James Bryce Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The career of British statesman and historian James Bryce (1832–1922) covered the reign of Queen Victoria, the American Civil War (1861–1865) and its aftermath, and extended until after the end of World War I (1914–1918). Bryce was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland; raised in Scotland; and educated at Glasgow, Heidelberg, and Oxford universities. His activities spanned the worlds of scholarship, politics, and diplomacy. He was a practicing lawyer, a professor of law at Oxford, a liberal member of the House of Commons (1880–1907), a member of the House of Lords as Viscount Bryce, and from 1907 to 1913 the British ambassador to the United States. In an era when travel was slow and imposed many obstacles, Bryce observed life and politics firsthand in many countries throughout the world and published articles and books about his travels.

Bryce’s two-volume The American Commonwealth (1888) was a pioneering study for its time of the institutions of American politics, drawing on his travels there from the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant onward, as well as on written sources. Like French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, Bryce was attracted to study America because it was the leading example of democracy. As Bryce wryly noted, any European who wished to recommend or disparage democracy could point to the United States because it offered plenty of facts to warrant either praise or blame. Bryce’s approach emphasized describing American politics without explicitly theorizing, as Tocqueville had done. Bryce was sympathetic but often critical, likening American political parties to two bottles with identical labels and both empty. He also wrote a chapter about why highly qualified men were never elected to the presidency.

Bryce believed that the best way to gain knowledge of political behavior was to become directly involved in politics and study one’s colleagues. That knowledge could be amplified by studying history and institutions and using comparison to identify similarities and differences in political institutions and practices. These principles were applied in his last book, the two-volume Modern Democracies (1921). The geographical scope was limited to Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States, countries of which he had firsthand knowledge. Democracy was defined as a system in which the majority of qualified citizens ruled. In keeping with the thought of the time, Bryce did not regard restrictions of the voting franchise on the grounds of race or gender as a disqualification from calling a government democratic.

Bryce held government office from 1885 to 1906 under three different prime ministers. He also prepared reports for the British government on subjects as diverse as secondary education, World War I atrocities, and principles for founding a League of Nations. He also served on the International Court at the Hague. His term as ambassador to the United States overlapped with the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Bryce was also a president of the British Academy and a member of the Alpine Club.

Bibliography:

Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1888.
Modern Democracies, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1921.
Fisher, H. A. L. James Bryce, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1927.
Ions, Edmund S. James Bryce and American Democracy, 1870–1922. London: Macmillan, 1968.