Volume 13, Number 9 · November 20, 1969
Top Family
By A.J.P. Taylor
The Habsburg Empire 1790-1918
by C.A. Macartney
Macmillan, 864 pp., $14.95
What makes history tick? Historians have backed religion, nationalism, class consciousness, and all the sociological rigmaroles from aggressiveness to curiosity. The strongest motive force in history is the one most often over-looked. It is family attachment and ambition. Men who would not strive for themselves do so for their families—meaning not merely their wives and children, which might be sensible, but generations yet unborn. Men not normally trusting rely on their brothers and cousins, as Napoleon based his empire on the Bonapartes and Northcliffe his on the Harmsworths. It seems that keeping the family going is what most of history is about, from the humblest peasant handing on his farm, to the greatest ruler handing on his Empire. Affection has little to do with it. Few fathers love their children, let alone their grandchildren. It must, I suppose, be a form of prolonging one's existence after death. People imagine that there is a tiny spark of themselves in their offspring and find consolation, as Banquo did, in a line of descent stretching out to the crack of doom. A strange fancy, but, as they say in Lancashire, there's nowt so queer as folk.
Review, 2167 words
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