What is History and can it end?

This was originally intended to be my EPQ, but I abandoned this project in favour of an in depth study into the 6th century Arab Conquests.  While this essay is incomplete, it infuses elements of African history, historical philosophy, and historiography into a single essay.

Throughout the ages, history’s properties have been fiercely contested; for some it is a scalar quality; a structureless sequence of events occurring without direction or purpose. Yet for others, such as Hegel, it is a vector force progressing towards a golden Messianic Age of universal peace and prosperity.  Yet for others it is simply an advancement towards the long-anticipated apocalypse.  With varying interpretations of what constitutes history, there are also varying interpretations of where it ends.  To answer this enduring question one must start by defining history, an elusive concept in spite of the endeavours of such luminaries as Hegel, Aristotle and Marx.  Once defined, history’s logical endpoint becomes apparent. 

There is a widely spread belief that history is composed of a ‘backbone’ of indisputable historical facts, and all histories are written as differing interpretations of these concrete truths.  This ‘backbone of history’ includes details such as that the Battle of Kosovo was fought in 1389.  Yet, a historian is not principally concerned with these facts.  It is important to know that the great battle was fought in 1389, and not in 1391 or 1384, and that it was fought at Kosovo Field and not in Bilcea or Dubravnica.  Yet, in the words of Housman, the great English classical scholar, ‘accuracy is a duty, not a virtue’.  Such accuracy is the foremost expectation of a historian, they simply must get dates and statistics right.  Praising a historian for their accuracy is akin to praising an architect for taking gravity into account when designing a skyscraper.  In the world of historiography, the phrase ‘facts speak for themselves’, is fundamentally wrong.  The facts lack volition, and only speak when called upon by the historian.  We only know that the Battle of Kosovo was fought in 1389 because historians regard it as a significant event worth enshrining in the pages of history. The crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar is no less a historical fact than the millions of other crossings, due to the fact that all occurred in the past.  Yet these other crossings interest nobody, and have been confined to oblivion by historians.  A historian is therefore necessarily selective. This belief in a spine of entirely objective historical facts beyond the interpretation of historians is completely false.

If these facts are subjective, than what separates the facts of history from events that once occurred?         In Ancient and even aspects of Medieval History, all records of bygone events are a series of accepted judgements, and all else suggesting the contrary has been lost to the mists of time.  The entirety of what can be known of the civilisation, omitting the possible implications that can be made by archaeology, is found within a limited number of volumes.  This is not because the historians of the age were particularly diligent and succeeded in recording the details of every occurrence in their societies.  This has happened because the history of 5^th Century BC Greece was written by a tiny group of Athenians, and therefore written based on their agendas, which determined which facts were worth preserving and which facts were convenient to discard into the ‘dustbin of history’.  As a consequence, all the available accounts of this period are from this perspective because we hardly know anything about the perspective of a Spartan, Theban or even an Athenian women. 

The foremost effect on the integrity of the historical record are the motives of those who write it.  A history is never written altruistically.  It is always written for somebody.  The ease of which the past can be skewed simply for the convenience of the group of people presiding over its transcription is startling.  For example, in Iranshar, where the adherents to Zoroastrian first began transcribing the Mathra – the word of God – the question of where the Prophet Zoroaster had received it emerged.  This riddle was not easy to solve, as almost every province of Iranshar laid claim to the honour of being Zoroaster’s birthplace.  However, the most ancient and reliable sources, dated to an era in which the Persians’ forefathers were nomads living on the Central Asian Steppes, and definitively placed the elusive location in the realm of the Hephthalites, a nomadic people who acted as a constant antagonist on Persia’s Eastern frontier.  The real location was therefore beyond the pale.  To spare the Zoroastrian Church from embarrassment, its leaders assertively endorsed a very different biography of the Prophet.  Zoroaster, they declared, had actually been born in the city of Media in the age of the Kayanids.  They also alleged that it was a Kayanid King who offered him asylum and served his embryonic religion as its ‘arm and support’.  The Sahansah at the time of transcription was Peroz, who had motives to identify himself with the Kayanids in order to legitimise his hold of the Persian throne.  Therefore, the Church, supported by its royal patron rewrote history according to contemporary geopolitics and their own agendas despite the complete absence of evidence to support their new biography of Zoroaster, which was now enshrined as the definitive truth while the older, genuine accounts were consigned to the void of time.

The most sinister example illustrating the effect of prejudices and agendas on the record of history is the racially motivated suppression of Africa’s role in world history.  Even Georg Hegel, whose revolutionary concepts I have frequently cited, held a false view on African History, a view born out of centuries of deception and racial hatred, a view still held by Oxford professors of History as late as the 1960s.  In a lecture in 1831, he stated that Africa was of no significance to the course of world history until it was colonised by Europeans.   Hugh Trevor-Roper, Professor of History of Modern History at the University of Oxford, echoed this view in 1963, despite the indisputable evidence of the significant role the continent has played in shaping Human History.  Of all the numerous African empires and innovations, nothing displays this sinister prejudice in the course of history more than Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was an African state, its location is African, inhabitants were African and much of its affairs were with other African civilisations.  Academics holding discriminatory views against Africans such as Hegel did not discredit the Ancient Egyptians, but believed that it was not an African civilisation, and that its people were European in origin and appearance.

This view is not only false, but is intentionally racist.  The root of this perception is the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in the 17th century, at the height of transatlantic slavery.   The French invasion force rediscovered the ruins of Egyptian civilisation.  This immediately caused problems as the economy of Napoleonic France was based on racialised slavery, which was justified by the pseudo-scientific concept that the 'negro race' was inherently inferior to Caucasians.  The discovery of the Pyramids and other structures showed that ancient North Eastern African civilisation was far superior to that of Europe's at the time, where most lived in squalor.  Imagery and statues clearly showed that they were built by people regarded by the French as 'Negros', a people considered as unintelligent and uncivilised.  This huge discovery directly challenged 'negro' inferiority, and therefore slavery and the French economy itself.

French academics reacted to the discovery in very different ways; some intellectuals recorded the discovery without obscuring the facts with racist bias. Professor Amelineau, an Egyptologist who translated and published Coptic texts stated; 'Egyptian civilisation is not aesiatic but African in origin, of negro origin, however paradoxical this may seem.  We are not accustomed to endow black or related races with too much intelligence'.  Although Amileau felt inclined to racially abuse the Ancient Egyptians, he acknowledged their ethnicity.  His understanding came directly from previously untranslated texts and from the unexcavated tombs of the First Dynasty Pharaohs.  Amelineau's claim corresponded with the firsthand accounts of Greek historians.  For example, Herodotus, the father of history, visited Egypt around 450BC, during the 27th Dynasty.  In the Second volume of Histories , he frequently notes the appearance of the native Egyptians he encountered on his voyage down the Nile, for example he states that the Egyptians were 'black with heat' and he was able to identify an Egyptian Oracle because she was 'black'.  When referring to the Colchians, people living in Southern Russia, believed to be of Egyptian descent, Herodotus was able to affirm the Egyptian belief that the Colchians were descended from the Army of Sesosrris; 'As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with wooly hair'.

However, many of the 167 French academics on the expedition held a belief in racial higherachy; a 'negroid' civilisation can not be highly advanced because members of the 'negroid' race were inferior to those of the 'Caucasoid' race. They could not dispute the intricacy and advancement of Egyptian civilisation, but due to their belief in racial higherachy, the only possible explanation was that Egypt was of European origin, and that it could not be African because the 'negroid' race were incapable of such incredible feats of engineering as the Pyramids.  This viewpoint has obscured the truth of Ancient Egypt, as the Napoleonic scholars Europeanised the Ancient Egyptians, inventing their ethnicity based on the false notion of ethnic superiority.  To obscure this glaring contradiction, scholars classified the Ancient Egyptians as ‘Hamites’, a subgroup of the Caucasian Race, which also encompassed non-Semitic populations such as the Berbers.  According to the pseudo-science of the day, this ‘Hamitic Race’ was superior to the ‘Negroid’ populations of Africa.  This ‘race’ was invented in complete absence of any biological basis, and was derived from the Biblical tale of Ham, the Son of Noah.  His offspring were allegedly ‘cursed with blackness’. Hamites were identified by unsystematic features, that do not suffice to characterise a race of people, such as thin noses or straight hair.  These were believed to be definitive evidence of their purported descent from Europeans.  Works such as those of CG Seligman, depicted Hamites as pastoralists, bringing new customs, languages, technologies and administrative skills wit them to the ‘darkness’ of Africa.  This popularly accepted theory credited 'Hamites' with all evidence of African civilisation.

In addition to the eyewitness accounts of Greek historians, the concept of a European Egypt was challenged by artefacts in which the Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as Africans.  This is one possible explanation of the mysterious missing noses of Egyptian statues; to give more credibility to a European Egypt, early Egyptologists defaced sculptures to hide the damming African characteristics that they displayed.  However, Intact statues of Pharaohs such as Narmer, founder of the First Dynasty and Djoser, builder of the Step Pyramid clearly show a 'negro' complexion.  Furthermore, tomb paintings show that the Egyptians were unconfused about their own ethnicity.  One such example is the 'Portrait of the Races', a painting found in the tomb of Ramases II. This artwork shows how the Egyptians saw themselves.  The artwork depicts four races; Europeans, Semites (people from the Middle East), Egyptians and Nubians.  As well as clearly distinguishing Egyptians from Europeans, it portrays Egyptians in the same likeness as the Nubians, who are widely accepted as being a 'negro' civilisation, with the only difference being their clothing.   

In spite of all this evidence, early Egyptologists dismissed claims of a black Egypt.  For example, Francois Champillion, translator of the Rosetta Stone, comments on Volney's (a scholar and author of The Ruins of Empires) assertion; 'He (Volney) concludes that the Ancient Egyptians were true 'Negros' of the same species of all indigenous Africans - To support his opinion, Volney invokes that of Herodotus, who apropos the Colchians recalls that the Egyptians had black skin and wooly hair.  Yet these two physical qualities alone do not suffice to characterise the negro race and Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the Ancient Egyptians is evidently forced and inadmissible'.  This statement aptly demonstrates the contradictory nature of the 'evidence' for a Caucasian Egypt; according to pseudo-science, 'black skin and wooly hair' defined the 'negro race', marked an individual as fundamentally inferior and condemned them to a lifetime of slavery.  I can not cite a more paradoxical and poignant example of the discerning nature of history, which is entirely derived from historians. 

Even today, Egypt is depicted as a European civilisation.  For example, a scientific reconstruction of Tutankhamun’s skull carried out by National Geographic in 2015 caused controversy as it depicted the Pharaoh as an Anglo Saxon.  A second reconstruction on the same skull conducted by British scientists yielded a 'negroid' complexion.  Although CT data can reconstruct the shape of Tutankhamun's skull to a high degree of accuracy, it gives no indication to characteristics such as skin tone and hair colour, therefore the artist selected a shade based on 'an average shade of modern Egyptians'.  The inaccuracy of this decision cannot be overstated; the modern Egyptians do not represent the Ancient Egyptians as intermarriage between different ethnic groups after immigration and various invasions considerably altered the appearance of the Egyptians.  The artist chose to ignore copious amounts of paintings and carvings from Tutankhamun’s own time; these images depicted the King in two colours: bright red (In Ancient Egyptian and Nubian art, A symbolic colour to represent men) or jet black.  Based on all available evidence, the artist should not take the complexion of modern Egyptians into account, but simply decide whether Tutankhamun was bright red or jet black.  Although this may seem an insignificant error, National Geographic's esteemed reputation and wide audience means that the eurocentrism in Egyptology, stemming directly from the racist conquers of Ottoman Egypt is reinforced in the modern era, therefore diminishing our acknowledgement of the scope of Africa's contribution to the human story. 

This bigoted account of Ancient Egypt demonstrates that history is not an objective quality, it is skewed by the viewpoints of the historian and, and the conventions of the era they exist in, making it a deeply subjective quantity.  George Orwell, the acclaimed writer and journalist aptly summarises this in his dystopian novel ‘1984’; ‘who controls the present controls the past’[1].  All groups and classes construct histories for themselves, in a manner that one might write an autobiography[2].  The working class will perceive the same past very differently to the bourgeoisie, for example.  A historian also shares this bias, even subconsciously.  When they practice histography, they devise a thesis, and collate traces of the past that lend credence to this notion. The French soldiers promoted images of the interbred Copts, who’s complexion was altered by generations of interbreeding with various waves of immigrants, but omit images of ‘negroes’, which did not support their thesis of a European Egypt.  A history is never written altruistically. History is always written for someone.  In this example, history was written by the French invaders to sustain slavery and was obscured by prejudice.  A historian also has pressures acting on them when constructing this narrative that were not exerted on their subjects in the past, such the deadline of the research, the market of the history (A depiction of the Haitian Revolution will be vastly different for European school children and an Afrocentric Caribbean student) or even domestic pressure about work-social life balance[3]. As the past is inaccessible, the facticity of history is flawed as there is no faultless account to verify all created histories by, only the work of other historians who are also compromised by the limitations of society and perception, thus widening the yawning chasm[4] between the past and history.  My definition of history is therefore an ever shifting narrative constructed of aspects of the past selected by present-minded workers, according to the inherent agendas of their psyche, social standing, ideological positioning and their period of time.   

Based on this definition, the course of history has a very simplistic endpoint, quite simply the extinction of historians. Yet there is an enduring concept that history is the story of mankind socio-culturally growing and developing, until we reach our evolutionary endpoint. Thinkers such as Fukyama, the socio-political scientist envisions the universalism of liberal democracy as this mythical system. He has likened it to the persistent scientific method in terms of its resilience to catastrophes[5]; Fukyama cannot foresee any disaster that would lead to man totally forgetting the scientific method, as future scientists will rediscover the fundamental concepts of science, and subsequently the scientific method.  He argues that democracy is entwined with fiscal prosperity as a state would have to accept some form of Capitalism to revel in affluence.  The protection of private property, which is central to Capitalist wealth creation, means that adoption of Capitalism would invariably heighten demand for individual rights, and subsequently democracy.  Fukyama uses this argument to assert that democracy is the height of human socio-economic development, and although there may be fluctuations – the overthrow of democracies and their replacement by authoritarian regimes, these are entirely temporary and democracy will always return, just as there is no alternative to the scientific method[6].  Based on this logic, all events that take place after the worldwide establishment of liberal democracy will be insignificant, as none can reshape the system of government[7]. According to Fukyama, the democratisation of the world will mark the end of history, as human socio-cultural development has peaked.  However, in reality this will not comprise the end of history as all means of government are inherently defective, and consequently the states of the Earth will be in constant upheaval due to the flaws of both democratic and autocratic government.

Due to the composition of the human psyche, no form of government will ever completely satisfy its subjects, and inevitable discontent will consistently lead to the fall of the established order.  Autocratic systems of government, such as monarchies or dictatorships do not fulfil the fundamental human desire for recognition, as established by Hegel.  They feel detached from the ruling regime, because they are recognised as statistics and not as individual human beings, as they lack an active role in administrating their nation.  This desire can be temporarily supressed if a dictatorial government has a popularly recognised right to rule[8], such as the Mandate of Heaven, or a pledge by the ruling military regime to rebuild the economy before ceding control to representatives of the people. A benevolent sovereign may appear as an exception to this rule, if he recognises his subjects by allowing them to revel in prosperity by distributing the state’s wealth. Lord Acton’s overly quoted phrase ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ aptly applies in this instance, as even a compassionate monarch will eventually become a despot because of the mechanism keeping them in power.  A regime is only able exercise control over the population if it commands the support of powerful groups in society, like the military, oligarchs and the police force.  This support is generally gained through bribes and other financial concessions, as the dictator’s inner circle is motivated purely by self-interest, rather than altruistic intentions.  They will therefore remove the current figurehead from power if another can provide them with more wealth, even if it means their populace lives in squalor[9]. Disillusionment with the fraudulent administration emanates from the integral corruption and distance of such a relationship between ruler and subjects.  Autocracies will successively be brought down by the Hegelian concept of recognition.

Liberal democracy may appear to be the only system of government to be compatible with desire for recognition (A truly Communist society is omitted because it is only a concept).  However, the peace, equality and tolerance present in a modern liberal democracy, its very attributes capable of felling a despot are also its fundamental weaknesses.  Democracies tend to settle disputes through diplomacy rather than war, yet a long period of peace will not strengthen the system, but will rather critically weaken it.   Hobbes acknowledges this notion, believing that man exists in a state of ‘perpetual war of every man against his neighbour’.  This inherent desire to wage a ‘war of every one against every one’[10], means that man’s nature is diametrically opposed to the freedom of a liberal state, as the need to fight will undermine liberalism’s foundations of peace and liberty.  Hegel applied this phenomenon to society and was accused of being a militarist, despite never glorifying the realities of war[11].  He simply acknowledged the transformation of men’s lives as a result of having fought for something much greater than   themselves, and the impact this will have on their appreciation and conviction of the virtues of democracy[12].  In ‘The end of history and the last man’, Fukyama n                                                            oted that ‘A liberal democracy that could fight a short and decisive war every generation or so to defend its own liberty and independence would be far healthier and more satisfied than one that experienced nothing but continuous peace’[13].  This statement is true because it is embedded within our consciousness to struggle for a just cause. In a world ‘filled up’[14] with liberal democracies, where there is no explicitly righteous cause such as a tyrant to overthrow, the people will struggle out of a boredom, and due to, megalothymia[15] - a term coined by Francis Fukyama, to build on Plato’s belief of a region of the soul that drives the tyrannical ambition to be control others.  A democracy does not give any effective outlets for this primitive desire for dominion, only metaphorical battles such as business deals being likened to robberies, or the thrill of extreme sports can attempt to replace armed struggle as an outlet to this aspect of the human condition[16].  Such psychology was the driving force behind futile uprisings such as the French Evenements of 1968.  In this revolt, students temporarily took over Paris and brought down General Charles de Gaulle, yet they lacked a reason to demonstrate; they were privileged members of a free and prosperous society[17].  It was the very prosperity and freedom that they rebelled against, as it omitted vital struggle and sacrifice from their existence, and although they had vague fragments of ideologies like Maoism, they lacked a coherent vision of an improved French society[18].  This inevitable occurrence, combined with institutionalised corruption will bring about democracy’s downfall.

The strength of Fukyama’s assertion of the connection between capitalism, democracy and liberalism, the cornerstone of his argument has been shattered by the global economic downturn.  In the wake of the ‘credit crunch’, it is evident that prosperity is not the product of laissez-faire principles, or by the unstoppable extension of economic liberty.  However, as recognised by Thomas Picketty, free markets have widened the disparity between rich and poor, and have reduced wages throughout the world[19].  In the countries worst affected by the recession – such as Greece and Hungary – voters have spurned the liberalism that Fukyama believed they would embrace with open arms.  Throughout the West, economic interventionism, nationalism, and even overt racism has exerted a greater allure to those casting their votes than the causes of freedom, deregulation, and equality before the law.  Fukyama’s Liberal capitalist democracy has not triumphed.  Conversely, the deficiencies of capitalism have turned democracy against liberalism. 

Due to these flaws of despotism and democracy, history cannot end with the establishment of a flawless system of government, as attractive as this quasi-religious concept appears. The course of history will be an inconclusive alternation between tyranny and liberty.  The events of this turbulent cycle will be recorded and archived as history, and as there is no climax to this cycle of governments, the events of each upheaval are equally important.  Recent developments have demonstrated that Francis Fukyama’s ‘end of history’ is a false concept, based on the aura of hope that emanated from the fall of Communism.  For a brief moment, when the Berlin wall tumbled and China’s Communist Party embraced the free market – it was possible to envisage a world order congregating on principles of Liberal democracy.  However, the three pivotal figures of the today’s world order are Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, they all hark back to a time of historic nationalism or to an imperial past.  All speak a 19^th Century language of Great Power interests that predates the post war dispensation[20]. 

Rather than the conclusion of a linear process of socio-cultural development, history will quite simply end with the absence of human historians to construct an account of the past, from the traces left behind by the occurrences of events.   Time is a continuous process. It has no comprehensible endpoint, yet as I have previously cited, there is a fundamental disparity between time and its partial portrayal by histography.  The distinguishing factor is the presence of historians to select the aspects of the past worth recording as history.  The existence of history is also entwined with the presence of humans to access sources.  Therefore, history will quite simply climax with the annihilation of the human race.   

There are many theories of the nature of the catastrophe that will destroy both humanity and its interdependent history, ranging from the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok to the Earth being consumed by the bloated sun in about five billion years.  It is impossible to determine the nature of the calamity, and to a certain extent it is irrelevant, as it is impossible for the entirety of Armageddon to be transcribed as history.  Although time will endure, history is a distinct quality and as it is interwoven with humanity - it is a narrative about the past.  Even in the theoretical implementation of Fukyama’s impossible universalism of liberal democracy, it will not comprise the termination of history; events will still occur and they will continue to be recorded until inevitable devastation renders humankind unable to practise historiography.

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[1] Orwell, G; ‘1984’; (London; Secker and Warburg ‘49) pg44

[2] Jenkins, K; ‘Rethinking History’; (New York; Routledge Classics, ’91) pg22

[3] Jenkins, K; ‘Rethinking History’; (New York; Routledge Classics, ’91) pg27

[4] Ibid pg23

[5] Fukyama, F; ‘The end of History and the Last Man’; (New York; Free Press, ’92) pg72

[6] Ibid pg xiii

[7] Ibid pg45

[8] Fukyama, F; ‘The End of History and the Last man’; (New York; Free Press, ’92) pg16

[9] Bueno De Mesquita, B; ‘The Dictator’s Handbook’; (New York; Penguin Random House, ’11) pg17

[10] Hobbes, T; ‘Leviathan’; (New York; Penguin Books, 1981) pg128

[11] Fukyama, F; ‘The End of History and the Last Man’; (New York; Free Press, ’92) pg329

[12] Ibid pg330

[13] Fukyama, F; ‘The End of History and the Last Man’; (New York; Free Press, ’92) pg329

[14] Ibid; pg330

[15] Ibid pg182

[16] Ibid pg329

[17] Ibid pg330

[18] Ibid pg330

[19] Piketty, T; ‘Capital In the Twenty First Century’; (Cambridge Massachusetts; Belknap  Press 2013) pg256

[20] ‘The gloom gets worse for Davos Man’; (Sunday Telegraph, London) 15.1.17 pgs 6-7