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6 - Contingency, the Essence of History

from Part Two - Thresholds and Limits of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Alon Confino
Alon Confino
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

“The new semester does not begin until May 7.…But why worry about what happens after May 7? Is it so certain that we shall still have the same government on May 7? The comparison with the Jacobins is popular just now. Why should the German Jacobins last longer than the French ones?” March 19, 1934

“I am reading the first few pages of the Tocqueville [The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution], which Frau Schaps gave me in 1924. No one, not even the most significant and knowledgeable contemporaries, anticipated the course of Revolution. Every page of the book surprises me with analogies to the present.” September 29, 1939

“Once I would have said: I do not judge as a Jew.…Now: Yes, I judge as a Jew…because it is central to the whole structure, to the whole character of National Socialism and is uncharacteristic of everything else.” April 16, 1941

Victor Klemperer

Were the Terror and the Holocaust inevitable parts of the French Revolution and National Socialism? Anyone with a background in historical understanding would immediately reject inevitability and embrace contingency. The notion of contingency has become a mainstay of historical analysis. The disciplinary demands “Always contextualize!” and “Always historicize!” are joined by “Reject inevitability!” It follows, therefore, that to learn more about the role of contingency in historical explanation we should take its importance as a point of departure.

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Chapter
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Foundational Pasts
The Holocaust as Historical Understanding
 , pp. 97 - 117
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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