Reinventing The Wheel - The Cost of Neglecting International History

Reinventing the Wheel: The cost of neglecting international history
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Reinventing the Wheel: The cost of neglecting international

history
There is an ever increasing tendency to imagine ourselves living somehow 'beyond history', to bask in what Francis Fukuyama termed
'the end of history'. In this lecture, Sir Adam Roberts presents a compelling case for the reintroduction of history to the centre of
international relations, drawing on examples from contemporary world conflicts.
Professor Sir Adam Roberts, President, The British Academy
Introduced by Professor Sir Roderick Floud, Provost, Gresham College
With thanks by Professor Richard Sorabji FBA, Emeritus Gresham Professor of Rhetoric
This is the 2011 Gresham Special Lecture.

The previous Gresham Special Lectures can be accessed here:
2013 - The New Face of Europe [1] by Sir Richard Lambert
2012 - Parliament and the Public: Strangers or Friends? [2] by The Rt Hon John Bercow
2010 - The Challenges of the new Supreme Court [3] by the Rt Hon the Lord Philips
2009 - The Ascent of Money [4] by Professor Niall Ferguson
2008 - Early Christianity and Today [5] by the Archbishop of Canterbury
2007 - The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils [6] by Sir Roy Strong
2006 - Walking the Line [7] by Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws
2005 - Should we trust the Scientists [8] by Professor the Lord Winston
2004 - Science in a complex world [9] by Sir Martin Rees
2002 - Towards freedom from hunger [10] by Professor M S Swaminathan
th
2001 - Commerce and Culture in the Late 20 Century [11] by Professor Charles Saumarez Smith
2000 - A Global Ethic - A Challenge for the New Millennium [12] by Professor Hans Kng
07/06/2011 - 18:00
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7 June 2011
The Gresham Special Lecture
Reinventing the Wheel: the cost of neglecting international history
Professor Sir Adam Roberts
It is a huge privilege and pleasure to be giving this lecture here in the Guildhall, parts of which date back to 1411, with its pre-history
dating back considerably further; and which has witnessed so much international history. It has not just witnessed it passively, as in
the blitz in December 1940, but also by hosting impressive international events.
In a speech at the Lord Mayors Banquet in Guildhall in November 1951, when the Cold War was still very cold and Stalin still ruled
in the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that it is only by respecting the past that we can be worthy of the future.
He also saw in Guildhall a symbol of the world he lived in. Commenting on the imminent return of Gog and Magog from their
wartime safekeeping, he said:
It seems that they [i.e. Gog and Magog] represent none too badly the present state of world politics. World politics, like the
history of Gog and Magog, are very confused and much disputed. Still, I think there is room for both Gog and Magog.
On the one side is Gog, and on the other is Magog. But be careful, my Lord Mayor, when you put them back, to keep them
from colliding with each other; for, if that happens, both Gog and Magog would be smashed to atoms and we should all have
to begin all over again and begin from the bottom of the pit.[1] [15]
In the Cold War, the two sides managed to avoid colliding with each other, at least directly. Then, 37 years after Churchills speech,
Guildhall was participant and witness of the end of the Cold War. Two particular events stick in my mind: I was present at both of
them.
On 3 June 1988 President Ronald Reagan, hot from a visit to Moscow (and a lecture at Moscow State University) gave a speech
here on Soviet-US relations in his most convincing folksy style. This was the Reagan who had earlier said that the march of
freedom and democracy . . . will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the
freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.[2] [16] I will be critical of the idea of history as an ash-heap, but Reagans use
of it had mitigating features. The special strength of Reagan, that this event in 1988 both marked and celebrated, was that despite
his fierce anti-communist rhetoric he extended a helping hand to Mikhail Gorbachev, making it much easier for him to handle the
decline and fall of the Soviet empire that came in the next three years.
On 7 April 1989 President Mikhail Gorbachev gave an address here, with a response by Prime Minister Thatcher. He too spoke on
East-West relations and did so in an even more constructive tone than the British government had expected. It was a foretaste of
the extraordinary events that were to come in the last half of 1989. Again, we had a sense of history in the making.
The end of the Cold War, which those two meetings so vividly marked, led to a revival of the proposition that we had somehow
reached the end of history. It was in that same summer of 1989 that Francis Fukuyama, then in Policy Planning in the US State
Department, argued that history was at an end.[3] [17] It was as if the weather forecaster had announced: There will be no weather
tomorrow. He has subsequently had a lot of explaining to do about all that has happened since it ended, which looks very like
history. To be fair, he defined history in a very special way, as a clash between fundamentally different ideas as to how human
society should be ordered. However, there is plenty evidence of such different ideas in the contemporary world.
The core argument

My core argument, put at its simplest, is that in a time of rapid change we need the subjects that the British Academy exists to
champion: Humanities and Social Sciences. History imbues many if not all of these subjects. In this short survey I will touch on:
The long history of the idea that we are in a new era to which history is largely irrelevant.
Some examples of episodes in the past hundred years in which some part was played by decision-makers apparently ignoring
relevant aspects of international history.
In conclusion, I will try to summarise the costs of thinking, and deciding, about international issues in an essentially ahistorical
manner; and to offer a few prescriptions..
My own credentials to speak for international history are distinctly modest. I did my degree at Oxford in Modern History (which
counts as a branch of Humanities) and then spent most of my career teaching International Relations (which counts as a branch of
Social Sciences). Some might think that I could benefit from the best-entitled academic course in my field that Ive come across. It
was at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and was entitled Remedial History for International Relations Specialists.
As a former student of the historian A.J.P. Taylor, I am a firm believer in his dictum that it is hard enough to know what happened in
the past, let alone the future. He also said many times that great events can have very small causes. And I have sympathy with his
definition of history as the subject in which one thing happens after another. I have slightly more doubt about his other dictum to the
effect that the only thing that we can learn from history is that people never learn from history. When I suggest that historical
knowledge is crucial to understanding the present, I feel him looking disapprovingly over my shoulder.
Let me be clear from the start about what I am claiming, and not claiming, for international history. I am certainly not claiming that
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Sir Adam Roberts [74]

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Guildhall [75]
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Politics - other [76]
History - other [77]
History [78]
Politics [79]
Politics - other
History - other
History
Politics
Source URL: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/reinventing-the-wheel-the-cost-of-neglecting-international-history

Links:
[1] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-new-face-of-europe
[2] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/parliament-and-the-public-strangers-or-friends
[3] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-gresham-special-lecture-the-challenges-of-the-new-supreme-court
[4] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-gresham-special-lecture-the-ascent-of-money-an-evolutionary-approach-to
[5] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/early-christianity-today-some-shared-questions
[6] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-beauty-of-holiness-and-its-perils-or-what-is-to-happen-to-10000-parish
[7] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/walking-the-line-preserving-liberty-in-times-of-insecurity
[8] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/should-we-trust-the-scientists
[9] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/science-in-a-complex-world-wonders-prospects-and-threats
[10] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/special-lecture-2002-towards-freedom-from-hunger
[11] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/commerce-and-culture-in-the-late-twentieth-century
[12] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/a-global-ethic-a-challenge-for-the-new-millennium
[13] http://blip.tv/file/get/GreshamCollege-ReinventingTheWheel_AdamRoberts861.mp4
[14] http://dl.dropbox.com/s/s6o16if4286jljd/ReinventingTheWheel_AdamRoberts.mp3
[15] file:///C:/Users/sophie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/GO7UVR1D/7June2011_Sir_Adam_Roberts.doc#_ftn1
[24] file:///C:/Users/sophie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/GO7UVR1D
/7June2011_Sir_Adam_Roberts.doc#_ftn10
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/7June2011_Sir_Adam_Roberts.doc#_ftnref1
[73] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/7june2011_siradamroberts.doc
[74] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/sir-adam-roberts
[75] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/guildhall
[76] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/category/lecture-categories/politics/politics-other
[77] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/category/lecture-categories/history/history-other
[78] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/category/history
[79] http://www.gresham.ac.uk/category/politics
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