Which history?

In case you haven't realized it yet, Ralph Luker of Cliopatra is a wonderful source for interesting items on history. The most recent of his suggestions to catch my eye is an Anne Applebaum piece arguing that the National Museum of American History should present a chronological overview of the history of the United States.

There are a number of problems with Applebaum's piece, problems that often arise in discussing history in the public sphere. The sooner the relevant issues are understood, the sooner Americans can gain a more sophisticated and fulfilling understanding of the past.

Applebaum's inspiration for encouraging the NMAH to present a complete narrative of American history is the observation that American students don't seem to know much American history. While this might be the case (she cites primarily anecdotal evidence; I’m sure there must be some recent study of students' historical knowledge, but I'm not aware of it), this is not a new phenomenon. Critics have been bemoaning the historical ignorance of American students for decades, if not longer. Applebaum guesses that back in 1964, when the museum opened, there was no need to portray the narrative sweep of American history since everyone already knew it. This is a dubious presumption wholly unsupported by evidence. I don't claim to know how much history Americans knew in the '60s, but I do know that people were criticizing that level of knowledge even then. American ignorance of history is not new. Blaming recent sociocultural developments for that ignorance misses the fact that historical ignorance has its own history and that that history should be considered when addressing the problem of poor knowledge of the past. Plus, as Kevin Drum notes, it's probably not just students who don't know much history.

More discouraging is Applebaum's view on the boundaries and definitions of history. In bemoaning the museum's failure to "tell the whole American story, or even chunks of the American story, in chronological order, from Washington to Adams to Jefferson, or from Roosevelt to Truman to Eisenhower," she reveals an uncritical and old-fashioned view of history. The idea that there is such a thing as "the whole American story" rests on the misguided assumption that it's possible to know, to say nothing of portray, the entirety of the past. Now, I don't think that Applebaum believes we can know everything about the past. Rather, I think she sees the "whole story" as encompassing a particular type of history: political narrative (as evidenced by her seeing American history as divided by presidential terms).

This privileging of high political history is problematic. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with political history. Studying the key political developments and events of American history is valuable and important. But focusing on the story of presidents, congressmen, and senators necessarily excludes other important and interesting stories, stories of industrialization, race, education, labor, finance, gender, agriculture, and countless other topics. These histories are just as real as political history and just as worthwhile to tell. But I get the feeling that Applebaum's vision for the core exhibit of the museum would exclude them.

Here's the key point. There's simply no such thing as the story of American history. There are lots of American histories, asking different questions, examining different sources, and reaching different sorts of conclusions. And there's no obvious reason why these different histories have to gel with each other. Periodization that accurately describes presidential politics might very well be useless in describing gender relations.

Now there's an argument to be made that knowledge of political history is more important to the average citizen than, say, knowledge of agricultural history. But it's telling that half of the examples Applebaum provides of historical evidence have little to do with history; it's not necessary to know much about history to know the three branches of the American government or the first three words of the Constitution. Deciding what counts as history gets more complicated once it's necessary to decide between, say, the presidential election of 1840 and the racial relations of the period.

My point here is not to argue that the NMAH should eschew political history entirely. Far from it. Rather, it's crucial for the museum to maintain exhibits that reflect the multiplicity of the past. A permanent exhibition that tells the "whole American story" (as imagined by Applebaum) would necessarily privilege a narrative that doesn’t fit or describe a large portion of American history. It would be virtually impossible to tell the "whole story," for the very simple reason that there’s just too much to tell.

And that's okay. As far as I'm concerned, America's marquee museum of American history should do more than simply present a story of "how the nation got to be here in the first place," a story, according to Applebaum, that excludes the telephone, sewing machine, and Judy Garland’s ruby slippers. The NMAH should reveal to its visitors that history is complex and multifaceted, more than a simple chronology of key events and figures. There's a place for narrative history in the museum, but there's no need to present that any one narrative is the "real" or most important story of American history. Professional historians stopped thinking about history as solely the story of politics, diplomacy, and war a long time ago. They should be encouraging the general public to adopt a broad view and understanding of history, not forcing a narrow narrative of politics down their throats. Simply put, the National Museum of American History should offer its visitors a chance to view the American past in all its quirks and glory, admitting all the while that it's impossible to tell the whole story of the history of the United States.