Experimental history

We advocate adding a requirement to the graduate history curriculum.

Some time ago, one of us (probably the astronomer) decided that history PhD students needed an addition to their course of study.  He was probably prompted by some dismissive or un-insightful passage in a book he was reading.  He held that each student should be required to cultivate a small patch of, say, wheat or barley, from sowing the seed to grinding the result into flour (baking optional).  His point was that most of humanity through most of its history worked on doing nothing else.  Such things as the anxiety over weather and the necessity to do certain kinds of work at certain times form an unspoken background to all the texts and documents that students work with.

There are certain practical difficulties with the idea.  Finding the requisite plot of land within easy distance of the campus would be hard for some urban universities (though perhaps it would give a useful boost to rural institutions).  Maybe students studying maritime cultures could substitute regular fishing expeditions.  Those whose focus includes Medieval kings might conduct the odd boar-hunt on horseback.  The show-stopper would be the fact that Humanities departments are already short of funds and being shut down, so additional activities are not on the table.

Even ignoring mundane practicalities, the idea is easy to push too far.  Biographers of generals cannot be expected to raise an army and win a war or even a minor skirmish.  Historians of sailing navies can’t be set aboard even a square-rigged sixth-rate, because none exist; so observing the teamwork of hundreds of mast-climbing sailors is out.  Traveling from Madrid to Paris on (simulated) sixteenth-century roads would exhaust anyone’s patience, to say nothing of one’s stipend.

We considered something much closer to home from the historian’s point of view.  Require that one’s dissertation be written by hand on parchment, by daylight and candlelight.  It would no doubt give much insight into many Medieval texts and their writers.  But someone would eventually have to read the result, and that’s a task we wish on no one.

Still, there are things we think are worth dong.  Maybe the barley field/vineyard could be a communal effort of the whole Department.  Maritime historians certainly should have experience in sailing craft of some description.  Some monasteries allow visitors for limited periods.

And–horses.  We’ve noted before how horses were the accepted background of life for thousands of years, and are now all but unknown to most people (in person).  We suspect that the horseless background of modern historians goes largely unnoticed because horses were so ubiquitous that they were rarely commented on in texts.  And yet an acquaintance with the animals would inform writings all the way from Sidney’s Defence of Poesy to Kipling short stories.

So experimental history for grad students is impractical, but might be greatly illuminating.  What would you include?