History the Nation and Empire: Sniping from the Periphery, Shula Marks

428

Raphael Samuel: current debate about national curriculum leads us to consider

components of national culture and ways constituede
Problematic notion that we should teach children about the consturction of the British
anation.
‘what we want is something a lot more open-ended: how did we come to be where we
are now’. none of the issues can be understoood outside of our understanding of Br as
an imperial and post-imperial power.

But don’t add if given Whig sense of history. ‘nothing could be worse than a
repetition of the high imperial visions of historic mission.’
No londger crudely expressed in terms of bringing civilisation (or capitalism) to a
backward world; assumption that empire was about brigning the undeveloped peoples
of the world the virtues of self-government and the Westminster parliamentary
system. And therefore decolonised when appropriate.

112.
Much prof imperial history is history from above: untouched by history from below
and sociology.
Divorce betw imp and british history was nec for the professionalisation of imp hist,
but unfortunate consequences. Very word is pejorative

With the loss of empire, imperial hisotyr has lost its coherence: the old agenda has
fragmented, the new one fails to fire the imagination.

‘the result is that imperial history seems even more dominated than other branches of
the prof by a diminisheing number of white, middle-aged, middle-class male scholars,
divorced to a considerable extent from the concerns of women’s history, social
history, Third World History – and the impairment is mutual.

Even commonwealth has lost socialist connotations (early in 1900s it aws counter to
imp, capitalist exploitation). Move on with extraordinary historical amnesia.

113.
One cannot understand the nature of the British nation outside fo the imp and post
imperial experience.
The tense marriage between ‘ little Englandism’ and our pretenshion sof Great Power
status are only too manifest’

Need to link empire and nation to need for class unity. EP Thompson: ‘inter-
recruitment, cross-posting and exchange of both ideology and experience’ at home
and in Empire
115.
British identity was surely crucially shaped by its encounters with the other in Ireland,
Africa and the New World.

116.
We need a new agenda. Ways have to be found of unifying history from above with
history from below, structure with process and individual agency, empire with nation.
Need to see the connecctions between things.