Customer Reviews

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Modern Library Chronicles)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In this slim but important volume, historian Margaret MacMillan sets out to challenge those who use or misuse history for their own purposes. Few escape her glance, from the Chinese who cultivate a sense of victimization even now that they have risen to the status of economic superpower (and whose leaders cite a sign that never existed in Shanghai, denying entrance to a park to Chinese and dogs) to both Palestinians and Israelis, quarreling over the question of "who was here first" with reference to the lands now under Israeli authority.

MacMillan's two most recent works (one about the Versailles Treaty of 1919; the other about Nixon and Mao) have given her tremendous insight into the way history is used and abused in geopolitical and political conflicts around the world. Bad history, she writes, tells only parts of complex stories, is selective, misleading and can lead to the creation of national 'myths' that hold their own dangers. She uses examples to bolster every point, such as the Serbian myths surrounding the defeat of Prince Lazar, their national hero, by Ottoman Turks at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. In fact, MacMillan points out, Lazar was simply one Serb prince (not a national leader); while he was killed, the battle was widely viewed as a draw and even claimed by Serbs at the time as a victory; and far from marking the end of Serb independence, an independent Serbia remained for decades. The Orthodox church used Lazar's death to bolster the myth of a resistance to Turkish rule for centuries; in the 19th century, when that myth collided with the emergence of nationalism across Europe, the result was not only the bloody conflicts in the former Yugoslavia but also one of the triggering events of the still-bloodier World War I.

MacMillan's command of her facts, from the well known to the most obscure, make this a convincing and lively read. Still, she's treading on perilous ground by challenging such cherished myths and pointing out how historical facts have been distorted to support them. It doesn't matter that she's an equal-opportunity critic (Both Palestinians and Israelis get their share of criticism for manipulating the facts in the ongoing "who was here first" argument.) Her argument is straightforward and yet provocative: only by recognizing that the stories we may like to tell ourselves aren't always the true or complete ones do we have a chance to take advantage of what history has to teach us: that others have myths that they, too, cherish; that we can and should question our values and convictions from time to time, and that the result will be a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

"It can be dangerous to question the stories people tell about themselves because so much of our identity is both shaped by and bound up with our history," MacMillan writes. (Indeed, just take a look at Sacred Geography: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land for evidence.) That doesn't stop MacMillan from tackling a wide array of battles waged in the 'history wars' that have been just as hotly contested as those in the better-known 'culture war'.

The result is a valuable book for anyone who is interested in reading history and going beyond the 'what', 'who' and 'why' of the events that happened to broader questions. What history is written, by whom and for what purpose? What assumptions do historians make when they write? How are their works received by their audiences? Anyone intrigued by these questions will find much to mull over in this book. If your world view is black and white, rather than shades of grey, you may find less to admire.

Recommended for additional reading on a theme related to this: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History

MacMillan is very smart. More important, she's very wise. That latter category informs all the thinking in this book and is what makes it well worth reading. (There's an oddly cranky review from earlier this month posted here. I don't understand it and can't square it with the book I read.)
The book tells us why the study of history is important. Part of the answer to that question is what history is - it's not just a table of names and dates: they are necessary, but not sufficient. Part is how history has been used and abused over time.
The learning in this book can be summarized in two phrases. The first is that you can't understand the news unless you understand the history. MacMillan shows this in her treatment of The Battle of Kosovo, which was a very different thing in 1389, when it happened and in 1989, when Serbian president Milosevic gave a speech marking the battle's 600th anniversary and began the process of unleashing the forces that would turn the former Yugoslavia into a slaughterhouse. The second, which is almost a corollary of the first, is her mention of the bewildering effect of living in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 40s, where the rewriting of recent history of the revolution and its aftermath was an ongoing industry. She notes dryly that it can be disorienting to live in a country with an unpredictable past.
The book, between flanking chapters of the history craze and history as a guide, discusses the abuses of history as a source of comfort, as a property to be controlled, as a tool in shaping identity, as a catalyst of nationalism, and as a source of grievances (and we all know what kinds of actions unaddressed grievances can lead to in our modern world). She also addresses history as a battle in the culture wars going on almost everywhere.
As I read this book, it seemed to me to be more of an edited transcript of a lecture than something originally intended as a written work. Sure enough, the notes show that this is exactly what it is.
As a lecture, it is quite good. Wide-ranging, stimulating, articulate (MacMillan wrinkles her nose - rightly in my view - at historians who write [sometimes deliberately] in difficult prose), and clear-eyed. She spots the issues, nails the manipulators, and shows what's going on behind the curtain of the show.
As a book, it's way too short - about 170 pages - and therefore way too surfacy. Every time she focused in on a topic or an event, I was pleased, only to sigh as she skittered across the top of it to the next one. As an op-ed piece, or even a magazine article, this would have been fine, but in a book, I wanted more depth.
So this is a good, even an important, introduction to an issue that every educated person should view with concern. History, like all components of critical thinking, is vitally important, necessary even, for democratic government to work. The stories of history shape beliefs and the beliefs bring about and justify action.
Of course the people who most need to read and understand this book are the ones least likely to look at it. Ignorance usually protects itself with thick walls pierced by vigilantly guarded gates. The lobotomization of the populace of this and other countries by those who should be educating and informing them will doubtless continue as long as there is money to be made and power to be generated by the process. MacMillan and her like are fighting against a trend. It's important to all of us that they succeed.

MacMillan writes a decent book, and she makes some good points about the way history ought to be used -- to teach "humility, skepticism and awareness of ourselves" -- and how it is too often abused to further political and cultural agendas. No quibble here, and anyone with any intellectual integrity would agree. But there's an irony here, because good historians should look for complexity and attempt to explain ambiguity, yet MacMillan too often picks some very low hanging fruit to make her argument, and as a result we read about culture war excesses from the right and the left which are all easy targets for a book on the politicization of history. Far more interesting would be to explore how ideology shapes the more credible or mainstream historical narratives that too often determine the fate of nations. How, for example, does the "city on a hill" narrative shape public policy in America? Or why has the United States for years been driven by the notion that capital and capital alone creates wealth? Instead, we hear, once again, about the Enola Gay controversy or about the usual suspects in ethnocentric history (though she seems to have a very broad and negative brushstroke when discussing ethnic history). So this is a book that will confirm the righteousness of all who are fed up with the obvious and well-known abuses of history. But we've all probably read the same arguments in magazines and op-ed pages. A more compelling book would ask tougher questions about the subtle and profound ways that history shapes history.

I enjoyed Ms MacMillan's work. 'Dangerous Games' is a concise, well-written application of 'How to Lie with Statistics' to today's political world. I wonder, though, if it draws valid conclusions. Another reviewer makes the observation that the intended audience is the non-historian. If that's the case, I feel the point of this work preaches to the choir and misses the real point of the lecture.

As has been stated a few times in these reviews, the fact that history is regularly and frequently co-opted/abused to further a particular agenda is not breaking news to either the historian or the non-professional historian who's otherwise interested in history. It may or may not be news for the non-historian who believes that Pearl Harbor led to America's involvement in Vietnam, but those people aren't reading this book anyway. Ms MacMillan uses the latter example rhetorically asking if such knowledge - or lack of - really makes a difference. She offers her opinion that it does. I have a hard time believing that's true.

The people co-opting history to make their partisan political case or otherwise further some agenda are well-versed in history. Their abuses typically utilize errors of omission (as Ms MacMillan states) rather than outright falsities, and are delivered forcefully with personal conviction. Communications experts say that effective communication is 80% context and 20% content, Fox and MSNBC make a lot of money with this formula. So, if a person improves his/her knowledge of history from Pearl Harbor = Vietnam to Pearl Harbor = WW2, does that really overcome a well-designed distortion of the record employed for ulterior motives? Of course, we can be more generous than that... I'd contend that the non-expert, not just the non-historian, will have difficulties under these circumstances.

So, to Ms MacMillan I'd ask, "Where are the historians when it comes time to debunk the abusers of history?" Expecting the unlearned masses to smarten up about history so that they're more difficult to dupe is not a solution - not a realistic solution, anyway. In the age of Twitter, even the soundbites are delivered in 140-character soundbites. Let's face it - in-depth, balanced pieces broadcast on PBS and CSPAN don't reach an audience of meaningful size, and that audience is probably already pretty well-read - more preaching to the choir.

If professional historians like Ms MacMillan really want to combat history abuse in pursuit of better voting decisions, etc., it's incumbent upon the community of experts to figure out how to address the News as Entertainment industry. Short of becoming an expert themselves, I don't believe the average Joe is equipped for the task or, frankly, wants to be up to the task, let alone the average Joe the Plumber.

Ms MacMillan's point is important. Are the people best qualified to do something with it getting the real point?

One of the reviewers observed the author gathers low-hanging fruit. In my view, this concept is true, but the "fruit" is not low-hanging, it is on the ground. The premise of the book, that history is something that can be used, abused, distorted, rewritten, etc., for one's own purposes, is so obvious to any mildly educated or experienced person, one wonders how that can actually be a revelation to anyone.
However, I was glad I read this book, but for reasons different than I think the book was written. I very much enjoyed the historical content, much of which I didn't know. But as Mark Twain said, "the problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know isn't so." I recognized the clever (or if not intended, the unconcious) way the writer repeatedly violates the same cautions against misusing history by "spinning" it herself. Some of her spinning is glaringly obvious to a novice, but one thing is crystal clear to anyone with some experience in critical analysis: The author politely but self-righteously rails against policy-makers making invalid analogies for their own purposes, but she herself announces her own views of tremendously complex events in history as gospel truth. Anyone who has read extensively about many of events knows there is voluminous scholarship disputing some of her "realities."
Another thing I found annoying about this work was how the author viewed opposing sides on a given issue (Japanese in WWII v Allies, Radical Islam v Civilized World, Stalinism v Free World, etc.) as morally equivalent. A series of believes or actions simply do not have intrinsic moral legitimacy, despite the New Age addiction to Social Darwinism. There are principles to which mankind, as a whole, does subscribe, and there are bad behaviors that should always be considered bad, and not relabelled to make room for them. Really, should female [...], honor-killing and genocide, to name only a few, stand even arguably acceptable in any culture at any time? Come on. Does anything outrage the author? Until we get to the utopia so many millions think is just around the corner, when the world graduates to that shining moment where there is no disagreement, no want, no poverty, no right no wrong, the value judgments define and should define who we are as a species.
The book attempts to legitimize history as a useful "science", but errs when the author goes a step further, by making unsubstatiated declarations, for example, that Ben Bernanke is uniquely qualified now to run the Federal Reserve, solely because he has studied and written extensively on the Great Depression. Making this leap of faith, in my view, is a most "dangerous game."
Despite these words, I recommend this book. It is well written, and certainly is grist for one who enjoys critical thinking. It reads pretty fast, like something thrown together from a lecture or lectures, which it was. It is not scholarship by any means, but again demonstrates Einstein's theory of relativity applies to the scientific world as it does historical interpretation. The ultimate message, that we should address history "with care", is trite and self-evident. In the interests of full disclosure, I must contrast this work with the author's "Paris 1919", which, for my money, is a stunning work of scholarship. After I finished it, I felt I deserved a couple of college credits!! Dangerous Games, however, is more of an essay, and an interesting one.

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Modern Library Chronicles)
Shortly after I had started reading Dangerous Games I was about ready to give up on it. It did not seem likely that there would be many fresh insights in it, just several near platitudes revolving around the general ideas that (1) history is constantly being rewritten, framed by contemporary events; and that (2) political leaders and others often create their own versions of it in order to serve their present goals.

Yet Margaret MacMillan eventually won me over because of how richly she supports her generalizations with a cosmopolitan array of examples. She draws mainly on world political history over the past century, although the roots trace much farther back in several cases. A sample follows, with just a few of her relevant examples noted in parentheses:
- Historical memories are malleable and often unreliable (British women's remembrances of the Raj in India).
- Nationalism is fueled in large part through constructed stories about a collective past (Serbs in the Balkans; Hindu nationalism in India).
- Nations and identity groups keep a sort of balance sheet scorecard of historical grievances and apply it to stoke current resentments (Armenians versus Turks; Israelis versus Palestinians; the Germans after Versailles).
- A rehash of painful history potentially can be ameliorative (the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission), but dwelling on past horrors can also detract from the ability to deal with the present (the Holocaust and slavery).
- Social and cultural group identity is a process, defined and redefined through time (several obvious examples, plus a few surprising ones, such as deaf activism).
- People tend to resist revisions that disturb their accepted versions of history (Native Americans and the "Kennewick Man" archeological findings; Italian Americans and Columbus; war veterans).

MacMillan addresses George Santayana's judgment that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." She believes it is overused, but that history does remind us of those situations that have caused trouble in the past. The challenge is to decide which lesson, if any, is most applicable, since history often carries conflicting messages. For instance, in MacMillan's opinion, American and British leaders looked to the wrong post-war occupations for lessons when they decided to invade Iraq in 2003. She thinks it would have been more instructive to consider the British occupation of Iraq itself in 1920, not the occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II.

MacMillan notes that history can "teach us humility, skepticism, and awareness of ourselves," that history can help us to think more clearly and avoid lazy generalizations, and that history can help us understand how others will behave and to set realistic expectations. However, she doesn't really develop these points and her focus remains chiefly on how political leaders or champions of causes use history to mobilize followers. I would have preferred more attention to how we can use history personally as individuals, but perhaps that is a different book, more than reasonably might fit into the 170 pages of this neat little Modern Library Chronicles edition.

This is a book on an important topic. But I can't see the book itself as important. In fact, it's a genuine disappointment.

The basic questions, as outlined in the chapter headings, are topical and well-chosen. That's why I awarded the book 2 stars. But I was underwhelmed by the actual discussions. A few particulars:

Chapter One, "The History Craze," in its entirety is borderline hysterical. After the Bellesiles scandal of a few years ago, in which academic historians made collective asses of themselves by falling head over heels for a particularly slick con-man, it is impossible to take seriously an argument that we peóns should just leave the study of history to the pros. Sorry, the pros have demonstrated that they're nowhere near good enough.

Throughout the book, I was annoyed by the use of current buzzwords, most of which are essentially meaningless and have no place in a serious or semi-serious work. Phrases and words such as "playing the race card," "neoconservatives," and the use of "right-wing" as, apparently, a synonym for everything the author dislikes, particularly fascism (and the equation of "fascism" and "right-wing," although common in some circles, is not a very sophisticated concept; if the author ever denigrated anything as "left-wing," I missed it). These poorly understood words and phrases don't aid the utilization of English as a tool for precise and unambiguous communication of ideas. Attempts to use words like "appeasment" in simplistic ways impede understanding of the history involved. On the plus side, I'll give credit where it's due; the author never uses the adjective "Manichean," a pompous label for a trivial concept.

Speaking of appeasement, a particularly bizarre example appears on page 159. "Talking to your enemies" is not appeasement, despite the book's implication; talking to your enemies is diplomacy. Caving to your enemies in the hope that they will later leave you alone is appeasement. But what the author too obviously wants is revealed in the next paragraph, a manufactured opportunity to blast off on one of her rants about the Spawn of the Devil himself, George W Bush. These poorly-argued attacks rapidly become tedious.

Far too often - several times in each chapter - the author descends into snark which would be embarrassing from a high-school student. Consider this gem from page 146 - "Today, we hear that the Western powers cannot interfere in the increasing chaos and misery of Zimbabwe because it would only rouse memories of colonialism among the population. It is a pity that such considerations were not taken into account when the United States went into Vietnam or, more recently, into Iraq." Equating the military and political situations of Zimbabwe with Vietnam or Iraq is, on many levels, simply absurd. And the claim that something wasn't taken into account is unsupported; the author offers wild guesses and simplistic surmises as history. And as history, it's worthless.

On page 153 we see a peculiarity. The paragraph is about how the dumb ol' American military wanted to forget the lessons about warfare it may have learned in Vietnam, to the point that a publisher turned down a book on counterinsurgency by a Marine colonel because it was an "interesting book, well written, but a subject nobody's interested in ..." This is bizarre. Any implication that willful forgetfulness is one of the US military's core values is going to need some justification. Is it possible that Prof MacMillan is unaware of the USMC's "Small Wars Operations" manual of 1935? This was written to codify experience gained during the "Banana Wars" and interventions in the Caribbean and Central America from the 1890s to the early '30s. It is hardly an obscure work. It was republished in 1940 as the "Small Wars Manual". This is not the only such American military manual, it just happens to be one I have, a reprint published by the Navy as NAVMC 2890.

So, I have to consider this a lightweight work on a heavyweight subject. It is, at least, easy to whip through. The format was obviously a series of lectures, a stultified format, but one which dynamic writers such as A.J.P Taylor have used successfully for informative and thought-provoking works of history.

In this series of lectures, here captured in book form, the author discusses the use of history by societies - more specifically the misuses. One of her biggest concerns is that the nation's best historians exist only on the periphery in describing the past, although some of that is due to their obscure approaches. History has become popular history which is seen in the frequent use of history to serve a nostalgia agenda - the attempt to paint an idyllic view of the past. In lieu of serious consideration of our past, pageantry and genealogy serve as superficial substitutes for serious history.

Of greater concern are the attempts to distort and cover-up the past to further political agendas, to justify actions. Surprisingly, the author really does not emphasize that social and political elites in any society have always tried to control perceptions of social realities - past and present; that control helps to maintain the very positions and power that they use to manipulate public awareness.

While the author acknowledges the practical uses of history, her analogy of an individual desiring to be knowledgeable about his past seems to make history optional. History is not simply nice information to have; history is a critical component of social intelligence. A society's inability to fully grasp the past will ensure that mistakes, or worse, will be repeated. Entire societies have literally disappeared from the planet because they have lived in an artificially constructed reality instead of incorporating an uncompromising look at the past.

Interspersed throughout the book are numerous cases where history has been misused. She briefly looks at Yugoslavian ethnic cleansing, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the German decimation of an entire community. In the U.S. the many issues surrounding the Civil War have been subjected to all manner of manipulation since our founding. But history is only a part of an overweening social philosophy. Historical facts without social ideas are not very useful. Some of the current crises in American society reflect the lack of a coherent idea of what our society is supposed to be and what that implies for policies, taking into account historical analysis.

The topic of the book is important, but the book seems patchy and incomplete. The failure to come to grips with our history and where we want to go as a society is a far bigger problem than the author suggests. The decades after 2010 may well stress American society more than at any point in our history - at least since the Civil War - due in part to inadequate historical and social thinking. It cannot be emphasized too much that social elites bear an immense responsibility in preventing social collapse. Their record is not necessarily all that good.

The authors interpretation of how history is used and abused in our culture and around the world in order to advance various causes didn't leave me with any particular insight. It was however, an interesting read full of common sense reminding readers to not take at face value the truthfulness of what we are taught, or told, by others. It seems everyone has an agenda, including historians. This one happens to be quite left of center.

MacMillan's book is a helpful and entertaining look at both positive and negative uses of history. Her thesis is that history is often much more complex than demagogues and national leaders assume, and that although history can be helpful in understanding the present, much caution is warranted. The scope of her work is extensive, ranging from the history of antiquity to current events such as the Iraq War. The variety in her examples of the uses of history effectively supports her thesis and is extremely applicable to the political challenges of the present. In addition, there are few historical sacred cows that she does not sacrifice - national, religious, and political entities are all critically evaluated in their usage of the claims of history.

In spite of these benefits, there are a number of philosophical objections that this reader has to her work. Implicit in her "correct" usage of history is the myth of unbiased historians, well consistent with the hubris of Western academia. Popular response of Australians to this misplaced academic secular moralism is casually dismissed as anti-intellectualism (p.115). One example of her faith in academia is the "likely" contradictions of Old Testament histories with select archaeological findings of the last century. She seems to expect that the billions of adherents of the monothiestic religions will gladly forsake their faith in the biblical record due to arguments from silence by a few skeptical academians.

Similarly, there is the absence of any moral imperative in her work, in spite of the reference to following one's values (p. 169). Although consistent with the thesis of her book, tarnishing the clear-cut moral superiority of the United States by an equal comparison with an aggressor such as Germany in the Second World War is exactly the sort of criticism that conservative Americans have against the academic community. Without denying American responsibility for acts such as the Japanese internment camps, one with a moral compass can say that there is a clear difference between these actions and the subjugation of the majority of the European continent and murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis. This sort of commentary is reflective of the broader Western academics' brand of postmodernist moral relativism where there is no metanarrative and no moral absolutes save relativism itself.