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Philosophy of History XXX: William McNeill and World History

March 31, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

Historiography that aspires to get closer and closer to the documents—all the documents and nothing but the documents—is merely moving closer to incoherence, chaos, and meaninglessness. –William McNeill

William McNeill (1917– ) is an American historian best known for his books The Rise of the West (1963) and Plagues and Peoples (1977). He spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he was a colleague of Marshall Hodgson (subject of an earlier article), and played an important role in establishing world history as a legitimate subfield of the historical profession. Although he abandoned the civilization studies model of Arnold Toynbee, and the cyclical model of Oswald Spengler, his approach was similar in its scope and vision, and he was in many respects their intellectual heir.

In The Rise of the West, McNeill argued for a “diffusionist” or “viral” model of history that understood social continuity and change in terms of cultural borrowing. Thus the emergence of a new technology, institution, or practically anything else in one culture was, in principle, to be explained by reference to its prior emergence somewhere else, on the assumption that the later development was an instance of borrowing rather than independent development. The concept of diffusion thus creates the thematic unity that makes world history and his work possible, while the externalist explanatory mechanism seems to disbar the internalist and cognitive approach advocated by Hegel and Collingwood, as well as the model of autonomous and independently developing civilizations favored by Spengler and Toynbee. Put another way, McNeill argued that it was the connections between all peoples and civilizations that formed the proper study of world history, not their competing and independent development. Although McNeill did believe that civilizations were really-existing entities, defined by common allegiance to a central textual canon, he preferred to study the interactions between them rather than the civilizations themselves. Thus McNeill’s history is largely one of things that can be transmitted cross-culturally with relative ease—technology, broad conceptual patterns, institutional arrangements, etc., and, accordingly, of frontier areas where such exchanges become possible. The study of frontier areas remains a central preoccupation for many historians today.

It has often been urged against world history that it is a kind of myth-making, because the sheer scale of the study precludes the careful and thorough examination of any particular body of evidence, and we of course always want to examine the evidence as thoroughly as possible, otherwise we’re just telling stories. The more evidence we give ourselves to work with, and the less time and rigor we allot for the examination of any particular part of it, the more explanatory freedom we’re helping ourselves to. Where’s the rigor? Shouldn’t this make other people suspicious?

In his 1986 presidential address, “Myth history,” William McNeill addressed these criticisms directly. History has always served a social function, he argued, by creating a shared identity and disseminating shared values that make individuals into members of a community. And this is the only way we can live, because humans are social animals and find solitude unbearable. Before globalization and wireless and the internet and so on it didn’t greatly matter that the histories of different groups were so different, because communication was slow and difficult and it was uncommon for people to be exposed to ideas that seriously challenged the ones they were used to. But when these encounters have happened, the best historians have broadened their vision in order to tell the story, not just of their own people, but of outsiders as well. So Herodotus wanted to tell the story, not just of the Greeks, but also of the Persians, and Leopold von Ranke not just of the Protestants, but of the Catholics. In the twentieth century, nationalist narratives collapsed in the aftermath of the Crisis of Liberalism (subject of an earlier article), and were further challenged by the inclusion of women, African-Americans, working-class people, and other underrepresented groups in our national story, where previously they had been excluded. This inclusion has been positive in the sense that a world armed with nuclear weapons can no longer afford the xenophobia of nationalist history, and our newly egalitarian society will no longer tolerate the elitism of WASP history, but old myths have not been replaced by newer, better ones. Instead historians have retreated into the archives, saying more and more about less and less, and in effect writing themselves out of the national conversation, or else adopting a purely critical role that rarely produces, and always offends. World history, William McNeill argued, is the answer. Just as Herodotus and Ranke expanded the visions of their societies by writing a more inclusive history, so too world historians must expand the vision of theirs to encompass all people, of whatever time and place, into a single story of the human race—one that will transcend differences of race, sex, class, religion, and all the other artificial barriers that divide us. It is, he argued, their obligation to the human community.

This post is the thirtieth is a series on the philosophy of history; the previous article in the series is here, the next is here.

Daniel Halverson is a graduate student studying the History of Science and Technology of nineteenth-century Germany. He is also a regular contributor to the PEL Facebook page.

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Filed Under: Misc. Philosophical Musings Tagged With: philosophy blog, philosophy of history, William McNeill

Comments

  1. Stephen Greenleaf says

    March 31, 2016 at 8:06 pm

    Daniel,

    Thanks for this newest post. I’m not well acquainted with McNeil, except by reputation. But I’m curious about your comment that his emphasis on cross-cultural contact and the spread of ideas that you describe as ” the externalist explanatory mechanism” that “seems to disbar the internalist and cognitive approach advocated by Hegel and Collingwood,” Does Collingwood adopt a theory of historical change? I’ve looked for it and haven’t found it. One of this fundamental tenants is that “all history is the history of thought”, but I don’t know that he has a developmental logic such as Hegel, Marx, or any number of thinkers have posited. Owen Barfield, in History, Guilt, and Habit, writes about Collingwood’s project. One of Barfield’s criticisms seems to be that Collingwood made no contribution to a theory of the evolution of consciousness, although Collingwood emphasized the historicity of all thought. Thus, Collingwood, I suggest, would not have rejected McNeil’s “externalist explanatory mechanism” based on inter-cultural contacts and the resulting transmission of information, but Colllingwood would have also noted that changing circumstances, from pure thought to incidents of climate, technology, or any change in historical circumstances, would have generated new thoughts and therefore the change we see in history. I don’t think that Collingwood identified a single driver of historical change.

    Thanks again for all of your effort on this fine series.

    Reply
    • daniel halverson says

      April 4, 2016 at 1:33 pm

      Hi Stephen.

      Thanks for your kind words and encouragement. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says “According to Collingwood, the science which is dedicated to the study of mind is history.” Further: “Which thinkers exercised a major influence on Collingwood? Was it the Italian idealists? Was it Hegel or was it Kant? … Collingwood’s work is full of implicit and explicit references, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, to Hegel, which show he had read his work carefully.”

      Following the view that he was a disciple of Hegel rather than of Kant (the influence of Hegel was quite strong in the decades he wrote), I have described his views as “internalist” and “cognitive,” or in other words as explaining historical developments from the inside-out, from the historical actor’s perspective, and emphasizing the role of thought as opposed to material factors in setting the course of historical development. Is this an explicit and detailed theory of historical change? Clearly not. Does Collingwood have such a theory? I don’t know. Does he need to in order to make assumptions about how historical change is likely to occur? I don’t see why he would.

      But if Collingwood was a disciple of Hegel, who did assume that historical developments were to be explained in terms of self-developing cultures, and if that change is to be explained principally in terms of thought, then there would be no reason to assume that when an idea appears in two or more places the explanation must be cultural diffusion. More likely, it would be the result of internal development. McNeill, by contrast, assumes that cultural diffusion is the likeliest explanation for the appearance of the same or similar ideas throughout history. Hence his view is “externalist,” in that it explains cultural develoment in terms of what is external to the culture, i.e. a different, rather than the working out of their own ideas and commitments.

      So we have two different, though not necessarily clearly articulated, ideas, or rather we might say assumptions, about why a certain kind of historical change happens.

      Daniel

      Reply
      • Stephen Greenleaf says

        April 4, 2016 at 8:47 pm

        Daniel,
        I have no doubt that RGC was greatly influenced by Hegel, but as we seem to agree, RGC identifies no engine of history, unlike Hegel’s struggle for recognition or Marx’s economic determinism. At least neither of us can identify any such driver in RGC’s work. But I remain doubtful, despite his emphasis on history as thought, that RGC is a good foil to your account of McNeill. In addition to his career in philosophy, RGC conducted a great deal of archeological field work about Roman Britain, and he published a major account as well. Given his background, I’d be very surprised if he wouldn’t have been accutely aware and appreciative of the extent and importance of cross-cultural contacts. This is my hypothesis, in any event, and my main point. I don’t claim a definitive answer.

        Again, thanks for writing & for this terrific series.

        Steve

        Reply
  2. Marie Snyder says

    April 1, 2016 at 5:49 am

    This appears to be a philosophy accepted by John Ralston Saul – albeit on a smaller scale – in his recent book, The Comeback, and a previous book A Fair Country. Both seek to develop a new way of understanding the history of Canada that incorporates Indigenous history instead of looking at Canadians as having only a French and British history. He presents an effective argument that provokes the reader to reexamine their own sense of identity, which could clearly have a social function – one that could inspire public pressure to change current policies.

    Reply

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    […] This post is the twenty-ninth is a series on the philosophy of history; the previous article in the series is here, the next is here. […]

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