Monday Forum: marcellous on history

Marcellous made a long comment on History, history wars and the wonder of the on-line world that I thought was worth bringing up in full as a contribution to discussion. Think of it as a guest post! I haven't commented at this stage to prevent my own views interfering with reaction.

Marcellous wrote:

This is very rough, but I'd say "history" really exists on three levels.

The first is, broadly, cultural general knowledge. Necessary for a liberal education, also for consideration of political and economic questions where analogies or lessons are drawn from history. This carries with a the lesson, on numerous levels, that the past is a foreign country.

The second is a "civics" strand. It is an open question whether that is first or second. In a way that is a subset of the cultural general knowledge, but it is the bit where the state cares to get involved in its own interests.

You need some things for both. I was shocked recently in China when my language tutor, a young research student in a humanities subject, clearly had no idea when the Ming dynasty yielded to the Qing (not, incidentally, the Quing, as I recently heard Brendan Nelson call it at the National Press Club).

Arguments about the school syllabus, I think, mostly swirl around these two, especially when we are talking about the bit of the syllabus which will be compulsory. (History as an elective is in severe decline in high schools these days.)

The civics is the bit where either selection or the slant of analysis (explicit or implicit) becomes a political argument.

Of course there is an intersection between the two. If you teach the industrial revolution, what else do you want to say about unions, the combination acts, child labour laws, labour law generally,....oh no! the rise of the labour parties in the UK and Australia as the political advocates for the organised working class! Propaganda! (We could also do Madame Bovary and the money lending acts as well, I suppose; or the "English", "Glorious" and French revolutions.) Under the present Federal government such revolutionary talk should probably stop at 1830.)

Both of these over all tend to be, at least at first, a question of facts and conclusions. They can be populated by ripping yarns such as the version of the Punic Wars you give (though don't you think there is a bit of a subtext about the Pax Romana and the Pax Americana lurking beneath this?). Or it could be (as I remember learning in agonising detail) the history of the reform of the voting franchise in the UK in the nineteenth century up to universal adult suffrage.

The third aspect of history is probably the subject rather than the subject matter: a diachronic analysis (otherwise it is historical geography) of change over time - however analytically or narratively constructed, where the key intellectual disciplines are the use and marshalling of evidence to tell the story/give the analysis. This only really enters the picture in senior high school (to a point) and after.

Ancient history is more fun because even now the sources are more sparse so you can exercise more imagination joining the dots. I still remember a thrill in Medieval History studying (I think) Arnold of Brescia when I realised that I could read (albeit in translation and with less knowledge of the context) practically all of the source available to anyone. The closer you get to now, the more that freedom is circumscribed by how many more sources/facts/artefacts are available - not that I would say (as you do) that it makes things dogmatic."

Reflections

I brought marcellous's comment up as a post because of the reflections it triggered.

To begin with, we need to distinguish between history and historiography, the writing of history. In a way, history just is, the story of the past waiting to be discovered. Historiography is very different, for what we chose to write about and the way we write about it is always based on and influenced by the present, including our own short pasts. What we think of as history is therefore always selective, changing.

We also need to distinguish between history and historical method. We may chose our topics, but how we approach those topics, the techniques we use to analyse the evidence, is a different matter. Here there is a a body of professional knowledge, of technique, that should be applied. The habit of some, especially French intellectuals such as  Michael Foucault and his disciples, of squeezing, forcing, history to support their models may sometimes have yielded insights, but I never though of it as history because it breached what I saw as the fundamental canons of historical method. I also found it quite indigestible, at times eye-glazingly so. 

A key feature of good history is that it must be refutable. I like and write what marcellous called a diachronic analysis of change over time, however analytically or narratively constructed, where the key intellectual disciplines are the use and marshalling of evidence to tell the story/give the analysis.

In writing, I am very conscious of my own selectivity. I select and present evidence in a way that makes sense, at least to me, that allows me to tell a story. However, that story is not what actually happened, but my own perception at a point as to what happened. I am creating patterns and relationships that feel right to me. However, I know from my own life experience just how messy and complex reality is.

Everything that I write and say, the simplifications that I make, is likely to be wrong to some degree. Part of my role as an historian is to make my sources and analytical processes transparent enough to allow proper challenge, Of course I don't do this all the time. In writing my weekly history column for the Armidale Express, for example, I want to interest and tell a story. I am not going to load that with all the paraphernalia that goes with more professional writing.

Marcellous referred to civics. This, he suggested, is the bit where either selection or the slant of analysis (explicit or implicit) becomes a political argument. I would broaden this to cover the broader formal curriculum.

In its way, history is deeply political. You can see this at present in the disputes over the Armenian genocide, the way that Byzantine history still affects modern Greece, the stories of the Balkan conflicts or the continued dispute between China, the  conflict between Japan and China over the rape of Nanking or Aboriginal re-interpretations of Australian history.  

The things that we chose to study, or are chosen for us to study, determine our memories and perceptions of the past. That which is excluded may still exist in history, but for practical purposes it dies from our memories; It takes time, but it happens. That is why there has been so much venom in the history debates, for here we have not just questions of selection, but also of rejection. What we study and indeed what we should think about it is dictated.

I think that the modern history that marcellous and I did at school was probably similar, based on his descriptions. You cannot study political or social history in Australia or England without addressing the question of the union movement and the rise of the Labor (Labour) parties. When I first studied modern history at school, these were one thread in the narrative, The same thread came through in the school economic texts in looking at institutional structures in Australia. That is why, I think, that I retain a view that unions have a legitimate role even when other aspects of my personal views might suggest the opposite.

I have chosen the union case quite deliberately, for several years ago I argued that the central problem facing the union movement lay in the way that changes in curriculum and the teaching of history had effectively amputated the union present from the union past in popular memory. This is not a comment on the Howard period, by the way. The changes happened earlier.

While I may disagree very strongly on particular manifestations of current unionism, I remain sympathetic to the broad role of the union movement because I know the historical context. I found and indeed find unionism to be a good thing in historical terms.

I am out of time this morning. I will conclude these reflections tonight.

Tonight stretched into two days! Seems to do that when there are other things on. The US Government shut down has begun; that and other economic news has been the focus of my attention!

In comments, Neil drew my attention to a 2008 post of his: Now, what did I learn half a century ago?. This book is from that post. It was one of the older texts. In comments, marcellous also corrected my interpretation that the history that he did at school was similar to that that I had studied, although I think that the topics marcellous highlighted were common.

Memory is an imperfect beast. I have lost count of the number of times that I have made errors on this blog when relying on memory alone. The question of what was studied in school or university history and when is an example. I have a broad pattern in my mind, but when it comes to detail at a point and especially key inflection points in content or approach, accuracy is lacking.

Course content is a reflection of what was considered important at the time; the way the subject was taught also reflects broader education and indeed social attitudes at the time; the two interact, further influenced by the technology available. All this said, I don't think that it affects my point that  in choosing what to study in history, we also choose what to forget.