The Undivided Past by David Cannadine

pp. 75, 79, 82.
      28. A. J. Toynbee,
The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilisations
(London, 1922), p. 328; Wolff,
Inventing Eastern Europe
, p. 366. For Spanish versions of these characterizations of the Central and Entente powers during the First World War, see R. Carr,
Modern Spain, 1875–1980
(Oxford, 1980), pp. 81–82.
      29. Bowden, “Ideal of Civilisation,” p. 40; A. Kuper,
Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account
(Cambridge, Mass., 1999), p. 8; W. A. Kaufmann,
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
(Princeton, 1950), pp. 87, 316–17, 339, 362.
      30. C. Bell,
Civilization: An Essay
(New York, 1928), pp. 3, 15, 17.
      31. R. Quinault, “Winston Churchill and Gibbon,” in McKitterick and Quinault,
Edward Gibbon and Empire
, pp. 317–32; W. Churchill, “Civilisation,” in R. S. Churchill, ed.,
Into Battle: Speeches by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill CH, MP
(London 1941), pp. 35–36.
      32. R. A. Butler,
The Art of the Possible
(London, 1971), p. 85.
      33. Quoted in F. Fernández-Armesto,
Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature
(New York, 2001), p. 20.
      34. Newark, introduction to
Huns, Vandals
, p. xxiv; H. Rauschning,
Hitler Speaks
(London, 1939), p. 87.
      35. Wolff,
Inventing Eastern Europe
, pp. 369–70.
      36. A. Piganiol,
L’Empire chrétien (325–395)
(Paris, 1947), p. 422; P. Courcelle,
Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques
(Paris, 1948), passim. Nor were such views confined to French scholars, for Britishhistorians writing in the aftermath of the SecondWorld War also saw the fall of the Roman Empire through the lens of their perceptions of 1939–45. In 1952, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, who had interrogated high-ranking German prisoners, published a book entitled
The Barbarian West, 400–1000
, which began with a chapter sketching out the “civilization” that was “threatened” by the “barbarians.” Havingsurveyed the secure achievements of the Roman Empire, the author ended, apocalyptically (and autobiographically), “upon such a world, theHuns fell”: J. M. Wallace-Hadrill,
The Barbarian West, 400–1000
(3rd ed., London, 1967), pp. 9, 20.
      37. S. Freud,
Civilization and Its Discontents
(New York, 1961 ed.), pp. 66–71; Todorov,
Fear of Barbarians
, pp. 24–25. Another proponent of this view was the historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, who, like his near contemporaryWinston Churchill, had also readGibbon as a young man. But his conclusion at the end of the SecondWorld War was more somber, for while he rejoiced in the eventual Allied victory, he was convinced that the long and devastating war had “cooked the goose of civilization” and that humanity was now living in “an age steadily lapsing and finally rushing into barbarism.” See D. Cannadine,
G. M. Trevelyan: A Life in History
(London, 1992), pp. 168, 175.
      38. E. J. Hobsbawm, “Barbarism: A User’s Guide,”
New Left Review
206 (1994): 45, 49.
      39. W. Benjamin,
Illuminations
(London, 1970 ed.), p. 258; B. Wasserstein,
Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time
(Oxford, 2007), pp. 1, 793.
      40. Here is one recent example, its title full of sub-Gibbonian vocabulary: B.-H. Lévy,
Life in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism
(New York, 2008). In fact, Lévy was criticizing the anti-Americanism that he believed characterizes much of the contemporary European left, and it was to this group that he gave the title “new barbarians.” See also M. B. Salter,
Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations
(London, 2002).
      41. W. Goffart,
Barbarians and Romans, AD 48–54: The Techniques of Accommodation
(Princeton, 1980), esp. pp. 3–39; Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople and the Barbarians,”
American Historical Review
86 (1981): pp. 275–306; Goffart, “The Theme of ‘the Barbarian Invasions,’ ” in E. Chrysos and A. Schwartz, eds.,
Das Reich und die