Is History History?
Nothing changes as often as history.
This dawned after yet another claim considered canon was revealed to be no longer consensus.
Histories read a decade ago can no longer be relied on.
Opening the latest account of a favourite historical figure – Spartacus, say – I expect the closing to be different.
That this time ‘the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history’ will conquer Rome.
New artefacts are unearthed every day.
Perhaps this explains the evolving nature of historical truth?
No.
In this instance, the facts hadn’t changed.
Only the interpretation of them.
The same sources were cited too.
But interpreted differently.
Written history claims to be a bigger truth-teller than historical literature.
Is it fibbing?
Or has historical backcasting revealed itself to be as contingent as weather forecasting?
Historical Fictions
A few years ago an eminent historian chided a novelist for the unhistoricity of historical fiction.
His Parthian shot?
‘No one reads Tolstoy for the history any more.’
The novelist didn’t counter:
‘Perhaps the reason for this is that no one reads the historians he drew on for their history any more.’
Or:
‘Will anyone read you for the history in a hundred and fifty years time?’
So, the historian patronised on.
Insinuating that history was a form of objective inquiry on a par with science.
This is ironic because:
a: philosophers argue that science is a subjective pursuit that proceeds via paradigms.
b: the subject historian was notorious for peddling politically motivated interpretations of events.
Did I give up reading history?
No.
But I’m no longer sure that when I move from literature to it, from mythology to it, I’m experiencing distinct modes of event processing.
Wig on or Whig off, history changes its mind as often as our historian does.
A history does, at least.
The End Of A History?
The Cambridge Dictionary proposes that the informal meaning of history is:
‘Something that happened or ended a long time ago and is not important now.’
This sums up a history.
A particular that fancies itself a universal.
History is the accumulation of artefacts.
Artefacts relate to it as facts do to science.
Both are agreements of reference in time and space.
Abstract particulars from universals.
Isolate coordinates of usefulness.
Consensus taxonomies.1
Dates, for instance, do not exist, per se.
We coin them for the sake of utility.
Ditto objects.
People and places.
Napoleon is an object particularised out of the universal humanity.
Ajaccio, his place of birth, an abstraction from the universal earth.
Research historians – archaeologists in the field, library – preserve artefacts for history.
Historians press-gang them to crew their arguments.
So, though the historian insinuated otherwise, a distinction can be drawn between history –
A platonic form –
And a history –
Its earthly but less earthy instantiation.
Like justice, there is a difference between an ideal –
Faultless as a god –
And the prosecution of any single incarnation of it.
This wouldn’t present a problem if we read history.
But we don’t.
We read a history.
Applied history.
Historicisations.
What Nietzsche called monumental history.
The author of a history considers themself a Newton of the science.
But is more like a compiler of a popular science book.
Bound for the bestseller list.
The Einsteins remain in their patent offices.
Drafting their peer reviews.
The Difference Between A History And Literature
Is there a difference between the art practised by the author of a history and that of the historical novelist?
Yes.
But it amounts to little more than one of degree.
Often the possession of a degree.
The novelist reaches further.
But the historian stretches when starting a sentence with ‘Napoleon must have thought…’
Both grasp conjecture till their phalanges fizz.
Fling argument over artefacts to ensnare them.
Transgress by way of abduction.
And what they abduct they sanctify.
Declare it good, gold.
Spin sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters out of maybes.
The Difference Between A History And Fantasy
Fairy tale > myth and legend > historical fiction > a history
A history is at the opposite end of a continuum that embraces fantasy.
But it is on this continuum.
Folk and fairy tales are decocted out of cautions for the vulnerable.
Myths and legends out of excuses for the fury of fate.
Both incorporate artefacts for practical purposes.
One to warn against incautious action.
The other to inspire heroism.
Literature was written out of both.
And a history?
Paraphrasing Popper’s reservations regarding psychology:
I enjoy, admire, even respect it –
But it isn’t physics, is it?
A whiff of the Just So story hangs over it.
How the British lion got its roar and all that.
Is A History Science?
This begs the question.
And not in the sense our historian intended.
But in which science regards itself.
Scientists concede that their job is to establish refutable contentions.
If these prove not merely falsifiable but false, they abandon them.
When they reach beyond facts, they concede that they are hypothesising.
Call the products of these endeavours theories.
In a history, theory is not labelled such.
It remains a history.
Nevertheless, a history shares something with science.
Belief in its rolling rightness.
That it has progressed.
Rather than exhibited variation.
Literature – art – has no such pretensions.
Promotes the paintings in the Lascaux cave as proudly as those on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Accepts that an argument can be made for doing so at least.
Indeed, that argument is all.
Is the art.
That there is no such thing as the truth.
Merely, a truth.
But a historian insists that the definite article befits their truth.
And that they will reveal it.
Okay, we were wrong then –
Then –
Yes, then, too –
But now we’re really onto something.
And won’t be hoodwinked again.
Won’t hoodwink you again.
What motivates this belief?
Career.
Its demand to kindle interest.
By stating what isn’t known.
The moral hazard?
There may be a reason why a contention is unknown:
It is unknowable.
What Is A History?
There is artefact.
There is truth.
There is a history.
None are precisely equivalent.
Artefacts – dusty, dull – are incontrovertible.
But when historians take them up in pursuit of a big idea, for practical purposes, to turn is into was, they invite the brain scientist’s caution about memories and imaginings:
Related, cross-wired, they may be confused one for t’other.
Hume – historian – ought to have spotted this.
Remarked that it is doubtful that you can turn a this was into a this must have been.
That a historian doesn’t parade regiments of artefacts.
They deploy them in argument.
Task them with any motive they wish to weaponise.
And not just artefacts.
Gossip, opinion, hearsay.
Old news.
From old newspapers – yellow and yellowing.
Translations of translations.
Chinese whispers, Russian telephone, body English.
The historian picks this artefact.
Unpicks that one.
Penelopes the lot into holey cloth.
A net that shrouds itself the moment it is unfurled.
Consequently, after two and a half millennia of activity, the olive pit hasn’t fallen far from Herodotus’ tree.
A history is still an improvable beast.
Burdening the concerns of its author more than their subjects.
Ploughing old events into an argument that proves a contemporary truth.
Proof A History Isn’t An Objective Product
If it were, there would be one of them only.
This would be added to as and when new artefacts were unearthed.
An antiquarian’s inventory, it would list such items as:
Napoleon was born in 1769.
Napoleon was born in Ajaccio.
Instead, there are numberless accounts of the same subject.
No two the spit.
Not in terms of terms merely, of style, as literature.
Each presents a different conclusion.
Though they draw on the same material and biases.
But they incorporate bibliographies?
Helpful as a recipe listing ingredients without quantities.
They cite references?
And forget to mention how they interpreted what they abstracted.
Or tell us what they left behind.
You could check?
Could.
Don’t.
The Sons And Daughters Of Lies And Histories
Who is to blame for this?
Historians.
Rather than pinpointing pivotal moments, they gouge them out.
In this sense, all of them are counterfactualists.
Subpoenaing artefacts that prove their argument only.
Witnesses that overmine their case.
Open and shut before they examined the evidence.
Are all historians bad?
A few consciously distort the past in an effort to change the future.
But not all historians are bad actors.
Though all are actors.
Unfortunately, lasting damage is done not by bad actors (both senses of the term) but by good.
How?
By not acknowledging the limitations of their art.
Not recognising same even.
Most are victim-perpetrators.
Undone by the suspect usuals:
Ignorance, prejudice, ambition – All the markers of mortality.
It is possible to construct a history based on artefacts exclusively.
Not impossible.
But few historians do so.
The temptation to plug the gaps between overpowers them.
So, as soon as they turn from what is known to have been the case towards what must have been the case they are as often wrong as right.
At first, the transition passes unnoticed.
If light is thrown on it, it dazzles.
As a broken artefact – following restoration – startles on being unveiled.
To all but a professional eye, the fabric added, glue goes unmarked.
Unfortunately, materials age at different rates.
So, over time, the distinctions grow marked.
This is why few films date as quickly as the historical epic.
The history they’re based on – the latest – discolours faster than the film stock.
Movies set in their own time maintain a once-was self-consistency.
Historical epics exist in no-time.
Project: once upon a time this wasn’t.
The Dramatic Fallacy
These days there are as many televisual as literal historians.
But even before the technology arrived, back in the BC, historians anticipated ad breaks.
No sooner had Herodotus originated the form, in fact.
Why?
Auditioning artefacts, it occurred to his followers that there was an audience for this stuff now.
So, they consulted Aristotle’s Poetics.
Delineated catharsis, discovery, complication, dénouement, tragedy.
Observed his unities of action, place and time by emphasising great men, city-states, epochs.
Following his three-act structure, the historian discovered that they could incorporate artefacts that keyed into the dramatic arc only.
Had a beginning (cause), middle (argument) and end (conclusion).
All that did not advance plot – the seeming somnolent majority – were excised.
Or lumpened together.
Thus the historian insinuated that this is what was going on at a particular point in time.
All that was going on then.
Why Do Others Swallow The Myth Of A History?
Historians conceive of events in dramatic terms to tension their arguments.
But why do others make their job easier?
Support their theses by conceiving of themselves as untragic heroes?
Napoleon knew he was more horse than rider.
As in hock to luck as Tolstoy would later reveal him to be.
But it flattered him to maintain he commanded history as he did troops.
Was not a point in timespace but its point.
A light-beam jockey.
For him, the object of history was to justify his present, not reclaim the past.
A history swallows the pretensions of its heroes.
Values their hopes – hypes – over their actions.
Why Do We Read A History?
Historians insist we are indebted to the past.
But no age before history felt it owed it anything.
Why should we?
Causes, movements – We thrive despite such considerations.
Live once.
For ourselves.
Against them.
Not on account of them.
The stories spun by historians, applauded by Napoleons are not the stuff of our lives.
History is written for those who seek acclamation.
So, ignores the majority who do not require applause to justify themselves.
Revolting, warring, empire-building — These overlays are imposed by figures who cannot game the quotidian.
What they regard as superficial we respect as authentic.
After historical figures are done with us, we return to real living.
A conception of value anathema to historians.
Concerns they dismiss as mundane constitute our real worth.
Liberty, equality, equitability – We require these, yes.
But Napoleons only grant three wishes to divert attention.
And magic them away as soon as they are crowned.
For us, history is a topic of conversation.
We remain interested in past practises – the horrors particularly – so long as they make us feel better about our own age.
About ourselves.
Thrillingly compressed, a history is safe because concluded.
Surging through the eternal present, we outrun it.
Does It Still Have A Purpose?
Historians would have us believe that without history we are bunk.
It is, rather, that without the myth of its importance, they are hawking hokum.
We experience it reluctantly.
Something that has to be learned.
A cause to validate the effects of our masters.
The efforts of their amanuenses.
What ground do they advance to justify our attention?
The lesson of history.
The claim that looking back informs going forward.
But history is a poor teacher.
Or its students poor students.
‘Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’
Interesting that Churchill – historical figure, historian – amended Santayana.
What he might have misquoted it to – given his historical context – was:
Those who remember the past determine to repeat it.
Great men learn history.
Have to if they are to emulate its monsters.
A history is a story of what was that they read for justification of what will be.
Do We Learn From History?
Why should we?
It is the story of ways that failed.
Must have done.
Otherwise, we’d still be in thrall to them.
But, surely, it teaches us what not to do?
Not even that.
The only lesson of a history learned by all is:
No one learns the lesson of a history.
Tyrants regard it as a justification to tyrannise.
Not forsake tyrannising.
They don’t learn from a history.
They learn to use a history.
So, Napoleon will always invade Russia.
Though he knows that Napoleons before him surrendered Grande Armées as a consequence.
Why?
This Russia – his Russia – isn’t the one that frostbit them.
Not precisely.
The latest historian ditto.
Yes.
Even historians fail to learn the lesson of a history.
Know that they will never capture Russia.
But never relinquish the opportunity to do so.
What Remains?
Surmise, supposition, speculation – All in the service of a lesson that no one heeds.
For that reason, a history deserves no more house-room than philosophy.
Which developed out of superstition too.
And, after two and a half millennia of attempts to dignify itself, exhibits a tendency to relapse.
Does a history have a future?
‘It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.’
Nietzsche might have added:
It is only as a parable that a history can be temporarily justified.
It wants to be regarded as a science, anything but literature, but serves a purpose if it remains ur-literature.
Or myth.
Delivers a truth.
Not the truth.
Puts artefacts to work for us.
Like science, a history will never discover truth.
But, in not fulfilling this remit, exude a priceless by-product.
With science, this is technology.
With a history?
The same one our no longer ruling royals – whose lives it persists in gilding – offer:
Entertainment.
Culture with a small cult.
So, we’ll continue to escape to the past when the present palls.
Need more meteorologists of myth to backcast the digital data weathering The Cloud.
Though the technology may render this impracticable.
Preserve too many artefacts for any historian to dust-off.
Ensure they never graduate from the first-pass:
Yesterday’s news.
So, there may be no twenty-second century historians.
Only dead journalists and Tiktokers.
Or, like bread-making, the preparation of a history may attract progressively more amateurs.
Not historians of local history, but local historians of monumental history.
The future of the past?
A gazillion Gibbons fermenting their own starter-myths.
A million Macaulays kneading their own arguments.