History Needs to be Objective for the Benefit of All.

There are certain topics in which anyone (with even the remotest interest) seems to fancy themselves an expert: sales, history, and the England football team are but a few of those topics.

Writing as one with an interest in all three, having graduated in history from a top UK university and working successfully in sales for several years, I’ll happily keep my opinions on the England football team to myself and those within the same four walls as me when a game’s on!

Sales skills are worthy of substantive discussion in their own right (they can be notoriously under-appreciated), but it’s history that I’m interested in covering here.

One of the first things that any university history course worth its salt seeks to impress upon its students is that history is not about learning and then regurgitating “the facts” in a neat, linear fashion, as so many untrained ‘experts’ assume it is.

Having met with tens of history academics throughout the UK over the past eight years, I’ve come across various approaches to educate undergraduate students on the messy, non-linear nature of the study of history.

At one institution I visited, every history student had to take a module on witchcraft in their first year. It was compulsory. Why on earth witchcraft?, I hear you ask. Because witchcraft is inherently messy; it demands that students read and assess bizarre primary source documents that they might struggle to make heads or tails of. There a no inherently “right answers”. Interpretation is indubitably required, as it is in any historical creation.

It is to the historian’s advantage, then, if their interpretations are well-informed, fair and as objective as possible. And it doesn’t do their readers any harm either.

Woke History is Broke History

I’ve recently been watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Civil War. Fascinated by this new historical interest, I joined some discussion groups on Facebook to learn from those who know more than I do on the subject. Most of the posts are insightful – pictures of figures from the war, quotations and other ephemera are shared and discussed.

I’ve noticed a small but vocal contingent in the groups, however, who go further in their judgment and condemnation of confederate generals than anyone else. For them, an objective, levelheaded presentation of facts and discussion won’t suffice. One commenter, for instance, questioned Ken Burns’ “straddling the fence” regarding his presentation of confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, presumably because he didn’t condemn him to hell for what his troops perpetrated at Fort Pillow. I thought that what Burns presented on Forrest and Fort Pillow was pretty damning in itself, though it was presented in a measured fashion. (Having dug a little deeper, I found alternative interpretations of Forrest’s personal role in relation to the atrocities carried out by his troops at Fort Pillow.)

Those who seek to use history as a means of accusing figures and institutions of wrongdoing in the past, for which those in the present must endlessly atone, are wrongheaded. Not only does their plight fan the bitter flames of contention and resentment, it also produces substandard history, which means substandard learning to take forward for better outcomes for all.

What we need for the benefit of all is objective history (at least as objective as we can make it), not politically-charged accusatory (or even vindictive) history.

The Only Way to Respect History

The introduction to Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine’s biography of Deng Xiaoping bears relevance in making the case for objective instead of accusatory history. Deng is not an uncontroversial figure, but, as Pantsov and Levine note, he “was a multifaceted individual whose portrait cannot be painted in just black and white.” They make a strong case in favour of striving to write an objective, non-political account of Deng:

“In attempting to recreate the concrete historical situation in which Deng, Mao, and all their friends and foes operated, we purposefully tried to avoid being biased by political prejudices of the right or of the left. It is the only way to understand the people who have lived before us correctly, and it is the only way to respect history. If one starts writing history from one’s political point of view, it will never be an objective historical record but rather a political accusation.”

The only way to respect history is, indeed, to write objectively, not politically. Why should we take the care to do so, though?

Good historians, like Pantsov and Levine, aren’t lacking a moral compass and they certainly aren’t naive. They’re well aware of the evils that have been perpetrated in the past:

“History is full of blood. When we turn over its pages, we feel the blood on our fingers. One cannot find an ideal historical figure.”

But they understand that the value of objective history isn’t so much for the dead, as it is for the living:

“It is we, not these long-dead leaders, who require the truth.”

So here’s to pursuing and supporting objective history with all its messy, inconsistent and complex characters and events.

Here’s to digging deeper to identify the full truth, overcoming lazy and politically convenient narratives in the process.

And here’s to using the truth that we uncover to build a better future for all.