Scott Anthony For The Straits Times
12 February 2019
History matters for its own sake. But it is also important
because it enables you to think dynamically and relationally in a world where
the deterministic language of machines is often used as shorthand to describe
changes that are far more complex. Indeed, it is vital to civic competence.
From forecasting to avoiding errors in geopolitical
calculation, a proper study of history can be a good guide to the future
One of the things I like about living in Singapore is the
optimism - the honest confidence that tomorrow will be better than today.
There's a belief that everything can and will be remade, and remade better.
The contrast with present-day Europe could not be more
stark. It's invigorating.
But one issue with constantly looking to the future is that
it can lead you to underestimate the utility of the past. Singaporeans are
proud of their past but, at the moment, it seems history is mainly used to
bolster or contest a sense of identity. The debate over 1819 and how much significance can or
should be read into Stamford Raffles' landing is a good example.
Although questions of identity are clearly very important,
if overemphasised, they can turn history into a morass of bad-tempered and
unwinnable cultural arguments. Meanwhile, the prejudice that history "is
the reciting of facts" remains quite deeply embedded.
The problem with both these dominant points of view is that
they miss many of the ways in which history can make a practical contribution
to the future. Over the past few years, Singapore has made considerable
investment in history and the humanities, yet the opportunities that this
investment opens up are not widely understood. There is still little sense that
history has anything practically useful to contribute to the task of shaping
tomorrow. But it does.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE
At the most basic level, historical research can improve the
models which we use to predict the future. To give a dramatic example, climate
scientists have turned to the ship logbooks of the English East India Company
because by making use of the observations recorded by 17th-century sailors,
they can build a long-term understanding of climate change.
Meteorology is a young science, its maturing interrelated
with the rise of aviation. Until this climate data began to be recovered by
historians, phrases often heard in the media, such as "the hottest (or
coldest) since records began", did not extend very far back in time; now,
the available instrumental records span more than 200 years. With this data, it
is possible to better model rainfall, and predict harvests and the impact of
floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Even more importantly, historical research helps us to
question the models that we use to predict the future. "Why did no one see
this coming?" - as Queen Elizabeth II famously asked economists at the
London School of Economics after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007. One
persuasive explanation was that the mathematical models used by modern
economists had become decoupled from the historical contexts that had informed
their creation.
The global downgrading of economic history as a discipline
meant that not enough attention was being paid to what was being put into, and
left out of, the models used to understand the global economy. The handful of
economists around the world who did not accept economic orthodoxies about debt
and money predicted the crisis, but because they did not accept those
orthodoxies, they were professionally marginalised. The political, cultural and
economic aftershocks of this oversight are still playing out today.
Preliminary research by Project Hindsight, a strategic
historical research consultancy based in London, has gone a step further. Its
research has examined a series of international private and governmental
long-term predictions made since 1963 in order to evaluate how reliable the
forecasting of the future has been. The answer is, not very.
In fact, it's becoming evident that our understanding of
technological change and its impact is almost always entirely wrong (and only
marginally better with economic predictions). This insight is worth keeping in
mind because we live in an age when almost all of the information about new
technologies, even very promising ones such as artificial intelligence, is
primarily produced by those very same industries - industries that often demand
tax breaks and regulatory exceptions as a down payment for future riches which
may or may not arrive.
In contrast, what this historical research into forecasting
suggests is that social data produces reliable long-term results. If you want
to glimpse the future reality of Singapore, ask a demographer.
NEW MEDICAL DISCOVERIES
Of course, there are also more straightforward contributions
that historians can make to national life.
At the Nanyang Technological University, digital techniques
are being developed to study how ancient and mediaeval medicinal products were
used across different Eurasian drug cultures. The hope was that by bringing
together (for example) mediaeval historians, microbiologists, medicinal
chemists and data scientists, new drugs could be created. In the context of the
rise of antibiotic-resistant microbes, it's an urgent undertaking.
The way in which Chinese Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou
referred to traditional Chinese medicine to develop treatments for malaria is a
model here.
Despite living in an era defined by an abundance of
information, we need historians to make sure we don't forget what we already
know.
AVOIDING GEOPOLITICAL MISTAKES OF THE PAST
There is also more to do in the one public role for
historians that people instinctively do support. The idea that people who are
ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it is a ubiquitous one (if almost
certainly not true). While using historical perspectives on contemporary
geopolitics seems uncontroversial because historians are liable to say things
that leaders do not want to hear, it has also proven difficult to realise.
The Chinese government has come down hard on so-called
"New Qing History" because its insistence on a more autonomous Manchu
identity complicates present-day territorial claims.
Meanwhile, recent work on contemporary Russia by researchers
like Mr Tony Wood and Dr Mark Smith has shown Russian President Vladimir Putin
to be in a compromised position, constantly struggling to appease and strike
bargains between rival opposing domestic power centres.
Yet, this analysis is mostly ignored in the West. Instead, a
media narrative of super-villainy is promoted for reasons that have plenty to
do with gaining tactical advantage on the battlefield that is contemporary US
politics. This course of action risks a new Cold War and raises the chances
that the next Russian president will be more aggressively nationalist.
To help counter such scenarios, an Applied History Project
was recently set up at Harvard University to provide policymakers with
historical perspectives, and to model interventions and their consequences.
Given the right environment, it would be easy to imagine a similar venture
flourishing here.
VITAL WORK IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD
What I am trying to suggest is that there is a plethora of
uses that history can and should be put to, but many of these uses are not
fully exploited yet in Singapore.
When I ran the Public and Popular History programme at the
University of Cambridge, many of our students were recruited by management
consultancies, financial institutions and large legal firms. The rationale of
recruiters like Boston Consulting was that if you're going into a large
organisation to offer advice, you need to be able to quickly come to understand
how and why it came to be structured in the way it is. Historians are trained for
this.
Similarly, large financial and legal organisations that are
hungry for acquisitions need to understand the liabilities they are taking on.
Even more so because we live in an age where the electronic office has wrecked
institutional memory, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
History matters for its own sake. But it is also important
because it enables you to think dynamically and relationally in a world where
the deterministic language of machines is often used as shorthand to describe
changes that are far more complex. Indeed, it is vital to civic competence.
Far beyond debates about the contemporary significance of
1819, the multi-disciplinary analysis produced by Singapore's historians has so
much more to contribute to the nation. The future needs historians.
•Scott Anthony is assistant professor of public history at
Nanyang Technological University. He was previously a strategic communications
officer at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the United Kingdom.
•There will be a talk on the use of history in policymaking
by Dr Andrew Blick from King's College London, titled Learning From The Past Or
Repeating Mistakes. It will be held next Tuesday at 6.30pm at the National
Library. For free tickets, go to learningfromthepastlecture.peatix.com/
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