Geoffrey Elton | |
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| Born | Gottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg (1921-08-17)17 August 1921 |
| Died | 4 December 1994(1994-12-04) (aged 73) Cambridge,Cambridgeshire, England |
| Alma mater | University College London |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, writer |
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Sir Geoffrey Rudolph EltonFBA (bornGottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg; 17 August 1921 – 4 December 1994) was a German-born British political and constitutional historian, specialising in theTudor period. He taught atClare College, Cambridge, and was theRegius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988.
Ehrenberg (Elton) was born inTübingen,Germany. His parents were the Jewish scholarsVictor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea Sommer.[1]: 79 In 1929, the Ehrenbergs moved toPrague,Czechoslovakia. In February 1939, the Ehrenbergs fled to Britain. Ehrenberg continued his education atRydal School, a Methodist school in Wales, starting in 1939.[1]: 79 After only two years, Ehrenberg was working as a teacher at Rydal and achieved the position of assistant master in mathematics, history and German.[1]: 79
There, he took courses via correspondence at theUniversity of London and graduated with a degree in Ancient History in 1943.[1]: 79 Ehrenberg enlisted in theBritish Army in 1943. He spent his time in the Army in theIntelligence Corps and theEast Surrey Regiment, serving with theEighth Army in Italy from 1944 to 1946 and reaching the rank ofsergeant.[1]: 79 During this period, Ehrenberganglicised his name to Geoffrey Rudolph Elton.[1]: 79 After his discharge from the army, Elton studied early modern history atUniversity College London, graduating with a PhD in 1949.[1]: 79
Under the supervision ofJ. E. Neale, Elton was awarded a PhD for his thesis "Thomas Cromwell, Aspects of his Administrative Work", in which he first developed the ideas that he was to pursue for the rest of his life.[1]: 79 He naturalised as a British subject in September 1947.[2]
Elton taught at theUniversity of Glasgow and from 1949 onwards atClare College, Cambridge, and was theRegius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988. Pupils includedJohn Guy,Diarmaid MacCulloch,Susan Brigden andDavid Starkey. He worked as publication secretary of theBritish Academy from 1981 to 1990 and served as the president of theRoyal Historical Society from 1972 to 1976. He was appointed aKnight Bachelor in the1986 New Year Honours.[3]
Elton focused primarily on the life ofHenry VIII but also made significant contributions to the study ofElizabeth I. Elton was most famous for arguing in his 1953 bookThe Tudor Revolution in Government thatThomas Cromwell was the author of modern, bureaucratic government, which replaced medieval, household-based government.[1]: 79–80 Until the 1950s, historians had played down Cromwell's role by calling him a doctrinaire hack who was little more than the agent of the despotic Henry VIII. Elton, however, made Cromwell the central figure in the Tudor revolution in government. Elton portrayed Cromwell as the presiding genius, much more so than the King, in handling the break with Rome and the laws and administrative procedures that made the English Reformation so important. Elton wrote that Cromwell was responsible for translating royal supremacy into parliamentary terms by creating powerful new organs of government to take charge of church lands and thoroughly removing the medieval features of the central government.[4]
That change took place in the 1530s and must be regarded as part of a planned revolution. In essence, Elton was arguing that before Cromwell, the realm could be viewed as the King's private estate writ large and that most administration was done by the King's household servants rather than by separate state offices. Cromwell, Henry's chief minister from 1532 to 1540, introduced reforms into the administration that delineated the King's household from the state and created a modern bureaucratic government.[1]: 80 Cromwell shone Tudor light into the darker corners of the Realm and radically altered the role of Parliament and the competence of Statute. Elton argued that by masterminding such reforms, Cromwell laid the foundations of England's future stability and success.[5]
Elton elaborated on his ideas in his 1955 work, the bestsellingEngland under the Tudors, which went through three editions, and his Wiles Lectures, which he published in 1973 asReform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal.[1]: 80
His thesis has been widely challenged by younger Tudor historians and can no longer be regarded as an orthodoxy, but his contribution to the debate has profoundly influenced subsequent discussion of Tudor government, particularly on the role of Cromwell.[4]
Elton was a staunch admirer ofMargaret Thatcher andWinston Churchill. He was also a fierce critic ofMarxist historians, who he argued were presenting seriously flawed interpretations of the past. In particular, Elton was opposed to the idea that theEnglish Civil War was caused by socioeconomic changes in the 16th and 17th centuries, arguing instead that it was largely due to the incompetence of theStuart kings.[6] Elton was also famous for his role in theCarr–Elton debate when he defended the nineteenth century interpretation of empirical, 'scientific' history most famously associated withLeopold von Ranke againstE. H. Carr's views. Elton wrote his 1967 bookThe Practice of History largely in response to Carr's 1961 bookWhat is History?.
Elton was a strong defender of the traditional methods of history and was appalled bypostmodernism, saying, for example, that "we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories – even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction – can prove fatal."[7] Ex-pupils of his such asJohn Guy claim he did embody a "revisionist streak," reflected both in his work on Cromwell, his attack onJohn Neale's traditionalist account of Elizabeth I's parliaments, and in his support for a more contingent and political set of causes for the English Civil War of the mid-seventeenth century.
In 1990 Elton was one of the leading historians behind the setting up of the History Curriculum Association. The Association advocated a more knowledge-based history curriculum in schools. It expressed "profound disquiet" at the way history was being taught in the classroom and observed that the integrity of history was threatened.[8]
Elton saw the duty of historians as empirically gathering evidence and objectively analysing what the evidence has to say. As a traditionalist, he placed great emphasis on the role of individuals in history instead of abstract, impersonal forces. For instance, his 1963 bookReformation Europe is in large part concerned with the duel betweenMartin Luther and the Holy Roman EmperorCharles V. Elton objected to cross-disciplinary efforts such as efforts to combine history withanthropology or sociology. He saw political history as the best and most important kind of history. Elton had no use for those who seek history to make myths, to create laws to explain the past, or to produce theories such asMarxism.
Elton was the brother of the education researcherLewis Elton and the uncle of Lewis's son, the comedian and writerBen Elton. He married a fellow historian, Sheila Lambert, in 1952. Elton died of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge on 4 December 1994.[9]
He edited the second edition of the influential collectionThe Tudor Constitution. In it, he supportedJohn Aylmer's basic conclusion that theTudor constitution mirrored that of themixed constitution ofSparta.
| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by | President of the Royal Historical Society 1973–1977 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Regius Professor of Modern History at theUniversity of Cambridge 1983–1988 | Succeeded by |
