7 - Ideological environments

Summary

All ages are ideological whether they admit it or not, all historians are political whether they feel committed or not, all cultural environments fashion their participants whether they know it or not. That said and acknowledgement made, is there not something specific in time and space about the political engagement of western intellectuals through the era of two world wars, the menace of totalitarian movements and the coming of the Cold War? One need not have in mind the agonies of a Heidegger or a Sartre; the conjecture might have importance at a much lower level of daily activity, even within so firmly an anti-intellectual group as English historians. It need not take the form of treatises. It might be a history textbook whose story screams political presupposition. It might be an historical monograph stained more subtly with its particular present in an observable way. It might be a notice on a faculty notice-board, like the following pinned up by one Führer, George Richard Potter of the University of Sheffield, while a better-known one entertained Neville Chamberlain at Berchtesgaden, Bad Godesberg and Munich. It runs thus:

Our historical class on INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS will be resumed at the University next Thursday, September 22^nd, at 7.30pm prompt. During the coming weeks we shall consider together the relations of the Great Powers since 1919 … In addition to describing the course of world events since 1919, the rise of the totalitarian states, the failure of the League of Nations in the Far East, Africa and Europe, we shall try to analyse the diplomatic relations of the countries of the world with one another, the cause of the wars in China and Spain, the nature of the conflict in central Europe and the origins and implications of the present situation.[…]