From the Flood to the Reign of George Iii: Developmental History and the Scottish Enlightenment

Copyright © 2016 by Alice E. Jacoby.

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CONTENTS

I    Introduction

II    The Concept of Causation

III    The Scale of Societies

IV    The Use of Developmental History in Chronological History

V    The Developmental Historian as Craftsman

VI    Origins of Developmental History

VII    The Historians’ Community

VIII    Contemporary Response to Developmental History

IX    Influence of Developmental History on British History, Sociology, and Natural Sciences

Appendix

The Scotch, whatever other talents they may have, can

never condense; they always begin a few days before

the flood, and come gradually down to the reign of

George III, forgetful of nothing but the shortness of

human life, and the volatility of human attention.

Sydney Smith, Letters

For my grandchildren Paul, Sara, Gabrielle, Kaitlin, and Sydney, who inspire me every day.

This book is also dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. W.K. Jackson of Dunoon who taught me about Scotland’s beauty and the kindness of Scots.

Special thanks to Douglas Unfug and Joan Ana-Leo without whom this book would not be possible.

I

Introduction

I n 1764, Voltaire commented ironically that Scotland was setting standards of taste in every field from poetry to gardening. ¹ Voltaire’s wit notwithstanding, Scotland during the eighteenth century did contribute so much to technology, physics, geology, medicine, agricultural reform, architecture, philosophy, and economics that it is deserving of its epithet – the Periclean or the Augustan Age. Gibbon thus could write that trade and learning had fled to the northern part of this island, which he compared favorably to Renaissance Italy. ² But one field which has been neglected and in which the eighteenth-century Scot excelled was the writing of histories. In 1745, Monsieur l’abbe le Blanc had observed, History is one of those parts of literature which [the French] have cultivated the most, either from the particular taste of our writers, or their generous view to the public utility. The English, on the contrary, have employed themselves least in this branch of learning. Twenty years later, the Professor of Eloquence and Belles-Lettres at the Royal School of Turin, Carlo Giovanni Maria Denina, echoed this theme:

England, though it abounds in almost every species of fine writing, has scarce produced one good historian. However, he made one significant addition to his statement: It was reserved to the Scotch to give the finishing stroke to such an essential branch of the English literature. The many eminent authors who at present make such a distinguished figure in Scotland concealed and compensated for a real English deficiency in this field. Hume gleefully agreed: I believe this is the historical Age and this, the historical Nation. I know no less than eight Histories upon the Stocks in this country.³

The scope of Scottish historical interest is amazing. John Pinkerton argued noisily with his Irish counterparts over the relative importance of Celtic and Picto-Gothic culture in Scotland and Ireland. David Dalrymple, William Robertson, Gilbert Stuart, and Robert Heron engaged in research on Scottish history, while David Hume, Thomas Somerville, John Dalrymple, Gilbert Stuart, John Millar, James Macpherson, and Robert Henry dealt with English history. William Robertson, Robert Watson, and William Thomson examined the policies of rulers Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Philip II and Philip III of Spain. Fulfilling a pledge made in the preface of his work on Charles, William Robertson published two volumes on Spanish America and in later years amused himself by studying Indian history. Adam Ferguson wrote on the Roman Republic, while William Russell, Alexander Fraser Tytler, and others tried to construct political histories of the known world.⁴

However, one paragraph hardly exhausts Scottish contributions to historical studies. In a sphere which would today be called social or institutional history, several eighteenth-century Scottish historians explored a number of topics. General histories of societies – as opposed to particular nations – were written by Adam Ferguson (Essays on Civil Society, 1767), Henry Hume, Lord Kames (Sketches of the History of Man, 1774), and James Dunbar (Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages, 1780). John Millar outlined the history of ranks in Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1771), while Adam Smith studied the history of wealth in An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). John Dalrymple and Lord Kames recorded the development of law in, respectively, An Essay towards a General History of Feudal Property (1757) and Historical Law-Tracts (1758).

An examination of all eighteenth-century historical works produced by Scots is not the intention of this book, which is instead, a case study of a limited number of Scottish eighteenth-century historical writings, here designated as Developmental History. Since this is a term new to historiography, some explanation is in order. Prior publications on eighteenth-century historical writings of the type being explored here have used the terms Conjectural or Theoretical History or New History. The first term was coined by Dugald Stewart, a student of and co-worker with a number of the Scottish historians. His definition follows:

In examining the history of mankind, as well as in examining the phenomena of the material world, when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to show how it may have been produced by natural causes. Thus… although it is impossible to determine with certainty what the steps were by which any particular language was formed, yet if we can show, from the known principles of human nature, how all its various parts might gradually have arisen, the mind is not only to a certain degree satisfied, but a check is given to that indolent philosophy, which refers to a miracle, whatever appearances, both in the natural and moral worlds, it is unable to explain.

To this species of philosophical investigation, which has no appropriated name in our language, I shall take the liberty of giving it the title of Theoretical or Conjectural History; an expression which coincides pretty nearly in its meaning with that of Natural History, as employed by Mr. Hume, and with what some French writers have called Histoire Raisonee.⁵

This description is misleading because conjecture was considered a valid technique by a number of historians who repudiated the use of it in the way just described. A variety of historical conclusions can be reached by a number of historians employing conjecture, so that the term really says very little about the content, pattern, and causal explanation of events in the work. In fact, the histories vaguely referred to by Stewart – he specified French works in general and the works of Scotsmen Hume, Smith, and Kames in particular – illustrate a variety of historical patterns. On the other hand, as can be seen later, the Scots dismissed the use of conjecture in the way that Stewart outlined. Adam Ferguson, for example, warned that the natural historian leaves conjecture for facts.⁶ The Scot felt he was writing history with footnotes, no matter what later critics concluded. Developmental History can carry with it more definite connotations.

New History,⁷ as used by Thomas Peardon, a twentieth-century student of eighteenth-century historical writing, is subdivided into Conjectural or Theoretical History, described above, and social history, consisting of historical information about customs which is subordinated to a political narrative. The distinction is arbitrary, since the two forms do overlap. Hence the better-known terms must give way to a term which can be defined more precisely.

The Developmental Historian was writing at a time when the definition of the word development was changing from the old sense of uncovering to a new sense of slow growth from within towards greater complexity. Actually, aside from two uses by Smith in the pages of the first Edinburgh Review, the words develop or development were used only in the last important work of the Developmental school – the history of Great Britain by John Millar. The modern sense of the word is evident in a passage of his describing the writings of Montesquieu, Kames, Smith, and others as an examination of the rise, the gradual development, and cultivation of arts and sciences, or in the discussion of English history from 1066 to 1603, where Millar discovered three natural subdivisions in each of which one met with progressive changes in the English constitution… which, being analogous to such as were introduced, about the same time in the other European governments, may be regarded as the natural growth and development of the original system, produced by the peculiar circumstances of modern Europe. The word development was considered to be – and scorned as – ‘Scottieism’, an example of words unacceptable to a group of North Britons who were emphasizing their place in belles lettres, which may account for the gap in its use. That the word is considered peculiarly Scottish strengthens the case for my use of it.⁸

Peter J. Bowler has strengthened the case for use of development through his study of what he calls the non-Darwinian revolution. In it he reminds us that Darwinism was not accepted immediately and that parallel to it grew up what he is pleased to term developmental evolutionism – an alternative stressing orderly, goal-directed, and usually progressive change. This process was compared to the growth of a plant, animal, or human.⁹ This is precisely what the Scots suggested in their histories. Indeed, new images grew up alongside the old seventeenth - and eighteenth – century architectural and machine images. The Scots retain old imagery: for example, Smith compared society to a great, immense machine and referred to God as the great Architect.¹⁰ Walter D. Love¹¹ examined Burke’s writings to show that he used frequently a machine image (wheels, springs, balance) or an architectural image (edifice, for example, something permanent which could be altered but which, it was hoped, would conform to the style of the original building). All these are man-made. The Scots -- especially Smith -- used these images – society as a fabric or machine, society as being raised up (a man-made or architectural process), springs, etc. As or more often they employed images of a plant slowly or gradually ascending, growing, rising spontaneously, ripening by degrees, unfolding, etc., to explain development. These newer biological images were important to suggest the development of superficially unplanned, if ultimately teleological, history, and may have had an impact on nineteenth-century biology. Thus, Ferguson could speak in his Essay about modern European republics like shrubs; the nursery of men; the fruits of industry abounding in Northern Europe; the seeds or roots of great monarchies planted at the disintegration of the Roman empire, the foliage of civilization, vestiges of past societies, etc., along with contemporary words like proceeds, becomes, passes, and comes. This need not invalidate the term Developmental History," inasmuch as the other authors were describing a process which acquired a name only with the last major work of this group of historians.

Any alternative terms employing the words evolution or progress have been excluded because of the danger of confusing the use of these terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of attributing to the historians views which they did not hold. Progress, for instance, was frequently a neutral term for these Scots – a going forward or proceeding in any undertaking; a course, procession, passage. In The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth – Century Britain (New Haven and London, 1990) David Spadafora argues that a new sense of progress was coming to the front – improvement or advancement, not the older value-free meaning. It can be argued that the Scots were usually not that modern, as indeed Spadafora occasionally admits. Hence, I will use the term in its neutral sense. The main definitions of evolution in the Oxford English Dictionary are applicable to the Scots, with the exception of the earliest definition, applicable to troop movements, and the Darwinian definition, involving the creation of entirely new forms: The process of evolving, developing or working out in detail, what is implicitly or potentially contained…a developmental expansion of a pre-existing form, which contains the rudiments of all the parts of the future organism. However, the Developmental Historian would never have viewed the possibility of the creation of entirely new forms of animal life. Human life was a process of the unfolding or fulfillment (though never necessarily fulfilled) of possibilities already present in a human being. Human nature was not transformed into something new, but its latent powers did develop.

The term History of Societies, occasionally used to characterize nineteenth – century sociological or anthropological studies, has also been rejected. Today the term presumes a scientific analysis of a great wealth of varied historical detail from many societies. This characterization would not apply to the Developmental Historian, who did study history to document a pattern or scheme which barring the accidental, whimsical, or unforeseen, resulted in civilization, but who did not achieve the scientific standards of the following century. Developmental History is simply a term for quick reference, short but sufficiently precise to include all the exponents of this type of history and to exclude non-adherents.

The Developmental Historian felt that he was creating a science of man by examining man’s experiences (found by way of observation and the study of histories). Such an examination led to two criteria for Developmental History. The first was its inherent motivational force. History proceeded not from the intervention of divine providence, not from a series of extraordinary catastrophic events, not from the actions of certain great state-founders or wise legislators, not even necessarily from the diffusion of discoveries and inventions. It did not proceed from human design or plan. Rather, it proceeded from the actions of human beings pursuing their own selfish ends but nevertheless producing unintentional consequences which the actors could not have foretold but which moved history slowly from one stage to another in an indefinite progression. The motive force, then, was the very nature of man, man susceptible of improvement and possessing the principle of change within himself. This motivational force has since been called the law of the heterogeneity of ends,¹² suggesting the heterogeneous and unexpected consequences of simple human actions. It operated slowly so that a quality of gradualness was imparted to all historical movement. The Developmental Historian frequently ignored or implicitly questioned the Mosaic timetable of creation and insisted upon the ages required for movement through the scale. In this way the historian was aware of the necessity of the passage of time and even, occasionally, of the factor of time as an active agent in producing change rather than simply a passive stage upon which historical events occurred.

The second criterion of Developmental History was its insistence that the history of societies, European or not, could be traced through separate stages consisting of one of two economically oriented patterns. The first assumed that every society had to pass from a state of savagery through a state of barbarism to a state of refinement or civilization, each state involving a structural change in property. I’ll discuss the contemporary meanings of these words in Chapter III. The second assumed that every society passed from a state in which men were fruit-gatherers to one in which they were hunters and fishers, and thence successively to a herding, and agricultural, and finally a commercial state. The two schemes or patterns were not mutually exclusive: a historian might employ both. They simply offered a means of organizing historical events, permitting a coherent study of differently situated geographical and cultural groups which illustrated the development from rudeness and simplicity to polish and complexity inherent in all societies.

It should be emphasized that a historian might write Developmental History on one occasion but not on another, depending on his subject matter and aim. For instance, subject matter confined within rigid time limits did not lend itself easily to a complex of ideas presuming extensive periods of time for gradual change. Developmental History can be classified as such, then, only by a careful reading of all eighteenth – century Scottish histories. This procedure reveals a coherent group of histories consisting of the following: the general studies of European and non-European societies by Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, and James Dunbar; the studies of English history by John Millar and Gilbert Stuart; the studies of law by John Dalrymple, Lord Kames, and Gilbert Stuart; the introduction to the study of ancient history by John Logan;¹³ studies of European history by William Robertson¹⁴ and Gilbert Stuart; and the studies of ranks and wealth by John Millar and Adam Smith,¹⁵ respectively; and, with some hesitation on my part, William Alexander’s history of women. In their entirety, none of Robertson’s works represents Developmental History, but certain key portions of the last three definitely do. These are Book I of the history of Charles, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe; Books IV and VII of the history of America, in which Robertson digressed from his consideration of the exploration and conquest of America to discuss the native inhabitants; and the long appendix on the history of India, in which he explored the manners and institutions of the Indians.

Inevitably, not all these works are of the same quality; there is a higher and a lower level within the school itself together with such diversity within the school that I am hesitant to call the historians a school in any strict sense of the term. Each emphasized a particular theme, often to the exclusion of others. However, I will for convenience use the term school in the sense that there was a significant shared interest in creating a science of man seen by way of development through history.¹⁶ Leaving aside specifically chronological histories, one may suggest briefly the contents of the more general histories of societies. Ferguson wrote an inquiry into the nature of man, particularly his instincts or first principles, and then concerned himself with the operation of these principles and the results of the operation. A history of man from his rudest state to his highest attainments in the civil, commercial, and fine arts followed. The section included a study of such consequences of man’s development as the subordination of man into ranks and the division of labor. The book closed with a description of the decline of nations, comprising a critique of modern morals and the promotion of Spartan virtues. Ferguson was not as successful as some of his contemporaries in treating the causes of change from one stage of society to another; at the same time, he was the most eloquent of the Scots writers, a fact which makes it hard to refrain from over-using him.

Millar’s Origin of the Distinction of Ranks was an examination of the subordination and conditions of certain specific relationships: man and woman, sovereign and subject, parent and child, and master and serf or slave, followed by a study of the changes in these relations resulting from growing commerce. The work was highly polished and another excellent specimen of Developmental History.

Dunbar’s somewhat superficial essay on the history of mankind showed least interest in the stages themselves but, on the other hand, a great interest in causal factors in the growth of society. Dunbar set out the primeval form of a society, especially its earliest linguistic and family arrangements. He then discussed the transition from savagery to barbarism, following this with an examination of climatic and geographical theories and man as an inherently progressive being. The retention of the theme of the rise and fall of empires exemplifies Dunbar’s occasional interest in themes which were more popular in the seventeenth century than in eighteenth-century Britain and France.

John Logan’s work was simply the syllabus of a series of public lectures which he had delivered. He began with short discourses on history, science, and physical versus moral causation. After outlining the characteristics of savage and barbarian, he went on to trace Asian, Egyptian, Greek, Macedonian, and Roman history. Throughout, the book was in sentence or sometimes phrase outline, and no footnotes appear. However, Logan stated certain premises of the Developmental Historian so concisely that he was often the source used by critics of Developmental History to refute its ideas.

Despite Manfred Schlenke’s brilliant critique¹⁷ of Bernard Pier’s William Robertson als Historiker und Geschichtsphilosoph, in which he shows that Robertson was primarily a political rather than a cultural historian, there are still good grounds for including him among Developmental Historians. Schlenke does illuminate the political interconnection of Robertson’s four works brilliantly. The history of Scotland considered that country when she was a power in the concert of Europe and quitted her in 1603 when she ceased to occupy this position. The history of Charles V studied the period when the balance of power within the European states-system presumably assumed its modern form. The studies of America and India examined the two extra-European events which most affected the state-system. As Adam Smith said, The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.¹⁸ On this basis Schlenke argues that Robertson’s interest in cultural history was subordinate at best. The present study does not suggest that the cultural history was the central theme in Robertson’s works, but it does insist that this subordinated theme is still a legitimate field of interest, particularly since the appendix on Indian society – an appendix to be sure – was one third the length of the work itself, and a quarter of the study of America was devoted to Indian society. The introduction to the history of Charles, furthermore, was one of three volumes in the original edition. These portions of Robertson’s work did focus on issues central to the Developmental Historian.

Kames’ history of man was, in some respects, weaker than that of most Developmental Historians. His sketches embraced the origin of man and of language, and the progress of man (his manners, ideas of property, useful and fine arts, religion, government) without and then within society. Throughout Kames moralized, regarding this as his most significant contribution to historical studies. His recognition of the relativism of morality was minimal, despite his professions. He proliferated the original instincts of man, which to him included hunting, property, holding, hoarding, taste, cleanliness, matrimony, monogamy, and the duty to worship God, until, as Albert Genyo Tsugawa points out, this multiplication of the original and irreducible constituents of human nature…becomes almost alarming. Gordon McKenzie, another student of Kames, suggests that Kames spent most of his life justifying his beliefs through argument.¹⁹ This explains why his writings, to a much greater extent than other Developmental Historians, dealt with manners, morals, and religion. Finally, the book was quite rambling, anecdotal, and discursive. Still, most of his premises were the same as those of other Developmental Historians, so he is an acceptable member of the school, however great his idiosyncrasies.

Smith’s Wealth of Nations opened with an examination of labor, the growth of a system of currency sufficient to facilitate the division of labor, and a study of prices. He traced the progress of opulence in Western Europe, both as