Historical Events as ‘Magic Yarn Balls’

Abstract

Historical analogies are widely invoked to characterize contemporary events. As we argue that historians should play a central role in assessing these analogies, or at least, that history should offer organized models to think about them, we present a framework for productively engaging with historical analogies in the public debate, policy discussions and elsewhere. First, we introduce the ‘magic yarn ball’ as a central metaphor to capture the textured complexity of historical phenomena in terms of similarity and difference. Second, we propose a general framework inspired by this metaphor to engage with historical analogies, centered on interrogation, individuation, and prospection. We apply our model by assessing analogies between the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany in 1933 and the inauguration of US president Donald Trump in 2017.