Comparative history

One of Marc Bloch's most important contributions was to reinvigorate the idea of "comparative history."  Bloch believed that we could understand French feudalism better by putting it into the context of European legal and property regimes; and more broadly, he believed that the careful comparison of agrarian regimes across time and space could be an important source of insight into human societies.  Moreover, he did not believe that the cases needed to be sociologically connected.  He thought that we would learn important new truths by comparing medieval French serfdom with bonded labor in Senegal in the twentieth century, and one of the innovations developed in Bloch's editorship of Annales d'histoire économique et social was precisely his openness to this kind of comparison.  (Bloch's ideas about comparative history are presented in his 1928 article, "Toward a Comparative History of European Societies," reprinted in Frederick C. Lane and Jelle C. Riermersma, eds., Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History.  See William Sewell's article, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History" (link), for a sophisticated discussion of Bloch's theory of comparative history.  Another useful resource is Colleen Dunlavy's syllabus for seminar on comparative history at the University of Wisconsin (link).)

What is "comparative history"? Most basically, it is the organized study of similar historical phenomena in separated temporal or geographical settings.  The comparative historian picks several cases for detailed study and comparison, and then attempts to identify important similarities and differences across the cases.  Theda Skocpol's treatment of social revolution is a case in point (States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China); Skocpol is interested in examining the particulars of the French, Chinese, and Russian Revolutions in order to discover whether there are similar causal processes at work in these three cases.

Other possible comparative research projects might include --

• Slave-based agriculture in Rome and the antebellum United States South
• Rituals of royal healing in medieval France and Bali
• Religious pilgrimages in Islam and Christianity
• Periods of rural unrest in Britain and Malaysia
• Modern economic development in England, France, and China
• Frontier societies in nineteenth-century North America and seventeenth-century Russia
• Feudal legal institutions in eastern and western Europe
• Processes of urban development in London, Mumbai, and Berlin

What is the intellectual purpose of comparative history? What might we expect to learn through careful examination of sets of cases like these?  What sorts of knowledge can comparative historical research provide?

There might be several goals. First, we might imagine that some of these phenomena are the effect of similar causal processes, so comparison can help to identify causal conditions and regularities. This approach implies that we think of social structures and processes as being part of a causal system, where it is possible to identify recurring causal conditions.  This seems to be Skocpol's approach in States and Social Revolutions, though she later extends her views in an article mentioned below.  Researchers often make use of  some variant of Mill's methods in attempting to discover significant patterns of co-variation of conditions and outcomes.  See an earlier posting on "paired comparisons."

Second, we might have a theory of social types and subtypes into which social formations fall. The purpose of comparison would be to identify some of the sub-types of a general phenomenon such as "slave economy". This sounds pretty much like the approach that Comte and Durkheim took; it corresponds to a social metaphysic that holds that there are finitely many distinct types of society, and the central challenge for sociology is to discover the structural characteristics of the various types.

Third, we might have a fundamentally functionalist view of social organization, along with a basic repertoire of social functions that need to be performed. We might then look at religious systems as fulfilling one or more social functions -- social order, solidarity, legitimacy -- in alternative ways. Comparison might serve to identify functional alternatives -- the multiple ways that different social systems have evolved to handle these functional needs.

Another possible purpose of comparative history is to attempt to discover historical and social connections across separate historical settings. For example, examining different methods of labor control in different fascist countries in the 1930s may give us a basis for assessing some of the forms of influence that existed between these movements and governments (post). And Victor Lieberman's comparative study of the rise and fall of state power in France and Burma falls in this category as well; see an earlier posting on his metaphor of "strange parallels".

Finally, we might have a social metaphysics that emphasizes contingency and difference. This perspective differs from the first several ideas, in that it looks at structured comparative study as a vehicle for identifying difference rather than underlying similarity. Examining the histories of Berlin and Delhi may shed a great deal of light on the range of social forces and historical contingencies that occurred in these ostensibly similar cases of "urbanization".  Here the goal of comparison is more to discover alternatives, variations, and instances of path dependency.  Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin's analysis of alternative forms of capitalist development in "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production" illustrates this possibility (link; see also World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization).

So there are a number of different intellectual purposes we might have in undertaking comparative historical research.  How have other social scientists understood these issues?

Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers address precisely this issue in "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry" (link).  Their analysis highlights three distinct models of analysis that can underlie comparative inquiry:

There are, in fact, at least three distinct logics-in-use of comparative history. One of them, which we shall label comparative history as macro-causal analysis, actually does resemble multivariate hypothesis-testing. But in addition there are two other major types: comparative history as the parallel demonstration of theory; and comparative history as the contrast of contexts. Each of the three major types of comparative history assigns a distinctive purpose to the juxtaposition of historical cases. Concomitantly, each has its own requisites of case selection, its own patterns of presentation of arguments, and--perhaps most important--its own strengths and limitations as a tool of research in macrosocial inquiry. (175)

R. Bin Wong offers a different view of the value of comparison in historical studies in his important comparative study of Chinese economic and political development (China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience).  Wong argues that comparison allows the historian to discover what is distinctive about a particular series of historical developments.  Features which perhaps looked inevitable and universal in European economic development look quite different when we consider a similar process of development in China; we may find that Chinese entrepreneurs and officials found very different institutions to do the work of insurance, provision of credit, or long-distance trade.  Likewise, elements that might have been taken to be sui generis characteristics of one national experience may turn out to be widespread in many locations when we do a comparative study.

Ultimately it seems that there are really only two fundamental intellectual reasons for being particularly interested in historical comparisons.  One is the hope of discovering recurring social mechanisms and structures.  This is what Charles Tilly seems to be about in his many studies of contentious politics.  And the second is the hope of discovering some of the differentiating pathways that lead to significantly different outcomes in ostensibly similar social settings.  The first goal serves the value of arriving at some level of generalization about social phenomena, and the second serves the goal of tracing out the fine structure of the particular.

(The images above represent rice cultivation in Bali and grain cultivation in France.  As Marc Bloch might have observed, they depict landscapes that reflect fundamentally different agrarian regimes: intensive cultivation in small plots in Bali, versus extensive cultivation making use of a considerable amount of animal or machine traction in France.  And Bloch would have been likely to spend a great deal of effort at discovering the legal, cultural, religious, and technical characteristics of the two regimes.)

Comparative history

One of Marc Bloch's most important contributions was to reinvigorate the idea of "comparative history."  Bloch believed that we could understand French feudalism better by putting it into the context of European legal and property regimes; and more broadly, he believed that the careful comparison of agrarian regimes across time and space could be an important source of insight into human societies.  Moreover, he did not believe that the cases needed to be sociologically connected.  He thought that we would learn important new truths by comparing medieval French serfdom with bonded labor in Senegal in the twentieth century, and one of the innovations developed in Bloch's editorship of Annales d'histoire économique et social was precisely his openness to this kind of comparison.  (Bloch's ideas about comparative history are presented in his 1928 article, "Toward a Comparative History of European Societies," reprinted in Frederick C. Lane and Jelle C. Riermersma, eds., Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History.  See William Sewell's article, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History" (link), for a sophisticated discussion of Bloch's theory of comparative history.  Another useful resource is Colleen Dunlavy's syllabus for seminar on comparative history at the University of Wisconsin (link).)

What is "comparative history"? Most basically, it is the organized study of similar historical phenomena in separated temporal or geographical settings.  The comparative historian picks several cases for detailed study and comparison, and then attempts to identify important similarities and differences across the cases.  Theda Skocpol's treatment of social revolution is a case in point (States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China); Skocpol is interested in examining the particulars of the French, Chinese, and Russian Revolutions in order to discover whether there are similar causal processes at work in these three cases.

Other possible comparative research projects might include --

• Slave-based agriculture in Rome and the antebellum United States South
• Rituals of royal healing in medieval France and Bali
• Religious pilgrimages in Islam and Christianity
• Periods of rural unrest in Britain and Malaysia
• Modern economic development in England, France, and China
• Frontier societies in nineteenth-century North America and seventeenth-century Russia
• Feudal legal institutions in eastern and western Europe
• Processes of urban development in London, Mumbai, and Berlin

What is the intellectual purpose of comparative history? What might we expect to learn through careful examination of sets of cases like these?  What sorts of knowledge can comparative historical research provide?

There might be several goals. First, we might imagine that some of these phenomena are the effect of similar causal processes, so comparison can help to identify causal conditions and regularities. This approach implies that we think of social structures and processes as being part of a causal system, where it is possible to identify recurring causal conditions.  This seems to be Skocpol's approach in States and Social Revolutions, though she later extends her views in an article mentioned below.  Researchers often make use of  some variant of Mill's methods in attempting to discover significant patterns of co-variation of conditions and outcomes.  See an earlier posting on "paired comparisons."

Second, we might have a theory of social types and subtypes into which social formations fall. The purpose of comparison would be to identify some of the sub-types of a general phenomenon such as "slave economy". This sounds pretty much like the approach that Comte and Durkheim took; it corresponds to a social metaphysic that holds that there are finitely many distinct types of society, and the central challenge for sociology is to discover the structural characteristics of the various types.

Third, we might have a fundamentally functionalist view of social organization, along with a basic repertoire of social functions that need to be performed. We might then look at religious systems as fulfilling one or more social functions -- social order, solidarity, legitimacy -- in alternative ways. Comparison might serve to identify functional alternatives -- the multiple ways that different social systems have evolved to handle these functional needs.

Another possible purpose of comparative history is to attempt to discover historical and social connections across separate historical settings. For example, examining different methods of labor control in different fascist countries in the 1930s may give us a basis for assessing some of the forms of influence that existed between these movements and governments (post). And Victor Lieberman's comparative study of the rise and fall of state power in France and Burma falls in this category as well; see an earlier posting on his metaphor of "strange parallels".

Finally, we might have a social metaphysics that emphasizes contingency and difference. This perspective differs from the first several ideas, in that it looks at structured comparative study as a vehicle for identifying difference rather than underlying similarity. Examining the histories of Berlin and Delhi may shed a great deal of light on the range of social forces and historical contingencies that occurred in these ostensibly similar cases of "urbanization".  Here the goal of comparison is more to discover alternatives, variations, and instances of path dependency.  Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin's analysis of alternative forms of capitalist development in "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production" illustrates this possibility (link; see also World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization).

So there are a number of different intellectual purposes we might have in undertaking comparative historical research.  How have other social scientists understood these issues?

Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers address precisely this issue in "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry" (link).  Their analysis highlights three distinct models of analysis that can underlie comparative inquiry:

There are, in fact, at least three distinct logics-in-use of comparative history. One of them, which we shall label comparative history as macro-causal analysis, actually does resemble multivariate hypothesis-testing. But in addition there are two other major types: comparative history as the parallel demonstration of theory; and comparative history as the contrast of contexts. Each of the three major types of comparative history assigns a distinctive purpose to the juxtaposition of historical cases. Concomitantly, each has its own requisites of case selection, its own patterns of presentation of arguments, and--perhaps most important--its own strengths and limitations as a tool of research in macrosocial inquiry. (175)

R. Bin Wong offers a different view of the value of comparison in historical studies in his important comparative study of Chinese economic and political development (China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience).  Wong argues that comparison allows the historian to discover what is distinctive about a particular series of historical developments.  Features which perhaps looked inevitable and universal in European economic development look quite different when we consider a similar process of development in China; we may find that Chinese entrepreneurs and officials found very different institutions to do the work of insurance, provision of credit, or long-distance trade.  Likewise, elements that might have been taken to be sui generis characteristics of one national experience may turn out to be widespread in many locations when we do a comparative study.

Ultimately it seems that there are really only two fundamental intellectual reasons for being particularly interested in historical comparisons.  One is the hope of discovering recurring social mechanisms and structures.  This is what Charles Tilly seems to be about in his many studies of contentious politics.  And the second is the hope of discovering some of the differentiating pathways that lead to significantly different outcomes in ostensibly similar social settings.  The first goal serves the value of arriving at some level of generalization about social phenomena, and the second serves the goal of tracing out the fine structure of the particular.

(The images above represent rice cultivation in Bali and grain cultivation in France.  As Marc Bloch might have observed, they depict landscapes that reflect fundamentally different agrarian regimes: intensive cultivation in small plots in Bali, versus extensive cultivation making use of a considerable amount of animal or machine traction in France.  And Bloch would have been likely to spend a great deal of effort at discovering the legal, cultural, religious, and technical characteristics of the two regimes.)

Comparative history

One of Marc Bloch's most important contributions was to reinvigorate the idea of "comparative history."  Bloch believed that we could understand French feudalism better by putting it into the context of European legal and property regimes; and more broadly, he believed that the careful comparison of agrarian regimes across time and space could be an important source of insight into human societies.  Moreover, he did not believe that the cases needed to be sociologically connected.  He thought that we would learn important new truths by comparing medieval French serfdom with bonded labor in Senegal in the twentieth century, and one of the innovations developed in Bloch's editorship of Annales d'histoire économique et social was precisely his openness to this kind of comparison.  (Bloch's ideas about comparative history are presented in his 1928 article, "Toward a Comparative History of European Societies," reprinted in Frederick C. Lane and Jelle C. Riermersma, eds., Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History.  See William Sewell's article, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History" (link), for a sophisticated discussion of Bloch's theory of comparative history.  Another useful resource is Colleen Dunlavy's syllabus for seminar on comparative history at the University of Wisconsin (link).)

What is "comparative history"? Most basically, it is the organized study of similar historical phenomena in separated temporal or geographical settings.  The comparative historian picks several cases for detailed study and comparison, and then attempts to identify important similarities and differences across the cases.  Theda Skocpol's treatment of social revolution is a case in point (States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China); Skocpol is interested in examining the particulars of the French, Chinese, and Russian Revolutions in order to discover whether there are similar causal processes at work in these three cases.

Other possible comparative research projects might include --

• Slave-based agriculture in Rome and the antebellum United States South
• Rituals of royal healing in medieval France and Bali
• Religious pilgrimages in Islam and Christianity
• Periods of rural unrest in Britain and Malaysia
• Modern economic development in England, France, and China
• Frontier societies in nineteenth-century North America and seventeenth-century Russia
• Feudal legal institutions in eastern and western Europe
• Processes of urban development in London, Mumbai, and Berlin

What is the intellectual purpose of comparative history? What might we expect to learn through careful examination of sets of cases like these?  What sorts of knowledge can comparative historical research provide?

There might be several goals. First, we might imagine that some of these phenomena are the effect of similar causal processes, so comparison can help to identify causal conditions and regularities. This approach implies that we think of social structures and processes as being part of a causal system, where it is possible to identify recurring causal conditions.  This seems to be Skocpol's approach in States and Social Revolutions, though she later extends her views in an article mentioned below.  Researchers often make use of  some variant of Mill's methods in attempting to discover significant patterns of co-variation of conditions and outcomes.  See an earlier posting on "paired comparisons."

Second, we might have a theory of social types and subtypes into which social formations fall. The purpose of comparison would be to identify some of the sub-types of a general phenomenon such as "slave economy". This sounds pretty much like the approach that Comte and Durkheim took; it corresponds to a social metaphysic that holds that there are finitely many distinct types of society, and the central challenge for sociology is to discover the structural characteristics of the various types.

Third, we might have a fundamentally functionalist view of social organization, along with a basic repertoire of social functions that need to be performed. We might then look at religious systems as fulfilling one or more social functions -- social order, solidarity, legitimacy -- in alternative ways. Comparison might serve to identify functional alternatives -- the multiple ways that different social systems have evolved to handle these functional needs.

Another possible purpose of comparative history is to attempt to discover historical and social connections across separate historical settings. For example, examining different methods of labor control in different fascist countries in the 1930s may give us a basis for assessing some of the forms of influence that existed between these movements and governments (post). And Victor Lieberman's comparative study of the rise and fall of state power in France and Burma falls in this category as well; see an earlier posting on his metaphor of "strange parallels".

Finally, we might have a social metaphysics that emphasizes contingency and difference. This perspective differs from the first several ideas, in that it looks at structured comparative study as a vehicle for identifying difference rather than underlying similarity. Examining the histories of Berlin and Delhi may shed a great deal of light on the range of social forces and historical contingencies that occurred in these ostensibly similar cases of "urbanization".  Here the goal of comparison is more to discover alternatives, variations, and instances of path dependency.  Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin's analysis of alternative forms of capitalist development in "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production" illustrates this possibility (link; see also World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization).

So there are a number of different intellectual purposes we might have in undertaking comparative historical research.  How have other social scientists understood these issues?

Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers address precisely this issue in "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry" (link).  Their analysis highlights three distinct models of analysis that can underlie comparative inquiry:

There are, in fact, at least three distinct logics-in-use of comparative history. One of them, which we shall label comparative history as macro-causal analysis, actually does resemble multivariate hypothesis-testing. But in addition there are two other major types: comparative history as the parallel demonstration of theory; and comparative history as the contrast of contexts. Each of the three major types of comparative history assigns a distinctive purpose to the juxtaposition of historical cases. Concomitantly, each has its own requisites of case selection, its own patterns of presentation of arguments, and--perhaps most important--its own strengths and limitations as a tool of research in macrosocial inquiry. (175)

R. Bin Wong offers a different view of the value of comparison in historical studies in his important comparative study of Chinese economic and political development (China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience).  Wong argues that comparison allows the historian to discover what is distinctive about a particular series of historical developments.  Features which perhaps looked inevitable and universal in European economic development look quite different when we consider a similar process of development in China; we may find that Chinese entrepreneurs and officials found very different institutions to do the work of insurance, provision of credit, or long-distance trade.  Likewise, elements that might have been taken to be sui generis characteristics of one national experience may turn out to be widespread in many locations when we do a comparative study.

Ultimately it seems that there are really only two fundamental intellectual reasons for being particularly interested in historical comparisons.  One is the hope of discovering recurring social mechanisms and structures.  This is what Charles Tilly seems to be about in his many studies of contentious politics.  And the second is the hope of discovering some of the differentiating pathways that lead to significantly different outcomes in ostensibly similar social settings.  The first goal serves the value of arriving at some level of generalization about social phenomena, and the second serves the goal of tracing out the fine structure of the particular.

(The images above represent rice cultivation in Bali and grain cultivation in France.  As Marc Bloch might have observed, they depict landscapes that reflect fundamentally different agrarian regimes: intensive cultivation in small plots in Bali, versus extensive cultivation making use of a considerable amount of animal or machine traction in France.  And Bloch would have been likely to spend a great deal of effort at discovering the legal, cultural, religious, and technical characteristics of the two regimes.)

The German mandarins

Fritz Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 is a key source on the content and social location of German academic and intellectual culture in a crucial period of its development, 1870-1933. The book appeared in German in 1967, and it presents a detailed intellectual and institutional history of the issues and actors.  The concept of mandarin is Ringer's shorthand for "influential educated elite."  Humanistically educated in a system that emphasized literature, classical languages, and philosophy, the mandarins played the role of the educated and powerful elites of late nineteenth-century Germany, as officials, professors, and other highly educated professionals.  These were men of letters who played key roles in German social and political life.  Ringer concentrates on one important segment of this elite group: Germany's professors and university leaders, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.  And Ringer's central finding is that there was a highly distinctive mentality and set of social emotions that pervaded this group, and these ideas and emotions had dramatic consequences both for the nature of their theories and the direction of their political behavior as Germany's crisis deepened in the twentieth century. 

Ringer's approach differs from other more internalist conceptions of intellectual history in several important respects.  First, he gives a great deal of attention to the social and political context of German academic culture, essentially implying a significant degree of social causation of thought.  And second, he tries to understand much of the thinking and action of this group in terms of a set of shared emotions towards the present and towards German culture.  He identifies the rapid processes of economic change, industrialization, and political upheavals as being key sources of impetus for the sense of intellectual upheaval that pervaded the period.  And the most important current of social emotion that he highlights is a progression from enthusiasm for a Romantic conception of education, to a profound pessimism and malaise about the current and future prospects for German culture in the face of mass democratization of society.

One way of reading this approach is to say that Ringer is functioning as a sociologist rather than strictly as an historian in his analysis of this period of intellectual history.  What makes Ringer's analysis sociological is his effort to locate the social position of the mandarin intellectual within a theory of comparative social and political development of early modern societies. His way of approaching the task recalls that of Karl Mannheim or Max Weber himself: situating an intellectual tradition within a broad and pervasive set of social circumstances. This approach leads to an understanding of a particular social segment -- the mandarin -- that is highly sensitive to changing social conditions: "Thus all will go well for the mandarins until economic conditions around them change radically enough to introduce powerful new groups upon the social scene" (12).

Key to the development of academic culture is the educational system, and Ringer shows how different Germany's educational institutions were from other European nations.  He provides a detailed treatment of the evolution of German educational institutions during the nineteenth century, including especially the elite gymnasium and the university. His treatment demonstrates how elite academic culture and the associated institutions incorporated the romantic and idealist strains of philosophy and literature through the theory of Bildung, or personal intellectual development.  The cultivation of the individual is the central goal of education. (This assumption has some similarity to the theory of liberal learning mentioned in an earlier post; but current ideas about liberal learning do not insist on a sharp separation between intellectual and practical activities.)

Ringer also documents the very sharp forms of social stratification that these educational institutions created within German society, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. So the academic elites were separated from the rest of society by the exclusive institutions through which they were educated and by an academic philosophy that was contemptuous of practical or utilitarian skills. The mandarins were defensive of German high culture, and they were hostile to the social processes of industrialization and democratization that seemed to threaten that culture.

Another distinctive feature of Ringer's treatment is his interest in providing a psychological account of how Germany's circumstances shaped the values and goals of its intellectual class. Contrasting "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations of beliefs, he argues that German intellectuals were shaped by their "emotional group preferences" (4).  Ringer attempts to explain quite a bit of the development of social theory during this period in terms of the fit between a given theoretical position and the emotional perspective of the mandarin on current history.

Ringer's interpretations of the thoughts and values of these German intellectuals display a fascinating combination of assumptions about sources of influence on the character of an intellectual's thought. First, there is the fact of situatedness and limited perspective.  Ringer often characterizes a thinker's choices of theories and topics in terms of the unquestioned background assumptions of this particular historically situated group. The person who grows up surrounded by the unlimited, flat horizons of Illinois will probably think differently from the one who experienced the mountain villages of the Alps since childhood -- and likewise with unquestioned social verities that differ from epoch to epoch.  Second, there is the factor of self-interest. The mandarins favored a particular theory of education because it supported their positions of distinction within the university. And finally, of course, there is logic and the rational development of a particular line of thought. Ringer's presentation of Weber's exploration of the concept of the Protestant ethic is a case in point.

The first kind of intellectual influence is unconscious and invisible. The second is closer to being conscious to the thinker. And the third is analytical and intentional on the part of the thinker. These frameworks bear some analogy to the three perspectives mentioned above --  "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations. But the correspondence is not exact. We might say that the three perspectives correspond to the three different ideas about how thought corresponds to the world: that thought reflects social reality; thought advocates for social position; and thought interrogates social reality. Ringer echoes this in his coda on Weber by suggesting that Weber was able to transcend the limitations of perspective and interest to some degree, permitting him to exercise some independent critical intelligence:

Max Weber and a few other leading social scientists in the modernist camp hold a special place in the intellectual history of the mandarin community.  They apparently shared some of the emotions with which the majority of their colleagues viewed the social transformations of their time.  But their intellectual response to these changes far surpassed the orthodox norm in subtlety, critical control, and precision.  Though never without a certain pessimism, they put their ambivalence at the service of analysis.  They became at least partly conscious of their own situation. (180)

What is particularly tragic in Ringer's account is how poorly this mandarin culture prepared universities and academics for the onslaught of National Socialism and antisemitism in the 1930s.  The nostalgia and pessimism that were the dominant themes of the mandarin social psychology left intellectuals unequipped for the struggle against fascism within the university and within German society.  Their ideas and emotions left them ready for "conservative revolution" during the Weimar period, and provided no positive basis for mobilizing society against fascism when the time came.

These differences of tone and emphasis played a role in the political struggles of the early 1930's, in which the National Socialists triumphed over their rivals among the enemies of the Republic. ...  Most academics realized at last that this was not the spiritual revolution they had sought.  It was too violent and too vulgar.  It declared itself the master of geist, not its servant. ...  The wrote in defense of historical continuity and tradition, as if they sensed that the minimal restraints of civilization were under attack.  Their tone was one of helplessness and pessimism.  In 1931 Karl Jaspers warned of a coming abyss of individual nullity and unfreedom.  Typically enough, he regarded the mass and machine age as the ultimate source of the approaching disaster. (436-7)

As a bit of contrast it is worth reading Arthur Koestler's autobiography, The Invisible Writing, in which he describes his experience as a radical journalist in Berlin in the early 1930s.  Koestler describes his own experience and that of other politicized European intellectuals in the face of the rise of National Socialism.  These too were intellectuals; but they were intellectuals who clearly perceived the deadly threat presented by the Nazi rise to power, and they were willing to fight.

Throughout the long, stifling summer of 1932 we fought our ding-dong battles with the Nazis.  Hardly a day passed without one or two being killed in Berlin.  The main battlefields were the bierstuben, the smoky little taverns of the working-class districts....  Among the Communist intellectuals who were prominent in pre-Nazi Berlin, my favourite was Hans Eisler, the composer.  His family belonged to the high Comintern aristocracy and deserves a brief description.  (29, 48)

(See an earlier post on Koestler's recollections.)

The German mandarins

Fritz Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 is a key source on the content and social location of German academic and intellectual culture in a crucial period of its development, 1870-1933. The book appeared in German in 1967, and it presents a detailed intellectual and institutional history of the issues and actors.  The concept of mandarin is Ringer's shorthand for "influential educated elite."  Humanistically educated in a system that emphasized literature, classical languages, and philosophy, the mandarins played the role of the educated and powerful elites of late nineteenth-century Germany, as officials, professors, and other highly educated professionals.  These were men of letters who played key roles in German social and political life.  Ringer concentrates on one important segment of this elite group: Germany's professors and university leaders, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.  And Ringer's central finding is that there was a highly distinctive mentality and set of social emotions that pervaded this group, and these ideas and emotions had dramatic consequences both for the nature of their theories and the direction of their political behavior as Germany's crisis deepened in the twentieth century. 

Ringer's approach differs from other more internalist conceptions of intellectual history in several important respects.  First, he gives a great deal of attention to the social and political context of German academic culture, essentially implying a significant degree of social causation of thought.  And second, he tries to understand much of the thinking and action of this group in terms of a set of shared emotions towards the present and towards German culture.  He identifies the rapid processes of economic change, industrialization, and political upheavals as being key sources of impetus for the sense of intellectual upheaval that pervaded the period.  And the most important current of social emotion that he highlights is a progression from enthusiasm for a Romantic conception of education, to a profound pessimism and malaise about the current and future prospects for German culture in the face of mass democratization of society.

One way of reading this approach is to say that Ringer is functioning as a sociologist rather than strictly as an historian in his analysis of this period of intellectual history.  What makes Ringer's analysis sociological is his effort to locate the social position of the mandarin intellectual within a theory of comparative social and political development of early modern societies. His way of approaching the task recalls that of Karl Mannheim or Max Weber himself: situating an intellectual tradition within a broad and pervasive set of social circumstances. This approach leads to an understanding of a particular social segment -- the mandarin -- that is highly sensitive to changing social conditions: "Thus all will go well for the mandarins until economic conditions around them change radically enough to introduce powerful new groups upon the social scene" (12).

Key to the development of academic culture is the educational system, and Ringer shows how different Germany's educational institutions were from other European nations.  He provides a detailed treatment of the evolution of German educational institutions during the nineteenth century, including especially the elite gymnasium and the university. His treatment demonstrates how elite academic culture and the associated institutions incorporated the romantic and idealist strains of philosophy and literature through the theory of Bildung, or personal intellectual development.  The cultivation of the individual is the central goal of education. (This assumption has some similarity to the theory of liberal learning mentioned in an earlier post; but current ideas about liberal learning do not insist on a sharp separation between intellectual and practical activities.)

Ringer also documents the very sharp forms of social stratification that these educational institutions created within German society, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. So the academic elites were separated from the rest of society by the exclusive institutions through which they were educated and by an academic philosophy that was contemptuous of practical or utilitarian skills. The mandarins were defensive of German high culture, and they were hostile to the social processes of industrialization and democratization that seemed to threaten that culture.

Another distinctive feature of Ringer's treatment is his interest in providing a psychological account of how Germany's circumstances shaped the values and goals of its intellectual class. Contrasting "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations of beliefs, he argues that German intellectuals were shaped by their "emotional group preferences" (4).  Ringer attempts to explain quite a bit of the development of social theory during this period in terms of the fit between a given theoretical position and the emotional perspective of the mandarin on current history.

Ringer's interpretations of the thoughts and values of these German intellectuals display a fascinating combination of assumptions about sources of influence on the character of an intellectual's thought. First, there is the fact of situatedness and limited perspective.  Ringer often characterizes a thinker's choices of theories and topics in terms of the unquestioned background assumptions of this particular historically situated group. The person who grows up surrounded by the unlimited, flat horizons of Illinois will probably think differently from the one who experienced the mountain villages of the Alps since childhood -- and likewise with unquestioned social verities that differ from epoch to epoch.  Second, there is the factor of self-interest. The mandarins favored a particular theory of education because it supported their positions of distinction within the university. And finally, of course, there is logic and the rational development of a particular line of thought. Ringer's presentation of Weber's exploration of the concept of the Protestant ethic is a case in point.

The first kind of intellectual influence is unconscious and invisible. The second is closer to being conscious to the thinker. And the third is analytical and intentional on the part of the thinker. These frameworks bear some analogy to the three perspectives mentioned above --  "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations. But the correspondence is not exact. We might say that the three perspectives correspond to the three different ideas about how thought corresponds to the world: that thought reflects social reality; thought advocates for social position; and thought interrogates social reality. Ringer echoes this in his coda on Weber by suggesting that Weber was able to transcend the limitations of perspective and interest to some degree, permitting him to exercise some independent critical intelligence:

Max Weber and a few other leading social scientists in the modernist camp hold a special place in the intellectual history of the mandarin community.  They apparently shared some of the emotions with which the majority of their colleagues viewed the social transformations of their time.  But their intellectual response to these changes far surpassed the orthodox norm in subtlety, critical control, and precision.  Though never without a certain pessimism, they put their ambivalence at the service of analysis.  They became at least partly conscious of their own situation. (180)

What is particularly tragic in Ringer's account is how poorly this mandarin culture prepared universities and academics for the onslaught of National Socialism and antisemitism in the 1930s.  The nostalgia and pessimism that were the dominant themes of the mandarin social psychology left intellectuals unequipped for the struggle against fascism within the university and within German society.  Their ideas and emotions left them ready for "conservative revolution" during the Weimar period, and provided no positive basis for mobilizing society against fascism when the time came.

These differences of tone and emphasis played a role in the political struggles of the early 1930's, in which the National Socialists triumphed over their rivals among the enemies of the Republic. ...  Most academics realized at last that this was not the spiritual revolution they had sought.  It was too violent and too vulgar.  It declared itself the master of geist, not its servant. ...  The wrote in defense of historical continuity and tradition, as if they sensed that the minimal restraints of civilization were under attack.  Their tone was one of helplessness and pessimism.  In 1931 Karl Jaspers warned of a coming abyss of individual nullity and unfreedom.  Typically enough, he regarded the mass and machine age as the ultimate source of the approaching disaster. (436-7)

As a bit of contrast it is worth reading Arthur Koestler's autobiography, The Invisible Writing, in which he describes his experience as a radical journalist in Berlin in the early 1930s.  Koestler describes his own experience and that of other politicized European intellectuals in the face of the rise of National Socialism.  These too were intellectuals; but they were intellectuals who clearly perceived the deadly threat presented by the Nazi rise to power, and they were willing to fight.

Throughout the long, stifling summer of 1932 we fought our ding-dong battles with the Nazis.  Hardly a day passed without one or two being killed in Berlin.  The main battlefields were the bierstuben, the smoky little taverns of the working-class districts....  Among the Communist intellectuals who were prominent in pre-Nazi Berlin, my favourite was Hans Eisler, the composer.  His family belonged to the high Comintern aristocracy and deserves a brief description.  (29, 48)

(See an earlier post on Koestler's recollections.)

The German mandarins

Fritz Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 is a key source on the content and social location of German academic and intellectual culture in a crucial period of its development, 1870-1933. The book appeared in German in 1967, and it presents a detailed intellectual and institutional history of the issues and actors.  The concept of mandarin is Ringer's shorthand for "influential educated elite."  Humanistically educated in a system that emphasized literature, classical languages, and philosophy, the mandarins played the role of the educated and powerful elites of late nineteenth-century Germany, as officials, professors, and other highly educated professionals.  These were men of letters who played key roles in German social and political life.  Ringer concentrates on one important segment of this elite group: Germany's professors and university leaders, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.  And Ringer's central finding is that there was a highly distinctive mentality and set of social emotions that pervaded this group, and these ideas and emotions had dramatic consequences both for the nature of their theories and the direction of their political behavior as Germany's crisis deepened in the twentieth century. 

Ringer's approach differs from other more internalist conceptions of intellectual history in several important respects.  First, he gives a great deal of attention to the social and political context of German academic culture, essentially implying a significant degree of social causation of thought.  And second, he tries to understand much of the thinking and action of this group in terms of a set of shared emotions towards the present and towards German culture.  He identifies the rapid processes of economic change, industrialization, and political upheavals as being key sources of impetus for the sense of intellectual upheaval that pervaded the period.  And the most important current of social emotion that he highlights is a progression from enthusiasm for a Romantic conception of education, to a profound pessimism and malaise about the current and future prospects for German culture in the face of mass democratization of society.

One way of reading this approach is to say that Ringer is functioning as a sociologist rather than strictly as an historian in his analysis of this period of intellectual history.  What makes Ringer's analysis sociological is his effort to locate the social position of the mandarin intellectual within a theory of comparative social and political development of early modern societies. His way of approaching the task recalls that of Karl Mannheim or Max Weber himself: situating an intellectual tradition within a broad and pervasive set of social circumstances. This approach leads to an understanding of a particular social segment -- the mandarin -- that is highly sensitive to changing social conditions: "Thus all will go well for the mandarins until economic conditions around them change radically enough to introduce powerful new groups upon the social scene" (12).

Key to the development of academic culture is the educational system, and Ringer shows how different Germany's educational institutions were from other European nations.  He provides a detailed treatment of the evolution of German educational institutions during the nineteenth century, including especially the elite gymnasium and the university. His treatment demonstrates how elite academic culture and the associated institutions incorporated the romantic and idealist strains of philosophy and literature through the theory of Bildung, or personal intellectual development.  The cultivation of the individual is the central goal of education. (This assumption has some similarity to the theory of liberal learning mentioned in an earlier post; but current ideas about liberal learning do not insist on a sharp separation between intellectual and practical activities.)

Ringer also documents the very sharp forms of social stratification that these educational institutions created within German society, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. So the academic elites were separated from the rest of society by the exclusive institutions through which they were educated and by an academic philosophy that was contemptuous of practical or utilitarian skills. The mandarins were defensive of German high culture, and they were hostile to the social processes of industrialization and democratization that seemed to threaten that culture.

Another distinctive feature of Ringer's treatment is his interest in providing a psychological account of how Germany's circumstances shaped the values and goals of its intellectual class. Contrasting "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations of beliefs, he argues that German intellectuals were shaped by their "emotional group preferences" (4).  Ringer attempts to explain quite a bit of the development of social theory during this period in terms of the fit between a given theoretical position and the emotional perspective of the mandarin on current history.

Ringer's interpretations of the thoughts and values of these German intellectuals display a fascinating combination of assumptions about sources of influence on the character of an intellectual's thought. First, there is the fact of situatedness and limited perspective.  Ringer often characterizes a thinker's choices of theories and topics in terms of the unquestioned background assumptions of this particular historically situated group. The person who grows up surrounded by the unlimited, flat horizons of Illinois will probably think differently from the one who experienced the mountain villages of the Alps since childhood -- and likewise with unquestioned social verities that differ from epoch to epoch.  Second, there is the factor of self-interest. The mandarins favored a particular theory of education because it supported their positions of distinction within the university. And finally, of course, there is logic and the rational development of a particular line of thought. Ringer's presentation of Weber's exploration of the concept of the Protestant ethic is a case in point.

The first kind of intellectual influence is unconscious and invisible. The second is closer to being conscious to the thinker. And the third is analytical and intentional on the part of the thinker. These frameworks bear some analogy to the three perspectives mentioned above --  "logical", "traditional", and "ideological" explanations. But the correspondence is not exact. We might say that the three perspectives correspond to the three different ideas about how thought corresponds to the world: that thought reflects social reality; thought advocates for social position; and thought interrogates social reality. Ringer echoes this in his coda on Weber by suggesting that Weber was able to transcend the limitations of perspective and interest to some degree, permitting him to exercise some independent critical intelligence:

Max Weber and a few other leading social scientists in the modernist camp hold a special place in the intellectual history of the mandarin community.  They apparently shared some of the emotions with which the majority of their colleagues viewed the social transformations of their time.  But their intellectual response to these changes far surpassed the orthodox norm in subtlety, critical control, and precision.  Though never without a certain pessimism, they put their ambivalence at the service of analysis.  They became at least partly conscious of their own situation. (180)

What is particularly tragic in Ringer's account is how poorly this mandarin culture prepared universities and academics for the onslaught of National Socialism and antisemitism in the 1930s.  The nostalgia and pessimism that were the dominant themes of the mandarin social psychology left intellectuals unequipped for the struggle against fascism within the university and within German society.  Their ideas and emotions left them ready for "conservative revolution" during the Weimar period, and provided no positive basis for mobilizing society against fascism when the time came.

These differences of tone and emphasis played a role in the political struggles of the early 1930's, in which the National Socialists triumphed over their rivals among the enemies of the Republic. ...  Most academics realized at last that this was not the spiritual revolution they had sought.  It was too violent and too vulgar.  It declared itself the master of geist, not its servant. ...  The wrote in defense of historical continuity and tradition, as if they sensed that the minimal restraints of civilization were under attack.  Their tone was one of helplessness and pessimism.  In 1931 Karl Jaspers warned of a coming abyss of individual nullity and unfreedom.  Typically enough, he regarded the mass and machine age as the ultimate source of the approaching disaster. (436-7)

As a bit of contrast it is worth reading Arthur Koestler's autobiography, The Invisible Writing, in which he describes his experience as a radical journalist in Berlin in the early 1930s.  Koestler describes his own experience and that of other politicized European intellectuals in the face of the rise of National Socialism.  These too were intellectuals; but they were intellectuals who clearly perceived the deadly threat presented by the Nazi rise to power, and they were willing to fight.

Throughout the long, stifling summer of 1932 we fought our ding-dong battles with the Nazis.  Hardly a day passed without one or two being killed in Berlin.  The main battlefields were the bierstuben, the smoky little taverns of the working-class districts....  Among the Communist intellectuals who were prominent in pre-Nazi Berlin, my favourite was Hans Eisler, the composer.  His family belonged to the high Comintern aristocracy and deserves a brief description.  (29, 48)

(See an earlier post on Koestler's recollections.)

Marc Bloch and the French social sciences

Marc Bloch was one of the twentieth century's most important and pathbreaking historians.  Several features of his work are particularly important: his attention to the specifics of medieval economic institutions, his interest in historically specific customs and practices, and his interest in uncovering the social and technical characteristics of medieval agriculture.  He helped to define contemporary social history and economic history.  (See an earlier post on Bloch's historical writings.)  Somehow Bloch developed a way of thinking about the history of France that deeply incorporated some of the mental frameworks of the emerging social sciences -- geography and sociology, for example -- at a time when mainstream French history was still very much driven by the chronicling of events and personages. As a discipline, history in France was very specifically defined in terms of its definition of subject matter and historical method, and Bloch's historiography challenged some very important pillars of this framework.  Along with Lucien Febvre he created the intellectual impetus that led to several generations of deeply innovative historical research within the Annales school.  So it is an interesting question for the sociology of knowledge to trace out some of the influences that were present in the 1890s and 1900s in French intellectual life that propelled Bloch's development.  (The topic has some parallels to an earlier posting on "The history of sociology as sociology.")

Susan Friedman's Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography: Encountering Changing Disciplines provides an excellent and detailed study of the intellectual and academic context in which Bloch's development occurred. (The book is also available in a much more affordable Kindle edition, and here is a link to the Google Books version.)  Friedman documents a major methodological debate, extended over roughly the decade surrounding 1903, concerning the relevance of geography and sociology to academic history.  The debate was in part intellectual -- how should the new ideas emerging from these social-science disciplines be incorporated into history?  But it was also institutional: how should the new disciplines of geography and sociology be represented within the university and the qualification system?  The École Normale Supérieure (ENS), the Collège de France, and the Sorbonne and their students and faculty played crucial roles throughout the debates.  The key figures in these debates were Durkheim and his followers, including especially François Simiand; Vidal and the young scholars who wanted to extend Vidal's ideas of human geography; and the defenders of traditional French historiography, centered around Charles Seignobos.  (Interestingly enough, Marc Bloch's father, Gustave Bloch, was an important voice on the side of history in this debate.)

Friedman sets up the institutional context of the French university (and the process of reform that was underway) at roughly the turn of the twentieth century, and she skillfully and knowledgeably traces through the intellectual debates and networks that provided the context to Bloch's development.  The book is of great value for any reader wanting to come to a better knowledge of the intellectual and institutional currents that shaped French intellectual life in the early twentieth century -- and particularly valuable if we are interested in learning more about the micro-development of Durkheimian sociology.  The book offers a detailed account of the development of the Durkheimian school of sociology and the approach to "human geography" championed by Paul Vidal de la Blache, and the controversies that arose between both schools and mainstream history.  (Here is a summary description of Vidal's theories of human geography and parallel thinking by Friedrich Ratzel.)

The central divides in these debates have a strikingly contemporary sound to them.  Main themes included:

• Can history be a "scientific" discipline?  What does this require?
• Is sociology subsumed under history or is history subsumed under sociology?
• Can social facts be explained by anything other than social facts (Durkheim)?  (This cuts against both the historians, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of individual motives; and the geographers, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of physiographic features such as mountains, soil fertility, or river systems.)
• Should history study "events" or "processes, customs, and institutions"?
• What is a social or historical cause?  Is there a distinction between causes and conditions?
• Should history focus its attention on the particulars of a given historical event or period; or should it use methods of comparison to arrive at generalizations and laws?

In reading Friedman's account of these debates, it is tempting to consider which positions were the most productive in the long term.  The Durkheimians' insistence on the autonomy of social facts, their inflexible holism, and their insistence on discovering general social laws all seem like mis-steps from the contemporary point of view.  They leave little room for social contingency and variation across social circumstances; and they leave no room whatsoever for an "agent-centered" approach to social and historical explanation.  Given these shortcomings, it is perhaps a good thing that the Durkheimians never fully dominated the history profession.  The Vidalians -- the human geographers -- seem like an improvement in each of these respects.  Their approach emphasizes regional variation; they are eclectic in their openness to a variety of types of historical causes; and they emphasize the crucial importance of paying attention in detail to the particulars of a case.  Their weakness, however, is a relative lack of attention to the specifics of social institutions.  But best of all is the historian who learns something from each perspective but then constructs his own intellectual framework for the historical setting of interest to him.

And in fact, this latter position seems to be the one that Bloch took.  Friedman argues that Bloch's historical sensibilities and methods were deeply influenced by these debates among the historians, sociologists, and geographers; but that ultimately his thinking remains "historical."

Even in his later years when he came closest to Durkheimian sociology, Marc Bloch remained essentially an historian.  He was an historian in the sense that his primary interests lay in change and differences rather than laws and theory and that the problems which he chose to address were human ones rather than those of the physical environment. (chapter 10)

It is interesting to observe that the writings of Marx and the ideas of historical materialism do not come into this story at any point.  These currents do not appear to have played a significant role in the academic debates over the future of French history in 1900.  Friedman observes that Bloch was impressed by Marx.  She notes that he wrote to Febvre "that he was considering using Marx to bring some 'fresh air into the Sorbonne' and that though he suspected that Marx was a 'poor philosopher' and probably also an 'unbearable man,' Marx was without a doubt a great historian" (Kindle loc 223-35).  But there is no indication in this book about what role Marx's writings played in his development. And even the statement about being a "great historian" is somewhat mysterious, since the bulk of Marx's work was plainly theoretical and immersed in political economy rather than historical research and narrative.  (See an earlier posting on primitive accumulation and a posting on Marx's strengths and weaknesses as an historian.)

Marc Bloch and the French social sciences

Marc Bloch was one of the twentieth century's most important and pathbreaking historians.  Several features of his work are particularly important: his attention to the specifics of medieval economic institutions, his interest in historically specific customs and practices, and his interest in uncovering the social and technical characteristics of medieval agriculture.  He helped to define contemporary social history and economic history.  (See an earlier post on Bloch's historical writings.)  Somehow Bloch developed a way of thinking about the history of France that deeply incorporated some of the mental frameworks of the emerging social sciences -- geography and sociology, for example -- at a time when mainstream French history was still very much driven by the chronicling of events and personages. As a discipline, history in France was very specifically defined in terms of its definition of subject matter and historical method, and Bloch's historiography challenged some very important pillars of this framework.  Along with Lucien Febvre he created the intellectual impetus that led to several generations of deeply innovative historical research within the Annales school.  So it is an interesting question for the sociology of knowledge to trace out some of the influences that were present in the 1890s and 1900s in French intellectual life that propelled Bloch's development.  (The topic has some parallels to an earlier posting on "The history of sociology as sociology.")

Susan Friedman's Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography: Encountering Changing Disciplines provides an excellent and detailed study of the intellectual and academic context in which Bloch's development occurred. (The book is also available in a much more affordable Kindle edition, and here is a link to the Google Books version.)  Friedman documents a major methodological debate, extended over roughly the decade surrounding 1903, concerning the relevance of geography and sociology to academic history.  The debate was in part intellectual -- how should the new ideas emerging from these social-science disciplines be incorporated into history?  But it was also institutional: how should the new disciplines of geography and sociology be represented within the university and the qualification system?  The École Normale Supérieure (ENS), the Collège de France, and the Sorbonne and their students and faculty played crucial roles throughout the debates.  The key figures in these debates were Durkheim and his followers, including especially François Simiand; Vidal and the young scholars who wanted to extend Vidal's ideas of human geography; and the defenders of traditional French historiography, centered around Charles Seignobos.  (Interestingly enough, Marc Bloch's father, Gustave Bloch, was an important voice on the side of history in this debate.)

Friedman sets up the institutional context of the French university (and the process of reform that was underway) at roughly the turn of the twentieth century, and she skillfully and knowledgeably traces through the intellectual debates and networks that provided the context to Bloch's development.  The book is of great value for any reader wanting to come to a better knowledge of the intellectual and institutional currents that shaped French intellectual life in the early twentieth century -- and particularly valuable if we are interested in learning more about the micro-development of Durkheimian sociology.  The book offers a detailed account of the development of the Durkheimian school of sociology and the approach to "human geography" championed by Paul Vidal de la Blache, and the controversies that arose between both schools and mainstream history.  (Here is a summary description of Vidal's theories of human geography and parallel thinking by Friedrich Ratzel.)

The central divides in these debates have a strikingly contemporary sound to them.  Main themes included:

• Can history be a "scientific" discipline?  What does this require?
• Is sociology subsumed under history or is history subsumed under sociology?
• Can social facts be explained by anything other than social facts (Durkheim)?  (This cuts against both the historians, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of individual motives; and the geographers, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of physiographic features such as mountains, soil fertility, or river systems.)
• Should history study "events" or "processes, customs, and institutions"?
• What is a social or historical cause?  Is there a distinction between causes and conditions?
• Should history focus its attention on the particulars of a given historical event or period; or should it use methods of comparison to arrive at generalizations and laws?

In reading Friedman's account of these debates, it is tempting to consider which positions were the most productive in the long term.  The Durkheimians' insistence on the autonomy of social facts, their inflexible holism, and their insistence on discovering general social laws all seem like mis-steps from the contemporary point of view.  They leave little room for social contingency and variation across social circumstances; and they leave no room whatsoever for an "agent-centered" approach to social and historical explanation.  Given these shortcomings, it is perhaps a good thing that the Durkheimians never fully dominated the history profession.  The Vidalians -- the human geographers -- seem like an improvement in each of these respects.  Their approach emphasizes regional variation; they are eclectic in their openness to a variety of types of historical causes; and they emphasize the crucial importance of paying attention in detail to the particulars of a case.  Their weakness, however, is a relative lack of attention to the specifics of social institutions.  But best of all is the historian who learns something from each perspective but then constructs his own intellectual framework for the historical setting of interest to him.

And in fact, this latter position seems to be the one that Bloch took.  Friedman argues that Bloch's historical sensibilities and methods were deeply influenced by these debates among the historians, sociologists, and geographers; but that ultimately his thinking remains "historical."

Even in his later years when he came closest to Durkheimian sociology, Marc Bloch remained essentially an historian.  He was an historian in the sense that his primary interests lay in change and differences rather than laws and theory and that the problems which he chose to address were human ones rather than those of the physical environment. (chapter 10)

It is interesting to observe that the writings of Marx and the ideas of historical materialism do not come into this story at any point.  These currents do not appear to have played a significant role in the academic debates over the future of French history in 1900.  Friedman observes that Bloch was impressed by Marx.  She notes that he wrote to Febvre "that he was considering using Marx to bring some 'fresh air into the Sorbonne' and that though he suspected that Marx was a 'poor philosopher' and probably also an 'unbearable man,' Marx was without a doubt a great historian" (Kindle loc 223-35).  But there is no indication in this book about what role Marx's writings played in his development. And even the statement about being a "great historian" is somewhat mysterious, since the bulk of Marx's work was plainly theoretical and immersed in political economy rather than historical research and narrative.  (See an earlier posting on primitive accumulation and a posting on Marx's strengths and weaknesses as an historian.)

Marc Bloch and the French social sciences

Marc Bloch was one of the twentieth century's most important and pathbreaking historians.  Several features of his work are particularly important: his attention to the specifics of medieval economic institutions, his interest in historically specific customs and practices, and his interest in uncovering the social and technical characteristics of medieval agriculture.  He helped to define contemporary social history and economic history.  (See an earlier post on Bloch's historical writings.)  Somehow Bloch developed a way of thinking about the history of France that deeply incorporated some of the mental frameworks of the emerging social sciences -- geography and sociology, for example -- at a time when mainstream French history was still very much driven by the chronicling of events and personages. As a discipline, history in France was very specifically defined in terms of its definition of subject matter and historical method, and Bloch's historiography challenged some very important pillars of this framework.  Along with Lucien Febvre he created the intellectual impetus that led to several generations of deeply innovative historical research within the Annales school.  So it is an interesting question for the sociology of knowledge to trace out some of the influences that were present in the 1890s and 1900s in French intellectual life that propelled Bloch's development.  (The topic has some parallels to an earlier posting on "The history of sociology as sociology.")

Susan Friedman's Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography: Encountering Changing Disciplines provides an excellent and detailed study of the intellectual and academic context in which Bloch's development occurred. (The book is also available in a much more affordable Kindle edition, and here is a link to the Google Books version.)  Friedman documents a major methodological debate, extended over roughly the decade surrounding 1903, concerning the relevance of geography and sociology to academic history.  The debate was in part intellectual -- how should the new ideas emerging from these social-science disciplines be incorporated into history?  But it was also institutional: how should the new disciplines of geography and sociology be represented within the university and the qualification system?  The École Normale Supérieure (ENS), the Collège de France, and the Sorbonne and their students and faculty played crucial roles throughout the debates.  The key figures in these debates were Durkheim and his followers, including especially François Simiand; Vidal and the young scholars who wanted to extend Vidal's ideas of human geography; and the defenders of traditional French historiography, centered around Charles Seignobos.  (Interestingly enough, Marc Bloch's father, Gustave Bloch, was an important voice on the side of history in this debate.)

Friedman sets up the institutional context of the French university (and the process of reform that was underway) at roughly the turn of the twentieth century, and she skillfully and knowledgeably traces through the intellectual debates and networks that provided the context to Bloch's development.  The book is of great value for any reader wanting to come to a better knowledge of the intellectual and institutional currents that shaped French intellectual life in the early twentieth century -- and particularly valuable if we are interested in learning more about the micro-development of Durkheimian sociology.  The book offers a detailed account of the development of the Durkheimian school of sociology and the approach to "human geography" championed by Paul Vidal de la Blache, and the controversies that arose between both schools and mainstream history.  (Here is a summary description of Vidal's theories of human geography and parallel thinking by Friedrich Ratzel.)

The central divides in these debates have a strikingly contemporary sound to them.  Main themes included:

• Can history be a "scientific" discipline?  What does this require?
• Is sociology subsumed under history or is history subsumed under sociology?
• Can social facts be explained by anything other than social facts (Durkheim)?  (This cuts against both the historians, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of individual motives; and the geographers, who want to explain social outcomes in terms of physiographic features such as mountains, soil fertility, or river systems.)
• Should history study "events" or "processes, customs, and institutions"?
• What is a social or historical cause?  Is there a distinction between causes and conditions?
• Should history focus its attention on the particulars of a given historical event or period; or should it use methods of comparison to arrive at generalizations and laws?

In reading Friedman's account of these debates, it is tempting to consider which positions were the most productive in the long term.  The Durkheimians' insistence on the autonomy of social facts, their inflexible holism, and their insistence on discovering general social laws all seem like mis-steps from the contemporary point of view.  They leave little room for social contingency and variation across social circumstances; and they leave no room whatsoever for an "agent-centered" approach to social and historical explanation.  Given these shortcomings, it is perhaps a good thing that the Durkheimians never fully dominated the history profession.  The Vidalians -- the human geographers -- seem like an improvement in each of these respects.  Their approach emphasizes regional variation; they are eclectic in their openness to a variety of types of historical causes; and they emphasize the crucial importance of paying attention in detail to the particulars of a case.  Their weakness, however, is a relative lack of attention to the specifics of social institutions.  But best of all is the historian who learns something from each perspective but then constructs his own intellectual framework for the historical setting of interest to him.

And in fact, this latter position seems to be the one that Bloch took.  Friedman argues that Bloch's historical sensibilities and methods were deeply influenced by these debates among the historians, sociologists, and geographers; but that ultimately his thinking remains "historical."

Even in his later years when he came closest to Durkheimian sociology, Marc Bloch remained essentially an historian.  He was an historian in the sense that his primary interests lay in change and differences rather than laws and theory and that the problems which he chose to address were human ones rather than those of the physical environment. (chapter 10)

It is interesting to observe that the writings of Marx and the ideas of historical materialism do not come into this story at any point.  These currents do not appear to have played a significant role in the academic debates over the future of French history in 1900.  Friedman observes that Bloch was impressed by Marx.  She notes that he wrote to Febvre "that he was considering using Marx to bring some 'fresh air into the Sorbonne' and that though he suspected that Marx was a 'poor philosopher' and probably also an 'unbearable man,' Marx was without a doubt a great historian" (Kindle loc 223-35).  But there is no indication in this book about what role Marx's writings played in his development. And even the statement about being a "great historian" is somewhat mysterious, since the bulk of Marx's work was plainly theoretical and immersed in political economy rather than historical research and narrative.  (See an earlier posting on primitive accumulation and a posting on Marx's strengths and weaknesses as an historian.)