WHO OWNS HISTORY?

FOUR BOOKS ADDRESS USES, AND ABUSES, TO WHICH THE STORY OF THE PAST IS SUBJECT

Author: By Harriet Ritvo

Date: SUNDAY, November 30, 1997

Page: G1

Section: Books

The problem is not that the study of history seems in danger of disappearing. In many ways, on the contrary, it is thriving. There is a cable television channel devoted to historical subjects, and historical features figure regularly in the schedules of other stations, both public and commercial. Historical movies such ``Braveheart'' and ``Glory'' attract large audiences. History in one form or another (usually, but not always, American history) remains a staple of primary and secondary schooling. And history books, whether intended for scholarly specialists or for a wider readership, continue to roll off the presses in a broad, inexorable stream. So the trouble with history is not the same as, for example, the trouble with classics, the very existence of which as a popular subject is threatened, Disney's ``Hercules'' notwithstanding. It is more like the trouble that has been plaguing the study and teaching of literature for the past several decades.

As in the wars about the literary canon, the issue in the historical controversies that has attracted the most public attention is one of scarcity. Time, particularly curricular time, is always precious, and, in these narrowly pragmatic times, where the humanities are concerned it is more likely to contract than expand. As with literature, history curricula are inevitably constructed according to zero-sum principles. In a class about 19th-century Britain, for example, more time devoted to urban slums means less time for tariff reform. In a world history class, more attention for Asia and Africa means less attention for Europe and North America. The choices are difficult because all of the possibilities are worth investigating. But difficult or not, choices must be made.

The problem with history, as constructed in these books, is a function of strength, not weakness. History is so attractive and important that everyone wants a piece of it. And there are more and more pieces to choose from. Over the last several generations, the previously neglected experiences and perspectives of workers, women, and nonwhite people have become the focus of intense historical study. In consequence, history itself (or at least readily available and conveniently packaged history) has become more diverse. This enhanced variety has intensified and politicized the problems produced by sheer volume of material. Although it has proved stimulating and even liberating to many people, it has compounded the irritation felt by some self-proclaimed defenders of historical tradition. They have responded to what they describe as dangerous fragmentation by trying to appropriate the biggest piece for themselves -- a piece big enough to ensure that there is none left for anyone else. Their purpose, they assert, is to preserve history from the enemies who would destroy it. Sharing what has traditionally been theirs alone is apparently not an option.

Keith Windschuttle is typical of these grabby Jeremiahs. He nails his colors to the mast in the first paragraph of ``The Killing of History.'' The study of the past, which remained constant in its unswerving search for truth for 2,400 years, since the Greeks invented it, has recently fallen from this protracted state of grace. Historians have abandoned their age-old quest to figure out what really happened, he alleges, and instead have followed literary and social theorists into the wilderness of relativism.

Windschuttle's book is a series of vitriolic attacks, evenhandedly distributed among misleading theorists (mostly presented as knaves) and misled historians (mostly presented as fools). It is difficult to account for such egregious bad temper on strictly scholarly grounds, especially since Windschuttle does not seem to be a practicing historian (he has written other books, but they deal with media studies or Australian social issues). Instead, what is at issue for him is the value and integrity of Western civilization. Thus among the examples he chooses to demonstrate what is wrong with historical scholarship are the contemporary treatment of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and English appropriation of Australia, long-celebrated European accomplishments that have recently been the object of searching reassessment. It is not surprising that he includes multiculturalism with relativism as the enemy not only of historical truth, but also of science.

The impossibility of reducing history to a single accurate account is hardly the discovery (or invention) of modern theorists. Writing history involves, among other things, a rigorous process of selection. Every time a historian decides to leave something out, meaning is lost. It is difficult to see why, especially if absolute truth is the elusive goal, a more inclusive mode of historical writing should not be more attractive than a less inclusive one. Nevertheless those who proclaim themselves to be defenders of the truth are exactly those who advocate the most radical simplification of history. And as Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn show, their name is legion.

``History on Trial'' chronicles the adventures of the National History Standards, which the three authors helped to draw up in the early 1990s. Enthusiastically supported (and generously financed) in embryo by Lynne Cheney when she headed the National Endowment for the Humanities, the completed standards subsequently became the target of her patriotic outrage when they presented an uncomfortably diverse and even critical vision of American history. Cheney's views were widely and vocally shared among her right-wing constituency; one of the most striking features of the story told in ``History on Trial'' is the outpouring of ill-informed, vociferous commentary that the history standards inspired on the part of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Nash and his colleagues had to endure a baptism of fire into the culture of soundbites.

But the news in ``History on Trial'' is not all bad. As the engaging narrative of Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn conveys the traumatic nature of their encounters with the media and with conservative politicians, it also conveys their unshaken conviction in the value of their work. They suggest that when the rhetorical conflicts have died down, several heartening developments will reclaim center stage. The standards have proved very useful to classroom teachers, in large part because they incorporate the inclusive new materials and approaches that historians have developed in recent decades. And more generally, the gap between university-based historians and history teachers in primary and secondary schools, which had been widening for most of the 20th century, has begun to narrow again. The authors of ``History on Trial'' welcome this trend as good for education and for the writing of history.

It is possible to see the developments that conservatives deplore, not as the death of history, but instead as providing its salvation. In ``The Degradation of American History,'' David Harlan celebrates some of Windschuttle's villains for having rescued history from what he considers the deathgrip of professionalization, embodied in the tendency of some historians, beginning in the 1960s, to incorporate the statistical methods of social science. He praises narrative over analysis, and abjures mere truth for moral utility. He repeatedly disparages concentration on what the past meant and felt like to the people who lived it; what is important, he suggests, is what the past means to us.

Harlan advocates a return to a canon of great works, albeit one more eclectically chosen than such canons have been in the past. From such a selection of texts he anticipates a kind of enlightenment more frequently associated with religion than with history. As a result, his views will not give much comfort to ordinary historians, especially since, like Windschuttle, he tends to concentrate on people who are not historians, at least by institutional identification. The main inspiration of Harlan's optimism, as of Windschuttle's despair, is the English Department. He especially likes such historically sophisticated literary critics as Elaine Showalter and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Eric Hobsbawm's ``On History'' is not a sustained theoretical polemic, but a collection of essays about the nature of historical scholarship, written over the long span of the British historian's distinguished career. Inevitably, some of his analyses seem dated; for example, he notes with embarrassment that in a 1970 essay about social history he failed to mention women. And there is an emphasis on Marxist theory that reflects his own intellectual archeology rather than the current state of the field. But many of the essays offer incisive, illuminating, and pragmatic contributions to the ongoing debates elaborated at greater and more systematic length in the other three books under review.

Hobsbawm concludes the collection with two particularly provocative essays. In ``Barbarism: A User's Guide,'' he argues that civilization has been giving way to barbarism in the 20th-century West, reversing a 150-year trend. In ``Identity History Is Not Enough,'' he argues against narrowly ethnocentric history, but not in favor of monoculturalism. Both of these essays are informed by common sense; both express a morality grounded in awareness of the horrors of the past and of the sadly easy continuity between past and present. Both acknowledge the realities of contemporary politics, but neither is at their mercy, or even at their service.

So, as Hobsbawm shows, and as Nash, Crabtree, Dunn, and, in his odd way, Harlan argue, the outlook for history is far from bleak. It has maintained, or it is reclaiming, its general audience. It is flexible and various, able to assimilate new subject material and to take what is useful from adjoining disciplines, such as literature and anthroplogy, without being swamped or sucked into their disciplinary travails. Like any vigorous intellectual enterprise, it generates controvery. But the particularly belligerent strain of rejectionism expressed by Windschuttle, Cheney, and their cohort reflects a rearguard defense of turf -- a sense that any change is a change for the worse on the part of people who conflate their own special perspective with the general interest. And they tend to make a very mighty noise. It is to be hoped, however, that readers and writers of history will not be dismayed or distracted.