HISTORY,
AN POLITICAL SUBJECT
"That's objective!"
many people think of political narratives.
But they mask the underlying issues
of the economy and class conflict,
and leave out how the society worked
• Accounts must choose some facts
and leave out others,
so an underlying purpose is inevitable
A ray of light: clues slip in with the data.
• Focus on the economy and class
transforms events' meanings
Take, for example, the effect of economic growth (otherwise said, capitalism, since there is no other term for the private search for gain on which growth depends) on peasants: it leads to land loss and uprooting. As well, the rise of a new commercial class challenges the elite. So one understands the universal destructions of wealth before such riches can be invested.
When growth takes place in spite of those destructions and other restrictions, it leads to cycles of struggles between traditional forces and commercial challengers. The latter win and and impose structural innovations (in 19th-century Africa a divisible currency, in 16th-century France a capitalism freed from traditional limits). A stronger power rises to contain them -- a warrior's chieftaincy in the remote African region I studied, the beginning of Absolute Monarchy in France. Their relatively primitive economies (in France, growth accelerates only with the explorations and discoveries of the end of the 15th century) make the cycles there easier to percieve than in, say, China or India, but they are probably universal.
Uncovering them shows:
° In West Africa, the importance of slave raiders and slave-based commercial producers, whose dominance by the end of the 19th century challenges the ethnocentric way in which African history is (involuntarily) still viewed.
° That the anti-Protestant "fanaticism" of French urban underclasses during 16th-century civil wars is explained by fury those Protestants -- many of whom were emerging capitalists -- brought on by defying the protections the Church gave the vulnerable, which hampered the search for gain.
° How Absolute Monarchy was an ultimate attempt to contain growth. Understanding that clarifies the great paradoxes of 17th-century France: building Versailles on a swamp without usable water when the king already has a series of palaces, and maintaining the prohibition of Protestantism even when it was clearly bringing the exodus of the kingdom's most productive population.
AN POLITICAL SUBJECT
"That's objective!"
many people think of political narratives.
But they mask the underlying issues
of the economy and class conflict,
and leave out how the society worked
• Accounts must choose some facts
and leave out others,
so an underlying purpose is inevitable
The most common is to unite people around an identity: in that sense medieval chronicles about kings and my 10th-grade textbook, The rise of our democracy, are similar. Such a perspective minimizes or even omits whatever does not fit into that linear vision (for how a French school book or the City museum downplay Paris's 19th-century revolutions, please click on the links).
As well, listing data is simple: just put note cards in order. That mechanical practice does not ask how society is put together, though there's no way one can understand how it changes if such functioning is left out. (Granted, many studies are important without such background, and many stories are so dramatic that its absence doesn't matter.)
As well, listing data is simple: just put note cards in order. That mechanical practice does not ask how society is put together, though there's no way one can understand how it changes if such functioning is left out. (Granted, many studies are important without such background, and many stories are so dramatic that its absence doesn't matter.)
A ray of light: clues slip in with the data.
Drawing: person suddenly gets it
• Focus on the economy and class
transforms events' meanings
Take, for example, the effect of economic growth (otherwise said, capitalism, since there is no other term for the private search for gain on which growth depends) on peasants: it leads to land loss and uprooting. As well, the rise of a new commercial class challenges the elite. So one understands the universal destructions of wealth before such riches can be invested.
When growth takes place in spite of those destructions and other restrictions, it leads to cycles of struggles between traditional forces and commercial challengers. The latter win and and impose structural innovations (in 19th-century Africa a divisible currency, in 16th-century France a capitalism freed from traditional limits). A stronger power rises to contain them -- a warrior's chieftaincy in the remote African region I studied, the beginning of Absolute Monarchy in France. Their relatively primitive economies (in France, growth accelerates only with the explorations and discoveries of the end of the 15th century) make the cycles there easier to percieve than in, say, China or India, but they are probably universal.
Uncovering them shows:
° In West Africa, the importance of slave raiders and slave-based commercial producers, whose dominance by the end of the 19th century challenges the ethnocentric way in which African history is (involuntarily) still viewed.
° That the anti-Protestant "fanaticism" of French urban underclasses during 16th-century civil wars is explained by fury those Protestants -- many of whom were emerging capitalists -- brought on by defying the protections the Church gave the vulnerable, which hampered the search for gain.
° How Absolute Monarchy was an ultimate attempt to contain growth. Understanding that clarifies the great paradoxes of 17th-century France: building Versailles on a swamp without usable water when the king already has a series of palaces, and maintaining the prohibition of Protestantism even when it was clearly bringing the exodus of the kingdom's most productive population.
An economic and anthropological perspective
makes sense.
Why is it so rare?
If you accept that history is a political subject, you'll agree that the powers that be have no wish to give the public a mental tool to challenge them. That does not mean that they impose their views on historians, or even that historians are aware of their conservative slant. One takes for granted the approach absorbed in high school, especially when it is part of the zeitgeist.
But there's a change. Today conservative history itself is being left out of school curricula. Because the forces behind globalized commerce encourage a single world market, and national histories obstruct that evolution?
Get rid of it!
Cartoon based on Scrooge McDuck and Rubens
A "bloog" by an obscure Paris tour guide
has absolutely no chance of confronting globalized commerce or of being noticed by more than a handful of people.
But showing how history is a weapon against mystification
and suggesting an alternative
is my contribution to an infinitely wider struggle.
But showing how history is a weapon against mystification
and suggesting an alternative
is my contribution to an infinitely wider struggle.
 |
| Harald Wolff |
The end.
* * *
I'd love to know what you think of this -- including if you don't like it.
And if you do, please pass it on.
It's not written to be sold, but to be read.
