Historical Rigour and Future Prescience

History provides the opportunity to shine some insightful light on the road ahead.

It has been impossible not to notice over the past few years how reality and facts became contestable. A seismic epistemic shift has occurred beneath our feet, dismantling stability from language and from acquired knowledge under a tidal wave of relativism and immateriality. While some two decades ago this would largely have been confined to particular disciplines, the humanities especially, relativism and immaterialism are no longer domain-specific; it is the defining cultural Zeitgeist of our era, permeating through the sciences, the arts, social and political institutions.

Given the all-encompassing nature of this epistemic relativism, there are any number of contexts in which we could discuss the cost to society when shared sense-making breaks down. As a student of history, however, I find myself drawn to considering the costs of rendering the past as merely a tool to fit the preferred narratives of the present. Indeed, within history as an academic discipline this fallacious trap has a name: presentism. After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, I wrote an essay on the dangers of presentism and relativism in historical analysis. The basic premise reflects the issue that nearly every historical issue which has come to the fore in recent years faces; that people now feel entitled to their own facts, and to whatever interpretation of the past justifies their feelings and beliefs in the present.

We should care about how history is considered and interpreted. Even if you don’t particularly care much for the study of history, that we have clarity on the past is crucial to understanding our present. Where that clarity is lost, whether by act or omission, the resulting instability in the meaning of who we are is ripe for manipulation by odious actors. Consider the manner in which Putin has manipulated “the Russian Idea” of a nation divinely entitled to regional imperial hegemony to justify his war in Ukraine. Or consider how the concept of Volk and the connection of people with the land derived from liberal German Romanticist writers and artists would be twisted into the grotesque ideologies of National Socialism a century later. The Nazis specialised in inducing historical hallucinations as a means to their power-grasping, destructive ends.

It serves society to be rooted in truth and reality in history. The benefits, however, are not merely in the ability to resist demoralisation and manipulation today, but to make sound predictions on where we might be going from here. The best historians not only exhibit the gift of rigorous analysis of the past but are consequently bestowed with a prescience for what may lie ahead. An exemplary illustration of this can be found in the book ‘Vanished Kingdoms’¹ by British historian, Professor Norman Davies. The book itself is organised in chapters dedicated to polities in Europe that have either ceased to exist, such as Prussia (from ~1230 to 1945), or have evolved in the form of their existence, such as Ireland from 1916. One passage in particular has always stood out to me as almost clairvoyant, from his chapter on Ireland as it relates to Irish independence and exit from the United Kingdom. Bearing in mind the book was published in 2011, in this chapter Davies discussed the likely future trajectories of the United Kingdom:

“Permutations in the most likely sequence of future political landslips are numerous, offering a variety of alternative scenarios. Scotland, almost certainly, will make the first move, although it is not yet ready to do so...Even if [the SNP] manages to organise a referendum on Scottish independence, it is very unlikely to succeed at the first attempt...Even so, the long-term trends are clear enough. English resentment against the 'peripheries' is sure to balloon in times of austerity, boosting support for specifically English-oriented organisations....this resentment as much as Scottish nationalism will be decisive in driving the Scots from the Union. What exactly will trigger the breach can only be imagined, but the ongoing problems of the euro conjure up some menacing perspectives...it would be reasonable to expect that a body of English Eurosceptics would seize the opportunity to demand Britain's withdrawal from the EU. Such a demand could be the match that fires the keg. The Europhile Scots, the Europhile Welsh, and the Europhile Irish would be enraged. If the SNP were to stage its referendum at a juncture when voting for Scottish independence was posted in terms of leaving the United Kingdom but staying in the EU, the [SNP] chances of winning would be greatly enhanced. If they won, the Act of Union would be revoked...”

The passage is impressive in its foresight. Perhaps most notable is the prediction that a Scottish independence referendum would be unsuccessful on its first attempt (which came to pass in 2014, defeated by 55% to 45%), and could be spurred on in any second attempt by Britain withdrawing from the EU. While no second referendum is yet on the horizon, polling in Scotland post-Brexit has consistently shown a narrowing of the gap in favour of independence (although not yet a majority).

Also notable is the prediction some ~6 years before the Eurosceptics, both within the Tory party and in the form of Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party, demanded and succeeded in Britain’s withdrawal from the EU through the 2016 Brexit referendum, although it was not entirely Euro-zone monetary problems that precipitated the referendum. Indeed the discord between the Europhobic English and Europhilic Irish, Scots, and Welsh was accurate; once we dig into the demographics of the Brexit vote it is apparent that it was an English, rather than United Kingdom, vote to leave (even in Wales, the narrow Leave majority was primarily driven by English people living in Wales).

The prognosis of growing resentment outside of London in the ‘peripheries’, as a result of austerity may have been more acutely foreseen given the proximity of publication to the financial crash of 2008. Nevertheless, the continued fracturing of the disunited kingdom, between pluralistic London and the English-oriented peripheries, has been exacerbated by the impoverishment of English regions outside of London.

This passage has also stuck in my mind as an example of how, although obviously with some imprecision, a firm grip on the tides of history provides the opportunity for shining some insightful light on the road ahead. For this to be truly illuminating, however, it requires anchoring to facts, to a verifiable reality. Yet almost any historical issue that has been live in recent years, from the legacy of slavery and empire to the present iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been characterised by the distortion, invention, and disregarding of facts in favour of narrative-driven history-making. This is the natural endpoint of the classroom becoming a frontline in the culture war as progressives and conservatives wage battles of censorship and banning in an attempt to impose their respective worldviews as the status quo.

There are any number of concerns as to where our current trends of watered-down educational curricula, insipid and predictable arts, and the "cognitive migration" of tech-dependence, will lead us. But the more we are unmoored from history, the more vulnerable we are to demoralisation and manipulation. I would hope that isn't prophetic, but history teaches us that in such circumstances, malevolent actors flock like moths to a flame to bend narratives, and society, to their will.

1. Davis N. Vanished Kingdoms. London: Penguin Books Ltd.; 2011.