Thrice Denied: ‘Declinism’ as a Recurrent Theme in British History in the Long Twentieth Century
Thrice Denied: ‘Declinism’ as a Recurrent Theme in British History in the Long Twentieth Century
复制标题
三次否认：“衰落主义”是二十世纪英国历史上反复出现的主题
DOI：
10.1093/tcbh/hwp019
复制
发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
J. Tomlinson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Tomlinson
从1870年左右开始，当英国达到其工业主导地位的顶点时，随着其经济规模相对于世界其他地区的下降，该国经历了相对衰落。这一不可避免的过程伴随着反复出现的政治和历史，这些政治和历史将这种衰落解释为不是全球资本主义不可避免的竞争和混乱发展的结果，而是英国社会病态失败的证据，创造了一个持久的“衰落主义”支撑现代英国的账户。这些都表明英国社会在几乎所有领域--经济、技术、政治和文化--都存在严重缺陷。衰落论的叙述模式是在政治竞技场中发起，然后被历史学家采用，然后由历史学家反驳这种论点。这种模式可以在1870-1914年期间、两次世界大战之间以及1945年后的历史和史学中找到。然而，在战后时期，特别是自20世纪80年代撒切尔政府以来的几年里，它一直是最强大的。本文概述了这些发展，并提供了一个有用的方式来了解二十世纪英国的这种衰落的批评。它表明，历史学家在过去常常将他们的方法建立在当代高度政治化和争论性的话语之上，但在许多领域，现在正在出版的工作使我们能够为这一时期构建更富有成效的叙述。
From around 1870, when Britain reached the apogee of its industrial predominance, the country has experienced relative decline as the size of its economy in relation to the rest of the world has fallen. This inescapable process has been accompanied by a recurrent politics and history which have interpreted this decline not as the result of the inevitable competitive rough and tumble development of global capitalism, but as evidence of pathological failings in British society, creating a persistent ‘declinist’ underpinning to accounts of modern Britain. These have suggested that British society has had profound failings in almost all areas—economic, technological, political and cultural. The pattern has been for declinist narratives to be initiated in the political arena, then to be taken up by historians, to be followed in turn by historians rebuttals of such arguments. This pattern can be discerned in the history and historiography of the 1870–1914 period, the inter-war years, and for post-1945. However, it has been strongest for the post-war period, and especially for the years since the Thatcher government of the 1980s. This article outlines these developments, and offers a critique of such declinism as a useful way to understand twentieth century Britain. It suggests that historians have too often in the past based their approach on contemporary, highly politicized and polemical discourses, but that in a number of areas work is now being published which allows us to construct more productive narratives for this period.