The Hierarchy of Historical Narratives & Historians
Identifying the Flaws within Modern History and Historians
Man believes in equality, but nature does not. In nature, no two things are the same.
The natural law is hierarchical. Look at a group of chickens, either the rooster leads, or the lead hen. And even among the rest of the hens, there is a ‘pecking order.’
No two hens are on quite the same level.
Even the same species has remarkable difference. My father in law likes to point out, quite correctly, that God is such a patient and innovative designer that no two blades of grass are the same.
The profundity of that observation has sat with me for so long, for so many years, that when I bring it up he now thinks I’m teasing or trolling him.
As you may know, on this Substack, I ‘LARP’ as a Historian. I am not a Historian. Actual historians spend an average eight years getting a graduate degree, publish a dissertation that they defend, and hopefully get published. There is a very definite career track for historians.
Every historian I have met and received career counseling from, has loudly and sternly advised me against becoming one, because there are no available jobs as a historian.
Yet there is so much history to tell, so many tales to uncover, and yet we are left with the few who have risen to the top of the pack. In nature, this would seem to be the ‘best of the best’ - a sort of Darwinian natural selection of the best storytellers, the best researchers, and the best at doing the work of ‘history.’
Of course I can hear your snickering from here.
So why are those who are the best at becoming historians not the best at doing history?
To assess that I think you have to understand the process of becoming a historian, and then, also, to understand how historians translate their works into print. Additionally, we would have to know how certain works rise to the top of the social and cultural milieu.
Are these systems set up to actually produce the best historians, who produce the best history?
“[The historian is] an unsuccessful novelist.”
-H. L. Mencken
This question presents many more questions than it purports to answer. What makes for good history? Are the best stories those that comfort or discomfort? Are the best stories necessarily historically accurate or some blend of fiction and moral parables?
“If I didn’t know you in person, and know your eccentric speech patterns and thought processes, I would think your Substack was a lot of schizophrenic ramblings interspersed with a few forced jokes. And puns. And overuse of alliteration.”
- A reader writes in with such charming observations.
One problem is that everyone enjoys a good history tale. So on some level, history is a profession that everyone has an opinion about. Additionally, there are so many history majors who never wrote a thesis, dissertation, or book, that there’s another huge tranche of individuals who are faux experts. And then of course you have reporters, investigators, independent researchers, who all feel as though they are the present day’s hidden gem waiting to be discovered for doing roughly similar work to a historian.
The digital age’s mental disease of shamelessly seeking public attention and acceptance is unfortunately baked into this challenge as well. Many people doing some sort of public history are really just mining the history archives for cheap and easy content. It’s a lot simpler to read a few books, peruse wikipedia and Google Books, than it is to independently create content.
“History is a set of lies, agreed upon.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
So the digital age encourages faux historians in a big way. The content treadmill is punishing.
Them Substacks ain’t gonna write themselves…
These rabbit holes to go down could justify not just a book or two, but a few dozens of books and discussions. Actually, it’s a limitless rabbit hole to go down. But to try and directly answer ‘what makes a good historian?’, a good historian has these five characteristics:
a) Accuracy. They strive for 100% accuracy in their factual statements.
b) Coherence. They are looking to tell compelling stories and weave coherent narratives. They are looking to tell a good story in a compelling way.
c) Relevance. About topics, issues, and subjects that are relevant to our current society
d) Jarring. Where the conclusions and ‘lessons’ of the story are intentionally challenging and surprising.
e) Contrarian. And when possible, shake up the current mainstream narratives.
That’s what I would say makes a good historian. These are my preferences.
I’m leaving out the key technical issues of course, things like grammar, writing styles, evidentiary development, research abilities.
What we typically find is that this wide array of experts and novices end up playing into certain archetypes. These archetypes are certain career tracks that many historians get into, they are ‘ruts’ in a way, channels that they start to get comfortable in, and find it hard to get out.
Once they figure out how to monetize their professionalized hobby, I have a certain amount of empathy that they can’t turn back. You will find film directors making an ‘indie’ or ‘arthouse’ film, but you won’t find too many historians that find wide popular audiences and then decide to go research a truly dry and esoteric topic.
I’ve identified eleven of these archetypes. The groupings try to show the levels between the average citizen who is unread and uninterested, and those who are at the other extreme. These are the types of people whom I think end up posing as historians in some way, but it includes both the producers and consumers of historian works, from the disinterested masses to the obsessive academic focusing on their niche topic.
Here’s my list of archetypes:
THE TEN ARCHETYPES OF PRODUCERS & CONSUMERS OF HISTORY
I put these in order of quality.
Actual Academics: goes through archives, seeks out new sources, open to being wrong, careful about even small facts and details. They not only know the material, they know the secondary sources, the primary sources, and have their own novel ideas and opinions. “A touch of the ‘tism” as they say.
Savant. Well-read people on a given topic: all types and stripes. They have read several books on the topic and generally know the arguments both sides make.
Crimethinker. People who read 1 dissident book
Unpopular Prof. Public Academics writing Academic Histories: the key is documentation to mainstream sources. These are ~14% of the book authors on history topics.
Popular Prof. Public Academics writing Pop History: the key is flowery language and narratives so simple Malcolm Gladwell could understand them. These are ~85% of the book authors on history topics.
Grad Students. People who have read 2 books on the topic: your typical graduate school history student. Defined by arrogance combined with the insecurity that they probably don’t know enough about their specific topic.
Undergrads. People who read 1 book on the topic: your typical college student. Defined by false confidence.
Partisans. People pretending to be academics, aka advocates: your typical political activist, they’ve skimmed the Wikipedia entry, maybe even read it all. These are ~1% of the book authors on history topics.
The History Channel. People with an opinion on the topic.
Heard it Somewhere. People with general knowledge of the topic
Unwashed Masses. People with no knowledge of the topic.
Ultimately I think these various tiers create a class of historian that commits a wide variety of sins against their obligation to the public. These are the primary failings that they exhibit:
Reinforcing the dominant narrative: these are the folks who just pile on to the well-worn narratives that already exist on a topic. They are johnny-come-latelys.
Lame topic and subject selections: quite a few historians pick topics that are safe, commercial, and boring. They aren’t challenging at all for the public.
Omission of key secondary sources: Usually reflecting the biases and prejudices of the academics. They rely on the dominant narrative warlords, and ignore others. Typically they ignore anyone who isn’t an academic, and usually those who come from the lesser-than schools. This is the academic welfare for low-rent institutions that think themselves elite.
Omission of key primary sources: The easiest way to deal with inconvenient facts and arguments is to simply curate the evidence so that nothing contrarian gets in.
Ignoring Obvious Bias: Quite a few authors I have read think that those who agree with them, in both conclusions and ideology, are free from bias. Conversely, many authors seem to very selectively dwell on the biases of their subjects and competing authors. The ‘who’s biased and who’s not’ game is one of the subtlest and careful games that modern academics seem to engage in.
Stillborning their conclusions: they often aren’t willing to say what their evidence actually suggests. They want to ‘beg the question’ and let you do the assuming, so that they don’t have to bear the burden of extreme views.
So, given all of those things, who are the worst, yet best-known, historians?
I’d offer that this list is the worst four in my opinion. I realize this is not ingratiating me to most of you.
I could go into laborious detail about the violations each of these historians make, but I think you can generally apply the above concepts to these people below.
Stephen Ambrose
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Jon Meacham
Eric Foner