Conference report: ISCHE
I presented a paper on Wednesday at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE). This is being held at my own university, the Institute of Education in London. It is certainly the largest gathering of historians of education in this country, with something like 550 delegates, most of whom are presenting a paper. With colleagues, I have been responsible for putting together the academic programme, which has been a challenging task.
ISCHE saw the first outing of our paper on the First World War in historical pageants of the 1920s and 1930s.
Although most British pageants did not depict the First World War directly – in contrast, for example, to American pageants of this time – some did so, and in surprising ways. We identify two main themes: sacrifice and patriotism. These could and did overlap, but different pageants concentrated on one or the other. As an example of a ‘sacrifice’ pageant, I showed some extracts from the Salisbury Peace Pageant of 1919. On the imperial theme, the Greenwich Night Pageant of 1933 is probably the best example: here, unsurprisingly, naval themes were to the fore:
Admirals all, they said their say
The echoes are ringing still;
Admirals all, they went their way
To the haven under the hill.
But they left us a Kingdom none can take,
The realm of the circling sea,
To be ruled by the rightful sons of Blake
and the Rodneys yet to be.
Another example I used in the paper was the Oxford Pageant of Peace in 1919. Here the first half presented episodes from the histories of Britain’ main war allies, including Belgium, France, Italy, Japan and the USA. These emphasised the historical ties of friendship. The second half focused on Britain and the empire, with scenes from English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish history, and ending with a tableau including the patron saints and Britannia.
I made the point that, wherever the war was presented, it was always in the context of other historical episodes. The pageant form was still important, but it was adapted to new contexts. The choice of episodes, as at Oxford, was often shaped by the war, and analogy and comparison were used in intriguing ways – this was picked up on in an interesting question from a Dutch doctoral student, who is working on a comparative study of national narratives in Dutch and English historical textbooks. At Oxford, the American soldiers of 1917 referred to themselves as an ‘Atlantic Armada’, a particularly resonant image given the focus of many Edwardian pageants on the Elizabethan period.
One audience member asked me whether there were any pageants depicting the First World War in Germany. This exposed my ignorance of German pageantry. I know that historical battle re-enactments do take place in Germany, but it would be interesting for me, and the rest of the team, to learn more about this. Perhaps we will have a paper on Germany at our international conference in 2016?
Mark Freeman