Doomed to Repeat? Historical Scholarship Outpaces World Events and Places an Entire Field in Jeopardy

Abstract: The field of history is in a crisis. Worldwide, there are nearly 847 scholarly history journals producing approximately 14,000 articles every year. Dozens of history books make the annual best-seller lists and thousands more languish at the bottom of Amazon’s sales charts. Worse, there are two television channels dedicated to history. Yet we have deduced that no more than 8012 things of note can happen in any given year. For centuries, historians have exploited the reserves of past events to write about, but this reserve is about to be depleted. Facing a catastrophic deficit of history, historians, ironically, are looking for a way forward.