living with history on both sides of the Atlantic - Part 2 of 2

After a longer than planned delay, here's part II:

When I was a history undergraduate in Britain I would often get quizzed by family friends and acquaintance about whether there was a point to studying history, and although I can’t say I’ve never had that question here it is certainly less common. History has a purpose here – it has work to do. That’s why high school students take a comprehensive “survey” rather than my British experience of studying small case-study units on 1920s America or Nazi Germany. History tells Americans something about who they are and why they are bound together as a nation – a nation based on ideas and not on territory or ethnicity. If you are a nation based on an idea then the construction of that idea through history has to make sense, it has to be linear and things have to have a sense of coherence that isn’t otherwise necessary or possible. Thus, as much as it frustrates me, Colonial Williamsburg isn’t just a portrayal of the town three hundred years ago, but an engaged narrative about the ideas of the nation – a narrative that admits problems and flaws in the initial idea (slavery) – but a narrative nonetheless. Bruton Parish, then, doesn’t just have history, it has historical narrative, because amongst the people who sat in its pews (as they’ll be glad to tell you) were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. No doubt some important London worthies of the 17th and 18th centuries attended St.Helen’s Bishopsgate, but they aren’t essential to helping British people understand their daily lives. History is part of peoples’ lives in Britain – the Blitz spirit, the Industrial Revolution, the English Reformation – but it doesn’t fit into a narrative and people don’t need it to. It is enough to have a vague sense that all these things went in to making Britain in a patchwork way. It is enough that they happened on that island, in that place. Post-colonialism and post-war decline has (perhaps) taught Britain that history is not a narrative of success and honour, but also that failures like imperialism, racism, class exploitation aren’t supposed to refine and improve us in an onward journey (as Southern slavery is called upon to do), but simply to chasten and content us with our sceptered isle. I think British identity, for all the castles and stately homes, is fundamentally about place, and that is why on my final descent into London I always find myself repeating the line of the famous English song “Jersualem” – the appeal is “England’s green and pleasant land” and the historic context just helps to you remember those who have enjoyed it before (however rotten they may have been).

But, of course, this is not to say that America’s relationship with the past is bad or that Britain’s is somehow mature and considered. The inverse may in fact be true. Because an identity based upon ethnicity and place in a twenty-first century world of mass-migration, where thousands of new immigrants arrive in Britain each year, British identity has become immensely confused. There are many Britons who don’t relate to the vague and confusing mass of historical and topographical connections on which identity rests. New standards, new citizenship tests, new popular culture offerings, consistently attempt to define and redefine the maxims and there is a genuine fear that (despite what Americans might think about fish and chips, poor dentistry, and all things Jane Austen) Britain might be losing its identity. Despite the supposed “Culture Wars” that presidential election season supposedly generates, left and right can still agree to the basic narrative of Colonial Williamsburg or Ellis Island even if they disagree about the details. American identity may be in debate, but it is certainly not in doubt.

So to answer the lady at the dentist: there really isn’t any more history here than elsewhere – it is just being put to better use and I haven’t decided yet if that makes it harder to study.