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  • Drawing Lessons from the Past
  • C. Behan McCullagh (bio)

I subscribe to an old-fashioned idea: history contains lessons that we can apply in the present. Occasionally historians complain that students can see no present relevance in their study of the past, fascinating as it might be. Even professional historians must sometimes wonder whether their work is of much value. Both students and historians, I suggest, would be excited by the idea that there are lessons for today that can be drawn from the past.

Many people believe that general truths about society come only from other social sciences—political science, economics, and sociology, for example. In general, I agree. But I also think that historical studies can serve these disciplines by providing cases for testing their theories. The theories themselves come from a familiarity with aspects of present societies; they are not drawn from a study of history. But these theories can sometimes be tested against historical cases. Indeed, historical cases, say of political revolutions and economic recessions, can not only test existing theories but suggest ways of improving them.

Under the auspices of the World Bank, Paul Collier and Anke Heoffler developed an economic model of the causes of civil war. They concluded that civil wars occur when there is an opportunity for a relatively poor but cohesive group of people to profit from looting: "the incidence of rebellion is not explained by motive, but by the atypical circumstances that generate profitable opportunities."1 Yet even the sixteen case studies of civil wars in recent history from which the investigators drew offer up a range of other causes of civil war. Many civil wars were fought by groups seeking political independence. Others were fought for religious ascendency. Historical studies are invaluable in widening our understanding of the causes of civil wars.

But aren't historical cases all unique? Clearly at one level they are. The particular reasons for people fighting a civil war, for example, are always different. However, it is often possible to describe a process of historical change in general terms, terms that can apply to other cases as well. But don't sequences of historical events depend upon the context in which they occur, which clearly differs in every case. So how can they possibly apply to other cases? The answer is that at a certain level of generality, contexts can be common. For instance, political structures often are sufficiently similar for generalizations that apply to one to apply to others as well.


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Jefferson Davis

When narrative historians investigate the causes of a significant event, they do not normally begin with a theory about the causes of such events. Rather they discover who was involved in the event, and they ask why those people behaved as they did? Although historians normally present their findings by writing a narrative that moves from causes to effect, when explaining a major event like the outbreak of the American Civil War, their research proceeds from the effect, the war, to its causes. As Geoffrey Elton said: "The historian never argues from cause to effect, always from effect to cause; and he operates by multiplying causes."2 Historians identify those who brought about the event, discover the reasons for their actions, and then examine the situation that gave rise to their motives for acting as they did. The information they acquire in this way is then used to construct a narrative history of the event.

Narrative histories of events as complex as civil wars describe the thoughts and actions of the individual leaders and offer summaries of the attitudes of the groups of people who followed them. To begin a causal analysis of such events, historians have to identify the people involved in the event and try to discern what ideas and interests motivated them. Let's stay with the American Civil War as our example.

In March 1861 the soldiers garrisoning Fort Sumter on an island four miles from Charleston, South Carolina, ran short of food. They could not obtain supplies from Charleston because it was packed with militia keen to take over this federal outpost that controlled access to the port...

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