Victor Kiernan - Wikipedia Victor Kiernan From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   (Redirected from V. G. Kiernan) Jump to navigation Jump to search This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Victor Kiernan" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article includes a list of general references, but it remains largely unverified because it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Edward Victor Gordon Kiernan (4 September 1913 – 17 February 2009) was a British Marxist historian and a member of the Communist Party Historians Group. He was recognised as one of the most wide-ranging of global historians. While his middle name came from one of British imperialism's greatest heroes, General 'Chinese' Gordon of Khartoum, he emerged as one of Britain's foremost ideological warriors against empire.[1] Contents 1 Life 2 Intellectual legacy 3 Kiernan and Urdu poetry 4 Marriages 5 Selected works/articles 5.1 See also 6 References 7 External links Life[edit] Born in Ashton-on-Mersey, a southern district of Manchester, Kiernan was one of three children born to Ella née Young and John Edward Kiernan, who served as a translator of Spanish and Portuguese for the privately owned Manchester Ship Canal. His family came from a congregationalist, non-conformist religious tradition that he later suggested played a role in his socialist formation and that of many of the Communist Party Historians Group founded in 1946. A scholarship student at the Manchester Grammar School, Kiernan developed a passion for the classics, as he added ancient Greek and Latin to the modern European languages he had already learned at home. Propelled with three new scholarships, he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge where he achieved a double-starred First in History (B.A.,1934; M.A., 1937). Recruited by Guy Burgess during a time of radical ferment among Cambridge students, Kiernan joined the Communist Party in 1934. He found his radicalism subsequently reinforced by what he regarded as the treachery of Britain's elites. Perhaps the greatest influence on Kiernan was Maurice Dobb. A lecturer in economics at Cambridge, he had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920 and was open with his students about his communist beliefs. Kiernan later wrote: "We had no time then to assimilate Marxist theory more than very roughly; it was only beginning to take root in England, although it had one remarkable expounder at Cambridge in Maurice Dobb." In 1938, as a junior fellow, Kiernan departed for Bombay in to continue his political activities and to teach at the Sikh National College and Aitchison College in Lahore, India (now Pakistan). Shortly after his arrival he married the theatre activist and childhood friend of Indira Nehru, Shanta Gandhi. Though they remained friends, they split up when Kiernan returned to Cambridge in 1946 to complete his Fellowship. Spurned by both Cambridge and Oxford, Kiernan was offered a lectureship in 1948 at the University of Edinburgh, thanks to the intervention of the distinguished historian Richard Pares. In 1970, Kiernan was given a Personal Chair in Modern History; a position he held until his retirement in 1977. Having joined the CPGB in 1934, he finally left in 1959, chiefly in disgust at the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, after which, he said: "I waited in hopes the party might improve. It didn't." In 1993 at the age of 80, Kiernan produced Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen a book he had been working on since 1947. A second volume, Eight Tragedies of Shakespeare, followed in 1996. His final book, Horace: Poetics and Politics appeared in 1999. Kiernan died peacefully in his sleep, aged 95, in Stow, Scotland. Intellectual legacy[edit] Kiernan made immense contributions to the post-war flowering of British Marxist historiography that transformed the understanding of social history. Seeking escape paths from a congealing Stalinism, this intellectual movement grew from several figures among them - E.P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Kiernan and Eric Hobsbawm. Brash and confident in wielding the best of the British Left's cultural arsenal, they welcomed open-ended dialogue with non-Marxist traditions. Some of this dialogue was on display in the journal Past & Present, a journal of social history that became the most prestigious in the English-speaking world. Kiernan wrote a major essay in 1952 for the first issue of the journal ("Evangelicalism and the French Revolution"), produced several landmark articles, and later served on its editorial board from 1973 to 1983. He also contributed to New Left Review throughout the journal's transitions. While Thompson, Hill and Hilton were rooted in English social history, Kiernan and Hobsbawm practised a historical craft with more global aspirations. Kiernan's distinctive contributions included the study of elites in history, the mythologies of imperialism, the folklore of capitalism and conservatism, and literature and social change. Kiernan and Urdu poetry[edit] While steeped in Western literature and the classical heritage of Horace, Kiernan called for an appreciation of Urdu poetry, as he translated works from its literary golden age spanning from Ghalib (1796-1869) to Allama Iqbal (1877-1938) to Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984). He elevated writers from the East who had been largely banished by guardians of the Western canon and then overlooked by stylish post-modern literary figures looking for more transgressive exemplars of literary craft. Marriages[edit] He was married twice: to the Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright Shanta Gandhi (Bollywood actress Dina Pathak's sister), from 1938 to 1946; and to the Canadian scholar Heather Massey, from 1984 until his death. Selected works/articles[edit] The Dragon and St. George: Anglo-Chinese relations 1880-1885 (1939) British diplomacy in China, 1880 to 1885 (1939) Poems from Iqbal, Translation (1955) The revolution of 1854 in Spanish history (1966) The lords of human kind. European attitudes towards the outside world in the Imperial Age (1969) Marxism and imperialism: studies (1974) America, the new imperialism: from white settlement to world hegemony (1978) State & society in Europe, 1550-1650 (1980) European empires from conquest to collapse, 1815-1960 (1982) The duel in European history: honour and the reign of aristocracy (1988) History, classes and nation-states (edited and introduced by Harvey J. Kaye (1988) Tobacco: A History (1991) Shakespeare, poet and citizen (1993) Imperialism and its contradictions (edited & introduced by Harvey J. Kaye; 1995) Eight tragedies of Shakespeare: a Marxist study (1996) Colonial empires and armies 1815-1960 (1982, 1998) Horace: poetics and politics (1999) See also[edit] History & humanism: essays in honour of V.G. Kiernan (edited by Owen Dudley Edwards; 1977) Across time and continents: a tribute to Victor G. Kiernan (edited by Prakash Karat; 2003). ISBN 81-87496-34-7. References[edit] ^ Tariq Ali (20 February 2009). "Victor Kiernan: Marxist historian, writer and linguist who challenged the tenets of Imperialism". The Independent. External links[edit] Obituary by Eric Hobsbawm Profile in The Hindu Obituary in The Scotsman Review of America, the new imperialism Obituary by James Dunkerley, History Workshop Journal, 69, (Spring, 2010). Obituary in The Times, 14 May 2009 Authority control BIBSYS: 90851787 BNE: XX1037055 BNF: cb120249725 (data) CANTIC: a12058117 GND: 122769864 ISNI: 0000 0001 1459 7459 LCCN: n80046671 NKC: jn19990004317 NLA: 36153410 NTA: 068191111 SELIBR: 327993 SUDOC: 028409272 VIAF: 9860778 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n80046671 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victor_Kiernan&oldid=960686546" Categories: 1913 births 2009 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Edinburgh British Marxists Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge British Marxist historians People educated at Manchester Grammar School People from Sale, Greater Manchester Communist Party of Great Britain members 20th-century British historians Hidden categories: Use dmy dates from May 2017 Use British English from May 2017 Articles needing additional references from January 2013 All articles needing additional references Articles lacking in-text citations from January 2013 All articles lacking in-text citations Articles with multiple maintenance issues Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Català Español Nederlands Русский Edit links This page was last edited on 4 June 2020, at 10:10 (UTC). 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