Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World
by Eric Foner
Publisher: Hill and Wang, April 2003

book reviewed by Peter G. Pollak

What books will you take to the beach this summer? The latest popular biography or historical fiction? If you're a history buff, think about putting "Who Owns History?" on the top of your pile.

In recent years according to Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, popular histories, the teaching of history and even what of the past ought to be remembered and how, have become the subject of public debate. In this collection of nine essays written by Foner between 1983 and 2001, he weighs in on these and related issues.

The nostalgic view of history teaching is that there was a time not too long ago when history teachers taught the facts. Then along came the champions of special interests and now any interpretation is as good as another.

In fact, what people experienced when history was taught as a set of facts was bad teaching. History has always been and in fact can only be the interpretation of the past. When history is taught as facts, the embedded interpretation is hidden and what you have is closer to brain-washing than to education.

In studying the American Revolution for example one can concentrate on the string of events that occurred and on the individuals whose actions played a major role. But what motivated those individuals? What ideas influenced their writings and their actions? What role did slavery and other social institutions play? Once you start bringing intellectual and social factors into play, events can be interpreted in new and different ways. That doesn't mean that one interpretation is as good as another. It just means that making sense of historical events requires continuous study, thought and debate.

What the "just tell me the facts" school of history readers is saying is that they don't want anyone messing with the way they want to remember the past.

That's also the problem of learning about history through film or popular history, which I define as any work of history that lacks footnotes and an extensive bibliography. People who saw "The Gangs' of New York" now think they understand the social circumstances of New York City during the civil war era. Forgotten is the fact that the movie is a work of fiction and that popular history is just an interpretation.

Reading Eric Foner's essays will help bring those points home.

The first two essays of this volume provide Professor Foner's pedigree. He is the nephew of Philip Foner, whose multivolume history of the American labor movement was once required reading for students of labor history; he is the son of a historian who was fired from City University during the McCarthy era and he was the student of Richard Hofstadter, one of the giants of American history in the last century.

Understanding Hofstadter's career is instructive for those who seek a greater appreciation of American intellectual history as well as Foner's evolution as a historian. Foner's essays on his own career and on Hofstadter's are insightful, although they will be accessible primarily to people who have taken history courses beyond high school.

Influenced by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the political passions of his father and uncle, Foner chose to study the post-Civil War era - the period known as Reconstruction.

Reconstruction is probably the least understand period of American history. Foner's review of the way in which Ken Burns handled Reconstruction in his documentary on the American Civil War demonstrates how popular treatments (i.e., interpretations) can both distort the past and provide suspect conclusions about the present.

It's the present after all that we care about. So isn't history really just a preoccupation of those with nothing better to spend their time on? Consider the debates over the Supreme Court in recent years. Many people have bought the interpretation that the conservative Rehnquist Court interprets cases according to the intentions of the founding fathers in contrast to the "activist" Warren Court, which went beyond what was intended to write new interpretations the framers never intended.

The standard rejoinder to this interpretation is that the Court has to address problems that the founders couldn't have imagined. Foner on the other hand turns the conservatives' argument on its head, arguing that the Rehnquist Court has been ignoring the will of Congress when interpreting the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution and Reconstruction legislation in general. In other words, they're doing what they accused the "liberal" court of having done.

How to teach, present and interpret history has not just had an American context in recent years. Foner's essays on history in Russia and South Africa as well as those focusing on the role of the U.S. on the world stage provide further examples that how the past is interpreted affects us all.

Dealing with such complex issues on such a broad scale is difficult enough for those for whom history is their profession. Fortunately, this volume is not just - or even primarily for historians. One of Foner's strengths as a historian is his ability to write clearly and succinctly. One does not have to have an intimate relationship with the facts of a particular period in order to appreciate Foner's analysis or to muster questions or even counter arguments.

If there were one essay that I'd make required reading for candidates for elective office and for newspaper editorial boards as well, it would be "Who is an American?" Foner's 1995 piece on American nationality. In it Foner demonstrates thoroughly how a careful reading of history can serve as a prophylactic against simplistic solutions to today's complex political issues.

Start your summer reading with Foner and you'll be able to take the latest popular history to the beach with sufficient protection (45 SPF as it were) against getting burned with simplistic views of the past.

Peter G. Pollak is editor in chief of The Empire Page and CEO of Empire Information Services, Inc. He has a Ph.D. in history and education from SUNY/Albany.

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06/09/2003