The Afterlife of Idealism: The Impact of New Idealism on British Historical and Political Thought, 1945-1980

304 Pages·2016·2.33 MB·English

by  Admir Skodo (auth.)

THE AFTERLIFE
OF IDEALISM
The Impact of New Idealism on
British Historical and Political
Thought, 1945-1980
Admir Skodo
The Afterlife of Idealism

Admir   Skodo
The Afterlife of
Idealism
The Impact of New Idealism on British Historical
and Political Thought, 1945-1980
Admir   Skodo
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-29384-4 ISBN 978-3-319-29385-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29385-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940919
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is, fi ttingly, the afterlife of my Ph.D. thesis, defended at the
European University Institute in 2011. It stems from my interest in three
fi elds: the theory of history, the practice of history, and the politics of his-
tory. I believe that the three are inseparable, and that the more conscious
historians are of this inseparability, the more they are willing to tarry with
all three, the wider the impact their histories will have in, and outside of,
academia. In this book I provide an intellectual history of a prominent
group of British postwar historians who traversed all three fi elds in their
thought. Over the years I have had the pleasure and privilege of discussing
whole drafts or parts of this book with numerous colleagues, friends, and
mentors. My fi rst thank-you goes to Professor Martin van Gelderen, my
supervisor at the European University Institute. My external supervisor,
Professor Mark Bevir, is another person to whom I owe a great deal. And
I am very grateful to Professor Stephen A. Smith, Professor Jan-Werner
Müller, and Dr. Timothy Stanton, the examining jury members of my
thesis.
At various academic or informal occasions, some very recent, I have
benefi ted from the comments of numerous colleagues and scholars, to
whom I wish to say thanks: Michael Saler, Martin Jay, David Hollinger,
James Vernon, Omnia El Shakry, Norma Landau, Susan Miller, Alan
Taylor, Lars Edgren, Johan Östling, Björn Lundgren, Ulrika Holgersson,
David Dunér, Thomas Kaiserfeld, Victoria Höög, Robert Hopkins,
Robert Stern, Ludmilla Jordanova, Mike Braddick, Frank Ankersmit,
Giuseppina D’Oro, Mathieu Marion, Guy Ortolano, Petri Koikkalainen,
Johan Strang, Ere Nokkala, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Emin Poljarevic,
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ervik Cejvan, Dejan Stjepanovic, Sven Mesinovic, Georges Fahmi, Amr
Adly, Ilse Lazaroms, Fernando Véliz, Tim Peace, Anders Herlitz, and
Michael Kuur Sørensen.
At Palgrave Macmillan I would like to thank the two anonymous ref-
erees. Their constructive critiques and suggestions have helped me sig-
nifi cantly improve the clarity of the book’s argument. A thank-you to my
editor, Kristin Purdy, who has been very helpful in all stages of the pub-
lishing process. All remaining errors and shortcomings of this book are
solely my responsibility.
I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to the fol-
lowing: Mrs. Teresa Smith for allowing me to quote from the papers of
R.G. Collingwood; and the masters, fellows, and scholars of St John’s
College, Cambridge, for allowing me to reproduce material from the
papers of Peter Laslett. I also wish to thank Mrs. Fiona Colbert, who
helped me locate these papers. The unpublished texts by John Burrow are
under the copyright of the Estate of John Burrow, and I wish to thank
the Executors of the Estate for granting me the right to quote from them.
A thank-you to all my friends and family in Sweden; the Bay Area; and
Sycamore, Illinois, to whom I am grateful for having helped me appreciate
life beyond, and within, academia. Finally, I am grateful beyond words for
the unfailing love and support I have received from my wife, Christine.
Admir Skodo
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Revisionist Potential: Historical Thought from 
Absolute to New Idealism 21
3 The Philosophical Moment in Postwar Historiography 77
4 Revisionist Whiggism: Revisions of the English Past
from the Tudors to the Victorians 121
5 The Political Thought of Revisionism 181
6 Conclusion 241
Appendix: Short Biographies of Key New Idealists and 
Early Postwar British Historians 247
Bibliography 257
Index 289
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
NEW IDEALISM AND BRITISH INTELLECTUAL LIFE
Even though R.G. Collingwood’s and Michael Oakeshott’s lasting con-
tributions to the philosophy of history and political theory have been reg-
istered, their impact on British post-World War II historical and political
thought has been seen as marginal. 1 It is symptomatic that Christopher
Parker’s T he English Historical Tradition , the only systematic study to seri-
ously consider idealism as a tradition informing British historical thought,
dismisses the new idealism from the theory and practice of British postwar
historiography: ‘Of course, most historians concerned themselves not at
all with either Oakeshott or Collingwood.’ 2 The ever perceptive Perry
Anderson has noted the absence of this type of idealism in discussions on
postwar British ideologies: ‘Anglo-Scottish Idealism of the early years of
this century […] has become one of the least recollected episodes of the
native past.’ 3
This book argues that the new idealism of Collingwood, Oakeshott,
and to a lesser extent their Italian counterpart, Benedetto Croce, had an
unmistakable impact on the historical and political thought of the leading
British historians and public fi gures E.H. Carr, G.R. Elton, Isaiah Berlin,
Peter Laslett, Henry Pelling, George Kitson Clark, Oliver MacDonagh,
Asa Briggs, and Maurice Cowling. 4 These historians are major representa-
tives of what I will call (new idealist) revisionist historiography. 5 Most of
these revisionists may be forgotten today, but they held prominent places
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1
A. Skodo, The Afterlife of Idealism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29385-1_1
2 A. SKODO
in British academia and public life in the fi rst three decades of the postwar
era. More importantly, with their emphasis on the plural and contingent
forms of social and political life, and their discussions on the nature of his-
tory, the revisionists helped shape the historical profession in a way that is
recognizable even today. The impact of the new idealism and revisionism
extended even to Marxist-inspired historiography, which made a point of
incorporating culture and agency as historical categories in response to the
pressure created by the idealists and revisionists to acknowledge the con-
tingent and pluralistic quality of social life and historical interpretation. 6
But while Marxism, a nineteenth-century tradition, is today considered
a signifi cant intellectual force in postwar British historical and political
thought, 7 idealism is not. This book argues that unless we consider new
idealism as a major tradition in the postwar era, our understanding of the
origins and content of postwar British historical and political thought will
remain incomplete and lopsided.
The postwar period in British historiography has been surprisingly
little studied. 8 This shortage of studies is striking since the period was,
according to David Cannadine, the ‘Golden Age’ of British twentieth-
century historiography, 9 refl ecting, in Eric Hobsbawm’s oft-cited words,
the broader Golden Age of the European twentieth century. 10 This was
a time ‘when Clio never had it so good’ owing, in material terms, to the
massive university expansion issuing from the educational reforms of the
early postwar welfare state. 1 1
Cannadine has made a very perceptive observation regarding the
logic of Golden Age (including revisionist) scholarship. The logic of
this scholarship lies in radically revising or strongly modifying liberal-
whig 1 2 historiography by drawing on the nascent social sciences and
political norms from postwar British society. 1 3 Golden Age historians
viewed the English past as a non-linear process of fractures, breaks, and
discontinuities that are too complex to be conducive to a belief in a uni-
tary English political culture able to withstand, even harness, rebellious
social discontent and political opposition. In this context, Christopher
Hill argued for the ‘Puritan revolution’ as a disjunctive break in English
history; Elton spoke of the ‘Tudor revolution’ in English govern-
ment; Laslett recovered an early modern world that ‘we have lost’;
E.P. Thompson unearthed the ‘making’ of the English working class;
George Kitson Clark spoke of the ‘making’ of Victorian Britain; and
Oliver McDonagh championed the ‘administrative revolution’ of the
nineteenth century. 1 4