John Lukacs

14 Historically Speaking March/April 2008 Do You Need a License to Practice History? John Lukacs I read Adam Hochschild's essay with great respect . He is too modest. He writes that he is a plumber addressingheart surgeons. These terms are wrong. The distinction is between licensed and unlicensed plumbers. Like all definitions, diese distinctions , too, leak. There are unlicensed plumbers who plumb better than many of the licensed ones. The crisis of history, of its study and teaching and training and writing, is part and parcel of the overallcrisis of civilization atthe end of agreat era of about 500 years. This is not the place to write about that. Reflecting on Hochschild's serious and valuable article I am compelled to say something about two perpetrators: (1) academics, (2) publishers; and dien (3) about die appetite for history and the nutritioners thereof. What Hochschild says about die limitations of academics—that is, about the guild of licensed plumbers—is nothing very new. Read what Samuel Johnson wrote in Rasselas about scholars, or Tocqueville abouttheuniversities in Francein TheAncien Regime. Theproblemwas, andremains, notthe shortcomings of the licensed plumbers' craft but that of their characters. So many of them are less interested in history dian they are concernedwitii historianship: thatis,widi tiieirpositionwidiintiieirinstitutions and profession andwidi die potentialadvantages thereof. The problem is not that tiieir interests and their writing are monographic and too specialized. I have great respect for honest specialists, who are truly interested in their subject and wish to know more and more about it. The hoary witticism about specialists who know more and more aboutless and less belongs to the 19di century. Now we have people who know less and less about more and more. Some of the public historians whom Hochschild gready respects are not immune to that. An enormous shortcoming of the licensed plumbers—the true fault of the guild—is diat of the broken mains and frozen pipes they allowed to happen , without even drinking about it, and not so long ago: the elimination of the once more-or-less routine Thomas Rowiandson, "Johnson in traveling costume," 1836. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. and compulsory teaching of history in all kinds of public and other schools and in colleges and universities . The fact (I depend upon Hochschild's statistics ) diat only 2% of college students are nowhistory majors is one result of this enormous failure. (That the other 98% of students still know some history, while they know just about nothing about dieir favorite major, business, is worth thinking about.) Adifferent—buteven more deplorable—guiltis that of the publishing industry. Here—again—we face an odd duality. On die one hand, their supposedly sophisticated but, in reality, primitive insistence on profits and sales, and thewholesale abandonment of tiieir earlier at least occasional sense of responsibility , nowgaveplace to their cynicalunderestimation of the potential intelligence of readers (and, oddly, of the potential of their corporate managers and owners, too). I must forego here to question Adam Hochschild's term "the general public," since such an animalnolongerexists. Whatexists, and will continue to exist, is a minority of adult men and women who still like to read. At die same time, publishers are aware of somethingthathas beenhappeningall overtheworld during the last half-century. For the first time, histories outsell novels—and by a large measure indeed. That phenomenon has an enormous significance. It is but part and parcel of something much larger than what itillustrates: thatan appetite forhistoryhas risen, that it now includes portions of populations and indeed nations who not so long ago were wholly indifferent to it. This appetite is one of the few bright stars in the darkening night of a disappearing civilization. (Whedier it will last I cannot tell: I hope it will.) But appetite cannot be discussed separately from nutrition : appetite may indeed be fed by cheap and fast foods, a dependence onwhich may even be injurious in the long run. Still: the existence of diis appetite is undeniable—as is diat of die dwindling of history courses and that of history students. This corruption of the publishing industry has also affected many of the prime public historians whom Hochschild admires. It is not only...