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Reviews

Nazik Saba Yared, Arab Travellers and Western Civilization, London, Saqi books, 1996; ISBN 0–86356–336–8; £45.00

East may be East and West West, but the scholarly interest in inter- actions between the two has been profound. The burden of such studies has, however, tended to be lopsided and one-way. Works on Western approaches to the East, including the Middle East, are now legion. Surveys of Arab travellers to the West have been much less common, particularly when produced by non-European scholars. Those that do exist have dealt mainly with the medieval period or with political and religious attitudes. Nazik Saba Yared reveals much new material relating to nineteenth — and early twentieth — century travellers who dealt with economic, social, literary, scientific and technological aspects of the West. She divides her study into three chronological sections, 1826–82, 1882–1918 and 1918–38, and charts an interesting dynamic of changing attitudes and instrumental responses during these eras. The approach is highly schematic, but some intriguing results emerge. In the first period, her travellers were generally highly westernized and were sometimes Christian converts. Their principal concerns were often related to the introduction of the concepts of the French Revolution to the Middle East, including the debate about the appropriateness of slavery to a modern society. Inevitably, questions of nationalism, law and notions of absolute and unjust rule were prominent in their thinking. They accepted the Western idea that the original powerful dynamic of the Arab world had ebbed away and they tried hard to reconcile ideas of progress with this alleged passivity. They looked for answers in Western education, an ideal- ized vision of free debate, science, the arts and the possibility of scientific proof of supernatural forces. In the second period, the travellers were much more concerned with fears of European domination, as perfectly illustrated by the British campaign in Egypt in 1882, in this case propping up traditional rule against the potentially progressive revolution of young officers led by Urubi Pasha. The idea of the nation was much more developed among this group, but there was also a higher degree of scepticism both about Western political systems and supposed economic success. Whereas the first group had shown little interest in class, the second was much more aware of the social dangers induced by Western industrialism and the possibilities of class warfare. An

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acutely critical eye was brought to bear upon the Western arts and there was a more pronounced recognition that the West owed a good deal to the East in this area. The basic freedoms of the Arab tradition as well as the considerable distinction of Arabic science were now stressed. In other words a harder cultural carapace was being formed to cope with apparent Western dominance. By the third period, a much more powerful resentment against the West had emerged. The West was despised for its secret treaties, its violence and its barely concealed imperialism, as in the mandates system of the League. A fascination with nationalism was replaced by the ideals of Islamic federation and Arabic unity, sometimes expressed in secular forms. Economic backwardness had now to be overcome on Eastern rather than Western terms, following Arabic ideals of spirituality, antimaterialism and social justice. The combi- nation of Western and Eastern qualities was seen as achievable on Oriental terms and by the methods of a civilization that was both more ancient and more refined than that of Europe. Yet there were certain continuities too. First, the fascination of these Arab travellers with the technology of the West and their tendency to categorize cultures through a set of technological criteria, albeit with different emphases over time, was entirely con- sistent and tends to confirm the work of Michael Adas and Daniel Headrick looking in the opposite direction. Second, although Edward Said is never mentioned, there is much of interest here for the great Orientalism debate. If the West constructed an Orient pre- fabricated in order to be ruled, then it is clear that Arab intellectual travellers, certainly in the first two periods and even to a small degree in the third, were often complicit in the visions of the East created by Western travellers and scholars. They were activated by very similar concerns, although by the twentieth century they were primarily caught up in the need to respond to the West, not least through that most potent form of resistance, cultural rediscovery and pride. In this, they mirrored developments taking place in India (perhaps earlier) and contemporaneously among Africans and Afro-Americans. Thus there is much of interest here to historians of inter-cultural relations, not least in the intriguing ways in which the author deals with changing attitudes towards women, Western theatre, fine arts, science and literature. For those who cannot read Arabic, this book is a mine of valuable and absorbing information.

John M. MacKenzie Lancaster University 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 445

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José Ignacio Fortea Perez, ed., Imagenes de la diversidad. El mundo urbano en la Corona de Castilla (S. XVI–XVIII), Santander, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria/Asamblea Regional de Cantabria, 1997; ISBN 84–8102–150–4; 513 pp.

The history of early modern Spain is, in some respects, that of its towns. At the start of the Habsburg era, the greatest challenge to the polity which had emerged since the advent of the Catholic Kings (and which Charles V was inserting into a rather different structure), came in the form of that abortive ‘revolution’, on the part of some of the Castilian cities, which we know as the revolt of the ‘comuneros’. Nearly three hundred years later, the first real steps towards dis- mantling the Spanish ancien régime were taken by the Cortes sitting in Cadiz during the struggle against Napoleon. In the intervening centuries, key themes in Spain’s history are virtually identifiable with individual cities. It is almost impossible, for example, to isolate the Indies trade from Seville and Cadiz, or the emergence of the absolute, centralized modern state from both the growth of Madrid and the fall of Barcelona in 1714 to the troops of Philip V. The importance of the subject has already generated some fine studies of individual cities and towns — including those of Bennassar on Valladolid, Amelang on Barcelona, and Ringrose on Madrid — but the subject has by no means been exhausted. The present volume, on the diversity of the urban experience in early modern Castile, brings together sixteen papers given at a con- ference on that subject, held at the University of Santander in June 1996. Most of the essays restrict themselves to Castile, some focusing on individual towns. However, Roberto Lopez Vela briefly con- siders the Aragon cities in an essay on the Inquisition in the Castilian towns while Richard Kagan ignores the latter altogether in a piece on the cities of the Spanish Americas which argues the lateness of the type of walled defences associated with the so-called ‘Military Revolution’ and prefers to focus on other types — spiritual and so on — of defence. Most of the contributions sit well within the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, but a few do not. These include Jaime Contreras’s piece on Old and New Christians in the fifteenth century and Isidro Dubert’s study of family structure and the contribution to urban growth of immigration in Galicia (not hitherto regarded as a major urban centre), focusing on the experience of Santiago de Compostela, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. The great danger with a collection of this sort, and reflecting a sometimes rather parochial approach to local and regional historical studies (which cannot always be dissociated from the nature of the 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 446

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funding of research and publication in Spain), is that it adds up to little more than an ill-matched assortment of narrow studies, none of which is aware of the larger picture. Indeed, Tony Thompson cautions against this in his contribution on royal patronage in the cities and political integration in the latter in Habsburg Spain. So, too, does James Amelang, in a plea for greater use of the comparative approach, in his essay on urban culture in early modern Spain. Fortunately, most of the pieces in this volume manage to avoid this trap. The editor, José I. Fortea Perez, keeps the larger canvas in view, in an essay on the towns, the Cortes and the problem of political representation in early modern Castile. In addition, that of Maximo Garcia and Bartolome Yun — privileging second-rank towns such as Burgos, Leon, Palencia, Valladolid and Zamora rather than on Madrid and Barcelona — explores consumerism, lifestyles and political change in the Castilian cities between 1750 and 1850, in order to evaluate demand-led models of economic growth that have been put forward to explain similar developments in eighteenth century England. It might be said that the collection focuses unduly on the Habsburg era, and — for example, Juan E. Gelabert Gonzalez on the pressures associated with Spain’s wars between 1632 and 1650 — on fairly well-known aspects of it. On the other hand, some other aspects (the military, for example) of the Castilian urban experience, particularly in the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, are less well represented. Occasionally, too, the format leaves something to be desired. In the contribution of Vicente Perez Moreda and David S. Reher on the demography of early modern Spanish towns, and in that of Hilario Casado Alonso on economic growth and commercial networks in northern Spain in the sixteenth century, some of the figures are printed too small to be readable (in neither case, however, does this obscure the argument). Overall, the various essays, drawing on a wide range of source materials, successfully demonstrate the diverse ways in which cities were identified, and in which they functioned and developed in early modern Spain. Urban, demographic and cultural historians of both Spain and other parts of early modern Europe will all find valuable things here.

Christopher Storrs University of Dundee 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 447

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Alfonsas Eidintas and Vytautas Zalys, Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918–1940, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1998; ISBN 0312–17232–X; 250 pp.; US$45.00 Saulis Suziedelis, Historical Dictionary of Lithuania, European Historical Dictionaries No. 21, Lanham, MD, and London Scare- crow Press, 1997; ISBN 0–8108–3335–2; xxxiv + 382 pp. US$47.50

These two books represent a substantial enhancement of the literature in English on Lithuanian history. Anyone with an interest in Baltic affairs will warmly welcome these publications which make the subject more accessible. It is also noteworthy that their approach is less partisan than earlier works which bore the strong imprint of the Cold War. In publishing a monograph on the first republic, Lithuanian scholars have stolen a march on their Baltic colleagues who have not yet been able to produce anything of note in English on Estonia or Latvia during the interwar period. In rebuilding its diplomatic corps in the 1990s, Lithuania appointed accomplished historians to senior posts. Lithuania in European Politics is, in a sense, a product of the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, where at the time of writing Zalys and Tuskenis served under Ambassador Eidintas. In addition, the senior American expert on Lithuania, Alfred Erich Senn, has written an introduction which provides historical background to the establishment of the Lithuanian republic in 1918 and an afterword which traces developments from the Second World War to the re- establishment of Lithuanian independence in 1990. The book is basically divided into alternating chapters on foreign affairs and domestic issues, with Zalys writing the former and Eidintas the latter. Foreign policy played a disportionately large role in the life of the first Lithuanian republic and it overshadowed and strongly influenced domestic affairs. Of central importance were the Vilnius and Klaipeda (Memel) questions, which strained relations with neighbouring states (Lithuania and Poland did not have diplomatic relations). Thus a notable portion of the book is devoted to the tangle over Vilnius, the ancient Lithuanian capital but ethnically mostly Polish city, which was seized by the Poles in 1920 and remained a bone of contention until the Second World War. This conflict also undermined all attempts at Baltic cooperation as Lithuania’s northern neighbours did not want to get embroiled in the dispute with Poland, which they regarded as a valuable ally. Partly in order to compensate for the loss of Vilnius, the Lithuanians annexed the East Prussian territory of Klaipeda in 1923 which had been under a League of Nations mandate. Lithuania gained a port on the Baltic Sea, but forfeited the moral high ground. A result was that in 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 448

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1939, when its existence was at stake, Lithuania found itself in isola- tion. Lithuania had no friends left among the great powers except the Soviet Union, whose embrace proved to be deadly. The tragedy of Lithuania’s geopolitical position was that it had to follow a revisionist course which could only bring short term benefit — the annexation of Klaipeda — but in the long run this was not just detrimental to her interests, but fatal. A small revisionist state staking its claims in between the two greatest revisionist powers meant swim- ming with the sharks and being at the wrong end of the food chain. Lithuania’s foreign policy, particularly its main concerns, the Vilnius and Klaipeda questions, are relatively well-known to historians of interwar Europe, whereas Lithuania’s domestic affairs have been much less illuminated. Lithuania’s parliamentary democracy was the first of the Baltic countries to succumb to authoritari- anism in 1926 following on the heels of Pilsudski’s coup d’état in Poland. The rule of Antanas Smetona, a nationalist president who sought inspiration from Plato, has been characterized by many different labels, none of which have been particularly enlightening. For Eidintas, the president was ‘very much a moderate chief execu- tive’ (p. 121). This apologetic tone is perhaps meant as an antidote to the earlier Soviet vilification of Smetona as a ‘fascist’. Eidintas seems to struggle to find a balance between rebuke and praise for the contradictory Smetona. He was the central figure of the Lithuanian first republic, but it is difficult for the reader to get a clear picture of the man. While Eidintas rightly notes that the Smetona dictatorship could in no way be compared with the totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, his conclusion that, ‘Faced on all sides by nondemocratic regimes, Lithuania could not remain an island of democracy’ is not persuasive (p. 125). This might have been a credible argument for the late 1930s, but it utterly fails to convince in the case of 1926. For the second half of the independence period the rivalry between Smetona and his erstwhile prime minister Augustinas Voldemaras was of central importance. The power struggle between the two nationalist leaders, however, receives only perfunctory treatment. We learn that in 1928 Smetona and Voldemaras ‘began to disagree on a number of important matters’ (p. 114), but are left to wonder what these might have been. In this connection, the activities of the ‘Iron Wolf’, the extreme right-wing paramilitary organization closely linked to Voldemaras, which ‘unsuccessfully attempted to topple Smetona several times’ (p. 115) also begs for more details. Although the Republic of Lithuania was a multinational state, the main focus of the book is clearly on Lithuanian nation-building. The authors certainly do not ignore the main ethnic minorities (the Poles, 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 449

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Jews, and Belarussians), but they tend to overemphasize all the positive features of inter-ethnic relations during the interwar period. While this is undoubtedly a necessary corrective to careless stereo- types of Lithuanians (and Eastern Europeans in general) as back- ward anti-semitic peasants, the degree of satisfaction of the Jewish minority with the Lithuanian state is probably overstated. The Poles, of course, were not happy at all. Nevertheless, though not without faults, the monograph is a significant advance over what has been available in English up to now. Suziedelis’s Historical Dictionary of Lithuania is a much more substantial work than the volume on Latvia in the same series (reviewed in EHQ 29 [2]). In part, this reflects the fact that of the three Baltic states, Lithuania has a pre-modern history of note. At its zenith in the fifteenth century the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was one of the largest states in Europe. During this period the Lithuanians were the subjects of history while the Estonians and Latvians were simply its objects. The Dictionary includes entries on Lithuanian individuals, organizations, events, and institutions from the Middle Ages to the present as well as of geographical features. One can always quibble about the selection of the 232 items which on average are treated in one page, but Suziedelis has done well in choosing those which are representative and informative. Particularly useful are longer entries on topics such as Lithuanian literature, population, Jews, the Catholic Church, and education. The author has laudably attempted to demonstrate Lithuania’s place in the history and life of her neighbours and in the general development of Europe. He has also tried to alert the reader to the existence of historiographical controversies. A helpful device employed throughout is the system of cross- referencing entries which enables the reader to locate related items of interest. The Dictionary also includes maps, a chronology, a substantial (40 pages) historical survey, an extensive bibliography usefully arranged by topics, and appendices on Lithuanian place names in different languages, Lithuanian rulers, and political leaders. Of course, there are inevitably bound to be a few minor oversights in such a text, for example, Ernestas Galvanauskas was not only foreign minister from 1922 to 1924, but also simultaneously prime minister. Such isolated inaccuracies, however, in no way detract from a very impressive effort. This is in all respects an excellent reference work that should be on the shelf of every decent library.

Andres Kasekamp University of Tartu 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 450

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Henri A. van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–1945, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 1998; 331pp.; £15.95, US$16.96 Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps Present/Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis, No. 5, Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation et Societés Contemporaines, November 1998; ISSN 0771–6435; 253pp.

The 1980s was undoubtedly the decade during which the Second World War definitively passed from memory into history. To be sure, many valuable scientific studies on the war period had appeared before then and many commemorative or pseudo-commemorative publications have been published since. During the 1980s, however, the detached and scientific approach to the Second World War became entrenched as the reigning paradigm. This process did not take place without some heavy shocks and serious growing pains — of which the German Historikerstreit has become the most widely known. In the Netherlands, the debates between a scientific and a commemorative — and therefore, moralizing — attitude, mainly crystallized around the inaugural lecture delivered in 1983 by Professor J.C.H. Blom of Amsterdam. In that lecture, entitled ‘In de ban van goed of fout?’ [Under the spell of right or wrong?], Blom proposed several ways to escape from the dominating collabo- ration–resistance framework of analysis. Long-term perspectives and internationally comparative approaches to political, economical and cultural phenomena should, Blom argued, give the Second World War its place in general history. Over the next fifteen years, Blom’s insights gained nearly general acceptance in the Dutch historical and intellectual world, even though the practical consequences were not always equally well represented in the actual historiographical pro- duction. The depth of the transformation that Dutch Second World War historiography has undergone since then can be fathomed by reading the tenth edition of Henri van der Zee’s The Hunger Winter, which first appeared in 1982 — one year before Blom’s lecture. Admit- tedly, van der Zee never wanted his book to be scientific in the strict sense of the word. His aim was to write a well-founded, but popular story of the hunger- and cold-stricken months the Dutch had to endure between the Allied failure to cross the Rhine (September 1944) and the final Liberation (May 1945). In so far as the author combines his own recollections with the study of a large amount of reports and diaries, the book represents, in the truest sense of the word, a transitional phase between memory and history. The ongo- ing commercial success indicates that the book still satisfies certain 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 451

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needs of popular memory. This is not surprising considering that this fluently written account succeeds in making the hunger and the cold of the described period tangible, thereby lending a certain ‘grandeur’ to the deepest misery. Moreover, for those specialized historians looking for new facts or new insights, the book doubtless had, and still has, qualities that go beyond its value as a mere human document. Thus, it overtly reveals — fifteen years before the notorious Berlin exposition Das Verbrechen des Wehrmachts — the cruelty of the German army forces, which seems to have been nearly as bad as that of the radical SS troops. Equally, the description of the indecisive and rather unheroic days just before and just after the liberation of the western Dutch provinces has still not found a counterpart in academic historiography. In the last part of the book, the constant alternation between the hard political and military facts on the one hand, and the concrete experiences of the Dutch populations on the other, makes a particularly lasting impression. Despite these various qualities, the book gives a somewhat out- dated impression. Although van der Zee does not repeat the old stereotype of the Dutch people being a ‘Nation of Heroes’ (a stereotype which since the 1960s has been inexorably unmasked as the result of a deliberate policy), his account is strongly pervaded by the Manichean vision of the survivor. In particular, the one-sided descriptions of German malice on the one hand, and the hagio- graphic account of Queen Wilhelmina’s acts on the other, have lost their credibility in the eyes of the 1990s reader. One of the many indications that this changing attitude towards the Second World War has taken root in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands, has been the transformation, in 1997, of the state- sponsored Study Centre on World War II History into a Study Centre on War and Present Society (SOMA/CEGES). The field of interest of this renewed centre has widened from the primarily political and military events of the Second World War to the social evolu- tions — in the broadest sense of the word — during the entire period between roughly 1914 and 1960. The centre’s journal, called Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps Present/Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis [Contributions to Present History], explicitly wants to be a translation of this widened scope — and manages fairly well to fulfil that claim. It clearly betrays its roots in a tradition centred on traditional war history. At the same time, however, it proves to have taken up various of the challenges set in Blom’s 1983 lecture, which, with some delay, has become a point of reference in the Belgian (or at least in the Flemish) historiographical debate, too. Most important in that respect is undoubtedly the fact that the two contributions 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 452

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which are exclusively devoted to the Second World War are per- sistently comparative. Not fortuitously, they both compare the Dutch with the Belgian situation. In one of them, the Dutch authors Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller try to settle once and for all the much- debated question as to why in the Netherlands a so much larger proportion of the Jewish population was deported than in Belgium. After a very systematic and detailed discussion of the existing literature, they conclude that the better organization of the occupation force in the Netherlands offers only a small part of the explanation. Of equal importance, according to Griffioen and Zeller, is the attitude of the Dutch population — which at a relatively late stage created specific resistance organizations to give shelter to Jews — and the strangely co-operative stance of the Jews toward their oppressors. These are fairly unsatisfying explanations, primarily because they are less explanations than observations. The authors do touch upon some fundamental and long-term factors which might allow for this distinction, one of which is the higher degree of assimi- lation of the Jews in Dutch society (which made them less eager to organize themselves in resistance groups). But these long-term differences are hardly reckoned with in the conclusion. The other comparative essay in this issue is more convincing, even if it is far less ambitious. Nico Wouters’s microhistorical comparison between the vicissitudes of two socially very similar border-villages — one in the Netherlands and one in Belgium — during the Second World War vividly shows how real a boundary between nations can become. Only a few kilometres of distance entailed a world of difference. The difference between an economically motivated collaborationism in the Netherlands and one that was mainly rooted in Flemish Nationalist resentment in Belgium; between a hierarchi- cally structured illegality in the Netherlands and a more dispersed, if not chaotic, resistance in Belgium; between a carefully construed Resistance myth without concrete heroes in the Netherlands and an eminently negative perception of Resistance in Flemish post-war memory. This issue of the journal is, however, most interesting where it breaks through the boundaries of Second World War history, and also those of classical political history. For instance, the article on the reactions set off by the death of the Belgian Queen Astrid in 1935 indicates the openness of the new journal to recent trends in cultural history. Its author, the Swiss historian Alexis Schwarzenbach, moves beyond the demystifying view on popular myths, and fully acknowledges the importance of the aesthetic element in symbolical repre- sentations. Abundant and functionally chosen illustrations largely add to the convincing power of his argument. Precisely this choice 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 453

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for rich iconographical support might prove one of the major assets of the Cahiers/Bijdragen in a historiographical world that realizes more than ever that language is not only shaped by words. Marnix Beyen Leuven University

Peter Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge, 1750–1870, vol. III, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; ISBN 0–521–35060–3; xviii + 797 pp.; £65.00

In this latest volume on the history of Cambridge University, one scholar accomplishes what it took a team of specialists to accomplish for its Oxford counterpart. Of course, Peter Searby’s coverage is less ample for Cambridge between 1750 and 1870, but this survey of Cambridge education and culture is close to authoritative: at every stage, Dr Searby generously acknowledges work by other scholars which he has used as the basis of his own. He is also refreshingly honest about where there are gaps in the history, for instance in the need for work on college financial management. There are three main sections: a survey of how the collegiate university functioned with the fundamental divide between candidates for honours and the great majority, the ‘poll men’; religious developments; and the undergradute experience, based mainly on student lives as recorded in letters and journals, including William and Christopher Wordsworth, and the Scottish physicist, William Thomson. Social life, which takes Searby into the territory of the late Graham Midgley’s University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford (Yale Uni- versity Press, 1996), is by no means neglected. Chapter 18 looks at walking, athletics and ball games; athletics began in the mid-1850s, the University Boat Club was established in 1827. And there is room for servants, an essential category which, as Searby pointedly notes (p. 142), were excluded from the comprable Oxford volume! What was the raison d’être of Cambridge’s existence over this period? Searby is in no doubt that it functioned as an essentially confessional institution. ‘. . . Cambridge was an Anglican seminary. The university’s purpose was churchly and ecclesiastical’ (p. 76). He insists that this was so throughout his 120 years, though the purpose was arguably wearing thin by 1840. Eighty-seven percent of eighteenth-century fellows, he calculates, were in holy orders. Yet so much of this book is concerned with individuals whose studies and concerns were far from theological or churchly that one wonders why Searby does not offer a wider working definition of an academic culture that could be, by turns, sluggish and perlucid, and whose 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 454

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products were gentlemen, amateurs, lawyers and, occasionally, City men, as well as clergymen (usually latitudinarians until the late eighteenth century then, increasingly, evangelicals under the influence of men like Charles Simeon and Isaac Milner). Paradoxically, this was an Anglican seminary that specialized in mathematics rather than divinity. Searby begins his volume, appropriately enough, with the educational revolution of 1700–40 which, by introducing math- ematical examinations, confirmed the Newtonian triumph. And he shows how teaching evolved in the colleges to cope with this bias, with the rising importance of tutors in the eighteenth century (p. 120) and diligent professors (like Adam Sedgwick in the 1810s) making up for the inadequacies of some of their colleagues. Mathematics may have been synonomous with Cambridge by 1750, but Searby insists that the subject’s dominance in the curriculum may have disenchanted a large proportion of the undergraduate population over the next half century. Even Richard Watson, the chemist, church reformer, and Bishop of Llandaff, was tired of mathematics, so the aridity they possessed for the average undergraduate must have been immense. Classics and theology were not part of the tripos until 1824 and, even then, candidates had to gain honours in the mathematics tripos disqualifying, for instance, the historian T.B. Macaulay, and Cambridge men went to medical schools elsewhere throughout this period. Much of the rest of his book shows how hard a task it was for educational reformers to dismantle this formidable academic edifice. Most dons resented outside pressure to have them make the adapta- tions they believed themselves uniquely well placed to sanction (or not), and were uncomfortable with the pressure coming from highly placed politicians like Russell, Peel and Palmerston (for long the university’s MP as well as Prime Minister). Russell, in particular, (encouraged by a dynamic Chancellor, none other than Prince Albert) was bent on much more radical reform than the Graham commission eventually recommended, with the result that the wide-ranging overhaul of the institution to create a multi-faculty university with honours courses for the able was underpinned by legisla- tion of 1856. This still left collegiate reform a fair distance behind, with Cambridge academics uncooperative on what they judged as excessively extensive fellowship reforms until, once again, pressure from central government left them no option. No reader interested in the history of higher education can fail to gain benefit from the rich detail and texture of Peter Searby’s monu- mental book, one which can be read through from start to finish, for the author knows how to vary the pace and keep the reader’s atten- tion. Thus, at intervals, he provides extended biographical portraits 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 455

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of representative Cambridge men, among them Edmund Law and William Paley, Charles Darwin, William Whewell, and Leslie Stephen. It is a fitting addition to the series, and an up-to-date starting point for any researcher with its extensive bibliography and eleven appendices covering topics from the literary productivity of the fellows of St John’s College elected between 1751 and 1870 to the quality of degree among holders of ‘restricted’ fellowships. So the absence of a comparative perspective does detract from Searby’s achievement; there is a ‘closed-off’ feel to the text which denies opportunity for reference to the wider European experience in this epoch when early modern meets modern of the sort explored in some of the essays in another volume of 1997 edited by Hilde de Ridder-Symoens entitled, A History of the University in Europe: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800). How insular was Cambridge in relation to its Italian or German counterparts? Searby never touches on this pressing concern. Similarly, while he covers the parliamentary history of the university thoroughly, his reluctance to locate the university’s influence in the wider nation, or to delineate the Cambridge response to the wider life of the state is to be regretted.

Nigel Aston University of Luton

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700, UCL Press, 1999; ISBN 1–85728–388–0; 278 pp. Dionysios Hatzopoulos, La derrière guerre entre la republique de Venise et l’empire Ottoman (1714–1718), Centres d’études hel- leniques, Collège Dawson, Montréal, 1999; ISBN 0–9684299–0–4; 259 pp.

Any work of scholarship on the Ottomans in the English language is welcome, and any work as authoritative and bold as Murphey’s account of Ottoman warfare is especially so. The work is divided into nine thematic chapters. They range from such stimulating topics as ‘Material Constraints on Ottoman Warfare: The Immutable Context’ (ch. 2) to a wonderfully level-headed account of ‘Moti- vational and Psychological Aspects of Ottoman Warfare’ (ch.7). The Caucasian and Mesopotamian campaigns are treated with as much ease as the Hungarian and Balkan wars, and over a dozen tables are provided of remarkably full statistical information, ranging from the proportion of the army’s time spent in rest and march, to the cost of camels or the load-bearing ability of oxen. Of course, there are the 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 456

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usual problems in structuring a book on such a highly complex and still largely unfamiliar subject. The timariot appears early on in the book but is not defined until pp.36–43. The sentence on p.10 which comprises over one hundred words (without the benefit of semi- colons) reflects well on the author for his enthusiasm but very badly on the publishers for their editing. Quibbles apart, Murphey’s thesis is plain. The size of the Ottoman empire was a source of strength not weakness. This was because ‘resources and surpluses from one area were used by the Ottomans to good effect to subsidise and supply military activity in another’ (p. xvii). A tribute to effective administration, ‘it was not so much by the numerical predominance of its military forces that the Ottomans were distinguished from their contemporaries in the West as by the thoroughness of the administrative backup and general support that maintained them in the field’ (p. 49). Murphey elaborates this by arguing that the successes of the Sultan’s forces were not driven by religious zeal in a gazi or holy war, but rather by ‘a full range of material incentives’ (p. 146). Certainly, the care with which Ottoman troops were treated as well as fed, along with the scope for social advancement through martial success, accord admirably with the Islamic sense of human dignity. Throughout this work Murphey engages fully with current scholarship on the ‘military revolution’ in the West. Far from seeing the Ottomans as technologically impaired, he places great emphasis on a Mediterranean ‘common market’, with military technicians free to ply their trade among Christians or Muslims. In some areas the Ottomans excelled. Siegecraft is one example, albeit with a propensity to undermine rather than to scale. It was, then, the ‘resource base’ of the Ottoman Empire, with its population, in 1600, of more than 20 millions, that made it the greatest military power. This only came to an end — slowly, as even Peter the Great found out — when by the late seventeenth century the Christian states of Europe began to form grand military alliances. Hatzopoulos’ account of Venice’s last war with the Ottomans for control of Greece and the seas around it contrasts with Murphey’s thematic account in that it is relentlessly chronological. Its value derives in large measure from the use of Italian manuscripts now to be found in Canada (one appendix includes an Italian translation of the Sultan’s religiously worded call-to-arms). In his blow-by-blow account, Hatzopoulos manages to dovetail the doomed response of the Venetians alongside a description of the Ottomans’ complex yet rapid campaign. Not least among this work’s virtues is the fact that, despite its emphasis on Venice, it manages to 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 457

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bring out the organizational skills of the Ottoman commanders, as well as their ability to draw upon reserves and indeed nationalities from the length and breadth of their empire. Murphey, one expects, would not disagree.

Glyn Redworth University of Manchester

Elaine Sisman, ed., Haydn and his World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997; 474 pp.

In the present climate of research ratings and peer assessment, scholarly presses appear to be leaning as much towards multi- authored books as towards the more conventional monograph. Even within the relatively narrow field of musicology, new titles relating to particular composers, such as Joseph Haydn, are no exception. The shape of this book is unusual and falls into two clear sections. Part One is called Essays and deals with a number of broad cultural issues; Part Two presents translations of three documents in German from around the turn of the eigteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are seven essays in Part One. Elaine Sisman begins her own article with a study of the possible parallels between Shakespeare and Haydn in eighteenth century criticism. One of her strongest points is to show the frequent juxtaposition in their work of high- flown eloquence with low comedy. James Webster’s contribution looks at The Creation and other late vocal pieces in the context of the Sublime. Professor Webster is always a persuasive companion concerning Haydn and Mozart scholarship and this chapter is no exception. Two articles on the instrumental music follow. Mary Hunter examines the London Piano Trios and Salomon Quartets as public and private chamber music and this is followed by Mark Evan Bonds’s commentary on the symphony as Pindaric Ode. Dr Hunter is good on the historical perspective and draws some interesting comparisons with contemporary novels of the time but I could have wished for more detail. Mark Bonds’s chapter is also concerned with eighteenth century perceptions, but from a different viewpoint. His main thesis concerns the difficulty of hearing Haydn symphonies as his contemporaries did and he rightly emphasises the fusion of nature and artifice in these works. As Dr Sisman suggests in her preface, the next two essays are about Haydn’s exterior and interior worlds. Elisabeth Green uses his opera Le pescatrici to explore the composer’s theatrical work for his Esterhazy patrons. A useful survey of the historical importance of 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 458

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that powerful aristocratic family leads on to the more tenuous idea that in this score Haydn purposely went beyond the conventions of opera seria in order to be subversive. Tom Beghin’s contribution uses the currently fashionable rhetorical approach to analyze the Keyboard Sonata in D Hob, XVI:42. Through an intricate set of procedures partly derived from Johann Beer’s Musical Discourses (1719), the author sets out to show that in logical terms, the remarkably unbalanced shape of the second movement may be dictated by the form of the first. The final essay by Leo Botstein seeks to explain why it was that nineteenth century audiences lost contact with the richness and complexity of Haydn’s work. The remainder of the volume — presented as Part Two — is valuable because it contains translations from the German of three important documents. Ferdinand von Schönfield’s A Yearbook of Music in Vienna and Prague 1796 lists concerts, musicians and patrons and is a useful snapshot of its time. The pastor Johann Triest provides extensive Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the 18th Century which were originally published by Rochlitz in his Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Finally comes an annotated list of Haydn’s own library, based on the manuscript in the Vienna Stadtbibiothek.

DenisMcCaldin Haydn Society of Great Britain

Douglas Smith, Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth Century Russia, Dekalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1999; ix + 257 pp.

In this fascinating book, Douglas Smith analyzes the origins, the flowering and the rapid decay of freemasonry in eighteenth century Russia. Beginning with a discussion of the origins of freemasonry in Scotland and England, Smith charts its entry into Russia in the 1730s with foreigners in the service of the Russian state. What started out as an exclusively foreign institution gradually became Russianized as more and more educated Russians joined it. During the reign of Catherine the Great freemasonry became one the most talked about phenomena of its day, or at least so among that section of Russian society which discussed such things. Smith painstakingly describes the freemasons, their temples, their rituals and their hierarchies. Man, the rough stone, was capable of infinite improvement by the tools of reason and discipline. The first step along this path was becoming a mason. Joining the masonic 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 459

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lodge not only provided the company of like-minded men, but offered access to the esoteric wisdom necessary to achieve self- knowledge. This was a lifelong process. As one level of understanding was achieved, another was revealed rather like a Russian doll. Each stage was accompanied by elaborate rituals, more hidden wisdom and a new hierarchy of virtue and authority. This rather strange institution attracted many thousands of educated Russian males in its heyday, particularly in St. Petersburg and Moscow. It spread unevenly across the Empire and seemed set for further growth until the changing political atmosphere following the French Revolution attracted overt government disapproval. Nikolai Novikov, one of the leading Russian masons was arrested and the government made it clear that it expected other masonic groups to disband. Even this fairly mild level of official dislike was enough to bring masonry crashing down like a house of cards as members everywhere hurried to disband their organisations. Despite the claims of masonry to hold the secrets of the cosmos, few Russian masons felt such knowledge was worth dying for or even suffering minor discomfort. The real value of the book lies not in the descriptions of the masons and their absurd rituals and claims, interesting though they are, but in the setting of freemasonry within its social context both nationally and internationally. Smith argues that freemasonry was part of the burgeoning civil society of Imperial Russia and must be seen against that background. Civil society was a vital, if fragile, growth in eighteenth century Russia. The development of commercial printing, universities, salons etc. helped carve out a new social group that did not quite fit any of the official categories and also the space in which it could operate. This ‘public’ or ‘society’ did not have a fixed or official identity, but nonetheless clearly existed. Education and a willingness to engage with the issues of the day through the new forums were the basic criteria for belonging. Masonry fitted into this landscape as one of the institutions seeking to stabilize and fix identity for people for whom traditional categories were no longer sufficient. In this sense, it was part of a wider matrix through which the emergent civil society sought to define itself. For Smith, masonry was not just one of several of these new institutions but rather a key one, reflecting many of the hopes and anxieties of the wider society. For those who joined, masonry offered many attractions: self-improvement; public service; the access to occult knowledge; the appearance of equality and universal brotherhood whilst still enabling the mason to feel superior to everyone else. For, despite the masonic claim to recognize distinctions based only 04_reviews 30/3 6/6/00 10:27 am Page 460

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on virtue, those possessing the most virtue coincided to a suspicious degree with those possessing the most wealth and status in the pro- fane world. The popularity of the masons provoked a counter-reaction. They were lampooned in the press and on stage with Catherine herself taking a leading role in writing several anti-masonic plays. For most of her reign Catherine tolerated the masons, doing little more than poke fun at them. What changed matters was the French Revolution and the growing reaction against it. Here another of the book’s strengths becomes evident. The author sets the masons squarely in their international as well as their national context. Widely seen across Europe as one ofthe major causes of the French Revolution, governments moved against masons, closing their lodges and dis- banding the brotherhood. Russia was no exception. Smith has produced an interesting and stimulating book. It is based on an impressively broad range of archival and secondary sources. Unfortunately, there is no discussion of the sources used, but this is the only major gap in an otherwise excellent book. The books strengths lie in the constant referencing of a rather obscure institution to its wider national and international context, alternating the particular with the general skilfully. Importantly, the book keeps a sense of proportion about its subject, stressing its importance but without being carried away. This work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of eighteenth century Russia.

Shane O’Rourke University of York