Big history back on the shelves

A recent article in Foreign Affairs by Yale historian Paul Kennedy reviews three books in the "world history" genre. The first book is by William Bernstein called A Splendid Exchange, which discusses on how trade and politico-military power have coincided "from ancient Sumer to the present day", but with a focus on classical antiquity and the Renaissance era. The second book, The Great Experiment by Strobe Talbott, is a kind of diplomatic history-cum-memoir which comes off quite nicely, at least according to Kennedy. The last is Days of Empire by Amy Chua, a up-and-coming law professor (or is she already there?) at Yale University. It's a classic chronology about "the rise and fall of empires", strung together around the thesis that a policy of inclusiveness, which she calls 'toleration' is a (the?) key to maintaining empires. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that our era of uncertainty engenders the publication of big-canvass books. As Kennedy says, "In an age of sound bites and the awful daily vision of human beings chattering into their cell phones as they hustle down the street, it is deeply satisfying that a small number of people still take the time to ponder and make connections between events over centuries."

On the same topic of Israeli history, here's an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the premier US periodical on academic life, on the difficulties of engaging in historiographical research among Israeli historians. One of the things it highlights is how historical facts can continue to remain contested, even in the face of credible documentary or other evidence. On such sensitive topics, will it ever be possible to actually arrive at an unbiased position on issues? How can historians ever distance themselves enough from their political inclinations, or, even more importantly, avoid being pushed in one corner or another on the basis of alleged political agendas? Any thoughts on these issues are more than welcome...

Israel at sixty: a time to celebrate or to commemorate?

In the coming days, world leaders will be descending into Ben-Gurion airport to assist in some formal celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. Understandably, the event is receiving quite a bit of attention in the newspapers and elsewhere. Yet while the general consensus today is that Israel is economically the most developed and sophisticated country in the region, many worry whether the country as such will continue to exist ten, twenty, fifty years down the line. While the most obvious reasons for such anxiety may be the threat of a regional war or perhaps even a nuclear attack, it seems that the most important factor -and possibly the key to a peace settlement- concerns shifts in the demographic composition of the inhabitants of historical Palestine (Gaza + Israel + West Bank). As the Financial Times suggests in an article, if the objective is to maintain the Jewish character of the country, the two-state solution appears the only viable one, and continuing the illegal building of settlements in the West Bank will therefore be only to the detriment of Israel in the long run.

The sixty-year anniversary is also of course the occasion to remember the circumstances in which the country was born and what became of it thereafter. This is the subject of a new book called 1948 - A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by historian Benny Morris, which was recently reviewed in the New York Times. Not nearly enough is known about this important episode in the twentieth century, and if ever myths needed to be busted on any topic, the 1948 war is probably it. Here's a quote: “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.” This is none other than David Ben-Gurion, expressing a sentiment that is too rarely heard today, even in the Western media. In the past, many have tried to justify the founding of the jewish state in 1948 and/or even excused the atrocities perpetrated in the process (which Palestinians call the Nakba) by making reference to the Holocaust. Ghastly and unprecedented as that event was, it is hard to see why the inhabitants of Palestine had to pay the price for that. This is what Ben-Gurion meant, and it's become a question that has remained as nagging today as it was in 1948. According to this week's Economist, there are however solutions for a persecuted people, of which many live in exile and are treated in most of their host countries as less than full citizens (I am talking about the Palestinians today). Without a comprehensive peace deal, a one-off solution for the "right to return" issue seems nevertheless highly unlikely.