AHA Bicentennial Project in World History: Proposal

The American Historical Association should organize a bicentennial project in world his­tory in order to articulate a global, integrated history of humanity. The agenda for this ambitious project defines a cooperative scholarly effort designed to culminate in the year 2084—200 years from the Association’s founding and just under ten decades  from the present.

Leading up to the bicentennial point, the AHA should organize and observe a se­quence of decennial stages beginning in 1994. The culmination of each decade will mark significant advances in a new, synthetic, and exciting form of historical scholarship and teaching. If the AHA were to adopt this proposal, it would seize intellectual and scholarly leadership in a sweeping enter­prise. The AHA could bring together the most stimulating aspects of historical re­search and scholarship now fostered by its eighty or more affiliated societies. The annu­al meeting would become a forum for the most important historical scholarship direct­ed at the common history of humankind.

If the AHA were to adopt this proposal, it would seize intellectual and scholarly leadership in a sweeping enterprise.

At present the AHA does not really shape American or world historical leadership. In­ stead the AHA, like many of its fellow societ­ies, carries out those essential, laudable, but rather staid activities that further the inter­ests of the historical profession in the United States. Developing professional standards, monitoring freedom of access to archives, offering an employment and job placement service are vital functions, but they do not speak to the core of the historian’s intellectual world. The annual meeting showcases some of the best historical research in its varied panels, but far from a majority of the membership bother to attend. Excellent as it is, the revived American Historical Review pri­marily reacts to submissions instead of setting agendas.

New forms of scholarship more often sig­nal their appearance in the meetings and journals of the affiliate bodies. Creative ad­vances in scholarship are often confined within the spatial, temporal, and thematic boundaries favored by  the  membership. Even those historians actively doing world history are encapsulated within their own subordinate society. Under its current approach, the AHA does little to foster that broad-gauge synthesis and comparative anal­ysis essential to serious study of human his­ tory on a global scale.

If properly planned and systematically ex­ecuted, such a long-term project could over­come many of the obstacles that now obstruct our view of world history. We need to build a coherent trans-national global history of hu­mankind. We have to push aside the walls of national history or those that divide devel­oped versus underdeveloped societies, East versus West, North versus South. We must oscillate between detailed monographic stud­ies and larger scale, world-regional, and global synthesis. We must alternate between ravines that separate our intractable notions of antiquity, medieval, early modern, and modern worlds should be a primary goal. Part of this effort can be devoted to the question of long-term continuities versus the role of surprise in human affairs. We should better integrate evidence from written docu­ments, oral tradition, and material remains to flesh out our local and global perspectives. Advances in archaeology, numismatics, folk­ lore, and linguistics, among others, cannot be ignored. But above all, as Carl Degler has recently suggested in the AHR, we must balance our national historical memory as Americans with a greater memory forming a new identity as human beings sharing a com­mon history on a fragile earth.

How might these lofty goals be accom­plished or approached? Obviously they can­ not be accomplished immediately; rather this is an audacious proposal for a hundred-year project. Obviously not with the limited fund­ing now at the Association’s disposal, but rather with outside funds that can be raised for this purpose. The only requirements are a serious long-term organizational commit­ment, and considerable energy, imagination, and leadership. These latter qualities are not lacking in the membership of the Associa­tion. Mobilizing this talent for such an ex­traordinary effort is another matter.

What are the possible products of this new scholarship? Over the years, the AHA could sponsor a series of synthetic studies in world history. Among the trans-national themes that come to mind are: the history of the steppe and the chariot; the history of slavery; the global history of the internal combustion engine; the history of indentured labor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the history of adolescence. These should be writ­ ten for the specialist and nonspecialist alike and made available in translation at modest prices worldwide. These volumes might be delineated by a continuing series of stock­ taking, state-of-the-art workshops devoted to trans-national topics.

The AHA could sponsor an electronic historical atlas to be digitized and placed in machine-readable form. This could be up­dated and continuously augmented. Various forms of global data such as that found in compendia of historical statistics can be put into electronic form as well.

The AHA could encourage systematic his­ torical research by teams of scholars working to well-defined protocols. This could be part of an effort to rethink our traditional ap­ proach to handicraft history of the sort now in favor.

Some effort could be devoted to writing future histories in which we postulate a range of outcomes for the state of the world in 2084. Groups of scholars would be charged with writing plausible narrative accounts to reach these end points. A sample of this type of effort can be found in Uno Svedin and Britt Aniansson, Suprising Futures: Noted from an International Workshop on Long-term World Development (Stockholm: Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research, Re­port 87:1, 1987).

Another historical series might be national histories written by historians who are not members of the society under scrutiny. This could be called the De Tocqueville series.

Finally, the AHA could conduct a project aimed at studying the qualities necessary for successful thinking in historical terms—proc­ess, chronological sequence, cause, and ef­fect. Contrary to popular belief among his­torians these are not abilities shared by all. Such a project might mesh with a renewed look at the effects of varying cultures and languages in historical thought.

Much of this work would be compatible with the emerging national and international human sciences initiative designed in tandem with the International Geosphere Biosphere (IGBP). Historians have much to offer in the tabulation and assessment of the effects of human action on the world’s biogeochemical cycles. Predictions for future human re­sponses to global change will rest on assump­tions made about such human behavior in the past. It is far better that historians be involved in interpreting that behavior along with social, biological, and physical scientists. The American Historical Association is in a unique position to nurture a new history of humanity. We have resources and talent available that are unequalled elsewhere in the world. We can attract the cooperation and perhaps the enthusiasm of bodies of historians in other countries. Our academic freedom and civil liberties, as well as our own traditions, make it possible for the first time to construct a common history of the world.