People

There is no doubt in my mind that the most important thing to impress on any student of history is that history is always about people. Repeat the phrase like a mantra, as many times as it takes to penetrate deep into your subconciousness: “History is always about people”. And you could add that people matter too.

For me it demonstrates why history is such an important subject, well worth our time, and it helps us to write good history. No matter the level we are at: Year Six or post-graduate studies, if we don’t appreciate that what we are studying is people, their lives, their hopes, their fears, then our grasp of history is weak.

I am going to use statistics to prove my point: unemployment statistics and statistics of war casualties. Now you might think that statistics are as far removed from people’s lives as you can get, but you would be wrong! Where might you come across examples of these two types of statistics in your studies? I have taught the effects of the Great Depression in America and in Weimar Germany at IGCSE level. And I have taught about casualties in WW1, the Vietnam War, the Iran-Iraq War and the First Gulf War too. And much the same at IB Diploma level, though I would have to take out the Iran-Iraq War and the First Gulf War but I would add the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War and WW2. I could also add the victims of the Nazi’s Holocaust, Stalin’s purges and Mao’s, Cultural Revolution. So I know something about statistics in history! And I would point out that in all these examples, the people being considered are all measured in their millions!

Now I have tried going back to find this quote and failed, but I am sure it was Eric Hobsbawm (a wonderful historian who someday you should read) who said that unemployment might be an economic statistic but it is a social experience. That really had an effect on me and made me think. Unemployment means a whole lot of worry, sleepless nights, a feeling of failure (no matter how much you might be a helpless victim). It may mean your farm or business, or your home, taken away from you; it may mean that you are evicted unceremoniously. You may be a husband or a wife, and a father or a mother. Your family are victims of your “failure” too. That’s not going to make you feel any better. You are forced to live with your in-laws (that’s not great either). More pressures, more tension. Husbands and wives argue, fall out, maybe divorce. That’s unemployment and it sucks.

What about casualty figures? If we can accept that most deaths in battle are those of young men, this means the loss of a son, perhaps a husband, and perhaps a father. So, as with unemployment, it is not just the numbers presented in the statistics that we should think about but the chain of others whose lives

have been changed forever. It will mean the loss of a wage, it will mean a family has become a single-parent family with all the hardships that can entail. For WW1 and WW2 it meant a generation of young single women destined to find it harder to find love and happiness in marriage: there were simply fewer single young men around! But modern warfare, of course, has brought war to civilian populations too. Bombs destroy lives as well as buildings, whilst civil wars (as they always have been) are fought in amongst the people.

But “casualties” often include those severely injured as well as those killed. Men who may never work again, who will carry the psychological scars of their injuries as well as the physical disability with them for the rest of their lives: the loss of a limb, blindness, lungs poisoned or burned. Or psychological trauma in its own right. After WW1 we called it shell shock.

Now this is a pretty miserable and depressing piece to read but in my defence, history does focus on the bad times much more than it does on mankind’s triumphs (look at your curriculum). And it is a history of all those lives that we are studying. For me, we only live once and to live through a major depression or a war, and to be directly affected, must be an awful experience. I have thankfully never had to, and I hope you don’t have to, but please think about those human lives in your study of history who have. It will make you a better historian and, more importantly, a better human being.

“History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” “History is always about people.” Keep repeating!