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The Complexity of History, Essay Example

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The history of human civilization is characterized by various stages of development, the dominance of some civilizations over the others, flourishing and decline of different empires. It can be argued that history is characterized by the constancy of rises and falls. On the other hand, it may be perceived as linear or cyclical in its development. In any case, history is far from being a definite and strict phenomenon since it consists of multiple elements that are seldom analyzed systematically.[1] In this regard, the primary aim of this essay is to engage John Green’s narrative on history in a critical manner. In this regard, his main argument that history representation largely depends on the perspective applied to it is analyzed in the context of examples he used and also personal considerations of history.

First of all, Green is very convincing in his statement that history is not just a sum of exact facts that cannot be questioned or challenged in the qualified community or by people from other disciplines. In this regard, he suggests that history is perceived through different lens depending on one’s field of expertise and personal background. Consequently, everyone has personal and professional bias when they write history particularly if it is an analytical one. Green’s statement is a valid one and is well-grounded on the works he had analyzed. However, there is more to it than just a biased perception of the history, according to personal preferences.

Viewing history from a constructivist perspective, it is perceived a construct of its time and people who were entitled to write it at the official level and a formal manner. Consequently, each epoch had its own perception of the events happening in it or the epoch before. Inevitably, history is based on the dominant perceptions and interpretations of the time when it is discussed. For instance, nowadays perception and analysis of the Cold War is far from being identical to the time when it was actually taking place, since the social and academic perception of its was driven by the threat and the difficulty in abstracting one’s critical perception from the personal interest.[2] In other words, history representation across epochs is already biased, but the examples Green makes suggest the diversity of perspectives of history rather than the personal intention of stating that only a single perspective is correct.

In this regard, when Green analyses various academic works that have different perspectives at the core of their analysis, he creates the impression that they claim to be the only right ones. However, none of the academic works was aimed to give a single right and unquestionable answer to the reason of “the Rise of the West.” They only suggested what they believed to be the most relevant in terms of their chosen perspective and tried to explore it with the tools available within their discipline. For instance, Fukuyama’s political theory oriented on the rule of law and dominance of capitalist values over any other political systems was well grounded in the trends in Political though and tendencies of the post-Cold-War international relations.[3]

In other words, many post-Soviet countries aimed at building their societies according to the Western model of capitalism and democratic values due to the functionality of the Western model on the global scale in contrast to the communist regime. Although Fukuyama derives the stability of the Western world from the institutional perspective, particularly the Catholic Church, he approaches political order and its historical development systematically. He argued that the success of a country depends on three components: state building, the rule of law and accountable government. Although he applied institutional perspective to historical development and dominance of one civilization over the others, it is still a systematic attempt to analyze various aspects of country’s development in the framework of consistency of the political orders and their adaptability to the external environment of the international relations.[4] In other words, it is not biased as Green suggests but is a certain discipline-oriented approach to viewing and analyzing history.

On the other hand, irrespective of the perspectives chosen by the discussed academics, they still come to the same conclusion that the Western civilization is successful nowadays because its features fit the existing world order and the most recent trends in the development of the international relations. In other words, although Robinson suggests that the success of the West is due to the inclusive pluralism and Ian Morris applies his four-dimensional model and socio-developmental index to evaluate it, they both agree that the West prevails according to the established criteria of success and development existing in this system of international relations and world order.[5] In this regard, the diversity of their approaches and emphases placed is not a sign of biased perceptions, but diversified analyses of various components that create a complex picture of the Western dominance in the world history over the last two hundred years.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the aim of each of the scholar was to contribute to the existing knowledge of history and world development form the perspectives and fields they are proficient in and to make the existing picture of the world more systematic. In this regard, it is not a responsibility of every academic to explore everything single aspect of history, it is simply impossible. Instead, each academic can research in-depth their particular segment that effects or contributes to the established trend in historical development of a certain phenomenon, in this case, the Rise of the West. In fact, the biased perception of history can develop only if an individual reads just a single academic work and considers that it the reflection of the history as it was.[6]

The best example is various wars that took place. Irrespective of the overall discourse of who won and who lost and which treaty was signed, there are dimensions of the global politics and cause-effect relationship between inter-state completions that resulted in consequent wars. For example, the continuous competition between France and England over the dominance in Europe was one of the factors that resulted in the rise of Germany and strengthening of the fascist movement. For the scholar or a student to understand history it has to be studied from various perspectives. It should be explored in terms exact events, political, economic, socio-cultural ad even individual dimension of those events and diversity of contemporary perspectives of its analysis and reflection.[7]

When Green suggests that one of the minuses in the given historical narratives is that the dominance of the West in the last two hundred years is not questioned, he forgets to outline that the dominance of the West is not just a construct of the West but the trends in the development of the international relations and the most functional ability of the Western countries to adapt and even drive those changes. In this regard, the primary source of West’s Rise just as in the previous epoch can be traced to the tools of labor and consequent development of technologies. Thus, since the Western countries were the first to develop the most advanced tools of labor and cutting-edge technologies they were the ones to drive the progress of the global scale, while the rest of the world was following that progress. In other words, it can be argued that technological advancement and know how are the means of the progress and the rise of the West, but the stimulation of their development and creative implementation was conditioned by the factors outlined by various scholars mentioned above and studied in this course.[8]

Although orientation on a single factors or perspective can result in biased perception of history, combined together these diverse perspectives create a multi-faceted picture of the reality that took place perceived in terms of the contemporary point of time. History just as reality cannot escape the temporal trends in its interpretation, but in each case an individual who really want to understand it to its fullest extent has to view the diversity of perspectives and the necessity of further deepening of its research. Another factor to consider in terms of interpreting history is that depending on the studied timeframe, not all of the factors regarding events development and trustworthy evidence are available and analyzed systematically.[9] There still might be evidence that might change the human perception of the course of history or its conditionality. In any case, the assumption that history becomes more dehumanized only because it uses numerical data and statistics is far from the truth. It might be more complex to memorize all of the quantitative data available, but it helps to understand the scale qualitative features of the events that took place. In other words, no matter how complex and based on which perspective the exploration of history is conducted, it remains a human history.

Overall, from all mentioned above, it can be concluded that although Green was right to emphasize that history is not a single line that consists of exact events without contextual or perceptual differences, it is not as biased as he makes it. Diverse perspectives on history are aimed at demonstration of multiple factors that trigger historical events and shape historical epochs. In this regard, Green is right to outline that history is a construct of perceptions based on the existing evidence and prevailing trend within the target civilization. On the other hand, irrespective of the tool applied, history remains about humans.

References

Archer, C.I. World History of Warfare. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.2002.

Chaliand, G. The Art of War in World History: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1994.

Duiker, W. and Spielvogel, J. The Essential World History. Boston: Cengage Learning. 2010.

Fukuyama, F. The Origins of Political Order. London: Profile Books. 2011.

Laqueur, W. Optimism in Politics: Reflections on Contemporary History. New York: Transaction Publishers. 2014.

Morris, I. Why The West Rules For Now. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011.

Ponting, C. World History: A New Perspective. London: Pimlico. 2001.

Rusen, J. History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation. Ontario: Bergbahn Books.2005.

Sachsenmaier, D. Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in Connected World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011.

Waugh, S. Essential Modern World History. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes. 2001.

[1] Rusen, J. History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation, p. 73.