Why History Matters | Patrick Allitt | TEDxEmory

Summary

The transcript explores the perception of history and its evolution in personal relevance as one ages. Initially, history may seem a dry list of names and dates, but it becomes more engaging as individuals recognize the impact of historical events on contemporary life and their own experiences. The speaker reflects on the difficulty of predicting the future based on historical patterns, using examples from the 20th century, such as the misinterpretation of events leading to World War I and II, and the challenge of drawing accurate lessons from history. The narrative also touches on the fallibility of historical predictions, highlighting how past visions of the future were often far from the actual outcomes. The summary concludes with the importance of studying history to understand the present, while acknowledging the limitations in foreseeing future events due to the complexity of human nature and historical contexts.

Takeaways

• 📚 **Importance of History**: Initially, children may find history boring due to its complexity and distance from their personal experiences.
• 👵👴 **Personal Connection**: As people age, they start to relate history to their own lives and the lives of their contemporaries, making it more interesting.
• 🌐 **Changing World**: The realization that history is not static and is intertwined with current events often comes with parenthood and personal involvement in historical events.
• 📖 **Technological Evolution**: Describing one's life to children can highlight the rapid technological advancements and how they have become an integral part of everyday life.
• 🤔 **Predicting the Future**: Despite studying history, it is challenging to predict the future due to the complexity and unpredictability of human behavior and societal changes.
• 🗣️ **Misuse of History**: Politicians often misuse history by claiming it teaches lessons, which can be misleading as history is more nuanced and doesn't always provide clear guidance for the future.
• 🇺🇸 **American History Narrative**: The self-congratulatory narrative of American history as a moral progression is emotionally satisfying but may not reflect the complexity of historical events.
• 🧐 **Understanding Perspectives**: To truly understand history, one must empathize with all sides of a conflict, recognizing that each believed they were right.
• 🤷‍♂️ **Difficulties in Learning from History**: The past provides no easy lessons, as evidenced by the misinterpretation of events leading to World War I and II, and the varied responses to them.
• 🌟 **Historical Amnesia**: The failure to correctly interpret historical events, such as atrocities during wars, can lead to repeated mistakes in judgment and action.
• ⏰ **Unpredictability of Innovation**: Predictions about the future, especially technological advancements, are often far from reality, showing how hard it is to anticipate change.

Q & A

Why do children often find history uninteresting?

Children may find history uninteresting because they perceive textbooks as too thick and heavy, and the content seems remote from their own experiences, consisting of a catalogue of names, dates, and events that they feel disconnected from.

How does one's perspective on history change as they grow older?

As people age, they start to find history more interesting as they begin to notice the outcomes of their contemporaries' lives, the changes in the world, and their own involvement in historical events, making history feel more relevant and less remote.

Why does history become more engaging when studying it through personal experience?

Personal experience makes history more relatable and easier to connect with. Describing one's life or the world they grew up in can fascinate children and provide a more tangible connection to the past than abstract concepts or events.

What was the technological marvel mentioned in the script that seemed extraordinary in the late 1970s?

The technological marvel mentioned was a device that functioned like a typewriter attached to a TV screen. As one typed, the words appeared on the screen, and if a mistake was made, the words could be adjusted to make room for the correction.

Why do politicians' claims that history teaches us lessons often prove to be false?

Politicians' claims that history teaches lessons are often false because history is complex and does not provide tidy moral lessons. People and nations have different perspectives and interests, making it difficult to draw universally applicable conclusions from historical events.

What is the common misconception about historians being able to predict the future?

The common misconception is that historians, due to their study of the past, have the ability to predict future events. However, the history of attempts to predict the future is filled with failures, indicating that such predictions are inherently challenging and unreliable.

How does the speaker describe the typical American self-perception in historical narratives?

The speaker describes the typical American self-perception as one of moral superiority and a series of moral victories, where the U.S. overcomes problems like the British rule, slavery, and 20th-century dictators, each time elevating itself to a higher moral plane.

Why is it important to understand the perspective of historical figures who are now considered wrong?

Understanding the perspective of those who are now considered wrong is important because it allows for a more nuanced comprehension of history. It helps to see the conflicts not as a simple right versus wrong but as a conflict between different beliefs of right, which can lead to a more empathetic and complete understanding of past events.

What is the difficulty in drawing lessons from historical events, as illustrated by the speaker?

The difficulty lies in the complexity and variability of human behavior and historical circumstances. Drawing lessons from history is challenging because different situations require different responses, and past lessons may not always apply or may even lead to misguided decisions when applied inappropriately.

What is the paradox the speaker refers to regarding the study of history and predicting the future?

The paradox is that despite a deep understanding of history, people, including policymakers, can still make significant mistakes in predicting the future or in applying historical lessons to current situations. This shows that knowing history does not necessarily prevent errors in judgment about future events.

Why are predictions about the future often inaccurate, as demonstrated by the speaker?

Predictions about the future are often inaccurate because they are constrained by the knowledge and imagination of the time when they are made. Unforeseen technological advancements, social changes, and other developments can render even well-informed predictions obsolete, highlighting the limitations of human foresight.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Evolution of Interest in History

The first paragraph discusses the common perception of history as a dry and distant subject for children, characterized by a dense array of names, dates, and events. As people age, they begin to find history more engaging, especially as they recognize the relevance of historical events to their own lives and the lives of their contemporaries. The speaker shares personal anecdotes, such as describing a world without modern technology to his children and recounting his experience with early word processors. The paragraph also touches on the fallibility of politicians who claim history provides clear lessons and the dangers of oversimplified, self-congratulatory narratives of history.

05:07

🌎 The Complexities and Moral Ambiguities of History

The second paragraph delves into the moral complexities of historical events, challenging the notion that history is a simple struggle between right and wrong. It critiques the self-satisfying way American history is sometimes taught, which portrays the country as consistently overcoming challenges and ascending to higher moral ground. The speaker argues that history is more nuanced, with tragedies and conflicts that cannot be easily categorized as good versus evil. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding the perspectives of all parties involved in historical conflicts and the need for historians to use their imagination to empathize with different viewpoints.

10:07

🤔 The Difficulty of Learning from History

The third paragraph explores the difficulty of drawing lessons from history, using the example of the First World War and the misconceptions that led to it. It discusses the false atrocity stories that influenced public opinion and the subsequent regret when these stories were found to be untrue. The speaker also highlights the failure to act quickly against Hitler's rise, influenced by the desire to avoid another catastrophic war. The paragraph illustrates how past experiences can lead to both excessive credulity and unwarranted skepticism, making it challenging to apply historical lessons to current crises.

15:09

🚀 The Futile Pursuit of Predicting the Future

The fourth paragraph addresses the futility of predicting the future, using examples from Popular Mechanics magazine and a French illustration from 1900. These predictions failed to foresee significant events and developments, such as the moon landing, civil rights and women's movements, and the rise of computers. The speaker concludes that while studying history is crucial for understanding the world, the complexity of human nature and historical circumstances makes it impossible to predict the future with certainty.

Keywords

💡History

History refers to the study of past events, particularly in human affairs. In the video, it is portrayed as initially uninteresting to children but becomes more engaging as individuals grow older and start to see the relevance of historical events to their own lives. The script illustrates this through the narrator's personal experiences and the evolution of technology.

💡Personal Experience

Personal experience refers to the events, situations, and encounters that an individual has personally lived through. The video emphasizes the importance of personal experience in making history relatable, especially when parents share their own life stories with their children, thus bridging the gap between the past and the present.

💡Technology

Technology encompasses the tools, devices, and systems that are created to solve problems or fulfill needs. The video discusses the evolution of technology, from the cumbersome rotary phones to modern computers, to illustrate how far we've come and how these advancements have become an integral part of our lives.

💡Change

Change refers to the process of becoming different. The video script highlights how the world is constantly changing, and history is a record of these changes. It discusses how witnessing these changes, especially as a parent, can make history more interesting and relevant.

💡Remoteness

Remoteness, in the context of the video, describes the perceived distance or disconnect between historical events and an individual's personal experience. The video explains that history may initially seem remote to children, but as they grow older, they begin to see connections and relevance to their own lives.

💡Contemporaries

Contemporaries are individuals who live around the same time period. The video uses the term to discuss how people's fortunes can vary greatly, even among those who start with similar circumstances, which can make history a fascinating subject to study as it reflects the complexity of life outcomes.

💡Moral Complexity

Moral complexity refers to the idea that moral issues are multifaceted and cannot be easily categorized as right or wrong. The video argues that historical conflicts are often between two sides that both believe they are in the right, which is a key aspect to understanding history's intricate nature.

💡Prediction

Prediction involves forecasting future events or developments. The video emphasizes the difficulty of predicting the future based on historical data, using examples of past predictions about life in the year 2000 that failed to anticipate significant technological and social changes.

💡Lessons of History

The lessons of history are the insights and wisdom that are believed to be gained from studying past events. The video challenges the notion that history provides clear, tidy lessons, arguing instead that it is complex and that drawing the 'right' lesson from history is fraught with difficulty.

💡World War I and II

World War I and II are major global conflicts that had profound impacts on the course of history. The video uses these wars as examples to illustrate how the interpretation of historical events can lead to misguided actions in the future, such as the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

💡Atrocities

Atrocities refer to acts of extreme cruelty or wickedness, particularly in a time of war. The video discusses how stories of atrocities during World War I were initially believed and later proven false, which led to skepticism during World War II when reports of the Holocaust emerged, demonstrating the challenges in interpreting and responding to such events.

Highlights

Children often find history dull and disconnected from their own experiences.

As people age, they start to find history more interesting as they see how it relates to their own lives.

Parents can connect with their children by sharing their own experiences and how they fit into the broader scope of history.

Describing the world of the past, like the 1950s, can fascinate children and help them better understand history.

Witnessing the creation and adoption of new technologies, like word processors, can be a powerful way to connect with history.

Politicians often misuse history by claiming it provides clear lessons for the future, which is a flawed perspective.

Studying history in the US can be very self-congratulatory, painting America as constantly overcoming problems and becoming morally superior.

History is more complex and does not provide tidy moral lessons. It involves understanding different perspectives, even those we may disagree with.

Historical conflicts are often between two sides that both believe they are right, not simply right vs. wrong.

It's important for historians to use imagination to empathize with different perspectives in order to truly understand history.

Drawing lessons from history is difficult - past attempts to apply lessons from previous wars have often led to misguided decisions.

Predictions about the future based on current trends are often way off the mark, as innovations and societal changes are hard to foresee.

Studying history is crucial to understanding the world, but it does not enable us to predict the future with any certainty.

History is a complex tapestry of human experiences and perspectives that cannot be reduced to simple moral lessons or predictable patterns.

Despite the challenges, studying history is essential to gaining a deeper understanding of the world and human nature.

Transcripts

you

children often dislike history they find

the textbook too thick and too heavy and

everything inside it just too remote

from their own experience at first

history seems like a long catalogue of

names and dates and people and places

which you've got nothing to do with them

at all it's all seems too remote to have

any real interest to their own lives but

then as people get older they sometimes

find a history which used to be dull

starts becoming a little bit more

interesting they start noticing for

example that people their contemporaries

some of them are doing very well in life

perhaps unexpectedly well others who

have such promise to begin with have

fallen by the wayside and it's very

difficult to explain why some have done

so well and others not so well and it's

fascinating to watch the way in which

the world is changing once you're in the

in your forties and once you're a parent

and once your own children are studying

history then very often you'll have the

experience that your children will say

that they're studying some aspect of

history in which you yourself were

involved and then you realise history

isn't just all finished once and for all

it isn't closed up in those books it's

continuing right up to the present and

we're part of it and as you begin to

describe to your children the world that

you grew up in very often they find that

fascinating it's easier for them to to

connect with than with the descriptions

of what the presidents did or the great

Wars and so on now as you describe your

life or as I describe my life I was born

in the late 1950s I described in my

child a world of astonishing hardships

when we didn't have personal computers

and we didn't have cell phones and when

if we wanted to make a phone call we

actually used a heavy object which was

wired into the wall and with which we

had to do a cumbersome rotary motion to

get the number we wrote with pens and we

listened to music on record players with

delicate needles and the kids say wow

that's sounds so primitive

how did you manage in such a world to

which of course your answer is it didn't

seem in the least bit primitive at the

time it seemed absolutely normal

now you also realize that you've been

present at the creation of some

technologies which have since become

entirely commonplace for example I was a

graduate student at the University of

California in Berkeley starting in the

late 70s and into the early eighties I

had a girlfriend who was working as a

temp at the law firm and one day she

came back from work and said to me

they've got this incredible thing at

work it's like a typewriter attached to

a TV and when you type the words it

there's no paper when you type the words

in the words come up on the TV screen

and if you miss a word you can make it

happen so that the other words move

aside and create a place for this word

to go in and we looked at each other in

absolute astonishment at the concept of

a machine like that and of course a few

years later we'd all got one and now the

idea of living without one does sound

like extraordinary hardship now you

often hear history often hear

politicians saying history teaches us of

that and as soon as you hear a

politician say that you know that the

next thing he says is going to be false

just just as when you hear a politician

say the American people as soon as you

hear that you also know the next thing

is going to be false because of course

different people want different things

and they disagree very profoundly but

it's widely imagined that historians are

clairvoyants that their study of the

past enables them to understand what's

going to happen in the future I give

talks often and usually my audience

listens respectfully to my description

of some historical episode but then when

it comes time for questions and answers

they nearly always say what's going to

happen in the future now I'd like to be

able to tell you that this man is a

history teacher and that what he's doing

with these equations is putting in all

the relevant historical data to show us

what's going to happen next but actually

he's not a history teacher and the

history of the attempt to predict the

future is a history of uninterrupted

failure

now one of the particular pleasures of

studying history in the United States -

which obviously I'm an immigrant is that

it's possible in America to study

history in a very very self-satisfied

moralizing way and it goes like this

perhaps you learned American history

like this as well back in the 1700s

America had a problem and the problem

was the wicked wicked British but then

his overcame that problem in the

American Revolutionary War and lifted

itself up onto a superior moral plane

and and then in the 19th century America

had a problem

it was the problem of slavery but then

it's overcame that problem in a great

Civil War and lifted itself on to a

higher moral plane and in the 20th

century America had a serious problem

the great tyrants and dictators but it's

overcame them first Hitler then the

Soviet Union and lifted itself onto a

still higher moral plane now that's a

very very emotionally gratifying way of

studying history isn't it because it

implies that history is the struggle of

right against wrong in which right

dependably wins have you ever had this

experience in fact I hope you've had it

when you're reading a good book or

watching a good movie you get to the end

with a feeling of very very profound

cathartic satisfaction the couple get

married or they overcome the obstacles

to their love or the bad guys are

defeated by the good ones and you're

left with a feeling ah yes it happened

the way it was supposed to now that's

all right in fiction but if you have

that feeling after watching a historical

documentary or reading a history book it

probably means that it's a very bad book

or a very bad documentary because

history is not like that it won't give

us satisfying lessons with a tidy moral

history is much more complicated than

that

you couldn't possibly study this very

very sort of satisfying upward ascent if

you're studying the history of Poland or

Ireland a history of Poland is almost

uninterrupted tragedy you could say the

same from

Irish history too now and again glimmers

of light break out but they're quickly

snuffed out by horrible circumstances

but of course Poland into Ireland just

as real as America and their historical

experience is just as valid for people

who are trying to actually understand

what the world is like now isn't it

equally true that when we're studying

history just as when we're reading

fiction or watching movies

we want to take sides and we want to

take sides with the ones whom we

perceive to be morally superior

for example the way in which the

American Civil War is now taught almost

universally is that the Union was right

because it was against slavery and the

Confederates were wrong because they

were in favor of slavery and I sometimes

say to classes when was the last moment

that the Confederacy could realistically

have expected to win the Civil War and

I've had students say but the

Confederates were the losers almost as

though they'd marched into battle saying

we're the losers you've only got to

think about this for a moment to realize

that it's not the conflict of right

against right right right against wrong

it's the conflict of right against right

not in the sense that we think the

Confederacy was right but in the sense

that we've got to understand that they

thought so but they marched into battle

with it with a strong conviction that

they were right and that they were

justified and that they were even

willing to risk dying for it if you

don't understand that if you don't

provisionally put yourself in the shoes

of the Confederate soldier you're never

really going to be able to understand

what happened at least as they're taking

places historical conflicts are always

the conflict between right and right

because nobody's willing to say this is

a bad cause and I'm willing to die for

it and in fact even though as a

historian obviously you've got to follow

the rules of the evidence you've got to

follow where the documents take you

nevertheless you've got to be able

you've got to be capable of flights of

imagination you've got to be able to

stand in the shoes not only of the Union

soldier and the Confederate soldier but

in the shoes of the abolitionists a man

like Frederick

or in the shoes of the slaves themselves

what did the world look like to them

what were they thinking about and what

were they hoping for and in the shoes of

Abraham Lincoln and in northerners the

shoes of northerners who said the

Confederate states have seceded we

should let them go you need to be able

to understand all of them and then you

need to be able to show how they came

together now as I mentioned a moment ago

it would be nice to think that history

taught us tiny lessons and that's after

studying in episode you could say this

is what happens here's what it meant and

here's the lesson that it teaches now I

want to show you with a little sample

from the 20th century how difficult it

is to do that the lessons of the First

World War which broke out in 1914 and

raged across Europe until 1918 involving

the Americans during its last two years

now when the war had finally finished

and the dazed survivors looked about and

reckoned with the fact that 20 million

people had been killed they said to one

another why did it happen what did we do

wrong which caused it to happen and the

answer that many of them came up with

was this in a highly mechanised world

which has got railroads and trucks and

machine guns and all kinds of powerful

technology aircraft submarines everyone

was on a hair-trigger alert everyone

thought the war would be short if it

broke out at all

and that therefore it to mobilize first

and to get into the field quickly would

give us an overpowering advantage so

everybody rushed to combat let's make

sure that we don't do that again after

the Second World War in 1945 when more

than 60 million people were killed

the survivors looked about themselves

and said how did it happen how did we

come into this war and what can we do to

make sure that something like that never

happens again

and the answer that came up with was

this we were too slow to resist Hitler

we saw his growing menace across Europe

the analyst the occupation of the

Sudetenland his gradual

exertion of more and more power for

Germany in Central Europe but instead of

fighting him quickly we weighted the

responsible politicians of Europe said

we need to appease Hitler why did they

say that because they wanted to prevent

what they understood to be the

unnecessary circumstance of war such as

it had happened back in 1914 of course

there were people like Winston Churchill

who said we're going to have to fight

him sooner or later we might as well do

it sooner when Churchill was saying that

in the mid in late 1930s he sounded like

an old dinosaur completely superannuated

by time though of course he turned out

to be absolutely right now to make

matters worse there's the question of

atrocities during the first world war

after the German army invaded Belgium in

northern France atrocity stories

circulated in Britain in France and then

in America that the Germans as they

advanced had crucified Belgian prisoners

of war that they'd raped the Belgian

nuns and that they were laying a path of

horrifying cruelty and destruction

before themselves when the Americans

entered the war it wasn't the only

propagandists who believe these stories

it was also ministers of the gospel and

many ministers went up into their

pulpits and said it's true that Jesus

was a pacifist but that's only because

he didn't have an enemy as evil as the

Germans if Jesus was alive today he'd

pick up a bayonet and drive it into the

body of the first German he met it's a

it's a religious duty to fight against

the enemy now when the First World War

finished it turned out that nearly all

these stories were completely false and

the clergy felt a very deep sense of

shame that they'd let themselves be

taken in by it

and said to themselves we're not going

to let that happen again

if we hear such stories we'll remember

the experience we had here in order that

it won't happen twice which is why when

in 1940 and 41 and 42 stories started to

come out from Germany about the fact

that the entire Jewish population was

being rounded up and put into

slave labor camps and then

systematically exterminated many of them

said we heard such stories before and we

were believe them and we were wrong to

believe them and the result is of course

that when the camps were finally

liberated in 1945 by the Allied armies

they realized with a horrified sense of

recognition that they'd been wrong twice

they were wrong the first time for being

too credulous and they were wrong the

second time for being too skeptical that

seems to me like a very very vivid

demonstration of the fact that it's

difficult to draw the right lesson from

history which lesson should we apply

every subsequent foreign policy crisis

has been confronted by exactly this

question there's a wonderful folk theory

of a harrowing photograph from Vietnam

now the American policymakers who took

the Americans into Vietnam were

remembering the lesson of the Second

World War

you've got to fight the enemy early when

he's far away and weak because if you

don't you're going to have to fight him

later when he's stronger and closer yeah

that was the lesson which they derived

from the events of the late 1930s and

Hitler's rise to power and it seemed

like a very very persuasive and powerful

lesson it wasn't that they were mad or

reckless or haven't studied history

enough they knew a lot about it and yet

they still made what nearly all of us I

think would regard as a terrible mistake

that's one of the great paradoxes we

need to come to terms with now the next

thing I'd like to talk to you about is

how hard it is to predict the future and

in the 1950s lots of magazines had

articles saying what's life going to be

like in the year 2000 here's one from

Popular Mechanics and it shows an

American farm from the year 2000 in

which each ear of corn is big enough to

load down the truck and you've got the

cosmic-ray distributor and various other

useful devices to help along the way and

oh here's a good one as well Popular

Mechanics magazine it said what's the

world going to be like in night in the

year 2000 well every workday dad's going

to go to work in his nuclear-powered

autogyro

and mom's going to stay at home in her

nuclear-powered kitchen in other words

every single interesting thing which

actually happened in the period between

1950 and 2000 didn't get mentioned and

the reason it didn't get mentioned was

because they haven't happened nothing

about the trip to the moon nothing about

the civil rights movement nothing about

the women's movement nothing about

miniaturization nothing about computers

all the stuff which actually happened

and of course that's true because

predictions are far far too difficult to

make predictions tell you a lot about

the time that the prediction was made

that was by studying these predictions

we can know what was on the mind of

people in 1950 but we can't know

anything at all about the year 2000 and

of course now that we've gone past the

year 2000 it's simply a source of fun to

look back and say how wrong could they

possibly be I also found this picture

this is from a French prediction in 1900

of what the year 2000 is going to be

lovely you know the whale powered bus I

mean it's true that we it's true that we

do now have submarines but I think they

got that slightly wrong in one

particular more than one particular and

from that frame the same French series

since I'm an educator I took a lot of

pleasure from this one as well this is

the imagination of the schoolroom of the

year 2000 in which the teacher there on

the right is loading textbooks into the

hopper and one kid you know that the

eraser monitor kid is sort of grinding

the handle and somehow the information

is also being transmuted into sparks

which then flow into these headsets and

straight into the students heads it's

that super that's the that's the 1900

idea of what the year 2000 is going to

be like

so my conclusion it's actually a rather

cautious one it's this that we've got to

study history to have any idea at all

about what the world is like without it

we're blind and groping in the dark but

even when we do now a lot about history

we're still circumscribed by the

complexity of humanity and the

complexity of historical circumstances

such that we can't possibly know what's

going to happen in the future thank you

very much indeed

you