In France, a movement for a ‘new history’ got underway in 1920s. It was spearheaded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, who were both professors at the University of Strasbourg. They founded the Annales D’historie economique et sociale, which launched a scathing criticism of traditional historians. Like Lamprecht and Robinson, Bloch and Febvre called into question the dominance of political history. They strived for replacing political history with a history with wider human spectrum, which would include all human activities.

They argued that it must not limit its ambit to the description of events but also offer a more profound analysis of the ‘structures’, a term which became favourite with Annales historians. Both Bloch and Febvre pressed their fellow scholars in history to learn from other disciplines. They had a penchant for linguistics, and they also read the ‘studies of primitive mentality’ by the philosopher-anthropologist, Lucien Levy-Bruhl.

Febvre was particularly interested in geography and psychology and carefully infused the concepts of Charles Blondel (a psychologist) and Friedrich Ratzel (anthro-geographer) in the studies that he carried out. Bloch imbibed influence from Emile Durkheim’s sociology and used concepts like social cohesion and collective representations. He also employed comparative method in his scholarly ventures and thereby widened the scope of history.

These giants among scholars were succeeded by Fernand Braudel, author of The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, “with a good claim to be regarded as the most important historical work of the (20^th) century”. He, like his worthy predecessors, had a multi-disciplinary approach and was reputed to be quite well-versed in economics and geography. He also underscored the affinity between history and sociology because both disciplines endeavour to see human experience holistically.

Pakistani historians ought to emulate Annales and diversify their academic interests instead of clinging on to political history which is event-centred, fact-based and fosters the role of a personality as the propelling force of history, as these methods have become anachronistic.

Influential scholars who produced cutting-edge work in the realm of social history are also to be found in countries like Brazil. Gilberto Freyre was one such social historian. Educated and trained in the United States, he earned fame and recognition as a social historian of extra-ordinary merit. He wrote a trilogy on the social history of Brazil, The Masters and the Slaves (1933), The Mansions and Shanties (1936), and Order and Progress (1959).

Despite some lacunae, the significance of Freyre’s work cannot be denied. He was among the pioneers to discuss the history of language, the history of food, the history of housing, and the history of body as an integrated account of the past society. He was also the first to use newspapers to write social history and adapted the social survey to historical purposes. More importantly, he studied the social condition of the colonised people which makes his work relevant to those venturing into the social history of the Punjab.

In the 1960s, such books as Shmuel N Eisenstadt’s The Political Systems of Empires, Seymour M Lipset’s The First New Nation, Charles Tilly’s The Vendee, Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and Eric Wolf’s Peasant Wars contributed significantly to bringing social theorists and historians to the fore. Since those times, a sizable number of social anthropologists, like Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins have produced studies on Bali and Hawaii from historical perspective.

Ernest Gellner, John Hall and Michael Mann have brought into vogue the philosophical history as a tool to study world history in the tradition of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber in order to distinguish different types of society and explaining the transition from one type to another. Michael Mann’s four-volume The Sources of Power is quite an influential work of social history. It is different in its focus and scope but an extremely important piece of scholarship.

Now we should turn our gaze towards Neo-Marxists and Subalterns and their engagement with social history.

Neo Marxists like E P Thompson, Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm have very successfully synthesised the political strand with social movements. In doing so, they have enriched history as a discipline. Out of the neo-Marxist trend, Subaltern studies emanated in 1982 with Ranajit Guha as its founding figure.

The major contributor to Subaltern School had been scholars from Western Bengal. Therefore, a majority of themes that they took up were concerned with Bengal. The Subaltern Studies not only mounted a big challenge to the political history, it also fused history with literary theory, critical theory, anthropology and political theory. On top of that, it brought into focus the micro subjects (marginalised or peripheral issues and individuals) of inquiry, instead of continuing with macro themes.

Because of its innovative methodology and novel theorising, Subalterns studies took the academic world by storm. The noteworthy aspect is indifference of Subalterns towards the Punjab. Shail Mayaram was the sole exception who carried out an excellent work on the Mevati community and its interface with Tableeghi Jamaat during early twentieth century. All said and done, the social history of the Punjab under colonialism has not been attempted so far.

The Universities of Pakistan and particularly the departments of history must encourage their academics to do social histories. If we rivet our attention specifically on Punjab’s social history under the British, some of the peculiarities must be borne in mind. Much of the Punjabi social self was constructed afresh after its annexation by the British. It was given a new language, education system, large number of immigrants poured into the Punjab immediately after annexation.

Every prominent city underwent transformation because of which within a single locale there emerged two divergent social spaces, old city and a new city (Civil Lines, etc). A new healthcare system was introduced. The institution of the private property had been put in practice. Introduction of railways and canal colonisation brought about marked changes in the socio-cultural profile of the region. New hierarchies were created in the rural Punjab through the policy of co-option.

Military recruitment also accorded a new character to the Punjab. All these changes notwithstanding, there are some socio-cultural aspects of the Punjab which resisted the arbitrary changes made by the colonialists. These aspects, as revealed by Hussain Ahmad Khan, outlasted the colonial dispensation. Social historians need to undertake their identification in greater detail.

(Concluded)