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The Failure of Liberal Racialism: The Racial Ideas of E. A. Freeman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. J. W. Parker
C. J. W. Parker
Affiliation:
Bristol Polytechnic
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Extract

He might be regarded indeed as a representative specimen of the Teutonic type.1 He was essentially Teutonic in his whole personality, physical, as well as moral and mental; in his square, sturdy frame, his ruddy hair, his fair complexion, his plain and simple habits of life, no less than in his love of truth, and straightforwardness in deed and word. For the pure Celt he entertained a kind of natural antipathy, mingled with something like contempt, which often manifested itself in odd and amusing ways, suggestive of Dr Johnson's attitude towards the Scotch.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 825 - 846
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Edward Augustus Freeman, 1823–92. Fellow of Trinity College, 1845–7. Examiner in the Schools, at Oxford, 1857–8, 1863–4, 1873. Regius professor of modern history, Oxford, 1884–92. Historian of the Norman Conquest and much else. Liberal candidate for parliament, 1857, 1858, 1868. D.C.L., LL.D., Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer, Member of the Order of Takova (Serbia) and of the Order of Danilo (Montenegro), Corresponding Member of the Imperial Academy of Science at St Petersburg, Honorary Member of the Historical Society of Massachusetts.

2 Stephens, W. R. W., The life and letters of Edward A. Freeman (2 vols. London, 1895), II, 463–4.Google Scholar

3 Davidson, J. M., Eminent radicals in and out of parliament (London, 1880), p. 255.Google Scholar

4 Freeman was quite happy with Davidson's portrait of him, warts and all: Stephens, Freeman II, 199Google Scholar

5 See: a brief mention in Banton, M., The idea of race (London, 1977), p. 26Google Scholar, and Banton, M., Race relations (London, 1967), p. 45Google Scholar; Barzun, J., Race: a study in superstition (revised edn, New York, 1965), pp. 19, 32, 67, 143–4Google Scholar; more considerable treatment in Gossett, T. F., Race. The history of an idea in America (Dallas, 1963), pp. 98–110; Gossett, covering Freeman's popular and influential lecture tour of America, 1881–2, notes also his antipathy to Jews and Negroes.Google Scholar

6 Proudly referred to in: Freeman, ‘A review of my opinions’, The Forum (April, 1892), p. 154; and also mentioned by the instigator of the move, H. B. Adams: Adams to Freeman, 10 July 1883, Freeman letters, John Rylands Library. Adams wanted his portrait as well, adding ‘You are destined to become a tutelary image in the Johns Hopkins Pantheon’.

7 See Stephens, , Freeman, 1, 114–7.Google Scholar

8 Stephens, Freeman, pp. 43–63, 66–74; Dictionary of national biography, xxii, 672.Google Scholar

9 Stephens, , Freeman, I, 105.Google Scholar

10 Harvie, C., The lights of liberalism: university liberals and the challenge of democracy 1860–86 (London, 1976), p. 156.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p. 222.

12 For an interpretation of nineteenth-century racial thought along these lines see: M. Banton, The idea of race, ch. 2, ‘The racialising of the west’, pp. 13–26. See also: Lorimer, D. A., Colour, class and the Victorians. English attitudes to the negro in the mid-nineteenth century (Leicester, 1978), pp. 11–13.Google Scholar

13 Stephens, Freeman, 1, 66, 108, 110; Freeman, , ‘On the study of history’, Fortnightly Review, xxix (1881), 335.Google Scholar

14 Arnold, T., Introductory lectures on modem history with the inaugural lecture (London, 1848, 2nd edn), pp. 23–30.Google Scholar

15 Freeman, and Rev. Cox, G. W., Poems, legendary and historical (London, 1850), p. 83.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. pp. 3–20, 39–49, 50–62.

17 Stephens, , Freeman, 1, 74–6.Google Scholar

18 Freeman, , The history of the Norman Conquest of England: its causes and its results (6 vols. London, 1867–1879).Google Scholar

19 Freeman and Cox, Poems, p. 182.

20 Ibid. p. 193.

21 Ibid. p. 198.

22 Acknowledged by Freeman as a major influence on his ballads: Freeman and Cox, Poems, p. 166.

23 Stephens, , Freeman, 1, 165.Google Scholar

24 ‘Mr Kingsley's Roman and Teuton’, Saturday Review, xvii (9 April 1864), 447. Articles in Saturday Review were anonymous but there is much evidence for Freeman's authorship, notably Stephen, L. (ed.), Letters of John Richard Green (London, 1901), p. 146Google Scholar. In general, for authorship of Saturday Review articles of 1855–68 see Bevington, M. M., The Saturday Review 1855–1868 (New York, 1941). Bevington uses both ‘external’ evidence and ‘internal’ evidence (e.g. style, opinion) but I have presumed authorship only on the basis of external evidence.Google Scholar

25 Freeman, , ‘The history of Normandy and England by Sir Francis Palgrave’, Edinburgh Review, cix (April 1859), 501.Google Scholar

26 ‘Normandy’, Saturday Review, xii (27 July 1861), 88.Google Scholar

27 Stephens, , Freeman, 1, 289.Google Scholar

28 Ibid. 1, 291.

29 ‘The landesgemeinde of Uri’, Saturday Review, xv (30 May 1863), 686.Google Scholar

30 ‘The landesgemeinden of Uri and Appenzell’, Saturday Review, xviii (21 May, 1864)Google Scholar, 622. See also Freeman, , The growth of the English constitution from the earliest times (London, 1876, 3rd edn), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar

31 Davidson, Eminent radicals, p. 251.

32 Freeman, English constitution, pp. ix-x.

33 Stephens, , Freeman, 1, 298.Google Scholar

34 Freeman to Bryce, 7 Apr. 1867, Bodleian Library, Bryce papers 5, fo. 150. Freeman was in the habit of referring to all ‘Celtic’ foreigners as ‘Welsh’ after the manner of the Anglo-Saxons.

35 Müller to Freeman, 14 Aug. (1870), Freeman letters.

36 Freeman to Müller, 31 July 1870, Freeman letters.

37 Ihne to Freeman, 10 May 1871, Freeman letters.

38 L. Stephen (ed.), Letters of John Richard Green, p. 263.

39 Stephens, , Freeman, II, 9.Google Scholar

40 Ibid. 11, 3–4, 9–10, 16, 22.

41 Ibid. 11, 19.

42 Ibid. 1, 301.

43 Catalogue of the Freeman Library, presented to Owens College by the legatees of the late Sir Joseph Whitworth, compiled by James Tait (Manchester, 1894), p. 210.

44 Freeman to Müller, 2June 1870, 31 July 1870; Müller to Freeman, 7Jan. (1870), ‘Saturday’ (1870), 30 June (1870), 14 Aug. (1870), 12 Nov. (1870), 11 March (1870), Freeman letters.

45 Müller to Freeman, 1 Jan. (1870), Freeman letters.

46 Freeman to J. R. Green, no. 62, 28 Jan. 1877, Freeman letters.

47 There is a box of over 100 letters, on the Eastern Question, sent to Freeman, mainly 1875–9, mostly in response to his appeals: Freeman letters. Much of his regular correspondence was also dominated by the subject.

48 Ihne to Freeman, 3 Oct. 1876, Freeman letters.

49 F. Pollock to Freeman, 26 Aug. 1876, Freeman letters.

50 Müller's doubts about blood and language eventually led him to deny all connexion between language and race, falling back on an almost mystical assertion of the blessing conferred upon speakers of the noble Aryan tongue. Müller, F. M., Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas (London, 1888), pp. 88–91. Freeman's theory of race was a more rational response to the collapse of Aryan racial philology and the decline of the doctrine of permanent racial types.Google Scholar

51 Freeman, , ‘Race and language’, Contemporary Review, xxix (March 1877), 713–28.Google Scholar

52 Freeman, , Four Oxford lectures 1887 (London, 1888), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

53 Freeman, ‘Race and language’, pp. 728–32.

54 Ibid. pp. 734–5.

55 Ibid. p. 740.

56 Freeman, , The Ottoman power in Europe (London, 1877), p. 48.Google Scholar

57 Freeman, , Comparative politics with the unity of history (London, 1873), p. 34.Google Scholar

58 Freeman, , Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and George Washington, the expander of England (London, 1886), p. 9.Google Scholar

59 Freeman, The Ottoman power, pp. 5–15.

60 Freeman, Comparative politics, pp. 23–5.

61 Freeman, , The historical geography of Europe (London, 1881), I, 7–8.Google Scholar

62 Freeman, Comparative politics, pp. 33–4

63 Freeman, , ‘Alter Orbis’, The Contemporary Review, XLI (June 1882), pp. 1041–60.Google Scholar

64 See, for example: Freeman, , William the Conqueror (London, 1888), p. 1 or Four Oxford lectures 1887, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

65 Freeman, , ‘Some impressions of the United States II’, Fortnightly Review, xxxii (1882), 328–9.Google Scholar

66 Freeman, , Lectures to American audiences (Philadelphia and London, 1882), pp. 90–4. See also: Four Oxford lectures, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

67 See, for example: Freeman, , Some impressions of the United States (London, 1883), p. 33.Google Scholar

68 Freeman, Lectures to American audiences, p. 388.

69 Freeman, , ‘Origin of the English nation’, Macmillans Magazine, xxi (1870), 419–31.Google Scholar

70 ‘Extirpation of nations’, Saturday Review, xix (7 Jan. 1865), 11.

71 Freeman, The Ottoman power, p. 42.

72 ‘The jews in Europe’, a short article first printed in Saturday Review (10 Feb. 1877), and reprinted in Historical essays (third series) (London, 1879), pp. 226–30, as an appendix to an amended version of ‘Race and language’.Google Scholar

73 Freeman, The Ottoman power, pp. xviii-xx.

74 Freeman, ‘Some impressions of the United States II’, pp. 333–4.

75 Stephens, , Freeman, II, 254.Google Scholar

76 Ibid. 11, 389.

77 Ibid. 11, 427–8.

78 Ibid. 11, 259.

79 Freeman, The Ottoman power, pp. 41–8.

80 Freeman, ‘Some impressions of the United States II’, p. 327.

81 Ibid. pp. 329–30.

82 Ibid. pp. 330–2.

83 ‘ I see you make all man-folk one lot’, he had written to the anthropologist, Tylor,’ My Aryan pride was hoping that some of the baser sorts might not be’. Stephens, , Freeman, II, 231.Google Scholar

84 Ibid. 11, 234.

85 Ibid., 11, 236–7.

86 Ibid. 11, 246.

87 Ibid. 11, 255.

88 Freeman, ‘Some impressions of the United States II’, p. 332.

89 Ibid. p. 333.

90 See, for example: Freeman's appendix to ‘George Washington, the expander of England’, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, pp. 104–43; or Freeman, , ‘Imperial Federation’, Macmillans Magazine, LI (1885), 430–45.Google Scholar

91 Stephens, , Freeman, I, 250–1.Google Scholar

92 Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, p. 91.

93 See particularly ‘George Washington, the expander of England’, Ibid. pp. 62–103.

94 H. B. Adams to Freeman, 10 July 1883, Freeman letters.

95 H. B. Adams to Freeman, 1 July 1883, Freeman letters.

96 Freeman, ‘Some impressions of the United States II’, pp. 334–5.