HI3026 History Writing in Britain and Ireland, 1820-1920

Module Organiser: Professor Ciaran Brady
Duration: Hilary term
Contact hours: 2 hours per week
Weighting: 5 ECTS
Assessment: 100% essay

The Nineteenth Century marked the hightide of historical writing in Britain’s public culture. By the 1850s the historian as moral philosopher, as political scientist, as cultural critic and as prophet of the future was everywhere celebrated, and large works of history rivalled popular novels on publishers’ best selling lists. At the same time the study of history, once despised in the universities as mere dilletantism, was rapidly establishing itself as a respectable academic discipline, and by the end of the century the methods of research, standards of accuracy, forms of publishing and organising institutions of the modern historical profession had been firmly established. By then, however, a serious divergence had arisen over the nature and purpose of historical research between the free-lance men of letters writing in the market place for a broad popular audience and the university historians burrowing in the archives and writing generally for their peers. And, as both groups began to regard each other with increasing incomprehension and contempt, the cultural prestige of history and its popularity as a form of knowledge went into decline.

This module seeks to trace the course of History’s history in Britain through a variety of avenues. The careers and works of the great representatives of both schools - Macaulay, Carlyle Lecky and Froude on the one side; Stubbs, Acton , Maitland and Gardiner on the other – will be examined. The structures and contexts of research, teaching and publication will be explored. And a critical analysis of the great themes of the leading historical works – the Norman Conquest, the Reformation, Cromwell, Empire, and the running sore of Ireland – will reveal the degree to which contemporary ideological preoccupations influenced supposedly detached historical interpretations.

Course Outline and General Reading List 2013 (PDF, 143kb)

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

• Identify the main features of historical writing in nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland
• Discuss the work of particular historians and the context in which they wrote
• Explain the different ways in which historians approached their subjects
• Analyze the principal debates between different schools of historical thought in the period
• Explore the differences between key interpretations in the context of when they were written and why
• Supply an individual synthesis based on critical reading of the secondary literature relating to nineteenth-century British and Irish historians
• Write essays and make oral presentations defending such a synthesis.