The term ‘invented tradition’ is used in a broad, but not imprecise sense. This observation formed the starting-point of a conference organized by the historical journal Past & Present, which in turn forms the basis of the present book. Anyone familiar with the colleges of ancient British universities will be able to think of the institution of such ‘traditions’ on a local scale, though some -like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve~ may become generalized through the modern mass medium of radio. ‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented. Yet, as a chapter in this book establishes, in its modern form it is the product of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nothing appears more ancient, and linked to an immemorial past, than the pageantry which surrounds British monarchy in its public ceremonial manifestations. He was previously Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford, from 1957. HUGH TREVOR-ROPER (Lord Dacre of Glanton) was Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, from 1980 to 1987. He is the author of The Historical Study of African Religion (1972) and Dance and Society in Eastern Africa (1975). TERENCE RANGER is Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Antony’s College. He has published extensively in Welsh and has contributed chapters to many books on Welsh history. PRYS MORGAN is Reader in History at University College, Swansea. Among his many publications is Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
He is the author of many articles on the interactions of history and anthropology and on the study of Indian society.ĮRIC HOBSBA WM is Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a founder-member of the journal Past & Present. coHN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
His books include Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns, 1774-1967 (1980) and The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990).īERNARD s.
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