Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades

Abstract

Is it possible that Bernard Bailyn, whose scholarly work continued virtually to the end of his very long life two years ago, still has important things to say to us about history? It’s not only possible; it’s actual, it’s happened. Bailyn’s final book, Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades, published last summer, is a great historian’s last will and testament, a gift of extraordinary generosity to all those who have admired, and benefited from, his uniquely influential oeuvre. It certainly is “retrospective;” most of its several parts look backward to one after another of his major projects. But, at the same time, it has a strongly forward feel—building anew on past insights, opening fresh questions, pointing toward horizons as yet unexplored. And, far more than anything else Bailyn wrote, it’s personal. Much is in the subjective voice, and feels alternately ruminative and conversational. The ruminations are candid and freeranging. The conversation is rich and many-sided—sometimes with other scholars, sometimes with the reader, often with the historian himself. What’s perhaps most remarkable is the copious description of process: the searching out of problems, the step-by-step development of interpretation and argument. Goals are set, possibilities measured, strategies weighed—leading at length to arresting, often “surprising,” conclusions. A sense of motion is ever-present: “I learned about. . .” “I came upon. . .” “It led me eventually to. . .” “As I went deeper into. . .” “And that