In the abstract, the myth of the Paris Commune is pretty simple--the working class revolution against the bourgeoisie. But once you delve into the actual historical details, it gets complicated quickly. There were so many different factions and different personalities involved.
I think this video does as good a job as can be expected of making a simple narrative out of the whole thing.
My only criticism... the IWA actually didn't play much of a role in the Paris Commune. (The association of the Paris Commune with Marx and the IWA is more myth than reality). To its credit, this video acknowledges that Blanquists, Jacobins and Proudhounists were a much bigger influence than the IWA, but by repeatedly mentioning the IWA, they give the impression that the IWA was more influential than it actually was.
That small nit-pick aside, everything else looks accurate to me.
Why I Read This Book
Living in Asia, the selection of English books is limited. So I often find myself reading books that wouldn't particularly have caught my attention back home.
This is one of those books. I was in the mood for a history book, the selection of English books at my local bookstore in Saigon was severely limited, and so I ended up with this.
I had no complaints about the subject nature of the book--the actual subject matter of the book is in my area of interest (I'm interested in Victorian Era History, and also the Paris Commune--both of which figure in this book--and I've always felt that Prince Bertie was an interesting guy). But the book cover didn't quite look like it would scratch my itch for a good history yarn.
And (spoiler alert) my initial reservations about this book turned out to be correct.
But it was short and readable enough, so I breezed through it in a couple of weeks. And here I am with my review.
Background
Before I get into critiquing the merits of this books, I'll give some brief background on the subject.
Before he was King Edward VII of England, the son of Queen Victoria spent most of his life known as Bertie.
Bertie was an interesting figure, partly because he essentially spent his entire life just waiting around to become king. He occupied the position of Prince of Wales for longer than any of his predecessors. Because Queen Victoria refused to die for so many years, Bertie didn't become King until he was 60. (Although, assuming he outlives his mother, the current Prince of Wales will one day beat that record--Prince Charles is 67 now.)
Bertie's parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, were famously very puritanical about sex, cigars and alcohol. Bertie infamously went in the exact opposite direction, and was a womanizer, drinker, smoker and playboy his entire life. (Bertie appears to have been one of these rich playboys who have an extended adolescents that lasts into their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s).
The family drama of Queen Victoria's prudism versus Prince Bertie's libertinism always makes for interesting reading.
Queen Victoria was constantly tearing her hair out trying to control her son. Bertie, for his part, spent most of his adult life trying to resist being controlled by his mother.
Queen Victoria was sure Bertie would be a terrible king, but in the end Bertie handled the responsibilities of kingship very well.
(Sidenote: Apparently Shakespeare's portrayal of the mischievous Prince -Hal is largely fictional--we don't actually have any historical records that King Henry V was irresponsible in his youth. (W) However, Bertie's transformation into King Edward VII is a great example of a real life Prince Hal story.)
The Review
Having explained why any book with Prince Bertie as the subject has the potential to be interesting, let me now get to the merits of this particular book.
Stephen Clarke's background is not as historian, but as a comedy writer (W). Serious students of history should stay well away from this book. (But then, of course you already knew that just by looking at the cover art.)
However if, like me, you enjoy history as a hobby, and want to be entertained and amused by history, then having a comedian as your guide is all the better.
And the good news is that Stephen Clarke can write very readable, witty prose.
I would have been quite content to read Stephen Clarke's version of a comic biography on Prince Bertie. But the problem is that this isn't really a biography. It's trying to make an argument, and in my mind it doesn't make a convincing case, and also spreads itself too thin trying to cover too many things at once.
The central argument of the book is in two parts, and goes like this:
1) Prince Bertie was very attracted to the debauchery going on in Paris during the 19th century, and in fact it was the French culture that shaped Bertie's character.
2). As a result of receiving his education in the night clubs of Paris, Bertie became great at managing social situations. Which in turn made him a great diplomat when he finally became King. Which in turn, made him the one man who was able to handle the unhinged Kaiser Wilhelm II. Stephen Clarke argues that as King, Bertie was able to delay World War I during his lifetime. And further argues that if Bertie had lived 4 years longer, World War I would never have happened.
It's an interesting argument, but the problem is that it means that this slim little book is essentially juggling 3 stories at once. It is at once a biography of Prince Bertie, and at the same time a social history of Paris during the 19th Century, and at the same time a story about the relationship between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Bertie.
All of these are interesting stories in their own right, but as a result of them all being crammed into the same book, none of them are done full justice. For, example, we get a very brief biographical sketch of Prince Bertie, but only the bare-bones details of his life, and not enough to get immersed in the story.
The second problem is that, despite Stephen Clarke's best efforts, it appears the connections between the different narrative threads are tenuous.
The decadence of Paris during the end of the Second Empire is well documented (See: Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, among other books), so Stephen Clarke is on firm footing there. Where he seems to be stretching is when he tries to say that connect all the decadent stories of Paris directly to Bertie's life, and to then claim that Paris molded Bertie into the man he would become.
To my mind, Stephen Clarke never really firmly connects what was happening in Paris to the story of Prince Bertie.
Now, I'm not an expert by any means. I don't know what the historical data actually says. But just as a casual reader, I can tell Stephen Clarke is stretching the evidence just by his use of modal verbs.
"Bertie probably thought..."
"Bertie must have seen..."
"Bertie could not have failed to..."
"Bertie undoubtedly..."
"It is probable that Bertie also..."
The entire book is just speculation. Stephen Clarke essentially spends 364 pages saying, "Look, we know that Prince Bertie was a very naughty boy. And we know that some very naughty things were going on in Paris at the time. So....You do the math!"
To be fair, Stephen Clarke does have a handful of actual real stories about Bertie getting up to mischief in Paris. But not enough to pad out his whole book. So he just fills the rest of the book with speculation.
An example of how extremely thin Stephen Clarke's evidence appears to be is his over-reliance on Nola by Emile Zola (a fictional novel) as proof of the mischief that Prince Bertie got up to in Paris. Initially Stephen Clark introduces Nola as what it is--a fictional story that may or may not have been loosely based on some real life incidents--but then as he gets carried away with his arguments, a few pages later, he drops the caveats completely, and starts quoting from Nola as if it were real life.
The evidence is stretched just as thin on the other argument as well--arguing that Bertie (King Edward VII) single-handedly kept World War I at bay.
Again, I'm no expert. But the story Stephen Clarke shows is stretched so thin, you can just see the holes even without doing any research. Stephen Clarke presents Edwardian diplomacy as if it was just based on the whims of the monarchs, ignoring that both Edward VII and Kaiser Wilhelm II had limited power in their respective constitutional monarchy systems.
Although Stephen Clarke does show that, at times, Bertie was able to calm Kaiser Wilhelm II down, he omits the fact that just as often Bertie's high-handed attitude towards his nephews would inflame Kaiser Wilhelm's anger (at least, according to Wikipedia (W).)
The book reaches its most desperate point on pages 354-357, when Stephen Clarke attempts to demonstrate that Bertie would have prevented World War I by imagining a fictional conversation between Bertie and the rest of the heads of state of Europe following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The description of this fictional scene contains narrative such as this:
"...By now his audience of royal males would have been stroking their decorative facial hair. At least half won over, they would have been ripe for Bertie's clinching argument..." (p.355)
I suppose this kind of unhistorical imagining is excusable in a comedy-history book that was never really meant to be a serious study. But then a few pages later, Stephen Clarke has the chutzpah to say
"Nowadays Bertie's role in keeping the First World War at bay is generally underestimated or even ignored. Most people seem to see the conflict as a machine that was gaining momentum throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, and would have broken loose whatever anyone did. I hope that this book has shown that things could have been different. Bertie really could have cooled the hotheads, and convinced the world not to go to war over so trifling a matter as the shooting of an Austrian Archduke who was unpopular with his own emperor." (p.361)
Excuse me? This book has shown nothing! An imagined conversation that Bertie might have had at an imagined meeting between Europe's monarchs?! It's interesting speculation, but that's as much as I'm willing to grant it.
So that's complaint number one. Too little story in this book, and too much speculation.
Complaint number two is more of a personal bias--I tend to prefer narrative history to social history. I like to hear history as a story, not as a description.
Stephen Clarke ends up spending a lot of time describing the social scene in Paris during the 1860s and 1890s, and so these sections caused me to lose interest. But that's just me. If you like social history, you'll enjoy this book more than I did.
**************************
As I read through this book, I began to re-evaluate my opinion on how interesting a figure Prince Bertie really was. Perhaps, as it turned out, he wasn't interesting enough to base a whole book around.
There's a certain romanticism associated with the teenage rebel, and so we can all cheer on the youthful Prince Bertie as he rebels from his parents and breaks free of his restrictive upbringing.
But the same characteristics are less attractive in a man of 40 or 50. When Bertie was a young man and horrified his parents with his drinking and womanizing, it was interesting family drama. But when Bertie is in his 40s and 50s, and still his only major life accomplishments are sleeping around a lot, and smoking and drinking, his story is beginning to look less interesting.
On the Plus Side
Despite all my complaints about this book, I will admit to learning a lot of interesting things along the way.
Flawed though the book is, there are lots of interesting little tidbits of information scattered throughout it. I suppose that might be enough to give this a cautious recommendation to other history geeks.
The thing that made the biggest impression on me is how completely crazy Kaiser Wilhelm II was. I thought maybe Stephen Clarke might have been exaggerating his character, so I looked Kaiser Wilhelm up on Wikipedia to double check it, and, yeah, he appears to just have been out of his mind. Check out the Wikipedia bio here (W).
The Daily Telegraph Affair (which is infamous enough to have it's own Wikipedia entry--here) is another little interesting bit I learned from this book.
Connections With Other Books I've Read
Prince Bertie/King Edward VII made several appearances in the Flashmanseries. In Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman describes their relationship thusly:
King Teddy's company is something I'd sooner avoid than not, anyway, for he's no better than an upper-class hooligan. Of course, he's been pretty leery of me for forty-odd years (ever since I misguided his youthful footsteps into an actress's bed, in fact, and brought Papa Albert's divine wrath down on his fat head) and when he finally wheezed his way on to the throne I gather he thought of dropping me altogether - said something about my being Falstaff to his Prince Hal.
In Flashman and the Tiger, one of the three stories revolves around Prince Bertie and the Royal Baccarat Scandal (W).
And King Edward VII is also a supporting character in Mr American.
Several times, Stephen Clarke mentions the Schleswig-Holstein problem as a sticking point in British-Prussian relations in the 19th century, and George MacDonald Fraser devotes a whole Flashman book on this point--Royal Flash.
Many of the diplomatic tensions in Europe around this period resulted from the Scramble for Africa, my knowledge of which comes primarily from Thomas Pakenham's excellent book on the subject.
For example, Stephen Clarke devotes pages 301-306 to describing the Fashoda crisis (W) and Bertie's role in it.
I had already known about Fashoda from Thomas Pakenham, but Stephen Clarke adds a little extra tidbit that I did not know--apparently this incident is still a sore point in France even today.
If you ask any French patriot to list the low points in Anglo-British relations, they will probably begin with recriminations about Joan of Arc and St Helena, before spitting out a strange word: "Fashoda". This is the name of a diplomatic incident that still rankles with the French, all the more so because hardly any Brits have ever heard of it. (Clarke, p.301)
As an Englishman who spends most of his time living in France, I guess Clarke would know.
The other big event that occurred during this time period was, of course, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. And so this book also fits in with my Paris Commune reading list.
The Paris Commune wasn't the central focus of this book by any means, but it does take the focus from pages 169-176.
The most interesting detail I learned from this section was that General Marquis de Gallifet, who pops up in most histories of the Paris Commune as a savage butcher of the Paris proletariat, was actually a good friend of Prince Bertie.
Nitpicks
I think I've spotted a couple mistakes in this book.
On pages 176-177. (I'll quote the whole paragraph to set the scene, but my issue is only with the last sentence):
Despite his friendship with Napoleon and Eugenie, Bertie was for obvious reasons a royalist at heart, as were many of his Parisian friends. And in 1871 the Comte had a real chance of stepping in to take power, because, unlike Louis-Philippe, he was a man of action. In the early 1860s, he had got bored in exile and gone to fight in the American Civil War--not, as we might imagine of a French conservative, on the Confederate side, but with the anti-slavery Union. He had even seen action in battle, at Gaine's Mill in June 1862, although it is surely a coincidence that the presence of a French aristocrat in the Union army led to one of its only defeats of the whole war.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Union army suffer a lot of defeats and set-backs before eventually winning the Civil War?
And one more nitpick from page 195:
Bertie was emboldened by the fact that the moralist Gladstone had lost a general election and been replaced by the worldlier Benjamin Disraeli, so that it looked as if his mother had been deprived of an ally in her war against her son's French indiscretions.
While there's no technical falsehoods in that sentence, it's leaving a false impression, so I'm going to go ahead and nitpick it.
The implication is that Queen Victoria would have been upset about Gladstone losing the general election to Disraeli, but in fact Queen Victoria was overjoyed. She hated Gladstone and loved Disraeli.
Child Psychology
While reading this book, I began thinking about how the life of Prince Bertie indicates that so many of the proverbs about child-rearing are complete nonsense.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." says the Bible (Proverbs 22:6)
Or
"He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."(Proverbs 13:24).
Bertie spent his entire childhood not being spared the rod, and also having the moralistic values of his parents shoved down his throat, and yet he still rebelled against everything he had been brought up with.
In fact, as Stephen Clarke argues, he rebelled against it precisely because it had been so oppressive in his childhood. As Clarke writes on pages 13
"Young Bertie was ordered to write essays for his father, each one of which provoked a paternal report to the effect that they were below standard and that he needed to study even harder. When the frustrated boy rebelled with foot-stomping, furniture-throwing tantrums, he was given a sound flogging by Albert."
and later 14-15
"It was, of course, entirely thanks to this tyrannical upbringing that Bertie would rebel and turn into exactly the kind of gambling, philandering playboy that his parents abhorred. But then a very similar pattern was being repeated for most upper-class British males at the time, so Victoria and Albert were only applying an extreme form of current educational thinking."
Stephen Clarke seems to be arguing, "if you try to force good values on a child, they will grow up to do the exact opposite."
You knew this list was coming eventually, right? Given my obsession with the Paris Commune, and my love of creating reading lists, it was just a matter of time before I got around to creating a list of all the books I've read on the Paris Commune.
But exactly why now instead of, say, 5 years ago, or 2 years from now?
A couple things pushed this back into the forefront of my mind.
I just discovered that Ho Chi Minh City (where I'm currently living) has an area named "Paris Commune Square." It's in front of the French Notre Dame Cathedral--just a few blocks from where I live and work, and in an area that I walk through regularly. I've been down this way countless times, but I've only just found out now that it's named after the Paris Commune.
Given how important the Paris Commune is in Communist mythology, I suppose this is not particularly surprising to find some part of Ho Chi Minh City named after it. But it's still a cool little surprise nonetheless.
"Oh wow, that's really cool," I said to a Vietnamese friend when I found out about this. "I've read load of books on the Paris Commune."
She nodded politely, and then promptly changed the subject. As it turns out, nobody cares about my reading list but me.
...Well at least I have this blog to indulge all my interests.
But I never did the "My Ten Favorites on the French Revolution" post. And actually, a look through my reading list shows that I couldn't write that post even if I wanted to.
I've read 11 books that are connected with the French Revolution in some way (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), but no books that are a straight up history of the French Revolution.
But a Paris Commune Reading list? Oh yeah, I could totally do that.
Before I get into that, however, I suppose I should explain what so fascinated me about the Paris Commune in the first place.
History geeks, by our very nature, are interested in anything and everything history related. I'm not limited to one time period--I'll also quite happily read about ancient Greece, or Samurai Japan.
But for many years now, the 19th Century has been my primary historical interest. For a number of reasons. It's a very turbulent period, where the modern democratic and republican ideals spread throughout the world, and just about every country underwent some sort of revolution.
For anyone interested in politics, this period is also fascinating because it's the beginning of the modern world, and the period in which all of our political ideology came from.
And, interestingly enough, not only did our political ideologies come from this period, they also ossified during this period.
Part of the reason the American Right is so out of touch with reality is because all their political vocabulary was created in 1776, and they've never caught up with the modern world.
Part of the reason the Left is so out of touch with reality is because all their political vocabulary comes from 1848, and they've never caught up with the modern world.
We live in a world in which our political ideologies no longer make sense, which accounts for a lot of confusion. But back in the 19th century, all of this stuff did actually make sense. You could talk about the right to bear arms, and well-regulated militias, and a proletarian revolution, and it was all possible and conceivable. It was a time when the political ideologies actually made sense with the reality of the times.
Within this period of the birth of ideologies, the Paris Commune stands at a particular crossroads.
The mythology of the Paris Commmune is just as interesting as the actual history.
It is presented as both the last republican revolution in France, and the first communist revolution. The anarchists also claim it as instrumental in the history of anarchism [LINK HERE].
The Paris Commune, being the only communist revolution before 1917, is therefore the last communist revolution it is possible to romanticize. After Stalin and Mao, communism is forever associated with bureaucracies, secret police, death camps, and work quotas.
The Paris Commune is the last Communist revolution that still belongs to the romantic era of red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the first Socialist International.
However, as any of the books on this reading list will tell you, the mythology is a lot different than the actual history. The Paris Commune was not particularly communist or Marxist or anarchist in its ideology. Karl Marx and the International played little to no part in the Paris Commune (other than to warn the Paris workers not to do it beforehand, and then to eulogize the revolution after it was all over).
The Paris Commune was, however, definitely a proletarian revolution. It was the first time in the modern era that a major world capital was controlled by the poor people.
The Paris Commune is also fascinating for being the proto-typical example of the tragedy of the Left. It exemplifies the perfectly the Abbie Hoffman quote: "The Left has a marvelous ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." [quote here].
Here were the radical leftists--finally for the first time in control of a major world capital. And what do they do? They spend all their time squabbling with each other, while the Versailles army marches in.
It's a tragic story that would unfortunately repeat itself over and over and over again in the next 150 years, as the Left has always been more interested in squabbling with each other than it has been in achieving victory.
Anyway, that's why this little event has fascinated me so much over the years.
Next, a couple quick disclaimer before I start the list--the memory fades somewhat over the years, and many of the books on this list I've read several years ago now. So undoubtedly my commentary on these books won't be quite as sharp as if I had just read them yesterday. This is a problem when compiling any book list, but it's particularly a problem with several books on the same subject, because they all lump together in the memory. The old "I know I read that somewhere, but which book was it in again?" problem comes up a lot.
But if I waited any longer to do this list, the problem would get even worse. So I'm going to try to muddle through this as best I can now.
Disclaimer number 2: This is only a list of the books I've read. There's tons of other books out there that I haven't read. For example, the most recent popular history on the Paris Commune, Massacre by John Merriman, which has gotten excellent reviews (see here).
But with those disclaimers aside, here's my own list.
Instead of ranking these books, I've decided to list them in the order I would recommend reading them, starting with:
This book is about 1848, not 1871. But I'd recommend it as a starting point just the same, because a surprising amount of the dramatis personae are the same in both revolutions. Almost all of the older revolutionaries in 1871 (Felix Pyatt, Delescluze, etc) all had prominent roles in 1848. And understanding the background of these characters and events will help a lot in understanding the events of 1871.
Want to know why Blanqui was such a hero to the left in 1871? Then it helps to understand his role in 1848.
Want to know why the left regarded Louis Blanc as a traitor for not supporting the Commune? Then it helps to understand his prominent role on the left in 1848.
Want to know why Clement Thomas was so hated by the Paris Proletariat in 1871? Because of his role in brutally suppressing the Proletariat in 1848.
Also the whole drama of the Napoleon the III, and the second Empire has its roots in 1848.
(For the purposes of understanding the Paris Commune, you only need to read the chapters in this book dealing with France.)
For the uninitiated, there are a lot of names and factions to keep track of in the events leading up to the Paris Commune. You have the officials of the Second Empire. Then you have the liberals (who later become the 3rd Republic after Napoleon III abdicates). Then you have the Left.
And to add to the confusion, the prominent voices on the Left in the events leading up to the Paris Commune were not the same names as the people who became the actual leaders of the Paris Commune itself. (Blanqui, Rochefort, and Flourens were all prominent leaders on the Left leading up to the Paris Commune, but Blanqui was arrested right before the Paris Commune, Rochefort got cold feet and did not participate in the revolution, and Flourens was killed very early on).
That's real life history for you--it can be a lot messier than a novel. But if you want a guide who can help you get to know who all these characters are, then Alistair Horne is that guide. He guides the reader slowly and carefully through all the major events of the siege and Commune.
Okay, now that you know who everyone is and what the major events are, it's time to get into the more polemical histories.
This book, written by Karl Marx's son-in-law, is the official Marxist history of the Paris Commune. It brings in a lot of details about the street fighting in Paris, and the order in which the barricades fell during the advance of the Versailles army. But it primarily assumes the reader is generally familiar with the events, and is just seeking a greater analysis. (It was published in 1876, so it was written for an audience who had just recently seen these events unfold in the newspapers, and didn't need to be reminded who Napoleon III was, or what the legacy of the Second Empire was.) But if you've already read Alistair Horne's book, then you should be ready for this one.
This book is definitely advancing an agenda: the Paris Commune fell not because it was inevitable that the Proletariat had to lose, but because its leaders were loud-mouthed idiots who were more concerned with making pronouncements than they were doing the actual work of leading. In particular, Felix Pyat and Gustave Cluseret come off as the chief villains.
The exact title of this book might vary depending on the publisher. I read Penguin Classics Karl Marx: The First International and After; Political Writings Volume 3. It may also be sold in the volume Christopher Hitchens edited: Karl Marx On the Paris Commune (A).
The basic essays you want are Marx's writings on the Franco-Prussian War (First Address of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War, Letter to the Brunswick Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party , Second Address of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War) and Karl Marx's infamous: The Civil War in France. As I wrote in my 2005 review of this book, I've never been able to get my head around Marx's philosophical or economic writings, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that his political writings were very easy to understand and very readable. They essentially read like any political polemicist today. (In my 2005 review, I compared it to reading Chomsky's political polemics.)
Whether you like Marx or not, every historian agrees that Marx's The Civil War in France is absolutely essential reading if you want to understand the place the Paris Commune occupies in communist mythology. But because it's a polemic, and not a history, I recommend you wait to read it until you have absorbed the history first.
At this point, you should be familiar with most of the names associated with the Paris Commune, so it's time to get a first hand portrait of a lot of those people (such as Blanqui, Rigault, Varlin, Vermorel, and Michelet) written by someone who actually lived through it.
There is some debate whether this book should be read as a straight up memoir, or as a fictionalized memoir, but it's a fascinating examination of the events of the Paris Commune by someone who actually lived through it. (As with a lot of the books on this list, it's long been out of print, and you won't find a copy at your local bookstore. But the Internet, or Amazon.com, should help you track down a copy.)
Rupert Christiansen brings in a different perspective to the Paris Commune. He focuses on the decadence of the Second Empire during its last days, and tries to draw a line from this towards the upheaval in the Paris Commune. As I wrote in my review, I'm not sure he succeeded in making the connection, but it's an interesting perspective nonetheless.
His use of primary documents like journals and letters is also a great attempt to see the events of the siege and the Commune through the eyes of every day Parisians living at the time.
Now that you've got the history, and the classic Marxist takes on the Paris Commune, you should find this collection of essays very interesting.
As I mentioned in my review, it's 21 short articles on the Commune by 21 different authors, differing widely in content, focus, and quality. Some of them are, admittedly, better than others. But there's some fascinating stuff in here. The reprinting of the legal defense of Gustave Courbet. (By this time in the reading list, you will definitely know who Gustave Courbet is.) And the reprinting of an interview Karl Marx gave to the New York World in 1871 about the Paris Commune.
This is a 500 page book, in which the events of the Paris Commune enter only at the last 50 pages. I recommend it anyway.
The main focus of the book is the battle of Sedan. Which is of course one of the precursors to the Paris Commune (as you'll no doubt know by this point in the reading list). And the battle of Sedan is expertly described.
Although Emile Zola is nowadays remembered as one of the heroes of the Left, he was decidedly not on the part of the Paris Commune, and portrays all of the Communards as scum and villains. It's not a sympathetic portrayal, but it's a reminder of how intense the feelings were back in the time (The Debacle was published in 1892), and the big divide at the time between the moderate liberals and the radical left.
Jean Vautrin is trying a little bit too hard to imitate Victor Hugo in this book. (He's essentially trying to do for the Paris Commune what Victor Hugo did for the 1832 uprisings). Jean Vautrin isn't quite on the same level as Victor Hugo, but it's an interesting little book nonetheless, which integrates a story about the redemption of an ex-convict, love, the criminal underworld, and the barricades of the Paris Commune. Many real historical figures play a part in this book, including Louise Michel, Dombrowski, Gustave Courbet, and Jules Valles.
So, hear me out here, what if we took the story of the Paris Commune, and added werewolves? Are you hooked yet?
Okay, I know it sounds ridiculous, but mixed in with the horror, there's actually a fair amount of accurate history in this book. In addition to being a horror writer, Guy Endore was also an established historical novelist. So he knew his history.
Many actual historical figures from the Paris Commune, like Raoul Rigault, the Commune’s head of police and Gustave Courbet, the Commune’s head of art, make appearances in this novel. The Picpus affair, in which the Commune discovered what appeared to be a secret prison and a secret graveyard in a Catholic Church (an issue still somewhat controversial to this day) is covered in detail. And Rigault’s famous conversation with a Jesuit priest is also faithfully recorded.
Books Related to the Paris Commune
The next 3 books all have large sections dealing with the Paris Commune, but none of them take the Paris Commune as their sole focus.
The problem with many histories of the Paris Commune is that they stop in 1871. But many of the Paris Communards had very fascinating lives that went on after 1871. (Those that survived the massacre, that is.) The first few chapters of this book are all about the Paris Commune, and the rest of the book tracks the lives of Paschal Grousset, Henri Rochefort, Louise Michel, and many of the other Paris Communards, in addition to building up a general history of the anarchist movement from 1871 to 1914
This is similar to the above book, but this book focuses solely on the life of Louise Michel. Louise Michel was the most prominent woman involved in the Paris Commune, and arguably the most prominent anarchist involved. (By this point in the reading list, you'll have encountered her name many times). Somewhat less well-known is Louise Michel's continued activities in the anarchist movement after 1871. She lived a long life after the Paris Commune (dying in 1905 at the age of 74) and she remained active in the anarchist movement during that time.
This book is primarily an art history book, but it also deals with the Paris art scene in the years 1860s and 1870s, including their experiences during the Paris Commune.
The Paris Commune also has a special connection to art history. Gustave Courbet, a socialist realist painter, was a member of the commune. After the fall of the Commune, Courbet was one of the lucky ones to survive the firing squads, but he was convicted in court of being behind the Commune’s decision to topple the Vendome Column, and ordered to pay for its restitution, which financially ruined him for the rest of his life.
(The Vendome Column was a monument to the battles won in the Napoleonic Wars. The Paris Commune, with its emphasis on internationalism, decided to pull down this monument to military imperialism, only to have the Column rebuilt after the fall of Commune.)
Ross King’s book gave a lot of biographical information about Gustave Courbet both before and after the commune. (Although King’s book is primarily about Manet and Meissonier, a lot of other artists pop up in the narrative and Courbet is perhaps the 3rd most important figure in this book after its two main principles.)
Books on Karl Marx
Whenever talking about Karl Marx and the Paris Commune, it's important to distinguish between the myth and reality. The myth is that Karl Marx helped to create the Paris Commune. The reality is that he had very little to do with it.
However, although Karl Marx did very little do influence the Paris Commune, the Paris Commune did a lot to influence Karl Marx.
The press attention from the Paris Commune, and the resulting red scare, changed Karl Marx from an obscure German philosopher to a household name almost overnight. Therefore any biography of Marx must deal with the fallout from the Paris Commune.
Berlin gives a surprisingly hostile account of the Paris Commune, which he appears to have based completely off the Bourgeois press. And he also advances the interesting idea that Marx actually opposed the Paris Commune because it was more along the lines of Bakunin's revolutionary ideology, but once it was clear the Commune was going to fall, Marx embraced it for the cynical reasons of the desire to link his name with the most infamous revolution in Europe at the time. Berlin is the first writer I have come across who claims this, and well it certainly is not an impossible conclusion, it would be nice if he gave some more evidence for it.
Although the book is largely chronological, the last 20 years in England are divided up into chapters by subject. For example one chapter is on Das Kapital, on chapter is on the rise and fall of the First International, one chapter is on the Paris Commune.
In reality of course all of these subjects were intertwined. For example one of the reasons Marx got so little work done on Das Kapital (and never got around to finishing the subsequent volumes) was because of his involvement in the First Communist International. And the event that thrust the Communist International into the public spotlight was the Paris Commune.
Hmmm. Actually I read this book ten years ago now, and I don't particularly remember what Francis Wheen had to say about the Paris Commune. (This is where that disclaimer I put at the top comes in.) But I do remember this being a really interesting biography in general.
So, remember The Insurrectionist by Jules Valles that I mentioned above? That book is actually part of a trilogy of roman-a-clef memoirs that Jules Valles wrote about his life. The first book is all about his childhood. It has nothing to do with the Paris Commune per se, but it does provide some interesting background on the life of one of the men who would later grow up to be a famous Communard.
Just about every history of the Paris Commune will briefly mention Clemenceau, the radical mayor of Montematre, who unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a peace agreement between the Paris Commune and the French government.
Being a typical American with a typical American education, I never knew there was any more to the man than that for a long time. Until I finally did some background reading, and found out that he later went on to become the leader of France during World War I.
I’ve been
interested in 19th Century radicalism for a long time now, so when I saw this
new (relatively—pub. 2010) book on the shelves, I snatched it up.
The
Review
On the
whole this is a very interesting and readable book.
It’s
not without its flaws, however, and I’ll start out by addressing the flaws.
The
primary problem with this book is that it’s juggling too many characters, and
too many different stories.As one
Amazon reviewer put it, about every couple of pages a new character is
introduced.This is
one of those books where you are constantly having to go back to the index to
keep track of everyone.(There is a Dramatis Personae at the beginning of
the book which lists all the major characters and summarizes their life, and this
is a helpful resource to flip back to.But the fact that it was necessary in the first place means the author
is probably juggling too much.There’s
103 names listed in the Dramatis Personae.)
The
second major problem, related to the first, is that it’s not at all clear what
the focus of the book is.If it is about
anything, this book seems to be about anarchist terrorists during the period
from 1870 to 1914.But the problem is
that during this period not all anarchists were terrorists, and not all
terrorists were anarchists.Some of the
most prominent anarchists during this period, such as Kropotkin, were not
connected to terrorism.And many of the
most infamous terrorists during this period, the Nihilists, the People’s Will,
The Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Irish Fenians, were not connected to
anarchism.And yet all these stories and
groups are included in the book.
And
then the book goes off on all sorts of other tangents—we get treated to the
development of the democratic socialist parties in England—absolutely nothing
to do with terrorism, and only a minor part of the international anarchist
story—but the author apparently thought it was interesting.Also we hear about religious utopian
communities in the United
States (and some of the Russian exiles who
were attracted to them).Victor-Henri
Rochefort is one of the main characters in this book, even though he doesn’t
really fit in to the terrorists or anarchists themes.And the author also takes several digressions
to focus on the life of notorious hoaxer and prankster Gabriel Jogand-Pages.
As
another Amazon reviewer put it, the focus of the book seems to have just been
whatever the author personally found interesting
To
add to the frustration, there’s a lot of things that should have been included
in the book, but weren’t.The author
goes into some detail about the rise of the early democratic socialist movement
in England (something
arguably not connected with his topic), but then completely neglects the most
famous act of anarchist violence in England—The Sidney Street Shoot-out
(W), something directly connected with his topic.The book ends with the death of Malatesta in
1932, implying that this was the end of anarchism.In fact, anarchism enjoyed tremendous support
in Spain
up through the end of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. But the growth of anarchism in Spain
is barely mentioned in this book.The
book is also Euro-centric.Anarchism
movements were flourishing in China,
Korea and Japan during this period, but they are never once mentioned.(Although the Communist Party eventually won out in China because of its superior organization, there was a period around 1900—1920 when anarchism was more of a dominant force than communism among young Chinese radicals).
So,
all of that is on the negative—too many characters to keep track of, and an
unclear focus.
On
the positive side, the book is decently well written, so if you can keep track
of all the characters, it’s an enjoyable read.
Okay,
so it’s not exactly perfect, but I found it readable enough.I’ll quote from a section to illustrate my
point.
A light drizzle was slanting down on the
night of 4 May 1886, when Mayor Harrison arrived in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to reassure himself that
the demonstration he had authorized was passing off in good order.The city was on edge, but having satisfied
himself as to the ‘tame’ character of the gathering, Harrison left at around
half-past seven, advising the police to stand down. Ignoring the mayor’s
instructions, Bonfield merely withdrew his men to positions of concealment in
side streets nearby.Throughout the
evening a steady flow of informants and plainclothes policemen shuttled between
the demonstration and Bonfield’s post, relaying updates on the speeches, right
until the moment when the last speaker, Samuel Fielden, mounted the wagon that
was being used as a podium. “Defend yourselves, your lives, your futures,” he
urged those anarchists who remained.“Throttle
it, kill it, stab it, do everything you can to wound it,” was his recommended
treatment of the law and its protectors, who even as he spoke were lining up,
180 strong in rows four deep, just out of sight. (from p. 207).
Granted,
some of the sections of the book read smoother than others, and some of the
sentences are a bit awkward.But on the
whole, I found the book highly readable.In fact, I enjoyed this book enough that I’m going to add it to my list of my favorite narrative history books.
Agent
Provocateurs and Conspiracy Theories
After
reading this book, it’s hard not to become a little bit paranoid about the
police and governments.
One
of the main themes of this book is that a lot of the anarchist violence was
actually organized by the police to either discredit the anarchist movement, or
to manufacture an excuse to arrest known anarchists.
This
is not to say that all of the anarchist violence was police orchestrated.There was, as the author makes clear, a
genuine violent element within the anarchist movement itself.But a number of the actual bomb plots in the
1880s and 1890s were actually the work of double agents and agent provocateurs
in police pay.
Much
of this is now a matter of established history, as records have been
declassified and former police agents have confessed.
However,
a fair amount of what went on in the secret world of conspiracies, spies, and provocateurs
is still unknown and will probably never be known.(As the author points out, many of the
official police records from this period have been destroyed).So there are many more points in the book
where author Alex Butterworth suspects the police may have been involved in
provoking violence, but can only hint at suspicious circumstances.
How
much of this is going on today is difficult to say of course.But it’s hard not to feel a little bit
paranoid after reading a book like this.
(Of
course, push this paranoia too far, and you get these ridiculous 9/11 conspiracy theories, which are surprising popular among large numbers of
otherwise rational people.At some
point, there’s a discussion to be had about how to maintain a healthy
skepticism of the government without completely losing your grip on
reality.But I’m not going to get into
all of that right now—that discussion will have to be saved for another post.)
Connections
with Other Books I’ve Read
(Warning: I always enjoy linking the books
I’m reading with previous books I’ve read, but this is probably only of interest
to me.Feel free to skip this last
section).
Since 19th
century radicalism has long been an interest of mine, this book connects with
many other books that have been on my reading list.
* The first several chapters of this book
were all about the - Paris - Commune, about - which - I’ve - read - several - books.(Although the fact
that the whole history of the Paris Commune is crammed into a few short
chapters is emblematic of how this book is attempting to
cover way too much material in way too short a space.)
* Louise Michel, one of the few leading
figures of the Paris Commune lucky enough to survive and go on to take a
leading part in radicalism for the remainder of the 19th Century, is one of the
main figures in this book.The details
of Louise Michel’s life that I learned from Alex Butterworth largely match what
I learned from the biography of Louise Michel by Edith Thomas.(Somewhat curiously though, Edith Thomas’s
biography of Louise Michel doesn’t show up on Alex Butterworth’s bibliography.)
* Victor-Henri de Rochefort is another
leading figure of the Paris Commune lucky enough to survive bloody week.
Rochefort’s
name has popped up in a number of books I’ve read on the Paris Commune, and as
he was a friend of Louise Michel, he also figured as a minor character in her
biography.But I never really got a
clear idea of who he was until I read The
Fall of Paris by Alistar Horne.(I mentioned this in my original review, but The Fall of Paris is the best book I’ve read on the Paris Commune
in terms of helping the reader to keep track of who all the various players are.)
Anyway,
I’ve known more or less who Rochefort was ever since I read The Fall of Paris, but I never had any
idea of his life after the Paris Commune until now.Alex Butterworth follows Rochefort’s story
and shows that although Rochefort was always controversial, he was not entirely
politically consistent, and later in his life he sided with far right causes
such as the becoming a Boulanger supporter and an anti-Dreyfusard.
Some
Amazon reviewers have complained that the inclusion of Rochefort’s story is emblematic
of the problem this book has with a lack of a clear focus, since Rochefort wasn’t
even really an anarchist.This is probably a valid criticism actually,
but I have to confess I personally didn’t really mind.I was curious to hear Rochefort’s story, so I
forgave the fact that it probably didn’t fit the theme of the book.
* Interestingly enough, one of the little
historical asides in this book ties in with the events of The Three Musketeers. When describing Rochefort’s imprisonment in
the city of La Rochelle,
Butterworth writes on page 71 that Rochefort must have been “imagining himself the romantic heir of the
Calvinist rebels three centuries earlier, who had held out there against an
interminable Catholic siege.(The siege of La Rochelle is one of the historical events described in The Three Musketeers ).
* Another former radical turned arch
conservative is Georges Clemenceau, who is also a minor figure in this
book.He started out as a friend (and
financial supporter) of Louise Michel, but ended up becoming a conservative
Prime Minister of France who crushed labor and socialist movements.Much of the information presented in this
book was in line with the mini-biography I read of Clemenceau some years back.
* The book starts out in 1870, when the
generation of 1848 were approaching their twilight years.So Marx and Bakunin are in this book, but
only as old men approaching the end of their lives.
* The portrait of the elderly Bakunin in
this book—as an old, washed-up, tired revolutionary—is very similar to the
picture of Bakunin painted in Bakunin, An Invention by Horst Bienek, and further seems to cement the idea
that being a anarchist revolutionary is a young man’s game.
* Marx also appears near the end of his life, and Alex Butterworth draws
from Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx, which I’ve also read.(Bakunin’s virulent anti-Semitism, which does
much to discredit Bakunin in his battles with Marx, is also recorded by Francis
Wheen, and Butterworth cites Wheen’s research on this.)
* Allan Pinkerton, who founded the infamous
Pinkerton Detective Agency, is a character in both this book, and Flashman and the Angel of the Lord.
The
ironic thing about Allan Pinkerton is that he was a radical leftist unionist
back in England, but when he
fled to the United States
he founded an agency which would become famous for suppressing unions.The impression I got from Flashman and the Angel of the Lord was
that the Pinkerton detective agency only became horribly repressive after
Pinkerton’s death, but as Alex Butterworth shows in this book, this was not the
case.Allan Pinkerton himself was very
active in his detective agency’s anti-union campaigns.
What
caused Allan Pinkerton to suddenly change sides is never explained at all in
this book.But then this book is filled
with so many stories of people changing sides (aristocrats becoming radicals,
and radicals becoming conservatives) that I suppose it would be impossible to
try to analyze every single instance.
* Another major anarchist figure in this
story is Emma Goldman.The story of Emma
Goldman presented in this book (and some of her associates: Alexander Berkman,
Johann Most) is very much in line with what I learned from Emma Goldman’s autobiography.
* The story of the People’s Will and the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II is also included in this book, and it was something
I had previously read about, in a slightly fictionalized form, in Andrew William’s To Kill a Tsar.
* The time frame of this book (largely
1870-1914, with an epilogue to the end of the 1930s) is concurrent with another
historical event—The Scramble for Africa.Although the rise of radicalism and the
colonization of Africa are not directly connected, both stories take place
against the background of each other and there are occasional references to
what was going on in Africa at the time.
Italian
Anarchist Errico Malatesta’s possible involvement with the Egyptian nationalist
movement is mentioned briefly.Gordon at
Khartoum is
mentioned a couple of times, as well as one incident when anarchists heckled
the famous explorer and colonizer of Africa Henry Morton Stanley.Thus this book ties in somewhat with The Scramble for Africa and Three Empires on the Nile.
* Vera Zasulich was one of the founders of
the Social Democratic Party with Lenin in 1903, and she was one of the main
characters in the first few chapters of Conspirator: Lenin in Exile before her split with Lenin.From Alex Butterworth’s book, however, I got
a bit better picture of her during her early days.
* The works of Jules - Verne are
referenced frequently in this book, making me much more curious to track down
and read some other Jules Verne books.From Alex Butterworth, I learned that Jules Verne collaborated with
radicals such as Paschal Grousset (the ex-foreign minister of the Paris
Commune) on some books like The Begum’s
Millions.
Alex
Butterworth mentions Fathers and Sons
only in passing, but he claims that the label of Nihilist was meant to be
satirical when Ivan Turgenev wrote the novel, but afterwards was adopted by
Russian youths after the publication of the novel.
