The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

Max Weber,charisma and nationalist leadership1

ABSTRACT. One of Max Weber's most well‐known achievements was the formulation of three concepts of legitimate authority: traditional, legal‐rational and charismatic. However, there are particular problems with the last of these, which is not historically grounded in the manner of the other two concepts. The charisma concept originated with Weber's sociology of religion, was pressed into service in pre‐war writing on the sociology of domination, shifted focus in his wartime political writings and changed meaning again in his post‐war writing on basic sociological concepts. To use the concept in historical‐political analysis, I argue, one must distinguish between a pre‐modern and modern form of charismatic domination. I argue that doing this enables us to understand features of the leadership of colonial nationalist and fascist movements.     

THE LIMITS OF OTTOMAN PRAGMATISM

In this paper I reflect critically on the concept of pragmatism as it is used in Ottoman historiography. Pragmatism has gained increasing currency over the last ten to fifteen years as one of the defining features of the Ottoman polity. I argue that unless it is properly defined from a theoretical‐philosophical perspective, and carefully contextualized from a historical perspective, pragmatism cannot be used as an explanatory or comparative category. When used as a framework of explanation for historical change, pragmatism blurs more than it clarifies an essential aspect of the Ottoman polity that it seeks to define, namely, the political. It is essential to reflect on the difference between the political and politics because whereas the political refers to the configuration of the power relations that organize a society as a legitimate entity, politics refers to the strategies, practices, institutions, or discourses whose purpose is to construct and retain hegemony within a polity. Through an analysis of the concept of pragmatism in Ottoman historiography, I show that for most proponents of Ottoman pragmatism, pragmatism pertains to politics rather than to the political. From a perspective rigorously confined to political theory, I argue that much like the discourse of modern tolerance, pragmatism in Ottoman historiography posits a problematic periodization, relegates the political to the background, and depoliticizes essential power relations.     

Lisbon's Red Belt: A Cautionary Tale on Politicisation and Depoliticisation of the Urban Realm

Within the making of Portuguese liberal‐representative democracy, the Portuguese Communist Party became a major actor in local government in urban deprived peripheries, shaping Lisbon's Red Belt. In this article, we analyse the communist discourse on the Portuguese urban question, showing how it politicised the urban as a site of unevenness and deprivation, but simultaneously depoliticised it by refusing to acknowledge it as a proper space for conflict. This historical account leads us to a critical debate with proposals that discuss urban politicisation by ontologising “the urban” or “the political”—we argue that these approaches tend to be less helpful in understanding processes of contingent, partial and inter‐related forms of politicisation/depoliticisation of the urban in itself. In contrast, we argue for a more attentive theorisation on politicisation–depoliticisation of the urban condition as a most valuable path to grasp situated formulations of citizenship and, hence, configurations of political regimes.     

The Classical Tradition Strikes Back. Reply to Comments on The Rise of Bronze Age Society from Gullög Nordquist and Helène Whittaker.

This paper discusses the recent excavation of a 10th century shieling in the highlands of eastern Iceland and places it in the context of other sites and research into Viking age shielings in the North Atlantic. Although the basic economic role of shielings in relation to livestock and summer transhumance is not contested, it is argued that a more complex interpretation needs to be developed around such sites, to consider their ideological and political status. The presence of ‘subsidiary activities’ is often a prominent element in the archaeological record of such sites; the site of Pálstóftir provides indications of small scale craftwork, hunting and magico‐religious practices which need to be made a more central part of interpretation.     

3. SIMA QIAN AND HIS WESTERN COLLEAGUES: ON POSSIBLE CATEGORIES OF DESCRIPTION

This article comments on some of Professor Huang's theses by looking at ancient historiography. It deals with the significance of history in its respective cultural contexts; the kind of orientation that historical thinking and historiography provide; and the relationship between concrete examples and abstract rules in historical argumentation. Distinguishing between ancient Greece and Rome, it shows that Huang's explicit and implicit East‐West oppositions are more valid with respect to ancient Greece than to ancient Rome. on important points, the situation of Rome is surprisingly close to that of china. thus not only in China but also in Rome, tradition and history are highly important as a life‐orienting force (as opposed to the importance of speculative thought in Greece); and not only in China but also in Rome the orientation that historical thinking and historiography provide is to a great extent moral (as opposed to orientation through intellectual insight that, for a historian such as Thucydides, is placed in the foreground). As to the relationship between concrete examples and abstract rules in historical argumentation, the paper takes up Professor Rüsen's category of “exemplary meaning‐generation,” but suggests a distinction between example in the sense of “case/instance” and example in the sense of “model/paragon.” Though the two corresponding modes of exemplary meaning‐generation are mostly entwined, it appears that in Chinese and Roman historical works (in accordance with their stress on moral effect) there is a tendency toward meaning‐generation by example in the sense of “model/paragon,” whereas in Greek historiography (in accordance with its stress on intellectual insight) the tendency is toward meaning‐generation by example in the sense of “case/instance.”     

Continuity and disruption in the ancient Hejaz: an assessment of current archaeological strategies

In this study I review two conflicting scenaria of the history of northwestern Arabia from approximately 1300 to 200 BC and discuss their theoretical and methodological determinants. The still sparse archaeological and historic information on this topic has been used in two quite different ways. On one hand there is the traditional culture historical approach which subordines all social interpretation to the precise strictures of an interrupted ceramic typology, on the other a recent attempt to interpret archaeological and textual data within the theoretical framework of a long-term historical model that integrates the Hejaz into the broader Near Eastern world system. I argue that these two approaches reflect fundamentally different approaches to the study of ancient society and that each incorporates a conceptual approach that necessarily determines its interpretational outcome. Furthermore I conclude that use of an inclusive theoretical model permits better integration of the growing archaeological and textual information bases and obviates much of the inconsistency and interpretational naivity that unavoidably derives from the culture historica approach.     

Ethno‐religious ‘unmixing’ of ‘Turkey’: 6–7 September riots as a case in Turkish nationalism*

Abstract. This article examines the structural and ideological factors that paved the way for the eruption of violence against non‐Muslims in Turkey on 6 September 1955. I argue that the conventional explanations that treat this instance of collective violence either as spontaneous rioting caused by over‐excited masses or as a government conspiracy that eventually got out of control are insufficient in that they fail to answer how and why so many people participated in these riots when we know that nothing on this scale ever took place in the history of the republic. In order to adequately understand the dynamics behind these riots one first needs to situate them in the broader historical context of the emergence, development and crystallisation of Turkish nationalism and national identity that marked the non‐Muslim citizens of the republic as the ‘others’ and potential enemies of the real Turkish nation. This historical analysis constitutes the first part of the article. Since ethno‐national riots do not always occur whenever there are conflicting identities, one also needs to explain the processes through which ethno‐national identities become radicalized and polarized. Thus, in the second part of the article, I focus on the economic, political and social conditions of the post‐single‐party era (post‐1950) that helped to radicalise the sentiments of the growing urban populace against the non‐Muslim ‘others’. I argue that it was the socio‐economic, ideological and political transformations of the Democrat Party era that made it possible for ethnic entrepreneurs and state provocateurs to mobilise the masses against a fictitious enemy.     

Social Relations and War Remembrance: Second World War Atrocities in Rural Tuscan Villages

This article addresses the issue of how long‐term memory of extreme conditions is socially transformed. It focuses on elements of the social structure and pre‐war habitus that might help understanding of the divided memory of massacres that were perpetrated by the Nazis in three rural Tuscan villages between 1943 and 1944. Within the “mnemonic communities”, discrepancies arise since some of the villagers paradoxically blame the partisans instead of the Nazis. An attempt is made to trace current representations of historical events in the framework of traditional social institutions and political life of these small villages in time of crisis. Battles over memory are seen as a twofold process—that is, as part of “internal”, intra‐village relations as well as a form of reaction toward the “external” world of which they feel victims. The article argues that long‐term memory of past political violence is strictly bound up with local power relations.     

The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought: a Wightian exploration

Is there any significant international thought in antiquity beyond the West? If there is, why has there as yet been no meaningful conversation between the expanding enterprise of theorizing International Relations (IR) today and ancient Chinese political thought? This extended version of my Martin Wight Memorial Lecture addresses these questions through a critical exploration of how a pivotal idea in ancient as well as contemporary international relations, namely, the idea of order, is deliberated in ancient Chinese political thought. Inspired by Martin Wight's profound scholarship so steeped in historical and philosophical depth, it investigates why and how alternative visions of moral, social and political order are imagined, offered and debated in ancient Chinese philosophical discourse. It examines the ways in which the moral and political pursuit of order as a social ideal is conducted in the anarchical society of states in ancient China. Through these historical and philosophical investigations, this article seeks to establish that ancient Chinese political and philosophical deliberations are rich in international thought and that classical thinkers in China's Axial Age are alive to us and contemporaneous with us philosophically as much as ancient Greek philosophers are. In establishing such a claim, the article calls for, and issues an invitation to, a conversation between the world of thought in ancient China and the theorization of IR as an intellectual ritual in search of a truly international theory.     

Positive Returns and Equilibrium: Simultaneous Feedback Between Public Opinion and Social Policy

This paper pushes forward political research from across disciplines seeking to understand the linkages between public opinion and social policy in democracies. It considers the thermostatic and the increasing returns perspectives as pointing toward a potentially stable set of effects running between opinion and policy. Both theoretical perspectives argue that opinion and policy are reciprocally causal, feeding back on one another. This is a general argument found in opinion‐policy literatures. However, much empirical research claims to model “feedback” effects when actually using separate unidirectional models of opinion and policy. Only a small body of research addresses opinion‐policy endogeneity directly. In this paper I consider an opinion‐policy system with simultaneous feedback and without lags. I argue that there is a theoretical equilibrium in the relationship of opinion and policy underlying the otherwise cyclical processes that link them. Given that available cross‐national data are cross‐sectional and provide limited degrees of freedom, an ideal theoretical model must be somewhat constrained in order to arrive at empirically meaningful results. In this challenging and exploratory undertaking I hope to open up the possibility of a general system of effects between public opinion and social policy and how to model them in future research. I focus on social welfare policy as it is highly salient to public interests and a costly area of government budgets, making it an area of contentious policymaking. Social policy is also a major part of the thermostatic model of opinion and policy, which was recently extended to the cross‐national comparative context (Wlezien & Soroka, 2012) providing a critical predecessor to this paper because identification of equilibrium between public opinion and social policy in any given society is greatly enhanced through comparison with other societies. This counterfactual approach helps to identify opinion‐policy patterns that may not change much within societies, but can be seen as taking on discrete trajectories between societies.     

Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni: A Literary and Philosophical Confrontation

Abstract

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was one of the first Jewish thinkers to express republican positions, yet very little is known about his knowledge of humanistic republican conceptions. Had he read Leonardo Bruni’s republican writings? Had he even heard of them? In this essay I attempt to address this philological gap by comparing Abravanel’s republican commentary on 1 Samuel 8 with Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae Urbis, especially the motif of the plea to God to authorize a political regime. This comparison is particularly useful for illuminating their respective positions on republicanism, their shared interests and conceptions, as well as their divergent attitudes to their own political and historical environment. This divergence, I argue, sheds light on the early modern Christian and Jewish receptions of ancient republicanism.     

DWELLING WITHIN: THE INHABITED RUINS OF HISTORY1

Addressing the recent call to rethink history as a form of presence, the essay works toward a recovery of a space in which such presence of history is encoded. I argue that history as a form of active perception is akin to virtual witnessing of the past in the moment of our encounter with historical artifacts, be they texts, photographs, or buildings. To this end, I engage with the conceptual and material aspects of historical perception, deriving a model of history as “inhabited ruins,” the way it emerges together with historical consciousness and finds an especially dynamic expression in Georg Simmel's philosophy of culture. Throughout, I work with the notion of distance and trans‐dimensional presence as the forces that shape and reshape historical awareness. Ruins, intimately connected to the modern historical imagination, are approached not as sites of commemoration or nostalgia, but as spaces of active exchange between presence and disappearance. As such, they are taken to be the models for the transitive character of history itself, blurring the division between perception and thought. In other words, ruins are taken as structures that evoke and summon the past to an encounter with contemporary reality—a type of co‐appearance that opens the possibility of virtually witnessing the past. I conclude that the logic of “inhabited ruins” constitutes the event‐horizon of modern identity, always placing history right at the threshold of fragmentation.     

Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th Baronet: An Unconventional Politician?*

The political life of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th baronet has traditionally been seen in line with Sir Lewis Namier's views of 18th‐century politics and this article seeks to reinterpret his political life, taking into consideration not only his activities within parliament, but also his role within local government and his cultural activities. It will particularly consider the importance of his role within the concerts for ancient music, his lord lieutenancy of Merioneth and the central part he played in the 1778 treasury warrant crisis as well as his vigorous attempts to defend his interest during the 1774 Montgomeryshire election. This article will also argue that the cultural activities of back‐bench country gentlemen within the 18th‐century house of commons can shed new light upon their political views and activities.     

International Political System and the Westphalian Paradigm: a Call for Revision

This analysis examines the political documentation of the Amarna letters, which date back to the mid‐fourteenth century B.C.E. This analysis will illustrate that a viable functioning international relations systems existed long before the Westphalia treaties (1648), which typically stand as the marker for the beginning of international relations. In order to examine this hypothesis, literature written about the Amarna period was examined for evidence of six defining indicators of international relations. This literature was applied in conjunction with the actual letters, providing the general tool of analysis. The analysis revealed that a fully‐functioning international relations system existed during the Amarna period, consisting of actors, polarity, international law, diplomacy, foreign policy, territorial expansion, trade, and alliance building. These finding do not mark insignificant the Westphalian treaties, their claims, or their symbolic importance. The main implication here is that the international relations field, as well as others, needs to acknowledge that much of what is considered “modern” in international relations actually developed in ancient Mesopotamia. Continuing refusal to account for the disparity between historical assumptions and reality will limit the scope of knowledge regarding international dilemmas considerably.     

HOW NINETEENTH‐CENTURY GERMAN CLASSICISTS WROTE THE JEWS OUT OF ANCIENT HISTORY

This essay considers why Jewish antiquity largely fell outside the purview of ancient historians in the Germanies for over half a century, between 1820 and 1880, and examines the nature of those portraits that did, in fact, arise. To do so, it interrogates discussions of Jewish antiquity in this half‐century against the background of those political and national values that were consolidating across the German states. Ultimately, the article claims that ancient Jewish history did not provide a compelling model for the dominant (Protestant) German scholars of the age, which then prompted the decline of antique Judaism as a field of interest. This investigation into the political and national dimensions of ancient history both supplements previous lines of inquiry and complicates accounts that assign too much explanatory power to a regnant anti‐Judaism or anti‐Semitism in the period and place. First, the analysis considers why so little attention was granted to Jewish history by ancient historians in the first place, as opposed to its relative prominence before ca. 1820. Second, the essay examines representations of ancient Judaism as fashioned by those historians who did consider the subject in this period. Surveying works composed not only for the upper echelons of scholarship but also for adolescents, women, and the laity, it scrutinizes a series of arguments advanced and assumptions embedded in universal histories, histories of the ancient world, textbooks of history, and histories dedicated to either Greece or Rome. Finally, the article asserts the Jewish past did not conform to the values of cultural ascendancy, political autonomy, national identity, and religious liberty increasingly hallowed across the Germanies of the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and inscribed into the very enterprise of historiography, on the other. The perceived national and political failures of ancient Jews—alongside the ethnic or religious ones discerned by others—thus made antique Judaism an unattractive object of study in this period.     

Auf der Suche nach der Politik in der Wissensproduktion: Plädoyer für eine historisch‐politische Epistemologie

In Search of Politics in Knowledge Production. A Plea for a Historical‐Political Epistemology. Knowledge production has an intrinsic political dimension. Starting from this presupposition, it is argued that the systematic integration of and reflection on the political dimension is necessary for an adequate understanding of historical processes of knowledge production in the sciences. The consecutive plea for a historical‐political epistemology proceeds in two steps: First, it is illustrated that in a number of recent historical science study cases, the political dimension is frequently marginal, or even absent. After a short discussion of previous theoretical concepts to describe the impact of politics for the production of scientific knowledge, an approach is sketched which builds on Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's historical epistemology and Bruno Latour's symmetrical anthropology. It is argued that in addition to Rheinberger's program to describe epistemic systems, the political dimension is intrinsic to three stages of the process of data production: First to an initial phase which consists in the arrangement socio‐technical configurations to produce new evidence. Here, factors such as the culturally shaped perception and evaluation of ?relevant”? problems, as well as the perception of career resources have to be taken into account. Second, the political dimension is relevant in view of the continuous re‐adjustments of the configuration of epistemic systems, e. g. towards newly available financial, technical, or intellectual resources and ?relevant”? challenges from outside the system. Thirdly, the data produced and represented by epistemic systems – “evidence” – are yet in need of interpretation. This process is in itself imbued with continuously shifting mechanisms of selecting and creating hierarchies amongst the pool of available data.     

STORY MAKES HISTORY,THEORY MAKES STORY: DEVELOPING RÜSEN'S HISTORIK IN LOGICAL AND SEMIOTIC DIRECTIONS

This essay will argue that the traditional opposition between narrative and theory in historical sciences is dissolved if we conceive of narratives as theoretical devices for understanding events in time through special concepts that abridge typical sequences of events. I shall stress, in the context of the Historical Knowledge Epistemological Square (HKES) that emerged with the scientization of history, that history is always narrative, story has a theoretical ground of itself, and scientific histories address the need for a conceptual progression in ever‐improved narratives. This will lead to identification of three major theoretical levels in historical stories: naming, plotting (or emplotment), and formalizing. We revisit Jörn Rüsen's theory of history as the best starting point, and explore to what extent it could be developed by (i) taking a deeper look into narratological knowledge, and (ii) reanalyzing logically the conceptual strata in order to bridge the overrated Forschung/Darstellung (research/exposition) divide. The corollary: we should consider (scientific) historical writing as the last step of historical research, not as the next step after research is over. This thesis will drive us to a reconsideration of the German Historik regarding the problem of interpretation and exposition. Far from alienating history from science, narrative links history positively to anthropology and biology. The crossing of our triad name‐plot‐model with Rüsen's four theoretical levels (categories‐types‐concepts‐names) points to the feasibility of expanding Rüsen's Historik in logical and semiotic directions. Story makes history, theory makes story, and historical reason may proceed.     

“共和”与“民主”的趋同——美国革命时期对“共和政体”的重新界定

在美国革命时期,"共和"这一古老政治词汇的含义发生了重大变化。美国建国者参照各种政治理论和历史经验,结合他们所处社会的特点,不仅成功建立了一种新型政体,而且为它做了全面的辩护和诠释,从而完成了对"共和政体"的重新界定。这种新型的共和政体,不再是"人民"与贵族分享权力的混合政体,而是完全建立在"人民主权"基础上的代表制政体,它的社会基础、价值取向和适应范围都发生了深刻变化,与古典共和理念之间形成了明显的差异。与此同时,"民主"的概念也得以扩充,"人民"通过代表制行使政治权力的政府,与"人民"亲自掌握权力的政府一样,都可以叫做"民主"。这两个交错并行的观念转化过程,不仅塑造了现代意义上的"共和"与"民主"的概念,而且使得两个原本含义不同的政体名称,最终变成了同义词。     

KOSELLECK,ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well‐known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti‐totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience.