Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton
Encyclopedia
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper (15 January 1914 – 27 January 2003) was an English historian
of early modern Britain
and Nazi Germany
. He was made a life peer
by Margaret Thatcher
in 1979, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton.
, Northumberland
, England, the son of a doctor, and the brother of Patrick Trevor-Roper
(who became a doctor and gay rights activist). Trever-Roper was educated at Charterhouse
and at Christ Church, Oxford
in Classics
and Modern History
, later moving to Merton College, Oxford
to be a research fellow. Trevor-Roper took a first in Classical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland and the Hertford scholarships in Classics. Initially, he had intended to make his career in the Classics, but became bored with what he regarded as the pedantic technical aspects of the Greats course at Oxford, and switched to History, where he obtained an honours first in 1936. Trevor-Roper's first book was a 1940 biography
of Archbishop William Laud
, in which he challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.
, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service
, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the Abwehr
. He came to have a low opinion of the pre-war professional intelligence agents but a higher one of post-1939 recruits like Kim Philby
. Trevor-Roper declared in The Philby Affair (1968) that Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the Chief of German Military Intelligence Abwehr
, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.
, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession) to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler
's death and to rebut the propaganda of the Soviet government
that Hitler was alive and living somewhere in the West. Using the alias of Major Oughton, Trevor-Roper interviewed politicians, military men, and supporting staff - which were present in the Führerbunker
with Hitler, and who had been able to escape to the West, including Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven. The ensuing investigation resulted in Trevor-Roper's most famous book, The Last Days of Hitler (1947, with revised editions as late as 1995), in which he described the last ten days of Hitler's life, and the fates of some of the higher ranking members of the inner circle as well of those lesser figures whose evidence was important for reconstructing this penultimate chapter of the war. Trevor-Roper transformed the evidence he gathered during his fact-finding mission, evidence that was often lurid, confused, and plain wrong, into a literary work, with sardonic humour and drama, that brings out incidentally how much he was influenced by the rhetorical prose styles of two of his favourite historians, Edward Gibbon
and Thomas Babington Macaulay. In response to The Last Days of Hitler, Trevor-Roper received a death threat from the Stern Gang
for his supposed over-emphasis on Hitler's charisma, which the authors of the death threat felt had exonerated the German people.
of anti-Communist
intellectuals such as Sidney Hook
, Melvin J. Lasky
, Ignazio Silone
, Arthur Koestler
, Raymond Aron
and Franz Borkenau
that resulted in the founding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its magazine Encounter
. In the 1950s and 1960s, he served as a frequent contributor to Encounter, but in private was sometimes bothered by what he regarded as the magazine's overly didactic tone, particularly in allegedly strident pieces by Koestler and Borkenau.
's A Study of History, he accused the eminent scholar of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony.".
For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were those of intellectual vitality, religious quarrels and of divergence between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former economically, politically and constitutionally. European expansion overseas was incidental to these processes. In Trevor-Roper's view, one of the major themes of early modern Europe was that of expansion. By expansion, he meant overseas expansion in the form of colonies and intellectual expansion in the form of the rise of nationalism
, the Reformation
, and the Enlightenment
. In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries were part of the reaction against growing doctrinal pluralism, and were ultimately traced back to the conflict between the rational worldview of such thinkers as Desiderius Erasmus
and other humanists and the spiritual values of the Reformation.
Trevor-Roper argued that history should be understood as an art, not a science, and asserted that key attribute of the successful historian was the power of imagination. For Trevor-Roper, history was full of contingency, and the story of the past was neither a continuous advance nor decline, but was rather resolved by accident and through the particular choices that particular individuals made in the time at question. Though Trevor-Roper often acknowledged the impact of social trends upon history, in his view, it was the actions of the individuals that made the difference. However, in his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon political history
, but rather sought to examine the interaction between the political, intellectual
, social
and religious trends of the period. His preferred medium for expressing himself was the essay rather the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and 60s, Trevor-Roper was increasingly influenced by, though he never formally embraced the work of the French Annales School
, especially Fernand Braudel
, and did much to introduce the work of the Annales school to the English-speaking world.
was a major, although not the sole, cause of the English Civil War
. For him, the dispute was over issues of free will and predestination, of preaching and the importance of the sacraments, and only later over the structure of the Church of England
. The Puritans desired a decentralized and more egalitarian church with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for ordered church with a firm hierarchy with the bishops on top and an emphasis on divine right and salvation via free will.
As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was most famous for his disputes with fellow historians such as Lawrence Stone
and Christopher Hill
, whose materialist (and in some measure "inevitablist") explanations of the English Civil War
he enthusiastically attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the so-called "storm over the gentry" (also known as the "gentry controversy"), a dispute with Christian Socialist R. H. Tawney
and Stone about whether the English gentry
were, economically, on the way down or up in the century before the English Civil War
, and whether this had anything to do with the outbreak of that war in 1642. Stone, Tawney and Hill all argued that the gentry were rising economically, and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that, whilst office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline and that was the Civil War's cause. A third group, revolving around J. H. Hexter
and Geoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry at all. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper who, in a rancorous counter-essay, showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility. He then attacked Tawney's theories concerning the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that the latter was guilty of selective use of evidence and of misunderstanding the statistics.
and Edward Hallett Carr, and on his colleague A. J. P. Taylor
's account of the origins of Second World War
, were also widely noted. Another notable dispute was with Taylor and Alan Bullock
over the question of whether Adolf Hitler
had any fixed aims or not. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a “mountebank” (i.e., opportunistic adventurer) instead of the ideologue that Trevor-Roper believed him to be. When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's in his 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War, the same debate continued, very publicly, between Taylor and Trevor-Roper. Another notable feud Trevor-Roper carried on in the 1950s-60s was with the novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh
, who saw Trevor-Roper as a severe critic of the Catholic Church, and was often vocal in expressing his criticism of him.
In regard to the Globalist-Continentalist debate
between those who argued that Hitler had as his aim the conquest of the entire world, as against those who argued that he sought only the conquest of the continent of Europe
, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading Continentalists. He argued that the Globalist case rested upon taking a wide scattering of Hitler's remarks over several decades and attempting to turn these views into a systematic ideology. In his opinion, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe.
.” He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe
saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems. In this “general crisis,” various events, such as the English Civil War
, the Fronde
in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War
in Germany, troubles in the Netherlands
, and revolts against the Spanish
Crown in Portugal
, Naples
and Catalonia
, were all manifestations of the same problems. The most important causes of the “general crisis,” in Trevor-Roper’s opinion, were the conflicts between “Court” and “Country”; that is between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry representing the country. In addition, the intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Reformation
and the Renaissance
were important secondary causes of the "general crisis."
The “general crisis” thesis generated much controversy between those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm
, who believed in the thesis, but saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being more social and economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction comprised those who simply denied there was any “general crisis,” such as the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steengsgaard, and the Soviet historian A.D. Lublinskaya. Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, which led to experts in 17th century history such as Roland Mousnier
, J. H. Elliott
, Lawrence Stone
, E. H. Kossmann, Eric Hobsbawm
and J. H. Hexter
all expressing themselves as to the pros and cons of the theory. At times, the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis." Villari went on to accuse Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the English Civil War
), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of an idealistic Europe-wide revolutionary movement. Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper was the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya, who attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, and thus argued there was no "general crisis;" instead Lublinskaya maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the normal workings of the emergence of capitalism.
endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for World War I
. Trevor-Roper wrote that, in his opinion, far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers. He went on to note that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship." Finally, he praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.
of the Sinologist
Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
, who had long been regarded as one of the world's leading experts on China
. In his biography, Trevor-Roper proceeded to expose Backhouse's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West as many of Backhouse's assertions, such as his claim that the Dowager Empress
ordered the murder of her son, were proven to be false.
, for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford
, and had his old friend and publisher the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited a festschrift
in honor of his friend, Sir Keith Feiling
's 80th birthday. In 1970, he was undoubtedly the author of The Letters Of Mercurius, a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s.
The extent of Trevor-Roper’s influence can be seen in the list of prominent contributors to History and the Imagination, the festschrift in his honor. Some of the more notable contributors were Sir Geoffrey Elton, John Clive, Arnaldo Momigliano
, Frances Yates
, Jeremy Catto
, Robert S. Lopez, Michael Howard
, David S. Katz, Dimitri Obolensky
, J.H. Elliott
, Richard Cobb
, Walter Pagel, Hugh Lloyd-Jones
, Valerie Pearl, and Fernand Braudel
.
The topics contributed by this group of American, British, French, Russian, Italian, Israeli, Canadian, and German historians extended from whether the Odyssey
was a part of an oral tradition later written down to the question of the responsibility for the Jameson Raid
.
thinkers like Voltaire
, Adam Smith
, and Edward Gibbon
, in 1963 he made the now-famous remark that Africa
had no history prior to European exploration
and colonization, saying rather that “there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness." and described it's past only as "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe." These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa “unhistoric”, was criticized by Africanists
in various fields of academia, spurring intense debate, up to today, between historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and those in the emerging fields of postcolonial
and cultural studies
on the definition of “history."
The conflict centers around what factors must be present in order for a society to qualify as having a “history,” which Trevor-Roper thought required documentable evidence of if and how a society's “movement” toward change and development was accomplished. Many historians have agreed with this central claim but think historical evidence should also include oral tradition
s as well as an established system of written history, which had previously been the litmus test for a society having left "prehistory
" behind. Other critics of Trevor-Roper’s claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether by materialist
, Annalist
, or, like Trevor-Roper, conservative methods. Still others have gone as far as saying that all approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history are not sufficient for an accurate description of African societies and cultures
. Nevertheless, although virtually all scholars now agree that Africa qualifies as having a “history," Trevor-Roper's statements played an indirect, but important role in the development of post-colonial African studies by motivating wide-ranging discussions about Africa’s role in the present and historical world.
of Peterhouse, Cambridge
. His election, which surprised his contemporaries, was engineered by a group of fellows led by Maurice Cowling
, then the leading Peterhouse Historian
. Despite this, his relations with the conservative members of the fellowship (and indeed the porters
) of Peterhouse subsequently proved to be difficult.
. The opinion among experts in the field was by no means unanimous; David Irving
for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, but then finally stated that they were, in fact, a forgery. Two other historians, Eberhard Jäckel
and Gerhard Weinberg
, also authenticated them. But within two weeks forensic scientist Julius Grant
had demonstrated unequivocally that the diaries were a forgery. The embarrassing incident gave Trevor-Roper's enemies at Peterhouse and elsewhere the opportunity to criticise him openly.
Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the alleged diaries raised questions in the public mind not only about his perspicacity as a historian but also about his integrity, because The Sunday Times
, a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries. Trevor-Roper denied any dishonest motivation, explaining that he had been given certain assurances as to how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer" and that these assurances had been wrong, prompting the satirical magazine Private Eye
to nickname him Hugh Very-Ropey.
Despite the shadow that this incident cast over his later career, he continued writing (producing Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans in 1987) and his work continued to be well received.
He was portrayed in the 1991 TV miniseries Selling Hitler
by Alan Bennett
.
by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter of Queen Alexandra
and had previously been married to Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, by whom she had had three children. There were no children of his own marriage to her.
His brother, Patrick Trevor-Roper
, was a leading eye surgeon and prominent gay rights campaigner, one of only three gay individuals willing to testify before the Wolfenden Committee, which was investigating whether British law on this should be changed.
Hugh Trevor-Roper was awarded a life peerage
in 1979 and chose the title Baron Dacre of Glanton, of Glanton in the County of Northumberland
. His choice of title reflected the fact that he was the great-great-great-grandson of Reverend the Hon. Richard Henry Roper, second and youngest son of Anne, 16th Baroness Dacre
, from her second marriage to Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham.
He was the first life peer created during Margaret Thatcher's
term as Prime Minister.
Trevor-Roper died of cancer in a hospice in Oxford
, aged 89. In his last years he had suffered from sight problems leading to visual illusions, problems which were corrected by surgery.
Four books by Trevor-Roper were published posthumously. The first was Letters from Oxford, a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947–60 to his close friend, the wealthy American art collector Bernard Berenson
, who lived in a villa outside of Florence
, Italy. The second book was 2006's Europe’s Physician, an unfinished biography
of Sir Theodore de Mayerne
, the Franco-Swiss court physician at the courts of Henri IV
, James I
and Charles I
. The latter work was a manuscript Trevor-Roper had largely completed by 1979, but for unknown reasons did not finish. The third book was The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, a critique written in the mid-1970s of what Trevor-Roper regarded as the myths of Scottish nationalism
. It was published in 2008. The fourth book was "History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays", which was published in 2010.
By Trevor-Roper
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
of early modern Britain
Early Modern Britain
Early modern Britain is the history of the island of Great Britain, roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Major historical events in Early Modern British history include the English Renaissance, the English Reformation and Scottish Reformation, the English Civil War, the...
and Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. He was made a life peer
Life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the Peerage whose titles cannot be inherited. Nowadays life peerages, always of baronial rank, are created under the Life Peerages Act 1958 and entitle the holders to seats in the House of Lords, presuming they meet qualifications such as...
by Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
in 1979, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton.
Early life and education
Trevor-Roper was born in GlantonGlanton
Glanton is a small rural village, in the county of Northumberland, England. Historically, Glanton was a relatively industrial village , although in recent years the level of industry has declined...
, Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
, England, the son of a doctor, and the brother of Patrick Trevor-Roper
Patrick Trevor-Roper
Patrick Trevor-Roper , British eye surgeon and pioneer gay rights activist, was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to "come out" as openly gay, and played a leading role in the campaign to repeal the UK's anti-gay laws....
(who became a doctor and gay rights activist). Trever-Roper was educated at Charterhouse
Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply Charterhouse or House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian...
and at Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
in Classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
and Modern History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, later moving to Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
to be a research fellow. Trevor-Roper took a first in Classical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland and the Hertford scholarships in Classics. Initially, he had intended to make his career in the Classics, but became bored with what he regarded as the pedantic technical aspects of the Greats course at Oxford, and switched to History, where he obtained an honours first in 1936. Trevor-Roper's first book was a 1940 biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Archbishop William Laud
William Laud
William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...
, in which he challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.
Military service in World War II
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
. He came to have a low opinion of the pre-war professional intelligence agents but a higher one of post-1939 recruits like Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
. Trevor-Roper declared in The Philby Affair (1968) that Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the Chief of German Military Intelligence Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.
Investigating Hitler's last days
In November 1945, Trevor-Roper was ordered by Dick WhiteDick White
Sir Dick Goldsmith White, KCMG, KBE , was a British intelligence officer. He was Director-General of MI5 from 1953 to 1956, and Head of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1956 to 1968.-Career:...
, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession) to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's death and to rebut the propaganda of the Soviet government
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
that Hitler was alive and living somewhere in the West. Using the alias of Major Oughton, Trevor-Roper interviewed politicians, military men, and supporting staff - which were present in the Führerbunker
Führerbunker
The Führerbunker was located beneath Hitler's New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex which was constructed in two major phases, one part in 1936 and the other in 1943...
with Hitler, and who had been able to escape to the West, including Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven. The ensuing investigation resulted in Trevor-Roper's most famous book, The Last Days of Hitler (1947, with revised editions as late as 1995), in which he described the last ten days of Hitler's life, and the fates of some of the higher ranking members of the inner circle as well of those lesser figures whose evidence was important for reconstructing this penultimate chapter of the war. Trevor-Roper transformed the evidence he gathered during his fact-finding mission, evidence that was often lurid, confused, and plain wrong, into a literary work, with sardonic humour and drama, that brings out incidentally how much he was influenced by the rhetorical prose styles of two of his favourite historians, Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
and Thomas Babington Macaulay. In response to The Last Days of Hitler, Trevor-Roper received a death threat from the Stern Gang
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...
for his supposed over-emphasis on Hitler's charisma, which the authors of the death threat felt had exonerated the German people.
Anti-communism
In June 1950, Trevor-Roper attended a conference in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
of anti-Communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
intellectuals such as Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He was the older brother of the influential entertainment lawyer Floria Lasky and Joyce Lasky Reed, the President and founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation and former Director of European Affairs...
, Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...
, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, Raymond Aron
Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
and Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis...
that resulted in the founding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its magazine Encounter
Encounter (magazine)
Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
. In the 1950s and 1960s, he served as a frequent contributor to Encounter, but in private was sometimes bothered by what he regarded as the magazine's overly didactic tone, particularly in allegedly strident pieces by Koestler and Borkenau.
Academic controversies
Trevor-Roper was famous for his writing style (see above). Especially in his many reviews, he could be pitilessly sarcastic, devastating in his mockery. In his attack on Arnold ToynbeeArnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:...
's A Study of History, he accused the eminent scholar of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony.".
For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were those of intellectual vitality, religious quarrels and of divergence between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former economically, politically and constitutionally. European expansion overseas was incidental to these processes. In Trevor-Roper's view, one of the major themes of early modern Europe was that of expansion. By expansion, he meant overseas expansion in the form of colonies and intellectual expansion in the form of the rise of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, and the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries were part of the reaction against growing doctrinal pluralism, and were ultimately traced back to the conflict between the rational worldview of such thinkers as Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian....
and other humanists and the spiritual values of the Reformation.
Trevor-Roper argued that history should be understood as an art, not a science, and asserted that key attribute of the successful historian was the power of imagination. For Trevor-Roper, history was full of contingency, and the story of the past was neither a continuous advance nor decline, but was rather resolved by accident and through the particular choices that particular individuals made in the time at question. Though Trevor-Roper often acknowledged the impact of social trends upon history, in his view, it was the actions of the individuals that made the difference. However, in his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon political history
Political history
Political history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Diplomatic history, social history, economic history, and military history, as well as constitutional history and public...
, but rather sought to examine the interaction between the political, intellectual
Intellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
, social
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
and religious trends of the period. His preferred medium for expressing himself was the essay rather the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and 60s, Trevor-Roper was increasingly influenced by, though he never formally embraced the work of the French Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
, especially Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
, and did much to introduce the work of the Annales school to the English-speaking world.
English Civil War
In Trevor-Roper's opinion, the dispute between the Puritans and the ArminiansArminianism
Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius and his historic followers, the Remonstrants...
was a major, although not the sole, cause of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. For him, the dispute was over issues of free will and predestination, of preaching and the importance of the sacraments, and only later over the structure of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
. The Puritans desired a decentralized and more egalitarian church with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for ordered church with a firm hierarchy with the bishops on top and an emphasis on divine right and salvation via free will.
As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was most famous for his disputes with fellow historians such as Lawrence Stone
Lawrence Stone
Lawrence Stone was an English historian of early modern Britain. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War and marriage.-Biography:...
and Christopher Hill
Christopher Hill (historian)
John Edward Christopher Hill , usually known simply as Christopher Hill, was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks....
, whose materialist (and in some measure "inevitablist") explanations of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
he enthusiastically attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the so-called "storm over the gentry" (also known as the "gentry controversy"), a dispute with Christian Socialist R. H. Tawney
R. H. Tawney
Richard Henry Tawney was an English economic historian, social critic, Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education....
and Stone about whether the English gentry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
were, economically, on the way down or up in the century before the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, and whether this had anything to do with the outbreak of that war in 1642. Stone, Tawney and Hill all argued that the gentry were rising economically, and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that, whilst office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline and that was the Civil War's cause. A third group, revolving around J. H. Hexter
J. H. Hexter
Jack H. Hexter was an American historian, a specialist in Tudor and seventeenth century British history, and well known for his comments on historiography.-Early career:...
and Geoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry at all. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper who, in a rancorous counter-essay, showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility. He then attacked Tawney's theories concerning the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that the latter was guilty of selective use of evidence and of misunderstanding the statistics.
Second World War and Hitler
Trevor-Roper's attacks on the philosophies of history advanced by Arnold J. ToynbeeArnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
and Edward Hallett Carr, and on his colleague A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
's account of the origins of Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, were also widely noted. Another notable dispute was with Taylor and Alan Bullock
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
over the question of whether Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
had any fixed aims or not. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a “mountebank” (i.e., opportunistic adventurer) instead of the ideologue that Trevor-Roper believed him to be. When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's in his 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War, the same debate continued, very publicly, between Taylor and Trevor-Roper. Another notable feud Trevor-Roper carried on in the 1950s-60s was with the novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
, who saw Trevor-Roper as a severe critic of the Catholic Church, and was often vocal in expressing his criticism of him.
In regard to the Globalist-Continentalist debate
Nazi Foreign Policy (debate)
This article refers to the historical argument over the Nazi Foreign Policy in terms of territorial expansion. The National Socialists governed Germany between 1933 and 1945...
between those who argued that Hitler had as his aim the conquest of the entire world, as against those who argued that he sought only the conquest of the continent of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading Continentalists. He argued that the Globalist case rested upon taking a wide scattering of Hitler's remarks over several decades and attempting to turn these views into a systematic ideology. In his opinion, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe.
General crisis of the 17th century
A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the “general crisis of the 17th centuryThe General Crisis
The General Crisis is the term used by some historians to describe the period of widespread conflict and instability that occurred from the early 17th century to the early 18th century in Europe and in more recent historiography in the world at large....
.” He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems. In this “general crisis,” various events, such as the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, the Fronde
Fronde
The Fronde was a civil war in France, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin....
in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
in Germany, troubles in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and revolts against the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
Crown in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, were all manifestations of the same problems. The most important causes of the “general crisis,” in Trevor-Roper’s opinion, were the conflicts between “Court” and “Country”; that is between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry representing the country. In addition, the intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
and the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
were important secondary causes of the "general crisis."
The “general crisis” thesis generated much controversy between those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, who believed in the thesis, but saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being more social and economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction comprised those who simply denied there was any “general crisis,” such as the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steengsgaard, and the Soviet historian A.D. Lublinskaya. Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, which led to experts in 17th century history such as Roland Mousnier
Roland Mousnier
Roland Émile Mousnier was a French historian of the early modern period in France and of the comparative studies of different civilizations.-Life:...
, J. H. Elliott
John Huxtable Elliott
Sir John Huxtable Elliott, FBA , who normally publishes as J.H. Elliott, is an eminent historian, Regius Professor Emeritus in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge....
, Lawrence Stone
Lawrence Stone
Lawrence Stone was an English historian of early modern Britain. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War and marriage.-Biography:...
, E. H. Kossmann, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
and J. H. Hexter
J. H. Hexter
Jack H. Hexter was an American historian, a specialist in Tudor and seventeenth century British history, and well known for his comments on historiography.-Early career:...
all expressing themselves as to the pros and cons of the theory. At times, the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis." Villari went on to accuse Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of an idealistic Europe-wide revolutionary movement. Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper was the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya, who attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, and thus argued there was no "general crisis;" instead Lublinskaya maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the normal workings of the emergence of capitalism.
First World War
In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by John RöhlJohn C. G. Röhl
John C. G. Röhl is a British historian.Originally from London, England, Röhl taught in Germany. He then became a professor of European history at the University of Sussex. He is a leading expert of the Wilhelmine German Empire, having written a two-volume biography of Emperor William II.-Books by...
endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Trevor-Roper wrote that, in his opinion, far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers. He went on to note that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship." Finally, he praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.
Sir Edmund Backhouse frauds
One of Trevor-Roper's most successful books was his 1976 biographyBiography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of the Sinologist
Sinology
Sinology in general use is the study of China and things related to China, but, especially in the American academic context, refers more strictly to the study of classical language and literature, and the philological approach...
Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet was a British oriental scholar and linguist whose work exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. Since his death, however, it has been established that some of his sources were forged, though it is not clear...
, who had long been regarded as one of the world's leading experts on China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. In his biography, Trevor-Roper proceeded to expose Backhouse's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West as many of Backhouse's assertions, such as his claim that the Dowager Empress
Empress Dowager Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi1 , of the Manchu Yehenara clan, was a powerful and charismatic figure who became the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China for 47 years from 1861 to her death in 1908....
ordered the murder of her son, were proven to be false.
Influence
In 1960, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of Sir Oliver Franks who was backed by the heads of houses marshalled by Maurice BowraMaurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...
, for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, and had his old friend and publisher the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....
elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited a festschrift
Festschrift
In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...
in honor of his friend, Sir Keith Feiling
Keith Feiling
Sir Keith Grahame Feiling was Chichele Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, 1946–1950. He was noted for his conservative interpretation of the past, showing an empire-oriented ideology in defence of hierarchical authority, paternalism, deference, the monarchy, Church, family,...
's 80th birthday. In 1970, he was undoubtedly the author of The Letters Of Mercurius, a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s.
The extent of Trevor-Roper’s influence can be seen in the list of prominent contributors to History and the Imagination, the festschrift in his honor. Some of the more notable contributors were Sir Geoffrey Elton, John Clive, Arnaldo Momigliano
Arnaldo Momigliano
Arnaldo Dante Momigliano KBE was an Italian historian known for his work in historiography, characterized by Donald Kagan as the "world’s leading student of the writing of history in the ancient world." He became Professor of Roman history at the University of Turin in 1936, but as a Jew soon lost...
, Frances Yates
Frances Yates
Dame Frances Amelia Yates DBE was a British historian. She taught at the Warburg Institute of the University of London for many years.She wrote extensively on the occult or Neoplatonic philosophies of the Renaissance...
, Jeremy Catto
Jeremy Catto
Dr Robert Jeremy Adam Inch Catto was, until 2006, the Rhodes Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Oriel College, Oxford, where he was also Senior Dean. He holds a Master's degree and a doctorate His research interests lie in the politics and religion of later medieval England...
, Robert S. Lopez, Michael Howard
Michael Howard (historian)
Sir Michael Eliot Howard, OM, CH, CBE, MC, FBA is a British military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, and Robert A...
, David S. Katz, Dimitri Obolensky
Dimitri Obolensky
Sir Dimitri Obolensky was born Prince Dmitriy Dmitrievich Obolensky to Prince Dimitri Alexandrovich Obolensky and Countess Maria Shuvalov . He was descended from Rurik, Igor, Svyatoslav, St Vladimir of Kiev, St Michael of Chernigov, and Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov...
, J.H. Elliott
John Huxtable Elliott
Sir John Huxtable Elliott, FBA , who normally publishes as J.H. Elliott, is an eminent historian, Regius Professor Emeritus in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge....
, Richard Cobb
Richard Cobb
Richard Charles Cobb was a British historian. He became Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, after an initially unconventional academic career in which he spent a dozen years working as an independent scholar in French archives. His work was recognised in France by the award of...
, Walter Pagel, Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones FBA was a British classical scholar and Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford....
, Valerie Pearl, and Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
.
The topics contributed by this group of American, British, French, Russian, Italian, Israeli, Canadian, and German historians extended from whether the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
was a part of an oral tradition later written down to the question of the responsibility for the Jameson Raid
Jameson Raid
The Jameson Raid was a botched raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by a British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895–96...
.
Debates on African history
Another aspect of Trevor-Roper’s general outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy is his viewpoint on historical experiences of pre-literate societies. Evoking EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
thinkers like Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
, and Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
, in 1963 he made the now-famous remark that Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
had no history prior to European exploration
European exploration of Africa
European exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans, who explored and established settlements in North Africa. Fifteenth Century Portugal, especially under Henry the Navigator probed along the West African coast. Scientific curiosity and Christian missionary spirit soon were...
and colonization, saying rather that “there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness." and described it's past only as "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe." These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa “unhistoric”, was criticized by Africanists
African studies
African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and societies of Africa .The field includes the study of:Culture of Africa, History of Africa , Anthropology of Africa , Politics of Africa, Economy of Africa African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and...
in various fields of academia, spurring intense debate, up to today, between historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and those in the emerging fields of postcolonial
Postcolonialism
Post-colonialism is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism...
and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
on the definition of “history."
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
The conflict centers around what factors must be present in order for a society to qualify as having a “history,” which Trevor-Roper thought required documentable evidence of if and how a society's “movement” toward change and development was accomplished. Many historians have agreed with this central claim but think historical evidence should also include oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
s as well as an established system of written history, which had previously been the litmus test for a society having left "prehistory
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
" behind. Other critics of Trevor-Roper’s claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether by materialist
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
, Annalist
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
, or, like Trevor-Roper, conservative methods. Still others have gone as far as saying that all approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history are not sufficient for an accurate description of African societies and cultures
Culture of Africa
The culture of Africa encompasses and includes all cultures within the continent of Africa. There is a political or racial split between North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is in turn divided into a great number of ethnic cultures...
. Nevertheless, although virtually all scholars now agree that Africa qualifies as having a “history," Trevor-Roper's statements played an indirect, but important role in the development of post-colonial African studies by motivating wide-ranging discussions about Africa’s role in the present and historical world.
Election as Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge
At the age of sixty-seven, he became MasterMaster (form of address)
Master is an archaic masculine title or form of address in English.- In English and Welsh society :Master was used in England for men of some rank, especially "free masters" of a trade guild and by any manual worker or servant employee to his employer , but also generally by those lower in status...
of Peterhouse, Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. His election, which surprised his contemporaries, was engineered by a group of fellows led by Maurice Cowling
Maurice Cowling
Maurice John Cowling was a British historian and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.-Life:Cowling was born in Norwood, South London, to a lower middle-class family. His family then moved to Streatham, where Cowling attended an LCC elementary school, and from 1937 the Battersea Grammar School...
, then the leading Peterhouse Historian
Peterhouse school of history
The Peterhouse school of history was named after the Cambridge college of the same name where the history taught concentrated on 'high politics'...
. Despite this, his relations with the conservative members of the fellowship (and indeed the porters
Porter (college)
The majority of colleges at the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Oxford, as well as newer collegiate universities such as York and older universities like University of Bristol and St David's College, have members of staff called porters. There is normally a head porter and a team of other...
) of Peterhouse subsequently proved to be difficult.
His role in the "Hitler Diaries" hoax
The nadir of his career came in 1983, when as a director of The Times he "authenticated" the so-called Hitler DiariesHitler Diaries
In April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...
. The opinion among experts in the field was by no means unanimous; David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, but then finally stated that they were, in fact, a forgery. Two other historians, Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
and Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg is a German-born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of World War II. Weinberg currently is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of the...
, also authenticated them. But within two weeks forensic scientist Julius Grant
Julius Grant
Julius Grant was a British forensic scientist and intelligence officer.Grant made a career exposing forgeries on the basis of chemical analysis of paper, ink and other characteristics of written documents. Much of his work was for British Intelligence as illustrated in the Colin Wallace Clockwork...
had demonstrated unequivocally that the diaries were a forgery. The embarrassing incident gave Trevor-Roper's enemies at Peterhouse and elsewhere the opportunity to criticise him openly.
Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the alleged diaries raised questions in the public mind not only about his perspicacity as a historian but also about his integrity, because The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries. Trevor-Roper denied any dishonest motivation, explaining that he had been given certain assurances as to how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer" and that these assurances had been wrong, prompting the satirical magazine Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
to nickname him Hugh Very-Ropey.
Despite the shadow that this incident cast over his later career, he continued writing (producing Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans in 1987) and his work continued to be well received.
He was portrayed in the 1991 TV miniseries Selling Hitler
Selling Hitler
Selling Hitler is a 1991 ITV television drama-documentary mini-series about the Hitler Diaries hoax and was based on Robert Harris's 1986 book Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries.-Plot:...
by Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
.
Personal life
On 4 October 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (9 March 1907 – 15 August 1997), eldest daughter of Field Marshal the Earl HaigDouglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 to the end of the War...
by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter of Queen Alexandra
Alexandra of Denmark
Alexandra of Denmark was the wife of Edward VII of the United Kingdom...
and had previously been married to Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, by whom she had had three children. There were no children of his own marriage to her.
His brother, Patrick Trevor-Roper
Patrick Trevor-Roper
Patrick Trevor-Roper , British eye surgeon and pioneer gay rights activist, was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to "come out" as openly gay, and played a leading role in the campaign to repeal the UK's anti-gay laws....
, was a leading eye surgeon and prominent gay rights campaigner, one of only three gay individuals willing to testify before the Wolfenden Committee, which was investigating whether British law on this should be changed.
Hugh Trevor-Roper was awarded a life peerage
British honours system
The British honours system is a means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories...
in 1979 and chose the title Baron Dacre of Glanton, of Glanton in the County of Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
. His choice of title reflected the fact that he was the great-great-great-grandson of Reverend the Hon. Richard Henry Roper, second and youngest son of Anne, 16th Baroness Dacre
Baron Dacre
Baron Dacre is a title that has been created three times in the Peerage of England, every time by writ. The first creation came in 1321 when Ralph Dacre was summoned to Parliament as Lord Dacre. He married Margaret, 2nd Baroness Multon of Gilsland, heiress of a large estate in Cumbria centred on...
, from her second marriage to Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham.
He was the first life peer created during Margaret Thatcher's
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
term as Prime Minister.
Trevor-Roper died of cancer in a hospice in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, aged 89. In his last years he had suffered from sight problems leading to visual illusions, problems which were corrected by surgery.
Four books by Trevor-Roper were published posthumously. The first was Letters from Oxford, a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947–60 to his close friend, the wealthy American art collector Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...
, who lived in a villa outside of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy. The second book was 2006's Europe’s Physician, an unfinished biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Sir Theodore de Mayerne
Theodore de Mayerne
Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne was a Swiss-born physician who treated kings of France and England and advanced the theories of Paracelsus....
, the Franco-Swiss court physician at the courts of Henri IV
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
, James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
and Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The latter work was a manuscript Trevor-Roper had largely completed by 1979, but for unknown reasons did not finish. The third book was The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, a critique written in the mid-1970s of what Trevor-Roper regarded as the myths of Scottish nationalism
Scottish independence
Scottish independence is a political ambition of political parties, advocacy groups and individuals for Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom and become an independent sovereign state, separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland....
. It was published in 2008. The fourth book was "History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays", which was published in 2010.
Works
- Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645, 1940.
- The Last Days of Hitler, 1947 (revised editions followed, until the last in 1995)
- Secret Conversations, 1941-1944 (published later as Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944Hitler's Table TalkHitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of wartime conversations and monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944...
), 1953. - Historical Essays, 1957.
- "The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" pages 31–64 from Past and Present, Volume 16, 1959.
- "Hitlers Kriegsziele" pages 121–133 from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitsgeschichte, Volume 8, 1960, translated into English as "Hitler's War Aims" pages 235–250 from Aspects of The Third Reich edited by H.W. Koch, London: Macmillan Ltd, 1985.
- "A. J. P. Taylor, Hitler and the War" pages 86–96 from Encounter, Volume 17, July 1961.
- "E. H. Carr's Success Story" pages 69–77 from Encounter, Volume 84, Issue #104, 1962
- Blitzkrieg to Defeat: Hitler's War Directives, 1939-1945, 1965, 1964.
- Essays in British history presented to Sir Keith Feiling edited by H.R. Trevor-Roper; with a foreword by Lord David Cecil (1964)
- The Rise of Christian Europe, 1965.
- Hitler's Place in History, 1965.
- The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change, and Other Essays, 1967.
- The Age of Expansion, Europe and the World, 1559-1600, edited by Hugh Trevor-Roper, 1968.
- The Philby Affair: Espionage, Treason, and Secret Services, 1968.
- The Romantic Movement and the Study of History: the John Coffin memorial lecture delivered before the University of London on 17 February 1969, 1969.
- The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1969
- The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century, 1970.
- Queen Elizabeth's First Historian: William Camden and the Beginning of English "Civil History", 1971.
- "Foreword" pages 9–16 from 1914: Delusion or Design The Testimony of Two German Diplomats edited by John Röhl, 1973.
- A Hidden Life: The Enigma of Sir Edmund Backhouse (published in the U.S. as The Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse), 1976.
- Princes and Artists: Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts, 1517-1633, 1976.
- History and Imagination: A Valedictory Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 20 May 1980, 1980.
- Renaissance Essays, 1985.
- Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays, 1987.
- From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution, 1992.
- Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 introduction (London: Everyman's Library, 1993).
- Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson. Edited by Richard Davenport-Hines. L.: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, ISBN 0-297-85084-9.
- Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore De Mayerne, 2007, ISBN 0-300-11263-7.
- The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, 2008, ISBN 0-300-13686-2
- History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays, 2010, ISBN 0-300-13934-9
See also
- List of books by or about Adolf Hitler
- Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd BaronetSir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd BaronetSir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet was a British oriental scholar and linguist whose work exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. Since his death, however, it has been established that some of his sources were forged, though it is not clear...
External links
About Trevor-Roper- Michael Knox Beran: H. R. Trevor-Roper, R.I.P, nationalreview.com, January 31, 2003.
- Barnard, T. (Faculty of History, University of Oxford) Obituary, History Faculty Alumni Newsletter, No. 1, April 2003. (there are several discrepancies between these sources)
By Trevor-Roper