Sheilagh Ogilvie: preference

Transcript context

…Now, how much do you think that coming from Western Canada has shaped how you understand these histories? Mostly it’s Europeans doing these European histories. How has it made you different? I think it’s been good in two ways. One is, I have no dog in the race. I’m Canadian. I don’t have emotional attachment to the history of any particular society in Europe. I hope it enables me to free myself of the desire either to criticize or to rehabilitate the past of a particular country that I’m looking at. I’m not saying Canada doesn’t have a history, but it doesn’t have a long history. It means that I’m endlessly curious about these places with deep, very, very long histories. I wish I had a second life so that I could do Chinese economic history, which is the new frontier. More than half my graduate students are brilliant young Chinese students who want to do for pre-modern China, what a generation or more have done for medieval and early modern Europe. They’re busy comparing credit markets in eastern central Europe with credit markets in 19th-century or early 20th-century China. The other completely uncharted frontier is, of course, Indian economic history. Often people will say, “Oh no, we couldn’t possibly go before the colonial period because there are no sources.” There are sources for pre-colonial India. They just haven’t been analyzed by economic historians. It’s a long answer to your question. I think coming from a place with a short history has inspired me with a passion for understanding places with long histories. What’s the future of Canada?…

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