Musings on History, Mythhistory, and the Teaching of History

As a professional historian and social scientist I have occasionally had the opportunity to interact with amateur historians and social scientists over the years. For many years the only amateurs I knew who were interested in and who wrote about history were several Mormons I had the opportunity to meet when I lived in Utah. Most of the amateur Mormon historians I encountered and read were quite good historians. Most of them were aware of the importance of primary source material. Most of them were cognizant of the importance of literature reviews (historiography and theoretical approaches). Most of them recognised the importance of context (economic, political, cultural, demographic, geographic). Despite their excellent understanding of history and the historical method, however, many of them were also parochial and partisan in their approach to history and to their Mormon subject matter both of which are always problematic for the professional historian and social scientist who strives to be as objective and as dispassionate as possible in order to present a fair and balanced reconstruction of the past and a fair and balanced interpretation of the present.

Though they are not part of the networks I am embedded in--typically I interact with academics and intellectuals--I was and am somewhat aware that many in the past and many in the present conceptualise history as a passion play or a morality play starring celebrity good guys and bad guys, who believe that it was and is the good guys and bad guys who made and make history, and that history was and is about good guys standing up to bad guys. I was, however unaware of how prevalent this decontextualised good guys versus bad guys Hollywood style history, a style of history that is heavily melodramatic and moralistic and as a consequence often interested in assigning blame for wars like the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II, though I should have been aware of this given my professional background as a historian and social scientist and my interest in culture, culture wars, and the culture war between mythhistory and real history. The things you learn on social media.

As a historian and social scientist I am, of course, interested in trying to isolate the long term and short term political, economic, cultural factors that impact any significant moment in history just as they impact everyday life. In regards to the US Civil War there is a consensus among historians and social scientists that the long term factors that contributed to the coming of the Civil War include include slavery, the economics of cheap labour in both the North and the South, the Northern control of the Southern cotton economy and the Northern dominance America's financial institutions, Whites not wanting to do back breaking work associated with cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar (the last the most deadly for slaves), White ethnocentrism, political tensions between the North and the South over slavery, American manifest destiny (the issue of what to do about territories and areas "incorporated" into the US), and states rights (including tensions over nullification). The short term or immediate factor that led to the American Civil War was obviously Fort Sumter. In regards to World War, I long term factors contributing to the coming of the Great War include great power rivalries and how these played out in economic, political, cultural, geographical, and demographic (population size matters, just ask Canada) ways. The short term spark, of course, was the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary by a Serbian nationalist revved up or doped up on the Serbian civil religious faith. The US Civil War and World War I, in other words, didn't come out of nowhere.

Now don't get me wrong. If one wants to explore human history from a theological, dogmatic, doctrinal, or social ethical perspective and assign blame for wars, well to each his own, I suppose. For me, however, such approaches have to be grounded in empirical reality and in the economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic factors that are the motors of history, society, and culture. And while one interested in assigning blame for wars can, I suppose, assign blame, there is nothing like real wars for bringing out the ambiguity and muddiness or murkiness of real life, something the excellent television show Da Vinci's Inquest does for Canadian politics and policing in every episode. In World War II, for instance, the US began the war after it entered into it with the policy of not bombing civilians. Very soon, however, the US, like Britain and Germany before it, was bombing civilian targets for a variety of reasons. Welcome to the ambiguity of real war and real life where there is generally enough blame to go around.

But back to mythhistory, my realisation that the mass of individuals prefer their history to be manichean and melodramatic and ultimately civics oriented has made me reflect on and rethink my past experiences teaching history. When I taught history I found most of the students I taught to be thoroughly uninterested in history. Why, I was not sure. Was it the focus on dates and great men of secondary school history? Was it the civics nature of secondary schoo history? The major reason most students took my history courses, and take history courses in general in college, was not because they wanted to but because they had to. The courses I taught at the time allowed students to fulfill the elective requirements they needed in order to graduate. Eventually the fact that most of the students in my history classes had no interest in real history--I am not even sure they had an interest in mythhistory or the mythic great men version of history--led me to trade in the teaching of history for the teaching of sociology. I found it much easier to teach sociology to students because I could convince them that sociology was relevant to their lives and I could, by emphasising the processes by which we humans became who we were--socialisation, identity, power, knowledge, and sexuality, for example--convince students, or at least some or most students some or most of the time, that sociology was relevant to understanding who they were and how they became the way they were. So was the reason students were uninterested in history because it wasn't relevant to their lives? Only Memorex knows for sure.