Reviewing, revisiting, and rewriting history

(Representative image) 'The Phantom Horseman',1870-93 by Sir John Gilbert (d.1897). (Image: Birmingham Museums Trust via Unsplash)

The British Prime Minister proclaims that the Roman Empire fell because of mass immigration. An Indian chief minister announces that Chandragupta Maurya defeated Alexander. And in the United States, politicians of a certain hue are determined to oppose the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that frames the history of their nation through the lens of slavery.

In times of disorder, debates over history become increasingly unruly, if not unhinged. New narratives are spun and all else rejected, with an eye on the Orwellian credo: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

What is history, though, and how should it be viewed? One of the most influential investigations of this question was carried out by E.H. Carr 60 years ago. “By and large”, he wrote in What is History?, “the historian will get the kind of facts he wants”. They are like fish on a fishmonger's slab: “The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.”

History, then, is not a matter of objectivity but a process of continuous interpretation: “We view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present.”

The eyes of the present are what one encounters in a new volume, What is History, Now?, edited by historians Suzannah Lipscomb and Helen Carr (who happens to be E.H. Carr’s great-granddaughter). It’s a collection of essays by Sarah Churchwell, Alex von Tunzelmann, Rana Mitter, Bettany Hughes, Peter Frankopan, Simon Schama, and many more, on ways to widen our current understanding of history.

As the editors write, the book “argues loudly that history belongs to us all and by making space for all histories, we can perhaps begin to understand a much deeper, broader past”. This makes history more meaningful for more people by questioning assumptions, filling in the gaps, and writing about margins as wide as the centre.

In this way, Peter Frankopan makes the case for global histories that join the dots across peoples and regions. Alex von Tunzelmann asks those agitated about historical dramas on film and TV to encourage critical thinking instead, which will equip students with tools to critique the modern world. Sarah Churchwell reads between the lines to show that one way to dismantle mythologies is by paying attention to vernacular words that “carry histories and sympathies embedded within them”.

Others emphasise those who have often been written out of history’s pages. Justin Bengry asks whether we can “queer the past” by letting historical characters define themselves in complex and unfamiliar ways. Suzannah Lipscomb calls for reclaiming the lives of ordinary women by reading archives against the grain. Jaipreet Virdi writes of the importance of disability history: “just as race, gender and sexuality are used as analytical lenses for examining historical events, so too can disability.”

Empire and its discontents have been a hot-button topic for a while, and Maya Jasanoff addresses this head-on. Historians ought to uncover stories that imperial powers had vested interests in keeping out of sight, she writes. As much attention should be paid to imperial entanglements of race, money and power as to the rise and fall of regimes. As with Frankopan, she emphasises comparative and connective studies across periods and regions.

For Leila K. Blackbird and Caroline Dodds Pennock, “neither coloniser nor colonised can heal through denial”. It’s vital to “invest in a history that is capable of centring the many vibrant Indigenous cultures, polities and languages that continue today”.

A rich part of indigenous tradition everywhere has always been a respect for the natural world, and Simon Schama turns the wheel full circle by emphasising the fate of our habitable planet. The interaction of humanity and nature, he asserts, can be a spur for new ways of historical thinking. After all, “nature shapes history quite as much as vice versa”.

Other approaches not covered in this collection have the same aims. Learning from ancient DNA is one, splendidly demonstrated by Tony Joseph in Early Indians. Another example is Jim Downs’s recent study of how slavery, colonialism, and war shaped the development of modern medicine.

It’s Charlotte Lydia Riley who states in no uncertain terms what these writers make a case for. History cannot exist without being rewritten, she says forcefully. A rewriting of comforting myth is an essential part of the historian’s role. This can make them deeply unpopular, by selecting what others believe to be the wrong stories, highlighting the wrong moments, and “by picking people understood as heroes and turning them into villains, or vice versa”. (As Audrey Truschke can tell you.)

Riley points out that if we could not rewrite history, “bad histories would stand as facts, and contentious interpretations – or worse, intentional untruths – would go unchallenged and unappealed”. Such retellings should be the start of conversations, not an end to them. Others come along to rewrite from different perspectives by using the evidence available, ideally in the best possible way.

Despite this, many insist on the sanctity of simplistic official views of the past, untainted by argument, dependent on only a few sources. Again, it’s E.H. Carr who offers sage advice. “Study the historian,” he wrote, “before you begin to study the facts”.