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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 1:34 am Post subject: Against History with a Capital 'H' |
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Here's George Will from the WashPost. Italics and Bold-type are by the OP, not the author.
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A Timely Reminder in '1776'
By George F. Will
Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page B07
When George Washington, in a spiffy uniform of buff and blue, sitting his horse with a grace uncommon even among Virginians vain about their horsemanship, arrived outside Boston in July 1775 to assume command of the American rebellion, he was aghast. When he got a gander at his troops, mostly New Englanders, his reaction was akin to the Duke of Wellington's assessment of his troops, many of them the sweepings of Britain's slums, during the Peninsular War: "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me."
You think today's red state/blue state antagonism is unprecedented? Washington thought New Englanders "exceeding dirty and nasty." He would not have disputed the British Gen. John Burgoyne's description of the Americans besieging Boston as "a rabble in arms." A rabble that consumed, by one sober estimate, a bottle of rum per man each day.
If, in the autumn of 1775, a council of Washington's officers had not restrained him from a highly risky amphibious attack on Boston across the shallow Back Bay, there might never have been a Declaration of Independence. If a young officer, Henry Knox, had not had the ingenuity to conceive, and the tenacity to execute, a plan for dragging captured mortars, some weighing a ton, and cannon, some weighing 2 1/2 tons, the 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain to the Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston, the British might have fought and won, rather than evacuating the city. If, after the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn, the first great battle of the war, a fog had not allowed 9,000 of Washington's soldiers to escape across the East River, the war might have effectively ended less than two months after the Declaration.
So says David McCullough in his new book "1776," a birthday card to his country on this Independence Day. "Ingratitude," he has said elsewhere, "is a shabby failing," and he writes to inspire gratitude for what a few good men, and one great one, did in the nation's Year One.
What British historian George Otto Trevelyan said of the December 1776 Battle of Trenton, which may have saved the Revolution, could be said of all the events -- defeats redeemed by skillful retreats, and a few victories -- of that year: "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."
What is history? The study of it -- and the making of it, meaning politics -- changed for the worse when, in the 19th century, history became History. When, that is, history stopped being the record of fascinating contingencies -- political, intellectual, social, economic -- that produced the present. History became instead a realm of necessity. The idea that History is a proper noun, denoting an autonomous process unfolding a predetermined future in accordance with laws mankind cannot amend, is called historicism. That doctrine discounts human agency, reducing even large historical figures to playthings of vast impersonal forces. McCullough knows better.
Solid, unpretentious narrative history such as "1776" satisfies the healthy human thirst for a ripping good story. McCullough says that E.M. Forster, the novelist, efficiently defined a story: If you are told that the king died and then the queen died, that is a sequence of events. If you are told that the king died and then the queen died of grief, that is a story that elicits empathy.
Using narrative history to refute historicism, McCullough's two themes in "1776" are that things could have turned out very differently and that individuals of character can change the destinies of nations. There is a thirst for both themes in this country, which is in a less-than-festive frame of mind on this birthday. It is, therefore, serendipitous that "1776," with 1.35 million copies already in print, sits atop the New York Times best-seller list on Independence Day.
But, then, serendipity has often attended the Fourth of July. That day is the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), arguably the father of American literature. And of Stephen Foster (1826), arguably the father of American music. And -- saving the most luminous for last -- of the sainted Calvin Coolidge (1872), who oversaw a 45 percent increase in America's production of ice cream.
So, this Fourth read McCullough. Perhaps by the light of a sparkler. |
Isn't David McCullough the guy who does the narration for all those Kens Burns-style documentaries?
Anyway, I really agree with the bit I italicized above, and I curse Marx (and Tolstoy, too) for his successful campaign against history and for History. Although, I really doubt I'll be eating any ice cream in gratitude for Calvin Coolidge. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 2:06 am Post subject: |
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The contingencies of "history" imply alternatives and crucial events and decisions, an academic exercise with a short life outside of books. The necessities of "History" are the bedrock of the lives we live and had lived in the distant past, in oral forms.
When did history become History?
When it re-discovered its roots as an ideological reinforcement of culture, only, in the modern world as an explicit tool to be molded and shaped more strategically than ever before. |
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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 6:41 am Post subject: |
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| Not to many people know this buy Washington was a terrible general. He spent more time running then fighting. He was a charismatic leader but was a god awful military strategist. |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 8:52 am Post subject: |
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| Wrench wrote: |
| Not to many people know this buy Washington was a terrible general. He spent more time running then fighting. He was a charismatic leader but was a god awful military strategist. |
Not too many people know this because it isn't true. Washington simply had, for most of the war, an inept, poorly trained and poorly equipped army. Of course he spent more time running than fighting...he was facing the best army in the world at the time. What would you have done, slugged it out with superior forces and have your army wiped out in one fell swoop? I think he did marvelous things with what little he had to work with. He kept running and kept training his army until they could strike at opportune times. Yes, there were other very capable commanders in other theaters, but Washington certainly was NOT a "god awful military strategist." Regardless, it's hard to argue with the results. |
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