Empire and Communications 9781487512088

Table of contents :
Contents
Reading Empire and Communications: Above and below the Line
Notes on the Text
Empire and Communications, 1972 edition
Foreword
Author’s Preface
Editor’s Note
1 Introduction
2 Egypt
3 Babylonia
4 The Oral Tradition and Greek Civilization
5 The Written Tradition and the Roman Empire
6 Parchment and Paper
7 Paper and the Printing Press
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Empire and Communications

HAROLD A. INNIS Revised by MARY Q. INNIS Edited and introduced by WILLIAM J. BUXTON

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

EMPIRE AND COMMUNICATIONS

Originally published in 1950, Harold A. Innis’s Empire and Communications is considered to be one of the classic works in media studies, yet its origins have received little attention. Ambitious in its scope, the book spans five millennia, tracing a path of development around the globe from 2900 BCE to the twentieth century and revealing the cyclical interplay between communications and power structures across space and time. In this new edition, William J. Buxton pays close attention to handwritten glosses that Innis added to a copy of the original edition and the revisions undertaken by his widow, Mary Q. Innis. A new introduction provides a detailed account of how the book emerged from lectures that Innis delivered at Oxford University in 1948, as well as how it related to other presentations Innis made in Britain during the same period. It explores how Innis sought to enrich his analysis by incorporating material related to phenomena such as war, education, religion, culture, geography, and finance. An insightful foreword by Marshall McLuhan is included, as well as bibliographical references and a revised index. By providing a narrative based on extensive notes from Innis, this edition makes Empire and Communications more accessible and contributes to the broad efforts to shape Innis’s legacy. harold a. innis was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media and communication theory. william j. buxton is a professor emeritus of communication studies at Concordia University.

©   University of Toronto Press 2022 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. First edition published by Oxford University Press 1950 Revised edition published by University of Toronto Press 1972 This edition published 2022 ISBN 978-1-4875-2069-4 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4875-1209-5 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-1208-8 (PDF) Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Empire and communications / Harold A. Innis ; revised by Mary Quayle Innis ;   edited and introduced by William J. Buxton. Names: Innis, Harold A. (Harold Adams), 1894–1952, author. | Innis, Mary Quayle, editor. |   Buxton, William, 1947– editor. Description: First edition published by Oxford University Press 1950; revised edition   published by University of Toronto Press 1972; this edition published 2022. |   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220210918 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220210977 |   ISBN 9781487520694 (paper) | ISBN 9781487512095 (EPUB) |   ISBN 9781487512088 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Communication – History. Classification: LCC P90 .I5 2022 | DDC 302.209 – dc23 We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities.

Contents

Reading Empire and Communications: Above and below the Line   vii william j. buxton Notes on the Text   xliii william j. buxton Empire and Communications, 1972 edition harold a. innis Foreword by Marshall McLuhan   xlix Author’s Preface   lvii Editor’s Note by Mary Q. Innis   lix 1 Introduction   3 2 Egypt   12 3 Babylonia   26 4  The Oral Tradition and Greek Civilization   53 5  The Written Tradition and the Roman Empire   85 6  Parchment and Paper   116 7  Paper and the Printing Press   141 Bibliography  171 compiled by william j. buxton Index  195 compiled by william j. buxton

Reading Empire and Communications: Above and below the Line william j. buxton

Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications is considered to be one of the ­classic works in media studies and the history of media, yet its origins in a set of lectures delivered at Oxford University in May 1948 have received little attention.1 In the spring of 1946 Innis received an invitation out of the blue from W. K. Hancock2 of All Souls College, Oxford, asking him whether he would be available to deliver the Beit lectures at the university during the 1946−7 academic year.3 The six lectures (supported by the Beit Trust)4 were to be on “imperial economic history.” He cautioned Innis that “the fund is not large ... its originators contemplated lecturers from this country.” This meant that “the fee is modest – £200 in installments: £100 when the lectures are delivered … another when the manuscript is delivered for publication” with “no allocation 1 Harold A. Innis, Empire and Communications, revised by Mary Quayle Innis (Toronto: ­University of Toronto Press, 1972). 2 Sir William Keith Hancock (1898–1988), an eminent Australian historian, was at the time Chichele Professor of Economic History and a fellow of All Souls College at Oxford. 3 W.K. Hancock to Harold Innis, 25 May1946, Department of Political Economy fonds (hereafter DPE) A76-0025, University of Toronto Archives (hereafter UTA), box 6, file 6. Innis interrupted ongoing negotiations for a position at the University of Chicago to prepare for his lectures, deciding not to return to Chicago to teach during the summer quarter of 1947. He later resumed discussions, but ultimately decided to remain at the University of Toronto, becoming dean of its graduate school. 4 The lecture series was held under the auspices of the Beit Professorship of Colonial History established in 1905 by the British gold-and-diamond magnate, Alfred Beit (1853–1906). At the time of the invitation, the chair was held by Sir Reginald Coupland KCMG FBA (1884–1952); his appointment to this position ran from 1920 to 1948. The Beit Fund was “not only … an endowment for a Chair, but … a means by which the University has been able to promote work in the field of British Empire studies which has been of great value.” It also provided support for visiting lecturers, whose presentations “were published in volume form [constituting] an important contribution to this field of study.” Oxford University Archives, Beit Fund, UR 6/B/1, file 3, correspondence file on the Beit Fund, 1948−53.

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for travelling expenses.” To give Innis some sense of who had given the lectures before, Hancock mentioned Innis’s former colleague, C.R. Fay,5 whose lectures had addressed “Imperial Economy,” and Sir Alan Pim,6 who had discussed ­“African Problems.”7 He let Innis know that if he were to give “an encouraging answer” he would be sent an official invitation from Sir Reginald Coupland.8 Innis did indeed receive such an invitation; he accepted it but arranged to deliver the lectures in 1948 instead.9 Coupland assured Innis that he was “completely free to choose the subject [for his] lectures in this … wide field of the Economic History of the British Empire.” He felt that it would have been presumptuous of him to suggest a topic, even if he had had one in mind.10 Innis took Coupland’s assurances at his word, suggesting that his lectures examine the relationship between empire and communications. It has been claimed that the lecture series was greeted with “general puzzlement” from the audience who had supposedly expected “a detailed examination of some aspect of British imperial history.”11 Yet at least one prospective member of the audience would not have been puzzled by what was presented in the lecture series. Hancock, who described himself as an “arch-engineer of [Innis’s] coming,” told Innis that he would be departing for Australia during the same term in which Innis would be delivering his lectures, and therefore he might miss them, a state of affairs that he described as a “cruel disappointment [as he] would have been the chief benefactor of [this] wisdom.”12 He also informed Innis that he had just reviewed his essay collection, Political Economy in the Modern State13 for the Economic History Review.14 The material covered in the review anticipated the set of lectures that Innis eventually delivered. Hancock noted that “this volume ... is full 5 C. R. (Charles Ryle) Fay (1884–1961), a British economic historian, was a professor of economic history (and a colleague of Innis) from 1921 to 1930 at the University of Toronto. He subsequently became Reader in Economic History at Cambridge University. 6 Sir Alan William Pim (1871–1958) was an administrator in India and colonial adviser to the British government. 7 Charles Ryle Fay, Imperial Economy and Its Place in the Formation of Economic Doctrine 1600−1932 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). Alan Pim, The Financial and Economic History of the African Tropical Territories (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). Both were published in the Beit Lectures on Colonial Economic History series. 8 Hancock to Innis, 25 May1946. DPE A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. 9 As he noted in a letter to John U. Nef, “in the spring of 1948 [he was] to give the Beit lectures at Oxford which implies a substantial mortgage on time and energy.” Innis to Nef, 15 November 1946 (est.), John U. Nef Papers (hereafter JUN), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (hereafter UCL), box 24, file 4. 10 Coupland to Innis, 18 August 1946, DPE A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. 11 Fay’s set of lectures was more in line with the theme: Fay, Imperial Economy. 12 Hancock to Innis, 4 January 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. 13 Harold Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946), 103–44. 14 W.K. Hancock, review of Harold Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State. The Economic History Review 18 (1/2) (1948): 113–14.

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of the learning and wisdom distilled from twenty and more years of intensive research into Canadian economic history.” This suggests that far from being surprised at what Innis decided to present, his hosts at All Souls College knew exactly what they were getting. Hancock drew attention to the “masterly essays on the theme of excess capacity in transport.” He noted that the “local research has been as intensive and meticulous as anyone else [but has] not affected him with the taint of localism − or of nationalism…” Rather than being obsessed with the role of the frontier – as was the case with Turner and other American historians – according to Hancock, Innis never ignored “the metropolitan markets which make the frontiers move … [A] study of Canadian history … ‘gives a crucial significance to an understanding of cyclical and secular disturbances not only within Canada but without.’” [A] second theme ... [demonstrates that] the diffusion of words since the invention of printing is a supply-and-demand history in which are interwoven technological change, business enterprise and the innate or acquired capacities of men to understand or misunderstand ideas.15

It was not surprising, then, that the subject Innis proposed for his set of lectures found favour with Hancock and Coupland.16 Arrangements Innis and Mary Quayle Innis sailed on the Empress of Canada from Montreal to Southampton on 1 May 1948 returning via Liverpool on August 4.17 Innis delivered six lectures (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5:45 pm) beginning on Wednesday, May 12, with the final one on Monday, May 24. The series was advertised in the Oxford Gazette during the Hilary (January to March) term at Oxford.18 While in Oxford they stayed at the Linton Lodge Hotel on Linton Road. Aside from delivering the Beit lectures, Innis was invited to visit Nuffield College, hosted by its warden, Henry Clay.19 The latter suggested that Innis 15 Ibid. 16 Anticipating his absence, Hancock requested that Innis provide him with a précis of his lectures. Hancock to Innis, 4 January 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. It appeared that Hancock was not present at the Beit lectures, having gone to Australia to take up a position at the Australian National University. 17 E.F. Thompson to Miss Carnegie, 19 March 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. Innis was not reimbursed for the cost of the voyages, which amounted to $1132 for he and his wife. Innis to Cotterill, 8 April 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 6. 18 Henry Clay to Innis, 11 May 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 7, file 6. 19 Sir Henry Clay (1883–1954) was a British economist and Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford.

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attend the Annual General Meeting of the Economic History Society held at the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as meetings of the Oxford Economics History Group.20 On May 21, Innis delivered the Cust Lecture in Nottingham. On June 17, he delivered the Stamp Memorial lecture at the University of London. He then spent a few weeks doing research in Paris21 prior to attending the Congress of Commonwealth Universities held in Oxford, July 19–23. In addition, during his time in the United Kingdom, Innis received honorary doctoral degrees from the Universities of Oxford, London, and Glasgow. “History of Communications” In accepting the invitation to deliver the Beit lectures, Innis was obliged to proceed in a direction that was somewhat at odds with his broader communications project. The major point of reference for Innis’s emergent interest in the subject was the “History of Communications” manuscript, running over 1400 pages in length, from antiquity to modernity with particular emphasis given to the material that was being written and printed on.22 Given that the latter work begins with chapter 4, it has been suggested that Innis simply removed its first three chapters and used them as the Beit lectures. However, archival research has revealed that Innis had in fact written three initial chapters that had not been included in the main body of the “History of Communications” manuscript.23 While these did not correspond directly to any particular chapters found in Empire, they did contain some material that was incorporated into them. This means that Empire should not be viewed as a fragment of the original manuscript. Rather, responding to the task that had been outlined to him by Hancock and Coupland, Innis drew on his ongoing research to examine some broader issues related to the “economic history of the British Empire.” 20 Clay to Innis, 11 May 1948. DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 7, file 6. 21 He had been awarded $500.00 from the Rockefeller Foundation to study paper production in France. Sidney Smith to Joseph Willits, 23 April 1948, Rockefeller Foundation, RG 1.2, series 427, box 17, folder 167, Rockefeller Archive Center. 22 Harold Adams Innis, “A History of Communications: An Incomplete and Unrevised Manuscript” (Microfilmed for private circulation, Toronto. Its first three chapters, edited and annotated by William J. Buxton, Michael R. Cheney, and Paul Heyer, appeared as Harold Innis’s History of Communications: Paper and Printing - Antiquity to Early Modernity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). 23 Evidently, after going through several iterations, Innis arrived at the following titles for the first three draft chapters: 1. “Feet of Clay” (dealing with Sumerian cuneiform writing and its impact); 2. “Papyrus” (dealing with ancient Egypt); and finally, 3. “Parchment” (covering the Middle Ages). Buxton et al, A History of Communications, 2.

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Publishing An important aspect of the Beit Lectures was an arrangement to have them published by Clarendon Press. In addition to his £100 stipend for delivering the lectures, Innis was to receive another £100 for making the text of his talks available to the publisher; it was to be submitted by the autumn of 1948.24 In response to a letter from D.M. Davin of Clarendon Press in November 1948,25 Innis conveyed to him that he had already sent the manuscript to Coupland, and requested that it be published by “the end of March [1949]” or preferably earlier so that it would be available to the “large wave of returned students” in their final year. They had pressing demands “in terms of library facilities and books.”26 However, having learned that a March 1949 publication date was out of the question, Innis agreed to the schedule suggested to him by Clarendon Press, namely publication in the summer or autumn of 1949.27 Innis revised the manuscript in the fall of 1948. To this end, he shared a draft of his chapter on ancient Greece with his colleague in the University of Toronto Classics Department, Harley Grant Robertson,28 quite well known for his scholarship on Greece.29 In a letter to Innis, Robertson made a number of suggestions about how the manuscript could be improved, telling him he had “enjoyed reading [his] masterly summary of the comprehensive subject.” He admitted, however, that he had difficulty following some of the sections, 24 D.M. Davin to Innis, 18 November 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 8. 25 Daniel (Dan) Marcus Davin CBE (1913–1990) worked for Clarendon Press from 1945 to 1978. 26 Innis to Davin, 30 November 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6, file 8. 27 The Cust and Stamp lectures were also published, but in a much more expedited fashion. Innis received printed copies of his Cust lecture in late November 1948. Harold A Innis, Great Britain, the United States and Canada: The 21st Cust Foundation Lecture Delivered on Friday, 21 May 1948 (Nottingham: Clough, 1948). The University of Nottingham quite generously sent additional copies to a number of Canadian media outlets. Innis to A. Plumb, 29 November 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 8, file 3. Innis received the page proofs for the Stamp lecture (published by Oxford University Press) in October 1948. However, it appears that the finished book was not available before March 1949. Harold A Innis, The Press: A Neglected Factor in the Economic History of the Twentieth Century (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1949). James Henderson to Innis, 15 October 1948, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 7, folder 6; Cole to Innis, 29 March 1949. Arthur Cole Papers, HUG 4290.405, Harvard University Archives, box 4, file 6. 28 Robertson (1892–1985), who had received a doctorate in classics from the University of Chicago, succeeded his father, John Charles Robertson, as a professor of Greek at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Ward W. Briggs, Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 44. 29 Hartley Grant Robertson, The Administration of Justice in the Athenian Empire (Toronto: University of Toronto Library, 1924). Innis cited this work in Empire (p. 82). Innis conveyed his thanks to Robertson in the book’s preface.

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particularly the one “on the early philosophers.” He thought Innis could make it clearer “how much they owed to the oral tradition and how much of their thinking was conditioned by new influences.” He also could not understand why Innis treated Plato and Aristotle “out of chronological order.” In terms of omissions, he felt that Innis should have included the “orators and sophists;” both, in his view, had influenced the oral tradition. Finally he called attention to what he considered to be “rather minor” matters, including “a certain dangerous tendency in the oral tradition itself,” and added “some notes on some small points.” These included queries on Plato’s views on poetry, on differences between the Iliad and Odyssey he thought necessarily significant, and on the views of their mutual colleague, E. T. Owen.30 The Text In January 1949, Innis submitted his final corrections to the press, and the manuscript was sent off to the printer.31 The 230-page book was published by ­Clarendon Press in the spring of 1950.32 It consisted of an author’s preface (1 page) a brief table of contents (1 page), six chapters (217 pages), and a rudimentary index (12 pages.)33 Each chapter contained a number of footnotes. Referring to the works cited, they also contained occasional commentary on these texts along with some summaries of their claims and arguments.34 The text was sprinkled with references to works written by persons providing general insights, such as Ernest Renan, Jacob Burckhardt, and Goldwin Smith. Innis used the introduction and the preface to help him clarify issues related to historical enquiry and to historiography; he was concerned with our capacity to understand past civilizations from a contemporary standpoint. His point of reference was the work of previous thinkers who had studied civilizations from a nineteenth- and twentieth-century standpoint. Innis suggests that these accounts

30 Harley Grant Robertson to Innis, 23 October 1948, HAI, B72-0003, UTA, box 5, folder 12. 31 Davin to Innis, 24 January 1949. DPE A76-0025, UTA, box 6 file 8. 32 At that time, those books published by Oxford University Press in Oxford appeared on the Clarendon Press List (those published through the London office appeared on the Oxford University Press). 33 One page had been left blank. Unlike the 1972 version, which had seven chapters (an introduction along with six substantive chapters), the original 1950 version had six chapters, with the material on Egypt included as a subsection of the first chapter along with the introduction. This may have been because the book was based on the six Beit lectures that Innis had delivered at Oxford. 34 A revised version was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1972. The revision, undertaken by his widow, Mary Quayle Innis, mostly consisted of incorporating glosses that Innis had written in the margins of the 1950 version. The significance of the revisions and the review process for our understanding of the text is discussed below (pp. xxxv–xxxvii).

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have largely been inadequate because of the bias inherent in examining civilizations through the lens of contemporary concerns and a failure to adequately consider the importance of communication. He noted that the machine industry of twentieth-century civilization, “has made it possible to amass enormous quantities of information.” Accordingly, “the concern with the study of civilization in this century is probably a result of the character of our civilization.” This could be found in the writings of Spengler, Kroeber, and Toynbee who were not able to escape the influence of their contexts, whether national or international. Indeed, Innis went so far as to claim that “since the First World War the study of civilization has been threatened by two monopolies, the first in Germany represented by Spengler, and the second in Great Britain or possibly the English-speaking world represented by Prof. A.J. Toynbee.”35 His own work, with its “bias for the oral,” could be seen as a corrective to these other approaches. He emphasized that he was framing his discussion in terms of the writings of Graham Wallas36 and E.J. Urwick,37 claiming that his study represented an extension of their work. Innis’s approach, Eric Havelock suggested, could best be viewed as a variant of “philosophical history.”38 Throughout his writings on communications, Innis makes frequent reference to what he viewed as “the neglect of philosophical problems.” This bears a striking resemblance to Hegel’s view that historical work can best be understood as a hierarchical tripartite division of labour, consisting of “original history,” “reflective history,” and “general history.”39 “Original history,” at the bottom of the hierarchy, consisted of an accumulation of factual material. Occupying the middle of the hierarchy was “reflective history,” which involved an interpretation of the primary items. Finally, Hegel argued that general or philosophical history was at the top of the hierarchy. It involved an effort to make sense of the overall meaning of what has been revealed in “reflective history.” As Blondheim points out, Hegel was of the view that this approach could best be applied to discrete fields that had hitherto received little attention.40

35 Harold Innis, “The Concept of Monopoly and Civilization,” paper read at a conference under the chairmanship of Lucien Febvre, Collège de France, Paris, 6 July 1951. Published in Harold A, Innis, Staples, Markets, and Cultural Change: Selected Essays, ed. Daniel Drache (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1995), 384. 36 Graham Wallas, Social Judgment (London: Allen and Unwin, 1934). 37 E.J. Urwick, “The Role of Intelligence in the Social Process,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue Canadienne d’Economique et de Science Politique 1, no. 1 (1935): 64–76. 38 Eric A. Havelock, “Harold Innis: The Philosophical Historian,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics 38, no. 3 (1981): 255–68. 39 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Hugh Barr Nisbet, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction - Reason in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 40 Menahem Blondheim, Discovering “The Significance of Communication: Harold Adams Innis as Social Constructivist.” Canadian Journal of Communication 29, no. 2 (2004): 131.

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Arguably, in giving attention to communications, Innis was in line with Hegel’s admonition.41 This accounts for the somewhat curious structure of the volume. It took the form of a seemingly endless parade of snippets from texts, accompanied by numerous brief summaries. It is as if Innis not only organized the parade but offered a running account of it from his place in the reviewing stand.42 Above all, his comparative approach was modelled on James Bryce’s analysis of constitutional change.43 According to Bryce, as with Newtonian astronomy, in the realm of politics, there is a “tendency which draws men, (or groups of men) together into one organized community and keeps them there,” which can be viewed as a “Centripetal force.” On the other hand, “that which makes men, or groups, break way and disperse,” can be viewed as a “Centrifugal” force. Bryce sought to understand the extent to which political constitutions as frames of government involving a “complex totality of laws” were “exposed to the actions of both of these forces … that which draws together and that which dissevers.”44 According to Innis,45 modernity, as outlined by Bryce, could be explained by examining modes of communication rather than constitutional forms.46 He elaborated the perspective based on Bryce by drawing on works that provided insights into “the factors responsible for the successful operation of ‘centrifugal and centripetal forces,’”47 as well as the extent to which communication was efficient.48

41 Innis, unlike Marshall McLuhan, showed little interest in establishing communication as a field. Rather, he viewed communications as a way of reconfiguring economic history. It is noteworthy that he contributed a number of review essays on books in the field for the Journal of Economic History. 42 This account draws on the analogy suggested by Blondheim (2004); See also David McCabe, “Hegel and the Idea of Philosophical History,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1998): 369–88. 43 James Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901). 44 Ibid., 217, 218, 220. 45 He later invoked Bryce’s notions about Roman Law and civilization to examine how the “second British empire” evolved after the American Revolution. Harold A. Innis, Roman Law and the British Empire: One of a Series of Lectures Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the University, delivered at the University of New Brunswick, 30 March 1950 (Fredericton: University of New Brunswick, 1950). 46 His analysis mirrored his critique of constitutionalism as a leitmotif for Canadian economy history: Harold A. Innis, Select Documents in Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1929); review of Documents Relating to Canadian Currency, Exchange and Finance during the French Period, Adam Shortt, ed. The Canadian Historical Review 8, no. 1 (1927): 62−5. 47 Innis, Empire, 7; Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury, The Standard of Usage in English (New York; London: Harper & Brothers, 1908). 48 Innis, Empire, 6–7.

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The cyclical approach found in Empire dovetailed with Innis’s 1948 “Owl of Minerva” paper, which provided the overall point of reference for the volume’s narrative, with ancient Greece as touchstone.49 Indeed, the structure of Empire mirrored that of his Royal Society presidential address.50 He starts by sketching out the normative narrative, beginning with the cultural flourishing that occurred upon the fall of ancient Greece. He then traces the subsequent trajectory of the Owl of Minerva’s flight, as a metaphor for subsequent periods of cultural effervescence. After outlining the developments that preceded Athens’ golden age, he examines what succeeded it, with particular attention given to modes of communication and the social and political forms they engendered. In Empire, Greece is retained as the normative point of reference in the volume’s middle chapter. It is followed by a chapter that is nominally about the Roman Empire and the written tradition but is actually more about Graeco-Roman civilization and its decline. In his Minerva’s Owl presentation, following his account of the Roman Empire and Writing, he abandons the civilization-centred narrative in favour of one grounded in forms of media, particularly parchment and paper. This approach is largely retained in Empire. Empire and Communications can thus be viewed as the “Owl of Minerva writ” large. Its scope is ambitious covering some five millennia of history from (2900 BCE to the twentieth century) and ranges widely geographically from Asia (India and China), to the near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East), to Europe, and finally to North America. In fleshing out this historical trajectory, Innis did not make use of primary sources as had characterized his earlier staples work. As Watson observes, this “shift from primary to secondary-source material was dictated both by the pressure of time and availability of material.”51 Since communications were yet to emerge as an object of study, there were few signposts available about what primary sources were available and where they could be found. Innis was not in a position in this stage of his career to be able to gain the mastery of languages necessary to read scripts written in the ancient languages. Moreover, undertaking “dirt research” through visiting contemporary versions of staple production was out of the question, as modern equivalents of earlier media practices did not exist. Innis proceeded by drawing on texts that directly discussed printing and written media, as well as more general texts that dealt with these phenomena more indirectly as part of a broader narrative. 49 The paper, which had originally been presented in 1947, was published in a slightly revised form in Harold A. Innis, Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951) (hereafter Bias). 50 His presidential address, in turn, built upon a course entitled “Social Fluctuations” that Innis had given at the University of Chicago during the summer quarter of 1946. 51 Alexander John Watson, Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 264.

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The points of reference for Empire are ancient civilizations – as well as c­ ity-states − that by nature were rather fluid and loose entities. Innis pointedly noted that the book would not address the British Empire, but rather “focus attention on other empires in the history of the West, with reference to empires of the East, in order to isolate factors which seem important for purposes of comparison.”52 The text moves between synchronic (comparative across space) and diachronic (tracing changes over time) analyses. The first two substantive chapters (2 and 3) compare the civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia, respectively.53 Since river systems were critical to the development of each, Innis was able to contrast the extent to which the somewhat different fluvial circumstances of each served as backdrops to civilizations that were centralized (Egypt) and dispersed (Babylonia).54 The middle two chapters (4 and 5) are called “The Oral Tradition and Greek Civilization” and “Written Tradition and the Roman Empire,” respectively. It is noteworthy that unlike the previous two chapters, the middle two explicitly paired particular forms of communication with specific civilizations. While the titles of the chapters suggest that Innis considered Rome and Greece to be discrete entities, he eventually came to the view that they merged into what he called a Graeco-Roman civilization. The final two titles for chapters 6 and 7 abandon reference to distinct areas; they refer rather to a succession of paired media, namely “Parchment and Paper” (chapter 6) and “Paper and the Printing Press” (chapter 7). Most notably, Innis was now placing media front and centre in his discussion. The final chapter could be seen as a transition from examining ancient civilizations and early modernity to addressing the industrial age, initially dominated by the British Empire, which, as Innis notes, had gained pre-eminence in the 19th century. No separate conclusion for the volume was provided (although chapter 7 has some concluding remarks for the material it covers). Unattributed Statements The main text – particularly in the later chapters – is sprinkled with unattributed statements. These usually consist of a sentence or two and appear to mostly refer to very well-known excerpts that Innis may have gleaned from the secondary sources in which they were mentioned.55 He may have assumed that 52 Innis, Empire, 5. 53 Given that the Sumerian civilization by most accounts preceded that of Egypt, Innis ignored their chronological order in examining the two. 54 Innis used Babylonia as a catch-all term for the various political organizations that emerged in the Mesopotamia region during antiquity. Because river systems were central to each, this suggests that Innis did not view geography as narrowly determinant of civilization. Graeme Patterson, History and Communication: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, the Interpretation of History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. 55 Most of the sources have been tracked down and included in the bibliography.

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they would be familiar to the reader and that a more detailed reference was unnecessary. However, it may have been the case that he came upon them late in his revisions and did not have enough time to provide complete references. He made a point of referencing classical sources such as Euripides, Solon, Aristotle, Horace, Cicero, Quintilian, and Julius Caesar. Some of these were from recognized authorities such as Walter Bagehot, Jacob Burckhardt, Henry Hallam, and Hastings Rashdall. A cluster consisted of works related to law (A.F. Pollard, Frederick Pollock, and C.H. McIlwain). He also appeared to be making an effort to bolster his discussion of 17th century thought with references to figures such as John Smith, Robert Hooke, John Amos Comenius, Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Jefferson. A number of French-language sources were also included: Antoine de Rivarol, Étienne Dolet, and Napoleon Bonaparte. The Broader Cluster Commentators have continually remarked that Empire represented a departure from his assigned task for the Beit lectures, namely, to address some aspect of the economic history of the British Empire. However, if one regards the original Beit lectures as part of a broader cluster involving Innis’s presentations and interventions in Britain during the spring and summer of 1948, it becomes possible to discern the extent to which his presentations did address issues crucial to British Empire economic history. The Beit lectures can only be understood in relation to three other interventions made by Innis in Great Britain around the same time: the Stamp Memorial Lecture at the University of London,56 the Cust Foundation Lecture at the University of Nottingham,57 and his presentation and commentary at the Sixth Congress of the Universities of the British Commonwealth held at Oxford University58 As revealed in Empire, Innis was able to barely broach issues related to the twentieth century in his Beit lectures. To be sure, he did allude to how “the impact of large-scale mechanization in North America on Great Britain and Europe became significant with the new journalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”59 However, he was largely unable to provide much detail about the implications of this claim, aside from a few general remarks 56 See p. x above. 57 Ibid. 58 Congress of the Universities of the Commonwealth and Association of Commonwealth Universities, eds., Report of Proceedings: Sixth Congress of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, 1948 (London: Association of Commonwealth Universities, 1951). The report contains a number of comments made by Innis, mostly related to the state of higher education. An abbreviated version of Innis’s paper was later published as “A Critical Review” in Bias, 190–5. See also Innis, Empire, 163–70. 59 Innis, Empire, 163.

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about how monopolies of knowledge developed in a number of different national contexts and within earlier empires.60 By contrast, the Stamp Lecture provided much more nuance and detail about what Innis had in mind as it sought “to develop the thesis that civilization has been dominated at different stages by various media of communication such as clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper produced first from rags and then from wood.”61 The purpose of the Stamp Lecture, according to Innis, was to “concentrate on the period in which industrialization of the means of production has become dominant through the manufacture of newsprint from wood and through the manufacture of the newspaper by the linotype and the fast press.”62 To this end, he examined how the interplay between the development of hydro-electric power and the production of newsprint had an impact on the circulation of newspapers in North America. According to Innis, this resulted in a form of journalism that was overly beholden to the “demands of advertisers,” which had a deleterious impact on the “character of news.”63 In turn, “the problem of adapting news to the needs of increased circulation led to an increasing dependence on feature material” and “the decline of the editorial as an influence on public opinion” with “headlines and news [dominating] the front page.”64 Innis also stressed that “the dominance of the newspaper was accompanied by a ruthless shattering of language, the invention of new idioms and the sharpening of words.”65 Moreover, as he emphasized, this form of journalism had a profound impact on the conduct of foreign policy and on the rise of nationalism.66 However, he did not confine himself to examining the impact of industrialized newspapers on politics and public opinion. Amplifying some of the claims he was making in the Beit lectures, he argued that “the impact of advertising through the press on the social sciences has been overwhelming.”67 Of particular concern to Innis was “the lack of interest among social scientists in other civilizations than those of the west, in the neglect of philosophical problems, and in the obsession with scholastic problems of reconciling dynamic and static theories.”68 More generally, Innis observed that “marked changes in the speed of communication have far-reaching effects on monopolies over time because of their impact on the most sensitive elements of the economic system.”69 60 Ibid., 164–70. 61 Innis, The Press, 5. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 17. 64 Ibid., 20–3 65 Ibid., 28. 66 Ibid., 29, 44. 67 Ibid., 45–6. 68 Ibid., 46. 69 Ibid., 47, 49.

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The themes from the final Beit lectures were also evident in Innis’s Cust lecture at Nottingham University. It is noteworthy that the original version of the lecture70 differs fundamentally from the published version that eventually appeared.71 Above all, the earlier iteration offered a more biting critique of American imperialism, while at the same time scorning the governments of both Canada and Britain. Reflecting his dismay with recent developments in his native land, he “[welcomed] the opportunity of discussing our problems in a country which I hope still maintains the traditions of freedom of speech.”72 He stressed that “Canada has had no alternative but to serve as an instrument of British imperialism and then of American imperialism” and that it “came under the vacillating and ill-informed policy of the United States.73 The Cust lecture served to give focus to some of the general questions addressed by Innis in his final Beit lectures. He gave attention to relations between Canada, Britain, and the United States within the ambit of the “increasing power of American imperialism” and the “waning influence of the British empire.” He underscored his contention that “American foreign policy has been a disgraceful illustration of the irresponsibility of a powerful nation which promises little for the future stability of the western world.”74 Echoing the views of “Professor Robert Peers”75 Innis was of the view that “Canada must call in the Old World to redress the balance of the new, and hope that Great Britain will escape American imperialism as successfully as she has escaped British imperialism.”76 Innis’s detailed examination of the relations between Canada, Britain, and the United States provided a nuanced elaboration of how, in his view, “survival in the West depends on their continual subordination and on a recognition of the cultural leadership and supremacy of Europe.77 Innis’s views on the western civilization in the post-war period were also displayed in the remarks he made at a meeting of Commonwealth universities held at Oxford University in the summer of 1948 subsequent to his lectures in Oxford, Nottingham, and London. Most notably, he took part in a featured session of the meeting: “A critical review, from the points of views of an historian, a philosopher, and a sociologist, of the structural and moral changes produced in modern society by scientific and technological advance.” Emphasizing that his standpoint was that of an economist rather than an historian, Innis was of the view that “the 70 Innis, “Great Britain, U.S., Canada” (1948). 71 Innis, “Great Britain, U.S., Canada” (1952). 72 Innis, “Great Britain, U.S., Canada” (1948), 2. 73 Ibid., 5. 74 Ibid. 75 Robert Peers (1888–1972), Professor of Adult Education, University College, Nottingham, 1909–70. Robert Peers, Adult Education: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2013). 76 Innis, “Great Britain, U.S., Canada” (1948), 24. 77 Innis, Empire, 169.

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agenda had been pawed over by administrators [and] that the true scholars in the Congress had also been pawed about by administrators.” He believed that “there was some measure of truth in the remark of my colleague [that the] topics for the discussion of these meetings had to do with matters administrative.”78 He observed that the “principal actors in the programmes were VCs [vice-chancellors], presidents, and principals, and other administrative officers.” He was hopeful, however that there would be a “full opportunity for the men who do the important work in the Universities – the teachers – to participate in the discussion and to make this meeting a success.”79 He went on to provide a more pointed critique of how Commonwealth universities had become implicated in broader monopolies of knowledge: “We are compelled to recognize the significance of mechanized knowledge as a source of power and its subjection to the demands of force through the instrument of the State. The Universities are in danger of becoming a branch of the military implications and to attack in a determined fashion the problems created by a neglect of the position of culture in Western civilization.”80 Innis’s remarks at the meeting of Commonwealth educators can be viewed as the capstone of his academic visit to the United Kingdom in the spring and summer of 1948. Reviewing Empire was eventually published on 19 January 1950. Shortly thereafter, Innis sent copies to his University of Chicago colleague, John U. Nef, and to his former student, Andrew Clark.81 Given Arthur Cole’s support or Innis’s work in communications, it is not surprising that he planned to organize a meeting of members of the Economic History Association to discuss Empire.82 In preparation for this session, Innis’s former student, and junior colleague, Tom Easterbrook, planned to organize a smaller seminar to discuss the book.83 The response to Empire was largely bound up with reactions to his other communication works, as well as reflections on Innis’s legacy upon his death 78 This was likely University of Toronto President, Sidney Smith, who also attended the meeting. 79 Innis, “Critical Review,” 101–2. 80 Ibid., 152. 81 Nef to Innis, 21 March 1950. JUN, UCL, box 24, file 4; Andrew Clark to Innis, 9 April 1950, HAI, B72-0025, UTA, box 8 file 4. Both were eventually to write reviews of Empire and Bias. 82 As chair of the Rockefeller-sponsored Committee on Economic History, Cole had been very supportive of Innis’s work in communications. 83 Tom Easterbrook to Innis, 18 February 1950, HAI, B72-0025, UTA, box 8, file 5. The others involved were Hugh Aitken and Noel George Butlin. Aitken and Easterbrook were at Harvard and planned to come to Toronto for the meeting. Noel Butlin (1921–1991), who was visiting from Toronto, later became a leading figure in the Australian social sciences.

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in November 1952. The reviews written by those who admired him were generally quite positive and were perhaps not subject to the usual level of frank criticism.84 Other reviews, while demonstrating some misgivings, did acknowledge the originality of the argument and the importance of the subject matter.85 Most notably, the eminent archaeologist, V. Gordon Childe, wrote a review of Empire that appeared in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science.86 Childe, from the standpoint of archaeology, raised some questions about Innis’s interpretations of media and their impact during antiquity. At the same time, he praised Innis for having opened up an important line of investigation. Editing The bulk of the reviews appeared in the immediate aftermath of Empire’s publication in 1950 (namely, 1950–2). Given that Innis had written numerous glosses in the margins of a copy of the text − likely with the view of producing a revised version of the book – this meant that he was able to take the reviews into account when writing his marginalia.87 The notes were written willy-nilly in the spaces available on many of the pages of Empire. The longer addenda were written in the margins at the top and bottom of the pages. He also wrote passages between lines within the body of the text. Innis used the right margins to write brief notes accompanied by an indication of what they referred to in 84 G.V. Ferguson, review of Harold A. Innis, Empire and Communications; The Press, a Neglected Factor in the Economic History of the Twentieth Century, International Journal 6, no. 1 (1950): 55–6; Andrew H. Clark, review of Harold A. Innis, Empire and Communications; The Bias of Communication, Geographical Review 43, no. 1 (1953): 140–2. 85 Henry L. Roberts, “Recent Books on International Relations,” Foreign Affairs 29, no 1 (1950): 143–64; Franklin Fearing, “Books,” The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television 7, no. 1 (1952): 87–96; D.C. Somervell, review of Empire and Communications, by H.A. Innis, International Affairs 26, no. 3 (1950): 452–3. 86 V. Gordon Childe, “Review: Empire and Communications by H.A. Innis.” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue Canadienned’Economique et de Science Politique, 17, no. 1 (February 1951): 98–100. Innis had met him at the 220th anniversary celebration of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which had taken place in Moscow and Leningrad from June 15 to June 28 in1945. Harold Adams Innis and William Christian, Innis on Russia: The Russian Diary and Other Writings (Toronto: Harold Innis Foundation, Innis College, University of Toronto, 1981). He made a number of references to him in Harold A. Innis and William Christian, The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). 87 That Innis made a practice of presenting revised versions of his positions in light of reviews and new findings is evident in a series of articles he wrote on Peter Pond and the early fur trade subsequent to the publication of his Pond biography. William J. Buxton, ed. Harold Innis on Peter Pond: Biography, Cultural Memory and the Continental Fur Trade (McGillQueen’s University Press, 2019).

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the text.88 Shorter items could also be found there (often without specification of what they referenced in the text). They included single words, names, places, dates, and brief queries. In some instances, Innis used a free-floating note to provide an explanation of a statement he had made in the text.89 Innis’s glosses, as it turned out, were not written in vain. They were incorporated into the new version of the text, edited and revised by Mary Quayle Innis, that was published in 1972.90 As with the Fur Trade in Canada and The Cod Fisheries, Quayle Innis incorporated Innis’s marginalia into the revised versions.91 All three revised versions were produced under the auspices of the Harold Innis Memorial Committee, which had been established to oversee the republication of some of Innis’s writings, as well as a number of his previously unpublished works.92 Mary Quayle Innis explained that the additional material consisted of “new ideas, suggestions, quotations, references – many to newly published books – which might be incorporated in the footnotes of a second edition.” She emphasized that these references “were nearly always incomplete” and were “the raw material for new documentation, not new footnotes in themselves.” Accordingly, it was decided “to publish the new material very much as it stood.” She did, however, locate the sources used by Innis, making use of the most recent editions of these works whenever possible.93 Given the unconventional nature of Innis’s additions, it was necessary to put them in a somewhat unconventional footnote form. The material94 was broken down into discrete footnotes, indicated with lower-case letters. and placed

88 Innis’s annotated copy of Empire is located in the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library of the University of Toronto Library. Watson has reproduced page 93 of the volume (Marginal Man, 240). This material is mostly covered on page 76 of the 1972 version of Empire. 89 For instance, Innis added to his statement that for various political forms of political organization, writing was “the work of highly centralized political and social organization – royal and priestly classes” (Innis, Empire, 10). He cited Arthur Evans and Joan Evans, The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos (London: Macmillan, 1902). 90 Innis, Empire. 91 The first version of Fur Trade was published in 1930. The revised version appeared in 1964. Harold A Innis and Oliver Baty Cunningham Memorial Publication Fund, The Fur Trade in Canada (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1930); Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (New Haven: Yale University Press; Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1940). Revised versions of the latter appeared in 1954, 1978, 1979, 2011, and 2018. 92 Other works in this initiative included Harold Adams Innis, Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956). 93 Mary Quayle Innis, Editor’s Note, in Empire and Communications, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). 94 Ninety-one items were added; most of them were new.

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directly under Innis’s original numbered footnotes. When the letters of the alphabet were exhausted, they were doubled up (e.g., aa). The items that Innis had inserted into the text were placed in the appropriate locations. The remaining longer additions written into the top and bottom margins were placed at the bottom of the pages under the newly added lettered notes. These appear to have retained their original order and were organized into un-indented paragraphs that often spilled over several pages. Overall, the additions were of greater length and detail then Innis’s original rather terse footnotes. And while the references in the 1950 version overlapped considerably with those found in his “History of Communications” manuscript, those in the 1972 version appeared to be mostly from works that had not been cited in either of the earlier texts.95 In the 1972 version, the original index was retained with a few new additions from the material that had been added. Quayle Innis also revealed that Innis had “indicated a few changes in the body of the text,” and that these were made “without comment.”96 The items appearing at the bottom of the pages appeared to be a combination of detailed reading notes accompanied by “ideas” and questions that were likely to guide future revisions.97 While Quayle Innis made a valiant effort to incorporate the new material, the content and purpose of the material belied its new form. The glosses (converted to notes by Quayle Innis) did not conform to the model for footnotes as it had emerged in the twentieth century. As described in the Manual of Style published by the University of Chicago in 1906, their role is one of “aiding readers [to] search out and read an author’s source material” and “indicating a pattern of debt and/or a direct pattern of influence and ­connection.”98 This was in line with the tradition of footnotes as discussed by Anthony Grafton. He noted that “historical footnotes … seek to show that the work they support claims authority from the historical conditions of its creation [and] that its author excavated its foundations and discovered its components in the right places.”99 Innis appeared to have added his marginalia in an 95 Most notably, Harold Peake and H.J. Fleure, Merchant Ventures in Bronze (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931); The Horse and the Sword (Oxford: Clarendon; London: Humphrey Milford, 1933). 96 Mary Quayle Innis, “Editor’s Note,” in Innis, Empire. 97 They could be seen as a variant of Innis’s Idea File. Indeed some of the entries from this work found their way into Innis’s marginalia (e.g., the metal theory of history as advanced by Childe), Idea File,102 11/14 in Empire, 29. 98 Manual of Style: Being a Compilation of the Typographical Rules in Force at the University of Chicago Press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/dam/jcr:bba47b07-61ba-41c3-8c79-33c005c1f56d/CMSfacsimile_all.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2021. Cited in Andrew Chrystall, “A Second Way to Read McLuhan’s Footnotes to Innis,” Canadian Journal of Communication 45, no. 2 (2020): 328. 99 Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 32.

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effort to fight the fixity of the text, thereby serving the purpose of completion and elaboration. For the later chapters, as noted, the issues addressed appear to have been taken up in other publications, based on the presentations that he had given in Britain during the spring and summer of 1948. This certainly reflects Innis’s “bias with the oral,” expressed at the Congress of British Commonwealth Universities in 1948.100 The glosses were aspirational, providing a template or blueprint for revision; they pointed to an integrated text with notes blended in, rather than located in margins to buttress or elaborate the argument. They not only provided guidelines for revision but corrected dates and clarified periodization. In some cases a name was simply listed with no explanation given as to why it had been included. Most notably, a gloss often consisted of a question. These were likely not intended for the reader but for Innis himself, indicating lines of research that could profitably be pursued. This suggests that the text should be read as an “unfinished and incomplete” work in progress much like his “History of Communications” manuscript.101 Very possibly, Innis also wished to elaborate on the sections of the main text that gestured to key issues and sources rather than exploring them in detail. It was evident that Innis had planned to beef up the earlier part of the text that dealt with the alphabet and orality. To this end, he referred to a number of publications that had appeared after 1948; hence they had not been available to Innis when he prepared his Beit lectures.102 A number of them were from articles that had appeared in journals during 1951 and 1952. Strikingly, Innis added material from the English Historical Review, Journal for the History of Ideas, and the newly established Past and Present.103 Reflecting his plans for revising the text, Idea File contained a flurry of entries dated around 1950.104 It is not clear whether he had read the works he cited cover to cover. He made no effort to either describe or interpret standpoints of the texts in question or their overarching lines of argument;105 he seems to have selectively chosen statements consonant with his own emergent perspective, even if they were not necessarily representative of the entire texts.106 100 Innis, “A Critical Review.” 101 Buxton et al., Innis’s History of Communications. 102 The explosion of works published after 1948 was related to the lifting of wartime restrictions, and the return of academics to scholarship. 103 This may have been because V. Gordon Childe was a founding member of the journal, serving on its editorial board. 104 Innis and Christian, The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis. 105 For instance, he did not distinguish between scholars who viewed the Bible as historically accurate and those who used archaeology as a point of departure. 106 For example, Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge and Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901); Frederic G. Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940).

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Meaning was created through the assemblage of statements taken from different sources.107 Perhaps because they were so unwieldy in form, the glosses have largely been ignored. However, the added notes are not really intelligible without imagining how they would have been incorporated into a revised text. This would have involved some departures from the first edition of Empire. As noted, the original text was roughly chronological and was organized in three clusters.108 The anticipated revision emphasized not only diachronic transitions (within and between these clusters), but also synchronic comparisons of the movements and developments that Innis had surveyed within each cluster. The glosses were often linked to the main text on the same page – sometimes specifically with letters (likely added by Quayle Innis). However, in many instances they simply represented an idea having some putative reference to the material Innis had discussed on the page or to a group of items that Innis had added. Understanding the Glosses The additional glosses seem to have been added to provide more texture to Innis’s discussion of the factors underlying changes (in relation to time and space) with a view to strengthening the linkages between the clusters of material he examined. Since the glosses ought to be treated as an integral part of the text (rather than additions extraneous to it), one is obliged to imagine the form Empire would have taken, had Innis been able to revise it along the lines that he was suggesting. Accordingly, what follows is a reconstruction of Empire as viewed through the lenses of the marginalia, gesturing to the original text wherever appropriate. The glosses in the book’s introduction gave little indication that Innis had plans to revise it extensively. He quoted from Wyndham Lewis in an apparent effort to compare the British and French Empires109 and noted that early writing was produced by “a highly centralized political and social organization,” namely “royal and priestly classes.”110 Innis, however, added numerous glosses to the chapters on Egypt and Babylonia, signalling that he intended to substantially revise them. To this end, he engaged with major works that he had originally ignored such as those 107 For example, William Keith Chambers Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (London: Methuen, 1935); Arthur Lane, Greek Pottery (London: Faber, 1947). 108 See p. xvi above. 109 Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled (London: Chatto and Windus, 1926); Innis, Empire, 4. 110 Evans and Evans, The Palace of Minos; Innis, Empire, 10.

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by Henri Frankfort111 James Henry Breasted,112 David Diringer,113 as well as two texts by William Foxwell Albright.114 Drawing on Frankfort (1897–1954), Innis was able to provide greater precision about how Egyptians periodized their own development and kept track of time. Frankfort also made specific reference to the importance of writing, metal tools, and monumental art for Egyptian civilization.115 In addition to using Breasted (1865–1935) for shedding light on the conflict between oral and written traditions in Egypt, Innis also drew on his work to add detail to his examination of how papyrus and clay were deployed in Syria and Egypt, respectively.116 Innis made numerous references to a pioneering work by Diringer (1900–1975) to give more nuance and detail to his discussion of how the alphabet emerged and developed in the near East, particularly in relation to Aramaic script.117 Innis owed a particular debt to Albright (1891–1971) in fleshing out a narrative of Egypt’s developmental trajectory, particularly as it pertained to the “Mosaic” tradition.118 Innis’s marginalia in the initial cluster appeared to have been particularly affected by his engagement with the work of V. Gordon Childe. Most notably, he wrote a response to Childe’s review of Empire.119 While Innis acknowledged that his claims were open to criticism, he also used the article as a way of reinforcing his claims about the difficulty of understanding the past through the lenses of the present and how archaeology was biased because of its fixation on material remnants of past cultures.120 Other ideas of Childe were prominently featured in the new footnotes that had been included in the 1972 edition of Empire.121 Innis cited Childe’s recently

111 Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). 112 James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times of the Persian Conquest (London: Holder and Stoughton, 1919). 113 David Diringer, The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948). 114 William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940); The Vocalisation of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1934). 115 Innis, Empire, 14. 116 Ibid., 16, 42. 117 Ibid., 41, 43, 48, 52. 118 Ibid., 19, 30, 34, 44, 45, 47, 64. 119 Harold Innis, “Communications and Archaeology,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue Canadienne d’Economique et de Science Politique, 17, no. 2 (May 1951): 237–40. See also p. xxi and note 87 above. 120 Ibid. 121 They can be found, inter alia, in Empire, pp. 16, 19, 29, 30, 35–6. Within the text, he had cited a quote from Childe’s classic Man Makes Himself to support his contention that scribes in Egypt had become “a restricted class” and that writing was a “privileged position.”

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published Social Evolution122 and made frequent reference to his What Happened in History.123 Innis also cited material from the journal Past and Present, which had begun publication in 1952 with Childe on its editorial board.124 (Childe had founded an earlier journal, upon which Past and Present was based. He also wrote an article on civilization for the second issue,125 citing a recent book by Frankfort.126) By virtue of a frame of reference that encompassed ancient Sumer and Egypt – as well as related movements such as the Hittites, Akkadians, and Hyksos – Childe’s account overlapped considerably with the material covered by Innis. Moreover, Childe’s commentary dovetailed with that of Albright, Breasted, Diringer, and Frankfort. He emphasized the development of writing with particular reference to hieroglyphics and cursive signs. In the chapters on Egypt and Babylonia, Innis identified the processes involved in producing the phenomena that he discussed in the text. This involved tracing how early writing was produced within centralized organizations,127 a theme that was examined by drawing at length on Childe,128 Breasted,129 ­Erman,130 and Diringer.131 Examining the spoken word in relation to religion and magical power132 he stressed how liturgies and prayer gain “potency from solemn utterance of true divine name.”133 The emergent administrative state apparatus, as grounded in written texts using various material media, was Innis’s point of reference for tracing a range of practices, particularly in relation to military interventions. While war and the military figured prominently in Innis’s original analysis, he had downplayed 122 V. Gordon Childe, Social Evolution (London: Collins, 1951). Empire, 60. 123 V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (London, Penguin, 1964). Consistent with her approach to revising the text, Quayle Innis referred to the new 1964 Penguin edition, rather than Penguin’s original 1914 edition. That Harold Innis saw Childe as having biases similar to his own is evident in a statement he made about this volume in the opening paragraph of his reply to Childe’s review. 124 Christopher Hill, R.H. Hilton, and E.J. Hobsbawm, “Past and Present: Origins and Early Years,” Past and Present, 100 (1983): 3–14; A.H.M. Jones, “The Economic Basis of the Athenian Democracy,” Past and Present, 1 (1952): 13–31. 125 V. Gordon Childe, “The Birth of Civilisation,” Past and Present 2 (1952): 1–10. 126 Henri Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950). 127 Innis, Empire, 16–17, 20, 22, 36, 42–3, 48. 128 Childe, What Happened in History?; Innis, Empire, 15–16. 129 Breasted, History of Egypt. 130 Adolf Erman and Helen Mary Beloe Tirard, Life in Ancient Egypt (London: Macmillan, 1894). 131 Diringer, The Alphabet. 132 Robert Briffault, The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin: New York: Macmillan, 1927); Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods; Innis, Empire, 24–5. 133 Innis, Empire, 21, 184–8.

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both, which were not even listed in the index. To be sure, Innis provided a sketch of the rise and fall of various city-states and empires but had little to say about the war and violence that made this possible.134 Innis did not confine himself to descriptions of the war-making capacities of early administrative states; he examined the processes through which war-making apparatuses were assembled and then put into action. This involved discussing the administrative organization in terms of its constituent features including metallurgy,135 horses,136 and weaponry,137 building and deploying modes of transportation, such as canals.138 and the development of new technologies such as the light, horse-drawn chariot.139 The latter, according to Childe, allowed Ahmose (the founder of the New Kingdom) to form a centralized military monarchy.”140 War, moreover, was closely bound up with religion and familial relations. Expanding on his notion that worship provided “a religious basis for development of imperial development”141 he added in a gloss (quoting Breasted) that “monotheism was imperialism in religion”142 and noted the “importance of belief in immortality to military power.”143 Indeed, marriage alliances served to cement control, through unions such as that of Thutmose IV and the King of the Mitanni’s daughter.144 Innis also gave attention to a range of other practices that he believed contributed to the consolidation of administrative states. These included the methods deployed such as stone-cutting and the use of plaster,145 the creation of a 134 For instance, while Innis drew on Burn for his discussion of Alexander the Great, he was more interested in the descriptions of war-making capacity (Ibid., 33–5) rather than the actual fighting, as Burn so graphically describes: … “two great masses of cavalry met head on [engaged in] the ‘fiercest cavalry fighting of the whole action ... each man trying to hack his way through straight before him …” A.R Burn, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire (London, 1947), 118. This may have been an artefact of the trauma he suffered in the trenches of the First World War. When he did recount his experience of the war, he dwelt on issues related to strategy and logistics, with particular reference to his involvement with the preparations for the assault on Vimy Ridge. Harold Innis, (William J. Buxton, Michael R. Cheney, Paul Heyer, eds.) Harold Innis Reflects: Memoir and WWI Writings/Correspondence. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, 56−75, 186−91. 135 Peake and Fleure, Merchant Ventures in Bronze. 136 Peake and Fleure, The Horse and the Sword. 137 Ibid. 138 George A Barton, The Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing, vol. 1 (London: Hinrichs, 1913). 139 Childe, What Happened in History?; Innis, Empire, 15–17, 19–20, 29, 33, 35–6 140 Childe, What Happened in History?, 162. 141 Innis, Empire, 21. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid., 20. 144 Ibid., 20. 145 W.M. Flinders Petrie, “On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 13 (1884): 88–109.

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solar calendar,146 the growth of science,147 the freeing of law from religion,148 and the development of diplomacy.149 In the initial Egypt and Babylon chapters, Innis also set the stage for his subsequent discussion of Greece/Rome. This involved tracing the trajectory of the alphabet – as linked to the oral tradition − from the near East to Europe.150 Within the glosses, Innis continued to make reference to the emergent scribal culture151 emphasizing the development of the alphabet from its near-East origins,152 through Crete153 to ancient Greece, and then to Rome.154 He gave particular attention to how the spoken word was “universally invested with magical power” in the “primitive world,”155 writing styles in relation to script156 as well as to biblical studies.157 Especially interesting to Innis was the material nature of what was written upon, particularly clay, stone, papyrus, parchment, and paper.158 He sought to understand how the materiality of a particular medium affected the practice of writing.

146 Alan H. Gardiner, The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1916). 147 Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity. 148 Lewis Richard Farnell, Greece and Babylon (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1911). 149 Cumberland Clark, The Art of Early Writing: With Special Reference to the Cuneiform System (London: Mitre Press, 1938). 150 Solomon Gandz, “Oral Tradition in the Bible,” in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874−1933, ed. Salo W. Baron and Alexander Marx, with a section in Hebrew, a Portrait, and a Bibliography compiled by E.D. Coleman (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 248–69. 151 Albright, Egyptian Syllabic Orthography. 152 Albright, Stone Age to Christianity; A. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948); John Strong Newberry, “The Prehistory of the Alphabet,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 45 (1934): 105–56. 153 Evans and Evans, Palace of Minos 154 Jesse Benedict Carter, The Reorganization of the Roman Priesthoods at the Beginning of the Republic (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1917). 155 Briffault, The Mothers, referenced in the unnumbered addition on page 13 in Innis, Empire; Farnell, Evolution of Religion. 156 William Bell Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece: An Account of Its Historic Development (London: B.T. Batsford, 1950); Diringer, The Alphabet; Albright, Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography; Carter, The Reorganization of the Roman Priesthoods at the Beginning of the Republic; Austin Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087−1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); James Westfall Thompson, The Medieval Library, 1923; F. Thureau-Dangin, Recherches sur l’origine de l’ecriture Cuneiforme, vol. 1., 1898; Frederic G. Kenyon and A.W. Adams, The Text of the Greek Bible (London: Duckworth, 1949). 157 Frederick Victor Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949). 158 William Henry Paine Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939); Frederic G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932).

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His initial glosses in the chapter on Greek civilization traced the link ­­ between Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece via “Knossos-Cretan-civilization.”159 He examined how the alphabet that had developed in Phoenicia and Cyprus was adapted to the “rich oral tradition” in Greece.160 His glosses largely address issues related to poetry’s conquest by prose.161 Innis was of the view, however, that the reforms of Solon – reflected in his fame for having instituted popular government in Europe – ushered in a new phase of development in Greece.162 The glosses added at this point gave texture to this claim, with their examination of changes in aesthetics and artistic expression. These included poetry,163 painting,164 ceramics, literature,165 sculpture,166 drama,167 religious rites,168 ­music,169 and architecture.170 He noted, however, that the reformed order was not without its challenges. His glosses provided detail about “individualistic religions” such as Orphism and Pythagoreanism.171 Departing from a reluctance to examine aesthetic or artistic developments in any detail – or to pass judgment on them − Innis provided a great deal of nuance and detail to what he obviously believed to be something of a cultural effervescence in classical Greek civilization, quoting figures of the day such as Hesiod172 and

159 Innis, Empire, 53–4. 160 Ibid., 58. 161 Ibid., 57–65; Harold Cherniss, “The Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12, no. 3 (1951): 319–45; Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. 162 Francis Macdonald Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London: E. Arnold, 1907); Innis, Empire, 69. 163 Parry, Homeric language; Innis, Empire, 68. 164 Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947); Innis, Empire, 69. 165 James Henry Oliver, The Athenian Expounders of the Sacred and Ancestral Law (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950); Innis, Empire, 71. 166 Stanley Casson, The Technique of Early Greek Sculpture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). 167 Thomas W. Allen, Homer: The Origins and the Transmission (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 1908); Innis, Empire, 71; Parry, “Homeric Language,” 78; Rhys Carpenter, Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley, CA: University of ­California Press, 1946). 168 Elisabeth S. Holderman, “A Study of the Greek Priestess” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913); Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; A.W. Pickard-­ Cambridge, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (London: Oxford University Press, 1946). 169 Schlesinger, The Greek Aulos. 170 Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece. 171 Ibid., 73; Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Francis Macdonald Cornford, “Invention of Space,” in Murray, Gilbert et al., eds., Essays in Honour of Gilbert Murray, 215−35 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1936); Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion. 172 Hesiod and T.A. Sinclair, Hesiod: Works and Days (London: Macmillan, 1932).

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­Herodotus173 to support his claims. Central to discussions of ancient Greece in both the original text of Empire along with the additional glosses was the work of Werner Wilhelm Jaeger (1881–1961). In the 1950 edition of Empire, Innis made frequent reference to Jaeger’s classical text, Paideia, underpinned by his conviction that Jaeger’s conception of education was key to understanding Greek civilization.174 In the glosses Innis added to the chapter, he used an earlier volume written by Jaeger to support his claim that humanism in ancient Greece had “subordinated technical efficiency to culture.”175 This reflected his interest in tracing the decline of orality in Greece attendant upon the spread of writing. Innis began his chapter on Rome by emphasizing the extent to which Western culture owed a debt to the “rich oral tradition of Greek civilization.”176 His early glosses in the chapter examined this heritage in relation to the early days of Rome, with particular reference to the use of papyrus,177 the adaptation of Greek cults, the invocation of Greek political ideas,178 the introduction of Greek script,179 and the establishment of currency.180 He also called attention to the influence of Etruscans,181 the rise of plebeians,182 and the reorganization of the priesthood.183 Innis then used his glosses to elaborate his discussion of the eastern outposts of the Roman Empire. In line with his earlier discussion of religion in the near East, he examined Judaism in relation to holy literature,184 the calendar,185 Platonic thought,186 173 Herodotus et al., The History of Herodotus, Trans. George Rawlinson (London: J.M. Dent; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1910). 174 Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). Innis had already drawn on this volume in his first major text on communication. Harold A. Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State. 175 Innis, Empire, 83. 176 Ibid., 85; Greenidge and Cicero, The Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time. 177 Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament. 178 John Linton Myres, The Political Ideas of the Greeks (New York: Abingdon, 1927). 179 Kenyon and Adams, The Text of the Greek Bible. 180 C.H.V. Sutherland, Coinage in Roman Imperial Policy, 31 BC−AD 68 (London: Methuen, 1951). 181 Inez Scott Ryberg and American Academy in Rome, Early Roman Traditions in the Light of Archaeology (Bergamo: American Academy in Rome, 1929). 182 J.L. Strachan-Davidson, “The Growth of Plebeian Privilege at Rome,” The English Historical Review 1, no. 2 (1886): 209–17. 183 Carter, The Reorganization of the Roman Priesthoods at the Beginning of the Republic. 184 Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism ­(London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1935). 185 James George Frazer et al., The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, part 4 (London: Macmillan, 1907). 186 Julien Benda and Richard Aldington, The Great Betrayal (La Trahison des Clercs) (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1928).

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geometry,187 the use of parchment,188 and theatre.189 Following this lengthy discussion of Hellenism within the Roman Empire, Innis addressed its influence on Rome.190 He noted the introduction of drama,191 how stichometry was affected by reading aloud,192 how orality and literacy intersected among the Druids193, and the further adoption of Greek deities.194 Innis’s glosses in his chapter on Rome also serve to elaborate his views on governance, particularly in the early Roman Empire. To this end he addressed issues such as taxation,195 public service,196 record-keeping,197 currency,198 succession,199 architecture and the built environment,200 as well as the reliance on libraries and texts,201 Recognizing the centrality of writing for the Roman Empire, Innis used his glosses to elaborate on the material aspects of written material, examining the use of parchment and papyrus202 and the extent to which 187 William Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892). 188 Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament. 189 Pickard-Cambridge, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. 190 Innis, Empire, 96. 191 E. Norman Gardiner, Athletics of the Ancient World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930). 192 J. Rendel Harris and A. Augustus Hobson, Stichometry; Farnell, The Evolution of Religion. 193 Nora K. Chadwick, The Druids (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966). 194 Arthur Darby Nock, “Σύνναος Θεός Symnaos God,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41 (1930): 1–62; William Scott Ferguson, “Legalized Absolutism En Route from Greece to Rome,” The American Historical Review 18, no. 1 (1912): 29–47.; George Willis Botsford, The Roman Assemblies from Their Origin to the End of the Republic (New York: Macmillan, 1909); Hendrik Wagenvoort and Herbert Jennings Rose, Roman Dynamism: Studies in Ancient Roman Thought, Language and Custom (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1947). 195 C.H.V. Sutherland, “Aerarium and Fiscus during the Early Empire,” The American Journal of Philology 66, no. 2 (1945): 151–70. 196 Mason Hammond, The Augustan Principate in Theory and Practice during the JulioClaudian Period (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933); Raymond Henry Lacey, The Equestrian Officials of Trajan and Hadrian: Their Careers, with Some Notes on Hadrian’s Reforms. A PhD Dissertation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917). 197 Donald Struan Robertson, A Handbook of Greek & Roman Architecture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943). 198 Victor Ehrenberg, Aspects of the Ancient World (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1946); Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex. 199 Ehrenberg, Aspects of the Ancient World. 200 Botsford, The Roman Assemblies from Their Origin to the End of the Republic; Dinsmoor; The Architecture of Ancient Greece. 201 René Cagnat, “Les bibliothèques municipales dans l’Empire romain,” Mémoires de l’Institut de France. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1909; M.P. Charlesworth, The Roman Empire (London: Cumberlege, 1951); Gaston Boissier, Cicero and His Friends: A Study of Roman Society in the Time of Caesar (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925). Chadwick, The Druids. 202 Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament; Reginald Lane Poole, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery down to the Time of Innocent III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915); Kenyon and Adams, The Text of the Greek Bible.

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both the oral and written tradition related to the development of law.203 Overall, he was of the view that Rome “unlike Greece” had an “emphasis on space” and was influenced by the “linear and narrative” as evident in the Roman army’s “limited interest in time.”204 In contrast to the Byzantine empire, which took the form of an “ecclesiastical hierarchy” grounded in parchment and biased towards time, the Roman empire, which extended over a vast area, took the form of an imperial bureaucracy largely deploying papyrus.205 In the chapter, “Parchment and Paper,” the early glosses were appropriately framed by this subject matter. Innis appeared to use the advent of papyrus as a way of periodizing the material covered, noting that parchment superseded papyrus under Benedict VIII (1020–2). It noted, however, that papyrus was able to persist until 1050 under Gregory IX and Victor II.206 In the glosses, he elaborated on his claim in the text that a monopoly of knowledge grounded in parchment had important implications for Western civilization, a monopoly that broke down with the introduction of paper.207 He gave considerable attention to illuminating the nature of that civilization, with particular reference to the relation between Rome and the early church in Scotland and Ireland,208 how “13th century great papal formula books,” reflected the “enormous administrative and legal centralized bureaucracy at Avignon,”209 and how the Domesday book and the Magna Carta could be seen as “landmarks in transition from oral society to written society.”210 Power struggles in the church ensued, bound up with centralization, prose, and papal formula books.211 The shift in power, he suggested, was related to the replacement of the uncial style of script by the less cumbersome ­miniscule.212 In tracing the coming of paper to Europe, Innis provided a brief overview of its migration from ancient India and China via Persia and the 203 Greenidge and Cicero, The Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time; Strachan-Davidson, “The Growth of Plebeian Privilege at Rome.” 204 Ehrenberg, Aspects of the Ancient World; Innis and Innis, Empire, 108 205 Poole, Lectures; Innis, Empire, 115. 206 Poole, Lectures; Innis, Empire, 116. 207 Innis, Empire, 117. 208 Ibid., 119. 209 Innis, Empire, 133; Geoffrey Barraclough, Curia Romana Catholic Church, and British School at Rome, Public Notaries and the Papal Curia: A Calendar and a Study of a Formularium Notariorum Curie from the Early Years of the Fourteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1934). 210 Innis, Empire, 134; V.H. Galbraith, The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936). 211 Francis Wormald, The Survival of Anglo-Saxon Illumination after the Norman Conquest (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1946). 212 Innis, Empire, 121; Kenyon and Adams, The Text of the Greek Bible; Frederic G. Kenyon et al., Ancient Books and Modern Discoveries (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1927).

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“Mohammedans.”213 He sought to bolster his claims that the advent of paper undermined the monopoly of knowledge rooted in parchment as embodied in “ecclesiastical control.”214 Innis’s glosses tailed off in the final chapter on paper and the printing press. It may have been because he had already added a good number of unattributed notes in the text; this indicated he had already included material that he wanted to follow up on. It also could have been that Innis added little in the chapter because of time constraints or because he had already covered these issues in his other talks in Britain in 1948.215 Moreover, some of the material in glosses had also been covered in some of his writings of 1949–52.216 His gloss on the first page of the chapter suggests that he wished to frame a revision in terms of what happened after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.217 Above all, he noted this meant that Western Christendom was in a “stronger position,” leading to the “revolt of Protestantism”218 and the notion of “papal infallibility.”219 Some of the early glosses in this chapter examined the extent to which religious texts were central to the transformation.220 Building on his introductory comments he conjectured on whether the fall of Constantinople led to England’s renaissance and the reformation.221 The remaining scattered glosses largely served to buttress Innis’s claims about the increasing presence of monopoly222 as well as mechanized communication.223 213 Innis, Empire, 124–31; Hatch, Principal Uncial Manuscripts; Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire; Solomon Gandz, “The Dawn of Literature: Prolegomena to a History of Unwritten Literature,” Osiris 7 (1939): 261–522; Photius and John Henry Freese, The Library of Photius (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: Macmillan, 1920). 214 Innis, Empire, 136–40. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087–1216; Étienne Gilson and Henriette Hertz Trust, “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” Proceedings of the British Academy 21 (1935). 215 See pp. xvii–xx above. 216 Harold A. Innis, Roman Law and the British Empire; One of a Series of Lectures Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the University, Delivered at the University of New Brunswick, March 30, 1950 (Fredericton: University of New Brunswick, 1950). 217 Innis, Empire, 141. 218 Ibid. 219 Ibid., 166. 220 Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919); John William Adamson, The Extent of Literacy in England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (London: Bibliographical Society, 1929). 221 Innis, Empire, 147. 222 Ezra Pound and D.D. Paige, The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941 (New York: New Directions, 1950); Reginald Coupland, Wilberforce: A Narrative (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923); Legouis and Cazamian, History of English Literature; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Crooke, 1651). 223 Ibid., 169; E.M. Winslow, The Pattern of Imperialism: A Study in the Theories of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948); George, Caliban.

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Mary Quayle Innis and Empire The fact that the original text had been revised in this way has significant implications for how it should be understood. Above all, Mary Quayle Innis should be given more credit for the edition that was published in 1972. By virtue of her careful work in adding the new material and clarifying the sources, her role certainly exceeded that of editor. The volume that resulted from her handiwork can best be seen as the culmination of a complex process of consolidation and retrieval of Innis’s writings following his death in November, 1952. She took a leading role not only in producing revised versions of Innis’s writings224 but also by helping build his legacy in other ways. The year before he died she “typed [the] index to [Innis’s] … The Bias of Communication.”225 She prepared the index to his posthumously published Strategy of Culture226 (delivering the manuscript to the University of Toronto Press),227 worked on his books, papers, and pamphlets,228 typed the “Ideas” manuscript,229 as well as his autobiography,230 and sorted out “The Russian Diary.”231 Along with all of these she was also involved with the newly formed Harold Innis Foundation232 and Innis College.233 For whatever reason, producing a new version of Empire and Communications was not among those initiatives that she initially undertook. This changed in 1970 when she began revising Empire in tandem with a venture organized under the auspices of the CRTC234 to publish a version of Innis’s “History of Communications” manuscript. Possibly due to conflicting visions about the form to be taken by the volume, a final version of it never materialized.235 By contrast, Quayle Innis’s project of editing a new version of Empire and Communications proved to be a very successful one. She already had established an excellent working relationship with the University of Toronto Press by virtue of

224 Harold Adams Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian History ­(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956); Innis, The Cod Fisheries. 225 Innis, Bias. 226 Harold Adams Innis, The Strategy of Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1952). 227 Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary entries for 23 September, 14 October 1952, Innis Family Fonds, Mary Quayle Innis Sous-Fonds, UTA 1412, UTA. 228 Ibid., 16 April, 19 August 1953. 229 Ibid., 19 May, 12 June, 26 September 1953. 230 Ibid., 2, 13, 15 October 1970. 231 Ibid., 19 March 1956 232 Ibid., 12 December, 27 February 1969; 2 June 1969, 3 December 1971. 233 Ibid., 5 November 1969. 234 Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 235 William J. Buxton, “The Bias against Communication: On the Neglect and Non-Publication of the ‘Incomplete and Unrevised Manuscript’ of Harold Adams Innis,” Canadian Journal of Communication 26, no. 2 (2001): 211–29.

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editing a book of hers that it published236 along with another to which she had made a major contribution.237 She had come to know some of the staff at the Press including Marsh Jeanneret, Eleanor Harman, R.I.K. Davidson and Francess Halpenny. She was well versed in material that was pertinent to Empire. Her Economic History of Canada, the second edition of which had just been published, addressed issues related to media and communications.238 She had already been reading a number of works that Innis had cited in the volume as well as texts by a number of authors that he had referenced.239 In addition to having read works that had relevance to the text she had also been taking Greek lessons.240 Early in 1970 she met with Davidson who told her she should transcribe all of the notes that Innis had written in the margins of the text.241 This proved to be her primary task in editing the book over the next year and a half. Her work required more than just the capacity to decipher her late husband’s illegible script. Doing this effectively required a great deal of familiarity with the material in question,242 going well beyond checking the references used by Innis. She not only used the most recent editions of the works he had cited, but also added a work by Havelock, which she had read (and obviously thought was 236 Mary Quayle Innis, ed., Nursing Education in a Changing Society (Toronto: University of ­Toronto Press, 1971); Committee on Religious Education in the Public Schools of Ontario and John Keiller Mackay, Religious Information and Moral Development: The Report of the Committee on Religious Education in the Public Schools of the Province of Ontario, 1969 ­(Toronto: Ontario Department of Education, 1969). 237 Committee on Religious Education in the Public Schools of Ontario and Mackay, Religious Information and Moral Development. 238 Mary Quayle Innis, An Economic History of Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954). 239 These included: James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (London: Macmillan, 1919); Jacob Burckhardt and S.G.C. Middlemore, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898); Jaeger, Paideia; Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity; E.T. Owen, The Story of the Iliad, as Told in the Iliad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947). 240 Elizabeth Bowen, A Time in Rome (London: Longmans, 1960); Henri Pirenne and Frank D. Halsey, Medieval Cities (New York: Doubleday, 1925); Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933); Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary, 27 December 1969. 241 He had earlier suggested that she read Empire (which she did). 242 Delisle and Mitchell have decisively demonstrated Mary Quayle Innis’s role in supporting his career. And Black has underscored her importance as a writer and scholar. However, neither article has provided a full account of the extent to which she was a formidable media scholar in her own right. She also was an enthusiastic consumer of material in a range of media, including, radio, TV and film as well as a radio commentator for arts and politics for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Donica Belisle and Kiera Mitchell, “Mary Quayle Innis: Faculty Wives’ Contributions and the Making of Academic Celebrity.” Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 3: 456–86; J. David Black, “‘Both of Us Can Move Mountains’: Mary Quayle Innis and Her Relationship to Harold Innis’ Legacy,” Canadian Journal of Communication 28, no. 4 (2003): 433–47.

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pertinent).243 Her daughter Mary, her brother Donald, and Davidson also contributed. Much of this work was taken up with working over “E. and C cards”244 and doing research at a number of venues including the main University of Toronto Library, The Toronto Reference (Central) Library, Trinity College Library, Victoria College Library, Locke Library,245 “Church Library,” Saint ­Clements Library,246 and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Library.247 She also worked at libraries in Vancouver, when visiting her daughter Mary and in Waterloo when visiting her daughter Anne. She uncharacteristically complained of being “very tired“248 and struggling in the stacks at the University Library. Preparing the index and checking the proofs proved to be particularly time-consuming, requiring nineteen days249 and thirty-six days respectively.250 On 4 October 1971, she sent the revised version along with a new index to the University of Toronto Press. The book appeared on 9 January 1972, the day before she passed away.251 Constructing the Innisian Oeuvres: The Place of Empire The full meaning and significance of Empire have not been adequately addressed; its relationship to Innis’s broader oeuvres largely remains unexplored. Innis himself bears some of the responsibility for this state of affairs. A number of his early statements about the origins of his major communications works were not only misleading but suggested a periodization of his writings that is at odds with their actual order. He noted that the revised versions of papers that were included in Bias of Communication252 were “brought together for purposes of accessibility and to support in more detailed fashion the thesis developed in Empire and Communications.”253 Yet two of the chapters included in 243 Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963). 244 Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary, 23 March 1970. 245 Now the Locke Branch of the Toronto Public Library. 246 Now the Saint Clements Branch of the Toronto Public Library 247 On one occasion she noted with evident enthusiasm that she had managed to track down “Poole” at the Pontifical library. Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary 14 April 1970. This was perhaps Reginald Lane Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: Macmillan, 1920). 248 Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary, 6 April, 1970. 249 She and her daughter Mary prepared the index from 10 to 29 September 1971, Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary. This work was evidently onerous; she remarked that she and her daughter were “both sick,” that the index was “hard,” and that her eyes were “tired.” Mary Quayle Innis Personal Diary, 11−13 September 1971. 250 She received the proofs on 30 August 1971 and worked on them until 4 October 1971. 251 Black, “‘Both of Us Can Move Mountains.’” 252 Innis, Bias. 253 Ibid., xvii.

xxxviii  William J. Buxton

Bias254 had appeared prior to the publication of Empire.255 This suggests that the thesis Innis attributed to Empire had actually been foreshadowed by at least two of his earlier writings. A similar elision can be found in the preface Innis wrote to Changing Concepts of Time.256 In this case he claimed that in the volume he sought “to elaborate the thesis developed in The Bias of Communication and Empire and Communications.257 However, two of the volume’s chapters258 had previously appeared.259 Hence, Innis’s claim that the purpose of the volume was to relate this thesis to “immediate problems” can be called into question. Indeed, given that both chapters originated in lectures delivered in the same year (1948) as those upon which Empire was based, then arguably they reflected “more sharply the temper” of the early cold-war period than that of a later chapter characterized more by firmer American cultural hegemony. Innis’s perspective on Canada’s international position had evolved over time. In the 1920’s he stressed the extent to which Canadian development had been shaped by its status as a hinterland producing staple products for metropolitan countries, particularly France and Britain.260 By contrast, in the 1930’s, following Canada’s attainment of autonomy within the British empire, he adopted a more continentalist perspective, viewing his native country as primarily a nation-state within North America.261 However, according to his friend – and University of Toronto colleague − Donald Creighton, with the “huge expansion of American imperial interests” attendant on the Second World War, the threat of the United States began to be borne upon him.” At the same time, the “evident decline” of Britain was “brought home to him when he went [there] in 1948.” By the time the war had ended, according to Creighton, Innis had become fully aware of “our gradual subordination in a continental empire which was dominated by the United States.”262 Innis’s rage remained simmering in the final chapters of Empire and in his three papers delivered in Britain in 1948. But by the early 1950’s his anger had reached a full boil, largely because of his disgust 254 “Minerva’s Owl” and “The English Publication Trade in the Eighteenth Century” 255 Harold Adams Innis, Minerva’s Owl (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948); “The English Publishing Trade in the Eighteenth Century,” Manitoba Arts Review 4 (1945): 14–24. 256 Originally published in 1952. Harold Adams Innis, Changing Concepts of Time (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). 257 Ibid., xxv. 258 Innis, “The Press” and “Great Britain, the United States, and Canada.” 259 Innis, Great Britain, the United States and Canada. 1948).; Innis, The Press 260 Innis, Empire, 6. 261 Buxton, Harold Innis on Peter Pond. 262 Elspeth Chisholm, interview with Donald Creighton, 21 November 1972. Interviews conducted of various individuals for the CBC programme “Innis of Canada: A Study of a Scholar.” UTA, Elspeth Chisholm Fonds, B1974-0001/004.

Reading Empire and Communications xxxix

with the Korean War and the role that Canada was playing in it.263 Echoing the views of his colleague and collaborator, Arthur Lower, Innis now believed that Canada had come full circle, moving from colony to nation and then back to colony.264 To be sure, Canada received only scant mention in Empire. But he did acknowledge in the first few pages of the volume that in attacking a new set of problems and issues he relied on tools that had been forged in the “interpretation of the economic history of Canada and the British Empire.”265 Because of Mary Quayle Innis’s revisions, the 1972 version of Empire differed dramatically from the text of 1950, as it contained works that were circulating in the period up to the early 1970s.266 Given that he added material up until at least February 1952, this means that Empire was contemporaneous with his final published works.267 The volume should not be understood as Innis’s initial monograph on communications − Political Economy (published in 1946) has that distinction − it should be viewed as the centrepiece of works on communications and culture that appeared in the period after the Second World War.268 By virtue of how it made sense of myriad aspects of different social formations, the 1972 version of Empire was continuous with the approach he had developed in his early work, most notably in his two volumes of “Select Documents.”269 Drawing on the French possibilist tradition of cultural geography,270 263 Ibid. See also Donald A. Wright, Donald Creighton: A Life in History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 188, 227. This vituperative view of American cultural ­imperialism is evident in his pamphlet “Strategy of Culture.” Harold A. Innis, “The ­Strategy of Culture: With Special Reference to the Canadian Literature − A Footnote to the Massey Report.,” in Changing Concepts of Time (Toronto: University of Toronto Press., 1952), 1–19. His son Donald provides further evidence of his father’s disenchantment with the United States in his account of their discussions during the summer of 1952 when Innis was preparing his American Economics Association presidential address. Donald Innis, “Comment, Harold Adams Innis (1894–1952).” American Economic Review 43, no. 1 (1953): 22–5. 264 A.R.M. Lower, Colony to Nation: A History of Canada (Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1946). 265 Innis, Empire, 6. 266 For instance, Childe’s What Happened in History had been republished in a number of editions by Penguin in 1964 and had enjoyed a wide circulation. 267 These include not only Bias, Changing Concepts of Time, and Strategy of Culture, but also “Monopoly and Civilization,” “Roman Law and the British Empire,” as well as “Industrialism and Cultural Values.” 268 It overlapped with the never-completed “History of Communications” manuscript, which covered much of the same material in more detail. 269 Harold A. Innis (ed.), Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1497–1783 (T­oronto: University of Toronto Press: 1929); Harold A. Innis and A.R.M. Lower, eds., Select Documents in Canadian Economic History 1783−1885 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1933). 270 Vincent Berdoulay and R. Louis Chapman, “Le Possibilisme de Harold Innis,” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien 31, no. 1 (March 1987): 2–11.

xl  William J. Buxton

Innis examined the interplay between geography, technology, and various aspects of human endeavour. He was particularly interested in understanding the processes through which time and space were reconfigured. In his earlier writings on Canadian economic history and political economy, his analyses were primarily framed by geographical and climatic factors.271 However, in Empire, Innis placed the mode of communication front and centre in his discussions, with particular attention given to not only its materiality, but also to its practices. Innis provided a clear sense of what he had in mind during the period when Empire was about to go to press. In the spring of 1941, the editor of Clarendon Press, D.M. Davin, informed him that a description of Empire would appear in its list of books for autumn and winter (1949–50), and requested that Innis provide him with “its contents, purpose, etc.”272 Innis complied with the request, providing a statement that gives some insight into the finished manuscript that had emerged from the Beit lectures. He emphasizes that while the volume examined “large-scale territorial organizations such as empires,” its focus was actually “the conditions which favour [their] emergence” and “which are important in determining their continuity [emphases mine].” To this end, Innis gave particular attention to the “administration of these organizations” with particular reference to the “important place” played by communications in their operations; he sought to examine how communications were able to mobilize “administrative talent.” He emphasized that he sought to describe “various systems of communications” and to analyse “their possibilities and limitations … in relation to political organizations. dominated by them.” This required an examination of the extent to which these limitations became “evident in the decline of these organizations,” which involved “replacements by a new medium.” Finally, Innis suggested that “a medium adapted to the administration of vast areas has limitations in meeting problems of continuity.” This implies “a medium suited to political organizations tends to be followed by a medium suited to organizations concerned with time and essentially ecclesiastical.” Subsequently this process is reversed, with time-based ecclesiastical organizations being succeeded by space-oriented political organizations. Finally, he gives “special consideration … to stone, clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper and the radio [as] media.”273 This statement concisely captures his overall line of argument in the volume, giving particular attention to its broader scope and dynamics. He emphasizes 271 For instance, in his study of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he examined the interplay between drainage basins, staples, technology, settlement, politics, and the economy. Harold A. Innis, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (London: P.S. King; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1923). 272 Davin to Innis, 11 May 1949, DPE, A76-0025, UTA, box 6 file 8. 273 Ibid.

Reading Empire and Communications xli

that it focuses on the administrative structures of large-scale organization and how they emerge, develop, and decline over time. These patterns of change were said to be rooted in systems of communication, which were both enabling and constraining. While he provides some sense of what these communication forms consist of (i.e., stone, clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper and radio), he gives little indication of what he means by the conditions making for the emergence and continuity of these large-scale organizations. The array of conditions considered by Innis was by no means constant or consistent throughout the volume (as enhanced by the later marginalia). Innis was at pains to demonstrate that each of the succeeding clusters he examined had its own character and dynamic, depending on the interplay between systems of communication and other conditions. As a philosopher of history, however, Innis’s contributions went well beyond speculation about the meaning  and purpose of the  historical  process. To be sure, Empire represents an ambitious effort to chart the rise and fall of civilizations over a number of millennia. But he did not undertake this task for its own sake. In the words of his friend and colleague, J.B. Brebner, Innis’s historical scholarship was fuelled by the concern to help correct the “cult of the present as inherent in the economics and politics of modern communications monopolies” that he felt “was robbing [human beings] of [their] roots in experience and thereby of [their] good sense.274 Innis’s reading of the then current state of western civilization was in line with his analyses of earlier empires. As he emphasized, imbalances between time- and space-based tendencies led to instability and ultimately decline. In the post-Second-World-War era, according to Innis, a decided bias towards space had taken hold as manifest in rampant mechanization. By virtue of its detailed and nuanced examination of the power dynamics of “large-scale territorial organizations such as empires,” Empire offered some insights into how “the bias of communication” in the Western world could be checked, and the enduring “problem of empire” confronted.275

274 Quoted in Havelock, “Harold Innis: The Philosophical Historian,” 255. 275 Innis, Empire, 170.

Notes on the Text

Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications, originally published by Clarendon Press in 1950, was a remarkable achievement. Given the paucity of material having direct relevance to the subject matter and the exigencies of conducting research in the immediate post-Second-World-War period, the task facing Innis was a daunting one. Mary Quayle Innis’s 1972 revision of the text was no less remarkable. In addition to facing the challenge of deciphering Innis’s illegible handwriting, she took it upon herself to both track down his sources and find the most recent versions of these that were available. The detailed references that she provided in the new set of footnotes are invaluable for the insights they provide into how Innis had planned to revise the volume. In order to make this material more accessible, these have been conjoined with the references in the text to form a new bibliography. This includes the sources for many of the unattributed names and statements that are scattered throughout the text. The 1950 version contained an index, which largely seems to have been carried over to the 1972 version. However, it did not contain many references from the new notes added by Mary Quayle Innis. In this edition the index includes items from those notes, and overall, the number of entries has increased and more use has been made of subentries and cross references. Key works cited in the text have been referenced. In preparing the index, the one found in the project Gutenberg Canada Ebook version of Empire and Communications has been built upon.276 The material included in the bibliography and the index has been confined to that found in Innis’s text to ensure that Innis’s scholarship is considered separately from the commentary provided by the editor.

276 https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/innis-empire/innis-empire-00-h.html. Accessed 16 August 2021.

xliv  William J. Buxton

The title of the introduction, “Reading Empire and Communications: Above and below the Line” captures its leitmotif.277 The inclusion of the new notes and footnotes by Mary Quayle Innis in the 1972 version of Empire represented an elaboration of the ideas advanced by Innis in the 1950 edition of the text. But at the same time, the new material heralded significant departures in the nature and scope of his historical enquiry. Unfortunately, these addenda have largely been overlooked, meaning that the text has yet to be understood in its totality. Accordingly, the new footnotes and notes drive the narrative for the introduction, with connections made to the main text wherever that is appropriate. How and why Mary Quayle Innis undertook the preparation of this material is explored in some detail. Given that how Empire came to be written and produced is yet another aspect of the largely “Unknown Innis,” the introduction traces its origins in his earlier work and in his engagement with the writing of “philosophical history.” Particular attention is given to his 1948 Beit lectures, emphasizing that this set of talks delivered at Oxford can best be understood as the point of reference for a cluster of presentations that he gave in Britain during the spring and summer of 1948. The prefatory material from the previous version (including Marshall McLuhan’s forward) has been retained. The new introduction does not address the views expressed in the forward, valuable as they are. Errors found in the text have been silently corrected. It is hoped that the introduction, revisions, and added material make it possible for readers to better appreciate the meaning and significance of the text and to engage more effectively with the ideas and insights that Innis brought forward in this pioneering work. I am grateful to Siobhan McMenemy (formerly of the University of Toronto Press and now of Wilfrid Laurier University Press) for kindly inviting me to write an introduction to a new version of Innis’s Empire and Communications. It has been a pleasure working with the current UTP acquisitions editor, Mark Thompson, whose assistance has been invaluable in bringing my work on the volume to fruition. I have very much appreciated the care and attention given to the production process by staff at UTP, including Stephanie Mazza, cover designer Michel Vrana, associate managing editor Leah Connor, as well as the book’s copy editor, Frances Mundy. In writing the introduction and preparing the new version, I have benefitted from the sage advice afforded to me by Charles Acland, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Menahem Blondheim, Anne Innis Dagg, Arthur Kroker, Ross McKibbin, Jesse Lee Niquette-Buxton, Manon Niquette, John Durham Peters, Carol Selfridge, Michael Stamm, as well as members of the Media History Research Group at Concordia University, and of the University of

277 This formulation was suggested to me by Jonathan Bordo, with reference to Innis’s Fur Trade in Canada.

Notes on the Text  xlv

Montreal−based Paperology Group. I am also grateful for the ongoing ­support provided by staff at Concordia University Library, Laval University Library and the indispensable Inter-Library loan service. Permission to publish primary material has been provided by the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services, Oxford University Archives, and the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. In particular, I wish to thank Tys Klumpenhouwer (Toronto), Kathleen Feeney (Chicago), and Anna Petre (Oxford) for responding to my requests in such an expeditious and thoughtful manner. Research for the preparation of the volume has been supported by an Insight grant (#4352017-0937) awarded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

l Foreword

Foreword li

lii Foreword

Foreword liii

liv Foreword

Foreword lv

lvi Foreword

4  Empire and Communications

Introduction 5

6  Empire and Communications

Introduction 7

8  Empire and Communications

Introduction 9

10  Empire and Communications

Introduction 11

Egypt 13

14  Empire and Communications

Egypt 15

16  Empire and Communications

Egypt 17

18  Empire and Communications

Egypt 19

20  Empire and Communications

Egypt 21

22  Empire and Communications

Egypt 23

24  Empire and Communications

Egypt 25

Babylonia 27

28  Empire and Communications

Babylonia 29

30  Empire and Communications

B A B Y L O N IA 3 1

Babylonia 31

The subordination of Sumerian civilization by Semitic peoples had an im­ portant effect on the conventionalization of writing. Sumerian was apparently an agglutinative language to which the conquerors would not adapt them­ selves. The difficulty of uniting languages with different structures involved supplanting the older language. The Sumerians had limited need for signs rep­ resenting syllables, but the Babylonians were compelled to spell out every single word by syllables. The basis of the Sumerian system was word values and of the Akkadian system, syllable values. 4 The Akkadians developed a syl­ labary of 275 signs in which the welding of consonants and vowels checked the possibility of an alphabet. The conquerors abandoned their proto-Elamite script, adapted the signs and characters of the conquered, and wrote inscrip­ tions in cuneiform. Sumerian became a dead language preserved largely by priests in religious writing, but signs which had been used as single syllables free of relationship to pictographs were taken over by the conquerors, as were those that had been used to represent objects or ideas, and were read as ideo­ graphs with Semitic translations. The Sumerian pronunciation of the more important ideographs was followed. Contact with Sumerian written texts brought an appreciation of abstract symbols such as became the basis for sym­ bolic algebra. 5 Hammurabi completed the change from Sumerian to Akkadian and made the Semitic language official. The Amorites reinforced the Akka­ dians and their language became the popular speech and the official medium. The Babylonians wrote words in non-Semitic form but in the main pro­ nounced them as Semitic. Influenced by Sumerian script they never developed an alphabet and at the most expressed one vowel and one consonant by a sign. Though Sumerian was no longer spoken and became the fossilized sacred language of priests, its decline was marked by defiance of the conquerors and by intense literary and historical activity. Cultural pre-eminence was empha­ sized by religious scribes who made fresh copies of ancient texts which were arranged and stored in the library of the god, and prepared hymns, books, and litanies for the temple services. Priests trained in the Sumerian tradition and with the scholastic attitude emphasized the systematic organization of knowl­ edge. Grammars and huge dictionaries or 'syllabaries' were prepared for the translation of Sumerian literature for the Semitic reader. Oral traditions were written down and literature became the bond slave of religion. The epic was invented as a means of 'working up the story of the demigods and heroes for use in the service of religion. ' 6 Lyric poetry was entirely devoted to the service 4 See G. R. Driver, op . cit., p. 59. 5 Ernst Cassirer, A n Essay on Man (New Haven, 1944), p . 47. 6 T. Eric Peet, A Comparative Study of the Literatures of Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopo­ tamia (London, 193 1 ), p . 26. See J. S. Newberry, 'The Prehistory of the Alphabet' (Harvard Studies in Classical Philol· ogy, XLV, 19 34, pp. 105-56).

32  Empire and Communications

Babylonia 33

34  Empire and Communications

B A B Y L O N IA 3 S

Babylonia 35

Babylon about 1 746 BC and established a dynasty that persisted to the end of the thirteenth century. It is probable that the Semites were checked in ex­ pansion to the north and compelled to turn toward Egypt under the Hyksos or Shepherd kings. In turn the Hittites, 1 3 mcluding probably the Mitanni, the Vanni, 14 and the Kassites, overran regions to the north in Cappadocia to which traders had introduced cuneiform writing by about 2000 BC. The latter was apparently overwhelmed by the Hittite hieroglyphic system but, used for gov­ ernmental purposes in the capital at Boghaz Keui and elsewhere, it restricted the development of Hittite pictographic writing. Without a consistently efficient system of writing and the stabilizing con­ servative influence of religion, the Hittite empire was exposed to difficulties from within and without. The priest king represented the sun and the priestess the mother goddess. A territorial deity was queen but religion was not sup­ ported by traditions of learning and by an abundance of writing material such as clay. The Mitanni were attacked by the Egyptians under Amenhotep I I ( 1470- 1420 BC) and came under their influence through a n alliance strength­ ened by the marriage of Thutmose II to a daughter of the king lasting from 1440 to 1 3 80 BC . About 1 3 70 BC Suppiluliuma I, king of the Hittites, suc­ ˇ ceeded in dominating the Mitanni and created a highly organized imperial and central administration whose officials took the oath of allegiance and met the demands of increasing complexity in state and imperial affairs. A strong im­ perial capital, a system of radiating communications, and the use of iron gave the Hittites important advantages in the consolidation of power. Egyptian provinces in Syria became exposed to Hittite intrigue, but about 1 2 7 2 BC Hattusil, king of the Hittitesh concluded a treaty with Rameses I I , i conceding 1 3 A. E . Cowley, The Hittites (London, 1920), p . 8 S . 14 D . G . Hogarth, Kings of the Hittites (London, 1926), p . S S . h

Protection against common foe. Ramescs II exh austing Egypt with colossal building enterprises - reflecting supreme in­ fluence of religion and priesthood. Mitanni princesses married p h araoh s three successive reigns. Peake and Fleure, Merchant Venturers in Bronze (Oxford, 1 9 3 1 ) . Iron mentioned i n Amarna letters fourteenth century, wrought iron h atch et found Ras Sh amra fifteenth to fourteenth centuries. Rameses II asked Hattusil for smelted iron. H. H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua (London, 1 9S0), p. 22. Mitanni in diplomatic confederation used script and language of Akkadians. Hittites persisted with stone and not as Assyrians adopt brick structures after 2400 BC. Hittites probably h ad monopoly of iron to 12S0 BC. Peake and Fleure, The Horse and the Sword, p . S4. Breasted - daughter of Hittite king married Rameses II 12S9. Ch ariot consolidated authority - stability of empires Assyria, Hittite, Egypt due to sole command of mobile arm to be despatch ed quickly and to speed conferred on officials and overseers. After fourteenth century h orse training in north Syria - ch ariot races. Light h orse-drawn ch ariots reduced journeys. Ch ilde (pp . 182-3 ) . Aryans and Hittites learned secret of iron - with iron, commoner could meet bronze-age

36  Empire and Communications 36 E M P I R E A N D C O M M U N ICAT I O N S t o him Syria and all o f western Asia from the Euphrates to the sea. Shortly after this date Shalmaneser I ( 1 280- 1 25 0 BC) of the Assyrians subjugated the Mitanni, and the Cappadocian empire of the Hittites collapsed about 1 200 BC. About 1 1 5 0 BC the Hittites attacked Babylon but were defeated by Ne­ buchadnezzar I of the dynasty which followed the Kassites, about 1 1 80 BC. Expansion of the sea-rovers (Ach aeans) in the fourteenth century was fol­ lowed by maritime invasion of the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and about 1 1 8,i.i the Greeks probably defeated allies of th e Hittites at Troy. 15 Re­ sistance of the Hittite power to encroachment from the south and east fos­ tered the growth of Ionian states and its contraction gave an opportunity for fresh expansion. In spite of the success of T iglath-Pileser ( 1 090- 1 060 BC) in breaking up the Hittite federation and in laying the foundations of an efficient imperial or­ ganization, contraction of Assyrian power as a result of encroachments from Arameans who were pushed into Assyrian territory to the left bank of the Euphrates from the fourteenth to the twelfth centuries enabled the Hittitesk to establish Carchemish as a bridgehead on the Euphrates about 1 0 5 0 BC. After the first phase of Assyrian expansion the Arameans probably absorbed Hittite culture and established the supremacy of their customs and language. Driven into north Syria they probably introduced Mitanni-Hittite art, includ­ ing the practice of engraving Semitic script in relief, to Zenjirli. A simplified script, developed at Carchemish to meet the demands of trade in the tenth century, spread to Asia Minor in the ninth century. These importations prob­ ably strengthened the tendencies in the period of comparative peace and ex1 5 John Garstang, The Hittite Empire (London, 1929), pp. 43-4.

k

1 280 (?) This date regarded as worthless by Burn. Ararneans (?) Hittites captured Carchemish early fourteenth century - latter in turn cap­ tured by Assyrians end of eighth century and followed by emergence of Phrygian power. D. G. Hogarth, Ionia and the East (Oxford, 1 909). knight. Bronze age ended about 1 200 BC. Childe [pp. 191-4] . 1 500-1400 horse-drawn chariot appears - wheeled cart about 2000 BC. Childe [p. 1 69] . Mitanni and Aryan chiefs about 1450 BC adopted equipment and organization, cuneiform script, and A kkadian language of earlier civilization. Hittite chiefs invaded Babylonia about 1 595 , borrowed theology, law, poetry, science, writing materials, and characters from Mesopotamia. [Childe, pp. 1 70-1.) Hittite empire finally disappeared possibly 1 1 1 5 BC. Peak e and Fleure, Th e Horse and the Sword, pp. 66-7. Assyria declined slowly after Tiglath-Pileser 1 1 13-1074. Substantial achievements of bronze age saved. Expansion of Asiatic military empires on A kkadian model - colonizing of Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans. Bronze age collapse left small partially barbarized communities - reorganized as imita­ tions of bronze age - theocratic states Palestine, Phrygia, Medes, Lydia. Assyria reduced these economically interdependent units followed by Medes and Persians.

Babylonia 37

38  Empire and Communications

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Babylonia 41 B A B Y L O N IA 4 1 The spread of a more efficient system of writing which followed the dis­ covery of the alphabet had profound implications for imperial organization. Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations and the empires which grew out of them were associated with great rivers in which the demand for centralization was imperative. Priestly colleges held a monopoly of knowledge through which they dominated successive organizations of political power. But the very suc­ cess of the monopolies contributed to the destruction of empires. Dominance of monopolies of knowledge in the centre of civilizations im­ plied limitations on the fringes, particularly with new languages compelled to emphasize simplicity rather than complexity in writing. Marginal classes as well as marginal regions demanded simplicity and weakened the position of elaborate systems of the scribes. From a study of the inscriptions of Sinai discovered by Flinders Petrie at Serabit in 1 905 it has been suggested by A. G. Gardiner, 19 that since the Egyptians were interested in this region from 1887 to 1 8 0 1 BC, Semitic workmen had used devices for keeping records which evaded the intricacies of the Egyptian system and that they probably borrowed the simplest signs of the alphabet and abandoned the remainder of the complicated system . In any case, Semitic peoples in contact with Egyp­ tians at some time before 1 5 00 BC apparently invented an alphabet which was developed in Palestine and perfected on the Phoenician coast. Papyrus and the alphabet prevailed over clay in regions in which the latter was diffi­ cult to find and to which it was difficult to transport. The invasion of the Hyksol apparently imposed a barrier between the south and the north of Arabia and led to the development of divergent systems of writing. About the tenth century the northwest Semitic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic language. Aramaic writing developed as a traders' scripts with a concise conventional alphabet, which was free from the complexities of cunei­ form writing, and could be written quickly. It included numbers which had 19 'The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet' Uournal of Egyptian Archaeology, III, London, 1916, pp. 1-16) and The Legacy of Egypt, ed. S . R. K. Glanville (Oxford, 1942), pp . 5 3 -79. See G . R . Driver, op. cit., p . 1 2 1 , for a conclusive discussion on the close rela­ tionship between Egyptian and Phoenician scripts in the absence of vowel signs, recog­ nizably pictorial signs, direction of writing, the use of papyrus and the potsherd, and of the reed pen and ink. r Hyksos movement may have induced a rural population to create a 'non-monopolistic' means of communication. D . Diringer, The A lphabet, p. 2 1 5 . s Decline of Hittite and Mitanni led t o minor Aramean states - wave o f Aramean migration to north Syria twelfth and eleventh centuries. Diringer, p. 25 3 . Also T . J . Meek, 'The Beginnings of Writing' (University of Toronto Quarterly, Xi, October 194 1 , pp. 1 5 -24). Evans argues alphabet from Crete to Cyprus and to Palestine (Philistines). A. Evans, The Palace of Minos, introduction. See J. S. Newberry, 'Prehistory of Alphabet.' North Semi­ tic alphabet probably emerged in Hyksos period 17 30-1 580 BC.

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was sparingly used a s a source o f law. 1 1 Treaties were engraved o n bronze or stone and stored in the Capitoline temple,g laws of the centuriate assembly in the Temple of Saturn, and important decrees of the Senate in the Temple of Ceres. The influence of the written tradition shown in the problems of lex was in striking contrast with the power of the oral tradition in civil law, a contrast that boded ill for the history of the republic and the empire. The success of Roman arms in extending th e territory of the republic cre­ ated p roblems of government. Wars and alliances left Rome as mistress of Italy by 260 BC. War with Carthage from 265 to 241 BC was followed by the acqui­ sition of Sicily and the Lipari Islands. From 2 3 6 to 2 1 9 BC Carthage extended her territory to include Spain, but conflict with Rome after 2 1 8 BC again brought defeat and the drastic reductions of the treaty of 202 BC. The third Punic war after 1 5 3 BC ended in the destruction of Carthage. War with Car­ thage involved conflict with Hellenistic kingdoms. Assisted by the fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes, and with the support of Greek cities, Rome declared war on Macedonia in 200 BC and compelled withdrawal from Greece, Thrace, and Asia Minor. After the outbreak of rebellion in 1 7 1 BC the Macedonian kingdom was extinguished in 1 6 8 BC, and the position of Rhodes was weak­ ened in 1 6 6 BC when Rome in the interest of Athens declared Delos a free port. Opposition to Rome among the G reek cities was followed by drastic measures including the destruction of Corinth in 1 46 BC. The dominance of trading communities on the Mediterranean came to an end . Rome became concerned with the task of Eastern empires. Philip and Alex­ ander-11 had developed efficient instruments of war and rapidly overran the city-states and built a Macedonian empire with control over the sea, the Per­ sian empire, and territory as far east as India. Through deification of the ruler, Alexander had established cohesion in a single cosmopolis which joined the eastern Mediterranean with western Asia and transcended cities, tribes, and nations. 'Man as a political animal, a fraction of the p olis or self-governing city had ended with Aristotle, with Alexander begins man as an individual' (A. J. Carlyle) . The problems of separatist tendencies in earlier empires imme­ diately emerged and after Alexander's death four dynasties were established, the Seleucids controlling roughly the former Persian empire, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Antigonids in Macedonia, and the Attalids in Pergamum . 1 1 Schulz, op. cit., pp. 8-1 1 . g Constructed for consuls 498 BC. h King worship entered Greek world with Alexander. 'March divided, fight united.' First Punic War to battle of Actium (3 1 BC) Romans enriched by booty from other nations. Epaminondas - Theban general against Spartans first to formulate consciously principle of superiority of force at decisive point - not necessarily over whole field of operation. Philip and Alexander used these principles in having an army strong in cavalry. A . R. Burn, A lexander the G reat and the Hellenistic Empire (London, 1947), pp. 3 3-5.

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The Written Tradtion and Rome  93 T H E W R ITT E N TR A D IT IO N A N D R O M E 9 3 o f internationalized monotheism spreading from Babylonia and Egypt. I t has been suggested that belief in the divinity of the stars and acquaintance with the technique of mental repression in Egypt led Plato to state that govern­ ments must be free to lie. The inscription over Plato 's Academy, 'Let none enter who knows not geometry, ' implied a neglect of pbysis and of the study of growth. Aristotle, a student of Plato probably from 367 to 347 BC, left the Academy after Plato's death and eventually set up his Lyceum in 3 2 5 BC. As an Ionian and the son of a doctor he became interested in biological sciences which implied a concern with observation rather than with system. Greek medicine had its significance in relation to ideals of health. It insisted on the principle that experience is the basis of all knowledge, emphasized exactness, and d istinguished the real causes of illness and symptoms by taking them out of the sphere of moral law. 'One must attend in medicine not primarily to plausible theories but to experience combined with reason. ' 18 The biological sciences emphasized classification, which , in the words of Whitehead , stood half-way between the immediate concreteness of the individual theory and the complete abstractions of mathematical notions and involved an emphasis on logic. His system was provisional and open, and pointed to a striving to­ ward totality of problems rather than finished knowledge. As a biologist rather than a physicist, he leaned toward a final cause. The science of natural knowl­ edge was built up and set beside astronomy in the realm of philosophy. The dethronement of mathematics as a formative element created a breach be­ tween philosophy and science. Metaphysics surrendered to special sciences. Cheap subsidized supplies of papyrus became the basis for an extensive ad­ ministrative system as well as large libraries. Ptolemy II built up a monopoly of papyrus following a decline in price from two drachmae for a roll in 3 3 3 BC to a drachma for several rolls in 296 BC, in spite of a general rise in prices incidental to the flow of treasure from the East. After 279 BC a roll cost nearly 18 Medical writings of the third century BC, cited Benjamin Farrington, Science and Poli­ tics in the A n cien t World (London, 1939), p. 63. Unnatural dualism of Orphics contributed to separation of lower world of sensa from heavenly world of ideas of Plato. Guthrie, Orpheus, p. 1S7. Platonic concept of theory of ideas possible only because Plato had continually in mind static shapes discovered by Greek mathematics - geometry adapted Plato's manner of thinking and success crowned in Euclid. Plato concerned with Being - Platonic dualism offset by Aristotle's concept of nature. Plato's problem of being or Aristotle's problem of becoming - influence of geometry evident in idea. Plato venerated geometry as, more than other disciplines, the speculative thought which brought nothing material. Julien Benda, The Great Betrayal (London, 1928), p. 121. Geometry - offspring of Egyptian mind - astronomy and astrology children of Babylonia. Wm Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (Cambridge, 1892), p. 251. Egyptians used decimal system. Greek art of coining introduced to Egypt under Ptolemy Lagos. Egyptians behind Babylonians in arithmetic - more accurate in geometry - used formulae for volume of truncated pyramid.

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sentences adapted to the economy of stone writing in laws, treaties, and offi­ cial records. Cato protested that Greek literature would be the ruin of Rome and in his polemics helped to lay the foundations for a dignified versatile lan­ guage. In 161 BC the Senate empowered the praetor to expel all teachers of rhetoric and philosophy and in 154 BC expelled two disciples of Epicurus. The spread of Greek metaphysics and psychology was probably checked, but Greek teachers and grammarians enhanced the popularity of Hellenistic ideals in lit­ erature in the second half of the second century. In about 168 BC Crates of Mallus,m the most distinguished scholar of the Pergamese school,28 established the first school of grammar in Rome and reflected the erudition and discern­ ment of Hellenistic literary criticism. Prose gained fresh power in attempts to meet problems of the Republic which followed a marked increase in wealth. Direct taxation was abolished by the Senate after 167 BC. Large-scale farming and absentee ownership brought protests against the increased power of the Senate, particularly after revolt of the slaves in 139 BC. The Gracchi were among the first to use the weapon of Greek rhetoric on behalf of the democratic cause. Gaius Gracchus increased the range of forensic prose and made it 'vivid, clear, versatile and vibrant' (Tenney Frank). Large numbers entered the political arena and speeches were given wider publicity through an enlarged circle of readers. Public speech moulded prose style. Over the long period from 500 to 100 BC harsh sounds had been eliminated and the Latin language reached maturity. In an edict of the censors of 92 BC Licinius Crassus attempted to discourage Latin schools of rhetoric, but its influence was evident in the development of prose as a finished product to its climax under Cicero. Broken speech was converted into a literary instrument with 'concentration and surcharge, magnificent sonority and architectonic sentence building.' Written speech became almost the equal of oral speech. Following the models of Isocrates, Cicero dominated the his­ tory of belles-lettres in Europe. Latin became a philosophical language and his widely read books and compilations were vehicles for the spread of Stoi­ cism. Epicureanism and Stoicism with a common ideal, 'the complete emancipa­ tion of the soul from the yoke of passion and superstition' (Asquith), were spread by living teachers and the spoken word to the disadvantage of Platon­ ism and Aristotelianism. Lucretius, following Epicurus in the didactic verse of De rerum natura, attacked the spirit of cringing before the gods, the en­ slavement of the soul incidental to the belief in the beyond and the fear of 28 See E. V. Hansen, The A ttalids of Pergamon (Ithaca, 1947). m Probably 159 - broke his leg while in Rome and lectured during his convalescence. Keeping of account books to indicate rights of senate and of generals in Italy by 1 90 BC.

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following a decree that every sacrifice was an act of treason against the em­ peror, meant the closing of pagan libraries. Later Stilicho ordered the burning of the Sybilline books. Ammianius Marcellinus could write 'the libraries like tombs are closed forever.' In 396 pagan worship was prohibited. The pagan calendar and pagan festivals were replaced by the Christian calendar and Chris­ tian festivals. As the power of the empire was weakened in the West that of the Church at Rome increased and difficulties with heresies in the East became more acute. In 390 Theodosius was refused admission to worship by Ambrose at Milan until he had done public penance for the massacre at Antioch. After the sack of Rome in 4 10, Eastern heresies became more vocal. Attempts of Alex­ andrian patriarchs to establish a papacy were defeated by Leo the Great (4406), who founded the pontifical monarchy of the West. Pelagius and his disciple Coelestius rejected the doctrines of predestination and original sin, and were excommunicated in 4 17. At the