Bismarck and Disraeli: A small reflection

I take a great interest in 19th century history. I think you have to know at least the late 19th century to understand all that has happened since. It was after all the era that produced Karl Marx, the most influential misanthrope of all times. But Marx was such an intellectual midget and such a depicable character (even his own father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought that Karl was not much of a human being) that it is no wonder his legacy has been so malign.

By contrast, the two greatest political figues of the age, Disraeli and Bismarck, achieved an enormous amount for humanity, peace and civility. Bismarck is normally pictured with his Prussian Pikelhaube (spiked helmet) on (though he was only in the reserves of the Prussian military in his glory years) and that does tend to mislead people into thinking of him as a brutal militarist—but that is the sort of ignorance you have to expect of people who have been fed the highly selective pap that passes for history lessons these days. In fact, Bismarck gave Europe a long era of peace and rapidly increasing prosperity.

After his great victory over Napoleon III at Sedan in 1870, one might have expected Bismarck to go on to a Bonapartesque quest to dominate all Europe, but he did nothing of the sort. The entire military campaign had not in fact been aimed at conquest at all. Bismarck simply used the war to unite Germany under the Prussian crown. So when the war was over, all but a small (but controversial) slice of formerly French territory was evacuated and Bismarck concentrated on creating the German empire—not by force but by diplomacy—albeit by diplomacy of a rather dubious sort at times. And a united Germany of course soon became the economic powerhouse that it has been ever since. But note this: from 1870 on, Europe had no major wars until 1914—a 44 year period of peace—pretty unusual for Europe up until that time. And that long peace was largely Bismarck’s doing. The united Germany’s formidable military was a much a hindrance as a help because it made the rest of the world fearful and could well have encouraged a grand alliance against Germany. But by a series of ever-shifting and totally Byzantine series of diplomatic manoeuvres, alliances and treaties, Bismarck kept everybody off-balance and both Germany and the rest of Europe were left free to prosper peacefully and to develop the full fruits of the industrial revolution—which they did mightily.

Bismarck was not as successful at heading off unrest at home, however. As in most of Europe, the newly-created industrial working class was in a fairly ongoing ferment—a ferment in which Marx played a small part. So there were some serious rebellions, uprisings and disturbances. As in foreign affairs, however, Bismarck’s ever-shifting policies and alliances managed to keep the peace overall. Regrettably, however, it was a fragile peace and violent socialism still lurked just beneath the surface. So after Bismarck was gone it broke out again—as the powerful Communist and Nazi movements of the post-1918 period.

Bismarck’s great English contemporary, Benjamin Disraeli, was far more successful at containing domestic unrest. Like Bismarck he saw the need for worker-welfare legislation as a means of buying social peace and both men were notable welfare innovators—THE welfare innovators, it might be said. So what was the secret of Disraeli’s success? Fundamentally, it was sentimentality. Although he was always vocal about his own Jewishness, Disraeli had a sort of love-affair with the English people that was only surpassed in more recent times by the love-affair that Ronald Reagan had with the American people. And the results Disraeli got were arguably as transformative as the results Reagan got. Disraeli had a great love and respect for English traditions and preached the virtues of Englishness incessantly. And he included in his embrace the ordinary English working people—whom he saw as “angels in marble”—people with great and good potential. He actually trusted the working-class—an almost unheard-of idea among all the governing classes in Europe at that time. So he sponsored legislation that gave the workers the vote on a greatly increased scale. And they rewarded his trust by being far less susceptible to the political and social agitation that plagued their contemporaries in Europe. They developed a lasting trust in their national institutions that did far more for lasting peace and civility than anything else could have done.

At one of the great international political conferences of the time, Germany was represented by Bismarck and Britain by Disraeli. To Britain’s considerable benefit, Disraeli ran rings around all of them—causing Bismarck to make his famous admiring remark: “Der alte Jude. Das is der Mann” (“The old Jew. THAT is the man”). Coming from Bismarck, that was a compliment indeed. Disraeli himself attributed the greater social peace of 19th century England to Englishness but to a considerable extent it was in fact his own personal achievement.

Posted by jonjayray on Monday, December 5, 2005 at 10:17 PM in History
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Comments:

Posted by Svigor on December 05, 2005, 10:49 PM | #

Comment on 19th century history any time you like JJR. I find the subject fascinating, far more engaging than your other stuff.

Posted by Desmond Jones on December 06, 2005, 03:18 AM | #

How much the Treaty of Berlin benefited the British is open for debate. However, it is yet another example of the evil empire destroying white Christian nationalism in this instance in favour of Balkan Jewry. Gladstone and most of Europe, in particular Russians, who share EGI with their slavic Bulgarian Christian brothers, were outraged by the slaughter of 30,000 Bulgarian Christians by the Islamic Turks. KMac asserts,in his ‘Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism’, it was not in the interest of European Jewry to allow Russians to smash the Ottoman Empire, in a holy war of retribution.

Jewish attitudes toward Russia also figured in the Jewish response to Balkan independence in the 1870s. Turkey had committed atrocities on Bulgarian Christians, resulting in an anti-Turkish political movement in Britain among the opposition Liberal party. In addition to concern about Jewish financial investments in Turkey, British Jews in common with their co-religionists in AustriaHungary, Germany, France, and America, looked at the situation from the perspective of Balkan Jewry. Turkish rule had allowed these Jews a greater degree of tolerance compared to the situation under Orthodox Christianity.

Not only was Jewish political influence brought to bear in England in support of Prime Minister Disraeli’s policy, but the Viennese press was pressured to support Turkey, and the Viennese branch of the Rothschild family pressured the Austro-Hungarian government. Lionel de Rothschild, a British subject, also got his German banking associate Gerson von Bleichröder to influence Bismarck.

Thus Disraeli dispatched the Royal Navy to the Dardanelles to protect ‘British’ interests in the region.

Posted by James Bowery on December 06, 2005, 04:54 AM | #

While not as monsterous as Cromwell’s illegal readmission of the Jews (perhaps the most monsterous act of treason committed by any Briton), Disraeli’s “accomplishment” was to “solve” the rising value of labor, due to the great demand for labor in the New World, in a typically neocon manner: Go imperial and acquire more labor. The countervailing force was typically British: Invent. It is hard to imagine what might have become of Great Britan if, rather than disappating its energies in Africa and Asia, to ultimately import those populations to its native soil, it had focused all of its energies on technical innovation.

The problem is in the very nature of scientific knowledge. Science is defined by reproducibility. If it is reproducible outside the kin-group then, as W. D. Hamilton points out:

Often, however, the cost in fitness of such altruism and sublimated pugnacity to the individuals concerned is by no means metaphorical, and the benefits to fitness, such as they are, go to a mass of individuals whose genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed. Thus civilization probably slowly reduces its altruism of all kinds, including the kinds needed for cultural creativity (see also Eshel 1972).

This used to be somewhat protected by differing languages, but of course one of the first attributes acquired by a mobile mercantile culture is facility in foreign language acquisition. About the only thing you can do is keep out the merchants and anthropologists and appear to all to be a primitive people wielding stone-age technologies—while, somehow, all who threaten to invade seem to drop like flies or seem just to do something else more “interesting”.

People like Disraeli who run around forcing billions of foreign people to speak your native tounge are perhaps the worst sort of enemy to a creative nation.

Posted by Ventris on December 06, 2005, 06:20 PM | #

That which is imposing here on earth ... is always akin to the fallen angel; who is beautiful, but lacks peace; is great in his plans and efforts, but never succeeds; is proud, and melancholy.

- Bismarck

Posted by ben tillman on December 06, 2005, 11:12 PM | #

Thus Disraeli dispatched the Royal Navy to the Dardanelles to protect ‘British’ interests in the region.

Desmond Jones, what do you know of the Dönmes?

Posted by Desmond Jones on December 07, 2005, 02:08 AM | #

Not much Ben. An obscure Jewish sect, settled in Salonica after being expelled from Spain; allegedly victims of Greek anti-semitism; finally finished off by the Nazis etc. etc. It’s apparently rumoured that some of the young Turks were Donmes.

Love to hear more.

Posted by Alexei on December 08, 2005, 06:05 AM | #

One doesn’t have to refer to Jewish interests to explain Disraeli’s despatching the Navy to prevent the Russian army from taking Constantinople in 1878. Britain had long feared Russia’s taking full control of the Black Sea and particularly the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and extending its influence to all the Balkans. Hence its support for the Ottoman Empire against Russia, which had consistently defeated the Turks on the battlefield since the 1730s. This support culminated in the Crimean War. Disraeli’s show of force evoked a ghost of that fateful war, and Russia, terrified at the prospect of losing its well-earned victory, held back though Constantinople was abandoned and ready for the taking.

There is an alternative version claiming Alexander II had secretly agreed on the limits to Russian advances in the Balkans before the 1877-8 war even started, so Disraeli’s demarche might have been a theatrical gesture for the public.

Posted by Desmond Jones on December 08, 2005, 02:22 PM | #

Interesting Alexei, however, you don’t answer the question why the fear of Russian expansion. Ferguson outlines in his ‘Cash Nexus’ the huge sums of money borrowed by the British gov’t to 1) finance the war against Napoleon and 2) invest overseas. The Turks were recipients of massive British loans throughout the 19th century and eventually defaulted. At least 25% of which was from the House of Rothschild.

‘The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire’ by Avigdor Levy, details the rise of Jewish power under the Ottoman in the 19th century. He asserts that the Jews and the Turks shared similar interests and thus the Turks encouraged a disproportionate Jewish representation in the gov’t.

If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then is it a duck?

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