The marginal utility of 2000 years of history versus 50 years versus zero years. This quantity is hard to quantify. May be it is zero. Maybe it is even negative. Maybe we cannot know what this value is for sure. But it is hard to see why it is necessarily positive notwithstanding Eric Hobsbawn comment that "Nations without a history are contradictions in terms.'
Historians studying India often make a big deal of the fact that India has 2000 years and more of history. But what is the marginal utility for a country to have a long history? The marginal utility seems small. Below is a comment on an article by Namit Arora on "Three Quarks Daily" :
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Nicely done Namit.
Some of these Marxist historians are pretty, pretty good. The only trouble is that they cannot always be trusted. Every once in a while, they will say something supremely ridiculous.
Three comments :
1. Regarding the point on historical awareness in premodern India: this is already known. Nothing new is being said here.
2. Regarding the points on Gandhi : this is also already known. Nothing new is being said here. It is useful to bear in mind that we are talking about a fellow form the mid-19th century. Some of those guys were very smart and intelligent, but hardly 'enlightened with a global level of awareness'. Like, say, you and I. :)
3. ‘Nations without a past are contradictions in terms' : It would be useful to think of this in terms of the marginal utility for a country to have 2000 years of history versus 50 years of history. The marginal utility of a very long history seems to be negligible. If, say, there was massive global warming (and this is purely hypothetical) and oil were discovered in Antarctica and they decided to form 10 new countries there which decided to live peacefully and responsibly, they would surely be no worse having zero years of history. In fact, they would be probably be better off.
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