The Landscape of History: How Historians Map The Past
A summary and review of the book written by John Lewis Gaddis and notes to spark interest in reading it!
The study of history is so broad that it is easy to get lost. Before getting lost, doing history requires the use of specific methods to get a grasp of what history is about.
In his book, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map The Past (Oxford University Press: 2004), John Lewis Gaddis provides a framework that helps history beginners contemplate the historical landscape in which historians operate.
History Landscape
The book cover portrays the painting The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (Image below). This romantic painting is an analogy to how historians see history. Since not all historians took part in important historical events, they speculate what, how, and why things happened as they did. This speculation leaves the wanderer with an image full of fog because all he has is a representation of the event, not the actual one.
Even when participating in such events, we only have a memory of them. The present became the past so we cannot retrieve it whenever we want just like a recording. History is about portraying the past onto a landscape because the past is all we have.
From this moment, thinking about the past as a landscape is the first landmark or the first method that historians use to represent events.
Time Travel
Taking part in events that become history would mean that one understood them better than the one who did not take part. No, imagine a soldier fighting in WW2 or someone living during the Black Death pandemic. How can they even think about history when such catastrophes are happening right next to them? It turns out that the one who did not witness such events is in a better position to do history. The historian disposes of a wide landscape which gives him more time to think, as opposed to being in the present moment when different historical episodes were taking place.
Despite the benefits of speculating about historical events, there is an inherent limitation in being absent from them. One cannot fully experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the past, such as the smell or sound of the Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun used in The Spanish Civil War. However, it’s worth noting that the specific details of such events may not have a significant impact on historians’ understanding of history. Nevertheless, it would be fascinating to experience more of what occurred in the past.
Selectivity is the ability to select different periods by which the historian can travel through his time machine, a second method that historians use.
Counterfactual Reasoning
What if Hitler had not risen to power in 1933, or if Germany had won World War II? These are common questions that people ask when examining history. However, it is important to consider how to use counterfactuals effectively. For example, it would be inaccurate to assume that modern technology would have influenced Hitler’s decisions, as he did not have access to the same resources as we do today.
Using counterfactuals establishes causation chains which can be important to extend one’s imagination through time, manipulating one variable at a time. Manipulating multiple variables at a time might make the thinking process more entertaining, but it can become quite messy, so sticking to one variable at a time aids you in not going astray much.
Oil on canvas (1818), wikimedia public domain.
A bit too philosophical
In conclusion, this book may come to you more as a philosophical work about history, than actual history, which I think is a fair point. The author presents many metaphors, illustrations, examples to showcase how different people thought about things which were not necessarily historical. He gives examples of books like Orlando by Virginia Woolf and The Prince by Machiavelli to make analogies supporting his points.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the book is for history beginners because it does not overwhelm you with events, but rather it makes you think about history more philosophically which can help with further history readings. In other words, the book provides a framework to think about history.
Thinking about the past as a landscape, manipulating space and time and using counterfactuals are just a few methods presented in the book. Note, those are not the only ones, but I think for me they were the most memorable out of them all.
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