In the past few years, I have become fairly passionate on the topic of whether history matters today. Of course, my job reinforces that point daily, but I find that the constant knee-jerk reactions to events on social media, the immediate rush to panic about anything that happens in the Middle East, and the inability to celebrate when positive change occurs (because we either don’t know or don’t care about what a situation looked like previously) have made me even more committed to publishing accessible history for today’s students.
But not just to students. Recently, at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto, three of my authors participated in a new series called Why History Matters Today. This series, a partnership between the JCC and the Higher Education Division of University of Toronto Press, offers stimulating lectures on fascinating historical issues to the Active 55 Plus demographic. Steven Bednarski, author of A Poisoned Past: The Life and Times of Margarida de Portu, A Fourteenth-Century Accused Poisoner, talked to the audience about the relationship between changes in the environment and pogroms against Jews during the Middle Ages. Franklin Bialystok, who is in the process of writing a history of Canadian Jewry, introduced a series of key Canadian Jewish personalities and explained how each settled and adapted in their own diverse way to Canadian society. Kenneth Bartlett, author of several Renaissance books on my list, spoke about Palladianism and its impact on today’s world. The audience, mostly people over fifty, hung on their every word.
Each author began his talk by considering “Why History Matters Today.” For Steven Bednarski, history shows us that we haven’t changed much over the centuries. Sometimes we are good to each other and sometimes we are not. Personally, I find that comforting. I believe that knowing history stops the knee-jerk overreaction because you can look to the past and say: “I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen Sunni/Shiite conflict, I’ve seen Donald Trump before. I’ve seen millions of refugees fleeing in unseaworthy vessels before.” Knowing that we have been here before should calm you down and then you can begin to ask the important questions: What did the world learn from that experience? What can I learn from it now?
History as a calming influence was reinforced by Franklin Bialystok who chided those who angrily opposed the recent Iranian arms deal and who offered up the comparison to 1938 when England and France appeased Hitler by allowing Germany to seize the Sudetenland. As a teacher of the Holocaust, Bialystok could rely on his knowledge of European history to remind his audience that today’s Iranian leaders are not yesterday’s Nazis and that twenty-first-century Israel is not twentieth-century Czechoslovakia. History, then, prevents one from making weak comparisons and the resultant hysteria.
For Kenneth Bartlett, the continued existence of buildings constructed according to the principles of Palladianism shows that we remain connected to our past, and so knowing something about that past enriches our present not just in the areas of current events but in art and architecture as well.
Given my preoccupation with the importance of studying history, I was thrilled when Nigel A. Raab from Loyola Marymount University sent me his manuscript entitled Who Is the Historian? which we recently published. This essay-length book had its debut at the recent American Historical Association meeting in Atlanta. In his book, Raab provides a thoughtful response to the question often expressed by students: “How is taking a history course going to help me after I graduate?” Raab explains what historians do, the skills that history courses impart, examples of people who use their historical education in other environments, and demonstrates how history enriches our present experience. Given the book’s success at the AHA, it has clearly struck a chord with history professors.
History matters very much today. As individuals, we are aware of our upbringing, our genetics, our childhoods. Our past informs our present. Why would we ignore our society’s history, our country’s history, or our community’s history? Their pasts inform their present too.
For 2016, we should commit to reading more history books. If we have extra time, we should take a history course or attend a lecture at a community centre. History is a teacher, albeit an imperfect one. We should listen to it more often.
-Natalie Fingerhut, History Editor
