Samenvatting
Samenvatting Tosh H 1,2,3
- Instelling
- Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Summary of 7 pages for the course Inleiding in de geschiedenis 1 at UvA
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Door: MC1993 • 7 jaar geleden
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Chapter one: Historical awarenessHistorical awareness is a slippery term. All societies possess 'memory'. Our memories serve as both a
data bank and a means of making sense of an unfolding life story. All societies have a collective
memory, that is used for a sense of identity and direction. To understand our social arrangements,
we have to have some notion of where they came from.
Historical awareness is nog the same thing as social memory. Collective memory is marked by
distortions, as our current priorities lead us to highlight some aspects of the past and exclude others.
Historical awareness invites a more rigorous interpretation. There must be a belief that getting the
story of the past right matters, so that our knowledge of the past is not confined to what is
immediately relevant.
A social grouping needs to have a shared interpretation of the events and experiences that have
formed the group, to have a collective identity. The term social memory reflects the rationale of
popular knowledge’s about the past. Social groupings need a record of prior experience, but the past
also has to explain or justify the present, often at the cost of the historical accuracy.
All societies look to their collective memory for consolation or inspiration, literate societies too.
Social memory continues to sustain a politically active identity. It success is judged by how effectively
is contributes to the cohesion and how widely it is shared by members of the group. It can be based
on consensus and inclusion and can focus on a moment of heroism (founding fathers).
It can also sustain a sense of oppression. Social movements entering the political area for the first
time are determined to have a absolute requirement of the past: black history, women's movement.
For those 'invisible' groups, effective mobilization depends on a consciousness of common
experience in the past.
However, the dominant approach in historical scholarship has been to value the past for its own
sake, and not to use it for social need. This intellectual movement 'historicism' began in German in
the nineteenth century.
The autonomy of the past must be respected. Each age must be understand in its own terms,
on its own values and priorities. Besides, the culture and institutions of the present day can
only be understood historically. History holds the key to understanding the world.
Leopold von Ranke:
'wie es eigentlich gewesen war'. The atmosphere and mentality of the past ages must be
reconstructed too. Detachment of present-day's concerns was a condition to understanding the past.
Ranke did not look for practical lessons from the past.
The historical awareness in the sense understood by the historicists rests on three principles:
Difference: a recognition of the gulf that separates our age from all previous ages.
Anachronism (thinking that people in the past behaved as we do) is bad.
o Difference in material conditions: clothes, buildings
o Difference in mentality: different values, fears, priorities.
'All history is a negotiation between familiarity and strangeness'.
One of the ways in which we measure our distance from the past is by periodization. Labelling
by century has this effect, as does the recognition of centenaries.
, Context: to explain the strangeness of the past and to put it in its historical setting. What may
seem bizarre becomes explicable, when interpreted as a manifestation of a particular society.
We must place everything we know about the past in its contemporary context.
Process: the relationship between events over time which endows them with more significance
than if they were viewed in isolation. What lies behind our concern with instances of historical
process is, apart from their intrinsic interest, the question of how we got from 'then' to 'now'.
There may be a gulf between us and them.
If historical awareness rests on a notion of continuum, it cuts both ways. Every aspect of our
culture, behavior and beliefs is the outcome of processes over time. No human practice ever
stands still. All demand a historical perspective which uncovers the dynamics of change over
time.
Three recurrent features of social memory have significant distorting effects:
Tradition: belief and behaviour are governed by the weight of precedent. What was done in
the past is a guide to what should be done in the future. However, in any society with a
dynamic of social or cultural change, an uncritical respect for tradition is counterproductive. It
surpresses the historical changes that have occurred.
o The consequences of tradition are particularly disturbing in the case of nationalism.
Historians often forget the tenets of their profession and try a nation-building history,
where nation, race and culture are brought together as a unified constant. Essentialism
produces a powerful sense of identity, but makes bad history. Everything that doesn't fit
the picture is surpressed. Also, the interval between 'then' and 'now' is telescoped by the
assertion of an unchanging identity, impervious to the play of historical circumstances.
Nostalgia: backward-looking, but interpreting the change in one direction only, change for the
worse. It is particularly characteristic of societies undergoing rapid change. The problem with
nostalgia is that it is a very loopsided view of history. The past is presented in its most
attractive light, it is a comfortable refuge, and therefore all the negative sides must be
removed. The past becomes better and simpler than the present.
Whereas historical awareness should enhance our insight into the present, nostalgia indulges a
desire to escape it.
Progress: change in the past has been for the better and that improvement will continue in the
future. A positive value is placed on the change. Progress makes the past seem less admirable
and more primitive the further back in time we go. Condescension and incomprehension are
the results. There can be no room for appreciation of the cultural riches of the past.
This is in conflict with the obligation to recreate the past on its own terms. The past should not
be judged by modern standards.
There are some significant areas of overlap between social memory and history. Academic
historians may distance themselves from social memory, but many of their specialisms have their
origin in an explicit political need (women, black's, labour history). It is not always possible to
distinguish completely between history and social memory, because historians perform some of the
tasks of social memory.
However, the distinction remains important.
Chapter two: Uses of history
One first has to consider the rationale of historical enquiry. What is the use of history?
Some think that history tells us most of what we need to know about the future. This requires
a highly schematic interpretation of the course of human development, known as metahistory.
, Others think that nothing can be learned from the past. This rejection takes two forms:
o A defence against totalitarianism. Some historians went so far that they refused to find
any more in history than accident and blunder.
o Commitment to modernity. If one is committed to the new, why bother with the past?
Neither metahistory nor the rejection of history finds much support among the historians. With
metahistory you can become more of a prophet. Historians are no happier to have their findings
dismissed as a complete irrelevance.
The most convincing claims of history to offer relevant insights lie somewhere between these two
extremes.
History can also be an inventory of alternatives. It reminds us that there is usually more than one way
to respond to a situation and that the choices open to us are often more varied.
→ Renaissance, creative energy drawn from the past.
History as therapy: a nation that cannot face up to its past will be gravely handicapped in the future.
Historians help us to face the present and the future by enabling us to understand the forces which
have made our world.
Understanding behaviour in its context:
A sense of the whole must always inform our understanding of the parts, even when historians write
about specialized topics. The problem is then how to interpret behaviour that may be founded on
quite different premises from our own. We are eager to define behaviour by different categories,
while human experience constantly breaks out of these categories.
→ Commercial transactions were not only guided by economic rationality, but also by
religion, social hierarchy…
The problem today is the complexity of society, which leads us to place faith in specialists, without
proper regard to the wider picture.
Context is also the principle that historians use against the common, but mistaken, belief that
history repeats itself. Human beings strive to learn from their mistakes and successes in their
collective life. For example, the reason politicians write biography’s about their predecessors, is so
that they can find a guide for their present-day actions. However, history doesn’t repeat itself. For
the precedent to be valid, the same conditions would have to prevail, but times change (difference
and process).
The truth that history never repeats itself also limits the confidence with which historians can
predict. The constant process of historical change means that the future will always be shaped by
additional factors that we can’t predict.
Process is also productive of insights into the present day. Identifying a process may help to explain
our world. Situating ourselves in a trajectory that is still unfolding gives us some purchase on the
future and allows a measure of forward planning. If conclusions about historical process are based
on careful research, they can give modest but useful predictions. We can call these sequential
predictions. The direction in which the historical process is unfolding can seem clear, the matters of
detail will be decided by the future.
The most important role of processual thinking is to offer an alternative to the assumptions of
permanence and timelessness that underpin so many societies.
→ Essentialism: nations have not changed over time, but they are continue in process. The
formation of racial and national identities is not a once-and-for-all event, but a continuous
process.
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