The History Manifesto is a call for historians to return to the study of longue durée to avert the “short-termism” epidemic the authors see overtaking our field and world.[1] Guldi and Armitage share a variety of data and charts, which attempt to support their claim, including term usage over time, dot graphs, and median time scales.[2] On the surface, the evidence paints a clear picture: historians are ever focused on the shorter time scale and we are on the brink of no return from the ever shorter attention span kids these days have. I’m sorry – I seem to have mixed up the diatribe against new history with a person complaining about the widespread use of technology.
One phrase I kept returning to in reading this work was “correlation versus causality”, an idea that things can happen at or around the same time but not be caused by the other. This was before I read the thorough (if not stepping into mean) critique on the book. When initially reading the work, I found their indication uncomfortable that short-termism came on the rise during the years when history as a field had moved into new territory: cultural and social study, focuses on gender and race, as well as newly diverse people groups entering history and the humanities at large. The authors reduce these important works and times to microhistory, while simultaneously hinting that these studies, if they did not outright “kill historical relevance”, absolutely damaged it.[3] It seems they’re saying that the study and inclusion of marginalized people has damaged the image of history for those who had previously been the focus.
Initially I assumed the authors had come into this with good intentions, but after consulting with my own data analyst source (read: husband) and reading further, I have to wonder if this was a publicity stunt to get people interested in open access books or just to stir up attention. I cannot imagine that nowhere along the way there was no questioning of the data or the somewhat insidious underlying message. Between their poor (if not outright false) interpretation of data and the hand-wavy claims, I don’t know that I can honestly say the book was created with good intentions, or even a clear view of what they were striving for – especially as two white academics writing from “ivory towers” like Brown and Harvard.[4]
Ignoring their data and focusing on the argument though, I would say that their view, and possibly the old view of the longue durée, doesn’t consider how quickly our world moves now and has for quite some time. Our world is in a new age of durée, which is to say much shorter. There have been full technologies rise and fall over several years, technology that we may not have even imagined when the term was invented. Not to say that we did not have similar technology then; but we certainly didn’t have a computer sitting in the palm of our hands every day, let alone in our living room on a small desk. The authors talk about a time when “History explained communities to themselves” and of the great narratives that used to be written.[5] However, we also used to have a narrative about the “great man” and “happy slave”, but I’m not sure that we need to return to those, and I don’t believe that boasting about the Western’s need to explain things to others is something to strive for either.
There are certainly points I agree with, just as the authors of the “Critique” did, but it seems from Guldi and Armitage’s response to that that if the person does not have only praise then their reply is invalid. The “data” used to back up their claims was just as flimsy as that in the book, and they did little to convince me to their side. Particularly when presented with quotes of praise for their work that read like the top of a movie poster as part of their rebuttal.[6] I’m glad that some people agree with their view of long and short; the field benefits from differing opinions and discussion, but we should be arguing in good faith, with solid data, and respect when people have valid criticisms. And please, make sure you’re practicing safe statistics.
[1] Jo Guldi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 2, 7-8.
[2] Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto, 2, 44; David Armitage and Jo Guldi, “The History Manifesto: A Reply to Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 543–54, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43696683, 552.
[3] Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto, 11.
[4] Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto, 9; Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler, “The History Manifesto: A Critique,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 530–42, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43696682, 537.
[5] Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto, 10.
[6] Armitage and Guldi, “The History Manifesto: A Reply to Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler,” 544.