Indeed, Ranke’s study of the state seems to have little to do with the concretely existing historical states. He tends not to study states in terms of their functions, the operation of power within them, or the conflict of interests. As Professor Theodore H. Von Laue observes, for Ranke practical politics involves the training of civil servants and the experts of government.88 Political theory deals with “the state,” but the state is an abstract, standing separate and above the actual activities of real governments. Conceived as a metaphysical reality, it could be used to demand the supremacy of the monarchy over the individual. Narrowly conceived in political and military terms, divorced from the total pattern of social, economic, and intellectual forces, Ranke’s concept of the state seems to apply to the absolute’ monarchies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries much more closely than to states in general.
Certainly, Ranke is justified in rejecting the metaphysics of individual rights. But in its place, he substitutes a metaphysics of state rights. Despite his emphasis upon the individual character of states as the products of history, in practice all of his states are surprisingly alike. As Ernst Schulin points out, in a recent study on the place of the Orient in Hegel’s and Ranke’s concept of world history, Ranke seems far less capable of describing the individual characteristics of a people than Hegel.89 In practice, all Ranke’s states are guided by the abstract demands of a raison d’etat relatively uneffected by internal developments. In this close identification of the state with foreign policy, Ranke’s concept of the state appears more abstract and rigid than those of Savigny or Wilhelm von Humboldt. Viewing political power in this manner, Ranke also has little understanding for the new forces that operated in European society since the French Revolution.
After 1836, Ranke wrote little relating to historical or political theory, except for random remarks scattered throughout his writings. Two notable exceptions remain: the lecture to King Maximilian in 1854 wherein he rejected the existence of linear, moral progress and spoke of the immediacy of all epochs before God, and the “Political Memoranda”90 in which he counseled King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia on revolutionary events’ between 1848 and 1851. These memorandums show little change in Ranke’s political views,91 although he now considered a constitution to be inevitable. Afraid of the danger of social upheaval, which he saw hidden behind universal suffrage that had been granted in 1848, he urged the introduction of a limited suffrage and the maintenance of ultimate political control in royal hands. The Prussian Army alone had prevented the revolution from succeeding. King and Army for him were the only stable forces in Germany. “Only when destructive parliamentary majorities will have won control of the army will the revolution have finally triumphed in Germany. Only then will a constituent assembly exercise the same rights as the French Assembly did it in 1789.”92 Behind ministerial responsibility, there lurked the threat of rule by “artisans and day laborers.”93 Afraid of the spread of French ideas, he still saw the need for a common German press law.94 He was unwilling to support the extension of political rights; nevertheless, he recognized the social obligations of the state. Not from humanitarian or moral considerations, but from the standpoint of the military needs of the Prussian state that needed workers to serve in its army, Ranke advocated the right to work.
It is conceivable that the state might employ in peace time under military discipline at least those workers fit for military service. Just as once the military was transformed from an inchoate mass of volunteers into a disciplined army, the activities of unskilled laborers now need to be organized. One can form labor brigades for those public works that still need to be undertaken, such as building projects, flood control, soil reclamation, etc. On the other hand, only limited political rights can be granted to the non-political classes.95
Ranke followed Bismarck’s policies with little enthusiasm. Even after 1849, he still hoped for a strengthened Bund under joint Prussian and Austrian leadership which would permit political diversity, and not threaten the traditional pluralism that he considered so important to the cultural development of German nationality. Bismarck’s concession to the liberals disturbed him even more deeply, although he never opposed it openly. When he hailed Bismarck after his break with the National Liberals in 1879, it was not because he saw in him the founder of the German Empire, but rather the man who defended Europe from social revolution.96
Despite the lack of theoretical formulations after 1836, Ranke’s prolific historical writings nevertheless reflect the ideas presented in the essays of the period from 1831 to 1836. Although he closely relied upon the documents, his histories are not highly specialized monographs. He seeks to trace dominant trends that he, however, generally defines in narrowly political terms. Using official sources, Ranke tends to judge events from the standpoint of governments. Thus, as Eduard Fueter has pointed out, in the discussion of the English Revolutions in the seventeenth century, he appears to ignore the great economic transformations without which the events of the time cannot be understood, because these changes were not recorded in diplomatic papers.97
Rudolf Vierhaus has disputed this view. In a recent study, Vierhaus has sought to defend Ranke against the frequent accusations that he neglected the role of the social and economic forces in history and had no understanding for the great emerging social forces of the nineteenth century.98 Ranke, Vierhaus argues, had no narrow political concept of society for which only the cultured elite composing the Obrigkeit were significant. “Any reading of his works leaves … the impression that Ranke did not ignore (wegretouchiert) the masses but took them seriously as an important factor of historical movement.” Ranke “wrote no line without being conscious that historical life is not only determined by the thoughts and deeds of the few great men but just as much by the interests, needs, abilities, fears and desires of the many.”99 Vierhaus rightly points out that Ranke was not entirely blind to social and class conflict. Nevertheless, Vierhaus’s documentation does not really change the traditional image of Ranke. Indeed, in the 1830’s, in his diary Ranke himself suggested that a world history be written which would emphasize the growth of population and stress economic and cultural activities; colonization, knightdom, the building of churches, art, and religion in the Middle Ages; agriculture and public works in the eighteenth century and the “tremendous development of industry and highways” in the nineteenth century. However, this was an isolated remark.100
As Hans Schleier notes, the attempts to recount the instances of Ranke’s preoccupation with economic and social questions only underline how marginal these problems were to Ranke’s historiography, and how little he understood the social forces of the nineteenth century.101 Vierhaus himself admits how poorly informed Ranke was about the economic conditions of the working class and how little understanding he had for the social questions of his time.102 Ranke, analagous to many of his contemporaries, saw the vision of an amorphous mass threatening all culture and civilization, and he failed to appreciate the significance of industry. He saw many social changes, of which the rise of the “third estate” was the most important to take place. The central social problem for Ranke was, Vierhaus admits, a political one, that of fitting the bourgeoisie into the framework of the old state, at the same time excluding the masses who lacked all prerequisites for political responsibility.103 Ranke’s concept of the state remained a static one. The continental monarchical great power, as it had arisen in the struggle between princes and estates and the religious civil wars between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, remained for him the model by which the states that existed in history were to be judged.104 This concept of the state reflected Ranke’s attachment to legitimacy, his religiosity, and the impact of the political thought of German Idealism on his thinking. But this viewpoint of the state remained inadequate for an understanding of the preabsolutistic state or of the political forces that emerged in the nineteenth century.
It is to his credit that in an age of rising nationalistic sentiment in historiography, Ranke did not sacrifice his belief in a European community. For him, state and nation were never identical, although he recognized the tendency of nations to form states and realized the strength which nineteenth-century
