The Week That Was…

There were two notable news stories this week. Except that the first wasn’t really that notable unless you’re a history geek like myself. I don’t want to really discuss this story in much detail except to say that it seems that it is much easier now to be a public fool than it ever was in the past. The Internet, which Menzies credits for revolutionising history (which, undoubtedly is true – check out one of the best First World War sites written by one of my own course predecessors for evidence of this), also makes it easier to be made to look very, very stupid, as Menzies himself has done. Of course Menzies has attempted a disclaimer by admitting he knows nothing, but he seems to show a fundamental understanding of what history is. It is not, in any way, about simply about writing down a few soundbite statements and then hoping there will be a few documents somewhere which will support you. It is, instead, about the whole process of investigation, exploration and interpretation. It is about going into an investigation with an open mind, not a pre-conceived idea of what you expect to find. The end product is incidental to the process of exploring history.

Anyway, moving swiftly onto the next big idiot of the week, Nick Griffin. Whilst the newspapers have been splashed cover to cover with his sloped-gaze of general bigotry and ignorance, Griffin has finally proved himself publically to be the racist, stupid prat we had all known he was. He has come out of the Question Time debacle, and all he has got to show for it is a complaint to the BBC that there were people protesting against him.

Well, not quite all, because apparently, according to a YouGov poll, some 22% of the population would now consider voting BNP. However, if pushed, only 3% would do so tomorrow. Just for the sake of the maths, 3% of the 1,314 people who were surveyed is just over 39 people. Which, in all fairness, is somewhere near what they were polling prior to the programme.

Now Peter Hain can get all worked up that the BBC has given exposure to a party which it shouldn’t be doing. However, I’m guessing that if the majority of the eight million people who watched the programme (plus those of us who watched it on IPlayer later) actually listened to Griffin, then we all know that (a) the BNP have very little in the way of policy beyond racial cleansing, and (b) Griffin was made to look like a complete idiot by everyone in that studio. Especially by Bonnie Greer. Plus, can someone please tell me how his history of the English people seems to ignore the fact that as a people we were colonised by Germans?

Griffin was not given the opportunity to vent his soundbites which he had obviously rigorously prepared beforehand, nor was he allowed to look like his words had an ounce of rationality to them. He was hopelessly out of his depth, and was shown to be nothing more than the voice for a racist few. Which, incidently, are still going to be present regardless of whether Griffin was here or not. If nothing else the programme shows that the BNP do not have supporters as much as the other parties have people who will not vote for them. I’ve said it before, but it is the job of these parties to demonstrate just what they can do for these people who feel so disillusioned that they vote BNP in protest rather than anything else. Once these people have been convinced, the BNP will struggle along with the few people who still think it is right that colour, race or ethnicity should have anything to do with anything.

I’ve championed free speech and a platform policy before and I will continue to do so as it provides ample opportunity to show people the ‘truth’ about those up on the stage. The ‘truth’ is that following Thursday’s events, the BNP are nothing more than a confused racist organisation fronted by a strange little man with a warped version of history, and an even more warped understanding of what the Ku Klux Klan actually is. Don’t fear him, he has nothing which we should be afraid of. Continue showing him up, making him look stupid, and continue working out how to win back voters.

Finally on this, Britain is not like Germany in the 1930’s for the simple reason that we have a monarch. Just a thought for the few doom-mongers who seem paralysed by the fear of the BNP.

The Relevance of It All…

Last Saturday was the final meeting of my MA class for this year. This time next year I will be in the midst of writing a dissertation on some element of the First World War. Naturally therefore, I have spent some time thinking about what topic I will do this on. Whilst thinking about this, I somehow stumbled upon the thought of discussing the relevance of the war to a modern society. I’m not entirely sure that this would make a disseration though, so have decided to scribble some thoughts down here.

So, is the First World War still relevant to society in the Twenty-First century? Obviously there can be no simple answer to this. It would depend entirely upon what criteria you judge it upon. And indeed, how you determine ‘relevance’.

It was the dicussion about the recent death of the first swine-flu victim which led me down this road. A lot has been made of this death, and the potential threat of swine-flu, although, as has been pointed out, ‘normal’ flu kills a fair few people yearly, and there is no media coverage of this. The Spanish-flu in 1918 spread worldwide killed anywhere between 40 and 100 million people, depending on what you read. That’s quite a lot of people. At its peak, roughly one-third of the world had the flu. So, could lessons learnt in 1918 help people appreciate the scale of the current situation? I’m not so sure, simply because the nature of the media is different now. It is a 24 hour thing, with access from papers, television and internet to anything, anytime. There needs to be something to fill this insatiable appetite for news, and, at the moment, that is swine-flu. If there is something there, the news will use it. They have to, simply to stay afloat. Experiences of the soldiers in the war of the spanish-flu vary, but, generally, the troops seemed to have suffered badly from the flu, due to a variety of things, of which malnourishment was certainly one. Indeed, some have argued that this helped the allied cause, and proved to be the tipping point. I’m very much not convinced by this argument as it ignores all the rest of the stuff that was going on at the time (ie Britain finally developing a decent arms system, sorting out the logistics, and Germany shooting her bolt too early in 1918), but that this has been argued at all shows the impact the Spanish-flu had in 1918.

Experiences of the flu tend not to vary over time. Either you get ill, suffer for a period of time, and then get better; or you get ill, suffer for a period of time and then die. The only experience we will really know about is the former. Solutions to the illness have developed, medicine has progressed (although it should never be assumed that the medical care in WW1 was poor, certainly for the British, it wasn’t). People learnt from the lessons of 1918. They learned how to deal with large scale pandemics. So much so that come 2009 we know the need to have a standing stock of vaccine for such outbreaks.

However, does this make the experience of 1918 relevant to today’s society? Possibly, although it would be easier to argue the other side. How can you really compare a nation coming out of the industrial revolution threatened by other countries around her to Britain today, in the midst of a digital era, moving away from her industrial past, and threatened by countries on the other side of the world? There is call to say that a comparison is impossible. However, I’m inclined to disagree. Pre-war Britain was not this unified harmony that was abruptly shattered by a war started in the east. Far from it, at least half the population were concerned with the suffrage, and a percentage of that were demonstrating their concerns through violent activity. There was some unrest in the waning, although not yet dead, industries which had for so long provided Britain with a platform in the world. Compare that to 2009 and the collapsing British car industy and the impact that this is having on the world car market. People in Britain are concerned with the political system and how it is working. It might not be the top-hats of 1914, but there is a distinct alienation of the politicians from the people in 2009.

However, this is but a digression from the original question. Does the war still have a relevance to today’s digitised society? Flu aside, I think there is cause to think that it does. As bands such as Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs (although their name was taken from a South African football team, this is evidence of the stretch of empires and the lasting memory of the Kaiser) march their way up and down the pop charts, this is evidence that the war has a wider ranging impact upon society than perhaps first realised. There is further musical evidence too, take the well-played Christmas song “Stop the Cavalry”, deliberately a critique of war, but holding further historical connotations. The most famous line “I wish I was at home for Christmas”, can be read in light of the famous thought of Kitcheners volunteers presuming the war would be over by Christmas. Even the title of the song has implications relating to the First World War, with the use of the cavalry in an industrialised war being one of the main bones of contention amongst historians. The misinformed suggestion that Douglas Haig was intent on using the cavalry at every opportunity appears evident is one which the main detractors of the war manfully stick to. Even the video for the song has Jona Lewie appearing in khaki as if on the front line. There is obvious connection to the famously “futile” war that remains today.

Blackadder perhaps has much to do with this. You can barely escape the sitcom in any discussion of the war. Most take it as read that Curtis and Elton were playing with the truth of the war, and whilst there was ‘artistic licence’, there was also a sense of reality to the plight of Captain Blackadder and crew. Rowan Atkinson’s titular character is an obvious critique of what a Captain was, or at least, the perception of what a Captain was. Obviously at odds with the concept of war, he has obviously been promoted earlier than he should have been, and it is only the men around him which make him appear good enough to lead. There are other comparisons too, General Melchett is the archetypal “donkey” general: mad, traditional, and out of touch with the reality of the situation. Even the representation of Haig is of him ‘playing soldier’ with plastic characters and a dustpan, indicative of his apparent scant regard for human life. The fact that he was a devout religious man perhaps detracts slightly from that particular myth. Naturally, it gets left out of the detractors thoughts.

There are other forms of entertainment derived from the war, various films in recent times have played upon a continuing fascination with the conflict. This is obviously part of a larger whole however, with war films as a genre growing in number. Indeed, in comparison to later conflicts, the First World War has got away without the ‘Hollywood’ treatment which has perhaps ruined public knowledge of the Second World War.

Moving away from entertainment, the war still resonates with the public at least once a year. I have, in the past, complained about a startling naivity in relation to the war, and the acts of remembrance that are performed every year on 11 November. However, there is clearly a large part of society which understands the significance of the emblematic poppy, and appreciates its pre-WW2 origins. The acts of remembrance still centre on WW1, which then encompasses the following conflicts.

The reason for this is simple enough to explain, WW1 was the first global war, and the first on the path towards total war. It was the original conflict for the industrial age. For this reason alone it will always have a certain resonance. However, whether this is enough to claim that it still bears relevance to today’s society is less clear.

There are other things which must inevitably must be considered (I haven’t mentioned the role of books, or indeed the middle east conflicts which could easily be claimed to be a product of the First World War), but this was only intended to be a few notes on the issue. Obviously there is plenty more to say, but I am not going to go into them now. Perhaps in the future. It is, for the time being, sufficient to suggest that the First World War is a remarkable period of history which perhaps shaped the course of the entire 20th Century, and indeed, the early period of the 21st.

Ejucashun, Ejucation, Twitter…

Whilst on my daily trawl through the BBC’s webpages, I found this story and was instantly dismayed. As a history scholar, I firmly believe more should be done to encourage people to question their pasts, and to connect the present with what has gone on before. The suggestions mooted in this report indicate that this is no longer a concern for governmental officials. Instead, it seems, we should be encouraging the ‘life skills’ of how to use Twitter, or how to blog.

Lets deal with this in three parts:

1. The suggestions seem to point to the idea that using Twitter is an important thing for children to learn. It is almost certainly not just Twitter but every social networking site going, but for the sake of convenience, Twitter will be used. I have a huge problem with this. The childhood stage of life is an important one in terms of building relationships with people, or at least learning how to do so. Kids learn moral and social things, you don’t pull people’s hair, you don’t hit people, you don’t bully people etc etc. They learn this through experiencing things, through doing, and through the repercussions of their actions. Kids learn how to talk to people, how to interact with others and communicate themselves. Again, they do this through actions. If we add Twitter into this, how much of a negative effect will this have on how they learn to build relationships with other people? I would suggest it would be a massive effect. No longer would it be necessary for children to talk to each other, when they can type instead. No longer would it be fun to go and play in the park with their mates because they could be interacting online instead. Twitter would begin to destroy how kids learn, rather than giving them the skills necesary. So yes, while they may learn to type, they will stop learning how to talk.

2. The report also mentions blogging. It seems to want to encourage more children to want to use blogs as a source of information, and to take up writing their own stuff. Why? Not all people are comfortable writing in the first place, never mind in a public access site. Why exacerbate things for those who do not want to write or use blogs?

Also, I’m going to throw into this Wikipedia, which is also mentioned in the report. Apparently, according to this write up of the story, “Children [are] to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information“. Great. This though assumes one very important thing. That Wikipedia is right. Which, as we all know, it is not necessarily. Indeed we have been told on countless occasions not to use Wikipedia as a credible source for work as accuracy cannot be guarenteed.

3. It was though the final point of the BBC’s first paragraph which irked me the most though. All this is come come at the expense of history. At least, that’s the impression it gave. Further reading indicates that this is not the case, although schools will have the ability to choose which periods should be taught with the goal to be:

“By the end of the primary phase, children should have gained an overview which enables them to place the periods, events and changes they have studied within a chronological framework, and to understand some of the links between them.“

Great. They will not be taught about possibly two of the three most important parts of modern British history, but instead whatever takes the teachers fancy at the start of the year. Now I get that the Second World War is still part of later academic life, and, to some extent, so is the Victorian era. But what else is there of significance that can be taught? The First World War? No-one understands that, let alone primary school kids. At least the Second World War had the ‘bad guy’ in Hitler. What does World War One have? Nothing, it was fighting for the sake of fighting. I would suggest it is better to sow the seeds of curiosity when children are more receptive to ideas. They can then follow this up and develop an interest later on in their academic lives.

I really do not think that further use of Twitter, Wikipedia et al should be encouraged. Many people are already moaning that there is too much exposure to the internet and computers, so surely encouraging further exposure should be frowned upon? At a period where we are frequently told of the growing obesity problem, surely placing kids in front of another screen cannot help? I’m still not sure what was wrong with classrooms and books personally.

Just as a note, reading some of the comments about this story, this one has to be my favourite:

“Im sure its just a coincidence the second world war where we fought against fascism is removed from the curriculum as our government becomes more fascist and controlling,

To cynical for my own good sometimes“

The writer later admits that the Second World War is not being removed at all, but the point still made me chuckle.

History…

Just thought I would post a link to an article on the Golden Strawberry. It makes for interesting reading, and is certainly a point of thinking that is worth considering. The article is here. Give it a read.

“So Your Doctor’s a Racist?”

The title of my self-help pamphlet (coming soon in some doctor’s surgeries) aimed at those who feel disturbed at the list of BNP members in Britain now doing the rounds on the internet. Having not seen the list, I am unwilling to speculate about the build-up of the members of the party in various communities.

There are, however, those who have seen the list, and are more than a little concerned that a trusted member of their community is actually siding with the increasingly abhorrent BNP. Be it a doctor, fireman, policeman, plumber, builder or anybody else, the list’s circulation has suddenly put most people on alert. For those who are attacked by the BNP, this is all the more worrying.

As a white male, I can say that it wouldn’t bother me what the political alliegences were, say, of a doctor who was treating me, as long as he got the job done (as these people who are members have been doing for some time). But my limitations are in my ethnicity. I am proudly British, but not to the levels of the BNP. I am obviously not the person who has something to fear in the BNP’s rhetoric (which is different to having something to fear from the BNP’s aims). There are plenty of people who do have a lot to be wary of. The BNP is still a racist party, it still has dubious morals based around fancy rhetoric aimed at disguising the true ideals. It still is growing and recruiting members. It has a hollow message that appears to be striking a chord with the population somewhere. More scary, I would suggest, than those already on the list, would be the likelihood of more people adding themselves to it.

As a neat after-thought, I was in the centre of Birmingham on Monday, wandering through the German market. There were unusually high numbers of police for a Monday morning, but all became apparent as I rounded the corner to see roughly 50 BNP members holding a protest at something. There were at least the same amount of police as protesters. I was wondering why the police were there, was it to calm the protesters, or protect them? I can only speculate…

Also, I’ve been thinking more recently about Germany, and not just because of the football. It seems, to my mind, that Britain currently has some of the same attributes as Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Economic troubles? Check. Small, but growing nationalist party? Check. Resentment over a war? Check.

There is obviously a long way to go before anything like Nazism and Hitler could happen in this country, but the conditions are interestingly falling into place…and, as I’ve said before, history is cyclical…

Sourcework…

During the first of many lectures on my new post-grad course last weekend, I sat and listened to one of my lecturers explain how sources, so long considered friends of the historian, are actually the bitter bitter enemies of those seeking an explanation or understanding.

Since GCSE I have had the value of sources plugged into me. “Use sources” we were told, “but watch out for bias“. As I have come through the system I have become naturally more and more cautious about source material. Everything, everyone has another agenda. Apparently. It is, therefore, the job of the historian to weed out the information from the bias.  Easy peasy. Except that it isn’t .

Apart from starting with a suspicious mind, and assuming everything is bad in some way, trying to work out what the hidden values are in a diary kept by a young, frightened solider on the front line in 1915 is bloody hard work. There may be bitter resentment at the authorities (although most soliders, certainly in early 1915, were volunteers, most members of the famous pals battalions). There may be a hatred of the Germans which shines through, although some soldiers didn’t want to kill the Germans any more than they wished to die themselves. Or, they were just documenting their experience. Put simply, there was no hidden agenda, they were writing to pass the time.

Except that the cynical historian would not believe that for a minute. For the historian, everything has another motive. The value of the source therefore lies in this ulterior motive, rather than the actual content.

The source therefore, due to this hidden agenda, serves to mask history in its purest sense. We cannot truly comprehend what happened because all the information we have actually hides the ‘truth’ with layers of rhetoric about another problem, be it a veiled criticism of someone, or something. Be it a subtle suggestion of a different opinion. Be it simply propaganda. The source complicates everything.

The paradox in historical terms is that the source is the only thing we can learn from. Source material is the only way we can access the past. Be it an old newspaper, or a document from 1300, or someone talking about 1945.  These are the only ways we can access the past, seeing as how, despite technological advances, no-one yet has mastered the art of time-travel (which is another problem that is infathomable, but is another issue for another time). We can only learn about the past from various sources. But all are biased in some way.

The formula is simple in this regard. The outcome is even simpler. We, as historians and indeed people, cannot ever understand the past simply because it is impossible to given the nature of what we have to work from.

If therefore we take away the idea of ‘trying to understand the past’ from the historians motives, what else do we have? What else does the historian do?

The obvious answer is that they try to understand the past. And then write about it. Having just decided that it is impossible to achieve such an aim, surely this is counter intuitive? I would argue not, simply because historians do not work in the principle that there is a definitive answer: “the past was like this. Full stop.” Rather they understand that the level of complexity in relation to the past is huge. The reason for this is also simple. The human.

The trouble with the past is that it is full of people. I mean there are millions and millions of them throughout the course of time. Think for a moment of your life. Of the hundreds and hundreds of people you have met at some stage. Think of your story, the various things you’ve done, places you’ve been, things you’ve seen. Think of your opinions, think then of how many people disagree with you. Then multiply that by millions and millions. That is history. Every single one of them has a story, has thoughts, opinions, feelings, just like you. The world may have been different, the people aren’t.

It is this multitude of stories which means we cannot understand the past. They vary so much. The understanding of a single event varies from person to person, depending on a whole range of factors. Historians therefore can only document the way they see things. They can only comment on what they know or understand. They cannot ever really understand history though.

If they cannot understand it, the question returns, why study it? My answer would be pure fascination. Here we have something 5000+ years big, that we cannot ever really understand. And this is fascinating. Why study anything at all if you know what you are going to get out when you start? It is similar to studying space. Here you have something so infinitely big that it is almost impossible to truly understand it. Yet scientists keep on looking, just in the hope that they find something, anything, that can progress their understanding just a tiny bit. I think it is the same for history.

War Laws?

Whilst rather aimlessly meandering my way through another book relating to the war, I was struck by the notion of “the laws of war”. To me, this seems something of a oddity. Is it possible to suggest that you can only kill or injure your opponent via a certain method? In 1915 the German army used Chlorine gas for the first time in combat. The British were outraged as this form of attack was seen as most barbaric and indicative of the lowest form of human which the Germans were perceived to be. The outcrys harped on about the unspoken, unwritten, but very much existing, laws of war.

Now perhaps this scepticism for such a concept comes from the Second World War. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki irreparably changed the nature of war forever. Whilst the wartime revolution had begun in 1914, I think 1945 was the time when this nature changed into something more sinister. Wars were no longer about soldiers, engaging in a tactical battle of intelligence and brute force. Wars were now about civilians. In the poker table of war, normal people became the chips. Ultimately, in 1945, the USA called Japan’s bluff to devastating consequences. The following Cold War saw this game played out between the Americans and the Russians. No-one called the other, despite, or perhaps because of, the stakes.

This returns me then to the original point, how can a concept as brutally savage as war have laws? The simple answer is that it can’t. When your objective is as simple as to cause as much damage to your enemy as possible in order to do one of two things (wipe them out entirely or force a surrender) there is scant regard for the methods used. This, it seems, is another one of those ‘means/ends’ questions. If using a ‘dirty’ (which, in effect, means ungentlemanly) tactic helps ensure a victory, is it reasonable to push ahead with such a method. In war the answer is always ‘yes’. In war there are no morals to be offended. After all, how can one have morals about killing, right? It isn’t as black and white as that suggests though. What of the conscipts to the army, forced to join up because they were of suitable age? Do they abandon morals once they hit that front line? Again, the answer is in the affirmative. However, one must sympathise with them, there is no choice, the primative problem is one of ‘kill or be killed’. As the human is born to survive, there is only ever one choice for those in the line, especially those who engaged with the enemy in the First World War.

The fact that a war is occurring means that the laws governing on an international stage have failed. These rules, kept in force (to a greater or lesser extent) by the United Nations in today’s society; did not though exist in World War One. Whilst there were numerous treaties allying various countries (hence why the war started in the first place), there was no overall body. The League of Nations was set up in the aftermath of the Great War, and even it was unable to prevent the Second from erupting.

Wars have little regard for rules. The fact that they are occurring in the first place is indicative of the point that somewhere, the rules have been broken. Once the first law is broken, the rest simply follow like a row of neatly arranged dominos until you arrive at the precipice of war where there is but one option. A criminal, having already robbed, will have little compunction in robbing again. Once this CV of rule breaking has been built upon and expanded, it becomes irrelevant how many more laws get broken.

My point then is that there can be no such concept as “war laws” simply because the time and the place for such modes of discipline have long since passed by the time war erupts. War laws are a nice concept created by the side which feels they have been the victim of a new type of attack. In 1915 it was the British. They were so offended, they made large scale plans for the use of gas attacks later in the conflict. Apparently, it is alright to break the rules if the other side has broken them in the first place. Either that, or, as is more realistic, we accept that there are no more rules which can be broken when you are in the midst of war.

Historical Reasonings…

Following my thoughts yesterday about the actual act of studying history, I thought I would elaborate further on this point. I would therefore like to question just what the role of the historian is in todays society.

The final qualification to that is important, I feel that to some degree the role of the historian has changed over time, and as a consequence todays historians (of which I think I am part) are entirely different creatures to those who were involved in recording history 100, 200  or 1000 years ago.

For me, I see a clear difference between ‘recording history’ which, to my mind was the job of those employed by the victors, of whom I was talking yesterday; and actually being a historian.

This though opens up a whole new avenue of questions. The most obvious one to ask is what does the historian do if not record history? To this, I feel the answer is simple. Historians (from a modern perspective) offer a comment on historical events. The historian in this case does not simply recite facts, but instead offers justifications for these ‘facts’. History therefore, simply put, is opinion. No historian can, by this logic, be wrong. They have their own interpretations of different events and they have considered the evidence to form a conclusion.

Except we all know that historians can be wrong. Naturally my thoughts turn to David Irving, the well known Holocaust denier. I am not going to try and justify him, or his thoughts, that is beyond me. Society has dictated that his thoughts about the Holocaust are wrong, and (shock horror) I agree with what society says here.

So, if historians can be wrong, there must be something which says that they are wrong. This limiter, as already intimated, is social values. There are topics which are taboo in all societies, and this necessarily means that they are not ‘open’ for discussion from anyone, except to conform to the already outlined social values. The issue of social values is another interesting one, but will not be explored further here.

To return then to the issue of what the historian does. If the historian does not simply record facts, then what do they do? There is the oft churned out line that historians are there to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated. However, this flies in the face of my other premise, that is, history is cyclical. If we just run with this for a moment, the logical implication that it makes is that the historian is somehow failing to to do their job because the history keeps repeating itself under new guises. If therefore the historian is failing, what is their role in a world which will keep playing out similar scenarios dressed up in different clothing for the rest of time?

Of course these latter musings work on one very big premise, that is, is history cyclical. I think it is. I think broad general patterns have thus far emerged in history which serve to indicate this: a technical revolution (iron age, industial revolution) followed by war seems to a generalisation that can be made I feel. Dictatorial leaders emerging (Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, back to Caesar) getting too big for their own good, and being destroyed. Human growth followed by a natural disaster to check it.

The trouble with the cyclical history idea is that it is broad, sweeping, and vague. When the details are explored further there seems little which unites the two comparative periods. Nonetheless, I maintain that history does indeed act in cycles, albeit very large cycles.

In which case, does that mean that the role of the historian is a redundant one? If history is repeating, the same mistakes are being made, and the historians are thereby failing the the assumed task which I stated earlier. Such a claim though ignores the point that cyclical history does not stop the world developing, it merely suggests that the same basic patterns of human behaviour are mapped out onto varying circumstances, as dictated by the time. Therefore, in essence, the historian still very much has a role to play, regardless of whether cyclical history is something which is happening.

What then is this role? For the first time in a while, I am drawing a blank. I’m not sure what the historians role actually is, and whether this is different to what it should be. Should historians be there to open the eyes of the people to varying understandings of events? Should historians by very much like political parties, you declare yourself as agreeing with one about something, and stick to that? Such thinking presumes the role of the historian is a public one. What about the personal aspect of studying history? Surely some people are historians due to a thirst for knowledge about the subject in hand? Should historians only want to further enlighten themselves, or should their concerns lie with educating more people?

The point of all this is that I remain unclear what the role of the historian is. Perhaps historians are just there to be yet another voice in the crowd offering opinions about something. The real question that must be asked is should it matter what the role of the historian is in modern society? Is it not enough to know that there are historians and they do contribute to the wider understanding of any given period, whether this is for their gain, or for someone elses. If then I cannot work out what the role of the historian is, perhaps we should consider where we would be today without historians. For starters we wouldn’t have Gordon Brown as Prime Minister (he has a PhD in history).  Nor would we have had John Prescott or David Blunkett. It is also questionable how far Jonathan Ross, Sacha Baron Cohen or Louis Theroux would have got without their degrees in history.  Considering that list, some may say we would be better off without historians…

Historical winners…

There is a general historical myth which explains simply that “history is written by the winners”. I wish to explore such an idea briefly.

Call me old-fashioned if you will, but the stereotypical conception of a historian is someone old, surrounded by hundreds of dust covered books peering at you disdainfully over the top of his or her round glasses. To me (as a historian), it used to be only these people who wrote history, and what they wrote stood.

Obviously as I have progressed, that image has been shattered by meeting various historians for whom such a cliche does not fit the bill. Likewise whatever they write should nearly always be treated with a hint of suspicion. Why are they writing, and what are they writing for? What do they hope to achieve in writing these works?

The phrase with which I opened already seems a tad simplistic. The obvious problems I have with the word “written” is nothing compared to the problems I have justifying who the “winners” were at any given time in history. Would it then be more accurate to suggest that history is not written by the winners (who ever they may be) but instead is written about the winners?

This latter thought though is still not entirely true. As I mentioned in my previous post, there are characters throughout the course of history who lost yet still have books aplenty written about them (Harold Godwinson, Napoloen Bonaparte, Charles I, and Adolf Hitler to name but a few). The implication of the statement is that the information we have available is from sources which were either sympathetic towards the ‘victors’ or had been influenced by the ‘victors’ in some way. This, it seems to me, is a problem for historians who are concerned with older periods of history. The twentieth century saw expansion of documentation from all sides of any conflict on a scale unknown previously. For those who study earlier periods, there is less in the way of this quantity of resources for the historian to work with. Obviously, this becomes more of a problem the further back you go, written documentation from the early medieval period, for example, is much more patchy than documents from the Second World War. We have few sources from the earlier period, and those we have, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are woefully unreliable for basic information (dates and names for example).

This then helps give rise to the myth that history was written by the winners. Older documents like the two named above, are examples of the winners recording a history which was favourable to them (Bede wanted to show the growth and significance of the church for example).  For the historically naive person, that would be where it stops. However, there is a growing concern amongst historians of these periods to think about the social aspects of the period, and aided by archeology, this can, to some extent by commented upon.

History, I would argue, is not written by the winners, nor is it written about the winners, at least not exclusively. Historians of the modern era are writing about various different elements of historical study, including social history, including military history, including counter-factual history. These studies are being made into a wide variety of time periods too. Post-modernist thought has lead to a widespread re-evaluation of historical understanding, and consequently history is no longer about the winners. It’s also becoming less about those who take part. History is becoming something much different. It is becoming something that the bespectacled dinosaur buried underneath books and manuscripts would barely recognise.

It is becoming popular.

And, I maintain, it is because of this one development, history can no longer be written by, or about the winners. History must be wide reaching enough to continue to engage with people who are suddenly fascinated by how people suffered bubonic plague, or how Joe Bloggs reacted to the reformation of the church. Popularity of the subject, I feel, necessarily means that history cannot be about those exclusive men or groups who won a battle.

Memories…

Following the last entry questioning why we study history, I would like to use this one to explore the reasons we have for remembering.

This in itself is quite a broad thing, what are we remembering, or who? To me such a question opens up two avenues, it seems we are either remembering an event (VE Day, The Norman Conquest, Martin Luther King giving that speech) or we are remembering a person (King, Winston Churchill, a soldier in the First World War).

So is remembrance equatable to ‘celebration’? Are we celebrating the events when we remember them? I do not mean ‘celebrating’ as in party hats and cake, but instead ‘celebrating’ as in we are remembering the good things about each event rather than the bad. Do we only remember the things which resulted in something positive happening? Is there a tendancy to ignore failure or defeat? (At this point, I am going to unapologetically explain that the course of this will concern WW1, but the wider issues should be considered in relation to other historical events)

On the contrary I would argue. I would suggest that as the twentieth century progressed, remembrance necessarily took the form of ‘negative remembrance’ which could be termed as mourning. 11 November is the prime example of this. Remembrance day is a time to remember the futility of war, originating after WW1 to respect the troops who had laid down their lives. It now encompasses thinking of those who were killed in WW2, or the Falklands, or the Gulf Wars. Remembrance in this case is about mourning the dead. It was meant to be indicative of the point that WW1 was the ‘war to end all wars’. These men had laid down their lives to stop another conflict happening again.

We remember things such as July 1 1916. Such as Passchendaele. Such as the sinking of the Titanic. Such as Pearl Harbour. Such as the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Such as the Holocaust. We remember the disasters of mankind much more easily than we remember the successes for example I would suggest. This, it seems, is equatable to a more general humanistic instinct, that for ‘bad news’. There is more to say about bad news than there is about good news. A rather simplisitic analogy would be football. People are quick to criticise after a defeat, but are rather more stuck for words following a win. It is easier to comment upon what went wrong than what is going right. This, I believe, is part of human nature.

So should it be any surprise that we ‘remember’ the negative things? Should we be keen to put a positive slant on things? Or will we get chastised for saying such a thing? Should we remember the loss of 20,000 men on 1 July 1916? Or should we look at the bigger picture, of tactical improvements, of learnt lessons, of victory?

The answer is obviously both. We should never forget these men, but we shouldn’t let that cloud our memory of the eventual outcome either. In a recent article on Douglas Haig, Britain’s Commander-in-Chief for much of the war, the author, Geoffrey Norman, compared Haig to Napoleon, Hannibal and Robert Lee (a general in the American Civil war who suffered at Gettysburg). The title of the article was “The Worst General” in reference to Haig, who is widely percieved as the ‘butcher of the Somme’ by modern audiences, and the article played up to the modern stereotypes of Haig (bumbling, uncaring, single-minded, unable to plan without the cavalry). The trouble with the comparisons Norman makes (away from the other tripe written in the article), is that the men he compares Haig to, all eventually lost their respective battles. Haig didn’t.

Is this remembrance then? Remembering the wrong thing? Is it better to remember something wrong than not remember something at all? In my opinion certainly not. If you are going to remember, make sure you remember for the right reasons. By all means commemorate the fallen soldiers in the cemetaries around Belgium but do not forget that all these men were killers. Reluctantly, maybe, but killers nonetheless. This shouldn’t be forgotten. Remember then their bravery, their suffering and the things that they may have had to endure. But remember the whole picture. Remember not just the Mona Lisa’s smile, but the whole portrait.

To return to the question then. Why do we remember? Is it more complex than saying we remember to avoid making the same mistakes again? Is it remembering because society says so? Do people remember because that is the standard thing to do. They are expected to do it? I will quickly relate to you the story of one of my housemates a couple of years ago. Whilst a couple of us were sat in silence at 11am on November 11, he came blundering in and asked why we were in silence. As we ignored him and continued our silence, he took offence. When he asked us later as to why we were in silence, we explained. To which his response was that if we had said, he would have shut up. Almost as though if he had had it explained to him he would have conformed. Almost as if people need to be told to remember at this time on this day.

Remembrance, I would argue then, is as much to do with conforming to what society expects as it is actually thinking about those men and women who have died in conflict. I wonder how many people actually think about the war dead at times other than on this date? Not as many I would be willing to guess.

This is wrong. Remembrance shouldn’t be a chore, it shouldn’t be something we need to be reminded to do. It should be something we actively do, something we want to do, and something we have no qualms over doing. We should remember things because they mean something to us, not because we are told to do so by social norms.

I would suggest that we remember to preserve. To preserve memories of these men, or to qualify actions, wars, or battles; and to some extent to stop the same things happening again. This is a hugely unsatisfactory answer to give though. The truth is we remember for a multitude of different reasons, each individual, and unique. However, I would suggest that for nearly everyone, social dictation is one of the contributing reasons for actively remembering.

There is so much more to say on this subject, but, I will refrain for fear of getting boring.