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This article is correct about the importance of history and the urgency of a more historically-informed public debate. But it erects a series of straw men in its attack on academic history. So here's a response. [THREAD] https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1153175405551116288
1. First: when did histories of "the marginal", "the poor" & "the everyday" stop being "matters of state"? Revolutions are made by the poor & the dispossessed. Populist movts are driven by people who are or feel "left behind". Govts fall over "everyday" issues of jobs & services.
2. One of the great feminist insights was that "the personal is political". Politics is about power, & power is exercised in the home, the family & the workplace. The state never stood apart from that: it jailed homosexuals, barred women from employment, regulated sex & marriage.
3. Every great liberation movt of the modern era created a school of history: Black history, women's history, queer history, labour history. This wasn't a retreat from politics: it recognised that the stories we tell about the past - & who we include in it - have political power.
4. In the age of Grenfell, Windrush, a social care crisis, child detention centres, a President telling Congresswomen of colour to "go home", agonised debates over trans issues, surging use of food banks, the histories of the "marginal" are more than ever "great matters of state"
5. Then there's the second charge: that historians should stop "fiddling with their footnotes" and get out of their "professional cocoons". No one enjoys writing footnotes, but in an age of "fake news" & faith-based politics, they anchor historical writing in evidence & argument.
6. "Fiddling with his footnotes" was what allowed Richard Evans to dismantle David Irving's Holocaust revisionism. It stopped @deborahlipstadt's book being pulped when Irving sued her for libel. And in a collaborative profession, it's how we give credit to other people's work.
7. Footnotes are a safeguard for the reader, allowing them to check the evidence behind our claims. They force us to question received opinion: to test whether the evidence really supports it. "Fiddling with footnotes" isn't a distraction from big new ideas: it's how they begin.
8. As for their "professional cocoons": academia has never been so public-facing. Academics curate exhibitions, advise TV documentaries, talk to journalists, do interviews, write for magazines, visit schools, advise museums. This is almost all unpaid & on top of our normal jobs.
9. "Popular history" & "academic history" are not separate worlds. The charismatic, good-looking historian on TV didn't start with a blank sheet of paper. They're communicating - often brilliantly - the work of a whole scholarly community. Done well, it's mutually enriching.
10. Like "applied science", public history is not just *compatible* with "pure" or "theoretical" study; it actively *depends* on it. Who would have thought the history of jihadist theology was "relevant" in the 90s? Or of the Bennite left before 2015? Or of Huey Long pre-Trump?
11. History is about expanding our sense of the possible. It teaches us that the world we live in is contingent & changeable; that things we take for granted can break & be broken. Historians should *actively seek out* things that don't seem relevant or immediate to the present.
12. I believe passionately in public history, though it's not always easy in a culture that privileges controversy for its own sake, trashes expertise & travesties what academics actually do. Journalists have responsibilities here, too. Let's all aspire to do better. [ENDS]