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Financial Times (London, England)
January 10, 2005 Monday
London Edition 1
The dangers of pick'n'mix history
By MARK MAZOWER
In 1401, while besieging the city of Damascus, the Mongol ruler
Tamurlane, whose armies had plundered their way from Moscow to Delhi,
summoned the scholar Ibn Khaldun. Who better to lay bare for him the
secrets of civilisation and political power than the author of that
enduring masterpiece of world history The Book of Lessons. History,
according to Ibn Khaldun, acquaints us with great figures of the past
and allows us to be guided by their example.
The all-conquering Tamurlane was a smart and argumentative man, keen
to glean any insights the past could provide. But was he able to
predict the triumphant successes that followed, or the later division
of his vast empire? Ibn Khaldun, who reminded his readers that
victory and superiority in war come from luck and chance - and that
no dynasty can expect to last more than four generations - would not
have been surprised by either.
The idea that history's value lies in the lessons it offers us goes
back a long way. Cicero described the past as "the teacher of life";
Hegel saw knowledge of it as the precondition for self-awareness and
freedom. And what Novalis called "the magic wand of analogy" is still
waved vigorously. Ahead of the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush
warned the United Nations against following the miserable example of
the League of Nations, while Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister,
insisted he would not be remembered for appeasement. Historically
minded dissenters dismissed Mr Blair's implicit reference to Neville
Chamberlain, likening him instead to Eden or Gladstone, imperial
interventionists whose sincerity was matched only by the catastrophic
consequences of their actions. Iraq in 2003 was thus turned,
depending on the viewpoint, into 1939, or 1956, or 1882.
No doubt history offers statesmen (and their critics) a handy
rhetorical weapon. Once historical events embed themselves in the
public imagination, they easily become a shorthand for basic moral
concepts such as treachery (Pearl Harbor), cowardice (Munich),
heroism (Dunkirk) and evil (the Third Reich). But the mere invocation
of these over-familiar names scarcely provides lessons in any
meaningful sense. When those who favoured invading Iraq likened
Saddam Hussein to Hitler, they were not actually interested in
comparing the two men or their regimes. Hitler for them meant not the
historical flesh-and-blood figure but the demonic image that still
dominates the public consciousness of the west as the epitome of
wickedness.
Plundering history in this way can be downright dangerous and lead
unwary policymakers down the wrong path. Has Condoleezza Rice, former
Sovietologist, been helped or hindered in her role as national
security adviser by her reading of how communism collapsed in 1989?
Believing that overwhelming US military superiority was what really
ended the Soviet one-party state, it was tempting to imagine Tommy
Franks spreading democracy in the Middle East, too. Tempting - but
the analogy turned out to be a false friend. And how nice it would
have been if the success and tranquility of the post-1945 Allied
occupations in Germany and Japan really had offered reliable pointers
to Iraq's post-invasion political trajectory. Yet this parallel,
frequently drawn by think-tanks and policy insiders, is little more
than wishful thinking. Taking occupation seriously as a historical
category would have meant pondering the French experience in Algeria,
the Russians in the Caucasus, or the Italians in Ethiopia. History is
not a pick'n'mix box of candy, in which you can pick only the sweet
ones.
Yet before we write off the whole idea of learning from the past, we
should try to distinguish the stuff of public debate from something
less noisy but more substantial. Selling policy is one thing; but
history can also act as a kind of reality check within the process of
policy formation itself. Comparison and analogy, properly conceived,
are the life-blood of historical analysis, but they depend on an
important kind of detached open-mindedness and a willingness to
explore both the similarities and the differences between the cases
being considered. Why should we not discuss how the treatment of the
Armenians in the first world war compares with the treatment of the
Jews in the second; or ask how the way Palestinians are governed in
the occupied territories differs from the way whites ruled blacks in
South Africa after 1948? Or why should we not explore the contrast in
all its complexity between the defeated Axis powers in 1945 and Iraq
today? Historical insights flow from such comparisons and there are
lessons to be learnt - about states and their ideologies, their
intended and unintended consequences - both for those making policy
and for those wishing to comprehend it.
Taken in the right spirit, therefore, history can provide its own
unique kind of help to understand the present. As a discipline it is
neither predictive, nor a practical guide to action: its lessons are
not so specific. Yet it remains an essential tool for scrutinising
the easy moralising, the ideological certainties and the expansive
claims that batter our ears. It can serve as a politician's
cheerleader, but it can also weigh policy assumptions and contexts.
And a final heretical thought: should the present provide the only
test of its value anyway? Two centuries ago, Friedrich Schlegel, the
German critic, suggested that the study of the past gives us "a calm,
firm overview of the present (and) a measure of its greatness or
smallness". Our normally democratic age likes to demand that history
serve it; but then it vanishes like Tamurlane's empire and becomes
history in its turn. Maybe there is a lesson there too.
The writer is professor of history at Columbia University
January 10, 2005 Monday
London Edition 1
The dangers of pick'n'mix history
By MARK MAZOWER
In 1401, while besieging the city of Damascus, the Mongol ruler
Tamurlane, whose armies had plundered their way from Moscow to Delhi,
summoned the scholar Ibn Khaldun. Who better to lay bare for him the
secrets of civilisation and political power than the author of that
enduring masterpiece of world history The Book of Lessons. History,
according to Ibn Khaldun, acquaints us with great figures of the past
and allows us to be guided by their example.
The all-conquering Tamurlane was a smart and argumentative man, keen
to glean any insights the past could provide. But was he able to
predict the triumphant successes that followed, or the later division
of his vast empire? Ibn Khaldun, who reminded his readers that
victory and superiority in war come from luck and chance - and that
no dynasty can expect to last more than four generations - would not
have been surprised by either.
The idea that history's value lies in the lessons it offers us goes
back a long way. Cicero described the past as "the teacher of life";
Hegel saw knowledge of it as the precondition for self-awareness and
freedom. And what Novalis called "the magic wand of analogy" is still
waved vigorously. Ahead of the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush
warned the United Nations against following the miserable example of
the League of Nations, while Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister,
insisted he would not be remembered for appeasement. Historically
minded dissenters dismissed Mr Blair's implicit reference to Neville
Chamberlain, likening him instead to Eden or Gladstone, imperial
interventionists whose sincerity was matched only by the catastrophic
consequences of their actions. Iraq in 2003 was thus turned,
depending on the viewpoint, into 1939, or 1956, or 1882.
No doubt history offers statesmen (and their critics) a handy
rhetorical weapon. Once historical events embed themselves in the
public imagination, they easily become a shorthand for basic moral
concepts such as treachery (Pearl Harbor), cowardice (Munich),
heroism (Dunkirk) and evil (the Third Reich). But the mere invocation
of these over-familiar names scarcely provides lessons in any
meaningful sense. When those who favoured invading Iraq likened
Saddam Hussein to Hitler, they were not actually interested in
comparing the two men or their regimes. Hitler for them meant not the
historical flesh-and-blood figure but the demonic image that still
dominates the public consciousness of the west as the epitome of
wickedness.
Plundering history in this way can be downright dangerous and lead
unwary policymakers down the wrong path. Has Condoleezza Rice, former
Sovietologist, been helped or hindered in her role as national
security adviser by her reading of how communism collapsed in 1989?
Believing that overwhelming US military superiority was what really
ended the Soviet one-party state, it was tempting to imagine Tommy
Franks spreading democracy in the Middle East, too. Tempting - but
the analogy turned out to be a false friend. And how nice it would
have been if the success and tranquility of the post-1945 Allied
occupations in Germany and Japan really had offered reliable pointers
to Iraq's post-invasion political trajectory. Yet this parallel,
frequently drawn by think-tanks and policy insiders, is little more
than wishful thinking. Taking occupation seriously as a historical
category would have meant pondering the French experience in Algeria,
the Russians in the Caucasus, or the Italians in Ethiopia. History is
not a pick'n'mix box of candy, in which you can pick only the sweet
ones.
Yet before we write off the whole idea of learning from the past, we
should try to distinguish the stuff of public debate from something
less noisy but more substantial. Selling policy is one thing; but
history can also act as a kind of reality check within the process of
policy formation itself. Comparison and analogy, properly conceived,
are the life-blood of historical analysis, but they depend on an
important kind of detached open-mindedness and a willingness to
explore both the similarities and the differences between the cases
being considered. Why should we not discuss how the treatment of the
Armenians in the first world war compares with the treatment of the
Jews in the second; or ask how the way Palestinians are governed in
the occupied territories differs from the way whites ruled blacks in
South Africa after 1948? Or why should we not explore the contrast in
all its complexity between the defeated Axis powers in 1945 and Iraq
today? Historical insights flow from such comparisons and there are
lessons to be learnt - about states and their ideologies, their
intended and unintended consequences - both for those making policy
and for those wishing to comprehend it.
Taken in the right spirit, therefore, history can provide its own
unique kind of help to understand the present. As a discipline it is
neither predictive, nor a practical guide to action: its lessons are
not so specific. Yet it remains an essential tool for scrutinising
the easy moralising, the ideological certainties and the expansive
claims that batter our ears. It can serve as a politician's
cheerleader, but it can also weigh policy assumptions and contexts.
And a final heretical thought: should the present provide the only
test of its value anyway? Two centuries ago, Friedrich Schlegel, the
German critic, suggested that the study of the past gives us "a calm,
firm overview of the present (and) a measure of its greatness or
smallness". Our normally democratic age likes to demand that history
serve it; but then it vanishes like Tamurlane's empire and becomes
history in its turn. Maybe there is a lesson there too.
The writer is professor of history at Columbia University