It seems like all of written history is a history of politics. Even so-called 'social histories' end up being histories of how politics interact with 'society'. Go turn on the history channel or something and they have a history of the building of some important building and it ultimately ends up being about the politics surrounding the building of that building.
I want to read a history about people. That is, I want to read a history about how some guy's life went as he was born, learned what little he could living on some farm somewhere, met a girl, found a sustenance of his own, had some kids, and died. It sounds boring, but that's only because of the complete lack of detail. World War freaking Two sounds boring at that level of detail. Some German dudes caused a ruckus in Eurasia, a couple Americans played a deadly game of whack-a-mole with some Japanese guys, and a big fat Italian man kept screaming for attention. Whoop-de-do.
The details are what matter. But nobody's life ever gets recorded unless they went into politics or something related. The best history I've ever read are those small glimpses of this very micro-historical stuff but it's never really...preponderous. I read a fun little history of my county written in the early 1900's and the best bit of it was a description of this guy's journey up the Delaware River. Fun stuff. But even that was freaking politics. He was a employee of the Dutch West India Company. The real best bit of the best bit was the short description of the first few families who moved into the area a bit after this guy's exploring. I wanted to know more. How were the lives they lived? Not just in terms of how grueling was it dealing with living across an ocean from everything that makes much sense to you, but I mean...what were they like? Who were they? Why did the one guy marry the wife he had? Which little girl did the lone little boy have a crush on? How many weeks did the one family spend building their hovel? What did they aspire to?
And even that's really still politics. They were all brought in by the WIC. What about the history of the people living in, say, Bedford in 1825? Who knows, right? What about that one guy in Bedford who ran the store? What about him?
There isn't enough of this kind of history.
I want to read a history about people. That is, I want to read a history about how some guy's life went as he was born, learned what little he could living on some farm somewhere, met a girl, found a sustenance of his own, had some kids, and died. It sounds boring, but that's only because of the complete lack of detail. World War freaking Two sounds boring at that level of detail. Some German dudes caused a ruckus in Eurasia, a couple Americans played a deadly game of whack-a-mole with some Japanese guys, and a big fat Italian man kept screaming for attention. Whoop-de-do.
The details are what matter. But nobody's life ever gets recorded unless they went into politics or something related. The best history I've ever read are those small glimpses of this very micro-historical stuff but it's never really...preponderous. I read a fun little history of my county written in the early 1900's and the best bit of it was a description of this guy's journey up the Delaware River. Fun stuff. But even that was freaking politics. He was a employee of the Dutch West India Company. The real best bit of the best bit was the short description of the first few families who moved into the area a bit after this guy's exploring. I wanted to know more. How were the lives they lived? Not just in terms of how grueling was it dealing with living across an ocean from everything that makes much sense to you, but I mean...what were they like? Who were they? Why did the one guy marry the wife he had? Which little girl did the lone little boy have a crush on? How many weeks did the one family spend building their hovel? What did they aspire to?
And even that's really still politics. They were all brought in by the WIC. What about the history of the people living in, say, Bedford in 1825? Who knows, right? What about that one guy in Bedford who ran the store? What about him?
There isn't enough of this kind of history.