An Aspiring Historian - Elbow Patches and Pipe Dreams

I didn’t much care for history in elementary school, or high school, or undergrad for that matter.  In fact, it wasn’t until three months into my MSc course at the London School of Economics that I decided: I would like to become a historian.  I grew up taking the same boring classes about the ‘regrettable necessity’ of dropping the atomic bombs ending the Second World War (we’ll return to this point at a later date) and listening to teachers wax lyrical about Thomas Paine, although no one thought to mention that at one point he had been abandoned by the Americans to the guillotines of the French Revolution and accused by the British of committing ‘carnal acts with his cat.’   I also went through the usual plethora of childhood dream jobs: baker, doctor, Olympic hurdler, actor, teacher.  Even when I started my MSc I saw myself more as an international relations theorist or at least a future ambassador.  What changed? 

Well, personally, I discovered that most things that I had been taught in my childhood history classes were so heavily flawed as to be laughable.  History wasn’t a black and white timeline of names, dates, and simple decisions.  Rather, it was like reading the diary of your unsuitable bachelor uncle (http://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/stories/1970s/my-uncle-oswald).  It is full of individuals and groups who are flawed, who have stereotypes, and who sometimes make horrific mistakes.  It is learning that British WWII policy in Morocco stipulated that “…in order to avoid the risk of internal trouble … limited quantities of green tea and sugar should be allowed to reach the Moors…” More than anything, it is recognising that the debates and subjectivities of history are what give it colour.  Every country remembers and teaches its own history differently.  However, this tendency results mostly in national glorification rather than real learning.  It’s crucial to teach all angles of history – the Allied firebombing of Germany for example, not just the heroic valor of the Blitz. 

As I round out my second year as a PhD student, I find my belief that history must be better and indeed more fairly taught and communicated stronger than ever.  So, what I propose to do in this blog is to write a series of history ‘shorts’.  They won’t follow any particular timeline and they won’t fit within a particular theme.  They will be based around small details, whether quotes, cartoons, or people, of a larger event.  In doing this, I hope to encourage others to really think about history, not as a date in the past, but as a story that held as much humour, confusion, drama and intricacy as our lives hold in the present.