In an age deeply entangled in the cult of “now,” what place is there for “before?”
Allow me to paint you a picture.
On the slope of a grassy ridge, there is a man. He stands in the illumination of a windswept fire, unfaltering in a torrent of rain. This man is a king; the lion-crested sigil of his family and the golden mail beneath prove as much. The ground shakes beneath his feet as he cries, “Forward!” The five engines of siege thunder toward the tower amid a burning shower of arrows. These stone walls can’t protect the rebel lords for much longer; John will make sure of that.
Despite what you might assume, this isn’t a scene from Game of Thrones. This is a glimpse into the past, specifically the siege of Rochester Castle by the infamous King John in 1215.
John Lackland was in the midst of The First Barons’ War and intent on bringing down the Barons of England who had rebelled against him. By the end of the siege, the king had brought half of the 100-foot tower crashing to the earth by means of an underground tunnel, 40 pigs and one massive explosion.
Sometimes the true stories prove the most fantastic.
History is filled not only with battles and kings, but people. Real people who lived, loved, ate and worked. These people fascinate me. They may not have had Facebook drama or car trouble, but they worried about taxes, whether they could pay their rent and how to care for their family.
History is made up of people just like us who, by circumstance, were born into a world that we can only piece together with what clues they’ve left behind.
The detectives of the past are on the rise to meet the challenge.
After a serious decline of almost all undergraduate majors in favor of computer science in the 1970s-1980s, history is regaining popularity and importance in the lives and minds of our generation. In fact, the number of history majors in the U.S. is at an almost 40-year high, increasing by 50 percent in the last decade alone.
This may be in part because of our pop culture’s immensely successful focus on historically inspired entertainment. Some of the most popular shows and films in the last decade have fit snugly into that category, from Game of Thrones (largely based on the Wars of the Roses), to Spartacus, The Tudors, and The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien’s attempt at reinvigorating the Anglo-Saxon mythos).
Conversely, complaining high schoolers and indecisive university students have always asked, “Why bother with history when it lacks ‘real world’ application?” Many give up such pursuits in favor of an instantly gratifying degree-to-career major.
Here is why we bother with history:
In another time, not so long ago, people used a knowledge of history to demonstrate their superiority over the less educated. It was a parlor trick one would use at a party, and the purpose of its study was nearly forgotten in the pretension of higher learning. That school of thought has given over once more to that of the historian.
Mindless memorization of facts, while sometimes a necessary (if unappealing) aspect of the career, is secondary to real thinking and the drawing of conclusions.
We “ruminate” (as analysts call it) on the evidences of the past, and through that contemplation, we are able to ascertain who we are. It may seem counterintuitive to look elsewhere for introspective revelations, but the present and future, like the ripples in a pond, are direct consequences of the past.
How can we hope to predict what is to come without first understanding what has gone before?
