February 26, 2010
Pathbreaker
Somehow I’ve managed to find myself in an academic history faculty, despite having specialised as an undergraduate in philosophy and political theory, and spent a fair amount of time complaining about lackadaisical historians.
Nonetheless, now that I’m here I feel that I ought to establish myself by founding a new historical discipline.
Many will have heard of the now defunct “Whig History” approach. This postulated history as progressing, inexorably and inevitably, towards a greater state of liberty, enlightenment and freedom. Liberty, enlightenment and freedom which all looked suspiciously like that achieved by British liberal constitutionalism which simultaneously accommodated monarchy.
Nobody really believes in Whig History anymore, mostly because of Herbert Butterfield’s attack on it in his The Whig Interpretation of History. That Butterfield invented the term “Whig History” in order to condemn it is a matter of significance I’ll leave for others to decide.
Anyway, I now propose a new categorisation: Tory History.
Whereas Whig History read into the past the inevitable march of progress, Tory History reads into it basic right-wing prejudice, a glorification of hierarchy, and frequent attempts to legitimise whichever contemporary status quo is perceived as being under threat. This is done, in part, by assigning conservative values or objects of sympathy a long pedigree, thereby implying their value and right to continue existing.
Favourite topics for Tory Historians therefore include the glorification of fox hunting and mindless patriotism, claiming that the Empire was a jolly good thing because the natives got railways and anyway the Japs were much nastier, and that Henry VIII was a bloody great lad for putting all his uppity wives in their places and how sad it is that society has now become “feminised”.
Leading Tory Historians may therefore be said to include Linda “Phwoar, Men in Uniform!” Colley, Niall “I can do economics me” Ferguson, and David “That annoying one off the telly” Starkey.
And, like Herbet Butterfield, I have no desire to be included as a member of the tradition I identify. No matter how much it pays to write columns in the FT, or do thunderously hyperbolic segments for the odious Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics.
James A said,
February 27, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Niall Ferguson is awful, just a transparent apologist for empire.
Off topic, but this is interesting:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/25/glenn_greenwald_dems_hiding_behind_filibuster
Proof, it seems, that the Obama administration never really supported a public healthcare option all along.
JA
Paul Sagar said,
February 27, 2010 at 1:18 pm
James,
You think Ferguson is awful, try Linda Colley. From her book Britons (which is complete twaddle):
“One reason for this was that the doctrine of separate spheres – like many other political concepts – was ideally profoundly contractual. Women refrained, at least in theory, from invading the public sphere, the realm of action, on the understanding that their moral influence would be respected and recognised. They accepted a vulnerable position in life, on condition that men would maintain and respect them.” (p.269)
Although Colley goes on to mitigate this absolute codswollop a little bit, it’s mostly the line she sticks to in her sweeping characterisation of 18th Century male/female divides.
At least, that’s when she’s not gushing over the “gorgeous uniforms” of late-18th Century upper class soldiers.
Thanks for the Obama link, I’ve not got time to read it now but I’ll try to later.
Chris Brooke said,
February 27, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Along with a study of the R101 disaster and a social history of the 1950s, one of the books that my friend, the late, and much lamented, Ewen Green always intended to write was a study of The Tory Interpretation of History. I think he even footnotes it as Green (forthcoming) in one of the essays in Ideologies of Conservatism, though I’m not sure he ever began serious work on the manuscript. (Not sure it was going to be about Colley, Starkey & Ferguson, though.)
Paul Sagar said,
February 27, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Chris
“(Not sure it was going to be about Colley, Starkey & Ferguson, though.)”
no, I imagine it was going to be about proper historians, as oppose to “celebrity historians” who are a “terrible thing to be”.*
–
* R. Bourke, Collected Boukeisms, (London: QMUL, 2009).
leftoutside said,
February 28, 2010 at 12:41 am
I hadn’t realised Ferguson was an apologist for Empire, I thought they had all vanished?
I remember him being rather negative about Allende’s Chile. I mean I know he’s not meant to like the guy but it was like he was pretending all the development successes of the interventionist Governments of the Southern Cone never happened. Pinochet’s Government only didn’t go bankrupt in the 1980s because it had the revenue from the Copper mines Allende nationalised. Hah! Take that delicious irony!
I think there’s a rich vein of terrible historians to document in this but I fear they may be predominantly “celebrity historians” because you have to be really crap at fact checking and selective with your sources.
Tom N said,
February 28, 2010 at 4:28 am
You may find their conclusions unpalatable but questioning their competence and historical credentials without evidence (can’t speak for Colley but I’ve read a fair amount of Starkey and Ferguson’s stuff) isn’t very clever.
Take Ferguson’s ‘Pity of War’. He successfully debunks the myth of a pre- WW1 ‘war fever’ through use of economic evidence, something I’ve rarely seen done elsewhere. Rather than, for example, relying on retrospective selection of sources to make the case that the war was seen as inevitable he analysed the price of war bonds to show that – actually – the war came as a surprise to a great many, probably the majority. That’s proper history. Give me that over windy Peryy Anderson-esq stuff any day.
When he got into an argument with Krugman recently even Robert Skidelsky admitted their dispute wasn’t a case of Nobel winner shitting on a jumped up historian but essentially a rerun of the same dispute that Keynes had with Treasury economists. Oh, and Ferguson was right about interest rates going up.
The recent ‘War of the World’ one is, admittedly, a bit hit and miss but opens with an utterly superb chapter that mixes economic analysis with historical demography (using records of blood groups to track population movements). His best though is the one on the Rothschild family.
That all said, a critical but serious overview of his life and work can be found here:
http://www.democracyuprising.com/articles/2009/niall_ferguson.php
James A said,
March 1, 2010 at 12:14 am
“I hadn’t realised Ferguson was an apologist for Empire…”
Yes, most definitely. Read e.g. ‘Colossus’. Or actually, on second thought, don’t.