by Dr Charlotte Parsonson-Young
The attack on history departments at higher education establishments across the UK has been well documented in recent years. In response to this alarming trend, in October 2024 the Royal Historical Society published a briefing called ‘The Value of History in UK Higher Education and Society’1, which surveys the decline of teaching as a whole. The briefing opens with the statistics that 40,000 students enrol in History degrees across the UK each year and that History as a subject is consistently in the top 10 choices for students. However, a survey of 66 universities revealed that there has been an average of a 60% decrease in academic staffing since 2020, with 39 History departments losing academic staff, and 45% of departments have had to cut module options as a result.
The RHS briefing addresses the issue at a broader level, but it does raise the question of what the current state of early modern teaching in the UK looks like, and in particular how many courses specifically focussed on the British Civil Wars and Interregnum periods are currently offered. The Cromwell Association hopes to address this issue directly through a survey of early modern modules offered at universities across the UK, which is accurate as of October 2024. The History department pages of each university website was carefully examined, and all details of early modern modules offered in all three years of undergraduate BA (Hons) History degrees were captured in a database. The survey was confined to just the single honours undergraduate degree; joint honours and postgraduate taught courses were not included, but investigation into the early modern provision of the latter might be a worthy subject for future investigation. For the purposes of this survey ‘early modern’ has been confined to modules which could reasonably be expected to contain material on the 17th century. A module focussed on Henry VIII would not be included within the figures discussed below.
The survey revealed that 77 universities across the UK offer 381 early modern modules on their websites. Concerningly, within that figure there are only 17 with an explicit focus on the Civil Wars and Interregnum years2. Of these 17 courses only 5 are available for second year students, and the remainder are confined to third year. It appears that there are not currently any courses on this topic aimed at first year students.
The remaining 364 modules, which are variously advertised to first, second, third, and occasionally fourth year students, are for the most part broader courses covering a date range of potentially several hundred years, rather than focussing on specific topics. For example, there are 78 modules at 43 universities which focus broadly on early modern Europe. Some of these even begin in the medieval period, with the earliest date range beginning in 1000. Others offer a hasty journey through the early modern and into the modern period, with date ranges ending in the year 2000.
This will not be entirely a surprise for anyone who has worked in academia over the last decade. There has been an increased emphasis on interdisciplinary or international studies, rather than having modules focussed on specific events. With that comes the real danger that departments will lose their skilled teaching staff because courses with such a broad date range could theoretically be taught by anyone; specialist knowledge of a period or an event isn’t required if it only gets a passing mention.
To place the 17 modules on the Civil Wars and Interregnum in context, it must be noted that there are 18 modules currently advertised on the topic of witchcraft, and 13 on the early modern slave trade. There are a total of 36 modules which have the word ‘revolution’ somewhere in the title, and it is not unreasonable to hope that the Civil Wars might feature in them, but without requesting a detailed breakdown from each department it is not possible to say with certainty.
It is also not surprising to discover that the four universities offering the highest number of early modern modules are all Russell Group; Oxford currently offers 26, Edinburgh offers 17, Cambridge offers 16, and Exeter offers 12. There are 19 other Russell Group universities offering modules, ranging from 9 at Nottingham to 2 at Queen’s University Belfast. The total number of early modern modules available at all Russell Group institutions is 166. Within that figure only 5 specifically focus on the Civil Wars.3
The other 54 institutions offering the remaining 215 modules are outside the Russell Group, but there are some with particularly strong offerings. For example, the University of the Highlands and Islands currently offers 10, with Birkbeck, Lincoln, and Oxford Brookes all offering 9. At the other end of the scale, there are 8 universities with only one early modern module available, and 16 offering 2.
As things currently stand students are largely being deprived of in-depth exposure to this period of British history. There is a danger that they would need to commit to postgraduate study if they want to pursue a subject such as the Civil Wars in any detail, unless they are lucky enough to be at one of the handful of universities currently offering something at undergraduate level. However, if a student has only studied a topic briefly, perhaps for one week as part of a broader course spanning several hundred years, are they likely to commit to the challenges of postgraduate study on that topic, or are they more likely to focus their attention on an area of history which they had been able to study in greater detail at undergraduate level?
When I was an undergraduate at Canterbury Christ Church University first year students largely had to take a set series of modules in first year, with limited ability to customise the course, but there was much more freedom in second and third years. We had a system of ‘parent’ and ‘linked’ modules, with the parent taking the standard format of an hour of lecture and an hour of seminar each week. The linked modules were more unconventional, and consisted of only four in-person, 2-hour seminars with a tutor during the academic year. These would draw heavily on the content of the parent module, as well as placing considerable emphasis on primary source analysis. The modules themselves were quite broad in scope, but I was able to focus on the early modern period quite easily. I had never studied that time period in any depth before and thought there was no better time than university to step outside of my comfort zone, which at the time was the 19th century. Four of the modules I took in second year were English Society in Transition 1450-1750 and the linked Polarisation, Poverty, and Policy in England 1500-1700, as well as Religion and Society 1300-1600 and Women, Power, and Patronage in Tudor and Stuart England, 1485-1715. It was during Women, Power, and Patronage that I stumbled across the issue of English Civil War sequestration, which would eventually become the focus of my BA dissertation, my MA, and my PhD, and continues to fascinate and inspire me to this day.
The same system of parent and linked modules was available in third year, and this time the subject options became more focussed. In particular, I was able to take the parent course Civil War and Revolution in England, 1625-1689 and the linked Sources for the English Civil Wars4. Without the courses in second year my interest in the early modern period would never have been piqued, and without the opportunity to study the Civil Wars in depth in third year I doubt my career would have progressed the way it has. I gained a strong level of foundational knowledge through those two years of study, and felt confident that proceeding onwards to postgraduate study at MA and PhD level would be within my ability.
As Blair Worden has noted, no conflict in this country’s history ‘has been so far-reaching, or has disrupted so many lives for so long, or has so imprinted itself on the nation’s memory’ more than the British Civil Wars5. Why, then, is university teaching turning away from one of the most socially, politically, and constitutionally significant periods in British history? It is certainly not for want of early modern historians to teach the subject; there are more academics than available jobs for them. Are current and future generations of potential Civil War historians at risk of losing access to this topic at undergraduate level?
The Cromwell Association is intending to make the database of modules compiled for this survey available on our website to provide guidance about strong early modern provision at universities across the UK, which we hope will be of use not only to students and A Level teachers but to anyone interested in the state of early modern teaching. There is no guarantee that the modules advertised in October 2024 will run in subsequent academic years, so it is our intention to update the database every few years to ensure that it remains as accurate as possible, and indeed doing this will provide further insight into the way provision changes over time.
1 https://royalhistsoc.org/the-value-of-history-a-new-briefing-from-the-royal-historical-society/
2 The universities currently advertising these courses are Cardiff, Gloucestershire, Goldsmiths, Keele, Leeds, Lincoln, Loughborough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Portsmouth, Roehampton, Sheffield, Southampton, Strathclyde, West of England, and York St John.
3 The modules are offered at Cardiff, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Oxford.
4 Neither of these modules are still offered at Canterbury Christ Church University.
5 Blair Worden, The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009), p. 1.