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Not to be confused with Brooke Adams or Adam Brooks.
Brooks Adams
Adams in 1910
Adams in 1910
BornJune 24, 1848
Quincy, Massachusetts, United States
DiedFebruary 13, 1927(1927-02-13) (aged 78)
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
OccupationHistorian
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard College
Harvard Law School (did not graduate)
Notable worksThe Law of Civilization and Decay
SpouseEvelyn Davis
ParentsCharles Francis Adams Sr.
Abigail Brown Brooks
RelativesAdams political family
Peter Chardon Brooks (grandfather)
Charles Henry Davis (father-in-law)
Henry Cabot Lodge (brother-in-law)

Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (June 24, 1848 – February 13, 1927) was an American attorney, historian, politician, legal theorist, political scientist and a critic of capitalism.[1] Along with his brother Henry, he is considered a pioneer among American theorists of history and global politics. Adams's biographer Arthur Beringause summarized his impact:

"[Adams's] was probably the first comprehensive attempt of any American to develop a scientific formula for explaining history. Before J. Allen Smith and Charles A. Beard, Adams had described the class bias of our Constitution. He anticipated Spengler's theory of the decline of the West, as well as his concept of the movement of power. Adams was among the first to recognize the effect of geography on politics. And Adams, while agreeing with Karl Marx in many respects, nevertheless offers correctives to the German's philosophy, notably in the field of finance and economics."[2]

Consistent with family tradition, Adams was involved in politics throughout his life. Though nominally a member of the Democratic Party for most of his life, Adams's largest political impact was arguably his personal influence with Republican Party leaders Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, who as President of the United States and chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, respectively, applied Adams's social theories to imperial policy.[3]

Biography[edit]

Early life and education[edit]

Peter Chardon Brooks Adams was born on June 24, 1848 in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Charles Francis Adams and Abigail Brown Brooks. Adams was the youngest son of the most prominent political family in American history to that point. In addition to his father's career as a state legislator and founder of the new Free Soil Party, his great-grandfather and grandfather were Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. His maternal grandfather, Peter Chardon Brooks, died shortly after Brooks's birth as the wealthiest man in Boston. He had five elder siblings: Louisa, John Quincy II, Charles Jr., Henry, and Mary.[4] He was baptized at the First Church of Boston by his uncle, Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham.[5]

Adams's childhood was dictated by his father's political career; he was educated first in Boston, in a course of study designed to prepare him for the Harvard College entrance exams, then Washington after his father's 1858 election to Congress, and finally London after his father became Minister to the Court of St. James in 1861.[6] He remained in London with his family until 1865, when he returned to Quincy to prepare for the Harvard entrance exams.[7]

At Harvard, Adams disregarded study in favor of socialization, with the exception of an interest in history, particularly the fall of Rome and the Middle Ages. He was a popular student, a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, a winning oarsman in several regattas, and the only one of his four brothers selected for membership in the exclusive Porcellian Club.[8] He received a large inheritance from his maternal grandfather while at Harvard, having reached the age of majority. He graduated in 1870.

A photograph of a young Adams, date unknown.

Legal education and career[edit]

Free to choose his own path, he settled on law and enrolled at Harvard Law School, inspired by his father's acquaintances, the judges Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and George T. Bigelow.[8] While in law school, Brooks lived with his brother Henry, a professor of medieval history, and frequently joined Henry's discussions with prominent historians.[9] In 1872, Adams's legal education was interrupted when he accompanied his father to Geneva as secretary to arbitrate the Alabama claims under the Treaty of Washington. However, the arbitration deadlocked upon their arrival and the elder Adams soon returned home upon learning that his wife was sick. Brooks remained behind, spending the summer alone in Paris.[9]

After some months, his father returned; the claims were settled in September. The Adamses returned to Boston, where Brooks resolved to study law independently; he never graduated from law school but was admitted to the Suffolk County bar on April 10, 1873.[9] Adams opened a law partnership with Edward Jackson Lowell, but both men preferred to pursue literary interests. Lowell retired from the firm after just one year.[10] Adams maintained the practice and re-entered a partnership with William S. MacFarlane in 1879.

From 1882 to 1883, he lectured at Harvard Law School, filling in for Professor Bradley Thayer.[11]

Political activism[edit]

Adams's first political involvement came in 1871, while in law school, as a non-partisan reformist. He joined the Commonwealth Club, a good government organization founded by classmate Henry Cabot Lodge.[9] Adams supported reformist Boston mayor Samuel C. Cobb in 1875[12] and, alongside his brothers and Lodge, worked to nominate Benjamin Bristow at the 1876 Republican National Convention. After the nomination went to Rutherford B. Hayes, they supported Samuel Tilden instead, and Brooks's father Charles ran for Governor of Massachusetts on Tilden's ticket.[13] Brooks actively campaigned for the ticket, delivering speeches in Hingham and Utica, New York.[14]

In 1877, Adams accepted the Democratic nomination for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He lost the election by two votes, after two maternal uncles voted against him.[15] In 1878, he was elected to the Boston School Committee; his experience in that body formed the basis for "The New Departure in the Public Schools," an essay on education reform.

In 1884, Adams was once again an active campaigner for the Democratic ticket, seeking to recruit upper-class independent reform Republicans, derided as as "Mugwumps," to support Grover Cleveland. This movement divided Adams from Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt, who remained loyal to James G. Blaine.[16] Adams spoke for Cleveland again in 1892, though his criticism of plutocracy amid the growing global economic crisis divided him from the conservative Bourbon wing of the Democratic Party; he rectified this apparent tension by arguing the Republican Party represented privatized money power and extreme concentration of wealth which would provoke social revolution. Thus, in Adams's view, only sound money and tariff reform decentralized wealth and staved off socialism.[17]

1896 election and national politics[edit]

Following the Panic of 1893, Adams promoted bimetallism to radicals and conservatives alike as an alternative to a hard gold standard or free silver policy.[18] At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, he was put forward for Vice President on a ticket with fellow conservative bimetallist John R. McLean. When their bid failed, they unsuccessfully pressed the nomination of former Republican Henry M. Teller. The convention ultimately nominated the more radical William Jennings Bryan. Though privately, Adams believed Bryan's election "would mean... probably armed revolution," he was one of the few Northeastern conservatives to support Bryan, primarily out of a continued antipathy to financial and banking interests. He and Henry Adams both donated to the Democratic campaign, and Brooks's decision to speak for the Bryan campaign drew both praise and criticism alike.[19] Following William McKinley's victory in the election and a global increase in gold reserves, Adams reluctantly abandoned a silver currency policy as impracticable and lamented Bryan as "one of the most empty, foolish, and vain youths ever put into a great crisis by an unkind nature."[20]

Advisor to Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge[edit]

After the election, Adams moved to his brother's home in Washington, where he strengthened his friendships with Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.[B157] The three were united in support of the war with Spain and a theory of naval expansion consistent with the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan.[B161] Roosevelt complained frequently, however, of Adams's apparent delight in the gloom of impending war.[B159, 160] Upon the sinking of the USS Maine, Adams returned to Washington to observe war planning and the rapid American victory; his prior pessimism was now hailed as prophetic, including by Roosevelt. Henceforth, he had a public following of men, including Roosevelt and Lodge, who sought his advice on matters of geopolitics.[B165] Upon Roosevelt's election as Governor of New York, Adams joined him in Albany to offer advice against both the eight-hour work day and the growth of business trusts; these ideas soon formed the basis of Roosevelt's Square Deal platform.[B171–72]

Adams also advised both Roosevelt and Lodge on foreign policy. As early as the 1895 Venezuela crisis, when war with England was narrowly avoided by means of international arbitration, all three sought the expansion of American territory and naval influence throughout the Western Hemisphere. Adams also offered public interviews expressing the belief that America would develop a great empire and even come to control a portion of Asia. To that end, he supported the preservation of American rule in the Philippines after the war.[B172] Adams also, through his brother Henry, had influence with Secretary of State John Hay.[B191]

Roosevelt presidency[edit]

As President of the United States and chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, respectively, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge would go on to apply Adams's social theories to national and imperial policy.[3]

Personal life[edit]

Adams photographed with a horse and dog by his sister-in-law Marian Hooper Adams, c. 1883.

In 1889, Adams married Evelyn Davis, the daughter of Admiral Charles Henry Davis. They did not have children.[21] Evelyn Davis's sister Anna was the wife of Henry Cabot Lodge, and her sister Louisa was the wife of John Dandridge Henley Luce, the son of Stephen Luce.

In addition to his political connections, his personal friends included Edith Wharton, John La Farge,[14] Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood,

Brooks Adams hired Wilhelmina Harris as social secretary for himself and his wife in 1920.[22] Harris lived and worked for them until both Brooks and Evelyn died.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1918.[23]

Writing and views[edit]

Early political and social commentary[edit]

In 1876, Adams began to publish in the North American Review, which was edited by his brother Henry Adams and Henry Cabot Lodge. His first major effort, "The Platform of the New Party," paralleled his brother's reform efforts in calling for abolition of the caucus system and patronage in federal government.[24]

In autumn 1877, he published a series of articles on taxation in The Atlantic Monthly, calling for a reduction in the overall tax burden but assurance that the majority of citizens were subject to some tax through the establishment of a large class of small landowners, warning that otherwise, the property of those who were taxed would be under threat. He was critical of Massachusetts's mortgage tax, arguing that it increased interest rates and made property ownership inaccessible for any but the very wealthy.

The Emancipation of Massachusetts (1887)[edit]

By 1882, influenced by his brother Henry and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s lectures on the historical development of the common law, Adams sought to develop a comprehensive theory of history and social development using the scientific method. This idea formed the basis for two essays in the winter of 1884–85, "The Embryo of a Commonwealth" and "The Consolidation of the Colonies," which sought to trace English and Puritan legal influences on the development of the American judiciary. The essays formed the basis for The Emancipation of Massachusetts. Adams spent two years writing The Emancipation, which he confided to Henry Cabot Lodge was "not an attempt to break down the Puritans or to abuse the clergy, but to follow out the action of the human mind as we do the human body. I believe they are one and subject to the same laws. ... The story I look on as only an illustration of a law."[25]

The book approaches colonial Massachusetts history from a liberal social Darwinist perspective, criticizing the conservative histories written by John G. Palfrey and Henry Martyn Dexter. Adams suggests every society experiences a theocratic phase in which clergy control civil society before they grow despotic and retaliate against reformers with political terror. Emancipation comes with the establishment of secular political society, freedom of speech, and equality before law.[25]

As his example, Adams recounts the history of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony, where theocracy was established by the Cambridge Platform. Then, per Adams's proposed laws, suppression of religious dissenters such as Quakers, Antinomians, and Anabaptists necessarily ensued:[25]

"[E]stablished priesthoods have been uniformly the most conservative of social forces... [C]lergymen have seldom failed to slay their variable brethren when opportunity has offered. The policy of theocratic Massachusetts towards the Quakers was the necessary consequence of antecedent causes and is exactly parallel with the massacre of the house of Ahab by Elisha and Jehu."[citation needed]

After the rescission of the royal charter by Charles II in 1684, threatening theocracy, the church (led by Increase Mather) agitated against witchcraft in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692. In reaction, the Crown retained the power to nominate executive officers while permitting the legislature to handle appropriations, which Adams declares "the precise moment when the modern theory of constitutional limitations appears defined...". Against this background, Adams credits his great-grandfather John Adams with developing the theory of a co-ordinate judiciary with the function of constitutional review.[25]

Contemporary reaction was fierce and universally negative, especially from conservative Boston society. Negative reviews were published in The Atlantic and The Nation. Privately, Adams wrote apologetics to friends and backers, including his brother Henry, William James, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, stressing the book was offered as an illustration of a general law rather than a true work of non-fiction history.[25] Beringause argues the book's historical narrative was "doctored to express ideas and prejudices of the author," but that it is nevertheless "valuable for its having laughed the filiopietistic school out of court, for its exposure of the political machinations of the clergy in early New England, and for its looking at the drama of Massachusetts history from a world view."[26]

The Gold Standard (1894) and The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895)[edit]

Main article: The Law of Civilization and Decay

Following the failure of The Emancipation, Adams sought to express his philosophy in a more general context, less restrained by historical detail. In an 1887 letter to William James, he hinted his next work: "The deepest passion of the human mind is fear. Fear of the unseen, the spiritual world, represented by the priest; fear of the tangible world represented by the soldier. It is the conflict between these forces which has made civilisation."[27]

Following a winter of study, Adams visited Europe to study religious history. He returned home, married Evelyn Davis after a short engagement, and returned to Europe for their honeymoon. In summer 1893, he presented an unfinished manuscript to his brother Henry, who heartily approved, and they spent a month together revising the language.[28] In the meantime, shaken by the Panic of 1893, he began to adopt a bimetallist perspective, based on the work of J. Laurence Laughlin and his family's customary fear of monetary conspiracy.[28] The Gold Standard, a relatively brief essay culled from this longer manuscript, "erected a philosophy of history based on the vicissitudes of men and events in the grip of an ever narrowing gold currency."[29] Adams attributes the "two greatest events in history," the decline of Rome and the European discovery of the Americas, to the pressure of the money supply. The work is influenced by his brother Henry's earlier essay "The New York Gold Conspiracy" and Archibald Alison's History of Europe (1833–42), which attributes the fall of Rome to the decline of silver mines in Spain and Greece.[30]

The full form of the manuscript was published as The Law of Civilization and Decay, in which Adams observed that as new population centers emerged, the center of world trade shifted from Constantinople to Venice to Amsterdam to London. Adams believed commercial civilizations rise and fall in predictable cycles. First, masses of people draw together in large population centers and engage in commercial activities. As their desire for wealth grows, they discard spiritual and creative values. Their greed leads to distrust and dishonesty, and eventually the society crumbles when a new, more economically energetic society takes its place.[31] In connecting the rise and decline of civilizations to relative levels of human activity, Adams developed a theory of history incorporating social Darwinist visions of war and race suicide and a binary division of human nature between the spiritual and the economic and between fear and greed, which wax and wane as society develops.

Modern historians have compared this work to the later, longer works Decline of the West (1918) by Oswald Spengler and A Study of History (1934–61) by Arnold Toynbee.[2][32][33][34]

America's Economic Supremacy (1900) and The New Empire (1902)[edit]

Following the publication of The Law and the success of the Spanish-American War, Adams focused on the new American role in global politics in a series of articles for literary magazines, which he collected in his next book, America's Economic Supremacy.

In the first article, "The Spanish War and the Equilibrium of the World," Adams synthesizes the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Karl Pearson, Hippolyte Taine, and the imperialist views of Roosevelt and Lodge. He retraced his philosophy of history to argue for a mutually beneficial alliance with England, to establish a maritime trading empire in competition with the land system of Germany and Russia, each seeking the prize of Asian trade.[35][B166–67] Adams argued the American victory at Manila Bay heralded a society ruled by total war and delivered an argument for the Hamiltonian theory of political economy, directed by a combination of the state and business leaders, as the only efficient system.[B168–171] Turning from theories of military competition to competition via government finance for the next two articles, Adams observed that Germany subsidized sugar production to undercut prices and flood the English domestic market. The result had been the collapse of the plantation system, revolution in Cuba, and the Spanish-American War. By contrast, the English policy in the West Indies had been decadent. Thus, collectivism and consolidation, as advocated by Hamilton and practiced in Germany, would be necessary for the United States to keep pace in the age of industry.[B174–75]

Theory of Social Revolutions (1913)[edit]

Legacy[edit]

Brooks Adams was the last Adams family member to live at Peacefield. After Adams's death, in accordance with his wishes, the house became a museum, first run through the family and then later by the National Park Service. Today, Peacefield is part of Adams National Historical Park.

The proposed Adams Memorial is expected to include reference to Brooks Adams.

Family tree[edit]

Works[edit]

Books[edit]

Essays and articles[edit]

Selected speeches[edit]

  • 1876
  • 1876
  • "The Plutocratic Revolution," to the New England Tariff Reform League, 1892.

Other[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "The new international encyclopaedia". Retrieved 2012-11-27.
  2. ^ a b Beringause 1955, p. 5.
  3. ^ a b Beringause 1955, p. 143.
  4. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 18.
  5. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 16.
  6. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 21–33.
  7. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 27–33.
  8. ^ a b Beringause 1955, pp. 40–47.
  9. ^ a b c d Beringause 1955, pp. 48–53.
  10. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 55.
  11. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 71–72.
  12. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 60.
  13. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 59.
  14. ^ a b Beringause 1955, p. 62.
  15. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 63.
  16. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 78–79.
  17. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 97–99.
  18. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 104–05.
  19. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 147–52.
  20. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 153.
  21. ^ Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls.
  22. ^ NYT Obituary, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/29/obituaries/wilhelmina-harris-95-directed-historic-site.html
  23. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-10-21. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  24. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 56.
  25. ^ a b c d e Beringause 1955, pp. 82–92.
  26. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 83.
  27. ^ Beringause 1955, pp. 92.
  28. ^ a b Beringause 1955, pp. 103–106.
  29. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 106.
  30. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 107.
  31. ^ Beringause 1955, p. 117.
  32. ^ Neilson, Francis (July 1945). "The Decline of Civilizations". The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 4 (4): 479. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1945.tb01467.x.
  33. ^ Kuokkanen, Petri (17 May 2003). "Prophets of Decline: The Global Histories of Brooks Adams, Oswald Spengler, and Arnold Toynbee in the United States, 1896–1961" (PDF). University of Tampere, Department of History. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  34. ^ Ludovici, Anthony (1944). "The Law of Civilization and Decay," The New English Weekly 25, pp. 177–178.
  35. ^ Adams, Brooks (1900). America's Economic Supremacy. Macmillan Publishers. pp. 23–24. ISBN 9781404725706.

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Bibliography[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Books and book chapters[edit]

  • Anderson, Thornton. Brooks Adams, Constructive Conservative, Cornell University Press, 1951.
  • Beringause, Arthur F. Brooks Adams: A Biography, Knopf, 1955.
  • Brands, H. W. "Brooks Adams: Marx for Imperialists," in The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Donovan, Timothy Paul. Henry Adams and Brooks Adams; the Education of Two American Historians, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
  • Dowling, William F. The Political Thought of a Generation of Adamses, Harvard Archives, 1950.

Academic journals[edit]

Academic theses[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikisource has original works by or about:
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Category:1848 births Category:1927 deaths Category:Adams political family Category:American political writers Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Geopoliticians Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Members of the 1917 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Writers from Quincy, Massachusetts Category:Historians from Massachusetts

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