There is history: what happened, but there is also a broader question: how does history happen, what drives it?

Over time, different philosophies of history come in and out of vogue and so you tend to get different accounts of the same period or person: history has its own history.

I like reading history and have read a fair amount and there are at least five different schools of what drives history.¹I have named each after one of its most vocal proponents (and, yes, I’m oversimplifying their views)

1. The Perez Technology Philosophy of History

Thesis: Technology is the dominant driver of history and we can best understand the future by extrapolating technological trends. Predicting where the world is going can be done by taking the emerging technologies of any era and extrapolating them out to their logical conclusion.

Example Interpretation: The internal combustion engine leads to the car which creates urban structure of the US and suburbs.

Books and People:

• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez
• Network State by Balaji Srinavasan
• Snow Crash
• The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
• The Dream Machine by Mitchel Waldrop
• Energy and Civilizationby Vaclav Smil
• The Fourth Economy by Ron Davison

2. The Zeihan Geography and Demographic Philosophy of History

Thesis: Geography is the driver and we can best understand the future by analyzing geography and its implications.

Example: Germany has historically been warlike because it was situated in a hard to defend area between Russia (via Poland) and France. The US has been successful owing to rich natural resources and a highly defensible position with Oceans on either side.

Books and People:

• Peter Zeihan is a well known proponent of this camp.
• I would add the Realist school of foreign policy espoused by John Mearsheimer (though it doesn’t map perfectly)
• Probably Jared Diamond as well (though he has more of an evolutionary biology bent to his view as well).

3. The Fukuyama Institutional Philosophy of History

Thesis: humans are also norm-following creatures. They follow norms of behavior of others around them.

Since an institution is nothing more than a norm that persists over time, human beings have a natural tendency to institutionalize their norms and behavior

Example: In Europe, the Catholic church changed the rules of inheritance to make it much more difficult for kin groups to pass resources down to their extended families which established it as a separate institution. The Rule of Law can be understood as the rules that are banding on even the most politically powerful individuals and has its basis in religion across cultures. The rule of law became most deeply institutionalized in Western Europe due to the role of the Roman Catholic Church.

Associated People and Books:

• Francis Fukuyama’s 2 Part series on Political Order is the primary exponent of this view of history that I am aware of. This is my summary of Fukuyama. Fukuyama’s End of History and the Last Man suggests that we are in a period of institutional decay.
• I would probably put the transaction cost economics literature from people like Ronald Coase and Douglass North in here as well.

4. The Harari Narrative Philosophy of History

Thesis: Culture/narratives are the primary driver of history and history evolves along the lines of these myths. The truly unique feature of human language is its ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all: narratives and myths

Example: Trade cannot exist without trust, and it is very difficult to trust strangers. The global trade network of today is based on our trust in such fictional entities as the dollar, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the totemic trademarks of corporations. However these things don’t exist in any physical sense, they are myths that we all agree on.

Associated People and Books:

• Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari is the most contemporary well known proponent of this theory. (Summary)

5. The Marxian²Economics Philosophy of History

Thesis: History is fundamentally driven by economics. Marx was the first one to advocate this by positioning a historical dialectic where communism was the inevitable result of class conflict generated by 19th-century capitalism. Similar economic theories exist across the political spectrum.

Example: Imperialism where Britain and later the US would install puppet dictators or engage in a foreign policy designed to promote private interests. This was arguably continued via institutions that purported to be neutral like the IMF and World Bank which basically forced a neoliberal agenda in exchange for loans. The countries that developed most successfully in the second half of the 20th century were largely those that ignored these ideas.

Associated People and B0oks:

• Karl Marx
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
• How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
• The Ascent of Money by Neils Ferguson

The Two Schools of Historical Determinism

There’s another dimension I think is important. These five theories are situated between two poles of how the causal mechanisms of history operate as coined by Isaih Berlin’s Essay the Fox and the Hedgehog.

To what extent are these each driven by a complex interplay of forces that are hard to identify (The Fox School) or to what extent are they driven by “Great Persons” who influence the course of history (The Hedgehog School).

The Fox School

Thesis: There is no discernible driver to history, it’s all too complex and full of butterfly effects which end up with us being “fooled by randomness.”

Associated People and Books:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• The Incerto by Nassim Taleb
• Complexity and the Santa Fe Institute

The Hedgehog School

Thesis: History is driven by Great Persons who shape the course of history and we are all just following in their wake.

Associated People and Books:

• Most Biographies fall into this camp (though I  think this is sometimes more out of a convenience factor than anything else. It’s hard to write a book without a main character to follow so you end up telling from one person’s POV)

Towards a Nuanced View of History

I tend to lean fairly strongly towards Fox School vs. The Hedgehog School in that I believe history is all a good deal messier than it appears in history books. Though particular leaders may be catalyst for change, it is often that there is a huge stack of dry hay in the barn and if one match doesn’t set it off then another likely will.

I tend to discount any simplistic historical philosophies as I don’t feel I know the right way to think about it but I know that reducing it down to a simple cause/effect model is usually the wrong way to think about.

My own bias among the philosophies tends towards the camp of economics as the proximate cause, for most historical change.

I tend to view Institutions, culture, geography, and technology as feeding into economics. Technology seems to be becoming gradually more impactful and geography gradually less over time so I tend to think economics and technology are the most useful historical philosophies for our present moment.

However, this is obviously incorrect in certain contexts (and me incorrect today!). To take only one example, the European age of exploration was probably more motivated by religious/cultural considerations than economic ones. From Roger Howley’s Conquerors, a history of the Portuguese Empire:

Since the fall of Constantinople, Christian Europe had felt itself increasingly hemmed in. To outflank Islam, link up with Prester John and the rumored Christian communities of India, seize control of the spice trade, and destroy the wealth that empowered the Mamluk sultans in Cairo—from the first months of his reign, a geostrategic vision of vast ambition was already in embryo; it would, in time, sweep the Portuguese around the world.”

To be sure, there was an economic component, but it seems hard to read histories of the Middle Ages such as Barbara Tuchman’s Distant Mirror and come away with a primarily economic or technologically driven view – culture and institutions seemed to play a much larger role.

The main thing I’ve gained from reading history is how many different interpretations there are and how many of them have a legitimate point. I think the best way to think about these schools is to recognize that all of them matter in varying degrees with their impact changing over time. If reality has a surprising amount of detail, it would make sense that the history of reality does too.

So the question is always what are the most important ones for our historical moment?

Last Updated on March 8, 2023 by Taylor Pearson

1. This is obviously a reductionist model and a lot of them overlap, but I’m interested in finding a better way to think about it and some simplified taxonomy seems useful.
2. I’ using the word Marxian rather than Marxist because “Marxist economics” has come to take on a very specific meaning with communist/socialist focus. I’m just using Marx here because he was the first person I encountered who posited economics/class as the driving historical force.