Margaret Macmillan, The Uses And Abuses of History , Profile Books, 2010 (South Asia edition)
Margeret Macmillan needs no introduction. A seasoned historian with a string of note-worthy publications to her credit including the award winning book- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and its Its Attempt to End War, which won the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize.
Ideally, Macmillan’s latest book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, (2020) would have been more appropriate for review. It was published recently and given the deteriorating geo-political situation around the world, one would hope to gain some insights to the evolving conflicts/wars affecting us and where we are headed towards. In contract, The Uses And Abuses Of History was published in 2010 (first South Asia edition), a seemingly long period for review and with innumerable reviews already at hand: some gloatingly appreciative and some scathingly critical. Yet for this blog and for this particular episode I chose to review this book as the title—The Uses and Abuses of History, pounds at the core of what we need to know in history-- what is the use of history, how is history abused and who abuses history. In an age where divisions and intolerance in society has never been so stark, where unlimited information is available at our finger tips, much of which may not be factually true, we need to approach the past with a cautiousness and skepticism to avoid being misled or conscripted into dangerous ideologies or prejudices.
This book is based on a collection of lectures presented at the University of Western Ontario in 2007. It is not a voluminous book, running for barely 175 pages and easy to carry while travelling. The Chapters (eight) are eloquently sprawled out in captivating titles, such as ----The History Craze, History for Comfort, Who owns the past? , History and Identity, History and Nationalism, Presenting History’s bill, History wars, History as a guide, followed by the conclusion.
The title of this book relates to a core historical theory or nature of history for that matter, but what is fascinating about this work is the ability of the author to present her arguments in an elegant narrative, sans the heavy theoretical jargons. She offers us innumerable examples, more related to the political chaos around the world, which as we learn is fuelled by the abuses of history. While such an approach does have its appealing advantages particularly to non-historians, yet it also has its dangerous pitfalls if the author gets too immersed in the narrative. For instance, there is a heavy emphasis on the Israeli Palestine conflict, and understandably so, but at times the writer does tend to lose sight of the basic objectives of the work. That apart a thorough analysis and justification of Macmillan’s work is possible only through a chapter wise review to draw the essence of what Macmillan terms as the ‘uses’ and ‘abuses’ of history.
The introductory chapter digs at the core of the ‘uses’ of history, i.e. who am I? As individuals we are all products of our own histories—our geographical places, our times, our social classes and our family background, all of which shapes the way we look at the world. So we use history not only to understand ourselves, but also to understand others. But if history is useful, it can also be dangerous as the author points out. ‘’It is wiser to think of history not as a pile of dead leaves or a collection of dusty artefacts but as a pool, sometimes benign, often sulphurous, that lies under the present, silently shaping our institutions, our ways of thought , our likes and dislikes.’’
The introduction does not seem to well-grounded enough, and rather too casual for academic discourse. Yet as an introductory chapter one cannot expect much except hope that subsequent chapters fulfils the desired objectives.
The History Craze- The title of this chapter may initially surprise us. What history craze I asked myself. At the level of school education where history should really matter, students’ perceptions in the subject is far from encouraging. Extensive studies by renowned educationists in Canada, the United States and Britain reflect the growing disconnect of students towards history. The author should have commenced from here, but instead moves straight to her definition of the ‘history craze’. ‘’History and not necessarily the sort that professional historians are doing is widely popular these days, even in North America where we have tended to look toward the future rather than the past.’’ This is a very pertinent point, for the kind of history which appeals to the public as Macmillan tells us, is of the proliferation of museums and art galleries around the world, our penchant for commemorating moments from the past, television channels showing snippets of history and historical sites which become budding places for tourists. So why this craze for heritage? First is the political angle (as the author states). We learn that in Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage exhorts Canadians to learn about Canadas history, culture and land. France on the other hand has witnessed an explosion of reenactments of the past, festivals and special months, weeks and days. The other interesting point is the decoding of DNA which ensures that individuals can trace ones ancestry that goes way back in time. For descendants of the African-American slaves who had lost all hopes of tracing their roots, the DNA has ‘’suddenly opened the door to self-knowledge.’’ The essence of this chapter however stands out in the following words---‘’If people can stand back and see their own histories in a wider perspective, then they can see how they are the products not just of particular individuals, but of whole societies and cultures….history has shaped human values, their fears, their aspirations, their loves and their hatreds. When we start to realize that , we begin to understand something of the power of the past…’’
History for Comfort- This chapter appears a bit confusing and sloppy. What is apparent nevertheless is how political leaders have used/abused history to mislead people for their particular ends. The founder of China, the Qin emperor reportedly destroyed all the earlier histories , buried the scholars who might remember them and wrote his own history. Mao too tried to destroy all memories and all artefacts, that by reminding the Chinese people of the past, might prevent him from remodeling them into the new Communist men and woman. There is also increasing reference to George W. Bush the leader who began the Iraq war. Numerous other examples are provided, although entangled in a hasty attempt. It is undoubtedly extremely important to know how we are often misled in our blind support to politician’s whose failed decisions and ugly rhetoric to push their own interests, has detrimental impact on societies. It is therefore extremely important to spot the historical humbug when foisted upon us. Yet sweeping generalizations and lack of coherence spoils the thrust of an otherwise extremely important issue.
Who owns the Past?—is all about what is bad history and what is good history. Bad history, as the author tells us is the kind written by amateur historians, makes for sweeping generalizations for which there is not adequate evidence and ignores awkward facts that do not fit in. A significant example here is the much popularized belief that the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles lead inevitably to World War 11. Reparations as Macmillan argues were a burden but never as great as they seemed. Germany paid a fraction of the bill and when Hitler came to power he cancelled it outright. Without the Great Depression and without a whole series of bad decisions, including those by respectable German statesmen and generals, the slide into aggression and then war might not have occurred. So bad history ignores such nuances in favor of tales that belong to morality plays but do not help us to consider the past in all its complexity. Another example of bad history mentioned in the book , is about Winston Churchills great history of World War 11. It dealt with sweeping and magisterial accounts but glossed over many awkward issues.
Good history on the other hand explores the past in all its richness and complexity. We contest one-sided, even false histories that are out there in the public domain, we question-what happened and in what order. We deal with difficult issues at hand and do not look over awkward issues. The reality however is that good history does not always meet with warm approval. Who is uncomfortable with ‘good history’ and why is it that even in some vibrant democracies an authentic historical work may not resonate well with both the government and its people, is what the author should have additional looked into.
History and Identity-An extremely important chapter which raises many pertinent issues we are not consciously aware of or simply chose to ignore.
Every historian is aware that we derive our identity from history. Our gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, class, nationality, religion, family, clan, geography, occupation not only defines our identity but also shapes the construction of our own world view. Who am I is one question we ask ourselves but equally important is who are we? History therefore should serve as a guide to understand others too.
Macmillan goes a step further to state that if history has been and continues to be misused to mislead the gullible public, then how much of this identity is fabricated? Are we nurtured into a false identity-an illusion which thwarts the possibilities of social cohesion. This is an extremely important point raised by the author and explains in many ways the growing animosity/discord amongst communities across the world including our own. Much of the stories from the past that are celebrated are often one-sided or simplistic. For instance (we are offered many examples)- the myth of the American cowboys stereotyped into an identity of a wild world where bold cowboys and determined settlers braved savage Indian hordes. The myth casts a powerful spell. In reality though these fabricated myths may not have been so alluring. Identity can also be a trap which imprisons us and divides us from others. Neighbours are told not to trust one another because they are Serbs or Croats, Muslims or Jews. It is a matter of shame if one member of a community chose to marry the other. Strangely when previously marginalised or ignored groups begin to develop a sense of themselves, the past inevitably comes into play. The once upon a time is always shrouded in a mystical and somewhat wondrous ways.
But who creates this past to lull people into an ideal which may not be so exact? The lost golden age can be a very effective tool for motivating people in the present. Unity was and is the destiny of Italy, Mazzini stated. Mussolini promised the Italians a second Roman empire and led them to disaster in world war 11. False claims can be disastrous. Eleutherios Venizelos, the leading Greek statesman at the time of world war 1, once gathered his friends around a map and drew the outlines of ancient Greece at the height of its influence, across modern borders. His outline included most of modern Turkey, a good part of Albania and most of the islands of the eastern mediterranean. Under the influence of this great idea, he sent Greek soldiers to Asia minor in 1919 to stake out Greece claims. The result was catastrophe for the Greek armies and for all those innocent Greeks who had lived for generations in what became modern Turkey. Hitler also used history to nurture a false sense of xenophobic identity on the genius and continuity of the German race. Logic and reason do not enter into closed systems of viewing the world in this narrow prism.
History is also abused when people try to ignore or even suppress evidence that might challenge their preferred view of the past. Distorted history, suppressed history and worse still , history that is simply false is the worst abuse of history. Interestingly the last five pages of this chapter gives examples from India. She discusses topical issues from the 90s which had generated immense debates on the so called ‘saffronisation’. There is already a lot of articles in this issue and the author seems to be simply reiterating these arguments.
History And Nationalism- Nationalism is a much discussed topic in history. Nationalism in itself is fuelled by history, the collective memories that helped bring the nation into being, the shared celebrations of the nation’s great achievement and shared sorrow of its defeat -sustain and foster it. The author gives us numerous examples of how history has been used to foster nationalism through powerful symbols, often at the risk of falsifying the past with ominous consequences for the people. Nations were created as Macmillan tells us, not by fate or god, but by people themselves. Scholars speculated in the 19th century, working on languages, folk tales, ethnography, archeology, while political leaders began to fuel nationalism by creating new myths of the past to mobilize their people often paving the way for bloody wars. Some examples is worthwhile reiterating. One is the history of the Serbs, where loss on the battle of Kosovo with the ottoman Turks was turned over as a Serbian nationalist lore with lazar the Serbian leader as a martyr for the Serbs and the loss of the battle as a promise of resurrection. Much of the details are not supported by facts. Stories were passed down through the centuries and only in the 19 century with the awakening of nationalism in Europe that these stories became so central in mobilizing the Serbs to fight for independence against a declining ottoman empire. The myths projected a dangerous vision of a Serbian nationalism, assuming that the Croats and Bosnians were a natural part of the empire. Vuk Karadzic standardized a modern Serbian written language and collected the epic poems. He left a poisoned legacy by arguing that those peoples such as Croats and Bosnian Muslims who spoke virtually the same language were also Serbs, building the ground for a dangerous vision of resurrection. In the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 80s and 90s old historical myths were brought up again while Slobodan Milosevic fueled Serbian nationalism. In Croatia nationalists such as Franjo Tudjman were looking back into their past to argue that a greater Croatia, incorporating hundred s of Serbs was a historical necessity. Macmillan then goes on to describe the Israeli problem.
The essence of this chapter is in showing how history is repeatedly used to build up a sense of national identity, or imagined community as Benidict Anderson had coined. But new nations keep on appearing and history is used to define communities and nations. One example was particularly illuminating. In the 60s Wolfgang Feuerstein a young germane scholar came upon a people inhabiting a remote valley on the south coast of the black sea near the Turkish port of Trabzon. They were Muslims like Turks but had their own language, customs and myths. Feuerstein felt they once must have been Christians. He studied them and lazis began to take new interest in their own past and cultures and develop a sense of themselves and past. They are becoming a nation. In 1999 a Laz party was established to push for a Lazist nation within Turkey creating new problems for the Turkish government.
Presenting History’s bill-is nothing more than reiterating the same arguments in the preceding chapter with innumerable examples of how history is repeatedly abused. And who abuses history? Macmillan points to political leaders of respective communities or countries who use unsubstantiated history to mislead their peoples for their own particular end. When the troubles started in Yugoslavia in the 1990s all sides called on history to justify what they were doing. Using history to label or diminish your opponents has always been a useful tool. Countries also use episodes from the past to shame and put pressure on others. China has a long list of grievances with Britain and Japan.. China uses history to recast its invasion and occupation of Tibet. According to the Chinese government it simply reasserted it's historical right. Taiwan, at least to the Chinese presents a similar case. But history proves no such thing. Dangerous disputes amongst Israelis and Palestinians over possession of the small piece of land that was once Palestine in the ottoman empire is another example.
History Wars- is not about battles won or lost. It is about what history should be taught to school children and how the battle for supporting the ruling state ideology is thrust in the history school curriculum. It is a ubiquitous battle across the world although with differences depending on the level of confidence and level of political freedom accorded to the citizens. In the United Kingdom for instance, there were repeated debates over what history school children should be learning triggering a national debate in 2007. The fact that many countries in the west were host to large immigrant population gave further credence to the issue. Should it be patriotic history? Shouldn’t those who wanted to be British citizens be able to show that they understand British history and culture. In the United States the issue on immigrants, black Vs white history, women’s history etc. led to the National Council for History Standards with a set of guidelines for American and world history which states could accept or not as they pleased. Although there was much stress on multi culturalism and on nonwestern civilizations, those responsible for the guidelines felt confident that they were successful telling the story of the US in a way that would appeal to students. Moreover they had included aspects of the past---women’s or black history for example that had previously been neglected. The public and bitter debate over the history standards was always about more than curriculum. It was the need for a common sense of the past. Samuel Huntington the famous political scientist and author of The "Clash of Civilizations" where he had argued that cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world, published another thought provoking book, Who are we, in which he warned that the ‘deconstructionist project’ has elevated group and regional histories at the expense of national history as a consequence of which we are becoming less than a nation.
The author then goes on to state that in countries that are ‘lacking in self-confidence’, the teaching of history can be an even more sensitive matter. In Turkey the government takes a strong interest in the curriculum. In Russia president Vladimir Putin took a personal interest in the writing of new ‘’patriotic’’ history textbooks used in schools. Government gave itself the powers to determine what textbooks were used. In China the party’s propaganda and education department keeps a close eye on the schools to ensure that they teach students of the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the imperialists and convey the lesson that history selected the communist party to lead China into its present happy state. In South Africa after the end of apartheid, the schools as part of the nation project of truth and reconciliation have tried to present a history that includes all south Africans.
The other battle ground as we are informed is over the national museums and memorials. The argument over how the past should be portrayed and interpreted often gives rise to angry debates.
History as a Guide--This chapter actually boils down to the question on what is the use of history. A number of reasons are given. Firstly history helps us to understand those with whom we have to deal with and secondly ourselves. For example what made the cold war so dangerous is that they simply did not understand each other. If you do not know the history of another people you will not understand their values , their fears and their hopes or how they are likely to react to something you do. There is another way of getting things wrong and that is to assume that other peoples are just like you. How the American war went wrong in Vietnam is a significant pointer in this context. For instance in the memoir of Robert McNamara- In Retrospect, he came up with lessons he hoped future leaders might heed. ‘’We viewed the people and leaders of south Vietnam in terms of our own experience…. our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people in the area and the personalities and habits of their leaders….’’
Knowing history can help avoid lazy generalisations as well. Knowing about the past can also help us avoid unnecessary and potentially costly mistakes.
Finally I may quote Macmillan’s ultimate take on the use of history---
‘’History can help us to be wise; it can also suggest to us what the likely outcome of our actions might be. There are no clear blueprints to be discovered in history that can help us shape the future as we wish. Each historical event is a unique congeries of factors, people or chronology. Yet by examining the past we can get some useful lessons about how to proceed and some warning about what is or is not likely to happen. We do have to be careful to cast our gaze as widely as possible….history if it is used with care can present us with alternatives , help us to form the questions we need to ask of the present and warn us about what might go wrong…..
To sum it up, I will conclude on the following note.
I had approached this book with a lot of expectations. As historians and even non-historians we all need to be apprised on the ‘uses’ of history, and it's ‘abuses.’ Who abuses history, how is history abused and why should we all be familiar with the uses of history, is crucially necessary for us all. The message of the author is clear---that those in positions of power quite often run the risk of tempering with the past to project falsified, mythical versions of national identities to serve vested self-interests, that most likely takes us spiralling downwards to our doom. We therefore need to approach the past with a questioning attitude, seek evidences and take a comprehensive view of how and why things happened the way it did.
Somehow however, the book fell short of my expectations. For an author with a number of prestigious awards, the lack of scholarly intent was shocking to say the least. It does definitely stir a lot of ideas and questions , but the tendency to generalize on her arguments should have been avoided. A balance between theory and narrative is much required in such a study and the tendency to immerse in countless examples is handled in a rather sloppy manner. Most of the information provided is also not something new or unknown. Also the absence of detailed endnotes in each chapter was surprising too. Lastly a lot of the discussions or examples on the abuses of history are dragged on endlessly thereby obliviating the main objective of this work.
You can purchase this book on Amazon.
AUTHOR: Sima Saigal