Category: What is History?

15^th October 2005

Studying history again after a gap of 30 years, I wondered how it had changed, so I re-read “What is History?” written by E H Carr in 1961 and “What is History Now?” edited by David Cannadine, (Palgrave Macmillan 2002), in which nine historians present their view of the subject forty years on. These views were originally delivered as lectures at a two day symposium sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research in London on 14 and 15 November 2000.

The theme that leaped out of the page for me was how the study of history seemed to have fragmented.

Seven lectures at the symposium, topped and tailed by a Prologue and an Epilogue, covered:

“What is Social History Now?”

“What is Political History Now?”

“What is Religious History Now?”

“What is Cultural History Now?”

“What is Gender History Now?”

“What is Intellectual History Now?”

“What is Imperial History Now?”

And as David Cannadine said in his Preface, why stop at these seven branches of history? He could also have included:

“economic historians, military historians, business historians, local historians, maritime historians, historians of art, of science, or population, of the family, and of diplomacy (to name the most immediately obvious examples).”

Quite so, I thought, and why stop there? Why not include garden historians, food historians, ancient historians, historians of medicine, historians of crime, historians of childhood, historians of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The list is endless.

It seemed to me that this is an approach which fragments and compartmentalises the subject.

In their lectures, instead of addressing the question “What is History Now?” many of the contributors were asserting the merits of their own branch; how it “expands our vision” in the case of Gender History; how Cultural History “contributes to the explanation and understanding of work, economics and politics;” or how: “the ultimate answer to the question ‘What is Imperial History?’ is really very simple. It is indispensable.”

One contributor went further to praise the universality of her own specialism: “The very notion of ‘intellectual history’ betrays the figure of sophia and the erotics of knowledge as the thirst after the eternally true, the eternally desirable.”

Surely History is more than the sum of its parts. Divide anything into too many fragments and the whole becomes meaningless. No complex structural or comparative analysis, let alone jargon and neologisms, intelligible only to the specialists in one narrow discipline, can put it together again.

As I read further, working my way through the reading list for my course, I found this view seemed to be shared by others. In the Epilogue to “What is History Now?”, Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto said that fragmentation leads to the “curse of over-specialisation: historians dig ever deeper, narrower furrows, in ever more desiccated soil, until the furrows collapse and they are buried under their own aridity.”

And David Cannadine himself, had written in a much quoted article in Past and Present (British History: Past present and future? Number 116, August 1987) of:

“…the triumph among British historians of the cult of professionalism…”

“…over specialised, over fragmented courses…"

“…the role of the historian as public teacher was effectively destroyed.”

“…more and more academic historians were writing more and more academic history which fewer and fewer people were actually reading.”

I am told that the pendulum has now swung back. My reaction to the problem of over-specialisation was to think: “Let’s go back to basics” and look again at History as the Study of the Past – how it really was – which brings us back again to the name of this blog…

8^th October 2005

In his classic work “What is History” E H Carr dismissed “wie es eigentlich gewesen” as a “not very profound aphorism….. designed, like most incantations, to save (historians) from the tiresome obligation to think for themselves.”

The full quotation is as follows: 

“When Ranke in the 1830s, in legitimate protest against moralizing history, remarked that the task of the historian was “simply to show how it really was” (wie es eigentlich gewesen), this not very profound aphorism had an astonishing success. Three generations of German, British, and even French historians marched into battle intoning the magic words “Wie es eigentlich gewesen” like an incantation – designed, like most incantations, to save them from the tiresome obligation to think for themselves.” (E H Carr, What is History, Macmillan 1961).

E H Carr went on to argue that:

“The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.”

“It used to be said that the facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order of context.”

This may well be true, but “wie es eigentlich gewesen” is not as simple as it sounds.

The power of history lies in the shared belief between the writer and reader that the events described really happened.

The impossibility of ever knowing “what really was” does not mean that we should not try to get as close to this elusive goal as we can.

It seems to me that the role of the historian in cutting through the fog created by innumerable interpretations, should not be underestimated. If a modern historian can show their reader the past “how it really was,” this may well be more valuable, to the reader, than a critical appraisal of yet another secondary interpretation or contribution to a sterile historical debate.

I am a 52 year old mature student who has just started studying for an MA in Contemporary British History at the Institute for Historical Research at London University.

History is a process of discovery, and in this weblog I intend to record my thoughts, ideas and, I hope, some insights and discoveries, as I work my way through the course.

The name of the blog comes from the famous nineteenth century German historian, Leopold von Ranke, who wrote, as a young man, in his first historical work, that the role of history is simply to show how it really was – “Wie es eigentlich gewesen.”

I had been trying to track down the full original quotation for some weeks, and eventually found it in the Crooked Timber posting by Henry Farrell and others on 7 Sept 2005 Wie es eigentlich gewesen (in comment 28).

“Man hat der Historie das Amt, die Vergangenheit zu richten, die Mitwelt zum Nutzen zukuenftiger Jahre zu belehren, beigemessen: so hoher Aemter unterwindet sich gegenwaertiger Versuch nicht: er will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen.”

For those who are interested, my own translation of the original German is:

The role, commonly attributed to History, is to judge the Past, to instruct the Present, for the benefit of the Future: such a high (noble) role is not claimed for this essay: it aims simply to show how it really was.

It seems to me that too many historians have criticised or attempted to judge the past – a fruitless task if ever there was one, as the past has been and gone and cannot now be changed. On the other hand, if we attempt to see the past as it really was and to interpret it in its own terms, it can still instruct the Present for the benefit of the Future.