XXI-A PLEA FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF
NORTHERN EUROPE.

By PROF. A. C. COOLIDGE,

OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

A PLEA FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF NORTHERN

EUROPE.

By A. C. Coolidge.

The earlier history of northern, or more especially of northeastern, Europe has as yet attracted but small attention from western scholars. In England and America the ignorance about it is most profound, and the students who have contrib. uted anything of value in this field could be counted on one's fingers. To be sure, the Germans have been too near the scene of action to neglect it entirely, while the French have at one time or another illuminated the history of the north with works ranging all the way from the most brilliant literature to the best fruits of modern scholarship. Thus, it is hardly too much to say that the reputation of Charles XII in the west is due rather to the famous biography by Voltaire than to his own character and actions, and most of the best foreign authorities on Russia to-day are to be found in France. Still little enough is generally known about such subject. The educated public has a vague idea that Gustavus Adolphus suddenly appeared from a hitherto unknown country, like a deus ex machina, to save the cause of Protestantism, and that Peter the Great forcibly converted a nation of barbarians, with no past worth troubling about, into a state with at least the superficial semblance of a civilized power. Even historians seldom realize that the interference of Gustavus in Germany may have been, from a Swedish point of view, "a serious blunder." His previous campaigns in Poland, though accidentally connected with the Thirty Years' war, and serving as a preparation for his part in it, were due to entirely independent circumstances, and would have taken place if

Charles XII, by Nisbet Bain.

the rest of the world had been at peace. Peter the Great, likewise, had predecessors who paved the way for his reforms, while the Russia he turned into new channels can only be understood by a careful review of her previous history.

There are plainly three reasons which may make the study of northern Europe of value to us. On the first of these, the importance of Russia in the world to day, we need not dwell, for everything connected with the development and conditions of such a mighty Empire is obviously worth our attention. Its inhabitants, too, are a gifted people, destined to play more and more a leading part in the future of mankind—the truth of this, though insufficiently realized, is too evident for discussion. For her part Scandinavia, which is holding her own well in literature and art, still has to be counted in politics. We must remember also the great questions of the past that are by no means all settled. The antagonism of the German and the Slav is as intense as ever; the dominion of the Baltic is as undetermined as that of the Mediterranean; Poland is dead, but the Polish nationality is full of life, gaining rather than losing strength in a way that makes its ultimate fate difficult to predict.

In the second place, we have to consider the influence the Scandinavians and Slavs have had on the western countries. We must begin by admitting that, as regards institutions, this has been but slight. It is true that in Holstein the Dane has been but recently dislodged, and in the manners and life of the inhabitants of Pomerania, Brandenburg, or Austria traces of Slav predecessors may reward the patient investigator, but, generally speaking, the interchange of ideas between the German and his more barbarous neighbor has been one-sided. On the other hand, no one can be well versed in the history of Germany without a study of the Drang nach Osten. For the fortunes of the Teutonie race the battle of Tannenberg was more momentous than that of Legnano, and the results of the colonization of the lands beyond the Elbe and the conquest of Prussia outweigh the brilliant, but transitory, glory of the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy. Even a survey of German civic institutions is incomplete without a knowledge of their workings or influence in Stockholm, Riga, and Cracow. If we pass to Rome and the Church we perceive that in the plans of the Jesuits and other leaders of the Catholic reaction Poland and even Sweden at one time held a foremost place,

while the dreams and enterprises of the Holy See in her dealings with Russia since the council of Florence form a curious yet unfinished chapter of history. It was a pope that suggested and brought about the marriage between a Tsar of Moscow and the heir of the last Emperor of Constantinople. Indeed, the Catholic Church has always looked to the East as well as to the West, more than once making concessions in the former quarter that she has sternly refused in the latter. On its side the North, after the beginning of the seventeenth century, on several occasions interfered decisively in the general affairs of Europe, in which it took a more and more active part. Gustavus II of Sweden arrested the progress of German Catholicism after Christian IV of Denmark had failed in the attempt to do so; the ministers of the boy King, Charles XI, joined the Triple Alliance which checked the policy of Louis XIV, while the Pole Sobieski dealt him a serious blow by saving Vienna from the Turks; the intervention of Charles XII, which at one time seemed probable, might have turned the balance either way in the war of the Spanish succession; Elizabeth of Russia was the most successful adversary of Frederick the Great, and Alexander I triumphed over Napoleon.

When we turn to the history of Scandinavia, Poland, and Russia for those peculiar features, or workings of great principles, that make a third reason for study and comparison, in view of the endless variety of detail, we have to be on our guard against the dangers of hasty generalization. All I shall attempt to point out here is a few salient features that call for attention.

One of the most important of these is the fact that we do not meet with the unity that so long prevailed in western Europe; no pope or emperor was recognized, however imperfectly, as the head of the community of Christendom. On the contrary, from the first we have the bitterest conflict of race and religion. The feeling of nationality seems always to have been intense, except for a time in the upper classes under the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century. The Russian, the Pole, the Dane, and the Swede were actively hostile to one another as such, if not at an earlier date chronologically, at least at an earlier stage in their development than we find was often the case in the lands to the west of them. Each of these four nations had its day when the primacy of the north belonged or seemed on the point of belonging to it. Each is even now