Raphael Elkan Samuel (26 December 19349 December 1996) was a British
Marxist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
historian, described by
Stuart Hall as "one of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation". He was professor of history at the
University of East London
, mottoeng = Knowledge and the fulfilment of vows
, established = 1898 – West Ham Technical Institute1952 – West Ham College of Technology1970 – North East London Polytechnic1989 – Polytechnic of East London ...
at the time of his death and also taught at
Ruskin College
Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is an independent educational institution in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) ...
from 1962 until his death.
Life
Samuel was born into a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in London. His father, Barnett Samuel, was a solicitor and his mother,
Minna Nerenstein, was at various times composer and partner in Jewish publishers Shapiro, Valentine. Samuel joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...
when a teenager and left following the
Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956.
Samuel was awarded a scholarship to
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
where he became a member of the
Communist Party Historians Group, alongside
Christopher Hill,
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...
and others. He co-founded the journal ''
Past and Present'' in 1952, and pioneered the study of working-class history. He founded the
Partisan Coffee House in 1956 in
Soho, London, as a meeting place for the British
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
.
He founded the
History Workshop
The ''History Workshop Journal'' is a British academic history journal published by Oxford University Press. ''History Workshop'' was founded in 1976 by Raphael Samuel and others involved in the History Workshop movement. Originally sub-titled " ...
movement at trade union connected
Ruskin College, Oxford. Samuel and the History Workshop movement powerfully influenced the development of the approach to historical research and writing commonly called "
history from below".
In 1987 Samuel married the writer and critic
Alison Light. Samuel's archive is held at
Bishopsgate Library.
After Samuel's death in 1996, the East London History Centre of the
University of East London
, mottoeng = Knowledge and the fulfilment of vows
, established = 1898 – West Ham Technical Institute1952 – West Ham College of Technology1970 – North East London Polytechnic1989 – Polytechnic of East London ...
was renamed the Raphael Samuel History Centre, in honour of his role in creating it. The Centre was established to investigate and document the
history of London since the eighteenth century. Consistent with Samuel's belief that historical studies should extend outside the academy, the Centre encourages research in the community, and the publication of materials ranging from monographs by established scholars to student dissertations and "Notes and Queries" features in the local press.
Since September 2009 the Raphael Samuel Centre has been a partnership between the University of East London,
Birkbeck College
, mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck.
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £4.3 m (2014)
, budget = £10 ...
and the
Bishopsgate Institute.
In an obituary in the journal ''
Radical Philosophy'',
Carolyn Steedman describes Samuel's work:
Like Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contrib ...
and Edward Thompson, he produced his historical work in interaction with working-class adult returners to education.... The standard charge against the history Samuel inspired was of a fanatical empiricism and a romantic merging of historians and their subjects in crowded narratives, in which each hard-won detail of working lives, wrenched from the cold indifference of posterity, is piled upon another, in a relentless rescue of the past. When he was himself subject to these charges, it was presumably his fine – and immensely detailed – accounts of the labour process that critics had in mind. But it was meaning rather than minutiae that he cared about.[Available online.]
/ref>
Raphael Samuel was interred on the eastern side of
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...
.
Selected bibliography
* ''Village Life and Labour'' (1975)
* ''Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers'' (1977)
* ''People's History and Socialist Theory'' (1981)
* ''East End Underworld'' (1981)
* ''Culture, Ideology and Politics'' (1983)
* ''Theatres of the Left: 1880–1935'' (1985)
* ''The Lost World of Communism'' (1986)
* ''The Enemy Within: The Miners' Strike of 1984'' (1987)
* ''Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity'' (1989)
* ''Patriotism (Volume 2): Minorities and Outsiders'' (1989)
* ''The Myths We Live By'' (1990)
* ''Theatres of Memory: Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture'' (1994)
* ''Theatres of Memory: Volume 2: Island Stories: Unravelling Britain'' (1997)
* ''
The Lost World of British Communism'' (2006)
References
Sources
*McWilliam, Rohan, "Samuel, Raphael", pages 1047–1048 from ''The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing'' Volume 2, edited by Kelly Boyd, London:
Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999, .
*Thompson, Paul, "Raphael Samuel, 1934–96: An Appreciation", pages 30–37 from ''Oral History'', Volume 25, 1997.
External links
A short biofor Raphael Samuel on Spartacus Educational
Profilein ''
Radical Philosophy''
website of the Raphael Samuel History Centre"Samuel, Raphael Elkan (1934-1996) historian" content description of Samuel's archive at
Bishopsgate Library.
Raphael Samuel History Centre and Research at UEL* Hilda Kean
"Remembering Raphael Samuel : Alison Light and A Radical Romance" 13 November 2019.
* Alison Light
"Diary , The death of Raphael Samuel" ''
London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review o ...
'', Vol. 23, No. 4, 22 February 2001.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Samuel, Raphael
1934 births
1996 deaths
20th-century English historians
Academics of Ruskin College
Academics of the University of East London
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
Communist Party Historians Group members
Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Communist Party of Great Britain members
English Jews
English people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
English people of Russian-Jewish descent
Jewish socialists
Marxist theorists