Do Historians Have a Death Wish?
Let me suggest why--first by a reference to oil; second, by way of what I would call a new Catch 22. Based upon what petroleum geologists know (not just believe) from such disciplines as paleogeography and stratigraphy, the world's supplies of easily producible oil (what can be economically delivered from the earth) will be virtually exhausted in less than 50 years! Now, you tell me, with the world's peoples at present numbering 6.1 billion (but probably at 8 billion by 2050), and consuming, as they now are, in the"neighborhood" of 30 billion barrels of oil per year, how are world economies (all intensively industrialized with a heavy dependence on crude for energy) going to survive to the year 2050, when, according to L. F. Ivanhoe (an authority with 50 years experience in the oil business) makes clear what is inevitable--specifically, by 2050 the whole earth will only be able to deliver 5 billion barrels of oil?
Answer this next--what will the estimated one billion motor vehicles of the year 2050 be running on by that time--water? They will have to, if that were possible, because there will most certainly not be enough gasoline (distilled primarily, as it must be, from oil) available to meet the demand. Converting to hydrogen for power might well solve the problem, but we are moving so slowly on the technologies for hydrogen-powered cars, which will all demand for their use and upkeep, new infrastructures for fueling and maintenance, not to mention the training of technicians (none of which exist as yet, except in the embryonic stage), that I very much doubt a worldwide"energy crunch" can be averted much beyond another 15 or 20 years.
Now, I ask you--what, if anything are historians (or university presses for that matter) going to do about any of this? The answer would appear to be nothing (a case in point, for the two academic years 2000-2002 I offered a lecture topic"Are We Running Out of Oil?" on the program of Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lectureship Series; yet, for that two-year period I received not one invitation to speak on the theme from any college/university in this country--" case closed"). The question raised above and observation combine to bring me to what I would denominate as the new Catch 22 by and for historians, which has been gathering force (I would say) for the last several decades, and might well be traced back to the so-called"scientific history" of the late nineteenth century.
For it would appear to me if we continue for much longer down the road of"scientific history," whatever that means these days (or ever did), the field of history in this country, if not in the wider world, is going the way of the dinosaur. May I offer the proof with a few solid facts? The first one concerns an e-mail I received not too long ago from a friend and former mentor at Miami University of Ohio, where I gained my doctorate (1976). He informed me that a monograph, published for him with several excellent reviews, had as yet sold no more than 400 copies! To which I want to add (and surely other historians reading this know much the same thing) monographs, issued by university presses in this nation seldom sell more than 800 copies (mainly to libraries, which it is also common knowledge, have been cutting back their orders in recent years).
What is the problem here? My answer is the new Catch 22 by and for historians. It works like this--write for a limited (increasingly"insular") audience of academics, primarily made up of those in one's own narrowly-defined specialty, in order to"get ahead" professionally; don't then (by any means) write what (heaven forbid!) would be characterized as"popular" in nature, that would appeal (not bore to death) a wider audience, for fear your colleagues (and the majority, it would appear to me, of university presses too), would"look down their collective noses" at your work, as not serious history! Or, let us say, shun the popular author, as if he or she had leprosy, because telling a good story.
What is even more alarming, if that be possible, professional historians know they are"on the wrong track." What follows is the proof! David Thelen,"The Practice of American History," in the Journal of American History (December 1994), gives the results of a survey of"1,047 JAH readers" and what they had to say regarding the historical profession. I want to use here only one finding. By a margin of 79.7 percent to 3.9 percent, American historians agreed history should amount to telling a good story. Even foreign respondents ("under the influence" more of"scientific history") thought the same (more or less) at 56 percent to 13 percent. Now, surely almost every historian reading this essay of mine, recalling as well my statement of the new Catch 22, would have to admit, very few practitioners of our discipline are making much, if any effort, to tell a good story. Most have long since been seduced by the siren call of"scientific history," however defined, often (if not usually) boring to read, even to"insiders." In fact, if we, as professional historians, continue on this"tack" for much longer, I really believe the perfect book, the perfect article, will one day be written--that is, no one will ever read one or the other, except the author, along with perhaps a few"insiders," none of whom (besides the author, I suppose) will find of much interest.
If what I have presented thus far, does not suggest (even prove), we, as professional historians, are heading the way of the dinosaur, in a word more to"extinction," ponder the following, along with the final question at the end, which refers back to Freud. When the National History Standards, developed initially from the offices of the National Center for History in the Schools, funded in 1988 through the National Endowment for the Humanities, with headquarters at UCLA, then elaborated by many others across the country, came before the U. S. Senate, those standards were tabled (never to be considered again by either chamber of Congress), by a resolution of 99 to one (January 1995). Now, you the reader tell me (and honestly) is not the historical profession of this country in deep trouble, if, as was true in this instance, the National History Standards, which were intended as guides both for instruction and curricular development, could get but ONE vote for adoption, from our Congress (the Senate anyway), representing the entire country? Could it be then, as Freud thought, and as here applied to historians, we all have a"death instinct"?
SOURCES
Catherine Reef, Sigmund Freud: Pioneer of the Mind (New York: Clarion Books, 2001), p. 106.
L. F. Ivanhoe,"Updated Hubbert Curves Analyze World Oil supply," World Oil 217 (March 1996):91-94.