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A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
[1952-1957]
(Cohen A260) (Woods A138)
Churchill's last great work was published nearly twenty years after its first draft was penned in the late 1930s, just after Churchill had wrapped up Marlborough. This enabled him to utilize the literary team he’d asmbled for the biography, to which he added dozens of outlines he had solicited from scholars. In his Preface he remarks that the book "slumbered peacefully" until 1956, "when things have quietened down." They had certainly quieted for him; for the first time since 1922-23, when he was briefly out of Parliament, his voice no longer counted at the summit of affairs. Reading reports of the last decade of his life, one is struck by the central interest his History reprented in his final years, how rapidly he sank into decline and depression after the final volume was published. His prewar contract with Casll called for him to be paid £20,000; the work eventually earned millions, was repeatedly reprinted, and remains in print today.
In its final form the original single volume evolved to four, each of which was
published simultaneously in Britain, the USA and Canada—a first for Churchill's works.
Each volume is divided into three "books." Volume I, The Birth of Britain, takes us from the primitive tribes who formed the "Island Race" to the development of the nation through the Feudal Age, ending with the reign of Richard III. Volume II, The New World, spans the period from the consolidati
on of the Tudor dynasty in 1485 to the "great and glorious" Revolution of 1688, the emergence of England as a great power, and the establishment in North America of "lively and asrtive communities" of English-speaking peoples. Volume III, The Age of Revolution, was perhaps Churchill's favourite, covering as it does the 1668-1815 period: from William III through the age of Marlborough and Queen Anne and the American war of Independence, to Trafalgar, Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon. Our author reminds us that this critical period produced three revolutions which "profoundly influenced mankind. They occurred within the space of a hundred years, and all of them led to war between the English and the French." Volume IV, The Great Democracies, is more detailed, covering only eighty-five years of 19th century history: recovery after the Treaty of Vienna, the mid-century reforms, the development of the United States, Victorian Britain, the modern Empire. There it stops. "I could not write about the woe and ruin of the terrible twentieth century," Churchill told his doctor, Lord Moran, exhibiting a foretaste of his old age ennui: "We answered all the tests. But it was uless." (Diary of 19 June 1956, Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, London and Boston: 1966).
History was roundly hailed in almost sycophantic terms by contemporary The
reviewers, for Churchill had by now reached the mellow status of a living legend—and dervedly so.
He had not yet been subject to the historical reconsideration all legends receive sooner or later (equally dervedly). For the purpos of this book, I find latter day analys more interesting, and have substituted some dramatically different viewpoints for the usual contemporary book reviews.
This work has been roundly criticid for the same fault as The Second World War, that it is "not history." It is certainly less an original contribution to history than Marlborough. Yet, as with his memoirs of the two World Wars, Churchill himlf never claimed that it was history: "This book does not ek to rival the works of professional historians. It aims rather to prent a personal view on the process whereby English-speaking peoples throughout the world have achieved their distinctive position and
Here again Churchill leaves himlf open to critics: his work is Atlantic-centric: Australia and New Zealand get only a few paragraphs of boilerplate. Moreover, it is Anglo-centric. Reading it, the proverbial man from Mars would scarcely reali that the United States and Canada were built by m
any besides Englishmen; that the Industrial Revolution was not entirely beneficent; that labour unions were necessary to stem the excess of laisz-faire; that all wars were not glorious (although the American Civil War gets its share of gravitas); that America and the Great Dominions evolved a new aristocracy bad on merit, not birth like the old one—and as such express vastly different cultures than the Mother Country's. Clearly this complaint about the History is valid—but Churchill himlf would probably not have contested it. Clement Attlee perhaps had the best one-line description of the work when he suggested that it might have been entitled, Things in History Which Interested Me.
Churchill's aristocratic breeding may be his greatest failure as a writer of what might be called (though he didn't) popular history. The great climacterics in democracy's evolution, for example, did not usually lead directly to power of, by and for the people; Magna Charta's immediate effect was privilege for the aristocracy versus the State. But where would the English and American Democracies be without Magna Carta? Is Churchill wrong to emphasize that great piece in democracy's mosaic, even if he doesn't bother equally to limn the influence of Rousau and Montesquieu on the American Constitution?
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Another criticism of the work is our author's "smug satisfaction" over the "perfection" of the British an
d American systems, but this is a sweeping overstatement. Recall if you will his 1954 respon to a churlish letter from Einhower, suggesting he make a speech about "the rights to lf-government," since "Colonialism is on the way out." Churchill's reply displays remarkable frankness for a statesman so often regarded as a devious Machiavellian: "In this I must admit I am a laggard. I am a bit skeptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional reprentation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged
黎平一中and even they are not perfect yet." (Boyle, ed., The Churchill Einhower Correspondence 1953-1955 (University of North Carolina Press 1990).
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Not much smug satisfaction there. And how much better it would have been had Einhower and Eden heeded Churchill's strictures over Suez two years later—not to mention the Somalis, Rwandans and Congole of the 1990s, and maybe even the Indians and Pakistanis of the 1940s? How much better it would have been for all the British colonial peoples if the end of Empire had been pursued with less of what Churchill described as "unemly scuttle"?
To other modern analysts of Churchill's literary output, the standard complaints about his History miss a fairly broad point. Professor James W. Muller, one of America's leading Churchill scholars, su
cpu推荐ms it up this way: "This is a magnificent interpretation of British history from a man who had as good a claim to have a practical grasp of statesmanship as any writer who ever described it. One can learn a great deal about how Churchill interpreted his own regime by reading this book—what he thought important, and why. The idea that it is a merely personal view is like the idea that his prime ministry was merely personal: in a n, quite true, but in a more important n, beside the point, which is that the views of this person, becau of his experience and grasp of politics, are more derving of our attention than tho of any number of conventionally educated Ph.D.s."怎么勾引
-Richard M. Langworth
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From the Reviews
“How, now that we have the four fat volumes before us, can Churchill's value as an historian be assd? The modern schools of history, compod of rious and pessimistic scholars, do not appreciate the dramatic or romantic reprentation of events and prefer to analyze human fortunes in social or economic terms. Churchill is, of cour, well aware of the alterations occasioned in human thoughts and wishes by such factors as mass immigration, religious enthusiasms, the rivalry between urban and rural communities and the varying demands for spices, sugar, cotton, tar or timb
er. He adheres, however, to the old-fashioned view that national destiny is most often marred or furthered by the action upon the contemporary environment of men of willpower and genius. ‘The fortunes of mankind,’ he writes, ‘are largely the result of the impact upon events of superior beings.’ To the scientific historian this may em an oversimplification of the pattern or circumstance. To the ordinary person the flash and dash of Churchill's zest will render the four volumes readable, humane, exhilarating,
memorable Few historians, moreover, have been gifted with a style of equal subtlety and vigor, a style at once classical and romantic, preci and imaginative, tolerant yet gently ironical, deeply nsitive to the tragedy of human failure and scornful only of tho who are faithless to the virtue within them. The four volumes leave us with enhanced admiration for human character, and an added compassion for human fallibility. They are the legacy of a man of superhuman energy, great intellectual powers and utmost simplicity of soul.”
-Harold Nicolson, The New York Times Book Review, 16 March 1958
Comments
This is a physically beautiful edition. Churchill told his doctor, Lord Moran, "...it is not necessary to br
eak the back of the book to keep it open. I made them take away a quarter of an inch from the outer margins of the two pages and then add the half inch so gained to the inner margin. Look at it, Charles. It opens like an angel's wings." (Diary for 29 February 1956, Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, London and Boston: 1966). The dust jackets are equally magnificent. All this, plus its priority as the First Edition make this the one to own if you only own one.
Appraisal
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All volumes are more than usually susceptible to spotting of the page edges and dulling of gilt spines; jackets hold up much better than the books beneath. Clean ts bearing some spotting and dulled gilt, in clean dust jackets, ll for relatively modest prices, but truly fine ts are at a premium. Be sure the stained top page edges haven't faded and that there is no trace of page edge spotting, and store them in a dry place.
