INTRODUCTION
In January 1854, George Finlay wrote to his friend and correspondent, Cornelius Conway Felton, then Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, requesting several volumes pertaining to American history. Finlay was finishing the concluding chapters of his two-volume History of the Greek Revolution Footnote 1 and remarked to Felton that he wished to ‘devote a few pages to America and her supplies during the last years of the revolution’, part of a chapter on the ‘influence of western civilization on the state of the Greeks’.Footnote 2 Among the volumes received from Felton the following year were the first six volumes of George Bancroft's History of the United States,Footnote 3 a work which Finlay later stated ‘combines everything to command a prominent place on my bookshelves’.Footnote 4 Yet this remark came before Finlay had read Bancroft's work, commenting in the same letter that he knew Bancroft would ‘open some new views to my mind’.
Finlay went on to make extensive annotations in the first seven volumes of Bancroft's work. Finlay's marginalia give an unabridged view into the way that he thought about history, one equally as insightful for interpreting his methodology as any consideration of his published works. Such a perspective is of great value as a snapshot of nineteenth-century historical thinking in real time, the instantaneous nature of marginalia capturing ideas at their inception without the nuance that one might expect from a published text. Finlay's annotations also offer much for our understanding of Bancroft's reception outside of the United States, particularly in regions like the Eastern Mediterranean that are often overlooked when studying intellectual exchanges between Europe and America. A wider geographical focus is a key step towards a global intellectual history of historical thought in a period when history first emerged as a national, ‘scientific’ discipline. In examining Finlay's apostils, we stand to gain much by reconsidering an important – if often overlooked – intellectual of the nineteenth century while shedding light onto the distinctly transnational discourses that shaped his style of history.
Any such analysis of Finlay's ideas and writings is itself transnational in character. Born in England but identifying more strongly with his Scottish roots (Wace Reference Wace1916–18, 122–3), Finlay was educated in Scotland and Germany and spent most of his adult life in Greece. Though Greece has traditionally been considered peripheral to many European developments of the nineteenth century, there have been attempts recently to reconsider both Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Age of Revolutions.Footnote 5 Finlay's perspective has retained its utility as an eyewitness account and explicator of these shifts. Though not employed in the imperial machinery of the British Empire, Finlay was a ‘man on the ground’ in Greece with strong connections to the United Kingdom. Further consideration of his comments thus offers fresh perspective on the British imperial vision of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from overseas: a view of the Empire – quite literally – from the margins.Footnote 6
While Britain was at the height of its power in the mid nineteenth century, Finlay ultimately saw the future in the fortunes of the United States. Writing to Felton in 1855, for example, Finlay suggests:
I have always made American political history an object of attentive study as I believe the U.S. are destined to give the decisive direction to the new political and social organization of civilized nations which is forming on the ruins of Medieval Europe. It has long appeared to me that the reformation + the French revolution were merely steps in an ascent which even now leads we know not where but wherever it may be, the direction will be given by the U.S. (Finlay, quoted in Frazee Reference Frazee1964, 202)
Finlay's comments are remarkably prescient in view of recent history. Moreover, they reveal that the United States was central to his conceptualisation of post-revolutionary states in an age in which Europe was swept by revolutionary fervour. This is, perhaps, no surprise. The influence of the American Revolution on the wider Age of Revolutions was well understood even in Finlay's lifetime,Footnote 7 and the historical causation that Finlay outlines – progressing from the Reformation to revolutions – is arguably the result of his Whiggish political leanings. In Finlay's mind, the experience of the United States – a country born of revolution and torn from the territories of a great empire – had a particular resonance with the experience of Revolutionary Greece, as well as other revolutionary countries in nineteenth-century Europe. While no one could predict the path that Greece, Italy, Germany and many others would tread after their respective revolutions, Finlay was confident that the American precedent – more so than the British – would help to determine their trajectories.
Regrettably for Bancroft, Finlay's admiration for his work did not endure. The final annotation left by Finlay in volume VII of Bancroft's History reveals his general impression: ‘I am afraid fine writing on subjects where plain truth is required will do something to destroy the judgement of Americans, if not injure the political institutions of America’ (Finlay, in History, vol. VII, 435 [Fin. J 29]). Throughout his marginalia, Finlay expresses a frustration with Bancroft's rhetorical style of writing, but this comment is important for another reason. Here, Finlay connects the writing of history directly to a state's political and social organisation. In his view, the failure of historians to provide faithful accounts compromises a country's past. In doing so, they jeopardise that country's future. We therefore gain some understanding of what Finlay saw as the purpose of history: to aid in the creation, consolidation and reform of a state's political and social institutions. In the case of his own work, Finlay (Reference Finlay1877, vol. I: Dedication) readily admits that his literary efforts were ‘in the cause of civil liberty and national institutions’.
Finlay's view of the United States and its relation to his vision for modern Greece thus warrants much closer attention. Finlay was a historian who not only wrote extensively about the creation of a Greek state but bore witness to its formation. The development of modern Greece was, by Finlay's account, a study of the ‘progress + decline of [the] intellectual culture, liberty + religion of [the] Greek race [and] of the race itself’.Footnote 8 With time, Finlay levelled deep-seated criticisms against the Greek state, laying bare his personal disappointment with the development of Greek institutions after the Revolution. Yet these criticisms reveal exactly how Finlay felt that the new Greek state might avoid yet another decline. In turn, they tell us much about mid-nineteenth-century conceptions of post-revolutionary states in an era that was in many ways defined by civil and political unrest.
Regarding the United States, Finlay was remarkably well-informed. An accomplished historian of various periods, he was a polymath in many other respects (Hussey Reference Hussey1975, 135–7). He corresponded extensively with a learned circle in the US that included C.C. Felton, Samuel G. Howe and Evangelinos A. Sophocles.Footnote 9 His writings on America therefore offer a view of the United States from within and from the ‘periphery’. The outlooks of liminal individuals like Finlay have much to contribute to the discussion of global perceptions of Revolutionary and Antebellum America in the Age of Revolutions. Greater consideration of these perspectives enables a more holistic discussion of American political ideas from a perspective that cannot be considered wholly Americentric, especially during a period in which revolutionary ideas became ever-increasingly more important in many parts of the world.
Finlay's comments on Bancroft's work are an excellent vehicle for this kind of historical analysis. His marginalia flesh out his historical process in terms of his motivation, interpretation and methodology. In doing so, they give some indication of how he thought history was to be properly written, a height to which he concedes that his own work may not reach (Finlay Reference Finlay1877, vol. I: Dedication). Finlay's marginalia also have much to offer in understanding his vision for the optimal socio-political organisation of post-revolutionary states like the United States and the Kingdom of Greece, in contrast to those that experienced more gradual and organic evolutions like the United Kingdom. Neither wholly of nor entirely removed from British and Greek interests, Finlay's position between nations granted him a viewpoint from which he was able to combine the global vision of the British Empire with the perspectives of peripheral Europe in which the British, French, Russian and Ottoman Empires were actively involved. He was of the mainstream and of the marginal, and his writings have much to proffer in the greater understanding of transnational intellectual perspectives on nationhood, state-building and imperialism during the nineteenth century. In what follows, I will establish what ‘history’ meant to Finlay by further exploring his dialogue with Bancroft's work, particularly where the two historians demonstrate contrasting historiographical perspectives. From there, it is possible to determine how far these disparate conceptions of the study of the past resulted from their respective worldviews, allowing a deeper examination of their motives as historians and their purposes in writing history. Doing so gives a much greater understanding of Finlay's beliefs regarding the political direction of Greece and the wider world in the mid nineteenth century. At the same time, I aim to shed greater light on the reflexive relationship between the socio-political institutions of young states and the emergence of history as a national and intellectual discipline.
‘PARALLEL LIVES’
Finlay's name is familiar to those well versed in the historiography of the Greek Revolution, but it is worth restating some simple biographical information to clarify discrepancies that have arisen in earlier publications.Footnote 10 Doing so will also allow some appreciation of the generation of intellectuals among whom Finlay ranked.
One person to whom Finlay is often compared is Samuel G. Howe, the American philanthropist, abolitionist, and Finlay's comrade-in-arms on the Karteria.Footnote 11 Borrowing from Plutarch's historical trope, Arnakis points out that Finlay and Howe can be said to have lived ‘parallel lives’: both men began their interactions with modern Greece as philhellenes ‘in the spiritual orbit of Lord Byron’, later opposed the policies of Kapodistrias and King Otho,Footnote 12 and eventually preserved important accounts of the Greek Revolution by recording their experiences in print (Arnakis Reference Arnakis1960, 201–3). After serving together during the Revolution, Finlay and Howe continued to write to each other for the rest of their lives and once again found themselves united in the distribution of humanitarian relief during the Cretan Crisis of the 1860s.Footnote 13 Finlay also became a fringe participant in Boston's intellectual circle through his correspondence with Howe and others, and he enjoyed similar relationships with many intellectual leaders of the day in the United Kingdom.Footnote 14 These include Edward A. Freeman, future Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford;Footnote 15 future British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone;Footnote 16 and philosopher John Stuart Mill, to whom Finlay was introduced by George Grote in 1854 and whom Finlay later hosted in Athens.Footnote 17
We might take Arnakis’ idea further, as a result. While not always enjoying the longevity or intimacy of Finlay's friendship with Howe, interpersonal connections between young, itinerant intellectuals often became the foundation of a scholarly networks that remained influential in the later lives of many of these figures. Certainly, many nineteenth-century polymaths appear to have moved among the same circles; an entire generation of academics, writers, poets, historians and philosophers – truly, thinkers – crossed paths in early nineteenth-century Europe in a hitherto unprecedented way. Hailing from across the Continent, Britain, and America, these individuals engaged in a discourse that facilitated the first truly transnational scholarly exchange of the modern age.
Finlay and Bancroft were no exception to this brave new world. Undoubtedly, both men made their own contribution to these networks, and there are striking parallels between the two men's lives and the spheres within which they moved. Finlay was born near Faversham, Kent, on 21 December 1799;Footnote 18 Bancroft was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1800 (Βillias Reference Billias2001, 509–11). After studying at Harvard, Bancroft went on to complete a doctorate at the University of Göttingen in 1820 under the aegis of prominent scholars including Arnold Heeren (Βillias Reference Billias2001, 509–11). Bancroft then spent the next two years travelling in Europe, meeting many of the leaders of the day: Goethe, Hegel, Lafayette, Macaulay and Byron (Βillias Reference Billias2001, 509–11). Finlay, meanwhile, matriculated at Göttingen in 1821 to ‘complete his studies in Roman law’,Footnote 19 though no evidence suggests that the two budding historians met during their time in Germany. By 1823, Finlay had paused his education to partake in the Greek Revolution, encountering the likes of Byron, Howe, Frank Abney Hastings and Thomas Gordon, in addition to Greek leaders like Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Odysseas Androutsos (Hussey Reference Hussey1975, 138). He settled permanently in the country from 1827 (Potter Reference Potter, Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas2009, 13). In the meantime, after spending 10 years as a tutor at Harvard, Bancroft began writing his History in the early 1830s (Βillias Reference Billias2001, 509–11). By 1838, he had been named to the American Antiquarian Society – as it so happens, on the very same day as Finlay's own nomination to the Society.Footnote 20
Having received the first six volumes of Bancroft's work from C.C. Felton in 1855, Finlay appears to have requested the seventh volume from Bancroft himself. The flyleaf of volume VII states that it was received ‘from the author’,Footnote 21 and Finlay returned Bancroft's generosity in 1861 when he arranged for a copy of his History of the Greek Revolution to be sent to Bancroft as well as to Felton and Howe.Footnote 22 The true extent of the historians’ relationship remains elusive, but unquestionably their paths crossed during Bancroft's time in Europe as US Ambassador to Prussia and, later, the German Empire. At the instigation of Robert P. Keep, United States Consul at the Piraeus, Finlay hosted Bancroft in Athens in 1872 on the latter's journey back to Berlin following a tour of the Near East.Footnote 23 The two historians briefly corresponded after this encounter,Footnote 24 prior to Finlay's death in January 1875, aged 75.
Much like Finlay and Howe, Finlay and Bancroft can be said to have lived parallel lives. After receiving educations in their countries of birth and later at Göttingen, Finlay and Bancroft met many of the same faces while travelling through post-Napoleonic Europe as young men; they were party to the same societies, whether learned or social; and both came to author national histories after varying degrees of political statesmanship in – relatively speaking, at least – young countries. The lattermost point carries perhaps the greatest significance for Finlay's interactions with Bancroft, especially regarding their respective interpretations of the past. In a letter sent to Felton in November 1861, Finlay admits to writing history in response to the works of other historians. While he had ‘long thought of publishing memoirs on the Greek revolution’, Finlay ‘felt that as Tricoupes [Spyridon Trikoupis] had written what he calls a history it was better to write my counter history’.Footnote 25 Finlay's motivations in authoring his History of the Greek Revolution thus emerge: to deliver what he terms ‘plain truth’ in light of Trikoupis’ apparent failure to do so in his Ιστορία της ελληνικής επαναστάσεως (History of the Greek Revolution, published Reference Trikoupis1853–7). While Finlay's work therefore appears dialogical in nature, it is not immediately clear how this relates to his extensive engagement with Bancroft's History as a major contemporary historical work. To what extent does Finlay's history of Revolutionary Greece encapsulate the same historiographical vision as Bancroft's history of Revolutionary America? What can we glean regarding how and why men like Finlay and Bancroft decided to write their histories as they did? What was their method? And what was their purpose?
‘HISTORY GONE MAD’
‘A pure American spirit of history’
To answer these kinds of questions, it is first necessary to give colour to Finlay's and Bancroft's disparate views of the historical discipline. In his first volume, Bancroft writes that it is ‘the duty of faithful history to trace events, not only to their causes, but to their authors’ (History, vol. I, 177). Elsewhere, he records that the role of the historian was ‘to reveal and to justify God's ways to man’, suggesting that, while God was the author of the historical script, the greatest actor in the ‘historical drama’ was the nation-state (Billias Reference Billias2001, 515–18). This is encapsulated in Bancroft's suggestion that he would present a balanced account by examining multiple perspectives ‘where different nations or different parties have been engaged in the same scenes’ (History, vol. I, v). Importantly, it is to these scenes that Bancroft alleges that he will apply ‘the principles of historical skepticism’ (vol. I, v).
Ostensibly, Finlay shows a similar approach by suggesting that nations were the main participants in history. In the author's preface to his History of Greece, Finlay (Reference Finlay1877, I.xix–xx) states that the object of his work was to ‘lay before the reader those leading facts that are required to enable him to estimate correctly the political condition of the Greek nation under its different masters’.Footnote 26 Both Finlay and Bancroft therefore begin their works by aiming to give greater historical cognisance to their readers, with Bancroft acknowledging that his divinely mandated mission would also serve to correct many of the errors that had ‘become incorporated with American history’ (History, vol. I, vi). Finlay's aforementioned reflection on Bancroft's History does much to suggest that the work was intended to improve the judgement of Americans by providing a greater awareness of their past. Its apparent failure to do so is perhaps less important here than its intent.
Why, then, did Finlay feel Bancroft had failed in his task? Finlay's greatest objection throughout Bancroft's work is the author's reluctance to, as Finlay terms it, ‘abase America when she deserves it also’ (History, vol. II, 232 [Fin. J 24]). Finlay repeatedly critiques Bancroft's unwillingness to criticise the United States, instead often attributing undesirable historical events to external parties for whose actions America cannot be blamed. The greatest of these actors was, of course, England.Footnote 27 Finlay's comment comes amid Bancroft's discussion of Bacon's Rebellion, in which the American historian blames England for trampling freedom of speech in Virginia after the Rebellion was put down. Bancroft tells us that printing presses were banned in the state and that speaking ill of Governor William Berkeley or his associates ‘was punished by whipping or a fine; to speak or write, or publish any thing, in favor of the rebels or the rebellion, was made a high misdemeanor’ (History, vol. II, 232). He continues, ‘Is it strange that posterity was for more than a hundred years defrauded of the truth? Every accurate account of the insurrection remained in manuscript till the present century’ (vol. II, 233). Finlay's response is sharp and to the point: ‘Of course England was to blame even after 1776’ (vol. II, 233 [Fin. J 24]; Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Finlay, in Bancroft's History, vol. II, 233 (Fin. J 24). Left, below: Finlay interrogates Bancroft's one-sidedness, questioning ‘Why not abase America when she deserves it also?’ Right, above: challenging Bancroft's account of Bacon's Rebellion, Finlay sarcastically remarks, ‘Of course England was to blame even after 1776.’
Finlay's dry wit makes an appearance here,Footnote 28 but its levity belies a greater pronouncement against Bancroft's shamefully selective account. While Finlay takes no issue with Bancroft's discussion of the oppressive measures taken by the English in response to colonial insurrection, his allegation that they were solely responsible for defrauding the world of a reliable account of the Rebellion does not hold up to scrutiny. If, as Bancroft suggests, a reliable account of the event was not printed until the nineteenth century, how was England to blame after America had declared its independence? It is perhaps no surprise that Finlay saw Bancroft's work as failing in the goals that he states at its opening. Certainly, the partiality that Bancroft displays here calls into question the scepticism that he claims to apply; when Bancroft later refers to the history of America as ‘the history of the crimes of Europe’ (History, vol. II, 251), Finlay retorts, ‘a very partial one then’ (vol. II, 251 [Fin. J 25]). Finlay's objections are not, therefore, limited only to what Bancroft says but also to the manner in which he says it: as part of an unbalanced argument that gives little consideration to American agency in American history. No doubt this is why Finlay later states that ‘abuse of England for small injuries [and] no gratitude for great benefits seems to be what Bancrofts [sic] regards as a pure American spirit of history’ (vol. III, 19 [Fin. J 25]; Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Finlay, in Bancroft's History, vol. III, 19 (Fin. J 25). Above: ‘so lords + English Aristocrats could do America kindness + justice.’ Below: ‘abuse of England for small injuries [and] no gratitude for great benefits seems to be what Bancrofts [sic] regards as a pure American spirit of history.’
Slavery and teleology
While an illustrative example, the case of Bacon's Rebellion is a minor one in the grander scheme of the dialogue between Finlay and Bancroft. Bancroft's steadfast unwillingness to criticise America is rather more overt in his account of American slavery. He attributes, for example, the existence of slavery in the Americas to the greed of English and Dutch merchants, framing it as a system imposed upon the American colonies against their will (History, vol. I, 159). Likewise, he asserts that the importation of slaves was favoured by ‘English cupidity’, an argument that Finlay does not dispute, conceding that ‘the English have always displayed so much more cupidity than their American descendants’ (vol. II, 235 [Fin. J 24]). Bancroft goes on, however, to excuse the participation of American colonists in the institution, writing, for instance, that ‘the immediate demand for laborers may … have blinded the eyes of the planters to the ultimate evils of slavery’ (vol. I, 173). In addressing America's continuation of the system after independence, he qualifies it by arguing that ‘the legislation of independent America has been emphatic in denouncing the hasty avarice which entailed the anomaly of negro slavery in the midst of liberty’ (vol. I, 172). Finlay questions whether such a moral denunciation of slavery made Americans ‘any less bigots [or] slave holders’ (vol. I, 172 [Fin. J 23]), exemplifying his view of slavery as not merely a racial institution, but as a racist one. By contrast, Bancroft's argument seems at times adjacent to those for slavery as a positive good in the United States despite his support for its abolition.Footnote 29 He states that ‘but for the slave-trade, the African race would have no inheritance in the New World’ (vol. I, 173) and that the slave trade ‘united the races by an indissoluble bond’ (vol. II, 464). To this latter statement Finlay dismissively responds, ‘bah!’ (vol. II, 464 [Fin. J 24]).
Bancroft's framing of his discussion of slavery is important for understanding his broader sense of history. His failure to come to terms with the morally questionable aspects of American history – particularly one as reprehensible as chattel slavery – is a scholarly inadequacy of which Finlay is unforgiving. Elsewhere, for example, Bancroft dedicates several pages to the evils of religious intolerance in Colonial America only to excuse it, leading Finlay to remark that Bancroft often narrates cruelties ‘instead of talking about them’ (vol. I, 448 [Fin. J 23]). This, Finlay argues, amounts to a ‘paraphrastic apology for cruelty’ (vol. I, 448 [Fin. J 23]). Bancroft justifies this line of argument teleologically, stating that even ‘if it [religious persecution] was followed by the melancholy result of bloodshed, [it] was also followed … by emancipation from bigotry’ (vol. I, 448). In essence, Bancroft's view of American history was one in which the means, no matter how severe, were justified if they led to American greatness. The religious persecution of the colonial period could, for example, be justified on the basis that it eventually led to the freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment. The divergent historical practices employed by Bancroft and Finlay thus led them to formulate disparate moral positions when looking at the past. When Bancroft similarly justifies the exclusion of Roman Catholics from freedom of conscience in Rhode Island, stating that it was ‘harmless’ owing to the absence of Catholics in the state, Finlay exclaims, ‘Where have your principles fled?’ (vol. II, 65 [Fin. J 24] [emphasis original]; Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Finlay, in Bancroft's History, vol. II, 65 (Fin. J 24). Right, below: Finlay underlines Bancroft's assertion that the exception of Roman Catholics from freedom of conscience in Rhode Island ‘was harmless’. He responds, ‘Where have your principles fled?’
It is possible to make sense of Bancroft's teleological view of the past by considering three key aspects of his Antebellum context. Bancroft was writing in a period that followed the deaths of America's Revolutionary generation, necessitating an attempt to reconnect with America's founding principles without the guiding influence of her founders themselves. The most important of these principles was arguably the American ideas of liberty and self-government that came to underpin the Jacksonian Democracy in which Bancroft passionately believed.Footnote 30 Slavery was also the national question du jour, with the debate over its abolition reaching a crescendo around the time that Bancroft published his first volume in 1834 and civil strife all but inevitable by the printing of the 1854 revised editions. Finally, major territorial acquisitions including the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Florida Purchase (1819), the Texas Annexation (1845), and the Mexican Cession (1848) swelled the United States from a collection of territories east of the Mississippi River to one that encompassed much of the present-day United States.Footnote 31 The liminality of the Antebellum period thus emerges. The fundamental question of Bancroft's America was to decide what kind of country it would be after seismic developments that made Antebellum America almost unrecognisable against the young republic that broke free from the British Empire.
For Bancroft, the answer to this question lay in America's past. Bancroft's ultimate aim in his History is to give an aetiological mythology of America, an explanatory and stirring founding narrative meant to justify the growth of the United States from 13 English colonies to a state encompassing a continent. In doing so, he gives a unifying and patriotic account of the American past – one all the more necessary after the deaths of the Founding Fathers and in the prelude to the American Civil War. Bancroft was keen to place responsibility for slavery outside of American hands to strike a reconciliatory tone between pro- and anti-slavery views, but such an understanding necessitates a mutable morality about which Finlay became increasingly exasperated throughout his reading of Bancroft's History. Bancroft contorts his narrative to preserve his idealised view of America, struggling to reconcile episodes of American brutality with his belief that the United States was the object of divine providence (Billias Reference Billias2001, 515–16). Finlay expressed a similar belief in providence as a driving force of history, but his frustration mounts as Bancroft emphasises this divine benefaction solely in relation to the US. When Finlay discusses the Greek Revolution of 1821 as ‘a clear manifestation of God's providence in the progress of human society’ (Reference Finlay1877, VII.181),Footnote 32 it is clear that the benefits of such divine guidance were not restricted to the Greek nation alone. In the opening to his History of the Greek Revolution, for instance, Finlay (Reference Finlay1861, I.2) makes sure to discuss the ‘importance of the Greek race to the progress of European civilization’ at large. Bancroft, by contrast, writes that ‘even Aristotle, so many centuries ago, recognized the upward tendency in human affairs; a Jewish contemporary of Barclay declared progress to be a tendency towards popular power; George Fox perceived that the Lord's hand was against kings’ (History, vol. II, 351). The proximity with which Bancroft relates these ideas – human progress, popular power and divine hostility to hereditary monarchy – epitomises his view that the American Revolution and indeed the Jacksonian Democracy of his own time constituted the pinnacle of humanity thus far.
Bancroft's narrative becomes increasingly contradictory to justify his teleological Americentrism. He implies, for instance, a malice prepense in Britain's rule of its American colonies by presenting the Navigation Acts as an effort to exclude the traders of Boston ‘from the market by an unreasonable duty’ (History, vol. II, 158). Bancroft later recalls the dissent of Carolinians that were disenfranchised by the establishment of the Anglican Church as the state's official religion, yet he admits that the ‘intolerant acts’ that had proclaimed it as such were, ‘by royal authority, declared null and void’ (vol. III, 18–19). Finlay is quick to point out ‘so lords + English Aristocrats could do America kindness + justice’ (vol. III, 19 [Fin. J 25] [emphasis added]; Fig. 2). Likewise, when England acted to protect the rights of Protestant dissenters in Maryland, Finlay stresses that, ‘here again England was the benefactor of America in one of those points about which the author has been loudest in his vaunts’ (vol. III, 32 [Fin. J 25]). Finlay's comment refers to Bancroft's wider suggestion that the British sought to strip Americans of their ‘rights and liberties’ (vol. III, 31–2). Finlay's annotations do much to remind us, however, that England could – and did – act in the interests of her colonies and colonists, a fact that Bancroft is so determined to overlook that Finlay accuses him of possessing a ‘rabid anti-Anglo spirit’ that ‘breaks out … rather foolishly’ (vol. III, 75 [Fin. J 25]).
Of course, one might be tempted to levy an accusation of anti-American sentiment against Finlay for some of his harsher critiques. Yet his clear admiration for the United States in his writings proves that this was not the case. Finlay's harsh words are instead an indicator of his vehement opposition to certain facets of the United States, especially slavery. Throughout his marginalia, and indeed throughout the many newspaper clippings contained within his personal papers, Finlay paid particular attention to the lived experiences of enslaved people in the US.Footnote 33 For example, when Bancroft quotes Mayhew suggesting that ‘no people are under a religious obligation to be slaves … if they are able to set themselves at liberty’, Finlay notes on the same page that ‘the Blacks of the Slave States will one day quote these words to the Americans as the Americans did to the English + with equal justice at least’ (vol. v, 309 [Fin. J 27]; Fig. 4).
Fig. 4. Finlay, in Bancroft's History, vol. V, 309 (Fin. J 27). Right: emphasising the words of Mayhew, Finlay writes that ‘The Blacks of the Slave States will one day quote these words to the Americans as the Americans did to the English + with equal justice at least.’
Finlay's discussion of the Don Pacifico Affair in his History of Greece similarly reveals that he was by no means uncritical of the British imperial project. A brazen display of gunboat diplomacy, this episode involved the Royal Navy blockading the Piraeus and seizing Greek vessels to seek remedy for British citizens who had suffered financial injury in Greece. Finlay was himself one of these citizens, though he later referred to the conduct of Lord Palmerston's government as ‘[straining] the authority of international law’ (Finlay Reference Finlay1877, VII.209). Even were it found to be technically legal, he argued, the conduct of the British Empire constituted a ‘violation of natural justice’ (Finlay Reference Finlay1877, VII.211). This is particularly significant given that the issue in question was the British state's seizure of private property as redress for public (that is, national) claims, the same issue at the heart of Finlay's own dispute with the court of King Otho.Footnote 34 As such, Finlay demonstrates a willingness to critique Greece and Britain alike, particularly where both parties committed sins against Finlay's conception of absolute ownership (dominium).Footnote 35 Finlay is therefore demonstrably more successful in employing historical scepticism in his writings than Bancroft, who, despite his self-proclaimed impartiality, does little to disguise his anti-British sentiments.
Finlay's objections to Bancroft's method thus range from his rhetorical writing, his bias and his mutable morality to his scholarly shortcomings when dealing with more challenging aspects of American history. These examples, among many others, underpin Finlay's characterisation of Bancroft's History as an ineffectual account that did not constitute the ‘plain truth’ that Finlay considered the duty of the historian. Finlay viewed the American's writing as the very ‘appellation of bombast’ (History, vol. I, 446 [Fin. J 23]), dubbing it ‘history gone mad’ (vol. II, 465 [Fin. J 24]) in light of Bancroft's willingness to ‘set up balderdash for truth’ (vol. II, 246 [Fin. J 24]). The discrepancies between the two historians’ methods can be, in large part, attributed to Bancroft's motivation for writing his History. The aetiological mythology of America that Bancroft puts forward relies upon a twisting narrative that conceals aspects of American history that do not align with his vision of the United States as the apex of human achievement. In that sense, the heart of Bancroft's work is not historical veracity but national pride. Finlay's objections are therefore underpinned not only by a different conceptualisation of how history ought to be written, but also by contrasting motivations in recording the past and differing interpretations of historical causation when doing so.
HISTORICISM V. RACIALISM
The origin myth of America
Having established in general terms the problems with Bancroft's History according to Finlay as a contemporary historian, we have not yet discussed Bancroft's reasoning for his approach or the detriment that Finlay felt that it might do to America's political institutions. Bancroft's book sales made him the most widely read American historian of the nineteenth century (Ross Reference Ross1984, 915), enthroning him as the ‘Father of American History’ for ‘providing his countrymen with a stirring version of America's beginnings’ (Billias Reference Billias2001, 528). Often, however, Bancroft's stirring narrative reads more like a national epic than a work of historical writing. He illustrates America's meteoric rise to greatness as a fact preordained and gives little in the way of historical causation. In doing so, Bancroft's work can be seen to provide the origin myth of America. Two factors contribute most to this impression. The first is Bancroft's attribution of American progress to divine providence, which depends ‘more on God than on human will’ (Billias Reference Billias2001, 515). The second – and perhaps the more important – is Bancroft's belief in the ‘so-called germ theory of his day’: that the seeds of American institutions originated in the Teutonic forests of Germany, germinating in Anglo-Saxon England before being transplanted to the New World where they might finally bloom (Billias Reference Billias2001, 517).
Such an understanding of the progress of history reveals Bancroft's belief in the supremacy of white Anglo-Saxon Europeans. Bancroft's History frequently refers to the inferiority of other races, including the ‘naked and feeble’ Native Americans (vol. I, 180) and black Africans, whom he generally terms ‘Aethiopians’, that remained ‘in insulated barbarism’ (vol. II, 464). Bancroft's worldview was almost certainly the product of his German training. The infamous Göttingen school of history, to which Bancroft's mentor, Heeren, contributed,Footnote 36 gave the basis of scientific racism by dividing humanity along the lines of physiological characteristics peculiar to different peoples (Demel Reference Demel, Kowner and Demel2012, 65–70). The extent to which Bancroft embodied the same views as his German mentors has been debated at length (Burwick Reference Burwick1966, 212; Handlin Reference Handlin1984, 133; Billias Reference Billias2001, 515), but he undeniably employs such thinking in his History. Bancroft dedicates a large section of his third volume to the ‘connection of the red man with other races’ (vol. III, 307–18), referring also to the ‘natural endowments of mind and body’ in possession of certain peoples (vol. III, 300–6). Bancroft believed that the inherent nature of a people had a large role in determining their achievements – so much so, in fact, that he opens his work by stating that ‘the spirit of the colonies demanded freedom from the beginning’ (vol. I, vii). In Bancroft's mind, the American love of liberty was intrinsic to the character of the American people; America's greatness was the natural result of its heritage from Germany and England, predisposed as the two nations were towards a ‘popular freedom’ that had made ‘the Anglo-Saxon emigrants [to America] the hope of the world’ (vol. II, 465). Yet such a comment also encapsulates Bancroft's view that any people might aspire to – albeit not exceed – the freedom personified by the United States if only they were to follow the American example (Billias Reference Billias2001, 519).
This language was not unique to Bancroft's writings. Finlay refers to the prosperity of the Greeks in analogous terms, writing to Felton that, in his mind, ‘the Greek revolution will only be a partial success until the Greek race begin to expand like the Anglo-Saxon into a great people sending forth annually thousands of ploughs’.Footnote 37 However, Finlay's ostensibly racialised language cannot be seen in the same light as Bancroft's.Footnote 38 Finlay gives little suggestion that the characteristics of different peoples are wholly innate. While he admittedly advocates that mimicking the Anglo-Saxon race constitutes the best chance for the progress of the Greeks, Finlay attributes the degradation of the latter's standing not to their inborn inferiority but to the ‘decline of [their] intellectual culture, liberty + religion’Footnote 39 after two millennia under foreign domination (Finlay Reference Finlay1877, I.xv). Finlay (Reference Finlay1877, I.xv) does refer to the ‘national character’ of the Greeks with some connotation of an essential ‘Greekness’, but this appears to be less of a fixed racialism than an indication of his cyclical view of history. Finlay saw ‘periods of “decline” and of “resurgence”’ (Potter Reference Potter, Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas2009, 16) between the Greeks of classical antiquity, the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Greece. In his mind, the continuities between the rise and fall of various civilisations in Greece could be explained by a national character that had remained essentially unchanged even as ‘[ancient] Hellenic institutions were swept away by the Roman empire and Christian church’ (Finlay Reference Finlay1861, I.16–17). Importantly, however, this character was not attributed to the physiological nature of the Greek people, and the circumstances in which the Greeks found themselves were far more historically determinate in Finlay's historiography. We therefore see a greater awareness of causation in Finlay's writing that is far more in line with the growth of historicism in nineteenth-century Europe (Ross Reference Ross1984, 911). This is far removed from Bancroft's linear march to glory in the case of America, or indeed his discussion of the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxons.
Here, we should return to Finlay's concluding comment that Bancroft's work would ‘do something to destroy the judgement of Americans, if not injure the political institutions of America’ (History, vol. VII, 435 [Fin. J 29]). Bancroft's influence should not be understated. His wide readership disseminated his aetiological mythology to an enormous number of Americans, crystallising beliefs about American exceptionalism that remain pervasive. Such exceptionalism would certainly have been detrimental to the way in which Antebellum Americans understood their place in the world. Indeed, Bancroft himself struggled to comprehend the destructive forces that led to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, determining that God must be punishing the United States for failing to eradicate the stain of slavery from its ledger (Leeman Reference Leeman2008, 462). While Finlay agreed that slavery was the cause of the war from its beginning,Footnote 40 his greater ability to interpret the causes that led America towards civil conflict allowed him to conclude that Northern States, ‘desirous of maintaining their own Union’ (Finlay Reference Finlay and Hussey1995), had no option but to go to war. In Finlay's opinion, allowing the secession of the South would have fatally weakened the North and precipitated the dissolution of the Union ‘much more effectually than a state of war’ (Finlay Reference Finlay and Hussey1995). The veracity of Finlay's argument, though not without merit, is not as important as the evident attempt to understand cause and effect in the political events of his lifetime. By contrast, Bancroft's belief that divine providence was the driving force behind America meant that he did not offer a more sophisticated view either as to how the United States came to civil strife, or, in turn, how it might proceed now that the ‘American republic … seemed in imminent danger of collapse’ (Leeman Reference Leeman2008, 462).
For Finlay, therefore, history was not merely the study of the past. Rather, he saw the sacred duty of the historian in providing a faithful account of the past as intimately tied to our understanding of the present and of the future. Bancroft's view of the American national character as innate and predetermined – derived from Teutonic heritage and juxtaposed against the intrinsic inferiority of other races – thus cannot be reconciled with Finlay's outlook on the degradation of the Greek race.Footnote 41 While Finlay may recognise a predisposition towards greatness in the Greek national character, he did not see the achievement of this greatness as predetermined. As we shall see in the next section, he presents Greek decline as the result of extensive mismanagement and a reflexive cycle of centralisation and corruption. Critically, he uses this interpretation to propose solutions to these recurrent problems, suggesting that any attempt by modern Greeks to rebuild the greatness of their predecessors must arise from what he terms ‘moral progress’.Footnote 42 In Finlay's mind, this progress could only result from the efforts of the Greeks to restore themselves rather than from their innate characteristics.Footnote 43 In essence, while Bancroft depicts America's rise as the natural result of divine providence and distinctly American heredities, Finlay attributes the rise – and the fall – of Greek civilisations to factors within human control. This is almost certainly why Finlay eventually came to express disillusionment with a perceived lack of progress in Greece given that the tools for improvement were, in his view, well within reach.Footnote 44
‘Pedantry in politics’
Comments made by Finlay in the margins of his copy of Alexis de Tocqueville's Démocratie en Amérique emphasise the significance of Bancroft's and Finlay's contrasting worldviews in this respect. Finlay is sceptical when Tocqueville describes the formation of the US Senate and the House of Representatives and explains that each state ‘was to send two senators to Congress and a number of representatives in proportion of its population’.Footnote 45 Finlay remarks that such a system was ‘rather numerical + regular than logical + rational, for seven men ignorant of reading + writing may be less adapted to select a legislator than one educated man’.Footnote 46 He later states that ‘nothing is so perilous as pedantry in politics’, indicating his vehement opposition to centralisation in its many forms (Démocratie en Amérique, vol. I, 141–2 [Fin. O 125]). In his published works Finlay attributes the longevity of the Eastern Roman Empire versus that of its western counterpart to the localised institutions of the Greeks (Finlay Reference Finlay1877, I.xxi–xxii; see also Potter Reference Potter, Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas2009, note 48). The observations written on Finlay's own handwritten translation of Greece's 1864 Constitution (Fig. 5) demonstrate that this view was equally applicable in the case of modern Greece.Footnote 47 He tells us, for instance, that ‘National Institutions have their firmest basis in local self-government’ which ought to be embodied as the ‘general principle in the political constitution of the State’ (Finlay c. 1864, p. 38 [Fin. G 130]; Fig. 6).
Fig. 5. Finlay, c. 1864 (Fin. G 130). Right: ‘The Constitution of the Greek State. 1864, translated by George Finlay with some observations.’ Like much of his library collection, Finlay's translation is bound in a volume with other pamphlets and papers.
Fig. 6. Finlay c. 1864, p. 38 (Fin. G 130). Centre: ‘National Institutions have their firmest basis in local self-government. It would be well to embody the general principle in the political constitution of the State. The following clauses do this.’
In a resurgence of his legal training, Finlay goes so far as to author additional constitutional clauses to codify this in law, writing:
All Greeks have public duties to perform, local rights to exercise + national institutions to defend. Some of these duties + rights are inherent in the citizenship of a free country; others are created + defined by express laws. (Finlay c. 1864, pp. 38–9)
He assigns these rights and duties according to residency in parishes, wards, demes and provinces,Footnote 48 while the fundamental purpose of such institutions, he tells us, was to ‘secure self-government to the Greeks’ (Finlay c. 1864, p. 39 [Fin. G 130]). Self-government is a term that Bancroft also employs heavily, referring to it as ‘where an individual is the sovereign’ (History, vol. I, 185), but while Bancroft's interpretation appears to be literal – investing political power in the individual man in line with his Jacksonian beliefs – Finlay's interpretation is more nuanced. Finlay's comments in Tocqueville's work show his opposition to universal male suffrage,Footnote 49 while the suggestion that the state would render itself unto a perilous pedantry were it to attempt to manage the day-to-day lives of its citizens indicates that Finlay felt that institutions were to be managed on a localised basis. An apparent tension between the ideals of self-government and representative government thus arises. While Finlay openly states that institutions ought to serve the ‘ordinary’ man, his exclusion of those people from the machinations of the state is indicative of his view that local institutions – rather than centralised government – ought to have chief influence over their lives. To Finlay, the purpose of representative government was to allow selected advocates to promote the interests of the citizenry, thereby negating a need for the citizenry to represent themselves. Individuals ought instead to devote their attention to the cultivation of their local community rather than to the burden of statecraft.
Finlay's writings draw a distinction between the ‘nation’ and the ‘state’ that contrasts with Bancroft's conceptualisation of the ‘nation state’ as a historical actor (Billias Reference Billias2001, 518). In Finlay's view, a nation was the conglomeration of the communities to which all citizens belonged and in which all had duties and rights to exercise.Footnote 50 A state, by contrast, was predominantly a political and economic apparatus in which only certain members of society ought to be properly involved. In that sense, while every citizen may be considered part of the Greek nation, not all were to be part of the Greek state.
We find some indication of why Finlay felt this was the preferable form of social organisation elsewhere in his writings. In his History of the Greek Revolution, Finlay attributes the degradation of the Byzantine Empire to the ‘centralising despotism of the Byzantine emperors’ (Finlay Reference Finlay1861, I.17), with the accumulation of power at the centre perpetuating what Potter (Reference Potter, Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas2009, 18) calls ‘financial maladministration and fiscal oppression’. In essence, the centralisation of power – economic or otherwise – led to increasing levels of corruption in the state. Finlay's translation of the 1864 Greek Constitution again reveals that he felt such corruption was an issue in modern Greece, too,Footnote 51 and he writes elsewhere that ‘unless the representative be rendered dependent on the people, he will soon lose sight of their interest and think only of his own’.Footnote 52 Finlay advocates that institutions should be localised primarily to prevent this destructive centralisation and its corrupting influence, and we may infer that the limited role that he envisions for the state was similarly motivated.
In this, Finlay felt the United States succeeded better than any other nation. Writing to Howe in 1867, Finlay states, ‘Your government alone could teach the Greeks what liberty is and how much it depends on national institutions and popularly elected local administrations.’Footnote 53 He goes on to denounce British institutions as inadequate by comparison, arguing:
English freedom naturally attracts too much attention in Europe for it does not afford sufficient instruction in the art of administration and none in social organization. The front of the British political edifice is a noble building … but the back parts where social arrangements are conducted is … windowless, deformed and dreary … where a kind of lodging is obtained and slow improvements are made. (Finlay to Howe, February 1867)Footnote 54
We might suppose, then, that Finlay felt American ‘freedom’ was more successful in instructing what he terms ‘administration’ and ‘social organization’, and that the US federal system was better equipped to deliver self-government in line with the liberal ideals that he espouses whilst avoiding the pitfalls of centralisation and maladministration. Certainly, Finlay's comments to Felton, as outlined at the beginning of this article, suggest that this federalised system might deliver a similar liberty to the Greeks (and the Europeans more broadly) as it had to the Americans. Consequently, while his comments on Tocqueville's work demonstrate that he remained sceptical of the US system of government, it nonetheless seems to have represented a political system in which Finlay felt his key criteria for the governance of Greece were adequately fulfilled: national institutions had their basis in local communities within individual US states, presided over by a national government of restrained authority, and protected by the US Constitution which enshrined the right to self-government as its general principle.
This goes a long way in explaining why Finlay held the United States in such high esteem. Yet the accuracy of his idealised interpretation of the US federal system is somewhat inconsequential. Rather, its true utility comes in interpreting how American institutions were perceived in Europe during the nineteenth century and how, in turn, they inspired liberal conceptions of state-building in revolutionary nations on the other side of the Atlantic. It is in this vein that we might interpret Finlay's motivation in writing his style of history. Drawing on Robertson (Reference Robertson2007, 1–50), Sotiropoulos (Reference Sotiropoulos, Beaton and Gaulforthcoming) outlines Finlay's work in relation to the intellectual discourse of the Scottish Enlightenment in which the role of the philosopher was to ‘understand a society's condition, its stage in the scale of progress, and … to find ways to ensure its betterment’. As we have seen in his dialogical exchanges with Bancroft's work, Finlay connects the importance of a faithful historical account to the judgement of the citizenry. Not only was there an innate link between history writing and political judgement in his mind, but Finlay's conception of history was, at its very core, a diagnostic tool for the needs of society. In turn, it was a mechanism through which institutions might then be created or consolidated to fulfil those needs. Finlay's interest in political institutions (and his belief that they should encourage human progress) was thus deeply rooted in his historical interpretation. The mistakes of past Greek civilisations – centralising despotism, political corruption, financial maladministration – could only be avoided in modern Greece if they were thoroughly understood through historical enquiry, with national institutions suitably reformed to prevent their reoccurrence.
While scholars have recently reframed the Age of Revolutions as a fundamentally interconnected epoch in which ideas moved across cultural and national borders, the writing of national histories has not been fully factored into this development. Τhere is, of course, a natural temptation to view national histories as the product of singular national contexts, but we ought instead to consider the writing of national histories as an acutely transnational enterprise. Bancroft's History, for example, crystalises an Americentric view of the United States exclusively from within. In doing so, however, it prompted a dialogue with Finlay's own interpretation of the United States from the peripheral perspective of the Eastern Mediterranean. In turn, this dialogue came to influence Finlay's view of modern Greece and the way in which he wrote of its past and present. American institutions – with their emphasis on devolved authority and written constitutionalism – seemed particularly suited to the task of preventing another decline in Greece like those that Finlay examines in his own historical works. As his political writings subsequently make clear, it was to their example that he felt Greece should turn. Writings like those of George Finlay thus flesh out the centrality of international intellectual exchange to the development of history as a ‘scientific’ field, and it cannot be ignored that this development occurred in a similarly liminal period for state-building in post-revolutionary nations. Finlay's own linking of the two factors – national history writing and national emergence – only serves to reinforce this connection further. Consequently, the paradigm through which we have traditionally considered the history of history writing ought to be shifted in favour of a more transregional or global perspective that recognises the mobility of ideas (and of scholars themselves) in the nineteenth century.
A QUESTION OF AUDIENCE
The recording of the past can, of course, drive national consciousness in the present. Nineteenth-century Greece was a nation constituted of profoundly different communities: islanders, Maniots, Moreot klephtes, the armatoli of Rumeli, and many others. Among such diversity, a shared Greek language was often considered the greatest indicator of Hellenic identity; Adamantios Koraes, for instance, suggested that ‘only the study of [a man's] language distinguishes … the measure of his love for his patria’ (quoted in Zanou Reference Zanou2018, 167). But such a view does not take account of the Greeks of Asia Minor, many of whom retained their Hellenism while no longer speaking the Greek language.Footnote 55 The divisions between Greeks even proved so great that, at times, inter-Greek conflict became the dominant issue during the Greek Revolution (Mazower Reference Mazower2021, 271–4). A difficulty in creating a national community from fractious, often competing cliques thus emerges, with the writing of history providing – in a way not dissimilar to Bancroft's History – a sense of homogeneity. In writing the history of Greece, intellectuals like Finlay played an important role in constructing the collective history of ‘the Greeks’.Footnote 56
Any such unity accomplished by the writing of Greek history was by no means deliberate in Finlay's case. While we might locate his writings at the critical juncture between history as a national discipline and nineteenth-century political economy, to focus too heavily on Finlay's brand of history in relation only to the national context of Greece would be a mistake. While Finlay's work would have been available to those in Greece who could read it, its publication in English makes it clear that Finlay's intention was not to rally harmony among the Greek masses, in contrast to Bancroft's work, which clearly set out to do so for the Americans. Rather, Finlay's audience appears to have been distinctly and intentionally international. Certainly, any sense of homogeneity achieved by Finlay's collective references to the Greeks seems more relevant to an outward-facing audience than within the domestic context of Greece itself. Further, aside from being his mother tongue, the publication of Finlay's work in English as the intellectual lingua franca of the ‘Pax Britannica’ would have allowed the dissemination of Finlay's ideas regarding nationhood and institutions across Britain, the Empire and further afield. While Finlay wrote extensively of Greek history and Greek institutions, the ideals he espouses in his work – not least localised institutions and administration – would have been equally applicable to any of the societies in which his work may have been read, as may the lessons that he draws from his study of Greek history. One may thus see Finlay's Greece as an exemplar – good and bad – for the post-revolutionary states of the mid nineteenth century. For Finlay, Greece had much to offer in bringing to fruition the liberal conceptions of statehood in which he passionately believed, congruent with the general progress of humanity.
Finlay himself seems to confirm these conclusions. Writing to John Stuart Blackie in 1857, he explains that while Spyridon Trikoupis had written his History as a Greek writing for a Greek audience, Finlay had instead written for English-speakers to whom the history of Greece was a part of world history.Footnote 57 To some extent, then, we may see Finlay as an early ‘global’ historian. Finlay's work crystallises a range of European liberalisms (Potter Reference Potter, Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas2009, 14) in relation to Greece, suggesting that he perceived the Greek Revolution to be a fundamental building block of a wider revolutionary age that ought to be part of the discourse when interpreting the bigger picture. His demonstrable interest in other regions like America, whilst maintaining a grounding in Greek history, suggests that Finlay sought to push Greece into the conversation regarding the advance of human society at large. In that sense, Finlay's work acts as a Greek counterpart to the national histories emerging from Britain, Germany and America at the time. As we have seen, however, his methodology in doing so is distinct from that of his contemporaries – not only that of Bancroft but also Trikoupis, among others.Footnote 58
A small pencil highlight in Finlay's copy of Démocratie en Amérique (vol. I, 382–3 [Fin. O 125]) gives us another tantalising indication of what he saw as the overall aim of his scholarly endeavours. When writing of a choice between absolute freedom or absolute despotism, Tocqueville comments:
If men were to reach the point of having to choose between total freedom or total slavery, total equality or total denial of rights, and if the rulers of societies were reduced to the alternative, either gradually to raise the masses up to their position or to reduce all citizens below the level of common humanity, would that not be enough to overcome many doubts, to reassure many consciences and to prepare each man readily to make great sacrifices?
Finlay's response is merely to emphasise Tocqueville's notion of ‘gradually [raising] the masses up’. It is hard to imagine that Finlay conceived of any greater goal in politics or history alike.
CONCLUSION
While not a household name, George Finlay remains the foremost English language historian of the Greek Revolution. Without his letters, publications and other works, the job of modern historians would be an infinitely harder task. This work aimed to take Finlay's writings beyond the lens of philhellenism and the Greek Revolution through which they are usually considered. My aim was to give greater consideration not only to Finlay's place in the historiographical canvas of the nineteenth century, but also to his distinctive rationale, methodology and style of history. Whether such an outcome is a fait accompli is not my determination to make, much as Finlay himself remained unconvinced of his work's contribution to a greater understanding of the human past. What I hope I have been able to demonstrate in this article is Finlay's importance as a historian and as a historical figure. His liminality between imperial British and peripheral Greek perspectives, his Scottish and German education, and his observational view of the United States make Finlay a nexus of many nineteenth-century transnational intellectual currents. His writings have much to offer to the further study of their interactions and alignments at a critical time for history as a discipline. This is to say nothing of his personal role in the Greek Revolution and the political and social organisation of independent Greece. I hope that this work has also gone some way in demonstrating the utility of marginalia as an underappreciated method of historical study, especially in the absence of a well-defined or agreed upon methodology through which they may be approached.
Finlay's writings represent a step towards the history to which present-day scholars are accustomed. His attempts to understand cause and effect, historicism, and human agency stand Finlay in contrast to contemporaries like Trikoupis and Bancroft. The disparities between the works of Bancroft and Finlay in particular exemplify a very real divergence in historical thinking during the nineteenth century. Such a divide has traditionally been attributed to the success and failure of revolutions on either side of the Atlantic (e.g. Ross Reference Ross1984), but this argument fails to take account of the fundamentally transnational nature of history writing in this period. Both Finlay and Bancroft received educations in Germany, developing far broader worldviews than is immediately apparent when considering their national origins. Yet Bancroft's spirit of history appears to be ‘pure American’, focusing on the providential rise of the United States as part of a mythology of America that sits astride classical and Christian traditions. Finlay, by contrast, wrote in defence of civil liberty by committing to paper the development of Greece's national institutions, exploring the national character of the Greeks and attempting to understand the causation between the cyclical rises, falls and rebirths of the Greek people. These differences result from contrasting purposes of history as much as varied historical methodologies. Bancroft's History is, in many ways, a vindication of the United States: it excuses American slavery, justifies American expansion and rationalises America's move towards universal male suffrage in a period – certainly in Europe – defined by a discomfort with more direct forms of democracy. In line with the thinking of the Scottish Enlightenment, Finlay's conception of history instead diagnoses the needs of society to ensure its socio-political progress, both in relation to socio-political institutions themselves and the national consciousness that underpins them.
In that sense, the works of Bancroft and Finlay both appear to give a unifying narrative of nationhood, though the intent to do so is far more obvious and intentional in the case of the former. We might therefore consider the outcome of their respective works. Bancroft's History accomplishes its goal of providing a stirring narrative of America's origins that might aid in the search for national identity in the Antebellum period, but it compromises on its historical veracity in the process. Finlay's works, meanwhile, act as an interpretative tool through which the study of the past might be wrought to gain a greater understanding of the present and build a more prosperous future. One of the most significant contrasts between the two historians is contained therein. While Bancroft writes to consolidate and legitimise American self-aggrandisement, Finlay's writings provide an exemplar for the post-revolutionary states of the early to mid nineteenth century – the ‘dos and don'ts’ of statehood that nations in any part of the world might learn from the experiences of modern Greece. In that sense, we might consider Bancroft's style of history to be fundamentally ‘backward-looking’ in its teleology, whereas Finlay's approach inevitably seems ‘forward-facing’ in its didacticism. While revolutions might be considered a state's birth, Finlay's works give an indicator of how to navigate its subsequent adolescence. His writings are thus part of an important, if neglected, nineteenth-century dialogue regarding what comes after a revolution – a discourse upon which there remains much work to be done.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many of the ideas in this article were first presented at a collaborative seminar hosted by the British School at Athens (BSA) and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). My gratitude goes to then-Assistant Directors Dr Michael Loy (BSA) and Dr Simone Agrimonte (ASCSA) for facilitating my participation. My utmost thanks must also go to Professor Sir Roderick Beaton, Emeritus Koraes Chair (King's College London), and Dr Michalis Sotiropoulos, 1821 Fellow in Modern Greek Studies (BSA), without whom this article could not have been brought to fruition. To Michalis, in particular, I am grateful both for his guidance and for his friendship. I also thank Professor John Bennet and Ms Deborah Harlan for their encouragement throughout my tenure at the British School and Professor Rebecca Sweetman for hers since. Most of all, I thank Evi Charitoudi, Evgenia Villioti and Amalia Kakissis – BSA Librarian, Assistant Librarian, and Archivist, respectively – for the unrestricted access to BSA collections that enabled this study and those that may, I hope, follow it.
