In defence of cultural history

Why study history? It’s a question which often gets asked, and the historian R. G. Collingwood’s answer – that history should enable us to ‘see more clearly into the situation in which we are compelled to act’- is one of the best responses. The idea that the study of the past should be applicable to the present has directed the career of Niall Ferguson, who was recently bemoaning the degradation of the subject. Discussing the current focus on race, class and gender in history faculties in a recent speech, Ferguson argued that undergraduates are being robbed of the chance to study events of real significance. Faced with a list of politicised options, American students are turning their backs on the subject altogether: the number of undergraduate history students has fallen at three quarters of U.S. universities since 2012.

The decline in student numbers has not been mirrored in the UK, where history is as popular a degree choice as it has ever been.