The Roots of Oral History: Exploring Contrasting Attitudes to Elite, Corporate, and Business Oral History in Britain and the U.S.

By contrast with the U.S., where oral history is valued by corporate bodies and where oral historians actively engage with business history, British oral historians continue to regard elite oral history with deep suspicion. And for their part, U.K. business historians and archivists remain skeptical about the value of oral testimony. Few British oral historians venture beyond a well-worn focus on working-class experience, the marginalized and the voiceless. While advocacy-led oral history should remain a key focus for oral historians, so must we also use our methodology to document our society more widely and to step outside our comfort zones and engage with interview subjects which challenge our radical credentials. This paper explores reasons for the marked contrast of attitude to elite oral history between Britain and the U.S., arguing that it is rooted in the rather different origins of oral history in the two countries. It draws on corporate oral history project work at the British Library—such as oral histories of the British publishing industry, the Tesco supermarket chain, Royal Mail, branding consultancy Wolff Olins, and the financial center of the City of London including Barings Bank—to argue the case for oral history's contribution to the public understanding of business history and corporate culture.