← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Dan Dare
Thread ID: 8695 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-08-02
2003-08-02 07:40 | User Profile
Niall Ferguson who has recently recently succumbed to the blandishments of NYU is continuing to strenuously promote, in the absence of any significant buy-in to date, the notion that that the US is the natural and inevitable inheritor to the British Empire.
Ferguson fans will be aware that this particular kite was launched as a subtext with his most most recent magnus opus .
Here then is the transcript of the debate with Robert Kagan at the AEI.
... MR. FERGUSON: Ladies and gentlemen, it is a distinguishing feature of both the great Anglophone Empires that they insist they are acting in the best interests of the people that they subjugate. It is part of our charm. It is our share of culture. [Laughter.] But the difference is, and Robert is right to point this out, that while the British ultimately came to trumpet the existence of their empire, to write frightful poetry about it, and some of the most pompous music ever composed, America, and this is rather English in itself, prefers self-deprecation. "No, no, no, we're not an empire."
[url=http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.428/transcript.asp]http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID..../transcript.asp[/url]
2003-08-02 19:23 | User Profile
Yes I think that would probably have been 'The Cash Nexus'.
Ferguson is one of the younger cohort of British historians that includes Andrew Roberts, Ian Kershaw and John Charnley, all of whom practice a mild form of revisionism. Ferguson is probably considered the most radical of this set, a reputation earned in large part through "The Pity of War".
In that work, he controversially and (in my view) convincingly made the case that the blame for World War 1 has unfairly been laid predominantly on Germany. His point is that Britain had no strategic national interest at stake and could easily have avoided entanglement in what was essentially a Continental conflict. Furthermore, Britain, but for a misguided alliance with France and Russia, would have been uniquely placed to apply its prestige and influence to ensure any such conflict was short and localized.
Ferguson maintains that WW1 was the seminal event of the 20th Century and all our current woes stem in one way or another from that catastrophe. I agree.