Framing History -- a brief musing

I have been reading A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield and Nicolas Pelham, two British authors. It is a political history focused of western Asia, south-eastern Europe and north Africa, especially as influenced by western European powers, emphasizing the period since 1800, and written from the point of view of England. Here is the publisher's synopsis:

Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. In this profound book, Peter Mansfield follows the historic struggles of the region over the last two hundred years, from Napoleon’s assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations, the Palestinian question and Islamic resurgence. The Middle East’s huge oil reserves gave it global economic importance as well as unique strategic value, and the result was massive superpower involvement.

For this new edition, Nicolas Pelham has written two extensive new chapters examining recent developments throughout the Middle East since the Gulf War, including the turbulent events in Afghanistan, the troubled relationship between the US and Iraq, the continuing Arab-Israeli war and the rise of Islamic Jihad.

Incisive and illuminating, A History of the Middle East is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what is perhaps the most crucial and volatile nerve centre of the world, and its prospects for the future.

In the process of reading the book I have come to wonder about the framing of history. How does one chose a place and a time to write about and how does one chose what aspects of the situation in that time and place to focus on, and what perspective to offer on the description?

Of course, the author is quite free to write about anything he/she chooses, the publisher (in our society) to publish anything it chooses, and the reader to choose among the smorgasbord of offerings. But it seems to me that some choices of framing are better than others.

The interaction among Turkish, Arab and Persian civilizations in the 19th and 20th centuries seems to be a very interesting topic. These civilizations have very deep roots, are geographically proximate and so rub up against each other all the time. I suspect that their historical interaction must be understood to grasp the current situation in a the current geopolitical hot spot. Yet these civilizations can not be fully understood in isolation from the influences of Britain, France, Russia, central Asia and other regions. Moreover, it seems to me that Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Berbers, and other cultures must also be seen as influences to understand the happenings.

My instinct tells me that the importance of historical causes diminishes as the interval between cause and effect lengthens in historical time. Thus it seems reasonable to me that to enhance understanding of the current situation in the region one should emphasize more its 20th century history than its 19th, more its 19th century history than that of earlier millennia. As classical painting gives clarity and detail to the figure and allows the background to be misted and muted, so a modern history must sketch the ancient precursors if current events in broad, impressionistic brush strokes.

So too, my instinct tells me that those who hold military, economic, political and/or intellectual authority have more influence over the course of history than do those without such authority. This perception seems to be shared by historians, and may of course be a socially constructed misunderstanding, like the flat earth hypothesis.

The choice of what to include in a discussion in part depends on what interests most the authors (and is likely most to interest the reader). We have parochial interests. It is not surprising that an English author writing for an English speaking audience would focus on the British interaction with the region he has chosen to write about. I suspect that the history, if written by and for Muslims from the Indian subcontinent would be different, as would histories emphasizing Turkish, Arab, or Persian points of view. My early engineering training suggest that it you want to understand a complex object, you need to see at least three orthogonal views. I suppose that too is the insight of cubist painters, of novelists like Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier) and Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet), and of film makers like Akira Kurosawa (Rashômon), not to mention all of those who teach methods for ethnographic research.

Factor analysis is a statistical technique to help make complex data sets with many dimensions more understandable. It seeks to find reduced sets of dimensions that can be used to portray the data while maintaining as much of its variance as possible. Factor analysis is but one of many data visualization techniques. I wonder if there are historiographic techniques for the selection of aspects of history that help display the complexity of situations in their most intelligible forms, or that are especially useful for those seeking to understand specific aspects of situations?

Specifically. is it more important to understand the evolution of per capita GDP, population density, environmental quality, technological systems, class structures, educational achievements, political institutions, or ruling dynasties to get a grasp on the booming, buzzing confusion that this complex region seems to the uninitiated? Which aspects of the situation are most useful to understand if one seeks to the others. Is understanding dynastic succession more important to understanding economic evolution than is understanding economic evolution to understanding dynastic succession?

Of course, the author of a popular history does not have unlimited choice. He/she can not draw upon information that does not exist in writing his/her history. Weak states and pre-modern states do not collect statistics, so adequate numerical data are not available for the taking. On the other hand, dynastic rulers tend to be careful in documenting the family history of the dynastic order, even if it has to be invented. Still, I wonder how much we really learn from knowing the names, birth and death dates of lines of long dead rulers of Mayan cities.

Thinking in time is important. Causes must precede their effects. The calendar is a framework on which historians hang their facts. Yet there is the well known logical fallacy, "post hoc ergo propter hoc". Too often, I suspect we draw incorrect inferences of causality from the fact that one event preceded another in history. Indeed, I suspect there are many epiphenomena in which side effects are attributed causality -- the fever is thought to be the cause of the illness, rather than a response to the infection.

Ultimately, I wish we had the histories of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and other countries in this region from the viewpoints of members of various different factions within those countries. A richer understanding of their points of view, of their perceptions of the important and interesting facts of history, might help to avoid the easy assumptions that have been too often made by foreigners and proven false by experience in the past.