Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"

Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"

First Edition Cover
Author	H. G. Wells
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Fiction
Publisher	Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Publication date	1926
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	55

Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History" is a 1926 short book written by the British novelist H. G. Wells as a rebuttal of the criticism of historian Hilaire Belloc. In 1926, Belloc published his A Companion to Mr. Wells's "Outline of History" as a critique of Wells’ earlier historical textbook, The Outline of History. A devout Roman Catholic, Belloc was deeply offended by Wells’ treatment of Christianity in The Outline.

Wells published his Outline in 1920 as a universal history – one that deals with more than "reigns and pedigrees and campaigns". Wells had embarked upon his Outline as a result of his work with the League of Nations and a desire to aid world peace by providing the world "common historical ideas".The Outline proved to be an expansive, all-encompassing work. Wells had a panel of specialists at his disposal to review and check his work. Although the panel revealed many inevitable "gaps, misjudgments and misproportions", Wells reserved the right to "maintain his own judgments". As a result, The Outline contained what were alleged by Belloc to be a number of biased statements, intolerant statements and false assumptions. Materialistic determinism was viewed as a central philosophy underlying the Outline, with Wells portraying human progress to be both a blind and inevitable rise from the darkness of religious superstition to the light of scientific utopia. Unfortunately, Wells’ judgments and perceived bias left his work open to heavy criticism.

Hilaire Belloc was the most lively and argumentative of Wells’ critics to take aim at The Outline. A devout Roman Catholic and staunch defender of the faith, Belloc attacked Wells' portrayal of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. He accused Wells of prejudiced provincialism and attacked his tacitly anti-Christian stance, stating that he had devoted more space in his "history" to the Persian campaign against the Greeks than he had to the figure of Christ. Belloc’s anger led him to take personal shots at Wells, accusing the writer of having "the very grievous fault of being ignorant that he is ignorant". He accused Wells of having the "strange cocksuredness of the man who knows only the old conventional textbook of his schooldays and mistakes it for universal knowledge."

Belloc wrote a series of twenty-four articles attacking The Outline, publishing them in Catholic magazines such as Universe, Southern Cross and Catholic Bulletin. In 1926, Belloc assembled the voluminous articles into a single volume entitled A Companion to Mr. Wells’s "Outline of History".