On History & Timeline 1700-1900, 5: Using the Timeline
What do you do with all this?
In the earlier posts in this series, we looked at why history matters, why the best way to study it is as a series of ideas rather than a random sequence of events, why Timeline 1700-1900 is organized by decades, and what makes the Timeline unique.
In this post, the final in this series: suggestions for how to use the Timeline.
Topics that interest you
Each decade is divided into categories because sometimes it’s useful to be able to follow a particular topic. If you love classical music, you can bone up on orchestral music in the late 18th century to find out why Beethoven is considered such a big deal.
If you’re raising kids, mull over whether an education based on the theories that were advocated from 1700 to 1900 might be better or worse than one based on the theories used in your kid’s schools today. Is there anything from the past that you could adapt to make today’s schools better?
If you’re running a business, what economic theories and government policies foster prosperity? Which are catastrophic?
Bookworms
If (like me) you’re an avid reader, you can use the Timeline to give you a new perspective when you read Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Voltaire’s Candide, Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Quinn’s Bridgerton series … The list goes on and on, and it extends to history as well. I just finished Doug Brunt’s The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, and am in the middle of Erik Larson’s Demon of Unrest. Researching the Timeline has made me much more engaged with both.
Current events
If you follow current events, you can use Timeline 1700-1900 to get a better perspective. Perspective is beyond price at a time when events hit us as bullet-sized snippets delivered rapid-fire. Occasionally your reaction will be “OMG no, not that again!” And sometimes, delightfully, it will be “Hurray! That again!”
If you want to change some aspect of the world, think of the Timeline as scaffolding. Knowing the ideas that have dominated history will let you build a better understanding of the past and the present, and it will increase your ability to change the future—whatever you want that future to be.
This is the end of the series on studying history. Why not jump right into the Timeline? For paid subscribers, the first PDF in Timeline 1700-1900, “The World in 1700,” appeared on 8/4/2024.
Early next month, I’ll upload a few posts on methodology, including the sources for Timeline 1700-1900, how I chose which entries to include, and formatting choices.
Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with food for thought.
Two history-related quotes worth remembering
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. —George Santayana in The Life of Reason, vol. 1 (Reason in Common Sense), 1905
And:
In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on.
In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. —John Dos Passos, “The Use of the Past,” 1941