Author丨Niall Ferguson
Faced with the anxiety of this era, British historian J. H. Pullham once wrote "The Death of the Past". The following is an introductory article by Niall Ferguson.
The real-life version of "Death in the Past"
The case of patient "H.M." is well known in neuroscientific circles. H.M. was a bright young man who suffered from epilepsy. In August 1953, when neuroscience was still in its infancy, a surgeon performed a procedure called a "bidirectional medial temporal resection" on H.M. to remove tissue from the medial temporal lobe. The purpose of this surgery is to relieve epileptic seizures. The surgery did achieve its purpose of relief. Unfortunately, the surgery itself had two disastrous side effects. First of all, the operation destroyed the patient's memory of eleven years; although H.M. was only twenty-seven years old at the time of the operation, the patient had no memory of what happened after the age of sixteen. Secondly, and more seriously, the operation also destroyed his memory. After the operation, H.M.'s memory of what happened could only last for a few minutes. One of the numerous medical reports surrounding the case described the real-life consequences of the operation:
Ten months after the operation, H.M. moved to a new home just a few blocks from his old home. ...Almost a year later, H.M. still could not remember his new address and could not find his way home alone...The patient continued to play the same word puzzle day after day, but without any real results, he I read the same magazine over and over again without noticing any duplication of content.
Many researchers on this case finally agreed that the surgeons acted too hastily and very carelessly removed several brain tissues that are critical to memory ability
(specifically, the hippocampus, amygdala, hippocampus paragyrus and entorhinal cortex)
.
What afflicted H.M. was an extreme form of amnesia, which also provided a vivid example of what Pullam called "the death of the past." For H.M., the past after 1942 is completely dead, both in the accumulation of events and in the process of memory (with a few exceptions, such as rock music, astronauts, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy). )
. To grasp the intention of Pullham's little book, one only has to imagine society as a whole being in H.M.'s situation.
Pullham, the son of a lowly "foreman" in a Leicester shoe factory, was transformed by his long and distinguished study of a courtier and connoisseur who was not only A frequent visitor to Windsor and the Rothschild family, he was also a guest of the older and more distinguished aristocratic circles in England. Yet no amount of Sèvres china or fine Lafite wine in his room could completely erase his past. Instead, he was fond of highlighting his worldly achievements as "a long road that started at Somerville Road in Leicester".
J. H. Pullham
In Pullham's eyes, a person can only make progress if he does not forget the past. The same concept also applies to society. He once declared at his beloved Christ's College, "It is important that academic leaders ensure the survival and prosperity of this college, just as it has done for the past five hundred years."
(unpublished manuscript)
. The death of the past means giving up the academic achievements of the past five centuries, which actually means that this college has no future.
This small book is based on the manuscripts of four speeches that Pullum gave in New York in March 1968. Therefore, it can be said that "The Death of the Past" has an obvious imprint of the times. In the same month, several racial riots broke out in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4. At this time, North Vietnam's New Year's Offensive was in full swing, and the United States' investment in this war tended to wane; in March 1968, the My Lai massacre occurred, and U.S. soldiers killed four hundred people in this village. Several people, including women and children, although the atrocity was not made public until a year later.The student movement was also brewing on both sides of the Atlantic. Even as Pullham was preparing his speech, the Beatles were winning a Grammy for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and the Rolling Stones were about to sing "Let's Live the Night Together." The energy of this single is unleashed. It seemed that the spring of 1968 was the perfect time to bury traditional attitudes and structures. Never before had I been in such a desperate state as I was this spring.
Until his later years, Pullham could be regarded as a left-winger. Of course, Pullham was not unaware of such revolutionary sentiments; such emotional currents could be felt even in Cambridge, let alone New York. So it's no surprise to find references to the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution in this little book. For example, in a long annotation on the "whiteness" of mainstream American historiography, there is this sentence: "The past two years have witnessed the determination of black people to strive to obtain their own past." He later commented, "The transformation of gender relations The same goes for other aspects... Statistics have shown that biological impulses and physiological needs have led us to a more tolerant attitude and may be returning people to human needs. The shadow of the taboo of the undead has dissipated from the human bed. Go."
However, this is not a sign of the changing times, and that is not what Pullum meant by the "death of the past." Rather, the questions Pullham raises in this little book were as relevant thirty years ago as they are today. To be precise, Pullham's question is: is academic history, in its process of destroying traditional conceptions of the past, an essentially destructive discipline, capable of destroying but not capable of replacing those based on mythic elements? A dominant but also socially functional “past”? On the one hand, there is the past that is committed to strengthening social cohesion, and on the other hand, there are revisionist historical concepts consciously created by professional historians. Pullham has always been worried that the two sides will become enemies. Unfortunately, this worry has become a prophecy in many ways and has been obtained. verified. Pullham's balding, suit-wearing, and bespectacled image certainly couldn't have been trendsetting in 1968, but Dead in the Past was intellectually ahead of its time in many ways.
"Death in the Past", [English] J. H. Pullam, translated by Lin Guorong, Janus Translation Collection | Huaxia Publishing House, March 2020 Edition
Cambridge Context
What is new in "Death in the Past", you must understand it At this point, we must not only understand the political context of this small book, but more importantly, we must also understand its academic context. Understanding this will also help you understand what is not new in it.
Pullham was fifty-six years old when he was in the prime of his historical career when he wrote the New York speech. Just a year ago, he published "The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675-1725", which was originally a series of Ford lectures at Oxford University . This series is a cadenza. The publication of the second volume of "The Biography of Robert Walpo" began the 1960s in Pullham's career. If Pullham was famous for his extreme meticulousness as a portrait painter
(before Walpo, he actually wrote a biography for Chatham in 1953)
, then in the 1960s Later, he was ready to paint with rougher lines. Although by this time he was widely recognized as the leading authority on the history of eighteenth-century England, he was also striving to expand himself.
At the same time, Pullham also felt that he was safe in the academic and political field, and he was even at the top of the academic hierarchy. He had been a leading figure at Christ's College for a long time, so it was natural that he was offered a chair at Cambridge in 1966 and, while lecturing in New York, became chairman of the History Department Committee. In addition, a fellowship at the British Academy also beckoned.In this case, he and his old enemy Geoffrey Elton
(who eventually defeated him and won the most important modern Schwartz Professorship)
were on an equal footing, to say the least.
Although neither Pullham nor Elton can be regarded as a big figure in the field of historical philosophy, the two people still quickly diverge in their attitudes towards the philosophy of history
(or so it seems)
. Just a year ago, Elton did publish a book called "The Practice of History", which was actually a manifesto for his own Anglo version of German historicism. To be precise, it relies on Ranke's archival material research methods to deal with traditional issues in the history of England. Pullham was fed up with this. This sole disciple of G.M. Trevelyan shared his mentor's instinctive enthusiasm for social history, and correctly perceived that social history would set the tone for the development of historiography in the coming decades.
Cover of the English version of "The Death of the Past"
As early as 1955, Pullham declared: "Social history in the most complete and profound sense is now a fruitful field of study that no other branch of history has. By analogy, and within this generation, great discoveries will be made." It is in the same spirit that Pullham asserted in "The Death of the Past": "The purpose of historical exploration is to understand the historical changes in human social activities. Seeking answers to basic questions in the world, expressed in the form of concepts and induction.” Therefore, it can be said simply that the so-called history teaching is to teach things about the “nature of social change.”
There is no doubt that Pullham’s remarks are to help the younger generation to fight against Elton’s methodological conservatism. Pullham has always been on the side of young people, and he regards this as his own principle. . However, from today's perspective, the differences between the two in some aspects are not as significant as they were at the beginning. It is the duty of historians to "tell the truth as it is". On this fundamental issue, Pullham is as much a Rankian as Elton. This is not difficult to see from the following statement:
... Since the Renaissance, there has been a growing determination among historians to try to examine and understand things as they really are, without serving the sacred status of religion, national destiny, morality, or institutions. ...The goal of historians has become increasingly clear, which is to see things as they really are...Real history refers to seeing things as they really are, regardless of whether such history will be consistent with the past judged by wise men in society What kind of collision occurred. The spirit of historical criticism means placing things in their own era and looking at them as they really are.
Pullam and Elton also have a common enemy. Pullham made an unwarranted allusion to F.R. Leavis in a note, "Another refugee from the no-where past... His portrait of nineteenth-century England is thoroughly romantic." , It’s just to satisfy people’s emotional needs.” If this criticism came from Elton, it would be completely reasonable. Pullham also criticized Macaulay for having a "rough and superficial" mind, and this criticism was the same.
Indeed, there are even echoes of more self-aware conservative historians like Herbert Butterfield in Pullham's statements. Although Pullum had already broken with Butterfield early in his student career, this was clearly reflected in their elaboration of the relationship between Christianity and Western historiography. Pullham himself is a staunch atheist, but he does admit that there is a distinctly Christian "consciousness of narrative and of the unfolding purpose of God."
Pulham and the Liberal Tradition
But it is here that we begin to truly penetrate into Pulham's intellectual treasure house. This brings us to the heart of Pullham's argument: his distinction between "past" and "history."
The so-called "past", in Pulham's view, always encounters informal distortions in human memory, and even deliberate misinterpretations, in order to conceal the deeper purpose. In contrast, history is not just what Ranke calls a "truthful" presentation of the past, a presentation that serves its own purpose; it is also an integral part of the grand plan of freedom, which is to advance humankind. cause of progress. “The future of history,” Pullham writes without hesitation, “lies in purging human narratives of hidden illusions about the past.” This also means transcending pure chronology. Historical research can and should provide historical research; deductions for future human behavior. Therefore:
Historians are able to describe what happened, and therefore to point out what behavior was inappropriate...History contains many truths about human beings...all that can enhance human beings...mastery of self and situation. The progress of abilities is worth pursuing.
and:
The purpose of historians is to continuously deepen the understanding of people and society. This is not only for the purpose of historical research itself, but also in the hope that deeper knowledge and deeper awareness can help shape people's attitudes and actions. .
Such statements are more in line with the historical circumstances of 1896 than those of 1968. To illustrate this point, we might as well give an example. In his inaugural address at Cambridge, Lord Acton once declared that scientific history is one of the driving forces of European progress:
The universal spirit of exploration and discovery... has never slackened, and has always been They are all resisting the recurring tide of reaction and will resist until the moment they finally prevail. This is...a gradual and unfolding change...by which human beings pass from a state of submission to a state of independence. This phenomenon is of paramount importance to us, because the science of history is this process. One of the tools it relies on.
In other words, historians must not only be committed to describing the destined victory of the human progress process, but this historical narrative work itself is actually a dynamic element of the human progress process. Pullham's following statement is essentially an echo of this concept: "This is in line with a historical truth: the human condition is always improving...Human achievement is rooted in the use of reason, whether it is technology It is true whether it is a problem or a social problem. The historian's job is to teach, preach and demonstrate this..."
Postmodern readers will be shocked when faced with such statements. Even those who are committed to defending the authenticity of the nineteenth century and thereby resisting the trend of postmodernity will be surprised to learn that Pullham here is nothing less than a call to arms, and in such a direct way. Way. Of course, we might as well remind you that there have always been some senior people in university history departments who really believed in such things as human progress and that humanity could learn from the past.
This situation is certainly interesting, but this situation in itself is not a reason to reprint the little book "The Death of the Past", or even to reread this little book. Pullham declared that the duty of human nature is to "resolve the contradictions and hostility existing among people." In response to this declaration, we must also remember the circumstances of the times in which Pullum found himself. While he calls on history to "assist humanity in establishing an identity, not as American or Russian, Chinese or British, black or white, rich or poor, but as human beings," we must also feel the same for Pullham. Understand, just as we should also understand John Lennon, isn't the latter's single "Imagine" also a cliched lyrical style? It is important that we understand these representations in depth.
Seeds of Doubt
The real weight of "The Death of the Past" lies not in Pullham's deeply traditional claims about the redemptive power of "scientific" historiography, but in the anxiety hidden behind the thin curtain.Rather, Pullham was deeply concerned that such historiography was an inadequate substitute for humanity's appeal to the past. Pullham did declare that "the ancient past is dying," but he also added, "We want history to take its place...". However, can history? Has anything like this ever happened?
Pullham was quite harsh on the historians of past generations, whom he pitted against real historians. Nonetheless, Pullham was keenly aware of the value of the past that the historians of the past had created, albeit grudgingly. . As Pullham himself said, "There is great danger in losing the sense of one's historical self." The so-called past, in Pullham's view, may not be as effective as history in the true sense, but it is still better than nothing. In any case, all the social and political functions that existed on the body in the past were not useless. This is not something that a person who has spent half his life in Cambridge cannot understand:
All living beings are inseparable from the dimension of time, because They are aware of the existence of time. They recognize that they are part of a historical process... [and] they want to understand the nature of this process, what it was like in the past and what it is like now. People need a historical past that is objective and true... Everyone is a historical being, living in the pattern created by time...
This is why the plight of the "H.M." patient makes us feel tragic. To be precise, H.M. did not suffer physical pain, but lost his sense of "historical existence" for most of his life - Pullham taught at Christ's College and was immersed in the past. About the same. The "pattern created by time" simply disappeared from his life.
It is entirely possible that this fate will befall the entire society. It is this possibility that haunts "Death in the Past" like a ghost, and the deep worry is hidden in the lines of Pullham's optimistic narrative. There is no doubt that it would have been very difficult for Pullham to confront the possibility that history, as he understood it, might act like the surgeon in H.M.'s case, cutting out key elements of our collective consciousness—right. It is such key elements that sustain past life, however imperfect that life may be.
Pullham himself illustrates this by choosing an image with rather apocalyptic qualities. He wrote, “History is like a moth that gnaws through the vast body of the past, hollowing out the wood and causing its structure to collapse.” Or, as he puts it in the next paragraph, “History is deeply Focusing on the past, in a sense, history conspires to destroy the past as a social force..." This statement is straightforward, but it also has critical weight. Academic historians have declared war on the various interpretations that traditional historiography has built around the past, and have indeed launched an offensive and achieved considerable success, greatly weakening the traditional interpretation model. The motives of these historians are certainly worthy of respect.
But the question is: have historians ever succeeded in creating a true historical discipline to replace the past that equally satisfies human emotional needs? In this regard, Pullham suddenly changed his writing and wrote: "Many historians seek refuge in the assertion that history is meaningless. They believe that history can only establish personal...discourse; history is a profession. It’s a player’s game, and it’s the professional players who make the rules of the game.” This statement makes one wonder who exactly Pullum is referring to. Pullham's "The Death of the Past" euphemistically acknowledges a frustrating situation early on: history is no more powerful than the past. The light of history is "dim and swaying." To be precise, Pullham's history lacks the rhetorical and narrative structure of what Hayden White calls "metahistory". It is this structure that makes the distorted ancient past full of magic, and even more so. A past like that is unforgettable.
When writing "The Death of the Past," Pullham, like many academics of that period, declared himself a socialist. Yet even at this early stage it is still possible to discern that Pullum was sowing his own intellectual seeds. By the 1980s, these intellectual seeds would have matured into full-fledged Thatcherism. To give an example, Pullham once commented, "In this era of huge and rapid changes, the social ideology that is taught and passed down from generation to generation may face great dangers of being unsustainable. With the past Return to death...and there will be a danger of social strife...". Two pages later, Pullham returns to this theme:
Once the strong grip on religion, education, and economic activities in the past is weakened, social affairs will be paralyzed. It is not difficult to imagine that one of the results is...the decline of family structures and the increasing independence of young people.
Obviously, this argument was filled with conservative sentiments, and it was enough to foresee the more intense conservative sentiments in Pullum twenty years later. Similar thinking soon excited some of Pullham's contemporaries, wherever they were on the political spectrum, including Kingsley Amis. Only a handful of Pullham's Cambridge colleagues, notably Maurice Colin, sensed that the end result was not general enlightenment but general disintegration in the liberal offensive against traditional institutions and ideological structures. .
Pulham can certainly realize that academic history, on its own, is not destined to extend to the moment of victory over history. In a gloomy discussion full of prophetic tone, Pullam warned: "If you just watch the past die, or if the past is really dead and a new past fails to emerge, then it will only be It can be said that this is the fate of history. As a result, history’s position as the interpreter of human destiny will be replaced by social science.” In this way, it is actually equivalent to saying that Pullam himself is between history and the past. The initial distinction made was a false binary; rather, if a broad sense of the past were lost, academic history would surely fade away due to a lack of public interest. Pullham's appeal to "a compulsive awareness of the value of the human past" is in fact an admission that if history really wants to defeat the past, such a victory can only be pyrrhic.
Thirty-five years have passed. Is the past dead? Looking at the popular historical documentaries on television, if such television programs have any meaning at all, it cannot be said that the past is dead. The recent launches of Simon Schama's Histories of Britain and David Starkey's The Six Queens of Henry VIII have successfully attracted British audiences ranging from two million to four million.
(The former is a protégé of Pullham, the latter of Elton, and Pullham may understand the irony better than Elton.)
Clearly, such shows exist at the intersection of the past and history Here, what is appealed to is the audience's existing collective memory of Britain's past. At the same time, such programs also strive to introduce to the audience the new results of academic historical research, at least some of them. But anyway, if Pullum's so-called past is really dead, there's no way a show like this would attract any viewers.
Perhaps, the real disease lies on the other side. To be sure, it is academic historiography, not the past, that is truly moribund in Britain. In any case, academic history subjects no longer become compulsory after the student reaches the age of fourteen. This also makes the UK one of only two countries in Europe where history is no longer a compulsory subject before students leave school.
(the other country is Iceland)
. This means that only a little more than one-third of British students will take history subjects in junior high school. What's more, in the period before junior high school, students devote very little time to history subjects, usually only one hour a week.This will inevitably have an impact on primary history education in the UK. After 1992, the number of people taking high school history courses has dropped by 16 percentage points. Twice as many students take social science as history, which is exactly what Pullham worries about.
The shrinking of academic history is also reflected in the range of courses chosen by British students. Theoretically, in the "third stage", the range of choices is quite broad, ranging from "British history from 1066 to 1500" to "the world after 1900". But in fact, 51 percent of junior high school history students and a staggering 80 percent of high school history students chose the theme of Nazi Germany. The rest seemed to have taken Tudor history. In many schools, the so-called history subject has become synonymous with "Hitler and Henry." All of this has undoubtedly affected the number of history students in British universities, and the impact on quality is probably even more serious.
Academic historiography has not only failed to replace the past, but is likely to drag the past into the quagmire. According to a recent survey, almost one-third of students aged between 11 and 18 actually believed that Oliver Cromwell participated in the Battle of Hastings. Less than half of the students knew that Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar was called HMS Victory. At least 30% of students do not know that the First World War started in the twentieth century, and they are still complacent. Not surprisingly, History Channel shows have significantly lower numbers of younger viewers. Only 14 percent of the viewers of the History Channel's "Empire" series are under the age of thirty-five, while over 60 percent are over the age of fifty-five. Only three percent of the audience was under the age of sixteen. The past may still be alive in British popular culture, but it must be aging rapidly.
Could this situation have been foreseen in 1968? Most likely not. However, Pullham's "Death in the Past" does hit the nail on the head. Is it wise for professional historians to disdain all memories of the past, retaining only those that are corroborated by their own research and published in authoritative journals in their profession? Could it be that the destructive energy of revisionism ends up creating not a new and improved past but a vacuum? If Pullum still hopes that historians will recast the past, he must also feel a vague suspicion that professional historians may screw up. Just a generation later, the nightmare of a society that had lost both its past and its history, as Pullham feared, was no longer a mere illusion.
In the medical world, "H.M." is the acronym for a well-studied case of amnesia. In addition, it is not difficult for readers to notice the irony that this abbreviation actually stands for "His Majesty" or "H.M." "Her Majesty the Queen". The monarchy provides an integral framework for Britain's past, and Pullham is certainly well aware of this: his book The Royal Legacy, published in 1977, was far more commercially successful than his other works. But if children believe that Cromwell fought at Hastings, what value does the past have? Under such circumstances, what hope is there for the history that Pullum has dedicated his life to? What is the point of introducing the historiography of royal, aristocratic and civilian heritage to one generation after another? To be precise, if the past dies along with history, who will remember what "H.M." stands for?
These are things that contemporary readers of Death in the Past must weigh carefully, as Pullham would do if he were still alive today.
This article is an introductory article specially written by Niall Ferguson for J.H. Pullam's "Death in the Past" and is authorized to be published by Huaxia Publishing House.
author丨Niall Ferguson
excerpt丨Yan Bugeng
editor丨Zhang Ting
