“The study of history is a battleground. The tradition of
all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living,”
Karl Marx.
“History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled
themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the
man who has made the greatest number of people happy”.
Marx, Reflections of a Young Man (1835)
Perhaps another title for this book should be study
history can earn you loads of cash. As the blurb advertising says “Considering
studying history at university? Wondering whether a history degree will get you
a good job, and what you might earn? Want to know what it is like to study history
at degree level? This book tells you what you need to know”.
While it is true that the study of history is taking a
battering at university-level promoting the study of history should not be
about how much money can be made by the university or the student. All this
will lead to is a dumbing down of historical study and a superficial attitude
amongst graduates towards history.
The book purports to be a study for people thinking of
studying history but does not take into account how universities have become
beholden to private companies. Many universities have prostituted themselves
before Big business. Billionaires are falling over themselves to give money to
universities such as at Oxford University to found new colleges in their names.
Donations from billionaires and millionaires are now commonplace even from
those who never studied there.
The authors, Peter Stearns and Marcus Collins, spend a
significant amount of space explaining that history students can gain the “ability
to handle evidence, understand causation, wrestle with competing
interpretations, write well, and detect bad arguments”. But this is largely
window dressing as their main point is that students can make a lot of money by
studying history (they cannot by the way). They write “Without a profound
understanding of the past, societies, organizations and individuals will make
needless mistakes and fail to take full advantage of emerging opportunities.”
If this book were only about why it is important to study
history at the university level, then I would have no problem with it, but it
is not that simple. Despite being well-established historians, both Collins and
Stearns present what little history is in the book simplistically and
misleadingly. Some of their historical pronunciations are not only wrong but in
one case dangerous.
A case in point is this quote from Stearns, who writes “history
helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all
modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include
evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were
formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. Histories that
tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national
experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a
commitment to national loyalty.
He continues “A study of history is essential for good
citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in
school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to
promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories
and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history
for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some
points. History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in
one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides
data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it is
the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also
about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international
and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship”.[1]
This would not look out of place in any Nazi handbook of
how to be a good citizen. I am not saying that Stearns or Collins are fascist sympathizers
but as Leon Trotsky wrote: “every sociological definition is at bottom a
historical prognosis”.
It would appear that Collins and Stearns’s prognosis is that
Communism is little different to what it replaced. Why else on page 35 would they
state that after the Bolshevik revolution took place, its police force was
little different from the Tsarist one it replaced. The slander is left without
any explanation and creates a narrative that ultimately sidelines the complex
evolution of events or the ideas of their participants.
It would perhaps be excusable if this was the only wrong-headed
and that is being a polite piece of history, but their simplistic and sometimes
deliberately misleading pronouncements on history matters permeate the whole
book.
To conclude the book appears to have been assembled quite
quickly, and much of what passes for history appears to been added in the same
manner. Again given that these are well known and established historians why no
index, and only 96 endnotes. It is also surprising that given the importance of
the subject matter why no major publishing house picked up the project. Collins
and Stearns’s conclusion is weak. What they should have said is that the study
of history is hard and it will or should not make you much money. A serious
historian should have a passion for history regardless of the money. The study
of history should be for the benefit of mankind or as a man who knew a thing or
two about history said: “History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled
themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the
man who has made the greatest number of people happy”.
[1] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/why-study-history-(1998)
