WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: Dr. Jeremy Black

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Jeremy Black is a British historian, professor of history at Exeter University, and Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College. He was on Hillsdale College's campus to deliver a public lecture on the American Civil War in the context of military history and to teach a one-credit course giving an introduction to military history.From 03/19/25.

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale on 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant, speaking with British historian Dr. Jeremy Black, who teaches at the University of Exeter. So you are visiting the college and you are teaching a course there. Could you expand more on what you're doing here in Hillsdale? Yeah, I'm teaching a course for the military history group on essentially, an introduction to military history. It's a credit course. And I'm also using the opportunity to teach on some other courses. And I'm giving a public lecture on the American Civil War from the British perspective. In fact, I'm doing that on Thursday evening at 715. And I've been to Hillsdale

before. I was very impressed when I came here last year. That's wonderful. What drew you to go all the way to America and teach here at Hillsdale? Well, um, we're going to, um, we're When you're at my age position, you get invited to do things. And, I mean, all the way to Hillsdale is actually not too far a distance. You fly directly from London to Detroit, and it's actually quite close. I mean, the previous flight I made was to Phoenix to speak at Arizona State, and this is much closer than Phoenix. So when I was researching about you, I found you're an extremely prolific writer. You've written how many books over 100?

Do you even know the exact number? I have written a very large number of books, but I would like to be known for the range of my scholarship and its quality. The quantity is interesting, but each book should be judged on its own merit. You're neither a good historian because you write a lot or because you write little. The, it's, you know, sometimes you get people who've spent 10 years working on a book and it actually turns out to be deeply flawed, conceptually, limited, methodologically questionable. So I think rather than so, you know, sometimes, you're saying, it's a great thing to write a lot, or the opposite, I think one should judge individual books on their merits. Well, in drawing back to that, do you have a favorite book you've written and why? Yes, I'm particularly interested in maps. I've always been very interested in maps. In fact, I nearly read geography at university rather than history, and I would have read geography had the subject not been going through a very mathematical quantitative turn at that

period. We're talking about the early 1970s. So I've done a number of books about maps. And I think the one that I would, yeah, I would really like to comment on a couple of books I've done for the University of Chicago Press, 100 maps on railroad history and 100 maps on the history of World War II. And these use maps from the period. Each of them have a very long section on them. So usually when people produce a map, they produce a caption of about 20 words. Mine, the captions are each 800 words. So about what the work map shows, about the actual quality of the map, about what the map is its strengths and its weaknesses. And then on top of that, there's an additional about 30,000 words about mapping in World War II or mapping of the railroads.

Wonderful. So with that, you've written a lot on Western culture and civilization. How do you define the West? Well, that's a how's that for a quick for a starter. I think what one could say is the West, capital W is understood to be the culture of the Europeans and their settler societies or successor societies. But clearly, when one uses the term the Europeans, that itself is open to discussion and debate. I mean, is European Russia part of Europe or not? What does one make about Istanbul, which is on the continent of Europe, but shall we say, is culturally rather different to say Paris or Moon.

Madrid. So the West is open to a number of different definitions geographically, chronologically and thematically. So, you know, America, if you're looking at the new world, would see itself as defining the West, but, you know, Lima or Buenos Aires, Santiago or Brasilia are also on the American mainland. And they have, shall we say, They're different cultural inheritance. So I think it's more complicated. I would say there are Wests, an added S at the end. And, you know, some Wests are, for example, religious.

Some are secular. Some are focused on what we might regard as a Hispanic tradition. Some are more focused on an Anglophone tradition. So I would argue that there are different Wests. Well, to focus on a more specific West, that of the Anglo-Saxons, you've written a lot about Britain, and I've also seen you talk about kind of the rise and fall of Britain. What were some of the causes that led to the nation's strength and now some of its increasing weaknesses? Yes.

As far as Britain is concerned, Britain itself was an amalgam of, Scotland and England essentially. I mean, obviously there's Wales as well and they conquered Ireland, but it's essentially Scotland and England. So you have a merger of the two monarchies in 1603, a parliamentary union in 1707. If you are then looking at the process by which from 1707, it becomes by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the world's leading empire, as well as being the state country that defines what you might mean by industrialisation. I think one has to look at both structural causes, long-term causes, but also the short term of contingency. After all, if French forces had marched down Whitehall after a successful invasion in 1805,

we wouldn't be talking about the triumph of the British system. So it was one that had to be fought for. that was by no means inevitable in its outcome, nor was it inevitable in its outcome as to what the British world would mean. I mean, we are talking at the present moment in Michigan. That obviously is not part of, you know, the British Commonwealth or however you wish to define it. And the 13 colonies, obviously Michigan was not one of the 13 colonies, but the 13 colonies broke away in a pattern that wasn't inevitable. So there's no inevitability in the political terms. What I would suggest is there was a matter of a relatively liberal understood

in the terms of classical liberalism, not modern terms, a relatively liberal society in the 18th century, which didn't mean an egalitarian society, but it meant a society with freedom of property, freedom before the law, freedom of expression, freedom of religious life. And all of those helped to produce, I would argue, a dynamic society which took advantage of economic resources, whether it's coal in Britain or sugar from its colonies, but principally coal. Coal was the key thing. And as it were very much important. embraced the possibilities of change within a context that was politically less revolutionary. I would say that kind of duality is very important, very important to Britain becoming,

you know, the leading economic power. So everybody that chose to invest in a steam engine was somebody who was investing in a sense of future possibility. and Britain had the most steam engines in the world. So it's a coal-driven maritime society with relative liberalism, relative social mobility, no internal tariff boundaries. And it manages partly because of fortitude, partly because of the island nature, partly because it's the world's leading naval power,

it manages to fight off external challenges, all of which were important. So Hillsdale offers the military history and grand strategy minor, and Dr. Black, as mentioned before, is of many things. He also is an expert on military history. So I would like to ask you, what do you think the role of military history is in larger contemporary geopolitical and ideological conversations? Well, I think military history is first of all important because if you don't consider the role of war and the military in human development, you end up with a rather strange account of why some societies survived, some flourished and some succumbed. As far as the present moment is concerned, I think understanding war and conflict helps you to appreciate the degree to which one has to be very cautious about assuming a determinism.

So you get some very naive accounts, the idea of geography as destiny in some way. There's a rather foolish British writer called Marshall who's been writing that. But in practical terms, we know geography isn't destiny. We know that some societies are more successful militarily than others and can defend themselves and expand. And the understanding of that is, I think, a very important aspect of military history. It's not a surprise that military history focuses, particularly on the last 150 years, because that tells us more about the present world. The other thing is that military history is part of our collective identity. It's part of the way in which there is a trust between the generations.

So a understanding of why previous generations did things. And just as one's own generation, one hopes will not be ignored or neglected. So it would be a very sad account of our culture if we forgot. or didn't understand or appreciate what people did in World War II. Thank you. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale on 101.7 FM. So, and also in light of the college valuing military history by teaching it, what does the college represent to you in light of the current intellectual landscape?

Well, I was fortunate enough to be invited here last year and to speak here to spend time meeting people. And I think it's a very impressive institution, which has particularly strong teaching values. I think that's very apparent. I think listening to the staff, seeing the staff interacting with students, you can see that.

Whereas, alas, all too often, academics are most conspicuous by their absence. And in fact, I was recently shocked to hear an academic saying that they found teaching a nuisance, you know, well, you don't see that in Hillsdale at all. And I think it's also the case that there is a very strong grasp of the importance of textualism here

and the exegesis of text, the analysis of those, which I think is very significant, a very important pedagogic or teaching method. And I think that, as well, you've got some very, very, I think, very high-caliber staff who are important scholars in their own right and who are very keen and happy to teach in an environment in which undergraduates are foremost.

Is there a right approach to history? And if so, what do you think this approach may be? Well, there are far. Depends what one means by history, of course, because history is simultaneously what happened in the past, and it's how we produce accounts of what happened in the past. I assume you're talking about the latter. Insofar as we're talking about the latter, I am very wary of determinist accounts. I think human beings have agency, both as individuals and as collectivities. And the idea that you would treat them in a reductionist fashion, explaining them by reference to some model or method of historical determinism is to me very suspect. So I am against reductionism. I'm in favour of an understanding of contingency. I'm in favour of a multifaceted approach to the past. I think it is

important to understand one's own culture, but also to, in country, but to do so within a context in which you also understand others. All of those are, I think, significant, unformidable intellectual challenges, which is what makes them worthwhile. And I think teaching people history helps them to learn how to think. And I think that's, you know, a very important aspect of the subject. Thank you. It is often said that history is written by the victors. What are your thoughts on that sentiment?

Well, thank you. That's an interesting one. I mean, not least because I'm speaking on the Civil War tomorrow here. Actually, often the victors don't need to write the history. They've won. Why should they bother? They're in charge. The people who often write the history are the losers because they want to explain it was all unfair.

So if you look at the American Civil War, an enormous effort has been made into writing the history of the civil war from the southern perspective. I'm not saying that that perspective is not worth considering, but a lot of emphasis has been made in them arguing that they were outresourced and all the rest of it, which is not, in fact, my interpretation of it, but you can come to the lecture tomorrow. And hear about hear that. So I would say often it is the losers, particularly because they either want to ventilate a sense of grievance and grievance history is, alas, very strong at the moment, or because they want in some way to argue that they were only lost unfairly. I would say that interpretation is much more to the fore. And, you know, a good example of that, again, are the world wars.

I mean, if you look at the Germans in both world wars, they had poor strategy. Ultimately, they were outfought by their opponents, the Allies. But in each World War, subsequently, the Germans like to argue that, in fact, they should have won, that they lost because they were outresourced. And again, they have time to argue that. I mean, that was essentially the notion that you got among Germans in 1918, 19, 1920 with people like Adolf Hitler, the young Adolf Hitler, claiming that they'd been stabbed in the back that they had really should have won. Well, in fact, that was absolute rubbish.

They'd lost. They were beaten on the Western Front by the Allied forces, British, French and American, Canadian, principally. In World War II, the Germans again, they lost. And whereas German fighting quality, unit for unit, was, I think, better than that of their opponents in 1939, 1940, 1941. By 1944 and 45, it certainly wasn't.

Thank you. So you've mentioned this a bit, earlier in the interview, you are giving a talk at 7.15 p.m. tomorrow about the Civil War. Could you speak more on what you're planning to present at that lecture? Yes. Yes. I've already written, as you may know, a book on America as a military power from 1775 to 1865 and a book on the shaping of, it's called Fighting for America, a book on the shaping of America. And what I'm focusing on is an interpretation of the civil war in the wider international context. I want to look at why the North won, in part as a question of it defeating the South,

but in part as a matter of no foreign intervention against it. One can recall, for example, that one of the reasons the British lost in their war in North America was precisely that France intervened on the side of the Patriots. during the Civil War, the Confederacy hoped, particularly in both 61 and 62, that the British and French would intervene on their side and the British and the French indeed considered doing so. So I want to talk about this wider context and in order to offer an interpretation that possibly not so many people are familiar with. In what ways do you think the current understanding of history could be improved?

Well, it depends about by whom the academic students, the general public. I mean, I suppose, first of all, I think, again, one needs to consider what one needs by understanding. If you look at the branch of history, which most members of the general public are interested in, it's genealogy. I really have no comments on that. I'm not a specialist on it, and I've never embraced that. field. If you mean public history, the sort of history that is discussed or presented in the media and may be memorialised or commemorated in museums and other such public functions, then I think in a country like America or indeed my own country, Britain, both of which are functioning democracies with a diversity of views, that I think it's very important. that different mainstream views are ventilated and that people realise that there are contrasting ways to look at things. I mean, for instance, if you look at television on the BBC in Britain,

you have this bizarre situation that you can have been watching the news in which you listen to politicians quarrelling about or competing over or discussing or being filmed talking in Parliament, having differing views on issues, of foreign policy, of domestic policy of fiscal accounts. And then you turn to the BBC history, and what a surprise, there's just one view and it is that of the historian speaking.

I think that that is flawed, deeply flawed. So I would say that history is a humane subject, and a humane subject accepts that there are differing points view and seeks to engage with them, to explain why these occur. Now, obviously, history happened. We're not being a post-modernist. We're not saying nothing, that it's all a matter of opinion. What we're saying is we need to consider why informed people have a different point of view. And I think if there was more of that at every level, then it would be intellectually more valuable as an area to be engaged in.

Do I think that's going to happen? Of course not. But I mean, you asked me the question, so I've done my best to answer it. Yeah. Thank you. Do you have any further comments you'd like to make? Yes.

I think an example of that, which listeners may be interested in, is I published a book a couple of years ago on a short history of America. And again, I, you know, as many books on American history, I wanted to look at that in a different way to the customary ones. So instead of organizing it round a state that was created around the 13 colonies that rebelled,

and then that state subsequently expanded, what I actually did was, as one reader put it, I wrote an account of America from the west-eastwards, the east-westwards and from the south-northwards. In other words, I was looking at the history in human time of those areas that are now parts of the United States without assuming that they would necessarily become part of the United States. And after all, to assume that they would necessarily become part of the United States looks somewhat bizarre from the perspective of California, which was Spanish and then Mexican or Alaska or Hawaii. And, and then, you know,

I found it much more interesting to try and unlock a different way of thinking of American history and of the significance of human geography and human geographies for history, not, as I argued earlier, in any determinist fashion. I'm against the idea of geography as destiny, but rather in order to emphasize the degree to which there are different histories present in the United States. I mean, in some respects, America is a continent pretending to be a country. You know, it is extraordinarily diverse, and that includes a number of different histories. And as I've said earlier this year, I have lectured in Arizona, Florida, Utah, and now I am in Michigan. And let me tell you,

one is well aware that there are different public cultures and different ways of looking at the past of this great country. Thank you very much. You've been listening to historian Dr. Jeremy Black on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.