Dangerous Games: The Uses And Abuses Of History

Von der Historikerin Margaret MacMillan wurden bereits Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World sowie Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India veröffentlicht. Insbesondere das erstgenannte Werk über das Zustandekommen des Versailler Vertrages hat mehrere Auszeichnungen erhalten.

Aufgrund ihrer eigenen Erfahrungen mit ihrem Buch über den Versailler Vertrag hat die Autorin die Bedeutung der Geschichte für die Menschen erkannt. In den 80-er Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts suchte sie vergeblich nach einen Verlag für ihr Manuskript. Erst in den 90-ern war sie erfolgreich. Das Ende des Kalten Krieges brachte radikale Veränderungen, die Verunsicherungen nach sich zogen, und wenn man Frau MacMillan folgt, dann hatte dies automatisch ein gestiegenes Interesse an geschichtlichen Themen zur Folge. Geschichte besteht für die Autorin aber nicht nur aus der banalen Auflistung von Daten und Ereignissen. Das vorliegende Buch erzählt warum das Studium der Geschichte so wichtig ist. Es erzählt vom Missbrauch historischer Ereignisse, wobei der Focus eindeutig auf den letzten 100 Jahren liegt. Und es erzählt vom Nutzen der Geschichte oder um es mit den Worten der Autorin zu sagen: “If the study of history does nothing more than teach us humility, skepticism, and awareness of ourselves, then it has done something useful.” Es erzählt aber auch wie unterschiedlich dieselbe Geschichte interpretiert werden kann, wie sehr die Wahrnehmung abweichen kann, indem man Fakten unterschiedlich gewichtet oder sogar ignoriert. Und wie sehr sich individuelle und kollektive Wahrnehmungen verändern können, zeigt MacMillan am Beispiel ihrer Recherche zu dem Buch über die englischen Frauen in Indien.

Neben dem Missbrauch der Geschichte zur Begründung von Kampf, Krieg und Terror, zeigt die Autorin auch wie bereits in der Schulausbildung eine manchmal einseitige Interpretation von geschichtlichen Ereignissen gefördert wird. Als Beispiele werden hier insbesondere die von Bush Sr. initiierten National Educational Goals genannt. Diese wurden 1993, als sie kurz vor der Veröffentlichung unter dem neuen Präsidenten Clinton standen, von Lynne Cheney, Ehefrau von Dick Cheney, damals ein bedeutender Republikaner, attackiert. Erst im Jahre 1996 konnte man sich auf neue Richtlinien einigen. Ein anderes Beispiel kommt aus Russland, wo Präsident Putin höchstpersönlich Interesse an den russischen Geschichtsbüchern zeigte und seine Sicht der Dinge durchzusetzen verstand. Die Neuausrichtung der Geschichte findet aber nicht nur in Schulen statt, als Beispiel sind die Vorgänge in Indien nach der gewonnen Wahl der Bharatiya Janata Partei (Hindu Nationalist Party) im Jahre 1998 genannt.

Auch die Schwierigkeiten eine gemeinsame geschichtliche Basis zu finden werden gezeigt, eine identische Interpretation von Ereignissen (z.B. Palästina/Israel) ist in manchen Fällen nahezu unmöglich. MacMillan zeigt wie sehr Geschichte die Identität eines Volkes bestimmen kann. Sie zeigt auch, dass manche Völker zu viel davon haben (z.B. Balkan) wohingegen andere zu wenig haben (z.B. Gründung des Staates Israel) und hierfür Kompensationsstrategien finden müssen. Dass Geschichte als Fundament für Nationen von Bedeutung ist, hat schon Samuel Huntington erkannt: Who are we?. Völker, welche die Erinnerung verlieren sind weniger als eine Nation.

Ebenso sind die unterschiedlichen Konsequenzen von geschichtlichen Ereignissen interessant: auf der einen Seite der Kniefall von Willy Brandt in Warschau, auf der anderen Seite die mangelnde Bereitschaft Japans sich für die Invasion von China in den 30-er Jahren oder die Menschenversuche in der Mandschurei zu entschuldigen.

Zu bemängeln ist lediglich, dass Frau MacMillan in ihrer Freude an praktischen Beispielen zu sehr hin und her springt. Zwei drei Absätze hierzu und schon sind wir in einem anderen Land, einem anderen Zeitraum. Die unglaubliche Detailfülle und Anzahl an Beispielen erschlägt den Leser bisweilen – so war zumindest mein Eindruck. Des Weiteren tauchen mehrere Themen, zum Beispiel die Konflikte auf dem Balkan oder die Wahrheitskommissionen in Südafrika, gleich mehrfach auf, um verschiedene Thesen zu stützen. Ohne Zweifel, die Autorin beherrscht ihr Fach und hat ein breites, fundiertes Wissen, dennoch wäre weniger manchmal mehr gewesen.

Alles in Allem ist es dennoch ein lesenswertes Buch über ein interessantes Thema. Geschichte kann helfen die Gegenwart zu erklären. Sie gibt uns Anhaltspunkte, um eine komplexe Welt zu verstehen, sie lehrt Demut, indem man erkennt wo vergangene Generationen geirrt haben, und sie fordert die Menschen auf, sich selbst in Frage zu stellen und ihre Wurzeln zu erkennen. Oder, um es mit den Worten von John Arnold, einem britischen Historiker zu sagen: “Visiting the past is something like visiting a foreign country: they do the same things same and some things differently, but above all else they make us more aware of what we call ‘home’.”

Dabei ist es wichtig das Was? Wann? Wo? zu hinterfragen. Wer hat die Geschichte geschrieben, warum wurde sie so und nicht anders interpretiert? Wie war es wirklich? Etwas mehr Skepsis, die Menschen auffordern, nach den Hintergründen zu suchen, selbständig und kritisch zu denken. Frau MacMillan hat ein sehr wichtiges Buch geschrieben. Kurz, aber wichtig.

Sehr empfehlenswert!

I happened to read a review of this in the Washington Post and was intrigued. It has proved to be a very insightful look at how history has been “spun” or misused throughout history, by all sides. The impact of this spinning and its consequences are demonstrated with well explained examples. The book heightens your understanding of how much you need to question how and why things are presented to the masses, as well the sources motives, intentional or unintended (even in retrospective presentations of history). We do this less and less now that we are too busy and reading has “gone by the wayside”. Mass media is becoming the primary source of information for large portions of society and there is little depth and lots of bias. The movie “Idiocracy” comes to mind. The author is fairly objective but one does detect her rare biases at one or two junctures. Overall she is a very professional historian. The book is intended for enlightening non historians and not as an indepth study of the study of history. (Point directed at a few “self superior” critics) I would go so far to say it is a must read for the everyday “Joe”. I read it concurrently with Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense” and found some very interesting parallels which surprised me. “Common Sense” is also a must read.

It’s a slim volume, packed with references to people (mostly men), places (mostly far away) and events (mostly misunderstood) of the past. For example, Qin Shi Huangdi strides across page 17 along with Saladin, Churchill, the Shah of Iran and Peter the Great in something like a great male leaders parade.

Bundled together, however, Dangerous Games serves as a cautionary tale for the present. Originally published in 2008, one gets the sense that MacMillan was writing this in the waning days of the Bush Administration as progressive vindication on Bush Era flaws, while simultaneously maintaining that we need to learn from history in order to prepare for the future. Despite the forward-looking approach, it seems as though every chapter is peppered with disdainful overt and covert remarks about George W. Bush: when Bush compared himself to Winston Churchill; when Bush attempted to market himself as a cowboy of the freewheeling western frontier; when Bush, in a 2006 speech to the graduating class at West Point, compared himself to President Truman. Perhaps most of the disdain is due to MacMillan’s citizenship: she’s Canadian and she possesses a distinctly Canadian perspective on her country’s neighbor (and that neighbor’s leader) to the south.

Despite the bias and the agenda, MacMillan has some valuable points to make. And she does so with clarity and order. Chapter titles suggest main points, which then are carried to poignant conclusions. For example, Chapter 1 is entitled “The History Craze” in which she promptly rides roughshod over people (along with governments and institutions) who pose as historians without actually being professional historians, and the danger that causes when faux historians produce believable but inaccurate histories of important events. Perhaps the best example of this is Hollywood’s penchant for writing out inconvenient aspects of, say, the Trojan War, Cleopatra’s choices or Henry VIII’s love life. Perhaps more insidious than simple inaccuracies are the stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood, which are believed by “middle” America in the absence of actual contact with Other. In either event, MacMillan would like to see professional historians not abdicate history to commercial and governmental interests just because mainstream society has a craze for it.

Chapter 2 earns the moniker “History for Comfort,” as MacMillan explains “why history can be at once so reassuring and so appealing” (15). Her answer: because history “can offer simplicity when the present seems bewildering and chaotic” (15) and because history “can also be an escape from the present” (16). In short, people use history like they use wine or video games: because it tastes good and offers a respite from the daily grind. It is the 21st century’s opiate for the masses. Along with acting like a medicant, history “help[s] us with our values at least in part because we no longer trust the authorities of today” (19). Don’t trust President Obama? Then call on historical references to Hitler to prove your anti-Obama position.

But along with history as comfort, MacMillan suggests that history can also cause discomfort, when, for example, it “highlight[s] our mistakes by reminding us of those who, at other times, faced similar problems but who made different, perhaps better, decisions” (22). President Nixon in his overtures to Mao Zedong as a method for getting the United States out of Vietnam serves as a prime example, largely in contrast to President Bush, who refused to interact with his esteemed enemies on any level and for any reason. Hence the rhetorical question: “if Nixon were president today, would he be going to Tehran for help in getting the United States out of Iraq?” (22). Of course, the problem with using diplomatic successes by President Nixon is that he is generally viewed as a political phariah and no credibility is established by invoking his name. Thus the idea behind the question remains unanswered and rhetorical.

MacMillan returns to the problem of armchair historians in Chapter 3, entitled “Who Owns the Past?” when she claims that “much of the history that the public reads and enjoys is written by amateur historians” (36), who by logical extension don’t write history well. Another way to say it is that amateur historians write bad history. And the problem with this is that “bad history tells only part of complex stories . . . [and] makes sweepting generalizations for which there is not adequate evidence and ignores awkward facts that do not fit” (36). The example MacMillan uses is contentious. Indeed, I know well respected colleagues who parade this history before unsuspecting college students: “that the Treaty of Versailles, made between the Allies and Germany at the end of World War I, was so foolish and vindictive that it led inevitably to World War II” (36). This, according to MacMillan, is bad history. Rather she asserts that this explanation of events “overlooked a few considerations. Germany had lost the war, and its treatment was never as severe as many Germans claimed and many British and Americans came to believe. Reparations were a burden but never as great as they seemed. Germany paid a fraction of the bill, and when Hitler came to power, he canceled it outright. If Germany in the 1920s had financial problems,” MacMillan asserts, “it was largely due to the fiscal policies of the German government” (36-37).

“Bad history” such as the previous example, “ignores such nuances in favor of tales that belong to morality plays but do not help us to consider the past in all its complexity. The lessons such [bad] history teaches are too simple or simply wrong” (37). This, then, becomes the crux of the chapter: historians “must do [their] best to raise the public awareness of the past in all its richness and complexity” (37). Furthermore, by invoking the ideas of British historian Michael Howard, MacMillan claims that “the proper role for historians . . . is to challenge and even explode national myths” (39) by not shying away from “blunt histories” (41). Such histories challenge our ideas about great leaders and the swirl of events in which those leaders were caught up. President Kennedy took drugs for a little-known illness. Does this suggest that knowing Kennedy’s drug use causes his great decisions to become a little less great and his poor decisions to become a little less poor? No. Rather the “blunt history” is a “complex picture [which] is more satisfying for adults than a simplistic one” (43). And recognizing that “we can still have heroes . . . but we have to accept that in history, as in our own lives, very little is absolutely black or absolutely white” (43). It’s the lack of clear lines, the absence of clean demarcations between good and bad, right and wrong that make some folks uncomfortable. Yet, that’s just what the historian is called upon to do: shake peoples’ beliefs and thereby shake their identities.

In Chapter 4, MacMillan takes up the issue of history and its relationship with identity when she asserts that “for those who do not have power or who feel that they do not have enough [power], history can be a way of protesting against their marginalization, or against trends or ideas they do not like” (53). This is where the power of myth becomes insidious. The stories school children are taught about Columbus’ voyages or Paul Revere’s famous ride are well known, and are beginning to be addressed in mainstream society. The undercurrents for these myths, however, are less well understood. These undercurrents, what MacMillan identifies as “the imagined community” (58), serve as host to nationalists, among other marginalized groups. And imagined communities seem to lead in a straight line toward ideologies. The groups who maintain ideologies work to show how “past, present and future all become comprehensible” (63) through neatly packaged stories known as “closed systems”: about origins, about present circumstances of marginalization, and about future consequences of that marginalization. According to MacMillan, “logic and reason do not enter into closed systems of viewing the world” (64). Just as birthers today reject reasonable attempts to validate President Obama’s birth in Hawaii (two different newspapers printed birth announcements in August 1961, for example), people with an ideological closed system mindset refuse to accept empirical evidence if that evidence refutes their worldview. In many regards, a closed system view allows an individual or a collection of individuals to escape responsibility for past choices and actions. It’s convenient, easy, simple. Yet, history and its uses is more resilient than this. “History that challenges comfortable assumptions about a group is painful, but it is, as Michael Howard said, a mark of maturity” (71). In short, history is necessary for a democracy like ours as it lumbers into middle age.

MacMillan goes on about the relationships between history and nationalism, history and war, and history and its costs, and along the way one gets the impression that MacMillan is simultaneously captivated by and horrified by the ways in which history has been used. Yet she always returns to the idea that history is important, needs professionals to tend it like a garden, and is a primary mechanism for a society’s knowledge of itself. She argues in her conclusion that “a citizenry that cannot begin to put the present into context, that has so little knowledge of the past, can too easily be fed stories by those who claim to speak with the knowledge of history and its lessons” (165). That those who don’t know history are exploited by those who choose to abuse it. Simple answers about current situations are never truly packaged in neat little closed system boxes. Indeed, if someone peddles events in that context, it should serve as a warning rather than foster a reality. Instead, MacMillan encourages the reader to consider history from the long view: “History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process” (167). This, then, is how the story cycles back to the beginning, not in a closed system but in a process of concentric rings of revelation about past events. Rather than take the long view of events, President Bush abused history and the historical amnesia of the American people by railroading them into a costly, tragic and unnecessary war in Iraq. Poignantly, this is the dangerous game for our generation.