Carroll Quigley
American historian, Georgetown professor, author of Tragedy and Hope (1910-1977)
Also known as: Quigley, Carroll Quigley, Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor Quigley
Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was an American historian and Professor of History in the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. He is the author of Tragedy and Hope, The Evolution of Civilizations, The Anglo-American Establishment, and Weapons Systems and Political Stability, and the metasubject of this archive. Quigley's lifetime project was a science of historical change: a typology of civilizations, a theory of their rise and fall, and — beneath both — a documentary case-study of the Anglo-American power network he called the The Milner Group.
Life
Born in Boston in 1910 to a family that, on his father's side, had left Ireland for Boston in 1828 — "so poor they couldn't even wait for the potato famine" (Quigley, "The Professor Who Knew Too Much", 3). Quigley took his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all from Harvard, in the 1930s. His doctoral dissertation was The Public Administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (Harvard, 1938). He taught briefly at Princeton, where he met and married Lillian Fox, before joining Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1941. He remained there until shortly before his death in January 1977, lecturing on the "Development of Civilization" course that generations of Foreign Service students remembered as the high point of their education. Among those students was William Jefferson Clinton, who in 1992 publicly credited Quigley as the professor who told him that "America was the greatest nation in history because our people had always believed in two things: that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so" (Quigley Misc, 16).
Method and project
Quigley's intellectual project was an attempt to make history into a rigorous analytical discipline. In The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) he developed what he called the seven-stages model of civilizational rise and fall, arguing that every civilization passes through Mixture, Gestation, Expansion, Conflict, Universal Empire, Decay, and Invasion. Each civilization possesses what he termed an instrument of expansion — an organized way of accumulating surplus and converting it into innovation — which over time becomes an institution and ceases to expand. In Weapons Systems and Political Stability (drafted 1965-1976, posthumously published 1983) he extended the same comparative-historical method to weapons systems and political form. Harry J. Hogan's foreword to that volume calls Quigley "that most extraordinary historian, philosopher, and teacher" (WS 5) — a fair statement of the man's reputation among his colleagues and students.
Tragedy and Hope and the controversy
Quigley's magnum opus, Tragedy and Hope (Macmillan, 1966), was a 1,300-page history of the twentieth century structured around the institutional behavior of power networks. It included, in chapters 5 and 20, a section reconstructing the The Milner Group as a coordinated effort by Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, and their associates to federate the English-speaking world. Within a year, ultra-right pamphleteers — chiefly Gary Allen (None Dare Call It Conspiracy, 1971) and W. Cleon Skousen (The Naked Capitalist, 1970) — had begun quoting these chapters in support of a Birch-Society narrative of Communist world conspiracy. Quigley spent the last years of his life trying to disentangle his analysis from this misappropriation: "It blackened my reputation amongst scholarly historians who are going to say, 'Oh, he's one of those right-wing nuts'" (Quigley, "The Professor Who Knew Too Much," 3). In conversation he was emphatic that he had "been through the greater part of Milner's private papers and found no evidence" for the Birch Society's claim that the Group financed the Bolsheviks (Professor Who Knew Too Much, 5).
The Anglo-American Establishment
Quigley completed the manuscript of The Anglo-American Establishment in 1949, but no publisher would touch it during his lifetime. It appeared posthumously in 1981 from Books in Focus. The book is a sustained piece of documentary historiography: a tentative roster of the The Milner Group (AAE 42-45), chapter-length treatments of the The Cecil Bloc, Milner's Kindergarten, the The Round Table, the Times, the RIIA, and the Group's role in the Versailles peace, India policy, and the appeasement decade. Quigley's stated position is plainly one of sympathy with the Group's stated aim — "I agree with the goals and aims of the Milner Group" (AAE 3) — but profound disagreement with the secrecy and the appeasement reflex into which the Group lapsed in the 1930s.
Legacy
Quigley left Weapons Systems and Political Stability unfinished at his death; the manuscript was edited by his Georgetown colleagues — Harry Hogan, Carmen Brissette-Grayson, and Dean Peter Krogh wrote its three prefatory essays (WS 5-9) — and published in 1983. His students went on to occupy senior positions in the U.S. foreign-policy and intelligence apparatus. His one undergraduate who became President of the United States cited him in a national-convention speech (Quigley Misc, 16). And his books — long out of print — were repeatedly reissued through Books in Focus and University Press of America, where they continue to attract a readership equally divided between academic historians and the popular conspiracist subculture that Quigley spent his last years repudiating.
Cited in
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 5 Quigley
The Evolution of Civilizations expresses two dimensions of its author, Carroll Quigley, that most extraordinary historian, philosopher, and teacher. In the first place, its scope is wide-ranging, covering the whole of man's activities throughout time. Second, it is analytic, not merely descriptive.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 4 Quigley
Only by a knowledge of the errors of the past is it possible to correct the tactics of the future. Carroll Quigley 1949
- professor-who-knew-too-much · p. 3 Quigley
It blackened my reputation, Quigley said, amongst scholarly historians who are going to say, 'Oh, he's one of those right-wing nuts.' Professor Carroll Quigley -- B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all from Harvard in the '30s -- is a trim, engaging man.
- professor-who-knew-too-much · p. 5 Quigley
For example, they constantly misquote me to this effect: that Lord Milner (the dominant trustee of the Cecil Rhodes Trust and a heavy in the Round Table Group) helped finance the Bolsheviks. I have been through the greater part of Milner's private papers and have found no evidence to support that.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 6 Quigley
Carroll Quigley, historian and teacher at Georgetown University, died January 5, 1977, leaving unfinished a manuscript on Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History upon which he had been working for the preceding twelve years.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 9 Quigley
TRAGEDY AND HOPE A History of THE WORLD in Our Time Carroll Quigley First published in 1966 by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, NEW YORK.
- father-walsh · p. 1 Quigley
Father Walsh as I Knew Him by Carroll Quigley, Ph.D. The 1959 Protocol, the yearbook of the School of Foreign Service, School of Business Administration, and Institute of Languages and Linguistics of Georgetown University.
- napoleonic-italy · p. 1 Quigley
The Public Administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy Carroll Quigley Doctoral Dissertation Harvard University, 1938 Revised for Publication, ca. 1971.
- quigley-misc · p. 16 Quigley
as a student at Georgetown I heard that call clarified by a professor name Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest nation in history because our people had always believed in two things: that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so.
- quigley-lectures · p. 1 Quigley
Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A Thousand Years of Growth, A.D. 976 - 1976 by Carroll Quigley Ph.D. Introduction by Peter F. Krogh.