Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

IN his 2019 memoir Illuminating History, Bernard Bailyn shared a story about entering the PhD program at Harvard. Fresh from service in the army, where he and countless others of his generation witnessed the unparalleled attack on the Enlightenment ideals that had ushered a liberal Europe into existence, he decided to study history. As it turned out, the army had assigned him to learn German in anticipation of the post-war reorganization and occupation of Europe. Bailyn's linguistic training and immersion in German led him, not surprisingly, into European history, especially the history of Germany. But after the war, when he arrived at Harvard, his interests had shifted. He had become fascinated with understanding the relationship between ideas and lived experience and to “exploring the connections between America and Europe, in whatever sphere.” Bailyn had settled on the early modern era where, he wrote, “one could see the connections between a distant past and an emerging modernity.” The question that drove him first into early American history became a lifelong quest. As he put it, during his career he examined individuals and documents that revealed “vital encapsulations of what would become major developments in the emergence of modernity.”1Fair enough, as Bailyn might have put it. This was the kind of large problem historians should pursue, a point he made early in his career in his provocative essay on the limitations of Fernand Braudel's study of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century.2 But what, exactly, did Bailyn mean by modernity? Re-reading his works on the seventeenth century suggests a dramatic change in his conceptions of the modern from the 1955 publication of New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century to the appearance in 2012 of The Barbarous Years. Early on, modernity seems to have meant capitalism to Bailyn, though he did not write about this as explicitly as others.3 In his last major work, a period of positive change that Bailyn once associated with the expansion of “the civilization of the Old World” apparently disappeared, replaced by a vicious era defined by the violent collision of Europeans and Native Americans.4 The historian Daniel K. Richter, in his epic story of early America, traced the impact of what he called “ancient pasts” in colonial North America.5 Bailyn only occasionally referred to earlier periods in his work on the seventeenth century. Unlike his studies on the Revolution, and particularly his argument that the history of ancient Rome shaped the political thought of English and Anglo-American pamphleteers, Bailyn's seventeenth century stood apart. The result was a tension between his often-elegiac assessment of the Revolutionary era and his somber analysis of the seventeenth century. This tension captured the Janus-faced nature of modernity: an era that witnessed expressions of the grandest human aspirations, evident in Jefferson's statute for religious freedom (a text Bailyn revered6), but also the grim reality of mass violence, which Bailyn saw only too well in the years before he entered graduate school.A posthumous reading of a scholar's work can often feel incomplete, especially if the author of the retrospective piece knew the subject well. As I sat with The Barbarous Years after Bailyn's passing, I wanted to ask him questions. I thought about the closing section of Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) by Bailyn's then-colleague Simon Schama, who reminded readers that “historians are left forever chasing shadows” and try as we might “[w]e are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”7 If Bailyn could have heard me, I would ask: What accounts for the difference in tone between your studies of the Revolution and The Barbarous Years?Bailyn would not be the first historian whose views of the past changed over the course of their careers. In a brilliant essay the Annaliste historian Jacques Le Goff revisited the work of Jules Michelet (d. 1874), the nineteenth-century historian of France who had become something of a muse for him. Le Goff had the advantage of examining Michelet's reworking of his own texts, enabling him to trace changes in the long-gone medievalist's interpretation of the past. Unlike Michelet, Bailyn eschewed the notion of updating or rewriting, preferring instead to reposition his work through elaboration—notably in the twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversary editions of Ideological Origins. Absent any testimony on his part about why he had a bleaker view of the first century of English colonization in North America than his assessments of the eighteenth century, I suspect the difference in tone derived from his assessment of the evidence. What I see in Bailyn's grim view of the seventeenth century “is the reality, as it stands accused by its own testimony,” as Le Goff wrote of Michelet in a passage that rings true.8In The Barbarous Years, Bailyn relied on his literary skill to reveal memorable moments of historical action. To explicate his understanding of the meaning of modernity, I offer a brief Bailynesque view from a satellite high above of crucial events that took place in Europe and the early modern Atlantic basin in the generations leading to 1607 and the opening of The Barbarous Years. With that mise en scène, I turn to this book, which holds a possible key to understanding Bailyn's thoughts on how the modern emerged and its meaning.Across his career, though Bailyn spoke frequently about medieval Europe and used the Domesday Book as a model for an imaginative survey of colonial North America, he primarily wrote about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not what came earlier.9 To my knowledge, he never explained the shift from a medieval to an (early) modern mindset, although there are hints in his writings that modernity originated in Europe. If I am right, then his view of the emergence of the modern aligns with other scholars.10 Other historians, including those whom Bailyn read (and assigned to students), described both medieval and early modern Europe, establishing the context for Bailyn's interpretations of the movement of Europeans and European ideas across the Atlantic.11Bailyn's early analysis of Braudel suggests he paid close attention to those who studied medieval history. Among scholars whose work he knew were historians, affiliated with Annales HSS, who developed the concept of la longue durée to describe the medieval past. They argued the need to incorporate techniques of other disciplines to understand historical arenas where human behavior seems to have changed little over long periods.12 As Braudel contended in 1958, to understand the past historians needed to embrace social scientists’ study of enduring structures, a notion he developed under the influence of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. The two spent three years together during the 1930s, at the behest of the French government, establishing the study of the social sciences and history at the University of São Paulo.13Historians drawing inspiration from the idea of la longue durée identified underlying structures that existed for generations in medieval Europe, such as the seemingly timeless rhythms of rural life before industrialization, ideas relating to nighttime, and feudalism.14 Certain institutions endured for centuries, such as monarchies and the Church, each of which developed rules to maintain order, especially in distressed times when social rules collapsed. The Inquisition proved an effective tool for suppressing masques of death as well as fornicating in church yards, helping the religious back to the Eucharist.15But the persistence of some aspects of daily life did not halt changes we associate with the emergence of the modern era: double-entry bookkeeping and marine insurance, the rise of cities, and especially the Black Death, which led to the almost immediate founding of colleges—institutions facilitating yet further changes over time.16 Long before Columbus, some Europeans traveled far beyond the continent's boundaries—Iberians to mid-Atlantic islands, Norse as far as Newfoundland, and the agents of Italian merchants to China. A consumer revolution created demand for sugar, silks, salted cod, and spices produced far from Europe.17The erosion of long-held attitudes and practices that had persisted through la longue durée accelerated across Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Infante of Portugal, also known as Prince Henry the Navigator, supported long-distance explorations from his base in the port city of Sagres. In 1441, Portuguese raiders captured two Africans, a small start to what became the world-transforming institution of the slave trade.18 Martin Luther's protest at Wittenberg in 1517 began to erode the Church from within by questioning policies such as purchasing indulgences, priestly infallibility, and clerical celibacy. The slave trade launched a revolution in labor and racial relations, on the one hand, and the Reformation began the dismantling of Roman supremacy, on the other. While other parts of the world turned inward, notably much of China in the fifteenth century,19 many Europeans embraced of and the of accelerated the by ideas than the sixteenth century, across Europe as historians have often one especially in and about a after had the French of in The by a of a to the began in and into the The individuals in in a and between and across the and and and into and by their at the of A and then his The from to only to both in the The to that in the for where were on by The was with across and the for this it as the historian has from of derived from the from the from the of political from the of to the religious and the and him and the of their and through the before had led to such and much especially within one the historian has became on the were each other to violent in other who the to on in and in other the of to the of Portuguese and their own of the in captured from small to a trade to and with European could to work in and But the first in by the on almost captured individuals and into from and and to the only arrived in and by the early a historian “the to a was to to labor from Europeans their of from the mid-Atlantic to the first century after in the the of Norse to than of of and as well as by an saw the as a where could for in for what Europeans as created of had never accounts of distant with of and the Europeans began to and to some of the of the The who under the of Henry the Atlantic though his his did much to English the to to in the a the Jacques the He two cities, and the that the of could have him and his Columbus, and for the of He as did other though by the early French for the English became in the in the when the and Martin in of the the to the modern his of he and his had in his to a of to a there in They back of it The English used it to and the for the not before the for a one of an to the of modern In on the English to the the and the created a about the and its the last of English to by and from one in and the other in Europeans with American to be and the of of English colonial began to than a century after to Henry that should in North America, that America would social of and who the social in North America, would for English the merchants would and but did religious and the by establishing a in North America, would halt the of Roman of Europeans for the far in the sixteenth century than the it would but those to the and colonization of North America This movement of part of the modernity Bailyn began before any English at practices traveled As wrote just a before publication of The Barbarous Years, ideas in medieval in such as and and then to the New and the produced of violence, and of and base for that would The opening of the for by who had often witnessed in Europe the for the violent story Bailyn to of Bailyn's 2012 was its and North America from 1607 to But than see this era as one of he instead it as an story of and between Africans, and in the that would become the Unlike earlier historians, who had in this era the of and the of a for those for their Bailyn instead saw the before 1607 as and than what came the and for with in what he and or with into and to the had once he did not a Bailyn the tone for his by the modern not with but with The of in the Atlantic basin and in North America than the to some The Barbarous Years to ideas that Bailyn in In his study of the for he on what he called between and in many has long one historians the shift from the medieval to the a in social relations, with the and in the was not In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, English colonial in the and the in the each of American where would over with the to The who with had their own the of his his as and to the as Bailyn graduate in his study of their when across the and their social or any of though it led to a that about also had little on their of where with from a labor on to and were who his last became a for Bailyn, in his first to a of of the violent of the Bailyn to in Illuminating History, he explained that he had the in the when studies of had become a Bailyn into the about the relationship of capitalism to led him to and the of which his to write his (and first on New In Bailyn to the emergence of English colonial to between and to of many other European New and would in become historical enabling Bailyn to the between and and to a key in the emergence of by the he wrote The Barbarous Years, Bailyn's view of the seventeenth century had become both and much In some he and his argument in a of historical what he called within a he derived from his reading of the historian In his opening he an of of North America, with attention to the and the two that crucial in the of English after He did not their world before 1607 as some a by some English in the sixteenth he that the of were from the of he wrote, “the and of the the of that in the of that after and the in that and and that with he changes in this Native world before the English arrived at the of his argument on the notion that were not in 1607 in an especially produced by Old But one had the he it had produced a that had to Native Bailyn into a In the historian argued that Native the trade for the Europeans their were by the for notably the anthropologist and the historian argued that the trade to a of Native As and Martin saw the the with which and others on the of the that their and to had their with in the and in the that that would be if took only the needed to If did then the would the world But when European to Europeans as the of their on to in what Martin called a this the trade was a result of what an might behavior and instead a at of the of in religious the publication of book, historians and his argument as on interpretations of Native could that the of the trade had not yet become by the historian wrote that the of was a result of the of English in New England in the seventeenth century, an by the of one might of a of though the influence of the trade was far after Bailyn was that earlier developments had Native of the change of The rise of on his political which in the expansion of his across Native in the He that the to was to and then a of As his too did his that he had one While that might be his him to place across the in the of modern the became his political his over the movement of experience shaped his to the He saw the not as but as the of a He would over as he had He apparently saw the of as part of his who had arrived as high in and became wanted to of in the as the colonial their he the that when he have of death in the after his the of his of the of developments before As a known as the had captured and to in where, a model that had after in the his he would to and learn the of a on from the to the as the to his in The he left his colonial who were establishing a in the and with other who would be the the a to European colonial expansion in their experience in when he practices after Unlike political him the English had their and He to their on when he a the The English to the with a The of to the of the English first the English the its in In in the launched by in produced a of the used a in Barbarous This which did not in an work at the testimony of the of after tone of The Barbarous Years than much of Bailyn's earlier work, especially the of Ideological with its long on the and of the Bailyn that piece the of a revolution he had traced in an to as he reminded readers in Illuminating History, the relationship between ideas and lived was an to his work on political though not a as he had in he had to understand how from the of the anthropologist what Bailyn's of the by Braudel and others that historians should social techniques to the past. In his own work, revealed the of Bailyn on his Ideological though he did not the revealed how shaped the movement a of his of colonial his of a positive on the of colonial The revolution the rules that him as an in what Bailyn might have explained as one of the of not on his at the the of the in some the who to only to as Bailyn wrote in one of his early that the social to in meant little when it came to out how to in the the whatever might be in Bailyn's earlier including he together with the To the in was not to be in the of the the that Bailyn used as for some of the he in Barbarous on a about the early years at the on how the English would might if Native did not their practices a of about the events of of New in a he and in a of a of was a reading of the then a of at and his on on a were he wrote, for from in a to their own of than what had known He could have reminded his readers that the was not much in the a point he made in the of his to the did it mean to slave and that he in this far world of out from of a can only to modernity and when did it In the opening of his to the Bailyn who saw in “the of the North American what the German was in the modern Bailyn argued that the movement of from the Old to the New from the of to the “the of American and was as well to the of Europe and during those centuries, one can from his of in the modern world came into the start of his career, when he with text and Bailyn a tension of emerging modernity in the between and the and and But by the he wrote Barbarous Years, his had one with Bailyn's and Bailyn's as of in the when those came in the of who also to religious medieval to as and a to the and its as was a to see in the and the of the and was the wrote of this in a passage Bailyn but the the to who had for to their in their and a over an The often on but in their were of mean times to in North modern world did not medieval of As Bailyn if one had a that could human history from the early medieval period to the the would have He was to change as a of As historians have argued the the movement of Europeans what called a he used to describe much of after the on in the of had argued that the of such in New England in the seventeenth century the of their own an that seems the we scholars the revolution launched a era in the history of the when not began to But one could that it was the of early modern capitalism that came change and the of the generations American historians the of with the of a 1607 meant the of a English in North and the of in America, the that had their own for generations and that was also the when the English on the first historians also the in and the a the of who ushered in an era of religious a notion for and when to the interpretations of historians what saw as the of civilization of its for and the of the English who arrived in the seventeenth century, including those who but had about he on a tension by other The two had argued that the English would not need to American would be by those to work at But that the supported the slave trade as a to though with to labor in North America and as long as the of a of a did not captured into to as Bailyn wrote, a in the during the of the century created a to in As he put had in the course of three generations by and merchants in the for with human and from by their modern world did not in much of has much what in the seventeenth century Bailyn was that for North America, English and colonization not an to but instead often in of what of the and the expansion of a social on racial and the to Bailyn identified three of historical those in an and of how might often the of individuals in a he called In a after an was over and the a on the replaced by a to past events into an with in a with the passage of periods of could a historian see that past could never what he called the that of led historians to write in what Bailyn called a this point in the historian in the can write about the past with a he never wrote about it in much Bailyn's understanding of the past his own lived just the of their training and a he had witnessed the become the of the the part of his career, from the he decided to a of about the Revolution through the publication of his on the Bailyn the to and for a when he to Ideological for its fiftieth anniversary in he on his reading of and to the of “the of The Barbarous Years, Bailyn embraced the in both of the events in the distant past and the that through and the of North America, in Bailyn's had and of and Africans, he when what each was the of the other of Bailyn did not this to readers to or But he did the in a that has of their In Bailyn's modernity came to North America with the but not something to be

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