Why Study History? | 5 Minute Video

Is it important to study history? Why do we need to know what’s come before us? Isn’t it enough to just “live in the moment?” Renowned historian Victor Davis Hanson explores these important questions.

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Script:

Why study history?

Ironically, this question is as old as history. 

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Thucydides, the great chronicler of the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta, and the man many call the “first historian” said that “…I have written my work, not…to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”

Thucydides hoped that what he was writing would help future generations understand what transpired in his day. If they could learn from it and make better decisions, his efforts would not be in vain.  

More than two millennia later, the American social thinker George Santayana said much the same thing, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

But while knowledge of the past is a prerequisite to wisdom, it doesn’t give the historian a crystal ball. 

We must be modest in our claims: studying history provides an invaluable guide—but only a guide—to current and future political, economic, military, and cultural challenges.

Just as it is dangerous to be ignorant of past events, so too it is equally risky to assume that history across time and space will repeat itself in exactly the same fashion. It never does.

Still, with the proper caution, studying history can warn us of dangers ahead. 

For example, across the ages appeasing or ignoring enemies has rarely proven to be a prudent strategy. Usually, it’s disastrous. 

The Greek city-states’ coddling of the Macedonian king Philip II, the weak Western democracies’ reaction to the aggression of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, and the indifference shown to the dangers of radical Islam by an affluent West in the 1990s make the point. 

There is another—perhaps less recognized—value in studying history.

Every generation, none more than our own, suffers from a pernicious presentism—the arrogance that those now alive have created the most prosperous period in history. The result is that too often we judge a materially poorer past by the same contemporary standards of an affluent and leisured present. 

Those who study history can avoid these fallacies.

Aside from the fact that the present is the beneficiary of the accumulated intellectual, moral, and scientific contributions of the past, proper knowledge of the hardships of prior ages teaches us the value of humility.

To take just one possible example, it might be an easy thing to chronicle what seems to us prejudices recorded among the wagoneers on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. It is quite another to imagine how the trailblazers struggled to survive one more day in an age without effective medicines, labor-saving machines, or adequate shelter.

Studying history also confers much needed perspective. 

It’s neither fair nor wise to attempt to apply the moral standards of today to say, the far more deadly 17th century when life, in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The COVID-19 pandemic seems to many like a public health crisis without precedent—until we take time to learn of the global outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus in 1918. The “Spanish flu” killed nearly 600,000 Americans in a nation of 100 million, with a worldwide toll of perhaps 50 million dead—and yet our nation and planet survived and learned from it.

One of the ways that I used to endure the tedium, dust, and noise of tractor driving was to remember that my farming grandfather covered the same ground with a team of horses. It took him two days of back breaking labor to cultivate four acres of land. I could do it in an hour—sitting down.

[xredrumx]

“History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” – Mark Twain

[jeremygwoods]

In school, it wasn't so exciting (except I had a few teachers who made it fun), but now I realize that, if you don't learn history, you will fall into the same traps others did centuries (or just years) before.

[thorbeorn]

History is by far the most interesting thing to read about. I do it daily and I'm just a history buff. What I get the most from it is appreciation. I might think sometimes I have it bad, but oh boy do I not.

[joenewton]

People often think they can not learn anything from the past. We think that we are so enlightened because of our technology . What could we possibly learn from the past? We can learn a lot about human nature. That is one thing that never changes. I for one like to read about disasters both domestically and abroad and read how our citizens in that time reacted to that situation.

[periechontology]

"The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.” -William Faulkner.

[Rocdog]

Learning history is essential. To know where you were going you have to know where you came from. As a person as a family as a society. We need to understand why other major civilizations in history fell and not make those same mistakes.

[oldarpanet]

When, at 60 yrs old, I contemplated seeking an on-line degree, I thought: What to study? I didn't want a trade, as in Medicine, Law or Engineering...I was "old" and I was not seeking a career.
I thought: study History. History of anything, or History in general. After all, History is anything (and everything) that happened before NOW. Wait, NOW. No, NOW! History is everything that has happened before now, whenever NOW is.
As much as we'd like to think, we, as people, haven't changed much over time. (I mean, people have changed over evolutionary time spans, but, since we began writing about our selves, not much time has passed and we haven't changed that much. So, learning from Ancient Greeks IS learning about ourselves, now. Learning from Romans IS learning about ourselves...

[freethebirds]

My husband and I had this conversation this morning. Our conclusion: "Those who learn from history are doomed to lose at the ballot box and be tyrannized by those who do not learn from history."

[charleneblack]

My friends & family admonish me for teaching my (homeschooled) 2nd & 3rd graders history "they shouldn't learn until middle school". I feel history is as important as math & reading, so I'm teaching as much as possible, asap.

[greg]

Such succinct and cogent thoughts shared here. I love the short punchiness of these short essays. Very persuasive and effective with a general population that has little time and even less attention capacity. Well done.

[michaelleblanc]

There is an old maxim that states something to the effect - The farther you go back in time the farther you can see into the future.

[bosse]

"The only thing we learn from history; is that we do not learn from history."
- Pat Buchanan

[nathanhalder]

I'm a history major (future high school teacher) and this is a beautiful articulation of why I love my field so much.

[joshuawells]

I am a history major about to get my BA in May. They had a guest lecturer come and give a brief presentation on this subject ever seemingly every year. And I often quote the old saying that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, while those who do are doomed to live with those who don't.

[patrickc]

One of my favorite contemporary conservatives.
History is extremely important as people are reminded of the journeys they took to get to where they are today, as well as learning not to make the same mistakes we made in the past.

[lhaley]

My family didn't have money but we had lots of books. My father fought in ww2 and had many books of that era. My whole family reads everyday about everything. We are a balanced family in politics and beliefs.

[chrisramsey]

I literally took a break from reading a history of the Norman Conquest to watch this. Very apt indeed. VHD is awesome.

[robinj.]

The way I heard it was:
"Those who refuse to learn the lessons of History are doomed to repeat them!"
I accept this as an axiom.

[rubywingo]

It’s called education! Knowledge is power! My father strongly encouraged us to know our history.

[abiseniyya]

Studying history is not reading one source once and memorizing it. Studying history is a lifetime process. Keep questioning. Be open minded to new findings. Try different perspective. Put your conclusion to the test by peer review.