Christopher Dawson, in Dynamics of World History (first published in 1958), explained his paradigm for history that goes beyond recording events, identifying physical causes and formal causes of historical shifts, to efficient causes and final causes. (He does not use Aristotelean terminology but clearly thinks in this framework). The foundations of history outline these causes, and his critiques of others’ views of history are largely based on their focus on a subset of the sources of culture change and history drivers. The factors that influence history and culture include geography, race, economics, physical environment, climate, knowledge, and religion. Changes on the world level are caused largely by either changes in one or more of these factors, or by the interaction of different cultures (resulting in adaptation and syncretism or war and conquest). But no subset of the factors is sufficient to explain history.
Dawson's reviews of previous historians range from recognition of insight (Augustine) to critiques of obvious shortcomings of the others: Gibbon, Marx, Wells, Spengler, and Toynbee. He presciently (or perceptively) observed (in 1935) that the ultimate verdict on Communism will be that the house it is building for the new humanity is not a palace but a prison. But he is particularly strong on this point: If God exists and is sovereign and outside of our universe, His intervention cannot be understood by any of the factors that we can read about. This provides a view of history unique to Christianity, that it is the record of God building His kingdom, His city, on earth. This was first clearly articulated in Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God, written in the fifth century. History is ultimately His story, with His purpose and plan. Although Dawson clearly states this (his view of final causation), most of his writings about history link material causes to efficient causes, not final causes.
The core of Dawson’s approach to understanding history is analysis of interactions between previously isolated factors or players that result in events and change. One example: throughout most of history, city-dwellers have been culturally and socially isolated from farmers, hunters, miners, etc. - people who dwell in the countryside and only come to the city to do business. And these same factors have brought interactions between divergent cultures around the world. Dawson touches on briefly is the impact of European culture on indigenous peoples around the world during the 18th and 19th centuries of worldwide empires. In many cases, the native cultures were deemed primitive and collapsed under Western onslaught. Whether the economic benefits to these peoples outweighed the loss of their native way of life depends on several factors, which were not covered in this book, but alluded to.
It would have been interesting to get his analysis of the modern world, in which transportation and the internet have obliterated cultural separation. One of Dawson’s main paradigms is that when previously isolated social groups start to interact on a continuing basis for some reason, both parties are affected with long-term change. In my view, we need this kind of assessment to understand the state of the world today. It is more than just economics, language, culture, and information; there is a fundamental redefinition of the ground rules of behavior, resulting in mental health-driven crises, such as epidemics of drug abuse, gun violence, suicide, and mass migration. Who today assesses the causal relationship between technology and behaviors?
In sum, with 420 pages of densely packed scholarship, one must persevere to read this book in its entirety. Perhaps there are contemporary writers with this methodical approach, but I have not encountered them. Dawson provides a framework and a way of thinking about history, and cause and effect in understanding our past that bears on our present, from a Christian yet scholarly perspective. He cites scholarly references regarding events that are documented and supported by evidence, rather than Scripture. The bottom line is that history can be understood, and it is to our own hurt that we choose not to do so.
