Deepening historical understanding in a transnational world: A review essay

Community College Enterprise, The, Fall 2003 by Aquila, Dominic A

Multiculturalism and the new internationalism

Cultural and political fissures in the international system have their corollary within nation-states, suggesting strongly a link between global internationalism and such movements as multiculturalism. Muticulturalism within nations has set off controversies in Britain, Mexico, Japan, Israel, South Africa, and the United States over what the content of a nation's history ought to be. In the United States, these conflicts became flash points during the quincentennial of the Columbian discovery of the Americas in 1992, and then again in 1995 with the Smithsonian's exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the first instance, disputes raged over whether or not Columbus's achievement was a cause for celebration (the establishment of the New World) or regret (for the deleterious effects it had on indigenous peoples). Anxious about exacerbating the conflict, some school districts told their teachers to avoid discussing the quincentennial in the classroom and, just as in cases of questions pertaining to sex, to leave it to parents to decide how to address the issue with their children. The controversy over the Smithsonian exhibit stemmed from veteran organizations' protests that it was too pro-Japanese. The conflict over the exhibit led to the removal of nearly all the historical information accompanying the display of the Enola Gay. Besides these two major public controversies, the many heated debates over national history standards for primary and secondary school curricula were another feature of what became known as the 1990s history wars.

These so-called wars were what prompted the publication of Foner's Who Owns History? Insistent on the historian's responsibility to engage vigorously in public discussions, the book aims to get past the high polemics of controversy and elevate the public discourse on history. It collects pieces Foner had previously published in a variety of mainstream and scholarly media. They cover issues in his field of expertise-the Civil War and Reconstruction, international subjects, including essays on history in South Africa following the dismantling of Apartheid and Russia following the unraveling of the Soviet Union, as well as more personal pieces on his life as an historian and the life and work of his mentor, Richard Hofstadter. Foner's relation to Hofstadter is itself highly symbolic of the shift in focus of American historians since the end of the Second World War. Hofstadter is perhaps America's greatest historian of the post-World War II era. He is most identified with the Consensus school of American history, which sees wide agreement since the Founding among Americans across all classes and political parties on the fundamentals of American life and politics. These basics include the inviolable rights of property, wide support for a mixed economy, and human rights. Foner's lifelong work on the history of slavery and emancipation was inspired by the fact that the Consensus view seriously understated their importance to American life and history.