One of the fiercest historical controversies in recent years exploded last summer, sparked by an essay entitled ‘Is History History?’. Written by James H Sweet, then president of the influential American Historical Association, it was printed in that organisation’s magazine in August 2022. The global social media backlash was overwhelming. Angry readers branded his article “crap”, “smug condescension”, even “white supremacist”. Scholars around the world weighed in, along with media commentators. An opinion piece in The New York Times called it “one of the confusing messes that pop up from time to time in the highest reaches of academia”, while The Washington Post mocked “academia’s most recent pratfall”.
In his piece, Sweet, professor of African history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, criticised a shift toward ‘presentism’ - the study of the past
