Comparative History and Other Exciting Titles

    What an age we live in: the flow of information that is accessible to millions and millions of people; the ability to search for information and form opinions. Social media have given us the power of the share/post function. We have a great responsibility laid upon us in the simple mouse click/swipe action. A responsibility to provide information that is complete and whole, requiring thought and possibly action from the readers that is beyond a few clicks or swipes. What do we do with this power? From my many years of observation it goes down like this: we read or watch something, feel empowered by the message and immediately repost with our two cents worth on why we agree with the post in the first place. More often than not, we repost things because we are outraged. Outraged at society. Outraged with government. Outraged with culture. Outraged with history. We read something that strikes a chord deep within our core values and we let the outrage carry us to share it with our friends. We assume our friends will agree and if they don't, we fall into a cesspool of indignation and provide them with all the reasons they need to change their values to fit the narrative of the post. The observation is that outrage begets more outrage and the mad typing of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points. Calm yourselves. The keyboard can't handle the change you are trying to elicit. If the design of a post is to evoke righteous indignation, chances are more than good that there is information within the post that has been distorted, and it should be questioned immediately. My attitude towards these types of posts is blasé, but then there will be a barrage of posts in my newsfeed that ominously tell the reader to "Do your research!" or "Know your history!” Those I read. Those I always question.

     History is the study of the evolution of society, from the beginnings of a civilization, to its technological advancement, and its centralization and unification. It is the study of change; the pattern of betterment across the ages, where one generation strives to leave a better world to the next and so on. Historical methodology and comparative history are taught mostly in higher level history courses. Historical Methods is the first class a student majoring in history takes in college, right alongside all those basic classes. It teaches the student how to research empirically, how to analyze and use the evidences found from the research. The history degree is capped by a Senior Seminar in Comparative History, the culmination of how the student has learned to study history. To the history major, it’s the most beautiful thing. Many students, throughout their formal education, learn history as a series of events and dates that are central to one civilization. Each history class focuses on one group of people: American, English, ancient, classical, etc. The comparison of these civilizations through critical analysis is often left behind in favor of the memorization of facts. Ask anyone which subject they disliked most in school and it generally falls to history. It's 'boring' is the first answer, ‘tedious’ a close second. If the model for historical education is to know the facts to keep us from repeating history then more analytical and comparative history should be taught. If historical methodology and comparative history were utilized during our foundational years of education, the notion of "know your history" would be far more pertinent.

    Interest in history seemingly happens later in life, well past the stacks of thick books and time lines. As we age and become more aware of the events around us, we learn the value of history as a means of guidance. We know the answers lie in the past. We read a bit, are told quite a bit through media and other informational outlets and we take the histories we remember from formal education, plucking facts from all different histories, and we slap them together, hoping they give us the answers we seek. Robert Bain, in his piece entitled Building an Essential World History Tool: Teaching Comparative History for the book Teaching World History (the study of history also throws long and wordy titles out there to scare people off) writes of 'implicit' comparisons. Bain says "...implicit comparisons are often poor comparisons. Using little or no methodology, people allow surface similarity or difference to pass for analysis or evidence. Teachers often assume students can compare because everyone makes comparisons so often. Yet frequency of activity does not guarantee the quality.” Bain's writing is spot on and the article in its entirety is worth the time as it goes into detail on how the method should function (see link above).

     Information is only worth what we do with it. The interwebs have done their best to distort and misuse history for the purpose of propaganda. The word ‘propaganda’ elicits visions of posters from the World War I and II era, the "Buy War Bonds!" or "Loose lips sink ships!" or the plethora of print media put out that was anti-Allies, anti-Axis, anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, anti-Semitic, and anti-fill-in-the-blank. The basic definition of propaganda is ‘information that is designed to mislead or persuade’ (dictionary.com).  The bombardment of propaganda via social media is mind numbing and more often than not a fabrication of some vague history or ideology. Propaganda use words like "that person is socialist or fascist or both" and "our morally defunct society is doomed to collapse like Rome" or "our current President is the next Hitler, ready to take us into the next Reich." The reality is just nope. Bains quotes David Hacket Fisher (Historians’ Fallacies) about the “misuse of comparison as the fallacy of the appositive proof, a ‘complex form of empirical error, which consists in an attempt to establish the existence of a quality in A by contract with quality in B—and B is misrepresented or misunderstood.’ This misuse is an “invidious mistake.”  Though the real intention is on event A, Fisher explains, the ‘erroneous B is bootlegged’ into the discussion of evidence.” The purpose of history is to be aware, to see patterns, to be wary. History is readily abused when it does not fit the fixed narrative. Comparative history begs you to know more about the pattern, more about how things happened and why. A much deeper understanding of how Fascism and Socialism swept Europe and how Communism gripped Russia is needed before you can make the comparison with America. Comparatively, we have little in common with the patterns and histories of either. There are many surface similarities, but the deeper histories would calm people down enough to reject every idea that takes one or two similarities and rushes us to our doom. “One of the dangers of a generic comparative method is that it presupposes we know from the outset what the effective categories of comparison are. One of the strengths of the comparative method in history is that it questions that assumption. Historians recognize that comparative categories are both time and culture bound. Therefore, they understand that new insights, questions, and categories arise after initial comparison,” Bains writes. The comparative method requires you to bring all the information you can to the table, to trace the road a civilization took, decide how they compare with another civilization, and then realize, even after the conclusion, that there will always be things that make it similar (so tuck that into the wary corner of your mind) but then not (so tuck that into a corner that’s interested but not freaked out). And just know that at some point you will have to re-evaluate your findings if later on you find something that turns the pattern on its side. History is incredibly fluid; its broader conclusions make the pattern, it’s the individual details that can change. It seems like a form of madness, right?  It’s always changing, yet everyone wants to stick it to a rigid course to fit the current events. It’s not that simple.

    Each kernel of information about a society can rock the comparison of one society to another. The rise of Hitler was due in large part to his and other German experiences during World War I and the years following. The German experience through the years of 1912 (give or take, one of those ghastly frustrations in deciding how far back to go) to 1933 is quite unique to that society. The American experience of the same time period was vastly different. I would argue that the Treaty of Versailles caused a great deal more suffering to the German people in a post-war world than the suffering Americans faced once back on American soil later on in the early 1930s. This difference made a huge impact on German societal and governmental stability and/or instability, something the United States had no experience with in the early 20^th century, at least not on the level of an all-encompassing, revolutionary stab at a new kind of governmental rule. But that’s a post for another day.

        I hope with this blog to take some social media posts to task but to also shed light on the 'isms' that are bandied about and the deeper history that many feel is the pattern for current America. I love the study of comparative history, I love history books and prefer documentaries to most television (unless it’s Doctor Who, but you know, time travel, and “people assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint—it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly time-y wimey… stuff”). It seems fitting that I share my collection of thoughts on history. I have boxes full of research, notes and essays that could use an airing. What else can I do? I was a history major. It's like being an English major....... dun, dun, dun….