A New Look, A New Departure: A Personal Comment on our Changed Appearance

Abstract

With this issue, the Journal of Contemporary History appears in a new format, the footnotes firmly placed where footnotes ought to be. Historical communication should always involve a dialogue between reader and historian. 'That's interesting: where did he/she get that from?' 'Come on now, I don't believe that: what on earth are the sources?' 'Interesting idea, but I bet there's no hard evidence for it.' Readers of history should be sceptical, doubts at the ready (I regularly present my students with the Marwick 20 per cent rule in any serious work of history probably about 80 per cent will be solidly established, but 20 per cent or so will be: sheer speculation, intelligent or otherwise; governed by the intellectual bees in the author's academic bonnet; the product of ordinary human incompetence, stupidity, or prejudice; or a mixture of all of these). Doubts are to be most quickly resolved (or confirmed) by a glance to the foot of the page, quick or protracted, depending on circumstance. Footnotes are there for the citation of sources, not, as indeed the editors of this journal have always firmly insisted, for the inclusion of matter which is either important enough to be included in the main text, or so tangential as to require exclusion altogether. Our friends in Cultural and Literary Studies insist that scholarly historical articles are simply texts like any old poem or novel: in fact, the scholarly article is a very special kind of text (we do not recommend would-be contributors to send us poems or fragments of novels), which must be precise, explicit, and based on evidence efficiently sign-posted in the footnotes, which, if properly deployed, are part of its essential character. The scholarly article is no more than one small, though distinctive, contribution to knowledge, always open to peer evaluation and criticism; professionally presented, it is never less than this. Enough on scholarly apparatus! The new format heralds a slight, but significant, change of emphasis in editorial policy. 'Contemporary history' is now quite widely taught as a separate sub-history in many universities; some, indeed, offer entire degree programmes in 'contemporary history'. In either case, what is meant is 'history since the second world war'. This journal will continue to print articles concerned with earlier decades in the twentieth century, but from now on there will be an increase in articles relating to the period since the second world war. After all, this journal was founded over 30 years ago, when, incidentally, the old 50-year rule still applied with respect to British government documents. It was reasonable then to have a quite