Why History Matters by John Tosh

Author:John Tosh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan Education UK

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History Goes Public

The argument of this book so far assumes that historians have at their disposal the means to reach beyond their academic peers and their students. This proposition must now be put to the test. And because the weight of academic tradition has seriously questioned whether dissemination is feasible or even desirable, it is clear that searching questions must be asked. A gulf is usually said to exist between the academy and popular history, and for good reasons. The questions which interest the academic historian and a general lay readership often seem like oil and water. The language of the monograph is poles apart from that of the TV spin-off or the coffee-table book; and there is a sharp divergence as regards the rigour with which facts are established and arguments sustained.

The many faces of public history

Today, however, the distinction is not so sharp. There exist the makings of an alternative practice dedicated to crossing the gulf: public history. While still marginal to the academic profession, public history is taking an increasingly prominent profile, as measured by conferences, outreach activities and publications. But the term ‘public history’ needs to be used with care. Its scope is still uncertain. Ludmilla Jordanova has defined it to include all the means by which those who are not professional historians acquire their sense of the past, but as she concedes, this is very much an umbrella definition.1 It conflates highly disparate activities whose only common ground is that they modify the traditional relationship between professional and lay history in some way. Of course that common factor is highly significant, but it means very different things to the various constituencies who are brought together under the umbrella of public history. In one register public history refers to everything that professional historians do to bring their work to public attention – through journalism, TV programmes or policy advice. In another register it refers to historical work carried out in conjunction with museums and other heritage bodies, partly in pursuit of a conservationist agenda and partly in order to promote the public consumption of the visible and tangible relics of the past.

In yet another register, public history refers to historical work carried out in the community by lay people through oral history, family history and other community projects. Here the role of the professional historian is one of support and advice, working alongside amateurs, often on their terms. History Workshop during its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s was a notable instance of this convergence between amateur and professional, bringing together trade unionists, feminists, freelance writers and academics. Indeed, the project of a democratised public history is now sufficiently established for historians to study it as a cultural phenomenon in its own right, most notably in Raphael Samuel’s Theatres of Memory (1994).2 Yet in the last resort, professional historians are peripheral to these endeavours. The initiative generally lies with the community, who sometimes have a strong sense of ownership of ‘their’ past; scholars only assist and advise.

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