A New Plea for an Old Subject? Four Nations History for the Modern Period (original) (raw)
2017, Four Nations Approaches to Modern 'British' History
's famed clarion call for the recovery of the concept of 'British history' and the inauguration of a 'new subject' is now more than forty years old. Pocock lamented a lack of 'histories of Britain' and the dominance of what grievously amounted to 'histories of England', in which the Welsh, Scottish and Irish appeared 'when, and only when, their doings assume[d] power to disturb the tenor of English politics.' This unevenness was compounded by the parallel writing of 'histories of Wales, Scotland [and] Ireland' as 'separate enterprises' within 'separate historiographical traditions', encountered by 'limited and fragmented publics'. i He would later describe Anglocentric and Anglophobic historiographies as two sides of the same coin which, if fused, would afford but a synthetic imitation of a true British history. ii For Pocock, within its more immediate cartographical confines, 'British history' denoted 'the historiography of no single nation but of a problematic and uncompleted experiment in the creation and interaction of several nations.' iii Pocock's challenge was most comprehensively taken up in the 1990s by early modernists who emphasised the need to place given points in history into their 'British' context, to tease out 'forgotten' dimensions and establish more complete narratives. The edited collections generated by a flurry of symposia led to the emergence of what David Cannadine has called a 'school of self-consciously "British" historians'. iv The Pocockian inheritance was conspicuous in these historians' vocabulary: where Pocock's suggested prototype had been for a 'pluralist approach', v proponents of the 'New British History' strove to achieve 'a multiperspectival history' and 'an holistic or organic account' of events in the isles. vi This was, at last, the '"Britishing" of British history', as Keith Robbins deftly described it. vii
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Four Nations Approaches to Modern 'British' History
Four Nations Approaches to Modern 'British' History
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
(2016) "Afterword: What was Britain? Where is its history" History Australia 13:1, 153-159
This is the pre-print version of an article published in HISTORY AUSTRALIA, 13:1 (2016), 153–159 ABSTRACT This article considers the different ways British history has been located and defined in the last forty years, highlighting in particular the shifting and porous nature of its borders. The article reflects on the disinclination of many contributors in this issue to adopt the label of 'British historian'. It points out that, despite the emergence of transnational history, those historians working in Australia on British sources continue to find themselves pulled between the national imperatives of multiple countries. But both transnational and national historical approaches might be seen as attempts to make sense of human lives and institutions made within systems that work by at once connecting and separating localities. The article concludes by arguing that historians working on British sources in Australia need to claim both labels of 'British' and 'Antipodean'. They need to situate themselves both within the supply chains of trade, labour and governance, family, expertise and belief that stretched across space, and within the various politics that sought to locate and contain them in different locations. What was Britain? Where is its history? These questions were at the heart of J. G. A. Pocock's 1975 plea for a new British history, referred to by several contributors in this special issue. They were also central to the 'new imperial history' that developed in the 1990s and that has stimulated so much recent work on Britain and its empire. And now they find a new set of answers in James Vernon's account of the history of Britain. Written at diverse political moments, each of these three historiographical departures approached these questions slightly differently. In the wake of the break-up of empire and the United Kingdom's associated entry into Europe, Pocock was writing against a scholarship that saw 'British' history as largely constituted by the actions, institutions and culture of the English. His vision of 'Britain' was an expansive one – reaching
Assembling Histories: J. G. A. Pocock, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the British World
History Compass, 2009
J. G. A. Pocock's work has made major contributions to the two fields of history and political science. In this article, we investigate the significance of his contributions to a wider field of social science and, in particular, to the discipline of sociology. Pocock's attention to the question of sovereignty and its constant reconfiguration throughout the British world is brought together with the concerns of authors writing in an actor network tradition. Pocock's British world, a world that moves between and connects different archipelagos, is an assemblage, one composed of political arrangements that travel but also have to be stabilised. This process is only ever provisional but is played out, Pocock claims, in a unique way in Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand. Arguing against the claimed certainties of postcolonial historiography he suggests that the Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand case is composed of a range of different futures involving the securing of and ⁄ or loss of sovereignty. These are currently being renarrated by its historians. This process of renarration necessarily involves a public role for the historian and has led Pocock, as commentator from a distance, into making critical interventions in what he refers to as the debate over sovereignty in Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand.
After the British World, The Historical Journal, Feb 2017
[186 words] Within the expanding field of global history, historians often conceive of distinct integrated 'worlds': discrete if permeable cultural units capable of coherent study. Some are defined exogenously through factors such as oceanic geography, others are conceived of endogenously through the cultures and identities of their adherents. In this context this article critically assesses the recent voluminous literature on the British world: a unit increasingly distinguished from British imperial history and defined by the networks and identities of global Britishness. The article argues that the British world, while making valuable contributions to the historiography of empire and of individual nations, fails ultimately to achieve sufficiently clear definition to constitute a distinctive field of study and neglects the crucial concerns of imperial history with politics and power, while flattening time, space and neglecting diversity. While highlighting many key concerns, other methodologies such as settler colonialism, whiteness studies, or revivified imperial history are better placed to take these on than the nebulous concept of a world. More broadly, an analysis of the British world highlights the problems inherent in attempting to define a field endogenously through a focus an identity. 20
Journal of British Studies, 2013
Forum: First Past the Post? The New Post-Revisionism in Early Stuart Political History "Michael Questier, 'Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England' Rei Kanemura, 'Kingship by Descent or Kingship by Election? The Contested Title of James VI and I' Richard Cust, 'Charles I and the Order of the Garter' Thomas Cogswell, 'The Human Comedy in Westminster: The House of Commons, 1604–1629' Peter King, 'Ethnicity, Prejudice, and Justice: The Treatment of the Irish at the Old Bailey, 1750–1825' V. Markham Lester, 'The Effect of Southern State Bond Repudiation and British Debt Collection Efforts on Anglo-American Relations, 1840–1940' Tamson Pietsch, 'Rethinking the British World' Andrew Wells, 'Sinking Feelings: Representing and Resisting the Titanic Disaster in Britain, 1914–ca.1960'"
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Britain and the World: A New Field
roundtable “Britain and the World” (with contributions from Catherine Hall, Miles Ogborn, Priya Satia, Tehila Sasson and James Vernon), Journal for British Studies, 57(4), 2018.