This critical précis aims at summarizing, comparing, and contrasting two scholarly articles on the subject of public history. Specifically, it focuses on the differences and similarities of Albert Hurtado’s “The Significance of Public History in the American West: An Essay Some Modest Suggestion” and John English’s “The Tradition of Public History in Canada.”
Albert Hurtado’s “The Significance of Public History in the American West: An Essay and Some Modest Suggestion” declares the need to integrate public and academic history as a way “to mold the West of the future.” Hurtado first outlines the scope of public history in three main areas: cultural resources management, creating histories of multiple Western institutions, and, last but not least, expert testimonies. Based on this overview, Hurtado asserts that it is important to strengthen the field of public history by “cross-fertilization with mainstream history” for the benefit of communities and society, in general. Billy the Kid provides a good example of why people were interested in westward expansion. Example of this is a legend that said he killed twenty-one men, but the real number is closer to eight. This is where public history plays a role in American westward expansion: it helps separate fact from fiction.
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John English’s “The Tradition of Public History in Canada,” argues that the public history as historians’ involvement in public life participation is, figuratively speaking, dead in Canada. John English points out on the gradual integration of the public history into the Canadian political and social reality, which reached its culmination in the 1960s, has ended. He attributes this to lack of historians involvement in any governmental projects except for commissioned historical research, lack of historians’ engagement into a variety of public matters, and impact of the American scholarship in running the history departments in Canada.
. The first great similarity is that both assigned readings focus on the issue of public history, specifically they provide historical insights into how the field of public history evolved in their respective countries and give a commentary on the current situation in the field of public history in the United States (Hurtado) and in Canada (English). Further, both texts point out the importance of historians’ involvement into the governmental and community life projects as a means of this field development and popularity. Next, both articles underline the role of academic or university education in the promotion of the specialty. Moreover, both authors trace the beginning of the field to pre-World War I times, and assert that it was not an overnight process that the history started to be used widely in the public domain. Finally, both authors critically evaluate the current state of affairs in the matter of public history development in their respective nations.
However similar the two articles may seem in their treatment of the subject of public history, they have a few important differences. Hurtado’s article provides a historical overview o the field of public history and concludes that the importance of public history is growing in the lives of various parts of American society. On the contrary, the assessment of the role of public history made by John English is very pessimistic. In fact, he focuses on the public history non-use and minimal inclusion in the governmental or social fields. His is the negative assessment whereas Hurtado’s is a positive one. Also, it turns out, that the Canadian realm of the public history had a shorter history of recognition and development, with various issues affected by the public history use. This significantly outlines the challenges that exist in Canada inhibiting the achievement of public historians. The interest to reserve the history of Canada in museum and arks is not upheld by the government thus hindering the development of the public history. The emphasis of reusing building or maintaining the standards of history in Canada has also facilitated to the failure of development.
On the opposite, the U.S. has had a longer history of the field development, which resulted in public history integration into different realms of social and political life.
The two authors have similar perspective in offering discussion of how public history has develop in both countries and the challenges facing it. However Hurtado remains optimistic with the minimal challenges in American history but English is more pessimistic with the challenges. English uses the article to criticize the failure of the government stakeholders as facilitator of failure of recognition in Canada history as well as it development. This comparison of the authors reflects the emphasis on history between the two countries and development of public history. Moreover, the challenges and the reform to be adopted in order to ensure public history continue to endeavor.
