Third World Development, Historians of the Expansion and “Relevance”

One December afternoon in 1977, Drs. J.P. Pronk, Minister for Development Cooperation in the retiring Den Uyl cabinet, gave a talk in the Senate Chamber of Leiden University which nettled me at the time and has led me to do a good deal of reflecting since. For in it he made his view plain that history was only interesting to him when it was made relevant – in this case combined with other disciplines and applied to problems in the development of poorer nations. While I was annoyed with him, the irritation was scarcely personal because I reminded myself that government always thinks in terms of how to make academics perform useful services, perhaps instead of pondering whether Beowolf might have been written by a woman. One cannot become angry with government, either, in view of the fact it pays our salaries, directly in the case of the public universities and indirectly, through grants and subsidies, in the private ones. What's more, the social sciences are in large part directed to the description, if not the solution, of political, economic and social problems, and the study of history nowadays is as often paired administratively with these disciplines as it is with the humanities. We all know that political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists have been eager in recent years to ally themselves with government and try their hands at resolving domestic and international dilemmas.