Review of
Politically-correct shallow history
Pieter Geyl: Napoleon: For and Against (1965)
Sound signifying nothing (1965 ignorance and correctness with one eye on Hitler)
16 Nov 2012First published in English translation in 1949, by Jonathan Cape, an arty publisher; but written at least five years before. According to several accounts Geyl, whose interest was Dutch history, was arrested and interned in Buchenwald for part of what became called World War 2; I suspect, judging by a phonetic surname list, he believed himself to be a Jew. I'll assume that, anyway. Geyl says (in another book) that the Second World War brought to France 'catastrophe and humiliation' which reinforces that impression.
Twenty years later: British University education had been expanded, and, naturally, what might now be called politically-correct fodder had to be provided, particularly in the subjects to be discreetly reupholstered as soft-options. Enter Penguin Books, who reprinted this in larger format ('Peregrine') than usual, with nice colour cover. There must be many A-level and degree-level students whose sole knowledge of Napoleon comes from coasting through this book. Certainly the blurb's extravagant praise, by people like A J P Taylor and Alan Bullock (newspaper-style historian of Hitler) might lull people into thinking it may genuinely be the 'best single volume' of the time about Napoleon.
'For and Against' is of course a primitively trite dichotomy. Geyl's procedure is to consider French writers (published from 1814 - 1935) only; it's not very clear what they had to do to count as historians. Some of Geyl's summaries are single pages; others are much longer. His framework is (roughly) chronological: start, chroniclers (the word of course is a slight), reaction against 'the legend', admirers, foreign policy, and end point. With thousands of books to choose from, there's little difficulty approximating to some such scheme. And from the politically-correct viewpoint, Geyl must have had little difficulty in his exclusions; no comment on Walter Scott, for example.
There's a revealing comment by Geyl to the effect that he's not an expert - to claim that, a whole lifetime's reading is needed. How convenient that one man's achievements should be summarisable by exactly one lifetime of study.
Briefly, Napoleon, from Corsica, as about 20 at the time of the 'Revolution' in 1789. After getting into his stride, he carried out about ten years of warfare, collecting such honours as Emperor of France in the process, disastrously invading Russia (it was cold), and finally meeting his end on St Helena, a dot of an island under British seapower, remote from Europe. At the time, much of Europe was a patchwork of small principalities (France had managed to unify, possibly as a result of Chauvin's efforts; Italy was a mosaic; Germany was disunited, the north being Protestant and Austrian parts Catholic; and so on). There were therefore something like twenty potential belligerents, with vast numbers of possible alliances. Moreover, many battles were followed by treaties of great intricacy, trying to bind behaviour to other powers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Geyl attempts no summary, anywhere, of Napoleon's military achievements, though in passing the 'Code Civil', the Concordat, and educational reform loom large through the general fog.
Cynics will notice a symmetry here with World Wars and 'war aims'. The true aims were not to be revealed to the public at the time, nor are they to be mentioned to young students now. In an analogous way, the effects of Napoleon, before and after, are not considered. Geyl (who praised himself on the quality of his Dutch prose) prefers archly to present quotations on moral characteristics: love of war, vanity, force of character, intellect, folly, vulgarity, persuasiveness, impetuousness, foreignness and Corsica. ... and of course there are innumerable views, quite possibly every bit as unreliable as opinions on Jesus, if he ever lived. Geyl's intention is to prevent students of history weighing up or assessing Napoleon; instead, the entire book deals with opinions and shades of wording, and has vast numbers of irrelevancies and subtopics and diversions and picturesque phrases and official judgments and slighted opinions.
Geyl wisely refrains from accepting any view as correct. 'Argument without end' is Geyl's polite assessment; 'drivel without end' is nearer.
Geyl doesn't even attempt to assess Napoleon's wars from the demographic/technical point of view. After all, 20th century mechanised war perhaps should throw some relief onto wars with horse-drawn artillery on bad roads, muskets, food with little preserving packing, absence of railways, communications by semaphore, and so on. Was it really that bad? I'm unsure; but it's a question worth addressing, since after all the romance, such as it is, of Caesar, Theodoric, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Mussolini, Stalin and other such figures, ought to be factually-based; oughtn't it?
What was the net effect of Napoleon? Mazzini said his regime 'crippled feudalism, strengthened the central authority, established schools, braced the soldiery and generally quickened the energies of the people' - possibly a Hitlerian comparison selected by Geyl. A J P Taylor debunks some aristocratic pretensions: 'old aristocracy ... was .. largely 18th century, many the creations of Napoleon; only Habsburg was a genuine historic dynasty. ...' Here's Beatrice Webb: '...new system of industry ... Great Britain... survive[d] the Napoleonic Wars intact, and not even invaded, whilst her ruling oligarchy emerged in 1815 as the richest and most powerful government of the time.' She should have known: her family was part of that process. Lefebvre (p. 380) '... explains the evil reputation of the Directorate by the impossible financial situation which it had inherited from the Convention: worthless assignats withdrawn, a state bankruptcy, all credit gone, nothing but the receipts of taxation for financing the war.' Geyl avoids most discussion of money, apart from suggestions he under-funded his projects, and leaves unmentioned Napoleon's lament that financiers were without country, and that after him money was in the hands of Jews. Was Wellington spared Rothschild's money-grabbing? One has to wonder, but Geyl doesn't.
Geyl has of course to choose discrete topics here and there; it's impossible to be entirely unspecific. He duly considers the shock of Enghien's assassination. But he's unconcerned about 300,000 dead soldiers. This is pure convention. It may well be a Jewish attitude: only Jews count, so the Jewish historian has to note, with puzzlement, that some non-Jews actually agonise over goyim dead - incredible, but they seem to, so let's go along with that. This saves an awful lot of effort of assessment.
Some subjects are evaded entirely: Napoleon may or may not have been vastly intelligent, but anyway surrounded himself with intelligent people: they made aluminium, worked with iodine, kept 3-d geometry a state secret, invented synthetic butter, and baguettes (to fit into trousers; and perhaps go with hydrogenated fats?), and wanted careers open to talent. There were limits - the tin buttons on the soldiers' uniforms fell apart under intense cold, for example. All of this is out of Geyl's range.
Another evasion is to dodge the hired hack idea. Michelet seems to have become something like a state-sponsored official historian, but Geyl sees no connection between his job and his opinions.
You may have been told this book is a first-class discussion by a great historical mind, by people trying to sell it, either for money or reputation. It isn't.