Meggie Macdonald

Archaeologists working near Cittareale have conclusively discovered the small village of Falacrinae after four years of digging, and a massive villa nearby has been identified as the summer residence of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.  Although the report itself is full of typing errors, the details suggest the villa is exquisite and an appropriate home for the first Flavian emperor.

15,000 square meters in size, its main hall is complete with a luxurious marble floor quarried in North Africa and includes two other rooms with excellent mosaics.

Vespasian, who came to power with the support of the legions in the East in 69 CE, concluding the bloody upheaval of the Year of the Four Emperors, was known for his stingy financial policies and his minimalist living style.  His financial strategy can be linked to the incredible spending of the Emperor Nero that nearly bankrupted Rome and left the coffers empty.  Vespasian himself cultivated the image of the simple man, being the first Roman emperor who was not from a patrician family, and much preferred his provincial home to his house on the Palatine (that his son, the third Flavian emperor, expanded into a much more ostentatious palatial residence).

Vespasian’s villa at Falacrinae was the family home, the place where he himself was born, and may also be the place where he died in 79 CE uttering the famous line from Suetonius:  “Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god”, a joke on the Roman Senate’s readiness to deify recently deceased emperors.  Vespasian was indeed deified on his death, having left the Roman Empire stable in its finances and its borders, and generally being recognized as an excellent ruler after decades of sordid, selfish, and unpredictable Julio-Claudians.

The 2006 report on Large-Scale Research Projects and the Humanities, prepared by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and available here, discusses the polarity between funding awarded to sole-authored, independent research in the humanities and research in the social sciences.

Due in part to the epistemological barriers – the language used that deters potential applicants – and in part to the disincentives for academic individuals, departments, and institutions to engage in large research projects, funding available for humanities has declined in recent years, far beyond what was originally thought.  In fact, funding for humanities research is disproportionately low to that of the sciences or social sciences.

Harold Coward was correct in noting the value of “centuries of reflection on human self-understanding” (p.21 of the report) when considering the value of humanities to large-scale interdisciplinary research.  The humanist’s realm is not limited in any way; in fact, it is the only ‘discipline’ (and I use the term loosely since it is, in many ways, insufficient and anachronistic) that can span any other speciality in academia. 

However, because humanities encompasses such a broad spectrum, it is difficult to find the language to both explain it and make it approachable.  There is something prejudicially ethereal about humanities research that unjustly limits its prospects within the larger world of scholarship.  This prejudice has been the result of decades of result-based research, complete with hypotheses and structured scientific method.  By wrongfully discouraging investigative research for its own sake because of lack of adequate funding, research in the humanities has suffered and the ability of researchers to work collaboratively has been limited to, bluntly, what is marketable.  It is appalling to consider that, simply because a subject does not fit into a readily accessible description, funding is not available for research.  How would the sciences have fared if policy-makers insisted on understanding in full the exacting nature of the research being undertaken?

Humanities is based on interaction, and the extension of knowledge into the interdisciplinary and collaborative realms is a natural development of this interaction:  human interaction.  This report, while acknowledging the value of intensive humanities-only research (ie. research within the discipline of humanities alone), offers recommendations for the successful funding operations of collaborative interdisciplinary research that includes the humanities and humanists.  They are:

- recognition of the value of humanities research, both on its own and as part of a collaborative project, and to increase the opportunities for humanities research

- restructure funding to reflect the unique editorial and referential aspects of humanities research as a core component of SSHRC programs

- redefine the collaborative concept to include the nature and style of interdisciplinary research that includes humanities

- define knowledge mobilization as it relates to the humanities, suggesting qualitative rather than quantitative points for analysis in determining funding

- determine how the role of graduate students’ work and development affect the nature of humanities research and subsequent funding options

- restructure the language of SSHRC and affiliate application forms to more adequately reflect the nature and approach of humanities research

- make immediate adjustments to the peer review system when determining funding awards

- recognize that what is happening is a long-term restructuring of the academic research awards system currently in use by SSHRC and its affiliates to reflect the continued value of humanities in future

What is ironic is that these points are attempting, on one level or another, to quantify humanities research in a manner that is accessible to the current peer review system.  A step in the right direction, of course, but whether these initiatives have been appropriately implemented within a reasonable time frame is the concern of this writer.  This report was published in 2006, following the 2005 research awards year and subsequent committee analysis of the structure of SSHRC funding, and yet, after reviewing the current list of awards for research by the SSHRC, a decidedly small number of winning humanities research projects are listed.  Is the process so slow that no visible results are available after three years?

I invite your comments on my interpretation of the report and the current awards list.  If you can show me that humanities are being better represented following the 2006 report, I will happily retract my above statements and greet with enthusiasm the recognition that the recommendations are being adhered to.

I have come to the definite conclusion that history is more alive in Canada than in many other places in the western world, but for a much less conventional reason.  Recently, re-enactors and various historical groups felt that a re-enactment of the battle of the Plain of Abraham on the anniversary of the pivotal clash would be an excellent idea.  They had been practicing for months, engaging historians both professional and amateur with years of experience, reproduction experts to ensure that costumes and equipment were as original as possible, and a large number of 18th century history enthusiasts to participate in what could have been an epic of historical revisitation.

The battle on the Plains of Abraham took place on 13th September 1759 and represents the reversal of fortunes for France in its competition with England over control of North America.  The French lost.  Their general, the Marquis de Montcalm, engaged the enemy English from outside the walls of Quebec City and was soundly defeated by forces under the command of General James Wolfe, who himself died at the site.  Although there would be other battles, some won by the French, and others by the English, by 1763, the Seven Years’ War was concluded with the Treaty of Paris, and France relinquished all control over its American colonies.  Canada thus became British North America and, a little more than a decade later, after the American colonies to the south declared their independence and won the Revolutionary War, would remain the last bastion of British imperial interests on this continent.

Now, 18th century history is not my forte, and it never has been.  I simply could never work up the enthusiasm for a period of history so closely resembling my own.  Nearly every 18th century historian would vehemently argue this point, that the century was more than unique and more than distant, that it was something incredibly original and diverse and worth studying in extremes.  That is how I feel about Roman history, and I applaud the enthusiasm of anyone who loves such a thing so much that they want to learn every last spec of detail about it.

The re-enactment of the battle on the Plains of Abraham was to be an excellent way to show the immediacy of Canadian history and the value of knowing about it.  And in a way, it did.  Separatists in Quebec went up in arms over the proposed staging of the ‘conquest’ of French Canada by the English and, in the end, the re-enactment went ahead 250 miles away in New York State.  Globe and Mail feature writer Ian Brown reported on the success and failure of this historical event.

All the participants involved were shocked and appalled when it was decided that the re-enactment could not take place because it would insult French Canadian history.  A celebration of a ‘conquest’ can be nothing but that.  Arguably, when the Eurostar high-speed train service between Paris and London was begun, and it was decided that the trains would leave from a rejuvenated St. Pancras International train station rather than Waterloo, to avoid the awkwardity of French passengers disembarking at a station named after the site of Napoleon’s greatest defeat, the situation is very similar.  But as re-enactors state, this was not an event meant to tarnish the indelible stamp that French culture has added to Canadian history, but rather to bring history closer to a country that may have lost touch or lost interest.

The interest is certainly still there.  In a way, trying to bring back the immediacy of Canadian history has been a success, because the social and political implications and tensions rose up like a geiser when the event was suggested.  Clearly history in Canada is not nearly as far removed from modern society as an ancient historian like myself would believe.  Even though the event had to be moved away from the site of the original battle, and even though this caused hurt and outrage among those wishing to celebrate history as a shared concept as well as those who do not wish to celebrate the changing tide of history, it shows that the events of history still resonate in startling ways more than 200 years later.

If people can get this emotional and this involved in the reproduction of historical events, can we not also claim a proximity to history that is more than immediate, more than latent, but still inextricably bound to our self-definition as Canadians?  Such a wonderful thought appeals on so many levels that I could not help but comment on it here.