On disciplinary rigidity

This past week, we read Aaron Sachs’ The Humboldt Current for one of my seminars. Frankly, I dug it. It’s certainly a different sort of history book. Sachs doesn’t lay out a clear argument in an introduction, nor does he reiterate it in a conclusion. He meanders. One wonders where he is going, at times. But, as he says somewhere in there, he wants us to get lost (which mirrors much of what his characters go through, and that, obviously, is a distinct narrative choice he makes). And, in the end, everything does come around to a very significant assertion that I found to be extremely compelling. Read it; the details aren’t exactly my point here, but suffice it to say I think this is a book that matters in a wider way than most histories, i.e. beyond the narrow confines of academia.

And that is my point – those narrow confines. Most of my fellow seminarians were largely put off by the book’s wandering structure, its lengthy and roundabout paths from narrative to greater meaning. In almost every way, in fact, apart from having solid footnotes and an obviously encyclopedic knowledge of his subject matter, Sachs avoids the standard conventions of a good history book. He does not follow the rules which, as a historian-in-training, one is told must be followed. The Humboldt Current reads, to me, something like the history book equivalent of a Thomas Pynchon novel. And yet, I think the book is extraordinarily successful as history. The flaws which were ceaselessly pointed out by my classmates seemed to me to be less about the book itself and more about our own level of discomfort when challenged with something different. One student made a good point about the necessity for rules and standards within a discipline, for better or worse, and it is a point that I to some degree concede. But when those standards lead us to judge a book so harshly when, had we approached it not as “historians” but as “intellectuals” (I use the term with some trepidation – I don’t wish to suggest any elitist connotations, but simply to imply a state of critical thoughtfulness) would have been met with a much deeper appreciation, then I think standards start to do more harm than good.

The aforementioned student went on to say such standards were necessary to establish boundaries between, for example, history and American Studies (which, really, how important is it to draw that particular line?), to which I added “or between history and fiction.” And yet, aren’t all these disciplines essentially seeking to explain something about the human condition? I am not equating history and fiction entirely (although there is much philosophical debate about their actual separation, if any), and certainly standards of good scholarship should apply to any academic discipline. But I think it does a disservice to creativity and to the ongoing positive development of historical study and writing when a book like The Humboldt Current is beaten up because it doesn’t fit comfortably into a nice, neat, history-shaped box. Sachs is consciously pushing the boundaries here, and I think written history will be the better for it. Read something like Richard Ehrenberg’s Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance, from the late 19th century, and if you haven’t killed yourself by the time you finish, you will be left with a keen appreciation for the evolution of historical writing.

Thoughts on narrative history and different scales of perspective

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, much like John Demos’ The Unredeemed Captive, is essentially narrative history; in other words, it is a story. In writing it, Linda Colley was not overly concerned with making an overarching argument. There is no thesis to The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh. As such, it can be somewhat difficult to critique, either positively or negatively. Certainly the questions about appropriate levels of conjecture that tend to be so common with this genre of history are applicable, but this does not necessarily make for bad history; Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms is perhaps one of the most conjectural historical works of recent memory, while it is simultaneously groundbreaking, fascinating, and remarkable in almost every way. Indeed, perhaps we can heap praise on these narrative sorts of works; are they really more conjectural than “regular” history? Or are they simply more honest about it? This is not a question to be decided here. Suffice it to say that, as a weakness, a significant level of conjecture is not particularly damning unto itself.

So the book is conjectural, yet viable. What else is it? Entertaining, to be sure. Popular history, perhaps (another not-so-damning complaint). But above all, it is quite enlightening. The advanced level of globalization that Colley shows to be in place by the mid-18th century probably comes as a surprise to many readers. Certainly those who are at least casually acquainted with historical trends and events know that extensive trade networks existed even centuries earlier than this. Yet the diverse ways in which this globalization exerted itself on the everyday lives of not only Marsh but her extended family, and on many of their friends and acquaintances (and, by extension, one must expect, a good portion of the British population as a whole) provide a significant alteration of perspective. In this way, Colley’s work is a perfect illustration of Richard White’s concern with finding the proper scales in which to locate historical stories, as well as the need to constantly shift between them, as events themselves reverberate differently from scale to scale. Colley seems to be consciously responding to this notion: “I seek to tack between the individual and world histories ‘in such a way as to bring them into simultaneous view’” (xxxi). It is Colley’s success at navigating these various scales that brings 18th-century globalization’s ability to impinge upon individual lives into stark focus, something more traditional histories of the period (with their focus on only the big picture) almost entirely fail to do.

Colley’s work speaks to White’s in another way as well, specifically to his The Middle Ground. In her discussion of British relations with Indians on the subcontinent (the dual use of “Indian” between the two works is both coincidental and not – Columbus’ nomenclatural gaffe is perfectly illustrative of the often unintended consequences of nascent globalization), Colley provides the following passage:

Historians disagree about the deeper significance of these kinds of cultural and material borrowings by invading Britons in India. For some, they are evidence of the fact that for much of the eighteenth century there was a greater willingness than would exist later to forge connections and understanding of different kinds across religious and racial lines. For others, it in axiomatic that ‘the appropriation of Indian habits or the use of Indian objects did not affect the identity of the British in India,’ and that everyday contact with difference only amplified the intruders’ self-consciousness. (179)

This “willingness,” usually brought on by necessity, to “forge connections” across cultures was one of the hallmarks of the middle ground; to find these processes in operation on the opposite side of the globe at approximately the same time adds credence to both authors’ works. White’s middle ground becomes not just a unique structure appearing at a certain time and place, but an effective blueprint for ways in which cultures with at least some equanimity of power interact. And Elizabeth Marsh, while certainly remaining unique is many ways, also becomes representative. Her world is not her world alone. It is the same world as that of Eunice Williams, Demos’ heroine. Both were caught up in global events that had powerful local repercussions. Perhaps – probably, even – these two women are special mostly in that they left behind some sort of documentary record that historians have been able to trace. It becomes not so difficult, then, to suggest that every history, however personal, has myriad global components, and every global history countless personal ones. Scales, and the ways they intertwine, are both effectively infinite and essentially one.

Response to a bunch of articles about borderlands and transnational histories

Within the discipline of history, the seemingly never-ending debates over who is allowed to do what kind of history, which methodologies are the most legitimate, and which sub-field holds ownership over which topics are often tiresome and more than occasionally pointless. We are all, in our own ways, historians. Can’t we simply do history and not worry about the slot into which we or our works fit? After all, some of the most groundbreaking books are precisely those that cross over these artificial boundaries. Richard White’s The Middle Ground comes to mind: is it western history? Native American history? Colonial history? Borderlands history? Yes. It is. William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis is similarly schizophrenic (in the most positive way). It is at once environmental, cultural, economic, western, frontier, and urban history. What is the sense of trying to tie such works to a single category?

Thus it was with some trepidation that I approached this week’s readings. Since categories themselves are at best marginally helpful, rancorous or even cordial debates over their meaning are surely no better. As Sven Beckert writes, “I am not sure that it is worthwhile spending much time on the finer points of these distinctions…why does it seem that more printed pages have been dedicated to discussion on the need for and methodology of transnational history than to empirical research?”[1] In the end, I think the two fields discussed, borderlands and transnational histories, are essentially self-explanatory. The former involves the study of the areas adjacent to a border of some sort between two or more groupings of humans, however organized. The latter is history that includes two or more nations at some level, and the interactions between and among them. It need not be any more complicated than this, though it can certainly become so if we let it.

I was pleased to find that much of the reading did not limit itself to searches for definitions or the precise construction of categories of study. Rather, the authors were at their best when discussing the need to move beyond the limitations inherent in nationally-oriented studies. Richard White’s piece, in particular, makes a powerful case for the ways in which the idea of the nation has come to dominate virtually all historical narratives within a given nation (often despite the authors’ best intentions). Indeed, that the rise of history as a professional endeavor was inextricably tied to the rise of the modern nation-state is a recurring theme in these readings, and a point I had not previously considered. This, in turn, suggests the sheer bulk of the wall against which these transnationalist and borderlander heads are beating (and perhaps grants greater legitimacy to their need for precise definitions). Yet White also cautions against the wholesale replacement of one limiting framework (the nation) with another (the global). Thomas Bender makes the same point, but as a western historian myself, I will privilege White’s words here: “The real choice is not finding the single historical scale that reflects the world in which we now live, but instead understanding the multiple scales upon which….lives have been lived and how such scales have merged and intersected.”[2] In the end, this seems like a common-sense and extremely necessary adjustment to the profession. For some topics, a national scale may certainly remain the best approach, while others may require different or multiple scales. The trick is to find the best scale or scales for each topic, those that allow the story to be told in the most meaningful and enlightening way. I will end with a half-flippant and half-serious question: didn’t Braudel essentially make this point about fifty years ago?

---

[1] “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December, 2006), 1446.

 

[2] Richard White, “The Nationalization of Nature,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (Decemeber, 1999), 986.

Final thoughts on Big History

As the semester gets ready to kick off next week, I thought I would get in one last post about Maps of Time (which I finished a couple of weeks ago). First off, having seen the movie Food, Inc. while in the midst of the book, I was struck by Christian’s discussion of the constant cycle of population booms and crashes spurred by technological growth, particularly in the realm of food production. Throughout history, new technologies have increased production to the point that human populations were able to rise dramatically. However, “Innovation was sufficient in all these cases to initiate growth, but not to sustain it or avoid overexploitation or ecological collapse” (312). The film makes this same point, namely that our current methods of food production and their attendant ecological and even social costs are almost certain to result in unforeseen and potentially drastic consequences. History, as Christian illustrates, would seem to bear out this prediction.

The second point I wanted to touch on occurs during Christian’s discussion of the characteristics of early agrarian civilizations, which often developed into tribute-taking states such as Egypt, the early Chinese dynasties, and Rome. These states, Christian describes, fostered the rise of tribute-taking elites; however, these elites “could not exist unless primary producers had access to the land, for that was where most surplus resources were produced. So, in most agrarian civilizations, most people had access to land in some form. This broad allocation of productive resources limited the steepness of gradients of wealth and inhibited the concentration of resources in the hands of elite groups” (321, my italics). Students of western history will immediately recognize some great similarities here with Turner’s frontier thesis. Although Christian does not make this connection explicit, it does suggest to me still more support for his overall theme of the repetition across great stretches of time of patterns in both human and natural systems of organization.

And that is that. Classes begin next week; I’ll also be working for Paul Hutton in the office of the Western Writers of America. A set weekly work schedule will be an interesting adjustment from the more flexible and haphazard hours of the TA. Whether it will be a welcome change remains to be seen, but the opportunity to work with Dr. Hutton should ameliorate any hardships that might otherwise arise.

More on big history and the West

One of David Christian’s most interesting points is the similarity of processes across different scales. Specifically, he compares human systems of complexity with natural ones. One parallel he draws is between the gravitational pull of large celestial bodies, and a similar lure exerted by cities as they developed throughout human history. As cities grew, they pulled in not only people, but information, goods, and so on. Eventually, major cities became so large that they functioned as cultural centers of gravity. Meanwhile, smaller cities and towns and even rural regions could function as what he calls “hubs,” assuming they were positioned geographically such that the flow of people, things and ideas to centers of gravity passed through them. And indeed, it was within these hubs that the greatest levels of innovation and dynamism were often found. Essentially, due to their smaller size and the rapidity with which cultural flows passed through these hubs, they were more easily transformed by the changes the flows inevitably brought.

I find both these concepts applicable to the American West. Centers of gravity have exerted and still exert major influences on their surrounding areas. (Cronon traces this concept for Chicago so well in Nature’s Metropolis.) This, among many other things, is what makes Los Angeles so fascinating. In fact, living in Albuquerque now, I still very much feel the pull of Los Angeles. Part of this is my own history, being born there, growing up and living in its direct shadow for most of my life, and reading its newspaper almost every day until recently. Baseball, too, plays a role – Albuquerque’s AAA teams have a long history as the Dodgers’ affiliates. My house here, built in the 1950s, has several fixtures that were built in Los Angeles (back when that city actually had a manufacturing base). Albuquerque feels to me very much like it is in the orbit of Los Angeles, yet not at all in the orbit of closer large cities like Phoenix or Denver.

But the dynamism of hub regions is, I think, even more applicable to the West, at least as a whole. Although not often located between centers of gravity until recently (once Los Angeles became one in the 1920s or so), it has long served as a site of mediation between various cultures, whether Spanish, Mexican, native, or Anglo. As such, the flows of people, ideas, and goods within and across the West has been somewhat uniquely intense, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries as the pace of cultural and technological changes reached new and ever-expanding heights. Perhaps it is this dynamism that helps explain the West’s lasting cultural appeal in America, and its arguably outsized role in the creation of a distinctive American culture.

The long view

I’m in the midst of reading David Christian’s Maps of Time: An Intoduction to Big History, and have been turning over its implications for western history as I read. Now, lo and behold, Kevin Fernlund has an article in the most recent issue of Montana on this very topic. He approaches it from two sides, first surveying the role of the American West in the foundation of a single universal timeline through the contributions of places like Caltech and its resident and visiting scholars, and the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories (though this also serves to highlight, as so many other histories do, southern California’s unique position within the West). Toward the end of the article, Fernlund shifts perspectives and attempts to link this universal timeline back to the West. In doing so, he makes a couple of claims with which I find myself disagreeing. First, he posits a “unique interface of nature and culture that sets the American West apart from other regions” (43). The cultures of the West and the ways in which they have interfaced with the environment are of course many and varied; which is the “unique” one he suggests? Secondly, he cites the view the West presents to human observers in space, “dun-colored and in stark relief against what is otherwise a very blue planet,” as proof of it as “an identifiable region, unlike any other in the universe” (43). But this viewpoint is rife with cultural baggage; for Americans especially, our presupposition of the West as a unique region leads us to see it more easily and with more certainty than it might in fact present. (If Christian were trying to make this same point, he would probably, as an Australian, highlight the Outback instead.) And where, exactly, does this dun-colored region end, as seen from space? Surely it bleeds into northern Mexico and southern Canada. Yet our histories tend to draw much firmer borders upon the land, recent advances along the southwestern borderlands by the likes of Weber, Truett, and others notwithstanding. It is not that Fernlund is wrong; the West is a unique region (and every western historian will give a different reason for why, exactly, this is so). But I think what he suggests as “big history’s relevance to western history,” that the West provides a “remarkable instance of the earth’s almost bewildering complexity” (43) is rather the West’s contribution to big history; a case study, as it were, in complexity. The implications of big history for the western historian are found more, I feel, in its discussions of energy flows; but of course, environmental historians have been making this case for some years now (William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis comes to mind as one of the most insightful examples).

In the end, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one thinking about these connections, and whatever my minor quibbles with Fernlund’s article, it will enrich my approach to the remainder of Maps of Time.

Early morning in New Mexico

Another late night in the new (home) office, at the new (old Steelcase from Craigslist) desk. I’ll be starting at the University of New Mexico in late August, undertaking what should be at least five years of graduate study in history (on top of the two I just finished at SDSU). And all the old doubts are rearing their collective heads. “What am I doing here? Am I smart enough? Dedicated enough? What the hell am I going to write about for a thesis? Will I wind up with a job at the end of it all? What, exactly, have I done in leaving Southern California, my home for every minute of my 36+ years on this earth?” This last one looms large; I find my thoughts turning towards memories of that life now left behind, and to those that preceded it in turn. It strikes me that I am the path toward becoming someone else. Jason 2.0. Or 3.0. Or 4.7.1. Or am I just beta-testing a new version that will turn out to be flawed to the point of unreleasability? At what point does the past self fade, and the new become dominant?

It doesn’t work like that, of course. I am and always will be the same me, which is not the same as being an immutable me. More than anything, I am the sum total of all the experiences, all the thoughts and memories and interactions, of my life. It is that essential continuity between the past and the present (and its implications for the future) that not only comprises each of our personal histories, but indeed the history of EVERYTHING. I find that pretty damn interesting, most of the time. Maybe, just maybe, I can translate that interest into a career. And that, I suppose, is what I am doing here.