Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2015
In 1921, John A. Ryan, a priest and professor at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and one of his students, the Reverend Raymond McGowan, published A Catechism of the Social Question. The first question in it reads, “What do we mean by the social question?” Answer: “A question denotes a problem or a difficulty which demands solution. A social question is one that concerns society, or a social group. The social question means certain evils and grievances affecting the wage-earning classes, and calling for removal or remedy.”
I would like to thank the editors and anonymous readers of Modern Intellectual History for their careful and constructive feedback on this essay and express my deepest gratitude to Larry Wolff and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU for hosting me as a visiting scholar for the 2013–14 academic year at the NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, where I wrote this essay with the support of a Mellon New Directions Fellowship.
1 Ryan, John A. and McGowan, R. A., A Catechism of the Social Question (New York, 1921), 5 Google Scholar, original emphasis.
2 de Amicis, Edmond, “Úvahy o socialné otázce,” Athenaeum, Listy pro literaturu a kritiku vědeckou, 15 Oct. 1892, 8–13, at 10–12. All translations are my ownGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid.
4 Masaryk, T. G., Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus: Studien zur socialen Frage (Vienna, 1899), 1 Google Scholar. The book was first published in Czech in 1898. See Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, Otázka sociální: Základy Marxismu sociologické a filosofické (Prague, 1898)Google Scholar.
5 To name just a few: Marx, Ive, A New Social Question? On Minimum Income Protection in the Postindustrial Era (Amsterdam, 2007)Google Scholar; Castel, Robert, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Question (New Brunswick, NJ, 2003)Google Scholar; Pilbeam, Pamela M., French Socialists before Marx: Workers, Women and the Social Question in France (Montreal, 2000)Google Scholar.
6 OED, querist, n. The Latin “querela” or “questus” both mean “complaint.” See Valpy, F. E. J., An Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language (London, 1828), 388–9Google Scholar.
7 On the “corn question” see, for example, Parnell, Henry, The Substance of the Speeches of Sir H. Parnell, Bart., in the House of Commons, with Additional Observations, on the Corn Laws (London, 1814), 3 Google Scholar.
8 Huskisson, W., The Question concerning the Depreciation of our Currency stated and examined (London, 1810), ii Google Scholar.
9 See, for example, Sawaskiewicz, Leopold Leon, Why the eastern question cannot be satisfactorily settled: or, reflexions on Poland and France (London, 1840), ivGoogle Scholar; Fircks, Fedor Ivanovich (baron), La question polonaise au point de vue de la Pologne, de la Russie et de l’Europe (Paris: E. Dentu, 1863), 85, 5–6 Google Scholar.
10 Sinclair, John, Remarks on a Pamphlet Intitled, “The Question Concerning the Depreciation of the Currency Stated and Examined” by William Huskisson, Esq., M.P. Together with Several Political Maxims Regarding Coin and Paper Currency, Intended to Explain the Real Nature, and Advantages, of the Present System (London, 1810), 24–5Google Scholar.
11 See Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, The Substance of a Speech Delivered by Lord Viscount Castlereagh In a Committee of the House of Commons, May 8, 1811; on the Report of the Bullion Committee (London, 1811)Google Scholar; Canning, George, Substance of two speeches, delivered in the House of Commons, by the Right Honourable George Canning, on Wednesday the 8th, and Monday the 13th of May, 1811, in the committee of the whole house; to which was referred, the report of the committee, appointed in the last session of Parliament “To inquire into the cause of the high price of bullion, and to take into consideration the state of the circulating medium, and of the exchanges between Great-Britain and foreign parts” (London, 1811)Google Scholar. For reviews of the above see the Monthly Review or Literary Journal, 66 (1811), 326–8.
12 See, for example, Canning, Substance of two speeches, 36, 46.
13 Ibid., 126.
14 Castlereagh, The Substance of a Speech, 4.
15 Cited in Biederlack, Joseph, Die sociale Frage: Ein Beitrag zur Orientierung über ihr Wesen und ihre Lösung (Innsbruck, 1921), 9 Google Scholar.
16 Although the phrase appears in the title of Davis Giddy's A Plain Statement of the Bullion Question in a Letter to a Friend, it does not appear in the body of the text. The nearest approximation is on the first page, where the author seeks to “induce a wish, and afford a clue, for examining the Question through all its details of documents, &c.” Giddy, Davis, A Plain Statement of the Bullion Question in a Letter to a Friend (London, 1811), 1 Google Scholar. That same year no less a figure than the English scholar of political economy and demography Thomas Robert Malthus employed the term “bullion question” in a review of Giddy and five other pamphlets. See Malthus, Thomas Robert, “Pamphlets on the Bullion Question,” Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, 18 (May–Aug. 1811), 448–70Google Scholar. Again, however, the term appears in the review title, but not in the body of the text.
17 Southey, Robert, Article 8, “The Poor,” Quarterly Review, 29 (1816), 187–235, at 235Google Scholar.
18 See Lawn, Brian, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio Disputata”: With Special Emphasis on Its Use in the Teaching of Medicine and Science (Leiden and New York, 1993), esp. 70, 74, 86 Google Scholar. It is worth noting that the scholastic method of disputation has even deeper roots, in Aristotle's Metaphysics, for example.
19 Malthus, Thomas Robert, Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to Their Practical Application (London, 1836), 9–10 Google Scholar.
20 An 1837 issue of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung introduced a new regular heading, “European Questions and Problems,” to its readership. The editors explained it as follows: “Under the heading of questions and problems we mean subjects in which the well-being and interests of Europe are heavily implicated, and will focus on and observe particularly those that are currently on the agenda, or, as they say in parliament, on the table.” Therewith the editors posited a necessary link between European interests and questions, a move that required those who would weigh in on questions to demonstrate that question's impact on “the well-being and interests of Europe.” “Europäische Fragen und Probleme,” Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, 91 and 92 (27 Feb. 1837), special Beilage, 362–3.
21 Nodier, Charles, “De la fin prochaine du genre humain,” Revue politique (Paris), 20 May 1831, 224–40, at 240 Google Scholar.
22 “The principal cause of error, and of the differences which prevail at present among the scientific writers on political economy, appears to me to be a precipitate attempt to simplify and generalize.” Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, 4–5.
23 Ibid., 5.
24 Lassalle, Ferdinand, Arbeiterlesebuch: Rede Lassalle's zu Frankfurt am Main am 17. und 19. mai 1863, nach dem stenographischen Bericht (Berlin, 1874), 41 n., italics in the originalGoogle Scholar. The comment appears in an annotation to the speech written by Lassalle himself.
25 Becher, Ernst, Die Arbeiterfrage in ihrer gegenwärtigen Gestaltung und die Versuche zu ihrer Lösung (Pest, Vienna, and Leipzig, 1868), 1–2 Google Scholar.
26 Müller, Gustav, Die einzig mögliche und wahre Lösung der sozialen Frage: Ein Lichtblick in dem wirren Getümmel der Welt in der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1894), 6 Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 7, 14–15.
28 Steiner, Rudolf, Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Stuttgart, 1920), 10 Google Scholar.
29 y Salvany, Félix Sardá, Le mal social: Ses causes, ses remèdes: Mélanges et controverses sur les principales questions religieuses et sociales du temps present (Paris, 1890), 3, 7 Google Scholar.
30 Ryan and McGowan, A Catechism, 46.
31 L’Ami de la Religion et du Roi, Journal Ecclésiastique, Politique et Littéraire (Paris), 156 (7 Feb. 1816), 385–96, at esp. 389.
32 Dampmartin, Anne-Henri Cabet, Lettre à Messieurs de la Chambre des Députés sur l’éducation publique et sur le choix des instituteurs (Paris, 1815)Google Scholar. No reference to the “social question” appears in the actual text.
33 “Paris,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (Paris), 20 March 1826, 2.
34 See, for example, “Disturbances at Lyons (from the Moniteur of Friday, Nov. 25),” Courier (London), 28 Nov. 1831, 4. “A social question is more important than a political one.” Note this is still a reference to “a social question,” rather than “the social question.” There were others, however, wherein references were to “the social question,” e.g. “Events at Lyons,” Courier (London) 20 Dec. 1831, 2. It may also be worth noting that in a letter from 1830, John Stuart Mill wrote in reference to events in France that “all the great questions of legislation, education, & social improvement in general will be brought on the tapis successively.” Mill, John Stuart, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 12, The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812–1848 Part I, ed. Mineka, Francis E., Introduction by F. A. Hayek (Toronto, 1963), 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Fischer, Wolfram, “Der Wandel der sozialen Frage in den fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaften” (1977), in Hohmann, Karl and Wünsche, Horst Friedrich, eds., Grundtexte zur sozialen Marktwirtschaft, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1988), 103–30, at 104 Google Scholar.
36 Fischer, ibid., 104–5, writes of this phenomonen in the German context in a brief conceptual history of the “social question.” Rudolf Steiner spoke of “the social question” as a “Wirtschafts-, Rechts-, und Geistesfrage.” Steiner, Die Kernpunkte, 18.
37 An die Urwähler: Die sociale Frage, Cologne, 1849, available at http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:061:1-172096, 1, accessed 27 July 2014, italics in original.
38 von Scheel, Hans, Die Theorie der sozialen Frage (Jena, 1871), 4 Google Scholar.
39 Ibid., 1.
40 Howerth, Ira, “The Social Question of Today,” American Journal of Sociology, 12/2 (Sept. 1906), 254–68, at 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 See, for example, de Amicis, “Úvahy o socialné otázce,” 13.
42 Von Scheel, Die Theorie der sozialen Frage, 2. See also Giesswein, Sándor, Társadalmi problémák és keresztény világnézet (Budapest, 1907), 128 Google Scholar.
43 Biederlack, Die sociale Frage, 2–3. He went on to define different parts of the “social question.” These included the agrarian question, the craftsman question (Handwerkerfrage), the worker question, and the woman question.
44 Ibid., 7–10.
45 Ryan and McGowan, A Catechism, 5.
46 Von Scheel, Die Theorie der sozialen Frage, 8.
47 Ibid., 15–16.
48 Müller, Die einzig mögliche und wahre Lösung, 7.
49 Biederlack, Die sociale Frage, iii, 1.
50 Stein, Ludwig, Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie: Vorlesungen über Sozialphilosophie und ihre Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1897), 466 Google Scholar.
51 de Tourville, Henri, “Preface to the French Edition,” in de Rousiers, Paul, The Labour Question in Britain (London, 1896), vi–xiv, at viGoogle Scholar.
52 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust: Eine Tragödie, “Der Tragödie Erster Teil, Nacht” (Stuttgart, 1971), 19 Google Scholar. “Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heißt, / Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist, / In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln. / Da ist's denn wahrlich oft ein Jammer! / Man läuft euch bei dem ersten Blick davon. / Ein Kehrichtfaß und eine Rumpelkammer / Und höchstens eine Haupt- und Staatsaktion/ Mit trefflichen pragmatischen Maximen, / Wie sie den Puppen wohl im Munde ziemen!”
53 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Leipzig, 1911), 272 Google Scholar.
54 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The German Ideology,” available at https://www.uni-due.de/einladung/Vorlesungen/hermeneutik/marxid.htm, accessed 27 July 2014.
55 Eötvös, József, A XIX. század uralkodó eszméinek befolyása az álladalomra, vol. 1 (Pest, 1854), 574–5Google Scholar.
56 Eötvös, József, A nemzetiségi kérdés (Pest, 1865), 9 Google Scholar.
57 Ibid., 7, 158.
58 Giesswein, Társadalmi problémák, vii.
59 Sándor Hegedűs, “A földbirtok és a társadalmi kerdés,” Budapesti Szemle, 23–4 (1876), 272–96, at 296. Giesswein's intervention engages implicitly with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men, written in 1754 as part of a question competition for the Academy of Dijon. In it Rousseau claimed that the basis for differences in wealth emerged in the moment that man left the state of nature by developing the notion of private property, which required abstraction and the creation of “society” out of individuals. This, Rousseau believed, also marked the origin of society, and hence of the possibility of the “social.”
60 Giesswein, Társadalmi problémák, 3–4.
61 Howerth, “The Social Question of Today,” 254.
62 de Bonstetten, Charles Victor, Etudes de L’homme, ou, Recherches sur les Facultés de Sentir et de Penser, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1821), 257 Google Scholar.
63 “The social question is thus now and forever more the question of establishing harmony in the integral life [Gesammmtleben] of the people.” Becher, Die Arbeiterfrage, 2–3, italics in the original.
64 Hugo, Victor, “William Shakespeare,” in Oeuvres complètes de Victor Hugo, Philosophie, vol. 2 (Paris, 1937), 3–233, at 173 Google Scholar.
65 Victor Hugo, “Post-scriptum de ma vie,” in ibid., 473–628, at 534.
66 De Tourville, “Preface to the French Edition,” xi, xiii.
67 Ryan and McGowan, A Catechism, 46.
68 Hobson, J. A., The Social Problem: Life and Work (London, 1901), 3–5 Google Scholar.
69 Ibid., 91.
70 See, for example, Sardá y Salvany, Le mal social.
71 Becher, Die Arbeiterfrage, 2–3, italics in the original.
72 Stein, Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie, 515–17.
73 Steiner, Die Kernpunkte, 42.
74 Hobson, The Social Problem, 298–299.
75 Courtin, M., ed., Encyclopédie Moderne ou Dictionnaire Abrégé des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts, vol. 23 (Paris, 1831), 275 Google Scholar.
76 Thiers, Adolphe, “Rede in der National-Versammlung, am 13. September 1848,” in Thiers, Adolphe and Blanc, Louis, Louis Blanc und Thiers über die sociale frage . . . Aus dem französischen (Breslau, 1849), 7–39, at 7–8 Google Scholar.
77 Ibid., iii.
78 Biedermann, Karl, Frauen-Brevier: Kultergeschichtliche Vorlesungen (Leipzig, 1856), 334 Google Scholar.
79 Von Scheel, Die Theorie der sozialen Frage, 1.
80 Biederlack, Die sociale Frage, iii.
81 Ryan and McGowan, A Catechism, 4.
82 Perhaps more than one discipline owes its existence to discussions of the “social question,” as Elizabeth Sage has argued that la question sociale has been “definitional to the discipline” of economics, as well. See Sage, Elizabeth M., A Dubious Science: Political Economy and the Social Question in 19th-Century France (New York, 2009), 112 Google Scholar.
83 Stein, Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie, 10.
84 Ibid., 28.
85 Adickes, Erich, “Ethische Prinzipienfragen,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 117 (Leipzig, 1900), 38–70, at 41, 44, italics in originalGoogle Scholar.
86 Ibid., 69.
87 Ibid., 48, original emphasis.
88 Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen, 79.
89 Ibid., 79. Another reviewer of Stein's work noted that while many Anglo-American sociologists—foremost among them Herbert Spencer—had dissociated sociology from socialism, Stein accepted the kinship of the two. Willcox, W. F., review of Die sociale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie by Ludwig Stein, Philosophical Review, 7/4 (July 1898), 410–15, 410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 This is evident especially in the title to the German version of the book, Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus.
91 Ouvrier, Jean (pseud.), Die politische Giftmischerei in der Arbeiter-Frage (Berlin, 1863), 3 Google Scholar. “Man brauchte eine Arbeiter-Bewegung und man schuf eine Arbeiter-Frage.”
92 Von Scheel, Die Theorie der sozialen Frage, 1–3, 22–3. For further examples see also Ryan and McGowan, A Catechism, 28; Stiegler, Gaston, “Coup d’oeil sur le socialisme contemporain,” in Société chrétienne suisse d'économie sociale, Quatre écoles d’économie sociale: Conférences données à l’Aula de l’Université de Genève, sous les auspices de la Société chrétienne suisse d’économie sociale (Geneva, 1890), 57–8Google Scholar; de Amicis, “Úvahy o socialné otázce,” 12.
93 Stammhammer, Joseph, ed., Bibliographie des Socialismus und Communismus (Jena, 1893), 295–6Google Scholar.
94 Steiner, Die Kernpunkte, 5; Heinzen, Karl, Die Helden des teutschen Kommunismus: Dem Herrn Karl Marx gewidmet (Bern, 1848), 74 Google Scholar; Lassalle, Arbeiterlesebuch, 41 n.
95 On the “sugar question,” from a speech delivered by Napoleon III to the French Chamber of Deputies on the occasion of the opening of the legislative session in November of 1863. A translation of Napoleon III's speech is in FRUS, United States Department of State, message of the president of the United States, and accompanying documents, to the two houses of Congress, at the commencement of the first session of the thirty-eighth congress (1863), Supplement: France, [1321]–1329, 1323. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, “The Question” (1887), in The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne, vol. 6 (London, 1904), 359–62Google Scholar; see also Nicoll, W. Robertson and Wise, Thomas James, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century: Contributions towards a Literary History of the Period (New York, 1967), 339–41Google Scholar. The “oyster question” engaged such prominent figures as the German novelist and poet Theodor Fontane and the German art historian Friedrich Eggers. See Fontane, Theodor, Eggers, Friedrich et al., Theodor Fontane und Friedrich Eggers: Der Briefwechsel: Mit Fontanes Briefen an Karl Eggers und der Korrespondenz von Friedrich Eggers mit Emilie Fontane (Berlin, 1997), 251 nCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
96 Geller, Jay, “ Atheist Jew or Atheist Jew: Freud's Jewish Question and Ours,” Modern Judaism, 26/1 (Feb. 2006), 1–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kovic, Miloš, Disraeli and the Eastern Question (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Wendy, “Tolerance and/or Equality? The ‘Jewish Question’ and the ‘Woman Question,’” différences, 15/2 (2004), 1–31 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
97 Dostoevsky, F. M., The Diary of a Writer (New York, 1954), 428 Google Scholar.
98 See, for example, Scott, Walter, The Eastern or Jewish Question Considered: And, What the Bible Says about Coming Events (London, 1882), 3 Google ScholarPubMed; Fadeeff, Rostislav, Opinion on the Eastern Question (London, 1871), 16 Google Scholar.
99 It was not unheard of for commentators to speak of the “final solution” of the “social question,” but relatively uncommon. Writing on the “woman question” in 1872, for example, the German women's rights activist and writer Louise Büchner mentioned the “final solution” of the “social question.” Büchner, Louise, Ueber weibliche Berufsarten (Darmstadt, 1872), 6 Google Scholar.
100 Examples of this are far too numerous, but here are a few: Karl Marx's reflections on the Polish question in the context of the 1848 Frankfurt Assembly: “As it is closely connected to the Polish question, the Poznan question could only be resolved if merged with the entirety of this problem.” From an article published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 19 Aug. 1848, cited in Marx, Karl, La question polonaise devant l’Assemblée de Francfort (Paris, 1929), 26 Google Scholar. See also Laudyn, Staphanie, A World Problem: Jews—Poland—Humanity (Chicago, 1920), 5–6 Google Scholar, wherein the author writes, “In studying the question, I have realized that the relation of the Jews in regard to Poland is exactly the same as their relations to the world at large. For that reason, the problem at issue intimately concerns other nations; in fact, affects their creeds, their ideals and aspirations.” Emphasis added.
101 The earliest pamphlets on questions speak of the importance, indeed the overwhelming “force” [Gewalt], of public opinion. Un mot sur la question polonaise en 1829 (Paris, 1829), 8; Ueber die polnische Frage (Paris, 1831), 3. “I raise my voice fearlessly before the high tribunal of public opinion,” declared Leopold Leon Sawaskiewicz in a pamphlet from 1840 on the Eastern question as it related to the Polish question. Sawaskiewicz, Why the eastern question cannot be satisfactorily settled, iv. See also Łubieński, Tomasz Wentworth, Kwestya Polska w Rosyi: List otwarty do rosyskich publicystów (Kraków, 1898), 10–11, 19Google Scholar; Pogodin, M. P., Pol'skoi Vopros, sobraniye razsuzhdenii, zapisok i zamyechanii (Moscow, 1867), iiiGoogle Scholar.
102 Just two examples must suffice here: although the appearance of the “eastern question” in state correspondence and published sources dates back to the 1820s and 1830s, most works on it trace its origins back at least to the emergence of tsarist Russia as a factor in the future of the Ottoman Empire with the Russo-Turkish war of 1768–74 and the subsequent treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774. For early mentions of the “eastern question,” see “French Policy towards Russia,” London Star, 7 July 1829, 3; Morning Chronicle, 21 Jan. 1830, 6; Albion and The Star, 5 April 1833, 2; Urquhart, David, McNeill, John, and Ross, David, Eastern Question, 16/89 (London, 1833)Google Scholar; Monthly Magazine or British Register (of Politics, Literature and the Belles Lettres) (May, 1833), 592; The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, 1833, Part II (London, 1833), 401. For examples of backdating see Roepell, Dr Richard, Die orientalische Frage in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, 1774–1830 (Breslau, 1854), 15 Google Scholar; von Pastor, Ludwig Freiherr, Smith, Goldwin, Antrobus, Frederick Ignatius, and Kerr, Ralph Francis, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages: Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and Other Original Sources, vol. 3 (London, 1899), 240 Google Scholar. Many commentators on the Jewish question have traced its origins as far back as the very origins of Judaism, though it too was very much of nineteenth-century (1830s) vintage. For backdating see Horowitz, P., The Jewish Question and Zionism (London, 1927)Google Scholar. The only thorough history of the “question” usage I have found thus far is an article on the semantic origins of the Jewish question by the Jewish historian Jacob Toury. He notes that, although there were semantic near misses during the revolutionary period in France, “a question juive did not emerge.” Ultimately he places the origins of the slogan in the 1830s, concluding that “the ‘Jewish question’ as a slogan did not take roots until it had established itself as an anti-Jewish battle-cry,” namely with two long essays published in 1838 in German titled Die Jüdische Frage. See Toury, Jacob, “‘The Jewish Question’: A Semantic Approach,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 11 (1966), 85–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My own research suggests that Toury's claims are a bit off the mark. See “To Correspondents,” The Times, 23 April 1830, 4.
103 The “formula—‘the Eastern question’—comprises, perhaps unknowingly to itself, all other political questions, perplexities and prejudices of Europe.” Dostoevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 428. At various times, the eastern question was discussed together with the Italian question, the Mexican question, and the Polish question. See de Montalembert, Comte, L’insurrection polonaise (Paris, 1863), 19 Google Scholar. See also Damotte, C., Solution mexicaine: Question polonaise, union européenne (Tonnerre, 1863), n.pGoogle Scholar. For an example of umbrella aggregation (of the sort that typified some discussions of the “social question”) see Mandl, Leopold, Die Habsburger und die serbische Frage: Geschichte des staatlichen Gegensatzes Serbiens zu Österreich-Ungarn (Vienna, 1918), 161 Google Scholar.
104 Following a long-standing preoccupation with viewing the “Eastern question” in terms of a “formula” with a “solution”—viz. Dumons, F., Un Mot a propos de la Question d’Orient sur le Devoir de la France et l’Avenir de l’Europe (Bordeaux, 1840), 10 Google Scholar; Dostoevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 428. So prevalent was the use of “2 + 2 = 4” as a framework for understanding contemporary questions, in fact, that Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his 1864 novel Notes from Underground, decried its insidious pervasiveness. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Notes from the Underground, and The Gambler, trans. Jane Kentish (Oxford, 1991), 34 Google Scholar. References to the Ottoman Empire as the “sick man of Europe” have made the “eastern question” especially rife with medicalized approaches, generally concentrated in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which Ottomanist scholars have characterized as the “eastern question paradigm” and the “eastern question school.” See, for example, Philliou, Christine May, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (Berkeley, 2011), 116 Google Scholar; Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 2011), 6 Google Scholar. British statesman William Gladstone wrote of “one remedy” for the various questions ranged under the aegis of the “Eastern question.” Gladstone, W. E., Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London, 1876), 46 Google Scholar. In the 1920 book A World Problem: Jews—Poland—Humanity, for example, the author makes an appeal for the application of scientific reason to the Jewish “problem”: “To heal a malady, it is necessary to examine it carefully, analyze it thoroughly and expose its nature fearlessly, before applying the necessary remedies.” Laudyn, A World Problem, 5–6.
105 “There are few positions more embarrassing,” wrote the Marquess of Salisbury in an essay on the Polish question from April of 1863, “than that of men who hold moderate opinions in regard to questions upon which excitement is running high.” Cecil, Robert, Marquess of Salisbury, Essays by the late Marquess of Salisbury (London, 1905), 3 Google Scholar. “Master, what do you make of the Eastern question?”—“I think they should mark it not with a question mark, but with an exclamation point.” May, Karl, Von Bagdad nach Stambul: Reiseerzählungen (Vienna, 1882), 408 Google Scholar. In Modern Greek, the phrase “You’ve made an eastern question (out of it)” (Anatoliko zitima to ekanes!) is a common idiom meaning “you’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.” Dostoevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 429, characterized the Eastern question as a piccola bestia that had produced a “condition of general madness.” Alexis de Tocqueville compared engagement with it to “banging one's head against the wall” (se faire casser la petit fiole sur la tête). de Tocquevill, Alexis, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, Nouvelle correspondance (Paris, 1866), 313 Google Scholar.
106 Biedermann, Frauen-Brevier, 334.
107 A Son of the East, The Eastern Question; or, An Outline of Mohammedanism, Its Rise, Progress and Decay (Boston, 1882), 8. See also ibid., 58: “The Eastern question is of such a complicated nature that it cannot be touched in one of its branches without affecting the entire series of problems which compose its entirety.”
108 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard, Pan–Europe (New York, 1926), xiii–xiv, italics in originalGoogle Scholar.
109 Hobson, The Social Problem, 6.
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