Communications

A communication will be considered only if it relates to an article or review published in this journal; publication is solely at the editor's discretion. The AHA disclaims responsibility for statements, either of fact or opinion, made by the writers. Letters may not exceed seven hundred words for reviews and one thousand words for articles. They should be submitted in duplicate, typed double-spaced with wide margins, and headed "To the Editor."

ARTICLES

To The Editor:
I read in the February 2003 issue of your journal (volume 108, number 1) two articles on current American scholarship on the French Revolution. Please permit me to point out a misinterpretation in Lynn Hunt's article "The World We Have Gained: The Future of the French Revolution" (/journals/ahr/108.1/ah0103000001.html) and offer a more general remark about that article and Rebecca L. Spang's article, "Paradigms and Paranoia: How Modern Is the French Revolution?" (/journals/ahr/108.1/ah0103000119.html).
Hunt bases her demonstration on three engravings depicting Time, the Social, and Secularization, respectively. Her presentation of the second of these illustrations is clearly erroneous; given the authority of your review, this error might mislead other non-francophone academics. Translating the legend of the engraving on page 14 as "the good constitution brought us flour and we only ate the best quality: we will have in our turn back-fat and triple chins," she explains that "the verse, using the language of the popular classes, indicates that food is their primary concern." This is a misinterpretation. The legend is composed of a title in the form of an exclamation ("Ô; La bonne Constitution[!]'/"Oh, the good Constitution[!]") and then two verses. The first of these verses ("J-faisions v-nir la farine et n-mangions que le son"/"I[/we] grew flour but ate only bran") is a criticism of the Old Regime, from which the second verse ("J'aurons à nôtre tour, lard et triple menton"/"I[/we] will have in our turn back-fat and triple chins") logically follows. This second verse implies that it is precisely the new constitution that is ushering in a new time of prosperity.
This legend is based on an adage, probably of popular origin—"Who labors and who eats the fruit of labor?"—but is here recycled in a highly sophisticated piece of propaganda in favor of the equality that is going to guarantee the nascent constitution. Above all, the personages in whose mouths is placed the message are neither members of the "lower classes" (line 3) nor obviously sans-culottes (because the expression only acquired significance much later) but are expressly presented as comfortably-off farmers, thus as members of the middle class par excellence. The gaiters that the man wears over his large shoes, his old-fashioned but ample and well-made vest, the fact that the woman, dressed in new clothes, is also wearing shoes rather than clogs, and finally and above all, their notable plumpness brings out the title's play on words. The "good constitution" here refers not merely to the fundamental charter of the emerging political order but also to the prosperous demeanor of the personages; everything in the image signals that this couple is intended to represent the classic type of well-off farmers present in multiple forms at the end of the eighteenth century.
The engraving is therefore one of many representations of the prosperity to come, thanks to liberty and/or equality. This political image is certainly in search of a social anchorage, but one that is intentionally ambiguous: this couple of comfortable farmers could just as well figure as a positive reference for patriots, as a menacing image of greedy rural intermediaries. Not only those who worked the earth with their own hands but also tithe collectors, proprietors, and even noble lords respected and greatly feared the unsinkable coqs de village (village notables), and this commercially produced engraving of 1790 could well have owed its financial success to very diverse reasons—either as a positive representation or as a disdainful caricature of a parasitical group.
The respective contributions of Hunt and Spang, moreover, seem to have a point in common: while they interrogate recent historiography, particularly on the origins of what they term "totalitarianism" and "democracy," they entirely overlook the controversies over voting and elections during the French Revolution. For a decade, an important body of scholarship has thoroughly analyzed the unprecedented abundance of votes and elections that punctuated the daily life of the revolutionary epoch. (See such works as Patrice Gueniffey, Le nombre et la raiso: La Révolution françcaise et les élections [1993]; Malcolm Crook, Elections in the French Revolution: An Apprenticeship in Democracy, 1789–1799 [1996]; Serge Aberdam, Serge Bianchi, Robert Demeude, Emile Ducoudray, Bernard Gainot, Maurice Genty, and Claudine Wolikow, Voter, élire pendant la révolution françcaise, 1789–1799: Guide pour la recherché [1999]). The concrete unfolding, the meaning of these operations, their politicization or manipulation (any vote, every election implies influences, pressures, constraints), or their suspension during the year 1794, however, deserve greater attention from those interested in the origins of "democracy" or even of "totalitarianism." This remark concerns Hunt less than it does Spang, because she devotes much more space and care to reviewing a considerable quantity of publications. It seems to me that, since she places special emphasis on the question of how the mass of contemporaries became involved in the French revolutionary transformation, the issue of voting merits some consideration.
During the ten years between 1789 and 1799, hundreds of thousands of public functionaries of all types were elected and referenda were held on several constitutions and all sorts of questions. Millions of Frenchmen—and sometimes French women—took part in these votes, always in the form of assemblies of citizens. To attend or absent oneself from these reunions, to elect or not, to proceed according to the social precedence of the Old Regime or to demand instead the use of alphabetical order, all of this supposed myriad decisions. About this exercise of sovereignty, in forms more or less sacralized, we possess hundreds of thousands of official records of these proceedings, lists of citizens voting and officials elected, speeches, and proclamations.
This field of research is marked by lively debate and disagreement, but I do not believe that we can neglect it. I will add that, at a moment when our continents are tending to distance themselves a bit more from one another, it might even be wise to discuss our common heritage.
Serge Aberdam National Institute for Agronomic Research Paris, France

Lynn Hunt replies:
Serge Aberdam rightly draws attention to a mistake in my article, but his "general remark" seems entirely unrelated to it. I will return to the mistake, which certainly bears correcting and some further reflection as well. In his general remark, Aberdam complains that I (and Rebecca Spang, but I leave that to her) "overlook the controversies over voting and elections." It is true that I did not discuss them in my nineteen-page article. It does not follow that I consider them unimportant; I devoted half of my book, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1984), to them. In the article, I intended to draw attention to an aspect of the French Revolution rarely noticed or analyzed: the experience of time. I argued that this experience had a profound influence on the founding of democracy (for better and worse) as well as an impact on the understanding of the power of social convention more generally.
Aberdam's criticism of the translation offered in the caption to one of the prints reproduced in my article is more on point. I accept his translation as more correct than mine. His conclusion that the figures represented are middle-class farmers may be correct, but this is less certain; if they are already so prosperous, then why are they going to enjoy prosperity only in the future ("I/We will have in our turn back-fat and triple chins")? Moreover, his reading changes nothing about my argument. He himself admits that the print's message is ambiguous (as I say in the caption). My only point in drawing attention to the print was to show that political and social meanings were intertwined, that prints assumed to be political in message were in fact also filled with social information. My argument in no way depends on this particular print, however interpreted; as I concluded that section of my analysis, "Most striking in the end, however, is the sheer number and variety of visual representations of the social. Like plays and novels, visual images made society as a set of rules and roles more visible to the ordinary person."
This does not mean that I consider Aberdam's correction trivial, far from it. What it shows is the need for much more interchange among historians about the meaning of visual evidence; "reading" eighteenth-century prints requires as much expertise as reading eighteenth-century textual documents. I clearly fell short in my reading of this print, and I welcome the help from Serge Aberdam in getting it if not right at least more right.
Lynn Hunt University of California, Los Angeles

Rebecca L. Spang does not wish to respond.
The Editors.

To the Editor:
I should like to defend Alfred P. Chandler, Jr., against what I see as unfair criticism in Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin, "Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History" [AHR 108 (April 2003): 404–31]. He may find my defense more offensive than their attack.
The ambitions of the three collaborators are considerable: "[W]e offer a new synthesis of American business history that aims to replace, but also subsume, the dominant Chandlerian framework" (p. 404). These ambitions mimic those of the great John Maynard Keynes, who proposed a new theory capitalizing itself as The General Theory replacing and subsuming neoclassical economic theory, and achieving tremendous pragmatic success, lately, however, suffering considerable theoretical diminution.
Chandler had conceived of an absolute opposition between "modern business enterprise" and the market. With its hierarchical command structure, as he saw it, management "took the place of market mechanisms in coordinating the activities of the economy" (Alfred Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business [Cambridge, 1977], 1). This was his "visible hand," balancing off the invisible hand of Adam Smith's market. Lamoreaux, Raff, and Temin assert that between "these two extremes are long-term relationships ... [among] otherwise independent economic actors." They specify: "It is a central claim of this article that this intermediate form is distinctive and common enough to be identified as a third major type of coordination mechanism" (p. 407). It is indicative of the vagueness of their "central claim" that they do not give this type a name beyond "long-term relationships," which could describe the mating habits of the pelican. Indeed, they cannot and do not show how this type can shoulder its way to an equal position and existence between the firm's independent existence and the free-enterprise market.
Beyond that, they claim that the existence of horizontal integration reduces the power of Chandler's conception of vertical integration. But they end up with enough examples of the more Chandlerian firms like IBM holding their own against such horizontal structures as conglomerates like General Electric. But then Chandler's history and logic never excluded these conglomerates, which are as consistent as the vertical structures to his long, detailed history of what actually happened in American business. They should have given more attention to his later Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (1990), where his scale and scope cover conglomerates as comfortably as they do vertically integrated operations.
More important, I suggest, is the failure of the article authors to recognize the fatal fallacy in Chandler's logic, a failure that led them to swallow his whale of an error while straining at an apparent gnat. The fact is that Chandler never attempted to demonstrate that his managerial revolution, as he claimed, "took the place" of the market. He merely asserted it. I suggest that any clear view sees management as being successful—as surviving—only to the extent that it responds to the market and obeys it absolutely. It is perhaps gratuitous to belabor the point. But in private enterprise, a firm is only successful when it covers its costs with its revenues plus profit, the clichéd bottom line. The free market pervades the free-enterprise economy, and firms swim in it as fishes in water. Chandler, Lamoreaux, et al. concentrated on the fishes and failed to see the water that gave them life.
David Felix Emeritus City University of New York

Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin reply:
We are pleased that David Felix was inspired by our article to write to the American Historical Review but feel that his comments are adequately answered by the original text.
David Felix Emeritus City University of New York

To the Editor:
Greg Dening is entitled to his opinions on the Comaroffs as anthropologists, Africanists, and historians, which you recently published (AHR 108 [April 2003]: 471–78). I do, however, hope you publish this note indicating that, despite Dening's complimentary remarks regarding my teaching him about Africa at Harvard, I do not share his views on the matters in his essay. From the way Dening phrases some of his remarks, I fear that your readers, at least those who do not know the Africanist literature, might assume that I agree with his views on the Comaroffs. This is far from true. I am sad to find a former student now so distant from me intellectually.
T. O. Beidelman New York University

Greg Dening replies:
I apologize to Dr. Tom Beidelman for seemingly associating his name with ideas of mine. My intention was merely to take an opportunity that I rarely have publicly to thank him for his inspiration in years gone by and to note his seminal contributions to historical anthropology over time.
Greg Dening Australian National University

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

To the Editor:
In the February 2003 issue of the AHR [108: 264–65], Michael Seidman's review of Jean-Françcois Berdah's La démocratie assassinée: La République espagnole et les grandes puissances 1931–1939 (2000) asserts that, during the last civil war, the Spanish Republic "persistently persecuted Catholics and the right." In reality, not the Republic but her uncontrollable Anarchist supporters persecuted Catholics—during the initial weeks of the Clerical mutiny, while the Republican government lacked effective control over its territory. In fact, a considerable minority of Catholics—the entire Basque Church—sided with the Republic. And not a few Basque priests had been executed precisely by the rightist mutineers. The Republican government persecuted the Right no more than any elected government "persecutes" those in armed rebellion against it.
The argument that "the assumption that the Republic was democratic makes it difficult to understand why ... [anti-appeasers]—including Winston Churchill—refused to help the 'Reds'" blatantly ignores the fact that Churchill did not maintain his initial condemnation of Republican Spain. And it blatantly ignores the fact that the Conservative Duchess Catherine of Atholl sacrificed her parliamentary seat in protest against Britain's breach of international law entitling the legal government of Spain to acquire foreign arms. It had not requested them from the USSR before France and Britain had refused to sell them.
And temporary Soviet alliances have not disqualified several Great Powers from being democracies. In fact, if Soviet support gave the Communists (in 1937) temporarily over-proportionate influence over Popular Front Spain, it was also because her middle-class Republican liberals welcomed it—while it was at that time in Joseph Stalin's interests to restrain the spontaneous social revolution sought by Anarchists and Trotskyists.
Manuel Sarkisyanz University of Heidelberg

Michael Seidman replies:
Manuel Sarkisyanz's letter permits the elaboration of three issues.
First, Sarkisyanz claims that "in reality, not the Republic but her uncontrollable Anarchist supporters persecuted Catholics—during the initial weeks of the Clerical mutiny." According to José M. Sánchez, The Spanish Civil War as a Religious Tragedy (Notre Dame, Ind., 1987), "the [anti-clerical] fury lasted some six months ... About 80 percent of the clergy were killed in the first two and a half months of the war" (p. 11). Only in May 1937—nearly a year after the outbreak of the conflict—did the killings of priests cease, with the notable exception of the assassination of the bishop of Teruel and his aides in February 1939. In total, 6,832 clergy were executed in Republican areas, compared to 14 in the Nationalist zone. In January 1937, Manuel de Irujo, a Basque autonomist and the only practicing Catholic in the Republican cabinet, proposed to liberate jailed priests, to proclaim explicitly freedom of religious practice, and to prohibit police from entering private homes where religious services were being held. His fellow ministers unanimously rejected his proposals. Even after the first year of war, priests and practicing Catholics were not safe in the Republican zone, including Madrid, where Anarchist influence was weak. Javier Cervera, Madrid en guerra: La ciudad clandestina, 1936–1939 (Madrid, 1998), concludes that "[Catholic] religious practices were considered a sign of hostility to the Republic" (p. 191). "In Madrid during the war, priests and nuns did not wear their clerical grab publicly, proof that this was very dangerous" (p. 275). Many supporters of the Republic—including much of its police, military, and courts—identified Catholicism with "fascism." A pre-war affiliation with a Catholic political party might mean a jail sentence or worse.
Second, by arguing that Churchill did not maintain his initial condemnation of Republican Spain, Sarkisyanz challenges my statement that "the assertion or assumption that the Republic was democratic makes it difficult to understand why conservative anti-appeasement forces—including Winston Churchill—refused to help the 'Reds.'" Churchill did become more sympathetic to the Republic during 1938, but he never advocated aid to it. On February 23, 1938, five weeks before the end of the conflict, he wrote in Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step, 1936–1939 (New York, 1939), "as long as the issue of the war hung in the balance, it would have been wrong for Britain to throw her weight on either side of the scale" (p. 294). In The Gathering Storm (New York, 1948), he continued: "In this [Spanish] quarrel I was neutral. Naturally I was not in favour of the Communists. How could I be, when if I had been a Spaniard they would have murdered me and my family and friends? I was sure, however, that with all the rest they had on their hands the British government were right to keep out of Spain" (p. 192). The duchess of Atholl did not share Churchill's views on Spain. Against his advice and because she was totally isolated in the Conservative Party, she resigned her parliamentary seat as a Conservative in 1938, ran as an independent, and lost.
Third, an alliance with the Soviet Union certainly does not disqualify the Republic or any other regime from being democratic. However, the Soviet Union and its agents in Spain did not conduct themselves as loyal allies who respected Spanish sovereignty. Instead, they exercised a colonial-style extraterritoriality, which was directly responsible for jailing and even assassinating anarchists, Trotskyists, and other leftist dissidents, including Andreu Nin, the leader of the Marxist Workers' Party (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista). Communists loyal to Stalin controlled large sectors of the Republican military, security forces, and intelligence apparatus. Stanley G. Payne, The Soviet Union, Communism, and Revolution in Spain, 1931–1939 (forthcoming, Yale, 2003), considers the Republic a "semi-pluralistic" regime that excluded the entire right from political participation and therefore, given overwhelming Communist influence over key state bureaucracies, was a possible precursor of the post–World War II "people's democracies" of Eastern Europe.
Michael Seidman University of North Carolina, Wilmington

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