‘Why should not citadels become academies?’: transatlantic tercentenaries, higher education, and local pasts in Britain after the First World War

Abstract

This article examines two transatlantic tercentenaries that took place around the end of the First World War: that of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh (1918) and that of the sailing of the Mayflower (1920). By sheer historical happenstance, these two major commemorative events were both centred on the county of Devon. Raleigh was associated with the city of Exeter, while the Mayflower pilgrims were indelibly linked with the maritime city of Plymouth. This thrusting into the limelight of two Devonian cities coincided with a regional effort to expand university education in the southwest. This article examines these two tercentenaries as case studies in the interaction between the transnational, regional and local dimensions of commemorative culture and historical narrative in Britain. It shows how, in both cases, internationalism fed regional rivalries, with national agendas peripheral at best. The article's second, related aim is to highlight a neglected aspect of scholarship on twentieth-century memorialisation, namely educational institutions as legacies of historical commemorative events. In both the Raleigh and the Mayflower anniversaries, links between the British locale and internationalism superseded any national aims or agendas, with both Exeter and Plymouth vying to be the regional leader in higher education, each bolstered by their claims to significance in America. Although neither scheme ultimately came to fruition, the tercentenaries nevertheless left behind educational legacies, calling into question the stark divide between ‘public’ and ‘academic’ history.