A Marriage of Inconvenience

Mark Doyle, Op-Ed Columnist

February 2012

As plans for a 2014 referendum on Scottish independence begin to take shape, people on all sides of the question will raid history to support their case. Unionists will point to the economic and cultural benefits that Scotland enjoyed in the wake of the 1707 Union with England, and nationalists will point with equal certainty to the economic and cultural costs of the Union. The gist of the unionist argument-from-history (if I may put it thus) is that the Union gave Scottish writers, businessmen, scientists, engineers, soldiers, and investors a larger stage on which to perform, a larger market from which to benefit, and an enormous empire to conquer and settle. The gist of the nationalist argument-from-history is that the Union led to economic policies that benefited England at Scotland’s expense, eviscerated Scotland’s unique Gaelic culture, and subjected Scotland to the whims of an indifferent, Anglocentric Parliament. Read More »

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January 2012

In this issue:


I.     Announcing the Inaugural Global Britain Lecture: Humboldt University Berlin, 10 May 2012
II.   Conference Accommodation Now Available
III. Conference Dinner Party at the National Gallery of Scotland
IV.  Conference Lectures Announcement
V.    Our January Op-Ed Columns
VI.  In Memory of David Atkinson MP (1940-2012)
VII. Book of the Month

Read More »

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Sea Power vs Land Power: the Geopolitics of Germany’s Defeat in the First World War

2012 Global Britain Lecture

10 May 2012, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Co-sponsored by the Centre for British Studies (http://www.gbz.hu-berlin.de/the-centre)

Professor Hew Strachan
MA, PhD, FRSE, FRHistS, Hon D.Univ (Paisley)
Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford

In 1904 Halford Mackinder, in the lecture which established the study of geopolitics in the English-speaking world, divided the world into the heartland, which he also called Eurasia (the land mass which runs from the Atlantic and the Pacific), and the rimlands. He predicted that the latter would diminish in relative importance as the heartland industrialised and in particular as the railway made land mass an asset, rather than an obstacle, to communication.  Russia would be able to tap its manpower and its natural resources, and would become the dominant power of Eurasia, overshadowing the west European powers. Read More »

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Women and Empire – Aphra Behn

Allegra Geller, Op-Ed Columnist

January 2012

I tend to shy from the present, preferring to focus on the past.  I am inclined to examine history for and within itself. It has been said that ‘History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty[i] which I hold to be true.  Much like art, I view history as something once created in which great beauty can be found. Although my studies thus far have remained within the Tudor and Stuart periods, over the past year I have enjoyed studying British literature with a focus on Empire (I am indebted to Dr. George S. Christian for introducing me to numerous great works). With that in mind, in this column I will strive to provide interesting glimpses into British imperial history, albeit liberally strewn with literary themes and references whenever possible. Read More »

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January 2012: Ross McKibbin’s “Parties and People: England 1914-1951″

Reviewed by:  Peter Catterall, Queen Mary University of London

Ross McKibbin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 224 pp. £20 (hardback).

Some twelve years later this book seeks to explore how the social changes examined in McKibbin’s Classes and Culture: England 1918–1951 impacted in the political sphere. There were certainly substantial political upheavals between 1914 and 1951: the effect of the First World War and the subsequent franchise reform and implosion of the Liberals; the electoral dominance of the Conservatives in the inter-war years; and the advent of the first majority Labour government in 1945. These developments can broadly be explored through four principal and inter-related prisms. One is high politics, focusing upon the role of the parties in structuring the political marketplace and the resulting forced choice offered voters in a political culture which, as the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems pointed out in 1910, treats general elections ‘as practically a referendum on the question which of two Governments shall be returned to power’.[i] Then there is electoral geography, analysing how local characteristics and boundaries can both have broader effects and embed distinctive voting cultures. McKibbin’s conclusions, however, particularly emphasise the final two factors, which are contingent events such as war or the 1931 budget crisis and electoral sociology, reflecting influences such as generational change or social class.

Issues such as foreign policy, which might have been expected to play a role in voter choice in such a difficult period internationally, are seen as marginal (p. 192). This was a problem for the Liberals who, as Richard Grayson has persuasively argued,[ii] were increasingly distinguished by the 1930s primarily by their approach to this field as other distinctive policy positions, such as Free Trade or Irish Home Rule, passed out of the realm of practical politics. Even before 1914 Protectionism had a cross-class appeal that enabled the Tories to make inroads in northern cities like Sheffield. It made a contribution to the location of the Conservatives within a broad set of patriotic values that a Labour party, often successfully portrayed in the 1920s and 1930s as both sectional and disloyal, could not reach. Yet this did not prevent Labour seizing and retaining power in Sheffield during the inter-war years. Read More »

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Wikileaks and the Problem of Public Secrecy

Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Op-Ed Columnist

January 2012

As a senior in college I wrote a column for my university newspaper.  Eventually I decided to withdraw it voluntarily as the editors kept making small changes that I nevertheless felt were significant at the time.  As the years have passed I’ve decided that I was probably being too much of an egoist about the whole thing, and my editors undoubtedly had the right of it.  As the beneficiary of many years of hard-hitting executive critique from my professors (i.e. what I must do, not what I might) on my work, I’ve learned to look forward to and indeed depend on such commentary.  I write this first column with the hope that my readers take this anecdote to mean that I will do my best to convey my thoughts about the subjects I plan to explore in a way that opens the door for discussion rather than closes it.  With this in mind, my column will primarily be concerned with issues of British international and diplomatic history, especially those which relate to the Victorian period.  The lessons and legacies of this history as they present themselves in the present day will also be of interest, as will the theoretical and disciplinary concerns of The British Scholar Society members’ shared field of interest.  I look forward to the debates that will hopefully ensue from my humble contribution to the discourse. Read More »

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Professor T. M. Devine wins prestigious Beltane Prize

Professor T. M. Devine, Chair of The British Scholar Society’s Advisory Board, is the recipient of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Beltane Senior Prize for Public Engagement 2012.  The award, according to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is “to ‎recognise and promote excellence in public engagement with research; fostering a culture in ‎which researchers consider good communication an integral part of their work.”  On winning the award, Professor Devine stated that “I am deeply honoured to be awarded this prestigious ‎prize in the vital field of public engagement in which so much brilliant work is now being ‎done in the universities to the huge intellectual and cultural benefit of Scottish society”.‎

You may find more information about the Beltane Prize by visiting the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s website at ‎http://www.rse.org.uk/667_RSEBeltanePrizesforPublicEngagement.html.  This webpage also includes an interesting “Getting to know the winners” segment about Professor Devine.

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David Atkinson MP (1940-2012)

A stalwart supporter of The British Scholar Society passed away on Sunday, 22 January 2012 after battling cancer.  David Atkinson was a former Member of Parliament for the Bournemouth East constituency between 1977 and 2005.  During his time in Parliament David served on the Council of Europe where he took an active role in promoting human rights around the world.  In an age of caustic, partisan politics, David always believed in doing what was right.  But following your conscience will not put you in power and David stayed on the backbenches his entire career.  David did, however, enjoy great success abroad as the Council of Europe’s special rapporteur for the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.  He was also the very first British backbench MP to address the United Nations General Assembly.  At home, David’s compassion extended to all creatures with his vote to ban fox hunting and his ongoing concerns for the environment, which included securing a £4.5 million grant to help save Hengistbury Head. Read More »

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Publications and the Historian

Dr. Jodi Burkett, Op-Ed Columnist

January 2012

What does it mean to be a professional historian? It is both a lot more and a lot less than I had imagined as a student. I came to history quite late. It wasn’t until my third year of undergraduate study, when I was on exchange from Toronto to Glasgow, that history started to make sense to me. At Glasgow I was taught by Simon Ball who quoted me L.P. Hartley’s famous phrase ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. For the past ten years I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this foreign country and about the craft of history. But it was only recently that I have truly begun to think of myself as a professional historian. I am one of the lucky PhD students who, upon the completion of my thesis in 2009, found a permanent and full-time job in academia. By definition this makes me a professional historian. However, this definition is rather simplistic. In fact, what it means to be a professional historian – the advantages and responsibilities it entails – continue to preoccupy me and are the driving force for my op-ed contributions. I will be writing about the concerns of working in the higher education sector in Britain at a time when, without much fuss, the public university system is being replaced by a private, fees-based system in which the pressure of teaching, research and administration are seemingly in competition and each inexorably increasing. Read More »

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A “Pixilation” of Curatorial Tradition and the Power of Banksy

Rebecka Black, Op-Ed Columnist

January 2012

With his new work Cardinal Sin, famed London street artist, known only as Banksy, criticizes the Catholic Church and questions curatorial tradition. More widely known for his clever works of public graffiti that question authority and criticize societal hypocrisy, Banksy’s latest work Cardinal Sin is a controversial three-dimensional sculpture piece that criticizes the Catholic Church’s involvement with numerous child abuse and sex scandals. The recent work is a replica bust of a Catholic priest whose face is distorted with ceramic tiles. The tiles are glued over the priest’s face to give it a pixilated look, as if to protect the priest’s identity.  According to a December 16th Huffington Post interview, Banksy claims his work could be considered a Christmas present because “At this time of year it is easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption and the abuse.” Happy holidays indeed. Read More »

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