We speak about history as if it belongs to everyone. We tell ourselves that the past is a shared inheritance, something we all have access to by virtue of living after it.
But in practice, only some people are taught how to enter it. The past is public; access to it is not.
History does not sit there waiting to be picked up like a forgotten object. It must be learned: through language, through literacy, through confidence, through resources, through an invitation into the spaces where interpretation happens. And those invitations are unevenly distributed.
Access to history is shaped by class, geography, education, money, cultural authority, and institutional gatekeeping. And because history is ultimately a story about who matters, limits on access become limits on belonging.
To learn the past is to inherit something powerful:
- intellectual capital,
- cultural legitimacy,
- interpretive authority.
Not everyone receives the tools to claim that inheritance.
Education as Gatekeeping
Historical thinking is not natural. It is a trained literacy, a language of patterns and questions and contexts that must be taught. Yet the training is offered unevenly.
Some children grow up surrounded by books, museum trips, Latin options, enrichment programmes, parents who speak the language of universities and heritage. They learn to see themselves as the kind of people who read old texts, who know how to pronounce foreign names, who answer questions confidently because someone taught them their voice belonged in a classroom.
Coming from a working-class Welsh background, I learned very early that access to the past is uneven. My school did not offer Latin, nor were museum visits or archive trips part of the curriculum. And unless the topic was mining or industrial heritage, I almost never heard accents like mine speaking with authority about history. Medieval studies was something I found only later, at university, through persistence rather than expectation. It took years before I felt entitled to ask the kinds of questions that other students had been trained to treat as natural. My experience is not exceptional; it is simply another example of how the path to the past narrows long before a student ever reaches a seminar room.
Others grow up far from these worlds. In parts of Wales, medieval outreach is rare, linguistic opportunities are limited, and schools work with shrinking budgets. The medieval past feels distant not in time, but in class. History becomes a subject you take in school, not a world you are trained to move through.
The British Museum
The Medieval Past Was Never Universal
It is tempting to romanticise the Middle Ages as a time when people lived closer to the sources of history, when chronicles and stories belonged to everyone. But medieval historiography was the product of gatekeepers.
The people who wrote the past were not ordinary villagers or artisans. They were:
- monastic scribes,
- clerics trained in Latin,
- royal officials,
- men supported by patrons,
- authors whose survival depended on political favour.
The Middle Ages were not recorded by everyone – they were recorded for power, by power.
What survives is shaped by who had the literacy, time, and institutional backing to write.
What vanished was often what ordinary people thought, feared, believed, or loved.
Access to the past was a privilege long before modern universities existed.
When we ask “Who gets to learn the past?” today, we are really tracing a medieval genealogy of exclusion.
University Access & Modern Authority
Jump to the present:
Who, realistically, gets to study the medieval world at a high level?
Who learns:
- Latin?
- Old English?
- Old Norse?
- Medieval Welsh?
- Manuscript studies?
- Palaeography?
These skills require things not everyone has:
- money for tuition, books, travel;
- time not taken by caregiving or work;
- mentors who show you the path;
- networks that make the field feel permeable;
- stability: financial, emotional, geographic.
The ability to read the medieval past literally depends on what languages you can afford to learn.
It is one thing to say “you can learn Latin for free on Duolingo”; it is another to be taught Medieval Latin by someone who knows what they are doing.
The pipeline to medieval studies narrows quickly. Some walk into it naturally. Others must push their way in, or hope someone holds the door.
Public History Isn’t as Democratic as It Appears
One might think TikTok historians, YouTube explainers, and museum Instagram accounts democratise the past. And in some ways, they do. Millions of people now encounter the medieval world without ever opening a textbook.
But even here, authority is coded by:
- accent,
- confidence,
- aesthetics,
- class presentation.
Who sounds like an “expert”?
Who looks like someone the algorithm should recommend?
A Glaswegian or Welsh accent explaining monasticism will often be treated as “less serious” than a neutral Home Counties voice. A woman of colour explaining the Norman Conquest is likely to receive comments questioning her legitimacy.
Digital spaces reproduce the hierarchies they claim to escape.
The platform may be open, but the audience has been taught whom to recognise.
Why Access Matters
If history shapes how we see the world, then who gets to learn history shapes who gets to feel at home in the world.
People from working-class families may never see themselves as inheritors of the medieval past. Students from minority cultures often encounter a version of history that erases or belittles their heritage. Carers, parents, disabled students, and those who work long hours often cannot access the unpaid internships, summer courses, study abroad programmes, or research events that build academic capital.
Not everyone feels entitled to interpret the past.
Not everyone sees themselves in the archive.
Not everyone is taught that their voice has a place in the conversation.
And when you don’t see yourself in the past, it becomes harder to imagine yourself in the future.
The Ethics of Knowledge
The past isn’t dead; it’s a shared inheritance.
But if only a few people are taught how to unlock it, then the rest of us inherit nothing.
To democratise history is not simply to teach dates — it is to open the doors to belonging. It is to recognise that historical thinking must be taught generously, repeatedly, creatively, and accessibly.
History will always be political, because access will always be unequal.
The real question is whether we are willing to make room for new interpreters of the old world — people whose voices have long been kept outside the scriptoria, the seminar room, and the archive.
The past is big enough for all of us.
The challenge is making the path to it just as wide.
Want to Read More?
- Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
- Beard, Mary. Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations. London: Profile Books, 2013.
- Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
Medieval Letters 
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