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Ruptures in History

of the past by dividing it up. Often using the moon as a marker, they have devised calendars. With the coming of civilizations, division by dynasties and kingdoms became the marker. With Christianity, we have the widely accepted B.C./A.D. dating scheme. By the time of the Renaissance— another “timely” rubric—the notion of tripartite division of time emerged: ancient, medieval, and modern history—one that is still largely with us and has spread from the West to the rest of the globe. This framework is not terribly helpful, however, when dealing with non-Western history. To speak of medieval Islam, for example, really means Islam at the time of the European Middle Ages; they are not the Middle Ages in the Islamic world. Somewhere around the 17th century, we have the idea of an “Age,” as in the Age of Louis XIV. The French Revolution of 1789 largely ended dynastic periodization, although the word “Age” has hung around.1 Given this background of how we measure change in the past, we must remind ourselves that historians generally see the past is both continuous and discontinuous. Stringing together facts, in what often appears to be a functionally deterministic way, historians draw a smooth line through the past. Both the facts and the continuity are, we now realize, constructed. We construct what is a fact and recognize that we could have emphasized other ones. And we impose continuity upon those we have selected. Equally important, however, is the recognition of ruptures in history. “Rupture” comes from a Latin word that means “to break.” Not surprisingly, there is no allusion to history. If one looks up “rupture” on Google, one finds that it is mostly defined in geological or surgical terms. The historical definition we must work out for ourselves. I suggest that we think of it as a major cut in the continuity of the past. Against the view of the human past as marked by continuity, ruptures mark abrupt change.2 Some ruptures are of a relatively minor nature, others of major significance. Among the former, we are told, for example, that “Naval combat as it had been fought for millennia does appear to have changed after 1945.”3 Combat between huge battle fleets, like we witnessed in the Pacific during World War II, seem a thing of the past. Surely, this represents a rupture. There are two other ruptures that I consider more significant, especially for the way they point to