Why History Matters: An Interview with John Tosh

Donald A. Yerxa:

Would you provide our readers with a brief summary of your argument?

John Tosh:

Why History Matters argues that citizens require critical historical knowledge to be informed members of the body politic and to formulate views and opinions that are grounded in evidence. Put like that, its sounds like a fairly banal argument. But the theme of the book is that there is a huge gap between acceptance of that proposition in general terms and its application as an actual aspect of public debate and consciousness. The book explores the reasons for that deficit and makes suggestions as to how it may be overcome.

Why History Matters starts by looking at the different kinds of history that are current in British society and distinguishes between forms of history that don’t lead to a critical awareness and those forms of history that do. The central part of the book shows the specific ways in which historicity or historical awareness does and can promote a closer understanding of present-day problems. So often this proposition is advanced in the most general of ways and gives very little clue as to how that might work out in practice. I evaluate it in the context of a continuing debate among historians about what we mean by “public history.” In my view “public history” is history that actually administers to the social and political needs of the public.

Yerxa:

What prompted you to write this book?

Tosh:

I’ve always been ambivalent about history. I absolutely love it, and it endlessly fascinates me. But I wonder whether it has any practical application. Insofar as there was a particular prompter to Why History Matters, it was the Iraq War in 2003. I use this as a kind of curtain raiser for the book. The Iraq War was overdetermined by historical precedent and historical process. And yet we in Britain were told next to nothing about that history in the media.

Yerxa:

You note the paradox of a society immersed in the past but also plagued by a relentless presentism. Could you speak to that briefly?

Tosh:

It’s clear that British society has seen a growth and revival of interest in historical issues as they are presented in the media, but even more, staged and presented in stately homes, in royal palaces, in archaeological sites, and so on. So much so that it’s become customary in Britain to refer to history as “the new gardening,” suggesting that it has become enormously popular. But I have to say, first of all, that a great deal of this interest is in terms of pure entertainment. And why shouldn’t it be? A great deal of it cultivates a nostalgic view of the past. There is the sense that what is worthwhile and comfortable about the present had been created in the past. It is no longer really available but can be experienced vicariously through exposure to the artifacts of the past. In Britain there is a kind of cultural reflex to look backward—but not in the spirit of learning anything that might have application in the present.

As for the relentless presentism, I mean the other side of this two-way process. This is the sentiment that refuses to view issues and problems in British society as largely constructed by what has been handed down by history, what has been conveyed to the present by the past. A classic example of this, which I do describe at considerable length in my book, is the concern over the state of the family in Britain. There is a great deal of angst that we are destroying, squandering, and corrupting the institution of the family by our lack of self-restraint, our immorality, etc. This completely loses sight of the fact that the family has throughout its history in Western society and elsewhere been conditioned by wider social, religious, and cultural changes. It has certainly not stood still, and it would be foolish to expect it to stand still now. So that’s just one example of a “relentless presentism”; it is an almost...