Active History

By Andrew Nurse

One of the great innovations of the now aging “New Social History” (NSH) was its commitment to uncovering a past about which people knew little. The NSH focused on what we might, in a non-pejorative way, call the broad mass of people: workers, slaves, peasants, First Nations, women, among others whose names appeared at best briefly in the historical record, if at all.  The new social historians were guided by a broad range of heuristics (far broader than their critics at the time made it seem) and deployed new investigative strategies. They combed and compiled census records, hunted through archives for any sign of ordinary people, made use of “folklore” and oral traditions, and read official records (court proceedings, marriage and baptismal records, newspaper accounts, chronicles) in different ways.

I “grew up” with the NHS and its work was breathtaking and inspiring. In uncovering the lived experiences of ordinary people, social history brought history to life. For me, the lived experience of past times –with all of its grinding poverty, charismatic religions, popular traditions, and struggles — gave history a purpose that was something more than the “names and dates” one-damn-thing-after-another approach that has been so caricatured by educators, commentators, and historians. I was also struck, and continue to be so, by social history’s profound ethical imperative: everyone deserved to have their history written. It was deeply problematic and politically disturbing to reserve history only for “great men.” There was something powerfully democratic in social history and the fact that “old white men” seemed not to like it only confirmed, to me, its democratic character.

That was then. Time goes by and I find that I have become one of those “old white men” (well … middle aged) whose work I used to find so misplaced. Continue reading →