A. J. P. Taylor

Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian, journalist, broadcaster and scholar. His approachably written and sometimes contentiously revisionist studies of 19th and early 20th-century subjects brought academic history to a new audience.

Quotes

1930s

A revolution cannot be judged by the ordinary standards of academic morality.
- Review of a biography of Maximilien Robespierre in the Manchester Guardian (14 January 1936), quoted in Adam Sisman, A. J. P. Taylor: A Biography (1994; 1995), p. 104

Injustice occurs in free states as in despotic states; and the attempt to right the wrong is as unpopular and dangerous in the one as in the other – as the case of Zola shows. The difference between free and unfree countries is that in the free country there are always men who will champion the unpopular cause at whatever the cost. It is this stage army of the good, with its slightly ridiculous reappearances which alone keeps our liberties alive. The Dreyfus case, at its outset, was a disgrace for France; but because of the struggles of a small minority it ended in bringing France more glory than all the campaigns of Napoleon.
- Review of Pierre Dreyfus's biography of Alfred Dreyfus in the Manchester Guardian (7 May 1937), quoted in Chris Wrigley, A.J.P. Taylor: A Complete Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Historical and Other Writings (1980), p. 6

The average Englishman was ashamed of the British Empire and believed (quite wrongly) that it had been acquired in some wicked fashion... This sense of sin placed British governments at a disadvantage in their negotiations with Germany: they were convinced of the justice of German grievances even before the grievances were expressed. British governments had spent most of the nineteenth century trying to prevent the growth of the British Empire, and still it had grown; German governments had done their utmost to encourage colonial enterprise, and yet their empire was a failure; clearly it was the fault of British governments and they must put it right... there they stood, ears anxiously cocked for the next German complaint. Moreover, British politicians have always been peculiarly sensitive to the charge of "unfriendliness" towards other politicians or other countries... Granville's letters to Herbert Bismarck—my dear fellow, what can be wrong?—are not unique in the record of British policy, and if the dear fellow insists on this or that as the price of renewing eternal friendship, of course he must have it.
- Germany's First Bid for Colonies, 1884–1885: A Move in Bismarck's European Policy (1938), pp. 14-15

Anglo-German relations between 1884 and 1914 abound in these private letters and unofficial visits, culminating in another British surrender and renewed protestations of friendship. But in the last years before 1914 British politicians were beginning to realise that only one thing could end these quarrels and secure German friendship for ever—the adoption of a policy which would give the Germans what they called security, but what to others appeared as German hegemony over the entire continent of Europe. Even Gladstone and Granville would have been unwilling to buy German friendship at this price.
- Germany's First Bid for Colonies, 1884–1885: A Move in Bismarck's European Policy (1938), p. 15

The only danger to history today is that historians are sometimes too modest and try to find excuses for their task. It is safer as well as sounder to be confident. Men write history for the same reason that they write poetry, study the properties of numbers, or play football—for the joy of creation; men read history for the same reason that they listen to music or watch cricket—for the joy of appreciation. Once abandon that firm ground, once plead that history has a "message" or that history has a "social responsibility" (to produce good Marxists or good Imperialists or good citizens) and there is no logical escape from the censor and the Index, the O.G.P.U. and the Gestapo.
- 'The Historian', The Manchester Guardian (5 August 1938), quoted in Chris Wrigley, A.J.P. Taylor: A Complete Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Historical and Other Writings (1980), p. 265

The details of diplomatic history do indeed seem of irredeemable triviality; but in fact, diplomatic history deals with the greatest of themes – with the relations of States, with peace and war, with the existence and destruction of communities and civilization.
- 'Diplomatic History', The Manchester Guardian (23 May 1939), p. 17

1940s

The object of policy is not to prove one's moral worth, but to succeed.
- Time and Tide (23 May 1942), quoted in Chris Wrigley, A.J.P. Taylor: A Complete Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Historical and Other Writings (1980), p. 284

1950s

It is the theme which has run through European history since the French Revolution—the search for stability in an unstable world. The great revolution destroyed tradition as the basis for society; ever since men have been seeking for something to take its place.
- From Napoleon to Stalin: Comments on European History (1950; 1953), p. 9

Quakerism has always been in danger of smugness, and is redeemed from it only by an obstinate radicalism.
- Review of Viscount Templewood's Nine Troubled Years in the Manchester Guardian (13 November 1954), quoted in Chris Wrigley, A.J.P. Taylor: A Complete Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Historical and Other Writings (1980), p. 372

I am not a philosophic historian. I have no system, no moral interpretation. I write to clear my mind, to discover how things happened and how men behaved. If the result is shocking or provocative, this is not from intent, but solely because I try to judge from the evidence without being influenced by the judgements of others.
- Englishmen and Others (1956), p. vii

The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

Comprises the text of the Ford Lectures on English History (1956); quotations are cited from the 1985 edition, ISBN 0140225757

Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.
- "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14

Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
- "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction
- "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 23.

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
- "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 24.

The worker is by nature less imaginative, more level-headed than the capitalist. This is what prevents his becoming one. He is content with small gains. Trade Union officials think about the petty cash; the employer speculates in millions. You can see the difference in their representative institutions. There is no scheme too wild, no rumour too absurd, to be without repercussions on the Stock Exchange. The public house is the home of common sense.
- "Dissenting Rivals: Urquhart and Cobden", p. 55

American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.
- "The Great War: The Triumph of E. D. Morel", p. 157

1960s

In international affairs there was nothing wrong with Hitler except that he was a German.
- Taylor, A. J. P. (1996). "Second Thoughts". The Origins Of The Second World War (reprint ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. p. xxviii. ISBN 9780684829470. Retrieved on 26 June 2024. "[Hitler] aimed to make Germany the dominant Power in Europe and maybe, more remotely, in the world. Other Powers have pursued similar aims, and still do. Other Powers seek to defend their vital interests by force of arms. In international affairs there was nothing wrong with Hitler except that he was a German."

A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
- The Origins of the Second World War ([1961] 1962), Ch. 7, p. 134

Why should knowledge of where I came from tell me where I am going to?
- 'Moving with the Times', The Observer (22 October 1961)

Politically we are not Europeans and never have been.
- 'Why don't these ‘Top People’ think for themselves?', The Sunday Express (21 October 1962), p. 16

The First World War had begun — imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.
- The First World War ([1963] 1970) p. 20

In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.
- The First World War ([1963] 1970) p. 165

Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.
- Referring to Napoleon III, in "Mistaken Lessons from the Past", The Listener (6 June 1963)

The great underlying conflict was between freedom and organization. Could the war be conducted by 'Liberal' methods—that is, by voluntary recruiting and by laissez-faire economics? Or must there be compulsory military service, control of profits, and direction of labour and industry?
- 'Politics in the First World War', Politics in Wartime and Other Essays (1965), p. 21

I think you can say that the British were more responsible than anyone for the destruction of Nazism and Fascism in Europe.
- World War (n.d. but 1966), p. 7

The peace of the world depends on American strength and, still more, on American restraint.
- 'Peace Comes of Age', The New York Times Magazine (14 August 1966), p. 72

We too should be true to our tradition. That tradition is one of national independence and Splendid Isolation.
- 'Will Germany be the next to explode?', The Sunday Express (2 June 1968), p. 14

English History 1914–1945 (1965)

In the second World war the British people came of age. This was a people's war. Not only were their needs considered. They themselves wanted to win. Future historians may see the war as a last struggle for the European balance of power or for the maintenance of Empire. This was not how it appeared to those who lived through it. The British people had set out to destroy Hitler and National Socialism—"Victory at all costs". They succeeded. No English soldier who rode with the tanks into liberated Belgium or saw the German murder camps at Dachau or Buchenwald could doubt that the war had been a noble crusade. The British were the only people who went through both world wars from beginning to end. Yet they remained a peaceful and civilized people, tolerant, patient, and generous. Traditional values lost much of their force. Other values took their place. Imperial greatness was on the way out; the welfare state was on the way in. The British empire declined; the condition of the people improved. Few now sang "Land of Hope and Glory". Few even sang "England Arise". England had risen all the same.
- p. 600

History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.
- "Revised Bibliography" (1975 ed.), p. 729

Taylor's Law states: "The Foreign Office knows no secrets."
- "Revised Bibliography" (1975 ed.), p. 730

1970s

There are some moral principles more important to me than economics. I am against racial discrimination. I am against privilege. I am for the sovereign independence of this country and for the unity of the Commonwealth. Labour does not help me on any of these.
- 'Why I won't be voting Labour this time', The Sunday Express (7 June 1970), p. 25

The Arabs have justified grievances in the Middle East. The Palestinians should weigh heavy on the conscience of the Great Powers.
- 'The Little Nation I Salute This Morning', The Sunday Express (9 March 1975), p. 16

My experiences in the General Strike cured me of communism... I decided that the Communist Party was not for me and quietly lapsed, thus escaping the soul torments that troubled so many intellectuals during the 1930s.
- 'Class War: 1926', The New Statesman (30 April 1976), pp. 572-573

I came of Radical, Dissenting stock on both sides. A collateral ancestor of my father's was killed at Peterloo. My maternal great-grandfather voted for Orator Hunt at the Preston by-election in 1830 and received one of the medals struck in honor of "the free and independent voters of Preston." My father was a Lloyd George Radical before the First World War.
- 'Accident Prone, or What Happened Next', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1977), p. 2

I called myself a Marxist from the time I became a Socialist. But, reading more history at Oxford, I began to feel that Marxism did not work. Consider the famous sentence in the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto recorded society is the history of class struggles." Very impressive but not true. Perhaps all history ought to have been the history of class struggles, but things did not work out that way. There have been long periods of class collaboration and many struggles that were not about class at all. I suppose my mind is too anarchic to be fitted into any system of thought. Like Johnson's friend Edwards, I, too, have tried to be a Marxist but common sense kept breaking in.
- 'Accident Prone, or What Happened Next', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1977), p. 4

1980s

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
- An Old Man's Diary ([1981] 1984) p. 39

I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?"
- A Personal History ([1983] 1984) p. 301

Quotes about A. J. P. Taylor

This is a brilliant book; almost every sentence crackles and there is often a whiff of fire and brimstone in the air.
- Asa Briggs, review of Rumours of Wars in The New Statesman and Nation (6 December 1952), p. 698

Mr. Taylor is a master of brilliant paradox, startling juxtapositions, and dogmatic brevity... But his brilliance suggests the crystal chandelier: sparkling at night but less impressive when closely examined by the cold light of day.
- Sidney Bradshaw Fay, review of Rumours of Wars in The American Historical Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (April 1954), p. 590

Mr. Taylor is in the very first rank. He is among English historians to-day about what Mr. Evelyn Waugh is among English novelists, a rescuer of forgotten truths, a knight of paradox, a prince of story-telling, and a great, maybe the greatest, master of his craft.
- Sebastian Haffner, 'Mr. Taylor's Masterpiece', The Observer (16 April 1961), p. 30
- A review of The Origins of the Second World War

Mr. Taylor carries out his revaluation in the clear, sharp, epigrammatic prose which makes all his work as stimulating as champagne – and which makes one wonder, sometimes, whether it was all really as simple as that. His mind is a convex mirror in which events appear brilliantly coloured, brilliantly distinct, and sometimes a little distorted. He has many of the virtues of Macaulay, and one or two of his faults. The pattern is too sharply etched; the epigrams are too neat; the judgements are too final: but how refreshing it is to read a historian who is not afraid of patterns, epigrams and judgements!
- Michael Howard, 'The Iron Chancellor', The New Statesman and Nation (9 July 1955), pp. 47-48
- A review of Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman

The fine line, it seems to me, goes thus: there has to be a plausibility in your story. A history book—assuming its facts are correct—stands or falls by the conviction with which it tells its story. If it rings true, to an intelligent, informed reader, then it is a good history book. If it rings false, then it’s not good history, even if it’s well written by a great historian on the basis of sound scholarship.
The best-known example of the latter was A. J. P. Taylor's Origins of the Second World War. It is a beautifully written tract, the work of a consummate diplomatic historian: an expert in the relevant documents, a competent linguist and highly intelligent. At first sight, all of the constituent parts of a good history book were present. So what was missing? The answer is hard to pin down. Perhaps the issue is one of taste. To claim—as Taylor did—that Hitler was not responsible for World War II is absurdly counterintuitive. However subtly expressed, the argument is so implausible as to be poor history.
- Tony Judt, in Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012), Chap. 7 : Unities and Fragments: European Historian

Mr. A.J.P. Taylor is the only English historian now writing who can bend the bow of Gibbon and Macaulay... The result is a masterpiece: lucid, compassionate, beautifully written in a bare, sparse style, and at the same time deeply disturbing.
- David Marquand, 'The Taylor Doctrine', The New Statesman (21 April 1961), quoted in Wm. Roger Louis (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War: A. J. P. Taylor and His Critics (1972), pp. 65-66
- A review of The Origins of the Second World War

I picked up Alan Taylor at the Athenaeum and walked with him along the Strand and Fleet Street. Taxed him with being a fellow-traveller and asked him what he thought he was getting at. He was slightly disconcerted, I fancy, but said that he quite recognised the impracticability of the position of the Socialist who believes in working with the Communists, but that he prefers this position, even so, to working with Anti-Communists. I said it seemed to me quite insane. He is now a Fellow of Magdalen, Oxford and, altogether, very well dug into the economic system which he wants to destroy.
- Malcolm Muggeridge, diary entry (13 April 1948), quoted in Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, ed. John Bright-Holmes (1981), p. 267

A. J. P. Taylor has written just such a challenging essay, packed with substantial summaries and spiced with brilliant observations, reflecting his scholarly maturity, his lucid mind, and his Vienna training under Pribram and the Austrian school of Friedjung and Redlich... An answer to a burning query, it is an impatient book, vivid and tempestuous, pointed and pugnacious, concise and overzealous, severe and sarcastic, ambitious and angry. Grandiose in style it often overshoots its mark. The profound is mixed with the wisecrack. It has the shortcomings of its virtues. It will shock the scholarly reader but it must challenge him too.
- Sigmund Neumann, review of The Course of German History in The American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 4 (July 1947), pp. 730-731

Alan Taylor I did find very exciting as an undergraduate. I must say I find today's undergraduates do so too.
- Hugh Thomas, quoted in Frederic Raphael (ed.), Bookmarks (1975), p. 153

The book will also suggest that students of world politics should draw for their rules of interpretation rather less on Marx and rather more on Machiavelli.
- W. K. H., review of A. J. P. Taylor, Germany's First Bid for Colonies, 1884–1885: A Move in Bismarck's European Policy in International Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 4 (July – August 1938), p. 558

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