Historian and author Niall Ferguson
Photo: Zoë Law
The great English historian A.J.P. Taylor once said, “Men only learn from history how to make new mistakes.” That may be too pessimistic a view.
I think we have learned from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that atomic bombs were weapons too terrible to use again. However, we learned too little from SARS about the threat of a new coronavirus – and from the war in Vietnam we learned too little to avoid failure in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that’s because we don’t take history seriously enough.