To contextualize, I'm an archaeologist by education and consider that a subfield of 'history'. Most people have incredibly strong attachments to (specific bits

To contextualize, I'm an archaeologist by education and consider that a subfield of 'history'. Most people have incredibly strong attachments to (specific bits) of history. It's often be inseparable from culture, national identity, and religion. However, it's difficult to justify that funding politically over things like building another warship (to keep us safe!), building a supercomputer (to keep us innovative!), or subsidizing corporate entities (to save jobs!). There's also no commercial market for building national identity. Accordingly, most funding comes out of relatively small culture/arts budgets that don't have to answer directly to constituents, except for a very few things that meet the incredibly high bar of direct political support like the national parks and pyramids. But if you're interested in how humans have adapted to climate change in the past, or how to design a resilient society, or how pandemics spread, you're going to need historical studies at some point.