"Come Together, Right Now" - Getting Over History

THE UNDIVIDED PAST: HISTORY BEYOND OUR DIFFERENCES
by David Cannadine
(Penguin, 2012) 

The blurb for this book describes it as an "impassioned, controversial plea for us to recognise the importance of both equality and history. Great works of history have so often had at their heart a wish to sift people in ways that have been profoundly damaging and provided intellectual justification for terrible political decisions. Again and again, categories have been found - religion, nation, class, gender, race, 'civilization' - that have sought to explain world events by fabricating some malevolent or helpless 'other'. The Undivided Past is an agonised attempt to understand how so much of the writing of history has been driven by a fatal desire to dramatize differences - to create an 'us versus them'. It is above all an appeal to common humanity." 

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I may need to re-read, or at least revisit parts of it further anon. But initially, it strikes me as a book very much *of* its time, which I suspect isn't wholly apparent to most people reading it now. Perhaps this book will read very differently in the years yet to come, when we are all more removed from the immediate present? - or when it is read by future generations who aren't of the present time period?

After all, whether they admit it or not, historians generally seek to understand the past through the prism of the present, and when they attempt the reverse the results are often rather wobbly at best - something which this book attempts to lay bare, especially in its final chapter on the concept of 'civilizations', and especially the current perceived 'clash of civilizations.' Attempting to synthesize or distil such large themes down into relatively short chapters on Race, Gender, Class, etc., is also inherently dangerous as the sin of omission is effectively unavoidable, hence anyone attending the feast will inevitably leave the table still feeling hungry for more of one thing or another which they felt was unjustly lacking. 

I note many of the reviews of "The Undivided Past" on Goodreads are highly critical and some are quite disparaging. Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising. 'Contra' stances are always controversial, and that's usually the point. Hence a book which espouses any sort of moderation is always at fault. Inevitably, it is neither liked nor lauded by either side of the debate - instead it gets shot down in flames for ostensibly not taking a proper position, especially when it's written by someone who apparently occupies a very lofty perch in the field it discusses. Cannadine's "Ornamentalism" was also shot down in flames by many, rightly or wrongly, because it sought to march out of step with the current academic trend concerning the study of Imperialism and the British Empire. And so people wonder if Cannadine is doing this deliberately simply to be controversial, or is he genuinely seeking to challenge the consensus, and if so, to what end? - The jury sitting in my head is, as yet, still undecided. 

Also on 'Waymarks'

 

Pomp & Circumstance - Struggling with Empire

 

Mind Maps of the Past & Present