James Anthony Froude

James Anthony Froude ( ;

Beginning in 1864, Edward Augustus Freeman, a High Churchman, launched a critical campaign against Froude in the Saturday Review and later in the Contemporary Review, somewhat damaging Froude's scholarly reputation. In 1879, Freeman's review in the Contemporary Review of Froude's Short Study of Thomas Becket incited Froude to respond with a refutation in The Nineteenth Century which largely discredited Freeman's attacks and reaffirmed the value of Froude's manuscript research.

In 1860, Froude's wife Charlotte died; in 1861, he married her close friend Henrietta Warre, daughter of John Warre, MP for Taunton. Also in 1861, Froude became editor of Fraser's Magazine following the death of former editor John Parker, who was also Froude's publisher. Froude retained this editorship for fourteen years, resigning it in 1874 at the request of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he was working. In 1869 Froude was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews, defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a majority of fourteen. In 1870, following the passage of the Clerical Disabilities Act (c. 91, Vict. XXXIII & XXXIV; "Bouverie's Act"), which permitted priests and deacons to resign from Holy Orders, Froude was finally able to officially rejoin the laity.

In a prize-winning work published in 1981, the historian J. W. Burrow remarked of Froude that he was a leading promoter of the imperialist excitement of the closing years of the century, but that in the mass of his work even empire took second place to religion.

Looking abroad (1870–1880)

right|thumb|Caricature by [[Adriano Cecioni published in Vanity Fair in 1872]]

Soon after the completion of the History of England in 1870, Froude began research for a history of Ireland. As with his earlier work, English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century was opinionated, favouring Protestantism over Catholicism and frequently attempting to justify British rule in Ireland, particularly under Oliver Cromwell (a deeply unpopular figure among Irish Catholics). Froude argued that Ireland's issues were the result of too little control from authorities in London, and that an even greater amount of British control—an "enlightened despotism"—was needed to alleviate problems that were present in Ireland.

In September 1872, Froude accepted an invitation to lecture in the United States, where his work was also well-known. At that time, many Americans (particularly Irish Americans) were opposed to British rule in Ireland, and Froude hoped to change their views. The lectures, widely discussed, raised the expected controversy, with opposition led by the Dominican friar Thomas Nicholas Burke. Opposition caused Froude to cut his trip short, and he returned to England disappointed both by his impression of America and by the results of his lectures.

In England, too, Froude's Irish history had its critics, most notably William Edward Hartpole Lecky in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, the first volumes of which were published in 1878, and in reviews in Macmillan's Magazine.

In February 1874, shortly before completion of English in Ireland, Froude's wife Henrietta died, after which Froude moved from London to Wales. As a means of diversion, Froude travelled to the Southern African Colony of Natal, unofficially for Colonial Secretary Lord Carnarvon, to report on the best means of promoting a confederation of the colonies and states of southern Africa. This region, seen as vital for the security of the Empire, was only partially under British control. Confederating the various states under British rule was seen as the best way of peacefully establishing total imperial control and ending the autonomy of the remaining independent states.

thumb|left|upright=.75|[[Secretary of State for the Colonies|Colonial Secretary Lord Carnavon]]

On his second trip to Southern Africa in 1875, Froude was an imperial emissary charged with promoting confederation, a position which conflicted at times with his habit of lecturing on his personal political opinions. In the Cape Colony, his public statements advocating the use of forced labour on the indigenous Xhosa people were particularly controversial given that the Cape Colony was under the rule of the relatively inclusive Molteno-Merriman Government, whose stated policy to treat its Xhosa citizens as "fellow subjects with white men" Froude accused of being "rabid in its anti-Imperialist stance". Relations were not improved by Froude's disdain for the Cape's local politics and of the "Cape politicians [who] strut about with their Constitution as a schoolboy newly promoted to a tail coat, and ... imagine that they have the privileges of perfect independence, while we are to defend their coasts and keep troops to protect them in case of Kaffir insurrection." Overall, though, the confederation scheme as promoted by Carnavon was not popular in the Southern African states, which were still simmering from the last bout of British imperial expansion (President Brand of the Orange Free State refused outright to even consider it).

However, in his travels through different parts of southern Africa, Froude gained some support through publicly agitating for pet local causes. "Chameleon-like, his politics assumed the colour of his surroundings," was how the Cape Argus newspaper described his strategy.

The Cape Colony was by far the largest and most powerful state in the region, and Froude thus sought audience with its prime minister, John Molteno, to convey Carnarvon's request that he lead the region's states into Carnarvon's confederation scheme. However, Molteno rebuffed Froude, telling him that the confederation attempt was premature, that the country was "not ripe for it" and that his government would not support it in the politically volatile region. He made the additional point that any federation with the illiberal Boer republics would endanger the rights and franchise of the Cape's black citizens, and that overall "the proposals for confederation should emanate from the communities to be affected, and not be pressed upon them from outside."

thumb|right|upright=.75|[[Prime Minister of the Cape, Sir John Molteno]]

Froude responded by openly allying with a radical white opposition party, the "Eastern Cape Separatists," promising a baronetcy to its leader Paterson if he would overthrow the Cape's elected government. In a public speech on 25 July 1876, challenging the Cape Government, he declared, "We want you to manage your natives as they do in Canada and Australia." He also promised to create a separate white Eastern Cape, and to impose a forced labour system onto the Cape's African population along "Transvaal lines" while confiscating Xhosa and Basotho land for redistribution to white farmers. Molteno, furious, condemned Froude's statements, accused Froude of imperial interference in the Cape Colony's democracy, and told the Colonial Office that he was prepared to sacrifice his job to keep the Cape out of such a confederation. Meanwhile, Merriman wrote to London accusing the "Imperial Agent" of desiring to subject and exterminate the Cape's Xhosa citizens. The Ministers of the Cape Parliament went on to accuse Carnarvon of attempting to use the Cape to oppress the region and bring upon a war with the neighbouring Xhosa and Boer states. After Merriman confronted Froude in person, at an Uitenhage event which degenerated into fist fights, Froude gave no further public speeches.

Froude's mission was thus ultimately considered unsuccessful, and caused considerable uproar in southern Africa. Nonetheless, Lord Carnarvon pushed ahead with his Confederation plan, which predictably failed and led to the confederation wars.

On his return to London, Froude announced, <blockquote>If anybody had told me two years ago that I should be leading an agitation within Cape Colony, I should have thought my informant delirious. The (Cape) Ministers have the appearance of victory, but we have the substance.</blockquote> Froude's observations on Africa were presented in a Report to the Secretary of State and a series of lectures for the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, both of which were adapted into essays for inclusion in Froude's essay collection Short Studies on Great Subjects.

In 1876 he was appointed to two Royal Commissions, the first into the "Laws and Regulations relating to Home, Colonial, and International Copyright" In the absence of British rule, Froude argues that the Irish would have perished through infighting and famine, "for except for us they would have never been alive to suffer." In response, John Lancaster Spalding wrote a rebuttal where he described Froude's article as pseudohistory and error-ridden.

Life of Carlyle controversy (1881–1903)

thumb|Caricature from [[Punch (magazine)|Punch, 30 December 1882]]

Froude had been a close personal friend as well as an intellectual disciple of Thomas Carlyle since 1861, and the two became even closer after the death of Carlyle's wife Jane on 21 April 1866. Reading Jane's diaries and letters, Carlyle was struck by her unhappiness and his own irritability and inconsideration for her, and he decided to atone by writing her a memorial. In 1871, Carlyle gave Froude this memorial along with a bundle of Jane's personal papers, to be published after Carlyle's death, if Froude so decided. Also, Carlyle appointed Froude one of his own literary executors, Crichton-Browne later corroborated that after one of Jane's illnesses, her personal doctor Richard Quain sent word to Carlyle that he could "resume marital relations with his wife." Aileen Christianson, citing the correspondence of both Carlyles, states: "It seems probable that they did have a sexual relationship, however curtailed in later marriage by illness and inclination, and that the later controversies over Thomas's 'impotence' or Jane's 'frigidity' were more to do with the posturing of the defenders of each side in the marriage than with the truth."

Froudacity

right|thumb|Front cover of Froudacity (1889)

Following completion of the Life of Carlyle, Froude turned to travel, particularly to the British colonies, visiting South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the West Indies. From these travels he produced two books, Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies (1886) and The English in the West Indies, or The Bow of Ulysses (1888), which mixed personal anecdotes with Froude's thoughts on the British Empire. Froude intended with these writings "to kindle in the public mind at home that imaginative enthusiasm for the Colonial idea of which his own heart was full". However, these books caused great controversy, stimulating rebuttals and the coining of the term Froudacity by Afro-Trinidadian intellectual John Jacob Thomas, who used it as the title of, Froudacity. West Indian fables by J. A. Froude explained by J. J. Thomas, his book-length critique of The English in the West Indies.

Later life (1885–1894)

During this time Froude also wrote a historical novel, The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, which was the least popular of his mature works. As with his earlier book on Irish history, Froude used the book to turn an Irish hero into a villain with historical distortion. On the death of his adversary Edward Augustus Freeman in 1892, Froude was appointed, on the recommendation of Lord Salisbury, to succeed him as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.

(Biography of Benjamin Disraeli)

Translations

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) (1854, published anonymously)

James Anthony Froude

Looking abroad (1870–1880)

Life of Carlyle controversy (1881–1903)

Froudacity

Later life (1885–1894)

Translations

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links