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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 531
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WCL 531 September 2006
Scholars and world citizenship
Just a few months over 60 years ago a prophet died in London. He was also a great writer and he enlisted the aid of historians to construct his 'Outline of History', which was the first serious attempt to write a history of the world from the standpoint of a world citizen. HG Wells wanted to show that it could be done, because too many scholars had abdicated their duty to seek the truth and preferred to write nationalist history, one-sided ad partial. Although by no means a modest man - he had a formidable intellect - he was willing to seek expert aid in a task that he saw as vital.
That 'Outline' was the spur for what UNESCO began a few years later in its History of Mankind and it inspired millions of people in the thirties of last century to accept the idea of world citizenship. Sadly, when it is even more desperately need ed in this century, we have no figure comparable to Wells. Taken up and publicised by John F. Kennedy, his declaration that History is more and more a race between education and catastrophe is even truer today than when he first wrote it.
For Wells, the 'world-betterer' as he termed himself, was above all a world citizen. From lower-class roots in imperialist Victorian England, with a series of popular novels and science fiction, he became world-famous and apart from a wobble at the start of the Great War, he devoted his life to warning his readers and audiences of the peril in which the human race stood. His message was vindicated by coming of the second world war and above all by the invention of the atom-bomb and its demonstration in the obliteration of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in two Japanese cities.
To become that prophet of doom he had to shake off the mental trammels of his upbringing and surroundings and immerse himself in works of scholarship of all kinds. His like are much needed today and a new exhibition just opened suggests that some scholars at least appreciate our needs. Most scientists are engaged, one way or another, in research and development of new weapons: it is up to their intellectual counterparts in other disciplines to redress the balance towards humanity.
The earliest European illustrations of native North Americans, the water-colours painted in the 1580s by an Englishman, the little-known John White, are after many years to be displayed in the British Museum. The following comment by its director, Neil McGregor, is worth noting and publicising. "This matchless family of world collections located in London has a unique contribution to make towards the formation of a new sense of world citizenship for a new century. Working with other collections, the British Museum's ambition is to turn this vital potential into a reality".
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This wise and valuable intention needs to be applauded and copies by scholars throughout the world. Once upon a time, scholars assumed that they were inevitably citizens of the world. With a common language, Latin, and looking back to a united Europe which for them constituted their world, it was a natural assumption. We live in a very different age, but we are now more aware of our history, more united physically and more in need of human unity than ever in the past. Scholars are needed above all, to justify and deepen that unity. Thereby they can do work beneficial to humanity even above their immense contribution in the preservation and extension of knowledge.
John Roberts
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