What's the point of history?

The other day, my son, who was strug­gling with his home­work, asked me: “What's the point of his­tory?” I would have liked an­other ques­tion, but felt I had to have a stab at an an­swer. I told him that it was a re­source peo­ple used to jus­tify their ac­tions in the pre­sent. Unim­pressed, he said he would ask his teacher. I imag­ine his teacher fed him the old line about his­tory being im­por­tant be­cause we learn not to make the same mis­takes.

I've al­ways been a fan of his­tory – so many great sto­ries, un­be­liev­able char­ac­ters, hints about why we live the way we do today. Yet, I've never bought the line that his­tory is a road map for the pre­sent, be­cause the cycli­cal na­ture of his­tory shows that far from pre­vent­ing us from com­mit­ting the same er­rors, more often than not it pro­vides a blue­print for how to go about hav­ing an­other crack at it.​Often with the same dis­as­trous re­sults.

If his­tory served as a warn­ing to hu­man­ity, war would now be (ahem) his­tory. No doubt his­tory serves a num­ber of pur­poses, but one of them is as a way of jus­ti­fy­ing our po­si­tion today. There are tons of ex­am­ples. This year is the 950th an­niver­sary of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings, when Saxon Eng­land was con­quered by the Nor­mans, who re­pressed the local lan­guage and cul­ture and stole all the land. After al­most a thou­sand years, the Eng­lish still sneer at the French. Yet, Saxon Eng­land has as lit­tle to do with the UK today as the land of the pharaohs has with pre­sent-day Egypt.

In 1415, it was the Eng­lish under Henry V who were con­quer­ing France, thanks to vic­tory at Ag­in­court. Henry's ex­pe­di­tion was to re­claim his French crown (which went back to the Nor­mans, who weren't even French but Vikings). An­other ex­am­ple. When the Serbs in Kosovo began slaugh­ter­ing Al­ba­ni­ans in the 1990s, they were car­ry­ing on a war that began in the 14th cen­tury! And let's not get started on Al-Qaeda or ISIS, who go so far as to claim di­vine ap­proval of their mur­der­ous ac­tions.

Given the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion of Cat­alo­nia, it is not sur­pris­ing that Cata­lans too are prone to reach­ing back to jus­tify their pre­sent stance as a na­tion. Ex­actly 300 years ago, the first Bour­bon King of Spain (who was French) de­prived the Cata­lans of their his­toric rights. Three cen­turies later, they still want them back. I en­cour­age you to read all about it on pages 40/41. But, look­ing back three cen­turies is re­ally no more than an in­tel­lec­tual ex­er­cise, though a valu­able and fas­ci­nat­ing one. If you feel strongly about chang­ing the way you live, then that is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion enough, and there is lit­tle need to re­sort to myth-mak­ing.