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Eastern European Elites: Teaching About Aristocrats in the AP Curriculum

Ellis Archer Wasson
Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware

FREE RESPONSE QUESTION (FRQ) #5 in the 2002 AP European history exam read as follows: "In what ways and to what extent did absolutism affect the power and status of the European nobility in the period 1650 to 1750. Use examples from at least 2 countries." I am sorry to report that the students who selected FRQ #5 did not shine. A question aimed at encouraging a comparative approach and which focused on a period during which aristocracies receive the maximum attention in textbooks produced mostly inadequate responses. Beyond some floundering around in the corridors and anterooms of Versailles, the majority of students had little or no idea where to go next. A few ventured off to St. Petersburg, but most of those skated on thin ice. Peter the Great's reforms were remembered as a packaged "unit." Students had trouble disaggregating issues relating to the nobility from other events and topics. The Table of Ranks, for example, was often jumbled together with reforms relating to religion and technology. Few students addressed the problem that confronted both Louis XIV and Tsar Peter in finding ways to get the nobility to subscribe to their agendas. The monarchs needed the services of their landed elites but at the same time did not want to weaken the royal prerogative. Beyond France and Russia, student knowledge proved even more fragile and fragmentary. The other Eastern European states, which offered many good examples for answers to Question #5 rarely received mention. Prussia and Poland appeared infrequently, and the Habsburg domains remained invisible. 1
      I do not blame the kids. In an exercise at a recent College Board workshop on AP European history I led twenty experienced teachers in a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the great powers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Leadership, regional autonomy, military strength, bureaucracy, and tax systems were among the issues raised in the discussion. When the group declared themselves satisfied with the list, nobilities had yet to be mentioned. Not a single teacher among this group of obviously gifted and dedicated people had raised the relationship between the aristocracy and the crown. How can one begin to talk about British or Prussian, let alone French or Russian, history in the early modern period without addressing one of the critical factors in the success or failure of states? 2
      It is hard to blame the teachers, however. To a remarkable degree both textbooks used in AP classes and the college survey courses in which teachers are trained pay comparatively little attention to aristocracies in the early modern period, and almost none in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (except for France during the first years of the Revolution). Virtually never do you encounter sustained analysis of landed elites or comparisons between individual countries. Even the British nobility, which not only became a ruling class in the fullest sense of the word and presided over the growth of the largest and most powerful global empire mankind has ever seen as well as generating the first "modern" society, rarely gets more than a brief mention (and that mainly in connection with corrupt parliamentary electioneering). Eastern elites, while not quite so successful or dominant, were profoundly influential in their own neighborhoods, yet get even shorter shrift. How can it be that groups who largely shaped the economic, social, political, and cultural structures of their societies remain hidden to so many students of European history? 3
      In part this lamentable situation is due to the egalitarian values that modern societies now fervently embrace. "Elitism" is a dirty word on both sides of the Atlantic.1 Even experienced and gifted politicians are given to absurd dictums. To quote one example: "The upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute, and decadent."2 Nowhere can one find a more glaring example of current opinions coloring and distorting historical study. There are plenty of good scholars producing excellent monographs on the key role landed elites have played in virtually all aspects of early modern and modern Europe, and yet little of this gets into textbooks and even less into classroom discussions. The AP test development committee has pointed in the right direction with FRQ #5, and by the regular incorporation of documents written by aristocrats in successive Documents Based Questions (DBQs).3 What students get in their courses, however, is undifferentiated stereotypes of hidebound exploiters in irreversible decline. Eastern nobilities are traditionally portrayed as even more backward and inept than those in the West. 4
      My purpose is to argue that one of the best ways to incorporate more Eastern European history into AP courses is to apply the comparative approach modeled by Question #5 to a discussion of the nobility. Such an approach has the dual advantage of making students' experiences more comprehensive and correcting imbalances that lead to inaccurate perceptions of the past. What follows are some suggestions about how you can incorporate more material about landed elites into your courses. 5
      First, make sure students understand some fundamental information about aristocracies and help them avoid myths and inaccuracies. Teach them that kings and nobilities were different and often had divergent interests and goals. Make sure they know that aristocracies were rarely monolithic. Often a few families at the top were very rich and many lower down comparatively poor. The Russians fragmented into court nobles vs. country gentry, magnates vs. small holders, Baltic Germans vs. Moscow, and Moscovites vs. the Court nobility in St. Petersburg, to say nothing of the Georgians, Poles, Moldavians, etc. The Habsburgs had to deal very differently with Hungarians, Bohemians, and the Milanese than they did with their German subjects. Even the Prussians, especially after 1740 had a number of distinctive elites, the junkers (relatively small scale farmers), the Silesian magnates of huge wealth with an eye to industrialization, and Rhineish aristocrats less happy with the rise of factories, yet profiting from urban growth and culturally miles ahead of the bucolic squires of the East. In some countries coats of arms were held by millions and titles passed to every descendant, in others the titled nobility was much more exclusive, with only one Fürst or duke in each generation. Some countries practiced primogeniture or allowed female inheritance of titles, while in others, estates were divided up among multiple heirs, and having only daughters brought families to an end. Some elites were regularly open to newcomers while others fought fiercely to remain exclusive. In some countries nobles were neck deep in business; in others "trade" was despised. 6
      Myths to fight against include the notion that the bourgeoisie was always at odds with the nobility. In fact the middle classes aped the aristocracy, the sincerest form of flattery, and hoped someday to be included in the inner circle. Most aristocrats, even in old-fashioned countries, exploited urban property and non-agricultural assets such as mines and ports. Often they played a crucial role in early industrialization and urban development. Aristocrats were no stupider, on average, than any other social group, and were usually better educated than all groups but the clergy (and they often supplied most of the upper levels of that order as well). Aristocrats could be revolutionaries, as their activities in England in 1688–89, France in 1789–92, and Russia in 1825 demonstrate.4 7
      Remind students that aristocrats played important political roles not just as individual leaders such as Metternich or Bismarck, but they also organized elections for diets, estates, assemblies, and parliaments. They sought power over both local and national institutions. They helped shape public opinion. They owned newspapers, held meetings, and marched their tenants to the polls in block formations. The big questions to ask about Eastern elites 1600 to 1945 are the following:
  1. What functions did they serve in individual countries?
  2. To what degree were they similar and to what degree different country to country?
  3. What were their strengths and what were their weaknesses?
  4. How did they respond to change? In particular:
    1. to market capitalism and economic competition
    2. to monarchical absolutism and the rise of the nation state
    3. to the Enlightenment—especially the idea of meritocracy
    4. to industrialization and socialism/Marxism
    5. to nationalism
    6. to the professionalization of the military officer corps, bureaucracy, and "career" politics—qualifying examinations, etc.
    7. to the extension of the franchise
    8. to changes in women's roles, "separate spheres", class vs. gender, etc.
    9. to defeats in World War I and World War II and the communist and fascist revolutions
    10. to high taxation, disappearance of servants, etc.
 8
      One of the ways to approach these issues is constantly to compare the experience of landed elites of various countries in relation to the above stated questions. For example, ask students to discuss, role play, or write in an essay about what aristocrats from various countries might say to each other if Russian, Prussian, Austrian, French, and British nobles met while visiting Rome during a "grand tour" in 1720 or 1788 or at a ball in Vienna in 1815 or while taking the waters at Baden-Baden in 1850 or at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo in 1914.5 One cannot expect students to understand all the nuances and subtle distinctions that can be drawn. However, the size of nobilities, relations with monarchs, the role of parliaments and /or estates, serfdom vs. capitalistic agriculture, religion, service nobility vs. independent magnates—all are big issues, vital to understanding the long-term development of modern Europe. 9
      I am only too well aware that AP teachers have finite amounts of time available for professional development. They cannot be expected to stay on top of all recent research in European history. Therefore, although I attach a bibliography that includes many of the important books pertaining to my topic, I want to focus on only two works that I believe offer teachers a chance rapidly and pleasurably to increase their fund of knowledge about aristocracies in general and Eastern elites in particular. If you get the chance to look at these books, you will both enjoy a "good read" and be able to incorporate more material about Eastern Europe into your courses. 10
      The first volume is a collection of essays recently edited by John Adamson, The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750.6 The essays are written by some of the best experts in the field and range over a wide range of countries. The book is also very much on the cutting edge of a new wave in early modern history focused on the study of royal courts. Perhaps the most remarkable book to emerge from this wave of scholarship is by the celebrated French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.7 Dozens of "court historians" now regularly gather for conferences; it is a growth industry. Adamson's book creams off some of the most interesting and entertaining results of this scholarship, and it is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of paintings and etchings, many of which are reproduced in color. Among the courts presented are not only the famous ones at Madrid, Versailles, London, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, but also fascinating surveys of less well known or out of the way places such as the Papal court at Rome, the House of Orange at The Hague, the Wittelsbachs at Munich, the later Medici in Tuscany, the Vasas at Stockholm, and the Sabaudians at Turin. Even if you skip the chapters devoted to the minor princes, reading the pieces on the big courts will help you see why historians now regard the place where monarchs and nobles "interfaced" as important in ways that previous generations of scholars did not. 11
      For example, Jeroen Duidam's chapter on the Vienna Habsburgs came as a revelation to me. I knew that the Protestant Bohemians took it in the neck at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, but I had no idea that in the aftermath three-quarters of all noble property in Bohemia and Moravia changed hands and half of all noble families were ruined. I had always heard how stiff-necked the nineteenth-century Habsburg court was, and the extreme emphasis that was placed on "quarterings" and blue blood for admission to the inner circle. However, Duidam shows that during the seventeenth century the lower nobility (the Ritters) throughout much of the Habsburg empire disappeared and their lands were either subdivided among peasants or were redistributed as rewards to a new group of magnates who now entered the Herrenstand (the peerage) for the first time. After the revolts in Hungary, families who remained loyal to the crown were richly rewarded. Nothing like this happened in England, for example. Thus in the Austro-Hungarian Empire this flow of new and newly enriched families formed virtually a new aristocracy that established a lasting compact with the Habsburgs on the eve of the great reorganization of their possessions in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. It strengthened the remade elite's hold on local government. This alliance also helped keep the wildly improbable conglomeration of peoples in the Habsburg dominions together in the teeth of fierce currents of nationalism until 1918.8 12
      To take another example from Adamson, Lindsey Hughes's chapter on Russia reminded me that although Peter the Great's concept of a "service nobility" was radical because the "Table of Ranks" was made non-hereditary and some very low-born servants were promoted to high places, the old elite continued to dominate virtually all the top military positions and offices of state.9 13
      I cannot attest to the accuracy and general scholarly acceptance of all the work published by Adamson, but each chapter is accompanied by extensive notes that lead the interested reader to a wide range of sources. I can speak with more authority, however, about the other book I want to recommend: Dominic Lieven's, The Aristocracy of Europe 1815–1914.10 If the segment on Britain in the nineteenth century, a field I know, is an indicator of his reliability in the other two sections on Germany and Russia, (and his special area of expertise is Russia) then this is a work strongly to be recommended. Lieven is a Baltic prince whose ancestral estates in Latvia were confiscated during the upheavals of the twentieth century. He was educated at Cambridge, trained as a professional historian, and now teaches at the London School of Economics. His book is not accompanied by the fancy illustrations of Adamson's work, but it is everything a piece of comparative history ought to be. It is well written, deeply learned, and clearly organized. He also brings to his work an understanding of aristocratic life available to few historians, yet the work is untainted by any misplaced sense of nostalgia. Alas, few historians have the language skills and the courage to undertake such a sweeping work whether it be about trade unions, peasants, military structures, woman's issues, or any of a huge range of topics that would benefit from the kind of analysis that Lieven has undertaken.11 14
      Although Lieven covers far less ground than Adamson's group of contributors, the depth of his research is impressive, and the focus on three of the four great powers of the period gives one a pretty good picture of where the important elites of Europe stood at a time when most textbooks have virtually eliminated them from view. Lieven could not have included France, because research comparable to what has been done in the countries he studied simply has not been done there. Moreover, the French nobility, though not entirely wiped out, was exceptionally fragmented, owned relatively small amounts of land, and was guaranteed no official role in national life (unlike in Russia, Germany, and Britain). They were simply no longer in the same league with their peers elsewhere. 15
      The errors that this book can correct are illustrated by the quotation I came across in a standard "World History" textbook issued by a highly regarded publisher, Prentice Hall. The author, Anthony Esler of William and Mary College, wrote about Russia 1860–1917: "Its fairy-tale aristocracy lived the life of the American antebellum South, of Versailles before the Bastille fell, with town mansions and vast estates, lavish balls, and sleigh bells jingling through the Russian night."12 This is not a picture much of the elite at the time would have recognized. In 1897 the hereditary nobility was over one million strong. For the most part it was made up of people who in Britain would have been considered professional middle class, petty clerks, and even semi-peasants. Half the nobles residing in St. Petersburg in 1910 owned little or no land and lived on income from securities and salaries. After emancipation of the serfs in 1861, many gentry families faced a series of crises involving rising labor costs and the collapse of international agricultural prices that led to many years of depression and frequent bankruptcies. Even the members of the top Russian elite marveled at and were filled with envy by the luxury and wealth of the English peerage.13 16
      Another surprise found in Lieven is his analysis of social mobility. His comparison suggests that the Russian elite absorbed far more newcomers and merchant wealth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than the British nobility.14 On the other hand, although the German elite had a rocky time financially after the Napoleonic wars, unlike many of the Russians they rebounded economically after 1850. At the top level the richest Germans had by 1914 caught up with the richest Russians and were within range of the British.15 17
      These and other revelations allow Lieven to address a number of great historiographical controversies. For example, he questions Martin Wiener's assertion of a "decline of the industrial spirit" in Britain, which rests, Lieven suggests on faulty analysis of elite values. He also takes on the celebrated "Sonderweg" thesis (i.e. Germany took a "different path" than other industrialized Western states) that sees German militarism and the rise of Hitler as the outgrowth of Prussian aristocratic culture.16 18
      Aristocracies as a group did not play much of a role in European affairs after 1918. It is true that many members of the junker elite continued in the officer corps of the German army through 1945, but Hitler hated and distrusted them. Only the upper British elite managed to survive intact into the second half of the twentieth century, still guaranteed seats in Parliament until 1997 (although the House of Lords was largely emasculated after 1911). Many noble British families retain great wealth and live in country houses of immense size and grandeur. 19
      However, individual continental noblemen continued to pop up here and there. Counts von Stauffenberg and von Moltke were leaders of what opposition to Hitler developed in Germany in the 1940s; Count Folke Bernadotte was the United Nations commissioner assassinated by the Stern gang in Jerusalem in 1948; Freiherr von Wiezacker, was President of Germany in the 1980s. Of course in Britain, the incomparable Winston Churchill, at one point heir to a dukedom, helped save Western civilization. 20
      These last examples are not ones to concentrate on in teaching AP European history, although one should ask students to think about the qualities that made Churchill who he was. It is, however, worth discussing what happened to aristocracies after 1900. Why did the Russian elite lose control of the countryside in 1905 and 1917 while the Germans managed to cling to their local authority and estates until 1945, and the British, though plagued by confiscatory taxation, still manage to survive in some rural areas and even to retain deference and popularity in the 21st century? Of course, like most of us, you will probably not be able to find the time to do much of this. The May examination looms ahead. However, you can put the aristocracy back into teaching about the 19th and 20th centuries. More can be said about Eastern Europe in the context of the comparative history of elites. You should explode some myths here and there to help students understand that all truth does not reside in textbooks, a key step at the beginning of any young historian's journey to intellectual maturity. 21


Notes

1.  I addressed this phenomenon at greater length in: "Teaching About Elites in the Era of Equality", The History Teacher, 32 (1999) 345–54. For another analysis of the problem in an earlier period, see: D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, "A Fair Field Full of Folk (But Only Beyond the Sea): the Study of the Nobilities of Latin Europe", Historically Speaking (November 2002), 5–7.

2.  Dennis Healy quoted in David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven, 1994), 608.

3.  Of the 25 DBQs since 1978 all but three have incorporated at least one document written by a member of the elite.

4.  For the sustained participation of nobles in the French Revolution long after most people assume they dropped out, see: Simon Schama, Citizens (New York, 1990), 364–65, 437–40, 477–80, 581.

5.  A Pole might be substituted for the Austrian, and indeed any combination of two or three is worth thinking about.

6.  First published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in London in 1999 and then in paperback by Seven Dials, Cassell (London) 2000. I bought a copy at my local Borders for $24.95, which is a great price considering the color illustrations.

7. Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV (Chicago, 2001).

8.  "The Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary—the Courts of the Austrian Habsburgs c. 1500–1750" in Adamson, 165–87.

9.  "Russia: the Courts of Moscow and St. Petersburg c. 1547–1725" in Adamson, 295–313.

10.  Published first in London in 1992 and then in paperback by the Columbia University Press (New York, 1992).

11.  One other author has covered some of the same ground. Arno J. Mayer, also courageously attempted a massive survey of European elites in the later 19th and early 20th centuries (The Persistence of the Old Regime, Europe to the Great War [New York, 1981]). Unfortunately, his powerful thesis about the origins of World War I tends to overwhelm his good sense and reshapes the material in ways that are not convincing. Also, Lieven had the benefit of a wider range of published studies available to him, and he dug much deeper into the sources than Mayer chose to do.

12. The Human Venture, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2000), vol. ii, 589.

13.  Lieven, 46, 88–89, 91, 93, 95, 182.

14. Ibid., 37, 43, 56.

15. Ibid., 35, 72.

16. Ibid., 243–53.


References

GENERAL

Adamson, John, ed., The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750, London, 2000. In paperback. Includes Spain, France, England, Holland, Rome, Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Savoy, Florence, Sweden, and Russia.

Clark, Samuel, State and Status: the Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in Western Europe, Monteral, 1995. In paperback. Important but too long.

Dewald, Jonathan, The European Nobility 1400–1800, Cambridge, 1996. A useful, if dull, survey. In paperback.

Henshall, Nicholas, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy, London, 1992.

Lieven, Dominic, The Aristocracy in Europe 1815–1914, New York, 1992. In paperback. The best overview. Focus on UK, Russia, and Germany.

Mayer, Arno J., The Persistence of the Old Regime, Europe to the Great War, New York, 1981. In paperback. Dated now, but a controversial and important book. A good read.

Powis, Jonathan, Aristocracy, Oxford, 1984. In paperback. A good, short survey on a broad scale.

Spring, David, European Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore, 1977. A collection of essays by distinguished scholars on France, Russia, UK, Prussia, and Spain. Now somewhat out of date.

Wasson, Ellis, "Teaching About Elites in the Era of Equality", History Teacher, 32, 1999, pp. 345–54.

Zmora, Hillay, Monarchy, Aristocracy and the State in Europe 1300–1800, London, 2001. In paperback.

ENGLAND

Beckett, J. V., The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914, Oxford, 1986. Very comprehensive but boring.

Cannadine, David, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, New York, 1990. Written with style, often informative, too polemical in places.

Dolan, Brian, Ladies of the Grand Tour, New York, 2001. Women, travel, and the Enlightenment.

Girouard, Mark, Life in the English Country House: a Social and Architectural History, New Haven, 1978. Still in print in paperback. A masterpiece.

Stone, Lawrence and Jeanne Fawtier Stone, Open Elite? England 1540–1880, Oxford, 1984. Fascinating but wrong.

Tillyard, Stella, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740–1832, New York, 1994. In paperback. Magnificent. A great story brilliantly told. Also an abridged, illustrated edition tied into a TV series.

Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter, New Haven, 1998. In paperback. A fine book focused on the issue of separate spheres.

Wasson, Ellis, Born to Rule: British Political Elites, New York, 2000. Sets Stone right.

The novels of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope.

FRANCE

Chaussinand-Nogaret, Guy, The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1985. In paperback. By no means accepted by all scholars.

McCahill, Michael, "Open Elites: Recruitment to the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century", Albion, 30, 1998, pp. 599–629. An important article and excellent survey of the literature.

Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV, Chicago, 2001. Surprisingly good read by a master historian. Of course, the best way to understand Versailles is to read Saint-Simon himself. There is now a wonderful paperback edition in three massive and juicy volumes.

GERMANY

Dönhoff, Marian, Countess, Before the Storm, Memoirs of My Youth in Old Prussia, New York, 1990. An absolutely amazing book by a woman who later became one of the most influential journalists in post-war Germany. It will become a classic.

Hoffmann, Peter, Stauffenberg, a Family History, 1905–1944, Cambridge, 1995. In paperback. Not a great read, but important.

von Moltke, Helmuth James, Letters to Freya 1939–1945, New York, 1995. In paperback. Very powerful book by the great Field Marshal's descendant who became a leading figure in the resistance to Hitler, for which he paid with his life.

Vassiltchov, Marie, Princess, Berlin Diaries 1940–1945, New York, 1987. Astounding descriptions of Berlin under siege and the conspiracy against Hitler.

ITALY

Gilmour, David, The Last Leopard, a Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, New York, 1988. Biography of the extraordinary Sicilian prince and novelist.

Lampedusa, Giuseppe, Prince di, The Leopard, New York, 1960. In paperback. This book has sold more copies than any other book ever published in Italian. It was Lampedusa's only major book, and yet a masterpiece. No other work of literature has ever captured the essence of aristocratic life and decline so perfectly.

RUSSIA

Ignatieff, Michael, The Russian Album, New York, 1988. In paperback. Ignatieff is now the Director of the Human Rights Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Roosevelt, Priscilla, Life on the Russian Country Estate, a Social and Cultural History, New Haven, 1995. In paperback. Lavishly illustrated but stops too early.

Schmemann, Serge, Echoes of a Native Land, New York, 1997. In paperback. Leading New York Times reporter gets in touch with his noble roots.

The novels of Turgenev and Tolstoy.

CENTRAL EUROPE

Potacki, Count Alfred, Master of Lancut, London, 1959. Self-serving memoirs, but gives a unique picture of a great Polish estate.

Pratt, Lord Michael, The Great Country Houses of Central Europe: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, New York, 1991. A beautiful book.

Roth, Joseph, The Radetzky March, New York, 2002. In paperback. A 1938 elegy on the Habsburg monarchy. A novel of considerable power.

von Rezzori, Gregor, The Snows of Yesteryear, Portraits for an Autobiography, New York, 1991. In paperback. A pre-war aristocratic Romanian childhood by a gifted writer.

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