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27 Review of A. J. P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955)
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Published:July 2023
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Abstract
Wight praised Taylor’s account of Bismarck’s life and career: “Better than any earlier biographer, Mr. Taylor surveys Bismarck’s personality.… Taylor draws a notable parallel with Disraeli, and shows recurrently how Bismarck’s career marches with that of Gladstone, the great opposite. The comparison with Cromwell is superficial. Their death-beds show the dissimilarity in religious depth, nor is the sociological analogy true. It is Richelieu whom, in character, circumstances and work, Bismarck most closely resembles. Mr. Taylor’s Bismarck is not the patient, systematic aggressor of tradition but an improviser of genius, showing greater moderation in victory than history elsewhere records.… No historian has done more to restore history to literature, but for all that he is not easy. The dazzling arabesques of his exposition arise from a sharp sense of the windings of politics, as when a paragraph begins by saying that Bismarck in opposing the Social Democrats underrated the power of ideas, and ends by arguing that in the long run he was right because to-day men prefer security to freedom. He does not pass the old condemnations on the statesman who corrupted the politics of an entire people. He is concerned to elucidate the historical environment which Bismarck could manipulate with such incomparable skill. Yet the moral judgment is the more true for being withdrawn. Most people are content with a one-dimensional political philosophy; Mr. Taylor’s is two-dimensional, resonantly taut between radicalism and realism.”
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