The Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton, Linda Colleyspecialises in the history of Britain since 1700, in a broader European, imperial, and global context. Her publications include In Defiance of Oligarchy(1982), the path-breaking work Britons (1992), Captives (2002) and, most recently, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh (2007). Professor Colley will deliver the Fifth Indian Economic and Social History Review Lecture in New Delhi on December 15, 2011. Here she responds to questions by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, joint managing editor of the IESHR, and Professor of History at UCLA.
In an autobiographical essay, the Cambridge historian Chris Bayly has alluded to how his early background in Tunbridge Wells, and family experiences, may have influenced his way of looking at history. Do you think your background and early years influenced your way of doing history, or the questions you have asked?
I'm sure early influences have an impact on most historians (and on everyone else). I was born and spent my first five years in Chester, an ancient city that retains some of its Roman walls and fortifications, and contains a great medieval cathedral, as well as Tudor, Stuart and early 19th century architecture. Visiting these things was free, and my parents made the most of this. So I have very early visual memories of objects and scenes that were represented to me, as a child, as being of and speaking to the past. I suspect, too, that since my father was constantly moving from place to place on account of his job, I learned early a certain restlessness, and perhaps a sympathy with individuals and groups in the past who were more than usually mobile.
In India, it used to be common to make a sharp distinction between Marxist and non-Marxist historians in Britain. In your experience, has that division made much sense since the 1970s and what is its status today?
I am old enough to remember when large numbers of British history researchers at Cambridge and elsewhere were still intent on studying working class ideologies and identities and trade unionism, usually in an industrial city; and when the editorial board of the journal Past and Present was dominated by great Marxian figures like Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm. Obviously, that time is long gone, but I'd want to make three points. First, even at their most influential Marxist historians in the U.K. tended to be kept out (or to keep themselves out) of the highest positions of formal academic influence. For instance, E.P. Thompson only occasionally held a formal academic post, while Hobsbawm was never able to gain an Oxbridge post. Second, onetime Marxist historians in the U.K. (as elsewhere) have often retained a commitment to theory, while switching its nature. By way of example, Gareth Stedman Jones for a while moved into linguistic analysis; while Catherine Hall moved into post-colonialism. Third (and again this is not just true of the U.K.), the decline of Marxism has had the unfortunate effect of leading ambitious young scholars generally to neglect economic history. I hope this is now beginning to change.
A significant part of your work, especially since your book Britons, may be thought to reflect on questions of British national identity, a thorny issue. How, as a historian, would you address the question of a multi-cultural Britain as a project and reality?
One of the benefits of working outside the U.K. is that I don't have to keep fielding media/politicians' enquiries about “Britishness” and its ills. Having constantly to do this drove me mad during the five years (which were otherwise very profitable) when I was at the London School of Economics!
I have come to think that what is needed in the U.K., from school-level onwards — and as an aid to wider public understanding — are forms of “British” historical teaching and interpretation that focus much more upon movement: movement over time and by different peoples into these islands (ie. Great Britain and Ireland), movements over time out of these islands: and movements within and among them. As it is, I rather fear that the process of devolution in the U.K. may only serve to throw up more walls, with Little Englandism being matched by a kind of Little Scotlandism etc.
Your work, especially over the last two decades, is sometimes posed by analysts and reviewers within the framework of “world history.” Are you comfortable with that category? Further, have you ever considered yourself to be a sort of “micro-historian” as well?
Like many other scholars, I shy away from claiming to “do” global or world history, which — as far as any individual scholar is concerned — is bound to be an impractical if not a presumptuous aspiration. Even the most brilliant single-authored world histories such as Bayly's Birth of the Modern World, are notably stronger on some regions of the world than on others (in the case of his book, Latin America suffers) because no one is capable of making all the intellectual leaps and connections that world history would ideally require.
Nonetheless, it is impossible and, to my mind, distorting to write British history, especially post-1600, without some kind of trans-continental purview and reach. Am I a micro-historian? Not really. But I did want both in Captives and inElizabeth Marsh to explore the potential of hitherto neglected approaches and source material. For example, what passes for world history has evolved substantially out of certain branches of economic history, and has tended in part for that reason to be somewhat impersonal, abstract, and often very masculine in its focus. Elizabeth Marsh was in part an attempt to do things differently. In my current project, in which I'm trying to wrest constitutional history away from its traditional encasement within national narratives, I'm very much returning to the macro.
What has been the impact on you personally, and on other British historians, of history-writing coming out of India? Do you believe that there is a real conversation today between Indian and British historiography? If so, what are the most interesting elements there?
The impact of scholarly work coming out of India (and not just in history) has been growing relentlessly, in the U.K., as in the U.S. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish this precise Indian contribution from the increased awareness — in some, not yet all British and American quarters — of the need to pay greater attention to non-Western scholarship in general.
By way of example, I, and a colleague have just started a programme of seminars exploring how people in different parts of the world conceptualised their membership of political communities from the 18th century onwards. Recent Indian historiography is bound to play a big part in our discussions, but so will work to do with China and elsewhere. My own first introduction to the work of Indian historians was by way of Ranajit Guha and the publications of the Subaltern Studies group. I continue to be impressed by how Indian historians are expanding and challenging both the material and the arguments available to historians of the U.K. But I am also impressed by the need for British-based scholars themselves to explore Indian and Asian connections in different ways.
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