François Guizot represents better than anyone the figure of the intellectual politician of the 19th century. His active participation in French politics from 1815 to 1848 did not prevent him from developing an important literary and cultural activity.
Born in Nimes on October 4, 1787, his father was a Protestant lawyer who served in the ranks of the Girondins and participated in the Federalist insurrection against the Jacobins. Imprisoned, he would be guillotined in 1794 when his son was only 7 years old. After these events, his family moved to Geneva, whose liberal and Calvinist environment marked Guizot's childhood.
In Geneva he learned humanities, pure sciences and classical languages. In 1805 he began his law studies in Paris, which he combined with his tasks as tutor to the sons of Stapfer, the ambassador of the Helvetic Republic in Paris. Thanks to him he will have access to Parisian high society and will meet his future wife, Pauline de Meulan. In 1809 he wrote his first work, a dictionary of synonyms, and came into contact with Antoine Suard who will tutor him in his literary beginnings and open the doors of the great French newspapers for him.
In 1812 Guizot was appointed professor of modern history at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris. But his passion for his politics will make him put aside his teaching work to start his public projection. He joined the moderate liberal group headed by Royard-Collard. During the First Restoration he was appointed general secretary of the Ministry of the Interior and worked on the elaboration of the Printing Law. Napoleon's return caused him to leave the ministry and return to the University. After the fall of Bonaparte and the implementation of the Second Restoration he resumed political activity. He was appointed general secretary of the Ministry of Justice, State Counselor and general director of the departmental and municipal Administration. In 1820 the fall of the Decasez government forced him to resign and he took refuge, once again, in the University. Between 1820 and 1830, years in which he is removed from the forefront of politics, he publishes numerous works on politics and history.
After the revolution of 1830 and the fall of Charles X, he was successively appointed Minister of the Interior, Minister of Public Instruction, Ambassador to London, Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Council of Ministers. His political career ended in 1848, with his dismissal from the government and his "exile" to London. Once removed from power, he dedicated himself to continuing his already extensive historical task, to deep theological reflection and to actively participating in the sessions of the French Academy, which he had entered in 1836. He died on September 12, 1874 in Le Val-Richer.
The historical work of François Guizot is considerable. He devoted more than a dozen books to this discipline, not counting the articles published in newspapers and magazines and the works carried out for the French Academy. Despite the diversity of his work, there is a common element in it:the influence of his political conception. On numerous occasions it is difficult to discern whether it is the historian Guizot or the political Guizot who is speaking to us. He uses history as an argument to justify his ideological principles and defend liberalism. We can clearly see it in some passages of his book “ History of the Revolution of England ”Where he stops the narration to compare it with the French one and draw conclusions for the France of his time. The difficulty in separating what is properly historical from what is political has led many scholars to see him as a historian sociologist or a political historian, rather than a pure historian.
Guizot distances himself from the dominant trend in French historiography at that time (Michelet or Thierry, for example) and shows a certain originality in his approaches. He takes a more theoretical than practical view of the study of history. The narration of the facts is not an essential issue for him (although it cannot be neglected either because, in that case, there would be no history), and his objective lies in explaining the course of history through the general principles that govern those facts. It is here that the idea of civilization arises from him.
Guizot considered that the main function of politics was to create in societies the conditions of adequate balance between the principles of authority and freedom, whose dialectical relationship will give rise to the history of civilization. For him, civilization is the central principle of history (although he avoids giving it a precise definition) that moves everything. Civilization is the result of a multiplicity of interrelated factors, none of which finds an isolated justification. In this way, civilization is not the facts but the connections that arise between the relationships hidden behind those facts.
he Considers that humanity has gone through different periods, each with its own intellectual cohesion, in which ideas are transformed to give way to others. The cause of these transformations is not so much the individuals but the struggles between social groups (he is the first to resort to this idea that the Marxists will later develop). In the case of Europe, he reduces the stages that mark its history to three:the first concludes with the fall of Rome, the second goes until the Reformation and the third from the Reformation to his own time. Each one of these periods is subjected to strong social tensions and transfers its characteristics to the next:the Roman Empire leaves its conception of empire and municipal freedom; feudalism, the idea of Germanic independence and the Reformation, the development of spiritual life.
Guizot believes in a general destiny of humanity and, therefore, in the possible elaboration of a Universal History. He assumes, however, that this task exceeds his powers and focuses his efforts on what he can cover and on what he has sufficient information. He focuses his attention on describing the evolution of social forms, on tracing the path that has allowed the appearance of rights and freedoms and on showing the transitions that have occurred throughout history.
For Guizot, the role of the historian is threefold. In the first place, he has to act as an anatomist who dissects the historical "body" and accumulates materials to know the facts that make it up. Secondly, he must abandon the function of anatomist to become a physiologist, whose mission will be to explain how the different organs of the body are related and what their functions are. Finally, he has to represent the past as a living reality with repercussions in the present. He raises, on the other hand, two ways of approaching the study of history. One would be to give priority to the individual and, therefore, to focus on the study of the slow and progressive improvement of human feelings. And the second, which he himself prefers, would focus his interest on the social, on the description of the social elements that mark the evolution of history.