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Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Modern Library Chronicles) |  | Author: Margaret MacMillan
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
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Media: Hardcover
Pages: 208
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Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0679643583
Dewey Decimal Number: 901
EAN: 9780679643586
ASIN: 0679643583
Publication Date: July 7, 2009
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Product Description
Margaret MacMillan, an acclaimed historian and “great storyteller” (The New York Review of Books), explores here the many ways in which history–its values and dangers–affects us all, including how it is used and abused. The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 and Nixon and Mao reveals how a deeper engagement with history in our private lives and, more important, in the sphere of public debate can guide us to a richer, more enlightened existence, as individuals and nations. Alive with incident and figures both great and infamous, including Robespierre, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush, Dangerous Games explores why it is important to treat history with care.
History is used to justify religious movements and political campaigns alike. The manipulation of history is increasingly pervasive in today’s world. Dictators may suppress history because it undermines their ideas, agendas, or claims to absolute authority. Nationalists may tell false, one-sided, or misleading stories about the past. Political leaders might mobilize their people by telling lies. Adolf Hitler, for instance, blamed the Jews for Germany’s humiliation at Versailles and its defeat in World War I. It is imperative that we have an understanding of the past and avoid the all-too-common traps in thinking to which many fall prey–as MacMillan skillfully illuminates. This brilliantly reasoned work will compel us to examine history anew, including our own understanding of it, and our own closely held beliefs.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 21
 History "can vindicate us and judge us; and damn those who oppose us." July 20, 2009
S. McGee (New York, NY)
41 out of 43 found this review helpful
In this slim but important volume, historian Margaret MacMillan sets out to challenge those who use or misuse history for their own purposes. Few escape her glance, from the Chinese who cultivate a sense of victimization even now that they have risen to the status of economic superpower (and whose leaders cite a sign that never existed in Shanghai, denying entrance to a park to Chinese and dogs) to both Palestinians and Israelis, quarreling over the question of "who was here first" with reference to the lands now under Israeli authority.
MacMillan's two most recent works (one about the Versailles Treaty of 1919; the other about Nixon and Mao) have given her tremendous insight into the way history is used and abused in geopolitical and political conflicts around the world. Bad history, she writes, tells only parts of complex stories, is selective, misleading and can lead to the creation of national 'myths' that hold their own dangers. She uses examples to bolster every point, such as the Serbian myths surrounding the defeat of Prince Lazar, their national hero, by Ottoman Turks at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. In fact, MacMillan points out, Lazar was simply one Serb prince (not a national leader); while he was killed, the battle was widely viewed as a draw and even claimed by Serbs at the time as a victory; and far from marking the end of Serb independence, an independent Serbia remained for decades. The Orthodox church used Lazar's death to bolster the myth of a resistance to Turkish rule for centuries; in the 19th century, when that myth collided with the emergence of nationalism across Europe, the result was not only the bloody conflicts in the former Yugoslavia but also one of the triggering events of the still-bloodier World War I.
MacMillan's command of her facts, from the well known to the most obscure, make this a convincing and lively read. Still, she's treading on perilous ground by challenging such cherished myths and pointing out how historical facts have been distorted to support them. It doesn't matter that she's an equal-opportunity critic (Both Palestinians and Israelis get their share of criticism for manipulating the facts in the ongoing "who was here first" argument.) Her argument is straightforward and yet provocative: only by recognizing that the stories we may like to tell ourselves aren't always the true or complete ones do we have a chance to take advantage of what history has to teach us: that others have myths that they, too, cherish; that we can and should question our values and convictions from time to time, and that the result will be a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
"It can be dangerous to question the stories people tell about themselves because so much of our identity is both shaped by and bound up with our history," MacMillan writes. (Indeed, just take a look at Sacred Geography: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land for evidence.) That doesn't stop MacMillan from tackling a wide array of battles waged in the 'history wars' that have been just as hotly contested as those in the better-known 'culture war'.
The result is a valuable book for anyone who is interested in reading history and going beyond the 'what', 'who' and 'why' of the events that happened to broader questions. What history is written, by whom and for what purpose? What assumptions do historians make when they write? How are their works received by their audiences? Anyone intrigued by these questions will find much to mull over in this book. If your world view is black and white, rather than shades of grey, you may find less to admire.
Recommended for additional reading on a theme related to this: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History
The Muse of History August 12, 2009
George J. Heidemark (Sickerville,N.J.)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The proposed health care symbol resembles a swastika, angry citizens who protest against national health care are traitors, the debate over the war in Iraq. Who is right? Who is lying?Are any nations really a "city on a hill", a shining beacon to others? Can a knowledge of history help us understand and deal with the difficult times in which we live?Particularly in our present era, this slim and provocative book by Margaret McMillian deserves wide readership. Professor McMillian author of the magisterial Paris 1919 has written this short volume on how history has been used and abused throughout time by nations and leaders for various purposes. She paints on a wide canvas and she includes anecdotes that deal with Hitler and his use of nationalism, the Treaty of Versailles, World War 2, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and many others. She reminds us that history is shaped and written by humans with definite points of view and agendas. Although participants to historical events help us understand the past, it is up to historians to weigh all the evidence and try to come up with some understanding of the past. The author does a fine job of dealing with this particular topic when she deals with the controversy over exhibits in the U.S. and Canada that dealt with telling the story of bombing Axis cities in World War Two. She reminds us that "history is often a foreign country" and that it does not always give us easy answers.It often eludes easy comparisons and generalizations such as World War Two and The War on Terror are the same and Saddam Hussein was another Hitler.Even though historical analogies do not give us easy answers, history keeps us thinking, it teaches us humility and it sometimes give us a wider stage on which to do our thinking. This book does not yield simple lessons,it is complex and subtle like the fascinating subject that it examines.
Toying with history is a dangerous game May 25, 2010
Christopher Haynes (Canada)
There is a mass of bad history out there, sometimes recognisable by its sweeping generalisations. It is conventional wisdom that the Treaty of Versailles led directly to World War Two. However, this account overlooks the fact that treatment was not as severe as many Germans claimed at the time. Germany only paid a fraction of the bill, and Hitler cancelled it outright. The Weimar Republic government's mismanagement of its economy was far more damaging. Germany also had bad leaders, who thought they could control Hitler once he got into power. Hitler's ambition and fierce nationalism were much more influential on the outbreak of the second war.
The descendants of the allies of World War Two believe it was the last clearly, unambiguously good war-even though they were allied with one of the most murderous regimes in history. In North America, Churchill is remembered as the hero who soldiered on alone against Hitler, rather than the author of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of World War One. And the romantic past can remind citizens who do not know history very well why they should support current leaders. George Bush compared himself to Churchill (the great commander, not the Gallipoli guy) and Truman (the unpopular one whom history has vindicated nonetheless); Stalin compared himself to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, the iron-fisted rulers who made Russia strong; Saddam Hussein compared himself to Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria who fought crusaders; and Mao Zedong liked to draw parallels between himself and the Qin Emperor who united China after the Three Kingdoms Period. Analogies draw pretty pictures of ugly faces.
That leads us to ask, what is history for? Is it to know the truth? To learn lessons for our lives? To create a community? To create patriots? To legitimise current government policy? Or to understand how we got here?
Why is truth important in history? Because only then can we understand the present, understand ourselves and most importantly, understand others. That means a) why our group is no more moral than any other group, b) why others are angry with us, c) what we should do to make things right. If we do not learn, or at least seek out, the truth in history, we will write off everyone else's anger as irrational. We have given you so much and this is how you repay us? Without truth, or at least a consensus on what the truth is, we have only yelling.
Army regiments have official histories because they are unifying, but they are usually one sided or simplistic. Organisations and ethnic groups have their own heroes. We like heroes and we want our heroes to be pure, so we take inspiration in their good deeds, sometimes exaggerating or even inventing them to create a role model, and ignoring or painting out their faults. The public, and thus politicians, suggest huge honours for soldiers alive and dead, even though the veterans themselves are often non committal. Commemorating soldiers can be good for unity around values that politicians like: nationalism, war, duty, and so on.
History has taken the place of religion as our source of myth. Our group came before and will outlast us, and in a time where fewer believe in an afterlife, our group is a source of immortality. But if the essential features of history, context and causality, are absent, we can see history as an inevitable progression toward a glorious present or future for our group, when in truth it is much less clear. Please also see my book, Why Interculturalism Will Work, for a discussion of the futility of chasing our identity.
Politicians are quick to make apologies: the pope apologised for the Crusades, for instance; Bill Clinton for slavery; Tony Blair for the Irish potato famine. Apologies are easy. But how do any of them help things? Dwelling on past events like slavery and the Holocaust can make it harder for us to deal with the here and now.
We usually see history through the lens of the present. After the imperialist Suez campaign of 1956, WW2 became seen as the time when all British came together and fought off evil. They felt nostalgia and pride. Churchill's account of WW2 suggested that the war cabinet was unanimous that Britain must fight on alone. However, the historical account shows that there were long debates in the cabinet, sometimes exploring how to avoid war. A similar debate went on in the American administration over dropping the atom bomb on Japan. When historians began to show that the allies were not always united, and made some morally questionable moves, they were attacked in the press. The US Air Force itself even took offence. Many critics, some who never even read the books they were attacking, said that the historians could not possibly know what happened because they were not there. Margaret Macmillan was even told that, as a woman, what could she know about military affairs anyway?
"Being there does not necessarily give greater insight into events," writes Macmillan; "indeed, sometimes the opposite is true." Memory is highly flawed. We think we remember but our memory is often very inaccurate. It is selective and malleable, not set in stone, not recoverable. As Primo Levy, a prominent scholar of the Holocaust, said with a sigh after interviewing Holocaust victims, when a memory is evoked too often, it becomes set in stone, stereotyped, adorned and embellished. And collective memory is stronger because it lasts longer, adorned and embellished over generations. Some nations date their nationhood, or their great win that unified them and expanded their land, or their great defeat since when they have always struggled to regain their land, back hundreds or thousands of years.
The rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1990s saw the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya by Hindu nationalists who claimed it had been built on the birthplace of the god Rama. More than 2000 people were killed in subsequent riots around the country. In part of a drive to peg India as a strictly Hindu nation, whose worthwhile accomplishments were all made by Hindus, those who destroyed the mosque declared they would destroy more Muslim buildings around India. Of course, believing that one's civilisation could ever be one pure religion, ethnicity or culture is nonsense: civilisations, societies, cultures and nations are very fluid constructs, as any balanced reading of history can tell us. But the communal violence India has suffered since Ayodhya is testament to the power of historic myth.
One factor that made the Cold War so dangerous was that neither side understood the other. Cold War policymakers paid little attention to the lessons they could learn from history about the other sides. US governments took the USSR's threats and revolutionary utterances at face value, and the Soviet and Chinese communists believed that the capitalists were willing to go to war in their imperialist quest for wealth. American experts on China predicted the Sino-Soviet Split but were drowned out by Soviet-watchers and hardliners, who said that Mao was under Stalin's control even after 1961. Russian and Chinese governments believed (and still do) that Western talk of human rights is a mere excuse to meddle in those countries' internal affairs. "If you do not know the history of another people, you will not understand their values, their fears, and their hopes, or how they are likely to react to something you do.
"There is another way of getting things wrong," continues Macmillan, "and that is to assume that other peoples are just like you." Robert Macnamara worked hard after retiring from the US State Department to understand what went wrong in Vietnam. He believed that Americans pasted a portrait of themselves on Vietnam, believing they saw a thirst for freedom akin to the American experience. American officials also thought they could escalate the bombing campaign and raise the pain on the North Vietnamese to force them into a cost benefit analysis that would lead them to conclude it was time to throw in the towel. If they had looked more carefully at the war the Vietnamese fought against the French, they may have realised the determination of the Vietnamese independence movement. They failed to understand the culture and the politics of Vietnam and the personalities of its leaders. The US government has still not learned history very well, as evidenced in George Bush's uses of the word "crusade" to refer to his manichean foreign policy, his lumping together of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and his administration's belief that Iraqis would welcome the foreign powers as liberators.
History can show us who made different, better decisions. President Barack is in a similar situation to that of Nixon contemplating the war in Vietnam. Nixon opened relations with America's enemy, China, which helped him manage Vietnam and the USSR. Barack might be wise to do the same with his Maoist China, Iran. Cooperation with Iran could mean help in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than hindrance of America's efforts. (Please see my post on why Iran is the bad guy.) Ah, but of course, we should be learning not from Nixon in Nam but from Munich and the foolish Neville Chamberlain.
Talk of appeasement and Munich is bandied about as if to mean one should never talk to one's enemies. Disregarding the fact that it was not at all clear what else Chamberlain should have done in 1938, the assumption behind allusions to Munich seems to be that everyone other than us knows only the language of force. It is necessary to treat the claims made in history's name with skepticism, or leaders will use it to bolster claims about the present. Saddam was likened to Adolf, and we all know how to deal with Adolf. George Bush and American neoconservatives have invoked Munich as a clear signal that we should not talk to but isolate or even attack Iran and Syria. But are Iran and Syria Nazi Germany? Is talking to their leaders a sign of weakness? The Munich analogy has been applied liberally since World War Two: Anthony Eden used it to justify a disastrous episode of gunboat diplomacy in 1956, for example.
We must learn to be thorough and think critically about history, to avoid believing the lies about history and its lessons, or we will be doomed to repeat it.
A Cautionary Tale August 19, 2009
A reader
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This Modern Library work should be read sedulously and placed on the desk next to your computer, the one which will surf the blogosphere. I suspect the author and the Modern Library board were motivated to offer this book by the "history craze" she discusses. Further, that "craze" is probably rooted in the use of "historical" validation by the modern journalists expounding perceived truths on the internet. She reveals this subtly in her fear that the "professional" historians' participation in the exercise is a much diminished role from what it used to be. This book argues the oft-repeated MSM fear that poorly filtered commentary as fact is dangerous to the body politic. And who can disagree?
However, as good as this book is and will be for future historical study, one might draw conclusions from it, which are far from those of Ms. MacMillan. History is important. It molds our institutional arrangements and becomes a major part of the story within which we live. And, as she notes, it belongs to all of us. I conclude the same but add: yes, with or without the assist of "professional" historians. History is too important to be centralized. From this work, one can reasonably argue against public school history, clearly an example of monopolized history teaching--- not a good thing. That (playing on her words) is history for the "comfort" of the Reich. Chapters four and five (history as identity and nationalism), combined with public/monopoly school history teaching, should give pause to every parent. History is always a work in progress, awaiting the next falsification of a cemented fact; revisionism in continuum; a story incomplete; moreover, "the unpredictable past".
Chapters 6 & 7 (History's Bill and History Wars) support the above, arguing against the Manichean notion of good and evil. The impulsive scramble for group identity leads to out-groups, the hyphenated putative victims who seek recompense, and the losers of wars whose histories will be told merely to highlight that it was more than the enemy conquered; it was evil. I suppose this human need predates Gilgamesh and the Old Testament.
Dr. Pangloss says: things turned out pretty much as well as they could have. MacMillan adds: maybe not. Scipio Africanus lives as Sherman marches to the sea. With total war justified and Orwell's admonitions ignored, we create a term, "collateral damage", to calm our consciences and accept the story. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, when you're fighting "evil". Thus, a tolerant nod to Henry Ford's: "History is bunk".
She concludes with Chapter 8 (History as a guide). It is the choice of the word "guide" that was significant to me, for she seems to admit what history is not. It is not a natural/physical science. It is a "social" science, which begs that one approach it with priors/theories in place, in order to make any sense of it. It is open to all students to synthesize past events: Shelby Foote, a novelist; Bruce Catton, a journalist; Tom DiLorenzo, an economist; Eric Foner, a historian; and the likes of Tom Woods, a multi-disciplined truth seeker. Counter-intuitively, this book, (thin in paper, thick in ideas) argues that history should not be left to the historians. I note here that one of my favorite history reads, historical fiction, is cogently and consistently provided by Gore Vidal, a Modern Library board member, a student of life with obvious "priors".
Buy this book, it's a gift that will keep on giving, humbly I'm sure.
What Can We Learn From History? December 28, 2009
M. G. Moore (Elk Grove, CA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's a slim volume, packed with references to people (mostly men), places (mostly far away) and events (mostly misunderstood) of the past. For example, Qin Shi Huangdi strides across page 17 along with Saladin, Churchill, the Shah of Iran and Peter the Great in something like a great male leaders parade.
Bundled together, however, Dangerous Games serves as a cautionary tale for the present. Originally published in 2008, one gets the sense that MacMillan was writing this in the waning days of the Bush Administration as progressive vindication on Bush Era flaws, while simultaneously maintaining that we need to learn from history in order to prepare for the future. Despite the forward-looking approach, it seems as though every chapter is peppered with disdainful overt and covert remarks about George W. Bush: when Bush compared himself to Winston Churchill; when Bush attempted to market himself as a cowboy of the freewheeling western frontier; when Bush, in a 2006 speech to the graduating class at West Point, compared himself to President Truman. Perhaps most of the disdain is due to MacMillan's citizenship: she's Canadian and she possesses a distinctly Canadian perspective on her country's neighbor (and that neighbor's leader) to the south.
Despite the bias and the agenda, MacMillan has some valuable points to make. And she does so with clarity and order. Chapter titles suggest main points, which then are carried to poignant conclusions. For example, Chapter 1 is entitled "The History Craze" in which she promptly rides roughshod over people (along with governments and institutions) who pose as historians without actually being professional historians, and the danger that causes when faux historians produce believable but inaccurate histories of important events. Perhaps the best example of this is Hollywood's penchant for writing out inconvenient aspects of, say, the Trojan War, Cleopatra's choices or Henry VIII's love life. Perhaps more insidious than simple inaccuracies are the stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood, which are believed by "middle" America in the absence of actual contact with Other. In either event, MacMillan would like to see professional historians not abdicate history to commercial and governmental interests just because mainstream society has a craze for it.
Chapter 2 earns the moniker "History for Comfort," as MacMillan explains "why history can be at once so reassuring and so appealing" (15). Her answer: because history "can offer simplicity when the present seems bewildering and chaotic" (15) and because history "can also be an escape from the present" (16). In short, people use history like they use wine or video games: because it tastes good and offers a respite from the daily grind. It is the 21st century's opiate for the masses. Along with acting like a medicant, history "help[s] us with our values at least in part because we no longer trust the authorities of today" (19). Don't trust President Obama? Then call on historical references to Hitler to prove your anti-Obama position.
But along with history as comfort, MacMillan suggests that history can also cause discomfort, when, for example, it "highlight[s] our mistakes by reminding us of those who, at other times, faced similar problems but who made different, perhaps better, decisions" (22). President Nixon in his overtures to Mao Zedong as a method for getting the United States out of Vietnam serves as a prime example, largely in contrast to President Bush, who refused to interact with his esteemed enemies on any level and for any reason. Hence the rhetorical question: "if Nixon were president today, would he be going to Tehran for help in getting the United States out of Iraq?" (22). Of course, the problem with using diplomatic successes by President Nixon is that he is generally viewed as a political phariah and no credibility is established by invoking his name. Thus the idea behind the question remains unanswered and rhetorical.
MacMillan returns to the problem of armchair historians in Chapter 3, entitled "Who Owns the Past?" when she claims that "much of the history that the public reads and enjoys is written by amateur historians" (36), who by logical extension don't write history well. Another way to say it is that amateur historians write bad history. And the problem with this is that "bad history tells only part of complex stories . . . [and] makes sweepting generalizations for which there is not adequate evidence and ignores awkward facts that do not fit" (36). The example MacMillan uses is contentious. Indeed, I know well respected colleagues who parade this history before unsuspecting college students: "that the Treaty of Versailles, made between the Allies and Germany at the end of World War I, was so foolish and vindictive that it led inevitably to World War II" (36). This, according to MacMillan, is bad history. Rather she asserts that this explanation of events "overlooked a few considerations. Germany had lost the war, and its treatment was never as severe as many Germans claimed and many British and Americans came to believe. Reparations were a burden but never as great as they seemed. Germany paid a fraction of the bill, and when Hitler came to power, he canceled it outright. If Germany in the 1920s had financial problems," MacMillan asserts, "it was largely due to the fiscal policies of the German government" (36-37).
"Bad history" such as the previous example, "ignores such nuances in favor of tales that belong to morality plays but do not help us to consider the past in all its complexity. The lessons such [bad] history teaches are too simple or simply wrong" (37). This, then, becomes the crux of the chapter: historians "must do [their] best to raise the public awareness of the past in all its richness and complexity" (37). Furthermore, by invoking the ideas of British historian Michael Howard, MacMillan claims that "the proper role for historians . . . is to challenge and even explode national myths" (39) by not shying away from "blunt histories" (41). Such histories challenge our ideas about great leaders and the swirl of events in which those leaders were caught up. President Kennedy took drugs for a little-known illness. Does this suggest that knowing Kennedy's drug use causes his great decisions to become a little less great and his poor decisions to become a little less poor? No. Rather the "blunt history" is a "complex picture [which] is more satisfying for adults than a simplistic one" (43). And recognizing that "we can still have heroes . . . but we have to accept that in history, as in our own lives, very little is absolutely black or absolutely white" (43). It's the lack of clear lines, the absence of clean demarcations between good and bad, right and wrong that make some folks uncomfortable. Yet, that's just what the historian is called upon to do: shake peoples' beliefs and thereby shake their identities.
In Chapter 4, MacMillan takes up the issue of history and its relationship with identity when she asserts that "for those who do not have power or who feel that they do not have enough [power], history can be a way of protesting against their marginalization, or against trends or ideas they do not like" (53). This is where the power of myth becomes insidious. The stories school children are taught about Columbus' voyages or Paul Revere's famous ride are well known, and are beginning to be addressed in mainstream society. The undercurrents for these myths, however, are less well understood. These undercurrents, what MacMillan identifies as "the imagined community" (58), serve as host to nationalists, among other marginalized groups. And imagined communities seem to lead in a straight line toward ideologies. The groups who maintain ideologies work to show how "past, present and future all become comprehensible" (63) through neatly packaged stories known as "closed systems": about origins, about present circumstances of marginalization, and about future consequences of that marginalization. According to MacMillan, "logic and reason do not enter into closed systems of viewing the world" (64). Just as birthers today reject reasonable attempts to validate President Obama's birth in Hawaii (two different newspapers printed birth announcements in August 1961, for example), people with an ideological closed system mindset refuse to accept empirical evidence if that evidence refutes their worldview. In many regards, a closed system view allows an individual or a collection of individuals to escape responsibility for past choices and actions. It's convenient, easy, simple. Yet, history and its uses is more resilient than this. "History that challenges comfortable assumptions about a group is painful, but it is, as Michael Howard said, a mark of maturity" (71). In short, history is necessary for a democracy like ours as it lumbers into middle age.
MacMillan goes on about the relationships between history and nationalism, history and war, and history and its costs, and along the way one gets the impression that MacMillan is simultaneously captivated by and horrified by the ways in which history has been used. Yet she always returns to the idea that history is important, needs professionals to tend it like a garden, and is a primary mechanism for a society's knowledge of itself. She argues in her conclusion that "a citizenry that cannot begin to put the present into context, that has so little knowledge of the past, can too easily be fed stories by those who claim to speak with the knowledge of history and its lessons" (165). That those who don't know history are exploited by those who choose to abuse it. Simple answers about current situations are never truly packaged in neat little closed system boxes. Indeed, if someone peddles events in that context, it should serve as a warning rather than foster a reality. Instead, MacMillan encourages the reader to consider history from the long view: "History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process" (167). This, then, is how the story cycles back to the beginning, not in a closed system but in a process of concentric rings of revelation about past events. Rather than take the long view of events, President Bush abused history and the historical amnesia of the American people by railroading them into a costly, tragic and unnecessary war in Iraq. Poignantly, this is the dangerous game for our generation.
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