History and Modernity

Bernard Cohn (1928-2003) was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago who studied India extensively.  In his essay, "The Pasts of an Indian Village" (1961), Cohn examines the various pasts as remembered by the peoples of Senapur village in Uttar Pradesh, India.  The various groups, Thakurs, Chamars, Brahmins, Muslims and Telis, all have a different narrative regarding their  "legendary" past, as well as that of the past several generations.

Cohn goes on to note:

All Americans share a past created by our educational system and media of mass communication.  We can invoke this past and have it be meaningful across regional and class lines.  Indians do not as yet share such a past.  An appeal for action on the part of the central government, based on what is thought to be a universal identification with a traditional or historic past, is meaningless or leads to antagonistic reactions of major parts of the population...... 

I would speculate that a society is modern when it does have a past, when this past is shared by the vast majority of the society, and when it can be used on a national basis to determine and validate behavior. 

A shared history that can be used to determine and validate behavior.  I wonder if such exists even in that bastion of modernity, the United States of America, where there are many competing histories - of the Yankee North, of the Lost Cause South, of the African-Americans, of the Latinos, of the native Americans; and those of the various immigrant groups.   In terms of sheer numbers, perhaps the first two are the most important. 

But it was just a speculation on Cohn's part.