ABSTRACT
Like the great trees of an ancient forest, the big stories we tell about history, the grand narratives we call them, are sooner or later toppled by history itself. One has only to reflect on how the twentieth century’s terrible events have undermined confidence in the narrative of Western Civilization and its long, progressive climb – Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece and Rome; Middle Ages to Renaissance and Reformation; Enlightenment and Revolution to the nation-state built upon industrial capitalism and nourished by science – to appreciate how corrosively history destroys our stories about it. And yet, just as surely as history will disempower every narrative, the historians, like ants repairing a disturbed nest, will soon begin to fill the gaps and tackle the gaps of comprehensibility left by broken narratives. In the debris they discover, or rediscover, events, processes, persons, groups, places, practices, and institutions the old narratives had dimly perceived or simply ignored.
