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THE UNITY OF HISTORY AND PERIODS? THE UNIQUE HISTORICAL PERIODIZATION OF E. A. FREEMAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2016

ODED Y. STEINBERG
ODED Y. STEINBERG*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Freie Universität Berlin E-mail: Odedyst@gmail.com
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Abstract

The Victorian historian E. A. Freeman (1823–92), following Thomas Arnold, promoted the innovative idea of the “unity of history,” according to which history was a linked, recurring cycle without the artificial boundary of periods. In recent research, however, it is little noticed that, along with this “unity” theory, Freeman also emphasized the ruptures and the divisions in history. It is even less noticed that Freeman devised a unique periodization, which abolished AD 476 as the date marking the fall of Rome. Thus the very idea of the “unity of history” seems to contradict the use of periods. The former stressed a historical continuum while the latter denoted historical ruptures. This article argues that Freeman's notion of “race” could, in most cases, solve the apparent tension between these two “divergent” ideas (unity versus periods). Nevertheless, it is also argued that in some exceptional cases Freeman identified other factors besides race (e.g. religion) as transforming the innate racial belonging and the predestined course of history.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 651 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

* I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Simon J. Cook for his advice and constructive comments. I also wish to thank Oliver Zimmer (Oxford University) for his comments on earlier drafts. This article was written thanks to the generous support of the joint post-doctoral fellowship of the Freie Universität, Berlin and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. I also wish to acknowledge the support of the European Forum and the Faculty of History at the Hebrew University.

References

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23 Lake, “Essentially Teutonic,” 60–61.

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27 Freeman, “Race and Language,” 183.

28 In a letter to the famous geologist and palaeontologist Sir William Boyd Dawkins, Freeman described the “Blacks” as physically inferior, while referring to his own Aryan supremacy: “The really queer thing is the niggers who swarm here; my Aryan prejudices go against them.” See Freeman to Dawkins, 15–16 Oct. 1881, in Stephens, W. R. W., The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2 vols. (London, 1895), 2Google Scholar: 234.

29 “The Jews must be very nearly, if not absolutely, a pure race, in a sense in which no European nation is pure. The blood remains untouched by conversion; it remains untouched even by intermarriage. The Jew may be sure of his own stock, in a way in which none of the rest of us, Dutch, Welsh, or anything else, can be sure.” See Freeman, “Race and Language,” 230.

30 Freeman, HOS, 2: 22–3.

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50 Already in the middle of the eighteenth century, Voltaire defined modern history as the era “since the decay of the Roman Empire.” See Gerhard, Dietrich, “Periodization in History,” in Wiener, Philip P., ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, vol. 3 (New York, 1973), 476–81, at 477Google Scholar.

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60 Ibid.

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65 Freeman, Edward A., The Ottoman Power in Europe, Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London, 1877), 5Google Scholar, added emphasis.

66 Bury, who was much younger than Freeman, edited several of Freeman's books. Following Bury's reviews of Freeman's HOS the latter even told him, “You understand me as nobody else does.” See Freeman to Bury, 22 Feb. 1892, in Stephens, Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2: 453.

67 Bury to Freeman, 15 Nov. 1891, Freeman papers, MSS FA1, JRUL.

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72 Ibid., 353–4.

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74 Ibid., 1: 291.

75 Ibid., 1: 301–2.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., 2: 22–3.

78 Ibid., 1: 302 n.

79 The theory of Anglo-Saxon expansion became popular among American historians. The main “carrier” of this theory was Freeman's friend, the historian Herbert B. Adams. See Bell, “Alter Orbis,” 233–4; Stephens, Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2: 181. Furthermore, for many British scholars, America, as Duncan Bell demonstrates, became a new model for the future of the empire. See Bell, Duncan, “From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought,” Historical Journal, 49/3 (2006), 735–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 755–9.

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87 Freeman, The History and Conquests of the Saracens, 21. As Gibbon famously declared, “I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion.” See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 12: 191.

88 Freeman, The History and Conquests of the Saracens, 3.

89 Ibid.

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94 For a later original periodization see Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 234.

95 Freeman, “Mahometanism,” 450.

96 Freeman, Ottoman Power, xix.

97 Ibid., xx.

98 Freeman, “Mahometanism,” 453–4.

99 Kelley, “Past History and Present Politics,” 120–23; Morrisroe, “Eastern History with Western Eyes,” 30–32.

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104 Freeman, Historical Geography, 17.

105 Ibid.

106 Freeman, Ottoman Power, 4.

107 Freeman, HOS, 2: 166–7.

108 Freeman, “Race and Language,” 173–7.

109 Freeman, The Chief Periods of European History, 138–9.