Historiographia in Nuce, Alexis de Tocqueville (Carl Schmitt)
Revista de Estudios Políticos Issue 43, January-February 1949
I.
A proverb I often heard in my youth still rings in my ears: “History is written by the victor.” It has the clarity of a command, and probably comes from a soldier.
The first history book I read when I was a young man was Annegarn's World History, an excellent homespun book which presents German history from the Catholic point of view. The Catholics of the time, around 1900, were certainly not victors in a Prussian-ruled Germany, and their historians were on the defensive, with some difficulty. I did not notice it while I was young. A young man who reads history books with enthusiasm does not care who wrote such beautiful narratives. I was taken with the good Annegarn, and it did not occur to me to think of problems of historiography.
Gradually I got to know the victors of my time and their historians. Then the sociological feeling of the proverb about the victorious historians became clear to me. It meant that the liberal national historians of the Bismarckian Empire, Sybel, Treitschke and their successors, are the great historians. The defeated Austrians or French, not to mention the Danes, Poles and ultramontanes, count for nothing. However, as WWI drew nearer, the warning was heard from time to time that we had to pull together if we did not want to fall into the role of the vanquished. Otherwise, in addition to the misfortunes of a lost war, the victor's historians would triumph over ours as well.
In all these proverbs about war, the 19th century European land war, a state-organized military war, was in mind. They were not thinking of civil war. There are many important proverbs about war in general. Poets and philosophers, historians and soldiers have spoken about war. Unfortunately, what is said about war only takes on its ultimate and most bitter meaning in civil war. Many quote Heraclitus' principle: “war is the father of all things.” Few, however, when they speak thus, dare to think of civil war.
II.
Alexis de Tocqueville has long been for me the greatest historian of the 19th century. It is a somewhat unfashionable distinction, but he is one of the rare historians who has not indulged in the historicism of his century. It is astonishing how his gaze penetrates through the surface of revolutions and restorations to reveal the decisive core of the evolution taking place behind the fronts and the contradictory slogans, an evolution which uses all the parties of the right and left to push things towards increasing centralisation and democratization.
If I say that this historian's gaze is penetrating, I do not mean that it is strained and forced. He does not have the zeal of the sociologist or psychologist, nor the vanity of the sceptic, nor does he harbor metaphysical ambitions. It does not set out to find the eternal laws of the universal historical process, the laws of the three stages or cultural cycles. He does not speak of things in which he does not existentially participate, of Indians or Egyptians, Etruscans and Hittites. Nor, in the manner of the great Hegel or the wise Ranke, does he lodge like a god in the royal box of the universal theatre. He is a moralist in the sense of the French tradition, like Montesquieu, and, at the same time, a painter, in the sense of the French conception of painting. His gaze is gentle and clear, and always a little sad. He has intellectual courage, but his courtesy and loyalty move him to give everyone a chance, and he does not show high-flown despair. Thus, in 1849, he was for a few months Minister of Foreign Affairs to President Louis Napoleon, whom he had perfectly fitted in as a histrionic actor. The chapter in his Memoirs which he devotes to this experience is very topical. He is best recognized in these Memoirs. No other historian can boast anything like Tocqueville in this admirable book, but what lifts him above all the historians of the 19th century is the great prognosis at the end of the first volume of his Democracy in America.
Tocqueville's prognosis predicts that mankind will undeniably and irresistibly follow the path towards centralisation and democratization which it has long since embarked upon. But the historian is not content with merely stating this general trend of evolution. He clearly and distinctly names the specific historical forces that support and bring about this evolution: America and Russia. As distinct and opposite as the one and the other are, by different paths: one, with liberal forms of organization; the other, with dictatorial forms, they lead to the same result of a centralized and democratized humanity.
III.
It is truly extraordinary that a young European jurist more than a hundred years ago, around 1835, was able to conceive such a prediction, when the dominant world picture of his time was still totally Europe-centric. Hegel had died a few years earlier, in 1831, without noticing in these two new world powers the headlines of a new evolution. What is most astonishing is that the French historian so concretely identified the two powers, America and Russia, which at the time were not yet industrialized. Two giants on the rise, both of which were born of the European spirit and yet not European, will meet and touch each other across the borders and over the heads of little Europe.
What Tocqueville thus predicted was not a vague oracle, nor a prophetic vision, nor a general philosophical-historical construction. It was a real prognosis, obtained by objective observation and through a superior diagnosis, conceived with the boldness of a European intelligence and enunciated with all the precision of a French spirit. With this prognosis, European self-consciousness changes and a new period of historical self-localization of our spirit begins. Broad social zones have not become aware of them until later, through the reflector of necessity and the loudspeaker of this clear rubric: decadence of the West. The problem is neither of today nor of yesterday. The first modern contribution to this secular subject comes from Tocqueville. And even today this contribution remains the most important of all, because it is the most concrete. Of some profound historical truths it can be said that it is when they are most clearly formulated when they emerge.
IV.
Tocqueville was a defeated man. All kinds of defeats were added up in him, and not by chance, nor by bad luck, but by destiny and with an existential character. As an aristocrat, he was a vanquished of the civil war, I mean the worst kind of war, which also entails the worst kind of defeat. He belonged to the social stratum that had been defeated by the revolution of 1789. As a liberal, he had foreseen the revolution, no longer liberal, of 1848, and was mortally wounded by the explosion of its terror. As a Frenchman, he was the son of a nation which, after a twenty-year coalition war, had been defeated by England, Russia, Austria and Prussia. On this flank, he was the vanquished of a foreign world war. As a European, he also came to fall on the side of the defeated as soon as he foresaw the evolution by which the two new powers, America and Russia, became, over the heads of Europe, the foundation and heirs of an irresistible centralization and democratization. As a Christian, in short, who was and remained, with the faith of his parents, by baptism and tradition, he was also defeated by the scientific agnosticism of his time. That is why he did not become that for which he seemed predestined more than any other: a Christian Epimetheus. He lacked the fortitude of historical salvation that would preserve his historical idea of Europe from despair. Europe was lost without the idea of a Katechon. Instead, he sought clever temporary agreements. He himself felt the weakness of these compromises, as did his opponents, who laughed at him for this reason.
He was thus a vanquished man who accepts his defeat. “C'est un vaincu qui accepte sa défaite.” This was what Guizot said of him, and what Sainte-Beuve jealously gossiped about. It was said with malice, as the literary critic used it as a poisoned arrow to mortally wound the famous historian. But God changes the meaning of these evils and turns them into a testimony of another, deeper, involuntary and unexpected meaning. The malicious venom can thus serve as a glimpse of what is arcane in the greatness that elevates the vanquished Frenchman above all the historians of his century.
V.
In the autumn of 1940, when France lay defeated on the ground, I had a conversation with a Yugoslav, the Serbian poet Ivo Andric, whom I love very much. We were united in our common knowledge and admiration of Léon Bloy. The Serbian told me the following story, taken from the myth of his people. All day long, Marko Kraljevic, the hero of the Serbian legend, fought with a mighty Turk and, after a hard fight, managed to bring him to the ground. After he had killed the defeated enemy, a snake sleeping over the heart of the dead man woke up and spoke to Marko: “It was your good fortune that I slept through your fight.” Then the hero exclaimed: “Woe is me, I have killed a man who was stronger than I am!”
I told the story to some acquaintances and friends, among them Ernst Jünger, who was in Paris as an officer in the army of occupation. We were all deeply impressed. But it was also clear to all of us that the salesmen of today are not impressed by such medieval legends. This is also part of your great prognosis, poor defeated Tocqueville!