The Chief Periods of European History E-Book

Edward Freeman

• Herausgeber: Perennial Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

This subject brings me at once within the range of controversy. I believe that the doctrine for which I have struggled so long, the doctrine, as I have somewhere put it epigramatically, that we, the English people, are ourselves and not somebody else, is now often held to be altogether set aside. Only a few old-fashioned people like myself are thought likely to maintain it. Yet, whenever I come across these new lights, I always begin to doubt whether those who kindle them have ever minutely contrasted the circumstances or the results of the Teutonic settlements in Britain with those of the better known Teutonic settlements in Gaul. Now this is the very root of the matter; in discoursing of the phænomena of Gaul, I have always had an eye to the phænomena of Britain, and I trust some day, if I am ever able to work through my materials, to set forth the contrast in full. To this object the lectures which I am now gradually giving will, I hope, serve; but it will be best to put no essential part of them forth to the world till I can deal with the subject as a whole. Till then I will simply put on record, for the benefit of those who may have heard statements attributed to me which they have certainly not read in my writings, that I have nowhere said, because I never thought, that every one Briton was necessarily killed, even in those parts of Britain which became most thoroughly Teutonic. At the same time, I think that every one who really reads his Gregory and his Bæda, every one who carefully compares the map of Gaul with the map of Britain, every one who stops to think over the history of the French and the English tongues—and the history of the Welsh tongue too will not do him any harm—may possibly come to the conclusion that the doctrine that Englishmen after all are Englishmen has really some little to be said for it.

Leseprobe

THE CHIEF PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

Edward Freeman

PERENNIAL PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Edward Freeman

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EUROPE BEFORE THE ROMAN POWER.

ROME THE HEAD OF EUROPE.

ROME AND THE NEW NATIONS.

THE DIVIDED EMPIRE.

SURVIVALS OF EMPIRE.

THE WORLD ROMELESS.

GREEK CITIES UNDER ROMAN RULE.

2016

EUROPE BEFORE THE ROMAN POWER.

IN MY FIRST COURSE OF public lectures I did my best to speak in a general way of the nature of historical study, of its kindred pursuits, of the difficulties by which it is beset and of the most hopeful means of overcoming them. I spoke of the nature of the evidence with which we have to deal in the search after historic truth, and of the nature of the witnesses by whom that evidence is handed down to us. In future courses I trust to apply the principles which I then strove to lay down to the study of some of the most memorable periods since the point at which, if at any point, the special business of this chair begins. That we have ruled to be the point at which the Teutonic and Slavonic nations first began to play a chief part in the great drama of the history of Western man. In the present term I ask your attention to a course which will attempt to fill a place intermediate between these two, and which may naturally serve as a link between them. Now that we have laid down rules for the general guidance of our studies, while we are looking forward to a more minute dealing with the history of some specially memorable lands and times, we may, as the intermediate stage, do our best to part off the history of man, such parts of it at least as concern us, into a few great and strongly-marked periods. In my former course, while taking a very general view of my whole subject, I did not feel myself bound to keep within any artificial limits, whether of my own fixing or of any other man’s. When speaking of evidence and of authorities, I drew my illustrations as freely from centuries before our æra as from centuries after it. In my present course I must make a yet more direct and open raid into the territories of my ancient brother. The history of the Teuton and the Slave, since the days when those races came to the forefront of the nations in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries of our æra, will be simply unintelligible if we do not attempt at least a general picture of that elder world into which they made their way, and of the course of events which gave that world the shape in which they found it. But my sojourn in the lands which are ruled to belong to another will not be a long one; before a ξενηλασία or an Alien Act can be hurled at me, I shall be gone. It will be only for the space of about a thousand years that I need tarry beyond the frontier which after all is a frontier of my own choosing. And I shall always welcome my ancient brother on a return visit of at least the same length. If I claim to walk lightly at his side through the ages between the first Olympiad and the great Teutonic invasion of Gaul, I bid him walk more steadily, more abidingly, at my side through the ages between the Teutonic invasion of Gaul and the Ottoman conquest of Trebizond. In my next academic year I shall not need to ask leave to play truant even for so short a space as I have spoken of. My main subject will then lie fully within the barrier. We shall cross the Rhine and the Channel with the Vandal and the Saxon of the fifth century. And if it may still be sometimes needful to look back to Arminius and Ariovistus, to remember that men of our own stock fought against Gaius Julius and Gaius Marius, we can in return again call on our elder brethren to look forward for a far longer space, to assure them that we hold them thoroughly at home, not only in the Rome, Western or Eastern, of any age, but in the Aquæ Grani of Frankish Cæsars and in the Jerusalem of Lotharingian Kings.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!