Enlightened Entrepreneurialism - A Conversation with Margaret Jacob

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781771700658
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

This book is based on an in-depth conversation between Howard Burton and Margaret Jacob, Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA. Topics examined during this extensive conversation include Margaret Jacob's motivations to become a historian and her comprehensive analysis of the history of the Industrial Revolution and interpretation of the major economic motivations on the ground, comparing daily life experiences in England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. A sophisticated understanding of the past naturally involves a composite approach that marries economic motivations with associated cultural factors of educational trends, religious influences and scientific and technological awareness, and more.This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Measuring Motivations, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Historical Origins - Rebel-turned scholarII. Decrypting Newton - From physics to theologyIII. Beyond the Numbers - Searching for causes IV. Apprenticeship - Pivotal time to developV. Religion and Geography - Unitarianism and other factorsVI. Theory vs. Practice - France's surprising underdevelopmentVII. Lessons Learned? - Towards cultivating the innovative spiritVIII. History Today? - Reflections on research and teachingIX. Past and Future - New books and bizarre faucetsX. Righting Wrongs, Slowly - Gender discrimination in the academyAbout Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series: This book is part of a series of 100 Ideas Roadshow Conversations. Presented in an accessible, conversational format, Ideas Roadshow books not only explore frontline academic research featuring world-leading researchers, including 3 Nobel Laureates, but also reveal the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research.

The Conversation

I. Historical Origins

Rebel-turned-scholar

HB: I’d like to begin with some personal questions about your scholarly origins: when you realized that you wanted to be a full-time, professional historian and how that all started for you.

MJ: Well, I went into college wanting to major in science. I came in having done some hydroponic experiments that had won some prizes; and I started off taking freshman chemistry, which is very dull.

I was also taking courses in history and literature and all the usual things at this small, Catholic, women’s college in Brooklyn called St. Joseph’s, which still exists and is coming up to its hundredth-year anniversary. It’s now co-ed and I was recently there for my 50th reunion.

Basically, the courses in history were just so much more interesting than the ones in science. On top of that, I also grew up in a household where Cromwell was alive and well—the ogre of choice, you know?

HB: Were there Irish roots in your family?

MJ: Yes, my mother’s from Ireland and she was steeped in Irish Republican history. Her brother was a member of Stormont, The Northern Ireland Parliament, which was totally gerrymandered. Out of 70 seats, I think there were about 11 for Catholics and he had one of those. So history was just part and parcel of our lives. I remember many years later, after I had worked in British history and Dutch history, my mother said to me, “I wish you’d do the history of your own people!”

HB: Did you feel any pressure to do that?

MJ: No. I had written a bit on Irish Republicanism in the 18th century, but no, the pressure was not overwhelming. It was just her sense of frustration towards me because I wasn’t submerging myself in it.

HB: Well, mothers can never be satisfied, at least not fully.

MJ: Exactly. I own a framed engraving of the first, known pictorial representation of freemasonry—because I worked on free masonry too—that dates back to the 1730s. I remember one Christmas we were having relatives over, and my mother called me up and said, “Will you please take that picture down. Cousin Rose doesn’t want to see the Freemasons on your wall!” In Northern Ireland, you see, the Masonic Lodges are tied in deeply with the Orange Order, so to her the engraving was deeply offensive. So I took it down.

HB: How long had she been offended by it, you think?

MJ: Probably from the moment I put it up. But she wasn’t going to do anything about it until cousin Rose came, and then it was just too much. Some battles you just don’t fight. I took it down, they came, and we had a great Christmas. And then I put it right back up.

HB: Getting back to your story, you were at St. Joseph’s, bored by your freshman chemistry classes, and so began drifting towards the humanities.

First a personal reaction: Who cares about chemistry? Everybody knows that’s boring. What about physics? Why not even pure mathematics?

MJ: Well, I certainly did do pure math—I made a living on the side teaching geometry to high school students. But I’m not sure why I never moved over towards the other sciences. I just stayed in chemistry before moving over to history.

I was lucky in that the nuns who taught us history had PhDs from places like Columbia and Yale. They were serious scholars, and the quality of the teaching in history was very high. And then, I guess, luckily I just became good at it quite quickly.

When I went to graduate school, I realized that all of the theology and philosophy that I’d had to take because they were all required courses was actually helpful. I’d hated all that at the time—I joined an underground “cell” at the college and we printed a newspaper called The Lutheran.

HB: Really? Wow, you were really quite the rebel.

MJ: Yes, indeed. I was quite alienated, and I stopped being Catholic by my sophomore year. But I stayed on because I had to: there was no other secular education that would accept those credits. I would have lost a year.

HB: Really? Despite those nuns with the PhDs?

MJ: Well, there was all this philosophy and theology that was required, not to mention the two-credit course in Gregorian chant—

HB: Hold on. Back up a minute. You took a credit course in Gregorian chant?

MJ: Yes, it was required.

HB: Can you still do it?

MJ: No, I couldn’t do it then. I still remember Father D’Ecclesias, poor man. At the end of the academic year, you had to sing for your exam grade, and I can still see this man listening to me and just feeling so badly for him and what he must have been feeling.

I mean, it was a slaughter of innocents: sounds that were never meant to be heard in a classroom, let alone a church. It was very difficult material, but even so.

At any rate, all those credits wouldn’t translate had I gone to a secular or city college, which meant that I would have lost at least a year, if not more. So I was stuck, as it were, but the other thing was that this was also during Vatican II—it was a time of great reform and stirring and my group in the college embraced all this and became somewhat notorious.

HB: How many of you were there in this “Lutheran Circle”, as it were?

MJ: There were about a dozen of us, out of a class of only 160.

HB: Did many of the others also go on to graduate school and other such activities?

MJ: Yes, they all went on to some kind of higher education. One got a master’s in social work, one became a lawyer, but no one else became a scholar. I’m the only one who took that particular path.

When I left I was quite alienated. The faculty had refused to put me forward for any of the national fellowships that you could compete for, like the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, because of my attitude.

I still remember the day that the head nun called me in to tell me. She had been very good to me, and she was practically weeping, she was so upset. It took me a long time—as in 48 years—to forgive them for that, because you just don’t do that to a kid, even if the kid’s a pain in the ass.

The fact was that I was an A student and I was going off to do graduate work at Cornell. What more did they want?

HB: But you did forgive them eventually. What tipped the balance after 48 years? That’s a long time.

MJ: Well, my closest friend in those years is still my closest friend today, and she kept me in touch with all of the other classmates in our circle. When the 50th reunion came along she had been put in charge of it, and I just felt that I had to go.

I was flying to Amsterdam that evening, so I could only stay until 3 pm or so, and as I was just about to leave I went over to one of the qu...