Appendix I

Herbert Butterfield on official history Correspondence with Rev. A.W. Blaxall, April–May 1952¹

1. Rev. A.W. Blaxall (Secretary/Treasurer, Christian Council of South Africa) to Butterfield, 6 April 1952

The Christian Council of South Africa

Box 81

Roodepoort

Transvaal

Dear Professor Butterfield,

It is perhaps presumptuous of a complete stranger to address you, and I shall understand if you do not have time to reply, although I hope otherwise.

You will understand that your book on History and Human Relations is particularly valuable for those of us who try to get the right perspective in a race conscious country like South Africa. The penultimate chapter has given me much to think about, especially because within recent months I have criticised our present Government who have appointed an historical research committee to write the real history of events which led to hostilities between the tiny Boer Republics and the mighty British Empire in 1899. The personnel of the committee include a few who will devote all their time to research, visiting countries overseas for the purpose, & others who will give part of their time. It is expected that the work will take at least five years, which means that salaries, overseas subsistence allowances, travelling expenses, together with the cost of clerical assistance, will run into scores of thousands of pounds – and that at a time when treasury is continually cutting down expenditure on social services on the ground of lack of funds. I wonder what you think about such costly research, especially when instigated by a Government which concentrates before all other things on building up what it is pleased to call the Afrikaner nation.

May I conclude with a word of sincere thanks for the trouble you take to make your knowledge available to simple people, such as

Yours sincerely,

A.W. Blaxall

2. Butterfield to Blaxall, 9 May 1952 (carbon copy)

Dear Mr. Blaxall,

I am afraid that it is not easy for me to give a reply to your kind letter of 6 April, because so many complicated issues are involved; and it is necessary to know the whole situation and to catch the ‘feel’ of it before making a judgment.

I am personally very distrustful of official history, and I doubt very much whether in the long run any government will put down vast sums for any kind of history which operates to the detriment of the party or the people or the nation with which it feels its interests to be connected. Also I think that governments are not fit to direct the subjects to which large-scale historical research shall be turned in any given generation; though I cannot deny that there are topics on which a government might well feel that it could afford to allow everything to be known; and the financial support of government in such particular cases may serve the immediate objects of historical science itself.

I have noted (e.g. in the case of Ireland) that when a country is at a certain stage of its history, and when its historiography (or the organisation of its historical activities) is at a certain stage, there is a tendency for historians to look more particularly to the government for financial help, and that help may seem to answer so many purposes at the given moment that the tendency sometimes seems irresistible.

I personally am sceptical of the procedure even here, however, and have warned some of my Irish friends that at any rate I foresee difficulties in the future in respect of plans similar to the one which your letter describes. This kind of support on the part of the state may contribute something to the development of historical science at a given point in the story; but I think that it is going to have its dangers sooner or later.

I believe that most people would argue that some sort of support from the state has been necessary for the development of historical study everywhere, but of course there are other means by which the state could make its contribution (and even has made it in the past). I am sure that on a long-term view the ideal thing for historical study is a world of independent historians, choosing their own subjects for research, and allowed by the government free access to the archives.

In any case I believe that, though everybody may be well-intentioned in the first generation of government-organised history, there is actual evidence to confirm the view that with the passage of time further developments take place – what the state acquires innocuously in one generation becomes the starting-point, for a more serious encroachment in the next – and in the long run a momentous change is bound to take place in the relations between historians and the state. Clear evidence of the consequences of this are furnished in the case of a number of countries on the European continent even since 1919. Only the absolute independence of historians who are known to stand on their own footing can ensure in a given case that all the unpalatable truths will be allowed to come out. All the evils of any kind of official history become increased as the period which is being dealt with becomes more recent, i.e. approaches what we call ‘contemporary history’.

The real reason why to some people it might seem quixotic to oppose these government projects is the fact that, in an age when the state is so clearly expanding its functions and multiplying its controls, the harnessing of historians to the state may be one of the inescapable tendencies of the time. I am not prepared to succumb to this argument, and I should always wish that if a government were to spend scores of thousands of pounds on history it would direct such expenditure in a way that took better care of the future and of the independence of historians. There are insidious pitfalls in the view that the independence of historians is adequately guarded in this kind of project, though sometimes it is not easy for the layman to see the pitfalls, and the historian who is involved in such projects comes to have a vested interest in them, so that he does not always seek to put himself into alliance with the independent outsider or to make the whole position clear. Sometimes also he gets a vested interest in a kind of ‘orthodoxy’ which has been established, so that the revision of historical versions and interpretations becomes more difficult. If it is only the official historians or officially-favoured historians who are allowed full access to the archives, they can clearly hamper any attempt to envisage a piece of history in a new framework. And if (as I have known to be the case) they get official support in attempts to put a check on the reviewing of their work, there is no possibility of their results really having to run the gauntlet of independent scholarship. There is no chance of any real criticism of an historical work if outsiders have no free access to the original documents; and I personally must hold reservations about all history written on periods or subjects for which the archives are not completely open. The one fight which historians have to make, therefore, is the fight for the opening of the archives; this is the real test of the genuineness of governmental patronage of historical study. I do not believe that if they are unopened (or partially unopened, or opened only to officially-favoured historians or to historians who can be penalised by withdrawal of salary) all the truth will be allowed to come out, as one project succeeds another.

Even in England, and still more in the U.S.A., the harnessing of scientists to the state has led to controversy, because some scientists believe that where the state controls the choice of topics and the direction which research is to take, extraneous motives are allowed to insert themselves – the free and balanced progress of science is hindered. I am sure that this argument applies a fortiori in the case of history, especially as concealed (and almost unconscious) motives of propaganda are liable to condition even the choice of the project to which the efforts of historians are to be directed.

It may be argued that a large co-operative undertaking is the most efficient way of securing a large-scale history within a reasonable time. I think that this is true only for history written at a certain level; it is true perhaps at a certain stage in the development of the historiography of a subject. It is all very well, provided, once the co-operative work is completed, the same archives are entirely open to the free play of scholarship, so that the enquiry can be carried to a further stage. The co-operative method (especially in the case of anything like an official history) often depends on the choice of a set of contributors who are united in the acceptance of a certain frame-work of reference, a certain over-all interpretation of the story. I have even known a case where a possible participant in such a venture was assured that he would be an ‘independent historian’ but was also told that of course it would be expected that he should conform to the accepted ‘framework’.² All dangers in such organised enterprises are multiplied if there is likely to be any considerable motive for partiality on [sic] tendenciousness [sic] in the direction of it.

In any case the multiplicity of views and outlooks in a number of independent historians acting on an individualistic basis seems to me the necessary condition of progress in historical science, whereas co-operative and governmental endeavours tend to produce a kind of ‘orthodoxy’ which makes it more difficult for a new outlook or for unwelcome revelations to make their way in the world.

I remain,

Yours sincerely [unsigned]

3. Blaxall to Butterfield, 18 May 1952

Dear Prof. Butterfield,

This is merely to thank you most sincerely for your interesting, & important letter of the 9th. I expect to be in Cape Town shortly when I will see the Archbishop & tell him of our correspondence.

We are passing through a very difficult, and dark period in this country. It is extremely difficult to see how any semblance of democracy can be restored by constitutional means – the Christian Council is indeed fortunate in having Geoffrey Clayton as our president at this time.³

Again thanking you,

Very sincerely,

A.W. Blaxall

_____________

¹ BUTT/130/4. In 1963, already in his seventies, Blaxall was convicted of giving help to the banned African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress. He was imprisoned for a day and a night before being paroled and returning to Britain, where he died in 1970: see <https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/arthur-william-blaxall>.

² This sounds like Desmond Williams

³ Geoffrey Clayton was the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg from 1934 to 1948 and Archbishop of Cape Town from 1948 until his death in 1957. He had been a Fellow and Dean of Peterhouse, 1910–14.