Favorite French Revolutionaries?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Uh, the abolition of privileges was slightly more than a matter of formal titles. It was a quite radical shift in the social hierarchy with very real consequences. I'm sure you can find many history books that deal with this issue, if you're not familiar with it.

This is the traditional view, yes. But it has come under sustained attack in recent decades (along with basically all of the other suggested social changes caused by the Revolution; including the very idea of the 'Ancien Regime', even) and no longer looks tenable. Essentially the argument is that even before the Revolution, Lords were turning into landlords and that all that the Revolution did was speed up this process. They lost their seigneurial rights (which had become increasingly unimportant anyway) and formal social privileges, but were more than adequately compensated in other respects (notably from the sale of Church land).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

It's interesting isn't it? We used to think that the French Revolution was the central event in the creation of modernity and that subsequent history could not be understood without some reference to its legacy. We now know that we were looking at the telescope through the wrong end: the Revolution had a larger impact on the writing of history than it did on history itself. It's no coincidence that the (ongoing) crisis in the historiography of the French Revolution began at the same time as the (ongoing) existential crisis in the Historical profession.

[© tweed]

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

It's interesting isn't it? We used to think that the French Revolution was the central event in the creation of modernity and that subsequent history could not be understood without some reference to its legacy. We now know that we were looking at the telescope through the wrong end: the Revolution had a larger impact on the writing of history than it did on history itself. It's no coincidence that the (ongoing) crisis in the historiography of the French Revolution began at the same time as the (ongoing) existential crisis in the Historical profession.

since you're more up on these things than I am: could you point me to some current historians/historiographers who are central to this 'crisis of the Historical profession', and how this connects with arguments that the impact of the French Revolution has been repeatedly overstated?

the only real reading/study I've done on the subject is Hobsbawm, who of course sees both the "British industrial revolution" (which he dates to the 1780s) and the French Revolution (dated from 1789 all the way through 1815) as the two cataclysmic events that would come to define modernity: the former in modes of production and the latter in state and political formation, law codes, etc.

[traininthedistance]

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

I do think my values align far more with yours than Mikado's, here: I really don't see how one can be an American (or even just be cognizant of the structure and history of American governance) with progressive values (specifically, those relating to diversity, tolerance, and respect for science/the arts) and not pine for a certain amount laicitie and centralization.  (Arguably laicitie is today more trouble than it's worth, seeing its use as a bludgeon against Muslim minorities.  But that is a relatively recent problem, and the dynamic is very different here on the other side of the pond.) Whether those values would have been dead in the water without the French Revolution, however, is a much more difficult claim to make.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Uh, the abolition of privileges was slightly more than a matter of formal titles. It was a quite radical shift in the social hierarchy with very real consequences. I'm sure you can find many history books that deal with this issue, if you're not familiar with it.

This is the traditional view, yes. But it has come under sustained attack in recent decades (along with basically all of the other suggested social changes caused by the Revolution; including the very idea of the 'Ancien Regime', even) and no longer looks tenable. Essentially the argument is that even before the Revolution, Lords were turning into landlords and that all that the Revolution did was speed up this process. They lost their seigneurial rights (which had become increasingly unimportant anyway) and formal social privileges, but were more than adequately compensated in other respects (notably from the sale of Church land).

Fair enough, I'm aware that the truth of social transformation is more nuanced that the idealized account that pro-Revolution historians gave of it. Still, I highly doubt that the social changes instituted by the Revolution can be reduced to purely cosmetic changes, as Mikado seems to claim. It might have not been a shift from one world to another, but it still was an important point of transition. And the French aristocracy would certainly have remained much more powerful throughout the 19th century (and possibly later) if the transition from feudal to industrial class structures was not dramatically stimulated by the Revolution and had remained an incremental process instead.

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

Yes, obviously someone could legitimately make that point. And undeniably, to prove or disprove it would require a degree of historic sophistication that would put me in a clear disadvantaged position. From what I know however, this doesn't strike me as a tenable position, and I really hope Mikado doesn't hold it. The fact that he never directly countered my arguments on the good things that spawned from the Revolution over the long-term would point in that direction.

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Actually, a distaste for French-style laïcité seems pretty widespread among American liberals, though for reasons that have little to do with Mikado's point (reasons with which I at least partly sympathize). But yeah, I get your point and it's nice to see I'm not alone in defending those values (speaking of this, where are the True Leftists when you need them? A little help from TNF would have been welcome).

I will still defend the Revolution's transformative impact at least in the context of French politics, and I am absolutely certain that even 2015 France would be very different from what it is had it never happened.

[politicus]

Uh, the abolition of privileges was slightly more than a matter of formal titles. It was a quite radical shift in the social hierarchy with very real consequences. I'm sure you can find many history books that deal with this issue, if you're not familiar with it.

This is the traditional view, yes. But it has come under sustained attack in recent decades (along with basically all of the other suggested social changes caused by the Revolution; including the very idea of the 'Ancien Regime', even) and no longer looks tenable. Essentially the argument is that even before the Revolution, Lords were turning into landlords and that all that the Revolution did was speed up this process. They lost their seigneurial rights (which had become increasingly unimportant anyway) and formal social privileges, but were more than adequately compensated in other respects (notably from the sale of Church land).

Pendulum effect at work, me thinks. It will swing back a bit towards a more positive evaluation of the significance of the revolution once the next generation looks at it.

[ingemann]

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

I do think my values align far more with yours than Mikado's, here: I really don't see how one can be an American (or even just be cognizant of the structure and history of American governance) with progressive values (specifically, those relating to diversity, tolerance, and respect for science/the arts) and not pine for a certain amount laicitie and centralization.  (Arguably laicitie is today more trouble than it's worth, seeing its use as a bludgeon against Muslim minorities.  But that is a relatively recent problem, and the dynamic is very different here on the other side of the pond.) Whether those values would have been dead in the water without the French Revolution, however, is a much more difficult claim to make.

Yes it's fine to use laicite to beat peasantry down with, but "oh no someone use its against a bunch of exotic brown people, we can't let that happen".

[ingemann]

Beside that this entire thread is one big case studio in how you create a Cult of the State.

[windjammer]

Robespierre: he was crazy but honest.


And yes, the French Revolution is the most overrated period of the french history.

[The Mikado]

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

I do think my values align far more with yours than Mikado's, here: I really don't see how one can be an American (or even just be cognizant of the structure and history of American governance) with progressive values (specifically, those relating to diversity, tolerance, and respect for science/the arts) and not pine for a certain amount laicitie and centralization.  (Arguably laicitie is today more trouble than it's worth, seeing its use as a bludgeon against Muslim minorities.  But that is a relatively recent problem, and the dynamic is very different here on the other side of the pond.) Whether those values would have been dead in the water without the French Revolution, however, is a much more difficult claim to make.

I have a deep, deep suspicion of anyone who claims that reshaping humanity and radically altering society is desirable and that the little people squashed along the way are just regrettable side effects. I find actual living, breathing human beings and the effects they undergo in massive transitions far more interesting than "society," an abstract fiction doesn't breathe, eat, or feel pain.

The countless tenant farmers of the Vendee who were massacred by Revolutionary troops, the soldiers conscripted by Revolutionary authorities to die on muddy fields in Italy and Belgium, the Toulon dockworker who didn't want to take orders from Paris anymore and was gunned down...they were prevented from living their lives, passing on their legacies to their children, or in some cases creating lines to pass down to begin with. At what point does the ended possibilities that would derive from their lives outweigh the glorious possibilities of remaking "society" itself? I'd hesitate to sacrifice even one living, breathing human to help the amorphous, faceless mass known as "humanity." What benefits did the inhabitants of those shallow graves in the Vendee gain from the abolition of noble titles or the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen?

When I'm trying to analyse whether an event had positive or negative effects, I try to look at what matters...how the event affected actual living breathing human beings. Who cares about "society" or "Western Civilization" compared to the story of innumerable families and small communities changed forever in very negative ways? Of the people whose lives went from hungry under a monarchy at peace to hungry under a republic at war and finding little to cheer on this alteration. These are the people worthy of our concern, not the Revolutionary "Heroes" in their dramatic poses immortalized by Jacques-Louis David.

EDIT: In response to Traininthedistance's question asking how an American progressive can have my opinions...I'm not a progressive. I've always been deeply suspicious of that word's early 20th century positivist and teleological connotations...there is no timeline of history with a forward and a backward, and there's certainly no real evidence that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You don't believe that broad social changes end up having a very concrete impact on real people's lives?

[traininthedistance]

EDIT: In response to Traininthedistance's question asking how an American progressive can have my opinions...I'm not a progressive. I've always been deeply suspicious of that word's early 20th century positivist and teleological connotations...there is no timeline of history with a forward and a backward, and there's certainly no real evidence that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.

I didn't say you were!  Though I would be curious as to your opinion of the value of things such as diversity, pluralism, freedom of mobility, support for science and the arts, the idea that scientific evidence should inform public policy, the existence of widespread (and urgent!) collective action problems such as environmental degradation, etc.

If these things do concern you, then we can have a productive discussion, setting aside your squeamishness regarding the word "progressive".  If you can find another term without its historical baggage, fine by me, happy to use it.  If those values do not concern you, then, well... I would like to know.

I also really hope that you didn't interpret my post as an endorsement of Revolutionary bloodshed?  Nothing in my post was anything of the sort.

Actually, a distaste for French-style laïcité seems pretty widespread among American liberals, though for reasons that have little to do with Mikado's point (reasons with which I at least partly sympathize). But yeah, I get your point and it's nice to see I'm not alone in defending those values (speaking of this, where are the True Leftists when you need them? A little help from TNF would have been welcome).

I think it's actually mostly "grass is always greener"-ism, as well as a general desire to push the Overton Window on this side of the pond away from the pathologies that result from mixing public policy and particular theological views.  Actual laicite does, indeed, have serious issues (and would never be enacted here anyway); it is in the comparison with the all-too-awful and all-too-well-known other extreme where it comes out looking good.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

since you're more up on these things than I am: could you point me to some current historians/historiographers who are central to this 'crisis of the Historical profession', and how this connects with arguments that the impact of the French Revolution has been repeatedly overstated?

This is fairly complicated, so I'll try to summarise without losing too much along the way. You'll be familiar with some of this already, I suspect. During the Post War decades the historical profession in the West became increasingly influenced by Marxist tendencies as it appeared that a Marxist (or quasi-Marxist) approach to history could explain the past in a rational and scientific manner. Political life and historical events were seen as offshoots of social and economic factors and changes rather than as independent phenomenons. This tendency took different forms in different countries (i.e. the approach of British Marxists - Hobsbawm, Hill, Thompson and so on - was notably less dogmatic than that of the German Bielefeld School) but by the 1970s was close to universal: it even spread to French social history, which was previously the exclusive domain of the anti-Marxist (but still materialist) Annales School, for instance. Even historians with right-wing political views tended to subscribe to some form of Marxist analysis.

You know what happened next, of course: The Forward March of Labour Halted and so on. By the end of 1970s it was becoming clear that contemporary political events could not be explained in terms of orthodox academic Marxism. This led to a massive crisis of confidence in Marxist historiography, because if it could not explain the present, were historians really right to assume that it could explain the past as well? New research (often by historians on the fringes of the profession) was also beginning to undermine certain critical assumptions about the past (but we'll come to this later). Younger historians overwhelmingly deserted the Marxist camp and began to scrabble around for alternatives. Many found one in Postmodernism -and in particular in Poststructuralism - and in other forms of cultural theory.¹ This is often referred to as the linguistic turn. A great example of this is Gareth Stedman Jones who had written Outcast London (a classic of Marxist social history) in early 1970s, but who's 1983 work Languages of Class explicitly denied even the existence of class in a Marxist sense.² But again, and alas, another problem. The sort of reheated (and if I'm being honest barely comprehended) Poststructuralism that so many younger historians seized on in the 1980s was no substitute for the old certainties of academic Marxism; it did not (could not) provide a holistic explanation for all of human history or for current events. Material reality is not language, after all. If you read through academic journals from the 1990s (I've not done this since I left academia a few years ago, but whatever) you see furious arguments between the Poststructuralists and the Marxist rearguard for the first half of the decade, and then a gradual petering out of interest (on both sides) around about 1996 or so. Unfortunately this was actually a sign of the deepening of the crisis, because during the same period (i.e. 1980s onwards) higher education across the world was increasingly brought under the sway of market logic and managerialism. Instead of trying to find explanations for the past and to uncover great theories that might underpin them, most historians (and this is not their fault as individuals) generally write about whatever will get funding and whatever will get them published (because a publication record now matters more than the actual content of what is being published). This leads to an emphasis on the topical, on the local, and on (I'm sorry but this is absolutely true) what certain malicious types would label the politically correct.³ There's still some very good work done, of course, but it's generally the product of brilliant individuals doing their own thing or concerns pre-1789 history.

So that's what I mean by a crisis in the historical profession. It's a really sad state of affairs and makes me personally unhappy.

How does the French Revolution relate to this? Largely by plunging into a great historiographical crisis, one that shows no sign of ending, and by doing so at exactly the same time (as there was increased interest - including from the publishing industry - for new and bold research into the Revolution in time for the bicentenary in 1989) as the entire profession lurched into the previously mentioned existential permacrisis. A large number of stridently revisionist works on the Revolution were published during the 1980s (the most important are probably François Furet's Interpreting the French Revolution and Simon Schama's Citizens; the latter is in some respects more 'radical' in that it stresses continuities with the past, while the former still insists on the Revolution as the turning point) and together they successfully undermined the old idea that the Revolution had anything to do with class (which, as you know, is one of the central assumptions to Marxist history). Other research published during the decade (including posthumously published work by Fernand Braudel) more-or-less conclusively demonstrated the relative unimportance of the Revolution to social structures in rural France and even to the development of capitalism in the country (i.e. that the process was well underway by the 1760s even and that the Revolution, whatever impact it had, certainly did little speed it along). Consequently, the importance of the Revolution to the development of modernity is now disputed, even if British undergraduates are still routinely taught (as I was) that 'Modern History' starts in 1789 and that there was no such thing as nationalism before that date. Habit dies hard apparently.

<sub>1. There were a huge number of other trends as well, some of them rather more sensible than Poststructuralism. Peter Clarke and his 'primacy of politics' followers (although probably too obsessed with detail for details sake) are a case in point. There was also an increased interest - particularly at the wacky end of the profession - in historical narrative.

2. Others went further; ex-Marxist Patrick Joyce went so far as to deny the existence of class in any non-linguistic sense in favour of a rather nebulous conception called 'The People' that he has never managed to explain coherently.

3. During one of the few academic conferences I ever attended, a complaint of Hobsbawm's about this latter point was read out by a speaker for the sole purpose of laughing at a relic. It wasn't a terribly dignified moment.</sub>

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

That would be going far too far. Here' s one good thing that happened due to the French Revolution: The Increasing freedom and eventual emancipation of large parts of the European Jewry. This may have happened in a world without the Revolution but surely not in the same way. Could industrialism be held to be responsible? Unlikely given where many of the Jews were and the pattern of emancipation.

You don't believe that broad social changes end up having a very concrete impact on real people's lives?

Of course. But is that worth a revolution though? Especially considering that those enacting the revolution did not have the greatest idea of what they wanted (Except perhaps 'Defeat the Austrians')

[traininthedistance]

This leads to an emphasis on the topical, on the local, and on (I'm sorry but this is absolutely true) what certain malicious types would label the politically correct.³ There's still some very good work done, of course, but it's generally the product of brilliant individuals doing their own thing or concerns pre-1789 history.

Caveat that I'm not a fraction as well-read in the subject as you, but: I'm unconvinced that this is a bad thing.  Shining a light on the particular, the forgotten, and the underappreciated strikes me as a more responsible thing to do than to just hew to the fusty old notions of Great Man or Class Struggle.

Perhaps overarching theories will come back into style again, and hopefully then they'd be more robust for taking into account a wider range of human experience.

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

That would be going far too far. Here' s one good thing that happened due to the French Revolution: The Increasing freedom and eventual emancipation of large parts of the European Jewry. This may have happened in a world without the Revolution but surely not in the same way. Could industrialism be held to be responsible? Unlikely given where many of the Jews were and the pattern of emancipation.

Yes, indeed.  In fact this is exactly the sort of thing where Enlightenment secularism has had a particularly important and positive impact on the real lives of real people.

[The Mikado]

To Al...I've always been puzzled by the idea that nationalism just turned on in the 18th century. Clearly you can find a lot of, for example, opinion in 1580s England that is distinctly hostile to the idea of union with Spain, and that's not entirely due to the Protestant/Catholic divide. Ditto Netherlands vs Spain in that same early modern epoch, another divide fueled by the Reformation but not really explained by it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

That would be going far too far. Here' s one good thing that happened due to the French Revolution: The Increasing freedom and eventual emancipation of large parts of the European Jewry. This may have happened in a world without the Revolution but surely not in the same way. Could industrialism be held to be responsible? Unlikely given where many of the Jews were and the pattern of emancipation.

You don't believe that broad social changes end up having a very concrete impact on real people's lives?

Of course. But is that worth a revolution though? Especially considering that those enacting the revolution did not have the greatest idea of what they wanted (Except perhaps 'Defeat the Austrians')

It is worth it if the social changes brought about are sufficiently significant to dramatically improve the conditions of a much greater number of people. This doesn't excuse or condone the bad things that happened during the Revolution itself, but assessing the morality of a historical event at a given time is a very different exercise from assessing the overall historical impact of that event.

I must add that I have always vehemently argued that incremental transformations are preferable to violent revolutions. If a deficient political system or society can be fixed through apt reformist maneuvering, it is a victory for humanity. The outbreak of a revolution is always a testament to society's failure to reform itself.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

To Al...I've always been puzzled by the idea that nationalism just turned on in the 18th century. Clearly you can find a lot of, for example, opinion in 1580s England that is distinctly hostile to the idea of union with Spain, and that's not entirely due to the Protestant/Catholic divide. Ditto Netherlands vs Spain in that same early modern epoch, another divide fueled by the Reformation but not really explained by it.

Like every 16th and 17th Century source I've read is aware of European entities known as 'England', 'France', 'Germany', 'Spain' and 'Italy' at least. And obviously they weren't just referring to states although I wouldn't say this was national identity of a modern type.

[Oak Hills]

Instead of trying to find explanations for the past and to uncover great theories that might underpin them,

Is moving away from that really such a bad thing, though?  I don't think it's possible to "uncover great theories that might underpin" events, because the causes of different events are often completely different.  There are no "laws" of history precisely because history concerns people, and people do not behave in predictable manners as particles do.  I'm of the opinion that "great theories" should be entirely the domain of physics and chemistry.

[The Mikado]

Instead of trying to find explanations for the past and to uncover great theories that might underpin them,

Is moving away from that really such a bad thing, though?  I don't think it's possible to "uncover great theories that might underpin" events, because the causes of different events are often completely different.  There are no "laws" of history precisely because history concerns people, and people do not behave in predictable manners as particles do.  I'm of the opinion that "great theories" should be entirely the domain of physics and chemistry.

I don't think Al was portraying that as a bad thing. Regardless, I agree with you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Moving away from grand theories is not a bad thing at all. It could be argued that the current situation is what happens when intellectuals get overly attached to such things. Moving away from even attempting to explain the past is a different matter entirely.

[© tweed]

thanks for the well-thought out response.  gives me plenty to chew on.

[Oak Hills]

Moving away from grand theories is not a bad thing at all. It could be argued that the current situation is what happens when intellectuals get overly attached to such things. Moving away from even attempting to explain the past is a different matter entirely.

Okay, I agree with you then.