The concept of nation and that of people are probably the two most important new contributions that historians of the Romantic period bring to the table of historiography in the first part of the nineteenth century. One tends to take the two as similar, if not complementary terms, especially in the romantic style of history-writing, but, as we shall see, different authors have different definitions and approaches to the terms. The aim of this essay is to illustrate how the two different terms appear in the works of the two most representative historians of their period.
Michelet is the historian that brings the people, as an autonomous actor and agent of history, to the foreground. We can clearly see this in his presentation of the taking of the Bastille, in his “History of the French Revolution”. The prison stands alone, as a symbol to absolutist tyranny, and it is surrounded by an amorphous crowd, that doesn’t have much in identifiable characters, or real leaders. The ideas for actions and the slogans come from this “people”, but from an unidentifiable source. The crowd acts as one, its sentiments are united, all in the direction of freedom, brotherhood and self-sacrifice. Even if its undertakings are sometimes mad ( such as the proposition of the “burly Santerre, a brewer, … who proposed to burn the place by throwing into it poppyseed and spikenard oil”[1] ), and unruly ( as in the case of the mobbing of the defenders of the Bastille)[2], they are presented as justified to a point, and its violence is shown as a more or less “positive” and more importantly a “revolutionary” one. The people who undertook the siege of the Bastille therefore are synonymous with the body of the French nation.
Macaulay’s representation of the crowd, is quite different from Michelet’s, and appears just as such, a crowd, not as an aware, self-conscious agent of history, but as an irrational, amorphous, heterogenous gathering of men, that acts upon feelings and fears. This is quite well exemplified when the british historian describes the state of chaos that envelops the country after the “abdication” of James. People start commiting acts of violence, and act upon rumours and fears ( the danger of the Irish, and the sacking of Catholic estates), being easily manipulated in the absence of the elites.
Therefore, the primacy in making history cannot be given to this “people”, but, rather, to the nation, which encompasses the people, but is not identifiable with them. But what is the difference between the two? In Macaulay’s case, the nation, which he ardently praises, is represented mostly by the leaders who give meaning and reason to the people, and point them in the right dirrections. It is them who are the true agents of history, such as the parliamentary elites, who find “ as the genius of our nation” [3] the legal justification for the revolutionary change, the enlightened dutch king, William of Orange, who accepts parliamentarism. British history for him is a straight, smooth evolutionary line, whitout ruptures or cleavages between the people and its leaders, the two agents being wise enough to make compromises to each other for the sake of the greater good of the nation.
The ethnic dimension of the nation is another important point in romantic historiography, being present, although in different doses, in both historians’ texts. The most striking example is Michelet’s description of the taking of the Bastille is the cleavage between the French and the Swiss defenders of the prison. The French are moved by Thuriot’s words and show real willingness to colaborate, whereas the Swiss simply have no reaction to the speech, because they “did not understand them”[4]. The foreign element is the antagonist. Michelet furthers this by a certain de-personification of the Swiss: while the French Invalides are given familiar characteristics and even are named and described in detail, the Swiss guard is presented as an unit, unfamiliar to the reader, sparsly described, exagerating its mercenary and foreign traits. Interestingly, they are the ones that arbitrarily fire upon the besieging revolutionary crowd, and acts of the Invalides in defense of the prison are characterized as “duty”, and even heroism, when, for example, a french soldier stops De Launey from setting fire to the building. [5] The alterity, the difference between “them” and “Us” is set in this way quite clearly by the French Historian. It is the foreigners, the Swiss guard, the Austrian Queen, and so on, who threaten the body of the French nation with tyranny.
Macaulay is also concerned with this question, but in his case, the difference is not as clearly stated as Michelet’s. The main difference that is seen as such is the cleavage between protestants and catholics ( but it is not a totally ireconcilable difference), and the main one, between Britain, as a national unit, and the rest of mainland Europe, or rather as Macaulay sees it, the rest of the world. The approach to life, the organization of society, and by conclusion that of social change and revolution is what sets the British apart from the rest. The people, unruly and dangerous as such, are presented by him, nonetheless, as a British crowd; when they sack the properties of the Catholic foreigners ( interestingly, acts of luteing of English estates are not given but a scarce mention), it is “to the honourable English character”[6], they do not cause physical harm to the “others”, only setting fire to Catholic objects of worship and manors. Their respect for law and an inherent stratification and organization of society is clear.
The English ( or rather, the British) are a nation which, in Macaulay’s view, do not make revolutions as other european nations of the time make. Their revolutions are made ahead of time, as in the case of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in order to avert the chaos and disorder that could be brought about by the people. The English nation does not ignore social and economic change, it embraces it, as a natural occurance; it is an element of the genius of the nation.
At the same time, this spirit of compromise, acceptance of the new is a part of their characther and tradition. Change is seen as natural; but when the British nation changes its political and administrative organization, it does not do so in the haphazard and violent way of the mainland. Rather, it looks back to its traditions, its old laws, which always contain some of the original genius of the nation and give traditional ways of reorganizing society in order to fall in line with new tendencies and give it the possibility of progressing in an orderly fashion. In the text, the best example is given by the legal justification to the abdication of James, and his replacement by William of Orange, found in an old deposement by the Parliament of an unfit Plantagenet in the thirteenth century. [7] The elites argued, in a traditional way, that the king was, by his act of fleeing the country, a traitor, and unfit to govern; he breached the traditional contract between the nation and its ruler. Therefore, he could be legally replaced by another dinasty.[8] In this way “calamities”, such as violent and unjust revolutions can be avoided succesfully; it is precisely this kind of argumentation and world-view that sets Britain apart from the rest.
The idea of a national tradition is not something restricted to Macaulay, it is something we can also find in Michelet’s historical works. He does not say it as explictly as the British historian does, but he hints at it. He speaks of a tradition of freedom and regenerative power of the nation. “Sometimes, the progress of peoples are compared to invasion of Barbarians” [9] ; he assumes this trait of barbarians as something noble, revolutionary and rejuvenative, that is needed from time to time to make the progress of nations possible. The “tradition of freedom” , so paramount for the Whig historical style, that states that the entire core of British history can be summed up as a quest for individual and collective freedom, is also present here, in a french form. This tradition (similar to Macaulay’s concept and claim as to the English), of “Gallic” and “Frankish” origin, is hinted at in this passage. In this way, the French Revolution is not a single, isolated, novel event, but just one, although grandiose and heroic, episode in the string of similar ones, throughout French history, streching back to Roman times. Tradition integrates innovation.
The people therefore, in the view of the ideas described above, are described similarly, but treated differently in the historical works of Jules Michelet and Thomas Babington Macaulay. The main difference can be traced back to each historians’ attempt to construct a national-traditional history that sets apart his own nation from the other one. The main event that serves as a term of comparison is revolution ( the French Revolution and its effect on Europe, to be more exact), and the different approaches that these two nations take towards it. While Michelet appeals to the masses as an agent of history, and identifies them more or less with the body of the nation, Macaulay views them as just a part of the nation, one that would be lost without the leading establishment. The two historians constructed in this way national histories that became typical ( through their enormous influence on the mentality of the period ) in problematics and identity in the later-part of the nineteenth century.
[1] Michelet, History of the French Revolution, p. 171
[2] Michelet, p.178
[3] Macaulay, The History of England, p. 278-279
[4] Michelet, p. 169
[5] Michelet, p. 176-177
[6] Macaulay, p. 285
[7] Macaulay, p. 292
[8] Macaulay, p. 277-279
[9] Michelet, The People: to M. Edgar Quinet, in History as a National Epic: Michelet, p. 116
