Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico by R. W. Weisberger W. McLeod , S. Brent Morris (review)

Abstract

758 SEER, 83, 4, 2005 several fundamental attributes:a common Christian culture, agrarian economy , socialhierarchy,common normativediscoursesaboutthe idealwoman. At the same time, Kollmann's paper reveals one inherent problem of comparative studies: simplistic explanations. Kollmann placidly reduces all complicated courtpolitics to marriage;similarly,Emil Niederhauserexplains Muscovywith another'all-inclusive'notion, Mongol-typeviolence. Simplified pictures are of course suitable for comparison, but they hardly advance our understandingof Muscovy. The book also includes interesting and insightful studies of particular sources. Gail Lenhoff questions the traditionalassumption that the Moscow metropolitansviewed the Novgorodians as separatistsby carefullyre-reading the Book of Imperial Degree (Stepennaia kniga).Other source studies include the papers of Magdolna Agoston (seal of Ivan III of I497), M. K. Iurasov (Nikonian chronicle), Endre Sashami (letter of the monk Avraamiiof I696). The historiographicalstudiesof Gyula Szvakand Sandor Sziliexamine recent Russian works on Ivan IV and S. V. Bakhrushin'sworks on Siberia. Other papers presented in the volume address the problem of continuity between Kievan Rus and Muscovy (Marta Font), the evolution of various groups of Muscovite merchants (A. I. Aksenov), the central administration in the seventeenth century (O. V. Novokhatko), and the relations between Russia and Ukraine in the second half of the seventeenth century(SandorGebei and Beata VargaKerteszne). Despite the varying quality of editing, the volume is a success. Hungarian colleagues shouldbe congratulatedon the publication of the book which is an importantcontributionto the field. Hopefully, the appearance of thisvolume marksthe formationof a new centre of Muscovite studiesin Hungary. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies SERGEI BOGATYREV University College London Weisberger, R. W., McLeod, W., and Brent Morris, S. (eds). Freemasony on BothSidesoftheAtlantic: EssaysConcerning theCraft intheBritishIsles,Europe, theUnitedStates,andMexico.East European Monographs, Boulder, CO, 2002. xxviii + 941 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Index. $62.00: ?43.??. FREEMASONRY is a subject which has been attracting increasing scholarly interest in recent years, as this book demonstrates. However, study of the subject remains very inchoate and fragmentary,with research being undertaken in many separateareasand little attempt made to link these to create a broader picture of freemasonryas a culturalphenomenon. For example, on the one hand, scholarsof the Enlightenmenthave investigatedfreemasonryto see how farit was a vehicle for the spreadof new culturalvalues, while on the other, historians of the British Empire have considered the way in which freemasonry was one of the social forces which helped bind together the Empire.Freemasonryhas not been treatedas a fieldof investigationin itsown right, but rather used to illustrate aspects of other historical themes. Until some attempt is made to give some wider perspectives, study of the subject will always remain fracturedand marginal. This problem is exacerbated in REVIEWS 759 the English-speaking world by the strong tradition of amateur masonic scholarship, which is frequently very inward-looking and antiquarian and apologetic in character. This makes it difficult to develop scholarship on freemasonrywhich addresseswider researchagendas. The present publication presented an opportunity to give some wider intellectual framing to the study of freemasonry, but sadly this chance has been missed. Many of the leading researchers into freemasonry writing in English have contributedto the volume, but unfortunatelylack of care in its planning, editing and presentation means that this publication is far from being the 'landmark in the world of scholarship', which one of its editors grandly proclaims it to be in a prefatory note. The aim of the volume is unclear. If it is intended to present a rounded view of the history of Freemasonryin both Europe and America, the lack of any articleson Dutch, German and Italian Freemasonry or French Freemasonry after I789 is puzzling. It is strangeto include a section on Freemasonryin Mexico, but to leave out South America. It is interesting to have some account of masonic libraries,many of which willbe littleknownin thewiderscholarlycommunity, but in so doing surely it is important to have some description of two of the most important European libraries, those of the Grand East of the Netherlands, which contains George Kloss's remarkablecollection, and the Grand Orient in Paris, which has recently regained the important archives which ended up in Moscow afterthe Second WorldWar.Likewiseit is helpful to have a bibliographyat the end of thevolume, but why is it restrictedonly to materialpublished since I980 in Europe and to periodical literature?A more...