150th anniversary of the Historical Tripos

Join us for a lecture by Professor Michael Bentley (St. Andrews and Oxford) to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Historical Tripos.

The Historical Tripos was created in 1873, History had previously been taught in connection with the Moral Sciences Tripos since 1851, and having been ejected, for a few years in the Law Tripos. But there was pressure to create a separate Tripos from different directions. Firstly, the Civil Service had recently introduced history as one of its exam subjects. Secondly, Oxford created a degree in Modern History in 1872 under the influence of its own Regius Professor of Modern History, William Stubbs. Thirdly, a wide range of new historical and antiquarian societies were publishing series which included an enormous volume of previously inaccessible historical documents. Finally, Cambridge men who had studied history as a subsidiary subject were making a profession of it, notably F.W. Maitland in legal history and W.C. Cunningham in economic history, who had been ranked joint first in the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1872, the year before the resolution to create the History Tripos.  Both men were influential in shaping the early tripos and in fostering opportunities for postgraduate research by male and female students, but these remained rare before the twentieth century.