University of Great Falls Books

Philip Snow's The Fall of Hong Kong paints a vivid picture of Hong Kong society in the leadup to the Japanese occupation of 1941-1945. The failure of the British to cultivate the loyalty of the Hong Kong Chinese in the years prior to the war weakened their ability to defend the colony against the Japanese. However, the Japanese also failed to capitalize on Chinese resentment against the British; their doctrine of "pan-Asian solidarity" was belied by their brutal treatment of the Hong Kong populace. Snow asserts that the common suffering of the Chinese and the British during the years of occupation introduced new feelings of solidarity, which in turn lead to the introduction of key social reforms in the years following the occupation.

Snow does an excellent job of showing how tenuous was the British hold on Hong Kong in the immediate aftermath of the war. The United States and the Nationalist Chinese both wanted Hong Kong to be returned to mainland China after the war. Most interestingly, Snow points out that Communist partisans in the New Territories played a key role in deterring a Nationalist takeover of Hong Kong in 1945.

A fascinating and highly-readable account for anyone with an interest in the history of Hong Kong (and China more broadly).

Caution: the khaki cover and exciting illustration of the jacket of this book may make the prospective reader think it's military history. It's not, instead it is much more in-depth as a political analysis of the way in which the sudden disaster of the fall of Hong Kong irretrievably changed the colony into a more tolerant and far more Chinese place, ready for the 1997 hand-over.

The story does need to be written of the last stand of the misnamed Winnipeg Grenadiers, a Canadian unit of the defence who despite the implications of their being "British" grenadiers were completely unprepared for front-line combat.

Indeed, a movie-maker like Australia's Peter Weir (Gallipoli) needs to tell the story, which Snow rightfully downplays, of what it is actually like to be seconded to a doomed offense as in Turkey, or an equally doomed defence of Hong Kong, in BOTH CASES to assuage the vanity of a highly overrated Winston Churchill.

The story of defeat, occupation, and retaking is a series of gaps in time which as Snow shows mean breakages and breakdowns in daily life, which policy-makers systematically ignore.

Americans, for example, fancied no fissure between Saddam Husayn's rule in Iraq and a democratic "handover" to the right sort of chaps, and under their feet opened what opened under the Japanese in 1941, and, to an extent, under the reoccupying British in 1945: the irruption into daily life of the Hobbesian substructure.

In Baghdad this was an interesting combination of high-level opportunists and lowlife, and it parallels the story Snow tells of the way in which elements of the Triad gangs entered and left governance depending on the convenience of the Japanese and British.

It's in other words and in another register Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy go away and the use of the underclass in uniform and out to satisfy the vanity of comfortable men. It's also the confusion in the public mind of representation with the things represented.

The transition was less from Britannia to Nippon and back again than Britannia to chaos to Nippon and back again, where the chaos, and being bombed and starved by friendly fire (Americans based in the Phillipines both bombed Hong Kong and interdicted rice shipments) is the reality from which most people never recover.

The West needs to learn from China about reluctance to use military force. Snow is puzzled by Chou En-Lai's restraint over the issue of Hong Kong because it is the Western statesman who doesn't eat with chopsticks and has had a tendency to bite off more than he can properly digest.

In the West, the British showed the most restraint in their long-passed Empire, coupled with a systematic tendency to annoy Asians. This can be exagerrated: until recently, the British were proud of the relative quiet of Basra but this quiet is now known to be illusory. But in contrast to the American and the Spanish empires, the British empire was free of ideological preaching, whether about "democracy and markets" or the need for Inquisitions and autos, da fe.

We need to encourage the Chinese in their wise and rather unmilitary foreign policies, where the juncture between British and Chinese domination was in 1997 a party in Victoria Park and not a bloody mess. We need also not to be smug about the return of barbarism as perhaps Hong Kongers were in the 1930s, for Iraq shows us it's always on the menu.

America's Henry Kissinger has recently stated it quite brutally. In addition to accepting without thinking Clausewitz' dictum (war is a continuation of policy by other means because unlike the actual Clausewitz, the statesman doesn't have to endure the physical rigors of the field anymore), policy under globalization has come to mean for each country the lessening of respect for sovereignity of other nations, which just happens to undergird international law, in the name of the more powerful country's "vision", a polite label for greed and fear.

In this context, both military history and Snow's political history usefully remind us of how this makes places like Hong Kong a bloody mess overnight, in a way that Americans see only on TeeVee.

In this well-researched and well-written book, Phillip Snow traces the history of the British Colony of Hong Kong, with the intent to show why Britain ultimately returned the colony to China. His thesis is that the Japanese occupation, a brief period of 3 years 8 months, out of the more than 100 years that the colony was in British hands, was the critical watershed which made British relinquishment inevitable. Britain's prestige and authority were mortally wounded by the loss of Hong Kong and the other colonies in South East Asia to the Japanese. This weakened position set in train a chain of events that ultimately lead to 1997. The story is a fascinating one.
Snow also traces the waves of reform and repression that Hong Kong's rulers have pursued over the years. He argues that the periods of liberalism were driven by outside events and calculations, rather than a sincere concern for the welfare Hong Kong's citizens, but gives credit to the efforts and the truly liberal figures in each of the administrations, pre-war British, Japanese, and post-war British. Snow is at some pains to give the benefit of the doubt to each of these regimes, and the work is fair and even-handed.
Although the Fall of Hong Kong was clearly written for the British audience struggling to come to terms with the substantial end of their empire, it should be of great value to the Hong Kong Chinese, who are also struggling to understand their history and place in the world. However, it would also be very useful to any students of empire, as phases of liberalism and oppression, enlistment and alienation of the society's elites, by both the Japanese and British, give excellent lessons to anyone contemplating ruling another nation with a different culture.
Finally, it is an excellent survey of the 20th Century history of Hong Kong, which will be invaluable to any student of the period. This work and its extensive footnotes should stimulate a mini-boom in research on the period.

Beyond Habermas' description of the changes that have taken place in the Western public sphere, with a better emphasis on empirical and historical data, the book gives a detailed account on the rise and fall of our interacting abilities. From the marketplace to the theater, the 19th century (and then the 20th) saw the decline of «play», along with its replacement by vicarious figures, like the «genius», the performing arts «vedettes» and now the politician as someone who feels (and does) what we are not anymore able to feel. Instead of hysteria, the civilizational disease is now narcissism, the unableness to act regardless of one's inner feelings. To be read along with Sennett's other masterpiece, a romance entitled «Palais-Royal».

Sennett scrutinizes those problems caused by the inbalance between personal and public life.According to Sennett, the 'public life' which is a significant piece of life besides the family and friendships was once so lively and meant much to individuals.There used to be a 'publicity' that contributed to the individuals' skills of 'play'through emotinal ties with strangers and to the civilization of the individual.Being a 'public man' well expressed in the 18th century European cities has become a gradually weakened phenomenon being replaced with the 'private life'.And has become as significant as the private life allows it to...Sennett asks,"How has the stranger been transformed into a threatening factor? How is it that today, keeping silent and remaining as the audience is the only way of joining the public life? In turn, how do these factors foster personality deficiencies? Solitude that is a result of modernism renders the individual a person captured by the private life.Sennett explains this process through works of Balzac and Diderot, theater, music, architecture,Dreyfus case and Richard Nixon. Richard Sennett is by no means hopeless; he is exploring the possibilites of getting to know 'the other' instead of imagining a 'lost public paradise'.

After reading Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, what a delight to read about Gibbon in a mere 111 pages (harmonious with Gibbons under five foot stature). A short treatment about such a large subject as Gibbon and his work could have been a problem, but Burrow pulls it off. After an opening mini biography of Gibbons life, the remainder of the book is an overview of 'Decline and Fall': chapter titles include "Rome", "Christianity", "Barbarism" and "Civilization". The best chapter is "Civilization", it can be read as a standalone essay about Western history, it is full of fascinating ideas and insights. The last chapter "A possession in perpetuity" ties together some loose ends and has an interesting discussion on the nature of art and immortality. Any book of this nature has to rely heavily on quotes and because Gibbons writing is so powerful he can steal the show, but Burrow more than holds his own, the cadence between Burrow and Gibbon is sheer pleasure. Yet, as Burrow says:

"To present a vast historical work like the 'Decline and Fall' as I have done, chiefly in terms of its organizing concepts and the explanations it offers, is necessarily to travesty it: to reveal the bones is to make hard, angular, dry and summary what in the experience of reading is enjoyed as flexible, rich and leisurely."(p.80)

The "bones" revealed by Burrow include Gibbon's stylistic device of black/white polarities underlying his arguments: Liberty/servility, vigor/enervation, manliness/effeminacy, simplicity/luxury, fanaticism/moderation, superstition/reason, theology/morality, asceticism/nature, unsocial/social and of course barbarism/civilization. This is not to say Gibbons has reduced history into a child-like "good vs bad" view, he does show ambiguity in human action, but his style or technique is to create polarities and then play off between those positions. This is an excellent work of historiography and intellectual history, I highly recommend it for anyone who has read Gibbon to better understand his context and ideas, Burrow treats Gibbon with a great deal of sympathy and the reader comes away with an even deeper appreciation and passion for the man and his work.

This is one of the finest volumes in the ' Past Masters' series. Burrow tells Gibbon's story and outlines the major themes of 'The Decline and Fall' with concision and clarity .He sets Gibbon in the context of his time and shows how his Augustan eighteen century values effect his judgment of the second- century Roman height of development, and the decline from it. Gibbon sees the decline and fall as a movement away from Roman independence, hardiness, military self- sufficiency and virtue to social indolence brought by prolonged prosperity and luxury. The measured and balanced tolerant religions of paganism are weakened and defeated by the enthusiastic superstition of Christianity. The civilized West is overrun by those of the barbaric East. Burrow does a wonderful job presenting Gibbon's biography, the background and preparation leading up to the writing of his great masterpiece. He shows too how Gibbon's great style however it aligns itself in support of Roman social virtue contains a subtlety and elaborative greatness that enables it to capture the positive qualities of Rome's barbarian opponents. Burrow shows how Gibbon's masterful style of antithesis and balance, work to give his account a kind of aesthetic and moral subtlety and ambiguity.
This is a very good introduction to one of the greatest of all classics of historical writing.

Until quite recently, most mass media system analyses differentiated between the European and American models of broadcasting. The first one is a national public monopoly. Regulated and financed by the state, it enjoys various degrees of political freedom in terms of program policies. In some cases, like that of Britain's BBC, the broadcasters manage to resist government influence on content. Occasionally, the public monopoly will share airwaves with a private broadcaster, usually a private monopoly (like Britain's ITV), making the system a duopoly. Still, the distinguishing characteristics of the West European model was its domination by a strong public broadcaster.

In contrast, the American model has had a thoroughly commercial character that can be traced back to radio days when big private investors were awarded frequencies over public, educational applicants. Reflective of its culture, the American model is based on the country's predominant values of individual initiative and economic freedom. Consequently, the U.S. television market is characterized by the domination of strong private networks and a marginal position of PBS, a public service broadcasting network formed by Lyndon Johnson as late as 1967.

Indeed, for several post-war decades both models coexisted with little policy exchange. However, the above distinction has become to a large extent obsolete.

The 1980s and 1990s saw an unprecedented series of changes in ownership patterns and regulation of the American media, culminating in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The four major TV networks became part of huge business conglomerates; media outlets have been merging vertically and horizontally. Deregulating the system, the American government has encouraged further monopolization, conglomerization, and commercialization of the media. Consequently, the position of PBS has been subject to further marginalization. After all, the use people make of their media is mainly a reflection of the prevailing climate of the times. Moreover, deregulation is now being applied in Europe as well, bringing more changes in the international media landscape.

In his analysis, Michael Tracey gives priority to one aspect of that metamorphosis-the idea of public service broadcasting. Far from deeming the West European model underdeveloped or plagued by political dependence, he holds public broadcasting to be "the single most important social, cultural, and journalistic institution of the twentieth century." Tracing the roots of its origin and successive stages of application, Tracey primarily looks at Germany's NWDR, Japan's NHK, America's PBS, and Great Britain's BBC, whose early 1960s incarnation is regarded "a high-water mark of public service broadcasting." He defines public service broadcaster as one whose programming is widely available, caters to minorities, serves the public sphere, displays a strong commitment to the education of the public, and competes for quality rather than ratings.

Much as Tracey symphatizes with the idea that broadcasting involves a moral, intellectual, and educational mission apart from any technological or financial considerations, he is skeptical about the future of the idea. Charting the threats and challenges posed to it since mid1980s by new technologies (cable and satellite TV, video, Internet), tendency toward government withdrawal (cutting spending), and dislike of cultural elitism (people have the right to choose), Tracey says the preservation of public service broadcasting "will be more akin to the preservation of primeval bugs in amber than the continuance of any vibrant cultural species."

That is particularly self-apparent in view of the truisms he offers concerning the future of audio-visual culture such as: proliferation of sources; commercial rather than state funding, government self-withdrawal to encourage new technologies, increase in broadcasters' difficulty to reach large audiences with informative and educational programming, globalization of the market model, and the rise of the masses rather than elites as trend-setters.

Despite his ironic treatment of the viewpoint represented by intellectuals from "the common rooms of the academy, the better gentlemen's clubs of London, Amsterdam, New York, and Tokyo, the smoke-filled bars still visited by the remnants of the left, the opinion columns of more traditional newspapers" who feel nostalgia for the old media order that gave priority to public service broadcasting, Tracey shares one thing with them-negligible impact of their perspective on current media changes.

Impressive in scope, well-researched, informative, lucid, clear, and comprehensible (which, unfortunately, does not hold for many a critic whose work is more dense and obscure than what they seek to explicate), The Rise and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting offers an in-depth look at an era whose eclipse we are witnessing. Informed by the author's conviction that the idea in question is a positive social force, the study does, however, suffer from certain one-sidedness of argumentation. The amount of attention given to the alleged beneficiary effects of government-owned media significantly outweighs the opposing viewpoint. But that is only understandable in light of the predominant contemporary attitude to mass media, particularly in the U.S., one which highlights business control, privatization, feeling good, and immediate gratification. Regrettably, much as Michael Tracey may have a point lamenting the fall of public service broadcasting, his study is likely to become merely a historical account of a short era in media policy, which is even more clear now (in face of the recent problems of PBS, among other factors) than when the book was published and first reviewed by me in 1998 for a European journal.

What could be more delightfully English than the country house? The many-roomed manors surrounded by lush gardens and populated with liveried footmen. From Pemberly to Chatsworth, from Manderly to Blenheim, the English country house has captivated American audiences as we wander from room to room in the ones now owned by the National Trust imagining what it must have been like to live in one of these palaces.

Many books have been written on the English country house, but most are fawning photographic journeys into the picturesque, or architectural studies. This is by far the best comprehensive social history of the country house: warts and all. This book chronicles the rise of the estate, when the Empire was at its peak, London at its dirtiest and the cost of wiring and heating all those rooms was not an issue, to the years when these elegant status symbols became ridiculous white elephants that literally couldn't be given away... to their reemergance as cultural and historical artifacts and status symbols all at once.

This book is well-researched and well-written, and offers a comprehensive view of all types of country houses: from the huge palaces to the little cottages that sprouted up in the Victorian period for the middle classes to enjoy. It even delves into the building rush of the 1980's, when the country home again became popular as the rich grew richer.

If you are at all interested in English history, the history of the wealthy, or the history or architecture then this book is for you. It offers a nice history of the National Trust and other organizations that own and open these houses to the public. If you are a tourist who enjoys traveling to country houses this is also definately worth a read.

A find of several arrowheads on our land in western NY sparked my interest in reading Full Court Quest: The Girls from Fort Shaw Indian School: Basketball Champions of the World by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith. Once the authors introduced me to the players on the basketball team named world champions at the 1904 World's Fair, I found myself immersed in the players' lives as they transitioned from life on reservations and farms with their families to their coming of age at a boarding school, separated from their own cultures.

Because different tribes had been settled in one location at the Fort Shaw Indian School, there existed the potential for conflict, but instead these girls supported one another while negotiating the illnesses that plagued them from time to time, as well as surviving the deaths of parents, siblings, and friends. Starting with a soccer ball and a basket nailed to the wall, they progressed through and over many obstacles to become the "champions of the St. Louis world's fair." Not only did they play two twenty-minute, full-court basketball halves, several times a week and sometimes twice in a day, they also performed pantomime, played musical instruments, and recited poetry as part of their "demonstration" of how Indian girls could become "civilized." They raced up and down the court and through the Northwest exhibiting their talents, recruiting new students, accepting challenges from whites who could barely score against them, showing grace and modesty each time they won.

Even though they were exploited to gain money for their school budgets, these diligent young women put all their efforts into perfecting their performances and heroically presenting a positive view of Native Americans at a time when the whites who lived on their native lands ridiculed, criticized, and denigrated them.

Through newspaper and magazine articles, BIA reports, letters, and oral history from their descendents, the Fort Shaw Girls' Basketball team emerges from the pages as a group of unique individuals, each with her own distinct personality. Numerous photos of the girls and extensive notes add to the details of their lives.

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, originally intended to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, became the showcase for Native American crafts and lifestyles that were quickly disappearing. The Fort Shaw girls represented the future with their recitations, dance, and exhibition basketball games just as the exhibits represented the past. Their biographers and descendents deserve our praise. Recommended for women's, multicultural, and regional history collections.

by Susan Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Sir Steven Runciman had an unique talent for conveying historical information with a flair. He did not convey history as a collection of unrelated facts to dates but instead provided all the color and nuances behind those facts and dates which gave them life. Only a few historians write in a way that transports the reader to the subject time, place, and people the way Sir Runciman has in this little volume.

The book is organized by describing the background and focusing on the last Emperor and Sultan Mehmet II as the key individuals in that background. It continues with a description of the weaknesses that prevented the west from providing efficacious help to Constantinople. Attention then turns to the siege and fall followed by an overview of the exodus of learned Byzantines to the west which helped to spark the renaissance.

A map of Constantinople and a pictorial depiction of the disposition of troops during the siege provides some detail for context. I would have liked more maps of the other geographical areas mentioned to provide the greater world context and that is my single critical point on this volume.

That so much information could be conveyed in so few pages with such brilliant flair is testament to his reputation. This is still the definitive work on the last years of Constantinople and the final fall of the Byzantine empire. It is a must have for ancient history libraries and a must read for historians wishing to communicate historical lessons in writing.

If every history book is written like this, I can be a history buff too (I am not). This is historical drama at its best. As scholarly a work it is, it also reads like a novel, like a fantasy epic, like "The Lord of The Rings" if you wish, only it is better as it is also faithful (as faithful as written history can be) to real events.

The writing of this book is crisp, the organization tight, making it a cohesive narrative and a real page-turner. Byzantine's is a sad story, a civilization dating back to Creek times and the heir of Rome, finally shrunk to a lonely city at the wash of the great Ottoman's wave. In the end it may be its theology and pride that ultimately caused Byzantine's fall (the author does not say this), or maybe it was because Europe was to entangled with its petty affairs and the Turks are rising. Whatever it was, there is a sense of inevitability in its crumbling. As the page turns, the book unfolds the story vividly before you. This truly is as engrossing a book as I've read, history or otherwise.

Runciman is academic yet lively, a rare combination that makes for a serious historical book that reads like a page-turning thriller/drama. Of course he is helped by the facts themselves. The story of the fall of Constantinople is one of those events in history that sounds like it was made up, because it is so picturesque. There are brooding Sultans, brothers strangling each other in competing for the throne, siege warfare, religious upheaval, dramatic sea battles, betrayal, the almost improbably anachronistic use of cannons and more.

The only fault I could find in the book is that sometimes he repeats himself in mentioning the same event in 2 chapters, each time in relation to a slightly different aspect of the story. But this he only does 5-6 times, everything else is great. He successfully builds up tension and is great at communicating the pathos of the events. The fall was seen as the end of a great civilisation stretching back thousands of years to ancient Rome. Reading the book you really feel the momentous nature of the events.

Runciman doesn't seem to like Mehmet II (the conquerer). I don't know enough of the history to tell if it's bias or whether he really was unusually cruel and despotic. I'm inclined toward the latter, for the facts speak for themselves. If other rulers of his day were similar (which they were!) this doesn't make him any more sympathetic.

This is a true classic of history. It's a real shame how unaware modern people are of Byzantium because our society is much more indebted to that civilisation than we think. This book is a sorely needed patch in this gap of knowledge.

Over five hundred years have passed since Constantinople became Istanbul. It is difficult to imagine the city was once a Christian metropolis known as the capitol of the Roman Empire in the East. Runciman tells the story of this city's last days before the Turkish conquest. The book does not aim to cover everything of relevance to the subject and can be read at a sitting.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the last days. For a time, neither side could be sure who would win and strange signs and omens could be interpreted as favoring either side. When the end is certain, the reader feels the blow almost as clearly as the defeated Greeks. Perhaps the worst thing about it all is how little interest Europe took in the matter. It all goes to show how powerless groups are when divided.

Exceedingly well written and utterly fascinating, Sir James Stevenson Runciman's classic account of the siege and fall of Constantinople manages to be thoroughly academically sound and highly entertaining at the same time. Steven Runciman doesn't just deliver the dry facts, which would be alright, no, he tells the story, which is much better. And he does it without forefeiting historical accuracy, and, blessedly, without drawing any politically motivated parallels to "modern" conflicts, be they religious, or political, or both.
This is one of the finest historical accounts I have ever read, and I recommend it 100%. It may be over 40 years old, but it is still unrivalled, the single greatest work on the subject in the English language. Only Roger Crowley's "Constantinople" comes close.

This well written and thoughtful book is a analysis of the concept of class in recent British history. Cannandine is not pursuing detailed historical sociology but is rather primarily interested in how class was/is conceptualized. Cannandine traces the history of different conceptions of class. This is more important than it sounds because Cannandine shows that different conceptions of class often had significant political and social consequences. Cannandine deals also with some historigraphic issues. Indeed, the title of this book refers less to historical realities than it does to the way historians have conceptualized class in analyzing recent British history. The 'Rise' of Cannandine's title refers mainly to an essentially Marxist conception of British history since the 18th century put forward by historians like EP Thompson. The 'Fall' of the title refers to the failure of the simple Marzist model to actually describe historic reality.

For Cannandine, class is the conceptualization of social stratfication and inequality. This is clearly related to economic realities but generally much more complex. The Marxist (though as Cannandine points out, Marx took his concept from classical British economists like Smith) concept of class as determined by individual relationship to the means of production is one concept. Cannandine describes 3 basic concepts of class in recent British history. The first and arguably most important is the concept of class as hierarchy; a finely differentiated and graded ladder of social status. A second is a tripartite division of society - upper, middle, and lower. The last is a dichotomous us versus them concept. Cannandine traces the prominence of these different concepts at different points in British history, how closely they actually described the phenomena they were addressing, and perhaps most interesting, how these concepts were deployed in and affected political life. Like Cannandine's other work, this analysis is very well documented and the quality of writing is excellent. In addition to the main theme, this book contains a number of other interesting comments, such as Cannandine's discussion of Margaret Thatcher and an insightful analysis of the role of the empire in maintaining the British sense of hierarchy.

The concept of class as hierarchy emerges as not only the most important but also the most characteristically British. Maintained not only by economic stratification but also by status markers related to the persistence of the aristocracy and the monarchy, class as hierarchy commands the allegiance of a remarkable spectrum of British society.

Class has generally been regarded as too important, or not important enough (depending on political allegiance). Cannadine does well in reviving the idea of class as an historical force, yet through providing a view of it largely independent from presently unpopular versions of Marxian analysis. A must read for Marxists and anti-Marxists alike.

In 1875, the British landed aristocracy and their landed gentry allies were the dominant social group in the world's most powerful nation. A century later, they were a marginal force in British society. This book is a detailed and unusually well written chronicle and analysis of the eclipse of this once dominant group.
The basic story is relatively straightforward. The decline and fall of the British aristrocracy resulted from the convergence of several key features of the modernization of British society and in some respects, an ironic result of phenomena that made Britain the world's commercial power. In the last quarter of the 19th century, dropping transportation costs plus the opening of enormous acreages in the western USA and Canada, Australia, and Argentina resulted in falling prices for primary agricultural commodities. The British aristocracy and gentry, whose fortures were tied to large, large estates, rent, and commodity prices, began to suffer declining incomes, a process that lasted well into the 20th century. One major consequence was the loss of aristocratic land holdings as expenses mounted. The breakup of estates resulted not only in lost economic power but also loss of local leadership. At the same time, the maturing British industrial economy was bringing forth a new class of increasingly rich plutocrats who would gradually displace the traditional aristocracy.
In politics and government, the dominant position of the aristocracy and gentry was eroded and then obliterated by a series of political and constitutional changes. The Third Reform Act in the 1880s greatly expanded the franchise and essentially eliminated the pocket boroughs so useful for maintaining aristocratic-gentry political power. The expansion and modernization of British government, with its resulting professionalization, led to increasing dominance of local and national government by the increasingly well educated middle classes. Similar phenomena occurred in the professions and the church.
Accompanying all these phenomena was a loss of a sense of aristocratic sense of mastery and self-confidence. This process was completed by the social catastrophe of the First World War, which resulted in a disproportionate loss of young aristocrats/gentry and accelerated the economic and political decline of the aristocracy/gentry.
Cannadine covers all these phenomena and more in an unusually well written book. This is one of the better combinations of careful, detailed scholarship and narrative I've encountered recently. My only criticism and it is minor is that more comparative detail about other European aristocracies would have been useful.

First let me begin by recommending this book to potential readers. While I have read the occasional biography of historic British aristocrats this is the first overview of their decline that I have read. I found it to be comprehensive in dealing with a variety of political, economic and social factors affecting the British aristocracy. David Cannadine's writing is clear and very readable. However the book deals with many concepts, some of significant complexity, and reader involvement is required but will be rewarded.

In his introduction the author acknowledges that many critics have identified him as a left wing intellectual and that the reader is therefore forewarned. In truth one of the reasons why the book is so readable is that there is relatively little overt class bashing. That does not mean that the author and the book are not heavily biased. However the bias is more the omission of critical questioning rather than in your face editorializing. For example the government mandated declines of 20-40% in rents from tenant farmers, which was a major factor in bankrupting the landowning aristocrats. While the author clearly relishes the outcome, the breakup of major estates, there is no substantive analysis of whether the rent reductions were in fact economically justified (as opposed to politically expedient). Since the author clearly states that the land, valued by its rents, was far less than the value of the land based on tenant farmer income it is by no means clear that rents were excessive. Also there is no history presented as to how the landlords and tenants had historically adjusted rents during crop failure etc. Nor, apparently since the author thinks the landlords had it coming, is there any discussion about the morality or legality of the government effectively confiscating the economic value of the land without compensation. I think any reader will enjoy the overview presented by this book but they do have to keep in mind the questions not asked by the author.

Surprisingly I found it impossible to read the book without concluding that the aristocracy were victims. The politicians drove down food prices, by opening the market to low cost imports, in order to benefit the large urban populations arising from industrialization. The politicians then skewed the resulting decline in farm incomes, by arbitrarily reducing rents received by the landlords in favor of the tenants. I'm sure the fact that there were few landlords to vote but many tenants was a consideration. The politicians then further curried favor with the electorate by double and triple taxing the landlords until they had no net income from the properties and had to sell. The tenants, poor and oppressed according to the author, magically turn out to rich enough to immediately buy the properties at fire sale prices (another question not asked by the author). The author appears to believe that the mere possession of so much land by so few will will provoke righteous indignation amongst the readers but unfortunately his facts make the politicians and voters appear far more venal.

David Cannadine is probably the leading historian of the British aristocracy and landed gentry. The readers of this book will fall into two classes (1) serious historians of the period, and (2) readers of English fiction from Trollope to Waugh who would like to know more about the aristocracy. The latter may find parts of this book heavy going. Cannadine is concerned with the history of a class, and individuals are discussed to illustrate his points. Additionally, a working knowledge of British political history of the period covered (1870-post WWII) is presumed.

Having said that, I found the book well written and thoroughly researched. Cannadine's work is too complex to be reduced to a short summary, but basically the aristocracy found itself beset on all side from around 1880 onward. A prolonged agricultural depression lowered their incomes, and created political pressure to break up the big estates. The increase in the franchise and the end of pocket boroughs undercut their power in the House of Commons. This in turn led to the aristocracy being abandoned even by the Tory party, which realized where the votes were. Ever increasing estate taxes (especially during and after World War II) approached confiscatory levels, requiring families to sell off their land. And many aristocrats found themselves completely unable to cope with those changes. Those who could cope did so largely by breaking the mold of the landed aristocracy of tradition.

Anyone looking for a "Brideshead Revisted" view of the aristocracy will be disappointed. But anyone who wants to know the pressures on the real-life equivalents of the characters of Waugh or Trollope will be greatly informed by this book.

This book is considered to be the very Bible on the recent history of the Bristih aristocracy, and so it is a must-read by anyone who is interested in the subject. However, there are some fairly serious problems with it.

I read it in the contect of Mr. Cannadine's vindictive and pointless "Aspects of Aristocracy," and so I found it hard not to keep in mind that Mr. Cannadine obviously and openly finds it difficult to overcome his biases. At least this book, unlike "Aspects" was obviously carefully researched... though it is also obvious that he overlooks much of what he found.

Mr. Cannadine concentrates primarily on the economic downfall of the aristocracy, and I think that he over-emphasises some causes while not emphasising others. There were also some figures that didn't make sense, and when I consulted an economics major that I knew I found them to be severely fudged towards Mr. Cannadine's thesis. He is eager to blame the aristocracy for their decline, and although some of these charges are true I think that he does not place enough emphasis on the external forces (mentioned in other reviews) which contributed to the declining importance and wealth of the English aristocracy.

So, this book is worth reading if you are interested in the subject, if only because you will be expected to have read it. However, it should be read extremely critically, and it is worth checking up on Mr. Cannadine's claims with a variety of sources. I find it interesting that most of the other reviews on this page are quite critical of the book, while giving it a high star rating... perhaps most readers like it because they are supposed to, and not because it actually offers valuable history?

It is also interesting to note that Mr. Cannadine has recently made a complete about-face, and his last two books have been extremely complimentary towards the aristocracy and their influences and contributions to English life. Perhaps he is angleing for a lifetime peerage?

How is it that the owners of Britain's stately homes, who once lived magnificently, now are reduced to admitting paying visitors to keep their homes? While this question is never asked in David Cannadine's book, it is answered nonetheless.

Cannadine manages rather adroitly to discuss the long downward spiral of the British aristocracy amidst the backdrop of the history of Great Britain in the 19th and 20th century. There was a time in which these great magnates practically owned or controlled most of the wealth of the nation. What went wrong?

A better question might be, what went right. Although they managed to control politics, the military, the church and the civil service, the position of these guardians of Britannia was undermined by two things, the industrial revolution (which put up a new manufacturing class in opposition to the traditional nobles) and the rise of popular democracy. The first three reform bills drastically weakened the traditional hold of the aristocracy on the political process. During the 19th century it was a rare government that did not include several if not many representatives of the titled orders. By late the 20th century, the presence of one of these would seem somewhat quaint, a reminder of by gone days.

But it was not just the loss of political power that undermined the aristocracy, the immediate pre WWI years were a disaster of the first magnitude with Lloyd George and his "people's budget."
One wonders what would have happened to someone of Lloyd George's ilk in the 17th century. Doubless he would have shared the same fate as Bishop Laud.

WWI, WWII, and the rise of the Labor Party really were the final nails in the coffin of the British Aristocracy and the once lords of the realm are now reduced to lending their names to directorships (some of doubtful legitimacy), opening their homes to tourists, and even worse turning their backs on the whole of what it meant to be noble as the family fortunes and the roof of the family manse continue to erode away.

Cannadine handles all of this rather well bolstering each of his claims brilliantly. If one wants to know how the British Aristocracy went from being the rulers of the realm to one of its tourist attractions they should read this book.

I finally finished it, his ultimate diagnosis is that English will either become a classical field in nature or will need to alter to embrace the present and the future. With Scholes specifics I disagree to some extent as he seems to want to turn undergraduate English into an advanced Intro to Communications course but I do agree that English (as well as most any liberal arts degree) need to alter. One idea of his I greatly enjoy is altering the LERs (liberal education requirements) to better fit a person's major than to just allow students to select randomly. Otherwise, fabulous book, not quite a page turned, and if you're not interested in English and literary theory I'd avoid to like the plague.

TEXTUALISING WITH A DIFFERENCE

Himansu S. Mohapatra

The Rise and Fall of English : Reconstructing English as a Discipline. By Robert Scholes. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. pp. 203. $ 16.50.

Scholes's book about the rise of English, its fall and its possible re-rise as a vastly augmented domain of textuality is quite simply the best book to have been written on the subject till date. Where the earlier accounts, especially the ones by the English Left named above, had stopped short at detecting the crisis and suggesting, in the name of a cure, a wholesale dissolution of such an ideologically tainted project, Scholes charts out a `militant middle position', firmly convinced that the extremes of traditionalism and iconoclasm are no help. Another aspect of the book's goodness is that it is addressed to the actual teacher of English, who, like Scholes, loves language, but who is lying dormant, if not dead, at the moment, and, who must rise phoenix-like from her ashes in the reconfigured domain of textuality.

The empowering concepts that Scholes has used throughout are those of the `text', `textuality' and `intertext'. Although a slight concession to `hypocriticism' (which in Scholes's usage designates a surrender to critical fashions) cannot be ruled out, Scholes is certainly no Barthesian glorifier of textuality as pure difference. This is despite the fact that he defines text, a la semiotic and deconstructive writers, as the `fabric of culture itself, in which we and our students find ourselves already woven' (73). For one thing, his notion of textuality does not exclude concepts like truth ad reality. Thus, if his version of text has an ideology, it is certainly not the pernicious non-cognitivist ideology of the poststructuralist and postmodernist text that Fredric Jameson and Satya P. Mohanty have chosen to criticise. For another thing, Scholes's position on the subject of textuality seems to be an echo of I.A. Richards's 1924 prefatorial claim in The Principles of Literary Criticism to `reweave on the loom of Literature some of the tattered sleeves of civilization'.

It is all too apparent that Scholes shares Richards's concern with truth, reality and with the well-being of civilization. Furthermore, both of them find themselves driven to the metaphors of weaving and textuality to express their sense of the worth of written compositions. The only difference between them is where Richards spoke of Literature with a capital `L', Scholes speaks of verbal and written texts, that is, textuality in its unrestricted sense, something that would include both poems and bumper stickers. It should be noted, however, that Scholes has both retained the Richardsian moment and gone beyond it.

Scholes himself traces the roots of such an attitude to the evangelical fervour of his former Yale colleague Billy Phelps. The rise of English to a place of prominence in the curriculum of Yale and Brown at the turn of the nineteenth century intersects with the career of Phelps. Classics and philology were on their way out, and, the full professionalization literary studies, signalled by the New Criticism, was yet to begin. Phelps, who studied at Yale from 1883 to 1887 and later taught there from 1892 to 1933, represented a moment of poise between philology and New Criticism. What this particular location implied was the synthesis of teaching and preaching, of reading and writing. Ironically this unity was broken during the period of full professionalization, first under the New Criticism, and, then under `theory'. This was the period when rhetoric yielded place to the speculative bias of literature, turning the earlier `actant', who did things, to the present `patient', to whom things were done. Scholes resurrects the past with such ardour in his opening chapter only in order to highlight its contrast with the doggy plight of the present-day teacher of English.

The rest of Scholes's story is soon told. He embarks in his last two chapters on a full-blown reconstructive programme. First of all he puts forward a `a trivial proposal'. This is an attempt to revive the medieval trivium of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Scholes's innovation is to rewrite these categories in modern and contemporary terms. For example, rhetoric gets redefined as `persuasion and mediation'. Scholes moves on to outline a proposal for a modern quadrivium. If English is to be a discipline proper, then it must be organized around a `canon of methods' rather a canon of texts. This quadrivium of theory, history, production and consumption is the best guarantee of a paradigm shift in English studies. It is our best bet for recapturing the earlier Phelpsian unity of theory and practice, but in a modern context of difference, diversity and a pervasive intertextuality.

There is just one missing strand in this otherwise superbly-woven fabric. It is to do with the whole discourse of the colonial rise of English. Scholes has, at two places in the book, conceded its central importance. There is no attempt, however, to go into the matter of the colonial origins of English at any length and to draw out its implications. It does not matter to the reader that this ground has been covered in earlier studies such as Gauri Viswanathan's Masks of Conquest (1989), Sara Suleri's The Rhetoric of English India (1991) and Harish Trivedi's Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India (1993). What the reader would like to know is how a consideration of the colonial underpinnings of English can be accommodated within Scholes's textuality paradigm without at the same time punching a gaping hole in it. As postcolonial critics have reminded us, English as a subject was forged `in the smithy of empire'. Scholes's textuality paradigm is conceived within the framework of the national culture. It will perhaps not survive a bracing encounter with the imperial formations. But that is no reason for us not to salute this bracing, witty, candid and infinitely charming book that sets out to textualise with a difference.

This book will probably never make the NYTimes Bestseller list, but for its intended audience of literature and English composition instructors, this is a thought-provoking text which provides a much-needed jab in the ribs to English departments everywhere.

This is not a dry critical review, but a practical, specific and inspirational text regarding the declining status of English studies in the U.S. Scholes doesn't just whine about what's wrong, but shows readers some ways to make English a useful and necessary component of a university education.

As an English graduate student, I was particularly intrigued by Scholes' ideas of making English composition courses more than just a dumping ground for underpaid instructors and unenthusiastic students. Scholes expanded my own conceptions about what English composition should do, and how it can be made more relevant to today's attention-challenged students.

Scholes has renewed my faith in English studies. Anyone who has taken or taught a college-level English course and wondered what the hell they were doing should read this intelligent and challenging book (or text, if you prefer).

Tired of eggghead profs and "scholards" (scholar + dullard)? Does Barthes make you barf? Will you blow up your university libary if one more person mentions words like "discourse," "interpellaton," "the signified," or "technologies of self"? Ah, then you must be in "grad skool"! My deepest condolences.

I found many of his insights to be refreshing and right on the mark. Some scholars will disagree with Scholes and criticize his strategies (that's why they're dull eggheads after all), but he identitifies a very real problem in English and humanities departments today (and academia in general). He attempts to address it in simple, highly readable prose--and with humor as well--while avoiding the jargon and the pretentiousness that plagues most scholary writing. I found myself staying up until the wee hours of the night to finish the book in one sitting. It was a wonderful respite for me during my first year in grad school, and it lifted my spirits considerably. As many of you already know, graduate school is an experience that basically chews you up and spits you out, destroying your self-esteem, dignity and health in the process. While it may not prevent you from throwing your Foucault and de Certeau books out the window, it may give you back your sanity--remember, it's not you, it's the system's power structure and its discursive effects!