Carroll Quigley


Carroll Quigley was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations. He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and his seminal works, The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis, and Tragedy And Hope; A History Of The World In Our Time, in which he states that an Anglo-American banking elite have worked together for centuries to spread certain values globally.
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Life and career

Quigley was born in Boston, and attended Harvard University, where he studied history and earned B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. He taught at Princeton University, and then at Harvard, and then from 1941 to 1976 at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
From 1941 until 1972, he taught a two-semester course at Georgetown on the development of civilizations. According to his obituary in The Washington Star, many alumni of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service asserted that this was "the most influential course in their undergraduate careers".
In addition to his academic work, Quigley served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the United States Navy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the House of Representatives|House] Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration in the 1950s. He was also a book reviewer for The Washington Star, and a contributor and editorial board member of Current History.
Quigley retired from Georgetown in June 1976 after being honored by the student body with its Faculty Award for the fourth consecutive year. He died the following year at Georgetown University Hospital following a heart attack.

Major conclusions

Inclusive diversity

Quigley's work emphasized "inclusive diversity" as a core value of Western civilization, contrasting it with the dualism of Plato. He concluded the book Tragedy and Hope with the hope that the West could "resume its development along its old patterns of Inclusive Diversity". From his study of history, "it is clear that the West believes in diversity rather than in uniformity, in pluralism rather than in monism or dualism, in inclusion rather than exclusion, in liberty rather than in authority, in truth rather than in power, in conversion rather than in annihilation, in the individual rather than in the organization, in reconciliation rather than in triumph, in heterogeneity rather than in homogeneity, in relativisms rather than in absolutes, and in approximations rather than in final answers."
Quigley asserts that any intolerance or rigidity in the religious practices of the West are aberrations from its nature of inclusivity and diversity. Quigley points to the tolerance and flexibility in Aquinas's belief that theological truth is revealed over time through dialogue within the Christian community, which allows the community to adapt to a changing world.

Institutionalization and the fall of civilizations

Having studied the rise and fall of civilizations, "Quigley found the explanation of disintegration in the gradual transformation of social 'instruments' into 'institutions,' that is, transformation of social arrangements functioning to meet real social needs into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs".

Weapons and democracy

From a historical study of weapons and political dynamics, Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy. Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use. This explains why democracy occurs so rarely in human history.
In the 1800s, guns were the best weapon available. In America, almost everyone could afford to buy a gun, and could learn how to use it fairly easily. Governments couldn't do any better: it became the age of mass armies of citizen soldiers with guns..
In the 1900s, expensive, specialist weapons became available, and citizen soldiers became dominated by specialist soldiers. Quigley notes that the slaughter of World War I was due to the mismatch between the traditional armies and the available weapons.

Style

Quigley's writing style is dense, influenced by a former history professor of his:
"As we raced along, Goethe was covered in fifteen minutes, Schiller in ten, Fichte in five...he covered any topic simply by slicing it up into a small number of parts and giving a name to each part. The complex character and achievement of Goethe, for example, were divided into six portions, each was given a title, and, ever after, the whole of Goethe could be evoked merely by reciting six words...I should like to outdare even my former professor by dividing this greater complexity into only five parts."

Quigley's analytical style is scientific, stemming from his earlier training in physics.

In this book we are concerned with the social sciences...and particularly with the effort to apply a scientific method of observation, formulation of hypotheses, and testing to such phenomena. The enormous size of this field has made it advisable to curtail our attention to the process of social change, especially in civilizations.

Influence on Bill Clinton

In his first year in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, Bill Clinton took Quigley's course, receiving a 'B' as his final grade in both semesters. In 1991, Clinton named Quigley as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy, when Clinton launched his presidential campaign in a speech at Georgetown. He said he learned from Quigley that “The future can be better than the past, and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.” Bill Clinton told his audiences, “that is what the new choice is all about....We are not here to save the Democratic party. We are here to save the United States of America.” It was Clinton's most effective speech, and he repeated variations time and time again as the blueprint for his campaign message in winning the Democratic nomination and the general election for President of the United States in 1992.
The same remark on American greatness was recalled by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who met her husband in Quigley's class on African history.

Quigley and the Round Table group

One distinctive feature of Quigley's historical writings is his assertion that the Round Table movement played a significant role in recent world history. His writing on this topic has made Quigley famous among many who investigate conspiracy theories.

Quigley and the Milner Group

In the "Anglo American Establishment" he focused on the Round Table group founded in 1891 by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner. Quigley argued that "The organization was so modified and so expanded by Milner after the eclipse of Stead in 1899, and especially after the death of Rhodes in 1902, that it took on quite a different organization and character, although it continued to pursue the same goals." Quigley greatly admired the British Empire and lamented that the secret society was not very successful. Historian Robert Rotberg states:
The society consisted of an inner circle and an outer circle. The society as a whole did not have a fixed name:
This society has been known at various times as Milner's Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as the Rhodes crowd, as The Times crowd, as the All Souls group, and as the Cliveden set.... I have chosen to call it the Milner group. Those persons who have used the other terms, or heard them used, have not generally been aware that all these various terms referred to the same Group...this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century.

Quigley assigned this group primary or exclusive credit for several historical events: the Jameson Raid, the Second Boer War, the founding of the Union of South Africa, the replacement of the British Empire with the Commonwealth of Nations, and a number of Britain's foreign policy decisions in the twentieth century.
In 1966, Quigley published a one-volume history of the twentieth century, titled Tragedy and Hope. At several points in this book, the history of the Milner group was discussed. Moreover, Quigley claimed that he had recently been in direct contact with this organization, whose nature he contrasted to right-wing claims of a communist conspiracy:
This radical Right fairy tale, which is now an accepted folk myth in many groups in America, pictured the recent history of the United States, in regard to domestic reform and in foreign affairs, as a well-organized plot by extreme Left-wing elements ... This myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the Radical right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other group, and frequently does so. I know of the operation of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.

According to Quigley, the leaders of this group were Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner from 1891 until Rhodes' death in 1902, Milner alone until his own death in 1925, Lionel Curtis from 1925 to 1955, Robert H. (Baron) Brand from 1955 to 1963, and Adam D. Marris from 1963 until the time Quigley wrote his book. This organization also functioned through certain loosely affiliated "front groups", including the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition, other secret societies are briefly discussed in Tragedy and Hope, including a consortium of the leaders of the central banks of several countries, who formed the Bank for International Settlements. Historian Robert Rotberg reports that, "Unfortunately, Tragedy and Hope lacks the usual scholarly apparatus. It cites nothing."

Criticism

F. William Engdahl, in an overview of financial imperialism entitled The Gods of Money, criticized Quigley for stating that the power of international bankers declined in the 1930s, and insofar as the influence of international bankers in America was concerned, suggested that Quigley was confusing "international finance" with Morgan interests. He suggested, like Sutton, that Quigley's papers had been vetted. Engdahl argued that it was not the case that the power of "international finance" declined, but rather, Morgan interests fell and were replaced by Rockefeller interests.
Quigley stated that the intentions and objectives of the group he profiled, associated with Wall Street and the City of London and Cecil Rhodes' super-imperialism, were "largely commendable". Members of the group, in statements recorded by the New York Times in 1902, proclaimed that they formed their society for the purpose of "gradually absorbing the wealth of the world".
Quigley argued that the Round Table groups were not World Government advocates but super-imperialists. He stated that they emphatically did not want the League of Nations to become a World Government. Yet Lionel Curtis, who, according to Quigley, was one of the leaders of the Round Table movement, wished for it to be a World government with teeth, writing articles with H. G. Wells urging this.

Books written by Quigley

  • Hardcover. 281 pages.
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  • ** 444 pages.
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  • * Paperback. 442 pages.
  • 1,348 pages. .
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  • * 676 pages. — A reprint of the second half of Tragedy and Hope.
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Collected works

Articles about or by Quigley