Let's say you're a history blogger who has written 10 essays on modern US history post-civil war, and 10 on post-Mao China...
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But you've lived 20 years in the US and have known 1000 Americans descended from the period you've blogged, vs 1 wk in China and 3 people
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To my knowledge that's an inaccurate, straw man-esque version of how academic history gets done. , care to comment?
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I'm talking more about non-academic 'big' history of the sort that shapes politics.
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academic history seems mostly narrow and circumscribed to stay away from political action
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Professional historians root themselves in documents/archives. It's rare to be in immediate contact with one's protagonists
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Sure. But if a professional historian was looking at late 20th century China, they'd do more than 1wk in country 3 people
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but somebody trying to rile up the twitter mobs on breitbart otoh... the less ground data the better
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True, but let's please not call those folks "historians" just because they claim to write about the past
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nature abhors a pop-big-history vacuum I'm afraid. Where angels fear to tread, fools create the future... ๐๐


