Rising grain prices (Historical cliches, Lev Tolstoy's 'War and Peace') (original) (raw)

Tijdschrift Voor Geschiedenis, 2006

Abstract

Despite the fact that Aristotle couldn't imagine that knowledge of the past could yield 'truths about life', nineteenth-century historicists believed just that: they were convinced that history, as it welled up from I the sources', revealed more about human existence than might be gleaned from what we see around us. At the time I started to study history, the belief in 'historia magistra vitae' had long evaporated. Yet, when I look back upon my student days, it was precisely a wish to learn I truths about life' that had attracted me to the discipline. Rather frustratingly, instead of truths about life, I learned that in order to become a historian I had to juggle with phrases like 'centralization', 'the emergence of the middle class, and 'rising grain prices.' It was only by reading Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace that I discovered that historical cliches are not innocuous: they may influence the way history is made. It is one of Tolst...

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