IN MEMORIAM: Peter Brock (2007)

(1920-2006)A preeminent authority on East European history and the world's foremost scholar on the history of world-wide pacifism, Peter Brock, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto, died at his home on Sunday, 28 May 2006, at the age of 86. Engaged in scholarship until the end, his last two books were published in the final months of his life, one on Polish history, which he co-edited,' and the other on grass-roots resistance to war.2Peter Brock was the author, co-author or editor of 30 scholarly books and large number of articles.3 other historian of Eastern Europe has equalled his sensitive and incisive treatment of so many of the of the area. His contribution to the evolving field of the history of pacifism was even more crucial. No ideology, wrote Oxford political scientist Martin Ceadel, more to one academic than pacifism owes to Peter Brock. That the scope and richness of this historical tradition can now be recognized is largely the result of Brock's sympathetic and dedicated scholarship, which was begun when pacifism was an unfashionable subject.4Peter Brock was born in 1920 on the Channel Island of Guernsey, United Kingdom. On both his mother's and his father's side he comes of distinguished military stock. Already as child, however, he seems to have begun to buck the family's military tradition. A favourite story of his wife, Carmen-his loving companion and support for more than three decades-was that younger members of the family were expected to address grand-papa as general, and regularly did so, whereas Peter always called him simply grandfather.5As an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 1930s, Peter came under the influence of secular pacifism, much in the air at the time, but it was not until the onset of the Second World War that his views began to cohere under the intellectual influence of Bart de Ligt, Dutch pacifist.6 Peter took his stand as conscientious objector, was briefly imprisoned, which he described in an autobiographical memoir composed after his retirement.7 He served out the rest of the war on alternative service, mainly in an English hospital. Meanwhile he had been strongly drawn to Quaker ideas about war and social justice, although remaining religiously, as he said, a bit of an outsider.After the war, he was accepted for work with Quaker relief, first among displaced persons in Western Germany and then in devastated Poland. This was his introduction to Eastern Europe. When the Quaker mission was closed, Peter Brock chose to remain in Poland and undertook graduate study at the Jagellonian University in Cracow. He left Poland with his first doctorate in history and lifelong attachment to Poles and their culture. After completing second doctorate in history at Oxford University, Peter Brock taught at the University of Toronto for the one year, 1957-1958, then successively at the University of Alberta, Smith College, and Columbia University. He returned to the University of Toronto in 1966, and it became his home. In 1991, the University recognized his exceptional scholarly leadership and achievements by awarding him the highest distinction it could confer, the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.Peter Brock was remarkable as leading historian of Polish and East European history because of his curiosity, respect for, and knowledge of many different peoples. Best known for his work on the Poles, he was also historian of the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Kashubs, the Lusatian Sorbs, the Slovaks and the Ukrainians. In each case he acquired enough of command of their often difficult languages to ferret out important patterns of their past through the study of sources. His writing concentrated, though not exclusively, on populist and nationalist ideas and movements that aimed in modern times at freeing from the tutelage and domination of elites and empires. He was inclined to take his stand with the socalled little peoples of the region, its underdogs. …