HI 1101 Junior Freshman: Interpreting History: Warfare and conflict Michaelmas term 2012

Historians often disagree. Disunity should not, however, be regarded by students as merely confusing and unhelpful. It is through argument that history develops and this module seeks to introduce students to debates, arguments and differences in historical approach and understanding. This is a lecture-only module held once per week. The theme for 2012-13 is warfare and conflict.

Module co-ordinator: Professor Alan Kramer

Lecture schedule and reading list All lectures will be held on Fridays at 10am in Room 2041b, unless otherwise notified.

Week one 28 September Introduction Professor Robert Armstrong

Weeks two and three 5 & 12 October The English civil wars and Professor Robert Armstrong The 1640s and 1650s witnessed the most destructive civil conflict to be fought on English soil (and the mostly costly, in terms of human lives, until the Great War), the overthrow of the , the creation (for the only time in history) of a British and an unprecedented outpouring of novel ideas on matters ranging from religious toleration to democracy. Two hundred years later the leading political parties in British life, the Whigs and Tories, still traced an affinity to the supporters of Parliament and of the King during those wars. Victorian politicians, British and Irish, argued heatedly about whether to erect a statue at Westminster to , who had taken the leading role in the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the regime which replaced his rule. Unsurprisingly, such dramatic times have also been the subject of an exceptionally rich historical literature. From contemporary authors to present-day historians, attempts to explain the breakdown in English society, and the events which followed, have drawn upon political, social, religious, cultural and economic developments. These lectures will introduce some of the more influential approaches adopted in the historiography of the English revolution, with a particular focus on formative ideas and on recent interpretations of the period. Reading list Primary sources Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, History of the (1702-4): selected pages Richard Baxter, The autobiography of Richard Baxter (first published 1696 as Reliquiae Baxterianae): selected pages Useful surveys of the historiography R. C. Richardson, The debate on the English Revolution (3rd edition, 1998) Ann Hughes, The causes of the English (2nd edition, 1998): the library has several copies of both of these books. John Adamson, ‘Introduction: high roads and blind alleys – the and its historiography’ in John Adamson ed., The English civil war (2009): Counter Reserve 942.062 P9 Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Introduction: locating the English revolution’ in Nicholas Tyacke ed., The English revolution (2007): Counter Reserve 942.06 P7 Some influential – and interesting – interpretations 2

Lawrence Stone, The causes of the English revolution (1972): available as an ebook through the library catalogue Conrad Russell, ‘The British problem and the English civil war’, History 72 (1987) John Morrill, Brian Manning and David Underdown, ‘What was the English revolution?’ History Today 34 (March, 1984), three short journal articles available online through the Library website

Weeks four and five 19 & 26 October The South African War, 1899-1902 Professor Alan Kramer

The South African War (previously known as the ‘Boer War’) was the costliest of Britain’s imperial conflicts. It drew in half a million British soldiers to defeat a small army of Boer commandos, it had a devastating impact on Afrikaner civilian society, and, not least, it also involved the black African population whose role for a long time had been written out of the history books. There is little unity among historians as to the causes of the war. At different stages in the century since the war historians have focused on different groups of participants and victims of the war, largely as a result of political change in South Africa itself. There is controversy also in relation to the assessment of British counter- strategy.

Reading list Historiography: Bill Nasson‚ ‘Waging Total War in South Africa’ in The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002), pp. 813-28, Excellent historiographical essay. Fred R. van Hartesveldt, The Boer War: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Berkeley, REF 968.04 P0 Special aspects John Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience, and Image, London: Frank Cass, 2000. Santry Stacks HL-234-666. See especially Bill Nassson’s chapter, ‘Africans at War’, pp. 126-140 David Omissi and Andrew S. Thompson, eds., The Impact of the South African War, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Santry HL-244-571. See especially Albert Grundlingh’s chapter on the ‘The War in Twentieth-Century Afrikaner Consciousness’, pp. 23-37 Source: Deneys Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, with a preface by General the Right Honourable J.C. Smuts; introduction by Thomas Pakenham. Santry PB-44-647 (first published in English in 1929; published in German in 1932, and in Irish in 1938).

Weeks six and eight 2 & 16 November

The 1641 rebellion in Ireland Dr Eamon Darcy

The 1641 rebellion was one of the most contentious events in Irish history. It was widely believed that Irish Catholics committed a wholesale massacre of Protestant settlers in the north of Ireland. These atrocities became a fundamental part of Protestant and later loyalist/Unionist identities in Ireland who used memories of the 1641 rebellion to justify the enactment of various anti-Catholic laws. Catholics, of course, denied that a massacre ever took place and criticised Protestant commentators' use of evidence for these claims. In more 3 recent times, historians have shied away from the sectarian dimension to the rising, making the 1641 rebellion one of the most hotly contested issues in Irish historiography.

Reading list Main text: Michael Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (London, 1994) Historiography of 1641: Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British (Oxford, 2005), pp. 461-9 Focused readings on the themes of war and conflict: Nicholas Canny, ‘What really happened in Ireland in 1641?’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation 1641-1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 24-42 Aidan Clarke, ‘Ireland and the General Crisis’, in Past and Present, 48 (1970), 79-99. Comparative article on the French Wars of Religion: Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Cenutry France’ in Past and Present, 59 (1973), 51-91.

Weeks nine and ten 23 & 30 November The 1857 Mutiny/Rebellion in India Professor Mridu Rai

Beginning on 10 May 1857, a mutiny in the Indian rank and file of the Bengal Army of the English East India Company threatened to dislodge one hundred years of territorial control established through most of the subcontinent by the latter. It took nearly a year and a half to suppress the rebellion. What began as a mutiny of soldiers very quickly extended into a civil rebellion joined in by various classes of Indian subjects—extending from peasants to landlords to former princes to include a variety of Indian urban service groups. This Rebellion has been the subject of a variety of different historical interpretations: there are those who saw it merely as a product of military insensitivity to various cultural predilections of the specific group of Indians recruited by the English East India Company’s army personnel; others saw this as a result of the tumult in society produced by the civilian administrators’ various interventions with tradition and custom; and, finally, among Indian historians writing in the early twentieth century this year was interpreted as India waging its ‘first war of independence’, a prelude to the Gandhi-led ‘freedom struggle’ that would purportedly end British colonial rule in 1947. In these two lectures we will examine the historiographical debate around the momentous events that ‘almost ended’ British colonial rule in India. The objective of these lectures will be to discern the contentions that emerge when colonial, Indian nationalist and left-wing interpretations intertwine to understand a process.

Reading list Primary sources: “The Azamgarh Proclamation” (available online) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House; London: Lawrence and Wishart, [1960?], Selected pages. Pramod K. Nayar (ed) The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), selected pages of this collection of original documents from the 21-day trial of the last Mughal emperor, deposed after the Rebellion of 1857. V.D. Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence, (Bombay: Phoenix Publications, First authorrised and Public edition in India, 1947), selected pages. P.J.O. Taylor, What Really Happened During the Mutiny: A Day-by-Day Account of the Major Events of 1857-1859 in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). Secondary sources: 4

Gautam Bhadra, “Four Rebels of Eighteen-Fifty-Seven” in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds) Selected Subaltern Studies (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 129-75. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 1-17. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858 ( New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001) Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)

Weeks eleven and twelve 7 & 11 December (latter date to be confirmed) The Battle of Clontarf - interpretations and legacies Professor Poul Holm

The Battle of Clontarf on Good Friday 1014 informs our interpretation of pre-Norman Ireland – and indeed continues to play a role in the heritage industry of today. In 2014 the Millenium of the battle of Clontarf will be celebrated in Ireland and abroad but what will be the cause of celebration? Historians have described the battle as a national victory when the threat of a Viking invasion rallied the Irish for the first time to some sense of national unity. Others see the battle as a revolt of the Leinstermen against the dominance of a would-be high-king with the Norsemen playing a minor role. So can we tell who really won at Clontarf? Why do historians disagree on such a fundamental issue?

Reading list Standard narrative history (compulsory): Clare Downham, ‘The Battle of Clontarf in Irish History and Legend’. Source: History Ireland, Vol. 13, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2005), pp. 19-23 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27725330 Historiographic paper (compulsory): Poul Holm, ‘Between Apathy and Antipathy: The Vikings in Irish and Scandinavian History’, Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, 8 (1995)151 - 169 TARA full text (author's copy): http://www.tara.tcd.ie/jspui/bitstream/2262/49404/1/PoulHolmBetweenApathyandAntipath y.pdf Further reading (optional): Darradarljod (The Fatal Sisters, translated by Thomas Gray (1716-1771) http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/883.html Eoin MacNeill, ‘The Struggle with the Norsemen’, Phases of Irish History (Dublin 1919), pp. 249-273.