Left History (E-Journal - York University)

Bradbury, Bettina

Reviews 151 
Bruce Curtis, The Politics of Population. State Formation, Statistics, and the 
Census of Canada, 1840-1875 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 
7'he Politics of Population won the John A Macdonald prize for the best book 
published in Canadian history in a year with strong competition. It is an excel- 
lent book that will be of interest to a much wider audience than its title suggests. 
This is not simply a history of census talung for quantitative historians who use 
the census. Nor will it be of interest only to political historians or sociologists 
interested more broadly in governance. This is an important social, cultural and 
political history that looks in detail at how and why censuses were taken. It will 
be of particular interest to Quebec historians. Many of the main characters are 
from Quebec, and in the politics of population, Quebec was the key player in the 
past as today. 
There are many reasons to read the book. First, it is an excellent read. Most 
chapters are lively narratives told with humour, a strong sense of human agency 
and analytical skill. In Curtis's able hands the taking of the censuses of 1841, 
1852, 1861 and 187 1 are dramatic acts, undertaken by bureaucrats both bum- 
bling and insightful. The enumerators, on whose work so much quantitative his- 
tory has been based, are seen dealing with frustrations that range from forms 
that don't arrive through major snow storms. In the early years, especially, 
numerous challenges limit their ability to do their jobs well. Second, it is a solid 
institutional history of the government departments and of the particular indi- 
viduals who were most involved in census taking. Curtis gives a clear picture of 
the administrative structures behind census taking and assesses their competen- 
cy or lack of it adroitly. Third, it is a detailed study about the production of a 
source that has been heavily used by social historians, including me, as windows 
into the lives of ordinary Canadians. Curtis reminds us that censuses were 
made, not taken. The issue of which questions should be asked, of how the forms 
would be structured, even the quality of the paper were all political ones. They 
must also influence what historians today claim to know from it. From the inter- 
action between enumerator and enumerated, through corrections and the tabu- 
lating of responses he shows how people's diverse answers and experiences were 
slotted into categories not of their malang. After reading the book, the con- 
structed nature of the categories chosen and imposed is clear. 
Fourth, Curtis shows how the production of that source, the making of the 
census was highly political. He insists, drawing on Foucault, that how a state sets 
out to "know" its population is a basic element of governrnentality. Population 
was political because numbers mattered as did where bodies were located. They 
mattered when representation by population was an issue. They mattered as the 
numbers of francophones dropped relative to English speakers, or the popula- 
tion of Quebec declined relative to Ontario. And they mattered to a man con- 
vinced of the superiority of rural over urban life. He shows how the hero of his 
152 Reviews 
tale, the man who created the most "scientific" census, Joseph-Charles Tache, 
decided that the 1871 census should be de jure rather than de facto like the pre- 
vious one, thus reflecting where people normally lived rather than where they 
were the night of the census. This argues Curtis, "replenished the French- 
Canadian countryside" (278). Fifth, the book makes a major contribution to 
Foucault influenced studies of governmentality and state formation. His book is 
framed by this literature, and he critiques it most findamentally in his insistence 
that historical context is critical and that individual actors make a difference. 
The strength of Curtis's arguments derive from his blend of solid engage- 
ment with theory and equally solid research in primary sources. These include 
government correspondence and publications, statutes, debates of legislative 
assemblies and councils, contemporary pamphlets, and newspapers. Montreal 
newspapers dominate in ways that make this very much a story of that city and 
certainly of that province. The book starts with a theoretical chapter, then fol- 
lows the history of the planning and making of each successive census. In some 
ways, this is a rather whiggish history that details the Colonial Office's desire 
for better numbers, the fiascos involved in all the pre-confederation attempts to 
count the population and the increasingly "scientific" procedures implemented 
competently by Tacht in 1871. At the same time it is a passionate reminder to 
all readers that census taking, like other forms of governmental knowledge pro- 
duction, creates categories that assume a normality, marginalizing the impor- 
tance of local knowledge and hiding ways of living that don't fit the categories. 
Historical geographers may be particularly interested in chapter 7, which 
describes how district boundaries were established. Some readers of Left History 
may find the institutional sections in early chapters a bit dry. Others may baulk 
at the more theoretical' discussions of chapter 7 and the conclusion. All readers, 
should ask themselves how they can interpret material drawn from these cen- 
suses, whether in the manuscripts or in published versions. The answer is not 
that all censuses prior to 1871 are completely useless. Rather, Curtis provides 
the information and analysis that will allow users of both manuscript and pub- 
lished censuses to be much clearer about the l n d s  of truth claims they should 
make based on the information that is available. In showing the many steps and 
the power relations behind the representation of the nation through censuses, he 
offers a compelling caution to those seeking to measure representivity through 
regression and other statistical analyses. In the process he makes the census 
more not less interesting. 
Bettina Bradbury 
York University 


Bruce Curtis — The Politics of Population. State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840-1875

Ward, Paul

158 Reviews 
Julie V. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement 1923- 
1945, (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000). 
British fascism sought to return women to "kitchen-slavery," according to the 
leading Communist theoretician, Rajani Palme Dutt. Julie Gottlieb's well 
researched and clearly written book suggests that this was not necessarily so. 
Despite Oswald Mosley suggesting that 'we want men who are men and women 
who are women,' the support the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and other fas- 
cist sects in the United Kingdom received from women ensured that such organ- 
isations had to allow an active role for feminine fascists. Indeed, Gottlieb goes 
further arguing that women's support resulted in, if not feminine fascism, at least 
a feminized fascism that made the British experience different from that of 
European forms of the ideology. One issue that Gottlieb does not address is the 
size of the fascist movement in Britain. At its peak, the BUF had around 40,000 
members. It never elected a single member of parliament and its best achieve- 
ment was around twenty-five per cent of the votes in a limited number of coun- 
cil wards in East London, its greatest heartland. Small parties, even when 
prospective dictators ran them, had to take account of their members' desires, or 
lose them. With a quarter of the low membership being female, the BUF had lit- 
tle choice but to make adjustments to accommodate the aspirations of those who 
wore black blouses rather than black shirts. 
In chapter 1, Gottlieb examines the experience of women in the British 
Fascists, formed in 1923 as an anti-socialist and patriotic organisation, celebrat- 
ing the victory of Mussolini in Italy in its choice of name, but claiming native 
origins. Uniquely among fascist movements in the inter-war years, it was found- 
ed and led by a woman, Rotha Lintorn-Oman. In the hostile atmosphere of the 
1920s, Lintorn-Oman was easily branded a cranky spinster, and allegations of 
immorality helped limit the size of the BF, which was never more than a few 
hundred strong. 
Chapter 2 moves the analysis forward to the role of women members in 
most important inter-war fascist group, the BUF. Women were subordinate in 
many ways to men within the BUF. They undertook the usual forms of political 
activity open to women, such as canvassing and fund-raising. But they also 
undertook the full range of activism taken on by male fascists. For example, 
female fascists were trained in ju jitsu and acted as stewards at meetings, talung 
on female anti-fascists. There is a suggestion in this chapter that the role of 
women, as active fascists engaging in all the deeds that entailed, contributed to 
the limited growth of fascism in the UK. The paradox was that "the ideology of 
feminine fascism," explored by Gottlieb in chapter 3, celebrated women's 
activism. Here for the first time, the context of women in a 'nascent' movement, 
essential for the growth of a very weak flower, is discussed. The BUF's gender 
ideology was a ragbag of ideas. It celebrated women as "publicists ... temptress- 
Reviews 159 
es ... and vendors of fascism" to a market apprehensive about the machismo of 
BUF, but also the role of the fascist mother within the home. These contradic- 
tions were supplemented by the desire of the BUF to regenerate manhood. 
Gottlieb suggests that this mixed message further limited fascism's numerical 
growth. In this same chapter, the role of fascist women as anti-Semites is use- 
fully explored, with emphasis laid on the feminisation of hatred through the 
direction of hostility to stereotypes of Jews exploiting, oppressing and abusing 
"British" women in a variety of work and sexual encounters. However, the chap- 
ter concludes that feminine fascism was decidedly weak: it was on (fascist) male 
terms and women fascists were, in fact, fascists first and women only distantly 
second. 
Chapter 4 is devoted to an examination of the legacy of suffragette activism 
on British fascism. The trajectory of three prominent suffragette-fascists is 
described. Suffragettes moved in to all parties and none after 19 18 and Gottlieb 
rather leaves the reader out on a limb as to whether these suffragettes were typ- 
ical or deviant through their adherence to British fascism. 
The focus in chapter 5 turns to the role and attitudes of Oswald Mosley. This 
is the least satisfying chapter. The comparison of attitudes of Mosley, Hitler and 
Mussolini rests on the assumption that they were equals or equivalents, but 
Mosley was fundamentally the failed leader of a failed political movement. In 
addition in this chapter (p. 205), Gottlieb decides to quote U2's Bono as an 
authority, not on the 1930s, but on late twentieth century fascism. Such a device 
would be frowned upon in an undergraduate essay. The chapter concludes with 
A.K. Chesterton's condemnation of the mainstream party leaders, "Mrs 
Baldwin," with his pipe, "Mrs MacDonald," who "talks eternally without saying 
a word," and Eden with his "flapper brains." But such men were electorally pop- 
ular, adding to the sense that it was Mosley's manliness that could not pull it off. 
David Jarvis and others have explained the way in which the Conservatives suc- 
cessfully domesticated their politics after the Great War, taking into account the 
importance of the female electorate. Baldwin's fireside chats on the wireless 
brought Conservatism into the home. Given that the Conservatives won five out 
of the seven elections between the wars, and indeed gained more votes that the 
winning party in the two that they lost, this could be suggested as a highly suc- 
cessful strategy. This also fits neatly with Alison Light's argument in Forever 
England (1 99 1) that ideas of national identity and patriotism were feminised and 
domesticated in the wake of the Great War. In this sense, the failure of British 
fascism might be seen as stemming in part from its inability to come to terms 
with the privatisation of politics. 
The final chapter of the book is on much firmer ground. The British state, 
at least, took some women fascists seriously. Nearly a hundred women BUF 
members were interned for varying periods once world war broke out. In addi- 
tion, many fascist women were prosecuted for anti-war statements and agitation. 
160 Reviews 
This was punishment for potential disloyalty rather than pacifism in many cases, 
although in others internment came about because of that oxymoron, state intel- 
ligence, resulting in injustices being done. In prison, it appears that idolisation 
of Mosley acted as substitute for fascist activity: women fascists in Holloway 
held a tea dance for OM's 44th birthday in 1940. Outside of prison other fascists 
used charitable efforts for the prisoners as a surrogate for political activity. At 
this point, fascist women's supporting role to the mainly male detainees was 
confirmed. Militant fascist women collected comforts for the fascist troops. 
In her conclusion, Gottlieb rightly argues that fascist women were 
"autonomous historical agents." Mosley agreed when he declared that "without 
the women I could not have got quarter of the way" (267). But of course, he did 
not get very far. The Labour Party by the end of the 1930s had a female mem- 
bership of hundreds of thousands and the Conservative Party had more than a 
million. Some discussion of fascist failure related to other parties' success might 
have been called for in the conclusion. This might have been more historically 
appropriate than the attempt to link the Spice Girls and Camille Paglia into the 
tradition of feminine activism that Gottlieb explores in the rest of the book. 
But that is not the finish of this book. It continues with a very useful "Who's 
who in the history of women and fascism in Britain." It acts to give us some 
insight into the day-to-day activities of fascist women (and men). Hence Mrs LT 
Cotton, member of the BUF and interned during the war is described as attend- 
ing a fascist meeting addressed by her husband in Branscombe, Devon. In 
response to the rough reception her husband received, Mrs Cotton "struck a 
member of the audience in the face." The "Who's who" also reveals the variety 
of ideas within fascism. Mrs Dudley Ward was an anti-Semite and animal lover, 
publishing a condemnatory book linking the two entitled Jewish Kosher (1944). 
Details are also provided of the huge variety of activities in which fascist women 
took part, from the organisation of fascist Etes, running branches, conducting 
sticker campaigns, cutting telephone cables and seducing sailors for reasons of 
espionage in wartime. There about 260 women and 30 men described in this sec- 
tion, a notable feat, and it adds generally to the usefulness of this impressively 
researched and clearly structured book. Gottlieb offers a distinctive interpreta- 
tion and adds significantly to the existing historiography on British fascism. 
Paul Ward 
University of Huddersfield, UK. 
Ellen Messer-Davidow, Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to 
Academic Discourse (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002). 
Although Disciplining Feminism: From SocialActivism to Academic Discourse 


Julie V. Gottlieb — Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement 1923-1945

Bailkin, Jordanna

170 Reviews 
One of the book's many strengths is its ability to move back and forth 
between different medical worlds, that of white doctors (and planters, as lay 
practitioners) and enslaved African Americans, each drawing on different tradi- 
tions informed by the American environment. The well-established Euro- 
American medical infrastructure - medical schools, hospitals, and journals - 
produced such documentary sources as doctors' letters and medical case studies 
which provide a window on white medical ideas and practices. These are sup- 
plemented by plantation records, including slave owners' diaries and correspon- 
dence, and plantation reports. The picture of African American healing is craft- 
ed from a careful reading of diverse sources: Fett has used slave narratives, 
interviews with former slaves, and physical remains, such as medicine bowls 
and "conjure packets". She acknowledges that post-emancipation sources, most 
prominently the interviews with former slaves, are problematic but defends 
them as "an invaluable source for studies of African American life under slav- 
ery" (209, n.68). Working Cures does more than look at black healers and heal- 
ing practices, it examines a southern medical culture produced by the meeting 
of African and European medical traditions and practiced by white Euro- 
Americans and enslaved African Americans, a "medical history in which human 
interactions, not diseases or treatments, occupy center stage" (10). 
Juanita De Barros 
Western Michigan University 
' W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Greenwich: Fawcett 
Publications, Inc., 1953; 1968), 144. 
Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, 
Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 
2002). 
This splendid volume of essays traces the relationship of art, science, and com- 
merce in early modern Europe, posing important challenges to received wisdom 
about the Scientific Revolution and the history of collecting practices. As Smith 
and Findlen suggest in their introductory essay, the historical relationship 
between science and commerce has received rather less scholarly attention than 
that of science and art. While the intersection of visual representation and sci- 
entific practice remains a major theme of many of these essays, the incorpora- 
tion of questions about commerce adds a significant and exciting new dimension 
to the history of early modem science. 
Smith and Findlen note that their emphasis on the centrality of commerce 
in early modem scientific practice introduces a different cast of characters and a 
Reviews 171 
different geographic sensibility to the study of the Scientific Revolution. This 
volume does not locate the Scientific Revolution exclusively at the traditional 
sites of Italy, Germany, and England, but extends the examinations to Spain and 
the Netherlands. The scientific practitioners discussed here - lofty though their 
humanist ideals might have been - were also intimately and sometimes surpris- 
ingly concerned with questions of trade, profit, and economic value. Commerce 
brought novelties to light, and novelties helped to occasion new modes of textu- 
al and visual description. 
The volume has important consequences for museum historians as well. 
Smith and Findlen argue that historians have traditionally treated early modern 
wealth as starkly divided between two groups of economic actors: the nobility, 
who dealt in gifts, and the bourgeoisie, who dealt in cash and commodities. In 
turn, these seemingly opposed categories of "gift" and "commodity" have been 
taken as central to the history of collecting. But as Smith and Findlen remind us, 
it was nobles who collected convertible gold and silver, which could be melted 
down at will if the situation demanded. And the collections of Dutch burghers 
seldom fetched their calculated value at auction. Here, the editors point to the 
interpenetration of gift and commodity in early modem Europe, as well as the 
absence of polarization between noble and bourgeois collections. 
The essays are uniformly strong; I will mention several here that treat the 
interrelationship of art, science, and commerce most explicitly. The first essay 
by Pamela H. Smith and Larry Silver, "Splendor in the Grass," offers close read- 
ings of early modem depictions of holy figures in outdoor settings. The authors 
cite early modern artists (Diirer and Altdorfer among others) who portrayed the 
communion with nature by holy figures as vested with alchemical significance. 
These visual images were profoundly concerned with the redemption of matter: 
like alchemy, art was fundamentally involved with the processes of transforma- 
tion. Deborah A. Harkness's essay, "'Strange' Ideas and 'English' Knowledge," 
sketches a thicket of English and alien practitioners of science in Elizabethan 
London, mapping the history of scientific endeavor in an urban, mercantile envi- 
ronment. Her impressively detailed study stresses the international composition 
of science in England, as English and alien practitioners competed for patents 
and commercial success. One of her many striking conclusions is that while 
English and foreign medical practitioners worked closely (though not necessar- 
ily happily) together, English instrument makers kept separate from their alien 
counterparts. Harkness speculates that this strict division of labor, in which alien 
makers dominated the clock and watch-making industries and English makers 
focused on mathematical instruments, may have played a part in the develop- 
ment of instrumental natural philosophy in seventeenth-century England. This 
essay therefore gives another layer of material and local specificity to the high- 
ly influential studies of English natural philosophy by Simon Schaffer and 
Steven Shapin. 
172 Reviews 
Harold J. Cook's fascinating study, "Time's Bodies," deals with scientific 
efforts to manipulate the processes of ordinary time through the artificial preser- 
vation of bodies and body parts. Cook's essay is particularly strong in showing 
that the science of preservation often had unintended consequences (a theme of 
the volume overall), such as allowing for new techniques of anatomical obser- 
vation. As Cook notes, early modem science and capitalism were united in 
working against the forces of transitory nature, as capitalists depended on regu- 
larizing work time and ensuring the durability of material goods to calculate 
properly their future value. In the same section, Chandra Mukerji's essay on the 
Canal du Midi (built in Southwest France in the 1660s-1680s) investigates the 
relationship between state-based entrepreneurialism and engineering in produc- 
ing a more "Edenic" landscape: a new "nature" that offered wealth to rich and 
poor alike. Mukerji suggests that the enormous labor force - 40,000 people - 
marshaled to build this canal helped to constitute a working-class in this area at 
a very early historical moment. Like Cook, then, Muke rji begins to explore the 
role of scientific practice in creating complex relations between labor and capi- 
tal. 
Paula Findlen's lively essay, "Inventing Nature," revisits one of the central 
figures of her much-acclaimed book, Possessing Nature (1994): Ulisse 
Aldrovandi. Here, she focuses on the intersection of commerce and cabinets of 
curiosity, showing how the scientific desire for curiosities created specialty mar- 
kets and curiosity traffickers. Drawing on correspondence between Aldrovandi 
and his sellers, Findlen traces the life of objects before and after they became 
valuable "curiosities." She notes that faked or fraudulent specimens (the hydra 
and the basilisk are two key examples) had their own important place in cabi- 
nets of curiosity. The process of inventing these objects as "natural," which 
depended in part on the visual representations of artists, held great interest for 
early modern collectors. This concern with the vagaries of value in the world of 
scientific objects is echoed in Anne Goldgar's excellent case study of the tulip, 
a preview of her forthcoming book on tulip-mania. Goldgar outlines key factors 
in the tulip "craze" of early modern Europe: namely, that the tulip was prized for 
its unpredictable and exciting capacities for variation, as well as its reputation 
for "outdoing" the work of any painter. The tulip was thus interpreted as both 
nature and art, constantly linked to man-made luxury objects (like marbled 
paper) and also praised for its ability to stimulate sociability among its collec- 
tors. 
Another standout essay is Benjamin Schmidt's "Inventing Exoticism," 
which builds on his recent prizewinning book Innocence Abroad (2001), and 
gives a new historical specificity to that increasingly popular trope of "the exot- 
ic." Schmidt marks the traits of Dutch exoticism via a study of Dutch geography 
and identifies an intriguing paradox: the expansion of Dutch geography (circa 
1700) was coincident not with Dutch imperial expansion, but rather with the 
Reviews 173 
contraction of the global powers of the Republic. Dutch geography was charac- 
terized by a "soft internationalism" and a tendency towards the generic rather 
than the aggressively national: specific to none, thus palatable to all (361). As 
Schmidt concludes, the Dutch were marketing an image of the globe - "cannily 
decentered and politically decontextualized" (362) - rather than colonizing the 
world. Schrnidt's essay thus identifies an important disjunction between the 
practices of geographic exploration and the marketing of geographic images, 
bringing an element of counterintuitive history to this volume on commerce, sci- 
ence, and art. 
Every essay in the volume contains treasures of its own. Other noteworthy 
topics include the relationship between visual representation and scientific 
"truth" in the works of Leonardo and Diirer (Pamela 0. Long), the use of sea 
charts to make territorial claims in sixteenth-century Spain (Alison Sandman), 
the use of classificatory images like tables and mimetic pictures in the seven- 
teenth-century Netherlands (Claudia Swan), a case study of the scientific inves- 
tigation and commercial marketing of Santo Domingo balsam (Antonio 
Barrera), the role of trade objects and business practices in making of the 
Wunderkammer (Mark Meadow), debates between philosophical and practical 
alchemists in the Holy Roman Empire (Tara Nummedal), artistic renderings of 
the experimental sciences by the Dutchman Cornelius Meijer in Rome (Klaas 
van Berkel), and the use of instrument shops in Paris and London as sites of pub- 
lic demonstrations in natural philosophy (James Bennett). 
A section called "Epilogues" contains two concluding essays by Lissa 
Roberts and Thomas Dacosta Kaufman; the latter linking the historical material 
in this volume to broader questions about the role of representation in the con- 
temporary world. Roberts' essay, "A World of Wonders, A World of One," pro- 
vides a valuable reflection back on the themes of the volume by identifying two 
prior historiographical "clefts": between historians of mathematical sciences 
versus those of the experimental sciences, and between scholars who discuss the 
arts and sciences of early modem Europe as under girded by aesthetic principles 
of unity and order versus those who emphasize variety and uniqueness. One 
section of Roberts' essay called "Toward a History of Doing" offers a particu- 
larly useful way to view the contributions of this volume. Roberts suggests that 
tension between the principles of unity and variety was recognized and debated 
in early modem Europe, and that this tension was provisionally resolved through 
the notion of activity. The focus on scientific practice in Merchants and 
Marvels, therefore, is both an extension and productive reformulation of early 
modem questions. 
Indeed, unity and variety are helpful terms for framing this terrific collec- 
tion of essays. The volume is delightfully varied in terms of geography and 
chronology, yet tightly focused and unified in terms of theme. Merchants and 
Marvels suffers from none of the typical problems of edited collections; the 
174 Reviews 
quality of the contributions is admirably even, and the coherence of the volume 
is impressive. This is both an accessible and sophisticated volume, organized by 
two leading scholars. The book will be of very great interest to scholars in the 
history of science, collecting, and early modem Europe, as well as anyone inter- 
ested in following the twists and turns of how value - both spiritual and eco- 
nomic - has been assigned to objects and knowledge alike. 
Jordanna Bailkin 
University of Washington. 
Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre, Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, 
translated by Catherine Porter (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2001). 
Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre first formulated their thesis about Romanticism 
as an anti-capitalist and anti-modernist Weltanschauung in a 1984 article called 
"Figures of Romantic Anti-capitalism" (New German Critique). The response 
to their intervention by British and North American academics was somewhat 
delayed. But when G.A. Rosso and Daniel P. Watkins reprinted the article as the 
opening chapter in a 1990 volume entitled Spirits of Fire: English Romantic 
Writers and Contemporary Historical Methods, a lively and informative debate 
was opened up. Following "Figures of Romantic Anti-capitalism" in the Rosso 
and Watkins volume is a substantial and friendly but dissenting response by 
Michael Ferber, and then a brief "Answer to Michael Ferber" by Lowy and Sayre 
themselves that culminates in the assertion, "The fire is still burning." 
This tone of affirmation and advocacy runs throughout the book-length ver- 
sion of Lowy and Sayre's case, published in ~ r e n c h  by Payot in 1992 and now 
available in Catherine Porter's able English translation. I emphasize the chronol- 
ogy of genesis and publication of their argument because it has an important 
bearing on connections to - and particularly on disconnections from - key 
developments in the Anglo-American scholarship with which I am most famil- 
iar. When the New German Critique article appeared in 1984, Jerome 
McGann's The Romantic Ideology (1983) was just beginning to be read and 
assimilated. So Lowy and Sayre engage only briefly and in passing with one of 
the decisive influences in turning Romantic studies towards historicist and mate- 
rialist critique. Other contributors to the 1990 volume in which "Figures of 
Romantic Anti-capitalism" was reprinted, such as Daniel Cottom and Marilyn 
Butler, are prominent participants in the historicist turn signaled by McGann's 
book, but their work too figures hardly at all in Romanticism Against the Tide of 
Modernity. In the nine years separating the French and English versions of the 
book an extensive and complex body of critical and methodological analysis has 
foregrounded questions about Romanticism as a historical category and cultur- 


Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds. — Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe

Howard, Pat

Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, and Frederick H. Buttel, eds. — Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment

Contributors 
David S. Churchill is an assistant professor of United States history at the 
University of Manitoba. His research interests include new social movements 
and radical culture in the 1960s, queer history, and the politics of sexual liber- 
ation during the Cold War. 
Peter Cole is an assistant professor of history at Western Illinois University. 
His article on the Philadelphia Controversy is part of a book project examining 
the history of the IWW's Local 8, the most successful effort at interracial 
unionism in the U.S. Progressive Era. 
Jo Freeman is a feminist scholar and activist. She has published nine books 
(and written a tenth), as well as numerous articles for scholarly and popular 
journals. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago 
(1973) and a J.D. from New York University School of Law (1982). As can be 
seen from her article, she was active in several social movements. For more 
information, go to www.JoFreeman.com 
Aspasia Kotsopoulos is a doctoral candidate in Communications at Simon 
Fraser University. She is finishing her dissertation on CO-production and tele- 
vision adaptation entitled, "Romance and Industry on the Road to Avonlea." 
She has taught film and cultural studies at the University of Victoria for the 
past four years. 
Daniel Rosenberg teaches history and is Director of General Studies in the 
College of Arts & Sciences, Adelphi University. He is a labour and social his- 
torian, the author of several books, and has published in Labor History, The 
Reference Librarian, Science & Society, and the Long Island Historical 
Review, among others. 


Contributors

Mitchinson, Paul

Nicholas Griffin, ed., assisted by Alison Roberts Miculan — The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970

Keep, Christopher

Thomas C. Jepsen — My Sisters Telegraphic: Women in the Telegraph Office, 1864-1950; Venus Green — Race on the Line: Gender, Labor and Technology in the Bell Systems, 1880-1980

Marker, Gary

230 Reviews 
Why were the first major thorough treatments of American thought only 
published in the last years of the Soviet Union? Ryder says the end of USSR 
has not been a watershed event in the study of American philosophy; since 
1960 those studies had become less ideological. Still Soviet scholars continued 
to focus on exposing inadequacies in those philosophies as opposed to purpose 
of learning something. 
I have some minor quibbles with Interpreting America. In places, Ryder 
relies heavily on exegesis and analysis of the positions of one or two philoso- 
phers, or one or two works, to set forth what then seems to be characterized as 
the entire Soviet response to American thought. How many Soviet philosophers 
worked in this area? Where did they work? Were they ensconced primarily in 
the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, the conservative bastion of Soviet 
thought? Were there nuances or differences of interpretation among Soviet 
schools of American philosophy? 
Ryder provides an extensive bibliography of Soviet sources, mostly from 
the 1960s onward, and many from 1980s and later. (Translations of works of 
American thinkers also appeared for the first time only in the 1990s.) The bib- 
liography uses an inconsistent (and inaccurate) system of transliteration with 
the same words transliterated differently on the same page. 
In sum, InterpretingAmerica is an original, thoughtful piece of scholarship 
that will be of interest to advanced students of philosophy and history. 
Paul Josephson 
Colby College 
Anthony Cross, Peter the Great through British Eyes: Perceptions and 
Representations o f  the Tsar since 1698 (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press 2000). 
To refer to Anthony Cross as a leading scholar of Russian-British cultural rela- 
tions is rather like calling Lance Annstrong a pretty decent bicyclist. In truth, 
no other English Russophile or Russian anglophile, living or dead scholarly or 
popular, has contributed as much to our knowledge of English Russia and 
Russian Britannia. Exhibit A: His previous books include By the Banks of the 
Thames; By the Banks of the Neva; The Russian Theme in English Literature; 
Engraved in the Memory; Anglo-Russica Cambridge, Some Russian 
Connections; Anglo-Russian Relations in the Eighteenth Century; Catherine 
the Great and the British; An English Lady at the Court of Catherine the Great; 
Anglofiliia u trona, and.. .,well, my point is clear. 
Reviews 231 
Cross' latest contribution, Peter the Great through British Eyes, brings 
together a disparate body of materials in separate chapters on Peter's visit to 
Britain in 1698; anglophone historiography of the Petrine era; eighteenth and 
nineteenth-century British caricatures of Peter; theatrical representations; and 
Peter in British publicism during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 
The chapter on Peter's Great Embassy, and the extended visit to England in 
1698, is particularly lively, especially the tale of Peter's paramourpro tern (and 
the author's namesake), the noted London stage actress Letitia Cross. The rau- 
cous behavior of the Tsar's party, the damage they inflicted by trashing more 
than one guest house, the drain on the treasury of George I (which was subsi- 
dizing Peter's four-month stay at the rate of 40 pounds per diem), all receive 
vivid display. Peter, as Cross recounts, was either unmoved or oblivious, and his 
merriment continued as unabated as were his curiosities over everything naval 
and technological. The subsequent legends of this visit, especially their depic- 
tion in British drama, are equally lively. By contrast, the passages detailing 
British and general anglophone historiography are more prosaic, straightfor- 
ward and accurate, but lacking the vivacity of the other sections. The epilogue, 
which recounts in a few pages the contributions of the last half-century of 
British historians to Petriniana, seems somewhat disconnected from the rest of 
the work. 
One sub-theme running through the entire text is the interplay of foreign 
policy and representations of the Tsar, in particular the clash and CO-existence 
of empires. Russia's simultaneous emergence as an empire and as a sea power 
during the Petrine era transformed both the image and the gravitas of represen- 
tation, in particular caricature. The double-edged sword of Russia's European- 
ness now replaced the seventeenth-century imagery of incivility and exotica. 
The new discursive poles were backwardness (bad old belligerent Russia) and 
cultural progress (good young Russia), each invariably bracketed with the cur- 
rent state of Anglo-Russian relations. 
Backward Russia was predicatably aggressive, expansionist, brutal; 
European Russia was cooperative, measured, a force for stability. Writing in 
1710, for example, Jonathan Steele congratulated Peter for "the crucial deci- 
sion not to turn to France, 'the nation from which the rest of the World has bor- 
rowed its politeness.'" Instead Peter chose the path of "honest labor" and "'[bly 
this means has this great Prince laid the foundation of a great and lasting 
Fame."' (46). The good Russia was, at heart, not so different from Britain, 
while the bad Russia was an untamable savage. Thus, in 17 1 8 Aaron Hill could 
poetize: "Britain and Russia differ, but in name. In nature's sense, all nations 
are the same. One world, divided, distant brothers share, And man is reason's 
subject - everywhere." (49). A few years earlier, though, when talk of Russian 
atrocities in Finland was rife, Daniel Defoe coined the exquisitely racialized 
232 Reviews 
epithet "Russian Mohawks," thus mobilizing the Enlightenment's full arsenal 
of vituperative metaphors of race, geography, and incivility in one simple con- 
struction. 
A curious and possibly important undercurrent in British popular imagery, 
both positive and negative, was the ongoing interest in Peter's troubled rela- 
tionship with his son Alexis, a relationship that ultimately led to Alexis' execu- 
tion for treason. Somehow this sad episode held special meaning for British 
publicists, as if it encapsulated some essential truth about Peter and Russia. But 
what? What does this ongoing fascination with the execution of the regent tell 
us about British political sensibilities or their assumptions about civilized king- 
ship? Herc, as elsewhere, the reader must draw hisiher own inferences. 
Cross eschews simple political conclusions from his material. Neither does 
he impose any specific interpretive model on it. He describes the book telling- 
ly as "a wide-ranging survey that embraces all forms of written evidence as 
well as visual images." Here, as in much of his previous scholarship on Russia 
and Britain, he delights in offering rich descriptions of little-known material, 
and then allow the readers to make of it what they will. This approach to nar- 
ration is both pleasing and slightly frustrating. Pleasing because it places the 
primary material at center stage and it avoids forcing cultural ambiguities and 
cross currents into a single rigid model. Frustrating because it deprives the 
reader of the author's own readings of his materials, his sense of their signifi- 
cance in grasping the geo-politics of culture. Living as we do in a time when 
the cultural symbols and material interests of states and peoples are intertwined 
with powerful and often violent consequences, it would be instructive to apply 
these heightened sensibilities to past time, especially if it were done by some- 
one with the expertise and erudition of Anthony Cross. From that single per- 
spective this book, otherwise so engaging and consistently attentive to detail, is 
something of a missed opportunity. 
Gary Marker 
State University of New York at Stony Brook 
Gary Kinsman, Dieter K. Buse and Mercedes Steedman, eds., Whose National 
Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies (Toronto: 
Between The Lines, 2000). 
This collection originated in a 1996 conference at Laurentian University which 
brought together critical researchers and Left activists concerned with under- 
standing and critiquing dominant notions of Canada's "national security." 


Anthony Cross — Peter the Great through British Eyes: Perceptions and Representations of the Tsar since 1698

Morrissey, Chris

Reviews 205 
See Sheldon B. Liss, Murxist Thought in Lutirl America (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 
1984); Barry Carr and Steve Ellner, eds., The Latin American Left: From the Full qJ'Allmde to 
Peres~roiku (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); or for a cynical view, Jorge G. Castaiieda, Uropiu 
Unurmed: The Latin Americun Leo after the Cold Wur (N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1994). 
Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 
Don't be fooled by what is absent from the prosaic title. With The Catholic 
Church and fhe Holocaust, 1930-1965, Michael Phayer has written the best 
Pius XI1 book to appear in the recently resurgent controversy. By virtue of its 
attention-grabbing title, John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope (1  999) is the best known 
of the lot.' But Phayer, rejecting Cornwell's thesis that anti-Semitism is the best 
explanation for Pius XII's behavior during the Holocaust, undertakes a less sen- 
sational and more professional asses~ment .~ 
One must understand Cornwell's conclusion as part of a personal, journal- 
istic quest to make sense of the Church's wartime record. Cornwell started to 
write his book in order to refute a group of young Catholics critical of Pius XI], 
who, one evening, had argued with him that, "the Church had sided with all the 
worst right-wing elements in the history of the 20th cen t~ry . "~  To his "moral 
shock,'' however, Cornwell discovered that, with regard to anti-Semitism, Pius 
XI1 was, on balance, part of the problem rather than part of any cure, either 
spiritual or political. Thus bewildered, Cornwell then drew hasty conclusions 
about Pius XIl's personal motives. 
Rather than inviting the reader to pass judgment on the anti-Semitism of 
one important man, and thus run the risk of scapegoating, Phayer provides the 
reader with evidence leading to more productive conclusions. They are more 
productive in that they address the collective responsibility of an institution, 
which still lives, and not the guilt of one man, who is now dead. Consequently, 
Phayer's book is the best one-volume introduction to the Holocaust memory 
that the Church, as an institution, must cultivate, at least if it is to face the future 
honestly. 
Instead of focusing his narrative on the personality of the wartime Pope, 
Phayer tackles the question of Catholic anti-Semitism in a measured historical 
context: before, during, and after the Holocaust. Only four out of eleven chap- 
ters analyze events during the Holocaust: three analyze before, and four after. 
With the sweep of this non-biographical scope, Phayer is able to assess Pius XI1 
more soundly than Cornwell. Paradoxically, by not making Pius XI1 the pri- 
206 Reviews 
mary focus, Phayer is able to shed even more light on Pius XII's career than if 
he had. By chronicling Catholic resistance to anti-Semitism from 1930 to 1965, 
Phayer is able to make an effective contrast between Pius XI1 and the vanguard 
of that resistance. 
More often than not, Pius XI1 was an obstacle to the resistance. In the 
words of Cardinal Tisserant, the Vatican chose instead to follow "a policy of 
selfish c~nvenience."~ Tisserant wrote these words in 1940, but, as Phayer 
shows, they also characterized subsequent Vatican policy. The misplaced prior- 
ities of the Vatican are painfully clear in retrospect, but Pius XI1 even ignored 
the protests of those who saw his misplaced priorities in advance. "Our superi- 
ors do not want to understand the real nature of this conflict," wrote Tisserant 
to Cardinal S ~ h a r d . ~  
France's postwar ambassador to the Vatican, philosopher Jacques Maritain, 
had warned presciently about anti-Semitism before the war.6 Yet Pius XI1 still 
ignored Maritain's post-Holocaust warnings about postwar anti-Semitism (177- 
82). Pius XI1 chose rather to combat Communism, not postwar anti-Semitism. 
Accordingly, he made anti-Communism the bedrock of Church spirituality and 
discipline. The Vatican viewed with suspicion philo-Semitic and pro-Israel 
Christians like Gertrud Luckner and it investigated those with her who were 
engaged in advancing post-Holocaust dialogue with Jews (176-77). 
In order that they might live to fight Communism another day, the Vatican 
sought clemency for convicted war criminals and assisted them in postwar 
escape (162-75). In spite of all this, Pius XII's apologists today still have the 
nerve to dismiss any observation of his papacy's historical favour for Nazis over 
Communists as "standard Communist propaganda" (76-77). 
Pius XI1 may not have been anti-Semitic, but he certainly had greater pri- 
orities than resistance to anti-Semitism. The welfare of the Catholic Church 
was his greatest priority, and hetping Jews in need figured in his plans only 
when he judged it would not place his greater aims in jeopardy. For example, 
he saw Rome as the symbol of universal Catholicism, and hence the fate of 
Rome's Jews was subordinate to his fears over whether the Vatican would be 
bombed during wartime (6 1-64; 97- 104). 
Jews were, in effect, pawns to be sacrificed on Pius XII's diplomatic chess- 
board, however regrettable and sorrowful this was to him. Although the papacy 
was restricted in terms of worldly power, Pius XI1 saw himself as a chessboard 
king, albeit similarly constrained. His vanity was most pronounced in the way 
he cultivated his stance as a Vicar of Christ, the role of a divine peacemaker 
unsoiled by worldly affairs. In order that he might be the postwar broker of 
peacc, and thereby accrue honour and prestige for him and the Church, he pur- 
sued a diplomatic policy of neutrality that kept him from explicitly condemn- 
ing particular acts of genocide (54-61). In reality he was far from neutral. At all 
Reviews 207 
times he preferred a strong Germany, to fight Communism, and accordingly he 
obsessively micromanaged Vatican relations with Germany, in order to pre- 
serve his desired queen on the chessboard. To keep this queen, he sacrificed the 
pawns, and Phayer documents how Pius XI1 consistently subordinated the exer- 
cise of moral leadership to diplomatic considerations. 
The bishops on Pius XII's chessboard in their own way, also failed in their 
leadership. Phayer devotes an entire chapter to survey the higher clergy geo- 
graphically across Europe. Absent Pius XII's lead, Phayer shows how they were 
reluctant to sacrifice themselves by resistance. Many would actually fear mak- 
ing the Pope look bad by doing so. Some acted admirably, but most did not. 
Only one European bishop lost his life on account of hiding Jews (109). 
The bishops, moreover, were not encouraged in resistance by the Vatican, 
which kept atrocities under a veil of silence. Information about acts of geno- 
cide, which could mobilize sentiment and inspire resistance, when it was given 
by any one bishop or informant to the Vatican, was not shared by the Vatican 
with other bishops. The Vatican, despite having the centralized resources to 
gather and disseminate information, failed to leverage what institutional advan- 
tages its global bureaucracy had.' 
Even before the Holocaust, as Phayer documents in two chapters, the 
Vatican abdicated its moral authority by failing to condemn genocide in Poland 
in 1939 and Croatia in 1941. It opted instead to pursue diplomatic strategies 
aiming to shore up the political power of Catholicism in Europe. During the 
Holocaust, some lower clergy and laypeople spoke out against Nazism and suf- 
fered for it. As Phayer shows, they were not adequately encouraged in their res- 
cue efforts by the hierarchy, and so widespread resistance failed to occur. 
Worse, disdain for Jews was not adequately admonished by the hierarchy, and, 
in the current political climate, this was tantamount to blowing in the same 
direction as the Nazi wind. 
The future of Catholicism, however, lay with the rescuers and dissidents, 
who, in co-operation with Jews, paved the way for the eventual renunciation of 
Church anti-Semitism at Vatican 11. Phayer's book has the virtue of being able 
to draw upon his own previous research into many women rescuers and to pay 
homage to them: Gertrud Luckner, who, while en route to Rabbi Leo Baeck 
with relief money, was arrested and sent to Ravensbriick, but survived and went 
on to advance Christian-Jewish relations; French underground member 
Germaine Bocquet, who hid Jules Isaac while he wrote Jesus and Isruel; con- 
vent rescuers Matylda Getter and Margit Slachta; diocesan rescuer Margareta 
Sommer; Zofia Kossak-Sczcucka of rescue organization Zegota; and Germaine 
Ribiere of Amitie Chrktienne. 
Apologists for Pius XI1 consistently arrogate to him the rescue efforts of 
such Catholics, and they try to claim that Pius XI1 provided the leadership for 
208 Reviews 
such efforts. Phayer does not engage these polemicists but, much more effec- 
tively, notes instead, event by event, the lack of documentation of such leader- 
ship. He also notes, by documenting the Vatican's other institutional priorities, 
the obstacles erected by the Vatican for resistance to anti-Semitism. 
The most effective rejoinder to the right-wing polemicists, however, ought 
to be based upon the evidence that Phayer assembles regarding the Vatican's 
postwar record. It is a sorry record that sheds light on the hidden motives of the 
preceding years. The Pius XI1 apologists understandably pass over it in silence. 
If the apologists want the moral capital of any Catholic resistance to anti- 
Semitism to accrue to the papacy, simply because Pius XI1 did on occasion 
effect the rescue of some Jews, it is only fair to apply such logic consistently. 
The infamy of Catholics' sins of omission and commission with regard to anti- 
Semitism ought also to accrue to Pius XII, since he too subordinated a moral 
response to anti-Semitism to preoccupation with other concerns. The magni- 
tude of this mutual failure renders irrelevant the question of who was imitating 
whom. 
As Phayer documents, Catholic inaction outweighed Catholic action from 
1930- 1965. Nevertheless, as Vatican I1 heralded the future would still belong 
to the activists. 
Chris Morrissey 
Simon Fraser University 
' John Cornwell, Hit1er:s Pope: Tile Secre1 History ofpius XI1 (New York, 1999). 
lbid, 295-297; cf. Phayer, The Cu~holic Chuvc11 und !/re Hc~loccrus/, xii-xiii. The index to Phayer's 
book is deficient with regard to Cornwell; the index cites only Phayer's disagreements with 
Cornwcll in Phaycr's Introduction, but neglects to include references to his disagreements at more 
crucial points in the text; cf. e.g. Phayer, 76. 
Deal Hudson, "Cri.vi.s Interview With John Cornwell," Crisis (Vol. 20, No. 3). March 2002. 
Available on-line at h~t~~://cri.sisri1ag~rzi1~r.cot~1/1~1r1rc/i2OO2//1.ult1re2.h1tt1 
Phayer, 175 and 264 n.74. Phayer quotes from Guenter Lewy, The Cutilolic Church and Nazi 
Ger~i~utp' (New York, 2000 [1964]), 307. 
Lewy. 306-307. The Gcrmans confiscated this 1940 Lctter From Suhard's residence; cf. Lewy, 401 
11.156. 
Cf. Jacques Maritain. .~lttri.se,,~itist~~ (London, 1939). 
' Phaycr. 76-77. 


Michael Phayer — The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965

Josephson, Paul

228 Reviews 
A brief review cannot do justice to the many subjects addressed in Leder's 
absorbing book. I only wished that she had not stopped with Stalin's death, but 
described at greater length the last six years of the story - the period of de- 
Stalinization and her battle to return to the United States. 
Heather J. Coleman 
University of Calgary 
John Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of 
American Thought (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999). 
John Ryder has produced a remarkable study of the reaction of Soviet philoso- 
phers to American philosophical and political thought. Ryder systematically 
covers major American thinkers from the colonial period through the twentieth 
century, and from Puritan Messianism to naturalism. As Ryder notes, Soviet 
philosophers took history and the history of philosophy quite seriously, and 
their studies of American thought are also serious. One reason for this is that 
Marxists believe that the social, political and economic context of a given 
nation will strongly influence thought. These thoughts concern such funda- 
mental issues as freedom and workers' rights in various political systems. 
Soviet interest in American thought had much to do with understanding the sys- 
tem that was opposed to it during the Cold War. Another reason for Soviet 
interest in American thought was that both nations were born of revolution. 
Soviet scholars emphasized class and economic interests as major motivating 
factors in philosophy, with bourgeois interests permeating all thought. Ryder 
focuses almost exclusively on Soviet writers from the 1950s onward. 
Interpreting America covers a series of interesting topics and philosophers 
that Ryder discusses thoroughly and precisely. In his discussion of Puritan 
Messianism which developed, unlike its British form, in the absence of feudal 
social institutions, Ryder notes that Soviet scholars were reasonably concerned 
about the place of religion in American secular society, an important subject for 
them given that theirs was a society that officially promoted atheism. They had 
interest in Roger Williams as the most significant representative of Puritan 
thought, as well as in Increase Mather and Cotton Mather. They explored the 
ideas of Samuel Johnson who had been stimulated by Berkeley's Treatise on 
Principles of Human Knowledge and his Three Dialogzdes Between Hylas and 
Philonous. Ryder then turns to the American Enlightenment and aspects of 
American political theory: the notion of the necessity of central government, 
Reviews 229 
the relationship between popular sovereignty, the social contract and democra- 
cy, and even analysis of the U. S. Constitution. Ryder might have related this 
discussion to the Soviet constitutions of 1936 (the "Stalin" constitution) and 
1977 (the "Brezhnev" constitution). 
Ryder next considers Soviet interest in American romanticism because it 
was a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment. He discusses 
Soviet response to the transcendentalism of Emerson, Thoreau and others. 
Ryder focuses extensively on pragmatism and the study of Peirce, James, and 
Dewey that accelerated in late 1960s and 1970s. Soviet philosophers criticized 
pragmatism because in the end "it has no way to account for the objectively 
determined traits of the world and for our knowledge of them, a problem root- 
ed in the treatment of ideas solely as instruments."(l55) 
Ryder's study would have been stronger had he included a brief outline of 
Soviet philosophy, including the development, if not ossification of the Soviet 
version of dialectical materialism. What was Soviet philosophy? What is 
dialectical materialism? Nor does Ryder refer to any aspect of the philosophy 
of science or the importance of Lenin's philosophical legacy, preferring to 
focus on questions of epistemology and ontology in philosophical thought 
more generally. Had he done so, this might have enabled readers to understand 
how Lenin's hostility for subjective idealism served as a reason for, say, Soviet 
rejection of pragmatism which, as Ryder notes, "flirted with" subjective ideal- 
ism. 
Ryder's analysis is comprehensive. However, by organizing solely accord- 
ing to the development of American thought, he deprives the reader of context 
for understanding shifts in Soviet treatment of American thinkers. For example, 
the 1920s witnessed a Soviet fascination for things American, especially its 
technology and science. Ryder notes that there were several studies of bour- 
geois philosophy published in the late 1920s and 1930s that included discus- 
sions of American philosophy. But they were mostly descriptive, not critical. 
By the late 1920s the government had closed the last independent publishing 
houses. What impact did this have on Soviet analyses of western philosophical 
thought? 
After World War I1 there was an "explosion of analysis," most dealing with 
pragmatism. Given the Cold War context, it is not surprising that they were 
highly ideologized and characterized by "extraordinary hostility" (140). At this 
time only xenophobic hatred remained of the fascination with America and the 
west, so much so that Soviet philosophers, historians, and social scientists had 
turned their attention to proving that Russia and the USSR were the birthplace 
of many of the great achievements of humanity. I understand Ryder's unwill- 
ingness to recount the polemics that American and Soviet intcllectuals pro- 
duced during the Cold War. Still, greater context of the Soviet experience 
would enhance the appeal of this fine study. 
230 Reviews 
Why were the first major thorough treatments of American thought only 
published in the last years of the Soviet Union? Ryder says the end of USSR 
has not been a watershed event in the study of American philosophy; since 
1960 those studies had become less ideological. Still Soviet scholars continued 
to focus on exposing inadequacies in those philosophies as opposed to purpose 
of learning something. 
I have some minor quibbles with Interpreting America. In places, Ryder 
relies heavily on exegesis and analysis of the positions of one or two philoso- 
phers, or one or two works, to set forth what then seems to be characterized as 
the entire Soviet response to American thought. How many Soviet philosophers 
worked in this area? Where did they work? Were they ensconced primarily in 
the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, the conservative bastion of Soviet 
thought? Were there nuances or differences of interpretation among Soviet 
schools of American philosophy? 
Ryder provides an extensive bibliography of Soviet sources, mostly from 
the 1960s onward, and many from 1980s and later. (Translations of works of 
American thinkers also appeared for the first time only in the 1990s.) The bib- 
liography uses an inconsistent (and inaccurate) system of transliteration with 
the same words transliterated differently on the same page. 
In sum, InterpretingAmerica is an original, thoughtful piece of scholarship 
that will be of interest to advanced students of philosophy and history. 
Paul Josephson 
Colby College 
Anthony Cross, Peter the Great through British Eyes: Perceptions and 
Representations o f  the Tsar since 1698 (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press 2000). 
To refer to Anthony Cross as a leading scholar of Russian-British cultural rela- 
tions is rather like calling Lance Annstrong a pretty decent bicyclist. In truth, 
no other English Russophile or Russian anglophile, living or dead scholarly or 
popular, has contributed as much to our knowledge of English Russia and 
Russian Britannia. Exhibit A: His previous books include By the Banks of the 
Thames; By the Banks of the Neva; The Russian Theme in English Literature; 
Engraved in the Memory; Anglo-Russica Cambridge, Some Russian 
Connections; Anglo-Russian Relations in the Eighteenth Century; Catherine 
the Great and the British; An English Lady at the Court of Catherine the Great; 
Anglofiliia u trona, and.. .,well, my point is clear. 


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