‘The Undivided Past’, by David Cannadine – review

David Cannadine detests generalisations and looks disapprovingly on any attempt to divide humanity into precise categories. The Undivided Past provides a resoundingly dusty answer to any historian rash enough to seek for certainties in this our life. It is highly intelligent, stimulating, occasionally provocative and enormous fun to read.

Cannadine considers the six ways in which humanity is traditionally deemed to split into distinct and usually hostile groups — religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilisation — and demonstrates that these groups are neither distinct nor hostile — indeed, can hardly be said to be groups at all. ‘When I was coming up,’ said President George W. Bush regretfully, ‘you knew exactly who they were.Today we’re not so sure who they are, but we know they’re there.’

There is no such thing as ‘they’ and ‘we’, Cannadine would retort. The Manichean vision of a society divided into they and we, good and bad, is not merely nonsensical but dangerous; by pre-supposing a world divided into blocs, it creates the frame of mind in which artificial differences become real and lead to embittered hostility and, eventually, war or revolution.