What are academic historians for?
Wales Business — By Dr Martin Johnes on May 27, 2010 7:00 am
History is more, much more than pages in an old book
THE BBC is currently commissioning a major new television series on the history of Wales. No doubt this will be widely welcomed, but some academics are rather snooty about television history. They see it as obsessed by the gruesome and the dramatic, uninterested in the complexity.
Quite apart from the snobbery of this position, it is not sustainable in an era of spending cuts. Public expenditure needs to be justified and it is difficult to justify spending money on researching the past when the results are only published in obscure journals or expensive books not even available at the local library.
Consequently, academics in all disciplines are now suddenly expected by the funders of higher education to demonstrate and measure the ‘impact’ of their research on those working outside universities. For those in the sciences, computing and engineering, this can be relatively straightforward. Their research is more likely to have obvious ‘real world’ applications and taxpayers are far less prone to question the sense of public investment in areas such as medical research.
For academics in the humanities, the idea of public impact is less straightforward. How can a historian actually demonstrate that his or her research has had an impact? They tend to resort to talking in vague terms about cultural enrichment or developing a popular appreciation of heritage. To evidence this they are increasingly looking for opportunities to turn their research into museum exhibitions or to act as consultants on television documentaries. They are setting up websites to tell the wider world about what they are up to.
The problem with this is that just because someone downloaded your paper, accessed your website or heard you in the media, it does not mean your research actually made an impact, that it has influenced people or changed their thinking. Measuring that is far more difficult. As all good historians know, audiences don’t always receive things in the way an author intended.
The reality is that it can take years before a book or article about history has any impact. If it happens at all, it is through the trickling down of knowledge that occurs when people are taught by an academic, or read his or her papers and then use this knowledge when they teach, make documentaries, work in museums or just discuss history with their friends. It is a slow, ad hoc process. It can be years before research and ideas become accepted, especially if they run contrary to powerful and long standing myths. Even when a historian’s ideas are accepted, there may well be subtle differences in understanding from what was originally conceived.
Measuring this process of ‘impact’ is nigh on impossible, but it is an important process. History has the power to challenge preconceptions, to ask awkward questions and to promote a nuanced culture. In Wales this is especially important. History unsettles any simple idea of Wales as a conquered nation, a radical nation or a Welsh-speaking nation. The past is much messier than that and an appreciation of that should undermine any attempt to build an exclusive or narrow view of what Wales is.
But bursting the myths – whether they are of Glyndwr as national redeemer, the English as evil oppressors, or the Tories as an alien party that closed all the mines – does not mean people cannot be inspired by history.
The courage and resilience with which the hardships of war and unemployment were faced is a sign of what ordinary people can do. Understanding this should encourage us to treat those who endured those traumas with respect. History can boost citizenship by making us less cynical of the institutions of democracy. The history of the struggle for the vote should make us understand why voting matters. The career of Aneurin Bevan demonstrates that politicians can make lives tangibly better. The recent rebirth of Cardiff, no matter how partial it has been, shows that local government, so often derided or even ignored, can make a difference.
Historians need to get those messages out there. It might be very difficult for them to measure how they are influencing wider thinking, but that should not mean they should not speak to the wider world.
There was a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, when Welsh history was rather fashionable. Its television shows were prime time fodder, at least one of its journals was widely read outside academia and one or two of its purveyors were even a little famous.
Today, Welsh history has retreated back into its academic confines and the scepticism surrounding how ‘impact’ can be measured is not encouraging them out. Ironically, it was a system in which university research was assessed by perceived notions of quality, such as publishing in elitist places, that encouraged the retreat of historians from public culture in the first place. So too did the reluctance of English publishers to publish anything on Wales. Welsh publishers, perhaps, have not done their bit either. Too often they are too cautious and too conservative. Perhaps they are even cushioned from having to market books too extensively by the availability of publication grants.
History should teach us that Wales survived because it matters to people, not because it means anything specific. In building the Wales of the 21st Century, we need to embrace our social, cultural and political diversity and realise that this can underpin rather than undermine our sense of being a nation. If historians in Wales can play some part in developing that then they will have made an impact and justified the public money spent on what they do.
Tags: BBC, history, research
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26 Comments
“THE BBC is currently commissioning a major new television series on the history of Wales. ” How come no programme commissioners ever make MINOR new television series? They’re ALL ‘major’, aren’t they?
Really good piece, Martin. Thanks for writing it for us. You’ve raised some interesting questions, particularly in light of the Education Minister’s spirited assessment of Welsh universities this week. It makes it more relevant than ever. Hopefully, I’ll see you next week when I’m in town.
This is a really excellent piece.
I have long maintained that ‘lessons can and should be learned from history’ . Our current political class are abysmally ignorant of this subject. I hope also that you include biography in with history as this is a more digestible and human form of history/public culture.
Your comments on the imposed requirement/pressure for academics to ‘show/demonstrate an impact’ are horribly true and the situation is exacerbated by the poor performance of grant addicted publishers. However, some blame must lie with academics themselves particularly those that cannot communicate effectively (or perform) using available media channels whether that is documentary, film,TV, or new media Internet. Their research is important but if it is not effectively communicated then it may disappear.
After all, history is rewritten daily.
Cambria: academics are certainly partly to blame for the lack of popular engagement with history. Some are poor at communicating, some are lost in jargon and some are simply not interested. One welcome development is the http://www.historyandpolicy.org/ website which has lots of short and clear papers on the historical lessons for policy today.
Thank you for this reference. Found this article on credit unions which is very useful.
Read the article carefully and you will see the usual mantras of the British anti-Welsh Left.
History unsettles “any simple idea of Wales as a [...] conquered nation [...] a Welsh-speaking nation. [...] an exclusive or narrow view of what Wales is.”
We need to go “bursting the myths – [...] of Glyndwr as national redeemer [...] However the career of Aneurin Bevan demonstrates that politicians can make lives tangibly better.”
I’m cutting out the syntax so we can carry out a bit of discourse analysis!
I’m sure that we can all reach for our Foucault and realise what the “real” message here is all about.
Normally, I’m accused of wanting to use history to build Wales’s sense of its nationhood, this week I’m accused of being part of the British anti-Welsh left. Understanding the complexity of the Welsh past and present does not mean Welsh nationhood is being attacked.
Simon,
One simple question: to what end?
This whole idea that people in Wales can be pushed into political allegiances unwittingly because of one handsome forked tongue or another has been maintained in the Welsh blogosphere for a number of years now, and has no basis in reality whatsoever.
Apart from the fact that this claim always falls at the first, lowest challenge, it is also deeply, deeply insulting to the intelligence of the Welsh electorate.
Welsh-speakers are sick and tired of Left Wing intellectuals constantly attacking the Welsh-language community as “exclusive”, re:
“History unsettles any simple idea of Wales as a conquered nation, a radical nation or a Welsh-speaking nation. The past is much messier than that and an appreciation of that should undermine any attempt to build an exclusive or narrow view of what Wales is.”
Why not construct the English-language community as “exclusive”? Why not construct Aneurin Bevan as “elitist”? In fact in an article on the politics of historiography, why bring up comments about the Welsh language at all?
Arguing that the construct of Wales as Welsh-speaking in the past is a false one (which with the execption of the geographical margins and the post-1536 Anglicisation of the elite, it was, until the early-mid 19th century), means that people are sold the lie that the idea of Wales as Welsh-speaking today would also be “exclusive”.
And this impacts on public policy today and is used to deny the Welsh language community their civil rights: in citizenship, in education, in higher education, in the maintenance of the Welsh-language community in general.
See, for example, the disgraceful decision yesterday to deny children in Canton, Cardiff their right to a Welsh-medium education because in the rhetoric of post-nationalism and associated discourses, the English-language education system is “multicultural” and “inclusive”, whilst Welsh-language schools are “monocultural” and “exclusive”.
Anyway I’m off to Ynys Enlli for the week, so this is my only comment on the issue. Best wishes all.
Welsh-speakers are sick and tired of Left Wing intellectuals constantly attacking the Welsh-language community as “exclusive”
Complete presumption. I spend my entire life around Welsh speakers and I’ve never heard anything of the sort. This claim is as fatuous as your selective editing was grasping, and paranoid. Wales has moved beyond all this nonsense.
Welsh-speakers are sick and tired of Left Wing intellectuals constantly attacking the Welsh-language community as “exclusive”
Complete presumption. I spend my entire life around Welsh speakers and I’ve never heard anything of the sort. This claim is as fatuous as your selective editing was grasping, and paranoid. Wales has moved beyond all this nonsense.
Duncan perhaps you should spend a little time where Simon works (and my better half does) it’s a pretty rampant viewpoint in many university departments……
“Wales has moved beyond all this nonsense”. Afraid not, Duncan. Witness current events in Cardiff education policy, Edwina Hart’s comments on Welsh medium education during her leadership bit or the implications of Sibani Roy’s recent open letter in the Western Mail to Ieuan Wyn Jones. Not sure “I’m sick and tired”, just underwhelmed at intellectuals who present themselves as trying to shake things up bracketing “Welsh language”, “exclusive” and “narrow” so closely together and elevating Aneurin Bevan. All so very anti-establishment, isn’t it, really subverting the hegemony…..
Ah, I see what’s happened. Somebody uses the term “Welsh language” on the internet, and all of a sudden the comments surge and we’re on a war footing.
As far as I can make out, Martin’s piece has nothing whatsoever to do with the Welsh language. It isn’t mentioned anywhere in the piece. Simon Brooks reads it through goggles of a certain kind, makes a leap in assumption and, before you know it, Martin finds himself in a latter day rogues gallery, alongside the First Minister and Sibana Roy, maintained by perhaps 15 or 20 people online, who believe they speak for the Bro. Some of them do it well, and some of them see anti-language types (if there is such a thing) everywhere.
I don’t know why Sibana Roy and Canton schools reorganisation have been linked to what was simply a comment about challenging historical conclusions. If Martin has made a remark about how Waterloo, the Armada or Agincourt weren’t quite the victories the books claim, would anybody have challenged him?
So, for the record, I work for a Plaid AM and I don’t recognise the picture that Sibana Roy paints. I have also had four children pass through Radnor School and not only think the Welsh Government’s decision was wrong, but that it has badly mismanaged the situation, and that the council has every right to be angry.
And that’s it, folks. We are expecting Menna Machreth to write for us shortly. That is more likely to provide a better debating platform on the Welsh language than this piece. At least no one will be making assumptions about the author’s real intentions.
In the examination of subtle messaging in this piece it has been totally missed that the image at the top is on a different side of the page. Which is the real subliminal intention on the part of the editors.
Oh well, you can’t control how what you are trying to say will be interpreted, but I would add that if I’m a member of the ‘British anti-Welsh left’ then I’m probably its only member who speaks Welsh and voted Plaid at the last election.
There certainly is a need for academic historians, in the pursuit of maintaining some sort of quality. I have started (and put down half way) a History of Scotland which was written by a journalist. Glossy smart illustration on the cover but very poorly written. Little references and weak insights.
There is a need for modern historians who can collate and analyse modern history. A Welsh Tacitus.
I say this as a history grad who saw the value of ‘good history’ and bad.
Sometimes the best history books have the least impact. Funders are up a sausage if they are looking for impact all of the time. A good history book quietly gives the evidence from both sides and gives possibilities of what happened (with lots of refs).
Personally I would leave the likes of Glyndwr and other distant heroes alone. Maybe comment upon new archaeological findings. Modern history has huge potential for academic historians – don’t leave it to the newspapers.
“Oh well, you can’t control how what you are trying to say will be interpreted, but I would add that if I’m a member of the ‘British anti-Welsh left’ then I’m probably its only member who speaks Welsh and voted Plaid at the last election.”
Hopefully this discussion will make you think twice. Before you once again support people who scream prejudice at the slightest analysis of their beliefs.
“Before you once again support people who scream prejudice at the slightest analysis of their beliefs.”
A sweeping, incorrect assessment of Plaid’s membership.
“A sweeping, incorrect assessment of Plaid’s membership.”
As maybe Duncan.
Yet anyone whose understanding of Welsh Nationalism was based on these pages, would have to agree with me.
Take this article: a reasonable and interesting article is lambasted, because the author suggests that history is complicated. Let’s face it – this is by no means the first time something like this has happened.
Michaelt, I see your point now. You’re right, we’ve had quite a few of these rows now, and we’re by no means the worst website for them. I wouldn’t go as far as to accuse those who scour the web looking for a cultural nationalism dust up of a disservice to the party. I’m a member, and I’m far closer in opinion to Martin when it comes to examining our past. But then all parties are broad churches, I guess.
In other words . . . Academics should get off their lazy arses and do something relevant. No sense squirreling your works away in ever smaller niches no one gives a shite about. Make it useful, you’re spending the taxpayers’ money.
Dos centavos
I’ve no particular gripe against Martin Johnes’ defence of academia, nor of historical complexity. In many ways, it’s a very fine article, although wrong (in my opinion) in its theoretical take on national identity. In particular I dislike the use of the word “exclusive” when used about language. (One might quibble too with the use of the word “diversity” in the last paragraph, which can sometimes be a loaded anti-Welsh term, but I’m very happy to accept that this is not the case in this article). Anyway, in my view, the word “exclusive” has become the keyword used to attack the Welsh-language community in post-devolution Wales.
The idea that the Welsh language is “exclusive” was originally used by notoriously anti-Welsh sociologists to convey the incorrect idea that language is “really” just about ethnic boundary making. Therefore, language just became another form of “racism”. But it is now being used by opinion formers and politicians of all sorts.
For example, Edwina Hart on Welsh-medium education:
“I want Welsh medium education to be genuinely available to all who want it and Welsh medium schools to be genuinely open to all who wish to attend. I worry that some schools do not properly reflect the communities in which they are located. Why do some Welsh medium schools in the centres of our biggest cities – Newport, Cardiff and Swansea – have so few black faces in their classrooms? The worst thing that can happen to the language is that it becomes the exclusive preserve of a self-appointed minority.”
The word “exclusive” is the key term here which makes possible the link between language and the idea of a (racist?) “self-appointed minority” (Welsh-speakers?/supporters of Welsh medium education?).
I wouldn’t mind so much if this wasn’t impacting on public policy, but as we know in Cardiff, unfortunately it is.
Is History unsettling? Of course it is for those working in schools and universities. But for the vast majority of the population who have been born and brought up in a visual culture, history, especially British history, is part and parcel of their mental furniture. They may have to poke around to find this furniture, but once found it is undoubtedly comfortable and reassuring. It is certainly not unsettling.
They may have to poke even further to find anything associated with the history of Wales. Most people won’t even bother. This is just as true of the people of Wales as it is of the people of England. The truth of the matter is that after 150 years of state education, and 20 years of national curriculum history with Welsh history being the core element in our primary schools and secondary schools up to the age of 14 (after that it is optional, the number of pupils choosing to continue with it being dependent on the inspirational talent of the individual teacher), the Welsh are at best uncertain of their own history, and at worst utterly indifferent to it. Why is this? There are many complex reasons, but here’s two to get on with:
1. During the last 50 years Wales has become totally disconnected from its own history. The level of discontinuity, particularly during the last 20 years, has been startling. Nonconformity and industry- the pit and the chapel- are the twin pillars of modern Wales. These pillars are no more. They have turned into dust. This is one reason why people see no relevance in history. But it goes deeper then that of course, because the golden age of the “Welsh way of life” was, intellectually speaking, barren and unproductive; a country given to metaphysical speculation that had utterly no connection to the Wales of that day; and as a consequence, history, just like today, was seen as an irrelevance; quaint and interesting to antiquarians only.
2. What historical consciousness as exists today is part and parcel of the “bread and circuses” of British life. We live in a visual culture; we can’t get our heads around a literary culture. Television, in other words, is the number one factor; in fact, it is the only elephant in the room. The genius of the visual as opposed to the literary culture is that it functions like a sponge. It absorbs the viewer and within a thrice, he or she is captured. The obvious reason for this of course is that our culture is fundamentally irrational. Indeed it is anti-rational. Which is why it is so easy for the BBC to produce history programmes that are easy on the eye and even easier on the mind.
Take the recent series the Seven Ages of Britain for instance. This is history as spectacle. Everything is bound up with objects. Each object has a history and that history of course is quintessentially Anglocentric; not Anglocentric in the ethnic sense (heaven forbid that ethnicity should ever be associated with the English; they are above such horrible things, things fit for erstwhile “small nations” à la David Starkey, an historian whom I like very much since he is the only one who is prepared to stir the pot) but Anglocentric in the “proper” sense, which is to say that it charts the rise and rise of the English state morphing into the British state but still remaining essentially Anglo-Saxon.
It is of course extremely exciting stuff. English history, let’s face it, is much sexier then Welsh history. It is a story about kings and queens, soldiers and politicians, each character having the pleasure of being able to wield power. In Welsh history, the exercise of power came to an end a very, very long time ago. The Middle Ages was the only time in Welsh history when blood and guts and power were in the ascendancy. Sadly, medieval history cannot be studied in Welsh schools- it is not offered at GCSE nor at A level. Yet it really could be exciting. To give one example: the excellent historian Hywel Williams has recently brought out a book on Charlemagne – a first class read. Equally classic reads are the books written by the great medievalist Rees Davies. But this is a closed world for us in Wales. In the meantime, the Welsh are left to the tender mercies of the BBC entertainment and brainwashing industry. As far as its history programmes are concerned, Wales is utterly invisible. No wonder that this leaves the ordinary Welsh viewer in a state of stupefaction concerning the history of his/her own country.
Only one decent TV history series has ever been produced. Ironically it was a series on the history of Wales. It was made in 1984 at the time of the Miners’ Strike and it was produced not by the BBC but by Harlech Television (three cheers for private enterprise!). It was called “The Dragon Has Two Tongues” and it was presented by Wales’ greatest and most thought provoking historian Gwyn A Williams and by the broadcaster Wynford Vaughan Thomas. The series took the form of a dialogue between the two men, with each one espousing differing viewpoints on successive periods in Welsh history. It was a thought provoking and pioneering series. Rather than allowing the BBC to produce another series on the history of Wales, which in all probability, will be a kind of Seven Ages of Britain writ small, i.e. history as a series of comforting image; The Dragon has Two Tongues should be resurrected and shown again. The sad fact is that even it were too be rescreened, I doubt very much whether people would bother to tune into it, so inured are they to the mind numbing comforts associated with bread and circus television.
Hefin
Couldn’t agree with you more on The Dragon Has Two Tongues. I saw a re-run of it (ironically, while in Dublin) and it was a brilliant piece of television. The format is one that should be used again.
Can I suggest that John Davies’s ‘History of Wales’ is thrown into the mix, an interpretation that does not follow the ‘kings and queens’ model, covers all ages and was actually written in Welsh and translated, so would hopefully not be considered as Brit left anti-Welsh.
It is a shame that it has taken BBC so long to tackle the history of Wales and let’s face it, they wouldn’t have done it if the Scottish version had not been done. They are prepared to take risks with Dr Who or Life of Mars, but are extremely conservative when it comes to programmes about Wales – unless Derek or Jamie are in it of course.
I believe that they are proposing 10 hours to match BBC Scotland and may go for 20 half hour slots rather than 10 one hour slots. Whether they are prepared to be as radical as HTV’s brilliant effort 25 years ago, is another matter. On the issue of Nye Bevan and on the anniversary of his death, why haven’t we seen a blockbuster film about this great Welshman? He was arguably the greatest democratic socialist in history, yet does he really get the recognition?
Excellent article and good thought-provoking responses. I agree with the thrust of the article in that historians cannot hide away from the communities that pay for them. Yet high quality academic history is vital too. In my community in North Wales we have raised funds to produce a ‘semi-academic’ history of the town (in this case since Victorian times). We are giving a copy of the book free to every household. The town in question has changed almost beyond recognition; we felt that a serious investigative history attempting to identify the forces that have shaped the town would enrich civic life. We have sufficient additional copies to give to people when they move into the community.
So far the process of researching and writing the volume has led to the creation of a new historical society. It has also led to a better understanding of the differences between history and heritage. The book itself is published next week at an event which will include an exhibition of artefects and photographs. The main point here is that popular history does not have to be just collections of old photographs and misplaced nostalgia. Done properly academic (or semi academic) history can provoke interest and debate amongst a large section of the community.