History may at first seem a strange subject for “about being here” which seeks to describe and interpret here and now. However, our present is infomed by our past. We are what we were; the sum total of our experience. Regular readers of “about being here” will have noticed how I often give a brief history or biography of my past life in leading up to describe my present one.
Likewise our society is the sum total of its past. To understand where we are today it is helpful to know where we came from. So history is a valuable subject.
I have been prompted to write about history by having just read Graham Swift’s exccellent novel “Waterland”. Its main charcter, Tom Crick, is a history teacher struggling to come to terms with his own past and at the same time puzzling about the very nature of history. One of the root meanings of “history” he says is “an inquiry” (as in “natural history”): we delve into the past seeking explanations. At the same time history as we like it presented is a “story” (the same word etymologically) a narrative that takes us from A to B. History is one way of satisfying our craving for stories - and what happened next?
In Alan Bennett’s “History Boys” there is a memorable moment in a mock Oxbridge entrance interview where the student is asked “What is history?” and gives the answer of unintended profundity: “It’s just one f***ing thing after another”.
All history is related with the benefit of hindsight and from the point of view of the victor or survivor. Today, for example, post cold war, the narrative of the Western world describes Communism as a failed experiment. All societies devise their own more or less official history to explain why they are where they are and to justify themselves, looking backwards from a very specific point in time. So the Communist sates’ history described in Marxist terms how human progress inevitably led to their ideal society. Often societies then indeed prescribe the teaching of that history to their schoolchildren so that they will fit into that society. Even if in our “western democratic society” the teaching of history is less prescriptive, it still embodies a consensual view of our present society’s interpretation and explanation of its origins.
History is by its very nature selective. The historian selects the facts that best explain where he is now. E.H. Carr’s “What is history?” is very good on what is a historical fact. Every day there are countless events but only some will later turn out to have had relevance in deciding the future. Obviously, our own lives are just the same, at one and the same time routine and utterly chaotic, it is only many years down the line that we can attribute importance to an event: I met so-and-so, who later became my wife, as opposed to I met so-and-so whom I never saw again. A logical order is only read into what happened afterwards. Our own invented biography and society’s invented history represent an attempt to make something meaningful out of life. The exercise is at once artificial and reassuring. Above all it tells the story which we like to hear.
History was my third subject at A-level at school. Actually I had wanted to do Art, for which I like to think I have a certain flair, but it was deemed to be not academic enough for a boy aiming to get into Oxford. At our first A-level lesson our teacher, Mr Kilty (who was later to appear on Mastermind on the TV, special subject hagiography), gave us the good news that “history is a slog subject”. There would be mountains of books to read. And so it turned out: I think I spent the same amount of time working on history as on French and German put together. In class we were given the factual outline and then encouraged to read widely. We soon found out that different historians had different views, explanations and interpretations of the same facts. Some of their names I can still remember: A.J.P. Taylor, E. Hobsbawm, E. Thompson, J.H. Plumb,, A. Cobham, R. Blake, to name a few. It was a good education because we were taught to analyse, compare and take what was useful to write an essay.
History like many other subjects is vast and boundless, so you have to specialize. We did 18th and 19th century British and European, (usefully supplemented by the American Revolution), stopping at the causes of World War I and the Russian Revolution. In retrospect it was a very useful area as it immediately preceded what was on our general knowledge radar about the twentieth century. It is a period that covers the building of the modern nation state and I have found that very useful as a background to working in contemporary European politics. I certainly feel that I could not do my job safely without an awareness of history and consequent sensitivities.
I went on to study literature at university, which is now predominantly what I read, but I still enjoy the occasional history book.
I think my favourite is Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. I hasten to add that so far I have read only the first three of the six volumes and even then some of the chapters in abridgement. The point is that Gibbon’s massive opus takes us from the apogee of the Roman Empire, as he saw it, at the time of Augustus all the way through to the fall of Constantinople, or the Empire in the East, in 1453. Writing as a European in the late 18thC, that is for his time almost a universal history. Gibbon is to be relished for his Augustan English prose, which is an absolute delight. He is also very funny in his irony. The historian is always present and we learn as much about Gibbon and his Enlightenment age as we do about his subject. I think that is fine as it is clear that it is his view, something which some historians try to avoid, dressing up their account as the only objective version. Gibbon also has an over-arching vision, he knows where he is going. His is the story of a gradual undermining of the old Roman civic virtues, not least by the introduction of Christianity. I like my essayist to have a clear argument, I can always disagree with him if I want to.
Above all, Gibbon has the good historian’s knack of telling a good story, with an eye for the kind of detail that captures the reader’s attention, the anecdotal and outrageous that illustrate character. He is good at what all readers of history relish alongside the story, that is information that gives some insight into daily life, the human element.
As the title tells us “Decline and Fall” is a story of decay, human failings, baddies. This is the kind of thing that readers of history (and literature) are really interested in.
The kind of history that would have us believe in relentless progress towards an ever better society is a bore and rings false. Life just isn’t like that. Things go round in cycles. Mankind does not really progress. We don’t actually learn from history. We make the same mistakes, because each generation has to learn from experience for itself. History repeats itself; some say, first as tragedy, then as farce. It’s recognizing ourselves in the recurrent cycles that brings history to life for us.
History tells us how we got where we are, but at the same time that we have not really come that far.
