Carroll Quigley (; November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) 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.

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".

Quigley retired from Georgetown in June 1976 after being honored by the student body with its Faculty Award for the fourth consecutive year.

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 (peaking in the 1880s), 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. Quigley notes that the slaughter of World War I (1914–1918) was due to the mismatch between the traditional armies (citizen soldiers) and the available weapons (machine guns used defensively).

Style

Quigley's writing style is dense, influenced by a former history professor of his:

<blockquote>"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 <nowiki>[Classical culture]</nowiki> into only five parts."</blockquote>

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

<blockquote>

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.

</blockquote>

Influence on Bill Clinton

In his first year (1965) in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, Bill Clinton took Quigley's course, receiving a 'B' as his final grade in both semesters (an excellent grade in a course where nearly half the students received D or lower).

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 greatly admired the British Empire and lamented that the secret society was not very successful. Historian Robert Rotberg states:

:But Quigley was not opposed to what Rhodes and Milner had purportedly tried to accomplish. Indeed, Quigley wrote more in remorse at what had failed than in antagonism to what he believed were their mutual efforts at extending the British Empire.

The society consisted of an inner circle ("The Society of the Elect") and an outer circle ("The Association of Helpers", also known as The Milner Kindergarten and the Round Table Group). The society as a whole did not have a fixed name:

<blockquote> 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.</blockquote>

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.</blockquote>

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.

Citations of Quigley in exposés of purported conspiracies

Soon after its publication, Tragedy and Hope caught the attention of authors interested in conspiracies. They proceeded to publicize Quigley's claims, disseminating them to a much larger audience than his original readership. The following year, G. Edward Griffin released the documentary The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside View of International Banking, crediting the Skousen book: "We wish to acknowledge that this film was inspired by Cleon Skousen's book, The Naked Capitalist, which we believe is one of the most important documents of the decade." Quigley responded directly to Skousen in a review stating that Skousen "has echoes of the original Nazi 25 point program."

In 1971, Gary Allen, a spokesman for the John Birch Society, published None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which became a bestseller. Allen cited Quigley's Tragedy and Hope as an authoritative source on conspiracies throughout his book. Like Skousen, Allen understood the various conspiracies in Quigley's book to be branches of one large conspiracy, and also connected them to the Bilderbergers and to Richard Nixon. As of the early 21st century the John Birch Society continued to cite Quigley as a primary source for their view of history.

Quigley is also cited by several other authors who assert the existence of powerful conspiracies. Jim Marrs cites Quigley in his book Rule By Secrecy, which describes a conspiracy linking the Milner Group, Skull and Bones, the Trilateral Commission, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Knights Templar, and aliens who posed as the Sumerian gods thousands of years ago. Pat Robertson's book The New World Order cites Quigley as an authority on a powerful conspiracy.

Quigley was dismissive of the authors who used his writings to support theories of a world domination conspiracy. Of W. Cleon Skousen's The Naked Capitalist he stated:

<blockquote>Skousen's book is full of misrepresentations and factual errors. He claims that I have written of a conspiracy of the super-rich who are pro-Communist and wish to take over the world and that I'm a member of this group. But I never called it a conspiracy and don't regard it as such. I'm not an "insider" of these rich persons, although Skousen thinks so. I happen to know some of them and liked them, although I disagreed with some of the things they did before 1940.</blockquote>

On Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy he said:

<blockquote>They thought Dr. Carroll Quigley proved everything. 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.

Further, None Dare Call It Conspiracy insists that international bankers were a single bloc, were all powerful and remain so today. I, on the contrary, stated in my book that they were much divided, often fought among themselves, had great influence but not control of political life and were sharply reduced in power about 1931-1940, when they became less influential than monopolized industry.</blockquote>

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.&nbsp;G. Wells urging this.

Bibliography

Books written by Quigley

  • Hardcover. 281 pages.
  • (Hardcover) 444 pages.
  • (Paperback) 444 pages.
  • Paperback. 442 pages.
  • 1,348 pages. Full text.
  • 676 pages. — A reprint of the second half of Tragedy and Hope.

Collected works

  • Lucchese, Adriano (ed.) (2015). Carroll Quigley: Life, Lectures and Collected Writings. New York: Discovery Publisher. .

Articles about or by Quigley

  • Quigley, Carroll (October, 1968). "Major Problems of Foreign Policy" Current History 55: 326
  • Quigley, Carroll (October, 1968). "Our Ecological Crisis" Current History 59: 347
  • Quigley, Carroll (October, 1968). "America's Future in Energy" Current History 69: 407
  • Staff writer (January 6, 1977). "Obituary." Washington Star, p. B4.
  • Wilkinson, David (Aug. 25, 1995). "From Mesopotamia through Carroll Quigley to Bill Clinton: World Historical Systems, the Civilizationist, and the President." Journal of World-Systems Research.
  • Wilkinson, David (Aug. 1996). "World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs. Central Civilization." Journal of World-Systems Research, vol. 2, no. 1. pp.&nbsp;117–185. .
  • McLemee, Scott (December 1996). "The Quigley Cult." George, vol. 1, no. 10, pp.&nbsp;94–98.
  • Rotberg, Robert I. (2014). "Did Cecil Rhodes Really Try to Control the World?" Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 42, no. 3, pp.&nbsp;551–567.
  • Ellison, Matt (December 16, 2016). "How Carroll Quigley Came to Georgetown." Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service. sfs.georgetown.edu. Archived from the original.

References

  • Official website
  • Terrence J. Boyle's site on Carroll Quigley
  • Matt Ellison's site on Carroll Quigley
  • Articles at JSTOR