Race : a study in modern superstition / Jacques Barzun.

  • Jacques Barzun
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Race : a study in modern superstition / Jacques Barzun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rayed against them the greatest historians of the period —Guizot, Chateaubriand, the brothers Thierry, Miche let, and Edgar Quinet. The first two were compromisers, middle-of-the-road partisans; the rest were outright Liberals; and all concerned themselves with race as an explanation or justification of political opinion. The ap peal to the past became a form of demonstration, and where an obviously selfish interest could not be justified on its own grounds it was somehow sanctified by relat ing it racially to a group of people who were postulated as inherently admirable. Benjamin Constant, the great est liberal force in the first quarter of the century, at tests the political power of these appeals to history. In his famous pamphlet on the Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation in Europe (1813) he says: Our fanatical reformers purposely confuse chronology to kindle and keep up hatred, just as some had gone back to the Franks and Goths to find pretexts in order to oppress in the opposite direction. (Pp. 121-2; 91 n.) Guizot and Chateaubriand do not confuse chronology, nor do they side with only one race. They concede the various racial points made by Boulainvilliers, Dubos, and Mably, which means accepting the three political traditions ascribed to Gauls, Romans, and Franks. Guizot's Essays on French History (1823) are an at tempt to harmonize everything under the banner of legitimacy. But for him as for the others, each of the political principles to be reconciled is a racial heritage. Chateaubriand is equally ready to do justice to the