Pattern and Repertoire in History

by Tony Syme and Bertrand M. Roehner

Historical landmarks, such as wars, coups, and revolutions, seem to arise under unique conditions. Indeed, what seems to distinguish history from the natural and social sciences is its inability to be dissected or generalized in any meaningful way. Yet even complex and large-scale events like the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution can be broken down into their component parts, and, as Bertrand Roehner and Tony Syme show, these...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067441845X
• ISBN13: 9780674418455
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 425 Pages
• Weight: 1.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Making history into a science

Although the authors don't say it in such anexplicit way, the objective of the book is noless than to make history into a science. How do they aim to achieve such an ambitious goal?They first observe that there can be no science ofsingle events. Single events can only be described (*).This applies to the fall of one apple as well as tothe Great Depression of 1929. On the contrary, onceone has defined a set of similar events, then one can begin to consider them in a comparative way, figure out which features they share as opposedto those that are merely incidental. For instance,there are manydifferences in the fall of apples, leaves, hazelnutsor peaches but these events allshare the fact that they are subjectto the influence of gravity. In short, onceone has defined a set of similar events, then one can begin to do science. Needless to say, the main difficulty is to definesets of similar events in a meaningful way. This is the main objective of the book. Each chapteris devoted to defining one or several sets of similarevents which often reveals striking similarities.For instance, it is shown that the street insurrectionsthat occurred in Paris in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1870 almost followed the same pattern. When one is confronted with a "big event", such as theAmerican or the French Revolutions, the first step beforeone can define sets of similar events is to break upthe big event into smaller (and simpler) components. In short, by decomposing macrohistorical events intotheir more elementary components, the authorsdecipher what may be seen as a kind of GENETIC CODEof history. In that view, nations and groups of peoplehave a repertoire based on their collectivememory and when time comes to act they draw (usuallywithout being aware of doing so) a sample of actions from that repertoire. Once you have read this book you will no longerlisten to the news in the same way. Instead of thinking of each event as single in its class, youwill be tempted to draw parallels. Has the civil war inKashmir something to do with the long strugglethat occurred in Ireland?Well, perhaps in some way."A superb and idea-filled book" to cite the comments by John Markoff and Charles Tilly which are listed on the back cover. An exciting read; highly recommended.(*) Note that even if this description is donein terms of a mathematical model this doesn't makeany difference. It will be no morethan a description nonetheless.