When planning a research trip to an archive, there are a
number of things to consider; how much it will cost, how to get there, how long
to spend there, etc. etc. Once the opening times and dates have been checked
and a date set, at no point does it occur that the archive could close.
However, this is exactly what happened to me in October 2013.
The focus of my PhD is Anglo-American relations and as
part of this I had to visit the archives of two presidents (Eisenhower and
Kennedy) and the National Archives II. This visit took over six months to
prepare, with emails going back and forth sorting out dates, what I would want
to look at and what would be required of me. Unfortunately no-one mentioned the
upcoming budget and the implications of its failure to pass. And so, this is
how I found myself in a hotel room watching the news for three instead of in an
archive finding the key piece of evidence for my thesis.
Nothing I can say can describe how it felt to be in this
situation. It was made worse by the fact that the three archives were in three
different states, so I was reminded of the cost and the effort every time I
checked out of a hotel and checked into another flight to another destination.
I visited Boston, Kansas and Washington on my four week trip and spent only one
of those weeks in an archive. I am currently preparing for a second trip out to
Boston and Kansas and I cannot say I am looking forward to it at all.
I didn’t spend all of my time in my hotel. After the first day or so, when I realised
that there was not going to be any quick remedy I tried my best to make the
most of it. I visited some sights I would not have otherwise seen and I am beginning to be grateful of that opportunity.
However these visits were tinged with regret and anger and so are my memories,
for now at least. I saw witches in Salem and an old Cow Town, straight out of a
Western (complete with a gunfight) in
Kansas but that wasn’t what I went for. I was lost without my work, I couldn’t
do anything while I was away and all the time I knew it would have a damaging
effect on my thesis. I wasn’t on holiday, I was here to work and I couldn’t. In
reality I didn’t really see Salem or Wichita, my mind wasn’t really there, I
was desperate to check the news and find out if anything had happened yet even
though I had begun to lose hope.
What did happen while I was there that did have a
positive impact on my work, was the experience of American politics in action.
It baffled me that a budget could be stalled like this when its effects were so
wide reaching. I had no idea that if a budget didn’t pass, funding stopped.
Museums, libraries and monuments all shut, federally funded national parks were
forced to close even if there were people camping there and government workers
didn’t get paid and wouldn’t be until the budget was agreed..
Then I began to think about the reaction of the Americans
to the issues raised by the shutdown. Rallies were held in Washington, where chants
of "Impeach Obama" rang out and confederate flags were flown, but not
for reason I would have expected. These rallies protested the closure of
monuments and national parks, claiming it was the unconstitutional for
Government to keep the people away from its history and its landmarks.
I also heard about
the corrupting influence of liberal thinking on America and the alarm over
America moving towards becoming a Socialist state. All of this seemed vaguely
familiar. All of this happened in 1909
with Lloyd George and his "People's Budget." The way to survive a
Government shutdown, therefore is to keep calm and remember that it's all
happened before and it will all happen again, that’s the pain and the joy of
being a historian.
Written by Claire Melland, a third year PhD student at Leicester
