Editing Hugh Trevor-Roper (section)

== Historical debates and controversies ==
Trevor-Roper was famous for his lucid and acerbic writing style. In reviews and essays he could be pitilessly sarcastic, and devastating in his mockery. In attacking [[Arnold J. Toynbee]]'s ''[[A Study of History]]'', for instance, Trevor-Roper accused Toynbee of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony".<ref name="Sisman">Sisman, 2010</ref>

For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were its intellectual vitality, and the quarrels between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former, economically and constitutionally.<ref name="robinson">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Robinson |first=Kristen |editor=Kelly Boyd |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing |title=Trevor-Roper, Hugh |year=1999 |publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers |volume=2 |location=London |isbn=1-884964-33-8 |pages=1024–25}}</ref> In Trevor-Roper's view, another theme of early modern Europe was expansion overseas in the form of colonies and intellectual expansion in the form of the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] and the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]].<ref name="robinson" /> In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries can ultimately be traced back to the conflict between the religious values of the Reformation and the rationalistic approach of what became the Enlightenment.<ref name="robinson" />

Trevor-Roper argued that [[history]] should be understood as an art, not a science and that the attribute of a successful historian was imagination.<ref name="robinson" /> He viewed history as full of contingency, with the past neither a story of continuous advance nor of continuous decline but the consequence of choices made by individuals at the time.<ref name="robinson" /> In his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon [[political history]] but sought to examine the interaction between the political, [[Intellectual history|intellectual]], [[Social history|social]] and religious trends.<ref name="robinson" />

His preferred medium of expression was the essay rather than the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and 1960s, Trevor-Roper was influenced by the work of the French [[Annales school|''Annales'' school]], especially [[Fernand Braudel]] and did much to introduce the work of the ''Annales'' school to the [[English-speaking world]]. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper wrote that Braudel and other Annalists were doing much innovative historical work but were "totally excluded from Oxford which remains, in historical matters, a retrograde provincial backwater".<ref name="Ascherson">{{cite magazine
  | last =  Ascherson
  | first = Neal
  | title = The Liquidator
  | magazine = London Review of Books
  | date= 19 August 2010 | url = http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n16/neal-ascherson/liquidator
  | access-date = 5 January 2016}}</ref>

===English Civil War===
In Trevor-Roper's opinion, the dispute between the [[Puritans]] and the [[Arminianism|Arminians]] was a major, although not the sole, cause of the [[English Civil War]].<ref name="robinson" /> For him, the dispute was over such issues as free will and predestination and the role of preaching versus the sacraments. Only later did the dispute become a matter of the structure of the [[Church of England]].<ref name="robinson" /> The Puritans desired a more decentralised and egalitarian church, with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for an ordered church with a hierarchy, an emphasis on divine right and salvation through free will.<ref name="robinson" />

As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was known for his disputes with fellow historians such as [[Lawrence Stone]] and [[Christopher Hill (historian)|Christopher Hill]], whose materialist, and in some measure "inevitablist", explanations of the English Civil War he attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the historiographical [[storm over the gentry]], also known as the ''Gentry controversy'', a dispute with the historians [[R. H. Tawney]] and Stone, about whether the English [[gentry]] were, economically, on the way down or up, in the century before the English Civil War and whether this helped cause that war.

Stone, Tawney and Hill argued that the gentry were rising economically and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that while office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline. A third group of history men around [[J. H. Hexter]] and [[Geoffrey Elton]], argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper, who showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility.<ref name="autogenerated1">Brown, Kenneth "Tawney, R.H." pp. 1172–73 from ''The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing'' p. 1173.</ref> He also rejected Tawney's theories about the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that he was guilty of selective use of evidence and that he misunderstood the statistics.<ref name="autogenerated1" /><ref>H. R. Trevor-Roper, "The Elizabethan Aristocracy: An Anatomy Anatomized," ''Economic History Review'' (1951) 3#3 pp. 279–98 {{jstor|2599988}}</ref>

===World War II and Hitler===
Trevor-Roper attacked the philosophies of history advanced by [[Arnold J. Toynbee]] and [[E. H. Carr]], as well as his colleague [[A. J. P. Taylor]]'s account of the origins of [[World War II]]. Another dispute was with Taylor and [[Alan Bullock]] over the question of whether [[Adolf Hitler]] had fixed aims. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a "[[charlatan|mountebank]]" instead of the ideologue Trevor-Roper believed him to be.<ref>{{cite book|author=Ron Rosenbaum|title=Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f6MmCEzVs6oC&pg=PT118|year=2011|publisher=Faber and Faber|pages=118–19|isbn=9780571276868}}</ref> When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's, in his 1961 book ''[[The Origins of the Second World War]]'', the debate continued. Another feud was with the novelist and Catholic convert [[Evelyn Waugh]], who was angered by Trevor-Roper's repeated harsh attacks on the Catholic Church.<ref>Sisman, (2010) pp. 178, 261, 291</ref>

In the [[Nazi Foreign Policy (debate)|globalist–continentalist debate]] between those who argued that Hitler aimed to conquer the world and those who argued that he sought only the conquest of Europe, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading continentalists. He argued that the globalist case sought to turn a scattering of Hitler's remarks made over decades into a plan. In his analysis, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe, as laid out in ''[[Mein Kampf]].''<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen J. |last=Lee|title=European Dictatorships 1918–1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gLXkGLDxSkAC&pg=PA242|year=2012|publisher=Routledge|page=242|isbn=9781135690113}}</ref>

The American historian [[Lucy Dawidowicz]] in ''The Holocaust and Historians'' (1981) delivered what the British historian [[David Cesarani]] called an "''ad hominem'' attack", writing that Trevor-Roper in his writings on Nazi Germany was indifferent to Nazi antisemitism, because she believed that he was a snobbish antisemite, who was apathetic about the murder of six million Jews.<ref name="Cesarani 2008">{{cite book |last=Cesarani |first=David |chapter=From Bullock to Kershaw: Some Peculiarities of British Historical Writing About the Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder of the Jews |pages=339–54 |title=Holocaust Historiography In Context |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Bankier |editor2-first=Dan |editor2-last=Michman |location=Jerusalem |publisher=Yad Vashem |year=2008}}</ref>{{rp|341}} Cesarani wrote that Dawidowicz was wrong to accuse Trevor-Roper of antisemitism but argued that there was an element of truth to her critique in that the ''Shoah'' was a blind-spot for Trevor-Roper.<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|342–43}}

Trevor-Roper was a very firm "intentionalist" who treated Hitler as a serious, if slightly deranged thinker who, from 1924 until his death in 1945, was obsessed with "the conquest of Russia, the extermination of the Slavs, and the colonization of the English".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|345}} In his 1962 essay "The Mind of Adolf Hitler", Trevor-Roper again criticized Bullock, writing "Even Mr. Bullock seems content to regard him as a diabolical adventurer animated solely by an unlimited lust for personal power{{nbsp}}... Hitler was a systematic thinker and his mind is, to the historian, as important as the mind of Bismarck or Lenin".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|346}} Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler, on the basis of a wide range of antisemitic literature, from the writings of [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]] to ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]'', had constructed a racist ideology that called for making Germany the world's greatest power and the extermination of perceived enemies such as the Jews and Slavs.<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|346}}

Trevor-Roper wrote that the mind of Hitler was "a terrible phenomenon, imposing indeed in its granite harshness and yet infinitely squalid in its miscellaneous cumber, like some huge barbarian monolith; the expression of giant strength and savage genius; surrounded by a festering heap of refuse, old tins and vermin, ashes and eggshells and ordure, the intellectual detritus of centuries".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|346}} Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper regarded Hitler, in marked contrast to Bullock, as a man who was serious about what he said but at the same time, Trevor-Roper's picture of Hitler as a somewhat insane leader, fanatically pursuing lunatic policies, meant paradoxically that it was hard to take Hitler seriously, at least on the basis of Trevor-Roper's writings.<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|345–46}}

Cesarani stated that Trevor-Roper was sincere in his hatred and contempt for the Nazis and everything they stood for but he had considerable difficulty when it came to writing about the complicity and involvement of traditional German elites in National Socialism, because the traditional elites in Germany were so similar in many ways to the British establishment, which Trevor-Roper identified with so strongly.

In this respect, Cesarani argued that it was very revealing that Trevor-Roper in ''The Last Days of Hitler'' was especially damning in his picture of the German Finance Minister, Count [[Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk|Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk]], who Trevor-Roper noted "had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, but he had acquired none of its values".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|352}} Cesarani wrote "Thus, to Trevor-Roper the values of Oxford University stood at the opposite pole to those of Hitler's Reich, and one reason for the ghastly character of Nazism was that it did not share them".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|352}} Cesarani noted that while Trevor-Roper supported the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservatives]] and ended his days as a Tory life-peer, he was broadly speaking a liberal and believed that Britain was a great nation because of its liberalism.<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|352–53}}

Because of this background, Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper naturally saw the liberal democracy Britain as anathema to Nazi Germany.<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|352–53}} Cesarani concluded that "to maintain the illusion of virtuous British liberalism, Hitler had to be depicted as either a statesman like any other or a monster without equal, and those who did business with him as, respectively, pragmatists or dupes. Every current of Nazi society that made it distinctive could be charted, while the anti-Jewish racism that it shared with Britain was discreetly avoided".<ref name="Cesarani 2008"/>{{rp|354}}

===General crisis of the 17th century===
{{Main|The General Crisis}}

A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the "[[The General Crisis|general crisis of the 17th century]]". He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems.<ref name="robinson" /> In this "general crisis", various events, such as the English Civil War; [[The Fronde]] in France; the climax of the [[Thirty Years' War]] in Germany; [[Eighty Years' War|troubles in the Netherlands]]; and revolts against the Spanish Crown in [[Portuguese Restoration War|Portugal]], the [[Neapolitan Republic (1647–1648)|Kingdom of Naples]] and [[Reapers' War|Catalonia]]; were all manifestations of the same problems.<ref name=autogenerated4>Rabb, Theodore K., ''The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 18.</ref>

The most important causes of the "general crisis" in Trevor-Roper's opinion were conflicts between "Court" and "Country"; that is, between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states, represented by the Court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry, representing the country.<ref name=autogenerated4 /> In addition, he said that the religious and intellectual changes introduced by the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] and the [[Renaissance]] were important secondary causes of the "general crisis".<ref name="robinson" />

The "general crisis" thesis generated controversy between supporters of this theory, and those, such as the Marxist historian [[Eric Hobsbawm]], who agreed with him that there was a "general crisis", but saw the problems of 17th century Europe as more economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction denied that there was any "general crisis", for example the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steensgaard, and the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] historian [[A.&nbsp;D. Lublinskaya]].<ref>Rabb, Theodore K., ''The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 20–21 & 25–26.</ref> Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, and led experts in 17th century history such as [[Roland Mousnier]], [[John Huxtable Elliott|J.&nbsp;H. Elliott]], [[Lawrence Stone]], [[E.&nbsp;H. Kossmann]], [[Eric Hobsbawm]] and [[J.&nbsp;H. Hexter]] to become advocates of the pros and cons of the theory.

At times the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis."<ref>Rabb, Theodore K., ''The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 22.</ref> Villari accused Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the [[English Civil War]]), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of a Europe-wide revolutionary movement.<ref>Rabb, Theodore K., ''The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 22–23.</ref>

Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper, the Soviet historian [[A. D. Lublinskaya]], attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, arguing there was no "general crisis". Instead she maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the emergence of capitalism.<ref>Rabb, Theodore K., ''The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 26.</ref>

===First World War===
In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by [[John C. G. Röhl|John Röhl]] endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for the [[First World War]].<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh "Foreword" to ''1914: Delusion or Design?'' p. 11</ref> Trevor-Roper wrote that in his opinion far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers.<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh "Foreword" to ''1914: Delusion or Design?'' p. 10</ref> He claimed that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship".<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh "Foreword" to ''1914: Delusion or Design?'' pp. 9–10</ref> He praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh "Foreword" to ''1914: Delusion or Design?'' pp. 13–15</ref>

===JFK Assassination===
Trevor-Roper was critical of the official account of the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]]. He voiced his scepticism of the [[Warren Commission]], which concluded that a lone gunman by the name of [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] was responsible. In a 3,500-word essay published in ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', he wrote that the commission employed a "smokescreen of often irrelevant material" and "accepted impermissible axioms, constructed invalid arguments, and failed to ask elementary and essential questions".<ref>{{cite news |title=Briton Questions Warren Findings; Historian Calls the Kennedy Death Report 'Suspect' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/14/archives/briton-questions-warren-findings-historian-calls-the-kennedy-death.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=14 December 1964}}</ref> He penned the introduction to [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]]'s book ''[[Rush to Judgment]]''<ref name="Chicago Tribune; May 23, 1966">{{cite news |last=Cassidy |first=Claudi |author-link=Claudia Cassidy |date=May 23, 1966 |title=On the Aisle: Preview of Mark Lane's 'Rush to Judgment,' In Inquiry into the Evidence's Other Side|url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1966/05/23/page/47/article/on-the-aisle |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |at=Section 2, p. 5 |access-date=July 24, 2015}}</ref> and was thanked in the acknowledgements section for being "kind enough to read the manuscript and make suggestions".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lane |first1=Mark |title=Rush to Judgment |date=1992 |publisher=Thunder's Mouth Press |page=25}}</ref> He also joined [[Bertrand Russell]]'s ''Who Killed Kennedy Committee?''<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Perkins Jr. |editor1-first=Ray |title=Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell A Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor |date=2002 |publisher=Open Court |page=404}}</ref>

===Backhouse frauds===
In 1973, Trevor-Roper was invited to visit Switzerland to examine a manuscript entitled ''Décadence Mandchoue'' written by the [[Sinology|sinologist]] [[Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet|Sir Edmund Backhouse]] (1873–1944) in a mixture of English, French, Latin and Chinese that had been in the custody of Reinhard Hoeppli, a Swiss diplomat who was the Swiss consul in Beijing during World War II. Hoeppli, given ''Décadence Mandchoue'' in 1943 by his friend Backhouse, had been unable to publish it owing to its sexually explicit content. But by 1973 looser censorship and the rise of the [[gay rights movement]] meant a publisher was willing to release ''Décadence Mandchoue'' to the market. However, before doing so they wanted Trevor-Roper, who as a former MI6 officer was an expert on clandestine affairs, to examine some of the more outlandish claims contained in the text.

For an example, Backhouse claimed in ''Décadence Mandchoue'' that the wives and daughters of British diplomats in Beijing had trained their dogs and tamed foxes to perform [[cunnilingus]] on them, which the fascistic Backhouse used as evidence of British "decadence", which explained why he was supporting Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Trevor-Roper regarded ''Décadence Mandchoue'' with considerable distaste calling the manuscript "pornographic" and "obscene" as Backhouse related in graphic detail sexual encounters he claimed to have had with the French poet [[Paul Verlaine]], the Irish playwright [[Oscar Wilde]], Wilde's lover [[Lord Alfred Douglas]], the French poet [[Arthur Rimbaud]], the Russian ballet dancer [[Vaslav Nijinsky]], the British Prime Minister [[Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery|Lord Rosebery]] and the [[Empress Dowager Cixi]] of China whom the openly gay Backhouse had maintained had forced herself on him.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh pages 295">Trevor-Roper, Hugh ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976 pp. 295–96.</ref>

Backhouse also claimed to have been the friend of the Russian novelist [[Leo Tolstoy]] and the French actress [[Sarah Bernhardt]]. For the next two years, Trevor-Roper went on an odyssey that took him all over Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and China as he sought to unravel the mystery of just who the elusive Backhouse was. Backhouse had between 1898 and his death in 1944 worked as a sinologist, the business agent for several British and American companies in China, a British spy, gun-runner and translator before ending his days in World War II China as a fascist and a Japanese collaborator who wished fervently for an Axis victory which would destroy Great Britain.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh pages 295"/> Trevor-Roper noted that despite Backhouse's homosexuality and Nazi Germany's policy of persecuting homosexuals, Backhouse's intense hatred of his own country together with his sadistic-masochistic sexual needs meant that Backhouse longed to be "ravished and possessed by the brutal, but still perverted masculinity of the fascist {{lang|de|Führerprinzip}}".<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 295.</ref>

The result was one of Trevor-Roper's most successful later books, his 1976 biography of Backhouse, originally entitled ''A Hidden Life'' but soon republished in Britain and the US as ''The Hermit of Peking''. Backhouse had long been regarded as a world's leading expert on China. In his biography, Trevor-Roper exposed the vast majority of Sir Edmund's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. In ''Décadence Mandchoue'', Backhouse spoke of his efforts to raise money to pay the defence lawyers for Wilde while he was an undergraduate at Oxford.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh 1976, page 268">Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 268.</ref>

Trevor-Roper established that while Backhouse raised money for the Wilde defence fund, he spent it all on buying expensive jewellery, especially pearl necklaces, which were a special passion of Backhouse's. It was this embezzlement of the money Backhouse had raised for the Wilde defence fund that led to him fleeing Britain in 1895. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West. Backhouse had portrayed Prince [[Ronglu]] as a friend of the West and an enemy of the Boxers when the opposite was true.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh 1976, page 268"/>

Trevor-Roper noted that in the "diary" of Ching-Shan, which Backhouse claimed to have looted from Ching's house just before it was burned down by Indian troops in the [[Boxer Rebellion]], it has Prince Ronglu saying in French about the government's support of the Boxers: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder."<ref>{{langx|fr|italic=no|"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute." Commonly attributed to [[Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord|Talleyrand]], more likely spoken by [[Joseph Fouché|Fouché]]}}.</ref><ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203">Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 203.</ref> Trevor-Roper argued that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ronglu – who only knew Manchu and Mandarin – would be quoting a well-known French expression, but noted that Backhouse was fluent in French.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203"/>

Backhouse was fluent in [[Mandarin language|Mandarin]] and [[Cantonese language|Cantonese]], lived most of his life in Beijing and after moving to China had declined to wear western clothes, preferring instead the gown of a Chinese mandarin, which led most Westerners to assume that Backhouse "knew" China. Trevor-Roper noted that despite his superficial appearance of affection for the Chinese, much of what Backhouse wrote about on China worked subtly to confirm Western "[[Yellow Peril]]" stereotypes, as Backhouse variously depicted the Chinese as pathologically dishonest, sexually perverted, morally corrupt and generally devious and treacherous – in short, Chinese civilization for Backhouse was a deeply sick civilization.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203"/>

Derek Sandhaus, however, notes that Trevor-Roper did not consult specialists in Chinese affairs, and seems to have read only enough of the text to have been disgusted by its homosexuality.<ref name=BackhouseIntro_xv>Backhouse; Sandhaus, ed., ''{{lang|fr|Décadence Mandchoue}}'', 2011, Introduction, xv–xxiv.</ref> While conceding that Backhouse fabricated or imagined many of the purported assignations, others Sandhaus independently confirmed or found plausible, reasoning that Backhouse spoke Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian (the languages of the imperial household), and that his account of the atmosphere and customs of the Empress Dowager's court may be more reliable than Trevor-Roper allowed.<ref name=BackhouseIntro_xv/><ref>{{cite news | author = Ewing, Kent | date = June 18, 2011 | format = book review | title = Pomp and Porn During the Qing Dynasty—Decadence Mandchoue by Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse | work = [[Asia TImes]] (atimes.com) | url = http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MF18Ad01.html | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110619200054/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MF18Ad01.html | archive-date = 2011-06-19 | access-date = 2025-01-08 }}</ref>

===Oxford activities===
In 1960, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of Sir [[Oliver Franks]] who was backed by the heads of houses marshalled by [[Maurice Bowra]], for the Chancellorship of the [[University of Oxford]], helping the Prime Minister [[Harold Macmillan]] to be elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited a ''[[Festschrift]]'' in honour of his friend Sir [[Keith Feiling]]'s 80th birthday. In 1970, he was the author of ''The Letters of Mercurius'', a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s, originally published as letters in ''[[The Spectator]]''.<ref>{{cite news |title=Guest Speaker: Nigel Lawson  |url=http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/380/full |newspaper=Standpoint |date=August 2008 |access-date=11 November 2013}}</ref>

===Debates on African history===
Another aspect of Trevor-Roper's outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy is his statement about the historical experiences of pre-literate societies. Following Voltaire's remarks on the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian tribes, he asserted that Africa had no history prior to [[European exploration of Africa|European exploration]] and [[colonization of Africa|colonisation]]. Trevor-Roper said "there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness", its past "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe".<ref>"What's New About African History?" John Edward Philips, History News Network, 6 April 2006</ref><ref>{{Cite book |first=Hugh |last=Trevor-Roper |url=http://archive.org/details/riseofchristiane0000hugh_c2c1 |title=The Rise of Christian Europe |date=1965 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace & World |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa "unhistoric", spurred intense debate between historians, [[anthropologist]]s, [[sociologist]]s, in the emerging fields of [[postcolonialism|postcolonial]] and [[cultural studies]] about the definition of "history".<ref>{{cite journal |first=Hugh |last=Trevor-Roper |title=The Past and Present: History and Sociology |journal=Past and Present |issue=42 |year=1969 |page=6}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=R. Hunt |last=Davis |title=Interpreting the Colonial Period in African History |journal=African Affairs |volume=72 |issue=289 |year=1973 |pages=383–400|doi=10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096410 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Gus |last=Deveneaux |title=The Frontier in Recent African History |journal=The International Journal of African Studies |volume=11 |issue=1 |year=1978 |pages=63–85}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Shepard III |last=Krech |title=The State of Ethnohistory |journal=Annual Review of Anthropology |volume=20 |year=1991 |page=345|doi=10.1146/annurev.an.20.100191.002021 }}</ref> Historians have argued, in response, that historical myths of the kind perpetrated by Trevor-Roper need to be actively countered: "Only a process of counter-selection can correct this, and African historians have to concentrate on those aspects which were ignored by the disparaging mythologies".<ref>{{cite journal |first=Ali A. |last=Mazrui |title=European Exploration and Africa's Self-Discovery |journal=The Journal of Modern African Studies |volume=7 |issue=4 |year=1969 |pages=661–76 |doi=10.1017/S0022278X00018887 |jstor=159156 |s2cid=145062805 }}</ref>

Many historians now argue, against Trevor-Roper, that historical evidence should also include [[oral tradition]]s as well as any type of [[written history]], a former criterion for a society having left "[[prehistory]]".<ref>{{cite journal |first=Kenneth C. |last=Wylie |title=The Uses and Misuses of Ethnohistory |journal=Journal of Interdisciplinary History |volume=3 |issue=4 |year=1973 |pages=707–20|doi=10.2307/202689 |jstor=202689 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Alan |last=Gailey |title=The Nature of Tradition |journal=Folklore |volume=100 |issue=2 |year=1989 |pages=143–61|doi=10.1080/0015587X.1989.9715762 }}</ref> Critics of Trevor-Roper's claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether by [[historical materialism|materialist]], Annalist or the traditional historical methods used by Trevor-Roper.<ref>Deveneaux, 67.</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=The Spectator |first=Ferdinand |last=Mount |title=The Voltaire of St Aldates |year=2006 }}</ref> Some say approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history cannot qualify as accurate descriptions of [[culture of Africa|African societies]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Finn |last=Fugelstad |title=The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History. An Essay |journal=History in Africa |volume=19 |year=1992 |pages=309–26|doi=10.2307/3172003 |jstor=3172003 }}</ref> Most scholars of any mettle now agree that Africa has a "history". Despite controversies over historical accuracy in oral records, as in [[Alex Haley]]'s book ''[[Roots: The Saga of an American Family]]'' and the [[Roots (1977 miniseries)|popular TV mini-series based on it]], many historians believe that African [[griot]]s, or oral memoirists, provide an historical oral record.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rwodzi |first=Aaron |title=Historiography of oral traditions |url=https://www.academia.edu/38081422}}</ref>

==="Hitler Diaries" hoax===
The [[nadir]] of his career came in 1983, when as a director of ''[[The Times]]'', Trevor-Roper (by now [[Baron Dacre]] of Glanton) made statements that authenticated the so-called [[Hitler Diaries]].<ref>{{cite book |title= Selling Hitler: The Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century – The Faking of the Hitler "Diaries" |last= Harris |first= Robert |publisher= New York: Pantheon |date= 1986 |isbn= 9780394553368 |url-access= registration |url= https://archive.org/details/sellinghitler00harr }}</ref> Others were unsure: holocaust denier [[David Irving]], for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, before finally stating that they were a forgery. Historians [[Gerhard Weinberg]] and [[Eberhard Jäckel]] had also expressed doubt regarding the authenticity of the diaries.<ref>Richard J. Evans, ''Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial'' (London, 2002), p. 25.</ref>

Within two weeks, forensic scientist [[Julius Grant]] demonstrated that the diaries were forgeries. The ensuing fiasco gave Trevor-Roper's enemies the opportunity to criticise him openly, while Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the diaries raised questions about his integrity: ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries if and only if they were genuine.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

Trevor-Roper explained that he had been given assurances (that turned out to be false) about how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer"{{who|date=December 2024}}, and about the age of the paper and ink used in them and of their authenticity. Nonetheless, this incident prompted the satirical magazine ''[[Private Eye]]'' to nickname him "Hugh Very-Ropey", "Lord Lucre of Claptout", or more concisely, "Lord Facre".

Despite the shadow this cast over his later career, he continued to write and publish and his work remained well received.<ref>''Rowse and Trevor-Roper defined'', [[Donald Adamson]], {{cite web|url=http://www.theroselandinstitute.co.uk/html/cornish_banner_publications_14.html|title=The Cornish Banner|date=August 2014|access-date=10 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101141837/http://www.theroselandinstitute.co.uk/html/cornish_banner_publications_14.html|archive-date=1 November 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>