It seems to me, for some reason, that lately over the pages of this blog and elsewhere we have rekindled discussions over the difference or ‘pastness’ of the past as compared with the present. Are historians too eager to find difference in the past that similarities go unnoticed, or is it the other way around? How familiar or different is the past? It would seem that as historians we have a vested interest in arguing for difference, since it renders our profession as that much more necessary—and alluring. And while it is quite impossible to argue that the past was Read more