Notes on History and the Twenty-First Century
or Progress and History in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Shuttle

17 April 2012, Space Shuttle Discovery circles Dulles airport on its last mission as it prepares to land for permanent display
at the the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Házy Center, photo credit Jack Roth.

Blue bar

It is extremely difficult to write about recent history; it is far too easy to make all kinds of mistakes.

If we go back to the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a general sentence of progress in the western world as countries industrialized, urbanized and modernized (although that it a value-laden term); people poured into cities; and universal primary education became widespread. Things were being invented all the time.

These all became fixtures of the twentieth-century world.

Now along with the signs of "progress" there were other events that perhaps called into question the idea of "progress"; these events tended to be a bit overlooked.

But since everything that happened in those first years of the century were later superseded by the First World War, that war left a much different interpretation of what was going on in the world than if there had not been a war. OK, let me try and explain. If you wrote the history of 1900-1914 in May 1914, that history would have been much different that if you wrote the history of 1900-1914 in 1919 (not to mention if you wrote the same history in 1929, 1949 or 2014). Historical perspective changes over time as historians reinterpret what happened in light of new information and in light of what happened later. And, that is the cautionary tale of writing recent/contemporary history. It was only much, much later (after the war) that historians examined 1900-1914 and saw the seeds of World War I being sown in that first decade.

I could write more about the first decade of the twentieth century, but let's now turn our attention to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Here's a list to think about.

I'm sure that you could come up with some other things, but notice any resemblance to the list from 1900-1914?

Now let's look at some of the signs of difficulties.

How do we balance our knowledge about recent events and achieve an understanding of that recent history? Are these just current events? How do they aid in our study of history, remembering that predictions are not really the scope of historians?

Well, one thing that we can do as historians is to try and establish an exact record of what happened. Is that any easier in this electronic age?

Now as the century 21 unveils itself, there is a striking resemblance to the first decade of the twentieth century the mix of positive achievements along with war and turmoil remains pretty much the same, but that does not mean that we can assume we'll have a worldwide calamity in the current century such as World War I was in the past century.

As historians, this is something that you should reflect on. What is the meaning of events as they unfold? How should they be understood in light of the historical record? Do they really have importance?

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