The Future of History
by John Lukacs
A maverick
but respected historian, John Lukacs had a lot to say about his own profession,
and in the sunset of his life he gathered together his thoughts on the subject
in this small but far from easy book. His theme is the role of history and the
historian at the end of a historical era, the Modern Age.
Lukacs
believed that modern Western civilization was something qualitatively different
from its presumed forebears, the Classical Age of Greece and Rome and the
so-called Middle Ages. In his conception, it lasted from roughly the late Renaissance to
the end of the ‘short’ twentieth century, which his colleague Eric Hobsbawm
defined as having ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lukacs
foresaw a period of cultural retrogression commencing in the twenty-first century –
but not necessarily a reversion to ‘barbarism’ as popularly defined, because
he thought technology would sustain the lineaments of civilization even as human culture declined and
fell. So far, events appear to be proving him right.
This is a
book of concentrated wisdom, gnomic and highly quotable. It is often
eye-opening, as when, for example, Lukacs writes that
Flaubert’s Sentimental
Education is more historical than its near-contemporary War and Peace... Flaubert’s portrait of
1848 is, historically speaking, more complex and more meaningful than Tolstoy’s
of 1812, because Flaubert describes how people thought and felt at that time;
his novel abounds with descriptions of changing sensitivities, of mutations of
opinions and transformations of attitudes.
As the above
suggests, The Future of History
is much concerned with the relationship of history to literature. Lukacs
insists that historians should be readers first, writers second and historians,
in a professional sense, only third. He quotes with approval Jacob Burckhardt’s
advice to students of history, bisogna
saper leggere – ‘you must learn how to read’. This championship of
non-professional historical scholarship and authorship runs right through the
book, from his praise for de Toqueville to his contempt for the liberal
historians who failed to discern or describe the rise of American conservatism
in the late twentieth century. Since I am a writer of historical articles and
books but no historian, it gives me great pleasure to read that ‘in the twenty-first
century the best, the greatest writers of history may not be certified
professionals but erudite and imaginative “amateurs”.’
This is in
keeping with Lukacs’s view that history is a literary genre and a creative
endeavour rather than a strictly empirical pursuit. Yet he is insistent that a
historian’s task is above all to search for truth, and he champions diligent
research, using original sources as much as possible. He is refreshingly
sceptical that such a thing as ‘scientific’ history can exist and contemptuous
of what he calls ‘historical fads’ such as social, psychological or feminist
history, which he regards as inevitably prejudiced and bound, therefore, to
produce false results.
The Future of History is a book best taken in small doses,
one or two pages at a time. Read it with a pencil in hand, and mark the bits
you find quotable or interesting, because you are sure to want to return to
them later: even, perhaps especially, if you disagree with them.
