The Rough Drafts Of History

‘Writing the Recent Past’: A New Zealand Book Council Seminar, 1 November, 2005.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

Let me begin by saying that although I am not a trained historian – two courses in economic history being my total at university – I read history for pleasure, I use history in my research and writing, and I recommend students do history to broaden their perspectives. However, today we are talking about contemporary history, which comes out from another profession.

Above my office desk there is a Doonesbury cartoon showing the front of the White House. Inside Clinton, coming to the end of his term, has called in some historians to tell them how he ‘truly made history’. He says to his audience.
‘Wait a minute, you are not historians, you’re just journalists. What are you doing here?’
They reply,
‘We write the rough drafts of history’.
Contemporary history is the rough drafts of history.

One definition of contemporary history is it where you could be subject to defamation proceedings. Its first lesson is to respect those one is writing about. This is not to mean to say I strive for blandness. I believe my readers want sound thought-provoking judgements

The first defence of defamation is truth, certainly a key goal for any historian. (A post-modernist would not last long in a court of law.) The law on defamation is such that journalists fear they will make an unintentional – but litigiously costly – mistake, especially as the law is so erratic. One of the last things I do before sending a manuscript off is to go through it checking whether any sentence could be defamatory were it wrong. Where that is possible, I double check its accuracy, perhaps also preparing a defence just in case. My publishers routinely check for libel too. On one occasion our lawyer thought what I had written was fine but, since the politician was particularly litigious, it would be wise to modify the presentation. Which I did without, I think, losing any force of the judgement.

That I have, on occasions, to deal with the possibility of defamation indicates that I am working on the frontiers. Contemporary history is not always so ambitious. Much is inoffensive, hiding behind the safe and trite. But I want to engage with the conventional wisdom, challenging my readers, suggesting where it may be in the future – albeit by that time I will have moved on too.

It will be historians who will judge how well I do this. I was touched that when he was writing the history of the contemporary Treasury, Malcolm McKinnon asked to read my Listener columns to get one perspective of the times. There are about 700 of them starting in 1977: half are either on my website or in a book. I dont generally amend or update them. They are a part of the historical record, and that includes my mistakes and misjudgements.

Of course, Malcolm did not rely on such writings, Primary sources were much more important to him. I am surprised how often contemporary accounts fail to use documentary evidence, despite ready access via the Official Information Act. Too often the rhetoric that pretends to be informed debate relies on popular accounts, ungrounded in evidence or analysis, rather than the hard slog of going through the primary sources. I can think of one book on contemporary events, which seems based upon clippings from the local newspaper, the author apparently unaware that journalist’s rough histories are not always correct.

Malcolm also interviewed ex-Treasury officials. I dont do a lot of such interviewing because I am not trained in oral history. When I do, I usually write a letter, setting out my understandings, and inviting the interviewee to respond. I have valued others’ interviews. I particularly recall one of Henry Lang by Ann Beaglehole where, as useful as the transcript was, it could not capture Henry’s meaningful pauses.

There is a sort of contemporary history based on the principle that everyone has a right to have their account of the events, even when the documentary record contradicts their memories. TV1’s Revolution is an example. So are some commissioned biographies or ghosted autobiography. Just because they were there, does not mean they knew what was going on, nicely illustrated by Shaun Goldfinch’s Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy, where some respondents make claims about influences on the 1980s economic policy, which are verifiably wrong.

In practice, not all those involved have the same right to have their views on contemporary events recorded and reported. Typically those that do, belong to the strata of society could be called the ‘high and mighty’ – the insiders, the powerful. The outcome is a bias to the conventional wisdom.

Interviewees have agendas. I recall an ex-Treasury official saying he was pleased to get down some material in his interview with Malcolm. He was not alone – Malcolm’s final text is properly circumspect. Knowing what has been put on record, a future historian has a really interesting story – but only when defamation proceedings are not possible.

The contemporary historian has an agenda too. The implications are quite different from traditional historians. I enjoy reading Christopher Hill on seventeenth century England. While his particular agenda may influence my understanding of what happened 350 years ago, he has no influence on the actual events he writes about. Those involved in contemporary history do.

We may be involved.. One of my contemporary histories of social policy is carefully written to suppress the fact that I was there. The story I was telling was far too important to be obscured by my ego. No doubt when the history is rewritten, I could appear, but it wont change the story much.

Even if the contemporary historian is only involved as a story teller, the perspective that is related may change individual’s understandings and hence ongoing events. There is no neutral position. The historian who chooses to tell the story in terms of the conventional wisdom, does just that: tell the story from the perspective of the powerful. It will give comfort to the insiders, and the storyteller may be well rewarded. However the story will be bland and boring, and later it will appear quaint and out of touch.

Choosing another perspective runs that risk too. I can think of a number of Marxist studies which were quaint and disconnected when they were published. They remain so decades later. Bruce Jesson is an exception. As his just published collected writings To Build a Nation shows, here was a lively and engaged mind. Bruce did not always get it right, as he says so himself, but he is so intelligent and informed, that the reader is challenged to think about how he got it wrong.

My situation has been more complex. New Zealand is so small, it is not hard to be a Forest Gump at important events, sometimes even carrying the towel. And it is not impossible that on occasions I have influenced perceptions. Whether future historians will bother to provide some evaluation need not detain us. The point is that it would be naive for me to ignore these effects. To a greater or lesser extent that applies to every other contemporary historian.

The events of the last thirty years have been some of the most controversial in the history of our nation – the equivalent, I suppose, of a civil war. It is still too soon to tell how the authoritative version will finally turn out.

Part of the problem is many commentators are not economic historians, and do not have the technical expertise to understand the issues. It is a bit like writing a history of warfare without knowing the difference between armaments and ammunition. The result is often a superficial conventional wisdom, in which key issues are ignored because the powerful do not want to think about them.

For instance, 1987 to 1993 were six consecutive years of falling output per person, the longest period of economic stagnation in our recorded history (although not as deep as the shorter Great Depression of the 1930s). In those years New Zealand fell from being slightly above the OECD average in the GDP per capita stakes to near twenty percent below. Future historians will not be able to ignore such a dramatic stagnation, especially as it contributes to an explanation of some of the important political and social events of the period and after. Today’s conventional wisdom choses to overlook this salient fat. Those who uncritically relate the conventional wisdom fail their readers, and will look shallow to future ones and to real historians.

I would expect the alternative account of what happened, to which I have contributed, will fare a little better. But even so, over 350 odd years it will be modified. In the interim, we contemporary historians do the rough drafts which future historians will use. One does not ask they find we got it right. One hopes they will find that we tried to tell the truth.

Go to top