Information About ™Norman Davies |
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Norman Davies (born June 8 , 1939 in Bolton , Lancashire , England ) is a British Historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the History Of Poland , Europe and the British Isles . BIOGRAPHY Davies' full name is Ivor Norman Richard Davies. 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 Ph.D. in Russia , 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 did not officially exist in the 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 is Supernumary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford . Throughout his career, Davies lectured in many countries ( USA , Canada , Australia , Japan , China , Poland , and in most European countries). 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 the most influential. It made Davies immediately popular in Poland, although - or rather because - it could only be distributed as a Samizdat copy. 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'' ( 1984 ). Some western colleagues have accused Davies of a "Polonophile" attitude in presenting Polish-Russian, Polish-Jewish or Polish-Western conflicts. In particular, some Jewish historians, most vocally Lucy Dawidowicz , Abraham Brumberg , and Theodore Rabb , object to Davies' historical treatment of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. They accuse him of minimizing historic anti-Semitism, and of promoting a view that The Holocaust occupies a position in international historiography which tends to minimize the suffering of non-Jewish Poles and even denounce them as Anti-Semites . 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 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 did not have jurisdiction in an academic matter. In the 1990s , Davies returned with two monumental works on the history of Europe as a whole ( 1996 ) and the British Isles ( 1999 ). In both books he sets out to present the importance of the "peripheries" on an equal footing and to revise conventional wisdoms in Historiography that he considers as Westernly biased and Anglo-centric, respectively. A supporter of the Labour Party , a republican and a supporter of closer British integration into the European Union , 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 neighboring 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 Ireland , independence for Scotland and Wales , the abolition of the British monarchy and England seeking its fate in a United States of Europe. Davies has often criticized those in Britain who favor the Atlanticist orientation with closer ties to the United States . In Davies's view, the destiny of Britain lies with closer ties to Europe. Next, Davies and his former research assistant Roger Moorhouse co-wrote a history of Wrocław , the former German Breslau, at the suggestion of the city's mayor. The book considers the city a focal point of Central European history and uses it to present that history "in a nutshell". Although fellow historians criticised a number of technical defects in the book, it became an instant bestseller in both Germany and Poland, where it had been published simultaneously. Davies also writes essays and popular articles for mass media audiences. Among others, he has worked for the BBC as well as British and American magazines and newspapers like '' The Times '', '' The New York Review Of Books '' and '' The Independent ''. In Poland, his articles appeared in the liberal Catholic weekly '' Tygodnik Powszechny ''. After 1989 , ''God's Playground'' became required reading in Poland, 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 ") which is not available in English. Davies's most recent book, ''Rising '44'' describes the Warsaw Uprising and was internationally well received on the occasion of its anniversary in 2004 . Footnotes |