See p. 46, where the author explains Montesquieu's argument about the role of Germanic nomads in implanting ideas about freedom and equality:
His basic premise was that in simple tribal societies there were those very
values of liberty, equality and fraternity which characterized the best of current
nations. Like Rousseau after him, Montesquieu believed that men were, by
nature, born free and equal. The simplest people, hunter-gatherers, ‘enjoy great
liberty; for as they do not cultivate the earth, they are not fixed: they are wanderers and vagabonds; and if a chief should deprive them of their liberty,
they would immediately go and seek it under another, or retire into the woods,
and there live with their families.’1 Thus slavery was immoral, for ‘as all men are
born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural, though in some countries it be
founded on natural reason.’2 The problem was that what began naturally and
could be protected by voting with one’s feet, fleeing repression, later had to be
protected by artificial means. ‘In the state of nature, indeed, all men are born
equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and
they recover it only by the protection of the laws.’3 This, in a nutshell, was the
story which he wished to tell in relation to what had happened in western
Europe.
Montesquieu’s reading of Caesar and Tacitus suggested to him that the early
Germanic societies were largely pastoralists, mixing this with hunting and
gathering. ‘Caesar says, that “The Germans neglected agriculture; that the
greatest part of them lived upon milk, cheese, and flesh; that no one had lands or
boundaries of his own; that the princes and magistrates of each nation allotted
what portion of land they pleased to individuals, and obliged them the year
following to remove to some other part.”‘4 Or again, ‘It seems by Caesar and
Tacitus that they applied themselves greatly to a pastoral life; hence the regulations of the codes of barbarian laws almost all relate to their flocks.’5 Like many
pastoral peoples, they were egalitarian and independent minded, both at the
tribal and individual level. They enjoyed a sort of republican structure, a
confederation of small chiefdoms with little hierarchy. ‘Each tribe apart was free
and independent; and when they came to be intermixed, the independency still
continued; the country was common, the government peculiar; the territory the
same, and the nations different.’6 Thus they managed to share a territory
without becoming locked into an increasingly oppressive state.
They were unusually isolated and rural peoples, as befitted their agriculture,
and ruled themselves through a kind of universal suffrage. ‘The German nations
that conquered the Roman Empire were certainly a free people. Of this we may
be convinced only by reading Tacitus “On the Manners of the Germans”. The
conquerors spread themselves over all the country; living mostly in the fields,
and very little in the towns. When they were in Germany, the whole nation was
able to assemble.’7 Any sign of instituted rulers at this time is a mistake. Just as
monarchy was absent in much of Europe before the Roman conquests, so ‘the
peoples of the north and of Germany were not less free; and if traces of kingly
government are found among them, it is because the chiefs of armies or
republics have been mistaken for monarchs.’8
...
Montesquieu’s view of the liberating effect of what happened, especially when
compared to the effects of the conquests by the Mongols, is summarized as
follows.
The first wave of Germanic conquest was later re-enforced by a second with the
Vikings. For these Montesquieu has equal praise. He wrote that Scandinavia
‘was the source of the liberties of Europe - that is, of almost all the freedom
which at present subsists amongst mankind.’5
...
The spread of Germanic civilization helped Montesquieu explain a mystery,
that is the uniform and unprecedented spread of an original and new form of
civilization in western Europe which grew from the ashes of Roman civilization. ‘I should think my work imperfect were I to pass over in silence an event which
never again, perhaps, will happen; were I not to speak of those laws which
suddenly appeared over all Europe without being connected with any of the
former institutions.’1 In fact, of course, although these laws bore little connection
to the Roman civilization which he had studied so closely, they emanated
directly from that system described for the Germans by Caesar and Tacitus for
‘Such is the origin of the Gothic government amongst us.’2 This is the system
which he admired and whose roots he wished to discover, for they clearly did not
lie in Rome.
...
The discovery of the roots was not merely of antiquarian interest for
Montesquieu believed that the quintessence of liberty in modern Europe, that is
the separation and balance of powers, had been first expressed in them. And it is
therefore not surprising that he should make a great leap across the centuries by
joining what he saw in the constitutional balance of early eighteenth century
England to what he had read in Tacitus. ‘In perusing the admirable treatise of
Tacitus “On the Manners of the Germans”, we find it is from that nation the
English have borrowed the idea of their political government. This beautiful
system was invented first in the woods.’4
...
Drawing on hints in Montesquieu’s work, his theory can be put as follows.
After the collapse of Rome, much of Europe was covered by a low density
Germanic civilization, with its freedom and equality. Then over much of
continental Europe, hierarchy and despotism began to re-assert itself as a
necessary consequence of growing wealth and military confrontation. An
expression and re-enforcing of this move towards what Tocqueville would call
‘caste’ and towards absolutism, was the re-introduction of Roman law and the
Roman Catholic religion. In essence Europe lost its freedoms to a resurgent
Roman civilization - and this was most evident in southern and central Europe,
for instance in France. For reasons which Montesquieu does not elaborate, this
returning tide became weaker the further north one went. So England, an island
in fact and in law, retained its basically Germanic social structure, political
system and monetary values. Thus, with its Germanic Protestantism added to
this, it seemed an oasis (with Holland) in a desert of threatened despotism.
...
What was particularly sad, Montesquieu thought, was that the ancient
foundations of freedom in Germanic laws and customs had been lost, and been
overlain by the revived, absolutist and imperial, Roman laws. This Roman
triumph had been made complete by Roman religion which had joined with
Roman law. Speaking of France, Montesquieu asked:
Montesquieu’s historical work was undertaken over two centuries ago. We may
wonder how far it stands the test of time, and how far it has been refuted by
subsequent research. Here we are fortunate to have a detailed study by Iris Cox
on ‘Montesquieu and the history of French laws’ which compares his work in
great detail with that of more recent scholars. She summarizes her findings thus:
‘in my judgement, Montesquieu’s historical account stands up well in the light of
modern knowledge. His account is comparatively short, but his statements on
most of the points he regarded as important in connection with his theory about
the spirit of the laws of France are supported in the works to which I have referred.’1 She lists all his major sections, from the ‘organization of early German
society, the facts of the Frankish invasion of Gaul’ through to ‘the gradual
re-emergence of Roman law in a different form’, and finds that ‘all these stages
in Montesquieu’s outline of development may be found in the pages of Chenon,
Lot and other modern historians.’2 She finds only two matters on which he may
be mistaken and which affect his story: ‘One is the question as to whether people
were free, in Merovingian and Carolingian times, to choose under which law
they would live’, the other is ‘whether, from Merovingian times onwards, the
administration of justice was ordinarily attached to the grant of land’.3 Neither
of these possible areas of misinterpretation affect the more general account
which I have summarized.
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