What is History?

University of California, Los Angeles Historian Eugen Weber once noted in his video lectures on World History that “if cats could write, they would write a history of cats.” Weber’s point was really about people, not cats. Historians have written a story with ourselves as the main characters. It will help our understanding of that story if we recognize that we are in fact only part of nature, not its main actors. Perhaps it is for this reason that historians spend so much energy trying to define just what it is we do. There is a purpose to this. If we have a clear idea of what our project is, we can come up with clear goals, and work toward them with purpose. The first step is to define history. We define history in various ways. A simple definition is that history is the study of change over time. In many ways, that definition is too vague, though it has the advantage of making it sound like history is a scientific discipline. Dictionary.com says that history is “the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.” That is no clearer for all its simplicity. Another insightful but confoundingly general definition is that from German historian Edward Hallett Carr in his book What is History: “History is a dialogue between the present and the past.”

These simple definitions are not very useful because they don’t really clarify the goals that historians are pursuing, although Carr’s idea suggests something important – that the goal of history is for people in the present to learn something about themselves by having a conversation with the past. Voltaire, a leader of Europe’s 18th-century Enlightenment, added another twist that resonates with historians of our time. In The Philosophical Dictionary he wrote that “The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at their origin, they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each generation.” In other words, history is didactic – it serves to educate us – and history can lose its link to the reality of events if we are not careful, or if we ascribe too much importance or meaning to them.

Catherine, a character in Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, probably came closest to the definition of history preferred by most first-year college students: “History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome.” Ambrose Bierce, the famous San Francisco newspaper columnist and cultural critic defined history as “An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.” In short, useless except as for entertainment. Yet Bierce also used history in his columns to help Americans understand the times and the changes they were living through, and to poke fun at politicians and industrialists to serious ends.

None of these profilers of history, however, seems aware of the point Weber made so casually in his video lecture.  Since humans, unlike cats, can write, we write a history of humans. Our histories cover those human subjects and situations known to us. Yet our focus on ourselves often causes us to forget the forest for the trees. Or perhaps we forget the stage for the actors upon it. This is, in fact, Shakespeare’s definition of history. In Macbeth he asserts “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.” Shakespeare is also apparently unimpressed by history. Still, even the great Bard has neglected what may be the most important thing about history: the stage. That is the task incumbent upon us all as historians.

How Do We Write History?

The word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek historía, meaning “inquiry,” “knowledge from inquiry,” or “judge.” However, the question of what kind of inquiries historians pose, what knowledge they seek, and how they interpret the evidence that they find remains controversial. Historians draw conclusions from past approaches to history, but in the end, they always write in the context of their own time, current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and even subjective viewpoints. Furthermore, current events and developments often trigger which past events, historical periods, or geographical regions are seen as critical and thus should be investigated. Finally, historical studies are designed to provide specific lessons for societies today. In the words of Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher and historian, “All history is contemporary history.”

All events that are remembered and preserved in some original form constitute the historical record. The task of historians is to identify the sources that can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of the past. These sources, known are primary sources or evidence, were produced at the time under study and constitute the foundation of historical inquiry. Ideally, a historian will use as many available primary sources as can be accessed, but in practice, sources may have been destroyed or may not be available for research. In some cases, the only eyewitness reports of an event may be memoirs, autobiographies, or oral interviews taken years later. Sometimes, the only evidence relating to an event or person in the distant past was written or copied decades or centuries later. Historians remain cautious when working with evidence recorded years, or even decades or centuries, after an event; this kind of evidence poses the question of to what extent witnesses remember events accurately. However, historians also point out that hardly any historical evidence can be seen as objective, as it is always a product of particular individuals, times, and dominant ideas. This is also why researchers try to find as many records of an event under investigation as possible, and it is not unusual that they find evidence that may present contradictory accounts of the same events.

In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved. Historians often consult all three.

Understanding Cause and Effect in History

World History textbooks today often analyze human history as a series of causes and effects that have led to the environmental, social, political, economic, and cultural contexts within which we live today. Human societies are a result of continual problem-solving through which humans over time changed elements of their environment, relationships, technology, work, culture, and even energy use and collection. These changes have led humans to face new challenges. How this happens, and where each new challenge comes from, is one of the key questions historians continually ask.

One example of this phenomenon is the issue of cancer. Statistically, the incidence of cancer was extremely low for most of human history. This might be because humans rarely lived long enough to encounter cancer symptoms. Also, since early human understanding of the body was limited, the effects of cancer on those few who were affected were probably misread as other illnesses, or simply not noticed until they caused what appeared to be a natural death – unexplained and unpreventable. In the 19th and 20th centuries CE, however, human lifespans grew long enough that more people exhibited similar symptoms, making it possible to identify a category of disease for the first time. Thus food security and medical technology helped humans reach a new point of success, wherein they were able to identify a challenge they were not aware previously, though that problem always existed. The solution to older problems, in some cases, did not cause new problems, but made it possible to see those dilemmas more clearly. Other solutions to problems in the past caused new challenges in their own right. The invention of gunpowder, for example, led to a need to find a chemical means of fixing nitrogen to supply growing uses of gunpowder. In this case, solving one problem led directly to the creation of another. Thus we can see that understanding cause and effect – one of the most important parts of the process of investigating history – is complex, and cannot be reduced easily to a few simple rules. There are, however, important approaches that a good historical analysis will take.

When looking at cause and effect, one principle to keep in mind is contingency, which applies to history in many ways. Historical events are usually the product of multiple factors that combined in a particular way, sort of like the ingredients of a cooking recipe. If one of those factors had been missing or different, the final outcome could have been different. Contingency requires historians to consider the possible roles played by chance, accident, or unintended outcomes, which also means that “fate” and “destiny” are not very useful explanations for past events. In fact, they are more commonly used to avoid a real explanation than to give a real explanation. Fate and destiny are very influential ideas, and the fact that people believe in them can be a powerful factor in events, but that does not mean that fate or destiny actually exists. Do not assume that the way that history unfolded is the only the way that those events could have happened. Other outcomes may have been possible and even very likely.

The Historian’s Tools

History is more than old dusty tales about old dusty things that happened to people who are now dead. (Besides, history can also include the lives of people still living.) It is the attempt to reconstruct the experience and context of the past so we can identify change, and pinpoint its causes and effects. There are a number of barriers in our way each time we try to look at an historical problem. The first is that, with the exception of truly recent history, the people to whom events happened, those who wrote about those events, their times, or themselves, or those who witnessed or participated in historical events, are not accessible to us. We can’t go up and ask them “uh, what did you mean by this?” or, “what did you intend to accomplish with this?” Fortunately, a large number of them have left documents: diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, private short stories, essays, speeches, laws, poems, artwork, books, and musings on issues of their time. These kinds of materials, created by someone present at events either as a witness or participant, are known as primary sources, and they are an historian’s best friend. However, they can be made to lie. Some primary sources turn out to be forgeries, poor copies, redacted texts, or blatantly prejudiced and incomplete. Good historians learn to tell the difference between the legitimate primary sources and the forgeries, but even the best can be fooled. Furthermore, very few if any primary source documents were written with future historians in mind; they are documents produced for specific reasons for that time and place, without care whether anyone three thousand years later will understand or not.

There are a few basic tools with which historians confront every primary document or source encountered. First, we have to know whether it was written at the right time. If the author is well known or has been studied historically, then the dates of the author’s life should match up with the dates of the event or data being studied. Then we look at the writing itself, ideally original documents. We look for several different things. If we have samples of an author’s other work, we can match up handwriting and grammatical style, use of vocabulary, etc.  We then match those things to the linguistic norms and uses of the time in question. If it passes these tests, chances are it is a genuine document, but we always reserve judgment.

A secondary source is produced by an author who was not present at events, nor, usually, who lived in the time under scrutiny. Rather, a secondary source is created by someone unconnected to the events being studied. That treatment is based on using and interpreting primary sources. So, historical monographs, your History textbooks, news summaries, and modern analyses are all secondary sources.

One of the first things World History courses touch on is human prehistory. Our sources here are relatively sparse in comparison with historical periods, but there are still a very large number of sources from which to draw as well as a great many theories as to how the evidence fits together. Taken together, we can see that the earliest periods of human development, especially those characterized by the diasporas of Homo erectus, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens sapiens, were very much periods of divergence.

This divergence seems to have been dictated by the changing landscape of different geographical areas of the planet. Human cultures adapted to their contexts and methods of growing plants, hunting, domesticating wolves, making boats and fishhooks (in marine regions such as the Hawaiian Islands), diets, and tools, were all created in response to each unique situation. Since each situation was different, so too was each culture. This is evident even in terms of language. The marks of a skilled historian in understanding the evolution of these distinctive cultures include creativity, logic, resourcefulness, diligence, honesty, inclusivity, and attention to detail.

Historical Realities

Historian and World War II French Resistance fighter Marc Bloch noted, before the Nazis executed him, that historians are not antiquarians, and we are not fortune tellers. Historians are people whose greatest interest is understanding the past so as to explain the present. That goal has great value. Understanding who we are, and what events and ideas helped us to get here, helps us to recognize what it means to be ourselves for, as Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living.” Consciousness of who we are and where we came from gives us the ability to avoid being simply reactive to events, helping us to make better, more informed choices as individuals and as societies.

However, there are two myths that we need to recognize to avoid simplistic thinking about history. First, the popular cliché that history repeats itself is not accurate; it is a common way to accept the past without thinking about it. Mark Twain, one of the quintessential American authors, addressed this when he noted that “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” By this he meant that while we often see events that seem to reflect other events in the past, that reflection is only partial. If we look carefully at two events separated by time, we see quite quickly that they differ based on the people who were present the reasons that people undertook the actions, as well as the locations and context (political, economic, social and environmental). History does not repeat or even closely rhyme. There are, however, insights to be gained by understanding parallels and deeper roots of contemporary issues. Understanding these distinctions will serve you well in this course.

Another common trope about history is that we study it to help predict the future, another misconception. We study history to understand ourselves, and to hone our reasoning skills, to be able to recognize that nothing is inevitable and every event has multiple causes. Ernst Mach, the British engineer who lent his name to the measurement of speed beyond the speed of sound, wrote that nature is so complex that there is no way that a model of nature, whether it be a weather prediction or an aircraft model in a wind tunnel, can take account of all possibilities in reality. History is the same. While we always search for multiple causes for events, we also acknowledge that we can never know them all.

For similar reasons, history can only analyze what has happened in the past. Extrapolating the past to project future events is not within its purview. Since historians are trained to understand how events that have occurred fit together, one thing we do know for sure is that our present was not inevitable – things did not have to turn out the way they did. Each event, each idea, each person and choice in the past might have been different, and with enough variations, a different present would have come into existence. Exploring this idea is a popular theme for writers of historical fiction and TV dramas. But it is not the purview of historians. We cannot imagine all the possible permutations of events, nor master the complex nature of multiple causes for even simple events.

Thus, we cannot know what will happen in the future. Historians are no better at predicting the future than anyone else. In fact, with an acute awareness of multiple causation and the complexities of human society, historians generally refuse to even try, and when we do, any responsible historian will preface it with a warning that they are likely to be wrong. So, our task is not to predict the future, but to better understand events from the past, learn the lessons these past experiences can impart, and better understand causes and effects through exploring multiple sources, and comparison of differences between societies.

From the Preface to Matsumoto, et al, He Huaka’i Honua: Journeys in World History I, to 1500 CE

History and the Environment

All of human history has played out on a stage that today we call the biosphere. In fact, until the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4th, 1957, everything that occurred in human history happened here on Earth. Thus our examination of history cannot take place without describing the environment within which events  occurred. Many of the causes of human events and changes (social, political, economic, cultural) have been challenges or opportunities  presented by the environment. The reciprocal truth is also apparent: changes in human behavior, population, and activities have forced the environment to change. This interconnected relationship is critical to understanding both the causes and effects of historical developments and their impacts on the evolving story of humanity.

Such an interpretation of history as the story of humans within nature is not new. Chinese cosmology, as well as religious ideas such as Confucianism and Daoism, are infused with the idea that humans can only be successful if they live and work in harmony with nature. The Olmec and the Maya of Central America believed humans to be responsible for consciousness of the universe, and as such a part of its workings in every way. Native Hawaiians believe in a deep connection to the ʻĀina, or land, conceived of as a nurturing Earth with consciousness and a reciprocal care for those who provide nurturing. It seems that many, if not most, human cultures have conceived of themselves as interconnected with nature. This book is an extension of that recognition, and endeavors to narrate history as rooted on the stage of the Earth, with human activities a part of, influencing, and impacted by, the Earth’s natural systems, the biosphere including land (the lithosphere), sky (the atmosphere), and water the hydrosphere), and the interconnected parts of those within which biological organisms exist (the ecosphere).

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 18th century, humans have had the capacity to affect the global environment. Since at least the 20th century, humans have moved more earth, water, and rock than natural processes. Our ability to affect the natural world has exceeded that of natural forces, and we have already left our radioactive mark in the geological record through the combined effects and fallout from nuclear testing and the use of atomic weapons at the end of World War II. Humans are now the largest change agent in the natural world. In response geologists are in the process of naming the modern era (dating either from the industrial age or the first atomic bomb) the Anthropocene, distinct from the Holocene, the era with which we begin this book. The Anthropocene designation indicates that humans (Anthropos in Greek) now have the largest impact on natural processes. In recognition of this critical relationship between humans and natural forces, each Chapter has an ‘Environment in History’ section, as well as integration of environmental issues throughout our discussions.

Modern Issues

While history does not allow for prediction, historical knowledge is certainly the necessary foundation for understanding the present, as well as future possibilities. In all cultures, in all situations we face in the present, an analytical awareness of the historical roots of things like cultures, traditions, religious beliefs, animosities, wealth and class, land ownership, laws, and political power is essential to better comprehend the world we live in today. We make these links throughout the text to foster appreciation for the roots of current issues, for example how attitudes and values evolved, and how relationships, structures, institutions and systems (class, economic, political) emerged; these are all necessary and relevant tools to interpret complexities of global 21st century events. Each chapter also includes specific discussion of intriguing and instructive links between past and present in the ‘Modern Issues’ sections.

In addition, to better prepare a modern reader to be an informed global citizen, we have sought to integrate into historical analyses discussions of sometimes neglected areas of history including issues related to gender and class. And as historians from Hawai’i, we have taken great care to better include Pacific peoples, cultures, achievements and developments in our coverage, for a more globally inclusive overview of early human cultures.

Active Student Learning

Reading about the past is both instructive and fascinating. However, working more directly with resources is often more engaging and meaningful for students. We have included two kinds of direct activities that students can pursue at the direction of the instructor or on their own. ‘Reading the Past’ sections in each chapter include links to relevant and accessible primary sources, written and visual, that lend insights into past societies, key figures, and influential works: religious, literary, philosophical, and political. Each source is accompanied by guiding questions to help focus reading and reflection. The ‘Learning in Action’ sections link the student to engaging multi-media sources available on the internet, an invaluable resource now available to modern scholars. These are short videos, interactive websites, animated maps and other visual sources that students can view and analyze, to dig deeper into related topics. Again, guiding questions are provided to foster greater learning and investigation into engaging and significant topics.

The Purpose of This Textbook

Knowing who we are, what we came from, and what events have led us to be who we are, provides us many things. We can better understand, and assign value and responsibility, to our choices and the historical roots that led to them. Historical understanding gives us a foundation from which to understand others – be they the next door neighbor, or a nation thousands of kilometers away. It provides us with an analytical way of thinking that can help us weigh our choices, and perhaps incorporate moral weight Knowing the past also provides us with a warning to think carefully about how our ideas, decisions, and actions can affect others. This allows us to be intentional and accountable in our choices and our thinking. Knowing where ideas and things came from can help us to value our past, and our humanity, and to find commonalities rather than simply focus on differences. A study of history is training to help us to avoid acting thoughtlessly or based only on instinct, and instead find ways to behave according to considered views of what is good, right, and constructive. History is, often, unfairly and erroneously used by speakers, salespeople, politicians, and even peers to justify their actions and decisions. Thus it is valuable to learn the rules of history, even if only to help justify decisions based on legitimate, defensible, factual reasons, rather than just on emotions or impulses. In short, history can help us to transcend our own limitations and increase our ability to foster and contribute to our society and humanity reaching their full potential.

We hope with this book to provide a view of World History that recognizes the global experience of humanity and to enable our students to move beyond a Western-centered understanding of World History. While recognizing the importance of the West, this textbook seeks to also honor and explore the contributions of non-Western societies, events, people and ideas throughout the course of time. With this, we strive to contribute to the reader’s understanding of the value of the diversity of humankind, and of human experience. We hope you will find it useful and interesting.