The Academy’s Retreat From History

Last month, Ava Johnson, a first-year Princeton undergraduate, published an opinion piece entitled “Now More Than Ever, We Need to Know Our History.” She points out that of Princeton’s six gen ed distribution categories in the humanities and social sciences—culture and difference, epistemology and cognition, ethical thought and moral values, historical analysis, literature and the arts, and social analysis—only two, literature and social analysis, require more than a single course.

She called on her school to require a second class in history, “because it is impossible to effectively understand and analyze the present without having an in-depth understanding of the past.”

In insisting that students take even a single history-related class, Princeton already requires more history than most universities. According to one recent analysis, just 18 percent of public universities require college students to take even one class in history or government.

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Even at those campuses that compel students to take a class that offers historical perspective, there is no assurance that the students will study any of history’s biggest issues: the evolution of labor systems and forms of government; long-term shifts in attitudes toward gender, diversity, sexuality and violence; colonialism, cultural borrowings, migration and trade; environmental changes and the impact of disease; and the causes and consequences of civil and interstate wars and conquests.

Often, a narrow focus prevails. I think it’s fair to say that history at the introductory level tends to emphasize the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis. The focus is on the linear progression of events within that nation, with a priority placed on political and military history. Such courses tend to promote national narratives that emphasize unique cultural and historical identities, sometimes at the expense of recognizing global interconnectedness and shared experiences. Rarely do such classes draw broad comparisons and contrasts between different regions and cultures, resulting in an insular understanding of historical development.

Or conversely, courses in world history, despite their broad and ambitious scope, often have their own limitations. These limitations stem from the challenges of covering vast amounts of content, balancing detail with broader themes and addressing essential historical questions.

World history instructors often feel compelled to include numerous facts, dates and events, which can overwhelm students and obscure the broader themes and patterns that are crucial for understanding historical processes. Issues involving causation and the complex interaction of economic environmental, political and social factors and the significance, consequences and impact of historical events too often get short shrift due to time constraints. Without broader themes, history can become a mere list of dates and facts.

Identifying long-term trends and patterns, such as the rise and fall of empires, the spread of technologies or shifts in economic systems, which are crucial for understanding the direction of history, are more often found in popular histories, like those by Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari, than in academic classes on world history.

Understanding how different parts of the world have been interconnected through trade, migration, war and cultural exchange is crucial for a global perspective. Yet this interconnectedness is often underemphasized in favor of more isolated national narratives. Analyzing the dynamics of historical development and comparing different societies and civilizations requires a depth of knowledge, a framework of analysis and a level of synthesis that can be hard to achieve within the limited time frame of a world history class.

Nor are most students introduced to the philosophy of history. This includes issues of:

• Purpose: What is the purpose of studying history? Is it to learn lessons, understand human nature or something else?
• Epistemology: Are there limits to what we can know about the past How do gaps in evidence and the passage of time affect historical knowledge?

• Accuracy and objectivity: How do historians assess the reliability and credibility of historical sources? Given the fragmentary nature of historical sources, how accurately can the past be represented in historical writing? To what extent can (or should) historians provide an objective account of the past, free from personal biases or cultural influences? What does it mean for a historical account to be true? Can historical truth be absolute or is it always provisional?
• Causation: What do we mean when we say that one or more factors caused a historical event?
• Determinism and agency: Are historical events determined by larger forces (economic, social, environmental), or is there room for individual agency? What is the role of individual actions and decisions in shaping history?
• Anachronism: How can historians avoid imposing present-day values and norms on past societies?
• Narrative and representation: What is the role of narrative in history, and how do historians construct coherent stories from disparate events and sources?
• Teleology: Is there a meaning, direction or purpose to historical events? Do events unfold according to a discernible pattern or plan or is it merely a series of random and contingent events? Are there universal patterns in history or is each historical situation unique? Does history show evidence of progress or improvement over time?
• Moral evaluation: Should historians make moral judgments about historical events and figures? If so, how? How should historians approach the study of cultures with different values and norms? What role should historians play in public debates about history, memory and identity?

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I attended a college, Oberlin in the early 1970s, without any requirements at all, so I would be among the last to favor a history mandate. But I agree with Johnson’s larger point: that historical perspective is indispensable in making sense of today’s world.

History’s value takes multiple forms. Apart from providing essential cultural literacy that enriches our lives and broadens our perspective, the study of history

• Reveals that everything—every concept, event, object and societal conflict—has a history. That is, it has antecedents, background and a fascinating backstory.
• Provides a much-needed alternative to synchronic modes of analysis that fail to incorporate longitudinal, diachronic, developmental and dynamic perspectives that emphasize evolution, development, metamorphosis, shifts, transformations, turning points and transitions.
• Reminds us of the essential role of context and contingency in causation and unmasks the importance of irony and unintended consequences in understanding change over time.
• Calls into question simplistic theories of causation and crude notions of progress and improvement and the naïve tendency to divide humanity into the children of light and the children of darkness or progressives versus the forces of resistance.
• Allows us to see how the present compares and contrasts with the past, for better and worse, and how different choices in the past might have led to a very different present.
• Offers vital insights into the sources, direction and meaning of historical change in modes of production, forms of government.
• Exposes and explains the very different trajectories that societies have followed across time.

There was a time, in the late 19th century, when history was regarded as the key to making sense of the contemporary world, when the disciplines of political science and sociology were part of the American Historical Association and when related disciplines, including anthropology and economics, were highly historical and attached a heavy emphasis on societal, economic and cultural development.

Those days are long past.

But the reasons why history became less central to the social sciences lies in professional specialization. As the social sciences matured, they developed distinct theoretical frameworks, methodologies and professional organizations. This led to clearer boundaries between disciplines, with each focusing more narrowly on specific aspects of human behavior and society.

Different social sciences disciplines also adopted methodologies that best suited their research questions. For example, sociology and political science increasingly emphasized quantitative methods, while anthropology focused on ethnography. These methodological preferences often downplayed historical analysis in favor of contemporary data and statistical models.

In addition, the 20th century saw a rise in empiricism and positivism, which emphasized observable, measurable phenomena and sought to apply scientific methods to social science research. This approach sidelined historical and qualitative methods.

The development of sophisticated statistical techniques and computational tools made quantitative analysis more prominent in disciplines like sociology, political science and economics. These methods often prioritized current or recent data over historical analysis.

Universities increasingly organized departments around specific disciplines, each with its own curriculum, faculty and research priorities. This compartmentalization reinforced the separation of history from other social sciences.

Today, economic history, ethnohistory, political history and historical sociology are often regarded as fairly minor and marginal subfields within anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. The days when many of the giants in those fields were historically minded—figures like Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Robert Fogel, David Landes and Douglas North in economics or Francis Jennings, Alfred Kroeber and Anthony F. C. Wallace in anthropology—appeared to be over.

And yet, history appears to be making something of a comeback. A resurgence in interest in history has taken place within literary studies, typified by the New Historicism and scholars like Stephen Greenblatt; in sociology, by Ira Katznelson, Orlando Patterson and Theda Skocpol; and in economics by J. Bradford DeLong, Claudia Goldin, Robert J. Gordon and Deirdre McCloskey.

However, I fear that my discipline is not well prepared to treat that scholarship with the rigorous engagement that is required. History, a notably atheoretical field, has tended to rely on theories and methods drawn from other disciplines. But I fear that history is even less theoretical and methodologically sophisticated than it was during the new social history’s heyday. Most Ph.D.-granting departments in history don’t offer any formal training in demography, econometrics, quantitative analysis or social science theory or methods. Graduate-level courses in digital history, documentary filmmaking, the medical or business humanities and museum studies are rare.

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If we want to make history more central to undergraduate education and emphasize the importance of diachronic, longitudinal and developmental perspectives, several steps can be taken.

1. We need to introduce a big-picture approach that provides a comprehensive understanding of human development by examining broad patterns and connections across different societies and eras. This approach contrasts with more traditional methods that focus narrowly on specific regions, nations or chronological sequences. One way to provide such a big picture is to focus on a broad topic or theme—like slavery or the idea of freedom or the impact of geography, climate and disease—and trace its patterns of development across time. Such an approach, which examines connections and contrasts across different societies and eras, contrasts with more traditional methods that focus on specific regions, nations or chronological sequences.
2. We need to integrate insights from other disciplines, such as economics, sociology and environmental science, into the study of history and help students understand how an understanding of history. History has the power to test and refine various social science theories and generalizations. History provides concrete examples that can substantiate or challenge theoretical claims. Here are a few examples.

• Marxist theory of historical materialism: Are shifts in modes of production and class struggles the drivers of historical change?
• Modernization theory: Does economic and societal modernization following a linear path involving industrialization, urbanization and an increase in formal education or is development better understood in terms of colonial legacies, cultural factors and international power dynamics?
• Weber’s theory of bureaucracy: Does the development of modern states and large corporations illustrate Max Weber’s theory on the rise of bureaucracy as a dominant organizational form or does the persistence of nonbureaucratic organizations and the rise of network-based and decentralized forms of organization in the digital age call into question the universality of Weber’s theory?
• Durkheim’s theory of social solidarity: Does the study of the shift from traditional to modern societies substantiate Emile Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity and increased interdependence, or do earlier patterns of social cohesion persist in traditional societies undergoing rapid modernization, suggesting that Durkheim’s binary distinction may be too simplistic?
• State formation: Does the formation of modern states through war, taxation and bureaucracy support Charles Tilly’s theory that “war made the state and the state made war,” or do the varied processes of state formation in Africa, the Middle East and Asia—where colonialism, nationalism and ethnic conflicts played major roles—challenge the universality of Tilly’s model?
• Democratic peace theory: Does the study of international relations since World War II reinforce the argument that democracies rarely go to war with each other, or does history show that democracies do engage in conflicts and that other factors, such as economic interdependence or strategic alliances, also play significant roles in preventing or instigating wars?
• Cultural evolution theory: Do historical studies of social evolution, such as the development of complex societies from simple bands and tribes, support theories of cultural evolution, or does the existence of advanced civilizations that did not follow a linear progression from simplicity to complexity and the impact of environmental and external factors, challenge simplistic evolutionary models?
• Theories of cultural diffusion: Do historical instances of trade, conquest and migration, such as the spread of technologies and ideas along the Silk Road, support theories of cultural diffusion, or does the independent development of similar technologies and cultural practices in isolated societies, like agriculture in the Americas and the Fertile Crescent, call into question the extent to which diffusion alone can explain cultural development?
• Theories of collective behavior: Do historical events like the French Revolution and the U.S. civil rights movement support ideas about how social norms can shift rapidly in response to shared grievances, or does the failure of some movements to gain traction despite similar conditions suggests that additional factors, such as leadership organization and external support, are also crucial?
• Authoritarian personality theory: Does the historical analysis of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes support theories about the authoritarian personality and the appeal of authoritarian leaders in times of crisis? Or does the diversity of support bases for authoritarian leaders and the presence of authoritarian tendencies in different cultural contexts suggest that personality traits alone cannot fully explain the rise of authoritarianism?

3. We need to emphasize the development of essential historical skills that go beyond merely memorizing facts and dates. Here are some of the key skills that are critical for understanding the past, analyzing historical events and applying historical knowledge to contemporary issues.

• Research methods. Learning how to conduct historical research, including formulating research questions, locating, evaluating and using sources and organizing information effectively.
• Analytical skills, including the ability to interpret historical images, maps, charts and other visual sources, and quantitative data to gain insights into the past.
• Contextualization. Placing historical events in their broader social, cultural, economic and political contexts to understand their significance.
• The critical analysis of historical sources and arguments, questioning the validity and reliability of the evidence presented.
• Cause and effect analysis. Understanding how and why events occur and the short- and long-term consequences of these events.
• Comparative analysis. Understanding different historical periods, regions and cultures to identify similarities and differences and to understand broader patterns and trends.
• Perspective taking. Analyzing history from multiple viewpoints, including those of marginalized or underrepresented groups.
• Argumentation skills, including the ability to integrate information from various sources to form a coherent understanding of historical periods, events or themes and to construct and defend a historical argument based on evidence, addressing counterarguments and making logical conclusions.
• Historical empathy. Understanding the moral complexities of the past and history’s role in shaping contemporary societies and developing the ability to understand and empathize with people from different historical periods and cultural backgrounds, including those we despise, recognizing the humanity in diverse experiences.

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The history our students need today needs to go beyond a mere chronicle of past events and offer a more analytical approach that does a better job of helping students understand complex contemporary issues and better prepares them to navigate today’s conflict-riven yet highly interconnected world.

This history needs to tackle a host of issues typically omitted from current survey classes, including questions involving inevitability, the complexities of human nature, inevitability and the motives behind wars and revolutions, to help our students better understand concepts like leadership, resistance, cooperation and conflict.

A more analytical history might, for example, show how race or gender roles and ideologies have been constructed, perceived and manipulated throughout history or the impact of colonialism on both colonizers and the colonized and the lasting legacies of colonialism on contemporary societies.

Students should analyze how social structures have evolved over time, from feudalism and caste systems to modern social hierarchies, and understand how these transitions might help us make sense of explain current social dynamics and inequalities.

By studying reform movements, such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and labor rights, students can see how pressure groups can contribute to significant social and moral transformations. The history of industrialization reveals that the Industrial Revolution was much more than a revolution in technology, but reshaped class relations, relocated populations on an unprecedented scale and contributed to fundamental shifts in cultural values. Understanding the historical roots of globalization helps students comprehend current economic interdependencies and contemporary issues involving trade, migration and cultural exchange.

This more analytical history would also explore ethical dilemmas, underscoring the complexities of moral decision-making. At the same time, discussing whether history has a direction or purpose encourages students to ask whether history a series of random events or whether it follows certain patterns and trajectories.

History is our best guide to understanding the complexities of human nature, societal dynamics and the nature and exercise of power. History can serve as a compass that can help us navigate today’s most urgent and complex challenges—whether these involve the legacies of colonialism and Western interventions, migration and cultural, societal and racial, gender, class and ethnic conflicts.

By studying the past, our students can gain invaluable insights into the behavior and motivations of individuals and groups, the evolution of social structures and the mechanisms of governance and authority. If we want to equip our students to navigate the present and shape a more informed future, they need to understand history. But this must be a very different kind of lower-division history than the chronicles we currently offer.