The Uselessness of History

When we contemplate the state of the world – our world, not China or India – it is tempting to look back and look for signs that we will soon pull us out of the morass we are in. If history cannot give us such signs, we may conclude, what point is there in studying it?

We may think we are living in an age of unusual difficulties, and it is not hard to find reasons why. In the decades before 1914 there was also an overwhelming sense of malaise. Kaiser Franz Joseph, the venerable head of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was being torn apart by internal tensions, said, after being on the throne for more than sixty years of ever-accelerating troubles, “Let us go down with dignity.”

In 1904 many melancholy young men lamented what they thought of as the hopeless decadence surrounding them. Ten years later they found themselves on a battlefield valiantly fighting for their country, profoundly relieved that war had giving them a purpose for living after all.

In 1978 Barbara Tuchman, the author of The Guns of August, published a book about the “calamitous fourteenth century” and gave it the title The Distant Mirror. The title made her intentions clear. The fourteenth century was a mirror of our own. But she carefully refrained from claiming that we could pick up useful hints from reading her book. (It focused on northern France.) She did say that “learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.” But presumably that was an observation about human behaviour, rather than a statement about the study of history.

The fourteenth century was a glittering time of chivalry and cathedrals, but also of the Hundred Years’ War, peasant uprisings, and of the Great Plague, perhaps the worst natural disaster in history. Barbara Tuchman began her book with a discussion of The Little Ice Age, a change in climate that lowered the average temperature of Europe until the eighteenth century. No doubt her description of this climate change and its effects is useful to scientists.

The one thing that might definitely cheer us up is that the fourteenth century led to the fifteenth century, i.e., to the Renaissance and the Age of Explorations. In our eyes that was certainly a change for the better. Whether the living conditions of the population of northern France, or in other parts of Europe, actually improved and people were happier is another question. They could certainly do without the Great Plague. But any meaningful comparison would depend on the criteria used and the cultural assumptions of the historian who makes the judgement.

All this suggests that George Santayana’s statement that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is pure rhetoric.

One may draw correct or incorrect conclusions from memories of the past. Thanks to the passage of time circumstances are never exactly the same and perspectives alter.

The American reluctance during the Cold War to engage in dialogue with the Soviets on the ground that this would be a replay of the appeasement policies of the late ’thirties (shades of Chamberlain) was based on a false analogy.

So – why study history if we cannot draw any concrete conclusions acceptable by most people?

For the same reason that we study any other branch of the humanities. To find out what homo sapiens has gone through and what he is capable of helps us understand who we are.

For those with imagination and a sense of adventure it is also greatly enjoyable.