A Persecuting Society

The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 
by R.I. Moore 

The 2000 edition of this book, originally published in 1987, contains two chapters responding to earlier criticism and willingly accepts some corrections, in at least one case at the expense of an important argument. So this author is not opinionated and is careful about the claims made. Moore acknowledges that violence and persecution are pretty nearly universal, but his thesis is that in the Twelfth Century, the emerging nation states of Western Europe, and also the papacy, established persecution as a distinct feature of the way both secular and church authorities enforced central control at the expense of more traditional, community based power structures.

As an example, he notes that the practice of trial by ordeal might appear objective, but depended on the judgement of a group of community figures which could be very subjective indeed. In trial by water, they might find reasons to suggest that the suspect who sank (implying innocence) had floated long enough to be guilty. In the same way, trial by holding hot irons allowed curious debates about whether the hands were healing properly (innocent) or not (guilty). History insists that replacing trail by ordeal with trial by properly educated officials is a move to greater justice, a triumph of Reason over superstition, but as Moore also notes, their operating methods used Reason in ways that had as little to do with objectivity as the popular ordeals they replaced and there was conflict between the two types of judgement. He cites examples of communities who refused to allow their decisions to be overturned by bishops or lords, not out of zealotry towards heretics for example, but to prevent their traditional powers from being encroached upon by external authorities. 

The persecuting authorities actively sought out targets for their exhibitions of power, if necessary by inventing them, or by taking a real but modest infringement and amplifying it into a major cause. In the 12th century, the three major categories were Jews, heretics and lepers. There was little if anything about their victims to account for the level of persecution and the inquisition process entailed devising a remarkably unpleasant caricature and then straining all reason to apply this to the subject. Typically this would include drawing on ancient sources, including the bible and the early church fathers, for authority, but as Moore observes, the answers they drew from these ancient authorities were entirely the product of their style of questioning. When the inquisitors sought to show that they were dealing with things predicted by the Book of Revelations, for example, they were starting out from that biblical source and then seeking evidence that could, with appropriate ingenuity, be made to fit. 

In short, the trials and persecutions revealed little about their targets and a great deal about the persecutors. In later centuries, targets multiplied. Moore cites Scribener, who in a 1996 essay showed how in 16th Century Germany, beggars, gypsies, spendthrifts, discharged soldiers and others were made vulnerable by being classified as outsiders. And Moore notes that the modern state has acquired a capacity to persecute beyond the dreams of the most ambitious mediaeval ruler. (p154)

Moore points out that persecution has if anything increased and not reduced with the passage of time. He considers that it is used by centralizing authority as a means to displace devolved and popular institutions and to interfere directly in every aspect of daily life. The book is chilling partly for its account of the distant past, but more so because it is so directly relevant to our own times. [He does not give specific examples, but I wonder how helpful it might be to use Moore's model in discussing Stalin's purges or the McCarthy era moral panic of the USA in the Fifties, or more recent "wars" on drugs and on terror.]

World Order by Henry Kissinger

I do not share many opinions with Kissinger - and he will not be very troubled to hear this - but given that he has played such an important part in world politics, and has been directly engaged in decisions as serious as war and peace, it is well worth while to see the myths by which he lives. 

The first two chapters set out his understanding of power politics. "No truly global "world order" has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe nearly four centuries ago at a peace conference in the German region of Westphalia, conducted without the involvement or even the awareness of most other continents or civilisations... The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power... Division and multiplicity, an accident of Europe's history, became the hallmarks of a new system of international order with its own distinct outlook." He contrasts this system with the Russian project of that time, to impose a single, autocratic ruler and a unified religious orthodoxy over a continually expanding empire; with the Chinese Emperor holding sway over "All Under Heaven," the pinnacle of a cultural hierarchy radiating from the centre of the world in the Chinese capital outward to all of humanity; with Islam's vision of a single, divinely sanctioned governance uniting and pacifying the world. Kissinger argues that in time, the USA also departed from the Westphalian model, instead advocating liberal democracy and free market economics as a universal aspiration to be actively promoted and even imposed. He never actually seems to criticise the USA's actions, but it is hard not to use his theoretical framework to identify major problems. 

Kissinger's sweeping survey of the use made in Europe of the Balance of Power, not to prevent war but to restrain its violence and scope, is to my mind very clever, culminating in a snappy explanation for the outbreak and consequences of the First World War. With his model in mind, it becomes terribly easy to see the strategic disaster of the way that war was ended, failing to draw either Germany or Russia into the new order, installing a string of small and hard to defend states along the their borders, virtually inviting the great powers to snack on them at leisure. He contrasts this with the 1815 peace after the defeat of Napoleon, when France was immediately restored to its proper place in the order of things. 

He moves on to give a dry and not very useful account of the Middle East and modern Islam, in which Israel is hardly noticed, before a much more lively chapter about Iran. This is both informative and, to my surprise, respectful of the Iranian approach to diplomacy. Quite simply the Iranian strategy is to seek the complete removal of American and Western influence from the region and to replace the colonial legacy with a restoration of Islamic culture. It is not difficult to consider this account as one that would be compatible with the sentiments in Edward Said's Orientalism, as others too have observed. Of course, Kissinger does not dwell on the negative aspects of America's role in the region. Although this comes later in the book, his account of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are brief but not without insights. His discussion of Afghanistan especially give a strong impression that he has no patience with American fantasies about the introduction of a western style democracy into a land of diverse local tribes, lacking traditions of even centralized government, and he implies that stronger neighbours will almost certainly intervene in time, reiterating the violent cycle. 

His discussions of Japan and of India are succinct. He has far more to say about China, not least to emphasize the continuity of modern and historic Chinese diplomatic strategies, but he talks about Mao in such bland terms that we have to assume he is being diplomatic himself. This does not matter - we have other sources for that. 

Two chapters directly concerned with the history of the USA give a very clear exposition of the major events of the past two centuries and offer some good insights, notably in his brief discussion of the Vietnam War and the domestic US opposition to that. He is not at all embarrassed to describe the various expressions of American "exceptionalism" which to my mind are in fact unpleasant. He quotes Thomas Jefferson: "We feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members." This is a thread running through the story of the USA, heard for instance in President Reagan's speech about the USA as a "City on the Hill." I have no problem with the idea that the world should watch and learn from America's experience, but I do object to the delusion that the world offers no reciprocal lessons for the Americans. 

The book closes with a review of some implications of new technologies, most importantly nuclear weapons and proliferation, but also cyber warfare and the political impact of the internet and search engines. "For most of history, technological change unfolded over decades and centuries of incremental advances that refined and combined existing technologies. Even radical innovations could over time be fitted within previous tactical and strategic doctrines: tanks were considered in terms of precedents drawn from centuries of cavalry warfare, airplanes could be conceptualised as another form of artillery, battleships as mobile forts, and aircraft carriers as airstrips. For all their magnification of destructive power, even nuclear weapons are in some respects an extrapolation from previous experience." He goes on from this to worry that computers and the internet might present insoluble problems but that is hardly the lesson to draw from the lines just quoted. He seems specifically worried that the role of serious minded foreign policy experts might be undermined and a lower calibre of politician attracted to high office. "What once had been substantive debates about the content of governance will reduce candidates to being spokesmen for a marketing effort... The candidates' main role may become fund-raising rather than the elaboration of issues. Is the marketing effort designed to convey the candidates' convictions or are the convictions expressed by the candidate the reflections of a "big-data" research effort...? If the gap between the qualities required for election and those essential for the conduct of office becomes too wide, the conceptual grasp and sense of history that should be part of foreign policy may be lost..."

This book will certainly help to give us a better "conceptual grasp and sense of history." It does paint a pretty picture of American activities on the world stage, and omits mention altogether of some difficult topics - notably Israel, or Central America - but to be fair it leaves enough material to permit a more challenging interpretation. If he were forced to be honest, I am confident he would agree that America's role as a "City on the Hill" is simply not in keeping with the Westphalian values which Kissinger presents as such an excellent model for a new world order. He does not advocate a perfect world, but one that we can all live in, with our diverse values and priorities. I like that model and much to my surprise, I very much liked Kissinger's book.