Leo Santifaller: Ergänzungsband 2/2. Festschrift zur Feier des 200 jährigen Bestandes des HHStA 2 Bände (1951)
VII. Allgemeine und österreichische Geschichte. - 68. Eduard McCabe (London): Another centenary. The execution of Charles I
338 Me Cabe, Another centenary. attributed to the career of the second Stuart. The theory just mentioned is of course an echo of the famous articles by Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus”. The controversy thus let loose on the origin of capitalism has brought down fire from a number of heavy academic guns; from Sombart, who went part of the way with Weber by contending that capitalism is purely modern; from Brentano1), who found out-throat capitalism at the bottom of the Punic wars; from Tawney, who admits the force of the Weber thesis for the seventeenth century and draws a vivid picture, of the Puritan tradesmen, for example, cursing Laud and his Popish soap 2); from Troeltsch3) and Robertson who deny any causal relation between religion and capitalism. The consensus of opinion has latterly sided with the last mentioned view 4) and the way has thereby been made easy for an interpretation of the Civil War period as a good example of the complexity of the class war5). That view has duly met with the flat contradiction that the Great Rebellion was “at no time a class war” 6). It is a commonplace that historians react to the prevailing climate of opinion; that seems to be fully borne out here. If the truth is not to remain in a well, the state of historical knowledge raises two questions: Firstly, whether one can predict the next phase of the Zeitgeist. Since that may mean only travelling a little further round the circumference of the truth, the second question arises, whether a synthesis of the work already done would cancel out at least the more violent prejudices of the succeeding generations. In disposing of the second question first, it may be said that each of us in fact makes his own synthesis, a synthesis that turns out to have the colour of our prejudices. This article tries to show how interest has shifted from the particular to the general; to be reminded then of other points of view, maintained at length, may put a bridle on our present prejudices. For a better synthesis than our own we can only wait; a perfect synthesis, even if it were possible, we would not recognise. As for the first question, it appears we have enough trouble with the past without daring to attempt the future. We can only note what appeared to be tendencies. Is it fanciful to suggest that the rationalising impulse, the tendency to interpret events in terms of economics, sociology, and as Europeans, comes from the Continent ? It is odd that the outstanding work recently done on this period by American and British scholars, shows something like filial piety or ancestor-worship; they are more concerned with notable men than with ideologies 7). An important aspect of British history that seems to be neglected is the actual cultural relation, apart from questionable theories on origins, between Europe and England in the 17th century. x) Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus. *) Religion and the rise of capitalism, p. 213. 3) Cit. Robertson, op. cit., p. 168, n. 2. 4) Clark, op. cit. B) Dobbs M., Studies in Capitalism, pp. 167—172; Robertson, op. cit., pp. 183—184; Unwin, op. cit., pp. 304, 328—329. ®) Davies, op. cit., p. XX. 7) Cf. Notestein, Commons Debates of 1629; Jordan, Development of religious toleration; Neale, Elizabethan Parliament. On the other hand, the contrary tendency is seen in the work of Tawney, Dobbs and Robertson already cited, all economic historians. Cf. also Wright L. B., Middle-class culture in Elizabethan England.
