An Essay in Universal History
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AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY From an Orthodox Christian Point of View VOLUME IV: THE AGE OF EMPIRE (1861-1914) PART 1: from 1861 to 1894 Vladimir Moss © Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2018. All Rights Reserved 1 The pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ Himself, hidden under the veil of the flesh. The future Pope Pius X (1895). When I consent to be a Republican, I do evil, knowing that's what I do... I say Long live Revolution! As I would say Long live Destruction! Long live Expiation! Long live Punishment! Long live Death! Charles Baudelaire (1866). European politics in the nineteenth century fed on the French Revolution. No idea, no dream, no fear, no conflict appeared which had not been worked through in that fateful decade: democracy and socialism, reaction, dictatorship, nationalism, imperialism, pacifism. Golo Mann, The History of Germany since 1789 (1996). The Messianism of the new era must arise and develop; the Jerusalem of the New World Order, which is established in holiness between the East and Asia, must occupy the place of two forces: the kings and the popes... Nationality must disappear. Religion must cease to exist. Only Israel will not cease to exist, since this little people is chosen by God. Albert Crémieux (1861). The Lord and Master of the money markets of the world, and of course virtually Lord and Master of everything else. He literally held the revenues of Southern Italy in pawn, and Monarchs and Ministers of all countries courted his advice and were guided by his suggestions. Benjamin Disraeli on Nathan Mayer Rothschild. The Jewish people has rejected Christ, the true Mediator and Messiah, and therefore has excluded itself from history. Instead the Germans have become God's chosen people. Constantin Frantz (1870s). [The Jews] are at the root of the revolutionary socialist movement and of regicide, they own the periodical press, they have in their hands the financial markets; the people as a whole fall into financial slavery to them; they even control the principles of contemporary science and strive to place it outside of Christianity. K.P. Pobedonostsev to F.M. Dostoyevsky (1879). This is the final struggle. Let us come together and tomorrow the International will be the human race. There are no supreme redeemers, no god, no Caesar, no tribune. Workers, let us make our own salvation. Eugène Pottier, L'Internationale. It is neither blindness nor ignorance that ruins nations and states. Not for long do they ignore where they are heading. But deep inside them is a force at work, favoured by nature and reinforced through habit, that drives them forward irresistibly as long as there is still any energy in them. Divine is he who controls himself. Most humans recognize their ruin, but they carry on regardless... 2 Leopold von Ranke. When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible. Jomo Kenyatta. 3 INTRODUCTION 6 I. THE WEST: THE MASTER RACES (1861-1894) 7 1. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 8 2. THE RISORGIMENTO AND THE FALL OF THE PAPAL STATES 21 3. BISMARCK AND THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY 31 4. THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE 35 5. THE BATTLE OF SEDAN AND THE PARIS COMMUNE 41 6. THE SECOND REICH 49 7. WAGNER’S RELIGION OF DEATH 60 8. NIETZSCHE AND THE ANTICHRIST 72 9. MOSES HESS AND THE PROTO-ZIONISTS 88 10. AUSTRO-GERMAN ANTI-SEMITISM 100 11. THE WESTERNIZATION OF JAPAN 104 12. THE FIRST AGE OF GLOBALIZATION 110 13. COLONIALISM, COMMERCE AND CIVILIZATION 114 14. WELFARISM, SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 124 15. RELIGION IN AMERICA 139 II. THE EAST: THE GOD-CHOSEN RACE (1861-1894) 144 16. “THE NEW MAN" 145 17. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS 150 18. METROPOLITAN PHILARET AND CHURCH REFORM 161 19. THE REVOLUTIONARIES 168 20. DOSTOYEVSKY ON SOCIALISM 177 21. PORTENTS OF THE ANTICHRIST 188 22. THE JEWS UNDER ALEXANDER II 194 23. THE EASTERN QUESTION, PAN-HELLENISM AND PAN-SLAVISM 203 24. THE GRECO-BULGARIAN SCHISM 216 4 25. AT THE GATES OF CONSTANTINOPLE 227 26. THE JEWISH QUESTION AGAIN 238 27. DOSTOYEVSKY ON RUSSIA 248 28. KATKOV ON UKRAINE 256 29. LEONTIEV VERSUS DOSTOYEVSKY 260 30. THE TSAR AND THE CONSTITUTION 268 31. THE JEWS UNDER ALEXANDER III 272 32. RUSSIA AND THE BALKANS 283 33. SOLOVIEV ON NATIONALISM AND CATHOLICISM 289 34. POBEDONOSTSEV ON LIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY 300 35. THE REIGN OF TSAR ALEXANDER III 312 36. TOLSTOY, LENIN AND THE VOLGA FAMINE 317 5 INTRODUCTION This is the fourth volume in my series An Essay in Universal History. The previous volume were: volume 1: The Age of Faith (to 1453), volume 2: The Age of Reason (1453-1789), and volume 3: The Age of Revolution (1789-1861). This fourth volume, subtitled “The Age of Empire”, takes the story from the emergence of the world’s first modern empire in the American Civil War of 1861- 65 to the zenith of the old empires of Europe to the eve of the great cataclysm of imperialism – the First World War in 1914. Empires have, of course, existed since ancient times, but the term “imperialism” came into vogue only in the 1860s. It acquired an increasingly negative connotation as it was deemed to clash with the values of other modern belief-systems. In this volume, considerable attention is devoted to how the major new belief-systems of Liberalism, Socialism, Nationalism, Darwinism, Freemasonry, Freudianism and Nietzscheanism interacted with each other, with Imperialism itself, and with that unique kind of empire, the Orthodox Autocracy in its Russian incarnation. The major theme in this volume is the undermining of the old belief-system of the Orthodox Autocracy by the new ones coming from the West before the catastrophe of 1914. My debts are very many, and are detailed in the footnotes. Especially important to me have been the writings of the Russian Orthodox monarchists: St. Philaret of Moscow, St. Ignaty (Brianchaninov), St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ambrose of Optina, Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov, St. John of Kronstadt, Constantine Pobedonostsev, St. John Maximovich, Archbishop Averky of Jordanville and Archpriest Lev Lebedev. Among western historians I have particularly benefited from the writings of A.N. Wilson, Philip Bobbitt, Bernard Simms, Paul Johnson, Niall Ferguson, Norman Davies, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Misha Glenny, Miranda Carter, Serhii Plokhy, Dominic Lieven, Christopher Clark, Henry Kissinger, Sir Richard Evans and Sir Noel Malcolm. Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us! Amen. 6 I. THE WEST: THE MASTER RACES (1861-1894) 7 1. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR The Age of Empire was a racist age, when theories of a master-race - White or Aryan – were developed in order to justify European imperialism over the Asian and African races. However, it began with a war that was in part a war against racism, the American Civil War between the Northern and Southern States of the United States of America. And, although, as we shall see, there was much more to the war than a struggle against racism, there is no doubt that, in spite of the shining exceptions of some individuals, the Southern States were racist in their official theory and practice. As Annette Gordon-Reed writes, “The founding documents of the Confederacy [the Southern States], under which the purported citizens of that entity lived, just as Americans live under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, announced that African slavery would form the ‘cornerstone’ of the country they would create after winning the Civil War. In 1861, a few weeks before the war began, Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, put things plainly: ‘The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution – African slavery as it exists amongst us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast had anticipated this and as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right… The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen of the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. “’Our new government is founded exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.”1 This war was not unexpected. As early as 1787 Alexander Hamilton "had made a prediction: The newly created federal government would either 'triumph altogether over the state governments and reduce them to an entire subordination,' he surmised, or 'in the course of a few years the contests about the boundaries of power between the particular governments and the general government will produce a dissolution of the Union.'"2 1 Gordon-Reed, “America’s Original Sin”, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2018, pp. 4-5. 2 Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers, New York: Vintage Books, 2002, p. 77. 8 However, it should be noted that Hamilton’s words related to statehood and revolution, not slavery. And that was the other great issue in 1861.