Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century

The Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century, which Marx wrote from June 1856 to March 1857, began to appear in instalments in The Sheffield Free Press, an Urquhartist newspaper, in late June 1856. But since the editors interfered with the text by arbitrarily making cuts without Marx’s consent, he stopped publication and handed over the work to another Urquhartist periodical — the London weekly Free Press. The work was published from the very beginning without any abridgements, as the text was sent in by Marx, from August 16, 1856 to April 1, 1857.

The published text was, in Marx’s own words, only an introduction to a projected work that was never written. It is divided into five chapters. More than half consists of documents (reports, letters and pamphlets) concerning the history of diplomatic relations between England and Russia in the 18th century. Chapter I consists of documents and Marx’s numerous comments. In Chapters II and III the proportion of Marx’s text proper is insignificant. The whole of Chapter IV was written by Marx; in Chapter V, where he profusely cites the pamphlet Truth Is But Truth... Marx gives a description of Peter I’s foreign policy.

The Revelations was never reprinted during Marx’s and Engels’ lifetime. After Engels’ death this work, like some other works written by Marx and Engels in the 1850s, was prepared for the press by Marx’s daughter Eleanor. It appeared in London under the title Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century after Eleanor’s death in 1899. In this book, the pamphlet The Defensive Treaty was printed as a separate chapter. Hence, as distinct from the publication during Marx’s lifetime, this book contained six chapters. Moreover, in the 1899 edition the concluding part (about four pages) of the fifth (fourth in the original) chapter was omitted.

In English the Revelations was also published in London and New York in 1969; the French translation appeared in 1954; the German translation in 1960, 1977 and 1981; the Polish translation in 1967; the Italian translation in 1977.

All these publications, as a rule, reproduce or are based upon the 1899 edition but restore the concluding pages of the fifth (fourth in the original) chapter omitted in that edition. Commentaries in some of them are biased.

In this volume the text of the book is reproduced from The Free Press collated with the 1899 edition.

Some minor factual inaccuracies are silently corrected.

Chapter 1

MECW: In this chapter Marx quotes letters of the British diplomats in Russia and the account of L. K. Pitt, Chaplain at the English trading station in St. Petersburg, which he discovered at the British Museum in the collection of William Coxe, an English historian and writer.

No. 1.-MR. RONDEAU TO HORACE WALPOLE ^[24]

Petersburg, 17th August, 1736