COMPARATIVE NATIONAL CULTURES

13 November 1957

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION--Colonel T. L. Crystal, Jr. , USAF,

Member of the Faculty, ICAF

SPEAKER--Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of History,

School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

GENERAL DISCUSSION 

Publication No. L58-54
INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE OF THE ARMED FORCES
Washington, D. C.

Introduction

Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of History, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 9 November 1910. He was educated at Boston Latin School and at Harvard University, obtaining an A.B. (magna cum laude) in 1933, an M.A. in 1934 and a Ph.D. in 1938. He was an instructor in History at Princeton University from 1935 to 1937, leaving there to do research work at the public archives of Paris and Milan on the Woodberry Lowery Traveling Fellowship of Harvard University. While abroad he wrote his doctoral dissertation on "The Public Administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, 1805-1814. " From 1938 to 1941 he was instructor and tutor in the Division of History, Government and Economics at Harvard University. Since 1941 he has been at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, first as lecturer in History and Civilization and now as Professor of European History. He is regarded as an authority on the comparative history of civilizations and the history of Europe in the 20th century.
 
He is a member of the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, the American Anthropological Association, and other learned societies. He is engaged at present in writing a book on world history in the 20th century Europe. His most recent published work is "The Origin and Diffusion of Oculi" in The American Neptune for January 1958. This is Dr, Quigley's fifth lecture at the College.
 
COMPARATIVE NATIONAL CULTURES
13 November 1957
 
COLONEL CRYSTAL: Good morning.
 
We have the privilege this morning of welcoming back to this platform a friend of long standing. Until I met the Doctor this morning. I really was going to say "an old friend, " because anybody who has done as much for as long a period as Dr. Quigley has for the Industrial College, I felt, must have a long gray beard. But in this age of DDT and penicillin he has preserved his facilities remarkably well.
 
I'd like to tell you a little bit about what his business is. He is a professional historian at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. One of the methods they use there is "to help the student to form an idea of the process of social development by obtaining a broader perspective and understanding of the past of our civilization, the meaning of great movements in the past, with special emphasis on their effects on our present civilization. And he has been trying to do this for some years with us.
 
Evidence of it is contained in some of the documents which have been published by us and to which I strongly recommend you: The pre-Revolutionary History of the Soviet Union, a brilliant presentation that lets you understand a little better where the Muscovites came from; The Development of the Soviet Economy--his lecture on this subject last year--and finally, and to me as a student, of even greater importance, is his bibliography on the economic potential of the Soviet Union and its satellites.
 
I'll give you one example of how a professional teacher helps students, because in an area which is difficult to find much about, labor in the Soviet Union, he has listed Deutscher, I., Soviet Trade Unions: Their Place in Soviet Labor Policy, an I. R.R.A. publication, and Hubbard, L. E., Soviet Labour and Industry. So in your research in this course of human resources don't neglect what the Doctor has already made available to us in our library.
 
He has also annotated it with critical comments on the biases of the authors, and this is that understanding perspective about which professional historians probably know more than most people in other areas of dispute and contention. History is one of those areas. In his biography you've probably read his latest contribution to scholarly work. I've not made arrangements with the magazine to get a specially reduced rate on the American Neptune for January, because I am one of those who is rather perplexed at exactly what the Origin and Diffusion of Oculi means. If any of you share my confusion, I want to admit that the amount of lexicographical research that I did last night only heightens my confusion, because I found the word "oculus" to mean, anatomically, an eye. In architecture, it's a circular hole in the middle of the western facade of most Gothic cathedrals. It is also the circular hole in the top of the dome of the Pantheon. In an astronomical manner it's the Corona Borealis. In botany it is a leafbud or an astringent plant. In chronology it's the third Sunday in Lent. In lapidology it's an opal, the oculus mundi. In zoology it can be called the crab's eye.
 
Well, without further ado, Doctor, you know you're among friends. We're very happy to have you here. I am proud to present to the class Dr. Carroll Quigley.
 
DR. QUIGLEY: I think it's a shame to interrupt that. He speaks very well, and it ' s the most fascinating subject I've ever heard discussed. But he's not a good man with the dictionary. I guess he didn't get the right dictionary.
 
The oculi I am talking about are the eyes painted on the front of ships in Asia and the East Coast of Africa. They have eyes painted so the ship can see where it is going, according to some people. One of the arguments in my article is that it is not to provide the ship with a way of seeing where it's going, but something else. But don't rush out and buy the American Neptune, because they'll run out. I don't think they publish more than a handful of them.

Next Section - Lecture Part 1