The Consolations of History

Congratulations to our own Hank Phillippi Ryan, whose novel THE FIRST TO LIE has been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award!!

 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's no secret I'm a big fan of history. I double-majored in history and theater as an undergraduate, and when in grad school for museum studies, my academic concentration was 17th century colonial history. 

 

When I switched from working in museums to law school, I wrote my thesis on 17^th century colonial legal codes (a good writer never throws away material, she only recycles.) 

 

 

As a reader, I love historical fiction, historical mystery, historical romance, etc. etc. I’m not sure of my love of studying the events of the past come from being dragged around Important Sites in Europe as a child, touring the revolutionary battlefields of eastern New York, or just hearing tales of my own family in days gone by.

 

However, I’ve recently discovered, along with most of the rest of us, that actually living through History-with-a-capital-H is not as much fun as one might suppose. Many the time I have wondered, “What was it like for people living through --------?” Fill in the blank with war, migration, plague, invasion, etc. Well, now I know. It sucked, that’s what it was like, and the ordinary folks of the 11^th or 14^th or 17^th century (or those living through WWI and the Spanish Influenza) spent a lot of time wishing things would just calm the heck down and go back to the way they used to be.

 

Lately, for consolation, I’ve been listening to a new history podcast (having already gone through Mike Duncan’s excellent History of Rome and Patrick Wyman’s riveting The Fall of Rome.) The latter introduced me to my new obsession: The Fall of Civilizations, by writer and man of letters Paul M.M. Cooper.

 

So far, I’ve made it through the end of Roman Briton, the Mediterranean Bronze Age collapse, the disappearance of Vikings from Greenland, the toppling of the Mayan empire and the fall of the mighty Khmer empire, once centered at the great city of Angkor. There are themes in common: most of the civilizations that went down relied on scarce resources, often from far away. They were part of networks of trade and alliances that worked until they didn’t. And almost every one so far suffered from climate change; ether the end of the Roman Climactic Optimum, some nasty volcanic explosions, or the Little Ice Age. No cities fallen into disuse and people scattered due to a warming earth—yet. I’m only up to the 16^th century, after all.

 

Why am I enjoying the experience of reliving so many disasters? It actually gives me hope. The Maya and the Khmer and the Britons didn’t disappear from the earth, after all. They went different places, and lived different lives. Now, were they as comfortable and easy as in days of yore? No. But they did go on, to quote Celine Dion.

 

And so will we.

 

So, dear readers, what periods of history do you find fascinating? And which ones inspire you?