A master of history’s meta-narrative

The writing of history, particularly Western civilizational history, has become a significant problem over the past 50 years with the decline of consensus historiography and the rise of the New Left and “history from below.” The problem of the writing of much history, especially American history, has become even more acute in the last decade because, as historian Scott Spillman wrote, American historians “no longer know what to think about the United States.” That’s not a small problem.

Is American history a story of one people, a national fusion based on a shared commitment to ideals? Or do we make sense of the American past through the lens of conflict—ethnic, racial, class, gender, and religious conflict? Is the history of the United States best understood as that of the upward progress of a unified whole, or is it a story of disparate “communities” of the dominant and powerful over and against the marginalized and oppressed? And finally, should American history be cast in celebratory terms, or should it depict America as, on balance, a force for evil in the world?

Britain’s Paul Johnson, author of over 50 books and hundreds of articles in his career as a writer, represents the tensions and dilemmas of modern history writing, died last week. Born in Manchester, England, in 1928, Johnson graduated from Oxford University and identified with the political left from the 1950s to the 1970s. He moved to the Conservative party with the rise of Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister. Johnson is one of many twentieth-century intellectuals who shifted to the right from the left. American conservatives like Whittaker Chambers, Daniel Boorstin, Irving Kristol, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick all began their careers as leftists and became conservatives in their later lives.

Johnson wrote history for a popular audience, but his work was influential among professional historians also. He received the most praise for his book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815–1830, but historians excoriated much of his later work, especially his 1997 foray into American history, A History of the American People. Historian Eric Foner, in his review of the book for the London Review of Books, described the book as a “screed,” a “diatribe,” and “totally out of control” as a conservative polemic against political correctness. Still, Johnson was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, the highest award for a civilian, by President George W. Bush. Bush offered this statement in his tribute: “Our country honors Paul Johnson and proudly calls him a friend.”

Though in 1952 Johnson identified with French demonstrators protesting a visit to Paris by U.S. Army Gen. Matthew Ridgway—World War II and Korean War general and then-NATO commander—by the time he wrote his 1997 grand narrative of American history, he was an unapologetic admirer of the United States. He dedicated the book to “the people of America,” calling them “strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.”

Though historians criticized him for downplaying the experiences of historically oppressed people in American history, Johnson saw American ideals as the key to correcting injustices that were not unique to Americans but manifestations of a human nature that was essentially sinful.

Johnson drew a great deal of criticism for his outspokenness. In a 2013 interview, he said that Barack Obama should receive “the King George III Award for being the worst president in American history.” Such statements did not win accolades from left-leaning media outlets or intellectual centers.

Johnson was the master of the meta-narrative in that he could frame history in terms of a great story animated by ideas that gave meaning to his subjects. As a writer of meta-narrative, Johnson is situated in the old tradition of historians like Bancroft, Macauley, Parkman, Churchill, and Roosevelt. And as a writer of meta-narrative, Johnson was inevitably a controversial figure. His readers, like the readers of the great metanarrative historians before him, are not ambiguous about their perspective on him. They love him, or they hate him.

Whatever you say about the legitimacy of Johnson’s style of writing, one thing is clear: if Western history, and American history in particular, cannot be described in consensus, then the future of American nationhood and citizenship must be in doubt. Whatever their shortcomings, the great consensus historians of the 1940s through the 1970s wrote history to foster responsible citizenship for two to three generations of Americans. Responsible citizenship always entails a balance between celebration and criticism. It requires the application of the virtues of temperance, wisdom, justice, and courage to the questions posed by the great events, ideas, and personalities of the past.

Historian Allen C. Guelzo calls history “the second question.” The first question is, “What is that?” The second question is, “Where did it come from?” I would add to Guelzo’s brilliant insight into history by saying that the first and second questions could be framed as, “Who are we, and where did we come from?” History as “the second question” is a simple question with a complex answer. If history cannot offer wisdom on who we are and where we came from, it will never provide wisdom on where we are now, or where we are going. While no historian’s view is the last word, Paul Johnson offered us essential guidance on answering history as the second question. That is no small achievement.