Norman Davies
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Norman Davies (born June 8, 1939 in Bolton, Lancashire, England) is a British historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Poland, Europe and the British Isles.
Biography
Davies' full name is Ivor Norman Richard Davies. A disciple of A.J.P. Taylor, Davies studied history at Magdalen College, Oxford. After stays abroad in Grenoble, France, and Perugia, Italy, he intended to study for a Ph.D. in Russia, but was denied an entry visa. Instead, he went to Kraków to study at the Jagiellonian University and do research on the Polish-Soviet war. As this war did not officially exist in the Polish historiography of that time, he was obliged to change the title of his dissertation to The British Foreign Policy towards Poland, 1919-20. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Kraków, the English text appeared under the title White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 in 1972.
From 1971, Davies taught Polish history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) of the University of London, where he was professor from 1985 to 1996. Currently, he is Supernumary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Throughout his career, Davies lectured in many countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Poland, and in most European countries).
The work that established Davies's reputation in the English-speaking world was God's Playground (1981), a comprehensive overview of Polish history, which still ranks as the most influential. It made Davies immediately popular in Poland, although - or rather because - it could only be distributed as a samizdat copy.
Against the backdrop of the current events in Poland, Davies published a more concise, essayistic description of the role of the past in Polish present, entitled Heart of Europe (1984).
Some western colleagues have accused Davies of a "Polonophile" attitude in presenting Polish-Russian, Polish-Jewish or Polish-Western conflicts. In particular, some Jewish historians, most vocally Lucy Dawidowicz#redirect and Abraham Brumberg#redirect , object to Davies' historical treatment of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. They accuse him of minimizing historic anti-Semitism, and of promoting a view that the Holocaust occupies a position in international historiography which tends to minimize the suffering of non-Jewish Poles and even denounce them as anti-Semites. Davies’ supporters contend that he gives due attention to the genocide and war crimes perpetrated by both Hitler and Stalin on Polish Jews and non-Jews. Davies himself argues that "Holocaust scholars need have no fears that rational comparisons might threaten that uniqueness. Quite the opposite." and that "...one needs to re-construct mentally the fuller picture in order to comprehend the true enormity of Poland’s wartime cataclysm, and then to say with absolute conviction ‘Never Again’."#redirect #redirect
In 1986, Dawidowicz’s criticism of Davies’ historical treatment of the Holocaust was cited as a factor in a controversy at Stanford University in which Davies was denied a position for alleged "scientific flaws". Davies sued the university for breach of contract and defamation of character, but in 1989 the court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction in an academic matter.
In the 1990s, Davies returned with two monumental works on the history of Europe as a whole (1996) and the British Isles (1999). In both books he sets out to present the importance of the "peripheries" on an equal footing and to revise conventional wisdoms in historiography that he considers as Westernly biased and Anglo-centric, respectively. A supporter of the Labour Party, a republican and a supporter of closer British integration into the European Union, in The Isles, Davies sought to expose what he considered the myth of a British nationality. In Davies's view, the whole idea of Britishness was an 18th-19th century myth created in order to justify English rule over the neighboring Celtic peoples such as the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh. Davies ends The Isles with a call for the end of the United Kingdom with Northern Ireland joining Ireland, independence for Scotland and Wales, the abolition of the British monarchy and England seeking its fate in a United States of Europe. Davies has often criticized those in Britain who favor the Atlanticist orientation with closer ties to the United States. In Davies's view, the destiny of Britain lies with closer ties to Europe.
Next, Davies and his former research assistant Roger Moorhouse co-wrote a history of Wrocław, the former German Breslau, at the suggestion of the city's mayor. The book considers the city a focal point of Central European history and uses it to present that history "in a nutshell". Although fellow historians criticised a number of technical defects in the book, it became an instant bestseller in both Germany and Poland, where it had been published simultaneously.
Davies also writes essays and popular articles for mass media audiences. Among others, he has worked for the BBC as well as British and American magazines and newspapers like The Times, The New York Review of Books and The Independent. In Poland, his articles appeared in the liberal Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.
After 1989, God's Playground became required reading in Poland, where each subsequent book was immediately translated and became an instant commercial success. In 2000, Davies's Polish publishers Znak published a collection of his essays and articles under the title Smok wawelski nad Tamizą ("The Wawel Dragon on the Thames") which is not available in English.
Davies's most recent book, Rising '44 describes the Warsaw Uprising and was internationally well received on the occasion of its anniversary in 2004.
Footnotes
- ↑ Lucy Dawidowicz, "The Curious Case of Marek Edelman". Observations. Commentary, March 1987, pp. 66-69. See also reply by Norman Davies and others in Letters from Readers, Commentary, August, 1987 pp. 2–12.
- ↑ Abraham Brumberg, "Murder Most Foul", Times Literary Supplement, March 2, 2001. Essay on Neighbors by Jan T. Gross. Tony Judt and Abraham Brumberg. Letters, Times Literary Supplement, London April 6, 2001. See also response by Norman Davies, Letters, Times Literary Supplement, London April 13, 2001.
- ↑ Norman Davies, "Russia, the missing link in Britain's VE Day mythology", The Times, London, May 01, 2005.
- ↑ Norman Davies, lecture, University of Cincinnati Department of History and the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education, Cincinnati, OH. April 26, 2005.
Awards and distinctions
Davies holds a number of honorary titles and memberships, including honorary doctorates from the universities of Lublin and Gdańsk, memberships in the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU) and the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europea [link], and fellowships of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society [link]. Davies is also an honorary citizen of Lublin and Kraków. In 2005, he was granted the Order of Saint Stanislaus in Poland.Publications
- 1972: White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20. (2004 edition: ISBN 0712606947)
- 1977: Poland, Past and Present. A Select Bibliography of Works in English. ISBN 0892500115
- 1981: God's Playground. A History of Poland. Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199253390 / ISBN 0199253404.
- 1984: Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192851527.
- *2001: Heart of Europe : The Past in Poland's Present Oxford University Press, USA; New edition ISBN 0192801260
- 1991: Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46.Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0312062001
- 1996: Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198201710
- 1997: Auschwitz and the Second World War in Poland: A lecture given at the Representations of Auschwitz international conference at the Jagiellonian University. Universitas. ISBN 8370529356
- 1999: Red Winds from the North. Able Publishing. ISBN 0907616453
- 1999: The Isles. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195134427
- 2002 (with Roger Moorhouse): London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224062433
- 2004: Rising '44. The Battle for Warsaw. London: Pan Books. ISBN 0333905687
- 2006: Europe East and West: A Collection of Essays on European History. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224069241
Reference
- Snowman, Daniel "Norman Davies" pages 36–38 from History Today, Volume 55, Issue 7, July 2005.
External links
- [Britain and the Warsaw Rising. Essay, 2004.]
- [Review of Europe: A History] by Anne Applebaum
- [Official press release on the case of Davies vs. Stanford University]
- [A Polish site about Norman Davies (in Polish), includes a gallery and parts of translated text]
| Books by Norman Davies | |
|---|---|
| White Eagle, Red Star | Poland, Past and Present | God's Playground | Heart of Europe | ' | ' | | Rising '44 | Europe East and West | |
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