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Local historian honored by British society |
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Monday, 15 June 2009 |
By KELLY DANIELS
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A local historian’s country of interest has honored him for his work.
Dr. William Anthony Hay was elected as a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Historical Society after writing about a historical period that had yet to receive much scholarly attention.
Hay was nominated by other fellows based on his profession in history, his scholarship in history and his public profile.
“When I was asked to fill out a form to write more detail, I just thought, ‘You mean me? There must be a mistake,’” he said, adding that he was extremely flattered to be asked.
When he received notification, Hay was an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, a very rare situation, he noted. Hay is now an associate professor at MSU.
Born in the U.S., Hay spent his childhood in Britain, where his father worked as a businessman.
At 5 years old, he read a copy of “Far Island’s Choice” and grew fascinated in history, a subject in which he majored, along with philosophy, in college.
“I was corrupted at an early age,” he said. “I still have the book, even though I think it’s worn down.”
Instead of having to memorize names and dates in the book, Hay was immediately exposed to the contexts of events.
“Often people think of history as just names dates and places, multiple choice, memorize this, memorize that, fill in the blank for a quiz... People often forget that our past was somebody else’s future,” Hay said.
Hay’s fascination with history carried on into his college years, which he spent at the University of the South, where his contemporaries included future editors of publications such as the “Sawanee Review,” “Harper’s Magazine” and “Newsweek.”
Hay’s book, “The Whig Revival: 1808 - 1830” was published in 2005 and received a lot of attention.
“Not many people have worked on this,” he said, calling his focus of study a “neglected period.”
The book explored how a political party, such as the Whigs in Britain, can go from opposition to office.
“They did it by changing the political landscape,” he said. “I came upon the project by chance as a graduate student.”
Hay had been studying British foreign policy during the Napoleonic war and grew interested in domestic politics.
“You had a group, the Whigs, who were in opposition and were deeply unpopular and had essentially failed for a long time. But in 1830, they get into power and the liberal party dominated until 1885,” he said.
Hay’s research of Britain also covers the country’s “phenomenal” ability to avoid revolutionary outbreaks during a period where many other countries were experiencing them.
“In 1848, there was a whole series of revolutions across Europe. In the 1860’s, America had its Civil War,” Hay said.
“Britain didn’t have anything like that... It’s the period that should have been a revolutionary moment for these people, but it didn’t happen. Britain managed to combine institutional and social cohesion in a way that others countries didn’t.”
Hay says that revolutions often arise during a period of high expectations.
“When things are getting better and there’s the expectation of them getting even better than that, that’s when you start to see a revolution,” Hay said.
Ethiopia, for example, suffered extreme famine and unfounded misery without generating a revolution in the 1980s. Poland, however, experienced a wave of opposition to Communism.
“Indeed, one could argue that the living standards in Poland from the late 1970s and 1980s were improving to some degree.”
Hay’s current project, a biography of Lord Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, focuses internally on the government during the same time that the opposition developed.
“How is it that Liverpool got Britain through a period of tremendous upheaval?” he said. “He had to lead the government with a very strong personality, to keep the show going on without the wheels falling off. I find it fascinating to see how he did that.”
Hay is planning for a future project focused on Queen Caroline of Brunswick, who married George IV.
“To say that they didn’t get along would be a catastrophic understatement,” Hay said. “When he became king, he wanted to get rid of Caroline.”
The opposition and public opinion, however, took up Caroline’s cause, and the government urged George give up the fight.
Hay says his project will focus on the “case” of Caroline.
‘Parallel career’
Hay has created for himself what he calls a “parallel career,” as a historian, which involves teaching and writing about the 18th and 19th centuries, and also as an explorer of contemporary events and issues, and applying knowledge of the past and its cultural contexts to current challenges.
“For example, I wrote a piece about defining democracy, and a few years ago there was a debate about democratization and whether the United States should be spreading democracy,” Hay said. “The first question should be what does it mean and what did it mean at different times?”
Hay’s research grows from questions related to the “lessons of” school of thought, such as, “How has the United States government handled security problems in the past?” and “What does the historical experience teach us?”
His work is not about drawing analogies that are often loaded examples, such as “Iraq is like Vietnam” or “Saddam Hussein is like Adolf Hitler,” but more about
drawing upon experience to understand how things work.
“The misuse of history is a rhetorical whip to beat people with. The use of history is to see how things work,” he said. “Unfortunately, people don’t do that very well.”
Hay’s most immediate model for lessons unlearned is the perpetual boom and bust of economic activity.
“Particularly in England, people invested in all sorts of opportunities that seemed to offer a great return,” Hay said. “Nobody thought about the risk involved, and often these were overvalued and oversold.”
Hay observes a persistent pattern of one generation getting burned and learning the lesson, and the next generation repeating those mistakes. The answers to many of his questions are provisional, Hay said.
“History doesn’t change, but the way we understand it often changes, and sometimes facts come to light, or new ways of looking at old facts come to light,” he said.
Along with his books, Hay’s scholarship includes journal articles, book articles, book reviews and research projects.
James Sterling Young, distinguished professor at University of Virginia, developed an oral history of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, which involved interviewing the people who worked closely with Carter after he left office. The research pieced together a picture of how that administration worked.
For a period of nine months, Hay got on board with “Presidential Oral History” to develop a similar study of President George H.W. Bush’s administration.
“The idea of the project was that this study would be a model that we can apply to the Reagan administration and then the Clinton administration, “ he said.
The tough market in the academic history world made it difficult for Hay to find a job teaching history.
Hay later received a call from the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) out of Philadelphia, Pa. to help establish a research project about the United States’ role within the western tradition.
While at FPRI, Hay also led seminars on globalization, U.S. European relations and is now a senior fellow for the FPRI and an associate editor for its publication, “Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs.”He continues to lead a seminar for FPRI on globalization.
Promoted to Mississippi State University’s tenured faculty this year, Hay has joined an effort by MSU’s administration to put the school’s humanity studies on the map.
For MSU’s Institute for the Humanities, Hay serves as coordinator for the distinguished lecture series, which has brought to the campus notable scholars, artists, and writers, such as Phillip Jenkins, James Turrell and Rodney Jones.
“The College of Arts and Sciences produces more enrollment at MSU and more credit hours,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is to bring the recognition and the scholarship up to the level that reflects the importance of the university.”
He earned his master’s in European History from the University of Virginia, where he also earned his doctorate in Modern European and International History. Hay serves as vice-president for the Southern Conference on British Studies.
“I’ve been very lucky with opportunities I’ve had at times,” he said.
Hay left his West Point home Sunday for England to conduct research for his new projects.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 16 June 2009 )
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