It is my pleasure to thank all those who have helped me in the writing of this book. First, I would like to thank the many people who introduced me to Brazil, its history and culture and the delights of the Portuguese language. I want particularly to thank the staff of the archive of the Museu Imperial de Petrópolis for all their help with Princess Isabel's papers. In Russia, as always, the staff of the Russian State Library in Moscow did all they could to help. I am grateful to the British Academy for financial support at the early stage of this project. The Department of History at York has provided a stimulating and friendly environment for research and teaching, both colleagues and students. In particular, I would like to thank Professor James Walvin for his encouragement and Professor Simon Ditchfield for reading the manuscript and making many helpful suggestions. I want to thank students, who for many years have made working in a university such a privilege, especially all the brilliant young women (and the very few young men!) who have taken my course on Catherine the Great over the past three years. My debt to my close friends in Moscow is enormous and has accumulated over twenty years. I would also like to thank Nina Pogosian, Viktoria Loktionova and Alyona Bulakh. Amina, Molly and Finn have been constant in their support and I am forever grateful to them. Two terrible wars feature in this book and, as I write these words, a third one is raging. This book is dedicated to two Ukrainian women, Kateryna Minakova and Olena Ionkina, who embody the spirit of their people and with whom I am privileged to be friends.

Easter 2023, York.

Meditating on Methods

Thucydides’ different approaches to the concept of fear provide us with a better grasp of how we can operationalize it across a wide set of case studies. Located in six countries where I undertook fieldwork, the depth of the analytical framework extends to a set of comparative stories which inform us about the fallout resulting from distinguishable notions of fear that arise in Western-positioned states, that is, if we agree that in-migration to western parts of Russia qualifies as a Western phenomenon.

Admittedly, coupling Thucydides’ classification with culturally dissimilar countries may have a hit-or-miss character to it. For example, it would be possible for orrodia, a rhetorical device, to be applied to all the six cases examined. However, choosing only Russia's President as rhetorician-in-chief singles out its explanatory breath. Identifying six different terms to ferret out supporting evidence for the types of fear characteristic of a country is a plausible paradigm that augurs in best practices and optimizing analyses.

Ben Judah's book This Is London begins with a fine-tuned understanding of what method he will be using before he plunges into micro-analyses of the roads and rail stations and street corners of London on the eve of the Brexit referendum: “I have to see everything for myself. I don't trust statistics. I don't trust columnists. I don't trust self-appointed spokesmen. I have to make up my own mind. This is why I am shivering again, in Victoria Coach Station, at 6 am.” This method comprises, paradoxically, an ideal-type framework for conducting empirical research. It is admirable that Judah flaunts his brass-knuckles approach when digging for empirics.

For my part, an obligation presented itself to investigate surveys and their inferences in addition to examining self-appointed rhetoricians and the inner workings of angst so as to unsheathe latent and manifest explanatory variables. All manner of data was included in the mix: interpretations of opinion polls and of election results; inferences drawn from policy debates and political rhetoric; and analyses of one-sided biased opinion and editorial commentaries. An asymmetrical investigation across case studies is advantageous so long as the dependent variable—political fear—remains constant.

Nevertheless, there are a host of appropriate questions to ask about research outcomes. One is whether a country is more fear-fixated than another; Russia's history and real-time quandary come to mind.

The Dandy's Body

In his 1821 essay ‘On the Look of a Gentleman’, the English essayist and critic William Hazlitt offers a fascinating description of the true gentleman:

This description fully works for the corporeality of a dandy. Of huge value both from a cultural and an anthropological perspective, Hazlitt's canon describes the nineteenthcentury ideal: a gentleman able to use and control his body as one would a precise and sophisticated instrument. At ease and free, he is adept at showcasing his body to pleasing effect. Following this somewhat general introduction, Hazlitt proceeds to go into more detail:

From these aphoristic descriptions, we may deduce how Hazlitt perceived the distinction between a dandy and a gentleman. For him, the dandy was ‘the fine gentleman’, one who exhibits particular elegance.

For centuries, servile labour exercised a determining influence on the political, economic and social life of the Russian Empire and Brazil both as a Portuguese colony and as the Empire of Brazil from 1822. Beginning as a system of coerced labour, it had metastasized into all parts of the body politic of both empires, leaving no area of life free from its taint. The institutions and values of the two empires were so thoroughly permeated by the existence of servile labour that its abolition appeared unthinkable, let alone practicable. Yet the pressure for abolition rose inexorably in the nineteenth century, making the inconceivable conceivable and the unachievable achievable.

The Russian and Brazilian empires were not immune to the demand for abolition that swept Europe and the Americas, but they were able to resist it until the second half of the nineteenth century. The institution of servile labour, central to all aspects of life in both empires, was fiercely defended by the master class, who resisted each and every attempt, however modest, to limit its power over serfs or slaves. The tenacious defence of slavery and serfdom by the serf and slave owners made abolition an existential matter for both empires, calling into question the constitutional, economic and social structures. If this was not enough, the abolition of serfdom and slavery marked only the start of a fundamental transformative process whose end could not be foreseen. What was to happen to the freed bondsman? How were they to be integrated into their respective societies? How was the relationship between the ruling class and the state to be reconstructed in the aftermath of such a traumatic breakdown? The answers to these questions tended to be stark and bleak: the destruction of the state, the collapse of the economy, the end of private property: in short, the ruin of civilization. Given such a vista, it is hardly surprising that in neither empire was there much enthusiasm for undertaking such a risky enterprise.

Nevertheless, decisive political action ended serfdom in 1861 in Russia and slavery in 1888 in Brazil, giving individual freedom to the serfs and slaves, overcoming the opposition of the master class and embracing all the consequent risks of emancipation.

Malaise or Remedy

Many troubling questions requiring hardheaded solutions have been asked about today's America. Among key issues are managing control over migration on the border with Mexico; repairing infrastructure in American cities; curbing outlandish profit-making by US corporations particularly in the oil and gas industry; reducing unparalleled socioeconomic inequalities instead of creating incentives to take them higher; halting the decline of the US middle class; making changes to the prevailing low and even zero tax rates assessed to American companies that are too big to fail; resolving persistent structural racism which is not solved merely by impact-less concessions to disadvantaged people; weakening the dominance of a glorified celebrity culture linking arms with cynical politicians; doing something about a not-free press and social media that are owned by mega-oligarchs; reducing incestuous nepotism; putting an end to absurd gerrymandering; and plus a sundry of other issues. The most serious and intractable problem of them all, climate change, is a universal problem. Many of these needed policy decisions result from predatory rather than free-market capitalism. With regard to foreign policy, the country's status as a once-enviable superpower is now under attack.

Diversity and inclusiveness sweeping across US institutions are paradoxes since most of the problem areas listed above seriously constrain inclusivity and go beyond its symbolic dimensions. For French-born journalist Raoul de Roussy de Sales writing in 1939, the answer to the question what makes an American was straightforward: “to become an American is a process which resembles a conversion. It is not so much a country one adopts as a new creed. And in all Americans can be discerned some of the traits of those who have, at one time or the other, abandoned an ancient faith for a new one.”

Staying with the notion of a distinctive creed, recent years have, by contrast, been characterized by sweeping identity politics and, at their core, the centrality of both distinctiveness and inclusiveness. Encouraged by an ideological state apparatus—in the United States there is one if we look hard enough—its main purpose is in practice to divide Americans into notional tribes of people. The goal of forging national unity is treated, then, as worthy of disdain and scorn when weighed against identity.

A large segment of American society still believes that tweaking democracy and its constitution is all that is needed to address the superpower’s difficulties.

Chameleonism

Dandyism is frequently manifested in the art of completely transforming external appearances, that is, the various means by which individuals change their personal style and ultimately their way of life. It is the art of the makeover in all its possible variations, the ability to change masks, poses and decors, to behave according to a given situation and desired scenario.

Thus, the late nineteenth-century aesthete and dandy Count Robert de Montesquiou- Fezensac (1855–1921) liked to arrange lavish masquerade balls at which the women could dress as Marie Antoinette's ‘shepherdesses’ and the host arrayed himself variously as Louis XIV, Louis of Bavaria, or Plato. Invitations were sent out on vellum paper, and the count personally saw to all the details of the menu, the house and garden decorations, the entertainment program, and the fireworks. Montesquiou’s adeptness at making striking changes in appearance is also evident in photographs, where he appears now as the Sun King, now as an oriental sheikh, now as an automobile driver in a leather jacket. These were genuine metamorphoses, journeys in time and space through skillful reincarnations. The ideology of the dandy make-over is based on a very essential principle of nineteenth-century dandyism, namely complete ‘chameleonism’. The chameleonic dandy transforms his life into a self-fashioning workshop, designing not only his outer appearance and roles, but also his scenarios, situations, and material surroundings. The dandy's chameleonic transformations are implemented through the principle of artificiality that is so characteristic of European decadence. For the aesthete, the artificial is always preferable to the natural – recall Oscar Wilde's aphorism:

Following this logic, the writers and dandies Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, and later Sir Max Beerbohm wrote essays in praise of cosmetics. Cosmetics and outer looks function as a removable guise, a convenient mask, an occasion for an elegant theatricalized game. The experienced dandy uses the makeover to manipulate opinion, while laughing deep down at the gullible ‘interpreters’ of his appearance.

The notion of chameleonism in nineteenth-century culture is connected with Romantic irony. The insightful philosopher Friedrich Schlegel regarded Romantic irony as the highest manifestation of human freedom.

The seventeen years separating these two letters to her father marked Isabel's transition from a nervous young woman to an empress-in-waiting. The diffidence, hesitation and anxiety evident in 1871 had been replaced by conviction, determination and confidence by 1888. Above all, the exercise of power had become intrinsic to Isabel. Isabel began her first regency in 1871 as a political ingénue and ended her third regency in 1888 as an empress-inwaiting. It had been no easy matter for Isabel to reconcile her roles as a woman and as empress-to-be since they existed in constant tension with each other. As a woman Isabel was expected to subordinate herself to her father, her husband and finally her adult sons. As empress she would be the embodiment of the nation, the head of state and the focal point of the political system. Isabel had to learn to manage these contradictory expectations, moving between them, emphasizing one and then the other at different stages of her life. Neither ever completely disappeared at any point, but as her life progressed Isabel increasingly adopted the mantle of empress-to-be. The three times she acted as regent for her father were critical stages in her shift away from her private role to her public one. This process reached its apogee during Isabel's third regency, when she decisively embraced her role as empress-to-be, placing herself at the head of the emancipation movement.

Late in the evening on 13 May 1888 in the city of Petropolis, located high in the Serra dos Orgaõs mountain range about 70 km from Rio de Janeiro, an exhausted but jubilant Princess Isabel lay on her bed and wrote a letter to her father, Emperor Dom Pedro II (1831–1889), describing the momentous events of the day.

The ‘great law’ Princess Isabel had signed earlier in the day was known as the Lei Aurea, the Golden Law, which abolished slavery immediately and permanently in Brazil. Cheering crowds had met Isabel in Rio de Janeiro, lining the route from the station to the Imperial Palace, showering her with flowers. The palace itself was a sea of humanity in festive mood, waiting for the decisive moment. When Isabel signed the law the crowds went wild. Shouts of ‘a Redentora’, the Redeemer, the title by which Isabel was already known, filled the air. At 4.30, Princess Isabel and her family left for Petropolis where once again large crowds gathered to greet her. More flowers rained down on Isabel as she attempted to leave the railway station in Petropolis, but the crowd prevented her, wanting to unhitch the horses from Isabel's carriage and pull it from the station to the summer palace. Characteristically, Isabel refused and got out and walked with the crowd.

1 The Work, its Date, Provenance and Subsequent History

The manuscript presented here is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11. From the beginning it was intended that Junius 11 be an extensively, if not lavishly, illustrated book of Christian poetry; it was perhaps commissioned by a wealthy secular or ecclesiastical patron. It was to be comprised of three poems on the subjects of Creation and the Genesis story down to Abraham and Isaac, the Crossing of the Red Sea recorded in Exodus, and the prophet Daniel; soon after the copying of these poems was completed, however, the final gathering of the manuscript was enlarged and a fourth poem in three sections, dealing with the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Temptation of Christ was added (whether these were originally three separate poems is discussed later). As was the practice in Anglo- Saxon England, none of the poems was given a title when recorded in the manuscript; they are known today by the names assigned to them by modern editors – Genesis (comprised of two poems designated A and B), Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan. The entire manuscript was to be illustrated, but sadly the project was never completed; thus there are blank spaces throughout it where the intended illustrations are lacking (after the final original illustration on p. 88). Two artists were responsible for the Anglo-Saxon illustrations; a third artist of lesser ability added a small number of extra drawings in the twelfth century. One of these, on p. 96, attempts to illustrate an episode in the poem (depicting ‘Abraham and the Messenger', it seems), which indicates that the poems were still being read in the late twelfth century. When other manuscripts in the vernacular (i.e. Old English) were no longer being read and were suffering neglect and falling into disrepair, and even being stripped of their bindings so that they could be reused on newly-recorded texts, MS Junius 11 was rebound, indicating that it was still valued; this enduring interest in the manuscript was probably because it was illustrated – a number of its drawings had already been excised by the thirteenth century.

While other interpretations abound, one plausible explanation for the success of the Brexit movement, leading to the Conservative Party's sweep of the 2019 elections, may be the linkage to Thucydides’ concept of deos. It entails a rational if ill-defined and intangible fear of a distant threat. Trained in the classics, the Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, would have been one of few to recognize the association. Alas, though knowledgeable in the classics, his role as Tory Prime Minister lasted from 2019 and 2022 though some influential Conservatives said he would be back.

Virginia Woolf's Prescience

Similarities exist between a sense that England was at peril in the late 1930s and a fear that the country had come under threat in the 2010s. The comparison comes from the pen of a brilliant author—as English as English may be—Virginia Woolf. Living a very English life in a townhome in Bloomsbury near the British Museum, as well as in a modest cottage in a small insular and adorable village in east Sussex, she was pampered and praised by a host of English high society representatives, from renowned economist John Maynard Keynes to art critic Clive Bell, fellow writer Lytton Strachey, and socialite Vita Sackville-West. Add to this her husband Leonard Woolf and we are in the company of well-bred intellectuals with progressive if quaint ideas.

Virginia Woolf would have recognized a rational threat to the shakiness of Englishness some eighty years ahead of Brexit. It was certainly not like the immediate threat of bombs exploding over London and firestorms blazing in the East Sussex Downs between her Rodmell cottage and the English Channel. A weakening of Englishness in England needed more time.

Woolf's last work was a jumbled “pageant embedded in a play” titled Between the Acts. Despite herculean moral support from her husband, she did not live to see the day when her pageant saw the light of day. In late March 1941, she drowned herself near her cottage by the River Ouse. Her body was discovered three weeks later floating down the river, at the village of Southease, by several children.

Had she been cut off from the mainstream, as she had attributed to England in her play? How did fear of international politics that were spinning out of control in the later 1930s contribute to her suicidal state that year?