Historian snark

6 August 2006, 2023 EDT

My unscientific observation is that historians tend to be much snarkier than political scientists. Or, at least, they’re better at it.

These were the words of the arch-royalist Pierre de Belloy, whose Conferences des edicts de pacification (1600) has the distinction of being the longest and perhaps the most tedious tract to issue from the toleration controversy of the sixteenth century.

— E.M. Beame, “The Limits of Toleration in Sixteenth-Century France,” Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 13 (1966), p. 250.

This is from an article I just happen to be reading at the moment. Much better examples of historian snark exist. I remember Lenman’s two-volume series, England’s Colonial Wars,1550-1688 and Britain’s Colonial Wars, 1688-1783, as containing particularly snarky discussion of Elizabeth’s policies towards Ireland and the New World, as well as of the American War for Independence.

I get the sense that British historians would, if there was such a thing, win the Best Academic Snark Award in any given year.

If anyone has examples of good snark from international-relations scholars or other political scientists, let me know.

Filed as: snark

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.