The Importance of Historical Memory in Policy-Making

Charles W. King

In recent decades historians have increasingly made a distinction between the events as they happened and what people at the time remember about these events, termed “Historical Memory”. As scholars have diversified from event and biography based narratives of history to social and cultural narratives, historical memory has become increasingly important in the academic history profession. This raises the question of whether or not policy-makers need to make such a consideration towards historical memory as well. It is tempting to shrug off historical memory and insist that policy can be made solely based upon the facts on the ground but this ignores two important realities; first, that policy and diplomacy is done by people, and second, that people make such decisions not based upon what may have actually happened (which they may not know) but upon their perception of what happened. Historical memory is a significant part of this perception.

While the effect of public opinion is most pronounced in democracies, authoritarian regimes are neither immune from nor unaware of its importance. The provide some of the clearest examples of its use in policy-making. The creation of the “Stab in the Back” narrative that helped propel Adolf Hitler and he Nazis to power in post-World War One Germany. More recently, both the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin have demonstrated skill at using their population’s historical memory, frequently as victims of fascism, to turn their population against foreign powers and in favor of strengthening the powers or influence of their respective governments. The propagandist nature of these manipulations makes them appear crude to outsiders, but they frequently ignore how deep things like the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation’ are to national identities.

Just as policy-makers, appointed or elected, cannot ignore the political realities their own country, they cannot ignore the political realities of others. It would be a grievous error to suggest that the Holocaust be ignored when considering how Israel interacts with its neighbors, allies, and the Palestinians today. Israel’s perception of existential threat is a significant factor in things as wide ranging as the position of political parties on settlements to the emphasis on crew survivability in the design of I.D.F.  armored vehicles. Historical memory has a clear effect on the Israeli people and state, and policy makers cannot afford to be ignorant of how this affects Israeli policy.

After the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898 newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearts was alleged to have telegrammed a journalist in Havana, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” That there is no evidence of such a telegram is not even beside the point but a demonstration of it. It did not matter if the Spanish had sunk the Maine and it only matters to a few historians that Hearst never said such a thing. it remains one his most famous attributions. This is because of the primacy of historical memory over historical fact. President McKinley could not stop the public call for war, Hearst is forever the man who fabricated a war to sell newspapers, and policy-makers need to recognize that memory and perception are frequently more important to making good decisions. Facts contrary to the dominant narrative while true are irrelevant, and hewing to them will not produce effective policy.

Further Reading

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1991).

Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2010).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997)

Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000).