Carroll Quigley was a historian. He trained at Harvard and Princeton and taught at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Though he's been compared favorably to Toynbee, he remains curiously obscure. A few years ago, I talked to someone who had just recieved a PhD in history from UCLA and drew a blank when I mentioned the name.
The situation is unfortunate, since Quigley has much to recommend him. If nothing else, he gives a view of the world as seen by the powerful and as taught to their immediate servants. In order to be effective at their jobs (defending the interests of those who run the show) foreign service workers must have a reasonably accurate picture of how things work. It was Quigley's role to provide that picture.
It is not in the interest of the ruling class, however, for the average citizen to have such an accurate picture. It would dispell too many carefully cultivated misconceptions about how things are. That's why you've never heard of him.
If, perchance, you HAVE heard of Quigley, it's likely that he was portrayed as a lunatic conspiricy theorist of the right, associated with Pat Robertson, The John Birch Society and worse. If you are slightly more informed, you may know that the right views him not as an ally, but as an unrepentant member of "The Conspiracy" who ratted it out for some obscure reason.
Particularly effective in maintaining ignorance concerning Quigley's work are leftist "conspiracy theory" debunkers such as Chip Berlet. If you press him, Chip will tell you, as he's told me on this list, that Quigley is "stupid", though one must wonder why a "stupid" person was allowed to shape the world views of potential U.S. Foreign Service employess at Georgetown University for 30 years. (Georgetown produces a larger percentage of Foreign Service employess than Harvard and Yale combined). While there, he taught a required course in world civilizations, so everyone passing through (including Bill Clinton, who was quite impressed) heard what he had to say. One must also wonder why Quigley merits no discussion at Chip's web site. Chip has cited Quigley as a major source of right wing conspiracy theories, and that is certainly true. Strange then that he makes no attempt to attack the problem at its source.
Well, it's strange until you read Quigley. Then it makes perfect sense.
Pardon my presumption in assuming a total unfamiliarity with Quigley's work, but I would be very surprised if more than one or two people on the list had ever read anything he wrote (Chip, perhaps,included). Most, I suspect, have never heard of him. So a little background...
Quigley's first openly published work was _The Evolution of Civilizations_ (1963). The book represents the content of his world civilizations course at Georgetown. In it he presents a theory of civilizational development. While earlier historians had presented various metaphors to explain civilizational change, Quigley presents a concrete model: the institutionalization of social instruments.
A social instrument is a cooperative arrangement that fulfills some social purpose. One of Quigley's examples is American football, originally adopted as a way to get college students out into the fresh air for exercise.
Institutionalization is the process whereby instruments come to serve, not the original social purpose, but the interests of those within the structure. He traces how football became, over the years, institutionalized to the point where it no longer serves the original purpose at all, but is instead an excuse for students to get out in the fresh air and drink beer while supporting the careers of coaches, atheletics administrators and the like.
A second key concept is that of the instrument of expansion of a civilization: the central method by which a given civilization achieves growth. Examples include slavery, commercial capitalism, mercantilism, industrial capitalism, and financial capitalism.
The process that drives civilizational development, then, is the institutionalization of instruments of expansion.
Armed with this analysis he illustrates how the careers of the various civilizations that have appeared over the millenia can be understood in its terms.
The life of a civilization begins with the development of an instrument of expansion. For a while, perhaps centuries, the civlization grows. People are more or less content with a piece of the expanding pie. As the instrument of expansion becomes institutionalized however, it ceases to serve the original social purpose as more and more of the benefits are directed toward those with vested interests in the system. This results in civil discontent, class conflict and other symptoms of crisis. Typically one of three things then happens: the institution is reformed, it is circumvented by a new instument of expansion, or it successfully crushes all opposition. If the latter occurs, the civilization enters a "golden age", i.e. one where the stagnant institution of expansion reaches full bloom. Since the average citizen is now merely being exploited, real growth stops, cynicism grows, hope dies, and a period of decay ensues. Historically, when a civilization has reached that stage, it has only been a matter of time until it was invaded and conquered by some younger, still growing, competing civilization.
Quigley's next major openly published work was _Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time_(1966). There, Quigley focuses on the twentieth century. He identifies two competing instruments of expansion in modern Western Civilization, industrial and financial capitalism, and shows how the struggle between them for dominance was reflected in the major conflicts of the last century.
But it is here that things become sticky. One of the elements that Quigley identifies as having had great influence (though certainly not decisive control) in the first half of the twentieth century is a quasi-secret organization that was formed by members of the English ruling class. He calls it the Rhodes-Milner Group. (Rhodes being, of course, Cecil Rhodes, Milner being the undeservedly obsure, but undeniably powerful Alfred Milner.) It grew out of the power nexus surrounding the Cecil family and was sometimes identified as the "Cliveden Set". The group was ideologically motivated by Ruskin, felt that Western Civilization had much to recommend it (after reading Quigley, you might agree with them on at least that much), and wanted to create a world system by bringing the U.S. back into the fold of the commonwealth and extending the benefits of Western Civilization to the entire world. They were agents of financial capital.
The group appears, hard at work, at various decisive moments in the 20th Century. He chronicles their creation of the Royal Institutes of International Affairs in various members of the commonwealth and the Council of Foreign Relations in the U.S. as public vehicles for the Rhodes-Milner agenda, and discusses, among other things, their role in the Boer War, the drafting of the Balfour Declaration, the Treaty of Versailles, the emasculation of the League of Nations, and Chamberlin's Appeasement Policy.
He outlines the methods they used, such as media control through direct or indirect ownership, control of the writing of the history of the British Empire (they modestly neglected to mention their own role) through control of educational institutions, and control of institutions such as RIIA and the CFR, designed to shape the opinions of those who shape the opinions of the masses.
But the Rhodes-Milner Group is hardly the central focus of the work. Instead they are presented as merely another element in the sprawling chaos that is human affairs.
In the course of the book, which weighs in at some 1200 pages, Quigley covers a broad range of topics, among them the role of technology in the development of late Western Civilization, a compelling class analysis of the United States, an assessment of the then current situation and the prospects for Western Civilization.
The contemporary reviews of this book are illuminating: the NYT dismissed it as boring and perhaps confused (It didn't mention that Quigley cites the NYT as one of the media outlets controlled by the Rhodes-Milner organization; in fact, like the other reviews, it doesn't bother to mention the Rhodes-Milner Group at all), one reviewer lauds "a refreshing frankness" but does not elaborate, most simply grapple with a few trivial points and stress the great length of the book, suggesting that readers could better spend their time in other pursuits. Somehow, the book never made the best seller lists.
Quigley's remaining book length work was "The Anglo-American Establishment". The publication history is rather obscure. Quigley wrote it in 1948, so it predates either of his other books, but was not openly published in his lifetime. It is hard to for me to believe that it was uncirculated prior to his death, hence my earlier hedging about "open publication" of this other works.
Unlike _Tragedy and Hope_, _The Anglo-American Establishment_ focuses exclusively on the Rhodes-Milner Group, and it provides meticulous (perhaps tedious) recitations of the activities and careers of the various group members. Much of the material comes from examination of the archives of the group itself (though Quigley says he includes nothing that cannot be found also in open archives), and Quigley expresses an uneasy approval of some of their goals, while, at the same time, condemning their desire for secrecy and some of the real world results of their actions.
Quigley died in 1976, but the picture that he painted of the twentieth century ends in the 60's. Much of the power of the Rhodes-Milner Group was then dispersed (though the group still existed). Power had shifted to the U.S. and Financial Capital was somewhat in check following WWII and Bretton Woods. He felt that the struggle between Financial and Industrial Capital was still unresolved, and that the question of whether Western Civilization would enter a new age of expansion or a "golden age", leading to decay, was open.
It is interesting to view what has transpired since in light of the insights Quigley has provided, but that must wait. Perhaps another day.
-- bill
"Truth unfolds in time through a communal process." Carrol Quigley