Bloomberg News is not one of my regular reads, and current news is mostly paywalled there, but its recent story "The Business of History" is now generally available. It's about the popularity and profitability of history podcasts. It also makes note of the rising sales of books about history. Bloomberg speculates it may all be related to the decline of history studies in universities.
I could not help noting one (not-much-noted) aspect of Jones's work that is also evident in "The Rest is History," the British podcast from historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, upon which the Bloomberg story is focussed. In books and broadcasts and podcasts, the new popular British history tends to take for granted a complacent little-England historical chauvinism in which British is always best and other breeds are mostly subjects of fun.
I first noticed this when I listened to a "Rest of History" series of podcasts about the Cathar heresy in medieval France. The Cathars are central to the historical work I may admire most of all in the world, Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. so I was already interested. But I discovered that every single historical expert on the Cathars featured or quoted on The Rest of History was English. Since all the leading historians of Catharism are French (if they are not Italian), it did seem an odd omission.
And gradually I realized The Rest of History applies the same cheery Brit-boy disdain to all historical subjects who are not English. Listen, for example, for the root-for-England style of Rest is History's series on Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. Classical types from before England existed get some respect, but I can't find their series on, say, the victories of Napoleon.
Dan Jones has grasped that the audience of a biography of Henry V is probably not there to put up with criticism of Henry's darker aspects.
When Jones's Henry V finds the defenders of a besieged town called Montereau too slow to surrender to him, he threatens to execute ten of his French prisoners of war. The defenders do not yield to this blackmail, and Henry has all ten hanged. It's a clear violation of the rules of chivalry, the laws of war, and Christian ethics -- but Snow places the blame "squarely on the obstinate Guillaume de Chaumont" for surrendering too slowly. When a French commander commits similar acts in another siege, Jones berates him as "a callous bastard" (well, he is apparently of illegitimate birth) and "singularly vicious." Anyway, he is eventually forced to surrender, and Henry hangs him too, along with a trumpeter who played some mocking tunes during the siege.
Is the double standard a deliberate flag-waving -- or just instinctive in this generation of writers?
A muscular defence by public figures of a traditional English history of the glories of empire and all the great English heroes has inspired actual threats to historians who practice the history of empire and slaveholding from a different perspective.Maybe also worth mentioning here: the recent book The Truth about the British Empire, edited by Alan Lester, which includes a Canadian chapter by Adele Perry, Sean Carleton, and Omeasoo Wahpasiw. From the British publisher's description:
Colonial history is now a battlefield in the culture war. The public's understanding of past events is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. Communities that long struggled to get their voices heard have, in their fight to highlight the hidden horrors of colonialism, alienated many who prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has generated a new, concerted denial of imperial racism and violence in Britain's past--a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.
