Kenneth Weisbrode, Reflections on Bruce Mazlish

I came to know Bruce Mazlish late in his career. "Prof. M," as he asked me to call him, taught a seminar at Harvard with my advisor, Akira Iriye, who had asked me to help with some of the research for the seminar and to prepare the reading list.

I remember my first meeting with Prof. M. We talked in his temporary office in the basement of Robinson Hall. He was formal but easy to talk to, although I was nervous because his name already meant a good deal to me. The book he wrote with Jacob Bronowski was the first real book of history I had read. A high school teacher had assigned it. It was this book that inspired me to read and to learn about history.

I didn't mention this at our first meeting and I recall little of what else we discussed, apart from one thing. At the end of the meeting, Prof. M. looked at me and said, "You mustn't hesitate to tell me if there is anything I can do for you."

Our teachers do many things for us. Many of mine have done. But none, so far as I can remember, ever put it so openly to me, or made good on the offer to such an extent. My research assistance for this course began a collaboration that lasted more than a decade and resulted in several books and the founding of a journal. Much more than that, however, was a change to my thinking that I never asked for or expected, but for which I am exceptionally grateful.

As it happened, the day Prof. M died I was busy re-reading Geoffrey Barraclough's Introduction to Contemporary History in order to teach it the following day. Anyone familiar with Prof. M's innovative work in global history since the 1990s will notice the many similarities—which Prof. M himself pointed out in an homage to Barraclough that appeared in our journal in 2008. The final paragraph of this article sums up, to me, much of how I feel about Prof. M's own contribution:

If Barraclough were alive and writing today, he would be among the foremost new global historians: primus inter pares. This is not the case, of course—he died in 1984. Yet in one sense he didn't really die, for his work lives after him. It is his inspiration that enrolls him in the camp of NGH [New Global History]; it is under his banner that the work of "contemporary" history continuously goes forward. As I have tried to argue, the cause is larger than a particular sub-field, for it is not just NGH but world and global history at large that are enlisted in the struggle to understand the past, the present and the future of an emerging global humanity. ("Revisiting Barraclough's Contemporary History," New Global Studies Vol 2, No. 3 October 2008): 16.))

From Prof. M I learned what it means to be a humanist. To do that, one must first learn to think like one. And to do that, one must first train one's mind to be open—to new fields, disciplines, ideas, concepts, and attitudes. Many people were skeptical of Barraclough's notion of contemporary history. After all, what could a medievalist know about such things? Many people—even in our own history department—were skeptical of global history. It was true that people, goods, and ideas crossed borders; they always had. But were most people in the world really so aware of global phenomena, or of the great globe itself? Was our world not fated to be divided, and subdivided, and mutually ignorant, all interconnections and interdependence notwithstanding, for the foreseeable future? To Prof. M, they "just didn't get it." But they would. I never asked him how he felt so many years later when so much of the historical profession has "gone global." I suspect he'd be fine with it, although still pushing hard in new directions.

Another thing that he taught me was that such achievements—or shifts in consciousness, as he liked to call them—do not happen by accident. People must be persuaded. They are often won over less by what one pushes them to understand than by how persuasion is done. My own story does not allow for the best example because, as I have noted, I was won over before I even came to know Prof. M. But I was won over to him, and not to anything interdisciplinary and global; in fact, I had begun my historical studies in the intellectual history of nationalism.

Then came the persistence, the clarity of thought, and the simple, consistent, uncomplicated kindness of my teacher and mentor. Well after he had retired from teaching and had more or less handed off his running of the Toynbee Foundation and of our journal to others, he continued to correspond—sometimes several times per week—with his thoughts, ideas, questions, curiosity. I miss this part of him most of all.

It was no longer a matter of winning my heart and mind to his way of thinking, if it ever was. The work spoke for itself. It was, instead, a matter of learning to do right by one's convictions by building structures, movements, and organizations that go beyond oneself; by sharing for the sake of sharing; by listening and by giving on principle; and, most of all, by setting an example.

Barraclough has commanded us to look at our own history "when the problems which are actual in the world today first take shape." I know when my own historical consciousness—as I now have come to understand it—first took shape. It was that afternoon in the basement of Robinson Hall, after which so much was given. And I never had to ask.

K. Weisbrode

1 December 2016