
The Case for Applied History - benbreen
https://www.historytoday.com/robert-crowcroft/case-applied-history
======
dash2
Liked this quote:

 _The range of analogies commonly utilised in public debate is depressingly
small – almost any event of significance is related to either the
international crises of the 1930s or the economic turmoil of the 1970s.
Historians are equipped to enrich that pool with more exotic alternatives._

The article is surprisingly silent about the obvious alternative: social
science. Economists and political scientists claim to use historical data in a
disciplined, methodical way to make predictions. Personally, I don't buy that
claim, but the author didn't think it worth discussing.

~~~
jgmjgm
Why would you complain about the author not answering a question that the
article is not about?

I'd like to quibble with the term prediction in this context too. I think it's
too strong to say that social scientists use historical data to make
predictions. They would use historical data to make inferences about the
likely causes of events and use that insight to inform policy going forward.
That is not prediction but gaining insight into probable outcomes if certain
things are done in certain contexts.

The closest one might come to prediction would be economic forecasting where
one looks at various patterns in the data to make an, ahem, educated guesses
about likely outcomes. This too is not exactly prediction because one is
interested in the likelihood of a range of outcomes. Even those who do these
things for a living admit that this is, at best, a guessing game. (As JK
Galbraith once quipped, "The only function of economic forecasting is to make
astrology look respectable")

------
kaycebasques
A different take:

> So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means
> for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but
> to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither
> natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more
> possibilities before us than we imagine. For example, studying how Europeans
> came to dominate Africans enables us to realize that there is nothing
> natural or inevitable about the racial hierarchy, and that the world might
> well be arranged differently.

\--- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, p. 241

------
evross
This is a brilliant idea I feel. Students of history have a fairly unique
position in having in-depth understanding of events. They are like cultural
scientists, they work to understand facts and causality.

With applied history, they could be actively studying ways to prevent mistakes
of the past. Then also, blending with the contexts of modern-day life, inform
more useful ways of living in the present and future.

~~~
sidstling
Except nobody is going to listen, and you can’t really do reliable prediction,
but mostly, nobody will listen. I studied history before I went into computer
science, and it’s taught me some useful skills.

Mostly it’s taught me that things are always more complex than they seem.
Like, if you zoom out and see history, events make sense. Augustus chose
Christianity as the state religion of Rome because it was a great tool to
unify the different cultures under emperorial rule. Then when you actually
look at why that made sense, you’re at a loss, because it makes sense in the
grand picture, but the actual decision makes no damn sense. They had a myriad
of religions to chose from, so why exactly did they chose the one they did?
Nobody knows, and if you put yourself in the same situation, ignoring
everything that came after, you’d probably have a hard time justifying it. Yet
it’s one of the most significant decisions in western civilization. That’s
just one example, and I probably worded it a little poorly, English isn’t my
first language, but knowing things are complex is a real relief, because
you’ll rarely get the feeling that people or systems are intentionally out to
get you.

Another thing it’s taught me is to be more positive, or at least less
doomsaying. I’m liberal and nationalism being on the rise isn’t exactly great
news to me, but because I know history, I know there is a pendulum at work,
and it’ll eventually swing the other way again.

Sure things typically suck in regions of the world, but they’ve never sucked
everywhere at once, and frankly, we’ve mostly seen progression since we
started recoding history, and that’s really comforting, to me at least.

I think it would be nice if we could apply this, I just don’t know how we
would do that.

~~~
Naga
> Augustus chose Christianity as the state religion of Rome because it was a
> great tool to unify the different cultures under emperorial rule

As a fellow history major, the worst thing in the world is when you make a
simple error and everyone calls you on it saying "I thought you were a history
major". ;)

~~~
sidstling
And the error completely takes focus away from the point, which was about
causality.

My only defense is that classical history was a 5ECTS course during my first
year and I never actually finished the full five years before I went into CS.
I should’ve obviously looked it up before posting to HN though.

As a little ironic/funny side note, the reason I changed to CS was because I
was really bored by the fact that I had spent two years mainly learning how to
work with source material and scientific methods, which wasn’t exactly what
I’d hoped “history” would be. Now that just bit me in the ass, again. ;p

------
gumby
As a backpacker and historian I love Collingwood's analogy.

The shallow jingoism of history as taught in school is indeed quite dangerous,
and without the "trail knowledge" Collingwood mentions you really _can 't_ see
what you're walking through.

For example, people love to sling around (or reject) the "nazi" analogy for
the current USA, but a far more insightful one is 1930s France.

Apparently in US schools all you learn is that the French ultimately (or, as
they are taught, "quickly") surrendered to the Germans in 1940, but _why_ is
where the insight lies. It is there, with the _Action Française_ and the
communists literally fighting with their respective armies in the streets, and
the desire of the _right_ wing to surrender in order to "purge" the country of
socialism that most closely matches the path the US is on.

(I don't believe the US will actually get to where France was in 1940, but
understanding the 30s helps me understand what's going on now).

~~~
csense
You're right, the reasons for the French surrender weren't talked about in my
US history class.

But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't surrender, once
the Nazis were in Paris holding guns to their heads.

~~~
gumby
> But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't surrender, once
> the Nazis were in Paris holding guns to their heads.

That's very true, but there are further interesting subtleties. To over
simplify in the name of brevity:

The French army was likely the most powerful in Europe in 1940 -- certainly
everyone believed so. The German general staff prepared for a _long_ difficult
invasion (Blitzkrieg notwithstanding) and in fact ran past their own supply
lines and had to slow down shows that they didn't expect the invasion to go so
quickly. I don't consider this one particularly relevant to the US, though you
could make a case.

The unprecidented loss of French youth in WWI (IIRC multiple entire years of
graduates of St-Cyr were wiped out to a man) had a serious toll on willingness
to fight. Again, I don't consider this particularly relevant.

Like I mentioned above, significant welcome on the right for national renewal
and anti-communist purge through the agency of the Germans. I see this point
to have the most relevance to the US. If you can get beyond the lazy tropes of
"racism" and "idiocy", the core of the current republican message and of
"MAGA" is at its core a revanchist belief in a return to some sort of
prelapsarian time of harmony and moral clarity. This is, at its heart, the
core of many right wing (which I would distinguish from "conservative")
parties today. Yes, there are of course racists and idiots among the right
wing supporters, but certainly idiocy and other pathologies are rife among the
Democrats and the left, mixed in among the reasonable folks. You can see a
parallel to the French situation with the

