Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Biographies

Lamartine’s most systematic presentation of his political ideas appeared in Sur la Politique

Rationnelle (1831), but his Voyage en Orient (1835), Histoire des Girondins (1847)andHistoire

de la R

evolution de 1848 are also important sources.

Charlton 1984b; Dunn 1989; Fortesque 1983; Guillemin 1946;Harris1932; Kelly 1992.

LAMENNAIS [LA MENNAIS], HUGUES-F

ELICIT

EROBERTDE

1782–1854. Born at St Malo, Br ittany, Lamennais was educated by his uncle Robert des

Saudrais, later to be at the forefront of the revival of French Catholicism. Ordained in

1816 following his return from a brief exile in England, Lamennais became disenchanted

with the alliance of church and state and increasingly critical of both these institutions. He

was excommunicated in 1834 following publication of Paroles d’un Croyant. Elected to the

National Assembly in 1848 and to the Constituent Assembly in the following year, Lamennais

retired from politics on the accession to power of Louis Napoleon. Following the publication

of D’Avenir, Lamennais’ democratic and republican political ideas were presented in Paroles

d’un Croyant (1834), Livre du Peuple (1838)andLe Pays et le Gouvernement (1840).

Carcopino 1942;Evans1951; Gurian 1947; Oldﬁeld 1973;Vidler1964b.

LASSALLE, FERDINAND

1825–64. Born in Breslau into a Jewish commercial family, Lassalle studied at the universities

of Breslau a nd Berlin, and was deeply inﬂuenced by Hegel’s philosophy. Attracted to radical

democracy and socialism, he participated in the revolutions of 1848, collaborating for some

time with Marx and Engels, with whom he shared many ideas. In the early 1860s he focused

on the historical role of the working class, presented his ideas in a series of brilliant speeches

and pamphlets, and founded the General Association of German Workingmen in 1863.His

meteoric career as a charismatic leader was cut short when he was killed in a duel in August

1864.

Bernstein 1893; Friederici 1985; Miller 1964; Na’aman 1970;Oncken1912.

LAVROV, P

ETR LAVROVICH

1823–1900. Born in the province of Pskov, Lavrov embarked upon a military career, reaching

the rank of colonel. In 1862 he became a member of the underground group Land and

Freedom which led to his arrest in 1866 and exile to Vologda. In 1868–9 he published (under

the pseudonym P. Mirtov in the review Nedelya) Historical Letters, his most inﬂuential book,

developing a theory of ‘critically thinking individuals’ who devote themselves to the struggle

for social justice. In February 1878 he ﬂed abroad and took part in the Paris Commune.

From 1873–6 he published, in Zurich and in London, the revolutionary periodical Vper

(Forward). In his numerous scholarly publications he laid the foundations for the so-called

‘subjective sociology’ stressing the role of the subjective factor in history.

Masaryk 1955; Pomper 1972;Venturi1960; Walicki 1969.

LEDRU-ROLLIN, ALEXANDRE AUGUSTE

1807–74. A French radical politician, Ledru-Rollin was born in Paris. Trained as a lawyer,

he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1841, representing the far left. He had an

active role in the Banquets’ Campaign, which led to the abdication of Louis Philippe in

1848 and was minister of the interior in the provisional government of May 1848.Inthe

presidential elections of December 1848, Ledru-Rollin stood against Louis Napoleon but

was then defeated in June 1849. He ﬂed to England, exiled after a failed insurrection against

the government. There he wrote many revolutionary pamphlets, which were published with

his speeches in Discours Politiques et

Ecrits Divers (1879). When the Second Republic fell he

returned to France.

964

Biographies

LEONTIEV, KONSTANTIN NIKOLAEVICH

1831–91. Born into the gentry in the province of Kaluga, Leontiev became the most

extreme religious and political conservative in Russia. From 1863–74 he served in the

Russian consular service in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, frequently visiting the

community of Orthodox monks on Mount Athos. After resigning from the diplomatic

service (over disagreements with Russian policy towards Turkey), he worked as a censor, but

after a few years handed in his resignation and settled in the Optina monastery, famous for

its holy elders. In later life he took monastic vows.

Berdiaev 1940; Masaryk 1955;Thaden1964; Walicki 1975.

LEWES, GEORGE HENRY

1817–78. A proliﬁc and acutely intelligent critic and author on many subjects, Lewes was

editor of the Leader (1850–4) and of the Fortnightly Review (1865–6). He was responsible (along

with John Stuart Mill) for the early popularisation of the ideas of Auguste Comte in England,

particularly in his Biographical History of Philosophy (4 vols. 1845–6)andComte’s Philosophy

of the Sciences (l853). Separated from his wife, in 1854 he entered into an unconventional

lifelong union with George Eliot. The following year he published his most noted and

successful work, the Life of Goethe. His later works combine his interests in philosophy and

psychology; see The Physiology of Common Life (2 vols. 1859–60) and his ﬁnal work, Problems

of Life and Mind (5 vols. 1874–9).

Ashton 1991;Dale1989; Simon 1963.

LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM

1826–1900. Born into a Giesen family of pastors and ofﬁcials, Liebknecht turned to socialism

in his youth, studied at Marburg University, and participated in the revolutions of 1848–9.

In London exile (1850–62) he became a friend and follower of Marx and Engels. When he

returned to Germany (1862), he immediately joined the new labour movement, represented

the First International and, along with Bebel, helped to found the Social Democratic

Workers’ Party (Eisenachers) in 1869. Although not an outstanding thinker, Liebknecht

was an effective speaker, talented journalist (he edited several socialist newspapers), popular

disseminator of socialist principles, and a Reichstag deputy almost without interruption from

1867 to 1900.

Dominick 1982; Eisner 1906;Pelz1994;Wendorff1978.

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM

1809–65. Lincoln was born in Kentucky to illiterate parents and in the proverbial log cabin.

His formal schooling was sporadic and he was largely self-educated. In 1834 Lincoln began

to study law and was admitted to the Bar in 1836.In1858 Lincoln ran for senator. He lost the

election, but in debating he thus gained a national reputation that won him the Republican

nomination for president in 1860. His anti-slavery reputation precipitated the secession of

the Southern slaveholding states which led to American Civil War. In 1863 he delivered

the Gettysburg a ddress which provides the best short American deﬁnition of democracy as

‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’. On 9 April 1865 the Southern

forces surrendered. On 12 April Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

Borritt 1992; Donald 1995; Greenstone 1993;Jaffa1959, 2000; McPherson 1990; Miller 2002;

Paludan 1994; Wills 1992.

LITTR

E, MAXIMILIEN PAUL

EMILE

1801–81. Best known as the author of the impressive DictionnairedelaLangueFranc¸aise (5

vols. 1863–72), Littr

e was a philosopher, scholar and politician who originally trained as a

965

Biographies

doctor. He fought on the barricades in 1830; was one of the editors of the republican journal,

National, until 1851; and eventually became deeply involved in founding the republican, lay,

centralised regime that became the Third Republic. From about 1840 he was associated

with Auguste Comte and became his most distinguished and inﬂuential (though often

wayward) disciple in France. Through his connections and his writings, he shaped the

ofﬁcial philosophy of the Third Republic to a degree unmatched by any thinker, except

perhaps the neo-Kantian Charles Renouvier.

Charlton 1959; Hamburger 1988;Nicolet1982;Scott1951.

LLOYD, HENRY DEM AREST

1847–1903. Born in New York City, Lloyd was a journalist and social reformer, and a graduate

of Columbia College. After attending Columbia Law School, he became a member of the

New York Bar in 1869. Lloyd became editor of the Chicago Tribune in 1872 and remained

there until 1885 when he resigned to devote himself to the cause of social reform. His most

signiﬁcant work was Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894) which begins and ends with an

ethical critique of the new corporate economy.

Destler 1963; Hofstadter 1955a; Lloyd 1912.

LOMBROSO, CESARE

1835–1909. Born in Verona into a Jewish family, Lombroso studied medicine, principally

at Pavia. He served as doctor in the army, before becoming Professor of Psychiatry at the

University of Turin in 1896. He is best known for L’Uomo Delinquente (The Criminal Man)

(1876) which controversially argued for the biological determination of mental and moral

character, and sought to identify the physical ‘stigmata’ of criminality. Lombroso rejected the

Enlightenment and utilitarian theories of crime and punishment, arguing that criminality

had an organic, hereditary basis. His work reﬂected and signiﬁcantly shaped late nineteenth-

and early twentieth-century attitudes to crime and punishment, criminology and scientiﬁc

policing. Other important works included Genio e Follia (1877) (The Man of Genius, 1891)

co-written with Guglielmo Ferrero, his son-in-law, and La Donna Delinquente (1893)(The

Female Offender, 1895).

Gibson 2002;Pick1989.

LYELL, CHARLES

1797–1875. Lyell was born in Kinnordy, Scotland. While studying classics at Oxford he

became interested in geology, which he pursued after his qualiﬁcation as a lawyer in 1822.

Throughout the 1820s Lyell compiled evidence for a theory of the formation of the earth

and in 1831 he was appointed Professor of Geology at King’s College London. The years

1830–3 saw the publication of his major work, The Principles of Geology, through which he

popularised the notion of ‘uniformitarianism’. In 1858 Lyell, with Joseph Hooker, presented

Darwin and Wallace’s papers on natural selection to the Linnaean Society, and in 1863 he

turned his own attention to the origins of human life, examining the fossil record in The

Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man (1863).

Wilson 1998.

MACAULAY, THOM AS BABINGTON

1800–59. An English historian and politician, born in Leicestershire and educated at Cam-

bridge. He was called to the Bar in 1826 and elected to Parliament in 1830 but he resigned

in 1834 to become a member of the supreme council of the East India Company. There

he was involved in the redrafting of the Indian penal code and in the instituting of an

educational system, following the British model. He retur ned from India in 1838 and as

966

Biographies

Member of Parliament for Edinburgh occupied the positions of war secretar y and forces’

paymaster. In 1857 he became Baron Macaulay of Rothley. His most signiﬁcant work, The

History of England from the Accession of James the Second (5 vols. 1849–61) was phenomenally

successful.

MAINE, HENRY JAMES SUM NER

1822–88. A legal historian and jurist, Maine was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge

where he was considered one of the brightest classical scholars of the time and was subse-

quently appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law, a post he held until his death. In 1863 he

went to India to advise the colonial government on the codiﬁcation of a system of law. In

1869 he returned to Britain and took on the chair of historical and comparative jurispru-

dence at Oxford. His ﬁrst work, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society

and its Relation to Modern Idea (1861), was his most famous. His other works embodied his

lectures on legal history. Village Communities in the East and West (1871) in particular was

based on his experience in India.

MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE

1753–1821.BornanaristocratinChamb

ery in Savoy, and educated in Turin, Maistre turned

against the Revolution as early as August 1789, after the voting of the Declaration of the

Rights of Man and the Citizen. In 1792, he left for Turin and then Lausanne, where he wrote

Lettre d’un Royaliste Savoisien

a ses Compatriotes (1793)andLes Bienfaits de la R

evolution Franc¸aise

(1795), a work in which he attacked the violence of the revolutionaries. He continued this

theme in his most famous work, Consid

erations sur la France (1796) where he poured scorn on

the concept of the social contract. From 1803, he was regent of Sardinia and from 1803–17,

he served as Sardinian ambassador to the court of Tsar Alexander in St Petersburg. Maistre

wrote many more books before his death in 1821, including Du Pape (1819) which attacked

both Protestantism and Gallicanism and Les Soir

ees de Saint-Petersbourg (1821).

Armenteros 2004;Berlin1990;Bradley1999;Darcel1988a, 1988b; Dermenghem 1979; Faguet

1891;Garrard1994;Lebrun1965, 1972, 1988a, 1988b; Spektorowski 2002.

MALATESTA, ERRICO

1853–1932.Bornin1853 near Naples, Malatesta became involved in the Garibaldian repub-

lican movement while a medical student. He met Bakunin in 1872 and became an anarchist

militant in Italy, helping to organise the insurrections of 1874 and 1877. By the mid-1870s,

he had become a believer in Kropotkin’s ‘anarchist communism’ and a proponent of ‘propa-

ganda by the deed’. Following the failure of the Benevento insurrection of 1877, Malatesta

lived in London, Argentina and the United States. Returning to Italy in 1913,hepartici-

pated in the Red Week general strike in June 1914;in1920 he re-established the anarchist

newspaper Umanita Nova. His most famous work was Anarchy (1891), which insisted that

anarchism was not a set of blueprints, but rather a method of encouraging the free initiative

of all after abolishing private property by revolution.

Hostetter 1958; Pernicone 1993; Ravindranathan 1988; Richards 1965.

MALLET DU PAN, JACQUES

1749–1801.BorninC

eligny, Mallet du Pan was a journalist, author and historian who was

one of the ﬁrst and most inﬂuential counter-revolutionary publicists. His ﬁrst work was

Compte rendu de la D

efense des Citoyens Bourgeois de Gen

eve (1771), a plea for compromise

between the various factions in Genevan politics. From 1784,hewastheeditorofLe Mercure

de France, where he defended enlightened despotism, adopting a position of moderation

against excess. In 1789 he opposed the Revolution in its pages and in 1792 left France for

967

Biographies

Frankfurt, Geneva and Berne. He became close to the group of deputies in the Constituent

Assembly known as the ‘monarchiens’. In August 1793, Mallet published Consid

erations sur

la Nature de la R

evolution en France, an attack on the Revolution admired by both Gentz

and Maistre, although it rejected the view that revolution had been caused by philosophy

or irreligion. For Mallet, the Revolution was essentially a displacement of power as the old

regime imploded on itself. In 1798, in London, he founded Le Mercure Britannique. He died

in a state of disappointment in 1801.

Acomb 1973; Godechot 1972; Mallet 1902.

MARX, KARL

1818–83. Karl Marx was the son of a Jewish lawyer, recently converted to Christianity. As

a student in Bonn and Berlin, Marx studied law and then philosophy. He joined with the

Young Hegelians, the most radical of Hegel’s followers, in denying that Hegel’s philosophy

could be reconciled with Christianity or the existing state. Forced out of university by his

radicalism, he became a journalist and, soon after, a socialist. He left Prussia for Paris and

then Brussels, where he stayed until 1848.In1844 he began his collaboration with Friedrich

Engels and developed a new theory of communism to be brought into being by a proletariat

revolution, as outlined in The Communist Manifesto. Marx participated in the 1848 revolutions

as a newspaper editor in Cologne. Exiled with his family to London, he tried to make a

living writing for the New York Herald Tribune and other journals, but remained ﬁnancially

dependent on Engels. Capital, published in 1867, established him as the principal theorist of

revolutionary socialism. He died in London in 1883.

Aviner i 1968; Cottier 1959;Elster1985; Hunt 1974, 1984;Leopold2007;MarxandEngels

2002; McLellan 1969, 1973; Rosdolsky 1977; Wheen 1999; Wood 1981.

MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE

1805–72. Mazzini joined the republican secret society, the Carbonari, at a young age.

Dissatisﬁed with their ritual and poor organisation, he formed his own society, Young Italy,

in 1831, committed to establishing a national republic by means of insurrection. Mazzini

tirelessly recruited some thousands of members but every one of its planned uprisings was

a failure and he was forced into exile in 1831.In1848 he returned and advocated a policy

of establishing republics in the various Italian states which together would wage war on

Austria and establish national unity. He supported the establishment of a republic in Rome

and became one of its leaders. Following its suppression he went once more into exile. He

returned to Italy after uniﬁcation but was a stern critic of the new state.

Smith 1994.

MELLA, RICARDO

1861–1925. Born in Vigo (Galicia), Mella began working for a maritime agency when

he was fourteen. At ﬁrst an ardent Federalist, in 1881 he became a dedicated defender of

the working classes, publishing with other young republicans the journal La Propaganda.In

1882, Mella converted to anarchism, moved to Madrid, and married the daughter of Juan

Serrano y Oreiza, the anarchist editor of La Revista Social. Mella became a proponent of

collectivist anarchism, translating Bakunin’s God and the State into Spanish. In the 1880s,

he advocated ‘anarchism without adjectives’ with Fernando Tarrida des M

armol, calling for

greater tolerance within the anarchist movement regarding economic questions. His most

famous work is a futuristic novella about the organisation of society entitled La Nueva Utopia

(1889).

Esenwein 1989.

968

Biographies

MICHELET, JULES

1798–1874. Born in Paris, Michelet studied at the Coll

ege Charlemagne and taught at

the Coll

ege Rollin before devoting himself to literary and historical studies as a younger

member of the ‘new history’ of Restoration France. Later, with the support of Guizot, he

took positions at the

Ecole Normale and the Coll

ege de France as well as with the National

Archives before his dismissal in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1848. After early works

on Luther, Vico, a textbook on universal history, and the early volumes of his great history

of France, Michelet published on the origins of French law (1837), which was a Vichian

interpretation of the ‘poetry of law’ from its mythological beginnings. Other later works

and especially his French history conﬁrmed his position as the national historian of France.

Kelley 1984a, 2003; Kippur 1981; Viallaneix 1998.

MIKHAILOVSKII, NIKOLAI KONSTANINOVICH

1842–1904.BorninMeshch

evsk in the province of Kaluga, Mikhailovskii was a literary

critic, publicist and one of the main theorists of Russian populism. From 1868–84 he was

the co-editor of Otechestvennye Zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland) and from 1892 until his

death the chief editor of Russkoe Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth). In his treatise What is Progress?

(1896)andThe Struggle for Individuality (1875–6) he set forth his own variant of the populist

‘subjective sociology’ (see Lavrov), combining the ideal of ‘the all-round individual’ with

a retrospective utopia and idealising the natural economy and pre-modern communalism.

At the end of his life he engaged in philosophical and political polemics with the Russian

Marxists.

Masaryk 1955;Mendel1961; Walicki 1969.

MILL, JOHN STUART

1806–73. Born in London, J. S. Mill was the eldest son of James Mill. After being educated

by his father at home, he followed him into employment by the East India Company,

where he remained until the Company was dissolved in 1858. He published his System of

Logic in 1843, followed by his Principles of Political Economy (1848). His principal political

writings were On Liberty (1859)andConsiderations on Representative Government (1861).

Mill was a Member of Parliament between 1865 and 1868. He died and was buried in

Avignon, France, where he kept a house after his wife had died and been buried there in

1858.

Berger 1984;Carlisle1991;Cowling1990;Crisp1997; Donner 1991;Gray1983;Hamburger

1999; Lyons 1997;Reeves2007; Riley 1998; Robson 1968;Ryan1987; Skorupski 1989, 1998,

2006;Ten1980.

MIQUEL, JOHANNES (FROM 1897:VONMIGUEL)

1829–1901. Miquel read law at G

ottingen and Heidelberg. Studying the writings of Karl

Marx, he became an extreme revolutionary. He practised as a lawyer for a time in G

ottingen,

became a Liberal and co-founded the National Association. In 1864 he was elected to the

Hanoverian Parliament and in 1867 he entered the Prussian Parliament, after accepting

the annexation of Hannover. In 1879 he was elected Lord Mayor of Frankfurt and in 1887

he entered the Reichstag, where he would be Minister of Finance for ten years. He supported

the Emperor’s plans for colonial and naval expansion and carried out a radical reform of the

tax system, but did not support the Emperor’s canal schemes which led to him resigning in

1901.

Aldenhoff 1994; Herzfeld 1938; Kassner 2001.

969

Biographies

MOHL, ROBERT VON

1799–1875. Mohl was born in Stuttgart and studied law in Heidelberg and Berlin. He held

in succession at T

ubingen University, the assistant professorship of law, the professorship of

political economy and the rectorship from 1836–44.From1847–61 he taught in Heidelberg.

He was member of the Upper Chamber of the Baden Landtag from 1857–73,servingas

president from 1867. Mohl was Baden envoy to the German Confederation until 1866

and envoy in Bavaria from 1867–71 and from 1874–5 he sat in the Reichstag. His major

works are Die Geschichte und Literatur des Staatswissenschaften (History and Literature of the

State Sciences) (1855–8 [1960]) and Staatsrecht, V

olkerrecht and Politik (Constitutional Law,

International Law and Politics) (1860–9 [1962]).

Angermann 1962;St

ocker 1992.

MOLESWORTH, SIR WILLIAM

1810–55. Born in London, he succeeded to the baronetcy at the age of thirteen. In 1832 he

became Member of Parliament for the eastern division of Cornwall. Through the politician

Charles Buller he met Grote and James Mill and subsequently founded, with John Roebuck,

the London Review. After the publication of two volumes he purchased the Westminster

Review, and for some time he and J. S. Mill edited the united magazines. He was Member

of Parliament for Leeds from 1837–41 and from 1845 to his death in 1855 he represented

Southwark.

MONTALEM BERT, COMTE CHARLES DE

1810–70. A French political leader and writer, Montalembert was born in London in 1810

(his father had left France after the Revolution to serve in the English army). He moved back

to Paris in 1830 and acted as the editor of Avenir until 1831, collaborating with Jean-Baptiste

Lacordaire and F

elicit

e de Lamennais in the Catholic liberal movement. This journal was

condemned by the Pope in 1832 and Montalembert started the newspaper Correspondant

as a means of expressing his ideas of Catholic belief and liberal politics. He was a great

exponent of the freedom of the press, became a Member of Parliament in 1837,andafter

the 1848 Revolution sat in the Chamber of Deputies. In 1851 he was named a member of

the Acad

emie Franc¸aise.

MORRIS, WILLIAM

1834–96. Born into a prosperous family in Walthamstow. As a student at Oxford, he met

Edward Burne-Jones, Swinburne and Rosetti, members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He

practised architecture, art and poetry, and translated Icelandic sagas. In 1876 he founded the

Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and by 1883 was active in socialist politics,

giving hundreds of public lectures, and later editing the journal of the Socialist League,

Commonweal. He resisted both anarchist and authoritarian tendencies within the socialist

movement. His publications include Art and Socialism (1884), A Summary of the Principles of

Socialism (1884), ADreamofJohnBall(1888), Signs of Change (1888)andNews from Nowhere

(1890; published serially in Commonweal in 1889). He died in London in 1896.

Leopold 2003; Thompson 1977.

MOST, JOHANN

1846–1906. Born in Augsburg, Most had a miserable childhood. He moved to Vienna in

1867 where he joined the International Working Men’s Association. A committed socialist,

he was frequently arrested and jailed for his political activities. Most was deported from

Austria in 1871 and returned to Germany to work as a journalist. He was elected to the

Reichstag in 1874 but was forced to leave when anti-socialist laws were passed. He arrived

970

Biographies

in London in 1878, converted to anarchism and started publishing Freiheit;however,he

was imprisoned for eighteen months when, in 1881, he published an article praising the

assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Upon his release he emigrated to America where he

continued to publish Freiheit.

ULLER, ADAM HEINRICH

1779–1829. Born in Berlin and educated at the University of G

ottingen, M

uller worked

as a tutor in Poland and Saxe-Weimar. He was associated with the noble opposition to

Hardenberg in 1810.In1805 M

uller was a secret convert to Roman Catholicism and

in 1812 he went to Vienna and entered the imperial service. He served in a number of

minor diplomatic positions and was created Ritter von Nittersdorf in 1826.M

uller’s political

publications include Elemente der Staatskunst (1809) based on lectures given a t Dresden in

1808–9,

Uber K

onig Friedrich II (1810)andVersuche einer neuen Theorie des Geldes (1816).

Aris 1936;Berdahl1988; Hanisch 1978; Koehler 1980.

NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY (CARDINAL)

1801–90. Cardinal and theologian, Newman was born in London and educated at Oxford.

He was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College in 1822 and was ordained in the Church of

England in 1824.In1826 he was appointed Tutor at Oriel and in 1828 he became vicar of

St Mary’s Church, Oxford. Together with John Keble, Richard Froude and Edward Pusey

he is considered as one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, which sought to link the

Anglican Church more closely with the Roman Catholic Church. Newman’s famous tracts

earned this movement the title of Tractarians. By 1839, however, he had begun to lose faith

in the cause. He converted to Catholicism and was ordained a priest in 1847, becoming

Cardinal in 1879. His most famous work is Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864).

Ker 2010;Rowlands1989.

NIEBUHR, BARTHOLD GEORG

1776–1831. Born in Copenhagen, the only son of the explorer Carsten Niebuhr. He left

the University of Kiel to pursue a career in the Danish and later the Prussian Civil Service.

He resigned from the latter in 1808 to become state historiographer. His R

omische Geschichte

(1811–32) marked an era in the study of its special subject and had a momentous inﬂuence

on the general conception of history. From 1816–23 he was Prussian Ambassador to the

Holy See and after this until his death in 1831 he was a professor in the University of Bonn.

NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH

1844–1900. Nietzsche came from a strongly religious family in Saxony. He was named

Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Basel in 1869. His ﬁrst notable work, Die

Geburt der Trag

odie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1873), reﬂects the inﬂuence of Schopenhauer

and of Wagner, with whom Nietzsche maintained a close friendship between 1868 and 1876.

He criticised Schopenhauer and the romantics for their self-abnegation and lack of vigour.

Suffering from mental illness from 1876 onwards, he became incapacitated by 1889,dying

in 1900. His works include Unzeitgem

aße Betrachtungen (1873), Menschliches Allzumenschliches

(1878), Die fr

ohliche Wissenschaft (1882), Also sprach Zarathustra (1883–91), Jenseits von Gut

und B

ose (1886), Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) and a posthumous compilation of disputed

validity, Der Wille zur Macht (1901).

Bodei 2002; Tanner 1997.

971

Biographies

NOVALIS (HARDENBERG, GEORG FRIEDRICH FREIHERR VON)

1772–1801. Born in Oberwiedstedt, Prussian Saxony, Novalis studied at the universities of

Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg. Having trained at Tennstedt, Novalis worked as an auditor at

salt works at Weissenfels in 1796–7; he returned there as an inspector of mines in 1799 after

studying mining at the Academy of Freiburg. Although his literary output is relatively slight

and fragmentary Novalis is credited with playing a crucial inspirational role in romanticism in

Germany. His political ideas appeared in aphorisms published in Schlegel’s Athen

aum (1799),

in Glauben und Liebe (1798)andinChristenheit oder Europa (1799).

Aris 1936;Beiser1992; Kuhn 1961;O’Brien1995.

O’BRIEN, JAMES (BRONTERRE O’BRIEN)

1805–64. Born in Ireland, O’Brien was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He moved to

London in 1829 and took up journalism, serving as editor of the Poor Man’s Guardian and

other radical journals, establishing his own National Reformer in 1837. When this failed he

joined Feargus O’Connor at the Northern Star. He read widely the literature of the French

Revolution and in 1836 his translated version of Buonarotti’s History of the Babeuf Conspiracy

was published, followed by the Life of Robespierre (1859). A prominent member of the Chartist

cause from the outset, O’Brien was imprisoned from April 1840 to September 1841,for

making a ‘seditious speech’ and when released he broke with O’Connor to advocate political

and social reforms through the National Reform League.

Chase 2006; Thompson 1986.

O’CONNELL, DANIEL

1775–1847. Irish nationalist, known as ‘The Liberator’, he was born in Ireland but educated

in France and admitted to the Bar in Dublin in 1798. As a lawyer he dealt with many cases

of Irish tenants against English landlords. O’Connell campaigned for the rights of Roman

Catholics, founding the Roman Catholic Association in 1823, and was a member of the

English Parliament for many years. His ardent wish was that the Act of Union be repealed

and that an Irish Parliament be established. His meetings attracted hundreds of thousands

and led to his imprisonment for three months for sedition. However, the potato famine of

1847 brought a halt to the movement’s political momentum. His funeral was one of the

largest ever seen in Ireland.

O’Connell 1977.

OWEN, ROBERT

1771–1858. Born in Wales, Owen was apprenticed to drapers in Lincolnshire, London and

Manchester, and went on to make his fortune in the cotton spinning trade. He ran his

cotton spinning mill at New Lanark on a philanthropic basis, and became interested in ideas

of rational education and its impact on the formation of character. Owen began to write and

speak on welfare policy, and also against organised religion. In 1825 he began to develop the

New Harmony community in Indiana, and to expound socialist ideas that would culminate

in a secular millenarianism. After founding other communities but becoming disenchanted

by their failure, he became increasingly involved in spiritualism and divorced from working-

class politics and the socialist movement.

Owen 1993;Taylor1983.

PALACK

Y, FRANTI

SEK

1798–1876. Palack

y came to prominence in 1848 when he opposed the holding of elections

to the German National Assembly in Bohemia and Moravia which were within the German

Confederation. Instead Palack

y argued for the continuation of the Habsburg Empire; he

972

Biographies

wanted it run on more decentralised and constitutional lines with autonomy for Czechs

and other Slav nations. He went on to help organise the Prague Slav congress although

he distanced himself from more radical elements. He also led the Czech party within the

Austrian Constituent Assembly. However, defeat of the revolution also brought defeat of his

decentralising ambitions and Palack

y grew increasingly critical of the Habsburg monarchy,

especially following the Austro-Hungarian Dualism of 1867.

Zacek 1970.

PALEY, WILLIAM

1743–1805. Born in Peterborough, Paley was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge,

where he became a tutor in 1768, lecturing on moral theology. Pursing a religious career

alongside his academic one, he was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1766 and

archdeacon of Carlisle in 1782. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), developed

from his lectures, became a key textbook at Cambridge. In the same period he campaigned

as a vociferous opponent of the slave trade. His major work, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of

the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802), sought to

provide a teleological proof of the existence of God, and of His benevolence, by highlighting

the complexity of biological organisation in the natural world.

PLEKHANOV, GEORGII VALENTINOVICH

1857–1918. Born in the province of Tambov, Plekhanov was the ﬁrst theorist of Russian

Marxism. In 1875 he joined the populist revolutionary movement and after the split in Land

and Liberty (October 1879) he created his own organisation, the Black Repartition, which

was opposed to the terrorist tactics of the People’s Will Party. In 1880 he left Russia and

in 1883 founded the social-democratic group the Emancipation of Labour in Geneva. His

political programme was outlined in Socialism and Political Struggle (1883)andOur Differences

(1885). His interpretation of Marxism, stressing the notion of ‘objective laws of development’,

was best expounded in his Development of the Monist View of History (1895). After the February

Revolution he returned to Russia. He saw the Bolshevik revolution as a fatal mistake but

refused to endorse active struggle against Lenin’s rule.

Baron 1963; Schapiro 1986; Walicki 1969.

PORTALIS, JEAN

ETIENNE MARIE

1746–1807. Born in Provence and educated at the University of Aix, Portalis was a lawyer

for the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence. He moved to Paris at the time of the Revolution,

was imprisoned, practised law brieﬂy, and then left for Switzerland. Back in Paris he served

Napoleon, was appointed Counsellor of State and Minister of Public Faith, and devoted

himself to the redaction of the Napoleonic Code, on which he left extensive commentaries.

Arnaud 1969; Kelley 1984.

PROUDHON, PIERRE-JOSEPH

1809–65. Proudhon was from humble origins and a printer by trade. He attained notoriety

in 1840 for a short book, What is Property?, to which he answered ‘It is theft’. During the

next twenty-ﬁve years, he attacked idle property-owners and outlined a moral socio-political

ideal which scorned politics and proposed to give workers direct control of the economy.

He variously called this ideal ‘anarchism’, ‘mutualism’ and ‘federalism’. He wrote many

books; perhaps the most famous from his mature year s was De la Justice dans la R

evolution et

dans l’

Eglise (1858). He brieﬂy held political ofﬁce as a Deputy during the French Second

Republic, but in 1849 was ﬁned and imprisoned for three years because of his verbal attacks

973