Jo Guldi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto
Guldi and Armitage issue a call for long-range, global perspectives in history writing in order to survive the seemingly all-pervasive "crisis of the humanities." The problem with current historical writing, Guldi and Armitage argue, is "short-termism," i.e. on too narrow a subject in too narrow a time frame in dissertations and manuscripts that have come out in the last 40 years (8). What the authors want to see instead are projects that tackle "big history," "deep history," or, in other words, the return of what Fernand Braudel termed the longue durée. The longue durée way of "thinking with history—but only with long stretches of that history," the manifesto suggests, will provide historians with the much-needed opportunity to explain the present and provide innovative solutions for the future.
Guldi and Armitage are aware of the possible shortcomings of the longue durée model. Indeed, they acknowledge that grand narrative history has been used to perpetuate the status quo in the past and that the genre runs the risk still. Nonetheless, Guldi and Armitage insist that historians need to think bigger in order to understand their present and their future alike; short-term studies may reveal important insight into the past but are by themselves incapable of providing larger conclusions for the future. To understand climate change, for example, Guldi and Armitage argue that historians must interrogate the ways in which the Western world has consistently exploited the environment of the entirety of the globe and then told the story of climate change as one of global negligence and an inevitable consequence of progress (71). What a longue durée analysis of climate change in light of Western colonialism and domination shows, however, is that the responsibility for climate change can more precisely be demonstrated to lie within the West itself. Historians must, therefore, unite with economists and environmental scientists in order to understand the multiple forces that contribute to long-term change and to be able to explain to popular audiences in a way that is both simple and for formulating solutions for social action.
To this end, Guldi and Armitage recommend a number of tools that may be helpful to collect and analyze big data in the historical profession. From Paper Machines to Google Ngrams, Guldi and Armitage see enormous potential in how technology can revolutionize the way historians view the massive amounts of data that is quickly becoming available to them digitally. Knowing how to use these data in explaining big issues will be key to bringing the longue durée back into the profession. This will require appropriate funding and scholarly rigor, but, Guldi and Armitage, are convinced, it can be done. Longue durée history, they conclude, can be written to "illuminate the deliberate silences in the archive, shining the light onto parts of the government that some would rather not see" (101). This kind of history, in other words, is not the baby-boomer generation history that seeks to maintain the existing order and uncritically views the present as the best possible outcome of the past; instead, its goal is to transform in light of insights derived from data acquired over hundreds of years.
This project is ambitious, and Guldi and Armitage are keenly aware of it. While they provide compelling examples for successful longue durée history, Guldi and Armitage do not fully satisfy a traditional skeptic's concerns. For example, given that research funding is increasingly tied to institutions that have private market interests, how are longue durée historians to navigate the competing interests between the kind of social responsibility programs that and Armitage espouse and the realities of competitive interest-driven capital? And what happens to the day-to-day realities of people who did not necessarily fit into historical trend changes that longue durée would presumably uncover? What about the outliers, the poor, the gendered, the raced? In other words, how exactly are longue durée historians to keep themselves from repeating the mistakes of their baby-boomer predecessors?
These objections are all obvious and most likely only reveal my own lack of forward thinking, the inherent conservatism that our profession brings with it. But it also reveals a skepticism derived from the very findings of longue duree history: if what has enabled some of the most profound technological advances for writing longue durée history is Western capitalism, then how is it to resist the very regime that is responsible for its creation and sustenance?
Guldi and Armitage are aware of the possible shortcomings of the longue durée model. Indeed, they acknowledge that grand narrative history has been used to perpetuate the status quo in the past and that the genre runs the risk still. Nonetheless, Guldi and Armitage insist that historians need to think bigger in order to understand their present and their future alike; short-term studies may reveal important insight into the past but are by themselves incapable of providing larger conclusions for the future. To understand climate change, for example, Guldi and Armitage argue that historians must interrogate the ways in which the Western world has consistently exploited the environment of the entirety of the globe and then told the story of climate change as one of global negligence and an inevitable consequence of progress (71). What a longue durée analysis of climate change in light of Western colonialism and domination shows, however, is that the responsibility for climate change can more precisely be demonstrated to lie within the West itself. Historians must, therefore, unite with economists and environmental scientists in order to understand the multiple forces that contribute to long-term change and to be able to explain to popular audiences in a way that is both simple and for formulating solutions for social action.
To this end, Guldi and Armitage recommend a number of tools that may be helpful to collect and analyze big data in the historical profession. From Paper Machines to Google Ngrams, Guldi and Armitage see enormous potential in how technology can revolutionize the way historians view the massive amounts of data that is quickly becoming available to them digitally. Knowing how to use these data in explaining big issues will be key to bringing the longue durée back into the profession. This will require appropriate funding and scholarly rigor, but, Guldi and Armitage, are convinced, it can be done. Longue durée history, they conclude, can be written to "illuminate the deliberate silences in the archive, shining the light onto parts of the government that some would rather not see" (101). This kind of history, in other words, is not the baby-boomer generation history that seeks to maintain the existing order and uncritically views the present as the best possible outcome of the past; instead, its goal is to transform in light of insights derived from data acquired over hundreds of years.
This project is ambitious, and Guldi and Armitage are keenly aware of it. While they provide compelling examples for successful longue durée history, Guldi and Armitage do not fully satisfy a traditional skeptic's concerns. For example, given that research funding is increasingly tied to institutions that have private market interests, how are longue durée historians to navigate the competing interests between the kind of social responsibility programs that and Armitage espouse and the realities of competitive interest-driven capital? And what happens to the day-to-day realities of people who did not necessarily fit into historical trend changes that longue durée would presumably uncover? What about the outliers, the poor, the gendered, the raced? In other words, how exactly are longue durée historians to keep themselves from repeating the mistakes of their baby-boomer predecessors?
These objections are all obvious and most likely only reveal my own lack of forward thinking, the inherent conservatism that our profession brings with it. But it also reveals a skepticism derived from the very findings of longue duree history: if what has enabled some of the most profound technological advances for writing longue durée history is Western capitalism, then how is it to resist the very regime that is responsible for its creation and sustenance?