With the Node CLI, I can add this to my shell statup file:
alias node='env NODE_NO_READLINE=1 rlwrap -S "> " node'
When I now run node, I can press the 'up' arrow key and the previous command from the previous session is put on the command prompt. As per this SO answer. See also iojs' history support.
I want to have this functionality with the Babel CLI, but changing the alias from node to babel-node does not change its behaviour.
[EDIT]: I've added this as an issue to Babel on Github.