That’s not just because the History Department is one of the most established academic disciplines in the Faculty of Arts and the University. Nor because our graduates are installed in embassies, the public service, journalism, the media, heritage, and sometimes the most unexpected places; or in academic positions all over the University, in diplomatic studies, international relations, tourism studies, library studies, education, even counselling and psychology.
No, it’s because we see history’s fundamental value as one of explaining the world we live in, today.
And because the world we live in makes the world of yesterday meaningful. We see events, the building blocks of political, economic, social and cultural development, as links in the chain of human movement and change. We understand the way their meaning changes with time. When people speak of China as a phenomenon of our times, we know China never flagged as a major presence in global politics, as the globalizing Silk Roads inform us. When an American president threatened Iran, we know he was doing nothing original, playing at a geo-strategic game that others have played for centuries. We treat with caution the talk about civilizational clashes with Islam, because it’s old hat by a few centuries.
When the pandemic struck we were not surprised to see epidemiologists looking to last century’s pandemic for clues of what to be prepared for. When slavery is mentioned, a panorama of human trafficking comes to mind, from antiquity right through to modern times, which humbles us to be aware that the world we live in is as much the product of man’s brutality as it is of human strife and creativity. No, we were not born yesterday.
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