The Lord Dacre of Glanton | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Trevor-Roper in 1975 | |
| Born | Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper (1914-01-15)15 January 1914 Glanton,Northumberland, England |
| Died | 26 January 2003(2003-01-26) (aged 89) Oxford,Oxfordshire, England |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Known for | Studies in 17th-century European history,Nazi Germany |
| Title | Regius Professor of Modern History |
| Term | 1957–1980 |
| Predecessor | Vivian Hunter Galbraith |
| Successor | Michael Howard |
| Spouse | |
| Relatives | Patrick Trevor-Roper (brother) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  British Army |
| Rank | Major |
| Unit | Intelligence Corps |
| Battles / wars | World War II |
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton,FBA (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He wasRegius Professor of Modern History at theUniversity of Oxford.
Trevor-Roper was apolemicist and essayist on a range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries andNazi Germany. According toJohn Philipps Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books".[1]Richard Davenport-Hines andAdam Sisman wrote that "The bulk of his publications is formidable ... Some of his essays are of Victorian length. All of them reduce large subjects to their essence. Many of them ... have lastingly transformed their fields."[2] Conversely, Sisman wrote: "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed."[3]
In 1945, British intelligence tasked Trevor-Roper with ascertaining the facts aboutAdolf Hitler's death. From interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents, he concluded inThe Last Days of Hitler (1947) that Hitler was dead and had notescaped Berlin.
In 1983, Trevor-Roper's reputation was "severely damaged" when he authenticated theHitler Diaries shortly before they were shown to be forgeries.[4]
Trevor-Roper was born atGlanton,Northumberland, England, the son of Kathleen Elizabeth Davidson (died 1964) and Bertie William Edward Trevor-Roper (1885–1978), a doctor, descended fromHenry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham and second husband of Anne, 16thBaroness Dacre.[5] Trevor-Roper "enjoyed (but not too seriously) ... that he was a collateral descendant ofWilliam Roper, the son-in-law and biographer of SirThomas More ... as a boy he was aware that only a dozen lives (several of them those of elderly bachelors) separated him from inheriting the Teynham peerage."[6]: introduction
Trevor-Roper's brother,Patrick, became a leadingeye surgeon andgay rights activist. Trevor-Roper was educated atBelhaven Hill School,Charterhouse, andChrist Church, Oxford, where he read firstClassics (Literae Humaniores) and thenModern History. He got a first-class degree inClassical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland, and the Hertford scholarships in Classics. Initially, both he and his brother[7] intended to make their careers in the Classics, but Hugh became bored with what he regarded as the pedantic technical aspects of the classics course at Oxford and switched to history, where he obtained first-class honours in 1936.[8] Whilst at Oxford, he was a member of the exclusiveStubbs Society and was initiated as aFreemason in theApollo University Lodge.[9][10]
In 1937, he moved from Christ Church toMerton College, Oxford to become aresearch fellow.[11][12][13] His first book was a 1940 biography of ArchbishopWilliam Laud, in which he challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.
Trevor-Roper was a member of the University of Oxford'sOfficer Training Corps, reaching the rank ofofficer cadetcorporal.[14] On 28 February 1939, he was commissioned in theBritish Army as asecond lieutenant with seniority in that rank from 1 October 1938, and attached to the cavalry unit of the Oxford University Contingent of the OTC.[14] On 15 July 1940, he was promoted towar substantivelieutenant and transferred to theIntelligence Corps,Territorial Army.[15]
During theSecond World War, he served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of theSecret Intelligence Service, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, theAbwehr.[16] In early 1940, Trevor-Roper and E. W. B. Gill decrypted some of these intercepts, demonstrating the relevance of the material and spurringBletchley Park efforts to decrypt the traffic. Intelligence fromAbwehr traffic later played an important part in many operations including theDouble-Cross System.[17]
He formed a low opinion of most pre-war professional intelligence officers, but a higher one of some of the post-1939 recruits. InThe Philby Affair (1968) Trevor-Roper argues that the Soviet spyKim Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the chief of theAbwehr, German Military Intelligence,AdmiralWilhelm Canaris, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.[16]
In November 1945, Trevor-Roper was ordered byDick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector ofBerlin, to investigate the circumstances ofAdolf Hitler's death, and to rebut the Sovietpropaganda that Hitler was alive and living in the West.[18] Using the alias of "Major Oughton", Trevor-Roper interviewed or prepared questions for several officials, high and low, who had been present in theFührerbunker with Hitler, and who had been able to escape to the West, includingBernd Freytag von Loringhoven.[19] Although he cites eyewitness accounts of the burning of Hitler's body, Trevor-Roper notes that bones are understood to withstand burning (science supported by subsequent studies).[20][‡ 1]
For the most part Trevor-Roper relied on investigations and interviews by hundreds of British, American and Canadian intelligence officers.[21][22] He did not have access to Soviet materials.[citation needed] Working rapidly, Trevor-Roper drafted his report, which served as the basis for his most famous book,The Last Days of Hitler, in which he described the last ten days of Hitler's life and the fates of some of the higher-ranking members of the inner circle, as well as those of key lesser figures.[citation needed] Trevor-Roper transformed the evidence into a literary work, with sardonic humour and drama,[according to whom?] and was much influenced by the prose styles of two of his favourite historians,Edward Gibbon andLord Macaulay.[citation needed]
The book was cleared by British officials in 1946 for publication as soon as the war crimes trials ended. It was published in English in 1947; six English editions and many foreign language editions followed.[21] According to American journalistRon Rosenbaum, Trevor-Roper received a letter from Lisbon written in Hebrew stating that theStern Gang would assassinate him forThe Last Days of Hitler, which, they believed, portrayed Hitler as a "demoniacal" figure butlet ordinary Germans who followed Hitler off the hook, and that for this he deserved to die.[23]: 63 Rosenbaum reports that Trevor-Roper told him this was the most extreme response he had ever received for one of his books.[23]: 63, 66
Trevor-Roper also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries. With numerous editions, the book was Trevor-Roper's most commercially successful.
In June 1950, Trevor-Roper attended a conference in Berlin ofanti-Communist intellectuals along withSidney Hook,Melvin J. Lasky,Ignazio Silone,Arthur Koestler,Raymond Aron andFranz Borkenau that resulted in the founding of the CIA front groupCongress for Cultural Freedom and its magazineEncounter. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a frequent contributor toEncounter, but had reservations about what he regarded as the over-didactic tone of some of its contributors, particularly Koestler and Borkenau.[24]
Trevor-Roper was famous for his lucid and acerbic writing style. In reviews and essays he could be pitilessly sarcastic, and devastating in his mockery. In attackingArnold J. Toynbee'sA Study of History, for instance, Trevor-Roper accused Toynbee of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony".[25]
For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were its intellectual vitality, and the quarrels between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former, economically and constitutionally.[26] In Trevor-Roper's view, another theme of early modern Europe was expansion overseas in the form of colonies and intellectual expansion in the form of theReformation and theEnlightenment.[26] In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries can ultimately be traced back to the conflict between the religious values of the Reformation and the rationalistic approach of what became the Enlightenment.[26]
Trevor-Roper argued thathistory should be understood as an art, not a science and that the attribute of a successful historian was imagination.[26] He viewed history as full of contingency, with the past neither a story of continuous advance nor of continuous decline but the consequence of choices made by individuals at the time.[26] In his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively uponpolitical history but sought to examine the interaction between the political,intellectual,social and religious trends.[26]
His preferred medium of expression was the essay rather than the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and 1960s, Trevor-Roper was influenced by the work of the FrenchAnnales school, especiallyFernand Braudel and did much to introduce the work of theAnnales school to theEnglish-speaking world. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper wrote that Braudel and other Annalists were doing much innovative historical work but were "totally excluded from Oxford which remains, in historical matters, a retrograde provincial backwater".[27]
In Trevor-Roper's opinion, the dispute between thePuritans and theArminians was a major, although not the sole, cause of theEnglish Civil War.[26] For him, the dispute was over such issues as free will and predestination and the role of preaching versus the sacraments. Only later did the dispute become a matter of the structure of theChurch of England.[26] The Puritans desired a more decentralised and egalitarian church, with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for an ordered church with a hierarchy, an emphasis on divine right and salvation through free will.[26]
As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was known for his disputes with fellow historians such asLawrence Stone andChristopher Hill, whose materialist, and in some measure "inevitablist", explanations of the English Civil War he attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the historiographicalstorm over the gentry, also known as theGentry controversy, a dispute with the historiansR. H. Tawney and Stone, about whether the Englishgentry were, economically, on the way down or up, in the century before the English Civil War and whether this helped cause that war.
Stone, Tawney and Hill argued that the gentry were rising economically and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that while office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline. A third group of history men aroundJ. H. Hexter andGeoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper, who showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility.[28] He also rejected Tawney's theories about the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that he was guilty of selective use of evidence and that he misunderstood the statistics.[28][‡ 2]
Trevor-Roper attacked the philosophies of history advanced byArnold J. Toynbee andE. H. Carr, as well as his colleagueA. J. P. Taylor's account of the origins ofWorld War II. Another dispute was with Taylor andAlan Bullock over the question of whetherAdolf Hitler had fixed aims. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a "mountebank" instead of the ideologue Trevor-Roper believed him to be.[29] When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's, in his 1961 bookThe Origins of the Second World War, the debate continued. Another feud was with the novelist and Catholic convertEvelyn Waugh, who was angered by Trevor-Roper's repeated harsh attacks on the Catholic Church.[30]
In theglobalist–continentalist debate between those who argued that Hitler aimed to conquer the world and those who argued that he sought only the conquest of Europe, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading continentalists. He argued that the globalist case sought to turn a scattering of Hitler's remarks made over decades into a plan. In his analysis, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe, as laid out inMein Kampf.[31]
The American historianLucy Dawidowicz inThe Holocaust and Historians (1981) delivered what the British historianDavid Cesarani called an "ad hominem attack", writing that Trevor-Roper in his writings on Nazi Germany was indifferent to Nazi antisemitism, because she believed that he was a snobbish antisemite, who was apathetic about the murder of six million Jews.[32]: 341 Cesarani wrote that Dawidowicz was wrong to accuse Trevor-Roper of antisemitism but argued that there was an element of truth to her critique in that theShoah was a blind-spot for Trevor-Roper.[32]: 342–43
Trevor-Roper was a very firm "intentionalist" who treated Hitler as a serious, if slightly deranged thinker who, from 1924 until his death in 1945, was obsessed with "the conquest of Russia, the extermination of the Slavs, and the colonization of the English".[32]: 345 In his 1962 essay "The Mind of Adolf Hitler", Trevor-Roper again criticized Bullock, writing "Even Mr. Bullock seems content to regard him as a diabolical adventurer animated solely by an unlimited lust for personal power ... Hitler was a systematic thinker and his mind is, to the historian, as important as the mind of Bismarck or Lenin".[32]: 346 Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler, on the basis of a wide range of antisemitic literature, from the writings ofHouston Stewart Chamberlain toThe Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, had constructed a racist ideology that called for making Germany the world's greatest power and the extermination of perceived enemies such as the Jews and Slavs.[32]: 346
Trevor-Roper wrote that the mind of Hitler was "a terrible phenomenon, imposing indeed in its granite harshness and yet infinitely squalid in its miscellaneous cumber, like some huge barbarian monolith; the expression of giant strength and savage genius; surrounded by a festering heap of refuse, old tins and vermin, ashes and eggshells and ordure, the intellectual detritus of centuries".[32]: 346 Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper regarded Hitler, in marked contrast to Bullock, as a man who was serious about what he said but at the same time, Trevor-Roper's picture of Hitler as a somewhat insane leader, fanatically pursuing lunatic policies, meant paradoxically that it was hard to take Hitler seriously, at least on the basis of Trevor-Roper's writings.[32]: 345–46
Cesarani stated that Trevor-Roper was sincere in his hatred and contempt for the Nazis and everything they stood for but he had considerable difficulty when it came to writing about the complicity and involvement of traditional German elites in National Socialism, because the traditional elites in Germany were so similar in many ways to the British establishment, which Trevor-Roper identified with so strongly.
In this respect, Cesarani argued that it was very revealing that Trevor-Roper inThe Last Days of Hitler was especially damning in his picture of the German Finance Minister, CountLutz Schwerin von Krosigk, who Trevor-Roper noted "had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, but he had acquired none of its values".[32]: 352 Cesarani wrote "Thus, to Trevor-Roper the values of Oxford University stood at the opposite pole to those of Hitler's Reich, and one reason for the ghastly character of Nazism was that it did not share them".[32]: 352 Cesarani noted that while Trevor-Roper supported theConservatives and ended his days as a Tory life-peer, he was broadly speaking a liberal and believed that Britain was a great nation because of its liberalism.[32]: 352–53
Because of this background, Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper naturally saw the liberal democracy Britain as anathema to Nazi Germany.[32]: 352–53 Cesarani concluded that "to maintain the illusion of virtuous British liberalism, Hitler had to be depicted as either a statesman like any other or a monster without equal, and those who did business with him as, respectively, pragmatists or dupes. Every current of Nazi society that made it distinctive could be charted, while the anti-Jewish racism that it shared with Britain was discreetly avoided".[32]: 354
A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the "general crisis of the 17th century". He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems.[26] In this "general crisis", various events, such as the English Civil War;The Fronde in France; the climax of theThirty Years' War in Germany;troubles in the Netherlands; and revolts against the Spanish Crown inPortugal, theKingdom of Naples andCatalonia; were all manifestations of the same problems.[33]: 18
The most important causes of the "general crisis" in Trevor-Roper's opinion were conflicts between "Court" and "Country"; that is, between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states, represented by the Court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry, representing the country.[33]: 18 In addition, he said that the religious and intellectual changes introduced by theReformation and theRenaissance were important secondary causes of the "general crisis".[26]
The "general crisis" thesis generated controversy between supporters of this theory, and those, such as the Marxist historianEric Hobsbawm, who agreed with him that there was a "general crisis", but saw the problems of 17th century Europe as more economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction denied that there was any "general crisis", for example the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steensgaard, and theSoviet historianA. D. Lublinskaya.[33]: 20–21, 25–26 Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, and led experts in 17th century history such asRoland Mousnier,J. H. Elliott,Lawrence Stone,E. H. Kossmann,Eric Hobsbawm andJ. H. Hexter to become advocates of the pros and cons of the theory.
At times the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis."[33]: 22 Villari accused Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for theEnglish Civil War), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of a Europe-wide revolutionary movement.[33]: 22–23
Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper, the Soviet historianA. D. Lublinskaya, attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, arguing there was no "general crisis". Instead she maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the emergence of capitalism.[33]: 26
In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book byJohn Röhl endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for theFirst World War.[‡ 3]: 11 Trevor-Roper wrote that in his opinion far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers.[‡ 3]: 10 He claimed that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship".[‡ 3]: 9–10 He praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.[‡ 3]: 13–15
Trevor-Roper was critical of the official account of theassassination of John F. Kennedy. He voiced his scepticism of theWarren Commission, which concluded that a lone gunman by the name ofLee Harvey Oswald was responsible. In a 3,500-word essay published inThe Sunday Times, he wrote that the commission employed a "smokescreen of often irrelevant material" and "accepted impermissible axioms, constructed invalid arguments, and failed to ask elementary and essential questions".[34] He later appeared on a special episode of the BBC's television programmeEncounter, hosted byErskine B. Childers, to discuss the Warren Report.[35] He penned the introduction toMark Lane's bookRush to Judgment (1966)[36] and was thanked in the acknowledgements section for being "kind enough to read the manuscript and make suggestions".[37] He also joinedBertrand Russell'sWho Killed Kennedy? Committee.[38]
In 1973, Trevor-Roper was invited to visit Switzerland to examine a manuscript entitledDécadence Mandchoue written by thesinologistSir Edmund Backhouse (1873–1944) in a mixture of English, French, Latin and Chinese that had been in the custody of Reinhard Hoeppli, a Swiss diplomat who was the Swiss consul in Beijing during World War II. Hoeppli, givenDécadence Mandchoue in 1943 by his friend Backhouse, had been unable to publish it owing to its sexually explicit content. But by 1973 looser censorship and the rise of thegay rights movement meant a publisher was willing to releaseDécadence Mandchoue to the market. However, before doing so they wanted Trevor-Roper, who as a former MI6 officer was an expert on clandestine affairs, to examine some of the more outlandish claims contained in the text.
For an example, Backhouse claimed inDécadence Mandchoue that the wives and daughters of British diplomats in Beijing had trained their dogs and tamed foxes to performcunnilingus on them, which the fascistic Backhouse used as evidence of British "decadence", which explained why he was supporting Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Trevor-Roper regardedDécadence Mandchoue with considerable distaste calling the manuscript "pornographic" and "obscene" as Backhouse related in graphic detail sexual encounters he claimed to have had with the French poetPaul Verlaine, the Irish playwrightOscar Wilde, Wilde's loverLord Alfred Douglas, the French poetArthur Rimbaud, the Russian ballet dancerVaslav Nijinsky, the British Prime MinisterLord Rosebery and theEmpress Dowager Cixi of China whom the openly gay Backhouse had maintained had forced herself on him.[‡ 4]: 295–96
Backhouse also claimed to have been the friend of the Russian novelistLeo Tolstoy and the French actressSarah Bernhardt. For the next two years, Trevor-Roper went on an odyssey that took him all over Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and China as he sought to unravel the mystery of just who the elusive Backhouse was. Backhouse had between 1898 and his death in 1944 worked as a sinologist, the business agent for several British and American companies in China, a British spy, gun-runner and translator before ending his days in World War II China as a fascist and a Japanese collaborator who wished fervently for an Axis victory which would destroy Great Britain.[‡ 4]: 295–96 Trevor-Roper noted that despite Backhouse's homosexuality and Nazi Germany's policy of persecuting homosexuals, Backhouse's intense hatred of his own country together with his sadistic-masochistic sexual needs meant that Backhouse longed to be "ravished and possessed by the brutal, but still perverted masculinity of the fascistFührerprinzip".[‡ 4]: 295
The result was one of Trevor-Roper's most successful later books, his 1976 biography of Backhouse, originally entitledA Hidden Life but soon republished in Britain and the US asThe Hermit of Peking. Backhouse had long been regarded as a world's leading expert on China. In his biography, Trevor-Roper exposed the vast majority of Backhouse's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. InDécadence Mandchoue, Backhouse spoke of his efforts to raise money to pay the defence lawyers for Wilde while he was an undergraduate at Oxford.[‡ 4]: 268
Trevor-Roper established that while Backhouse raised money for the Wilde defence fund, he spent it all on buying expensive jewellery, especially pearl necklaces, which were a special passion of Backhouse's. It was this embezzlement of the money Backhouse had raised for the Wilde defence fund that led to him fleeing Britain in 1895. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West. Backhouse had portrayed PrinceRonglu as a friend of the West and an enemy of the Boxers when the opposite was true.[‡ 4]: 268
Trevor-Roper noted that in the "diary" of Ching-Shan, which Backhouse claimed to have looted from Ching's house just before it was burned down by Indian troops in theBoxer Rebellion, it has Prince Ronglu saying in French about the government's support of the Boxers: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder."[39][‡ 4]: 203 Trevor-Roper argued that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ronglu – who only knew Manchu and Mandarin – would be quoting a well-known French expression, but noted that Backhouse was fluent in French.[‡ 4]: 203
Backhouse was fluent inMandarin andCantonese, lived most of his life in Beijing and after moving to China had declined to wear western clothes, preferring instead the gown of a Chinese mandarin, which led most Westerners to assume that Backhouse "knew" China. Trevor-Roper noted that despite his superficial appearance of affection for the Chinese, much of what Backhouse wrote about on China worked subtly to confirm Western "Yellow Peril" stereotypes, as Backhouse variously depicted the Chinese as pathologically dishonest, sexually perverted, morally corrupt and generally devious and treacherous – in short, Chinese civilization for Backhouse was a deeply sick civilization.[‡ 4]: 203
Derek Sandhaus, however, notes that Trevor-Roper did not consult specialists in Chinese affairs, and seems to have read only enough of the text to have been disgusted by its homosexuality. While conceding that Backhouse fabricated or imagined many of the purported assignations, others Sandhaus independently confirmed or found plausible, reasoning that Backhouse spoke Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian (the languages of the imperial household), and that his account of the atmosphere and customs of the Empress Dowager's court may be more reliable than Trevor-Roper allowed.[40][41]
In 1960, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of SirOliver Franks who was backed by the heads of houses marshalled byMaurice Bowra, for the Chancellorship of theUniversity of Oxford, helping the Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan to be elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited aFestschrift in honour of his friend SirKeith Feiling's 80th birthday. In 1970, he was the author ofThe Letters of Mercurius, a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s, originally published as letters inThe Spectator.[42]
Another aspect of Trevor-Roper's outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy is his statement about the historical experiences of pre-literate societies. Following Voltaire's remarks on the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian tribes, he asserted that Africa had no history prior toEuropean exploration andcolonisation. Trevor-Roper said "there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness", its past "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe".[43][‡ 5]
These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa "unhistoric", spurred intense debate between historians,anthropologists,sociologists, in the emerging fields ofpostcolonial andcultural studies about the definition of "history".[44][45][46][‡ 6] Historians have argued, in response, that historical myths of the kind perpetrated by Trevor-Roper need to be actively countered: "Only a process of counter-selection can correct this, and African historians have to concentrate on those aspects which were ignored by the disparaging mythologies".[47]
Many historians now argue, against Trevor-Roper, that historical evidence should also includeoral traditions as well as any type ofwritten history, a former criterion for a society having left "prehistory".[48][49] Critics of Trevor-Roper's claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether bymaterialist, Annalist or the traditional historical methods used by Trevor-Roper.[50][51] Some say approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history cannot qualify as accurate descriptions ofAfrican societies.[52] Most scholars of any mettle now agree that Africa has a "history". Despite controversies over historical accuracy in oral records, as inAlex Haley's bookRoots: The Saga of an American Family and thepopular TV mini-series based on it, many historians believe that Africangriots, or oral memoirists, provide an historical oral record.[53]
Thenadir of his career came in 1983, when as a director ofThe Times, Trevor-Roper (by nowBaron Dacre of Glanton) made statements that authenticated the so-calledHitler Diaries.[54] Others were unsure: holocaust denierDavid Irving, for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, before finally stating that they were a forgery. HistoriansGerhard Weinberg andEberhard Jäckel had also expressed doubt regarding the authenticity of the diaries.[55]
Within two weeks, forensic scientistJulius Grant demonstrated that the diaries were forgeries. The ensuing fiasco gave Trevor-Roper's enemies the opportunity to criticise him openly, while Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the diaries raised questions about his integrity:The Sunday Times, a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries if and only if they were genuine.[citation needed]
Trevor-Roper explained that he had been given assurances (that turned out to be false) about how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer"[who?], and about the age of the paper and ink used in them and of their authenticity. Nonetheless, this incident prompted the satirical magazinePrivate Eye to nickname him "Hugh Very-Ropey", "Lord Lucre of Claptout", or more concisely, "Lord Facre".
Despite the shadow this cast over his later career, he continued to write and publish and his work remained well received.[56]
In 1980 at the age of 67, he becameMaster ofPeterhouse, the oldest and smallest college in theUniversity of Cambridge. His election, which surprised his friends, was engineered by a group of fellows led byMaurice Cowling, then the leadingPeterhouse historian. The fellows chose him because Cowling's reactionary clique thought he would be an arch-conservative who would oppose the admission of women. In the event, Trevor-Roper feuded constantly with Cowling and his allies, while launching a series of administrative reforms. Women were admitted in 1983 at his urging. The British journalistNeal Ascherson summarised the quarrel between Cowling and Trevor-Roper as:
Lord Dacre, far from being a romantic Tory ultra, turned out to be an anti-clerical Whig with a preference for free speech over superstition. He did not find it normal that fellows should wear mourning on the anniversary of General Franco's death, attend parties in SS uniform or insult black and Jewish guests at high table. For the next seven years, Trevor-Roper battled to suppress the insurgency of the Cowling clique ("a strong mind trapped in its own glutinous frustrations"), and to bring the college back to a condition in which students might actually want to go there. Neither side won this struggle, which soon became a campaign to drive Trevor-Roper out of the college by grotesque rudeness and insubordination.[27]
In a review of Adam Sisman's 2010 biography of Trevor-Roper, theEconomist wrote that the picture of Peterhouse in the 1980s was "startling", stating the college had become under Cowling's influence a sort of right-wing "lunatic asylum", who were determined to sabotage Trevor-Roper's reforms.[57] In 1987 he retired complaining of "seven wasted years".[58]
In 1981 aFestschrift was published in honour of Trevor-Roper,History and the Imagination. Some of the contributors wereSirGeoffrey Elton,John Clive,Arnaldo Momigliano,Frances Yates,Jeremy Catto,Robert S. Lopez,Michael Howard,David S. Katz,Dimitri Obolensky,J. H. Elliott,Richard Cobb,Walter Pagel,Hugh Lloyd-Jones,Valerie Pearl andFernand Braudel.[59]: vii The topics contributed by this group of American, British, French, Russian, Italian, Israeli, Canadian and German historians extended from whether theOdyssey was a part of an oral tradition that was later written down, to the question of the responsibility for theJameson Raid.[59]: viii–ix
On 4 October 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (9 March 1907 – 15 August 1997),[60] eldest daughter ofField MarshalThe 1st Earl Haig by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter ofQueen Alexandra and had previously been married to Rear-AdmiralClarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, by whom she had had three children. There were no children by his marriage with her.[61]
Trevor-Roper was made alife peer in 1979 on the recommendation ofPrime MinisterMargaret Thatcher.[12] He was raised to thePeerage on 27 September 1979, and was introduced to the House of Lords asBaron Dacre of Glanton, ofGlanton in theCounty of Northumberland.[62] He did not base his title on his surname, because "double-barrelled titles are an invention, and a monopoly, ofWilsonian peers", and "under the rules of theCollege of Arms either ['Lord Trevor' or 'Lord Roper'] would require him to change his surname to either 'Trevor' or 'Roper.'"
On mentioning the family's connection to the Dacre title to his wife, who liked the sound of it, Trevor-Roper was persuaded to opt for the title of "Baron Dacre", despite staunch opposition from thesuo jure27th Baroness Dacre (née Brand). She had her cousin,the 6th Viscount Hampden, "as titular head of the Brand family", inform Trevor-Roper that the Dacre title belonged to the Brand family "and no-one else should breach their monopoly", on the grounds of the title's antiquity of over six centuries.
This high-handed treatment strengthened Trevor-Roper's resolve in the face of his initial ambivalence. He observed "why should the Brands be so 'proud', or so jealous, of a mere title ... a gewgaw, which has been bandied intermittently from family to family for six centuries, without tradition or continuity or distinction (except for murder, litigation and extravagance) or, for the last 250 years, land? They only acquired this pretty toy, in 1829, because aMr Brand, of whom nothing whatever is known, had married into the Trevor-Ropers, who had themselves acquired it by marrying into the Lennards. Now they behave as if they had owned it for six centuries and had a monopoly of it for ever. A fig for their stuffiness!". Notwithstanding objections, Trevor-Roper duly took the title of Baron Dacre of Glanton.[6]
In his last years he had suffered from failing eyesight, which made it difficult for him to read and write. He underwent cataract surgery and obtained a magnifying machine, which allowed him to continue writing. In 2002, at the age of 88, Trevor-Roper submitted a sizable article onThomas Sutton, the founder ofCharterhouse School, to theOxford Dictionary of National Biography in part with notes he had written decades earlier, which editorBrian Harrison praised as "the work of a master". Trevor-Roper suffered several other minor ailments related to his advanced age, but according to his stepson, "bore all his difficulties stoically and without complaint". In 2002, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died on 26 January 2003 in ahospice inOxford, aged 89.[63]
Five books by Trevor-Roper were published posthumously. The first wasLetters from Oxford, a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947 and 1959 to his close friend the American art historian and collectorBernard Berenson. The second book was 2006'sEurope's Physician, a biography of SirTheodore de Mayerne, the Franco-Swiss court physician toHenri IV,James I andCharles I. The latter work was largely completed by 1979, but for unknown reasons was not finished.
The third book wasThe Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, a critique written in the mid-1970s of what Trevor-Roper regarded as the myths ofScottish nationalism. It was published in 2008. The fourth book collecting together some of his essays onHistory and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays was published in 2010. The fifth book wasThe Wartime Journals, edited byRichard Davenport-Hines, published in 2011.The Wartime Journals are from the journals that Trevor-Roper kept during his years in the Secret Intelligence Service.
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