Bad-Guy History

The decline of historical narrative has been widely announced, sometimes with glee, probably more often with anger or regret. Jean-François Lyotard, one of those polysyllabic Parisians whom so many love to hate, has famously defined postmodernism as skepticism toward all guiding narratives, and that skepticism has informed much of the criticism of the kind of sweeping narratives of nations and civilizations that historians once wrote.

In this country, J.L. Granatstein has emphasized the political importance of such narratives, and famously regretted the occlusion of a unifying national narrative by the academic fascination with micro-histories of “housemaids in Belleville.” Neither Anthony J. Hall’s The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl with One Spoon nor John C. Weaver’s The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650‒1900 can be accused of being housemaid history: both sweep globally over centuries. Both share with Sir...