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March 2012

In this issue:

I.        Keynote Speaker:  Mike Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Government
II.      Round-Table on Independence added to the Conference Line-up
III.    March 2012 issue of Britain and the World is Now Available
IV.     Housing Deadline:  Room Block at Pollock Halls available until 4 May
V.       Dinner Party:  Reserve your place at our cornerstone networking event
VI.     Lecture Series Reminder: Hew Strachan to give the inaugural Global Britain Lecture on 10 May in Berlin
VII.   March Op-Ed Columns
VIII.  Book of the Month

I.  Keynote Speaker:  Mike Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Government

Mike Russell, Member of the Scottish Parliament and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Government, has been an active member of the Scottish National Party for over three decades and served as the Party’s first full-time Chief Executive from 1994 until 1999.  He was named “Debater of the Year” in the 2000 Herald Awards and has twice been nominated for “Scottish Politician of the Year”.

In addition to his political activities, Mr. Russell is a television producer and the author of seven books.  Glasgow – The Book and Edinburgh – A Celebration were his first two publications in the early 1990s.  More recently, Mr. Russell has authored, with Dennis MacLeod, Grasping the Thistle: How Scotland Must React to the Three Key Challenges of the Twenty First Century (2006) and The Next Big Thing: A Fable of Modern Scotland (2007).

More details will be forthcoming on Keynote Address in the April and May Newsletters.  In the meantime, if you would like to attend the conference registration is available by visiting http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/ and clicking the Conference Registration option that suits you.

II.  Round-Table on Independence added to the Conference Line-up

Given the large amount of publicity focusing on the Scottish independence referendum, which will be held in 2014, we have decided to add a Round-Table on this contentious topic to the Conference line-up.  As an educational organization dedicated to the study of Britain’s interactions with the world over the past 400 years holding our annual conference in Scotland means that we feel obligated to provide our attendees with a Round-Table on a topic that is on everyone’s mind.  The British Scholar Society is just as interested with the current unfolding of British history as it is of the past.  This is history in the making and we want you to have a front-row seat.

Here are the details of the Round-Table:

Thursday, 21 June 2012
18:00 – 19:30
David Hume Tower Lecture Theatre

“The End of more than Three Centuries of the Anglo-Scottish Union in 2014?”

Chair:  Magnus Linklater, former Editor of The Scotsman

Panelists:
John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde
Owen Dudley Edwards, Honorary Fellow of History at the University of Edinburgh
Catriona MacDonald, Reader in History at the University of Glasgow
Joyce McMillan, Columnist for The Scotsman

We hope to see all of you there.

III.  March 2012 issue of Britain and the World is now available

The March 2012 issue of Britain and the World is now available online at www.eupjournals.com/brw.  Hard copies of the journal have just been received by the Society and should arrive in your mailboxes soon.

The March 2012 issue of the journal includes:

Editorial

“The British World Model of World History”
Gregory A. Barton

Articles

“Imagining the Scottish Diaspora: Emigration and Transnational Literature in the Late Modern Period”
Catriona M. M. Macdonald

“Intellectual History, Life and Fiction. The Case of Evelyn Waugh”
Reba Soffer

“Civilizing Mission: Animal Protection in Hobart 1878–1914”
Stefan Petrow

“Playing Fields and Battlefields: The Football Pitch, England and the First World War”
Brandon Luedtke

Witness to History

“Reflections on Memory and Archives: RAF Bomber Command During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis”
Robin Woolven

Round-Table

GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency
Richard J. Aldrich

If you are a member of The British Scholar Society and want to know how to gain full access to all contents of Britain and the World online, please send an email to editoratbritishscholardotorg  (editoratbritishscholardotorg)   and we will provide you will instructions for accessing/creating your account on the Edinburgh University Press website.  We hope you enjoy the March 2012 issue of Britain and the World.

IV.  Housing Deadline:  Room Block at Pollock Halls available until 4 May

Our room block at Pollock Halls for the upcoming Britain and the World Conference at the University of Edinburgh is only available until 4 May.  After that date, the block will be released back into general circulation for purchase by anyone.  Please ensure you make your booking as soon as possible to avoid being kept out of our very affordable accommodation options.

Rooms may be booked by visiting:  http://www.book.accom.ed.ac.uk/.  Once you are on the website you will need to put in the number of days you want to stay, click on the starting date for your stay on the calendar, and then insert the Promotion Code in the last field.  The Promotion Code is BSS12.  This will provide you with the conference rates.  If you would like to arrive earlier or stay later you will need to book that separately.  Room availability outside of our designated block is subject to availability but if done in advance there should not be any problems.

Information on all aspects of the conference may be found by visiting http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/.

We look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh!

V.  Dinner Party:  Reserve your place at our cornerstone networking event

You may now reserve your place at The British Scholar Society Dinner Party, which will take place at The Scottish Cafe and Restaurant, which is nestled inside the gorgeous National Gallery of Scotland, on the Mound, right in the heart of Edinburgh.  The Dinner Party will take place on Friday night, 22 June from 8 pm until 1 am.  The Dinner Party is an optional event and will cost $80 per person (we have been forced to convert this from £50 per person, based on current exchange rates, to avoid a $4 processing charge from Paypal).  The price includes coffee, water, wine, and a three course meal.  Further details about the menu will be forthcoming in the April Newsletter.

To book your place at what is sure to be a memorable event, please visit our Conference 2012 webpage at http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/ and scroll down to the Dinner Party section.  There you will be able to click on the “Buy Now” button which will take you to Paypal to pay for the Dinner Party.

Please note that family members are invited to attend the Dinner Party.  If you would like to purchase additional Dinner Party tickets please choose the desired quantity on the Paypal screen.  Once we receive payment we will be in direct contact with you to find out the names of everyone attending the Dinner Party.

VI.  Lecture Series Reminder: Hew Strachan to give the inaugural Global Britain Lecture on 10 May in Berlin

This is a reminder that our inaugural Global Britain Lecture will take place on 10 May at the Humboldt University in Berlin.  Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford will present his lecture entitled “Sea power vs. land power: the geopolitics of Germany’s defeat in the First World War”.

For more information on the lecture, which is free and open to the public, please visit our Lecture Series webpage at:  http://britishscholar.org/outreach/lecture-series/.

VII.  Our March Op-Ed Columns

The British Scholar Society announces the publication of each column when it appears on our Twitter feed and on our homepage at http://britishscholar.org under “News from the Society”.  In case you missed any of these fascinating articles, or simply want to read them again, they are all available by clicking on the individual links below or by visiting our Op-Ed page at http://britishscholar.org/publications/op-ed/.  There you can click on an individual columnist and their personal pages, which include the columns, will appear.

  1. Rebecka Black:  Modern Art, Inc.: Picasso and Modern British Art at the Tate Britain
  2. Dr. Jodi Burkett:  Teaching: the bread and butter of the professional historian
  3. Professor Mark Doyle:  What Lies Beneath the Falklands
  4. Leslie Rogne Schumacher:  The Problem with Plan B: Thoughts on the Jobs Crisis in History
  5. Michael Talbot:  No Place Like Home?
  6. Dr. des. Helene von Bismarck:  The Indispensable Junior Partner

VIII.  Book of the Month

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March 2012: Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies c. 1880–1960

Reviewed by:  Michael Roche, Massey University

Robin Butlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 692 pp. £70 (hardback).

Historical geographer Robin Butlin, in the course of a distinguished career, has written and edited a number of books dealing with the nature and development of historical geography, the historical geography of Europe and historical geographies of imperialism. In Geographies of Empire he writes for an audience of geography undergraduates and students in other disciplines with an interest in imperialism and colonisation, and hopes to add something to the historiography of empire, though his readership might also usefully extend to include a more general one, particularly for the last two-thirds of the book.

Butlin concentrates on the period from the high imperialism of the 1880s through to independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Although he suggests his coverage is selective and even eclectic, the fourteen chapters and 600 pages of text provide an empirically rich account of imperial trajectories and colonial expansion.  Importantly the scope is wider than the British Empire and includes sustained discussion about French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch imperial designs and colonial aspirations. Eschewing a comparative approach that chronologically organises different European imperial narratives in successive chapters, Butlin opts for a thematic approach organised around geographical themes and interpretations. He is sensitive to concerns about Eurocentrism going hand in hand with the writing on empire, acknowledges his own position as an author based at the core of the old British Empire while drawing on some work that destabilises such certainties about it as an all seeing vantage point.

Butlin, while writing in an accessible manner, keeps some of his social science theory visible rather than submerging it underneath a narrative. Thus in the first chapter he clearly anchors his initial discussion around Canadian geographer Cole Harris’ work on the ‘simplification of Europe overseas’, on US geographer Donald Meinig’s five volume The Shaping of America, and on US Marxist geographer Jim Blaut’s Colonizer’s Model of the World and then in sequence introduces a number of more recent understandings of imperialism concluding with post colonialism, gender analysis and indigenous knowledge. Here the lecture course origin of the book is most obvious.

The chronology of empire is not discussed in isolation from its geography, but is linked to the spaces that empires occupied and population is not restricted to a one-dimensional discussion of migration, but the global flows of people that accompanied imperialism and colonialism are kept to the fore. Territory is not just rendered as a stage on which historical forces are played out. The subsequent chapter on ‘patterns and shadows on the land’ tackles some mainstream historical geography concerns about resources and land use. The following cluster of chapters, five to nine, on exploration and sources of geographical knowledge, on mapping, the civilising mission and environmental histories are in some ways the most rewarding. In passing Butlin also reveals some of the ways in which geography as a body of knowledge was part of imperial endeavour. These five chapters touch on themes where Butlin has extensive first-hand knowledge. They can also be read as standalone pieces and they offer a reworking of some of the taken for granted positions about heroic exploration and mapmaking and how these were implicated in larger imperial projects. Chapters 10 to 12, for completeness, cover the important topics of transport and communication, towns and cities, and the economic geographies of empire. This leads on to a penultimate chapter where Butlin examines the ending of empire before providing a concise conclusion.

My reading of Butlin is made from a particular corner of the former British Empire, which perhaps sensitises me to smaller scale episodes of imperial endeavour and to land where the agents of empire were not sojourners but arrived and eventually outnumbered indigenous peoples and where ‘postcolonial’ has a particular complex resonance. In this respect Butlin deftly apportions his text between, for instance, larger narratives of imperial expansion in the continents of Africa and smaller vignettes of the Salvation Army in India. As a fellow historical geographer, I doubtless have sympathy with Butlin’s intent and approach, but even allowing for this, I would suggest four strengths to the volume. First, it puts some theoretical material up front at the beginning of the book. Readers will be able to appreciate the position from which he writes. Second, the coverage while not encyclopaedic, which in any case would have swamped what the book seeks to do, is nevertheless wide and spans the gambit of major European imperial powers. It is not just a dressed up account of the British Empire. Third, the chapters are written in an admirably accessible fashion and finally, the array of Butlin’s own photographs reproduced as illustrations for the book, points to his having journeyed to some of the places about which he writes, which perhaps explains his ‘feel’ for some of the things he is writing about.

At the same time I would identify two weaknesses in the text. Butlin himself alludes to a degree of eclecticism in what he has included by way of content and example, but any book is a selection so this is hardly a fatal problem. A multi-authored collection can, potentially at least, overcome some of the difficulties by assembling a collection of experts, but the resulting volumes can lack the cohesiveness that Butlin as a single author brings to this book. The other weakness is very much a double edged sword; Butlin writes in an even handed fashion. He does not advance a grand narrative, but at the same time such an approach can and does justifiably attract criticism. Butlin, in contrast, has captured the essence of a body of geographical writing about imperialism and colonisation and regards empire and colonisation in an authoritative and lucid manner. He succeeds, I think, in distilling a body of disparate geographical writing on empire and making it intelligible to historians. The book is one that can be fruitfully read from cover to cover or successfully dipped into.

 

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Teaching: the bread and butter of the professional historian

Dr. Jodi Burkett, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

When meeting in professional arenas – for example at conferences – historians, perhaps rightly so, talk about their research. Yet, apart from a very small minority, what occupies the minds (and time) of most professional historians is teaching. The UK, like many other countries, has a hierarchy of universities in which those who spend the majority of their time, and derive the majority of their money, from teaching, are at the bottom. I teach at a ‘post-1992’ institution which derives approximately 85% of its income from teaching – teaching clearly matters to my institution. Yet, teaching is often seen as the thing we must do in order to pay for the thing (research) which we actually want to do. Yet, it is also very often the most rewarding (or, at least, immediately rewarding) aspect of a professional historian’s job. It is through teaching, through the communication of our research and knowledge to a captive audience, that we can test the limits, scope and breadth of our knowledge. It is also through teaching that we can rediscover the joy of history – that moment when students put material together (what many Further Education colleges in the UK refer to as the moment ‘the penny drops’) makes a lot of trials and tribulations seem worth it. Read More »

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The Problem with Plan B: Thoughts on the Jobs Crisis in History

Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

I hope my readers will permit a deviation from the theme of Britain and the World to engage the continuing jobs crisis and the attendant discussions about graduate students taking a “Plan B” approach, a subject that is important not only to our area but to the field of history in general. It is also personally important, as I will defend my dissertation at the end of the term. Next month’s column will see a return to regular programming.

***

When I began my PhD studies in 2006 many assured me, just like everyone in the last generation has been, that the imminent retirement of Baby Boomer professors would open up untold numbers of jobs by the time I emerged into the academic world, diploma in hand. As I look forward beyond my graduate career, it is abundantly clear that rumors of the rise of a jobs-filled, post-Baby Boomer academy have been greatly exaggerated. Yet as if the falsity of this portrait isn’t enough, I’ve lately noticed that a troubling narrative has emerged in regard to the whole premise of choosing a career as a history professor. Namely, it has become popular to look at the field of history as bound, inexorably, to a future in which college-level history instruction will be done primarily by harried, faceless wage slaves and administered by a small, diminishing, and hateful/self-hating cadre of permanent faculty. Ergo, the critique generally goes, grad students should get out while they still have the chance to build a “normal” life.

A much-discussed blogpost by Larry Cebula, a professor at Eastern Washington University, is emblematic of the trend in dirgeful writing about the field. The thrust of Mr. Cebula’s article is summed up in the concisely provocative title, “Open Letter to My Students: No, You Cannot Be a Professor.” Tenure is gone, he argues, the pay is less than one gets waiting tables, and the “opportunity costs” of spending a decade pursuing a PhD sets one back in relation to the earning and investment of their age peers. “It isn’t going to happen,” he says, “the sooner you accept this the better.” One has to admire Mr. Cebula’s candor, and certainly many of those who responded to his post thought it a fair assessment of young historians’ prospects in this academic brave new world, such as one who said he no longer writes recommendations for his students if they’re intended for graduate applications in the liberal arts. This isn’t the first time in the last few years that I’ve heard of a professor making this commitment.

Mr. Cebula does at least make sure to note that this situation has nothing to do with the objective quality of students going into American graduate programs, but apparently this is too optimistic a view according to some of those in a position to hire. A panel at this year’s meeting of the AHA saw several prominent historians discuss the ongoing jobs crisis in the discipline. A PhD student who attended this session, L.D. Burnett, has written a truly riveting account of the proceedings, noting an especially uncomfortable moment when a member of the audience said that 90% of the applications he’d seen in his career came from candidates that, in his opinion, not only weren’t qualified for a particular position but didn’t have what it took to be qualified as historians. Putting aside the fact that this feeds directly into the fear nearly all young grad students have that it is only a matter of time before they will be exposed as frauds and drummed out of their programs, remarks on quality don’t really seem to be the problem. As it always has, the academy churns out a whole range of scholars, but what little chaff gets by is far outweighed by the grain.

One is left wondering whether there is any response to the crisis that is constructive and avoids punishing the very students historians hope to get a chance to teach and inspire—students of the species that all historians belong to, no matter whether they sit behind the professor’s desk or before it. The problem with an “it’s for their own good” response to the crisis is not only that it isn’t very useful for offering scholarly aspirants a direction toward some non-scholarly career, but that it doesn’t bring us any closer to changing the current state of affairs. Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman have hit closer to the mark in a recent article which argues that graduate programs need to, from the start, encourage students to think about using their PhD for careers outside of the narrow realm of traditional tertiary instruction. Still thought-provoking is Lynn Hunt’s 2002 op-ed on the growth of professionalism in academia, which has driven graduate students to motivate themselves with the goal of getting a job rather than indulge a personal zeal for history. All of us who have slogged our way through a PhD can agree with Hunt’s feeling that an obsession with the “vicissitudes of the job market” kills the spirit that drives one to learn, write, and teach.

But though Grafton, Grossman, and Hunt should be given credit for carefully and creatively approaching the issue, I’m not certain that they get to the heart of the problem with the dreaded “Plan B” conversation either. That is, if one is in a graduate program one likely loves teaching and doing research in history far too much to be nearly as fulfilled outside academia as one is within it. Moreover, the drive to continue along the route of one’s scholarly antecedents is very strong, especially given that they sit, manifest, in front of us all along this path—one which they themselves walked not so very long ago. We are who they were, and we want to follow them. And once one gets a taste of teaching history at the college level and finds that he or she likes it, the notion of doing something else obviously feels like a personal and professional failure. The idea of not being a professor of history is terrifying to those of us nearing the end of our graduate career. It is a real and valid fear and, for the health of the atmosphere of collegiality between students and professors, it would be a cruel irony to place the fault at the feet of students whose dedication to the profession precludes a happy shift to an alternative job.

In writing this column I cycled through a number of titles, one of which was “There Is No ‘Normal’ after Graduate School.” Anyone trying to protect the sanctity of Plan A while opening up room for Plan B has to consider that graduate school, by means of its wonderful and terrible trials, changes us, presenting successful candidates with the expectation that they will be welcome at the table with those who’ve already found a seat. This is the obvious result of selecting students who fit the mold of the previous generation of scholars, who can navigate the established channels of degree progress, can integrate themselves into the scholarly community, and can convey their knowledge and their passion to the next generation—all things that, in a wealthier and not too distant past, marked one out for acceptance and success. New PhDs are not lemmings, trudging blindly off the cliff of graduate school into a sea of unemployment. No, we’re prairie dogs, and we want to stay in the burrow with the rest of the colony. These are natural, even instinctive feelings: for me, as for most of my colleagues, a career in history is not a choice but a compulsion. Any solution to the employment crisis in the field cannot hope to be successful unless it takes this fact into account.

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Modern Art, Inc.: Picasso and Modern British Art at the Tate Britain

By: Rebecka Black, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

In February of 2012 the Tate Britain in London opened its newest exhibition Picasso and Modern British Art. The show, sponsored by R.L.M. Finsbury and British Land Company PLC, is meant to explore the influence of Picasso upon Britain’s most noted artists of the twentieth century including Wyndham Lewis, Francis Bacon, and David Hockney. The show, open through July 15, 2012, is a collection of over 150 works – 60, almost half, of which are by Picasso – that trace the influence of Picasso from his London visit in 1916 until his 1960 Tate exhibition. According to the Tate, this show “explores [Picasso’s] extensive legacy and influence on British art [and] how this played a role in the acceptance of modern art in Britain, alongside the fascinating story of Picasso’s lifelong connections to and affection for this country.”[1] This all sounds very romantic but, unfortunately, the show is already under fire for its perceived misrepresentation of Picasso’s “affection” for Britain and his influence on British modern art.

In a recent review of the Picasso show – who are we kidding; it’s a show about Picasso that draws big crowds, not a show about British artists – Jonathan Jones of the Guardian claims “there is no evidence in this exhibition that Picasso ever gave a hoot what British artists thought of him, or a damn for their work.”[2] Apparently after Picasso’s first visit to England in 1910 (he was in London for the infamous Roger Fry Manet and the Post-Impressionists show), according to the exhibition catalogue Picasso was so unimpressed with England’s modern artists he asked “Why, when I ask about modern artists in England, am I always told about Duncan Grant?”[3] Clearly, Picasso expected to hear London had more than one modern artist. I suspect he also found Duncan Grant to be less than modern, considering that by 1911 (after his visit to London) Picasso was already working in his avant-garde Cubist style while Grant had yet to abandon  figural compositions and landscapes.

Jonathan Jones also shows disappointment in his review for what he felt could have been the strongest British artistic connection to Picasso: Francis Bacon. Bacon, like Picasso, is internationally celebrated today for his intense abstraction of forms – most notably the human form. The Francis Bacon gallery in the show includes Bacon’s early works rather than his more abstracted late career works.[4] In his early works, Bacon was not fully working with abstracted forms enough to relay the true influence of Picasso to the viewer. Because Bacon’s early Crucifixion works come across as barely influenced by Picasso, in her review Laura Cumming of The Observer questions how the curators could have thought the less experimental artists included can be understood through Picasso.

Cumming also feels it is not so much a show about influence as it is about “plagiarism.”[5] British artists may well have been inspired by the influential giant that was Picasso – what artist of the twentieth century was not? What this show, according to reviews, seems to be guilty of is depicting how British artists admired and copied Picasso rather than how British artists understood the work of Picasso and then created something inspired by the master, yet unique. With these reviews in mind, what exactly does this exhibition do for British modern art other than continue to perpetuate the notion that British art of the twentieth century was only a late, uninspiring imitation of the avant-garde in Europe?

Whatever the true purpose is for the show – I have yet to see it but I do believe the Tate Britain is aiming to emphasize British modernism’s uniqueness – the negative reviews from its audience cannot help. This exhibition, like any, is intended to educate the public on a particular subject, in this case British modernism. If the reviews are correct, though, and what the show is actually doing is just glorifying Picasso, then perhaps it is just another corporate-sponsored blockbuster exhibition exploiting a big name to bring in the crowds.

Perhaps because of British art’s negative reputation the Tate must rely on such subversive tactics to even begin to change perceptions about 20th century British art. It would not be unusual for the Tate Britain to do so and in fact may be quite necessary in order to achieve its sincere goal of public education. Since there is a lack of individual philanthropy in today’s international arts community, corporations have taken on the role of sponsoring art exhibitions – especially blockbusters featuring big names like Picasso, King Tut, or the Impressionists that guarantee huge crowds. Of course the motivation for corporations to financially support art exhibitions is self-serving, but the biggest down-side to this partnership is the way in which it perpetuates a stasis of art education through blockbuster shows. According to the reviews, with this show what audiences are likely taking away is not a new, positive understanding of British art; rather they are presented with a Picasso-heavy show with various unknown artists who have seemingly plagiarized the master. This not only is detrimental to the understanding of British art, it perpetuates the artist as genius myth about Picasso and relies on the myth to draw large audiences.

In her article, “Exhibiting the Cannon: The Blockbuster Show,” Emma Baker emphasizes this difficult position in which modern museums, like the Tate Britain, often find themselves.  Through her assessment, one can extrapolate that the “blockbuster” phenomenon, like the Picasso exhibition, is evidentiary of modern society’s limited understanding of art (specifically British art in this instance), which is viewed only as cultural capital – something that can be gained by viewing but not necessarily understood, and this is demanded over true cultural enrichment. The demand for cultural capital has placed museums, like the Tate Britain, in a difficult position wrought with “economic pressure” to rely on capitalist patrons to support their idealistic and non-capitalist driven mission at the expense of educational goals. [6]



[1] Tate. http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/picassoandbritain/default.shtm

[2] Jones, Jonathan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/feb/13/picasso-modern-british-art-review

[3]Cumming, Laura. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/feb/19/picasso-modern-british-art-review

[4] Jones

[5] Cumming

[6] Emma Barker, “Exhibiting the Cannon: The Blockbuster Show,” Contemporary Cultures of Display, pp.127-145.

 

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The Indispensable Junior Partner

Helene von Bismarck, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

It is a commonplace to say that the United States of America has been Great Britain’s most important ally since the end of the Second World War. Countless books and essays have been written about the Anglo-American relationship. Some have emphasized the “specialness” of this alliance; others have dismissed this concept by pointing at the frequent disagreements and frictions between the governments of the two countries. On one thing, however, there seems to be widespread agreement: that the United States has always been much more special to Great Britain than Great Britain has been to the United States. This perception results, in part, from the great discrepancy between British and American military might and economic power during the Cold War. After 1945, the argument goes, Great Britain, faced with economic decline and a rapidly disintegrating empire, could only be a junior partner to the American superpower and self-proclaimed leader of the “Free World”. This assumption is just as problematic as it is persuasive, because it can result in a tendency to overlook the role Great Britain and its empire played in the geopolitical thinking and strategic planning of the US Government. Great Britain may have been only one out of many American allies during the Cold War, but that does not mean that its cooperation was at certain times and in specific regions not essential from the American point of view. In other words, a junior partner can be – in spite of his relative unimportance in comparison to the more senior one – a sine qua non to the success of a project.

An example of a region where the US Government regarded British cooperation as essential to safeguard important American interests was the Persian Gulf during the 1960s. Until 1971, Great Britain maintained a special position in this area; a position that was based on a significant military presence as well as political treaties with the local governments. Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the seven Trucial States (today’s United Arab Emirates) remained under Great Britain’s protection against foreign aggression. Throughout the 1960s, the US Government attached great importance to the preservation of this British presence in the Persian Gulf. The great American expectations in this regard were put in a nutshell by the US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, when his British counterpart, George Brown, informed him in January 1968 that Great Britain intended to leave the Persian Gulf as part of its general military withdrawal from East of Suez: “Be British, George, be British – how can you betray us?”. Greatly angered and dismayed by the British withdrawal plans, the Johnson Government tried to make Great Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Cabinet change their minds, but to no avail. The Anglo-American relationship had reached a low point.

The reason why the US Government was so keen to see Great Britain’s special position in the Persian Gulf preserved was its firm conviction that this presence had an important stabilizing influence in an area that was of great strategic and economic significance during the Cold War. The relevance to the Western Bloc of the Persian Gulf and its rim states, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, lay in the vast regional oil reserves. The principal consumers of this oil were Japan and the Western European countries, who imported 75% and 60%, respectively, of their annual oil requirements from the larger Persian Gulf area. Their great dependence on the regional oil reserves made it imperative for the US Government to ensure that the Persian Gulf was not controlled by a hostile power. From the American point of view, the worst imaginable scenario for the Persian Gulf was to fall under the domination of the Soviet Union, which would then be able to use access to the oil reserves as a bargaining tool to hold the Western Bloc to ransom. In addition to these Cold War considerations, the US Government also had direct commercial interests in the Persian Gulf region: to protect the substantial and extremely profitable investments American companies had made in the local oil industry.

During the 1960s, the US Government – supported by the State Department and CIA – remained convinced that the larger Persian Gulf area was an inherently unstable and insecure region. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq all had territorial ambitions which threatened the integrity of the smaller Gulf States. At the same time, the rivaling character of these ambitions seemed to entail the risk of a greater regional conflict, which was – from the American point of view – bound to eventually lead to Soviet intervention. The US Government, therefore, expected Great Britain to continue to act as a protecting power to the smaller Gulf States and prevent the development of a dangerous power vacuum. This was something which the United States felt neither willing nor able to do itself. The State Department regarded it as politically impossible to establish a US presence in the Persian Gulf that was comparable to Great Britain’s special position of influence. The British relationship with the smaller Gulf States had evolved and grown since the middle of the 19th Century and was therefore not easily replaced. Another important reason for the US Government’s unwillingness to get involved in the defense of the Persian Gulf was that the United States found itself becoming more and more embroiled in the Vietnam War as the 1960s progressed. With its forces tied up in Southeast Asia, the United States could not afford to establish a substantial military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Faced with increasingly severe domestic criticism because of the Vietnam War, President Johnson also believed a continued British world role to be essential for presentational reasons. Both Johnson and Rusk regarded it as politically disastrous if the American people gained the impression that the United States had been abandoned by Great Britain in its effort to police the “Free World”.

The example of the Persian Gulf proves the value of analyzing the Anglo-American relationship from the perspective of the US Government. Great Britain’s special position in the Persian Gulf was, until 1968, an important factor in the US strategy to contain communism in the Middle East and deny the Soviet Union access to local oil resources. When the British Government decided to withdraw from the Persian Gulf, President Johnson did not find a way to make up for this significant loss. It was left to his successor, Richard Nixon, to find a solution.

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No Place Like Home?

Michael Talbot, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

In an effort to encourage Brits to spend their remaining pounds at home rather than splash out on sangria or ouzo in the outer-reaches of the Eurozone, the British Government has launched its ‘staycation’ campaign, asking the public ‘why go abroad in 2012?’. In the newspapers, on the radio, and notably on the television, with this celebrity-strewn advert by the English tourist board, city-dwellers are encouraged to seek that bit of England that really is still green and pleasant. And, as Londoners prepare to be swamped by the masses descending for the Olympics in a summer that may well bring one of the worst water shortages in the South-East in recent memory, the temptation to flee as far as possible without actually leaving these islands will surely overcome a significant number of the capital’s inhabitants.

The Diamond Jubilee in June, if the Golden Jubilee in 2002 is anything to go by, will see the city turned into a true party town, with millions on the streets and in the pubs toasting Her Majesty and generally having a good time. The Olympics seem to elicit a much more divided response. It would be wrong to say that there are not Londoners exciting about the Olympics. Some care about the actual sport, some want to make a fortune from hapless tourists, some masochists want to hang around just to see the madness. A significant number, specifically those who will have to continue to work and commute in central and east London, are highly resentful of the extra strain that will be put on an already creaking infrastructure, particularly the buses and the Tube. Some particularly disgruntled denizens have even developed an alternative tube map designed to keep the extra masses away from central London. Just what sort of quality of experience our visitors will have in this vast and expensive city is anyone’s guess.

And that particular question, of the experience and insights of tourists in London, got me thinking about visitors from the past. When we think of travel and Britain in a historical context, we very often think of Brits abroad, from the Grand Tour to explorers on the edges of Empire, but rarely of the visitors that came here. I will focus exclusively on London here, simply because I rarely think of the country outside of the M25 motorway. As a Turkish friend of mine from Istanbul, having discovered that I had travelled in provincial Turkey quite extensively, described himself as a Turk who had never been to Turkey. I can certainly say of myself that I am a Brit who has barely been to Britain.

Some of the early travel accounts of visitors here are of Italian and French noblemen and intellectuals, and their impressions were not always positive. The homme des lettres Samuel de Sorbière wrote in his Relation d’un Voyage en Angleterre (Account of a Journey in England, 1664) that he had received a less-than-friendly welcome from some of the locals who had never before seen a Frenchman. ‘The cry of “a Mounser, a Mounser,” that is, “un Monsieur, un Monsieur”, that they repeat and shout with all their might, is the first insult they say. But little by little, as they get more agitated, or as someone tries to keep them at a distance or quieten them, they arrive at “French dogs, French dogs”, that is, “chien de François”, which is the honourable epithet that we wear in England.’ De Sorbière dished out his own insults, particularly on that favourite Gallic subject of bashing English food. ‘The English,’ he wrote, ‘are not a people of great taste, and the tables of the great lords, who do not have French cooks, are filled only with large pieces of meat. Bisques and soups are unknown there…their pasty is coarse and badly cooked, and the compotes and jams are inedible.’

Nor have the Brits always been terribly welcoming of their guests. In one of the first incidences of mass tourism in the London area, the 1851 Great Exhibition was at once wondrous and infuriating. An article in the May 1867 edition of Macmillan’s Magazine entitled ‘Gossip about the Paris Exhibition’ reveals something of the British attitude towards the hordes at the Crystal Palace, and perhaps might offer some comfort to those presently awaiting the Olympic crowds:

It seems almost incredible now that [in 1851] Englishmen, not insane in other respects, seriously imagined that the assemblage of an unwontedly large number of foreign tourists in London might be fraught with danger to the British constitution; that precautions were taken and troops collected about the metropolis to guard against some undefined and unknown peril.

And for those currently thinking about cashing in on the Olympics by renting out their rooms at exorbitant fees to trusting foreigners, a John Leech Sketch in the Punch special ‘Memorials of the Great Exhibition’ edition poked fun at the stereotypes of what might happen when an honest Englishman let foreigners into his castle.

From the online archive of cartoonist John Leech, direct link here.

Just over half-a-century after the Great Exhibition, London again hosted the peoples of the world when the Games of the Fourth Olympiad were held in the capital in the summer of 1908.  By that time, foreign cultures were so common in London that The Penny Illustrated Paper of 13 June 1908 was able to reassure foreign visitors that they would find in London ‘a home away from home.’ Have a look at the cartoon below – I particularly enjoy the ‘English spoken here’ in the window of the American shop.

 

From the Pictorial Gems website, direct link here.

Such xenophobia is somehow part of English culture, more-often joking than malicious. The article in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1867 mentioned above gave some hope for a change after the Great Exhibition: ‘Since then, I think, honestly, European nations have grown to know more about each other; and, if exhibitions have not done away with war, they have modified those instinctive dislikes which the different peoples of Europe entertained towards each other.’ It seems clear, however, that stereotyping other Europeans remains a favoured pastime of those in Europe and its immediate environs, and in many ways this provides something of a barrier to developing a homogenous ‘European’ identity.

What is interesting in the historical context is when visitors from outside of Europe came here.  One very interesting case, revealed in a study by the Turkish historian Mehmet Alaaddin Yalçınkaya, is in the diary of Mahmud Raif Efendi, who was the chief secretary to Yusuf Agah Efendi, the first permanent Ottoman resident ambassador, who lived in London between 1793 and 1797. Mahmud Raif Efendi’s account is interesting for its clarity and relative lack of colour, but there are some fascinating insights into his opinions of what must have seemed like a very distant land indeed.

He spent much time discussing the British system of government, which he thought ‘differs from all others, it being a mixture of monarchy and republic,’ and also reported on British military strength, particularly that of its navy, in some detail. He was somewhat bemused by British finances, and this report from the last years of the eighteenth century will sound particularly familiar in these first years of the twenty-first:

The income of the English government amounts to about twenty-two million pounds sterling, and customs duties make up half of this, and taxes the other half…the government’s revenue is sufficient in peacetime, but in wartime it is obliged to borrow more than twenty million a year from merchants. When we arrived in England, the national debt amounted two hundred and forty million, and in four years, over one hundred and twenty million has been borrowed for the war against France, making altogether three hundred and sixty million.

Reflecting on the three years and nine months of his stay in England, Mahmud Raif Efendi noted that ‘I have been well, despite the unstable nature of the weather, for the climate, although very humid and continually heavy with fog, is not unhealthy. It is even remarkable that foreigners are fitter than the natives.’ He found the city very large, living costs very high (no changes there then), admired the huge windows in the shops of Oxford Street, and was generally praiseworthy of London’s architecture, especially of public squares with gardens.

For some of his final remarks, he gave a rather touching assessment of the inhabitants of the country: ‘The native people…generally dislike outward magnificence…Englishmen are fine men with a serious nature; the women are the most beautiful in Europe. There is a lot of science and education: the people, although coarse, are better educated than those of other nations; they acquire knowledge by reading public papers.’

Those public papers will certainly be crucial in shaping the opinion of the public towards the Olympics this coming summer. Although London papers like The Evening Standard are firmly behind the Games, there is an increasing amount of fear-mongering about London’s ability to cope, not dissimilar to that which appeared in 1851. Things are certainly different from 1908, when having a multicultural city was seen as a negative point. But in the current climate there has been significant public debate from both the government and the media about what constitutes a British identity. Although this has led to some internal soul-searching, the Games will provide useful feedback by getting outside opinion from our international visitors; some of the most valuable and under-used historical sources on early modern Britain are through the eyes of foreigners, especially those from outside of Europe and North America. Moreover, as large numbers of Londoners will undoubtedly take up the government’s suggestion and head out into that very alien landscape that composes the rest of Britain, their experiences as tourists in their own country will provide further insights into just what makes the English English, and the Brits British.

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What Lies Beneath the Falklands

Mark Doyle, Op-Ed Columnist

March 2012

Anniversaries are funny things. Thirty years ago Britain went to war with Argentina to maintain control of the tiny, remote Falkland Islands – or the Malvinas, as the Argentines call them – a leftover patch of imperial red in the South Atlantic that most Britons had forgotten about until Margaret Thatcher reminded them. The upcoming anniversary of the war, which began with an Argentinian invasion on April 2, 1982, is stirring considerable passion in both countries, partly because it coincides with the deployment of Prince William to the Falklands for helicopter rescue training (which Argentina sees as a deliberate provocation), partly because suddenly everybody is talking about Thatcher again (thank you, Meryl Streep), and partly (largely?) because there may well be enormous oil deposits near the islands. Argentina is demanding that the Falklands be handed over to them – or “returned” to them, since the British are accused of having stolen the islands in 1833 – and Britain is insisting that Argentina recognize the principle of national self-determination, which means that the Falklands should remain British as long as the island’s 3,000 inhabitants want to be, which they emphatically do. Read More »

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February 2012

In this issue:

I.      Next Lecture Series Event with Dr. Richard Allen Tomorrow at University of Wales, Newport
II.    Inaugural Global Britain Lecture at Humboldt University Berlin: Time Announced
III.  2012 Conference Programme (Draft) Now Available
IV.   Conference Registration is Now Open
V.     Our February Op-Ed Columns
VI.   Book of the Month
VII. Featured Scholar

I. Next Lecture Series Event with Dr. Richard Allen Tomorrow Evening at University of Wales, Newport

‘For the Better Management of the Poor: The Welsh Society of Philadelphia and the Relief of Emigrants, 1798-1850’

Dr Richard C. Allen

Reader in Early Modern Cultural History
University of Wales, Newport

 

1 March 2012, University of Wales, Newport, City Campus (Room A16)

6:00 – 8:30 pm

To reserve a spot please visit http://www.newport.ac.uk/events/bymonth/Pages/TheBritishScholarSocietyLectureSeries.aspx and click on “Book Your Place Now!”

Abstract:  This lecture provides a fascinating insight into one of the oldest benevolent societies in America with a history that stretches back to their first meeting on St David’s day in 1729.

Charity, members of the Welsh Society of Philadelphia recognised, began at home but also needed to be dispensed to the ‘remotest parts of the Earth’. This was articulated in the preamble to a constitution they drew up on 4 February 1799. It stated that newly arrived emigrants should be taken by the hand ‘instructing him in what he is ignorant of and providing for his Immediate necessities’. Sixty-four Welshmen (or the descendants of Welsh emigrants) held the first meeting of the Society a year earlier on 1 March 1798 in Philadelphia. As part of its remit, members were expected to provide moral support, financial assistance and practical relief for Welsh exiles who would struggle in a foreign land without help. It is a Society which has enjoyed an uninterrupted history to the present day and, naturally, a long-lasting association with Welsh-Americana, particularly its promotion of Welsh cultural activities and its annual St David’s day celebration.

The purpose of this paper is not, however, to record the complete history of this Philadelphian Welsh Society, but rather it will focus primarily on the development of this cultural body, its early membership and the significant position and experiences of members in Philadelphia – the spiritual home of the Welsh exile in America. Additionally, it will explore why this Society appealed to Welsh exiles and their wealthy descendants. Finally, it will consider the role of the Society as a provider of charitable assistance to the needy, who from the late-eighteenth century onwards saw America, especially Philadelphia, as an alternative to a life of hardship in Wales.

Schedule:

6pm – 6:30pm – Refreshments

6:30pm – 8:30pm – Plenary lecture by Dr. Richard C. Allen & Questions

II. Inaugural Global Britain Lecture at Humboldt University Berlin: Time Announced

The Inaugural Global Britain Lecture, featuring Professor Hew Strachan of Oxford University, will take place at the Humboldt University in Berlin on 10 May from 6:15 to 7:45 pm.  More information on how to book a spot at the lecture will be made available in our March Newsletter, on our Lecture Series webpage at http://britishscholar.org/outreach/lecture-series/ and via our Twitter feed @britishscholar.

The idea behind the Global Britain Lecture is to better understand Britain’s interactions with the wider world by conducting lectures outside of the Anglophone world.  We hope to make this an annual tradition and we are pleased to announce our partnership with the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt for this exciting event.

III.  2012 Conference Programme (Draft) Now Available

The British Scholar Society’s Britain and the World Conference 2012 Programme (Draft) is now available on our website at http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/.  The 2012 Conference will include 48 panels, 7 individual lectures, and a Round-Table in addition to our networking events on Thursday (Conference Icebreaker), Friday (Dinner Party at the National Gallery of Scotland), and Saturday (historical pub crawl) evenings.  Conference participants hail from 21 countries and four continents, making Britain and the World 2012 the most global British history conference ever.

IV.  Conference Registration is Now Open

Registration for The British Scholar Society’s 2012 Britain and the World Conference is officially open.  You may register today by visiting the 2012 Conference webpage at http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/.  Once there, please choose the correct registration category and click through to Paypal for payment processing.  Registration rates are as follows:

Student Member:  $70

Faculty Member:  $85

Student Non-Member:  $170

Faculty Non-Member:  $185

If you would like to become a Member of The British Scholar Society for $55 before registering you may do so by visiting http://britishscholar.org/british-scholar/membership/ and clicking on “Become a Member”.  Membership in the Society entitles you to two issues of our journal Britain and the World, free online access to both current and all archived issues of the journal, the reduced registration rate for the conference, and substantial discounts from our publishing partners.

Please note that registration must be completed online via Paypal or by sending a cheque in U.S. dollars to:

The British Scholar Society
5102 Woodview Avenue
Austin, TX.  78756-1905
USA

We will not have the facilities to accept registration payments at the Conference so this must be done before you arrive.  If you have any questions about conference registration please contact us at editoratbritishscholardotorg  (editoratbritishscholardotorg)  .

V.  Our February Op-Ed Columns:

The British Scholar Society announces the publication of each column when it appears on our Twitter feed and on our homepage at http://britishscholar.org under “News from the Society”.  In case you missed any of these fascinating articles, or simply want to read them again, they are all available by clicking on the individual links below or by visiting our Op-Ed page at http://britishscholar.org/publications/op-ed/.  There you can click on an individual columnist and their personal pages, which include the columns, will appear.

1.  Rebecka Black:  Depicting the War in War Horse
2. Dr. Jodi Burkett:  The National Union of Students
3. Professor Mark Doyle:  A Marriage of Inconvenience
4. Allegra Geller:  Women and Empire – Mary Wollstonecraft
5. Leslie Rogne Schumacher:  Beyond Love-Hate: Rethinking the British-Polish Relationship
6. Michael Talbot:  A Crusade against the Crusades
7. Dr. des. Helene von Bismarck:  The Search for a Western Identity

VI.  Book of the Month

VII.  Featured Scholar

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