Communications

ARTICLES

To the Editor:

Thomas W. Gallant deserves thanks and congratulations for his stimulating article, "Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth-Century Greece" (/journals/ahr/105.2/ah000359.html). He raises important issues for any historian interested in the study of violence, and he has illuminating things to say on many of them.

     Nevertheless, there are some serious problems with his essay. The first may not even be entirely Gallant's fault: his article has evidently gone through some exceptionally poor proofreading. Many of the anecdotes recounted barely make sense, as actors and actions are hopelessly confused. Take, for example, this incident (p. 365, names simplified): "A entered the taverna of B . . . and demanded that C stop calling him a cuckold. According to the police report, B believed that C was the source of the gossip about him, gossip that B's wife had told him. When confronted with the accusation, A simply laughed. Beside himself with fury at being mocked, C swore to make him eat his words. After a fight . . . A needed thirteen stitches." Who slandered whom? Who accused whom? And who fought whom? Only a reader who has access to Gallant's primary sources could hope to sort it all out.

     A secondary difficulty emerging from this sloppiness in reproducing anecdotal material is that it casts doubt on Gallant's reportage of facts summarized rather than presented in full (for example, p. 377 n. 68; p. 379 table). If the reader doesn't trust the information s/he can check, how is s/he to trust data s/he cannot? Likewise, recurring references to an "unpublished ms." of the author's own research (with no indication that it is about to be made more widely available; 376 n.67, 377 n.69, 378 n.70, 378 n.72) fail to instill confidence.

     Incidentally, although Gallant's habit of referencing his own writings may not be wholly in good taste, it is not nearly as bad as his ungenerous citation of others' work. Pieter Spierenburg is foremost among historians who link "the duel among members of the elite classes" with "plebeian or peasant violence"—precisely the issue Gallant identifies as a research lacuna, which his own study is meant to fill (p. 360). Why, if this is the concern highlighted in the opening paragraphs, is reference to Spierenburg's important book tucked away far into the article (p. 373 n.50 and following)? This is not to detract from the originality of Gallant's contribution—the lacuna is large enough to accommodate more than one historian—but Spierenburg does deserve better billing.

     More interesting still are the flaws in Gallant's methodology and interpretation. (I should note that I have no direct knowledge of the Greek materials he deals with and can only base my observations on the data Gallant himself provides.) The first is his apparent lack of concern with the texture of his sources, with the limitations they impose and the types of readings they enable. Gallant cites several nineteenth-century colonial officials' and travelers' memoirs as proof of volatile Greek tempers and an easy recourse to "'the dark knife and bloody stiletto'" (p. 361). Such quotations are colorful, but—falling well within the genre conventions of Orientalist ethnography—they hardly substantiate anything other than that the Greeks were perceived as just another bunch of savages (a perception Gallant hints at elsewhere, p. 377 n.69). Conversely, court records may provide less affective evidence, but they do not convey an unadulterated truth, either. (Almost precisely the same point emerges from Spierenburg's book review elsewhere in the same issue; p. 626.) That noblemen are under-represented in court records dealing with violence need not mean that "the Ionian aristocracy did not duel" (p. 377); it would only mean that if those aristocrats who did draw blades were as likely as their peasant counterparts to end up in front of a magistrate, a point Gallant neglects to establish. Moreover, Gallant's inattention to source limitations hamstrings his main argument concerning diachronic development—that honor was dissociated from violence, allowing it to endure while the latter atrophied into mock-fighting. In present-day Greece, knives are drawn "[only] when it is certain that others are present to prevent their use . . . This was definitely not the case in the past," Gallant asserts (p. 376). But how can he know? Past posturing would in all likelihood never have made it into the courts in the first place or (at least in the early nineteenth century, when even slashings tended to get lenient treatment) may have been summarily dismissed. It is therefore highly unlikely that bloodless violence, if it ever were the case in the past, would make an appearance in the records Gallant scrutinizes.

     Finally, even in our broad-minded age when hardly any reading is outright wrong, interpretations ought to be believable—and Gallant's sometimes are not. How can he conclude that "Maridas's family accepted his fate as just and so felt no need to cleanse their honor in Kallihias's blood" (p. 368), when he has just reported that "some of [Maridas's] kinsmen ran to get their guns" immediately after Kallihias shot him (p. 367)? The consequent distinction Gallant tries to draw, between attitudes to fair and unfair slayings, disintegrates. Similarly, the reading of a butcher's clever puns at his antagonist's expense (p. 364) as an insult "sufficiently ambiguous as to leave the offended party with an out if he wished to avoid a fight" (p. 366 n.22) must be rejected. Humor is so often barbed, so seldom mollifying. The butcher's comparison of his rival to an animal ready for the slaughter and his suggestion to sell an ear he chops off during the fight are calculated to degrade his unfortunate opponent, not to comfort him.

     Gallant offers many real insights, but he lets slip too many others. His observation that "[w]itnesses were central to the ritual" of knife fighting is spot on, but he goes wide of the mark when he adds that "their role was by and large a passive one" (p. 371). Here was his opportunity to make a real breakthrough in writing the history of violence, an opportunity to break away from the depressingly prevalent bipolar model that sees violence as occurring primarily between attacker and victim, and only incidentally involving third parties. Gallant convincingly argues that knife fighting is a discursive ritual and acknowledges that witnesses, "[e]ven more than the participants, . . . framed the discourse for public assessment" (p. 370), yet he fails to recognize the primary, active role such witnesses played in the theater of violence. Inasmuch as it leaves something for the rest of us to do, this is nice. Otherwise, it's a real pity.

Oren Falk

Centre for Medieval Studies Toronto

Thomas W. Gallant replies:

I am pleased that Oren Falk found my article so stimulating that it prompted him to write such a lengthy letter. Unfortunately, I find little of substance in his missive that warrants a response. His criticisms either betray little understanding of historical methodology or they are based on a cavalier and superficial reading of the text. Moreover, the tone in which he couched his comments is remarkably unprofessional.

     I shall use just one example, out of his many misguided criticisms, to show how flawed is Falk's comprehension of the article. In the last paragraph of his letter, Falk criticizes me for asserting (p. 371) that the witnesses to a duel were by and large passive observers to the combat. He then chides me for failing "to recognize the primary, active role such witnesses played in the theater of violence," and he cites a passage (p. 370) to support this criticism. Regarding the first point, the passage he cites comes from a section in which I compared the practice of dueling in a wide variety of historical contexts. It is empirically correct that the witnesses to the single combat between two men were largely passive: if they were not, then the fight would have been a brawl and not a duel. As to his second relating to the active role of witnesses in the theater of violence, I make that argument explicitly. Throughout the article, I employed the metaphor of the duel as a play as the central element of my analysis. I wrote explicitly and unambiguously that the "third act to these dramas" (pp. 363, 370) of the knife fights took place in the courtroom, and that it was the observers to the fight who now appeared as witnesses at the trial who played the most important role. I argued further that "reputation, not truth, was on trial." The witnesses became the crucial actors, and, in the third act, they took center stage. What could possibly be clearer?

     In sum, while I am pleased that Falk found my article stimulating, he would have been better served by channeling his energies into a more careful reading of the article.

Thomas W. Gallant

University of Florida

To the Editor:

In light of the evidence for the non-West's achievements noted in Roger Hart, Margaret C. Jacob, and Jack A. Goldstone's review essays of Alfred W. Crosby's book The Measurement of Reality [AHR 105 (April 2000)], the question should be asked, why didn't the non-Western world build on its achievements and come to dominate the rest of the world? In the case of the Chinese, they were engaged in extensive maritime activity from East Africa into the Pacific prior to 1492, only to retreat to the continent to turn their attention westward against the barbarians of Central Asia. Even in the West, the Italians, though mariners in the service of western Europeans, showed no inclination to found colonies in America because they were content in their role as middlemen between western Europe and the Levant. The same seems true of Islamic states. Hence the will to dominate is also a factor. Lacking a motivation to dominate, it didn't happen for most nations.

     Curiously, although Goldstone notes that southern Europe failed to develop the industry etc. that one might expect given Galileo's discoveries and the rediscovery of ancient science, he failed to ask why northern Europe did. One answer is the Reformation, which broke with the conventional authority that canonized Aristotle, Ptolemy, etc. as establishment science. More could be said, but clearly no one cause explains the rise of the West, not even quantification, as the three review articles note.

Thurber D. Proffitt

Biola University and San Diego Community College District

Jack A. Goldstone replies:

Thurber Proffitt correctly notes that northwest Europe, despite lagging behind many other regions in seafaring and overseas conquests (early Ming Chinese, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish) was nonetheless the first, and only, region to industrialize. He points to the importance of the Reformation, and the consequent break with the canonized authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy, as crucial steps to modern science, and hence to industry.

     I agree that overthrowing the authority of the established Aristotelian/Ptolemaic cosmology was crucial to industrialization. One key element of the steam engine, that pivotal innovation for industry, was working with pressure and vacuums; yet vacuums were ruled out of existence by Aristotle's physics.

     But it is wrong to associate that shift in worldview mainly with the Reformation. Calvinist Holland harbored Descartes, yet only under the personal protection of the Stadtholder; when Frederick Hendrik died, Descartes had to flee. By the late seventeenth century, a reaction against Cartesian and mechanical thinking had set in, to the point where lecturing on Descartes was banned in Dutch universities. A few Newtonians continued to teach celestial mechanics into the early eighteenth century, but by 1720 a reactionary Calvinist establishment had shut off most scientific progress. Nor were Lutheran states home to scientific innovation for many centuries after the rise of Lutheranism. Protestantism opposed to the wisdom and miracles of the priesthood and Catholic Church the "eternal truths" embodied in Scriptures. Scientific progress that threatened the Scriptures could be just as staunchly opposed in Protestant as in Catholic states.

     The exception was England, and this mainly due to the triumph of William III and the Anglican Church. Newton, far from offering a purely mechanical worldview (like that of Descartes, which was seen and opposed as tending toward atheism), blended mechanics with the "magical" or occult worldview. Newton believed in (and spent more time than in physics exploring) alchemy, numerology, insights from Revelations, and of course in divine will. The mysterious force of "gravity," requiring action-at-a-distance, was seen by many as a magical and theological intervention in the mechanical universe. Indeed, Newton saw it this way as well, and was appalled at the atheistic tendencies of some mechanical philosophies.

     This made the Newtonian worldview a theologically acceptable alternative to the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic view still defended by the established churches on the continent. In contrast, the established church in England pointed to the order of the Newtonian heavens as a manifestation of God's will and a model of the harmony that should prevail in earthly and spiritual affairs. Under the guise of discovering God's order of the universe, in England, "scientific enquiry not only became legitimate, but almost a religious duty to devout Protestants" (Jeremy Black, A New History of England, 2000, p. 155).

     Margaret Jacob has been the leader in showing how the Anglican Church, and its sponsorship of Newtonian science, played a critical role in the origins of modern industry. It is this, more than the Reformation per se, that laid the foundation for modern industrialization.

     Still, one-cause explanations will not suffice, and the rise of industrialization in Britain requires attention to religion, industrial expertise, political freedoms, entrepreneurial opportunity, and technical problems that set British industry off in certain directions (for example, developing coal-fired pumps to drain deep mines, rather than windmills to saw wood, grind grain, and drain polders). Indeed, I believe a crucial part of the story must be what particular combination of conditions made England different from Europe, much more than what made Europe as a whole different from other world regions. In most respects of material life, government administration, and attitudes to religious orthodoxy, the majority of Europeans were not greatly distinguished from inhabitants of other major trading civilizations in the eighteenth century. A fuller attempt to address the questions raised by Thurber Proffitt's comment is found in my essay "The Rise of the West—or Not?" Sociological Theory (2000). I suggest readers look there for a more multi-causal, conjunctural, argument regarding the origins of Western achievements.

Jack A. Goldstone

University of California, Davis

Roger Hart and Margaret C. Jacob do not wish to respond.

The Editors

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

To the Editor:

I am writing to protest Albert S. Lindemann's latest defamatory attack on Robert S. Wistrich (AHR 105 [June 2000]: 1083–84). Wistrich's negative review of Esau's Tears appeared in Commentary over two years ago. Apparently, Lindemann cannot let it go. He must settle the score any way he can.

     Thus Wistrich is "blind to nuance and moral complexity, shallow and monotonous in interpretation, and devoid of scruple in lashing out at those he defines as enemies." His writing "is characterized by neo-conservative polemic and a fervent nationalistic/ethnic partisanship." He is "a reckless partisan, immune to self-doubt, and incapable of recognizing . . . injustice on his side."

     Now these are serious accusations. But they stand behind Esau's Tears. Lindemann criticizes Wistrich, he explains there, "to indicate a kind of approach" to the subject that is "seriously inadequate." In Esau's Tears, then, Lindemann must surely corroborate the serious accusations he has brought against Wistrich in the pages of the AHR.

     No such thing. Here is the entire discussion. After abusing Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Lindemann turns to Wistrich. His Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred "suffer[s] from defects similar to those in Dawidowicz's work, prominent among them a tendency to colorful and indignant narrative, accompanied by weak, sometimes tendentious analysis. In Wistrich's case part of the problem is ostensibly that The Longest Hatred was first conceived as the background narrative to a television series—almost always fatal to nuance and complexity. He has published a number of other works of distinctly higher scholarly and interpretive standards" (p. x).

     Note the repetition of the phrase "nuance and complexity." In Esau's Tears, their lack is attributed not to "neo-conservative" and "nationalistic/ethnic partisanship" but to the fact that Wistrich's book was a tie-in to a Thames Television series. Where is the corroboration of Lindemann's other charges? Where is the proof that Lucy Dawidowicz also "suffers" from these faults? It is true that Lindemann labels her a neoconservative, too, but he immediately adds that "[t]he neoconservative label is a tattered and problematic one" (p. 542). He discusses her writing (without citation) in four brief sentences, caricaturing her views on a historian's loyalties for the sake of attacking them (p. 509). Wistrich he quotes not at all. He mentions him in passing only once more.

     Lindemann's steadfast failure to corroborate his accusations against other scholars is deeply troubling. Nor is it an exaggeration to describe this failure as steadfast. Two years ago on the H-Antisemitism discussion list, he attacked me, in strikingly similar terms, for faulting his knowledge and interpretation of Judaism. "Surely these accusations ought to be corroborated," I wrote in reply, "but I have begun to despair of Lindemann's ever trying to corroborate anything that he says" (January 18, 1998). (The entire debate between Lindemann and me can be read at my web page at www.tamu.edu.) Lindemann has had plenty of time to reconsider his argumentative practices. Instead, he displays a remarkable consistency. Rather than examining their work in any detail, he prefers to stigmatize his adversaries.

     Which brings me to my last point. The targets of Lindemann's relentless attacks—Wistrich, Dawidowicz, Goldhagen, me—all have one thing in common. We are unashamed of our loyalty to the Jewish people. Dawidowicz speaks for us in saying that "as long as historians respect the integrity of their sources and adhere strictly to the principles of sound scholarship," their loyalties "do not distort, but instead they enrich, historical writing" (What Is the Use of Jewish History? 1992, 19). We believe there is a fundamental difference between integrity and neutrality. We know that no one can attack Jews for being "nationalistic/ethnic partisans" from a neutral standpoint. To mount such an attack, he must take up his position somewhere. Unless the word is code, it is not only Jews who are "ethnic"; everyone is. There is no not having ethnicity. We are a bit suspicious, then, of the uncritical hurry to equate ethnicity with nationalism. This suggests to us someone who treats his own ethnicity as normative and therefore transparent. It is not, finally, that Lindemann, too, is unashamed of his loyalty to his own people but that he is not even aware of expressing this loyalty in everything he writes, especially in his attacks on Jews. He accuses others but has never accused himself. As his style of argument clearly shows, Lindemann, too—white, male, Christian—is a "nationalistic/ethnic partisan," but on behalf of what? He never says, although his attacks imply much.

D. G. Myers

Texas A&M University

Albert S. Lindemann replies:

Talk about not being able to let go.

     For the past several years, D. G. Myers has attacked me, often in venomous if erratic terms, in just about any forum that will listen to him—a diminishing number, since many have learned that he writes in what Peter Novick has termed "Myersese": words mean not what one thought but what Myers decides, subject to change whenever he feels like it; facts, too, may be changed according to rules he makes up. So, too, for logic, consistency, and decorum. In short, one can't rely on a thing Myers says—a loose cannon if ever there was one.

     I decided some time ago simply to ignore him. That, however, is not always easy. To provide one example among many, last March, on H-Holocaust, he described me and Novick as "Holocaust revisionists," a vile slander that slipped by Moderator Jim Mott, who immediately apologized to us and to the list, observing that H-Holocaust has a strict policy "against distributing false allegations" (Monday, March 20, 2000). After some off-list exchanges with Mott, Myers departed from the list. This was in fact his second departure, since he had angrily left a year or so previously after another flare-up. Some time before that, another altercation had occurred on H-Antisemitism, culminating again with his angry departure after exchanging extremely bitter words with the list's moderators and executive board.

     When admonished this time by Mott, Myers, in a familiar pattern, suddenly turned contrite: "I am sorry for disrupting H-Holocaust . . . I regret that this has caused offense to you and others." He added, "Although I may not always like their [Novick's and Lindemann's] work, I have always found it to be respectable. And as I have said many times, criticism is an act of respect. What is beneath respect deserves silence." Alas, as noted, logical consistency is not a trait of Myersese: he also wrote Mott that "my own silence is the only atonement that I can offer Novick and Lindemann."

     Over the past several years, Myers has charged me, on H-Antisemitism, with being an "enemy of Israel" and an "anti-Semitic polemicist." He wrote to amazon.com about my book Esau's Tears as follows: "This is a bad book—bad intellectually, bad morally . . . breathtakingly ignorant . . . dishonest and one-sided . . . sickening." In a letter to Commentary magazine, he insinuated that I should be prevented from teaching at the University of California.

     All "acts of respect," of course.

     My criticisms of Wistrich have mostly to do with his Commentary review of my book and things he wrote thereafter in letters to the editor in Commentary and the AHR. I think any reasonable observer, in looking over those materials, will recognize that I am hardly making things up. For Myers to put himself in a list consisting of Wistrich, Dawidowicz, and Goldhagen is yet again typical of his bizarre posturing. I have not attacked his historical work, since he has produced none and is not a historian. I had never heard of him before he started attacking me.

     As a brief but typical example of how Myers twists and misuses texts, let me quote from a separate post he sent H-Holocaust, again attacking me: "The Feast of Purim begins this evening. And so it may be time to consider the claim by some revisionists that the holiday, and the commandment to blot out the memory of Amalek . . . which is [sic] partly fulfills, [here he quotes me] 'offer justification . . . for a policy of racial extermination'" (Monday, March 20, 2000).

     Those last words are indeed from my book, but they do not mean what he tries to twist them to mean. Here is the quotation in context: "The Book of Deuteronomy has been described as providing a religious source for modem racism, and its various exhortations concerning the extermination of the indigenous peoples of Canaan (e.g., Deut. 19, 20) offer justification, for those who seek it, for policies of racial extermination" (Esau's Tears, 72).

     My references to Deuteronomy cite James Parkes, which Myers does not recognize; far more unconscionable, Myers has deleted the crucial qualifier, "for those who seek it." Moreover, Parkes clearly did not have Purim in mind, nor did I in citing him; we were referring to the use that modern, non-Jewish bigots have made of Deuteronomy to justify racism and genocide.

     It is, finally, rather sad that this fiercely combative yet befuddled individual imagines himself a valiant defender of the Jews. With defenders like him, who needs enemies? His love of the Jewish people is a little like his respect for me. I would happily do without it, as I think most Jews would prefer not to be the object of his kind of love.

Albert S. Lindemann

University of California, Santa Barbara

ERRATA

Joel Kraemer's name was misspelled Kramer in the article by Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, October 2000. The author caught the error, but the article had already gone to press.

     William R. Hutchison's name was misspelled Hutcheson in his review of a book by Mark Hulsether (October 2000), p. 1341, as well as in the Table of Contents and Index. The editors regret the error.

The Editors

LOCKSS system has permission to collect, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.