Before we continue with the premises à opinion à argument à thesis part of the model, we need to understand how history interacts with the past. There is such a thing as an objective past. Stuff actually happened, whether we have a record of it or not. Tens of billions of human beings lived, ate, successfully procreated, and died, regardless of whether or not we have any record of their actions.
Unfortunately for modern scholars, very little of this past exists in the archeological record, and less still exists in writing. New forms of acquiring historical information, like DNA studies and carbon dating, can help flesh out the past, but there are still massive gaps in what we know that will never be known without a time machine. Even with a time machine, we would be limited by the number of time machines and the availability of people willing to go back in time to observe a lot of really boring stuff. So no matter how hard we try, our understanding of the past is limited by the historical record, our ability to process the record, and our subjective interpretations of what we possess.
Historians want to understand the past, but they work with the historical record. History is what we tell ourselves about our past. Because people can have strongly differing opinions, there are usually multiple, overlapping histories that can give conflicting views of the past. They are often as much about our present as they are about the past. They can be weaponized. As time goes on they often have to change, but they can also be defended in the face of new evidence. Most importantly, however, good histories align as closely as possible with the part of the historical record that is in our possession. So even though histories are created and subjective they are limited in their range of interpretations before they leave the realm of history and become historical fan-fiction.
Let’s look at some examples. We could tell the history of Canada as that of two founding nations. The French and English came to Canada for similar reasons, and over the course of centuries their respective cultures and languages spread across the top half of a barren continent along east-west waterways. There was conflict, but over time they learned to work together, and now have modern, bicultural Canada.
Or is Canada actually an inherently British state, violently imposed over other cultures? The Acadians were expelled. The Quebecois faced centuries of oppression and attempts at cultural genocide. The land was cleared of its original peoples. Immigrants from around the world were brought to work in menial roles that financially supported the British imperial business.
But wait! Isn’t Canada a multi-cultural, post-national state that is a conglomerate mashup of its constituent cultures? People from around the world came to Canada for their own reasons, and blended their identity into the nation. Or we could argue that Canada is the Diet Coke United States of America, where every idea the Americans had was adapted by Canada a decade later, no matter how much Canada claims to be unique and different. I think you get the point.
We can take the same approach to any history. Is the United States a global bastion of freedom, founded on the self-evident truth that all men are created equal? Or is it a business empire, founded by Bostonian merchants, that expanded until it encompassed half the world? Or is the United States an inherently British state violently imposed over other cultures?
Were the Crusades a religious war against Muslims, or a religious civil war among Christians? Is human society inherently progressive and always getting better, or is it constantly cycling between growth and Malthusian destruction? Is China a 2,500 year old state that possesses incredible consistency throughout history, or is it a modern creation of the Chinese Communist party that uses the mythology of successive dynasties to justify its aggressive expansion? Did the European colonial empires spread modern ideals and science around the world, or were they just all-consuming economic engines violently imposed over other cultures? Did the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas sign away their land for a pittance, or were they violently expelled from their land and then marginalized by settler societies?
I could keep going on, so I won’t. The thing to understand about these competing histories is that they all address the same past. To a large extent they use the same historical record, although it is natural to select sources that better align with how one chooses to portray the past. We know something happened, we agree on what sources we have concerning that past, but we tend to strongly disagree on how to interpret that past. It’s the Tower of Babel in academia.
Ian Weatherall 