Lewis Bernstein Namier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier (June 27, 1888 – August 19, 1960) was a significant English historian. He was born Ludwik Niemirowski in Wola Okrzejska in what was then Austria-Hungary and is today Poland. His family were secular-minded Jewish gentry. Namier's father, with whom Lewis often quarreled, idolized Austria-Hungary. By contrast Lewis Namier throughout his life detested the Dual Monarchy. Namier was educated at universities of Lemberg in Austrian Galicia (modern Lviv, Ukraine), Lausanne, and the London School of Economics. At Lausanne, he heard Vilfredo Pareto lecture and whose ideas about elites would have much influence on him.

He migrated to the United Kingdom in 1906 and became a British subject in 1913. During World War I, he fought as private with 20th Royal Fusiliers in 1914–1915 but was discharged owing to poor eyesight. Namier then held various positions with the Propaganda Department (1915–1917), the Information Department (1917–1918) and finally with the Foreign Office (1918–1920). At the Versailles peace conference of 1919, Namier served as part of the British delegation. Namier’s area of responsibility at Versailles was Poland. At Versailles, Namier's relations with the chief Polish delegate Roman Dmowski were extremely antagonistic owing to Dmowski's anti-Semitism.

After leaving the government, Namier served at Balliol College (1920–1921) before going into business. Later, Namier who was a long-time Zionist worked as political secretary for the Jewish Agency in Palestine (1929–31). For a time, Namier was a close friend and associate of Chaim Weizmann, but Weizmann later severed his relations with Namier when the latter converted to Anglicanism to marry his second wife. He served as professor at the University of Manchester from 1931 until his retirement in 1953. Namier always regarded Manchester as an unacceptably provincial university, and longed for an appointment to what he regarded as a more prestigious university. Namier remained active in various Zionist groups (in particular lobbying the British Government to allow the creation of what he called a Jewish Fighting Force in the Palestine Mandate), and from 1933 was engaged in efforts on behalf of Jewish refugees from Germany.

He is best known for his work on Parliament and its composition in the latter part of the eighteenth century, which by its very detailed study of individuals caused substantial revision to be made to accounts based on a party system. Namier's best known works were The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, England in The Age of the American Revolution and the History Of Parliament series he edited later in his life with John Brooke. Namier used Prosopography or collective biography of every MP and peer who sat in the British Parliament in later the 18th century to reveal that local interests, not national ones, often determined how parliamentarians voted. Namier argued very strongly that far from being tightly organized groups, both the Tories and Whigs were collections of ever-shifting and fluid small groups whose stance altered on issue by issue basis. Namier felt that prosopographical methods were the best ones for analyzing small groups like the House of Commons, but was opposed to the application of prosopography on larger groups. At the time of its publication in 1929, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III caused an historical revolution in terms of understanding the 18th century.

In addition, Namier used other sources such as wills and tax records to reveal the interests of the MPs. In his time, Namier's methods were innovative and were quite controversial. Namier's obsession with collecting facts such as club membership of various MPs and then attempting to co-relate them to voting patterns led his critics such as Sir Herbert Butterfield to accuse him of "taking ideas out of history". Namier was well-known for his dislike in ideas and people who believed in them, and made little secret of his belief that the best form of government was that of a grubby self-interested elite.

A friend, admirer and patient of Sigmund Freud, Namier was an early pioneer in Psychohistory. He also wrote on modern European history, especially diplomatic history and his later books Europe in Decay, In the Nazi Era and Diplomatic Prelude unsparing condemned the Third Reich and appeasement. In the 1930s, Namier had been active in the anti-appeasement movement and together with his protégé A.J.P. Taylor spoke out against the Munich Agreement at several rallies in 1938. As an ethnic Jew (Namier had converted to Anglicanism), Namier was horrified by the Holocaust and his writings on German history have been criticized for Germanophobia. Like the work of his friend Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, Namier's diplomatic histories are generally poorly regarded by historians because Namier was content to condemn appeasement without seeking to explain the reasons for it.

He was married twice and knighted in 1952. Also, in 1952, Namier was given the honour of deliverng the Romanes Lecture, on which subject Namier chose Monarchy and the Party System. Namier held very right-wing views, and has been called the most reactionary British historian of his generation. Ironically, Namier’s principal protégé was the left-wing historian A.J.P. Taylor.

1 Work
2 References
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Work

The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 1929.
England in The Age of the American Revolution, 1930.
Skyscrapers and other Essays, 1931. Contains his essays on Austrian Galicia.
In the Margin of History, 1939.
Conflicts: Studies in Contemporary History, 1942.
1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 1944.
Facing East: essays on Germany, the Balkans and Russia in the twentieth century, 1947.
Diplomatic prelude, 1938–1939, 1948.
Europe in Decay: A Study in Disintegration, 1936–40, 1950.
Avenues of History, 1952.
In the Nazi era, 1952.
Basic Factors in Nineteenth-Century European History, 1953.
Monarchy and the party system : the Romanes Lecture delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre 15 May 1952, 1952.
Personalities and powers, 1955.
Vanished Supremacies; essays on European history, 1812–1918, 1958.
Crossroads of Power: essays on eighteenth-century England, 1962.
The House of Commons, 1754–1790, 1966, 1964, edited by John Brooke & Sir Lewis Namier.

[edit] References

Burke, Peter "Namier, (Sir) Lewis Bernstein" page 207 from Great Historians of the Modern Age edited by Lucian Boia, Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Colley, Linda Lewis Namier New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
James, Clive. Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (2007) online excerpt
Namier, Julia Lewis Namier: A biography, London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Pares, Richard & Taylor, A.J.P. (editors) Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier, London: Macmillan Press, 1956.
Price, Jacob "Party, Purpose, and Pattern: Sir Lewis Namier and His Critics" pages 71-93 from Journal of British Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 November 1961.
Rose, Norman Lewis Namier & Zionism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.