Presentism and the Politics of History: Revisiting the 2022 James Sweet Affair

Abstract

Abstract: This article revisits the debate over presentism in historical writing touched off by American Historical Association President James Sweet in an August 2022 column for the Association’s newsletter. Sweet’s statement, expressing concern that historians motivated by today’s political concerns sometimes distort historical evidence, sparked a flurry of responses, mostly from detractors in public and supporters in private. Leaders in the profession and writers in the popular press articulated in response a mainstream compromise position: present-day concerns are an entirely legitimate point of departure for historians but must be held in check by respect for research integrity. This article challenges the rhetorical binary between presentism and strict empiricism, arguing that framing the issue in this way downplays the most important characteristic of ‘good history’, interpretive originality. Neither political passion nor scrupulous research suffice to produce great works of history which typically originate in creatively counter-intuitive thinking.