HISTORY: Debate about the new history

John Wonder rejects the new history:

"What Tim Brown is complaining about is that several histories are not somehow one history. One may have a technical history, a social history, a plant cultivation history, and so on, without end (if you can find the material). Of an enormously complex social stream one can only record so much. There seems to be a kind of "standard history" that is a combination of political (including military) history and social and intellectual history (the history of the Renaissance, for example), which is about all one can expect. If we want to trace the downtrodden masses and mistreated aborigines in particular, one must have a particular history and a particular point of view ."

My comment: I learned history the way John describes, but I have moved to the other position. Living in Winchester, I had a great interest in the history of medieval history. It did not worry me that the bishop had cut down a whole forest for the logs necessary to make swampy land strong enough the support the apse.

When I first visited St.Petersburg, I was impressed by the Ermitage and other buildings. Now I think of all he peasants who lost their lives building the palaces.I had no interest in the history of plumbing, but now I wonder about the causes of the Black Death. The grossly pretentious palace of Versailles had no plumbing.When I first read Rousseau's 1750 Discourse on the Arts and Sciences I thought it was a dreadful tirade, but I have become more sympathetic to it.

I was taught about our glorious military victories, not about the misery wrought by war. Tolstoy's War and Peace puts things in perspective. I wonder how the French can still idolize Napoleon and la Grande Armee-

Ronald Hilton - 8/17/00