Anton Fugger by Götz Freiherr von PölnitzReview by: Felix F. StraussThe American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Jul., 1964), pp. 1052-1054Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1842957 .

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1052 Reviews of Books

tive country. What English historians can accomplish in the snarled history of Holland in this period has been demonstrated by C. R. Boxer and K. H. D. Haley; let us hope that if Robb continues with this work she will learn from them how to go about it. Let us also hope that a historian worthy of the task will not be dissuaded from it.

University of Wisconsin-Alilwaukee HERBERT H. ROWEN

BELGIQUE ET CONGO: L'RLABORATION DE LA CHARTE COLONI- ALE. By Jean Stengers. [Collection "Notre passe."] (Brussels: Renaissance du Livre. I963. Pp. 25I.)

THE short history of the Congo Free State was not a happy one, and the bitterness it aroused reached a climax during negotiations for its transfer to Belgium be- tween I906 and I908. Much of the controversy centered upon the terms of the Colonial Charter by which the new colony was to be governed, and this serves as the focus of Professor Stengers' excellent study.

In tracing the alteration of the Charter of I908 from the drafts of I895 and I90I, he has produced a comprehensive treatment of the relations between the Belgian government and the autocratic regime of Leopold II. Drawing upon materials in government archives and private collections in Belgium and in British Foreign Office documents, the author weighs the relative importance of external and internal pressures in the defeat of the King's attempt to retain authority be- hind a facade of parliamentary control. He assigns the primary role to a large minority in the Belgian Parliament, drawn from both the Left and the Right, who insisted on parliamentary control of the colonial budget. He concludes, however, that the cabinet and the King capitulated to this minority only because of the necessity of convincing the British government and British public opinion, out- raged by the atrocities in the Leopoldian Congo, that the new arrangements had widespread support in Belgium.

Stengers avoids the partisan tone that has characterized earlier studies in this area. Unlike most Belgian scholars he recognizes that the British reformers were moved primarily by humanitarian rather than commercial motives. This dispas- sionate treatment leads, however, to a view of Leopold that is perhaps over- generous. Surely the man who tolerated, if he did not initiate, the abuses of the rubber system, must be charged with something more serious than entertaining 'out-of-date" colonial theories.

This well-written and well-documented work is the best treatment to date of this aspect of Belgian colonial history.

Notre Dame College of Staten Island CATHERINE ANN CLINE

ANTON FUGGER. Volume II, I536-I548. Part I, I536-I543. By Gotz Freiherr von Pdlnitz. [Schwiibische Forschungsgemeinschaft bei der Kommission fur

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Von Polnitz: Anton Fugger I053

bayerische Landesgeschichte, Fourth Series, Volume VIII. Studien zur Fug- gergeschichte, Number I7.] (Tiubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). I963. PP. xvii, 656. Cloth DM 56, paper DM 50.)

AMPLITUDE of available source material has led Von Piolnitz to divide the second volume of his magisterial biography of Anton Fugger into two parts. The first part covers the uneasy years from I536 to I543.

Anton Fugger was deeply involved in the crosscurrents of events, in spite of his stubborn attempts to remain above the conflicting issues in order to retain in- dependence of action to guard his wide-flung business interests. These attempts explain Anton's ambivalent business and financial policies during the period. One of Protestant controlled Augsburg's most distinguished and wealthiest citizens, he remained firmly attached to Catholicism, although his religious outlook was moderate and irenic. He acted as a banker and purveyor for high-ranking prelates, and, at the same time, he expanded his business relations with Protestant princes. Some members of his family and several of his key associates embraced Luther- anism without his censure. With the same disregard for contending forces, he maintained throughout the period an active, though prudently camouflaged, economic liaison with France.

All of Anton's varied business connections and financial transactions were dwarfed in volume and value by his dealings with the Habsburgs. And all his attempts to retain an independent course of action foundered because of this. Every major operation required the approval of his regal overlords, Charles V and Ferdinand. He needed their good will and their protection. They needed him, his money, and his firm's organizational network and facilities to maintain their empire, to centralize their territorial administrations, and to carry on their wars. Anton could still address his King on an equal footing, but in the interplay of political and financial power, the locus of dominance was clearly shifting toward the state.

Von Polnitz' chief thesis-the inextricable interdependency of state policy and finance-is efficiently demonstrated and has probably never been documented more abundantly. Indeed, the book impresses one less as a conventional biography of Anton Fugger than as a chronologically developed case study of a deper- sonalized entrepreneur. The text is primarily a connecting tissue for the more than eighteen hundred footnotes which, in smaller type than the text, pre-empt a dozen more pages than the narrative. Most of these notes are far more than source citations, serving as a means for presenting new and detailed primary data and abstracts from important documents. It is here that the student will find a storehouse bursting with invaluable information. Such an organization, un- fortunately, hampers the development of a free-flowing style and, far more seriously, reduces effective generalization and synthesis. In his brief foreword, Von P6lnit3 defends himself against the major reviews of his first volume (including the one in the AHR, LXV [July I960], 899), many of which were critical on the

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I054 Reviews of Books

same score, by justifying his approach as one that makes available a maximum of information on an enormous amount of new source material in as minimal a space as possible. Even though one may take exception to the author's limited approach, one has to agree that his contribution to scholarship is both valuable and sub- stantial.

Von Polnitz' contribution would be greatly enhanced and fellow scholars im- mensely cheered if henceforth he would systematize the vast array of data which are at present immersed among the numerous footnotes. Annual statistical tables would enable the reader to see significant trends at a glance. The student would also welcome systematically arranged comparative data on both cooperative and competitive ventures of Anton's prominent contemporaries in the business, finan- cial, and "industrial" world. This would, without diminishing the stature of Anton, place him more solidly into the context of his time. Likewise, to visualize the changing Fugger empire, it would be helpful if there were maps appended to each volume, similar to the one in the author's Jakob Fugger, Volume 11 (95I),

showing the principal trade centers where Fugger factors were located, pointing out the various Fugger mining enterprises and the sites where the extracted ores were marketed, outlining major trade routes, and depicting the estates that the

family acquired (or disposed of) at home and abroad.

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn FELIX F. STRAUSS

STILLBORN REVOLUTION: THE COMMUNIST BID FOR POWER IN GERMANY, I92I-I923. By Werner T. Angress. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. I963. PP. xv, 5I3. $IO.OO.)

THIS impressive study commands virtually all the materials available to non- Communist investigators and provides an eminently readable account of the German Communist party during its most crucial period in the Weimar Republic.

Professor Angress is concerned with what he calls the Kampfzeit of the party, the period I9I8-I923. But since the early years have been so well explored by such monographs as those of Waldman, Tormin, and Kolb, he deals with this period in a perceptive and balanced resume that uses, and credits, the latest specialized research. He concentrates on the less well-known and equally im- portant years from I92I through I923.

Angress does not parade his encyclopedic knowledge. Rather, with quiet authority, he uses exemplary scholarship to illumine and adjudicate such complex and previously controverted issues as the March uprising of I92I, the "German October" of I923, the intrigues surrounding the "Left Opposition," the inanities of the "Policy of the United Front," and the period of National Bolshevism, a time when German Communists sedulously wooed the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg and when Ruth Fischer-of all people-tried to match the Nazis in vicious anti-Semitic invective.

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