University of Cambridge History and Politics Subject Masterclass

This is the second subject masterclass I have attended, the first being pure history in October.  I would highly recommend it to any prospective Year 12 Oxbridge candidates as you get a great feel for the city and the nature of lectures in such a high calibre university.

China's Great Leap Forward: Ideology, Myth, Reality - Dr Rachel Leow

I am a regrettably a complete stranger to Chinese history, as rich and diverse as it is but Dr Leow's lecture gave me a great foundation of knowledge on Mao's China, and much specific information on the Great Leap Forward.  It was a centralised economic and social plan.  It had three broad aims:

1. Establish a Communist society (whatever that is!)

2. Abolish the development gap between rural and urban areas

3. Accelerate the evolution of China's agriculture and industry    

He aimed to achieve this with collectivism - the use of communes.  In this system, all industry, agriculture and nearly every aspect of citizen's lives was centered on a single community intended to be self sufficient, and to export surplus production to other regions of China.  These settlements were initially relatively small, only a maximum of 250 families were located in each commune.

As the plan progressed, the communes grew in size until the development culminated in 'People's Communes' - the final stage of collectivisation.  20,000 families lived in each commune to achieve Mao's vision of collectivisation.  Every member of the commune was in theory equal, despite differing roles, and was entitled to receive a set income.  98% of rural China was collectivised by 1958.

Due to their self sufficient nature, the policy advocated individual efforts in industry, such as the disastrous policy of unskilled workers smelting steel in makeshift furnaces.

Mao's vision was a failure of Biblical proportions.  In 1959, ideology took precedence over common sense, and communes were saddled with unachievable production targets.  Taxes rose at a time when yields fell.  poorly produced farm machinery was unusable, many thousands of workers were injured after long hours.  Domestic steel production was a costly burden to Mao's regime.  Steel produced in the backyard furnaces was too weak for construction - its original purpose.  Furthermore, the production took necessary workers from the fields, so that desperately needed food simply withered in the fields.

1959 was an awful farming year, parts of China were struck by droughts and floods.  The harvest for 1959 was 170 million tons of grain, well below the required 260 million tons.  1960 was even worse, the harvest was just 144 million tonnes.  9 million people starved to death in that year alone.  Between 1960-62, 20 million Chinese people died of starvation.  The famine insinuated horrific cases of cannibalism, as desperate citizens ate deceased relatives.

Despite Mao's obvious complicity in the famine, Dr Leow makes it clear that it was not Mao's intention to kill 20 million of his own people.  By showing his capacity for self-reflection - Mao recognised his failure by 1963, and accordingly marginalises himself from the mechanisms of his state, while remaining the party's ideological figurehead.

Most interestingly, she explores the reasons for our western perception of the famine, which depicts Mao as a cold blooded murderer.  She evaluates the sources for books such as Dikotter's 'Mao's Great Famine'.  The title of this book suggests its function as solely blaming Mao for the catastrophe.  This impression is compounded by the fact that the book was written using just 121 documents out the thousands of documents on the topic in the Chinese archives.  History is never written altruistically, a history is always for someone.  Sources lack volition, they only come alive when a historian chooses to reanimate them, based on their own agendas and prejudices.  In this case, the book was written with these sources as they support the acceptable Western notion that dictators are inherently evil, and the famine was entirely Mao's doing, while ignoring the documents that equally imply the disaster was due to the rapid rate of population increase, or poor farming methods.

Trump and History - Prof David Runciman 

This lecture was particularly stimulating as it asked questions of what is exactly the point of studying history.  Many use the Santayana's enduring quote, 'Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it', to justify and inspire their dedication to the field.  Runicman embraces this possibility, but rightly urges caution as it is evident that no two events have ever occurred identically throughout the course of history, as circumstances and context can metamorphosise in a matter of years.

The first comparison, particularly abused by liberal elements of the news, are the parallels between the present and the rise of Fascism throughout 1930s Europe.  Although aspects, such as the Islamophobia that has infiltrated mainstream politics, sinisterly mirror the persecution of the Jews, Runciman dismisses this pessimistic parallel offhand.

He convincingly destroys the possibility of Fascism in the USA.  He does so by delving into the nature of Fascism, it is effectively a movement of organised violence which involves murder and the eventual forceful removal of all opposition and undesirables.  Although there have been violent incidents on the fringes, Trump's campaign was exceptionally peaceful by 1930s standards.  The main source of aggression has been on the web, and though serious, keyboard warriors cannot be compared to gangs of Nazi Brownshirts.  The age structure to the USA is diametrically opposed to the organised violence of Fascism - the growing proportion of elderly dependants are not as volatile as the hordes of disillusioned, angry young men of pre-Nazi Germany.

The US is also far too rich to succumb to tyranny.  Evidence suggests that democracy is not threatened by autocracy if GDP exceeds a certain level.

Runiciman also disregards the popular tendency to fervently dismiss Trump as a mentally ill Russian spy certain to destroy humanity with his access to the nuclear codes, and put him into the context of past American presidents. The overall conclusion is arguably hopeful, the USA have had far worse presidents, and great men such as Roosevelt only come around once in a generation, and a succession of mediocre politicians fill the voids between these great presidents.  Runiciamn emphasises the careful checks and balances of the American Constitution, Trump is severely hamstrung by legislation, and our Prime Minister enjoys far greater powers than Trump can ever gain.

He explores the nature of Trump's campaign and deduces that he was the figurehead of a populist revolt against America's elite by disillusioned voters, particularly from rural America, who see democracy as unsuited to the era of globalisation, and that Washington has forgotten them and their worsening plight.  Trump captured an channeled this anger by effectively campaigning against both parties, his denouncement of fellow Republicans were just as brash as some of his searing attacks on Hillary Clinton.

With this knowledge, Runciman finds that the best period of history to understand the status quo is 1890s America.  This was the last comparable populist uprising.  This era was also a time of relative international peace.  This peace widens the gap between the government and its subjects, as discontent is easily expressed in the absence of the nationwide sense of comradeship that is present during war.  Those in the 1890s were in the midst of the second industrial revolution, which transformed their lives in the same manner as our own digital revolution.  There was an economic downturn in 1893, which mirrors the crash of 2008.

In the midst of this upheaval, people regarded both parties as equally elite and effectively the same.  The subsequent populist anger was absorbed by America's resilient institutions, and eventually produced a new breed of presidents such as Wilson.

However, Runciman makes it clear that we should still remain skeptical of this positive analogy; in 1896, Brian, the populist Democrat candidate stood at the forefront of a similar wave of populism, but he did not win.  Trump is the only wholly populist to win.

The two revolutions have also had fundamentally different qualities.  The 1890 Industrial Revolution helped Washington regain control over its populace by centralising industry and employment.  Conversely, the digital revolution undermines this centralisation by dispersing power throughout the web.

The populist anger at the state was also different to that of today, in the 1890s, the US state was underpowered, taxes were low and public service provision was minimal. This slack gave the state huge potential to create a welfare state etc, which gave any populist revolt against it an obvious direction.  Today however, the state is full to capacity, and the populist anger has no straightforward solution as it did in the 1890s.

The wisdom to be gleaned is that history is useful in assessing current events, however, historians should not fall into the trap of complacency and believe that all occurrences will follow the exact pattern of the past.  The political scene is a dynamic, ever-shifting affair and a historian should adapt their analogies in accordance to occurrences.