More on Tanenhaus's views of history

After reading Sam Tanenhaus's response to the Cliopatra symposium his essay on Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., I disagree with him on a couple of key points. In emphasizing the need for "great men" and master narratives, Tanenhaus displays a distorted understanding of what constitutes good history.

First, Tanenhaus has a rather eccentric view of how historians should portray individual figures within their work. In spite of insisting that "'great men' need not be great ... so much as representative," he later calls on historians to meet the critique of Saul Bellow and show how "the ordinary person could achieve a kind of greatness through his struggles with the culture that surrounded him." Far from being representative, then, Tanenhaus's ideal historical figures are the ones who transcend their societies' boundaries and attain distinction and eminence.

As Frederic Smoler noted in his response to Tanenhaus, academic history is largely anti-heroic these days. With good reason, if you ask me. While there are clearly a number of figures from the past who have shaped the course of history, to write about them hagiographically is to miss out on the larger fabric of the past. People do not rises to greatness without being influenced by the society and culture around them. Studying context explains a great deal and often serves to demystify, and in the process humanize, the supposed heroes. To be sure, Tanenhaus warns that historians "must be careful not to underestimate ... the larger impersonal forces in and against which individual lives unfold." But to set out to write a history of individuals striving for greatness virtually ensures that the narrative will ignore the importance of context and, as a result, fail to capture the whole picture.

My second problem with Tanenhaus's ideal of historical practice is related to the first. As Scott McLemee pointed out, it is not as easy as it once was to write coherent narratives of the past. In 1945, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. could write The Age of Jackson without so much as mentioning the Trail of Tears. To do so now would be seen as a willful whitewashing of the past. In 1945, it was good enough for a Pulitzer.

I don't mean to bash Schlesinger. Rather, my point is that the more we learn about the past, the harder it becomes to create coherent narratives out of it. This is not a bad thing. In general, I think we'd all be better served if we were much more humble in our pronouncements on history and its contemporary significance. The past is messy and there are no easy lessons in it.

Tanenhaus, though, sees the breakdown of narratives as a bad thing: "every nation is defined to an important extent by its unifying myths (stories), however unstable, and that we sacrifice something if we don't seek to give those stories some credence even as we examine and revise them." Let's be very clear about this: Tanenhaus believes that we shold be granting credence to myths. While few historians would disagree with his assessment that mythmaking is a key component of creating national unity, even fewer would see it as their responsibility to help prop up those myths. Historians' first responsibility is to the past, not to the nation. To switch those priorities is to risk distorting the past for present concerns.

In short, Tanenhaus's views on the way that historians should work are profoundly ahistorical and, if implemented, would result in presentist history that fails to accurately portray the past. While there's no such thing as the Historical Truth that can be written, following Tanenhaus's advice would miss the mark by a long ways.

Lessons from Rome?

I saw The Emperor's Club a few years ago and found it frustrating as all hell. But I couldn't quite place the source of my annoyance. After stumbling across a reference to it somewhere on the internet last week, I thought about it some more and figured out my problem with it.

William Hundert teaches Roman history at an elite boys private school. He wants to instill virtue and character in his pupils by teaching them about Rome. "When the boys read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Julius Caesar even, they're put in direct contact with men, who in their own age, exemplified the highest standards of statesmanship, of civic virtue, character, conviction." A lofty and noble goal. Perhaps a bit misguided, but the character's believable.

What strains credulity is the movie's climax: a rather silly Roman history trivia contest that most closely resembles a spelling bee. After bloviating for the whole movie on the need to look to the figures of Caesar and Cicero for moral inspiration, Hundert oversees a contest where students wear togas, answer purely factual questions ("Who was Hamilcar Barca?"), and fight it out to become Mr. Julius Caesar.

Look, you can argue that studying the past provides valuable lessons for the present. You can even argue that we should seek to emulate the great men of the past. But you can't argue that and then bestow honor and prestige on those who memorize the most battles. Hundert ends up coming across like a pedantic blowhard who believes that history lies in the facts. As a result, his high-minded moralism comes across as an almost naive hypocrisy when faced with a real moral conflict.

Random encounters with international cricketers

Last summer, I spent a week in Bermuda with my parents and girlfriend. During my time in England I picked up an interest in cricket, so I decided that we should all go to a match. Never mind that my parents and girlfriend had, at best, a rudimentary knowledge of the game (my girlfriend still giggles when announcers say things along the lines of "He's taken a key wicket there"). I would be there to explain things.

We showed up at Lord's Oval a few minutes before the scheduled start. The players were warming up and there wasn't much of a crowd, so we walked over to the shore and watched some crashing waves to kill some time. After a few minutes we wandered back to the stands (nothing more than the porch of the clubhouse) and awaited the start. The players were all there, and so was an umpire. But one person was missing.

The second umpire, it seems, had either forgotten or decided not to show up. The remaining umpire did about the only thing he could: he came over to the spectators and asked for volunteers. He asked my dad first. He laughed nervously and suggested me as an alternative. "You should ask my son. He knows the rules, at least."

After nervously explaining that my actual cricket experience was limited to 20 overs of wicket-keeping in a lowly MCR vs. porters match, I was nonetheless deputised as the second umpire. I did manage to convince the real umpire to let me remain at square leg; LBWs would be far beyond my ken.

The umpiring itself was rather low-key. I had only a few decisions to make, none of them difficult. The one time I gave someone out was a clear run-out. The batsman had failed to make his ground by at least three feet. On the players were just as bewildered by my being there as I was. "When did you get to the island?" "Yesterday afternoon." "And you're already umpiring cricket?!"

As it turned out, Flatts Victoria handily defeated Western Stars by 101 runs.

A nice story, and a good example of the things that can happen when keeping an open mind while traveling. But why is it timely? Well, as I recently discovered, two of the players in the match I umpired were selected for Bermuda's World Cup side. Thanks to Saleem Mukuddem and Dean Minors, I've been on a cricket pitch with players that have been on a cricket pitch with some of the biggest names in the sport: Andrew Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen, Muttiah Muralitharan and more. All thanks to a desire to sit and watch some cricket one Sunday morning.

A milestone

Today, by dumb luck, I came across the first instance of me being cited in print. The first book on my cart was Anges & Démons: Autopsie d'une mystification by Jean-Michel Oullion. As you probably know, my most popular post ever was a rather lengthy list of the innumerable errors in Dan Brown's trainwreck of a thriller.

I flipped through Oullion's book -- no big surprises. Even though I haven't picked up the book in over two years, the factual errors are so egregious (to say nothing of the awful writing) that the whole thing ends up being pretty memorable. But imagine my surprise when I get to the bibliography. The last item:

Sur le blog de Danny Loss, nos lecteurs anglophones trouveront également un mini-forum de discussion sur les erreurs d'Anges et Démons.

If anything, I'm a bit concerned by how closely some of Ouillon's critiques followed my own. But for right now the main feeling is exhilaration.

Historians for the present

Manan Ahmed has called for a symposium: A Historian for the People. This is my contribution.

Sam Tanenhaus, writing in the New York Times, notes the passing of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as the loss of America's "last great public historian." Tanenhaus points to Schlesinger, along with C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, as having written classic works of history that simultaneously addressed contemporary political problems. Tanenhaus calls for more historians like them.

Tanenhaus shoots down the most likely successors to Schlesinger as lacking the broad cultural authority that Schlesinger held for the past half century. Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution and James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom fail to influence how we think about current topics. In this respect, Tanenhaus gets things backwards. It might be the case that the Wood's proposed radicalism really has no contemporary significance. Tanenhaus's complaint that the works of Wood, McPherson, and those like them are "mired" in the past misses out on the fact that they must stand on their own merits as studies of a particular period in the past. That they do not offer clear lessons or morals for the present is not a liability.

I suspect, however, that even if Wood and McPherson wrote books in the mold of Schlesinger, they would not gain the audience and attention that Schlesinger commanded. Schlesinger's cultural authority came, in large part, from his life story. The son of Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., he already had a name famous in scholarly circles. Born in the same year as John F. Kennedy, he was a student at Harvard at the same time as the future president. He served in the Office of War Information and OSS during WWII, then returned to Harvard as a professor of history, all before becoming a Special Assistant to President Kennedy. As a result, he had the scholarly credibility, the social connections, and the political experience necessary to emerge as a bona fide public intellectual.

It's not simply a matter, then, of historians emulating Arthur Schlesinger's commitment to addressing contemporary issues. Schlesinger was a special case. He built up a tremendous amount of social capital in ways that aren't readily available to historians today. For better or worse, there are few opportunities for historians (or most other academics) to move directly into public service.

Historians can and should offer their perspectives on the problems and issues of today. But it's not as simple as writing books like Schlesinger. The 21st century needs a new model of the public intellectual. Tanenhaus is right; there won't be another Arthur Schlesinger. He was of another generation and is not an easy model for contemporary historians to follow.

I don't know the best way for historians to engage in public discussions. It's a tough question, made all the more difficult by rapid changes in technology -- witness the rising importance of blogs in the past few years. As significant a public figure as Schlesinger was, his time is past. When it comes to how to best address contemporary issues, contemporary historians should look to the future, not the past.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 89

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., died last night at the age of 89. I haven't read any of his work, but he spoke at Swarthmore just over three years ago, when he spoke compellingly about the importance of debate before war and the patriotism of dissent.