BOOKS
Cambridge History
By DESMOND WILLIAMS OVER fifty years ago, Lord Acton planned the outline of a universal history which was to sum up the historical research of preceding generations and of his own. He had great visions of the Cambridge Modern History as a stepping- stone to definitive history and as an abstract or a scale reduction of all our knowledge of the modern period. He died before he could execute his plan, and others were to carry it .to its con- clusion. The venture hardly lived up to his high hopes, and for many years generations of English sudents have had to plough through the massive twelve tomes of the CMH. That work failed per- il 'Ps on account of the absence of a unitary concept. The planning itself was vitiated by a, positivi and atomistic approach to the subjects; and contributions were unequal in value.
Cambridge—or at least part of it—has now tried a second time. The advisory committee in- cluded Sir G. N. Clark, J. R. M. Butler, J. P. T. Bury and the late E. A. Benians; and the work is edited, in this particular volume,* the first in the new series, by Professor G. R. Potter. Pro- fessor Potter, however, has decided to interrupt his editorial functions in order to take up an 'appointment as cultural attachd at the British Embassy in Bonn.' Perhaps he was right.
Modesty is now the cult among 'establishment' historians. Those responsible for the planning of the new work do not professedly make the same high claims as Acton. They do not purport to be 'definitive' or 'scientific.' To judge from this much-heralded volume the professional his- torian of today, if he reacts against the extrava- gant vision of his ancestors, falls into the other extreme of pharisaical and smug humility. These writers in the main are competent; they dare little, and stimulate not at all.
Sir George Clark has written a sensible, though in part irrelevant and rambling, general intro- duction. At its conclusion he expresses the hope that what has been created is 'an articulated history,' whatever that may be. In fact, the plan of the new series differs very little from that of the old one; it suffers from many of the defects Which marred the earlier work. The history, as Written, is conventional and dull, safe but often second-hand. One rarely has the feel of original research produced by original minds. The equiva- lent volume in the old work included some dis- tinguished names—for example, Tout, Bury, Ward, Cunningham and Figgis. It is astounding how little, in fact, is added to our knowledge by a comparison .of the new version with the old. The chapters on the Hispanic kingdoms, the in- * THE NEW CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY: I, THE RENAISSANCE, 1493-1520. Edited by G. R. Potter. (C.U.P., 37s. 6d.) vasions of Italy, the Burgundian Netherlands and on learning and education in Western Europe all give a superficial, smooth and by no means com- prehensive survey of the wider trends within the fields chosen. Everything is neatly arranged; depth and imagination are strikingly lacking. Pro- fessor Denys Hay provides us with an introduc- tion in which he deals partly with the conceptual problems raised by the term 'Renaissance' and mentions some of the more obvious developments in the political and intellectual history of the period. It will hardly deepen our understanding of the struggle and torments of that unsteady and changing period. Similar comments can be made about most of the other contributions, with the favourable exception of Professor Darby's chapter 'The Face of Europe on the Eve of the Great Discoveries.' The chapter on art is also an improvement on the old version.
It is always easy and sometimes unfair for a reviewer to query omissions in a large- scale history of this sort. In Professor Weiss's chapter on learning and education in Europe there are no references to humanists such as Mutian, Crotus Rubianus, Cochlaeus or CEco- lampadius. All were significant in the German Renaissance and subsequently in the history of the Reformation. Copernicus is not mentioned once in the whole volume. He doubtless will appear later, but the omission of even a passing reference is peculiar. Very little is to be found about 'science,' and surely the Paris Sorbonne School at the beginning of the fifteenth century might have been touched upon in retrospect. Separate chapters of a general nature on the in- tellectual and social developments of that critical age would also have been helpful. They also would have made the history more 'live.'
Professor Weiss says 'the Reformation was in a way both the culmination and the ruin of humanism.' This may be a suggestive epigram; it is also a misleading one. Humanism flowed on in various channels to influence Reformation and Counter-reformation in the subsequent age. Erasmus reached down to the Council of Trent and the Jesuit order—at least, Acton thought so. And Melanchthon, Contarini, Calvin and Morone, not to speak of Cardinal Charles Guise, were not only partly sons of the Renaissance, they also brought some of it into their world.
Events and ideas are usually divorced from personality in many of these chapters. A man's thought or actions, his success or failure cannot easily be divorced from his character as it ap- peared to his contemporaries. Erasmus and Hutten, not to mention other leading men of the Renaissance, were impeded in their influence by current reactions to their moral behaviour. We hardly get even a glimmering of personality and almost no characterisation throughout large stretches of this book.
The planners of this volume decided to 'de- partmentalise' the political history. Each volume apparently will contain brief, and somewhat dis- continuous, chapters on successive periods in the history of the different nations involved. This arrangement was also adopted in the case of the old CMH. It was unfortunate then; and is unfor- tunate now. It would be far better to have either a full and continuous national history of one country, or to take a number of countries, ob- viously connected in the historical process, and treat them all under one heading as part of one coherent aspect of historical development. Another defect in this volume is the relatively small part devoted to eastern Europe, In the period 1493-1520 that region was important as part of Europe and not merely on account of subsequent and contemporary developments. Mr. MeCartney's chapter on eastern Europe is scud and does communicate effectively a coherent im- pression of events over a wide area. It is a pity that his subject was not given more space.
This volume neither fulfils the requirements of a standard textbook nor those of intensified and specialised original research. The student will once more have tedious hours and the re- search historian will receive no encouragement. It is difficult indeed to avoid the conclusion that The New Cambridge Modern History, in its first volume, is a, failure. Invidious comparisons be- tween 'establishment' history in Britain and the achievements of general history in France and Germany can hardly be avoided.
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