Response to Yerxa, Kersh, Glenn, and Morone

September/October 2005 Historically Speaking 25 Response to Yerxa, Kersh, Glenn, and Morone David Hackett Fischer • ur discussions have centered on a set of large questions about the history of liberty and freedom in America and the world. The first question, which Donald Yerxa addresses, is about how this subject might be approached. A second issue, which Rogan Kersh takes up, is about empirical evidence for the main lines of change. A third problem in Brian Glenn's paper is about patterns of cause and consequence. A fourth in James Morone's essay is about the linkage between the history of liberty and freedom, and problems in our own time. I'll respond to each paper in that order. serious and even-handed way. In my book, this approach yields a history ofvisions of liberty and freedom that is an expanding web ofideas. Each was consciously invented as an act of choice and agency. Both were contested, and their collisions inspired more ideas in an open process that has grown larger and more complex through many generations.1 My research leads me to the conclusion that this dynamic pattern is distinctive of open societies—not in America alone, but in free and open systems with stable institutions Historical Methods Donald Yerxa begins with the critical problem of methods and models. His discussion of my book is accurate, perceptive, and very helpful in sorting out major issues. As he observes, my approach differs from the work of most historians who are writing today. The history of liberty and freedom has been studied in many ways, which is as it should be. The great strength and saving grace of American scholarship is its broad eclecticism. Without suggesting that my way is the best way, I would like to suggest that we have a special opportunity just now to link elements of the old political history (events, chronology, agency, contingency) with those of social and cultural history (structure, process, breadth, inclusion). The combined strengths of these two schools might help us to find a third way forward. To that end, Liberty and Freedom, with much of my recent work, finds a mediating model in an idea of history as a web of contingency . Contingency is about events, choices , and agency. Webs are about structures and processes, which amplify the agency of individual choices in some ways, and constrain them in others. This is also a way to link high politics and vernacular culture, small elites and large populations, ideas and actions, in a In Liberty and Freedom / worked with about 500 images ofliberty andfreedom. By conventional methods ofprimary research, it was possible to identify thepeople who invented most of these images, and also to read in their own words the meanings that they had in mind. throughout the modern world. It also helps us to understand their dynamism, resilience, and extraordinary strength. This is not the way that history happened in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and other tyrannies and totalitarian states. It may be part ofthe reason why open societies defeated closed societies in the major conflicts ofthe 20th century, and why free institutions have been multiplying rapidly since 1989. This approach to the history ofliberty and freedom emerged from an empirical process that Yerxa calls "primary synthesis." He observes that it not the way that most academic history is written. I agree, but practices are changing. We have seen too much primary research without large questions, and too many large questions without primary research. Here again we have an opportunity in the development of digital technology and other new tools of serious scholarship. This epistemic revolution extends the historian's reach, and tightens his grasp. We are likely to see more works of primary synthesis in the years to come.2 In my own work, empirical evidence— quantitative in The Great Wave, ethnographic in Albion s Seed, and iconographie in Liberty and Freedom—is critically important in this process of primary synthesis. In that respect, my use of iconic materials is different from the iconography and iconology of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Fritz Saxl (18901948 ), Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), and Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001). Those scholars shared the idealist...