Sunday, January 2, 2011

(I) Definitions/Concepts of International Affairs; (II)History: Definitions and Why Study It

I)International Affairs/Foreign Policy: Definitions and Key Concepts

A. Dictionary definition: international relations (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics:

The discipline that studies interactions between and among states, and more broadly, the workings of the international system as a whole. It can be conceived of either as a multidisciplinary field, gathering together the international aspects of politics, economics, history, law, and sociology, or as a meta-discipline, focusing on the systemic structures and patterns of interaction of the human species taken as a whole. The discipline acquired its own identity after the First World War.

B. Dictionary Definition: foreign affairs (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary):

Matters that are connected with other countries.

C. The Definition of Foreign Affairs by Kevin Sandler, eHow Contributor:

Foreign affairs involve developing a better understanding between different cultures. Richard Merritt in "Foreign Policy Analysis" defines foreign affairs as "the activities of a government that involve its foreign policy and its relations with the other countries, diplomacy, international representation and the academic study of these activities." The terms "foreign affairs" and "international relations" are used alternatively. This covers the issues abroad that relate to homeland. Each country has a foreign affairs department that deals with its relations with the outside world as well as responds to everything relating to the interests of the home country in foreign lands. [Foreign Affairs include the following:]

1. Foreign Policy

Foreign policy represents the decisions and course of action taken by a government in regard to its relations with other nations. The objectives of a foreign policy are to protect the interests of the country and promote its self-interests in the international arena. The decision makers of the foreign policy take into account the demands of the individuals and groups in the homeland, bureaucracy, as well as their own perceptions and point of views.

2. International Relations

The scope of international relations is far more complex and includes the relations between governments pertaining to trade activities, economic and military alliances, cultural relations and related activities that take place across the national boundaries. James Rosenau, in his book "Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization," writes that "international relations include the relationships and interactions of people at the individual level, and NGOs and transnational corporations at the corporate level." He is also of the view that the events of a national nature affect the routines of life at home.

3. Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the means to achieve the foreign policy ends in relation to other nations by negotiations and talk rather than war. A professional diplomat conducts the diplomacy process by representing his country on foreign soil and also by observing, analyzing and reporting various issues relating to human rights, economics, culture, immigration, public opinion and a wide array of areas in the host country.

4. International Representation

Different international organizations are established to promote relations among states for the advancement of peace, better economic environment and improved human rights conditions. Most intergovernmental organizations have principles and procedures for admitting members--for example, the United Nations--and are governed by a charter. Intergovernmental organizations play the role of conflict resolution and peacekeeping among nation states.

5. International Security

Security in the 21st century is defined as the lack of a danger to an individual, group or state and its ability to live peacefully in its environment; this includes economic, ecologic, ethical, technological, cultural, gender, energy and military aspects. According to the U.N. Charter, "Security Council has the right to interfere in any issue it deems a threat to international peace and security." Foreign affairs attempt to solve security issues peacefully if possible.

D. Definition off Principal Terms in International Relations (linnbenton.edu):

Part One: The Nation-State:

1. State: a large social system with a set of rules that are enforced by a permanent administrative body (government). That body claims and tries to enforce sovereignty. That is, the state claims to be the highest source of decision-making of the social system within its jurisdiction, and it rejects outside interference in making or enforcing its set of rules. The many smaller systems within the state are not sovereign, nor are large international organizations like the United Nations, since states routinely reject their authority. The state is a political concept that refers to the exercise of power or the ability
to make and enforce rules.

2. Sovereign: ultimate power to control people and events within the area of the state.

3. Nation: a group of individuals who feel that they have so much in common (interests, habits, ways of thinking, and the like) that they should all become a particular state. Unlike the term state, the term nation refers to the subjective feelings of its people. By this definition almost all the present nations would like to become nation- states, but many nations are actually parts of other states, and many states are not nation-states. On the whole, nation-states can count on much greater loyalty from their citizens than states that contain many nations, and this gives them greater strength in their inter-
national dealings. (As you can see, the term “international” should
really be “interstate”).

4. Society: the population controlled by a state, or the population that forms a nation, or both. Some societies are territorially limited to a single geographical area and a single state while others are not. The term society, unlike the terms state and nation, is not limited to a single definition because societies overlap with different states and nations.

5. Country: a well-defined geographical area. The term simply refers to a spatial concept.

6. Peace of Westphalia, 1648: event generally identified as marking the end of the medieval order and the beginning of the European centered, nation-state based, balance-of-power system which characterized international political behavior until 1914.

Part Two: The International System:

1. Geopolitics: refers to the role of geographic factors in international politics. Not as much attention is given to this in the late 20th Century because industrialization and technological advance has reduced the potency of geographic barriers to human
movement in commerce and military action.

2. World System: a set of interconnected societies. The state of being of each of these societies depends to some extent on its relative position in the world system, which has strong, middling and weak members. The world system of 1900 was a capitalist system.
During most of the 20th Century there was a capitalist world system and some competitors who challenged its hegemony. In the late 20th Century, there is again simply a capitalist world system.

3. Core Societies: economically diversified (in the 20th Century that means industrialized), rich and powerful societies that are relatively independent of outside control.

4. Peripheral Societies: economically overspecialized, relatively poor and weak societies that are subject to manipulation or direct control by core powers.

5. Semi-Peripheral Societies: societies that are trying to industrialize and/or diversify their economies. While they are weaker than core societies, they are not as subject to outside manipulation as peripheral societies.

6. Interdependence: two or more nation-states which are mutually dependent, i.e. national populations become closely linked through international transactions. The notion of independence of any society is totally relative in this century. Not even the core societies are truly independent because their strength depends, in part, on control of resources that come from peripheral and semi-peripheral areas.

7. Sensitivity: two or more nation-states are in a position of mutual dependence by choice.

8. Vulnerability: nation-states are in a position in which there are no readily available alternatives to the situation of mutual dependence in which they find themselves.

Part Three: Competing World Views:

In preparing to study international relations, emphasis must be placed on the constant tension between facts and interpretation. If our study of international relations required only facts, we could potentially all have the same understanding of world politics. Facts do not speak for themselves, however. They are organized by concepts, structured by theories, interpreted by worldviews and evaluated in the light of individual and subjective value systems.

1. Realism: portrays the world political system as an anarchic struggle for power and security among competing states. No higher authority exists than these states. Thus states individually, or in alliance with other states, provide for their own defense. Power is the only effective means of assuring security. Security follows from vigilance willingness to act prevent any state from achieving a preeminent and threatening position.

2. Idealism-Liberal Internationalism: suggests that there are reasons to believe that the dominant global role of states might be weakening. International institutions, international law and international commerce all contribute to the developing global community. Thus, we should describe the world not only in terms of state interaction but also in terms of increasing community.

3. Radicalism: Understands the world as organized according to capitalist imperatives. International relations are highly stratified and dominated by the unequal relationship between the industrialized and developing worlds. Radical, systemic change is necessary in order to achieve security on a global basis---a security understood as based on the satisfaction of basic needs for the world’s population regardless of their national identity.

4. Thomas Theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real
in their consequences.”

E. Key Categories in Foreign Policy Concepts. From: Martin Griffiths, Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations (Routledge):

1. Realism: Relations among states take place in the absence of a world government. For realists, this means that the international system is anarchical. International relations are best understood by focusing on the distribution of power among states. Despite their normal legal equality, the uneven distribution of power means that the arena of international relations is a form of ‘power politics’. Power is hard to measure; its distribution among states changes over time and there is no consensus among states about how it should be distributed. International relations is therefore a realm of necessity (states must seek power to survive in a competitive environment) and continuity over time. When realists contemplate change in the international system, they focus on changes in the balance of power among states, and tend to discount the possibility of fundamental change in the dynamics of the system itself. The following key thinkers all subscribe to these basic assumptions in their explorations of the following questions: (1) What are the main sources of stability and instability in the international system? (2) What is the actual and preferred balance of power among states? (3) How should the great powers behave toward one another and toward weaker states? (4) What are the sources and dynamics of contemporary changes in the balance of power? Despite some shared assumptions about the nature of international relations, realists are not all of one voice in answering these questions, and it would be wrong to believe that shared assumptions lead to similar conclusions among them. In fact, there is sharp disagreement over the relative merits of particular balances of power (unipolarity, bipolarity and multipolarity). There is also much debate over the causal relationship between states and the international pressures upon them, and the relative importance of different kinds of power in contemporary international relations.

2. Liberalism: In contrast to realists, liberals see international relations as a potential realm of progress and purposive change. They value individual freedom above all else, and they believe that the state ought to be constrained from acting in ways that undermine that freedom. Domestically, the power of the liberal constitutional state is limited by its democratic accountability to its citizens, the need to respect the demands of the economic marketplace and the rule of law. Liberals believe that, despite the difficulties of replicating these constraints at the international level, they must be established to promote stability among, as well as within, sovereign states. Among the key thinkers included in this section, there are differences of emphasis between the priority to be given to democracy, economic interdependence and the international legal regulation of security and economic issue-areas. Republican, commercial and regulatory forms of the liberal tradition are represented here, as liberals debate both the merits of these forms and the degree to which (in isolation or combination) they affect international relations. In the 1920s and 1930s, liberalism was disparaged as a form of ‘idealism’ or ‘utopianism’ by the selfproclaimed ‘realists’ of the time. This was the label that was indiscriminately applied to the work of Norman Angell, Woodrow Wilson and Alfred Zimmern. Today, liberalism is no longer marginalised in the study of international relations. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and therefore communism as a global competitor to capitalism, has provided an opportunity for contemporary liberals to assess the legacy of their intellectual tradition and its relevance at the end of the twentieth century. However, although some contemporary trends may appear to vindicate the insights of the ‘idealists’, liberalism must respond to new challenges as the forces of global capitalism undermine the apparent ‘victory’ of liberal democracy in the Cold War.

3. Radical/Critical Theory: The following thinkers are concerned with the sources of structural inequality inherent in the international system, as well as the ways in which it might be overcome. Often inspired by, but not limited to, the Marxist tradition of thought, they illuminate how international relations among states makes possible (and tends to conceal) the inequities of a global capitalist system. These thinkers are radical in two ways. First, they believe that theory and practice are not separate and autonomous realms of thought and action. Second, they are not content with international reforms that are limited to regulating relations among states, particularly if they rely on the capacity and the will of the so-called ‘great powers’. They believe that both realism and liberalism serve to maintain the basic distribution of power and wealth. They think that we need to reflect critically on the historical conditions underlying inequality, the material and ideological forces that sustain it and the potential for radical reform of the system in favour of a more just world order. If students are to remain faithful to the emancipatory social interest of promoting ‘human needs’ on a global scale, these thinkers urge them to explore the complex connections between a formal ‘anarchy’ among states and an economic ‘hierarchy’ among social and economic classes. The rigid distinction between politics within states and ‘relations’ among social classes must be dispensed with. These thinkers expand the scope of international relations to include the forces at work in ‘global society’, whose practical achievement requires that we question our traditional allegiance to the sovereign state. Of course, none of these thinkers believe that the latter’s obsolescence is imminent, and they disagree on the relative potency of ‘new social movements’ as substitutes for Marx and Lenin’s transnational revolutionary working-class proletarians.

INSTRUCTOR’S NOTE: STUDENTS CAN SKIM PARA 4-9

4. Theory Of International Society: The central concerns for key thinkers in this section are with notions of law and morality that operate among states. They address questions that are central to international relations but which tend to be neglected by realists and liberals. The term ‘international society’ implies that, despite the absence of a central authority, states exhibit patterns of conduct that are subject to, and constituted by, legal and moral restraints. If this is the case, then international relations cannot be understood adequately as a manifestation of power politics (as realists argue), so it may be unnecessary to radically transform the international order to achieve global peace and justice (as radicals claim). For Martin Wight, the theory of international society represents an alternative to realism and idealism in the study of international relations. Hedley Bull claims that the ‘institutions’ of the society of states (war, the great powers, international law, diplomacy and the balance of power) are crucial in maintaining international order. These thinkers encourage us to think about international relations as a social arena whose members – sovereign states – relate to each other not only as competitors for power and wealth, but also as holders of particular rights, entitlements and obligations. In terms of method, they emphasise the importance of an historical approach. The rules of international society arose in Europe in the context of a particular Western Christian culture. How were they reproduced over time as international society expanded outside Europe? Does the society of states depend upon a shared culture of norms and expectations among states? What are the strengths and weaknesses of international society? Michael Walzer and John Vincent are particularly concerned with the relationship between human rights and the rights of sovereign states. They seek ways in which to reconcile the society of states with cosmopolitan values. In contrast, Terry Nardin argues that any attempt to infuse international society with cosmopolitan purposes will undermine its procedural foundations and the value of coexistence.

5. International Organisation: This group of thinkers shed light on the ways in which international relations is regulated by organizations and practices of co-operation among states. Karl Deutsch, David Mitrany and Ernst Haas are students of integration, particularly in the context of European experiments with supranational co-operation in the form of the European Community. Mitrany introduced the idea of ‘functionalism’ to the study of international relations, arguing that the growth of international trade and interdependence weakens the power of the sovereign state, which he thinks is a good thing. Haas is less convinced that functional regulation will proceed in the absence of political coordination among state elites, and he examines the political processes that promote and impede supranationalism. Karl Deutsch is responsible for the term ‘security community’ to describe the framework of relations among states in particular regions. John Ruggie and Robert Keohane are students of international organisation in the broadest sense. For them, investigating the various organisational forms that populate the international arena requires a wider focus than the study of particular formal institutions such as the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund. Ruggie’s work focuses on the practice of multilateralism in the post-1945 era. He argues that it is a complex organisational form of international governance that modifies the simplistic image of the Cold War as a bipolar struggle for power between the United States and the Soviet Union. Keohane’s work focuses on the organisational implications of economic interdependence among states and the conditions that facilitate the establishment and maintenance of co-operative ‘regimes’. Finally, Alexander Wendt argues that the study of international organisation is limited within the confines of realist and liberal frameworks of analysis. He offers a ‘constructivist’ framework, which pays particular attention to the ways in which states and the international system co-constitute each other.

6. Postmodernism: Richard Ashley and Robert Walker draw our attention to the ways in which knowledge and power are inextricably connected in the theory and practice of contemporary international relations. They describe themselves as self-imposed ‘exiles’, on the margins of the academic discipline, probing its conditions of possibility and the limits to its authoritative knowledge claims. For them, students of international relations are forever in search of an elusive ideal, some philosophical foundation beyond the play of power from which to account for and recommend reforms to the practice of statecraft. For them, the modern distinction between theory and practice is replaced by ‘discourse’, a term which blurs the dichotomy between reality and its textual representation. Ashley, in particular, is engaged in a project of disciplinary ‘deconstruction’, exposing the strategies by which particular discourses of power/knowledge in the field construct oppositional conceptual hierarchies and allegedly repress dissent. The language we use to describe the world we live in does not mediate between the self and our environment. This is a modern conceit that relegates important epistemological issues to the background, concerning how we legitimate our fundamental ontological beliefs regarding the scope and dynamics of our field of study. Robert Walker sets his critical sights on the discourse of ‘sovereignty’, which is taken for granted by many students in the field but which also regulates our sense of time, history and progress. Since these thinkers refuse to engage in empirical or normative analysis based on modern notions of reason and truth, they confine themselves to illuminating the dark side of modernity. In particular, the figure of Max Weber looms large in Walker’s work. He suggests that the ‘iron cage’ of modernity is manifested in the study of international relations, which limits our ability to imagine the political possibilities of radical change.

7. Gender And International Relations: Until the 1980s, and despite the inroads of feminism in other social sciences, the role of gender in the theory and practice of international relations was generally ignored. Today, this is no longer the case as a number of feminist thinkers have turned their critical sights on a field that up to now has been genderblind. However, it was inevitable that feminist critiques of the state and the gendered nature of political theory would manifest itself in the study of international relations at some point. With the end of the Cold War, the return of ‘identity politics’, and the sustained criticisms of positivism in the field during the 1980s, the opportunity for examining the role of gender has been seized upon by a number of feminist thinkers. At the empirical level, Cynthia Enloe’s work reveals the role of women in sustaining international relations even though this role is performed in the background and on the margins of international relations theory. Jean Elshtain is a political theorist whose contributions to international relations stems from her deep understanding of the role of gender in framing dominant conceptions of the state in Western thought. In particular, she sheds much light on the way in which conceptions of the appropriate role of men and women are expressed in the theory and practice of war. J. Ann Tickner’s work focuses on the role of gender in shaping the way we study international relations. She argues that the inequality between men and women is reflected in the way that we think about ‘security’ and ‘stability’ in international affairs. Unless the experiences of women are considered in determining what is included in, and excluded from, the study of international relations, our understanding remains radically incomplete.

8. Historical Sociology/Theories of The State: The following thinkers were not trained in the specific academic field of international relations. In particular, Anthony Giddens, Michael Mann and Charles Tilly share an intellectual background in sociology. Their interest in international relations arises from a prior concern with the historical dynamics of the rise of the state and its relationship with war and capitalism over time and space. To a greater or lesser degree, the following thinkers are all on the Left of the political spectrum, even though there are some interesting similarities between their views of the state and those of realists, who tend to be politically conservative in outlook. These thinkers depart from realism in their refusal to examine international relations as a separate sphere of activity from ‘domestic’ politics. Indeed, they are interested in the historical conditions that gave rise to such a differentiation of political activity.
Furthermore, whereas realists tend to contrast the domestic and the international in oppositional terms (order versus anarchy, peace versus war), these thinkers are arguably more emphatic in asserting the dominance of power politics at both levels of analysis. The state is ‘Janus-faced’. Its ability to generate loyalty and resources in order to wage war with other states is closely connected with its dominance over other actors in civil society. The following key thinkers are historians on a large scale, comparing the trajectory of the rise of the state across space as well as time. As with the thinkers examined in a number of the categories used in this book, they are engaged in a number of internal debates, over the role of capitalism in historical explanation, the relative weight given to what Michael Mann calls ‘the sources of social power’, and the future of the state in an era of apparent ‘globalisation’ of economic activity.

9. Theories Of The Nation: Nationalism, it seems, is breaking out all over the world, threatening to fragment some existing states and merge others into new ‘nation-states’. But the term ‘nationalism’ is often used in very vague ways, and our understanding of this form of political mobilisation is impeded by the lack of attention paid to nationalism within the discipline of international relations. As the distinction between war among states and war within them is less distinct today than in earlier eras, nationalism is attracting more attention. One of the biggest problems for international order at the end of the twentieth century is how to reconcile the principle of state sovereignty (which protects the existing distribution of territorial boundaries) and that of self-determination for ‘peoples’ (which constantly threatens to redistribute borders according to a vague normative principle). Accordingly, it is fitting to include reference to the work of three key thinkers on nations and nationalism. Benedict Anderson is a student of the phenomenology of the nation. He has mapped the historical conditions of its emergence as an ‘imagined community’, and explored the practices that sustain the appeal of the nation over other foci of political allegiance in the modern era. Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith are the leading scholars on a major debate over whether nationalism is ancient or modern. Gellner argues that nationalism is a product of modernity and economic industrialisation, whilst Smith claims that nationalism is a unique fusion of modern and pre-modern ideological claims.

II) History: Definitions and Why Study It

History: Definition

A.1 Dictionary Definition of his•to•ry (Dictionary.com):

1. the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.
2. a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account; chronicle: a history of France; a Medical history of the patient.
3. the aggregate of past events.
4. the record of past events and times, esp. in connection with the human race.
5. a past notable for its important, unusual, or interesting events: a ship with a history.
6. acts, ideas, or events that will or can shape the course of the future; immediate but significant happenings: Firsthand observers of our space program see history in the making.
7. a systematic account of any set of natural phenomena without particular reference to time: a history of the American eagle.
8. a drama representing historical events: Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies.

Origin:
1350–1400; ME historie

World English Dictionary: Definition of history:

1. a. a record or account, often chronological in approach, of past events, developments, etc b. (as modifier): a history book; a history play
2. all that is preserved or remembered of the past, esp in written form
3. the discipline of recording and interpreting past events involving human beings 4. past events, esp when considered as an aggregate
5. an event in the past, esp one that has been forgotten or reduced in importance: their quarrel was just history
6. the past, background, previous experiences, etc, of a thing or person: the house had a strange history
7. computing a stored list of the websites that a user has recently visited
8. a play that depicts or is based on historical events
9. a narrative relating the events of a character's life: the history of Joseph Andrews

[C15: from Latin historia, from Greek: enquiry, from historein to narrate, from histōr judge]

B. The History Guide: What is History

What follows are a series of quotations about history and the historian's craft. They have been culled from a variety of sources and they appear here in totally random order. Their purpose is to incite, energize and stimulate your historical imagination.

* * *
"'History,' Stephen said, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'" James Joyce

"Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves." G. M. Trevelyan.

"To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of a great civilization present a different picture. In the wide ocean upon which we venture, the possible ways and directions are many; and the same studies which have served for my work might easily, in other hands, not only receive a wholly different treatment and application, but lead to essentially different conclusions." Jacob Burckhardt

"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illuminates reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity." Cicero

"The past is useless. That explains why it is past." Wright Morris

"Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes." Francis Parkman

"History . . . is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Edward Gibbon

"There is properly no history; only biography." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid." Livy

"What experience and history teach is this-that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." G. W. F. Hegel

"Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life." Fernand Braudel

"The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present." E. H. Carr

"If you do not like the past, change it." William L. Burton

"History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes." Karl Marx

"An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view." Samuel Eliot Morison

"History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is." R. G. Collingwood

"History is more or less bunk." Henry Ford

"That historians should give their own country a break, I grant you; but not so as to state things contrary to fact. For there are plenty of mistakes made by writers out of ignorance, and which any man finds it difficult to avoid. But if we knowingly write what is false, whether for the sake of our country or our friends or just to be pleasant, what difference is there between us and hack writers? Readers should be very attentive to and critical of historians, and they in turn should be constantly on their guard." Polybius

"You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was." Leopold von Ranke

"Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion." Anna Comnena

"Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past." Sigmund Freud

"Every past is worth condemning." Friedrich Nietzsche

"The historian does simply not come in to replenish the gaps of memory. He constantly challenges even those memories that have survived intact." Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

"Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time." Frederick Jackson Turner

C. Why Study History?

Peter N. Stearns, American Historical Review

People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?

Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.

Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline.

History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be


The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

The importance of history in explaining and understanding change in human behavior is no mere abstraction. Take an important human phenomenon such as alcoholism. Through biological experiments scientists have identified specific genes that seem to cause a proclivity toward alcohol addiction in some individuals. This is a notable advance. But alcoholism, as a social reality, has a history: rates of alcoholism have risen and fallen, and they have varied from one group to the next. Attitudes and policies about alcoholism have also changed and varied. History is indispensable to understanding why such changes occur. And in many ways historical analysis is a more challenging kind of exploration than genetic experimentation. Historians have in fact greatly contributed in recent decades to our understanding of trends (or patterns of change) in alcoholism and to our grasp of the dimensions of addiction as an evolving social problem.

One of the leading concerns of contemporary American politics is low voter turnout, even for major elections. A historical analysis of changes in voter turnout can help us begin to understand the problem we face today. What were turnouts in the past? When did the decline set in? Once we determine when the trend began, we can try to identify which of the factors present at the time combined to set the trend in motion. Do the same factors sustain the trend still, or are there new ingredients that have contributed to it in more recent decades? A purely contemporary analysis may shed some light on the problem, but a historical assessment is clearly fundamental—and essential for anyone concerned about American political health today.

History, then, provides the only extensive materials available to study the human condition. It also focuses attention on the complex processes of social change, including the factors that are causing change around us today. Here, at base, are the two related reasons many people become enthralled with the examination of the past and why our society requires and encourages the study of history as a major subject in the schools.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

History Provides Identity

History also 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. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. 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.

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

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's 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. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.

The Ability to Assess Evidence

The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations

Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change

Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process.

History Is Useful in the World of Work

History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives.

What Kind of History Should We Study?

The question of why we should study history entails several subsidiary issues about what kind of history should be studied. Historians and the general public alike can generate a lot of heat about what specific history courses should appear in what part of the curriculum. Many of the benefits of history derive from various kinds of history, whether local or national or focused on one culture or the world. Gripping instances of history as storytelling, as moral example, and as analysis come from all sorts of settings. The most intense debates about what history should cover occur in relation to identity history and the attempt to argue that knowledge of certain historical facts marks one as an educated person. Some people feel that in order to become good citizens students must learn to recite the preamble of the American constitution or be able to identify Thomas Edison—though many historians would dissent from an unduly long list of factual obligations. Correspondingly, some feminists, eager to use history as part of their struggle, want to make sure that students know the names of key past leaders such as Susan B. Anthony. The range of possible survey and memorization chores is considerable—one reason that history texts are often quite long.

There is a fundamental tension in teaching and learning history between covering facts and developing historical habits of mind. Because history provides an immediate background to our own life and age, it is highly desirable to learn about forces that arose in the past and continue to affect the modern world. This type of knowledge requires some attention to comprehending the development of national institutions and trends. It also demands some historical understanding of key forces in the wider world. The ongoing tension between Christianity and Islam, for instance, requires some knowledge of patterns that took shape over 12 centuries ago. Indeed, the pressing need to learn about issues of importance throughout the world is the basic reason that world history has been gaining ground in American curriculums. Historical habits of mind are enriched when we learn to compare different patterns of historical development, which means some study of other national traditions and civilizations.

The key to developing historical habits of mind, however, is having repeated experience in historical inquiry. Such experience should involve a variety of materials and a diversity of analytical problems. Facts are essential in this process, for historical analysis depends on data, but it does not matter whether these facts come from local, national, or world history—although it's most useful to study a range of settings. What matters is learning how to assess different magnitudes of historical change, different examples of conflicting interpretations, and multiple kinds of evidence. Developing the ability to repeat fundamental thinking habits through increasingly complex exercises is essential.

Historical processes and institutions that are deemed especially important to specific curriculums can, of course, be used to teach historical inquiry. Appropriate balance is the obvious goal, with an insistence on factual knowledge not allowed to overshadow the need to develop historical habits of mind.

Exposure to certain essential historical episodes and experience in historical inquiry are crucial to any program of historical study, but they require supplement. No program can be fully functional if it does not allow for whimsy and individual taste. Pursuing particular stories or types of problems, simply because they tickle the fancy, contributes to a rounded intellectual life. Similarly, no program in history is complete unless it provides some understanding of the ongoing role of historical inquiry in expanding our knowledge of the past and, with it, of human and social behavior. The past two decades have seen a genuine explosion of historical information and analysis, as additional facets of human behavior have been subjected to research and interpretation. And there is every sign that historians are continuing to expand our understanding of the past. It's clear that the discipline of history is a source of innovation and not merely a framework for repeated renderings of established data and familiar stories.

Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

Further Reading
Holt, Thomas C. Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination, and Understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990.
Howe, Barbara. Careers for Students of History. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1989.
Hexter, J. H. The History Primer. New York: Basic Books, 1971.
Gagnon, Paul, ed. Historical Literacy. New York: MacMillan, 1989.
Oakeshott, Michael. On History. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983.
Stearns, Peter N. Meaning over Memory: Recasting the Teaching of History and Culture. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
© 1998, American Historical Association.
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ADDITIONAL MATERIALS (NOT CITED ON YOUR SYLLABUS) ON “WHY STUDY HISTORY”). You are recommended, but not obliged to read these.

Why Study History?
History Department Homepage, Hanover College

The purpose of historical inquiry is not simply to present facts but to search for an interpretation of the past. Historians attempt to find patterns and establish meaning through the rigorous study of documents and artifacts left by people of other times and other places.

The study of history is vital to a liberal arts education. History is unique among the liberal arts in its emphasis on historical perspective and context. Historians insist that the past must be understood on its own terms; any historical phenomenon--an event, an idea, a law, or a dogma for example--must first be understood in its context, as part of a web of interrelated institutions, values, and beliefs that define a particular culture and era. Among the liberal arts, history is the discipline most concerned with understanding change. Historians seek not only to explain historical causality--how and why change occurs within societies and cultures. They also try to account for the endurance of tradition, understand the complex interplay between continuity and change, and explain the origins, evolution, and decline of institutions and ideas. History is also distinguished by its singularly broad scope. Virtually every subject has a history and can be analyzed and interpreted in historical perspective and context; the scope of historical inquiry is bound only by the quantity and quality of surviving documents and artifacts.

It is commonly acknowledged that an understanding of the past is fundamental to an understanding of the present. The analysis and interpretation of history provide an essential context for evaluating contemporary institutions, politics, and cultures. Understanding the present configuration of society is not the only reason to study the past; history also provides unique insight into human nature and human civilization. By demanding that we see the world through the eyes of others, that we develop a sense of context and coherence while recognizing complexity and ambiguity, and that we confront the record not only of human achievement but also of human failure, cruelty, and barbarity, the study of history provides us with a richly-textured, substantive framework for understanding the human condition and grappling with moral questions and problems. History is essential to the traditional objectives of the liberal arts, the quest for wisdom and virtue.

There is another reason to study history: it's fun. History combines the excitement of exploration and discovery with the sense of reward born of successfully confronting and making sense of complex and challenging problems.
--Frank Luttmer (1996)

Other Essays on the Study of History

Lord Acton, Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History (1906) (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Roland Barthes, The Discourse of History (1981) (University of Florida)
Robert Blackey et al., Why Become a Historian? (2007) (American Historical Association)
Natalie Davis, Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead (1987) (Stanford University)
Frank Luttmer, The Devil, History, and Studia Humanitatis (1999) (Hanover College)
Louis O. Mink, Modes of Comprehension and the Unity of Knowledge (1987) (University of Florida)
Gerald W. Schlabach, A Sense of History: Some Components (1906) (University of St. Thomas, Minn.)


Amanda Podany The History Summit I, CSU Dominguez Hills May 29, 2008 1
Why Study History? A View from the Past

A couple of years ago, each of the faculty members in my department was given a gift by a publisher—a coffee mug with an inspiring quotation on it. It reads:

“History teaches everything, including the future. --Alphonse de Lamartine”

The mug is very useful—just the right size. But not many modern historians would agree with the sentiment inscribed on it. If it were true, historians would be a lot richer than we tend to be—imagine being able to tell the future, simply by knowing about the past! Alphonse de Lamartine wrote that sentence during the 19th century, at a time when many scholars were optimistic that history would prove to be a science, and a predictive one, at that. But historians have proved to be notoriously bad at predicting the future, so we don’t justify the importance of studying history that way any more.

Today I want to take you through the words of a number of historians from the past 2,500 years. Each of them thought that history was an essential discipline, but they thought so for very different reasons. I don’t make any claims for this selection being encyclopedic, but I do think that the quotes below cover most of the main reasons that have been proposed for the importance of historical knowledge.

Ever since history was first developed as a discipline, by Herodotus in 5th century BCE Greece, reasons have been given for its importance, not just to historians but to society as a whole. We are making the same case today. Some of the reasons are still current, others have fallen into disfavor.

Reason 1:

The reason that Herodotus gave for writing his history, a reason that he laid out at the very beginning of his work, falls into our first category:

In order to ensure that great deeds are not forgotten:

Herodotus (5th century BCE): He wrote his history “in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.” (source of quotation: Kelley, 24)
This was a popular idea in the ancient world. Many historians made the same case. Some, notably Pliny the Younger, wanted to write history in order that they themselves might not be forgotten. Failing that, Pliny wrote to the great Roman historian, Tacitus, asking him to include Pliny’s own deeds in his history—assuming, rightly as it turned out, that Tacitus’s work would be read for centuries to come thereby ensuring Pliny’s own immortality. Tacitus himself made a similar case to that of Herodotus:

Tacitus (1st-2nd century CE)
“My purpose is not to relate at length every motion, but only such as were conspicuous for excellence or notorious for infamy. This I regard as history’s highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.” (Tacitus)
Note that Tacitus added a corollary to Herodotus’s idea—he proposed that, knowing that histories would be written and future generations would remember, people would be deterred from performing evil deeds.

A thousand years after Tacitus, Byzantine historian Anna Comnena gave the same reason (though in perhaps more poetic language) for the study of history: that it kept events from slipping away and being lost forever:

Anna Comnena (12th century):
“[T]he science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.” (Kelley, 114)
This reason is rarely given today as a rationale for the study of history, though it remains true that histories immortalize, to some extent, the events and people they record.

Reason 2:

One of the most enduring reasons for writing and studying history was given by Herodotus’s successor, the great Greek historian, Thucydides. He proposed the second reason to be discussed today:

In order to understand the present and prepare for the future:

Thucydides (5th century BCE):
He wrote of his history “…if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.” (Kelley, 34-35)
Thucydides focused on history’s use for understanding the future, and didn’t mention its role in helping one understand the present, but the Greek philosopher Aristotle did. He wrote:

Aristotle (4th century BCE):
“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” (Szasz)
This idea—that everything has a past and that knowing the past is crucial to understanding, is one of the great pillars on which history stands. Three centuries later, Cicero wrote, along the same lines:

Cicero (1st century BCE):
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” (Kelley, 77)
But was the past just like the present? Can one go beyond what the classical thinkers proposed and assert that one can predict future events and behaviors based on how things turned out in the past? My students often think so. They will often use the cliché that “history repeats itself” to justify why it is important to study history. Some Renaissance thinkers believed this. Machiavelli wrote, for example:

Niccolo Machiavelli (15th-16th century):
“Whoever considers the past and the present will readily observe that all cities and all people are and ever have been animated by the same desires and the same passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the past to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any republic, and to apply those remedies that were used by the ancients…” (Kelley, 294)
Few historians were so optimistic, though. During the Enlightenment, thinkers focused on the study of history not as a way to “foresee” the future but as an aid in planning for the future and avoiding mistakes. Thomas Hobbes and Voltaire both made this case:

Thomas Hobbes (17th century):
“For the principal and proper work of history being to instruct and enable men, by the knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present and providently towards the future…” (Kelley, 303)

Voltaire (18th century):
“This benefit consists in the comparison which a statesman or citizen can make between foreign laws and manners and those of his own country…. The great errors of the past can also be used in this way. One cannot too often recall the crimes and misfortunes caused by absurd quarrels. It is certain that by reviewing the memory of these quarrels we can prevent them from being revived.” (Kelley, 445)
In the 19th century, Aristotle’s point was made again by Jules Michelet:

Jules Michelet (19th century):
“He who would confine his thoughts to present time will not understand present reality.” (Stern)
Meanwhile, Macaulay was making the case, again, for using history to understand the present and plan for the future:

Thomas Babington Macaulay (19th century):
“No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future

“An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is, therefore, absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events.” (Stern, 83, 89)
By the early 20th century, this argument had become a little more sophisticated. James Harvey Robinson was well aware that no historian could ever know everything about the past—the evidence for the reconstruction of most events has been lost. But even if one could know everything (in a “Godlike” way, as he put it), Robinson didn’t believe that the actions of people in the past would be able to provide useful “precedents of conduct.” He wrote:

James Harvey Robinson (1912):
“History… may be regarded as an artificial extension and broadening of our memories and may be used to overcome the natural bewilderment of all unfamiliar situations….Could we suddenly be endowed with a Godlike and exhaustive knowledge of the whole history of mankind…we should gain forthwith a Godlike appreciation of the world in which we live, and a Godlike insight into the evils which mankind now suffers, as well as into the most promising methods for alleviating them, not because the past would furnish precedents of conduct, but because our conduct would be based upon a perfect comprehension of existing conditions founded upon a perfect knowledge of the past.” (Stern, 263)
By the 1930s, Huizinga was rejecting the idea that any “laws” could be ascertained for history or that the future could be predicted based on the past:

J. Huizinga (1934):
“history is pre-eminently an inexact science, …its concept of causality is extremely defective…it resists the formulation of laws…the concept of historical evolution can be considered valid only so far as one accepts the organic analogy…
“Though the past supplies our material and compels our attention, though the mind realizes that not one minute of the future can be predicted, none the less it is the eternal future that moves our mind. The widespread and persistent opinion that history should deal with our understanding of the present rests on a misconception: a ‘present’ is as little known to historical thought as it is to philosophical thought.” (Stern, 290)
Marc Bloch, one of the founders of the Annales school of history, emphasized this further. In his view, history never repeated itself, at least not exactly:

Marc Bloch (20th century):
“History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.” (Szasz)
Nonetheless, even if history can’t predict the future, even if it doesn’t repeat itself, surely it is essential for understanding the present and for our sensible functioning in the world. The classic analogy of a people who have forgotten their history (though I’m not sure who first came up with it) is to someone waking up with amnesia. This person can’t make any rational decisions because he or she has no idea about his or her personal past. We all go through our days completely dependent on the wisdom accumulated from our past experiences. So it is with societies and nations. If they forget their pasts, they have no accumulated wisdom on which to act. Individuals can’t predict their personal futures with any accuracy—anything might happen due to circumstances that are out of their control—but that doesn’t prevent them from planning their activities and making decisions based on their past experiences. So it is with history’s usefulness to the population.

Historians, even today, still go back to Thucydides’ and Aristotle’s basic idea, formulated almost 2,500 years ago:

Kenneth Stampp (20th century):
“With the historian it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.” (Szasz)
This idea has been expressed by many modern historians. A good example is found in the article by Peter Stearns that was distributed to the participants in this summit, where he writes as follows:

Peter Stearns (2007):
“The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened…we have to look for factors that took shape earlier…. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.” (Stearns)
Reason 3 (no longer used):

Ancient historians, especially Jewish and Christian historians, had a third main reason for studying history, one that is never cited by historians today:

In order to understand the will of God:The first two reasons discussed above are still seen as legitimate by some historians. This third one now falls only into the realm of theology, not history. It was expressed clearly in the 1st century by Josephus:

Josephus (1st century CE):
“the main lesson to be learned from this history by any who care to peruse it is that men who conform to the will of God…prosper in all things beyond belief, and for their reward are offered by God felicity; whereas in proportion as they depart from the strict observance of these laws, things (else) practicable become impracticable, and whatever imaginary good thing they strive to do ends in irretrievable disasters.” (Kelley, 133)
This idea remained popular throughout the Medieval period in Europe, and elaborate frameworks of thought developed around it, based on the Bible. To these historians, God played a role in history, rewarding virtue and punishing sin. Medieval historians readily predicted the future based on what they saw as the correlation between human history and biblical prophecy.
Martin Luther agreed with Josephus that God’s will could be seen in history:

Martin Luther (16th century):
“histories are nothing else than a demonstration, recollection, and sign of divine action and judgment, how He upholds, rules, obstructs, prospers, punishes, and honors the world, and especially men, each according to his just desert, evil or good.” (Kelley, 315)
Starting with the Scientific Revolution, however, and continuing into the Enlightenment, historians began to separate their studies from those of the theologians. History’s focus returned to the study of human activities and their human and natural causes. The study of God was something entirely separate....

Reason 4:

Tacitus (quoted above) had mentioned the role of history in condemning evil behavior. This, and its corollary—the praise and emulation of virtue--became a common theme in works that promoted the study of history, even when God was not seen as rewarding virtue or punishing evil.

In order to provide a moral lesson—a model of good behavior and a warning about evil:

In the Middle Ages, the Venerable Bede made this case:
Bede (7th-8th century):
“For if history records good things of good men, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good: or if it records evil of wicked men, the good, religious listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse, and to follow what he knows to be good and pleasing to God.” (Kelley, 173-174)
History was a moral lesson, one that would improve and inspire the student. Petrarch, the early Renaissance writer agreed that history was designed to:

Petrarch (14th century):
“point up to the readers those things that are to be followed and those to be avoided, with plenty of distinguished examples provided on either side.” (Kelley, 230)
Petrarch, perhaps a little futilely, wrote letters to Cicero and other classical authors, as though they were his contemporaries (though they had been dead for well over a millennium), taking issue with, or applauding them, for their actions (and even wondering whether they might have taken offense at his word. He was a little eccentric, to our eyes, but he clearly felt that there was much to be learned from the past. Two centuries later, Jean Bodin said much thing:

Jean Bodin (16th century):
“This, then, is the greatest benefit of historical books, that some men, at least, can be incited to virtue and others can be frightened away from vice.” (Kelley, 383)
Generally, modern historians make little mention of this idea that history provides such a clear-cut morality tale—even some “heroes” often prove to have feet of clay when studied in depth—but the idea was raised by the Bradley Commission in the late 1980s as a reason to promote the study of history in schools:

Bradley Commission (1989):
“It [history] can convey a sense of civic responsibility by graphic portrayals of virtue, courage, and wisdom—and their opposites.” (History Teacher 23/1)
Some virtues in historical figures are obvious, but some are less clear. What about someone like Alexander the Great? Does he provide an example of virtue or vice? Anyone emulating Alexander today would be roundly condemned by the international community. But to condemn him for his behavior in the past would be ahistorical; he lived at a time when modern ideas of human rights had not yet developed. We now believe that is not our job, as historians, to judge the past based on modern values.

Peter Stearns provides a more nuanced view related to this reason for the study of history. Rather than adopting the idea that there are clear, unambiguous instances of virtue and evil in history, he proposes that students of history look at the very complexities of situations in the past in order to “test” and “hone” their “moral sense”:

Peter Stearns (2007):
“Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings.” (Stearns)
Reason 5:

In order to understand the history of one’s nation and to increase patriotism or sense of identity:

With the development of the idea of the “nation” came a new role for history. People reasoned that a sense of national identity could be generated through a knowledge of shared history. Already, this was being voiced by Leonardo Bruni in the Renaissance when he referred to “our own history”:

Leonardo Bruni (14th-15th century): “History: a subject which must not on any account be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the origins of our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of Kings.” (Kelley, 245)
In the 19th century, French historian Augustin Thierry was typical of his time in proposing that national history be widely taught in order to strengthen patriotism:

Augustin Thierry (19th century):
“I believe that our patriotism would gain a great deal both in selflessness and in steadfastness if the knowledge of history, and particularly of French history, were more widely diffused among us and were to become in a certain sense more popular.” (Stern, 67)
By the late 20th century the Bradley Commission recognized the need for both a common political vision and a recognition of the multicultural nature of American society, both of which were aided through the study of history:

Bradley Commission (1989):
“An historical grasp of our common political vision is essential to liberty, equality, and justice in our multicultural society.” (History Teacher 23/1)

Peter Stearns emphasized that awareness of a shared history could provide not only a nation, but a business, institution, or ethnic group with a common identity:

Peter Stearns (2007):
“History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form….Many institutions, businesses, communities and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes.” (Stearns)

Reason 6

History could do more than simply make citizens feel proud of their nation, or share a common identity. It could make them better citizens.

In order to encourage civic participation and citizenship:


In the 19th century, Frederick Jackson Turner wanted history to come alive and to be relevant to students, and to inspire them to be good citizens.

Frederick Jackson Turner (19th century)
“But perhaps its most practical utility to us, as public school teachers, is its service in fostering good citizenship….We must make history living instead of allowing it to seem mere literature, a mere narration of events that might have occurred on the moon….Historical study has for its end to let the community see itself in the light of the past, to give it new thoughts and feelings, new aspirations and energies.” (Stern, 207)
A few years later, J. B. Bury also emphasized the need for citizens to be knowledgeable about history, a theme continued, after World War II, in a yearbook put together by the National Council for Social Studies:

John Bagnell Bury (1902):
“it is of vital importance for citizens to have a true knowledge of the past and to see it in a dry light, in order that their influence on the present and future may be exerted in the right directions.” (Stern, 216)

NY Times on the NCSS Yearbook (1947):
“American history is called the necessary and vital core in any program of preparation for intelligent American citizenship in an interdependent world….The educators observe that citizens of the United States must, without losing their national identity, become citizens of the world.” (NY Times, Feb 2, 1947)
By the late 20th century and continuing today, this was seen as one of the most important reasons for placing history at the center of the school curriculum—a familiarity with history, along with the “habits of mind” it encourages, are seen as absolutely necessary in order for citizens to function in our democratic society.

The Bradley Commission (1989):
“It [history] is vital for all citizens in a democracy, because it provides the only avenue we have to reach an understanding of ourselves and our society, in relation to the human condition over time, and of how some things change and others continue….The knowledge and habits of mind to be gained from the study of history are indispensable to the education of citizens in a democracy.” (History Teacher 23/1)

Peter Stearns (2007):
“History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past….studying history encourages the habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.” (Stearns)
A number of other reasons for the study of history have been put forward over the last century, most of which remain valid and are uncontroversial.
Reason 7

In order to lessen prejudices:

Knowing more about the histories of peoples different from oneself tends to generate more understanding. Trevelyan referred to this as “sympathizing with others:

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1913)“It [history] can mould the mind itself into the capability of understanding great affairs and sympathizing with other men.” (Stern, 235)
Others have written more recently of history’s ability to undermine stereotypes and diminish unfounded prejudices.
Reason 8

In order to appreciate arts and literature:

All works of art and literature were produced during specific time periods. In many instances the works cannot truly be appreciated without an understanding of the histories of those times.

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1913):
“Another educative function of history is to enable the reader to comprehend the historical aspect of literature proper….For much of literature is allusion, either definite or implied….History and literature cannot be fully comprehended, still less fully enjoyed, except in connection with one another.” (Stern, 237)

Bradley Commission (1989):
“History provides both framework and illumination for the other humanities. The arts, literature, philosophy, and religion are best studied as they develop over time and in the context of societal evolution. In turn they greatly enliven and reinforce our historical grasp of place and moment.” (History Teacher 23/1)
Reason 9

In order to foster personal growth:

In addition to making us better, more informed citizens, a knowledge of history simply makes us wiser, according to this line of thought. Bradley Commission (1989):
“It [history] can satisfy young people’s longing for a sense of identity and of their time and place in the human story. Well-taught, history and biography are naturally engaging to students by speaking to their individuality, to their possibilities for choice, and to their desire to control their lives.” (History Teacher 23/1)

Peter Stearns (2007):
“[History] offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to
run their own lives.” (Stearns)
Reason 10

In order to prepare for work by developing analytical skills:

The skills one uses in learning to read, analyze, and interpret history extend to many other aspects of life. Whether at home (for example, trying to determine the credibility of information on a website) or at work (e.g. doing research for a business report), skills learned in well-taught history classes have a lasting value. Such skills even help students do well on standardized tests of reading, though this can hardly be viewed as an end in itself. More important is that a different (and arguably more useful) type of literacy is needed for reading primary or secondary sources in history than is required for reading fiction.

NY Times on NCSS Yearbook (1947):
“A proper teaching of history, the Yearbook authors hold, can develop critical thinking among students, as well as built democratic attitudes.” (NY Times, Feb 2 1947)

Bradley Commission (1989):
“history is generally helpful to the third aim of education, preparation for work. It is needed for such professions as law, journalism, diplomacy, politics, and teaching. More broadly, historical study develops analytical skills, comparative perspectives, and modes of critical judgment that promote thoughtful work in any field or career.” (History Teacher 23/1)

Peter Stearns (2007):
“History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders.” (Stearns)
These are not the only reasons for studying history, of course. One can think of many more. What rings true throughout the centuries, however, is that history has always been an essential element of the educational curriculum. It is not a luxury or an add-on to be brought in if time allows. Its study is part of the life-blood of a society.

And, finally, a few words of praise for the wise men and women who spend their lives teaching history (from a couple of eminent thinkers):

Postscript: In Praise of History Teaching:

Martin Luther (16th century):
“The historians, therefore, are the most useful people and the best teachers, so that one can never honor, praise, and thank them enough.” (Kelley, 315)

Frederick Jackson Turner (19th century):
“Given a good school or town library…and given an energetic, devoted teacher to direct and foster the study of history and politics and economics, we would have an intellectual regeneration of the state.” (Stern, 208)
* * * References:

The Bradley Commission on History in Schools. “Building a History Curriculum: Guidelines for Teaching History in Schools.” The History Teacher 23/1 (1989) 7-35.
Fine, Benjamin. “Council for Social Studies Emphasizes the Importance of American History Teaching.” New York Times, Feb. 2 1947.
Kelley, Donald R., ed. Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991.
Stearns, Peter. “Why Study History?” Unpublished manuscript, 2007.
Stern, Fritz, ed. The Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
Szasz, Ferenc M. “The Many Meanings of History, Parts I-IV” The History Teacher 7/4 (1974) 552-563; 8/1 (1974) 54-63; 8/2 (1975) 208-216; 9/2 (1976) 217-227.









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