Professional Documents
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Obsolete?
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Gertrude Himmelfarb
."Happy 1s the naaon that has no lustory.':' That adage, familiar
from at lcast the eighteemh cenrury, 1S an ambtguous trtb~
ure to those small nations that have been sparcd the sufferings exacted
'by history as the price of greatness. Today 1t is not oniy !ustory that IS
idistrusted~ it 15 the very idea of the nation. For some historians the
imotto mght be revised to read, "Happy is the hisrory that has no
I
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~nanon."
121
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rather than causes. The reader would then be free to make "whar links
he thinks fir for hunself," thus liberanng htmself, in effcct, from the
ryranny o f the histortan. Only thts kind o f lustory, Zeldin declares, ts
10
worthy of bemg called "total hiStory."
significant that the exarnple he uses is F rance rather than England; one .
wonders whether he would have refected quite as emphatically the idea
o f a "History of England."
If the Atmalstes may be sad to ~'strucruralize" history, Zcldin proposes to "deconstruct" ir. He spclled out the implicanons ofhts theory
in 1976, shorrly before the second volume of hts France appcared.
More rccently he repeated hts nd.ictrnent of convennonal hstof'l(,
beliefs of the masses," on public lives rather than privare lives, on htgh
culrure rather than popular culture, on men rather than womcn and
that have traditionally defined hisrory: chronology, causauon, and collectivity-the latter induding class and sooety as well as naoonality.
The release of social history from the bonds of policies, Zeldin has
argued, is only the first srep m tts liberation. For tt is still m thrall to
other no less oppressve "tyrannies": the tyranny of time (manifested in
the evoiunonary as well as the chronological approach ro lsrory), the
tyrarmy of soctal class, and the ryrarmy of causation. 9 Even those two
aduits rather rhan JUVenilcs, even (at rlus pomt Zeldin goes beyond the
now fmiliar critique of the new hsronan) on classes rathcr than mdividuals. A truly Jiberared lustory, he msJSts, musr be rorally rndividualisnc and atom1stic-not national, not economic, not social, but
"pcrsonal" lustory. "It is only by reconstructlllg our ptcrure of society
from the bottom upwards, srarnng with the mdividuals who are tts
atoms, that wc can grasp the complex1ty that lies bchmd thc national
stcrcotypcs." 12 Thc individuais hc proposcs to resurrcct, howcver, are
not thosc familiar in traditional historv. Cntic1zing one essaytst for
C\'C!'Y
Cites a
Employmcnt Comm1ss,on Rcpon of 18-!:3 on d1c cducauon of thc poor. Askcd who Tc:sus
Chnst was, one child idenri.fic:d him as Adam, anothcr as an a-posr.k, and ver a.nothcr as "a
k~g ofLondon a Jong orne ago." (CoUecud Workr (Nrn York, 1975- j, rv, 4!0._)
Some ofthe glue, Zeldin adnuts, the myths abour reaiity, are dues to
the reairy Itsclf. But they are also rmslcading, he mSISts, if, like the
politican's myths, they g1ve undue unportancc to polincal or legislative evcnts in the lves of the people or if, like the h!Stonan's myths,
they ytcld ro the "tyrannies" of causation, chronology, dass, nanonality. Again it IS the strategy ofpomtillisme that he recommcnds to clinunate these illusory constructs and connecoons and to reduce the com
plexJties of h!Stoty to their most elcmentary forms, the melucrabie
rca1ity of individuais.
br long~fdr shame
Depraved by my grandfathc:r
Royalist by my mothcr
Fatalist by my brothcr
Commumst by my father
MatXlst by urutatlon
Athe!St, O thanks to God
Athe!St, O thanks to God. 27
Because ali Frenchmen are atypical, thcy can only be described anecdorally and bographically. This is the method now adopted by Zelclin.
his anecdotes and biograph1cal sketches appearing under such chapter
headings as "How to Lave Thcm~" "How to Compete and Ncgonatc
with Them," '1How to Apprectate Their Tastc." Thc faccnous ntlcs
have the effect of mockmg the wha1c enterpnse of generalizatton~ as
well as avoding the usual catcgories offamily, sex, dass, rcgion, occu~
pation, generation. When statistics do appear, they are undocumcmcd
(except for general bibliographical references ar the cnd o f the book),
"), 23 and disbelittled ("these figures, for what they are wonh
counted on the ground.s that averagcs and gencralizanons are mcanmg~
less bccause there are always devtarions from the average and excep~
tions to the gencralization.
The first part of the book, "Why It Is Hard to Mcet an Average
French Person," recalls the feeble gag about the Amencan farnily w1th
2.7 children, the third child iacking a limb and part of h!S face. After
compiling a statistca1 composite that has the average Frenchman
spencling half lus nme alone, buying a newspaper oncc every thrce
days, rraveling by bus once every eleven days and by train once a
month, buying a par of blue Jeans once every two ycars and a plasnc
bag every day, spending one day in hospital every su months and
gomg to court once every four ycars, residing in a town of rwenry
thousand inhab1tants and dymg of heart rrouble ar the age of siXrymne, Zeldin condudes: "In pracricc, of course, the perfectiy avcrage
Frenchman ts a rariry."29 One does not have to be a quanntative historian to protest this parody of the srarisncal method, and one IS
cmbarrasscd to point ou r that thc very idea of an averagc, so far from
asswrung a smgle homogeneous rypc, assumes heterogeneity, with
individuais falling abovc and below thc average in one respcct or an~
other.
Much of the book 1s clirected against exactly tlus presumpnon of
homogene1ry. "The first aim of th1s book," the openmg paragraph
armoWiccs~ "is, to show why people still believe they can sum up the
French ma phrase or an ep1grarn, and whar absurdincs follow." 30 And
the final cbapter rcm.inds us of the futiliry of trvmg ''to dcscribe a
nanon of 54 rnillion, stillless one of 220 million, m a smglc phrasc, ro
aruibute to alltts inhabttants identtcal moral qualines. " 31 Thc idca that
nanonaliry stands or falls on the abiliry to charactenze a nauon m a
single phrase or ep1grarn, or to attribute ident1cal qualines, moral or
Jo
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Richard Cobb, cxt.Stemialist histonan p.u c..cdlc:ncc, suggcsrs tlm a history of Francc
from 1930 to 1944 could take as 1ts ritle "'L'Age du Bret/' thc: bcrct beconung in thc ycars
uncter thc: Vichy regu-nc: thc: "c:mblc:m of mor.U rcgOlc:r.lnon," thc: '<visib!c: affirm.luon of ta
frnnat."' (Cobb, Frrnd1 and Gr:n1lll11!, G&mlli1:S a.nd Fmuh: A Pmonal J1JittpmatJon of
Frana unda Two Oaup~UwnJ, 1914-191811940-1944 [Hanovcr, N.H., 19811, pp. 174175.)
.
din): "I feel very French, vcry Parstan. I do nor feel ar homc clscHc and his family spcnt some time at Sranford Universtty,
where he was better paid than at horne, lived more comforrably, did
more intercstrng work, foW1d American sc1cntists far more generous
wirh thcir idcas than hs French colleagues, and judgcd Francc, compared wtth America, ro bc "appallingly competinve and unfricndly."
Yet he and lus fmily "did nothmg but dream ofretummg to F rance,"
and he hirnself d.iscovered that "he needed to bc a Frcnchman. " 33
Here, as throughour the book, Zeldin makes the kind of generaliza
tions that hc would bc quick ro criticJ.Ze in othcrs as cvidcnce of na~
w~.crc."
tional stereotypes.
Hc 1s, of course, not the typ1cal French workcr. 34
In France one must not JUSt cat and drink., but talk aiso. 35
No foretgner should ever mock the Frcnch languagc, first bccausc hc
lt
has divine
status in Francc. 36
emigra~ed.
Jt
Perhaps n Zeldin's next book he will finally be ablc to carry out lus
agenda ,;_,d write a htstory so rhoroughly atonuzed and pcrsonalized
thar it will be rid of all those tyraruues that have rradioonally dorru
nared ir. One can unagme what such a liberared work willlool< likc: a
coUecoon, perhaps, of vignettcs, biographtcal or autobtograp!ucal, m
no particular temporai or spatai arder, largely if not exclustvely conccmcd with pnvate mattcrs. One can unagmc such a work-but it lS
not easy to thmk of it as a work of h.istory. Wharever it might be~ lt
would surely descrve to appear under a new name, liberared nor only
from the old categories and concepts but also from rhe assoctations and
expectattons evoked by the very word "lusrory."
Although few lustonans subscribe to the whoie of Zeldin's agenda,
whtch would dinunate among orher thmgs dass, cause, and chronol
ogy, many sympathze with that.part ofit having to do with nationality. And many more, not prepared to abandon that conccpt entirely,
are inclined to be suspicious o f ir, both because nationality suggests thc ,.
importancc, if not thc primacy, of poltica! history and because ir raises
the even more distasteful specter of natronalism. lt s curious that
lustonans, rathcr than malting the k.nds of dcfininons, discrmunations,
and qualifications that would serve to distingush berween a scnse of
national idennty and an deology ofnationalism, or between a civilized
nationalism and a barbarous one, should adopt the unbistorical srrat
egy o f impcaching thc vcry idea o f nationality, and with It the idca o f
rhe nation as an organzmg principie in the srudy of history.
It was no benighted politicallustonan, but the father of social hisrory, Marc Bloch, who said., during World War II: "I was bom in
France. I have drunk o f the waters o f hcr culrure. I havc made her past
my own. I breathe frcely only in her climate, and I havc dane my best,
with othcrs, to defend hcr interests." 39
sensibil~
ncw hisronan to challenge tlus assurnpuon togcther wth. aJl the other
clitrst, moralisuc, consensual assurnptions goveming tradiuonal lus-
Were it not for thiS latest fashion in historiography, two largc, lav
ishly illustrated volumes, Tbe Oxford Illu.rtrated Histmy of Bntam and
Tbe Englisb World: History, Cbarnaer, and Peopie, might takc thcir
placc among the more worthy coffee-tablc books of ourrune. 42 As it is,
thcy have a special interest tor the hiStonan. The editors of these
collaboraove volumes, themselves distinguished histortans, are well
aware that the o1d truisms are the new "problematJCS 1 '' that ideas once
so familiar as to rcquirc no argumcnts are now pnme subjecrs for
revisiomst intcrprcranons:B Perhaps on1y cditors so dstmgmshed
could have the couragc to rcsst thc ryranny of thc ncw, to reaffirrn
truisms that happen to be truc in prcfercnce ro theories notabic ch1cfiy
for thc1r novelty. One o f thcsc trwsms is thc idea that rherc 1s such a
t.hmg as a character, sp1rir, or trad.ition that makes o f English fustory
somcthng more than a succession of disparate cvcms (as Zeld.in's
pointillismc would havc it), and somethmg othcr than French history,
o r German history, or any othcr national htstory. 44
The foreword tr The Oxfmd I/lmtrated History opens: "The disrmctiveness, even uniqucncss, of the Bricish as a people has 1ong bccn
taken for granted by foretgn observers and naove commentators
alike." Kenneth Morgan goes on to c1te forcign observers rangmg
The author of tlus chaprer commenrs that the delegares "spoilr therr
poliucal case by adding that Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were part o f
the English nanon. " 62 It s no r ele ar whether h e is rebuking them for
speaking of the "English nanon" rather than the <'Briosh nation," or
,;;hethcr he 1s qucsoorung whether any rubnc could, ar that rime,
comprehend such diverse cnones as Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England-whether, in short., there was the "sense ofBrtishness" that the
editor deduces from ths history, or only a '1sense of Englishness."
The E11glish W orld has no such problem. The operaove word m the
ritle, and throughour mosr of thc book, ts "English," and the sub1ecr is
unarnbiguous: "Thc Englisimess of England," as the mrroductory
chaprer is encitled. Far from making any daims for Britam as a
significant historical unir, the book rejecrs any such idea. The chaprer
on "The Uniry of the Kingdom" has as lts mam theme thc disunry of
thc kmgdom, the parnal mrcgratlon of Scorland and thc dramaoc
failure of unificanon w1th lrcland. Only m the chapters on thc "First
Bntish Emptre, (thc scttlemenrs m the Ncw \-Vodd) and the "Sccond
Bntish Empue" (lndia, Africa, and Ausrralia) does Brirain come mro
tts own; with thc abandonmcnt of those emp1rcs, attcntton reverrs to
England and thc English.
the hundred years from 1621 to 1721. Lawrcnce Stone has pointed
out, the English had the repuration of beng "thc most ficklc and
volatile peoplc in the westcrn world." H e cites the comcmporary sayng: "An Englishman by his continued stirringofthe fire shows that he
never knows when a thing s well.'l66 But tius was thc perod when
usual facts adduccd by the econornic h.tstonan-the availability of capttal, technological innovanons, natural resources, thc growth of population-but also in England's umque polity, society, culrurc, and reli-
tradiuon,libcrty and commumty. Asa Briggs quotes Tocquevillc's puzzlemcnt over one o f thc many contradictiJns tn the English charactcr:
"I cannot completely understand how the spirit of assoctation and the
sprrt of <xcluson carne to bc so highly dcvclc.ped m the sarne peoplc,
and often to be so inttmately combined." Tocqueville,s examples were
clubs that were cohesive for thcir members and cxdusive rn rclation to
nonmembers, and familics that "divide up when thc birds are able to
!cave the nest." Indeed, he took that amalgam of assoaanon and dissoctaton to be the essenual fearure of England's polity as well as
soaety.69 Brggs finds a strnilar penchant for comranness m the enthusiasm for and reststance to technologtcal change, n the amb1valence
toward moneymaking even ar the hetght of the Indusrrial RcvoJunon
, and arnong the mos r cnterpnsing mdustrialists, m the connnued
pronunence of the aristocracy and gentty well mto the nineteenth
century, in an 'open society" that 1s acutdy class~conscious, n an es-
gton. Pc:rhaps the most s1gnificant fact about the first mdusmal narion
ts that tt was also the oldest parliarnenrary nauon, thus providing the
polincal stability and harmony esscnaal to econoiiUc progrcss. Durmg
The English W 11rld has provoked the sharpest, most sustained attack on
the "ryranny" o f nanonal hisrory .74 As it happcns, that critique (in the
Times Literary Sttpplement} was followcd by a much shortcr re\>Jcw of
Arthur Bryant's Spirit of Engltmd. Tlus book was curtly dism1sscd:
"Th1s 1s patriotic history, not objectivc history." Patriotic history, thc
revewer went on to say, is f ar less common n England than, for
example, In RusSia or Argentina; indced, Bryant IS "almost Its only
exponent m England. " 75 One IS tempted to add that if sueh iustory IS
less conunon m England, tt is in part because the d.istrusr of patrloosm
IS more common. And tt is tlus discrusr that contributes to the arumus
against national hiStory. National iusrory has bccn idcntified w1th patriotic, or nationalist. history, just as the idea of nanonality has becn
identified w1th the ideology of nanonalism.
Lord Acton unplicitly distmgwshcd bctwcen nattonality apd nanon~
alism when he differentiated the tv/O ideas of nattonaliry: thc old idea
wluch regarded nationality as "an essenoal, but not a supreme dement
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tonalism (and like the nation itself), has a hlstoty, changing ovcr the ::c;;,
course of time and vatyng from place to place, even taking different
furms at the same tune and place-providing thc impulsc, for cxamplc,
behind Little Englandism as well as impcrallsm, behnd Iiberalism as - _;:;:
well as conservatism.
It was John Stuart Jvlill, England's foremost philosopher of liberalism and mdividualism, who nsisted on the unportancc of nationality
and thus of national histoty:
A portion o f mankind ma y be said to construte a Nationality i f they are
umted among themsdves by common sympathies which do nor exist
between them and any others-which make them co"{}perate with each
other more wiUingly than with other peopl~ desire to be under thc same
governmcnt, and desire that lt shou!d be governmc:nt by thc:mselves ar a
portion of themsclves exdusively. This feeling of natonality may have
becn gcneratcd by various causes. Sometl.mes ir is the etfect of idennty o f