure for him at least
the original photographs of the bordereau.
General de Pellieux.—“Oh! I would like nothing better, and I regret
that the reports of the Esterhazy experts cannot be brought here and
discussed. I was absolutely opposed to closed doors. They were
declared in spite of me, but I have no right to violate them.”
M. Labori.—“But certainly somebody has a right to authorize this
production. Let the order be given, and the light will stream forth. Oh!
we have made some progress in the last week. Here we are, almost
in agreement. If this trial goes on, we shall all walk out of here like
honest people, arm in arm. It will be admitted that there has been
only an immense misunderstanding between us, and that nothing is
easier than to honestly repair a judicial error involuntarily committed.
Well, my general, do what we ask. Get the minister of war to produce
the bordereau. Pray him to show us this bit of transparent paper
which is so securely locked up in his department, and let everybody
see it. If it were not that certain minds are anchored in a blind
obstinacy, we should soon see that in this whole matter there is not
wherewith to whip a cat. It is a great pity that M. Couard is not here.
It would be a pleasure to witness a discussion between him and M.
Meyer, his former professor in the Ecole des Chartes.”
“I ask nothing better,” cried a stentorian voice, from the middle of the
auditorium, and through the crowd pushed M. Couard, carrying a
large package.
“I do not wish it to be said,” he shouted, “that I have not the
profoundest respect for my old teacher. But what is the Ecole des
Chartes? The Ecole des Chartes, I know it. I have been through it.
Do they teach anything there about the handwriting of the nineteenth
century? The fifteenth, the sixteenth, I even grant you the
seventeenth and eighteenth, if you please; but contemporary
handwriting? Why, there is not a single chair of modern handwriting
there. I revere M. Meyer as a professor of Roman philology, but as
an expert in handwriting he is like a child just born. Why, I was
present at the development of a thesis on the famous flag of Jeanne
Hachette, which is preserved at Beauvais. The candidate had
deciphered upon it all sorts of interesting fifteenth-century
inscriptions. I twisted with laughter. His description was based upon
a flag manufactured in 1840 to replace the true one, which is worm-
eaten, and of which nothing is left but shreds, upon which it is
impossible to read anything. ‘Each one to his trade, then the cows
will be well kept.’”
M. Meyer.—“If there is no instruction in writings at the Ecole des
Chartes, where did you get your instruction, Monsieur Expert?”
M. Couard.—“By practice, my dear master,—practice for eight
years.”
M. Meyer.—“Pardon me, I do not defend myself. Pupils are always
the best judges of their professors.”
M. Labori.—“What is the package, so preciously wrapped, that you
have there under the table? Does it contain, perchance, photographs
of the bordereau?”
M. Couard.—“No, it is the famous dissertation upon the flag of
Jeanne Hachette. I see what you are after. You wish to turn the
course of my testimony. But it is established, nevertheless, that my
old teacher is only an expert on occasion.”

Testimony of M. Paul Moriaud.

The next witness was M. Paul Moriaud, professor in the Geneva law
school. He desired to use a blackboard for his demonstrations, as M.
Franck had done the day before, but the court refused to permit him
to do so. After declaring that there were never two handwritings so
nearly identical as that of Esterhazy and that of the bordereau, he
discussed the question whether the bordereau was produced by
tracing.
“Tracing,” said the witness, “can be done in two ways. There is first
the tracing of entire words separately. Suppose you desired to
produce this phrase: ‘You are right, Monsieur,’ signed ‘So and So.’
You procure a specimen of the writing of M. So and So, and you look
for the word ‘are,’ the word ‘right,’ etc. You paste them side by side,
you cut out the signature and paste it beneath, and you photograph
the whole; or else you trace them. In this case we may suppose
tracing, for the bordereau is on tracing-paper. Here you have 181
words, almost all different. There are rare words among them,—
Madagascar, check, hydraulic, indicating, etc. Well, if you should
collect Major Esterhazy’s letters for ten years, and try to find in them
all the words that are in this bordereau, you would not succeed. The
process is an utter impossibility.
“You have been told by previous witnesses of the style and
punctuation of the bordereau. I wish to say something of the way in
which the words are placed. M. Esterhazy begins his paragraphs
without indention. The lines that begin paragraphs are as long as
their predecessors. Furthermore, he never divides a word at the end
of a line. If there is not room for it, he runs it over to the next line.
Now, you find that in the bordereau. Another thing. The bordereau is
not in the same handwriting throughout. Now, M. Esterhazy’s
handwriting is very variable. He writes coarse or fine, according to
circumstances. Now, these two handwritings of Major Esterhazy are
to be seen in the bordereau. The first fourteen lines are written in a
more compact, more calm, more legible, finer handwriting, the last
sixteen in a larger, looser hand. Now, if the bordereau had been
traced, what would have been the result? All the words would have
been in the same handwriting, either one or the other; or else there
would have been a mixture, one word in one handwriting and the
next in the other. But in the bordereau all the first part is in one
handwriting, and all the second part in the other, which clearly shows
that M. Esterhazy wrote the bordereau at two sittings, in two different
states of mind.
“Some words are repeated in the bordereau. The word ne, for
instance, occurs four times; the word de seven times. It is very
evident that, if these words had been hunted for in M. Esterhazy’s
letters, in order to trace them, on finding the word ne they would
have copied it four times. But such is not the case. If we had time, I
would propose a little experiment. I would ask you to cut from the
bordereau one of the four words ne, and give it to me; whereupon I
would immediately tell you which one of the four it was. Or you might
do the same thing with the word vous, which occurs six times. If you
will cut it out and show it to me, I will tell you whether it is the fourth,
the fifth, or the sixth. They are so different that, from memory, in spite
of the inevitable confusion that takes possession of a man when he
speaks in public and among strangers, I should be able to recognize
them, which proves that each of these words was written individually
by M. Esterhazy. No two persons ever write the same word exactly
like, and no person ever writes a word twice in exactly the same way.
And so in the bordereau there is this variety of form which life always
gives.
“The last argument. As I said, M. Esterhazy never divides his words,
but, if the end of the word is far from the end of the line, he makes a
long final stroke, often immoderately long; and a curious thing, that I
have never seen in the handwriting of anybody else, is this: if the
word at the end of a line is a little word, and if M. Esterhazy has
much room, he writes the word in a larger hand. You will find, for
instance, at the end of a line an immoderately large ne, which seems
almost in another handwriting. Now, that is precisely what you will
find in M. Esterhazy’s letters, the elongation of the final strokes to fill
out the blank space at the end of a line; which proves clearly that
these words were not taken here and there from Esterhazy’s letters.
I consider this demonstration irresistible, and, whether its truth be
admitted or not today, the day will come when savants will take these
documents and say that M. Esterhazy wrote the bordereau, and
there will be no doubt about it whatever. There may have been an
original corresponding as a whole to the bordereau, but in that case
M. Esterhazy wrote the original. If it be insisted that somebody has
imitated M. Esterhazy’s handwriting, the imitator was M. Esterhazy
himself.”
At the end of this demonstration the court adjourned.

Tenth Day—February 17.

After a renewed demand on the part of the defence for the
production of the original of the bordereau, and a refusal of the court
to order its production, M. Paul Moriaud again took the stand to
testify concerning the Uhlan letter. In this letter he pointed out
various peculiarities tending to identify M. Esterhazy as the writer,
especially the x form given to the letter n, giving the word “Uhlan” the
appearance of “Uhlax,”—a peculiarity which had been pointed out in
the bordereau a year previously by an expert to whom M.
Esterhazy’s writing was unknown.
M. Moriaud was confronted with M. Varinard, who persisted that the
Uhlan letter is a forgery, though saying that he could not give his
reasons without having the original before him. The defence then
asked for the production of the letter.
M. Clemenceau.—“Does not General de Pellieux think that it is of
interest to the honor of the army to know whether a French officer
wrote such a letter?”
General de Pellieux [advancing to the bar].—“Of the highest interest.
On this point I agree with the defence, and there is not a single
officer who does not share my sentiment. Major Esterhazy’s letters
were written in 1882. I myself ask for their production.”
It was agreed that the letter should be produced the following day,
and publicly examined by experts. Before the closing of the incident
M. Clemenceau asked General de Pellieux whether any alterations
to which the letter had been subjected must not have occurred while
it was in Mme. de Boulancy’s possession.
General de Pellieux.—“Surely; it was placed under seal by me.”
M. Clemenceau.—“Under open seal (by sealing a thread passed
through the corner of the document). Does not that sort of seal leave
the document uncovered?”
Testimony was then given by M. Giry, professor in the Ecole des
Chartes, and by Dr. Hericourt, editor of the “Revue Scientifique,” to
the effect that the similarity between the writing of the bordereau and
that of Major Esterhazy amounts to identity, after which Colonel
Picquart was called to the stand.
M. Labori.—“Yesterday General de Pellieux declared that Major
Esterhazy could not have procured in 1894 the documents
enumerated in the bordereau. What has Colonel Picquart to say in
answer to that?”
Colonel Picquart.—“I should not have approached this question, if it
had not been brought up here yesterday; but now my duty to tell the
truth obliges me to give my opinions in regard to this bordereau. I
beg that my words may not be misinterpreted. Some things that I
shall say perhaps will contradict what General de Pellieux has said,
but I believe it my duty to say what I think. Permit me to view this
question of the bordereau in a general way. I am accustomed to deal
with these questions, having been occupied with them on other
staffs, prior to my service of a year and a half as chief of the bureau
of information. Well, the bordereau enumerates documents of much
less importance, in my opinion, than that which has been attributed
to them. I note in the first place this passage:
 I address you meantime:
(1) A note on the hydraulic check;
(2) A note on the troupes de couverture;
(3) A note on the firing manual;
(4) A note relating to Madagascar.
“Well, these are only notes. Anyone who had had anything serious to
furnish, and not simply what he had picked up in conversation, or
seen in passing, would have said: ‘I send you a copy of such and
such a document.’ When one wishes to give value to his
merchandise, he points out its origin. Now, a note indicates simply a
personal observation, or perhaps a little copy of something or other
drawn from memory, or from the newspapers, or from some other
source. I note also this,—that, in the case of the only authentic
document, which is not of capital importance, the firing manual, the
author of the bordereau said: ‘Project of a firing manual,’ adding:
‘This last document is extremely difficult to procure,’ thus showing
the difficulty that he had in procuring it. Now, could Major Esterhazy
have obtained these points of information?”
The Judge.—“That is the question.”
Colonel Picquart.—“I say: ‘Yes.’ When the famous dispatch brought
Major Esterhazy’s name to my attention, I, in search of information,
applied first to a person belonging to his regiment, who said to me:
‘This man has singular ways. He has been twice to the artillery firing
schools, and he asked permission to go a third time at his own
expense.’ I know that he explains these frequent visits by saying that
he had a country house not far from the Châlons camp. But I would
like to know whether on each occasion he went to the Châlons
camp. The last time, yes; but the other times I do not think that he
did. I cannot assert it,—because I never assert anything of which I
am not sure,—but it seems to me that one of the firing schools was
at Mans.
“Another thing. An agent informed us that a major wearing
decorations, and about fifty years old, was furnishing documents to a
foreign power, especially documents concerning artillery and firing.
This points to the conclusion that Esterhazy could give information
concerning artillery.
“A third thing. The member of Esterhazy’s regiment to whom I
applied told me that Esterhazy had asked him whether he knew
anything about the mobilization of artillery. Why did he desire to
know that? Consequently I believe that Esterhazy could furnish a
personal note as to what he had seen of the hydraulic check and the
modifications in artillery formations. The newspapers have said that
this matter of a modification in artillery formation was the subject of a
legislative bill, and was known, before its introduction, to not a few
senators, deputies, and journalists. Now, Esterhazy knew not a few
deputies, and was a frequent visitor at newspaper offices.
“Concerning the statement of the bordereau, in relation to the
troupes de couverture, that some modifications will be made by the
new plan, I maintain that this expression evidently came from
someone not connected with the department, and, if desired, I will go
into detail on that matter, but behind closed doors.
“Now I pass to the note concerning Madagascar. It has been said
that it could not have been known at the beginning of 1894 that there
would be a Madagascar expedition. In the first place, this is simply a
note relating to Madagascar. It has nothing at all to do with a project
for the participation of land forces in a Madagascar expedition. It
may have been copied from a geographical document. There is
nothing to indicate that it was of a military character. If it should be
said that it must have been of a military character, I would answer
that, since the first Madagascar expedition, there has been every
year a question of sending somebody there; and I have received
letters from many of my comrades, who, knowing that I had served in
the colonies, asked me if I could not give them some information, in
view of the widespread report that there was to be a Madagascar
expedition. I mention this to show that in the beginning of 1894 there
was already much talk about Madagascar, though it was not then
known that there would be an expedition in which the land forces
would take part.
“Now as to this passage from the bordereau: