The World Historians
Karl Korsch
!ERE IS NO DOUBT
that world history is being made today on a
grandiose scale. To what extent, we must ask, was the approach
of these events reflected in the historical thought of the preceding
generation?
For a preliminary answer we turn to a speech that was
addressed by an American historian to the people of the last
American frontier twenty-eight years ago:
"Across the Pacific looms Asia, no longer a remote vision and a
symbol of the unchanging, but borne as by mirage close to our
shores and raising grave questions of the common destiny of the
people of the ocean. The dreams of Benton and of Seward of a
regenerated Orient, when the long march of westward civilization
should complete its circle, seem almost to be in process of real–
ization. The age of the Pacific Ocean begins, mysterious and
unfathomable in its meaning for our own future."*
This was indeed a power£ul vision of historical developments
which then lay far ahead of the generation that was to experience
the first and the second world wars. Yet it appears on closer
scrutiny that even this most dynamic of American historians was
not fully aware of the terrible challenge to the whole traditional
structure of his world which was to arise from the events which he
so confidentlY, predicted. To him, the "age of the Pacific Ocean"
was simply the next great step in a continuous movement in which
every preceding step had likewise been part of the march into a
"mysterious and unfathomable" future. All existing civilization
he conceived as a "westward civilization," and he joyfully quoted
a European witness for the assertion that in its uninterrupted west·
ward expansion "the land which has no history reveals luminously
the
course of Universal History."
The map of the United States
today, Turner said, "lies like a huge page in the
history of society."
"Line by line as we read this continental page from West to East,
we find the
record of social evolution."
(My emphasis-K.K.)
To show the precarious nature of this world-historical concept
•F. J. Turner, Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914-
reprinted in
"The Frontier in American History."
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