Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 127, Issue 1, 2014

Of all the rituals of ancient Rome none was more spectacular than the triumph. Scholarly attention has long been devoted to the origins and circumstances of this ritual, but lately the role of the triumph in moral discourse has also come into focus. Emperors could gain great military prestige from celebrating a triumphus, yet this prestige could (posthumously) be undermined by hostile historians and biographers who used descriptions of triumphal processions to cast unpopular emperors in a negative light. Discussing in particular the ‘bad triumphs’ of Nero, Elagabalus, and Gallienus, but also considering many other cases, this article explores how triumphal descriptions could be employed as literary weapons. Ancient authors did not hesitate to emphasize, distort, or invent certain aspects of the ritual to suit their purposes. In fact, the triumphal idiom proved such a powerful tool for the delegitimation of emperors that it was even employed to situations which did not constitute triumphal celebrations at all. Hence the cultural elite sought to control the meaning of the ritual and to establish whether emperors counted as benign rulers or tyrants.

This article explores the metaphor of the father in the professional memory culture of historians. It takes as a case study Jules Michelet, who is generally considered the father of French historiography, and it traces how, why, and by whom he was elevated to this status. The role of Gabriel Monod, one of the most prominent historians at the end of the nineteenth century, was crucial in the promotion of Michelet. Ernest Lavisse, the writer of historical textbooks, also adopted Michelet as a father of history. This is remarkable because Monod and Lavisse were both members of the so-called positivist generation of historians, which is deemed to have distanced itself from the romantic historiographical tradition of Michelet in favour of a rigorous scientific method. Hence other factors than a similarity in scholarly practice appear to have been decisive in the choice of Michelet as father of history.

This article examines a number of racist and antisemitic interpretations of the philosophy of Spinoza put forward by German authors in the period 1880-1940. Particular attention is given to the views of völkisch authors such as Eugen Dühring and Houston Chamberlain, and national-socialist philosophy professors such as Hans Grunsky and Max Wundt, who worked within the newly founded discipline of nazi Judenforschung. Their aim was to isolate Spinoza’s thought from its wider ‘Germanic’ context and to present it as typically ‘Jewish’ – with all the negative connotations that word suggested (derivative, intellectualist, materialistic). According to Grunsky, Spinoza’s hidden agenda in developing his political philosophy had been to subject the ‘Aryan’ peoples to the dictates of a ‘new Torah’. At the same time, however, Spinoza’s own interpretation of Mosaic law as a purely political legislation had helped Immanuel Kant develop a pernicious notion of Judaism as a non-religion. Through Kant’s influence Spinoza’s thought was open to exploitation for antisemitic purposes, just as the German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen had feared. The claim that Judaism is not a religion also appears in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The suggestion that Hitler derived some ideas from Spinoza and the Enlightenment generally is still to be examined seriously.

In 1924 the Dutch journalist and poet Jacob Israel de Haan was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the Zionist Haganah. His death has been described as the price he paid for his struggle on behalf of the Palestine Arabs. He was labeled therefore as the Jewish (or even Dutch) Lawrence of Arabia. Indeed, in his writings De Haan pointed out the incompatibility of Zionist demands with Arab expectations. Yet he was in the first place a champion of Jewish orthodoxy as represented by Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld, the leader of the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem. His quarrel with the Zionist Organization crystallized around their claim also to represent Jewish orthodoxy. Because of De Haan’s efforts the British Colonial Office in London did not combine the Sonnenfeldgroup into the Zionist Chief rabbinate as had been planned by High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. The Zionist Organization became nervous about De Haan’s propaganda. Extracting from King-Caliph Husayn of the Hedjaz in February 1924 a statement that His Highness considered the ‘godless’ Zionism a danger for Islam was De Haan’s last diplomatic act. This was denounced at the instigation of Frederick Kisch, the political Zionists' chief in Jerusalem, and probably sealed De Haan’s fate, following a number of other threats in the previous years.

The Second World War still receives wide attention in official commemorations and political discussions often focusing on national historical experiences of war. But collective memories of World War II are also strongly influenced by a multitude of popular renditions from both home and abroad. Films and novels, comic books, and websites constitute an important but underestimated source of widespread narratives and images of war, with various perspectives appealing to large and diverse audiences. The wide variety of transnational war representations makes it possible for participants in contemporary historical culture to make their own individual selections, resulting in a hybrid historical narrative which helps them to appropriate the past. Their relationship with history is, somewhat paradoxically, characterized both by commitment and distance, while the public authority of historians has become less obvious. The fact that the War is now a moral benchmark as well as a lighthearted topic of entertainment, combining fact and fiction, stresses the need for new research into popular culture in order to provide a more balanced picture of the contemporary social significance of the Second World War.

How has historical research on secularization evolved over the past half century? Focusing on British contributions, this article distinguishes three phases: (1) approval of ‘secularization’ as a useful analytical concept, (2) criticism of the secularization paradigm on empirical and methodological grounds, and (3) historicization of secularization as a mid-twentieth-century master narrative. Because all three phases focus on the production of secularization narratives, this article advocates a fourth research phase, focused on the consumption or circulation of secularization narratives, especially outside the academic realm. With reference to the Sheffield Industrial Mission in the 1950s and 1960s, the article argues that secularization narratives not only have a referential dimension, but also a performative aspect. They not only explain the changing roles and functions of religion in modern societies, but also contribute to such changes, if only by providing frameworks through which people interpret their world. Accordingly, if historians want to explain why in the 1950s the Sheffield Industrial Mission called for radical transformation of ecclesiastical structures, or why in the 1960s staff members of the Mission disagreed on the course of action appropriate for communicating the gospel in a ‘secular’ environment, it is the use and impact of secularization narratives that has to be taken into account.