'Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton' (
January 15,
1914 –
January 26,
2003) was a notable
historian of
Early Modern Britain and
Nazi Germany.
Life
Early life and education
He was born in
Glanton,
Northumberland,
England and educated at
Charterhouse and at
Christ Church, Oxford in
Classics and Modern History. Trevor-Roper took a first in Classical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland and the Hertford scholarships in Classics, before switching to Modern
History, and getting another first in 1936. Trevor-Roper's first book was his
1940 biography of Archbishop
William Laud, in which Trevor-Roper challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.
Military service in World War 2
During
World War II, Trevor-Roper, an expert on the Abwehr, served as an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), in Section V--Spain and Portugal, which was headed by
Kim Philby, whom Trevor-Roper regarded as "the most competent and industrious man in that generally lax organization." ("The Philby Affair," London 1968, p. 42). After the war Trevor-Roper claimed that
Philby (one of his close colleagues, whom he knew and liked) had successfully undermined efforts by the Chief of the German
Abwehr, Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government. Later, in 1963, when Philby was discovered to be a Soviet agent, Trevor-Roper felt a deep sense of betrayal by his former friend.
Investigating Hitler's last days
In
1945,
Trevor-Roper was ordered by the British government to investigate the circumstances of
Adolf Hitler's death and to rebut the claims of the
Soviet Union that Hitler was alive and living somewhere in the West. The ensuing investigation resulted in Trevor-Roper's most famous book,
1947's ''The Last Days of Hitler'', in which he traced the last ten days of the Fuehrer's life.
Anti-communism
In
1950, Trevor-Roper attended a conference in
Berlin 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 Trevor-Roper 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 career and controversies
In
1957 he was appointed
Regius Professor of Modern History at the
University of Oxford, a post he held until
1980; subsequently he became Master of
Peterhouse, Cambridge. Having achieved his first major success with ''The Last Days of Hitler'' (
1947), he consolidated his reputation as an authority on the
Third Reich with books such as ''Hitler's Table Talk'' (
1953) and ''The Goebbels Diaries'' (
1978), although his speciality was early modern Britain, especially the period around the
English Civil War.
In 1959, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of Sir
Oliver Franks who was backed by the leading dons for the Chancellorship of the
University of Oxford and had his patron the Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan elected instead.
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 the gentry were in decline and that was the Civil War's cause. A third faction, revolving around
J. H. Hexter and
Geoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with either the alleged rise or decline of the gentry.
Trevor-Roper's attacks on the philosophies of history advanced by the historians
Arnold J. Toynbee and
Edward Hallett Carr and on his colleague
A.J.P. Taylor's account of the origins of
World War II, were also widely noticed. Another notable dispute was with Taylor and
Alan Bullock over the question of whether
Adolf Hitler had any beliefs 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.
In regard to the Globalist-Continentalist debate between those who argued that
Adolf Hitler had as his aim the conquest of the 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 Trevor-Roper's opinion, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe.
A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the “general crisis of the 17th centuryâ€. 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, economic and political problems. In this “general crisisâ€, various events such as the
English Civil War, the
Fronde in
France, the climax of the
Thirty Years War in
Germany and revolts against the
Spanish Crown in
Portugal,
Naples and
Catalonia were all manifestations of the same problem. The most important causes of the “general crisisâ€, in Trevor-Roper’s opinion, was the conflict between “Court†and “Countryâ€; that is between the newly emerging (or would-be newly emerging in the case of the
Holy Roman Empire) centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign nation-state represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry representing the country. The “general crisis†thesis generated much controversy between those, such as the Marxist historian
Eric Hobsbawm, who believed in the “general crisis†thesis but saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being more social and economic in origin then Trevor-Roper would allow, and those who simply denied there was any “general crisisâ€.
One of Trevor-Roper's most successful books was his 1976
biography 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.
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 societies outside Europe. His famous claim in 1963 that
sub-Saharan 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,†has been criticized by
Africanists in various fields of academia.
[1] This comment, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa “unhistoric,â€
[2] led to 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."[3] [4] [5] 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.
[6] Many historians have agreed with this central claim but think historical evidence should also include
oral traditions as well as an established system of
written history, which had previously been the litmus test for a society having exited "
prehistory."
[7] [8] 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.
[9] HTR's methods, etc. 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.
[10] 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 postcolonial 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
Master 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 fellowship (and indeed the
porters) of Peterhouse subsequently proved to be confrontational.
His role in the "Hitler Diaries" hoax
The nadir of his career came in
1983, when, along with some others (the opinion among experts in the field was by no means unanimous; even
David Irving, widely accused of Nazi sympathies, decried them as forgeries), he authenticated the so-called ''
Hitler Diaries'', which later forensic examination proved to be a fake. The other experts asked to examine the diaries were
Eberhard Jäckel and
Gerhard Weinberg. The embarrassing incident was the last straw for his colleagues at Peterhouse, who took to calling him "Lord Faker".
Trevor-Roper's endorsement of the alleged Hitler 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 in whose parent company he held a financial interest, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries. Lord Dacre denied any dishonest motivation, insisting that he, like others, had made a mistake. It was after this mistake that ''
Private Eye'' nicknamed Trevor-Roper ''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.
Personal life
On
October 4,
1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (
March 9,
1907 -
August 15,
1997), eldest daughter of
Field Marshal the Earl Haig 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. His brother,
Patrick Trevor-Roper, was a leading eye surgeon and prominent
gay rights campaigner.
He was awarded a
life peerage in
1979 and chose the title 'Baron Dacre of Glanton', of Glanton in the County of
Northumberland.
Lord Dacre of Glanton died of
throat cancer in a
hospice in
Oxford, aged 89.
Work
★ ''Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645'', 1940.
★ ''The Last Days of Hitler'', 1947.
★ ''Secret Conversations, 1941-1944'' (published later as ''Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944''), 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 ''Vierteljahreshefte 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.
★ ''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 Plunder Of The Arts In The Seventeenth Century'', 1970.
★ ''Queen Elizabeth's First Historian: William Camden and the Beginning of English "Civil History",'' 1971.
★ ''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.
★ ''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 European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1969
References
★ Lloyd-Jones, Hugh; Pearl, Valerie & Worden, Blair (editors) ''History and Imagination: Essays in Honor of H.R Trevor-Roper'', London: Duckworth, 1981.
★ Saleh, Zaki ''Trevor-Roper's Critique of Arnold Toynbee: A Symptom of Intellectual Chaos'', Baghdad: Al-Ma'eref Press, 1958.
★
Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler : the search for the origins of his evil'' New York : Random House, 1998 ISBN 0-679-43151-9.
Endnotes
1. Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1965): 9.
2. Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Past and Present: History and Sociology,†Past and Present 42 (1969): 6.
3. R. Hunt Davis, “Interpreting the Colonial Period in African History,†African Affairs 72, no. 289 (1973): 383-400.
4. Gus Deveneaux, “The Frontier in Recent African History,†The International Journal of African Studies 11, no. 1 (1978): 63-85.
5. Shepard Krech III, “The State of Ethnohistory,†Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991): 345.
6. Ali A. Mazrui, “European Exploration and Africa’s Self-Discovery,†The Journal of Modern African Studies 7, no. 4 (1969): 668-669.
7. Kenneth C. Wylie, “The Uses and Misuses of Ethnohistory,†Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3, no. 4 (1973): 707-720.
8. Alan Gailey, “The Nature of Tradition,†Folklore 100, no. 2 (1989): 143-161.
9. Deveneaux, 67.
10. Finn Fugelstad, “The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History. An Essay,†History in Africa 19 (1992): 309-326.
★ Cited link: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200607/ai_n17177920/pg_1
See also
★
List of Adolf Hitler books
★
Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
External links
★
Obituary,
''The Telegraph''
★ Barnard, T. (Faculty of History, University of Oxford)
Obituary,
''History Faculty Alumni Newsletter'', No. 1, April 2003.
★
Obituary from BBC News website
★
Obituary from GuardianUnlimited (there are several discrepancies between these sources)
★
Review in The Times of 'Letters from Oxford', a new edited collection of Trevor-Roper's correspondence with Bernard Berenson in the 1950s.
★
Review of 'Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson' (ed. Davenport-Hines, R.), Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2006.
★
Lord Dacre of Glanton: Obituary, in
''The Times'', January 27, 2003.
★ Hunt, Tristram.
"Back when it mattered",
''Guardian'', March 5, 2003.
★
"The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" pages 31-64 from ''Past and Present'', Volume 16, 1959. online
★
Review of Letters from Oxford by Christopher Silvester in
''The Sunday Times'', July 16, 2006.
★
Review of Letters from Oxford by Laura Cumming in
''The Observer'', August 6, 2006.
★
''The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change, and Other Essays'', 1967. full text online
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