Recently, given the responsibility of commissioning a textbook on the history of modern Europe (covering, roughly, the period between the French Revolution and the end of the Second World War) , I decided to spruce up my reading of the subject. I had to meet authors who had degrees from Ivy League universities and I couldn’t afford to prove myself to be a dud. Well, I did read a little and found out something interesting. Napoleon was, apart from being ambitious, a rather caustic character. His view of liberty, for one, is entertaining: ‘Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men. Consequently, it may be repressed with impunity. Equality, on the other hand, pleases the masses.’ Elsewhere he muses: ‘Liberty means a good civil code. The only thing modern nations car for is property’1
The point is that even the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ made by the post-revolution French National Assembly declared that ‘…social distinctions may be based only upon general usefulness’. It does not define ‘general usefulness’ but did admit in the seventeenth declaration that ‘property is a sacred and inviolable right’. Interestingly enough very few of us know that simultaneous to the declaration of the Rights of Man there was a Declaration of the Rights of Woman. Anyone interested in knowing about this can pick up and read The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Bedford Books, 1996), pp 124-129. I found it more radical and passionate than most of the bull shit that a literature student encounters in his post-grad classes.


The Versailles Peace Treaty, we all know, sowed the seeds of the Second War. But, few care to read it. While the treaty put the entire blame of the war on Germany, extracting costs from it for all damages, it did little to blame greedy and lousy nations like Britain. It declared—‘Germany renounces in favour of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers all her rights and titles over her oversea possessions’. It gave Germany fifteen years to ruin itself sufficiently. After that, it promised to withdraw. However, it also declared that child labour needs to be abolished and that ‘labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce’. It accepted ‘The right of association for all lawful purposes by the employed as well as the by the employers.’ Lenin, we know, did not think much of the First World War and Soviet Union did not participate in it. (This disappointed a socialist called Mussolini greatly and turned him into what we know he was.) He decried this war as a capitalists’ war scourging for colonial booty. However, this declaration already shows the effect of the Russian Revolution: it acknowledges labour rights and concludes that—‘Each state should have due regard to the equitable economic treatment of all workers.’ The League of Nations did not respect it, the Great depression was inevitable. So was the Second World War, the fall of Churchill and the British Empire.


I can go on with my litany. The point is that the study of history in our country is lacking in that it disregards research and reading of historical documents and sources. It emphasizes rote learning and trusting secondary opinion as holy-speak. Thus, we grow up with half-baked ideas and politically biased summaries. I do not speak of obscure sources or pedantic thesis. Read, the freely available ones and know for yourself.