A History of Britain and The American Future: A History
Simon Michael Schama
Roadshow
R4 DVD
Simon
Michael Schama, CBE (born 13 February 1945 in London)
is a British historian and art historian, he is a currently professor at
Columbia University. His has written extensively in the fields of art and
history and is best known for his ground-breaking BBC series A History of Britain (Roadshow 2000). This series was and is the bestselling
series ever for the BBC and spawned a trilogy of tie-in books for the show,
which continued the story up to the year 2000. It was also a major hit in the
United States being brought to a large audience through the History Channel. In
2008 Schama produced a more contemporary series on
the history of the United States through the lens of specific issues. This
series has just been released on DVD in Australia through Roadshow
Entertainment.
Schama’s approach to
history is well informed yet populist; he works to make the ins and outs of
history approachable and communicates extra-ordinarily well. Ivory tower
academics have complained to his “telescoping” approach to British history, yet
with only fifteen one hours episodes there is only so
much you can cover without the series being an academic treatise rather than a
work of educational entertainment.
While
Schama certainly isn’t shy to express his political
opinions, he was openly critical of George Bush and worked to support Obama,
his documentaries are well balanced and try and examine various facets of any
given event, period or theme.
Schama works to take an innovative approach to historical
teaching so, for example, in his book Dead
Certainties (1991) he took the death of two individuals General James Wolfe
and that of George Parkman to speculate and explore life and death.
This approach was continued in the final episode of the History of Britain
where rather than taking a linear approach to the world wars, he compared the
lives of Winston Churchill and George Orwell. In doing so he was able to offer
a remarkable insight not only into each of these individuals but into the
themes that their lives and achievements embodied. In the case of Orwell these
included workers’ rights, the failure of the left, the danger of the right and
the upcoming menace of new forms of authoritarianism.
The American Future: A History
is a four part documentary series written and presented by Schama
which aired on BBC Two in the UK during 2008 in the run up to the 2008 US
presidential election. It was an unusual departure from the History of Britain
in that it is thematically based and considers issues from the history of the
United States and demonstrates how they continue to resonate in the present.
It
has four episodes American Plenty, a look at the myth of the invincible America
with special reference to the water crisis, issues regarding petroleum and
land. American War examines the unique approach Americans seem to take to war
and conflict from the earliest reaches of the civil war to the current conflict
in Iraq. It also covers in some debate the nature of “hawks” vs. “doves” in
American foreign policy. The controversial American Fervour examining that
seemingly American intersection between religion and politics and What is an American ? covering race and
immigration.
This
has proved to be a very controversial series. While the British seem open to
debate and consider their past many American’s interpreted this series as some
sort of personal assault on their nation’s pride. Personal attacks abounded
including ludicrous claims that this was “Marxist” propaganda and simply a puff
piece to help Obama win the election. It is fair to say that the approach Schama takes in this series is very different from his
earlier work, he has become somewhat more polemical
with age and because he is exploring controversial themes expresses his own
opinions clearly with, at times, an unequivocal eloquence. That is to not to
say that this is a biased work, Schama has obviously
researched the themes he covers well and presents various different views of
the subject at hand. It is a challenging and stimulating series and certainly
worth watching.
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