Somebody, somewhere, once famously quipped, “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” It’s hard to tell who actually said it. The quote has been attributed to everyone from Napolean and Voltaire to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I never said it – though I just wrote it – but I believe it holds a certain kernel of truth.
I say that even though I’m something of a history buff, and believe history is an important discipline that we ignore at our peril. But let’s face it – history can (and has) been molded to fit a certain narrative. Not history itself, because what happened happened, and you can’t unhappen it unless you live in some parallel universe where time can be shaped and shifted.
But the recording of history is a different matter. I’d be willing to bet that nearly every historian injects some kind of personal bias into how history should be interpreted, recorded, taught and ingested. It’s almost impossible not to. That’s why I’m a firm believer that all history should have a 360 point-of-view, seen through the eyes of everyone who existed during a certain period of time.
Right now I’m juggling a couple of history books. One teaches the very kind of history I learned as a student many decades ago. The other teaches the very kind of history I never learned as a student many decades ago. More on that later…
Usually, I’ll buy history books that zero in on specific time periods and regions of the world, such as the LBJ years in the United States, or the rise of communism in China. But every so often I’ll buy one of those condensed history books that sum up all the world’s history in a single volume.
I’m currently reading one of those books – “A Little History of the World,” by E.H. Gombrich, first published in 1985 but translated into English a couple of decades later. I started reading it a couple weeks ago and will probably have it finished in a couple weeks more.
Another history book I’m reading right now is “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” by Margot Lee Shetterly. “Hidden Figures” was a New York Times bestseller published in 2016 and later turned into an award-winning movie. I’ve been reading this book for more than a year, a few pages at a time. I pick it up during family reading time before the kids go to bed.
First, a brief synopsis of each….
“A Little History of the World” offers short chapters on important periods of history, from the first signs of life on earth to the Cold War of the late 20th century. There are 40 chapters in all, each written at a high school level, so younger readers will relate.
“Hidden Figures” takes place from roughly the 1930s through the 1960s, and is focused primarily on a part of eastern Virginia where scientists and mathematicians were charged with helping the United States develop aeronautical and space technologies during World War II and the period that followed. The initial goal was to help the U.S. and its allies win World War II, but then it evolved into helping the U.S. compete with the Soviet Union in space flight (and defense systems).
I would recommend both books. They’re decent reads with plenty of interesting information. Just as importantly, they see the world and its history through entirely different lenses, and could serve as Exhibit A and Exhibit B in the current debate over whose history should be taught, and why.
*****
“A Little History of the World” – which we will hereafter refer to as “A Little History” – sees the world through a very Eurocentric lens. Even though the book claims to offer a history of the “world,” the world that it sees largely excludes the Americas, Australia and the Pacific Rim, as well as most of Africa and Asia.
Of its 40 chapters, more than half – 22 – are predominantly concerned with Europe. Many early chapters are devoted to ancient civilizations in north Africa, the Middle East, and central and east Asia. There is one chapter devoted to Islam (partly focused on early conquests of non-Muslim lands in Europe), and another vaguely devoted to Buddhism.
Once the book moves past the birth of Jesus, it seems to believe that the “world” is essentially everything north of Africa, west of Asia, and east of the Atlantic Ocean.
After reading the first half of the book, I decided to glance ahead to see if it might widen its footprint beyond Europe. It really doesn’t. There is exactly one chapter devoted to the Americas, and that chapter is primarily concerned with the Americas through the eyes of European conquerors.
The title of the Americas chapter is “A New World,” which is problematic in itself. There was nothing “new” about North and South America when Columbus and other European explorers arrived. Humans had already been living there for at least 13,000 years. According to one team of researchers, the first inhabitants were the Clovis people, who migrated over a land bridge from Asia/Siberia to what is now Alaska around the year 11,000 B.C. Other researchers say humans arrived in North America 130,000 years ago.
Either way, this was not a “new” world. It was an old world that many historians ignore until the arrival of Europeans. “A Little History” does mention the Aztec empires of the Americas, but only in the context of their ultimate defeat by the Spanish. You find almost nothing on other indigenous peoples, even though they built great and wide civilizations across two huge continents.
I can’t remember reading anything in “A Little History” on central or southern Africa, or on east Asia outside of China. Or the early inhabitants of Australia. Or the Pacific rim islands, or the Caribbean.
This is a book whose idea of the “world” does not extend much beyond a tiny sliver of it. This is also a book that probably would have been taught in my schools when I was coming up. “World history” meant Europe, a sprinkling of Egypt, Persia, and China, and not much else. “American” history meant the USA, beginning with the first European settlers. Those were the two histories I and millions like me were taught.
It is no coincidence that “A Little History” was written by an art historian who was born in Vienna in 1909 and died in London 92 years later. From what I’ve been able to gather he never ventured much outside of Europe for any length of time. That’s no problem – lots of historians never venture much outside their homelands.
But I still can’t understand how this author – or his editors, or his publisher – could call a book “A Little History of the World” while leaving the vast majority of the world and its history out.
Actually, that’s not right: I can understand it: Seen through their eyes, the “world’ basically is and was Europe, with a sprinkling of Egypt, Persia, India and China. That was the world, or at least the only world that mattered.
I have lived more than six decades, and I still know nearly nothing about the histories of most of Africa and South America. And it’s not because I haven’t tried. I buy books like “A Little History of the World” – and similar volumes – thinking I will learn about all civilizations, not just a select few. What’s clear is that I’m buying the wrong books.
What’s also clear is that “Hidden Figures” is one of the right books.
*****
Did you know that African American women played a key role in developing what would eventually become NASA? I didn’t until a year or so ago, when our family saw the “Hidden Figures” movie on my wife’s recommendation. That inspired me to buy the book, which takes a much deeper dive into three women in particular: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson.
All were hired as human “computers” at Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, starting in the early 1940s. This was before the advent of electronic computers, when people were tasked with going through complex aeronautical calculations. Only the most gifted mathematicians could handle the work.
At the time, Virginia was an American South “Jim Crow” state where Black people lived as de-facto second-class citizens, forced by law and custom to live in separate communities from whites, attend separate schools, go to separate public restrooms, and drink from separate water fountains. It was U.S.-style apartheid, and Blacks might find themselves in front of a lynch mob for getting out of line.
From here, I’ll borrow from a Sparknotes summary of the book because I’m too lazy to summarize it myself:
These women play an integral role in the development of American aviation and space technology. They persevere in the face of discrimination against both their race and their gender. The first women are hired to work in an all-Black unit as human “computers,” performing calculations under the direction of engineers. Over the years, as Langley desegregates, the women join engineering teams and serve alongside white men. In the 1960s, they work on the Mercury and Apollo space programs, helping to put a man into orbit and then to put men on the Moon.
The main reason Vaughn, Jackson and Johnson were hired in the first place was because they were very skilled mathematicians – and the United States needed every hand on board with so many men being drafted into the armed forces during World War 2.
Black women might have been second-class citizens, but if they were expert mathematicians, they were suddenly recruited to help with the war effort – even if they had to use separate bathrooms at work.
I won’t go into too much more detail about the book. The women proved themselves to be dedicated, hardworking and valuable members of the Langley team. Whatever trepidation white co-workers and supervisors had in the beginning melted away when they found out how adept Vaughn, Jackson and Johnson were at their jobs.
*****
I was born during the early days of space exploration and the Cold War. Those two dynamics were a huge part of my childhood in terms of how the world was presented to younger eyes. NASA was a heroic organization, and astronauts were gods. Communism was the devil. We were in a battle of good vs. evil.
And yet I learned nothing about the mathematicians, engineers, and scientists who did all the work behind the scenes – and I certainly had no inkling that Black women played a vital role.
We should have been taught about these folks, and the contributions they made. Students of all colors and persuasions should have been taught that space exploration crossed over racial and gender lines. It would have given us a greater appreciation for the contributions of every person, every sector of society.
We would have known that the sanitized, Eurocentric history we were force-fed was, as they say, a fable agreed upon.
*****
On a final note….
One thing that strikes me while reading “Hidden Figures” is how dedicated people at Langley were to their work. They seemed to really enjoy going to the job every day, putting in long hours for moderate pay, and pulling together for a common cause. This was the case even among people who were oppressed the second they left the office. But they believed in their work, which means they also believed in the very country that oppressed them. Imagine that. I probably couldn’t have pulled it off.
Reading it almost makes me feel sad, or at least wistful.
From the vantage point of divisive, dysfunctional and cynical 2023, it warms the heart knowing there was actually a time when Americans from all segments of society were unified behind a common goal. It seems impossible that there was a time when an innate optimism pushed people to work together and dream big.
I wonder if we’ll ever get there again.
Vance Cariaga 