Carroll Quigley

Carroll Quigley (November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) was a historian and professor of history at Georgetown University from 1941 to 1976.

Quigley was born in Boston, where he attended school and later received both undergraduate degrees and a doctorate from nearby Harvard University.

At Georgetown University, Quigley joined the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he taught his highly regarded course, Development of Civilization. This was to make a strong impression on many of his students, including the future U.S. President Bill Clinton, who named Quigley as an important influence during his acceptance speech to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

In addition to his academic work, Quigley was a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, which went on to establish NASA.

Quigley's theory of the seven stages that civilizations undergo (mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay, invasion) and his characterizations of existing civilizations have gained currency in discussions of contemporary affairs by historians and others.^[1]

Writings on the Anglo-American elite

Quigley became well known among those who believe that there is an international conspiracy to bring about a one-world government. In his 1966 book, Tragedy and Hope, he based his analysis on his extensive research in the closely-held papers of an Anglo-American elite organization,^{[citation needed]} to which he was given access.^{[citation needed]} According to Quigley, the U.S. and UK governments were secretly controlled through a series of Round Table Groups, the group in the U.S. being the Council on Foreign Relations.^{[citation needed]} He contended that both the Republican and Democratic parties were controlled by an "international Anglophile network" that shaped elections.

The Anglo-American Establishment was not published until 1982, five years after Quigley's death, because of its controversial material:^{[citation needed]} several publishers would not publish it when it was written in 1949, but the manuscript was found after his death on the Island of Rhodes.^{[citation needed]}

The book argues that the real motive of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler was to instigate a war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; by deliberately encouraging and assisting in Germany's efforts to expand in the east so that Germany could have a common frontier with the Soviet Union.

He also claimed that Alfred Milner was the chief author of the the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Critics assailed Quigley for his approval of the goals (though not the tactics) of the Anglo-American elite, while selectively using his information and analysis as evidence for their views.^{[citation needed]} Quigley himself thought that the influence of the Anglo-American elite had slowly waned after World War II, and that, in American society after 1965, the problem was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly.

Quotes

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known. (p. 950}

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. {p. 1247}

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

- All from Tragedy and Hope

No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished in Britain, that is, that a small number of men should be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of the documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and teaching of the history of their own period. (p. xi)

This event of March 1936, by which Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, was the most crucial event in the whole history of appeasement. So long as the territory west of the Rhine and a strip fifty kilometers wide on the east bank of the river were demilitarized, as provided in the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pacts, Hitler would never have dared to move against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He would not have dared because, with western Germany unfortified and denuded of German soldiers, France could have easily driven into the Ruhr industrial area and crippled Germany so that it would be impossible to go eastward. And by this date, certain members of the Milner Group and of the British Conservative government had reached the fantastic idea that they could kill two birds with one stone by setting Germany and Russia against one another in Eastern Europe. In this way they felt that the two enemies would stalemate one another, or that Germany would become satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat of the Ukraine. It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West. Even less did it occur to them that Russia might beat Germany and thus open all Central Europe to Bolshevism.

- Both from The Anglo-American Establishment

Books

The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1961) ISBN 0913966568
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966) ISBN 094500110X
The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (1981) ISBN 0945001010
Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History (1983) ISBN 081912947X

References

^ Carroll Quigley: Theorist of Civilizations

External links

Books

Lectures

Interviews

1974 audio interview

[1] Carroll Quigley: Theorist of Civilizations

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