History and Politics Flashcards
Herbert Butterfield, ‘The Whig Interpretation of History’ (1831)
Butterfield: it was “the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”
Critical of ‘grand narratives’ that put parliamentary sovriegnty and personal liberty at the centre of British national history
Butterfield’s Solution to teleology: technical history Encourages historians to see competiting narratives as a struggle to make sense of their own age, not as a struggle to ‘control’ the past. Recognises innate subjectivity of these narratives actors of the past were not trying to bring about the present state, but how they acted did bring about the present state
What are the problems with Whig History?
Cronon, ‘Two Cheers for the Whig Interpretation of History’
use of ‘whig’ (small W) and ‘whiggish’ to describe proponents of progressive narratives
oversimplified narratives—he called them “abridgements”—that achieve drama and apparent moral clarity by interpreting past events in light of present politics: teleological
What are the uses Whig History can be put to?
Cronon, ‘Two Cheers for the Whig Interpretation of History’
Despite the danger of abridgement, there can be no history without abridgement. Butterfield realised that all history is abridgement and must be ‘in order to impose some semblance of order on what would otherwise feel like overwhelming chaos.’ (Cronon)
Whenever historians seek to make their knowledge accessible to a wider world—whether in books, classrooms, museums, videos, websites, or blogs—they unfailingly abridge, simplify, analyze, synthesize, dramatize, and render judgments about why things happened as they did in the past, and why people should still care today.
Possible to frame the past with ‘winding’ narratives instead of progressive ones, avoiding ‘the worst sins of whiggishness’
–> We’re right to be ‘suspicious’ of Whig histories, but cannot escape the ‘storytelling task of distilling history’s meanings’
How can History be of use to policy makers?
Reid, A., Szreter, S., History and Policy
‘one of the values of history in a liberal democracy could be to inform us about current policy-making’
- reports to government enquiries on a range of topics, including pensions, monetary policy, the NHS, carbon trading and waste strategy
What challenges are faced by Historians writing political-public history?
Reid, A., Szreter, S., History and Policy
- Could it be made accessible to the public?
- Would it be possible to get the attention of the public?
What is the aim of the History and Policy initiative?
Reid, A., Szreter, S., History and Policy
‘If we can secure sufficient funding, our ambition is to become a self-sustaining, national institution providing impartial historical knowledge in order to build public confidence in the way decisions are taken and create better policy-making that benefits everyone.’
What is Berridge’s account of arguments made in the History Manifesto?
(Give a broad overview of the whole book.)
(Berridge, ‘Review’ (2015)
ONE
- There was a golden age from 19th C to 1970s where history played a role in policy making
- reformers in social and welfare policy such as the Webbs, the Hammonds and Tawney, used history centrally as part of their analysis.
- In France the work of Braudel and the Annales school introduced the concept of the longue duree as the unifier of the social sciences, a subject with key influence through networks in French higher education policy.
- Throughout the 197os and 80s, the work of E.J. Hobsbawm offered a view of long term political change as a set of precedents for the future.
- –> In the post colonial world, in international development, institutions looked to the past to provide a roadmap for the future.
TWO
- Focus on ‘short past’ brought these focuses to an end
- More on micro/local histories
- Decline of Economic History, rise of Social and Cultural History
THREE
- New revival of long-term history
- Historians must pioneer use of the internet in the ‘Digital Turn’
History in crisis: Evidence of lack of policy engagement for history
In October 2013 the report Now for the Long Term prepared by a panel headed by a former Director General of the World Trade Organisation focussed on the increasing short-termism of modern politics and a consequent inability to address the challenges which will shape the future.
NO HISTORICAL ADVISORS
What Criticisms does Berridge make of The History Manifesto?
METHODOLOGY
- Authors do not take a cautious view of using digital sources (‘digital sources close down options and encourage easy overuse of particular collections, which have their own biases’)
- Much research in this area is focused on America. More focus needs to be given elsewhere
BOOK RAISES ISSUES BUT DOES NOT PROVIDE SOLUTIONS
- authors’ argument for history being a social science
- Agrees that history can be unifying
However, is critical of authors for not suggesting how history can influence policy
BUT
- long term trends and statistics do convince policy makers in the long term
- A combination of the new longue duree history and micro history, with carefully assessed use of digital possibilities, is needed to curtail short termism.
- Historians need to be bolder in addressing future policy agendas
What criticisms does Andrew Jones make in ‘The limits of synthesis’?
BOOK RAISES ISSUES BUT DOES NOT PROVIDE SOLUTIONS
- Though authors should be ‘commended for stoking a renewed debate about how history can help tackle such intractable societal issues as climate change and inequality…the Manifesto itself is very limited in how it suggests historians should respond to these challenges.
IGNORES THE NEED FOR HISTORY TO EVOLVE
- Veneration of a ‘Golden Age’ of longue durée history ignores the fact that changes in the discipline were necessary.
IGNORES NEED FOR SPECIALISATION
- Ignores need for specialisation: call to synthesise ‘deeply troubling, and somewhat elitist’
OVEREMPHASIS ON DATA
- Guldi and Armitage argue that the path to relevance is to engage with policy makers and use data analysis. This is ‘myopic’ (short-sighted) and ignores other means of public engagement, including: historical novels, films, television dramas, and websites.
—> To do so returns us to long-standing debates concerning culture, and the mechanisms by which professional history intersects with broader cultural practices.
The facts: The Commodification of Education
The student-as-consumer approach in higher education and its effects on academic performance
Louise Bunce, Amy Baird, and Siân E. Jones.
September 2012: Fees rise from £3000 to £9000 after the Browne Review
2015: Students come under Consumer Rights Act, Number cap removed (cap on number of students permitted to enter university)
Evidence for consumer mindset more anecdotal than empirical, but studies have shown that paying for something leads to a stronger consumer mindset, and students are more career minded in opting for subjects with stronger employment prospects
—> ‘A consumer attitude was previously thought to create a shift away from intellectual engagement with the content matter towards doing what is necessary to pass or obtain the desired degree classification (Williams 2013). The current findings provide data to support these concerns…’
How can history help form a national identity?
Bull, ‘Is Medieval History Relevant?
The nationalist regime of General Franco in Spain, for example, drew extensively on ideas and images inspired by the Spanish Middle Ages - or, more specifically, a vision of the Spanish Middle Ages seen from the point of view of the Christians rather than the Moors or Jews, and of the Castilians more than the other Christians
Should one only study a ‘useful’ subject at university?
Quote from Clarke
Counter argument
Bull, ‘Is Medieval History Relevant?
Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education, (2003): I don’t mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there’s no reason for the state to pay them
Idea that universities full of people studying useless subjects at public’s expense is a prejudice easily sold to the public
Intangible benefits: contributes to our values and civilisation
Historians part of the economic structure of the heritage industry
The strength of feeling that the crusades can arouse is remarkable. In 2000, for example, no Jess a figure than Pope John Paul II felt moved to express regret for the harm that Christians in the past had done to others in the name of religion. In 2004 he apologized for the sack of Constantinople by the army of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
What are the broad arguments made in:
Cox, M., ‘The Uses and Abuses of History: The End of the Cold War and Soviet Collapse’
- little attention paid to how historical memory impacted policy making at the end of the Cold War
- Handling of the collapse of world order can be explained with an understanding of the past
- Looking backwards rather than forwards, policy-makers approached the new dawn with much less enthusiasm and optimism than their public pronouncements seemed to indicate at the time or later.
Several reasons history is useful to policy makers:
history as warning
history to legitimise or delegitimise action
history to make sense with the absence of a contemporary framework
How can the past influence policy makers?
Ernest May (1973)
Cox, M., ‘The Uses and Abuses of History: The End of the Cold War and Soviet Collapse’
Ernest May’s work (May 1973)
suggested that US policy makers always considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in their negotiations with the Russians after 1947 because of their historical memory of the West’s confrontation with the Nazis
appeasement could no longer be counted on
totalitarianism can only be answered with strength
How can the past influence policy makers?
Germany
Cox, M., ‘The Uses and Abuses of History: The End of the Cold War and Soviet Collapse’
Fear over the development of Germany as a country in 1989 - would they unify?
- French President Francois Mitterand showed fear of unification
- Other leaders feared a united Germany would mean German expansionism and nuclear/military proliferation
Some fears NOT historical
- Future of nato was in jeopardy
- If Germany unified, Gorbachev may not last long
HISTORICAL concerns
- Germany’s troubled past, character of people, relationship with its neighbours
- Thatcher strongly opposed unification. She invited Historians to discuss Germany’s past and present state and the conclusions were largely negative
- Collapse of empires is always destabilising
Gibbons, Adam Smith, had written on fall of Roman Empire and how it had plunged Europe into darkness in the 18th century
—> It would of course be going too far to suggest that the Bush administration was determined in its policy towards the USSR by lessons drawn from the fate that befell other imperial formations in the past. Still, these lessons were there to be learned, and what they suggested was that one needed to be extremely cautious when it came to tampering with structures of extended power
The draw of the past
George Bowling
Bloodworth, J., From Corbyn to Trump: Welcome to the politics of nostalgia’
George Bowling in Coming Up for Air: he mattered in the past, but now doesn’t, so escapes to it
–> Rather than a struggle between future and past, this is an attempt to revive a past and ‘impose it on the present in the manner of a square object driven into a round hole’
Examples of the Politics of Nostalgia today
Trump: Make america great again
50% of supporters is aged 45-64
Election of Corbyn
Nationalisation, ‘the red flag’
Average age of labour member after May 2015 is 51
Grammar School revival
Blackpool and BREXIT Deprived town Large tourism industry that taps into by-gone age The pier Voted 67.5% for a brexit
—> When the present is so unremittingly grim for so many, it’s hardly a surprise that people want to ensconce themselves in the warm penumbra of the past.
The Politics of Nostalgia: Brexit
Green, E., How Brexiteers appealed to voters’ nostalgia
A nostalgia which invoked memories of a past where Britain ‘took control’ appealed to:
- imperialist nostalgists
- 1973, Uk still had smaller colonies (Belize, Hong Kong)
- 1975 Referendum, Enoch Powell “Rivers of Blood” speech, ambitions to become viceroy of India
- “No” Campaigners in ’75 argued UK should focus on links to commonwealth, not Europe
Concept of past ‘golden age’
- Many look back to WW2 and victory over the nazis
- UK could ‘go it alone’ in WW2, and can today
older voters.
- Age ‘one of the most important correlates of voting for Leave’
–> Brexit gave older voters the chance to ‘return to the UK of yesteryear’
History and the Politics of Nostalgia
Marcos Piason Natali
What are the preconditions for a criticism of nostalgia? Is historical analysis essential for a criticism of nostalgia?
Nostalgia…is faulted for its
inaccuracy and is accused of promoting views of the past that are empirically
untenable.
IT IS ONLY AFTER HISTORIOGRAPHY BECOMES THE DOMINANT MEANS OF APPROACHING THE PAST THAT NOSTALGIA MAY BE FAULTED FOR ITS INACCURACY
For the term nostalgic to be used
as critique, as it so often has been in modern thought, certain conventions have to
be in place:
It is because of the twin beliefs in the promise of the future and the irreversibility of time that nostalgia can be seen as harmful to an individual’s wellbeing and to a collectivity’s welfare.
- It is only if history is understood as necessarily emancipatory, progressive, and rationally comprehensible that affect for the
past can be immediately condemned as an irrational obstacle hindering the pursuit
of social justice; it is only if the past is thought of as forever lost and death is seen
as final that a desire for repetition can be seen as unrealistic.
Biressi, Nunn, ‘The London 2012 Olympic
Games Opening Ceremony:
History answers back’
Key ideas
OVERALL
‘in straitened times British citizens are being asked to make do, to accept the rolling back of state provision and to modify their expectations of a civil society on the basis of historical myths as well as current realities’
TV HISTORY
- British televised national events such as the Royal Wedding and the Diamond Jubilee
have been deployed to conjure up wartime fortitude and a nostalgic community
spirit.
- when cyclist Bradley Wiggins stepped forward to ring the bell at the start of the Opening Ceremony the BBC commentator
urged him to ‘keep calm and carry on’
[The Ceremony] provided a space for a counter-austerity discourse that invited viewers to query prevailing political messages.
Ian Birrell, Daily Mail review of the Olympic Opening Ceremony
- Danny Boyle’s celebration of the NHS does not align with reality
- NHS ranking World Health Organisation ranked countries’ health systems, Britain came in below Greece, Malta, Oman and Portugal
- Anecdotal evidence of mistreatment of his own children and others’
The creators of the Olympic Opening Ceremony: important background information
Biressi, Nunn, ‘The London 2012 Olympic
Games Opening Ceremony:
History answers back’
Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell Boyce.
The two men’s professional credentials were many and varied although they also shared an Irish Catholic heritage, working-class sympathies and a collaborative professional relationship.
Boyle is best known for the post-class, post-realist films Trainspotting
(1996) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which dealt innovatively with characters
living severely impoverished lives at the edge of civil society.
Boyce is a film-writer, a former critic for Living Marxism, a novelist and quondam writer for several well-loved British soap
operas.
