April 4, 2023
Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall and Rise
Dame Linda Colley (OBE)
Shelby M.C. Davis Professor of History, Princeton University
George Bustin (introducer) and Dame Linda Colley
Minutes of the 26th Meeting of the 81st Year
John Cotton presided, and Sarah Ritter read the minutes of the previous meeting. George Bustin introduced his guest, Professor Stanley Korngold, Professor of Comparative Literature and German at Princeton University. Julia Coale led the invocation. There were 90 Old Guard members in attendance.
George Bustin introduced our speaker, Dame Linda Colley, Shelby M.C. Davis Professor of History at Princeton University, where she has taught for over 20 years. She is an eminent scholar of British colonial, imperial, and global history, and her books are considered classics in the field. Professor Colley has received numerous awards and lectureships and seven honorary degrees. In 2022 she was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Dame Colley described Edward Gibbon and his magisterial work, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as “hiding in plain sight.” While hugely popular in its own time, today very few people have read its six volumes and 3000+ pages. Nevertheless, “Decline and Fall” has become a common and widely recognized trope for decadence and decay. “Why should a fat Englishman, leading a seemingly comfortable life in what was then the richest country on the globe, select decline as his subject and write on it at such relentless length?” she asked. “And why has it become one of the most widely translated works of history in the modern world?” Some answers lie in the man himself. In his autobiography, he structured his life around a single theme: “From my earliest youth, I aspired to the character of an historian.” He wrote little about his complex sex life or his relation to money and power, and instead described a rather simple, private existence, which was hardly the case. During his lifetime he was a militia officer, a member of Parliament and an imperial bureaucrat caught up in the American Revolutionary War.
Colley rediscovered Gibbon while recovering from a foot operation that left her bedridden for six weeks with plenty of time to reread Gibbon’s work. She suggested we might better understand this eminent historian through the lens of defeat, disadvantage, and loss, and observed that “defeat and loss ran through his family and relations.” A number of his relatives were Jacobites, Roman Catholics, and Tories at a time when all three were unpopular if not illegal. These disadvantaged loyalties had paradoxical consequences, enabling Gibbon to develop a questioning position about Britain and to view it from a wider, global horizon.
Gibbon’s early journal focused on three dates that were “freighted with menace.” His mother and his six younger siblings died. He described Oxford as “most idle and unprofitable,” and was sent abroad to Lausanne for five years after being expelled for converting to Catholicism, though this last had many benefits and changed his life.
Along with his progress as a scholar came a particular intimate defeat. In 1762, while serving as a militia officer, Gibbon consulted a doctor about a persistent swelling in his left testicle. Later diagnosed as a hydracell in his scrotum, the swelling continued to grow until, according to Gibbon, it “was the size of a small child.” The condition was incurable and there was little possibility of Gibbon reproducing children. Thus, “issues of decline and decay were particularly personal and powerful,” Colley observed. His progressing illness confirmed his already strong interest in aggression and the uses of military power, serving for him as a compensatory expression of masculinity.
“What remains striking,” Professor Colley told us “is the extraordinarily ambitious scope of the work, written by someone who was increasingly frail, but who was nevertheless able to dive deeply into sources, pulling them together into a compelling narrative.” “This was a bestseller from the start,” she said. The original printing of 1000 sold out in three days. The sheer length of Decline and Fall allowed Gibbon to include a “succession of gripping pen portraits,” including many of women, and helps to explain why it was especially popular with female readers.
Gibbon was the first true global historian, showing how events in one place had ripple effects elsewhere, deepened by the American Revolution. Gibbon was both a member of Parliament and an assiduous member of the Board of Trade and Plantations, which gave him an intimate view of British colonialism and the decline of Britain’s empire through the loss of the 13 colonies. While Gibbon condemned the American insurrectionists, he also felt, as a former militia officer, that Britain could not win because the cost of sustaining a war by an empire was simply too great.
Gibbon’s mixed message about empire helped to explain the extraordinary popularity of Decline and Fall and its spread across the globe. The title – Decline and Fall – also contributed to its popularity. It was the first work to use this particular construction and was far more uncompromising than other works that focused on the cyclical nature of history. The fact that his narrative of the decline of Rome coincided with the decline of Britain’s empire in America did wonders for its sales, and so did its perceived critique of imperialism. Decline and Fall was widely translated and its reissue often coincided with upheavals in other countries. The work influenced readers as various as Roosevelt and Churchill, Gandhi and Nehru, Richard Nixon and Richard Wagner. The essential appeal of the work was that it could be approached as a “particularly crowded novel,” the Game of Thrones of its time.
Respectfully submitted,
Jane Silverman
George Bustin introduced our speaker, Dame Linda Colley, Shelby M.C. Davis Professor of History at Princeton University, where she has taught for over 20 years. She is an eminent scholar of British colonial, imperial, and global history, and her books are considered classics in the field. Professor Colley has received numerous awards and lectureships and seven honorary degrees. In 2022 she was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Dame Colley described Edward Gibbon and his magisterial work, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as “hiding in plain sight.” While hugely popular in its own time, today very few people have read its six volumes and 3000+ pages. Nevertheless, “Decline and Fall” has become a common and widely recognized trope for decadence and decay. “Why should a fat Englishman, leading a seemingly comfortable life in what was then the richest country on the globe, select decline as his subject and write on it at such relentless length?” she asked. “And why has it become one of the most widely translated works of history in the modern world?” Some answers lie in the man himself. In his autobiography, he structured his life around a single theme: “From my earliest youth, I aspired to the character of an historian.” He wrote little about his complex sex life or his relation to money and power, and instead described a rather simple, private existence, which was hardly the case. During his lifetime he was a militia officer, a member of Parliament and an imperial bureaucrat caught up in the American Revolutionary War.
Colley rediscovered Gibbon while recovering from a foot operation that left her bedridden for six weeks with plenty of time to reread Gibbon’s work. She suggested we might better understand this eminent historian through the lens of defeat, disadvantage, and loss, and observed that “defeat and loss ran through his family and relations.” A number of his relatives were Jacobites, Roman Catholics, and Tories at a time when all three were unpopular if not illegal. These disadvantaged loyalties had paradoxical consequences, enabling Gibbon to develop a questioning position about Britain and to view it from a wider, global horizon.
Gibbon’s early journal focused on three dates that were “freighted with menace.” His mother and his six younger siblings died. He described Oxford as “most idle and unprofitable,” and was sent abroad to Lausanne for five years after being expelled for converting to Catholicism, though this last had many benefits and changed his life.
Along with his progress as a scholar came a particular intimate defeat. In 1762, while serving as a militia officer, Gibbon consulted a doctor about a persistent swelling in his left testicle. Later diagnosed as a hydracell in his scrotum, the swelling continued to grow until, according to Gibbon, it “was the size of a small child.” The condition was incurable and there was little possibility of Gibbon reproducing children. Thus, “issues of decline and decay were particularly personal and powerful,” Colley observed. His progressing illness confirmed his already strong interest in aggression and the uses of military power, serving for him as a compensatory expression of masculinity.
“What remains striking,” Professor Colley told us “is the extraordinarily ambitious scope of the work, written by someone who was increasingly frail, but who was nevertheless able to dive deeply into sources, pulling them together into a compelling narrative.” “This was a bestseller from the start,” she said. The original printing of 1000 sold out in three days. The sheer length of Decline and Fall allowed Gibbon to include a “succession of gripping pen portraits,” including many of women, and helps to explain why it was especially popular with female readers.
Gibbon was the first true global historian, showing how events in one place had ripple effects elsewhere, deepened by the American Revolution. Gibbon was both a member of Parliament and an assiduous member of the Board of Trade and Plantations, which gave him an intimate view of British colonialism and the decline of Britain’s empire through the loss of the 13 colonies. While Gibbon condemned the American insurrectionists, he also felt, as a former militia officer, that Britain could not win because the cost of sustaining a war by an empire was simply too great.
Gibbon’s mixed message about empire helped to explain the extraordinary popularity of Decline and Fall and its spread across the globe. The title – Decline and Fall – also contributed to its popularity. It was the first work to use this particular construction and was far more uncompromising than other works that focused on the cyclical nature of history. The fact that his narrative of the decline of Rome coincided with the decline of Britain’s empire in America did wonders for its sales, and so did its perceived critique of imperialism. Decline and Fall was widely translated and its reissue often coincided with upheavals in other countries. The work influenced readers as various as Roosevelt and Churchill, Gandhi and Nehru, Richard Nixon and Richard Wagner. The essential appeal of the work was that it could be approached as a “particularly crowded novel,” the Game of Thrones of its time.
Respectfully submitted,
Jane Silverman