I have been reading up on late medieval British history (for a course I’ll be teaching) and so have been trying to come to grips with some of the key developments in constitutional history, such as Magna Carta and the early development of Parliament. What I’m most conscious of, looking at them for the first time as a historian, is how much it was chance (or at least external events) that gave them their long term significance and success. It was only because Henry III succeeded as a minor and needed to secure his position that Magna Carta was repeatedly reissued and came to be seen as a fundamental statement of English liberties. The extension of Parliament to include burgesses was part of Simon de Montfort’s attempt to gain support for his coup d’etat; the continued series of Parliaments in the reign of Edward I, which fixed its form, were largely due to his need for money to fight incessant wars. The developments were not due to some innately English character or ideas.

I thought of this when I came across a reference to a report by the right-wing think-tank Civitas on ‘Why history remains the best form of citizenship education’ (http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewJuly05.pdf). This is written by a professor of philosophy, presumably because they couldn’t find a historian willing to write such tosh. The idea that you can learn about the British constitution via its historical development is fair enough. But it’s the details that are so dubious. Take the report’s claim:

‘A primary didactic purpose of teaching history in British schools should be...to serve the civic function of giving pupils the wherewithal for feeling justifiably proud of being British and for being attached to their history and their traditions.’

It then goes on to endorse the ‘Whig Interpretation of History’, which it says is:

‘distinguished by its portrayal of the history of Britain and of the native English-speaking diaspora more generally, as having been marked by an exceptional degree of material and moral progress’.

The article’s views are so ridiculous that it’s hard to know where to start. The author wishes to show that using history to develop citizenship isn’t a new idea and so quotes John Locke. He could have started a thousand years ago and more with Roman history. History was written primarily for the purpose of moral education for the vast majority of recorded history. The rise of professional history, a history that is more concerned with events than providing a moral commentary on them, is a relatively recent development. But one of the main reasons it happened is the obvious one: real life, the past real life that is history doesn’t fit into the neat categories of morality. The good don’t always win, the God-fearing nation (whatever God that may be) isn’t necessarily triumphant and bad ideas not only don’t disappear, but they flourish. Similarly, the idea of the exceptional ‘moral progress’ of the British/Americans (let alone white South Africans) just doesn’t hold much water today, because it’s obviously not true.

The old Whig interpretation of history (whatever David Starkey may claim) doesn’t work as a basis for a history of Britain (for one thing, it is effectively English history before 1707). It might be possible to produce a more progressive and inclusive ‘Whig history’ of Britain’s constitutional developments, in which an acknowledgement of an increase in liberties is done with less crowing about the inferiority of all other races. But this still leaves a big problem: what do you do about the bits of history that don’t fit the model?

Take Edward I’s expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. That now seems an important aspect of his reign (although it’s not mentioned in ‘Our Island Story’ (http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=marshall&book=island&story=_contents), Civitas’ preferred history book) and there’s an obvious moral lesson there. But will it make children ‘justifiably proud of being British’? And what, more generally, do you do about the fifteenth century? What is there to be justifiably proud of in the Hundred Years’ War or the Wars of the Roses? That a war of aggression by England was initially successful because of superior weapons technology (the longbow)? If you are going to stick to the morally uplifting story of how Britain (England) became so superior, you pretty much have to write off everything between Wat Tyler and the Reformation and hope no-one notices a gap in the textbook. Alternatively, you go back to the notion that the purpose of teaching history in schools is to give pupils an idea of what happened in particular periods of time, with inculcating patriotism only as a secondary function.

I made the mistake today of reading another article by Niall Ferguson and I am still seething. This was another of his articles on the theory of empire (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3550), which starts off by making the interesting point that most recent empires have lasted for far shorter periods than ancient and early modern ones (although Ferguson’s suggestion of the Holy Roman Empire as lasting from 800-1806 is pretty meaningless, and he omits some short-lived ancient empires, such as the Athenian and Macedonian empires) He then asks why recent empires have proved so short-lived.

One part of his answer is that more recent empires have aspired to more centralised control of the conquered territories and by their ruthlessness in reshaping their conquered territories encouraged resistance. Instead of exploring this, he then goes on to the dubious argument that empires emerge largely for economic reasons and adds: ‘But why fight wars? Again, the answer must be economic’. The idea that emperors from Augustus to Charlemagne decided whether or not to expand their territories based on whether they could do better than by ‘free exchange with independent peoples or with another empire’ is simply ludicrous.

Ferguson then goes onto the ‘Life of Brian’ argument:

At the same time, however, an empire may provide “public goods”—that is, benefits of imperial rule that flow not only to the rulers but also to the ruled and, indeed, to third parties. These can include peace in the sense of a Pax Romana, increased trade or investment, improved justice or governance, better education (which may or may not be associated with religious conversion), or improved material conditions.

He then concludes (as only a purblind economic historian can):

An empire, then, will come into existence and endure so long as the benefits of exerting power over foreign peoples exceed the costs of doing so in the eyes of the imperialists; and so long as the benefits of accepting dominance by a foreign people exceed the costs of resistance in the eyes of the subjects.
...
Empire today, it is true, is both unstated and unwanted. But history suggests that the calculus of power could swing back in its favor tomorrow.

The implication is clear: empire, if it’s the right kind of empire, is OK. Now, I don’t want to argue that all empires were equally bad, or deny that there have been positive aspects to some empires. But I find it extremely doubtful that there are going to be any more peoples eager to receive ‘the benefits of accepting dominance by a foreign people’. (And the ‘costs of resistance’ are weasel words for risking being killed: even the oh so benevolent British empire carried out the Amritsar massacre). Ferguson in his discussion of why empires now disappear so quickly doesn’t mention the obvious point: that foreign rule is incompatible with the aspirations to democracy now widespread in the world. It’s arguable that a Gallic peasant didn’t do too much worse under a Roman emperor than a native ruler (he still got exploited by some high-up, and in most cases he probably couldn’t dream of any different situation). But once theories of universal human rights (or even of no taxation without representation) develop, empires are on ideologically shaky ground. In particular, democracy for imperial subjects is almost a contradiction in terms: the British introduced it only in colonies where the ‘natives’ had largely been wiped out (such as Canada and Australia). (It is also possible where relatively small colonies send representatives to a single imperial parliament and can thus be outvoted - see e.g. pre-1922 Ireland and some of the French West Indies).

Such resistance to foreign rule is likely to have little to do with a careful calculation of the benefits (economic or otherwise) of empire as against independence. And even where there are such calculations they are rarely favourable to imperial rule, however ‘good’ the empire. There was no queue of countries I know of begging to be admitted to the British Empire, for example, (though Mozambique has asked to join the Commonwealth). Meanwhile, subjects who had ‘benefited’ from a Western education and sometimes elite status were often among the leaders of resistance to empires (from Jose Rizal to Gandhi and Jomo Kenyatta). The ‘calculus of power’ may well mean further attempts to create empires in the future, but they are likely to find ever more stubborn resistance.

There is only one realistic answer to this question: we don’t know. Nevertheless, historically several theories of how society/sexuality and gendered behaviour should be organised have been based on the assumption that the answer to the question is known to the moral organisers of society. As a very great generalisation, in Christian countries, which have seen some forms of sexual expression as wrong:

a) if you think that men cannot control themselves sexually (at least some of the time), then you emphasise marriage (as a legitimate outlet for male sexuality) and segregation of the unmarried. (One version of this is male monasticism, another is severe restrictions on the movements of women). In this view, (Catholic) priests, who must be celibate but are not cloistered, are almost bound to fall into sin (a common view ever since Protestantism got going). (Interestingly, you get the same patterns if you start from the medieval view that it is women who are unable to control their lust).

b) if you think only a spiritual elite of men can control their lust, then priests as well as monks can possibly manage OK. Laymen are then definitely an inferior group, ranked in their weak will with ‘bad’ priests. (In both a) and b) of course, women, or at least any who exhibit ‘tempting’ behaviour, by being sexually desirable in any way, are automatically worse).

c) if you believe that most men can potentially control their lust, then laymen and women aren’t automatically at the bottom of the heap. Instead of misogyny, there is more of an emphasis on male responsibility for controlling their own lust, as a conquerable sin. (I would argue this is the Carolingian position).

What is odd is that these three very different views, all of which have been held and are still held today, are based on the answer to an intrinsically unanswerable question. I can’t think of any way, even with modern research methods, that you could study this question accurately. The chances of getting accurate answers from surveys, however well defined, seem to me low for such a sensitive subject and there are few experiments that would avoid bias. There are some (fairly gruesome) methods for measuring sexual desire in men, but they don’t tell you anything about the interaction of body and will. Now consider how you would go about getting an answer in an age before social science. You are reliant either on dodgy medical theories about the genitals and observation/discussion. Jerome was happy to use anecdotal evidence for the unstoppable power of the sexual drive (such as the eighty-year-old bishop who suddenly married), but his primary reason for seeing sex in this way was his own experience. Jerome makes explicit that his lust tormented him even as an ascetic in the desert. The same is probably true for the many medieval clerics and monks who spoke of the overwhelming force of lust in generalised terms: it is their own experience that they are reflecting. Who else would they be willing to ask and might they obtain a truthful answer from (excluding possibly their most intimate friends)? How much has the history of Christian discussion of sexuality been influenced by the sexual sensitivities of a handful of men?

...complete with footnotes. (This is at the end of the copy of the full speech by Pope Benedict at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_09_06_pope.pdf). Having read it all, I’m still not sure exactly what the Pope was intending by the offending remarks. Even if this is what you get if you choose a German academic as Pope (as my husband put it), the quotation that caused all the problems still seems very odd to include.

The main theme of the talk is faith and reason and the Pope’s argument that they ought to ‘come together in a new way’. Part of it seems to be a familiar criticism from him about modern rationalism, and specifically that it only considers as rational propositions those ones that are empirically verifiable. His point that this is a very limited view of the use of reason is a good one. As a historian, I think the use of reason is important in a field like mine, despite it being one where no ideas can ever be definitively ‘proved’. I’m less enthusiastic than the Pope is about the results of the intertwining of early Christian thought and Greek philosophy (it had a fairly bad effect on sexual ethics, for example), but I would certainly accept that religion should not simply ignore reason or intellectual activity.

The references to Islam are actually somewhat peripheral to the main argument. The key quote from the Emperor Manuel II Paleologus for Benedict is ‘not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature’. Benedict contrasts this ‘self-evident truth’ in Greek philosophy with the Muslim view that God is beyond rationality. [I will say now, I don’t know enough about either Greek or Muslim theology/philosophy to say if these characterisations are accurate]. This in itself is hardly inflammatory.

Benedict, sensibly enough, gives the context for this quote: the emperor saying that violence should not be used to convert people, only proper reasoning. It is fair to say that medieval Muslims supported forced conversions (although not, I believe, of Jews and Christians). And the support of the death penalty for apostasy (abandoning Islam) by many contemporary Muslims is an appalling blot on the religion. However, it is hard to say that medieval Christianity was any better. Christian wars of conquest were fought from the Baltic to Palestine in the Middle Ages and from the time of Augustine onwards, theologians justified violence against those who did not believe correctly. There were some voices who argued that religion should be taught rather than imposed (like Alcuin in the eighth century). But, as far as I know, none of them faced up to the implicit problem with this suggestion. What happened, if, after careful Christian exposition and argument, a rational person still did not believe or believed another religion? In practice, the repeated answer by religious and secular authorities was that such people were blinded/wicked/incorrigible/children etc and therefore must be coerced or persecuted, or at best excluded from the realm to avoid contagion. Manuel’s statement comes in a time between the expulsion of Jews from England and the expulsion/forced conversion of Jews and Muslims in Spain, both supported by Catholics at the time. If Benedict wants to make a point about forced conversion, or religious violence in general, a little more humility about the historic Christian experience would have been good.

The bit that has really got Muslims worked up, however, is when Benedict quotes the emperor as saying Muhammad brought only ‘evil and inhuman’ things. I still cannot see why the Pope included this quote: it’s not necessary in order to give the context for his main quote from Manuel about reason. Even if he wanted to show that the emperor was very hostile to Islam, he could have made that point directly. (If I was marking this as an essay, he’d lose marks for the paragraph with that quote for not getting to the main point). Either Benedict included that quote because he’s so concerned about adding colour to a lecture that he didn’t think about the wider consequences of what he was doing (which might make him an interesting lecturer, but not really suitable in a political role), or he quoted Manuel because he consciously or subconsciously agreed with him. Either view isn’t really encouraging.

There was a bad article in the Guardian a few days ago by Mary Warnock, the philosopher, about organ donation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1863232,00.html). The laws on organ donation have recently been changed: among other changes they now mean that a person’s decision to donate organs before they died cannot be over-ruled by the relatives subsequently. However, the new law does not grant absolute priority, which Mary Warnock is complaining about.

There’s certainly a good argument that absolute priority should be given to the donor’s wishes, either legally (they should have a control over their own body) or morally (one should not override a dying relative’s wishes). Unfortunately Mary Warnock chooses to make a different argument: that relatives’ wishes must be ignored because ‘any objection to the use of the organs of someone recently dead must be based on either irrational sentiment or irrational dogma, or both’.

If you going to argue that irrational arguments are invalid for making decisions about organ donations, then you open up all sorts of problems. For a start, how rational were the organ donor’s decisions to become a donor? Suppose he (she) put his name on the organ donor register because he believed he would somehow be less fated to die early if he’d done so, or he would accumulate good karma/merit in heaven by doing so or that if he donated his heart something of his essence/soul would somehow live on in the person who received it? None of these are ‘rational’ reasons for becoming a donor. As a real example, a friend of mine became a donor because his brother took an overdose and he might have suffered permanent liver damage. This made my friend feel more personally committed to becoming a donor: surely that counts as irrational behaviour in the strict sense as well? (I’m pretty sure that he didn’t first check carefully whether a liver transplant would have been the appropriate treatment in such cases or whether hospitals give organs to those who have self-harmed in that way.)

Similarly, if irrational arguments are invalid in such cases then why should anyone be allowed to refuse the donation of their own organs? (This is not the same argument as saying that there should be an opt-out rather than opt-in for organ donation, which still allows strongly held views by the donor to be respected). Mary Warnock believes there is no good reason you can refuse your relative’s organs being donated. She implies it is irrational to object even if there was not consent for the taking of organs (as in the Alder Hay scandal). Surely anyone who refuses to become an organ donor themselves must equally be doing so from ‘irrational’ sentiment or dogma and can also safely have their wishes ignored?

Finally, she shows the limits of her ‘rational’ argument by accepting that it is ‘right to treat the death of any human being as an occasion for the formal expression of grief and respect’. But the minute you start talking about ‘respect’ for the dead you get to beliefs and ideas that are culturally/personally specific and so almost by definition not ‘rational’. If you are a Parsee you believe that dead bodies should be consumed by birds. If someone suggested that this should happen to your body or your relative’s body after death and you are not a Parsee you might well object (even if it could be proved there was no environmental health problems). That might not seem respectful to your tradition/personal views, however ‘rational’ it might well be in terms of effective disposal.

If Mary Warnock wants to discuss ‘irrationality’ she needs to provide a far better argument as to why some irrational views should be respected and some not. As it is she leaves the impression that ‘irrational’ in this context means ‘views she personally disagrees with’. There is also a worrying undercurrent which links her views to the Alder Hay scandal: that of superiority. She and other ‘rational’ people know best: who are others to disagree with her or doctor’s decisions based on their inferior views? I am in favour of encouraging organ donations and approve the recent changes to the law but Mary Warnock’s attitude does this side of the argument no favours.