The complexity of history: Beyond cause and effect

In a previous post, I mused that we are only beginning to understand the complexity of social realities and history. It sounds clever, but what do I really mean? As luck would have it, I have recently been reading about the origins of the American Revolution. This historical period has been studied so extensively, and in such detail, that one can use it as an example.

Traditionally, history has been seen as a fearless quest for the sufficient cause of past events – German historian Leopold von Ranke put it concisely when he spoke of ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ (‘how it actually was’)¹ – whether that cause is the prime moving fact, the prime mover Himself, or Hegel’s and Marx’s teleology. I would call it a straightforward quest for ‘begats’ – be they kings or facts. Upon closer inspection, however, one finds oneself adrift on a perilous sea of infinite necessary factors – and the serene shore of Sufficient Cause turns out to be a fata morgana.

Deep undercurrents of change

In America, as much as in the rest of the world, the period leading up to 1776 was one of profound change (see The American Revolution: A History by Gordon S. Wood). The population was expanding rapidly, people were moving in search of land and trades, and transnational production systems were being established (see The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomerantz). International trade flourished. These changes reinforced each other in intricate and bewildering ways, with no inevitable direction.

We can plumb even greater depths – the emergence of internationally traded consumer goods like sugar, molasses (rum!), tea, cocoa, and coffee opened up a new and expanding world of consumption for non-elites. It was luxury for the masses, in a way, and a far cry from (medieval) subsistence (see Le isole del lusso by Marcello Carmagnani). We should not ignore the deep impact of such mood-changing products on our brains (see On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail), as they came to replace socially sanctioned psychotropic mechanisms like liturgies, ceremonies, and spectacles (see Discours de la servitude volontaire by Étienne de La Boétie). The ‘pursuit of happiness’ had become a very personal and physical affair.

The material world was being transformed, but few recognised, let alone understood, its significance at the time. Elites had neither the awareness nor the means to shape such change in a way to preserve the social structures underpinning their authority. Increasingly, they were perceived as corrupt and tyrannical – even when implementing physiocratic principles (or perhaps because of such ‘progressive’ policies).

Transformative experiences

Buffeted by these forces, people reacted and tried to make sense of their experiences. Often, they felt anger and passion (see American Insurgents, American Patriots by Timothy H. Breen), which were cast in terms of devilish conspiracies and prophecies of impending doom. People needed words to express their emotions, so they resorted to trusted analogies – ready-made stories that easily resonated. Religion (see The Hebrew Republic by Eric Nelson) – a central and everyday experience in a community – and its language of truth, absolutes, and destiny provided a popular fit. Others found inspiration elsewhere among the classics, which were rapidly becoming available. It was all part of a ‘massive, seemingly random eclecticism’ (see The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn). It was often rather superficial and hodgepodge, nay, undigested. They vented these emotions as best they could, sharing their experiences through emerging systems of communication (newspapers were becoming popular).

Yet ‘these long popular, though hitherto inconclusive, ideas about the world and America’s place in it were fused into a comprehensive view, unique in its moral and intellectual appeal’. What happened? All these ‘inconclusive ideas’ were poured into the crucible of popular experience and were transformed by it. As a concrete example of the transformative effect of experience, let us look at the central role of the Committees of Observation. The First Continental Congress created them to enforce the boycott of English goods. They did so in a very effective fashion: imports dropped by about 90%. Flush with success, these local networks of committees moved on to pursue ideological crimes – the root cause of non-compliance. The behaviour of these committees was religiously tinged, which gave them grassroots legitimacy. They sought ‘confessions’, ‘remorse’, ‘new political birth’, and coerced ‘reconciliation’ by ‘shaming’ and the threat of ‘civil excommunication’, while eschewing physical punishment. These local structures channelled the anger into procedures and became ‘schools of revolution’.

Meanwhile, a new elite began to emerge – the Band of Brothers – which moved to shape these forces into a more coherent whole. It would be a grievous error, however, to view the committees – micro-history, as it were – as subaltern to the macro-history played out at the national level. The impulse for the boycott policy came from the Suffolk Resolves of one such local entity, and micro-history was just as much in the lead as macro-history – in fact, there was a steady tension between these two realms.

The solitons of chance

A soliton is a ‘self-reinforcing solitary wave that maintains its shape while it travels at constant speed’, and I use it here as a metaphor for the unexpected and violent effect of sheer chance.

In September 1774, a rumour flew across the Americas that General Gage had destroyed Boston. People everywhere – figures of up to 50,000 have been mentioned – rose in arms, converging on Massachusetts. The rumour was soon dispelled, but not before Americans had seen each other in arms – it was a serendipitous plebiscite of wills – and one that forever raised the horizon of the possible. The First Congress scuttled plans to compromise with Britain and endorsed the Suffolk Resolves.

As context dissolves agency

History teaches everything including the future.

–Alphonse de Lamartine

History has long been imagined as a list of personal or impersonal forces creating inevitabilities. Historians have relegated infinite necessities to introductory background in the process of enucleating the sufficient cause(s). Chance was a distraction best hidden under sweeping generalisations.

If modern historiography teaches us anything, it is that, between the polar views of history as ‘begats’ and history as ‘a series of accumulated imaginative inventions’ (Voltaire), there lies a world of complexity, where everything from biology to ideology interacts in profound but understandable – if not predictable – ways. Within this complexity of infinite combinations and possibilities, it is transformative experiences that create path-dependent outcomes – a creative, not an ineluctable, process.

Observing the complexity of the context dissolves the dream of the human will mastering the future. Knowledge of the social and material context, however, allows us to adapt and exploit opportunities in a trial-and-error fashion. This may be the best we can do – but it may be just ‘good enough’.

The post was first published on DeepDip.

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