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We can trace in the arts and literature of a nation the mysterious symbolism of its inner mind, the unconscious expression of its position and tone of thought, according to the same hidden law which has caused those very diversities of which these works become the visible and tangible expression. 1
Today the Victorian historian Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-92) is best known for his History of the Norman Conquest, Its Causes and Results (1865-1876)--an opus, like its author, noted for being long-winded, pedantic and somewhat eccentric.2 Freeman's role as the self-appointed gatekeeper of rigorous, "scientificâ[euro] history was rewarded in 1884, when his long-held dream of an Oxford professorship was finally realized. Opinionated as well as cantankerous, Freeman combined traditional heady scholarship with enthusiastic participation in contemporary debates concerning politics and empire. "History is past politics; politics is present historyâ[euro] is perhaps his most memorable quip. As a scholar, Freeman is often seen as taking his place alongside J. R. Seeley, William Stubbs, and J. R. Green in the rise of the Whig tradition of academic history. 3 Supposedly un-Whiggish aspects of his historical method--most notably his racialism--have either been ignored or downplayed as the personal eccentricities of a "Teutomaniacâ[euro].4
More than two decades before the publication of his Norman Conquest, Freeman had already established himself in Oxford as an authority on architecture, having been an active member of the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture. In this capacity he encouraged cooperation as well as a certain amount of frank dialogue between the Oxford society and its Cambridge counterpart, the Cambridge Camden Society (CCS, later the Ecclesiological Society). This led to his being commissioned to prepare a history of world architecture for Burns's Select Library, which appeared eventually with the publisher Joseph Masters as A History of Architecture in 1849.5
What makes Freeman worthy of study as an architectural writer is his understanding of architecture as a historical phenomenon whose institutional and aesthetic characteristics were shaped by "naturalâ[euro] processes of development. Central to this understanding was the idea of race. For Freeman, race acted as the underlying factor linking the natural, inborn intellectual aptitudes of a given people with their supposed artistic...