History: Its Lessons and the Price for Their Disregard
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.”- Aldus Huxley
The one big question that keeps agitating all thoughtful people is, “Does History ever teach people anything?” The one obvious, but unpalatable answer is, a big NO. History, like the grandparents, keeps interfering, chiding, admonishing and warning the children of time, (individuals and nations), all the time, without ever minding whether its views are taken seriously or not; or even whether they are valid or not.
But the truth is that the sayings and warnings of the grandparents often come true; but the realization of this truth comes only after a good amount of damage has already taken place. History, with all its truths, never becomes obsolete or redundant, not even in the age of science and technology. Professor Rufus Fears in his wonderful lectures, “The Wisdom of History” throws ample light on the role of history when he defines its wisdom as “the ability to use the lessons of history to make decisions in the present and to plan for the future.” Nations that stone-wall themselves, and that stubbornly refuse to learn anything from history, they often get marked to pay a very dear price, sometimes on the scale of total extinction. The knowledge of history is not just the acquisition of an awareness of the chronology of events and people who mattered in the past; it is about applying its lessons in life; it is about acquiring an ability to think historically.
Churchill once famously said, “History can be an impediment as well as a guideline.” Nothing can be truer than this. Nations that avoid looking into the mirror of their history, sooner or later, get doomed because History has a tendency to repeat itself, but only in the worst possible manner. Nations that do so, take History as an impediment, a kind of straightjacket - something that is constrictive like a python and hinder-some to their planning or thinking, a kind of speed-barrier on their highway of progress. This is a wrong perception. History is like a good GPS device, a useful roadmap that can tangibly help a nation on how to avoid the pitfalls that had become a cause of destruction in the past, for its own people as well for the other nations.
The Qur’an also eloquently keeps reminding humanity of its past by terming it (history) as, ‘Ayyamullah”, “The days of Allah”. “…Narrate unto them the history (of the men of old) that haply they may take thought”. 7:176. “There is in their stories, instruction for men endowed with understanding.” 12:111. The Qur’an is not a book of history, but clearly one of its urging themes, according to Shah Waliullah, is to keep reminding humanity to develop the ability to think historically because the underlying wisdom behind the remembrance of past happenings is that nations may begin to draw instructive lessons from their enlightening examples. It is the same message that Professor Rufus is heard pointing out in his lectures, “The Wisdom of History”.
Dr. Rufus Fears throws new light on the topic when he says that in the past, and more so in the modern times, the wars that were waged on the issues of ideologies, democracies, human rights etc., proved themselves to be more destructive, more long lasting and much more longer than the wars that were fought by two kings or dukes or emperors on matters of geography or started on a personal whim, including the Napoleonic wars. In the past, the defeat of an emperor or king and his army meant the defeat of that country, and hence an immediate treaty or settlement of the matter. This often meant the end of the confrontation. In the modern times, often the wars are based on ideologies and democracies, and hence they are never-ending.
The American Civil War of 1861-1865 (the first modern face of war) that resulted in the butchery of over 623,026 Americans was not a war between two countries; it was a conflict between two democracies within the same country - the Confederacy and the United States. In that sense the American Civil War offered a clear and very important lesson to the world, which being, avoid such conflicts as early as possible through a settlement that is based on equality, fair-play and justice, and not on the humiliation and denigration of the vanquished one. This brilliant lesson of history was as valid in the First World War and in the Second World War in Europe as it was in the Bosnia/Serbia conflict, in Rwanda/Burundi massacre of 1994, and most glaringly as it was during the Pakistan’s Civil War of 1971 that ended in the creation of Bangladesh, or even as it is now, over the disputes that have almost resulted in other multiple mini-civil-wars that are going on in Baluchistan, FATA and other disturbed areas of Pakistan.
The irony of the matter is that even though Churchill clearly understood this lesson that the wars of democracies are very lethal, yet he failed miserably to avoid neither of the two World Wars. The Generals of Europe did not like to study, or did not desire to learn, any lessons from the US Civil War that the era of modern warfare with the inclusion of telegraphy and the inventions of the heavy guns had begun. Replace the telegraphy and the rifles of the American Civil War with the latest nuclear arsenals and other biological agents, wars onward would serve as perfect recipes for man’s total self-annihilation.
The WWI ended when “Germany got defeated and the American President Woodrow Wilson offered hope in the form of a peace plan based on bringing democracy to the world”. Professor Rufus is dead right when he says, “Wilson is an instructive instance of the refusal to learn from history… he believed that if democracies were established, peace would reign.” The scenario in Europe by then had either changed or was changing fast - the dawn of the era of democracy was breaking out: the Russian monarchy had been dethroned, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had become history, the German emperor had fled and Germany had become a Republic; and most importantly, Britain’s and France’s hold over their vast colonial empires had become weak. History was beating its drums that it was time to settle disputes on the table, and not in the battlefields, and that the era of wars between the kings and emperors was fast ending. But the Thucydides of European politics did not learn an iota from history, they insisted on fighting the two World Wars on the Napoleonic pattern, which they were not. They, at home, did believe in human rights, human freedom and liberty for all, but in matters of war, they acted and thought like the Roman Caesers.
Yes, if democracy is the answer to how to end wars, then it must be implemented in letter and spirit. History tells us that it did not happen so. Professor Fears rightly points out when he says, “It became clear that democracy could be just as great a source of ethnic oppression as tyranny.” Democracy has the potential to erase the scars of hatred and evil, and can very well prove itself a magic-glue for mending the fences of divide, and for enjoining the hearts, provided it is implemented keeping in view a sense of justice and honor for all. “Justice is the single most important quality that a person can possess”, said Cicero. And according to the scholars of Islam, God created the Universe only to test man in his sense of Justice during his stay in this world, because justice is what Allah is going to administer on the Day of Judgment even if it were of an atom’s weight. And justice is what is often found missing in the world when it chooses to settle disputes.
History tells us that the people of Carthage were ravaged by the Romans, and then a peace treaty was imposed on them in 348 BC. On the face of it, this Treaty was a document of reconciliation, but in reality it was a parchment of humiliation, a punitive ploy used by the Romans to humble further the defeated Athenians. So what peace could ooze out from a gesture which was erected on human humiliation? History could only offer an example.
A similar, almost identical feat was repeated by the Enlightened Europeans when Germany got defeated in the WWI. A Treaty known in history as ‘The Versailles Treaty” – 1919 - was created. The French and the British, who tirelessly claim to be the champions of the cause of human rights and of human freedom, were now vehemently united in imposing this most humbling treaty on the people of Germany in the name of democracy. And hence the veracity of what Professor Rufus has said, “It became clear that democracy could be just great a source of ethnic oppression as tyranny.” “What power has law where only money rules,” warned Gaius Petronius as early as in the year 66 AD. “Law stands mute in the midst of arms.”, said Cicero in 106 BC.
One reason that the United States of America became a Sole Super Power, whereas initially it consisted of just 13 struggling republics with a communication system as old as that of Julius Caesar, is that its Founding Fathers early on cynically realized that tyranny, be it of individuals or of the people or of King George III, or of his burdensome taxes with no representation, notwithstanding all the British might was just not acceptable to people who cared for human dignity and freedom. They decided to prove that might did not always make things right.
So they institutionalized this idea in the form of the Declaration of Independence on 4th of July, in 1776, and about 11 years later, in 1787, they presented in just 1,322 words, the best humanly worded document, called the Constitution of the United States of America, which opens with the words, “We the people…” These three words engendered a new and cohesive nation, ready to impact the world as well. In it they extolled the idea that for any government to be legitimate, it was imperative that it must cherish the consent of the people. In the creation of this most wonderful document, the Founding Fathers sought guidance from at least six sources: from history; from the Old Testament; from the Rise and Fall of the Romans and the Greeks; from Christianity; and from Britain and finally from the American Frontiers. James Madison spent a whole winter studying Roman historians Polybius and Tacitus. Now they value it as much, if not more, than they value the Bible. (Continued next week)
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