ResoluteReader: France

Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Jonathan Sumption - Cursed Kings: The Hundred Years War IV

Everything that I have written about the first three volumes of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War is also true of this, the fourth and penultimate volume. Sumption's account is enormous in scope, with a masterful grasp of the archival material and an eye for interesting detail that enlivens the sheer volume of information. Readers will like me sometimes lose track of the bigger picture, but that's a limitation of the format.

Volume IV however does feel different to the other books, and this is mostly to do with the period it covers. Much of the book is shaped by the descent of France into violent Civil War, as the mentally distressed King Charles VI, becomes increasingly unable to rule for prolonged periods of time. Charles' frequent "absences" mean that the ruling class is riven by internal differences and tensions. To cut a long story short, two men come to represent the different approaches to ruling France as Regent for Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans and John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy. Louis was close to Charles, though by no means a pleasant character. Sumption describes him as "extrovert, self-indulgent and extravagant" but a "politician of exception ability, charming and gracious, politically astute, highly intelligent and articulate in council". While unpleasant, and "addicted to gambling and womanising" he was thus an enormous barrier to the John the Fearless' own ambitions. Within feudal society such rivalries could easily become open warfare, and this is what happened. John has Louis murdered, and the quest for justice and resolution leads to a massive civil war, with both sides courting the English Kings Henry IV and V for assistance in the war.

As with Sumption's early books, there is much detail of various alliances as the hopes of both sides ebb and wane. What makes this period different to earlier work to a great extent, is the involvement of the masses of Paris in this contest. While it would seem like the mass of the population would care little for one wing of the ruling class over another, John the Fearless proved adept at promising reform and change to benefit the lower classes. In particular he promised, and indeed did move, to enact some reforms and sack many corrupt ministers and servants of the crown and civil service. Thus the civil war that followed Louis' murder saw the involvement of ordinary people in a very different capacity to just being soldiers dying on the battlefield. Their protests, insurrection and risings helped drive events forward.

Then, as now, Paris was both the capital of France and its principle city economically. Sumption ably describes the power the masses had in the capital:

The growing power and volatile temper of the Parisian guilds would come to be associated with the most powerful and dangerous of them all, the corporation of the Grande Boucherie. This guild controlled the largest of the Parisian butcheries, occupying a maze of covered alleys west of the Chatelet, beneath the shadow of the church tower of St-Jacques-la-Boucherie... The butchers were a self-contained hereditary clan, much intermarried... their members were not much esteemed. They were 'men of low estate, inhuman, detestable and devoted to their dishonourable trade'... In spite of their low social status the butchers were rich, enjoying the benefits of a tightly controlled monopoly and a growing market for their product. WIth wealth came ambition. Their leaders coveted status and power, they relished their position as kingmakers, once the rivalries of the princely houses spilled out onto the streets. Concentrated in the narrow lanes of their quarters, they could summon up mobs in minutes, calling on hundreds of muscular apprentices and journeymen...

No wonder then, that "fear of revolution in their capital had been an abiding anxiety of the kings of France for many years". This power shapes the ensuing civil war. John's opponents, the Armagnac family, who take power in the aftermath of Louis' death, experience the strength of the Parisian power when up to 5,000 of the Count of Armagnac's followers are killed by them. The war itself is equally brutal, with John's forces rampaging their way across the country repeatedly defeating the Armagnac forces.

One of the fascinating things that Sumption draws out in this, is the relative impoverishment of all those nobles who are fighting, both in the French civil war and their opponent in England. Feudal kings were desperate short of cash to fight battles. Keeping their armies in the fields cost a fortune, and the shortage of money (and consequently food and troops) is a key factor. It also helps explain why the masses of France were so volatile and angry at taxes, and open to the influence of someone who told them it would end.

Into this mess comes Henry V, whose invasion of France in 1415 seems to sweep all before him. The civil war has left France with limited ability to respond, and the massacre of the French nobility at Agincourt hamstrings the French nobility for years. By 1420, with the signing of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), Henry V has captured Normandy and expanded the English state into one of the most important parts of France. Paris itself is threatened and Charles has no option but to sign, making Henry regent and heir to the French throne.

It was a brief moment of success for the English throne, though it does not end the immediate conflict. But the death of both Henry and Charles in 1422, where this book finishes, pushes the war into a new era. While Henry gained fame as the victor of Agincourt and the winner at Troyes, it was built on tenuous grounds. As Sumption points out, the success was:

By its nature impermanent. [Henry's] ambitions depended too much on the slender resources of his English kingdom. His conquests had owed too much ot the extraordinary circumstances of France during his reign: fifteen years of civil war, the backlash provoked by the murder of John the Fearless, the political and military misjudgements of the Dauphin's advisers. And they had owed too much to Henry's personal qualities: his reputation, his military skills and his iron will and energy.

It could not survive Henry's death. The war, and bloodshed, would continue.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

William Morris - The Pilgrims of Hope

This little book is simultaneously a piece of art and a historical document. Of the 108 pages, just forty or so are given over to the piece of the title, William Morris' poem The Pilgrims of Hope. This, as Michael Rosen says in his introduction is a "fascinating piece of work" in which the author struggles to depict a contemporary class struggle through a long, descriptive poem. For someone like myself who struggles with poetry as a literary form, Rosen's introduction and the longer discussion of the context of Pilgrims of Hope's publication by Nicholas Salmon are extremely useful, both in understanding the poem and putting it in context.

The Pilgrims of Hope tells the story of Richard, a young man living in the country, who learns about the wider world and its struggles through an encounter with a refugee from France. This leads him to London where, among other things, he attends a socialist meeting - much like the ones that William Morris himself organised - and there gets involved in Communist ideas and struggles. When the Paris Commune breaks out, Richard, his wife and his French friend travel to Paris to take part in the struggle and defend it from the counter-revolution. There they form a classic love triangle and Richard's friend and lover die on the barricades, leaving the exact nature of their relationship unclear.

Its a short story, and surprisingly, it's not well told. I am greatful to Salmon's deep reading of the poem for understanding events. What is interesting is the way the poem rises and falls, climaxing on the barricades. Here I was tempted, as Salmon suggests, to see the love triangle as representing the intensity of emotion experienced by the participants in the Commune. Interestingly Morris tends to portray socialists politics in such an emotional way. His hero's discovery of socialism at a political meeting is described as a rebirth, "I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night." After this Richard becomes the "New Proletarian" imprisoned for his role in the fight for the right to protest.

But it is the trip to join the Commune that is the centre of the story - this Morris calls "A Glimpse of the Coming Day", implying that the Commune's democracy and freedom was a vision of a future socialist society. Richard had "never yet" been abroad and his arrival but arriving in Paris:

Yet here we beheld all joyous the folk they had made forlorn!
So at last from a gray stone building we saw a great flag flu,
One colour, red and solemn 'gainst the blue of the spring-tide sky,
and we stopped and turned to each other, and as each at each did we gaze,
The city's hope enwrapped us with joy and great amaze.

Morris doesn't dwell on the gains of the Commune. Indeed the editors include a piece by William Morris written for the 16th anniversary, but even this does not include much about what the Commune and the Communards did, or any real analysis of the importance. It is, however and important read, as it demonstrates both Morris' commitment to revolution and the fact that he acknowledged the Commune as an event. Some biographers, including EP Thompson suggest that Morris never discussed the event.

It is thus important that the editors also include two short pieces by Friedrich Engels written for the 20th anniversary that both describe and analysis the Paris Commune and place it in its revolutionary context. Together these short articles explain why Morris was moved to write a long poem about the Paris Commune, and take up precious space in his newspaper week after week.

As a poem I do think that The Pilgrims of Hope lacks something. Morris experiments with the style and material. In places its over romantic and the story feels thin and contrived. Nonetheless reads, as Salmon points out, would have been familiar with events and experiences - such as the socialist meetings.

All in all this is a interesting period piece with some excellent analysis by Michael Rosen and Nicholas Salmon. Perhaps not the best place to start your reading of the history of the Paris Commune, but one to add to the list.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Mark L Thomas, Jessica Walsh & Charlie Kimber - The Revival of Resistance: The 2022-3 strikes and the battles still to come

In the year to June 2023 Britain saw around 4.1 million strike days. Traditionally these days are described by the media and the government as "lost", but for the trade unionists taking them, and the socialist movement these days represented a revival of the workers movement. This represented the highest level of strike action since the 1980s and a chance for trade unionists to turn back decades of pay freezes, attacks on workers' conditions and austerity. That year saw impressive strikes and pickets lines and huge demonstrations. Like many other socialists engaged in active solidarity I visited more pickets in this year than I had in my previous three decades of activism. The vast majority of those picket lines were exciting, inspiring and big - with a new young generation of workers engaged in strikes, many for the first time.

But the size of the strikes and the celebratory mood on them sometimes hide a problem. In few of the strikes was there a serious strategy to win, and too many disputes have ended with deals that are best described as "poor". With inflation in the UK hitting record levels, many groups of workers settled for deals that were less than inflation and certainly, as this book argues, below what could have been won.

The authors of this book are all leading members of the British Socialist Workers' Party. Their short book is an attempt to analyse the strikes and offer "a sharp challenge to the union bureaucracy and lays out a strategy for the way forward". Thus the book is more than an analysis of the moment, but an attempt to learn lessons and develop workers' struggle. The authors identify a number of problems with the struggle as it stands. The first is the episodic nature of the strikes with unions calling strikes that lasted one or two, sometimes a few days. The second is a failure to coordinate - a reluctance on behalf of the union leadership to strike together with other unions. When this did happen, such as the days that saw the Civil Service union PCS strike with the teachers in the NEU - the joint events, such as the demonstration in Manchester that I was part of, were joyous celebrations of workers' power.

The authors write:

A central less from these experiences is that resisting poor deals is connected to the argument for escalation, which is a break from the limited pressure of episodic strikes. The question of how more can be won, how real victories can be best achieved needs to be raised constantly. This in turn need s to be combined with rebuilding activist networks that understand they cannot rely on the trade union leaderships to fight effectively and consistently.

This critical position on the trade union leadership is often at odds with the initial experience of many strikers. As the authors point out:

For more than 30 years, the near universal experience of working class activists, even the most militant, has been one of relying on and operating within a framework set from above - by the trade union bureaucracy, and acting independently of them has been a rare exception. So it is not surprising that many activists entered the recent strikes with illusions both about the scale of the confrontation needed to achieve decisive victories... but also, and correspondingly the scale of the challenge with their own officials that this would require.

The authors draw on the SWP's analysis, first developed by Tony Cliff, that argues that the trade union apparatus, forms a "separate social layer with its own set of interests distinct from workers on the one hand and the bosses who oversee and enforce their exploitation on the other". The bureaucrats and union leaders have a material interest in maintaining their position and not fighting too hard - not least their high salaries, as a rather shocking and useful salary table in this book shows.

The strikes could, and should, win more - and the barrier is the inherent conservatism of the trade union bureaucracy. The counter to this is the development of rank and file organisation that can lead the struggle from below, in defiance of the leadership if and when needed. The authors demonstrate this with historical accounts and several examples from contemporary struggles in Britain. But most excitingly there is a really inspiring chapter on the movement in France that is on a much bigger scale than in Britain. There the movement "shook" the country and demonstrated the potential to win so much more. There are plenty of useful lessons for British trade unions. The inclusion of this material and linking it to the British struggle is a real strength of the book.

The authors' caution though. The potential for developing these movements is not the immediate victory of socialism, but rather a process by which

workers would start to see alternative sources of power and decision-making that could destroy and replace the capitalist state. Everything that diverts and delays that process is fatal. It creates opening s for the bureaucrats to squeeze life from the struggle.

In conclusion then the authors are hopeful that we can build on the movements of 2022/3 to win real change. But there is a struggle - we need a bigger, stronger rank and file within the trade unions and a bigger revolutionary socialist movement. With these tools the movement can grow and expand its horizons. There has never been a greater need for workers' victory and this short, but inspiring and accessible book should be read by every worker who is sick of the system and wants to fight back.

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Karl Marx - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Outside of the radical left The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is not one of Karl Marx's best known works. This is a shame, because it is an engaging, humorous and brilliant work of historical analysis that showcases Marx's writing skills, his polemic and, as Engels notes, his "thorough knowledge of French history". More importantly it is where Marx uses his "great law of motion of history" to show how events are the "clear expression of struggles between social classes", and as Engels said in 1885 "after thirty-three years we must still say that [the work] has stood the test of brilliantly."

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte deals with events in France after the revolutionary proletarian movement of 1848 has been defeated. It is not a straightforward history of events and readers looking for that will need to supplement their knowledge from elsewhere, including Marx's own Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850. Rather Marx shows how specific events in France arise out of the clash between differing class interests, in particular those of different sections of the bourgeoise colliding with each other. But Marx demonstrates how the working class is instrumental in driving forward some of those interests, before itself being isolated and defeated. This passage gives a sense of how Marx writes history - with the back and forth of class struggle shaping wider events:

The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe can be followed only by a bourgeois republic; that is to say, whereas a limited section of the bourgeoisie ruled in the name of the king, the whole of the bourgeoisie will now rule in the name of the people. The demands of the Paris proletariat are utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put. To this declaration of the Constituent National Assembly the Paris proletariat replied with the June insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeois, the army, the lumpen proletariat organized as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the clergy, and the rural population. On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but itself. More than three thousand insurgents were butchered after the victory, and fifteen thousand were deported without trial. With this defeat the proletariat passes into the background on the revolutionary stage. It attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of strength and always slighter results. As soon as one of the social strata above it gets into revolutionary ferment, the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer, one after another. But these subsequent blows become the weaker, the greater the surface of society over which they are distributed.

Marx, of course, reserves his praise for the workers who fought, as against the cowardly, reactionary bourgeoisie.

But at least it succumbs with the honors of the great, world-historic struggle; not only France, but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake, while the ensuing defeats of the upper classes are so cheaply bought that they require barefaced exaggeration by the victorious party to be able to pass for events at all, and become the more ignominious the further the defeated party is removed from the proletarian party.

Marx wrote this to explain the success of Louis Bonaparte, a figure whose seizure of power, and his Janus faced policies, became a byword on the left for reactionary governments and figures. But reading the 18th Brumaire I was repeatedly struck by how Marx places historical materialist analysis front and centre of every event. It produces some of his most memorable and also clear statements on different groups in society, for instance the peasantry, who Marx says forms the class basis for Napoleon's power:

The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’s poor means of communication and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships... the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes... They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.

The reference here to the peasants as being a "sack of potatoes" reminds me that this book is full of some of Marx's most quotable passages. It is where, for instance, Marx quips that history repeats itself as tragedy and farce, where he writes that people make history, but not in circumstances of their choosing and where he reminds us of the way the capitalist class subordinates all to their interests:

The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century set the state to stand guard over the newly emerged small holdings and fertilized them with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks the blood from their hearts and brains and casts them into the alchemist’s caldron of capital.

Without some knowledge of French history, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is not an easy read, but it is worthwhile as it is perhaps the finest example of Marx's application of his own historical materialism.

Wednesday, April 06, 2022

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray - History of the Paris Commune

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray was a participant in the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871. He is popularly supposed to have been "the last man on the barricades" and while not a leading figure in the revolution, he was very much at its heart as a fighter. Escaping France he went into exile in London where he began work on his History of the Paris Commune, drawing on contemporary reports, personal experiences and the recollections of exiles. Working with Karl Marx the book was translated into English by Marx's daughter Eleanor, with whom Lissagaray became engaged.

The book then is remarkable in the sense that it is an eyewitness account of a revolution, and has close links to two of the worlds' great revolutionaries. But what of the book itself? The book begins with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 which gave birth to the Commune, but events are probably hard to follow for the reader who knows little of that period of French history. Writing in the aftermath of the Commune, when details were fresh, but political battles were being waged over the interpretation of events, Lissagaray gives a vast amount of detail about figures from the French left. Those unaccustomed to this might find it easier to read an introductory account first before delving into Lissagaray.

But readers should delve into this book. Despite the difficulties with detail, its a fascinating and impassioned account of revolution. Lissagaray is enthusiastic about the people who made the revolution and critical of those elected to lead it, whom he says spent too much time talking and not enough deciding. Clearly there were mistakes made during the Commune's brief lifetime and Lissagaray is open about them. But he always begins from the revolution itself, "for the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track". Lissagaray also devotes two chapters to the short-lived Communes outside of Paris, that are rarely discussed in books about 1871. These lasted barely a few days, their short lifetimes being in part due to the lack of industrial development and hence sizeable proletariat outside Paris, the weaknesses of the left and the failure of the Commune to make it clear to the wider country what it was doing.

These failures know doubt helped condemn the Commune, though not as much as the failure by the revolution to immediately take on the military force of the old government at Versailles. As Lissagaray says the French bourgeoisie "seeing this Paris capable of engendering a new world, her heart swelled with the best blood of France, had but one thought - to bleed Paris." And bleed it they did.

The brutal assault on Paris which Lissagaray played a role in resisting was followed by the most violent and bestial repression. Lissagaray quotes official figures that suggest that 17,000 people were summarily executed in the "bloody week" following the storming of the city. Thousands more died, were deported, tortured and imprisoned in the most sickening of conditions. Much of the final part of Lissagaray's book is an account of these tragedies and the violence of the French government. No doubt this is in part a contribution to the political debates taking place, but also an political act to drum up support for the exiles and prisoners.

The ruling class wanted to drown Paris in blood to teach the workers' a lesson. Never again should they threaten the rightful place of the bourgeois class. But despite the massacre, and contrary to the hopes of capitalists everywhere, the Paris Commune remains an inspirational moment in working class history, from which we even the greatest revolutionaries could learn. Despite some accessibility issues, Lissagaray's book is a superb history that all radicals should read.

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Mitchell Abidor - Voices of the Paris Commune

In March 1871 the workers of Paris seized control of their city and declared the Paris Commune. It was an event that through its radical, democratic organisation directly challenged capitalist society, likely prevented a return of the French monarchy and transformed how revolutionaries understood state power and the nature of a workers' state. Writing for the fortieth anniversary, Lenin wrote that the "cause of the Commune is the social revolution, the cause of the complete political and economic emancipation of the toilers. It is the cause of the proletariat of the whole world. And in this sense it is immortal.

Remarkably we have many accounts of the Paris Commune, from participants, observers and supporters and its opponents. Mitchell Abidor's short volume contains such "voices" in an attempt to give a flavour of events. Unfortunately while I found the collection interesting it was hampered, in my view, by an emphasis on the legacy of the Commune and some of the internecine debates within the revolution. A large chunk is devoted to the debates among the elected leadership about the Committee for Public Safety, which a section of delegates saw as a massive concession to undemocratic and authoritarian practice. The discussion takes a form of reprints from the Commune's journal and as such is difficult for non-experts to follow unless they have a grounding in the debates. I felt this needed far more from the editor to explain context and personalities.

The second part of the booklet reports extensively from the inquiry into the Commune and as such focuses on the legacy of the Commune and the activity of the participants. Again this skews things towards internal debates (which are of course important) such as what to do with hostages etc. Disappointingly most of the respondents discuss the failings of the Commune and its leadership - not seizing the bank, not marching on Versailles. This has the effect of making the Commune feel dry and top down - I'd have welcomed more quotes that gave a sense of the revolutionary zeal at the bottom of society. There is also a surprising level of cynicism, or perhaps disappointment, from more than a few voices as they look back on events. Perhaps that's a reflection of the appalling counter-revolutionary violence inflicted on the Commune in its final weeks, violence that had the effect of bringing together the different factions in the defence of the revolution. As one member of the Commune, J. Martelet, is quoted here as saying, "We found ourselves side by side during the terrible Bloody Week, majority and minority, fighting with the same ardor until the final day of the fight, defending together with the same faith the rights of the working people."

Sunday, February 06, 2022

Henry Heller - The French Revolution and Historical Materialism

This collection of essays by Henry Heller builds, and in part incorporates, his earlier work on the French Revolution. In previous books and articles Heller has put a classical Marxist argument - that the French Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution, the "founding moment of modern history". His argument was in the face of mainstream contemporary "revisionist" thought, which argued that this was not the case. In writing his earlier works Heller explains that he had to continually reassert a Marxist position because the cause of revisionism went further than simply attacking the concept of the bourgeois revolution but its aim was to "not only to challenge the Marxist view of the revolution but to put into question its narrative of modern history, whose denouement looks toward a revolutionary transition to socialism".

The essays in this book mostly come from Heller's defence of his position and his polemic against others. Most of the chapters originate in articles in the journal Historical Materialism and as such are often more specialised than the reader with a passing interest in the Revolution will want. So while the book lacks even a short account of the French Revolution itself, the opening essay is a reprint of Heller's introduction to the most recent edition of Jean Jaurès' classic A Socialist History of the French Revolution. This was the first explicitly Marxist account and its importance to Marxist histography and Heller's own studies is abundantly clear.

Because they originate in a strident defence of Marxist thought on the Revolution, these articles are highly academic and detailed. As such they are somewhat inaccessible, though close reading will find important insights. For instance, Heller places the French Revolution in a much wider context, arguing for instance that:

West European advance came directly at the expense of Eastern Europe and Asia, Africa and Latin America. The process of West European transition throughout its early history entailed turning other areas into dependence economies and colonies. Seizing resources from less advanced areas or later on from colonised regions became an intrinsic feature of West European development. In other words, the emergence of capitalism has to be understood in terms of an ongoing world-wide process of appropriation based on uneven development both within and outside Europe.

Elsewhere Heller continues the critique of other Marxist historians such as Robert Brenner, that he developed in his book on the Birth of Capitalism. Here he notes that their failure to identify an early capitalist class in France in the Early Modern era, has "greatly reinforced the currently popular revisionist" views that argues the Revolution wasn't bourgeois. In contrast to Brenner, Heller argues:

[Brenner] overestimated the durability of the victory of the French peasantry at the end of the Middle Ages. By the latter half of the sixteenth century, most of this class in northern France was clearly placed on the defensive by both the nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie. In this context, what proved structurally determinant was the redistribution of properly among the commoners themselves at the expense of the lesser peasants and to the benefit of the bourgeoisie, both urban and rural. Brenner rejects the importance of the process of peasant social differentiation to capitalist origins in the case of English agriculture. Single-mindedly insisting on the importance of class struggle, he rejects the idea that social differentiation among peasants might have been important to the establishment of capitalist social relations.

Thus Heller argues for the centrality of the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation - the changes to land ownership which fuelled early capitalist accumulation. He sees the emergence of a manufacturing class in the cities alongside the rural capitalists. Capitalism develops "within the interstices of the seventeenth-century absolutist regime". He argues for a dynamic process of change - "the notion that contradictory economic and political processes could be at work within a given social system". This process, which culminates in the Revolution, helps create the capitalist class as a class-in-itself. But it was the "convulsions" of the revolution itself that would "produce the sense of the bourgeoisie as a class" for itself.

In exploring these themes Heller takes up many other issues - including arguments around the existence of a "working class" within the Revolutionary period, and the nature of the Jacobin regime and its attitude to manufacturing. In putting his argument Heller marshals much detail to bolster his case, and in places this made for heavy reading. Nonetheless Heller gives a real sense of a dynamic, developing economic system of (open and hidden) class warfare were capitalist relations are slowly developing in the period, until the Revolution allows them to break free.

While this is very much a specialist book aimed at those interested in debates about Marxism and the history of the French Revolution, and as such many readers might be put off, there is much here of interest and Heller makes an excellent defence of his central point, and the importance of Marxism to the study of the Revolution for today.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Jonathan Sumption - Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War III

Volume three of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War deals with a neglected period of the conflict. This is the period of transition between the rule of the English kings Edward III and Richard II. It's unusual because it is not marked by epic battles but more complex interactions between states and armies. Now, the conflict between France and England spread to neighbouring areas - in particular Castile and Portugal, but also Italy and Flanders.

For the English though there was no respite. Edward III's initial military successes were never going to be sustainable, and by the second half of the 14th century he was facing repeated financial problems. The English' parliament's attempts to fix the shortages of cash, led to increased taxation. In turn, these taxes and the ongoing economic and political problems driven by the war with France, led to growing discontent that eventually exploded into open rebellion. The "Peasant's" revolt of 1381, is the centrepiece of the period for many historians. Yet Sumption demonstrates that the English Rising was very much part of a wider "Revolt of the Towns" that sure both rural and urban rebellion in Flanders and France. The causes were similar to that in England - Sumption argues that these

occurred against a difficult economic background: disease, depopulation and a deepening recession characterised by falling agricultural prices, industrial stagnation and a severe shortage of gold and silver coin. All contributed to the growing crisis of Europe's cities. The physical destruction wrought by war in England France and Italy and later in Flanders, Spain and Portugal aggravated the effects.

Sumption tells the stories of the various revolts well, giving a good sense of events. Perhaps more important though is the way he casts the rebellions as part of a Europe wide economic crisis. The similarities between the Rising in England and elsewhere, as well as the wider discontent across society is brought out well. As is the repression of the revolts that allowed the ruling classes of France and England to regain control. Here the similarities of violence and brutality are very clear.

In the years after the 1381 rising England came close to facing a significant invasion from France. For two years, from 1383 to 1385 the French managed to assemble a major military force. Had that force landed in England there could well have been a significant defeat for the English. Lack of funds, political chaos and organisational blunders meant that preparation for defence was negligible. In July 1385 as the French King prepared to invade, the king had left London for Scotland and defence was in the hands of those incapable of delivering. As Sumption says, "There was no attempt to organise coast-guards, to array troops inland or to set up warning beacons on hill-tops". The country could have been taken - and that it wasn't was down to luck.

At the other end of the country, French troops in Scotland found campaigning tough. Nonetheless Richard II still made a hash of the campaign. The invasion of England was put off following events in Flanders as the towns of Damme and Ghent were under siege. One of the strengths of Sumption's book is that he is able to tell the parallel stories from multiple locations that determined historical events. Simultaneous campaigns in Scotland, France and Flanders might make for a complicated story - but Sumption manages to keep the reader following.

Despite this I found the book much harder going that the first two volumes. Here the story is spread over a much greater geographical space. The interests of individuals such as John of Gaunt become entangled with the fates of whole countries. Keeping track of it all is hard for the reader, despite Sumption's best efforts. The book ends with the Truce of Leulinghem. This was a dramatic outcome of years of peace talks between the countries, but Sumption makes clear that the peace was very much still born. It failed to solve the underlying problems, and both the French and English kings used it as a breathing space to try and solve their own internal issues. In particular Richard II attempted to consolidate his power base by challenging his internal enemies.

Sumption finished the book with the defeat of Richard and the crowning of Henry IV in October 1399. The shock of the French at the news was "due in part to outrage at the idea of deposing an anointed king". This reflected real differences in government between the two countries. But a bigger problem was that the French firmly believed that Richard had been overthrown because he wanted peace. The scene was set, in French eyes at least, for further war.

Volume three packs a vast amount of history into almost 900 pages. It is not an easy read, while I found the sections on rebellion excellent, I was overwhelmed by detail - particularly in the chapters on Portugal. At times the sheer level of detail overwhelms the wider historical narrative. Despite this the book remains part of the single best historical account of the Hundred Years War. If you can stomach the length and detail, you'll want to read it.

Saturday, May 08, 2021

Justine Firnhaber-Baker - The Jacquerie of 1358: A French Peasants' Revolt

Reading Jean Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred Years War recently I was struck by the vehemence with which he describes participants in the Jacquerie - the peasant revolt that shook France. The rising took place in the political chaos that followed the French defeat at the Battle of Poitiers where the English captured the French king. For Froissart, and other contemporaries, the Jacquerie were "strange and terrible happenings" where "evil men, who had come together without leaders or arms, pillaged and burned everything and violated and killed all the ladies and girls without mercy, like mad dogs".

Such language matches that with which Froissart and contemporary chroniclers describe rebellions in England and I wondered at other parallels. So I was very excited to learn about Justine Firnhaber-Baker's new book. As the reader quickly gathers from Firnhaber-Baker's extensive notes and bibliography there are no shortage of books and articles on the 1358 events in France. But her book fills an obvious gap for English readers - an accessible and scholarly study of the events. She begins by summarising what took place at the end of May 1358:

As summer approached and people prepared to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, thousands of French villagers revolted. In the Île-de-France north of Paris, Normandy to its west, Picardy and Champagne to its east, and further afield, they attached the nobilities castles and manor houses, burning them down and destroying or stealing their contents. They killed noblemen and assaulted their families. According to some reports, they event killed noble children and gang-raped noblewomen, murdering some pregnant ones. On 10 June at the eastern city of Meaux, they allied with urban commoners and troops from Paris, itself in rebellion against the crown, in order to attack a castle on the Marne River... there they were defeated. The castle's noble garrison chased down those who managed to flee and slaughtered them 'like pigs'.

The Jacquerie sent shivers down the spines of nobility throughout Europe. Yet, unlike some other medieval rebellions, such as the English Rising of 1381, source material is much more scarce. Firnhaber-Baker has scoured it to explore the detail behind the crude propaganda of Froissart and others, and try and answer key questions. Why did the villagers revolt? Why in 1358 and not before? What were the links between national politics and local issues? How barbaric were the rebels? How violent was the crushing.

Key to answering these questions is the author's central argument that the motivations of the rebels cannot be separated from wider politics. We must not think of medieval villagers as being ignorant masses unconcerned with wider issues. In fact, it's precisely the interaction between "national politics" and local concerns (economic and political) that drove English rebellions such as those of Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, Robert Kett and more complex risings such as the Pilgrimage of Grace. So Firnhaber-Baker quotes the Royal Chronicler who said of the people in Paris and it's countryside were "greatly dismayed, for they feared that there would be conflict between the two lords leading to the destruction of the country."

In other words, the political crisis at the top of French society that followed the capture of Jean II at Poitiers, cascaded down through society among people who could expect to feel, or had already experienced, the ravages of military forces. For ordinary people the fractures taking place in society were a direct threat because they upset the established order.

So it would be wrong to simply understand the Jacquerie as a economic revolt against oppression, low incomes or serfdom. But simultaneously it would be incorrect to ignore how these issues fed into wider discontent. Which helps explain why the rebellion was sparked when it did. Firnhaber-Baker explains the rebellion itself was not "spontaneous". There is always a tendency after rebellions or uprisings take place for commentators to be surprised at events taking place "out of the blue". It is as true of (say) contemporary riots and protest movements against police racism which seem to come out of nowhere, but reflect deep-seated discontent at racism as it was in 1358 or 1381.

Froissart implies the Jaccquerie began when someone got up and denounced the nobility and called for their destruction, but events had much deeper roots. As Firnhaber-Baker says about the massacre of nobles at Saint-Leu-D'esserent that marks the start of the rebellion:

The rustics may have acted on their own initiative, for while the incident did serve the Parisians' purposes, they do not seem to have anticipated it. Nor were urban sophisticates the only ones to have opinions about politics. Country-folk knew what was happening in Paris, and some were sympathetic. A month earlier, a villager had been killed near Compiegne for telling some noblemen 'Go to Paris, where all you nobles will be killed just as others already have been'.

A "spontaneous" attack on nobles took place because the presence of the nobles themselves in the area was linked by local people to wider political changes. The attack on the nobles would likely have been understood by participants as an engagement by their communities into national events. That latter commentators close to the victorious elite saw this as the result of a few agitators reflects their fears and prejudices. Firnhaber-Baker points out that the rising was not an intended consequence of the actions of peasants in one part of France. "Organising a large-scale rural uprising would have required a prodigious act of imagination on anyone's part", but nontheless it happened. Rural revolt was not unknown in Frnace, but large-scale revolts were "rare".

The scarcity of contemporary sources hides much of the detail of the rising from us. But the lack of political demands on the part of the rebels should not imply that they didn't exist - even if they weren't articulated into a series of "articles" like those of Robert Kett's movement. But there are moments when the "masses" enter onto the historical stage and begin to shape events, even if few participants understand them, at least initially, like this. Leon Trotsky famously wrote in his History of the Russian Revolution:

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business - kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new régime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgement of moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as they are given by the objective course of development. The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

This is not to pretend that the Jacquerie was a precursor of the 1917 Russian Revolution, but rather to try to understand the dynamic that was taking place on the ground. In May 1358 the French masses took to the historical stage, and began to shape national politics.

A few weeks into the Jacquerie there is a key moment when one noble, Charles Navarre appears to switch sides and attacks the rebels, despite them being essentially on the side of his own allies. A crude class analysis, which Firnhaber-Baker rejects, says that this occurs because of him recognising his innate position in French society: "Speculation that Navarre's class consciousness trumped his strategic interest do not jibe with the evidence". Instead she sees it as Navarre's actions as arising out of "political opportunism" rather than "morality or class solidarity". I'm not entirely convinced that the separation is as clear as that - in fact it strikes me that Navarre's opportunism arises precisely out of his class position. It must have been clear to him that the Jacquerie were not going to militarily defeat his enemies, and making his own class position clear through violent repression cannot have harmed his cause, or his opportunism.

Rightly Firnhaber-Baker rejects crude class analyses of peasant revolts. Understanding, for instance, the contradictory roles of local landowners or lords, during (say) the Pilgrimage of Grace or Kett's Rebellion means seeing their class role in the context of wider society - and local as well as national social links. Nonetheless we cannot ignore that there was a class role. So the author is right to say in her conclusion that:

Politics were important, but more so in terms of the practices of mobilisation and coalition-building than ideas about society and government or the objectives of change The social relationships that wove people and communities together or that tore them apart were at least as important in creating the revolt and ensuring its suppression as were opinions on governance, war or even taxation.

But it is also true to say that the revolt would not have happened without class interests and the factional fights within the ruling class, shaping wider changes in society.

If I've focused here on the role of class. I should also point out that Firnhaber-Baker's book is excellent in drawing out other divisions in society. In particular I was impressed by her account of the role of gender. While noting the role that women played in the revolt itself, she also highlights how their wider labour was central to making sure that the rebellion could happen at all.

No rural rebellion could have taken place without someone milking the cows, nursing the babies and weeding the kitchen gardens. If the law was unconcerned by these quotidian labours, the nobles' reaction demonstrates and understanding of their contribution to the uprisings. Considering responsibility to have been corporate and universal, they punished whole villages, without apparent regard to innocence or guilt, age or gender.

It is precisely this nuanced approach that places the Jacquerie in a wider social, political and economic context that makes this book such a delight to read. Justine Firnhaber-Baker's book fills an important gap in the literature and is likely to be the definitive work on these events for many years. I encourage anyone with an interest in rural rebellion and medieval revolts to read it.

Friday, April 09, 2021

Venus Bivar - Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France

Until reading Organic Resistance I had a crude explanation for why it is that the food culture of European countries like France was so much better than we have in England. The reason was, I believed, because the processes of enclosure that took place in England with the development of capitalism lead to the complete defeat of the peasantry and with that, the systematic undermining of rural variations in food. In contrast, I thought, the process had been far less thoroughgoing on the continent, where the peasantry lasted longer and local food prospered, and indeed was protected, into more recent times.

It turns out that I was only half-right. As Venus Bivar's excellent account of the post-war transformation of rural France explains, the process is actually more complex. But also very illuminating for those grappling with the politics of France, the European Union and food itself. We also learn that what characterises French agriculture is not the localised artisanal food holiday makers and second home owners enjoy, it's actually mass produced export food.

Peasant agriculture survived much longer in France. At the end of the Second World War France society was still very rural, with 36 percent of the adult population working in farming (compared to 5.5 percent in the UK). The French government, in close alliance with US foreign policy, drove a programme of rapid industrialisation in the French countryside. Bivar explains that:

Between 1955 and 1975.. the active agricultural population was cut in half, and 40,000 to 50,000 farms disappeared every single year.... the average size of French farms almost tripled, from fifteen to forty-two hectares... By the end of the 1980s, just 6 percent of the active French population was still working in agriculture

The process was "ruthless". Bivar includes enough tragic accounts from farmers and their families who lost out in this process, to make the reader realise that what was taking place in a very concentrated time frame was very similar to the much more elongated process that took place in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. But the process in France was more than simply the engrossment of farms into larger units. There was a transformation in agriculture itself. Farms became larger, yes. But they also became mechanised, dependent on chemical pesticides and fertilisers, and producing crops for the export market. As Bivar summarises:

Farmers lost their land, took on crushing amounts of debt, compromised their health with the application of chemical inputs and left behind their communities - all in the name of modernisation. Technocrats, neo-corporatists farm unions, the EEC, and the Credit Agricole [bank] all worked to further the modernization agenda, and in doing so placed a series of demands and constraints on agricultural France, the most extreme being the near abrogation of property rights.

The enclosure of English agricultural lands had finished by the 20th century. Its industrialisation began in the 19th century, but World War Two was the moment when British farming embraced the internal combustion engine. But British farming spent WW2 providing for an war-economy, while France had no state support or foreign aid. When this came after WW2 ended it came very fast and was very thorough-going.

Early in Bivar's book there are a couple of remarkable maps, before and after "remembrement" of a small village. The before map, shows what look like medieval strip farming, and the post-map shows these strips joined together in huge fields. The "remembrement" process pictured could easily be mistaken for similar maps made during the English enclosure movement. Essentially this all but destroyed the French peasant food economy. It also destroyed the rural environment. As Bivar highlights:

much of the remembrement that was carried out disturbed the natural systems that had previously managed water and wind. Banks and hedgerows were destroyed while rural engineers implemented massive irrigation and drainage projects: 'Remembrement overturned the old inherited order of the fields, substituting it with the real-world checkerboard of the surveyor.'

So how come French farming today is know for organic, high-quality, low volume, locally produced cheese, wine and bread? The story of this, is another key part of Bivar's book. It is summed up in a fascinating advert that the author includes. It is one that at first glance looks like a modern advert against animal cruelty, highlighting the cramped conditions of animals. Titled "The life of a chicken in 1962" it contrasts battery chicken production with the lives of organic free-range animals. Sadly the whole text of the advert isn't translated, but Bivar gives us the highlights including references to "degeneration" and "civilisation". These words hint at the murky origins of the organic movement in France, lying as they do among far-right and sometimes fascist movements that sought to protect the French nation's purity and defend the interests of farming communities under threat from industrial production.

In the aftermath of the radical upheavals of 1968, a new generation of leftists entered the countryside and splits within the organic movement, together with growing acceptance of organic food as an alternative to mass produced food transformed the situation. Today organic food is associated with environmentalism, the left (in its widest sense), yet as Bivar artfully explains, this certainly was not the case and the real story is much murkier, going back to the Vichy regime and French antisemitism.

Post-war France saw enormous struggles over the country's identity. This led to a turn to the EEC and EU as a solution to rural problems that could not be fixed internally. As Bivar writes:

Throughout the decade, the threat of domestic unrest, precipitated by recurring waves of agricultural protest, loomed large in a nation whose history was famed for its periodic outbursts of rebellion. The Fourth Republic, preoccupied by the war in Algeria, struggled to maintain stability on the home front without diverting precious resources from its military operations. As the colonial situation worsened, the French state grew increasingly incapable of addressing the mounting concerns of its farmers. Accordingly, European integration, and specifically the integration of agricultural markets, grew more and more attractive as a means of assuaging rebellious farmers.

In the aftermath of WW2 the French state created an industrial agricultural system that made the country one of the biggest food exporters in the world. At the same time they destroyed rural communities and traditions. In the vacuum, the far-right was able to fill a political space and in doing so created an organic farming movement that today is celebrated globally. The contradictions of this process however, including the active participation of farmers in rebellious protests, have left a number of fascinating legacies that are brilliantly unpicked by Venus Bivar in this book.

Its a remarkable work that packs a lot in, but remains readable and accessible to the lay reader. It's wouldn't be a bad book to pack for those planning a camping trip to France post Covid. It might not be the first choice to read while sipping French wine and nibbling some local cheese, but it will illuminate the political and economic forces that have shaped the landscape and the food you are munching.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Jonathan Sumption - Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years War II

There is a famous quote from Hegel from 1806 when he saw the Napoleon Bonaparte after his capture of Jena. "I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it."

I was put in mind of this while reading of the capture of the French King John II by the English after the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. At that point, the whole French administration fell apart. All the preceding tensions, caused by war, economic crisis and internal feudal rivalry, broke through. Before that, the king, through his very person was able to hold the French state together. With his capture and removal to England - despite his ability to communicate with his court and subjects, France was thrown into a unrivalled chaos.

Poitiers, or rather its aftermath, form a central part of volume II of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the English-French Hundred Years War. It's in this moment that the French crisis is finally illuminated. But the roots go back many years to the initial English successes detailed in book one. The book begins with English forces, or rather bands and forces that identify with England, marauding the French countryside. The brutality was fighting and whole areas were stripped bare of food and people. When the small walled market town of Uzerche was captured, one account described the "murderers and robbers calling themselves English" who scaled the walls, killed the guards and opened the gates. Sumption continues:

One a Monday night they burnt down the buildings around the public square and plundered the richer houses. On the Tuesday they attacked the monastery, where many of the inhabitants had taken refuge, but failed to capture it. On the Wednesday they burned the whole quarter of the town by the river bridge and then withdrew leaving the streets strewn with corpses including thirty-two of their own number.

Sumption describes this as a "characteristic incident". Those that think the Hundred Years War was defined by military expeditions and battles like Poitiers, Crécy or Agincourt, ought to reflect that much of the war was conducted in the most brutal of fashions (Sumption repeatedly uses the word terrorist) by armed groups who fought under their own banners with "conveniently loose allegiance to Edward III". That said, terror tactics were not just down to the armed bands. The Black Prince's 1355-1356 campaign destroyed 500 villages, a dozen walled towns and made "serious" damage to the economy of south-west France. The Prince was "highly satisfied" by this.

While the detailed accounts of swirling allegiances and brutal fighting is hard to take in for the reader, I was struck by Sumption's sense of narrative in this, and the first volume. So Sumption details the different evolution of the English and French military, showing how the "privatisation" of the military in England gave them an organisational and disciplinary edge over the "innate conservatism" of the French forces.

In France, years of economic mismanagement, military failure and inept leadership had left the country on the verge of collapse. Sumption details the growing discontent - both in sections of the ruling class, but most importantly at the base of French society, which led to "revolution" in Paris and the mass peasant explosion that is known as the Jacquerie. Sadly these accounts are marred by Sumption's desire to paint them as "mass fanaticism" which was similar to the "atmosphere of 1792 and 1870". Given the utter failure of the French state to protect the mass of ordinary people - its no surprise that thousands of the lower orders decided that things needed to change.

The book ends seemingly with England in the ascendancy. The temporary peace deal had granted huge areas of France to England, yet it was built on sand. A proxy war in Spain had undermined the English military position and the economic situation was uneasy. Having returned to France from captivity, John II went back to England having failed to deliver all his ransom. His death there and the crowning of Charles V as France's new king marked a new period in the War and France's ascendancy. For the first time in years feudal rule is able to come back together under one person.

The length of these works might put many readers off. Those who persist will find them rewarding both in detail but also analysis. Jonathan Sumption is able to offer an overarching narrative that places better known events and battles into wider context. I look forward to volume III.

Related Reviews

Sumption - Trial by Battle: The Hundred Years War I
Sumption - Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War III
Green - The Hundred Years War: A People's History
Barker - Conquest
Barker - Agincourt

Monday, December 28, 2020

Jonathan Sumption - Trial by Battle: The Hundred Years War I

Trial by Battle is the first book in a multi-volume epic history of the Hundred Years War between France and England. It's a detailed historical work, based almost entirely on original sources of which the author is an acknowledged master. At nearly 650 pages long, including end-matter, the book is a hefty read, yet covers only the first part of the war - the feudal conflicts that gave rise to the sustained war and the first years. The reader is taken as far as the Battle of Crecy and the capture of Calais by the English.

Out of necessity, much of the detailed history of the 14th century covers the deeds of great men and a handful of great women. These tended to be the things that were recorded by contemporary chroniclers. So I was pleased to discover that Sumption has not written a history that simply covers palace intrigues, battles and acts of chivalry. Instead, as far as he is able, he draws out deeper historical processes and lesser considered events. For instance, a great theme of the this book is the way that the War was shaped by the difficulties that the two principal kings in the period, Edward III and Philip VI had in raising cash. This is a recurring issue for both, though a real problem for Edward who was trying to fight abroad. It affected everything - from numbers of troops to the alliances that Edward made.

In part, the problem of ready cash was simply about the economic hardship that followed years of war, and the reticence of the lower-orders to stump up taxes. More deeply it was a problem that had roots in wider economic problems. As Sumption points out for France:

One of the things, however, which almost all of the nobility had in common was that they were encountering mounting financial difficulties from the second half of the thirteenth century onward, difficulties which were mainly attributable to the problems of the French agricultural economy but which the government exacerbated. The pressure on them came from several sources. In almost every case they suffered from a sever and continuous rise in their cost of living.

The problem for the wealthy was profound, but for the "lesser men" it was far worse. The implications of economic difficulties and changes played out across the continent. In Flanders where a nascent capitalist wool and cloth trade was closely linked to English exports and French agriculture, the masses led proto-workers revolts that allowed Edward III to drive a wedge between them and their traditional French lords.

Added to this were complications of geography and history. Today, in an era where international politics is dominated by the nation state, its hard to understand how different things were in the 14th century. England and France were much more nebulous concepts. Bits of the area that is now known as France were considered English and the people there had somewhat ambiguous relations with the government. As Sumption reminds us

Between Brittany and England there were ancient connections which made the dukes uncertain friends of France for all their exalted status in the French peerage. It could scarcely have been otherwise, their geographical situation being what it was.

Sumption doesn't point it out, but this worked in the other direction to. Cornwall, which had close economic, language and cultural ties to Brittany, had loser ties to London - a significant factor in the 1497 rebellion against Henry VII's government. But these links meant that rulers in 'England' could legitimately claim rights to huge chunks of 'France' in ways that seem impossible today - and various local lords might change allegiance depending on how the wind was blowing.

Edward III's relations with the ruling classes in Flanders ebb and flow through the book based on economic and military changes. Philip VI's own fortunes are buffeted by similar issues, though he is less flexible from a military point of view. In part this must be because by mid 1340s Philip is forced to keep an eye on three areas of potential military strife, Gascony, Brittany and the Normandy area where Edward is likely to invade.

But it is also because he has a inaccurate view of how Edward III's fortunes have changed. The early years of the Hundred Years War are dominated by ineptitude on the part of Edward whose financial problems undermine his ability to fight freely. But by 1340s these have been partly overcome, and the English have developed their own military skills. Sumption argues that the English had gone through a "military revolution", in part because of the associated wars with Scotland.

After 1327 the "whole [English] army was paid wages, from the principal earls downwards... They fought together with their friends and neighbours, sometimes year after year in the same retinues... The retainers of the nobility were no doubt less diligent, but it is clear that they contributed a great deal to the progressive militarization of English provincial life during the 1330s. War became another field for the elaborate web of interest and obligation which bound their world together."

The debacle for the French at Crecy has much to do with the skills of the English longbowman, but also the way that an underprepared Philip was forced into fighting by public pressure and found himself engaging with a new type of fighting that the French were not prepared for.

The length of this book, and no doubt the whole series, allows Sumption to draw out how these factors play out. One of the great strengths of the book is that Sumption can paint a very broad picture of the context and then zoom down to details of a particular battle or siege and show how these play out.

I noted that many histories of the Hundred Years War rely on retelling the tales of kings and battles. But Sumption repeatedly notes how ordinary men and women were affected, and on occasion shaped events. I was particular surprised to see that on several occasions during the struggle for succession in Brittany, when rival lords fought to be king, and different sides were backed by the French and English, ordinary people refused to allow their towns to be placed under siege. Either forcing the commanders to parlay, or simply opening the gates up themselves. It meant that there was a tendency for the French to blame the lower orders for their failures in battle - but also demonstrates that there was as "mass politics" that is often neglected in historical accounts of the Middle Ages.

This mass politics were shaped by wider forces. The successes of the English in 1345/6 led to a groundswell of support for the war that made raising cash easier. The opposite happened in France as people refused to pay taxes or demonstrated "indifference" to events. But even before this there was little active hostility to the war, with "muted" resistance to English drive to recruit troops. This would change later, with the war weariness and resentment of taxation playing a role in the Peasant Rebellion of 1381, but by the end of the period covered in this book, Edward III and his ruling class could look confidently towards the future.

Having said this, I feel I should warn my left-wing readers that Sumption hasn't written a Marxist history of the Hundred Years War, or even "history from below". In fact I am sure he would recoil at any such suggestion. Readers wanting more on this aspect of the history might be interested in David Green's The Hundred Years War: A People's History. Nonetheless this is a honest and far-ranging history of the period which tries to cover every aspect of the conflict in the years covered. I look forward to reading the following volumes and recommend it to people interested in knowing more about these 14th century wars and the context in which they took place.

Friday, September 06, 2019

Doug Enaa Greene - Communist Insurgent: Blanqui's Politics of Revolution

The struggle against capitalism has thrown up many radicals and revolutionaries. Some of them have been a adventurers who've been prepared to risk everything for fame and glory. Among these is often included the name of Louis-Auguste Blanqui an alleged reckless insurgent who would risk anything and everyone in the name of revolution. So it is excellent that Doug Greene has written this recent biography of Blanqui rescuing his name from such crude distortions.

Blanqui was born in the aftermath of the Great French Revolution. But the legacy of that Revolution had been squandered and a new generation of radicals were looking to transform the world anew. New socialist ideas were developing, but these new formed theories had yet to crystallise into a ideology that could help the working class transform the world. Blanqui own ideas developed in the context of growing discontent with society, but he was not one to simply accept the idealism of early socialist thinkers. He railed against Utopian socialists:

No one has access to the secret of the future. Scarcely possible for even the most clairvoyant are certain presentiments, rapid glimpses, a vague and fugitive coup d'oeil. The Revolution alone will reveal the horizon, will gradually remove the veils and up the roads, or rather the multiple paths that lead to the new order. Those who pretend to have in their pocket a complete map of this unknown land - they truly are the madmen.

The early years of the 19th century in France saw the development of new social forces. The old artisans were gradually being replaced by workers in factories. This process would take many decades to complete, but these workers increasingly organised major struggles that showed their power. Two major uprisings in Lyon in 1831 and 1834 demonstrated this, and Greene argues that Blanqui would take the old revolutionary Jacobin tradition and "renew and radicalise republicanism by orienting it to the working class".

From this point Blanqui increasingly develops a more revolutionary socialism that argues"there is a war to the death between the classes that compose the nation". The July 1830 Revolution had, Blanqui thought, had seen the people drive forward against the old order, but only to see a new oppression, as Blanqui wrote:

The people were the victors. And then another terror seized them [the bourgeois[, more profound and oppressive. Farewell dreams of Charter, of legality, of constitutional royalty, of the exclusive domination of the bourgeoisie... You can see that during these days, when the people were do grand, the bourgeois were tied up between two fears, that of Charles X in the first place and then that of the workers.

The new emerging capitalist class wanted to break free of the last chains of the old feudal order but were held back by their fear of the workers power. The compromise would last till 1848 but for Blanqui it solidified a harder revolutionary understanding. Blanqui became involved (or setup) a series of radical underground organisations. Some of these were shaped by old ideas that came from the earlier period of radicalism. The Society of Families, for instance, was dominated by what Greene describes as reflecting "the Jacobin concept of the people with more than half being artisans, property owners, shopkeepers and intellectuals." Blanqui did not see this as a problem:

The bourgeoisie contains an elite minority, an indestructible phalanx - enthusiastic, zealous, ardent: this is the essence, the life, the soul and the spirit of the Revolution. It is from this incandescent core that ideas of reform or renewal incessantly arise, like little bursts of flame that ignite the population... Who leads the people into combat against the bourgeoisie? Members of the bourgeoisie.

So while Blanqui saw workers as essential to successful revolution, it would be led by a minority of the bourgeoisie who had come over the side of revolution. Sadly the strategy repeatedly failed. Greene documents some of these failed attempts at uprisings. On May 12 1839 for instance, Blanqui's forces tried to lead a revolutionary uprising in Paris. No one rallied to the flag. Greene writes:

Blanqui had expected that a single heroic strike would awaken the revolutionary elan of the workers, and this would spread the revolt across Paris. Instead the Parisian population watched in confusion... and they took no part in it. This was the fatal flaw in Blanqui's conception of revolution: the masses played no role in liberating themselves.

Blanqui was certainly no coward and he paid for his revolutionary beliefs with many years in prison - years of hardship that almost killed him. He never lost his revolutionary politics though and continued to develop his ideas of revolutionary organisation. Certainly one thing that socialists can all agree with is Blanqui's assertion that "Organisation is victory; dispersion is death". The problem is, of course, what that organisation does and why.

What Blanqui was not able to understand was that revolution is an event in which the working class is absolutely central. Workers are not a stage army, marched on at an appropriate time to display their power. Rather they are a force that will, through their own organisation, smash the old order and create a new one. This will, as Marx pointed out, lead to the transformation of both society and the workers, who throw off the "muck of ages". This was not to dismiss the importance of revolutionary organisation, but to give that organisation a specific role shaping and develop the movement, not substituting for it.

Certainly Blanqui was unable to break his faith in old forms of organising. By the mid part of the 18th century underground secret conspiracy was no longer necessary nor desirable. In fact, Blanqui's insistence on such forms of organising arguably left him unable to sense the mood of the masses or in a position to shape their struggles. It is tragically notable that Blanqui was captured and imprisoned on the eve of the outbreak of the Revolution of the Paris Commune in 1871. Interestingly the ruling class understood exactly this and refused to release Blanqui in exchange for even the most important prisoners of the Commune. While Blanqui himself failed to understand the Commune as illustrative of a new stage of struggle (he tended to compare it back to the Paris Commune of 1792), his enemies understood that where he at its head he would have brought a clarity to its revolutionary leadership that the Commune sorely lacked. Such a testimony is perhaps the greatest compliment that Blanqui could ever receive.

How should we understand Blanqui nearly 140 years after his death? It is easy, as many have done, to simply critique his vision of revolution being down to a few inspired leaders. But Blanqui was a revolutionary of his time, and if he failed to develop his organisational ideas with a changing and evolving situation, he was hardly the first or the last. The Paris Commune of 1871 led to Karl Marx transforming his own vision of revolution. Since then revolutionaries have been able to build on a nearly 150 years of experience of mass workers organisations and struggles. Blanqui did not have that luxury, but he, at least, never gave up on the dream. Doug Greene concludes by pointing out that

Marxists such as Lenin, Luxembourg and Trotsky agreed with Marx's criticism of Blanqui, but they recognised that when their opponents condemned them a 'Blanquists' it was not because they actually were... it was not because they shared Blanqui's vices, but because they upheld his virtues - his willingness to struggle against the odds, treating insurrection as an art, and his uncompromising revolutionary communism.

This short biography has much of value, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in French history. More importantly it is extremely valuable for socialists today who are trying, often in difficult circumstances, to build, or rebuild mass revolutionary organisation. In the 21st century capitalism offers poverty, environmental disaster, economic crisis and the prospect of war. Understanding how we can stop that means learning the lessons of our revolutionary history. While Blanqui's ideas are dated and misconceived, we can still learn from his failures and mistakes in order to be victorious in the future.

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Marx – The Civil War In France

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