Alan Knight (historian)

Alan Knight is Professor of History of Latin America academy at the University of Oxford, England, where he is a Fellow at St. Antony's College and Director of the Latin American Centre. Knight is the author of the two-volume "The Mexican Revolution" (Cambridge 1986) for which he received the "Albert Beveridge Prize" by the American Historical Association and the "Bolton Prize" by the Conference on Latin American History. He is considered "an authority" on Mexico (The Guardian: 28 Aug. 2003).

Books

In addition to "The Mexican Revolution" (2 vols., Cambridge, 1986), Knight is the author of "US-Mexican Relations, 1910-40" (San Diego, 1987), the 1930-1946 chapter on Mexico in "The Cambridge History of Latin America" (Vol. VII, 1990), "The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the 20th Century" (1992) and a three-volume general history of Mexico: "Mexico, From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest" and "Mexico, The Colonial Era" (Cambridge, 2002). Volume 3 is yet to be published. Knight has also written numerous extended articles on 20th-century Mexico, related topics and theory. These articles are crucial in order to understand the historical context and debate of his work.

= Academics = Before teaching at Oxford, Alan Knight taught at the University of Essex (1973-85) and the University of Texas at Austin (C.B. Smith Chair in History), and in 1986 was a visiting fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. At age 28, he graduated with a D. Phil. in History from the University of Oxford (1974). His doctoral dissertation was “Nationalism, xenophobia and revolution: the place of foreigners and foreign interests in Mexico, 1910-1915”.

Professor Knight is now the editor of the Cambridge Latin American Studies Series. Since 1985, he has been married to Lidia Lozano, translator and contributor of Latin American history.

Quote

"The meteor-asteroid that plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico, shrouding the earth in a dark pall and ending the era of the dinosaurs, was clearly the carrier of an exogenous crisis (for the dinosaurs, at least). If however, humankind terminates its own era in a deathly nuclear winter, we will have only ourselves to blame... The question is obviously important, since in the first case the regime cannot be blamed for the demise, in the second it connived its own destruction."Alan Knight. Historical and Theoretical Considerations. (1998)

Situating Alan Knight

Alan Knight credits his professors Michael Cherniavsky and Jack Gallagher at Oxford for pointing to him “the attractions and opportunities of the path I eventually took, that of Latin American history.” (Knight 1986.I: xii). His production of 35 years started from the specific conflict of the Mexican Revolution and has developed into broader narrations: comparative landscapes (Mexico-Latin America, Mexico-Europe) and interregional comparatives of more recent events ("The Peculiarities of Mexican History: Mexico Compared to Latin America, 1821-1992" or "Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, especially Mexico"). Yet crises and state-building, agrarian societies and revolutions still provide the matrix for his historical analysis.

Alan Knight's books alternate with fluency between the narrative and the analytical. He says: "I see no intrinsic superiority of one form over another. It all depends on the job in hand." (Knight 1986.I: ix). His books and articles are far and critical of the national epics of the past and tend to focus on the smaller components of the whole: regional nuances and protagonists, local stories, peasants and smaller characters. His writing balances the paradigms of the new historiography between "fashionable postmodernism" and "narrow positivism" (idem).

Alan Knight as an empiricist

On one hand, "we (historians) can ... test a hypothesis by collecting data, framing a clear argument, and submitting it for consideration to experts in the field..." (Knight Subalterns: 154). Nevertheless Knight often avoids data values research and charts. His book "Mexico: The Colonial Era" has no charts, and "The Mexican Revolution" has only two in 1200 pages. He argues: "The aggressively numerate, in particular, may regret the relative absence of statistical material. This is deliberate: I share Chevalier's skepticism about much of the statistical evidence for this period, and E.P. Thompson's belief that, especially as regards of popular radicalism, the usefulness of statistical evidence is easily exaggerated" (Knight 1986.I: ix).

According to Alan Knight, historians need to be vigilant of those who believe the role of history is to test general theories of human behavior that demonstrate eternal truths. Good history is to be found somewhere between the paradigms of complete relativism and absolute-objective constructions as facts. In his words: "Fortunately, we do not have to choose between the pomo funny farm and the positivistic prison. There are plenty of green fields in between." (Knight Subalterns: 156)

Alan Knight is a critical post-revisionist. For Knight the revisionists camp has naturally aligned with contemporary currents of thought. "It has become fashionable to trash Marxism, to cavil at "economic reductionism", to cherish "individualism", to revere the market, to question the state's positive, arbitrating, and redistributionist role in society." (Knight Revisionism: 197) To Alan Knight, the revisionist historiography was a positive development to the post-revisionist generation: simplistic accounts based on class struggles or modes of production were discarded, revolutions became multi-causal as classes became fluid and complex, outcomes derived from sociopolitical forces, and structural transformations derived from revolutionary processes and not events.

On Latin American Historiography

Alan Knight is critical of "the "new cultural history" that often repackages old and familiar forms of historiography in new neologistic wrapping" (Knight Subalterns: 138). Even worse, he argues that the "new cultural history" obsession with all human behavior as culture and the empowered agency of the oppressed, plus a preached political engagement that "turns people off", obscure semantics and jargon, all make the "new cultural history" paradoxical and ambiguous.

Theoretical Approach

On the genesis of social crises, Knight says that the perception of a problem as critical (the "emic" subjective assessment) is as important as the critical problem itself (the "etic" objective assessment). Very often crises and panics have marginal correlations to exterior events (millenarian movements, Red Scares in the U.S.), "and for a crisis to count as a crisis, such a subjective mood must be present" (Knight Historical: 33). Therefore, the degree of endogenous and exogenous causalities needs to be gauged. For Alan Knight, elite political history from the top-down is appropriate for times of stable and relative autonomy of power. A shift to endogenous causes is appropriate when dealing with social or political crises by examining the structural conditions of regimes (and its victims) to survive or perish.
Alan Knight concludes: "the more stable the elites, the more useful elite theory (or Namerite history); the more unstable the elite establishment, the more we should seek theoretical illumination elsewhere: in Hobbes, Marx, and the "new social history" (Knight Historical: 39).

Books

* Nationalism, xenophobia and revolution: the place of foreigners and foreign interests in Mexico, 1910-1915. (Unpublished, 1974) 355 pp. University of Oxford Thesis (D.Phil.)
* The Mexican Revolution, Volume I: Porfirians, Liberals, and Peasants, Volume II: Counter-Revolution and Reconstruction. (Cambridge, 1986). Albert Beveridge Prize (American Historical Association), Bolton Prize (Conference on Latin American History)
* U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1910-1940: An Interpretation. (San Diego, 1987)
* Latin America: what price the past? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)
* The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century, J.C. Brown and A. Knight eds., (Austin, 1992)
* Mexico: From The Beginning to the Spanish Conquest. (Cambridge, 2002)
* Mexico: The Colonial Era. (Cambridge, 2002) - Referenced as "Knight" in the text. -
* Mexico: Since Independence. (in progress)
* Cardenas and Cardenismo, 1934 to 1940. (in progress)

Articles

* Subalterns, Signifiers, and Statistics: Perspectives on Mexican Historiography. Latin American Research Review Vol. 37, No. 2 (2002), pp. 136-158
* Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico. Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 223-248
* Historical and Theoretical Considerations; Mexico and Latin America in Comparative Perspective in Elites, Crises and the Origins of Regimes, Mattei Dogan and John Higley eds. (Oxford, 1998)
* Latin America in Routledge Companion to Historiography, Michael Bentley, ed. (London, 1997)
* The Ideology of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940. Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe. Tel Aviv University. Vol. 8, No.1 (Jan-Jun 1997)
* Latin America: political economy and geo-politics since 1945; in Oxford Development Studies Vol. 24 No. 2 June 1996
* Latin America: What Price the Past? An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 18 November 1993 (Oxford), 1995.
* Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910-1940. The Hispanic American Historical Review Vol. 74, No. 3 (Aug., 1994), pp. 393-444
* Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy? Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 73-107
* Revisionism and Revolution: Mexico Compared to England and France. Past and Present No. 134 (Feb., 1992), pp. 159-199
* The Peculiarities of Mexican History: Mexico Compared to Latin America, 1821-1992 Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 24, Quincentenary Supplement: The Colonial and Post Colonial Experience. Five Centuries of Spanish and Portuguese America (1992), pp. 99-144
* Mexico, 1930-1946; in The Cambridge History of Latin America (Vol. VII, 1990)
* Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 Richard Graham, ed. (Austin, 1990).
* Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It? Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 18, No. 1 (May, 1986), pp. 41-74
* The Working Class and the Mexican Revolution, c. 1900-1920. Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 16, No. 1 (May, 1984), pp. 51-79

External links

* [http://chiasmos.uchicago.edu/events/alanknight.shtml Audio/Video recordings] of Alan Knight discussing "The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Mexican Revolution" at the University of Chicago

*History @ 33 1/3: Audio Interview with Alan Knight on the Mexican Revolution [http://www.history3313.com/iWeb/History3313.com/New%20Podcasts/41FC930F-97A7-4878-B1F0-388671A272E1.html]