The Misuse and Misunderstanding of History

History, as I wrote in a previous blog post, often plays a significant role in political rhetoric.  This rhetorically nebulous concept supposedly teaches us lessons, confirms the legitimacy of our nation states, and makes the victorious outcomes of wars inevitable.  Too often in the political arena, history is used to camouflage broader issues and avoid discussing problematic deeds.  This was a realisation I was reminded of again while reading the BBC article ‘CIA interrogation report: Battle lines being drawn’.  The article discussed the tensions surrounding the release of a 480-page summary of the Senate report detailing the interrogation methods and results of the post 9/11 operations against al-Quaeda.  Referred to as “Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation”, the CIA program has generated a huge amount of criticism following the detention and harsh interrogation of terror suspects. 

There has been a considerable amount of backlash against U.S. foreign policy surrounding this report.  However, there continue to be individuals including former president George Bush Jr. and former CIA Director Michael Hayden who attempt to dismiss the contents of the report before its publication.  Hayden’s statement that “We’re not here to defend torture. We’re here to defend history,”[1] is a misuse and misunderstanding of the role that history and historians play. His passing reference to history as a larger than life, yet vague concept fails to engage in any meaningful way with the potential implications of the report.  Additionally, the suggestion that history is an inherently unassailable concept implies the defensibility of any number of dubious past deeds.  The release of historic documents, or in this case a summary of those documents, must be taken as an opportunity to critically engage with a country’s past decisions, not the chance to dismiss uncomfortable information that reflects poorly on a nation’s self-perceived image. 

The recent agreement between the U.S. and France to a compensation package for Holocaust victims who were transported to concentration camps during the Second World War by the French state rail company SNCF highlights the contradiction in the willingness to engage with some historical ‘errors’ but not others.  The willingness of U.S. lawmakers to attempt to exclude SNCF from rail contracts because of the role that it played highlights the lasting power and memory of historical wrongs.  That discussions involving potentially painful parts of our national histories are difficult is not at issue.  It took years for European memory to remember the Holocaust as a racial, rather than as a more comfortable, political persecution.  Still, history is not a celebration of a nation’s best moments, but should aim to be critical and unbiased.   The divulgence of historical documents and the questioning of national memory and identity is sometimes a painful process. However, what is worse is the stoking of a culture of national forgetfulness and the tendency to avoid recent historical mistakes for the safe haven of history long passed. 

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[1] Anthony Zurcher, ‘CIA interrogation report: Battle lines being drawn,’ BBC News, December 8, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-30383600

Natural Disaster: Arguing the Eastern European Metaphor

Hostility towards immigration is nothing new.  Following the First World War, French Alliance vice president Paul Haury rejected the idea of replenishing France’s population through immigration, citing the dire consequences evident in the United States. “The exploits of gangsters and child murderers demonstrate that there is something disordered in that country, whose traditions have been swamped by a flood of too many heterogeneous immigrants.”[1]  However, what is troubling today is the tone and imagery that the current immigration debate continues to take in Britain.  Historical and current discussions of immigration and immigrants constructed through the employment of a highly negative emotive, and vague rhetoric make attempts to have a viable discourse on this topic, at the very least, a struggle.  Ingrained associations comparing immigration with being ‘swamped’, ‘flooded’, and ‘overrun’, encourage a culture of negativity in which studies that argue otherwise, are quickly dismissed and “anecdotes end up trumping statistics.”[2]

How can history help us to understand the current debates? Historical studies can demonstrate a myriad of similarities between current political and public discussions surrounding immigration and other campaigns that have focused its rhetoric onto the threat of an ‘other’, particularly in times of economic and political uncertainty.  In my own work, I recall the themes present following the French defeat in June 1940, calling for a ‘National Revolution’ in order to restore a society that had been crippled and rotted from within.  The Vichy leadership, under the paternal figure of Marshal Pétain, called for a restoration of the ‘natural order’, destroyed as a result of ‘decadence’.  This restoration was based upon the values of family, work, and nation and relied upon a rhetoric that equated the national revolution as the cure for a sick nation.  Its assumptions that the current state of France was an aberration, made justifications to return France to the French seem natural, and inevitable.  On June 16, 1940, a law was created making it permissible to strip a naturalized French citizen of this nationality, and on July 22, a commission was set up to review all naturalizations granted since 1927 and to strip those of French citizenship who were thought to be ‘undesirable.’[3]  This event and the rhetoric that accompanied it can highlight a number of important themes and troubling definitions that must be taken into consideration, not only in the present immigration debate, but in current issues more generally.

Nigel Farage’s Radio 4 statement, "If you said to me, do you want to see another 5 million people come to Britain, and if that happened we would all be slightly richer, I would say, do you know what? I would rather we were not slightly richer … I do think the social side of this matters more than the pure market economics," is problematic in that it implies, but fails to address the idea of retaining Britain for the British.[4]  Farage’s argument rests on a vague reference to ‘the social side’, without ever addressing what this entails or who would be a welcome player.   Similarly, Ukip’s party manifesto, under a heading of “Free Speech and Democracy” to “teach children positive messages and pride in their country” and to put “Britain first” by returning[5] “self government to the British people”, encourages assumptions that link free speech with patriotic sentiments and a Britain is best mentality, rather than fostering a real and critical dialogue about what it means to be British, how to cope with real changes in the nation, and the role that diversity plays in this definition.[6] Additionally, assumptions that there is a ‘natural’ or ‘equilibrium’ state of a nation that we must return to tend to be backward looking in nature, focusing upon a rosy image of what is perceived as ‘the good old days’.  

History, and the rise of the modern nation state has demonstrated that it is too easy to focus a debate on an ‘us vs. them’ rhetoric.  As academics, we need to foster a shift in the terms of argument.  We need a new rhetoric on immigration that employs a fresh, and forward looking language, and forces us to define potentially problematic terms and ideas instead of reinforcing old stereotypes and associations based on ‘the yellow peril’ or most lately stemming the tide of Eastern Europeans. 

Chris Riddell, The Observer Comment Cartoon, The Observer, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2014/nov/23/ukip-immigration

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[1] Philip Nord, France’s New Deal (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 51

[2] Owen Jones, ‘Statistics Alone Won’t Win the Immigration Debate’, The Guardian, November 5, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/05/statistics-immigration-debate-european-migrants-uk-20bn

[3] Muel-Dreyfus, Francine. Vichy and the Eternal Feminine: A Contribution to a Political Sociology of Gender, Translated by Kathleen A Johnson (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001), 85

[4] John Harris, ‘It's not about the money: what Ed Miliband and David Cameron can learn from Nigel Farage’, The Guardian, January 10, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/10/farage-political-nose-gdp-immigration

[5] My italics

[6] UKIP, What We Stand For, http://www.ukip.org/issues

This Week at the Archives...

This week, in an acknowledgement to a number of looming deadlines, I would like to share some short and hopefully entertaining tidbits that I uncovered while working at the National Archives last week. 

Mishaps and Delays to the Anglo-Free French operations at Dakar, September 1940:

Following the collapse of French resistance in June, there was much anticipation whether resistance would continue in the colonies.  However, while French Equatorial Africa was more amenable to de Gaulle’s Free French forces, recruitment and general support for the group was sadly lacking.   Nevertheless, in early August, discussions were begun regarding attempts to capture key West African territory.  They eventually evolved into Operation Menace, a plan to install de Gaulle at the West African port city of Dakar, Senegal.  However, the plans were plagued with uncertainties due to conflicting reports on the level of support in the region for de Gaulle, as well as more mundane issues. 

It was these less dramatic issues that served to remind me of the potentially colourful nature that mishaps and drama can lend to historical research. While looking at the development of the operation, I discovered that several ships, manned with French crews, were late in sailing, delaying the timeline by three days.  Upon closer research, the official report revealed that this delay was due to “misbehaviour by some of the French crews.”  Crews refused to sail until their arrears in pay had been addressed, improvements to messing were made, and crucially, the captain’s missing mistress was found.[1]  In a later report, compiled by Major P.R. Smith-Hill, he specified that the sailors had demanded improved rations on board, consisting of champagne and fois grois.[2]  It was noted that “these matters were adjusted”, however the report sadly did not specify where the Captain’s mistress had been found, or how and why she had gone missing. 

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[1] National Archives, Kew, WO 232/13, “The Dakar Operation, August and September 1940,” 8

[2] National Archives, ADM 199/907, Admiralty Record Office, “Unofficial Account of Operation, Major P.R. Smith Hill, Royal Marines,” 249

Making History: What We Remember

On June 13, 1940, then French Premier Paul Reynaud addressed the French and British publics, in a broadcast that received full coverage in major British newspapers.  He vowed, “We will fight before Paris; we will fight behind Paris; we will fight in the provinces and, if we are driven out, we will go to North Africa, and if necessary, to our possessions in America.”[1]  The following day, the Queen addressed the women of France saying, “A nation defended by such men and loved by such women must sooner or later attain victory.”[2][3]  Given the events of the following days, these valiant and courageous words found little room in historical memory.  They were overshadowed by larger events, most notably the French defeat, and Reynaud’s poignant words were left behind.  Churchill’s well-known (and similarly constructed) June 4 speech, on the other hand, is not only still quoted today, but is attributed as one of the greatest speeches in British History: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans…we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.”[4]

Churchill’s speech ‘made history’, it is claimed.  However, this term and idea, ‘making history’, is so often thrown around without much thought to what it actually means.  This seemingly innocent phrase punches above its weight, implying that an event or even a moment stood above the rest, predestined to enter the ranks of national memory, making up and even defining the context in which a nation understands itself.  In the days following Reynaud’s speech and the French collapse, the Guardian, which had previously championed his words and the valiant struggles of the French, turned on his efforts, claiming that they were “interpreted…as “pre-capitulationist” and it had a bad effect on the troops.”[5]  The same article went on to blame Reynaud’s delivery style for the ultimate ineffectiveness of the speech: “Reynaud was full of good intentions, but he lacked great dynamic vigour and failed to inspire the people as Clemenceau would have done.”[6]  It is notable that Reynaud was compared to a predecessor who was ultimately victorious, as also it is crucial to note that the emphasis was placed not on the material factors of the fight, but on the strength of Reynaud’s actual words.  Clemenceau made history as a victor, just as Churchill would do.  It was this victory that fully confirmed the rhetorical value of his speeches. 

Ultimately, ‘making history’ is a misleading concept, which oversimplifies events and often attributes a sense of preordained destiny and greatness to an individual or group’s words, actions, or outcome.  George Orwell sagely wrote in his essay ‘My Country Right or Left’, “Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present.”  He argues that historical events that are given such significance today are built up over time through nostalgia and indeed, the passing of time and the need to attribute meaning and significance to the actions of the nation.  Of the Battle of the Marne, spoken of today with reverence he says, “…you disentangle your real memories from their later accretions, you find that it was not usually the big events that stirred you at the time. I don't believe that the Battle of the Marne, for instance, had for the general public the melodramatic quality that it was afterwards given. I do not ever remember hearing the phrase ‘Battle of the Marne’ till years later.”[7]  The study of history is crucial for understanding not only what and how events in the past took place, but also, for questioning why we remember them in a particular way and how that shift came about.  In this vein, a more critical eye is needed to scrutinize not only the perceived ‘moments of greatness’ in the life of a nation, but, indeed, why and how they are remembered in this context.

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[1] ‘M. Reynaud’s Earlier Message,’ June 14, 1940, Manchester Guardian, 5

[2] ‘To the Women of France: Queen’s Broadcast,’ June 15, 1940, Manchester Guardian, 7

[3] To say nothing of the heavily gendered tone of the message…

[4] Hansard Milbanks Parliamentary Debates Online, ‘War Situation’, June 4, 1940

[5] Former Paris Correspondent, “The Riddle of the French Capitulation, Pétain and the Men Behind Him,” Manchester Guardian, June 25, 1940, 10

[6] Ibid, 10

[7] George Orwell, ‘My Country Right or Left’, George Orwell Library Online, http://orwell.ru/library/articles/My_Country/english/e_mcrol