Methodological Innovations? Henk te Velde, Charles Tilly and the Manifesto of Transfer History

The 12th number of the 2005 issue of the Revue Europeenne d’Histoire saw the crystallization of a new historiographical undercurrent: the history of transfers. The entire tome was dedicated to this novel way of looking at historical research and indeed, history. It is safe to say that this number of the Revue was meant to serve as a promoter and in some ways, a manifesto to the merits of studying historical transference. The efforts of the contributors to this undertaking was divided in two major categories. The first major chapter was dedicated to political transference, the second to social diffusion of models. The task of writing an apologia for the enterprise was taken up by Henk te Velde, and bolstered in the second part by Charles Tilly. This division of labor between the two scholars was quite conspicous, but as this essay will prove, not accidental by any means. It is the contention of this paper that there is a clear-cut connection between the inner logical framework of transfer history and structuralist historical sociology. Therefore, the inclusion of Charles Tilly is not coincidental, but consequential, since he becomes the flying buttress of this nascent historical Weltanschauung.
The definition of the history of transfers is announced early-on, in the introductory article of Henk te Velde(1) . It is conceptualized as the study of ”migrations of political practices across national borders (2)”. The merit of this approach, the Dutch scholar argues, is that it does away with national constrictions, so taken for granted by historiographers of past. In this manner of looking at historical knowledge, pitfalls such as German Sonderweg ideas or images of French exceptionalism, can be avoided. History can become much more broad in its interpretatory efforts and highly contextualized in its explanations. Historians can, by adopting this methodology, become involved in a wide array of thematic debates, and the field, as such, can be unified as never before. The chimera of Historia Magistra Vitae is in some way, looming in the backdrop. However, in order to avoid being viewed as a new claimant to the role of a panacea in the field of history and social sciences, a few curtailments are put on its scope. Its demarché is concentrated upon the analysis of the ”long nineteenth century(3) ”. Te Velde also claims that transfer history is not a model, not a method, but a heuristic tool, a new way of looking at history(4) . This cognitive device views history as a web of interconnected units, transferring ideas and concepts between one another.
Transfer history identifies comparative history as its main counterpoint. Its main legitimating strategy is therefore to engage in a favorable polemic with this counterpart, and criticize a number of its shortcomings. The most important of these is its claim that comparative historical studies take national units as given, and only operate within these structures. In this way, instead of providing alternatives to the classical national historiographies, they shore them up, by overtly emphasizing the differences between national units (5). This argument is not a fully valid one, since even the earliest works proposing a comparative agenda, such as Marc Bloch’s, insist on the fact that it can be utilized on various levels(6) , out of which the national is just one. On the other hand, it can be argued that scholars that defend the virtues of transfer history fall into the same trap, committing mistakes similar to those they accuse comparativists of perpetuating. The choices of the time-span for their activities are a haunting reminder of a periodization that covers the high-point of nation-states. Moreover, in this particular issue of the Revue, the majority of the scholars choose themes that concern transference between units that are identified or defined as belonging to some nation or another. The articles of Nicolas Rousselier, Annelien de Dijn, or Stefan Berger all deal with the transmutation of political practices, be it those of German Socialism(7) , or English parliamentarism(8) , to foreign contexts. The logical conclusion that can be deduced from this formatting of scholarly research is that something particular to a political practice existed at a time in a certain political context, that set it apart from what was occurring in other contexts. These particularisms, furthermore, are designated as “English”, “French” or “German”, ergo, still operating within national boundaries. It can be therefore argued that historians of transfer do not completely live up to the standards they themselves constructed.
Transfer history claims ascendancy over the comparative method, seeking to supersede it due to its superior ontological world-view. But at a closer look, its point of departure seems to be quite similar to that of a comparative approach. In their choice of units of analysis and the relationship between them, the study still insists on resemblances and differences. In fact, comparison is tacit in the study of transfers. It is therefore difficult to argue that the history of transfer is different, and some comparativists might postulate that it is just a rehashed version of their respective approach. One important breaking-point, according to Henk and his camp, is the interest for causation. Certainly, transfer history’s focal point, as extolled in the 2005 issue of the European Review of History, is not searching for causal models(9) . Be that as it may, the contention that comparative history is all about causality rests on a vulgarized understanding of it. Comparison is an element of a toolkit at the disposal of researchers, and can therefore be utilized in a number of situations. The examination of causal models, the testing of hypotheses, the search for commonalities and divergences are just a few that can be mentioned.
There is something, though, to the claim of transfer history offering a different view on historical studies. This can be decanted from its construction of the model of transfers. In its simplest and most basic form, it utilizes a conceptual apparatus borrowed from the field of semiotics. The two protagonists of it are the emitter and the receiver. The message is emitted from the former to the latter, in a mono-directional fashion. There a number of filters, cultural, societal and so forth that affect the transfer of the message, and have a say in its final meaning. This blueprint of transfer is, nevertheless, a hybridized version of the original. This is its major weak point. This pattern’s Achilles heel is that it does not possess a comprehensive mechanism of active feed-back, from the receiver to the emitter. One can then make the argument that the isolation of pure transfer is so difficult, as to be almost impossible. The existence of undiluted transfers, occurring in concordance with the mechanism described above, is questionable.
Two examples Henk te Velde uses are the practices of boycott and that of parliamentary obstruction. As it is a subject the author of this essay is quite familiar with, it shall be the one analyzed. The Dutch historian claims it was a practice invented, or re-invented by Irish MP’s in the latter part of the 19th century as a political tactic with which to combat the negative aspects of British imperial system(10) . Due to its enormous success, in forcing the English Parliament (the epitome of similar institutions of the period) to grind to a halt, and its propensity of being a political strategy which worked within the confines of the legal system, it was quickly adopted on the European mainland, and even overseas. The most spectacular forms of obstruction occurred in late 19th-early 20th century Austria-Hungary, and Hungary, within it. The members of the opposition in the Hungarian Lower House found this tactic to be quite well-tailored to their objectives, and rapidly adopted it as a favorite in the late 1880’s(11) . However, just as soon as “obstruction” became a common thopos of the Hungarian political lexicon, it changed its original meaning. Its utilizers did not find the Irish methods effective enough in delaying parliamentary proceedings, and increasingly began to mix in more and more violence, at first verbal. Honking horns and other means of distracting attention became commonplace, so much so that in 1904, then House-President Tisza Istvan evicted rowdy deputies by force. The culmination of this aggressive wrangling and obstruction was the destruction of the furniture and fixings of the Lower House of the Hungarian Parliament in early 1905 by enraged opposition deputies. This evolution and change of meaning of the term “obstruction” begs the question: what of the original essence of the term remains when such a “transfer” occurs? If the acceptation of the word “obstruction” (the end-product) is so diverging in Ireland and Hungary, did a transfer really happen? One can argue that nothing more than the designation of “obstruction”, “filibuster” or “cloture” migrated, and not much else.
The articles contributed to the issue of the Revue promoting the history of transfers have a common theoretical standpoint. It is best expressed by te Velde’s and Tilly’s introductory articles. The mechanics of transference and diffusion are the binding points. The theoretical backbone of transfer history is transplanted from such social scientists as Everett Roger (extensively praised)(12) and Charles Tilly (whose inclusion in the tome is therefore easily comprehensible). The concepts of hyper-difference and over-likeness, alongside Tilly’s triadic nexus for conditioning a successful transfer(13) , are all utilized profusely. The idea that a transfer always travels from a core that innovates to a public that adapts, is a leitmotif. This blueprint is quite reminiscent of Wallersteinian and other schemes, popular among social sciences in the 1960’s- 70’s. It seems that, in this sense, transfer history is no more than a transplantation of a core-periphery, classical dependency paradigm into the field of the study of political ideas and practices. This approach certainly has its merits, but has received a fair amount of criticism from post-structuralism. The main point of critique was that it pre-invents a model or definition and applies it on concrete cases ( as opposed to comparative studies that use their approach to test their hypothetical standpoints). The pre-existence of a supra-national network that allows transfer is also paramount; for example, Wolfram Kaiser speaks of “proto-globalization(14) ”. This draws after it the conclusion that the transfer-approach is limited in time and space to when such a network can be comprehensively proven to being in existence, otherwise it is an exercise in anachronism. The allegory of world-system theory and the notion of capitalism is omnipresent.
This renders the whole theoretic grounding of the system hopelessly fragile. It, for example, cannot on its own, account for political practices and innovations having multiple centers of innovation. Political ideologies are of such nature; our contemporary understanding of liberalism stems from a multitude of composite elements, be it French, English or American of origin. Another lacuna of the theorizers of transfer history is the role of mediators; it is not fully explained how a particular mediator affects the transmission of a practice ( its final form). In Kaiser’s article, Kossuth Lajos is presented as such a mediator, exporting the idea of Hungarian national self-determination to America, England and wherever he toured(15) . One possible avenue of this criticism directed against this line of thought is to claim that it was the multi-centered 1848 revolution that diffused ideas of national liberties and self-empowerment, not Kossuth. His tour therefore owes its popularity to the practice of “preaching to the converted”, before anything else.
The history of transfers presents an interesting approach and manner of looking at historical studies. Its merits are manifold, especially its criticism of the traditional national parochialism deserves serious attention. However, its claim of being a method of trans-national history bequeaths criticism. Due to its overt ambition, it fails to deliver on a number of goals which it designated for itself. The adoption of theoretical groundwork from the field of social sciences would be meritorious, if it would not fall prey to the same almost-teleological rigor that brought much criticism to sociology in the past. This robs transfer history of the flexibility of the very object which it claims to supersede, comparative history.

Notes:
1.Henk te Velde, Political Transfer: an introduction, p. 205
2.Henk te Velde, Political Transfer: an introduction, p. 205
3.te Velde, Political Transfer…, p. 205
4.te Velde, Political Transfer…, p. 206
5.te Velde, p. 206
6.Bloch, Marc, A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies, in Land and Work in Medieval Europe, pp. 44-81.
7.Berger, Stefan, Herbert Morrison’s London Labour Party in the Interwar Years and the SPD: Problems of Transferring German Socialist Practices to Britain, pp. 291-306
8.de Dijn, Annelien, Balancing the Constitution: Bicameralism in Post-revolutionary France, 1814-31, pp. 249-268 and Roussellier, Nicolas, The Political Transfer of English Parliamentary Rules in the French Assemblies (1789-1848), pp. 239-248
9.Cohen, Deborah, O’Connor, Maura, Comparison and history : Europe in cross-national perspective, New York : Routledge, 2004, p. xii
10.te Velde, pp. 215-216
11.Gero Andras, Az elsopro kisebbseg. Nepkepviselet a Monarchia Magyarorszagan. Budapest: Gondolat, 1988, p.89
12.te Velde, p. 208
13.Tilly, Charles, Invention, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Social Movement Repertoire, p. 308, p. 310
14.Wolfram Kaiser, Transnational Mobilization and Cultural Representation: Political Transfer in an Age of Proto-Globalization, Democratization and Nationalism 1848-1914, p. 406
15.Kaiser, p. 410

Bibliography:

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