Nation, Duty, Character and Confidence: History at Oxford, 1850–1914 | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

Extract

Modern history, introduced to Oxford in the 1850s, was a subject that was hardly ‘modern’. The governing bodies of the university, as well as its teachers, intended history to strengthen and perpetuate the traditional values of liberal education. Beginning with the fall of Rome and concluding in the eighteenth century, history was not an innovative or experimental study of recent, let alone contemporary, issues and events. Instead, the study of history began and continued as an epic illustration of the qualities required of England's governing elite. Within a rapidly changing society that found the future more compelling than the past, modern history organized history, politics, economics and law as testaments to the enduring qualities of individual character and national institutions. All the liberal disciplines at Oxford, as well as those at Cambridge and subsequently at the new civic universities, reflected a national consensus about moral progress and social order which was reinforced by the content of those disciplines. The general frame of mind and expectations could not be attributed uniquely to Oxford. But there can be little doubt about the powerful influence Oxford exercized upon those graduates who left the university to assume careers of considerable national importance. It may be argued that among the various disciplines, none made so earnest and sustained an attempt to produce the right kind of men, fit for any undertaking, as did the Honours School in Modern History.

References

1 Quoted from the evidence of Montague Burrows and Frederick York Powell to the Select Committee on Higher Education, 1867, XIII (23 July 1867), 410, 414.

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4 Wilkinson, Spenser, the first Chichele professor of military history, in his inaugural, The university and the study of war (Oxford, 1909), pp. 25–6Google Scholar. First-class graduates included Archbishop Cosmo Lang, who had also taken a second in Greats; Herbert Samuel; and C. H. K. Marten, the provost of Eton who was knighted for teaching history to Princess Elizabeth.

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34 The only professor to serve as an examiner between the 1850s and 1900 was Stubbs, who examined a total of 506 students during the years 1865, 1866, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1877, 1878, 1882 and 1883. Among the tutors Arthur Johnson was an examiner in 1878, 1879, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1898, 1899 and 1900 of 1,076 students. Richard Lodge came next with a total of 750 students. Computer study, CSUN. There is no data available after 1900.

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36 Between the 1850s and 1900, all the outside examiners were Oxford graduates. Computer study, CSUN.

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72 Powell's, only scholarly publication was an edition of the Icelandic saga, The Corpus Pueticum Boreale (1881)Google Scholar, done in collaboration with the Icelandic scholar Grubrand Vigfusson The Ongines Icelandicae, also written with Vigfusson, was published in 1908 after Powell's death Firth found Powell unstable and conspicuously wanting in ‘business capacity’ Firth to Tout, Tout papers, 25 Nov 1894

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78 Memorandum on the organization of advanced historical teaching in Oxford (12 Jun e 1908).

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83 Southern, Richard W., The shape and substance of academic history (Oxford, 1960), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

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85 His students included three regius professors at Oxford: Maurice Powicke, H. W. C. Davis and V. H. Galbraith; a regius professor at Cambridge, G. N. Clark; the prominent historians A. G. Little, Ernest Barker and Lewis Namier; C. H. K. Marten of Eton and John O'Regan of Marlborough; Richard Lodge, Ramsay Muir, F. D. Ackland, R. C. K. Ensor, R. H. Tawney, G. D. H. Cole and such great statesmen as Curzon, Elgin, Milner and Herbert Samuel. See Smith, M. F., Arthur Lionel Smith, Master of Balliol, 1916–24; a biography and some reminiscences, by his wife (London, 1928)Google Scholar; and by his daughter, Rowy Mitchison, ‘An Oxford family’, privately printed, in A. L. Smith papers.

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97 In 1897 boards of faculties were given authority to direct B.Litt. candidates; in 1907 a supervisor was paid to perform this function; in 1908 the B.Litt. degree in modern history came under the control of a standing committee composed of the regius professor and four members, elected by the Board of Modern History for a term of two years and eligible for re-election. Modern History Reports, 1, 53, 6 Mar. 1908. By April 1909, after three years of deliberation, the board established criteria for the D.Litt. which required publications from the candidates to be judged by at least two judges appointed by the board for each particular case. Modern History, 1, 42, 17 Feb. 1906 and 28 Apr. 1909.

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* The Modern Association's minute books were kindly made available to me by Harry Pitt, Fellow of Worcester and secretary of the history faculty.