3 History Books That Will Change the Way You See the World

Some people say you can only understand the present by knowing about the past. After all, it’s how we got from A-Z. The systems we have in place today across the world — government, transport, and various forms of leisure and past time — are from the accumulation of decades of history and development.

Our present, therefore, is inextricably shaped by the past. This quote by Edmund Burke was ingrained in me from the moment I started studying my history degree,

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

By reading about the past, we can better understand the world around us. This concept initially drove me to spend three years of my life reading history books and getting myself into £50,000 worth of debt.

Although it’s been over a year since I graduated, certain books continue to impact how I view the world. The following books will shape your understanding of race, government, power, dominion, sexuality and gender. If you want to understand the world better, history is the best place to start.

Orientalism, Edward Said (1978)

Understanding history involves recognising the unequal power balance between The West and The East and how it has influenced the past conception. Winston Churchill wasn’t lying when he famously said, “History is written by the victors.”

For a long time, the history of slavery and imperialism was only documented by a certain cohort of historians — white men — with a certain viewpoint that I need not explain. As I figure, you’ll know what I am referring to.

Since then, the way these complex periods are understood has changed greatly, thanks to revisionism, historical distance and greater societal understanding. Orientalism played a part in upsetting this balance and giving greater exposure to how the Western world has portrayed the rest of the world — most notably the east.

When I first had to read it at university, it fundamentally altered how I perceived the world.

Its impact (in a nutshell)

Edward Said was an Arab-Palestinian intellectual who spent a significant amount of time living in the West. He drew on his own lived experience to reflect on this power imbalance and how the West had created imperial notions of every part of Eastern culture.

At the heart of it is an examination of the process of Western ‘othering’ — and how the term ‘Orientalism’ is an inadequate, unfair and offensive portrayal of the East. His main arguments are as follows:

The West held views of the rest of the world that were outdated and flawed by using stereotypes that demonstrate this historical power imbalance: exotic, dangerous, unchanging, underdeveloped, uncivilised (a few examples)

Said argues this framework is damaging because it’s how some of the most powerful Western leaders interpreted the rest of the world.

Orientalism is used as a framework to explain the lingering colonial mentality and sense of dominion that is still at the heart of some Western nations.

Understanding the concept of Orientalism opened my eyes up to the ongoing inequalities between the West and East and made me realise the impact of language, stereotypes and assumption.

It made me view the past through a searing, critical lens rather than one that only favoured progress. History isn’t a straight line of linear progression. Although we have come far, there is a long way to go.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott (1999)

If you believe history is a linear line of progress, then you’re in for a shock. This mindset is known as a ‘Whiggish’ interpretation, where everything in the past is presented as progressive to get to the advanced point to where we are today. It was the one area we were actively encouraged to avoid swaying into when writing our undergraduate essays.

But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense to avoid it. In today’s world, we have many problems. Ongoing racial and gender inequality, climate change, poverty, social deprivation and continuing wars are just a few examples. If we follow the Whiggish version of history, ideally, we’d have none of that today.

The development of modern nations across the world has the danger of swaying into this Whiggish territory, especially when Britain and the United States largely document it. For my specialism in my final year, I studied how the US and Britain enforced a policy of ‘development’ across Africa, India and other ‘less developed’ nations across the world and how it was justified in the name of ‘improvement’.

Essentially, it was a way of continuing paternalism, dominion and power imbalances deployed during Imperialism, dressed up in the language of making improvements and developing the rest of the world to the West’s standards.

Its impact (in a nutshell)

Seeing Like a State demonstrates how certain schemes and ideas deployed by the West on ‘less developed nations’ essentially failed because they were not good for the people that lived there. Scott argues that the modern state as a structure was always doomed to fail.

It was an essential text in my special subject and changed how I viewed the world by encouraging me to be more critical — of everything. James Scott essentially argues:

In the past (and even in the present), rich states impose development schemes aiming to make a country better, but they do not improve the lives of the everyday people who live there.

He cites measures of development (and control) are uniformed languages, census data, and standardised weights and measurements.

But these measures actually make it easier for the state to control its people and not improve their livelihoods.

Besides being an enlightening read into how states have evolved in different places across the world, it teaches us these ‘improvements’ that aim to benefit us actually do the opposite. This is often carried out through a lack of understanding of the lived experience and listening to the people that live in these places.

In terms of how Britain and the US aimed to collectively ‘develop’ the rest of the world they perceived as behind, it makes you realise these aims were essentially a new, dressed up method of control.

Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918–1963, Kate Fisher and Simon Szreter (2010)

Granted, this is a little more niche, but it still changes how we think about sexuality, gender and the depiction of the Roaring Twenties that we are all so familiar with in The Great Gatsby. Although we undoubtedly, on the whole, enjoy greater sexual freedoms than we did in the past, there are still societies across the world that do not benefit from this.

Sexuality is a very individualised, nuanced and difficult area to study. It relies on breaking down that barrier of private life and exploring ideas through non-typical sources like oral testimonies. In the past, people weren’t as open about sex, and if they did talk about it, it was often in a private capacity like in diaries or letters.

Anyway, I’m diverging. My final year dissertation looked at gender, sexuality and expression in premarital life in the 1920s in Britain, using the letters written between my great-grandparents before they were married.

The general historical consensus was that despite our perception of the Roaring Twenties and frugality, couples were strictly expected to adhere to sexual restraint before they were married in Britain. Essentially, most people believe couples never had sex before they were married, and it would take several decades more to be broken down.

Reading about this changed how I viewed sexuality and these unwritten societal expectations about relationships that dominated young couples’ lives in the past. It made me realise how valuable letters were as a private, unrestricted form of communication between people and how different relationships were back then.

Its impact (in a nutshell)

Sex Before the Sexual Revolution aims to break down this misconception that once the 1960s hit Britain, everyone was having sex and talking about it more freely. It looks at what sex, gender and sexuality meant for ordinary people, using interviews conducted by Kate Fisher and Simon Szreter.

Those before the 1960s are often pitted as deprived and sexually repressed, but this aims to present a more nuanced interpretation of our sexual past. Kate Fisher and Simon Szreter argue the following:

Sexual relationships and experiences before the 1960s in Britain are more individualised and nuanced than most historians give credit for.

They dismiss the idea that sexual progress was a guarantee from the 1960s onwards.

Sex was, on the whole, still a private matter between couples (this did not change post-1960.)

It’s hard to imagine how our ancestors navigated relationships before contraception and other forms of sexual progress that have occurred since the 1960s. But as mentioned previously, this is another example of how history isn’t linear. Sex for a long time was confined to privacy and a matter only to be discussed between partners if discussed at all.

The Sexual Revolution (think the swinging 1960s in Britain and the evolution of the contraceptive pill) disrupted certain behaviours, but it didn’t change society to the point of no return. Importantly, it was mostly a Western phenomenon. Read this book if you want your preconceptions about sexuality to be challenged.

I could add many more books to this list because my degree shaped the way I viewed the world. It encouraged me to challenge my preconceptions of progress and the way the world is today. It forced me to question everything and to never take anything for granted.

These books caused me to think deeply about a range of issues, and I believe that I am a better person because of them. Although they may be more time consuming to read, they are definitely worth every page.

Originally published in Age of Awareness at Medium.com