Don't know much about history

Dear Readers--

It has been some time since I last studied History during my Bachelor of Arts but a recent Hullabulloo in the History Aethersphere has attracted my attention.

Certain old women of both Sexes have their bluestockings in a twist regarding the comments of Mercurius Rusticus upon so-called "gender history" and in particular the 2008 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.

As Rusticus has removed the offending remarks (probably to avoid the Monstrous Regiment of Women descending upon him to rend him limb from limb), your Humble Scribe must rely upon quotations from Ralph Luker to convey their flavour.

First this version:

It is difficult to think of anything more depressing than a conference of female historians or more irrelevant to the future of the discipline of history. None of these figures has ever appeared on any work of early modern history that I have ever read or is likely to figure on any reading list I see. Historians are and should be concerned with the past of humanity, with men and women, old and young alike: being female is not a prerequisite for such studies and women's history like the histories of gender, sexuality and the family is a transient, ephemeral phenomenon.

Then the revised version:

The sad truth is that universities across the advanced countries of the world have succumbed after c.1970 to pressures from the so-called women's movements to include in their syllabuses courses on women's history for which there was and is little justification. Intellectual fashions and fear of contemporary interest groups have led to the traditional focus of the subject being fundamentally altered to appease these interests. It is no surprise that it has been followed by demands for the composition of the profession to be altered too. Both developments have, in my view, done a disservice to the discipline. But intellectual fashions change as those attending this conference appear to have divined. That is a good thing. I hope to see the tide of women's history, gender history and the history of sexuality recede until it is a tiny creek flowing into the broad river of history. Then we shall have them in proper proportion.

This is not the end of the story, however. Anonymous comments, bearing a strangely familiar style, have appeared attached to several articles upon the controversy at Tenured Radical.

After the article 'As Catharine McKinnon say, Are Women Human' were the following comments:

Anonymous said...

A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Cantabrigiensis

I thank you heartily for yours of the 28th ultimo and for news of your good health and that of your university and wherein you seek intelligence of our affaires here in this great city where all things in agitation come to our notice.

Now I must tell you of our good brother, Rusticus, who, some days since, touched lightly upon the malady affecting our history these last forty years, to wit, the flowering of 'women's history, of gender history and of sexuality' (Anglice, nonsense). He wrote too upon the fears - of female agitators and of being unfashionable - that infected the tribe of jellies in our seats of learning and of their craven surrender at will to these forces. Having done so, he retired to his study for his peace and quiet save only for his retreat to an ordinary each day for his repast.

But speaking truth in this age is little less than a crime. Against him there hath been raised up an army of Amazons anxious to rip off his mask and tear off his head. They are led by one Potter, a 'wit' from Middletown, Connecticut, no less, who has anathematised Miss Mary Rusticus as an 'ignorant slut' (being ignorant of his gender) and commanded him to repeat the incantation 'Natalie Zemon Davis' to purge himself of his melancolick humour. Others, equally obscure, in our former colonies (so fortunately lost by our late King George III) have denounced him as an 'odious piece of work' and enjoined Mistress Potter to 'kick his [invisible] ass', a feat even that Hercules of electronic wall scribblings, Master Luker, could not achieve. More generously still, a little Historiann has invited him to 'kiss my ass', an overture to which good Rusticus being unused to American customs is not minded to accept on grounds of hygiene, good taste and sense.

So you see, good brother, how things stand here and what passes for sense and wit amongst the tribes of distant North America. Rest assured that Rusticus is safe, warm and well in his ordinary in the centre of the universe where we are both bidden to join him at our leisure,
Your loving brother to serve you'
Mercurius Civicus

Anonymous said...

'Tis not that these are not matters of account, the burden of the charge at th'assises is that the promises made and the goods delivered differ greatly. For the discovery of women in the past and of the difference betwixt the sexes was no discovery in 1960 or 1970. Nor, in truth, was it to be regarded as equal to Columbus's voyages to th'Americas. Great empires have fallen to these female conquistadores but they have made the land of Clio no more fertile than it was before they came. All they have done is to seek to rule over it when their title is empty. Their course, I aver, is run. New fashions will come in and they themselves will be forgotten for generations to come. You may be sad but tis the way of the world,
Edinensis

Anonymous said...

I realise that Colorado is a long way from the centre of the universe but, even there, I had hoped that a sense of humour might be found. Ms Little's lack of one confirms my fears,
Mercurius Rusticus

Anonymous said...

Dear, Dear Professor Potter !Rusticus a new blogger ? An "obscure English blogger" ? A transparent attempt to gain attention ? Rusticus "bitter" and "snarky" (the latter word is not in the OED and, therefore, does not exist) ? If you and your 'sisters' had checked the facts before you pronounced (? an habitual feminine failing ?) you would have said none of these things.
Chatterwell

Further elaborations occurred at the later article, "What would Natalie Zemon Davis do":

Anonymous said...

Lady Anne Grating writes: I am able to help you with some details of Mercurius Rusticus's life and career.

He is a Scot from an old landed family, born in 19--, his father baillie of Erewhon and his mother hereditary keeper of Loch Ness. He was educated at Bonham's School and afterwards at Aberdeen University where he gained a Double First in Women's History and a First in Gender Studies in a single year. His military service was performed in the Highland Heavy Cavalry where he was aide-de-camp to Major General 'Tiger' Nidgett at the battles of Clio's bridge, Harpy's Valley and Harridan Ridge from all of which he emerged with his trews intact.

After this service, he proceeded to the banks of the Cam where his many books, articles and squibs in the public prints caused him to be elected first to a College fellowship and then to an ancient Chair in history. Whilst there, he was one of the founders of a secret society, the Men's Liberation Front, dedicated to freeing the male half of humankind from millennia of matriarchy. His friends, including the barmaids in the Fox and Hounds, say he is of an amiable disposition much given to corresponding with his friends, Sir Philip Francis, Master Rochester Sneath and Henry Root, Esquire. After his death, these letters will be published to the world to the inestimable good of all people of learning and good sense.

Of late, he has been pestered by diverse communications from female hands in the New World suggesting what he might do or what might be done to him. The former he must decline as physically impossible, the latter as illegal under the common law. If his wife permits, he will be on King's Parade at 10 a.m. next Wednesday morning to inspect the fourteen ladies who have proposed marriage.

A portrait of Mercurius Rusticus at the age of 23 will shortly appear.

Anonymous said...

I can scarcely believe that any member of our sex could have been so foolish as to reveal to men our rule and superiority over them. We have successfully deluded them for generations into thinking they ruled the world while we pulled the strings. And now by complaining of the appearances of our deception in history as elsewhere, we are undone. A life in the snug of the Pig and Whistle or the bar of the King's Arms awaits to prevent their foolish plots for freedom. Your silly sisters should have kept your counsel and left well alone. As it is, Rusticus must be confined to his chamber for several years on gruel and water until his senses are befuddled again.
Valeria Margherita

And finally:

Anonymous said...

Let me begin by introducing myself. I am Mercurius Rusticus, an academic historian of more than forty years' standing. I hold advanced degrees from three U.K. universities and have taught in ten of them. My publications include over fifty books and articles together in addition to hundreds of more casual blog entries. In my own field of early modern history and in my own university, I am relatively well known and my identity can easily be discovered. Those who have so readily denounced me, including - be it noted by Mr Luker - those using pseudonyms, have evidently rushed to judgment without checking the facts first.

In fact, my critics have failed to read carefully what I wrote on my blog on 16 and 17 June. Quoting oneself is an act of vanity but I hope I may be forgiven for doing so on this occasion. "Historians are and should be concerned with the past of humanity, with men and women, old and young alike"; that was my starting point. Let me repeat too that "being female is not a prerequisite for such studies." My argument begins with this contention.

The study of women's history was well established before the rise of the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Do I need to do more than cite the works of Mary Beard or Alice Clark or Eileen Power or Beatrice Webb? There were important female historians too - women like Valerie Pearl, Menna Prestwich, Claire Cross and Lucy Sutherland long before that time. Keith Thomas was teaching a course on women's history in the University of Oxford in the early-1960s. It is quite untrue to claim that the study of women's history was brought into academic instituions by 'feminist women'.
My second contention, namely, that the study of the history of women predates the rise if 'women's history and gender studies' is, therefore, correct too.

Naturally enough, the first wave of 'feminist' historians and their heirs and successors from c.1970 onwards believed that they were opening up new continents and new worlds for intellectual exploration for the first time. They were wrong but the advocates of new fashions in the world of ideas almost always advance such claims. Equally naturally, they demanded a positive response from the institutions of higher education on both sides of the Atlantic to their demands for new courses in women's history, gender studies and so on. In a system driven by what administrators (mistakenly) see as students' expectations, not to mention the shriller cries of radical women's groups, they have given way and created new courses and new positions to appease these demands. I am personally aware of posts being awarded to women (in preference to abler men) simply because they were female and because making such appointments would please bureaucrats and pressure groups alike. One would have to be very naive indeed and to have lived life in a cloister not to know of the existence of the latter.

Citing Natalie Zemon Davis as an example of an innovative female historian is hardly enough to prove your case. She was and is a good historian in my view but not a great one in the sense that Edward Gibbon or Bloch or Braudel or Garrett Mattingly or, on occasion, Jack Hexter were and are. A single swallow does not make a summer as the logicians will tell you.

Nor is it convincing to praise the exchanges between Natalie Zemon Davis and Robert Finlay as models of civility in the field of women's history. If they were, then the comments on my posts from female readers of your blog (and their male fellow-travellers) fail this test. They have been predominantly abusive and poorly written, some, indeed, largely illiterate. They have all lacked humour and wit, which is an interesting illustration of the state of women's history in your country.

The sad truth is that women's history has not lived up to its promoters' hopes, let alone to their extravagant claims a generation or two ago. It has absorbed the energies that would have been better spent elsewhere and created an interest group that cannot bear to be challenged, let alone criticised. Its decline is already under way as it is overtaken by newer, more fashionable historical preoccupations. You may not like it but you will have to live with it.

This Journal applauds the wit and wisdom of Mercurius Rusticus in his quixotic tilting at the Windmills of Political Correctness and Feminism and in doing so in a pastiche of 17th century English; and fervently hopes that he escapes the murderous clutches of Feminist Maenads.

Your Sincerely,
Mild Colonial Boy, Esq.