Cosmopolitan Islanders

by Richard J. Evans

In Cosmopolitan Islanders one of the world's leading historians asks why it is that so many prominent and influential British historians have devoted themselves to the study of the European continent. Books on the history of France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and many other European countries, and of Europe more generally, have frequently reached the best-seller lists both in Britain and (in translation) in those European countries themselves. Yet the same is emphatically not true in reverse. Richard J. Evans traces the evolution of British interest in the history of Continental Europe from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. He goes on to discuss why British historians who work on aspects of European history in the present day have chosen to do so and why this distinguished tradition is now under threat. Cosmopolitan Islanders ends with some reflections on what needs to be done to ensure its continuation in the future.

Genres: History

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2005

About the author

Richard J. Evans is one of the world's leading historians of modern Germany. He was born in London in 1947. From 2008 to 2014 he was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, and from 2020 to 2017 President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He served as Provost of Gresham College in the City of London from 2014 to 2020. In 1994 he was awarded the Hamburg Medal for Art and Science for cultural services to the city, and in 2015 received the British Academy Leverhulme Medal, awarded every three years for a significant contribution to the Humanities or Social Sciences. In 2000 he was the principal expert witness in the David Irving Holocaust Denial libel trial at the High Court in London, subsequently the subject of the film Denial. His books include Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson History Prize), In Defence of History, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War. His book The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, volume 7 of the Penguin History of Europe, was published in 2016. His most recent books are Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (2019) and The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (2020). In 2012 he was knighted for services to scholarship.

Reviews

[Martin Samuels · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, clearly written analysis by one of Britain's leading historians. This short work demonstrates how British historians differ strongly from their Continental peers in the extent to which they study the history of other countries, either exclusively or in parallel with their own. Evans explores the history and reasons behind this difference - a difference at first unexpected, given the fact that other European countries have affected each other's history so profoundly over the centries that one might expect mutual analysis to be the norm. He then considers the future, noting with concern that the rapid decline in the study of foreign languages in the British school system means that few students have the skills necessary to undertake research in primary source materials, while the pressure for PhDs to be completed quickly leaves insufficient time for language acclimatisation and extended research visits. While his calls for longer funding periods for PhD students studying non-Uk history is sensible, his suggestion that the schooling system should be reformed in order to generate more historians of foreign countries seems a little extreme - though the arguments for improved language schooling more generally are powerful. The book certainly reawakened my own interest in comparative history.