Honour Among Men and Nations: Transformations of an Idea

124 Pages·1982·5.26 MB·English

by  Geoffrey Best

GEOFFREY BEST is dean of the School of European Studies at
the University of Sussex.
To no group subject to sociological and political analysis has
honour seemed to matter more than to the military. Their
idea of it has commonly been accepted as the most superior,
open to emulation to the limited extent that different cir-
cumstances and purposes in non-military life permit.
The degeneration of this concept and of the public realm
in which honour's obligations have to be observed is the
subject of this book, based on the 1981 Joanne Goodman
Lectures at the University of Western Ontario.
Best begins with the discovery, in the age of the American
and French revolutions, of the nation as the supreme object
of honourable service. He discusses how nationalism and
democracy marched together through the nineteenth century
to harden this creed and broaden its base, so that what had
previously been a code for noblemen became a popular code
for patriots.
He finds that, in spite of the historical naturalness, even
inevitability, of nationalism, its ensuing and corrective
counter-current, internationalism, is a much more appealing
principle. In internationalism, a tradition of cosmopolitan,
transnational thought and activity, unmoved by the pas-
sions of nationalism and critical of them on the grounds of
humanity and peace, he perceives a greater field for honour-
able service - honour's obligation to the service of mankind.
Best casts new light upon some familiar historical epi-
sodes and values and suggests fruitful fields for future
study.
THE JOANNE GOODMAN LECTURES
Delivered at The University of Western Ontario
1976
C.P. Stacey
Mackenzie King and the Atlantic Triangle
(Toronto: Macmillan of Canada / Maclean Hunter Press 1976)
1977
Robin W. Winks
The Relevance of Canadian History:
U.S. and Imperial Perspectives
(Toronto: Macmillan of Canada 1979)
1978
Robert Rhodes James
Britain in Transition
1979
Charles Ritchie
Diplomacy: The Changing Scene
1980
Kenneth A. Lockridge
Settlement and Unsettlement in Early America:
The Crisis of Political Legitimacy before the Revolution
(New York: Cambridge University Press 1981)
HONOUR
AMONG
MENAND
NATIONS
Transformations
of an Idea
The 1981 Joanne Goodman Lectures
GEOFFREY BEST
University of Toronto Press
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 1982
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-2459-9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-6472-8 (paper)
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Best, Geoffrey.
Honour among men and nations
(The Joanne Goodman lectures ; 1981)
ISBN 0-8020-2459-9 (bound). Ý–ISBN 0-8020-6472-8 (pbk.)
1. Honor. 2. Nationalism. 3. Internationalism.
I. Title. II. Series: The Joanne Goodman memorial
lectures; 1981.
JC328.B47 320.5 C82-094520-X
The Joanne Goodman Lecture Series
has been established by Joanne's family
and friends to perpetuate the memory of her
blithe spirit, her quest for knowledge, and
the rewarding years she spent at the
University of Western Ontario.
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Contents
FOREWORD ix
PREFACE xi
1 Noblemen and the Rest 1
2 Democracy and Nationalization 27
3 Man and Mankind 55
Postscript 85
NOTES 95
INDEX 105
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Foreword
The Joanne Goodman Lectures were established at the Univer-
sity of Western Ontario in 1975 to honour the memory of the
elder daughter of Mr and Mrs Edwin A. Goodman of Toronto.
Each year the university invites a scholar to deliver three lectures
on some aspect of the history of the English-speaking peoples,
particularly those of the Atlantic Triangle of Canada, the United
Kingdom, and the United States, that will be of interest to mem-
bers of the university community and the general public. The list
of those who have so far participated in the series indicates the
distinction of these lectures and the part they play in the intellec-
tual life of the institution. The University of Western Ontario is
grateful to Mr and Mrs Goodman and their family and friends
for this generous and moving benefaction dedicated to a student
who loved history and enjoyed her years at this university.
Professor Geoffrey Best, dean of the School of European Studies
at the University of Sussex, has long been acknowledged as one of
the leading historians of Victorian religion and society. But by
1971 when he published Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-1875, the best
synthesis and interpretation of the high point of nineteenth-cen-
tury civilization, he was already greatly expanding and chang-
ing the range of his scholarly interests in a manner exemplary
but daunting to other historians by turning to the history of