Natalie Zemon Davis (1928-2023) A critical assessment and tribute

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Dr Natalie Zemon Davis
1928-2023

Dr Natalie Zemon Davis was a rare historian in that he combined a vigorous prose style of writing with a flair for elucidating the unexpected and the spectacular. Crafting a taut narrative while keeping her eyes close to the primary sources is a talent that only the best among historians possess and these days when Historians compete with the "Social Scientists" for writing bland turgid jargon ridden semi literate prose, the stylist in Dr Davis stands out stark and clear. Her death on the 21st of October came as a shock to her admirers all over the world and I count myself as one such.

Dr Natalie Davis was a Jewish American Historian and as such gravitated towards the "progressive" side of American politics. Unlike the radicals of today whose radicalism is expressed primarily in a radicalized aesthetic, Davis and her husband, Chandler, face the raw brutality of the American State during the McCarthy Era when a campaign to root out "communist"   subversives was pushed through with the same passion with which the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda is today being touted today. Davis and her husband who was a Professor of Mathematics were stripped of their passports and Chandler even spent six months in Prison for refusing to accept a subpoena and pleading the fifth. Certainly her politics was progressive. In 1959 she took her PhD for the University of Michigan and spent the rest of her life at Princeton University. Her Culture and Society in Early Modern France, Return of Martin Guerre, Fictions in the Archives and Trickster's Tales are important contributions.

Today the field of History has declined into a morass of post colonialism with the subjective and the unverifiable elevated as categories of understanding the past. Narrative and event oriented analysis of reality has given way to dense "thick descriptions" cast within a cultural/anthropological construct are seen as alternatives to the grounded histories that the Historical Method and its application creates. Memory, Culture, Society are the banners under which the New History associated with Carlo Ginsberg, Natalie Zemon, Ladurie and others marched. But these broad and almost undefinable concepts stretched Historiography almost to breaking point and in the cracks various kinds of splintered Histories sprouted based on identity, ideology and ideas. Dr Davis has not directly confronted these "post colonial" challenges.

Davis served as the President of the American Historical Association and her address History's Two Bodies remains a classic. Her death is a loss to the profession in the true sense.