Goldwin Smith

Smith was born at Reading, Berkshire.[2] He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and after a brilliant undergraduate career he was elected to a fellowship at University College, Oxford.[3] He threw his energy into the cause of university reform with another fellow of University College, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. On the Royal Commission of 1850 to inquire into the reform of the university, of which Stanley was secretary, Smith served as assistant-secretary; and he was then secretary to the commissioners appointed by the act of 1854. His position as an authority on educational reform was further recognised by a seat on the Popular Education Commission of 1858.[4] In 1868, when the question of reform at Oxford was again growing acute, he published a pamphlet, entitled The Reorganization of the University of Oxford.[5]

In 1865, he led the University of Oxford opposition to a proposal to develop Cripley Meadow north of Oxford railway station for use as a major site of Great Western Railway (GWR) workshops.[6] His father had been a director of GWR. Instead the workshops were located in Swindon. He was public with his pro-Northern sympathies during the American Civil War, notably in a speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1863 and his Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence Association the following year.[2]

Besides the Universities Tests Act 1871, which abolished religious tests, many of the reforms suggested, such as the revival of the faculties, the reorganisation of the professoriate, the abolition of celibacy as a condition of the tenure of fellowships, and the combination of the colleges for lecturing purposes, were incorporated in the act of 1877, or subsequently adopted by the university. Smith gave the counsel of perfection that "pass" examinations ought to cease;[7] but he recognised that this change "must wait on the reorganization of the educational institutions immediately below the university, at which a passman ought to finish his career." His aspiration that colonists and Americans should be attracted to Oxford was later realised by the will of Cecil Rhodes.[8] On what is perhaps the vital problem of modern education, the question of ancient versus modern languages, he pronounced that the latter "are indispensable accomplishments, but they do not form a high mental training" – an opinion entitled to peculiar respect as coming from a president of the Modern Language Association.[5]

Portrait of Goldwin Smith, by Sir Edmund Wyly Grier, 1894.

He held the Regius professorship of Modern History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866, that "ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the 'best instrument for cultivating the historical sense." As a historian, indeed, he left no abiding work; the multiplicity of his interests prevented him from concentrating on any one subject. His chief historical writings – The United Kingdom: a Political History (1899), and The United States: an Outline of Political History (1893) — though based on thorough familiarity with their subject, make no claim to original research, but are remarkable examples of terse and brilliant narrative.[5]

He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1865.[9]

The outbreak of the American Civil War proved a turning point in his life. Unlike most of the ruling classes in England, he championed the cause of the North, and his pamphlets, especially one entitled Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery? (1863), played a prominent part in converting English opinion. Visiting America on a lecture tour in 1864, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and was entertained at a public banquet in New York.[5] Andrew Dickson White, president of Cornell University at Ithaca, N.Y., invited him to take up a teaching post at the newly founded institution. But it was not until a dramatic change in Smith's personal circumstances that led to his departure from England in 1868, that he took up the post. He had resigned his chair at Oxford in 1866 in order to attend to his father, who had suffered permanent injury in a railway accident. In the autumn of 1867, when Smith was briefly absent, his father took his own life. Possibly blaming himself for the tragedy, and now without an Oxford appointment, he decided to move to North America.[10]

Goldwin Smith (center) and Andrew Dickson White (behind him, with top hat) at the opening of Goldwin Smith Hall, 1906.

Smith's time at Cornell was brief, but his impact there was significant. He held the professorship of English and Constitutional History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1868 to 1872.[11] The addition of Smith to Cornell's faculty gave the newly opened university "instant credibility."[11] Smith was something of an academic celebrity, and his lectures were sometimes printed in New York newspapers.[12]

During Smith's time at Cornell he accepted no salary and provided much financial support to the institution.[13] In 1869 he had his personal library shipped from England and donated to the university.[13] He lived at Cascadilla Hall among the students, and was much beloved by them.[13]

In 1871 Smith moved to Toronto to live with relatives, but retained an honorary professorship at Cornell and returned to campus frequently to lecture.[13] When he did, he insisted on staying with the students at Cascadilla Hall rather than in a hotel.[13] Smith bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the University in his will.[13]

Smith's abrupt departure from Cornell was credited to several factors, including the Ithaca weather, Cornell's geographic isolation, Smith's health, and political tensions between Britain and America.[14] But the decisive factor in Smith's departure was the university's decision to admit women.[12][14] Goldwin Smith told White that admitting women would cause Cornell to "sink at once from the rank of a University to that of an Oberlin[note 1] or a high school" and that all "hopes of future greatness" would be lost by admitting women.[14]

Goldwin Smith Hall

On June 19, 1906, Goldwin Smith Hall was dedicated, at the time Cornell's largest building and its first building dedicated to the humanities, as well as the first home to the College of Arts and Sciences.[11][15] Smith personally laid the cornerstone for the building in October 1904 and attended the 1906 dedication.[15] The Cornell Alumni News observed on the occasion, "To attempt to express even in a measure the reverence and affection which all Cornellians feel for Goldwin Smith would be attempting a hopeless task. His presence here is appreciated as the presence of no other person could be."[15]^{: 452–453}

In Toronto, Smith edited the Canadian Monthly, and subsequently founded the Week and the Bystander,[16][17] and where he spent the rest of his life living in The Grange manor.[18][19]

In 1893, Smith was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.[20] In his later years he expressed his views in a weekly journal, The Farmer's Sun, and published in 1904 My Memory of Gladstone, while occasional letters to the Spectator showed that he had lost neither his interest in English politics and social questions nor his remarkable gifts of style. He died at his residence in Toronto, The Grange.[5]

Smith is considered by historian Edward P. Kohn to be a "devout Anglo-Saxonist", a racial belief system developed by British and American intellectuals, politicians and academics in the 19th century.[24] In his view, Smith defined the "Anglo-Saxon race" as not necessarily being limited to English people, but extended to the Welsh and Lowland Scots, though not the Irish.[25] Speaking in 1886, he proclaimed that he was standing "by the side of John Bright against the dismemberment of the great Anglo-Saxon community of the West, as I now stand against the dismemberment of the great Anglo-Saxon community of the East." These words formed the key to his views of the future of the British Empire[5] and he was a leading member of the anti-imperialist "Little Englander" movement.

Smith thought that Canada was destined by geography to become part of the United States. In his view, separated by artificial north–south barriers, into zones communicating naturally with adjoining portions of the United States, Canada was an artificially constructed and badly-governed nation. In his view, it would eventually break away from the British Empire, and the "Anglo-Saxons" of the North American continent would become one nation.[26][27] These views are most fully developed in his work Canada and the Canadian Question (1891). Smith's views on the future of Canada–United States relations was criticised by Canadian priest George Monro Grant in the Canadian Magazine.[28]

Bust of Goldwin Smith, by Alexander Munro, 1866.

Goldwin Smith, photo by Notman & Fraser.

Smith identified as an anti-imperialist, describing himself as "anti-Imperialistic to the core". Despite this, he admired aspects of the British Empire; speaking on the topic of British rule in India, Smith claimed that "it is the noblest the world has seen... Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there."[5] Smith remained resolutely opposed to Britain granting more representative government to India, expressing fear that this would lead to a "murderous anarchy."[29][30]

When the Second Boer War (1899-1902) broke out, Smith published several articles in the Canadian press and a book In The Court of History: An Apology of Canadians Opposed to the Boer War (1902) expressing his opposition to the war. Arguing against British involvement in the war on pacifist grounds, Smith's views were uncommon among the English Canadian community of the period. Smith published another anti-imperialist work in 1902, Commonwealth or Empire?, arguing against the United States assuming an imperialistic foreign policy in the aftermath of its victory in the Spanish–American War.

Smith held strong anti-Semitic views.[31] Described by McMaster University professor Alan Mendelson as "the most vicious anti-Semite in the English-speaking world", Smith referred to Jews as "parasites" who absorb "the wealth of the community without adding to it".[32] Research by Glenn C. Altschuler and Isaac Kramnick has studied Smith's writings on Jews, which claimed that they were responsible for a form of "repulsion" they provoked in others, due to his assertion of their "peculiar character and habits", including a "preoccupation with money-making", which made them "enemies of civilization". He also denigrated brit milah, a Jewish ritual of circumcision, as a "barborous rite", and proposed either culturally assimilating Jews or deporting them to Palestine as a solution to the "Jewish problem".[33]

Smith wrote that "The Jewish objective has always been the same, since Roman times. We regard our race as superior to all humanity, and we do not seek our ultimate union with other races, but our final triumph over them."[34][35][36] He had a strong influence on William Lyon Mackenzie King and Henri Bourassa.[37] He proposed in other writings that Jews and Arabs were of the same race.[38] He also believed that Islamic oppression of non-Muslims was for economic factors.[39]

In December 2020, the Cornell University Board of Trustees voted to remove Smith's name from the honorific titles of twelve professors at Cornell. The Board took this action in recognition of Smith's "racist, sexist and anti-Semitic" views. The Board declined to rename Goldwin Smith Hall.[40]

• Lee-Warner, William (1911). "Dalhousie, James Andrew Broun Ramsay, 1st Marquess of" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 764–765.
• Parker, Charles Stuart (1911). "Peel, Sir Robert" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 40–44.
• "Letters of Goldwin Smith to Charles Eliot Norton", Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 49, October 1915/June 1916, pp. 106–160.