The Peculiarities of Cambridge History: Some Comparative Thoughts on the Historical Tripos

Abstract This study develops and expands some of the arguments of a lecture I delivered on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Cambridge’s Historical Tripos. Its central proposition – that it is meaningful to talk about ‘Cambridge History’ and to discuss its distinctiveness – remains central to this published version of the lecture, as does the idea that the Tripos has always embodied that distinctiveness as a form of social memory. Both the Tripos as a structure and the Faculty archive as a source come into play in helping to make sense of the Cambridge trajectory over the past half century. The lecture lays stress on some persistent legacies from the Cambridge tradition, identifies some strands that developed internally after 1945, and considers the impact of external influences on Cambridge History. Taking the story up to the ‘new’ Tripos of 2022, the lecture concludes that the legacy has exercised more control than has innovation and that the Historical Tripos is best understood as a continuing conversation with its own past.