Baar Monika. Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century
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128 Intellectual Background
(history) the testament left by our ancestors to their grandchildren, to serve as
an interpretation of the present time and as a guide for the future.⁹³
Like Karamzin, Kog
˘
alniceanu devotes the second part of his text to an
assessment of the key turning-points in Romanian history, in which he
necessarily departs from the Russian version to some extent. He adopts
some archetypal rhetorical devices from the Russian scholars’ work. For
example, Karamzin writes:
My heart beats quicker upon hearing the names of the boyars than on hearing
the name of Themistocles or Scipio and venerates the deeds of Sviatoslav,
Dmitri Donskoi, Oleg, Dimitiri Pozharski in Russian history.⁹⁴
Similarly, Kog
˘
alniceanu declares:
My heart beats when I hear the names of (the Romanian rulers) Alexander
the Good, Stefan the Great, Michael the Brave. I am not ashamed to tell
you that these men are more important for me than Alexander the Great,
Hannibal or Caesar. Their battles are of greater interest because they were won
by Romanians.⁹⁵
Lastly, Horv
´
ath’s lack of familiarity with the Russian scholar testifies to
a cultural barrier; in nineteenth-century Hungary no significant cultural
ties were forged with Russia, and the Hungarian liberals’ generally
ambivalent feelings towards the Russian Empire, and their fear of
Panslavism, could have also contributed to that apathy.
CONTEMPORARY RESONANCES: THE FRENCH
LIBERAL SCHOOL
A study of foreign intellectual influences needs to take into account
that these can have a delayed effect, because, for example, censorship
hindered the circulation of foreign books and translation could often
take a long time. On the basis of hitherto assessed authors, it would
be tempting to conclude that my historians were primarily influenced
⁹³ Kog
˘
alniceanu, Opere, II. 386. My translation relies on but is not identical with the
excerpt in Bal
´
azs Trencs
´
enyi and Michal Kope
ˇ
cek (eds.), Discourses of Collective Identity in
Central and Southeast Europe (1770–1945), Vol. II: National Romanticism—The Formation
of National Movements (Budapest and New York, 2007), 46.
⁹⁴ Karamzin, Istorija Gosudarstva Rossijskago (Moscow, 1989), I. 4; and the French verison,
trans. Jauffret [sic], Histoire de L’Empire Russie (Paris, 1819), I. xix.
⁹⁵ Kog
˘
alniceanu, Opere, II. 389.
Intellectual Background 129
by the mindset of earlier generations, because ideas travelled to their
countries with significant delay, preventing them from becoming fully
conversant with the intellectual world of their contemporaries. This was
far from being the case; they were strongly influenced by contemporary
currents of thought. Of these, their engagement with the ideas of
the French liberal school testifies to an almost immediate pattern of
reception, although the direct traces of this transmission are relatively
scarce.
On a superficial level, French historians of the Restoration period,
such as Thierry, Guizot and Michelet may not appear to be obvious
sources of inspiration, given that the legacy of the French Revolution,
their main preoccupation, rendered some of their insights unique. Yet,
in a wider context, some of the French scholars’ fundamental concerns,
as well as their elevated position in society, offer useful comparisons
and help to explain why they could be inspirational to my historians.
Because of the role it played in public life, history was perhaps valued
even more highly in France than in Germany, and historians’ greater
willingness to engage with social issues and reform resonated particularly
deeply with my protagonists.⁹⁶ The majority of Enlightenment scholars
as well as contemporary historians, irrespective of their nationality,
believed that historical writing should be accompanied by action, and
thus, their vision of progress was essentially reformist; they saw change
as fundamental.⁹⁷ Moreover, whereas English liberal thought was not
fashioned as a means of political reform, French theories of social
change were designed to explore political issues or to try to resolve
pressing political problems of the time.⁹⁸ As Chapter 7 will reveal, the
French scholars’ preoccupations with feudalism provided a common
denominator in this context. As well, Guizot’s Histoire g´en´erale de la
civilisation en Europe, a major contribution to the study of the concept
and history of European civilization, received widespread support and
acclaim in most European countries, including East-Central Europe.
To varying degrees, my historians were all conversant with French
historians of the Restoration period. I have not found allusions to
their works in Daukantas’s writings, but this does not mean that he
never encountered them. Daukantas’s home library contained Guizot’s
⁹⁶ Iggers, ‘Nationalism and Historiography’, 19.
⁹⁷ Reill, The German Enlightenment, 72.
⁹⁸ Larry Siedentop, ‘Two Liberal Traditions’, in Alan Ryan (ed.), The Idea of Freedom:
Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin (Oxford, 1979), 174.
130 Intellectual Background
Conseils de morale (1829), Michelet’s Pr´ecis d’histoire moderne and his
essay on Vico, and it is likely that, towards the end of his life (by which
time he had already completed his histories), he familiarized himself
with Thierry’s works.⁹⁹ Kog
˘
alniceanu encountered the intellectual world
of several scholars in his youth, especially during his stay in France.
Subsequently, as editor of the journal Archiva Rom
ˆ
aneasc
˘
a, he introduced
the first volume by adapting a trope from Thierry’s Lettres sur l’Histoire
de France; according to this, history provided the criteria to ascertain
which nations were progressing and which were lagging behind.¹⁰⁰
Horv
´
ath’s texts offer scant evidence of the direct impact of French
scholars upon his thought. On one occasion he establishes a parallel
between the Hungarian politician Ferenc De
´
ak (the main agent behind
the Compromise) and George Washington, declaring that Guizot’s
characterization of the American statesman is equally applicable to
his Hungarian counterpart.¹⁰¹ Nevertheless, Horv
´
ath’s familiarity with
Thierry and Guizot is unquestionable, as both scholars enjoyed consid-
erable popularity in nineteenth-century Hungary; their writings were
widely read both in the original and in translation and were reviewed
and discussed in well-known journals.¹⁰² Horv
´
ath’s interest in the En-
glish Revolution is likely to have been aroused upon reading Thierry’s
works, rather than those of English scholars. Moreover, Horv
´
ath’s
fellow prominent historian L
´
aszl
´
o Szalay saw Guizot as a role model,
visiting him in Paris and subsequently embarking on correspondence
with him.¹⁰³
It is probable that the French scholars’ arguments were ‘internal-
ized’ to such an extent that they became common knowledge. For
instance, the periodicals in which Horv
´
ath’s articles appeared (Tu-
dom
´
anyt
´
ar, Athenaeum) published reviews of Guizot’s Histoire g´en´erale
de la civilisation en Europe (1841) and Michelet’s Histoire de France
(1840). Interestingly, neither of these was based on the original work;
the review of Guizot’s book was adapted from the journal G¨ottingsche
Gelehrte Anzeigen, whilst Michelet’s came from the Journal des Savants.
Thierry’s books were also sold in large numbers and received generous
coverage in Hungarian journals, despite the fact some of them were
⁹⁹ J. Lebedys, ‘Simano [sic] Daukanto Biblioteka’, in Lietuvi
¸
u Literat¯uros Instituto Darbai,
vol. I (Vilnius, 1947), 60.
¹⁰⁰ Kog
˘
alniceanu, Opere, II. 404.
¹⁰¹ Horv
´
ath, Huszon¨ot ´ev Magyarorsz
´
ag t¨ort´enet´eb˝ol, I. 345.
¹⁰² V
´
arkonyi, Pozitivista szeml´elet, II. 44–5. ¹⁰³ Ibid., II. 170.
Intellectual Background 131
officially banned.¹⁰⁴ Analogies between the French scholars’ outlook and
Horv
´
ath’s perspective were highlighted by two prominent Hungarian
scholars in the early twentieth century, independently of each other. One
of them compared Horv
´
ath to Thiers, Guizot, Thierry and Macaulay
because of his anti-feudal stance and interest in the ‘third estate’,¹⁰⁵
while the other claimed that Horv
´
ath transplanted the historical concept
of French liberalism to Hungarian soil.¹⁰⁶
Palack
´
y’s Protestant interpretation of Czech history and debt to
the tradition of the Bohemian Brethren has been likened to Guizot’s
Huguenot background and austere Calvinism.¹⁰⁷ He first ventured
into Guizot’s intellectual world of European society and civilization
in the 1840s, during his sojourn in Nice. Subsequently, he warmly
recommended Guizot and Thierry to his friends and also embarked on
the translation of Histoire g´en´erale de la civilisation en Europe with his
son; their Czech version was published in 1851.¹⁰⁸ Yet, as with Horv
´
ath,
direct references to the French historians are few and far between. One
instance is Palack
´
y’s appeal to Guizot to reinforce his assessment of early
German history and, possibly also his characterization of the Germans as
R
¨
aubervolk (aggressors).¹⁰⁹ Palack
´
y’s son, a Francophile, sent a copy of
his father’s book to Thierry, whilst Palack
´
y himself established contacts
with editors of the Revue des deux Mondes, and in 1855, Saint-Ren
´
e
Taillandier published an article entitled Histoire et historien de Bohême:
Franz Palacky. This publication gradually introduced the Czech question
into the international political arena.
Lelewel was well acquainted with representatives of the French liberal
school, even composing an article which engaged in a virtual dialogue
with Guizot, intended to correct the French scholar’s hypotheses on
Polish history, as Chapter 7 will reveal.¹¹⁰ However, Lelewel’s real French
‘counterpart’ is undoubtedly Jules Michelet; both scholars epitomize a
¹⁰⁴ Ibid., II. 76.
¹⁰⁵ Henrik Marczali, ‘Horv
´
ath Mih
´
aly eml
´
ekezete’, Budapesti Szemle 141 (1910), 176.
¹⁰⁶ B
´
alint H
´
oman, ‘A t
¨
ort
´
enelem
´
utja’, in B
´
alint H
´
oman (ed.), AMagyart¨ort´enetír
´
as ´uj
´utjai (Budapest, 1931), 31.
¹⁰⁷ This is the main claim in Josef V
´
alka, ‘Palack
´
yafrancouzsk
´
aliber
´
alní historiografie’,
Sborník prací filozofick´efakultybrnˇensk´e univerzity C 33 (1986), 101–9.
¹⁰⁸ Josef V
´
alka, ‘La th
´
eorie de l’histoire chez Palack
´
y’, Sborník prací filozofick´efakulty
brnˇensk´e univerzity 14 (1967), 99.
¹⁰⁹ Palack
´
y, Die Geschichte des Hussitenthums und Prof. Konstantin H¨ofler: kritische Studien
(Prague, 1868), 76.
¹¹⁰ Lelewel’s response was published in Polish as Joachima Lelewela odpowied´znaankiet
¸
e
historyczn
¸
aFranc¸ois Guizota, transl. Marian Heryk Serejski (Wrocław, 1962).
132 Intellectual Background
genre of Romantic historiography which carried messianistic overtones,
and the intellectual exchange between the two scholars was informed
by a degree of reciprocity. Michelet showed a keen interest in Polish
history, especially the life of the freedom fighter Tadeusz Ko
´
sciuszko
and the Revolution of 1830. He refers to Poland as the Christ of nations
and his footnotes reveal that his understanding of Polish history was
partly derived from his acquaintence with Lelewel’s writings.¹¹¹ At the
same time, Michelet made recourse to Kog
˘
alniceanu’s Histoire when
referring to episodes of Romanian history, proving that my historians
were not entirely unknown to contemporary Western scholars.¹¹²
CONCLUSION
Of the diverse sources of inspiration in my historians’ work, the rel-
evance of domestic scholarship, the Scottish and German variations
of Enlightenment, as well as the impact of Nikolai Karamzin and the
French liberal school have been assessed. My analysis has also high-
lighted the fundamental pitfalls that underline the study of intellectual
transfer. In particular, it has emerged that, more often than not, the
genesis of an idea may not be identifiable with a single source or
author, nor may it be possible to detect, especially on the basis of
tacit hints, whose ideas my historians originally appropriated when they
advanced a claim which had widespread appeal at the time. To that
end, the impact of the Zeitgeist should not be underestimated. No
sharp clear line may be drawn between influence and similarity:the
common framework, the prevalent dilemmas which informed a given
epoch often rested on shared assumptions and thus provoked analogous
responses. A further complexity lies in the academic conventions of the
age, which allowed for a more extensive incorporation of other scholars’
arguments than would be the case today. Furthermore, the intellec-
tual worlds of the authors whose ideas this chapter is concerned with
were not independent, but intricately entwined. For example, Herder
provided inspiration for representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment
and also influenced Arnold Heeren, although the appropriation of that
¹¹¹ For Michelet’s reference to Lelewel’s Geschichte Polens see Jules Michelet, L´egendes
d´emocratiques du Nord, ed. Michel Cadot (Paris, 1968), 40 and 282.
¹¹² For Michelet’s reference to Kog
˘
alniceanu’s Histoire see Michelet, L´egendes d´emocratiques
du Nord, 241.
Intellectual Background 133
heritage necessarily resulted in deviations from the original message.¹¹³
Additionally, Heeren’s and the French historians’ evocation of com-
mercial language and, to some extent, their concept of civilization was
influenced by Scottish scholars, such as Adam Ferguson and William
Robertson.¹¹⁴
The reliance of my historians on foreign authors and concepts
should be approached with caution. On a superficial level an extensive
absorption may imply lack of originality and even cultural dependency.
It may also presuppose a tendency towards a heterogeneous mindset.
Yet, such syncretism can be viewed in terms of intellectual vibrancy, all
the more so, because my historians made a conscious effort to acquaint
themselves with a variety of intellectual traditions. The key to accessing
another culture was language, and in that respect, they were better
equipped that many of their contemporaries, especially Palack
´
y, who
could read some fourteen languages.
Romantic-liberal historiography absorbed numerous tenets of En-
lightenment scholarship. My protagonists were profoundly indebted
not only to the political ideals and conceptual framework of the En-
lightenment, but also to the information which their predecessors
discovered about the history of their nation. This legacy has also been
observed in other national contexts; for instance, Macaulay is deemed
a direct inheritor of the Enlightenment, in addition to benefiting from
the intense influence of literary Romanticism and his commitment to
political science.¹¹⁵ My findings have confirmed common knowledge
about the prominent role of the G
¨
ottingen academic community as a
mediator in the intellectual encounters between Britain and Germany.
They have also testified to established views on G
¨
ottingen’s position
as a major gateway for the exploration of the history of Eastern and
Northern Europe and also its significant impact on local scholarship. In
addition, as a side-effect, another link has emerged, one which unites
those two directions of interchange: the route that ideas followed from
Britain to G
¨
ottingen and then from there to Central and Eastern Europe.
¹¹³ Roy Pascal, ‘Herder and the Scottish Historical School’, Publications of the English
Goethe Society 14 (1938–9), 23–42.
¹¹⁴ Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Four Studies in French Romantic Historical Writing (Baltimore,
1955), 99. For the impact of British scholarship on Heeren see Hellmut Seier, ‘Heeren und
England’, in Lothar Kettenacker, Manfred Schlenke and Hellmut Seier (eds.), Studien zur
Geschichte Englands und der deutsch–britischen Beziehungen: Festschrift f¨ur Paul Kluke (Munich,
1981), 48–78.
¹¹⁵ Peter Ghosh, ‘Macaulay and the Heritage of the Enlightenment’, English Historical
Review 112:446 (1997), 359.
134 Intellectual Background
Nikolai Karamzin’s reception testifies to a pattern of transmission which
defied the traditional ‘centre to periphery’ route. Instead, it exemplifies
intellectual transfer between ‘peripheries’, without necessarily traversing
the ‘centre’.
As my historians’ encounters with the French historians of the
Restoration period indicate, influence does not necessarily translate
into obvious signs, such as references and footnotes. The paucity of
direct traits may also signify the popularity of certain authors, as
it may suggest that their views became part of common knowledge
and thus did not incur specific mention. The unrepresentative nature
of my sample may be partially responsible for the absence or weak
impact of some prominent intellectual trends and individual authors.
For example, only relatively moderate evidence points to Macaulay’s
influence in my historians’ writings, although Lelewel and Palack
´
y were
undoubtedly well-acquainted with his oeuvre. Yet, the English scholar’s
overall popularity in East-Central Europe, evident from numerous
reviews, translations and discussions of his celebrated essays and History
of England, is undisputed. Also, a prominent Hungarian scholar who
assessed Horv
´
ath’s legacy in an obituary suggested that his studies
on significant and fascinating Hungarian historical figures might have
endeavoured to domesticate a genre which came to be associated with
Macaulay’s essays. This could have been driven by Horv
´
ath’s intention
to convince the reading public that outstanding heroes were not only to
be found in foreign books: Hungarian history also yielded remarkable
characters.¹¹⁶
It is noteworthy that the five historians were inspired by one distinct
generation of German scholarship—Gatterer, Schl
¨
ozer, Heeren—the
last representatives of a universalist tradition. In that context, the silenc-
ing of Heeren, ‘the last German proponent of a broad Enlightenment
vision of world history’ by a chorus of vicious critics in 1832 marked
a symbolic caesura in German historiography.¹¹⁷ The next generation
embarked on a different trajectory. Their faith in universally applicable
values was now shattered and (apart from a few isolated thinkers who,
like the Freiburg historian Karl von Rotteck, remained faithful to the
principles of 1789), historians came to believe that alien concepts and
¹¹⁶ Marczali, ‘Horv
´
ath Mih
´
aly eml
´
ekezete’, 181.
¹¹⁷ J
¨
urgen Osterhammel, ‘Peoples without History in British and German Historical
Thought’, in Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (eds.), British and German Historiography,
1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions and transfers (Oxford and London, 2000), 266–7.
Intellectual Background 135
traditions could not be transplanted to German soil.¹¹⁸ Scholars who ex-
emplified this new trend, including Barthold Niebuhr, Georg Gottfried
Gervinus, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann and Gustav Droysen, exerted
virtually no impact on my protagonists’ writings.¹¹⁹ Nor were my his-
torians, as we have seen, influenced by the new Rankean ‘paradigm’.
Like their methodological desiderata, their intellectual world also seems
to have represented a critical moment of transition; their fundamental
engagement with the national past dovetailed with a great debt to the
Enlightenment legacy.
¹¹⁸ Iggers, The German Conception of History, 40–1.
¹¹⁹ Although Palack
´
y had scholarly contacts with some of these scholars, for example
he met Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Karl Theodor Welcker, Georg Gottfried Gervinus
and Ludwig H
¨
ausser in 1859 in Heidelberg, and Dahlmann read parts of his Geschichte von
B¨ohmen, there is little evidence of the significant influence of these scholars in his own work.
5
Language as Medium, Language
as Message
THE FECUNDITY OF INFERIORITY COMPLEXES
Linguistic change is often assessed in teleological terms, such as the
‘triumph’ and ‘evolution’ of language or national ‘awakening’. Whilst it
would be inadvisable to dismiss an element of ‘development’ altogether,
neither should it be equated with linear progress, rather, with a constant
conflict between centripetal and centrifugal forces, convergence and
divergence, and continuous readjustment to contemporary realities.¹
Motivation for the enrichment of European languages was characteris-
tically informed by an ‘anxiety of deficit’; concerns about the poverty of
the vernacular in comparison to other tongues.² During the Middle Ages
Latin seemed limited in capacity when compared to Greek, subsequently
vernacular languages sought liberation from Latin and in the Orthodox
world from Church Slavonic.³ In the sixteenth century French scholars
lamented that their mother tongue was not as elaborate as Greek and
Latin, whilst their English counterparts also perceived their language
as imperfect and unsophisticated.⁴ Additionally, in accordance with
Herder’s assertion that dominant nations based their rule less on mili-
tary might than on ‘the use of a more cultivated language’, cultures under
foreign domain attempted to emancipate themselves linguistically.⁵
¹ Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2004),
13.
² Ibid., 17.
³ Thorsten F
¨
ogen, Patrii sermonis egestas: Einstellungen lateinischer Autoren zu ihrer Mut-
tersprache, Ein Beitrag zum Sprachbewußtsein in der r¨omischen Antike (Munich and Leipzig,
2000), 41.
⁴ Richard Foster Jones, The Triumph of the English Language: A Survey of Opinions
Concerning the Vernacular from the Introduction of Printing (Stanford, 1953), 10.
⁵ Burke, Languages and Communities, 164.
Language as Medium, Language as Message 137
Scholars embarked on linguistic standardization on pragmatic as
well as on ideological grounds; in order to promote communication
between various regions and to endow their language with the prestige
and dignity associated with Latin. This entailed the publication of
grammars, the regulation of orthography and the purification of the
language from foreign influences. The second half of the eighteenth
century marked a turning-point in these developments: whilst earlier
linguistic pursuits revolved around variety, in this epoch scholars grew
increasingly preoccupied with unity. Language and nationality became
more closely entwined and this phenomenon was enshrined in the
conviction that nations, like individuals, had ideas unique to them
which were manifested in the genius of language.⁶ From this it followed
that the pinnacles of language corresponded perfectly to the pinnacles of
the literary and political tradition; conversely, political decline exposed
language to corruption and decay.⁷ The forging of links between
language and nation was often animated by ideological aims.⁸ For
example in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century, the
establishment of a common language was seen as essential for cementing
the amalgam of four distinct nations, England, Scotland, Ireland and
Wales.⁹
The inferiority complex, a result of confrontation with the standards
of other languages, supplied a powerful dynamic for elevating respective
vernaculars to the status enjoyed by other tongues. Opportunities for
enrichment included the reintroduction of old words, borrowing words
from dialects, the creation of new expressions from native roots as
well as translations of foreign terms. Confidence in the eloquential
power of European vernaculars gradually began to increase and the
notes of self-disparagement grew much fainter. No longer was the
elegance of Latin seen as unattainable, and vernacular languages evolved
into the media of instruction, as illustrated by John Locke’s statement:
‘if a gentleman be to study any language, it ought to be that of
his own country’.¹⁰ ‘Topoi of humility’ were thus superseded by
⁶ This idea has traditionally been associated with Herder, but can be traced back to earlier
times.
⁷ Tony Crowley, Language in History: Theories and Texts (London and New York, 1996),
64.
⁸ The nexus between language and state-building is discussed in R. J. W. Evans, ‘Language
and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy’, Austrian History Yearbook 35
(2004), 1–24.
⁹ Crowley, Language in History, 68. ¹⁰ Ibid., 66.