The Rest Is History - 7. The Lessons of History

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Can we truly learn from history? And if we can - do we? It’s one of the big questions this week as Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook roam through the centuries in search of certainty. Never get involved in a land war in Asia. That’s our starter for ten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. History never repeats itself, but it rhymes, said Mark Twain. In which case, can we truly learn from history? And if we can, do we? Here on The Rest Is History, we like to focus up very close on Bronze Age Anatolia or the summer of 1981. But we also like to focus on the truly

big questions. And for big questions, we need a big historian with a big brain. Dominic Sandbrook, good to have you back. A big head anyway. Listeners, yes, yes, a big head. Listeners, you can feel free to write your own jokes in as well. Dominic, how's your week been? In mourning for Maradona? I know you're a big fan. I am sad about Maradona, actually. Maradona was a great character and I do think he was a great... Oh gosh, we did greatness, didn't we, in our first episode? I do think he was a great... He's a great figure, isn't he? He's a great figure in Argentine history. He's a great figure in footballing history. He's probably the greatest footballer in terms of dragging his team to the World Cup.

So yeah, I am in mourning for Maradona. Maradona the great. Right, before we get to our topic for discussion today, let's check out some of your comments on last week's podcast in which we travelled back to Troy and discussed what makes it such an enduring legend. Brilliant comment here from listener Fergus Michael John. Don't we all like Hector because he's a real hero, not divinely protected like Achilles? Yeah, so Achilles is a cheat. He doesn't spend his time sulking in his tent. He fights for his people. We can't be Achilles, but we could aspire to be Hector. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think that Hector behaves very well in the Iliad, doesn't he? I mean, he's a noble hero

who says goodbye to his wife and child, and he goes out to do his bit for his country, as it were, or his city. There's not all this kind of moaning and gro goodbye to his wife and child and he goes out to do his bit for his country, as it were, or his city. There's not all this kind of moaning and groaning about slave girls and crying and just sort of being a bit of a wet blanket like Achilles. Do you not agree? No, I think the fact that Achilles is appalling is precisely what makes him such a brilliant hero, actually. I think he's so great that he doesn't have to be held to normal standards. Oh, that's terrible. Yeah, I can see why you like John Lennon.

Right, Mikhail Tavaridis, he said, a great episode about a great topic. I think the Iliad is the best book for opening the gates to further interest in mythology and history, not only of the Greek variety, at least it was for me. Was the Iliad a great gateway for you, Tom? Yeah, I think the Greek legends generally, the heroes and things. I think i was kind

of a perseus and heracles man first before before i got onto the trojan war but yeah yeah it's it's the gateway drug no question about it um and uh c bb mf i hope i've got those initials right um he contend that's to say loved the episode strange how troy the filmmakers of troy failed to realize achilles isn't a hero to the modern world. So he's agreeing with you, Dominic. A sullen, capricious glory seeker. Everyone rooting for Hector because he comes out with the Christian virtues you mentioned. That's me.

So good. He's agreeing with both of us. That's the kind of response we like. And we've got Pepin Lucker who said, not one but two Duran Duran references. Excellent. Yes, those references were like a river twisting across a dusty land. Oh, Tom, let me bring you back to planet Earth.

We've got to stop this. We've got to cancel this. Right then, we're having our very own existential crisis this morning, and it's not about Duran Duran references. It's about the big one. Does history matter? the big one does history matter do we learn from it can we learn from it um Dominic I want a thousand words on the subject by the end of this podcast 15 mark question actually now I'm going to give you 30 marks because it is a very difficult one oh that's kind thank you um does it matter do we learn from it can we learn from it uh we don't well we learn something but we don't it doesn't make us better and it doesn't furnish um neat moralistic lessons i think now the idea that there's lessons in history i mean that goes back to the greeks and the romans doesn't it so you think about pluto's lives come on we haven't we're not going to get into christianity yet by the way

let's shelve that until the second half at least. If maybe save Christianity for the extended edition, which you can send to your personal followers on some sort of dark web link. But are there neat lessons? No, there aren't. People draw the lessons I think they want to draw, don't they? I mean, I don't think there are. Nobody ever draws a lesson from history

they didn't want to draw in the first place. I think there's a confused mass of stuff and people impose their own patterns on it and they tease out, they seek justification in history for what they wanted to do anyway. That's my short answer. So when you say confused mass, I think that the lesson we learn from history is the one that Gregory of Tor famously opens his history of the Franks with when he's writing in the late sixth century. The best opening, I think, not just any history book, but any book ever. And he says a great many things keep happening. Some of them good, some of them bad. That's all history. That's that's that's the lesson of history, isn't it? Stuff happens. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. Can we say more than that? It's interesting, isn't it, that when people

seek to write history, they've always generally sought to sort of tease out some kind of lesson. So, you know, for a long time, the story of history was the deeds of great men and what lesson can future, you know, future leaders learn. So that was why history was written in many ways. It was for sort of educated elite people to learn the mistakes of, I don't know, Mark Antony or somebody and to make sure they don't. I mean, often history is sort of the story of the puncturing of hubris. I mean, that seems such a sort of recurrent theme. Now, the interesting thing is that I don't think we have abandoned that. So now I think, I mean, you see this so much in all the discussion about history and decolonization and statues and

all the rest of it. People want, they still look to history to furnish kind of ideological, for sort of ideological support, I guess, don't they? So they look to history and they say, the story of history is a series of inspiring examples, and we can learn the lesson of how these people fought against oppression or whatever it might be. Yeah, I think that's right. I think history, traditionally, going right the way back to the beginning and right the way up to the present, is about examples that we can follow, lessons that we can learn in that sense. But can I go back to the ancient Greeks? I mean, I know it's very, very, very in our time to do that. You always have to start if you're in our time with the Greeks.

But if you if you look at Thucydides, who is kind of the archetype of this kind of historian, somebody who says very deliberately that he's writing this book to be not just for the now, but to be a possession for all time. And when you look now at, say, West Point or military academies or foreign affairs centres in universities, they're very keen on Thucydides because they look at him and they say yeah there are actual lessons here so the classic one that's very popular at the moment in relation to America and China is what they call the Thucydides trap which is the idea that um a set power a set superpower is going to be menaced by another power coming up on the tracks so Sparta is menaced by

uh by Athens um Britain was menaced by Germany before the tracks. So Sparta is menaced by Athens. Britain was menaced by Germany before the First World War. America is now menaced by China. And so they extrapolate from this the idea that you can find in Thucydides, and I suppose by extension, every work of history, kind of hard lessons that can be applied in any situation. But I think that that is certainly to misunderstand Thucydides. And it's to understand the nature of history generally, because actually Thucydides is never saying that the left that I'm not. You know, he's not giving hard and cast lessons. What he's doing is flagging up situations that then will be contingent. So another famous lesson that supposedly Thucydides gives, and again, it's much quoted at the moment, is the idea that the strong do as they wish and the weak have to put up with it. And this again is in the kind of the context of the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians

are about to attack the island of Melos and incinerate it. But the paradox of that is that this is going to then encourage the Athenians to invade Sicily and basically lose the war. So the Athenians misunderstand their own lesson. And I think that that's kind of the risk, isn't it? Is that if you extrapolate hard, solid lessons from history, then you're going to misinterpret them. Well, there are some excellent examples of that, Tom. And actually, when you talk about West Point and sort of military academies, I think they're some of the worst people drawing these lessons, aren't they? I mean, the classic one is the lesson of appeasement.

I mean, that's the sort of, we've talked a lot about the sort of, the way in which the world wars have become a myth, and they've become a sort of foundational myth of 21st century civilization. And time and again, sort of politicians and colonists reach for appeasement, which they completely misunderstand as a policy of sort of flabby, you know, weakness and what are just sort of they think that the appeasers were just cowards. And that the lesson of appeasement is that you have any sort of strongman or anybody that you don't like. And if you don't stand up to them, then they will take over the world and all the rest of it. And you heard this a lot in America in the 1960s,

in the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses and in the National Security Council and whatnot. They would sit around and they would say, we can't be Britain in the 1930s. We have to send more troops to Vietnam. We have to roll back communism. We must stand up to them and all the rest of it. And then, of course, Iraq. Right. Iraq. Iraq is the other time. So Tony Blair and George Bush, they talk about appeasement a lot and they say the lesson of history is you stand up to dictators. And Britain has its own experience

of making this terrible decision with Suez. So I think that's the first time actually that Suez in 1956, where the appeasement sort of metaphor was really dragged into action. Anthony Eden, who had lived through appeasement, said, Colonel Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, who's nationalized the Suez Canal, he is Mussolini. He is another Mussolini. And we must stand up. He wasn't. He was just a Nasser. And I think that tendency, that sort of lesson of history temptation, is that you say Donald Trump actually is Adolf Hitler. And, you know, that's the sort of history repeating itself stuff, isn't it? Which I never believe that history repeats itself. Yeah, I think the tendency to accuse your enemies of being Hitler is, I mean, it's not so much a lesson, is it? It's a kind of spasm. It's a sort of knee-jerk thing, isn't it?

This is how Nazi Germany started. So maybe one of the lessons of history is that people aren't actually Hitler. Well, nobody is Hitler, by definition. I mean, other than Hitler. But it's funny, isn't it, how people... It's a good way of closing down an argument, right? That you say, well, this is Nazis and this is Hitler. But it's funny, isn't it, how people, it's a good way of closing down an argument, right? That you say, well, this is Nazis and this is Hitler, therefore evil, therefore we must immediately, you know, throw our hands in the air and intervene or do whatever.

It's an interest, but it's interesting the extent to which we are kind of historically conditioned. So we can't talk about issues without reaching back to history for precedence and for, you know, you can't consider things purely on their own merit. So Donald Trump can't just be Donald Trump. He has to be compared with the dictators of the 1930s or sort of 19th century populists or whatever. There is another way in which, again, looking back to the Greeks, you can, perhaps people have drawn lessons from history, and that's to kind of identify patterns within it. So Thucydides kind of, you know, he sets out the idea that if you study the past, you can draw lessons for politics. But Herodotus, his predecessor, he is, and you mentioned the importance of hubris. Basically, in Herodotus, there's this

idea that history generates a pattern, that you have people who are hungry, people who are poor, people who live on the margins, they're tough. And they see wealthy cities, wealthy empires, and these wealthy empires become soft. and the hungry, lean people can move in and they take over and then they become wealthy and they become soft and then more hungry people move in. And you get this cycle going on and on. And it's interesting because that's basically the idea that you get in Ibn Khaldun as well, the great medieval Muslim historian, who likewise kind of traces this pattern that people on the periphery will inevitably move in on the great settled centres. So does that, I mean, I don't know, do you think

that there's any value in tracing those kind of patterns through history in the way that Herodotus and Ibn Khaldun did? I suppose it's kind of element of Marxism there, isn't there as well? There is. I mean, yeah, these things are not... I mean, they're sort of structurally driven, aren't they? That you get a... I mean, I think that is a reasonable sort of... I don't think it's a stretch to say that a lean and hungry generation claws its way to power and then gives way to a sort of a fatter and less hungry one. I mean, you're just sort of viewing one's contemporaries. You can see how self-made people classically will have children who are less driven because they're all the rest of it. That's true of societies as well. I think you can see that.

And you can see, I think it would be weird to deny that you can look at particular situations and see patterns recurring. I mean, if you were, for instance, if you studied both the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, it would be perverse, I think. I mean, of course, they're different, but it'd be perverse to say there's no pattern whatsoever. There's no similarity at all between Louis XVI and Nicholas II or between, you know, the Girondins and the Mensheviks or something.

But isn't that because both the French and the Russian revolutions are essentially generated from the same kind of ideological mulch. That their blooms from the same, you know, they're drawing, I'm not allowed to talk about Christianity, but I'm going to. They're drawing on kind of deeply rooted Christian assumptions about the idea that the first will be last and the last will be first and that there'll be a kind of millennial reckoning when the sheep will be divided from the goats and that kind of thing. Yeah. So you don't get, I mean, but you don't get revolutions. It's about the logic of revolution, isn't it? I mean, that's what happens in a revolution.

Yeah. But revolutions are culturally specific. I mean, do you get revolutions like that in Mesoamerica or in China before Mao? I mean, I don't think so, because I think that the lessons of history, maybe they're very precise if you're looking at specific cultural contexts. But the broader issue, I guess, is are there universal lessons that apply kind of across the entire span? No, I'd say no. Not on a social level. Okay, so looking at the Herodotus Ibn Khaldun idea, it's a very materialist idea. The idea that ultimately there are people who live on the periphery who inevitably will come in because they don't have stuff that they want. But doesn't that also work in a context though, Tom? Isn't that also historically specific that you're talking about, you know, they're both talking about a particular place, the sort of, you know, Eurasia and all the rest of it. Yes. Well, specifically it works, I mean, it works with deserts, doesn't it? And the steps and the idea that you have kind of

centres of urban civilisation and then you have kind of peripheries. But the converse of that, again, to turn it on its head, is that very settled sedentary civilizations are likely to be more powerful than those that aren't. So a Spaniard arriving in Central America in the early 16th century brings with him thousands of years of sedentary civilization and the Aztecs don't have that um and in that context actually you could say that Ibn Khaldun's got it exactly wrong but that it's always those from the wealthy centers that will triumph but that doesn't work does it look at the Mongols look at the Mongols I mean they built the greatest land empire in history they swept through everybody. And they were your classic steppe nomads coming to sedentary societies to sort of settled, you know, European or Asian sacking places like Baghdad, going into Poland and Hungary and all the rest of it.

I mean, the Mongols are the classic kind of Ibn Khaldun outsiders, aren't they? They're on the margins. They're nomads, steppe horsemen, and no one can resist them. They are, but you could say that maybe the lesson of history is that nomads will be absorbed and essentially take on the contours of the civilizations that they conquer. So, you know, I mean, the Mongols basically became Chinese. And that just doesn't seem to me like a very, I mean, a very surprising or compelling lesson, though. I mean, that just doesn't seem to me like a very, I mean, a very surprising or compelling lesson, though. I mean, that just seems to me like, I mean, sometimes a lesson from history just strikes me as plain common sense. So, for example, the point about, you know, a self-made, a sort of rapacious self-made man then has a lazy, spoiled, self-indulgent son. I mean, I don't think you need to have sort of poured through the records of history to work that one out, surely. But what about the kind of the Jared Diamond

perspective, the sense that the achievements of a given civilization essentially are dependent on material circumstances. They're dependent on what crops you may have, what animals you can domesticate, what reservoirs of raw materials you have. And that's the determinant. I mean, now those are lessons that Jared Diamond would say, these are hardcore lessons. He would. And you've now hit upon one of my great sort of, one of the things I really hate about history, which are books that claim guns germs steel and whatever 112 lessons and how democracies die how the west rose all this kind of thing those books i mean i always associate all those books with a sort of the airport bookstore in milwaukee or something and i think those are books that are

for american businessmen who've they've lost their charger they've got a two-hour flight to kansas city they need something to read, and here is a book that they think will give them all the lessons of history. They can boil it down to a 12-point TED talk, and at the end of it, they'll know all history, they'll know what's going to happen, because that's what all these books always do. They say, we have studied the past, and we've boiled it down to this sort of PowerPoint presentation, and now we know what's going to happen in the 23rd century. And I find all that stuff, personally, I hate all that stuff.

I think it removes all the complexity and the difference about history. It sort of basically says all history is the same. There are set rules. It's like a video game. And once you work them out, you know, you'll win. And I think it's balderdash, actually. Well, but that's the issue with lessons of history, isn't it? Is that if they're absolutely solid, then in a sense, you can't escape them. They're like a kind of straitjacket. And that we're just and I suppose that that's the idea that we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What is it Karl Marx said? People make their own history, but they don't. But they make it in circumstances not of their own choosing, or words to that effect. I mean, we are prisoners of history, aren't we? But I think it's a fallacy to think that we can identify a series of a sort of formulae by which we can, by which, you know, we'll avoid the mistakes of our predecessors. I mean, patently, one lesson from history is that people don't avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Do you know what I think? Well, I think we keep on making the same mistakes because those mistakes are kind of inevitable. Well, give them part of being human.

Well, so let's look at Brexit. I feel that we haven't really touched on. I didn't see that coming. Well, so let's look at Brexit. Wow. I feel that we haven't really touched on. I didn't see that coming. So both sides in the Brexit debate say that the lesson of history is either that we should stay in the European Union or we should leave. Or we shouldn't. Yeah. Right.

So you choose the lessons. But I would say that in that context, the lesson of history is that we were never going to be able to make our mind up. It was always going to be a kind of split because because essentially we we in Britain are the prisoner of our geography. We are. Yes. You know, can't live with continental Europe, can't live without it. So that would that for me would be a lesson of history that we're kind of doomed to repeat this push me, pull your relationship with continental Europe. And you can see that looking at the way that the course of British relationship to continental Europe, that seems to me a fairly hardcore lesson that you can draw. But I wouldn't go so far as to say the lesson is, yeah, we should leave or yeah, we should stay.

Yeah, no, I think you're right about that. I think the lesson there is not so much a lesson that gives a neat answer as a lesson that basically says it's an open question and always will be. And, you know, some listeners might not like that because they'll have very strong views about Brexit. But if you take another example, also on the European fringe, I remember reading an article a few years about Ukraine and the article said, you know, Ukraine has this choice of a European future or a Russian future. But the very nature of being Ukraine is you always have that choice and it's never resolved. And that's exactly the position with Britain and Europe. I mean, obviously, we are European and we're part of Europe. But obviously, also, there's a lot of people who don't feel European and Britain has always felt itself to be peripheral and slightly different and all the rest of it. And that's not a question that can go away. And I agree with you.

But I think what's different about that lesson is that that's a lesson that is kind of open-ended. I think where I'm suspicious of lessons from history is where they sort of shut the conversation down and they reduce it to a sort of very neat formula that miraculously coincides. Yeah. With what they think. Yeah. Political prejudices. But yes, I but but but I agree the idea of of well, I mean, you know, Joey said that the idea that history is a nightmare from which we struggle to wake up. I think that there is something there that we are stuck in

certain contexts that we can't really break free from because of geography, because of whatever. Anyway, talking of nightmares from which we're struggling to wake up. Let's have a break. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and

early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Do please remember to rate, review, most importantly, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And a reminder to get in touch with us on Twitter using at the rest history. So no, there's no is in the Twitter handle. You can also contact me on at Holland underscore Tom. Or you can hassle Dominic using at DCS and Brooke, or DC Sandbrook if you want. You said that in a very strange way. Well, I just thought DCS sounded better than DC Sandbrook. I mean, DC Sandbrook, you sound like you're in The Bill or something.

Really? I'd never thought of that. I'd always thought that that sounded like a kind of Victorian historian who wrote like multi-volume lives of forgotten politicians but actually no yeah no you sound like a cop on the edge yeah in one of those kitchens that i go back to that's empty and is very sort of starkly lit and i eat my ready meal and contemplate the wreckage of my private life while catching the yeah while catching the serial killer yeah exactly um anyway We're slaloming off badly here. So the lesson of history is that we can't stick to the subject. So we have actually only put this up yesterday. We've had plenty of comments about it already.

And for those of you who are new to the way we work, Dominic and I will tweet the subject of each pod the day before we record. So do keep a lookout on Twitter on a Thursday and do please send us your questions, your observations, indeed your corrections. All are welcome. So Dominic, what comments have we got? So let's go. We've got tons of comments, actually. So instead of us just rambling on, we should just go through them all and see how many we can get through, see if we can get through all of them. So Thomas Reyes says, he says, I feel it's a catch 22 situation where if you don't learn from history, you repeat the same mistakes.

But if you do, you make some new ones. Either way, you lose. What do you think of that, Tom? Yeah, well, I think that the anxiety to avoid Munich is the classic example of that. Yes, it is. That we're, you know, politicians are so desperate not to become Chamberlain that they kind of blunder into all kinds of mistakes. Yeah. Is there not a better way of thinking about human affairs and indeed politics is to assume that you'll make mistakes? There's no way to avoid them. And you're just rather than being obsessed with the idea that there's some sort of perfection you know which if you only find the rules you'll be able to you'll be able to i mean that seems to me a very foolish way for politics i mean politicians do that don't they they they

they pretend infallibility when they're in opposition um and then uh and then it all becomes terribly complicated when they get into office which they yeah miraculously wasn't beforehand yeah um yeah so i think this obsession with repeating mistakes i mean why don't you just assume you're going to make lots of mistakes because you're human and end of story you don't need to then read any history books ever again um doing yourself out of a job there yeah that's foolish i'll shut up okay well you thought that was a big one the next the next one is is massive and it's from chet archbold do you think we see human nature through history that transcends specific places and time? I guess that's what we were kind of fencing around in in the first half.

And the idea that that history can be become basically a kind of a branch of science. I mean, it's been very much in the news. There's a guy in America, I think he's originally Russian, called Peter Turchin, who was a specialist in pine beetles. And he has now applied his methodology in studying pine beetles to Homo sapiens. And he's been in the news because he, I think about a decade ago, predicted that 2020 was going to be a terrible year where everything fell to pieces and he was able to arrive at this conclusion by his study of human nature and there's something very kind of science fiction about that the famous example of that is Isaac Asimov's foundation series where there's a guy called Harry Seldon who uses it to predict exactly what is going to happen in the future and his predictions do indeed hold out for, I think, several centuries, and then it all goes wrong. But it is a kind of common fantasy,

I think, the idea that if only we can identify what human nature is and apply it to the study of the past, then we can work out what the future will hold. I think we can work out what human nature is, or we can get a good sense of human nature through studying history and indeed through i mean you can get a sense of human nature through being a you know a child on a playground just looking around and history is actually not so different predicts in the future i think that's all complete balls actually um but human nature yes i think you do learn about human nature from history i mean i really do feel that reading a lot of because one of my jobs is as a you know i review a lot of history books um for the sunday times different periods so you know i'd read

dozens of books a year not on my specialism and one thing that really strikes me i mean that they have made me much more pessimistic about the human condition because in so many of these books people just behave terribly and kill each other and and all the rest of it and um i think you know studying history makes you much more it should make you more humble sort of politically you become much more aware of your own minuscule role in life's rich pageant and um gives you a sort of sense of perspective about the the issues of the day and all that kind of thing don't you think tom don't you think when you're studying the persian wars and all that's the business i what i find is is um how various and contingent human assumptions are and yes again and again where you think that there are kind of certain

core irreducibles they turn out not to be at all, you know, attitudes to something as basic as sex or love, or it's all so culturally contingent, that that actually the kind of the idea that there is a human nature that can be redeemed from the flux of the swirl and the specificity of culture is something I don't really hold. Although having said that, I mean, I think there's this guiding principle that I think MI5 have, that Britain is four meals away from anarchy. So I think that's true. I mean, I think a lack of food. I definitely always feel that way. That kind of thing. Okay, well, that's the relationship of human nature to history dealt with in two minutes let's move we got another one maybe slightly

easier uh yes this is a much easier one always look a gift horse in the mouth says mark gourd house because there might be greek warriors inside ready to sack your city do you agree that's very good um yeah uh here's another one, particular relevance to ancient history. Mike McKay, never make your bodyguards unhappy. That's just not true of, I mean, that's not just true of, you know, Caligula or somebody, is it? It's true of... It's so true of Caligula, though. It's so true of Caligula. Of course, it is true of Caligula, but it's also true of, you know, it's true of any modern president or prime minister. Never make your courtiers, never make your associates unhappy,

and especially if they have weapons of one kind or another, they might not be literal weapons, then you're a fool to, do you need to study history to work that out? Maybe you do. Well, I mean, I suppose the difference in modern society is that

your bodyguards are more disposable because they don't have real weapons. So Boris Johnson getting rid of Dominic Cummings, lots of people think that's a good idea. Yeah. Whereas if Cummings was armed... Yeah, well, yes. I mean, Caligula laughing at his bodyguard

because he has a woman's voice. That's foolish. Because the bodyguard has a sword. So I think there's a slight difference there. Anyway. Not an eternal lesson, maybe. So now we've got I buy high and sell low. And he's got a very pessimistic lesson.

Nothing lasts, he or she says. Anything can become a ruin given enough time. People are just small waves on a deep, quiet river. Gosh, this is very Ozymandias, isn't it? And completely true yes nothing lasts no i mean isn't that a extraordinary thing i'll tell you what's a funny thing is how everybody assumes that um i mean people have all these kind of assumptions that they say people assume that all our current nation states for example are sort of you know they're kind of historical

absolutes that will last forever france door and there will always be a france and whatever one day there won't be and that a lot of people say oh how can that be true but of course nothing does last nothing at all yeah and um that's a very um religious perspective the idea that human life is brief. It comes and it goes. And by extension, human empires are brief as well. And they caught up on the flux. And there is a counterpoint to that. What's lasted longest, China, Iran?

Yeah, I think China is the kind of the great countercultural example to the assumption that we have in the West that empires rise and are destined to fall. Because although China has repeatedly receded and been conquered and seemed to fall apart, it's always reconstituted itself. As we were talking about earlier, it's always absorbed those who conquer it. And I think you can recognise that China in the 21st century is very much an empire in the way that it was back in the days of the first emperor. So in that sense, you could say, well, you know, China lasts. Yes, maybe anything. Nothing is inevitable, except for death taxes and the Chinese empire. Okay, here's a more specific point from Francis Stratford. You don't think the Germans will invade neutral Belgium a second time, do you? Okay, that's an interesting point, because actually, that does take us back again to

the way that geography kind of channels events over and over again. And the way in which what is now Belgium, but was, you know, for a long time, just the low countries and the way in which what is now Belgium but was you know for a long time just the low countries the way that that has kind of been a stamping ground I suppose for the rival powers in Germany and France I mean that has been a kind of constant hasn't it? Yes and that's true actually and I think it's a weird thing how historians often don't take enough account of geography I did a I mean this is back years, but I did a course when I was an undergraduate about the Near East in the age of Justinian and Muhammad. And in the very first tutorial, my tutor said, you know, just he got out this big atlas and we looked at the map and he said, it's really important that you know,

like where the mountains are, where you're going to march, where the cities are, all this kind of thing. Lots of things that actually historians, particularly modern historians, don't really take massive account of. And we are prisoners of geography. And to that extent, I mean, the patterns that we seek to find in history are often not to do with human behaviour. They're how actually our planet conditions how we behave. And I think Belgium is a good example of that. But the thing about Belgium is kind of it's more a geopolitical than just a geographical one, isn't it? I mean, it's the kind of the fracture line between what becomes France and what becomes Germany,

which I suppose really goes back to Charlemagne's time and the... It does. There's a book about this, isn't there? Lopharingia. So when Charlemagne, you know, Charlemagne's inheritance gets divided into three parts, and what you'd call, you know, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and whatnot, this sort of central belt. Yeah, Burgundy, exactly. This sort of central belt has always been a border zone. And we talked about Ukraine earlier, and Ukraine's a good example of that, actually, this sort of borderland between Europe and Russia. And Russia's own,

you know, you can't understand Russian history without, or the decisions that Vladimir Putin is taking right now, you can't understand them if you don't understand the geography. And the same would be true of Poland, I guess, historically. Poland's been kind of fought over, split apart, whatever. And I guess that's a key argument in favour of the European Union, is that it, in a way, was kind of designed to solve the problem of Lotharingia, Belgium and Burgundy, and that kind of stuff, to stop France and Germany fighting over Alsace-Lorraine. So maybe that is, you know, that's a lesson from history, is you need the European Union to stop people fighting over it.

Very romantic point there, Tom. I'm sure there are alternative lessons that we could come up with to oppose that. Here's one from Alan Smeaton. And he says, historians are pre-programmed to vehemently disagree with one another when it comes to what are facts, the interpretation of said facts, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. And I guess the implication of that is that there's a kind of disagreement as to even what constitutes a fact. Well, there is, isn't there?

And the significance of a fact. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think that historians do disagree with one another. I mean, historians don't... There's sometimes a view that historians disagree with each other because they're sort of unusually sort of bitter and self-centred and jealous of their territory. But historians disagree with each other about the past because they're human,

because we all disagree with each other about everything, and particularly about the past, actually. So, you know, historians disagree with each other about the past not just for sort of professional, industrial reasons, but because if you ask two people to give an account of a given moment, they'll always give you two different versions. And that's the beauty of history isn't it that there isn't ever an answer or a single explanation and actually that's why we like it and lessons are don't necessarily have

to be true that's also something very important to bear in mind that lessons can be taught and they can be completely wrong yeah and people can come along and say, well, actually, this isn't the lesson I want to, I want a different lesson. Yeah. Well, the appeasement example is the classic example of that, that the appeasement lesson rests upon a sort of very simplistic understanding of what happened in the 1930s,

but doesn't stop people. I mean, people will never shut up about it, will they? I mean, they'll go on about it forever. Poor Chamberlain. Yeah. See, I like chamberlain i think he's uh hard done by yeah midlander yes exactly like yourself yes great um we've we've had a rough deal midlanders in history except for shakespeare anyway i'm just rambling now

alan allport alan allport says he says um this is just a sort of vehicle now for me to air my my insecurities alan allport says as i tell my students those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat the exam now alan allport is the author of a very good uh history of the second world war um brilliant history the second world which kicks off with tolkien which all histories should um those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat the exam. Is that true? I mean, that's a nice joke, but it's also that idea about

if you don't learn from history, you'll repeat it. I actually don't even believe that. I think you'll make mistakes whether you learn from it or not. But there's also buried there the assumption that there is a kind of certain scholarly paradigm

that if you don't subscribe to it, then you will get in trouble. And, you know, there are historians who are so great that every so often they will come along and they will shatter that paradigm. And you could, you know, you could completely fail the exam because you don't give the right answer. But actually, your answer could be more interesting than the conventional one that's expected by the examiners. That's always what I kind of hoped, you know, when I failed an exam. You'll be vindicated by history. Yeah, I'll be vindicated by history.

OK, here we've got one from Kevin O'Brien Chang. All the lessons of history in four sentences. This is great stuff. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. power the mills of god grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small the bee fertilizes the flower it robs when it is dark enough you can see the stars golly um this quotation from charles a beard is this i'm is that from charles a beard sort of american mar Marxist historian. I don't know.

When it's dark enough, you can see the stars. That sounds like a little bit like something from a greetings card, doesn't it? I mean, you send... Quite a depressive greetings card. Yeah, but a friend of yours is in hospital. I sent them this. Look forward to your Christmas card with that kind of cheery sentiment. No, no, because I just don't believe you can see the stars.

So I think I think it was dark enough. You know, just more darkness. Yeah. OK, well, I've got a very bleak sense of human affairs. You certainly have. Well, here's one that's definitely right. Carl Glover says never get involved in a land war in Asia. And that's definitely right, because that's in The Princess Bride. But I think the great he won all his wars in Asia. Dominic, stop it.

The Princess Bride is right. And also that there's also never go against the Sicilian when death is on the line. That's the other lesson from history that Princess Bride has to offer. I think the... Land war in Asia. Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Of course, you're right. I mean, you know, lots of conquerors in Asia. But I suppose the sense is don't invade areas of Asia where you are going to get bogged down. And Vietnam would be the example. But over the course of, you know, over the board sweep, basically, it's a warning against invading Syria, Mongolia, Russia. You know, the steppes, the vastness of Eurasia, Afghanistan. Yes. I mean, that's it. So the British went into Afghanistan in the 19th century, didn't they?

To try and secure the border northwest border of india um the russians obviously went into in the 1980s and then the coalition after 2001 and they all ended badly in various ways um and that is probably a good example people often sort of said why isn't there someone in the foreign office or the state department who's really au fait with you know 19th century british history but actually often the wars, because often they were precisely these people that you were talking about earlier, who'd been to West Point and sort of spent, you know, three years studying all these sort of ancient wars and whatnot. So, yeah, but I mean, and also Russia is the big one, isn't it? So you've got Darius the Great who invades Scythia and it goes disastrous.

He's the first. And then famously you've got Napoleon and then you've got Darius the Great who invades Scythia and it goes disastrous. He's the first. And then famously you've got Napoleon and then you've got Hitler. Yeah, I mean, the extraordinary thing about that is Hitler makes exactly the same mistake as Napoleon, doesn't he? Again, suffused with hubris. So that's your hubris lesson again. And that's just poor winter planning, isn't it? As much as anything. Have you, Dominic, have you ever played Risk? Yes, of course. Okay, so Risk. Yeah. poor winter planning isn't it as much as anything have you dominic you ever played risk yes of

course okay so risk yeah it's a game of global conquest yeah and the temptation is always to try and conquer asia and it always destroys you so the lesson of history applied to risk i think i've played a game called hearts of iron a strategy game called hearts of iron where i played as germany in the second world war and i did invade russia because i was determined to um succeed where others had failed and i failed how did you do disastrous disastrous did you get to stalingrad i don't think even think i got that far i think i was just utterly annihilated okay so don't don't invade russia i mean that's a lesson of history if even i can't do it then there's no hope for anybody. OK, well, here's one definitely for you, right up your street.

Kshank's history. The cover-up is always worse than the original crime. For example, Nixon and Watergate. And you are Mr Nixon. Yes. So that's definitely true of Watergate, because Watergate was in many ways just a sort of clownish escapade that didn't really work. It didn't change the election result. Had Nixon's men confessed that they'd bugged the Democratic headquarters in this very incompetent way, they would probably have been able to get away with it, actually. I certainly think Nixon himself would have been able to get away with it. But it was the cover-up and then the revelations that he had this taping system and he'd been recording himself,

and then the revelations of what he'd been saying on the tapes. And the fact that it was so protracted over more than a year, that's what really did for him. So he's a classic example of the cover-up kind of consuming you. I suppose, as a lesson, it depends what the original crime is, isn't it? Yeah, because it may well be that we never know about the crime, in which case the cover-up actually works.

Maybe history is littered with successful cover-ups that we don't even know about. That's always the fun of people opening archives, isn't it? Is discovering the hope that you'll discover something terrible. It never happens though, does it? I mean, actually if it did it'd be brilliant.

But yes, I think it's strange, isn't it? Politicians' reluctance to apologise. I think that is a lesson from history. A quick, sort of humorous, humble apology will solve a multitude of problems. But people don't like doing it. Well, spin doctoring advice there from Dominic.

And I hope that there are lots of politicians listening who may want to employ his guidance. Well, we said it was a big question, you know, are there lessons from history? And so it has proved to be. Please do get in touch. Tell us if you have lessons that you draw from history and we'll read out the best five next week. A reminder, please, to rate, review and subscribe. And a hearty thanks to everyone who has kindly done so already. We'll be back next week. See you then. Thanks again for listening. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com.

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