The Past Speaks

Image of Quebec City by Martin St-Amant.

Canadians were stunned by the news that a gunman with far-right sympathies had gone into a Quebec City mosque and murdered six worshipers. Ever since then, pundits have been trying to make sense of the tragedy. In a few cases, they have blamed Quebec nationalism, which is represented as ethno-nationalist and chauvinist. Overlooking the fact that Quebec nationalism comes in both a narrow ethnic variant and a more inclusive “civic nationalist” one, they have created a narrative arc that links the killer to the recently proposedCharte des valeurs québécoises, to Parizeau’s “money and the ethnic vote”, and all the way back to the right-wing clerico-nationalism popular with Lionel Groulx and certain other Quebec intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s. English-speaking Canadians love talking about that dark moment in Quebec history, which is one of the reasons they were so receptive to Esther Delisle’s controversial 1992 book The Traitor and the Jew.

J.J. McCullough of Vancouver presented this line of reasoning in a piece about the shooting in the Washington Post, where he spoke of Quebec’s dark history of anti-Semitism, religious bigotry and pro-fascist sentiment, facts which are rarely included in otherwise self-flagellating official narratives of Canadian history. They complain about the exaggerated deference the province gets from Ottawa as a “distinct society” and “nation-within-a-nation,” and its various French-supremacist language and assimilation laws, which they blame for creating a place that’s inhospitable, arrogant and, yes, noticeably more racist than the Canadian norm. Writing for a domestic Canadian audience on the CBC website, Amina Moustaqim-Barrette declared that Québécois nationalism has always been an ethnic, as opposed to civic, nationalism — based in an ethno-cultural identity exclusive to descendants of French colonial settlers.

Alexie Labelle and Florence Vallée-Dubois have published, in English, a very useful corrective to this view in Policy Options. I am glad that these two PhD students have challenged the junk social science that has surfaced during this dark time. Their piece is well worth reading and in congruent with the mounting evidence that the shooter was inspired by a foreign leader rather than by any Quebec or Canadian political leader. His classmates say that he adored Trump and Marine Le Pen.  Radio-Canada reports that on the eve of the attack, the killer was discussing Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban on Facebook. He wasn’t discussing Pauline Marois or the Charter of Quebec Values or Lionel Groulx or any other French Canadian individual or institution.

I’m sometimes a bit frustrated by my fellow business and economic historians. There is tremendous pent-up demand for our services from private industry: CEOs and other decision-makers recognize the value of our research in understanding such complex phenomena as political risk. However, whenever there is a crisis that illustrates the limitations of research methods of the more successful academic disciplines (by successful, I mean capable to capturing societal resources), we historians squander the opportunity to take advantage of a brief window of opportunity. In 2008-9, there was a lot of talk about business historians displacing the economists, getting our research in the limelight by showing its relevance.  A few business historians, most notable the excellent Bloomberg columnist Stephen Mihm have risen to the occasion but most have not been able to engage with decision-makers and the general public.

Sometimes something as simple as a poor location decision can get in the way of allowing smart academics to speak to smart people in the private sector. Here is a case in point. The British Academy of Management (BAM) is organizing an event called Managing political risk and uncertainty from historical perspective. They have some great speakers and the event is timely for all sorts of geopolitical reasons.

Where is this wonderful event taking place? Will it be held in BAM’s offices on Euston Road in London, which are a few underground stops from the financial district? Is it instead being held a prestigious business school whose alumni network includes people who make firm strategy? It is being held in the evening to allow busy business people to attend after the workday? No, instead it will be held in the city of Coventry in a facility that is a 25-minute walk from the railway station and which is surrounded by a vast, windswept carpark. Coventry University’s London campus, which is in the financial district, would have been a far, far better choice. There simply aren’t a lot of business decision-makers in Coventry.

Anyway, here is a description of the event. Full details are available via BAM.

I wish the organizers of this event the best of luck, but the location is wrong, wrong, wrong!

We are delighted to announce the upcoming Joint BAM SIG Event Managing political risk and uncertainty from historical perspective, taking place on the 27th February 2017 from 10.00 to 17.00 at Coventry University Technology Park.

Description:

In a climate of increased political volatility, this workshop will examine organisational responses to political risk and uncertainty over time. It will explore the development of theoretical and methodological approaches to analysing non-market strategy and the management of political risk, specifically focusing on how history has been used. The workshop aims to generate discussion around the contribution to be made by history to the scholarship in this field.

Invited Speakers

Prof Steven McGuire, School of Business, Management and Economics, University of Sussex

Prof Thomas Lawton, Open University Business School

Prof Emeritus Michael Moran, School of Government, University of Manchester

Prof Neil Rollings, Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow

Readers who work in business schools will likely be aware that the (American) Academy of Management is in something of a crisis because of Trump’s famous travel restrictions. I see from social media that many non-US academics, including some big names with tonnes of citations in Google Scholar, have announced their intention to boycott the 2017 meeting in Atlanta.

In this context, I was interested/amused to see how a Canadian organization of business school professors has been trying to leverage the situation to attract people to its own, less-prestigious conference. I am reposting an email I got a few minutes ago with the key sentence in bold.

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I’ve been fascinated to see how the past has been used (and abused) by political actors in the Age of Trump. I suspect that this fascination is shared by many use-of-the-past/social memory scholars. History has been used by both Mr. Trump and his allies and his opponents: Trump’s supporters in the US and the hard, pro-US right in the UK were pleased when Trump restored a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. (The fact that Churchill supported British membership in a United States of Europe was conveniently ignored). As I showed a few days ago, there were many historical references in the first wave of anti-Trump marches, which were led by women. While some of these historical references related to earlier periods of history (such as the struggle for women’s suffrage in the 1910s) many have focused on the years surrounding the Second World War. Consider how the memory of this period is being used:

1. Churchill’s bust is in the White House because of his wartime leadership, not because of anything he did before or later
2. Theresa May’s appeasement of Trump has been associated, via Photoshop, with the policies of Neville Chamberlain in the #TheresaAppeaser meme
3. Sales of 1984, a book written  in the 1940s, surged in the days following the Trump administration’s open admission that it was embracing alternative facts.
4. The US policies towards Jewish refugees in the late 1930s has been invoked frequently in the wake of Trump’s refugee policy

Why does the Second World War continue to loom large in the historical consciousness of the West? Partly it is because this period is objectively important– at least as measured by the body count. Partly it is because references to it are omnipresent in Hollywood films and popular culture more generally, so people have a common frame of reference. Moreover, the conflict is universally regarded as a “just war” by political actors in the English-speaking countries. That shapes how its memory is used.

It’s important to note, however, that neither the Second World War nor the Holocaust dominate the historical memories of people outside of the North Atlantic countries, as the late Peter Novick observed. In much of the rest of the world, the 1940s are not the go-to decade for historical sensemaking. I suspect that observers from East Asia who are unfamiliar with Western historical culture would be mystified by the frequency with which Western political actors mention the war.

AS: The Open University has funding to support a PhD student who is interested in working on financial diversification before modern portfolio theory. The funding package covers tuition fees, a generous research training support grant and a stipend (circa £14,296 per annum) for 36 months, which is long enough to complete a PhD in the UK system. Looks like a great project!

Supervisors: Prof Janette Rutterford, Dr Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos and Mr Daniele Tori (Department for Accounting and Finance, The Open University Business School)

Project description: This project aims to investigate aspects of financial innovation in the UK during the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th century. Its main focus will be risk management in the context of financial diversification. The period roughly between the 1870s up to WWI is considered in the recent literature as the first wave of economic globalization, with the introduction of critical financial innovations on both sides of the Atlantic. From the 1870s, different economies gradually adopted the gold standard, while London served as the global financial centre. Developed capitalist economies experienced the rise of stock exchange securitization and the separation between ownership and control (the so-called ‘managerial revolution’) along with other important financial innovations. These developments were accompanied by high levels of income inequality and financial instability; the first globalization era thus has similarities to the contemporary financialised capitalist world. Its study will not only deepen understanding of an important era in the development of capitalism, but will also offer alternative ways to consider the historical and institutional roots of investor behaviour, financial innovation, and their fragile coupling, i.e. financial instability. Applications should demonstrate an interest in developing both a theoretical and empirical contribution, together with an insight into previous engagement with these issues. Successful applicants will use and build on existing datasets on financial portfolio holdings of individuals and of institutional investors, as well as collect relevant market data. They will also join a growing and vibrant group of PhD students in the Open University Business School.

The deadline for applications is midday GMT on Thursday 30 March 2017. Application must include the following:

• a 1000 word proposal which indicates your knowledge of the literature, methods and likely approach to your project of interest
• a covering letter indicating your suitability for the project
• a completed application form
• certificates with transcripts, if possible, confirming your professional qualifications relevant to your application

More information about the application process can be found here:

http://business-school.open.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/phd-studentships

Further queries can be addressed to:

Dr. Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos: dimitris.sotiropoulos@open.ac.uk

Prof. Janette Rutterford: Janette.Rutterford@open.ac.uk