Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix (; 8 February 1910 – 5 February 2000), known informally as Croicks, His mother, Florence Annie (née MacGowan), was the daughter of a Protestant missionary: she was a firm believer in British Israelism. Her fundamentalist Protestant beliefs were ever present in his childhood; he would become a firm atheist. There, he became proficient in Greek and Latin, and a talented tennis player. He once defeated Fred Perry in a minor tournament.

Career

He left school at the age of 15 and became an articled clerk in Worthing, West Sussex, England. This allowed him to train for a legal career without a degree in law, and he was admitted as a solicitor in 1932. He practised in Worthing and then in London, until he was called up for war service in 1940. He would later join the Labour Party. He was regraded as a pilot officer (on probation) on 18 September 1941. His commission was confirmed on 18 July 1942, and he was promoted to flying officer on 18 September 1942 with seniority in that rank from 12 August 1942. His job in the RAF was to interpret enemy radar signals to ascertain the location and destination of their aircraft. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree by the University of Oxford in 1978.

Personal life

In 1932, Ste. Croix married Lucile. Together they had one daughter (died 1964). The couple divorced in 1959. That year, he married Margaret Knight. He had two sons from his second marriage.

The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972)

The Origins of the Peloponnesian War made several major contributions to scholarship on the subject of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, the major one being a reinterpretation of the Megarian Decree, passed by the Athenian Ekklesia in 432 BC. Most scholarship hitherto had considered the decree to involve economic sanctions by excluding the Megarian state and Megarian traders from access to ports throughout the Athenian Empire. Ste. Croix instead interpreted it as a religious sanction (drawing an analogy with the Spartan demand, in response to the Megarian Decree and other Athenian policies, for Athens to expel some religiously-tainted citizens). Ste. Croix maintained that the sanction was exercised not to hurt the Megarians, which it could not do because of the nature of trade and economics in the ancient world, but on religious grounds, which were felt to be genuine by the Athenians. His argument has not achieved general acceptance among historians.

Ernst Badian severely judged Ste. Croix's book for his "obsessive hatred of Sparta". In his opinion, the book was "written to prove that Sparta bears almost sole responsibility for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War".

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981)

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World was an attempt to establish the validity of a historical materialist analysis of the ancient Greek and Roman world. It covers the period roughly from Greek pre-classical times to the Arab conquest. Part one addresses fundamental topics. After an expository plan chapter II (Class, Exploitation, and Class Struggle) begins with an apologia of Ste. Croix's understanding of basic classical Marxist theory (§ I The nature of class society) and some specific terms (§ II "Class', 'exploitation', and 'the class struggle' defined). The remainder of Part One is a detailed analysis of these concepts applied to the Ancient Greek World (Chs. III Property and the Propertied and IV Forms of Exploitation in the Ancient Greek World, and the Small Independent Producer).

Part II contains the historical analysis per se and begins (Ch. V The Class Struggle in Greek History on the Political Plane) with an exposition of how the economic processes addressed in part I lead to a gradual but complete eradication of Greek democracy by the middle of the Roman principate. The remaining chapters (VI Rome the Suzerain, VII The Class Struggle on the Ideological Plane, and VIII "The Decline and Fall" of the Roman Empire: an Explanation) focus primarily on Rome and put forth the thesis that it was the increasing dependence on slave labor and diminishment of what would be considered in a modern context the middle classes that was the actual cause of the collapse. There is also a lengthy discussion of the significance of the mode by which surplus value is generated. Ste. Croix makes the point that the mode of surplus extraction is not necessarily the same as the mode of production engaged in by a majority of the population. Specifically, that while a relatively small portion of the work force were slaves, Rome under the principate nonetheless became essentially a slave society.

Selected publications

  • "The character of the Athenian empire" in Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 1954, 3, pp. 1–41.
  • "Greek And Roman Accounting" 1956.
  • The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. London: Duckworth, 1972.
  • Early Christian attitudes to property and slavery. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975.
  • The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests. London, Duckworth, 1981.

References

Further reading

  • Ernst Badian, "Agis III: Revisions and Reflections", in Ian Worthington (editor), Ventures into Greek History [Second Australian Symposium on Ancient Macedonian Studies held at the University of Melbourne in July 1991, dedicated to Professor Nicholas Hammond], Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994.
  • Cartledge, P. A. and Harvey, F. D. (eds) (1985) Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday. London: Duckworth in association with Imprint Academic.
  • Obituary in The Guardian (UK) Archived here.
  • Obituary in the Weekly Worker (UK)
  • Obituary from the World Socialist Web Site.
  • World Socialist Web Site: An exchange on G.E.M. de Ste. Croix.
  • RootsWeb.com (genealogical information)