ABSTRACT

Donald Sassoon has used an Althusserian metaphor to reformulate the famous Marxian precept that people make their own history but not under self-selected circumstances:

[Historians should not behave] like the omniscient traveler who, upon embarking on a train journey, knows all the stations on the way, as well as the train’s final destination. In the study of history, the correct attitude is to jump on a moving train not knowing where it comes from or where it is going, walk up and down the cars, examine the furnishings, talk to the passengers, find out how they have interacted, what their aspirations and hopes have been. The historian can look at the landscape and note how it changes. By leaning out of the window – a risky enterprise– it may even be possible to observe which way the train will veer, whether a mountain is approaching, or a river is to be crossed, but no more than that. Although anything can happen within the train, much of it unpredictable, there is one thing the historian must not forget: trains can go faster or slower, they can come to a stop, they can explode; but they are constrained by their tracks. History is about what people do within the limits of their landscape, their needs, and their past. 1