Why I don't do contemporary history

Christopher Andrew has just published an official history of MI5. Professor Andrew has a vast reputation amongst those who know about intelligence history in the UK. However his book has been criticised. As Richard Norton Taylor argues in the Guardian, Professor Andrew had access to a large amount of MI5 material but his history is no doubt skewed both because he cannot tell us what he had access to and because he cannot tell us what he was denied access to. I'd expect almost everyone reading this to have an instant reaction to that sentence: there are two very justifiable opposite feelings, the first is that if you do not know what a history is based upon and cannot follow from text to source, and if the historian cannot tell you about his sources, then you might as well not trust him- he is an establishment stooge. The second is that MI5 cannot release to the general public operational details from the last ten or fifteen or even thirty years without possibly endangering lives. I do not think those questions are easily resolved: the tension is both constant and difficult and one of the reasons that I do not specialise in that type of history is because the moral dilemma facing the historian is so clear. I do not know if Professor Andrew's answer is good enough- I do know that the question is not easy.

Religion in Politics

During Book 8, Livy reports an incident that reveals both his intelligence as a historian, his credulity as a beleiver and his insight as an observer of politics. The difficulty for anyone in the modern world reading him is to separate out those three things- or to decide whether they are possibly separated at all. He reports that Annius, a representative of Latium, came to the Roman senate and insulted Rome, the consul Manlius turned to the statue of Jupiter in the senate and asked it to bear witness to the Latin insult. Annius insulted Jupiter himself in the tumult and left the senate. Livy refuses to endorse rumours that he fell down the senate steps, knocking himself unconscious, that as Annius insulted the Senate and the God, a clap of thunder broke in the sky. He mentions these facts but adds the rider that 'such things may well be true, or they may be invented as aptly portraying the wrath of the Gods'. (VIII 4)

Livy reports this, I believe, as is shown by his second sentence to demonstrate part of the art of rule that Roman rumours were part of. These things might have been 'invented' because they would aptly portray the wrath of the Gods- the Gods must be angry and how else could they be but by thunderbolt and bloody nose. But it cannot be an accident that almost immediatly afterwards Torquatus arrives on the scene and announces over Annius's body that the Gods have endorsed a war against Latium. Placing the incidents in the order that Livy writes them and with his expression of doubt, there may be an element of endorsement here for the strategy of using religion, divining the course of events to support the Roman state. On the other hand, Livy's doubt may be a throwaway expression- he does at another moment say these stories are 'almost certain' and Torquatus we are told, without qualification pronounces his sentence over the body of the stunned Annius. In that reading, this is a providential moment in Roman history. Or perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate: Livy wants us to admire the Roman statesmen who divined the act and supported the rumour as well as the Gods who vindicated their own honour.

Cultural Property

Mary Beard has written an interesting article for the TLS focussing on cultural theft. She links together two recent books- the first analysing what the ancients thought about cultural plunder, the latter looking at the same issue two thousand years later in the reign of Emperor Napoleon I. She is right to target this as a vexed issue and brings to light many was in which cultural plunder and restoration is not a simple question- there are many types of coercion and many types of exchange, culture itself often ends up being returned not to where it came from but to somewhere else- so Italian monuments returned in the 19th Century did not go back to their old resting places the small churches but to large museums. Also the original owners of property often acquired it through holding wealth based on immoral actions- slaveholding in the ancient world or straightforward feudalism in the modern. Often that injustice could cross what are now national boundaries: who owns an ancient monument, the decendents of those who owned it, or the decendents of those who built it and how could we work out who was who? Property rights here clash with natural justice. There aren't obvious answers to these questions: but there are obvious relevances to the modern world and the febrile politics of cultural reclamation.

Interviewing the Regius

An interview with Quentin Skinner, who though he never taught me, has taught me through his books and articles and who has been incredibly influential on my approach to history and to thought. I would urge watching it- some of it is personal to Skinner and his circle but much of it is about the world of learning he inhabits- Machiavelli, Hobbes, Wittgenstein and Collingwood- and furthermore the argument he has developed about liberty. Skinner, for those who haven't come across him, was Regius Professor at Cambridge until this year. He is incredibly important as a philosopher of the history of ideas, basing his arguments upon John Austin's theory of illocutory action. He is also an important scholar: for example he traced a concept of liberty back through time which he argued was different to our current one- liberty as a non-dependent state (rather than as an uncoerced action)- this concept Skinner argued was the principle legacy of ancient Rome through the digest of law to early modern philosophers like John Milton. He sees Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a sophisticated demolition of that argument. His work though includes much more- and in these interviews he surveys both it and his influences.

Profile

Ok this is wanton ego boosting- but Norman Geras asked me to do one of his Normblog profiles and he's put it up on his website- I was pretty stunned to be asked, still am pretty stunned to be honest. Some of the questions are answers I'd change today- like what's your favourite blog, that changes depending on the day of the week- others might have been the product of my mood on the day. But you might find it interesting so here's the link!

Review: The Tyrannicide Brief, a life of Justice John Cook

John Cook was Soliciter General of England, Chief Justice of Munster, friend of Oliver Cromwell and several of Cromwell's allies and the lawyer who prosecuted Charles I for treason. He was also a key protagonist in pamphlet debates during the English Civil War, publishing a series of arguments about law reform and one of the most important republican pamphlets- Monarchy No Creature of God's Making- of the interregnum. He deserves a good biography- unfortunately the latest biography of him, by Geoffrey Robertson the human rights lawyer significantly fails to appreciate Cook's role in the English revolution. Robertson is dismissive of the period in which Cook lived, evaulates purely as a modern lawyer rather than demonstrating any political or historical nous and demonstrates at every page his ignorance of and contempt for the many great historical works written on the period. Some of his errors are mitigated: he briefly thanks George Southcombe of Lincoln College Oxford for doing some of the research as well as Ian Wilson- my guess is that Messrs Southcombe and Wilson are responsible for some of the better judgements and most of the research in Robertson's biography whereas Robertson himself is responsible for the overall tenor and some of the most lamentable mistakes.

To start with, Robertson draws a portrait of Cook that is heavily anachronistic and severely biassed. For him Cook was a modern law reformer: we are told that Cook anticipated modern ideas about debt, the NHS, the right of defendents, the union of equity and law and democracy itself. What Robertson never seeks to do is to ask why Cook believed in these things- whether they ressembled accurately what we have today and what Cook was responding to- for him the important thing about Cook is how he anticipated Robertson. This is perhaps the crux of the book for Robertson does not really see Cook as a figure in the historical past but as Robertson avant la lettre: Cook was we are told the man who lit a blaze under tyrants, a blaze that would continue to the days of Milosevic and Pinochet, that he argued that a military commission could not acquit someone of a crime (something Robertson directly relates to the former Yugoslavia) and that he destroyed sovereign immunity. No matter that nowhere in the trial of Charles I or of the rest of the royalists tried and executed in the early months of 1649 was the modern concept of war crimes mentioned, Robertson still beleives that they believed in war crimes in exactly the same way as we did.

Robertson is alert to the fact that Cook focussed on the Bible more than moderns did- a testament possibly to the influence of Southcombe and Wilson- but he is unwilling to note the concommitant, that Coke believed in a godly and not a secular order. Robertson for instance notes that independent Calvinism was a tolerant creed without noting that it was a creed which mandated the exclusion of those who were not saved. The distinction between a national Presbyterian or Anglican Church and the Independent Church supported by Cromwell and Cook was not purely the distinction between a Church which tolerated and one which did not, it was also a distinction between a church which said that all could be saved and everyone should be targetted for God's ministry and one that consigned those that would not hear to everlasting perdition. But there are worse blindnesses than that. Robertson does not understand the arguments for regicide, so much so that he ridicules the chief argument for regicide that the King had behaved against the public interest as an argument 'fit for a tavern'.

Perhaps most damagingly Robertson is incredibly partial. No perspective but that of the puritan (apparantly Presbyterians weren't puritans- a discovery we are all indebted to him for) gets a fair hearing. This is most evident in Ireland. According to Robertson at the seige of Drogheda in 1649 'Civilians were not killed' (p. 229). This is contrary not only to most modern historical opinion- John Morrill, Michael O'Siochru and almost every historian with the exception of Tom O'Reilly who has studied Drogheda agrees that civilians were slain- it is contrary to Oliver Cromwell's own evidence. Cromwell wrote to Parliament saying that many inhabitants were slain and there are accounts from the time that demonstrate that an atrocity did happen and that, contrary to Robertson's account, Cromwell did not act 'reasonably' the day after but the slaughter continued. Morrill and others including myself would argue that Cromwell was not neccessarily the uncomplicated ogre of Irish legend: but a human rights lawyer ought to be more wary of suggesting that there was no abuse. Furthermore though Robertson for instance is right to state that in his declaration of Clonmacnoise Cromwell vowed that Catholics might keep their private beliefs, he fails to quote passages in which Cromwell also said that they could not publically profess their faith. Priests were excluded from surrender terms explicitly. Robertson also passes over the Irish act of settlement with hardly a murmur- a Parliamentary act (of which Cromwell did not neccessarily approve but plenty of those close to Cook did approve of) which condemned the Irish to travel to Connaught in the harvest season. Cromwell in Ireland was not a pleasant man- he may not have been a demon but to paint him as an angel stretches credibility in ways that Robertson, in other contexts would condemn.

But this is of a piece with the rest of his work. Robertson is given to immature and snide comments about those who opposed Cook- the Rump Parliament in 1658-9 were 'good old boys supporting a good old cause'. He says those who opposed the army and Cook in 1647 were 'representatives of war profiteerers'. Bizarrely he even attacks their lack of a sense of humour- as though one might tell at the distance of several centuries! His attachment to his subject means that Robertson is the only author I have ever come across who says that John Cook wrote the Remonstrance of the Army, wrote the act that declared England a Republic, convinced Oliver Cromwell not to take the crown (to be fair he actually says it was Cook's arguments) and had an influence on the US Constitution! Every biographer falls in love to some extent with their subject, but this is infatuation. Robertson has very little perspective on Cook's place in the regime- he was an important lawyer but his arguments were not neccessarily original or unusual, he shared many with the group who employed him to charge Charles. Robertson also makes other mistakes- he mistakes Robert Lilburne for Richard Lilburne, he says that Mary Queen of Scots was guilty of the murder of her husband and says that Cromwell had decided on Charles's trial on the 16th December 1648, not knowing that a peace offer was made with Cromwell's permission by the Earl of Denbigh on the 18th. Such mistakes might be admissable: if Robertson was not also addicted to unfounded speculation, how he can know that John Cook's class decided that James I was a terrible King because he had executed Raleigh, how can he understand that Cook decided it would be better to marry than burn- presumably overcome with lust- and hence married his wife. Where is the evidence for either statement?

This is bad history and bad biography. It is redeemed by a couple of good judgements- Robertson does understand that English Republicanism was biblical and not always Machiavellian, he does understand the importance of the theatre of John Lilburne's trials but there is an arrogance and stupidity that wins out every time. Ultimately Robertson writes this book as a partisan hack might, someone who came to praise John Cook not to understand him. His understanding of the past is occasionally good but more often mistaken and his work is filled with errors. John Cook deserves a good biography- this unfortunately is not the biography he deserves. He was a crucial figure in the history of his period- the pamphlets that Robertson cites are important and in some cases Robertson treats them well- furthermore his record in Ireland deserves further study because Cromwell and Cook believed it was the model for England. But this is not the biography Cook deserves: I try in general when reviewing books to supply a summary of the argument and what it has added to my knowledge, in this case I was merely depressed by Robertson's false judgements and faulty understanding. Furthermore, he needs to learn how to use footnotes- they are used sparingly and randomly in his work and it is difficult to trace assertions back to a source.

There are some very good historians who were not academics- one thinks of Jonathan Sumption or Elliot Vernon in the present generation, Cecily Wedgewood in the previous- but Geoffrey Robertson is not one of them.