The Transformation of British Historical Scholarship: State, Society, and Technology Since 1945

The Second World War profoundly shaped the historical profession, as many professional historians were drafted into state service, both in active roles and in contributing to the massive Official Histories project overseen by the Cabinet Office. This relationship with the state did not diminish after 1945 but expanded significantly under the first majority Labour Government, which extended governmental influence into all higher education institutions. Though legally registered as charities, universities effectively became creatures of the British State, facing growing pressure to make recruitment, syllabi, and teaching modes more ‘relevant’. While Labour governments from 1945-51, 1964-70, and 1997-2010 advanced this process, Conservative administrations also played key roles, notably through the Robbins Report of 1963 and the creation of new universities in 1992.

These state-driven structural reforms catalyzed two major shifts within historical study. First, they radically altered the social background of both history students and teachers, with a significant increase in representation from the working class. Second, they prompted a parallel shift in subject matter, marked by a strong turn toward economic and social history in the 1950s and a rising demand for women’s history from the 1960s onward to counter prior exclusion. More recently, the imposition of a national curriculum in British schools, where history's role is often contested, has further confirmed the deep, and not always welcome, penetration of state influence into historical education.

A distinct generational narrative unfolded alongside this institutional evolution. Despite the influential Marxist scholarship of the Communist Party Historians’ Group, most undergraduates in the 1940s and 1950s remained conventionally apolitical. The 1960s fundamentally altered this landscape, as universities filled with politically oriented students motivated by the Vietnam War and the emerging Irish ‘Troubles’. While their Marxism was often rudimentary, this cohort vigorously championed labour history and nascent women’s history, injecting seminars with aggression and engaging in direct political action. This intense period of radical engagement, however, gave way to a noticeable intellectual quiescence and political indolence throughout the 1970s and the subsequent Thatcher and Reagan era.

The radicalism of the late 1960s, though less dramatic than in Paris, represented a major caesura. Intellectual provocation in the subsequent period was sought in thinkers like Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes. Hayden White’s Metahistory (1973) initially had little impact but became foundational for a theoretically-minded generation after 1980, seeding Britain’s brief engagement with postmodern ideas. Notably, few established British historians beyond Patrick Joyce consistently deployed these theories. By the 1990s, the radical Marxists of the 1960s had become senior faculty, their personal histories intertwining with the discipline’s trajectory.

Concurrent with these trends, technology emerged as a transformative force for historical method and dissemination. The electronic computer, stemming from Alan Turing’s work at Bletchley Park, revolutionized quantitative analysis, empowering the cliometricians of the 1950s and 1960s. Later, the World Wide Web overhauled bibliographic research and access to primary sources. Dissemination was equally transformed; radio, through the BBC’s Home Service and Third Programme, created new platforms for scholars, but television's visual power proved revolutionary. Evolving from A.J.P. Taylor’s lectures to the series of Simon Schama or David Starkey, television rendered history visually immediate. By 1995, successful historians often operated as ‘public intellectuals’ or ‘tele-dons’, reaching audiences unimaginable in 1945, a shift as profound as the advent of printing.