A few weeks ago I watched BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are for the first
time – a rather shocking revelation for a historian. It was the episode in
which supermodel Cindy Crawford sought the help of the BBC (and many historians
and archivists) to trace her family history. As Crawford travelled on her
backwards journey of self-discovery I found myself smugly differentiating
myself from her (impartial professional historian vs. self-interested unknowledgeable
family historian) before going on my own journey of discovery to realise that
just because my research isn’t about my family, or anyone remotely like me, it
is far from as impersonal or unemotional as I’d like to believe.
Cindy Crawford’s overriding goal
at the outset was to discover at which point her ancestors had crossed the great
Atlantic divide to the New World. Going back twelve generations she discovered
that although her great-grandfather ten times removed was a pioneering settler
and a religious exile – fitting in neatly to already formed historical
frameworks – he also deserted his family in America after returning home to
seek a wife. Crawford openly articulated her struggle to empathise with this
man; she certainly seemed to consider their shared bloodline bequeathed her
some right to hold Thomas Trowbridge accountable to modern standards of kinship
and fatherhood. ‘Ah’, I thought smugly, ‘as a professional historian I don’t let me emotions get in the way of these things
– I study convicts, who’ve committed crimes big and small, and empathise with
their plight equally.’ To her obvious relief Crawford soon discovered Thomas
Trowbridge had failed to return to the colony and be reunited with his family
because he had become embroiled in the English Civil War. Her qualms about his
initial desertion laid to one side, Crawford (and the programme makers) seized
on tales of war heroism in a manner that brings to mind Gove’s attitude to the
WWI centenary.
I was smug as ever, believing my
study of the black sheep of society (and ones unrelated to me) meant that I didn’t
fall into the emotional rhetoric of nationalist rhetoric. Yet, a twinge of
self-awareness made me ask myself – was this the result of historical impartiality?
Or was my choice of a study – a personal proclivity in a field where thousands
of topics and thousands of years are up for grabs – really borne out of my own
personal history? After all, my grandfather from Romania was conscripted to the
German side (see even here I wince from using the word Nazi, for I have no reason
to believe my grandfather bought into the ideology, but I suppose technically
he was) as he had moved from his homeland to search work several years hence. For
that reason, alongside my upbringing as an expat abroad, I struggle to buy into
national histories, and identify far more with those on the borders of the national
story.
The final part of the programme
revealed to Crawford that she was related to the first century king of the
franks Charlemagne. Crawford was absolutely elated, decrying that their genealogical
collection was enough to bring that whole subject to life for her. My initial response
was a sneer at the superficiality of her discovery – after all Charlemagne was
her great grandfather fifty times removed. You only have to go back 12
generations to be related to over 4000 people. As we go back in time there are
more duplicates (as cousins marry cousins) but regardless it is likely her
family tree includes many more ordinary people – murderers, cowards, paupers –
than it does royalty. But once again, I could lay no claim to historical
impartiality. I rejected the importance Cindy Crawford laid on the blood
relation, no matter how incremental, because my when my mum (who was adopted)
found her biological sister and mother, it became abundantly clear to us both
that shared experiences make people family, not blood. Both of the sisters tried to grasp hold of
shared traits, but they really came from opposite backgrounds (one from the
remote fields of Catholic Ireland, the other from the crowded streets of
London). Again this view was consolidated by being brought up abroad, as much
as I loved my extended family, they knew me far less than the family friends
who we saw on a weekly basis.
Perhaps the difference between
the family historian and the academic historian is not as large as we like to
think. While we’ve can make fair claims to impartiality in our analysis, I
think that our initial choice of study masks deeply personal (and often
unrealised) attitudes to nation, bloodlines and history itself – or maybe that’s
just as personal to me as everything else!
