Discipline and power : the university, history, and the making of an English elite, 1870-1930

This book is an intellectual and cultural account of the growth of history as an undergraduate discipline at Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century. History, the familiar centre of a broad Victorian consensus about God, country and good, provided the most consistent moral panorama able to satisfy a variety of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic needs. The book argues that history was taught in English universities in generally Whiggish ways to develop a sense of national duty and loyalty in students. These students were all part of an elite, and most were destined for the civil service or for other professional or elite business careers. The author treats the cultural and political role of history and history-teaching in much greater depth and with greater incisiveness than has ever been done before, and in so doing, marshals together a great deal of new evidence. Discipline and Power is an intellectual, cultural, and social analysis of the ways in which universities successfully transformed a set of values, encoded in the concept of "liberal education," into a licensing system for a national elite. From the mid-1870's until the rise of totalitarianism and the Great Depression challenged prevailing habits of mind and conduct, the universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, achieved unrivaled influence upon thought and conduct in every sphere. In their independence from external interference, the universities and colleges evolved by regulating the contents and purposes of new subjects. History, more than any other discipline, reflected and reinforced a broad Victorian consensus about God, country, and the good. Among the contending fields of study, history provided the most consistent moral panorama able to satisfy a variety of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic needs. History was taught, studied, and tested by a set of assumptions deduced far more from a patriotic agreement about duty than from critical methods or from the weight of evidence. Dedication 6 Preface 8 List of Figures 10 Introduction 14 1 Consensus and Tradition 23 2 Truth and Objectivity 44 3 National History Established 66 4 The Professors Interpret History 91 5 The Professorial Tradition Continued 112 6 Tutors and Teaching 141 7 Students and Learning 170 8 Life After the University 191 Epilogue: The Sin of Omission 218 Reference Matter 224 Notes 226 Sources 288 Index 314