Everything about Norman Davies totally explained
Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA (born
June 8,
1939 in
Bolton,
Lancashire) is an
English historian of
Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the
history of Poland,
Europe and the History of the United Kingdom & Ireland.
Academic career
A disciple of
A. J. P. Taylor, Davies studied history at
Magdalen College,
Oxford. After stays abroad in
Grenoble,
France, and
Perugia,
Italy, he intended to study for a
PhD in the
Soviet Union, but was denied an entry visa. Instead, he went to
Kraków to study at the
Jagiellonian University and do research on the
Polish-Soviet war. As this war was denied in the official communist Polish historiography of that time, he was obliged to change the title of his dissertation to
The British Foreign Policy towards Poland, 1919-20. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Kraków, the English text appeared under the title
White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 in
1972.
From
1971, Davies taught
Polish history at the
School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) of the
University of London, where he was
professor from
1985 to
1996. Currently, he's Supernumary
Fellow at
Wolfson College, Oxford. Throughout his career, Davies has lectured in many countries, including the
United States,
Canada,
Australia,
Japan,
China,
Poland, and in most of the rest of
Europe as well. In the 1980s,
Stanford University controversially denied him a tenured faculty position for alleged "scientific flaws".
Holding a professorial chair in London since 1985, he retired in 1996.
Work
The work that established Davies's reputation in the English-speaking world was
God's Playground (
1981), a comprehensive overview of Polish history, which still ranks as one of the most influential in the field. It gave Davies fame and notoriety in Poland, although — or rather because — it could only be distributed as an underground
samizdat copy in the early 1980s. It would be published officially after the
fall of communism in Poland. After
1989,
God's Playground became required reading in many Polish classrooms, where each subsequent book was immediately translated and became an instant commercial success. In
2000, Davies's Polish publishers
Znak published a collection of his essays and articles under the title
Smok wawelski nad Tamizą ("The
Wawel Dragon on the
Thames"). It isn't available in English.
In
1984, against the backdrop of the current events in Poland, Davies published a more concise, essayistic description of the role of the past in Polish present, entitled
Heart of Europe.
In the
1990s, Davies returned with two monumental works: (
1996) and (
1999). In both books he sets out to present the importance of the "peripheries" on an equal footing and to revise conventional wisdom in
historiography that he considers too Westernly biased and Anglo-centric, respectively. In
The Isles, Davies sought to expose what he considered the myth of a British nationality. In Davies's view, the whole idea of Britishness was an 18th-19th century myth created in order to justify English rule over the neighbouring 'Celtic' peoples such as the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh. Davies ends
The Isles with a call for the end of the
United Kingdom with
Northern Ireland joining the
Republic of Ireland, independence for
Scotland and
Wales, the abolition of the British monarchy and
England seeking its fate in a united Europe. Davies has often criticised those in the United Kingdom who favour the
Atlanticist orientation with closer ties to the
United States. In Davies's view, the destiny of England lies with closer ties to Europe.
In 2002, at the suggestion of the city's mayor
Bogdan Zdrojewski, Davies and his former research assistant
Roger Moorhouse co-wrote a history of
Wrocław / Breslau, a Silesian city. Titled and published simultaneously in three languages (Polish, German and Czech), it became an instant bestseller in both Germany and Poland. The book considers the city a focal point of Central European history and uses it to present that history "in a nutshell".
Davies also writes essays and popular articles for the mass media. Among others, he's worked for the
BBC as well as British and American magazines and newspapers, such as
The Times,
The New York Review of Books and
The Independent. In Poland, his articles appeared in the liberal Catholic weekly
Tygodnik Powszechny.
Davies's book
Rising '44 describes the
Warsaw Uprising and was internationally well received on the occasion of the Rising's anniversary in
2004. In
Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory (2006), Davies attempts to revise western perspectives of World War II. The chronicle treats the Eastern Front and the Soviet contribution as the decisive factors in the defeat of Germany. The book also directs the reader to review the broader reality of the Stalinist Soviet Union, both as an early ally of Hitler, and as an amoral totalitarian state.
Criticism
Some colleagues have accused Davies of being an opinionated and biased Polonophile who strives to give the most charitable interpretation towards Poland's actions in Polish-Russian, Polish-Jewish, Polish-Ukrainian or Polish-German conflicts. and
Abraham Brumberg, object to Davies' historical treatment of the
Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. They accuse him of minimizing historic
antisemitism, and of promoting a view that
the Holocaust occupies a position in international
historiography which tends to minimize the suffering of non-Jewish Poles. Davies’ supporters contend that he gives due attention to the genocide and war crimes perpetrated by both
Hitler and
Stalin on Polish Jews and non-Jews. Davies himself argues that "Holocaust scholars need have no fears that rational comparisons might threaten that uniqueness. Quite the opposite." and that "...one needs to re-construct mentally the fuller picture in order to comprehend the true enormity of Poland’s wartime cataclysm, and then to say with absolute conviction ‘Never Again’."
In
1986, Dawidowicz’s criticism of Davies’ historical treatment of the Holocaust was cited as a factor in a controversy at
Stanford University in which Davies was denied a tenured faculty position for alleged "scientific flaws". Davies sued the university for
breach of contract and defamation of character, but in
1989 the court ruled that it didn't have jurisdiction in an academic matter.
Awards and distinctions
Davies holds a number of honorary titles and memberships, including
honorary doctorates from the universities of the
Jagiellonian University (since 2003),
Lublin,
Gdańsk and
Warsaw (since 2007), memberships in the
Polish Academy of Learning (PAN) and the
Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, and fellowships of the
British Academy and the
Royal Historical Society. Davies is also an
honorary citizen of Polish cities of
Warsaw,
Wrocław,
Lublin and
Kraków. Member of the committee for
Order of the Smile.
In 1999 he received the
Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (Knight's Great Cross) from the
Prime Minister of Poland.
Publications
- 1972: . (2004 edition: ISBN 0-7126-0694-7)
- 1977: Poland, Past and Present. A Select Bibliography of Works in English. ISBN 0-89250-011-5
- 1981: God's Playground. A History of Poland. Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925339-0 / ISBN 0-19-925340-4.
- 1984: Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285152-7.
- 2001: Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present Oxford University Press, USA; New edition ISBN 0-19-280126-0
- 1991: Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-06200-1
- 1996: . Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-820171-0
- 1997: Auschwitz and the Second World War in Poland: A lecture given at the Representations of Auschwitz international conference at the Jagiellonian University. Universitas. ISBN 83-7052-935-6
- 1999: Red Winds from the North. Able Publishing. ISBN 0-907616-45-3
- 1999: The Isles. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513442-7
- 2002 (with Roger Moorhouse): London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-06243-3
- 2004: Rising '44. The Battle for Warsaw. London: Pan Books. ISBN 0-333-90568-7
- 2006: Europe East and West: A Collection of Essays on European History. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-06924-1
- 2006: Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory. Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-69285-3
Further Information
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