What are the historical debates?

ISSUE Postmodernism Conservative BalancedWhat is history?

Jenkins: “History is a shifting, problematic discourse, ostensibly about an aspect of the world, the past, that is produced by a group of present-minded workers”.

Herodotus used the word ‘history’ several times and meant it as a “rational enquiry into the past”, which established the meaning for Western historical writing

Elton: “Reconstruction of past human experiences, actions, thoughts and endeavours

Bloch: argued that history was never a study of the “mere past” because the historian would integrate their contemporary views and ideologies into their work – hence the “past and present would be intertwined”

Historical Relativism

Jenkins – collapse of old metanarratives and modernist certainties is liberating. Postmodernism encourages spread of many-voiced history, as people of all types write regional, local and national histories

Foucault: society is in constant demand for truth, as much as for economic production and political power. Truth is produced and transmitted under the control of certain pol. or eco. apparatuses – university, army, writing, media

Denial of a ‘true’ history plays into the hands of those who have a vested interest in a denial of their own – Holocaust by neo-Nazism claim genocide 6 million Jews never took place. Richard Evans: “It trivialises mass murder to see it as a text

2 months after publication IDOH, Evans agreed to act as expert historical adviser in legal case involving David Irving – end 20th C. Holocaust denial had become litmus test for historical theory + method. Evans checked Irving’s footnotes in detail, tracking original sources to see whether material cited and discussed did substantiate points made = innumerable errors, selections and misinterpretations to prove there was no organised slaughter Jews, no gas chambers, H. did not order extermination Jews

Evans concluded: “Systematic distortion of historical record”

Trial held HC London early 2000

Herodotus – incorporated numerous stories, tales and interpretations, allowing the reader to decide which one is true. Ex. Lykurgus. Herodotus rejoices in the ambiguity of historical facts. “I would suggest that if the Phoenicians really carried off the women from the temple”, “That at least is how I should explain the obvious impossibility of a dove using the language of men”

Where were the distinctions to be drawn between legitimate alternative views, ideologically driven distortion and outright lies and fabrication?

Evans:“An objective historian is one that works within the limits”.Metaphor of historians as figurative painters sitting at various points round a mountain: “will paint in different styles, using different techniques and materials…they may even disagree about some aspects of its appearance. But they will all be painting the mountain. If one of them

paints a fried egg, or a railway engine, we are entitled to say that they are wrong”.

Science vs. Art

ART Herodotus American Hayden

White: ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’ – historians fails to recognise that they inevitably and unavoidably use fictional techniques to narrate the past = beginning and end, highlighting details, subordinating other, varying tone and POV, repeating symbol/motif. The relationship between people or between events that appear to be inherent in the past have actually been imposed by historians

Henry Steel Commander: “Let us admit at once that history is neither scientific nor mechanical, that the historian is human and therefore fallible, and that the ideal history, completely objective and dispassionate, is an illusion”

Bloch: believed history was more of an art form because unlike science, it requires human intuition for interpretation and comprehension

SCIENCE Thucydides – named the

father of “scientific history”. His History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest example of serious historical research – displays the same rigour + respect for truth and evidence as modern historians – worlds apart from more literary historians such as Herodotus

Some historians found the effervescent Herodotean mood of literary experimentation and adventurous risk-taking of the 1980s/90s disturbing and dangerous

Methods introduced by Ranke turned history into science

Rankean empiricism and faith in objectivity

Bury (1861-1927): “History is a science, no less and no more”. (But then one year before his death): “I do not think that freedom from bias is possible and I do not think it is desirable”, “The most effective histories are usually partial and bias”

EVANS The most important

attempt to assess the value of postmodernism in history was Richard Evans’ ‘In Defence of History’

Evans thinks some effects of pomo have been positive: “offering a way out of the impasse into which social determinism, above all in its Marxist variants, had run by the beginning of the 1990s” + its concomitant drawing attention to the individual, esp, the little known individual

Ranke argued that history was both science and art. history had to match the demands of philology whilst offering the reader the appeal of imaginative literature

Tuchman: “I think of myself as a storyteller, a narrator, who deals in true stories, not fiction”

Tuchman: “The historian should act as an artist and make the work interesting but still stay within the boundaries of historical evidence

Who are the historians?ISSUE Postmodernism Conservative Balanced

Historical objectivity

(Carr v Elton)

Carr ‘What is history’: “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 or context.” – one must study the historian (background, education, attitudes) before one can study his interaction with the facts

Carr: “When we call a historian objective, we mean I think two things. That he has a capacity to rise about the limited version of his own situation in society and in history, that he has the capacity to project his vision into the future in such a way as to give him a more profound and more lasting insight into the past”

Carr: “Once historians have pieced together what happened and have determined the facts, they interpret what they found”

Commager: “Consciously or unconsciously, all historians are biased; they are creatures of their time, their race, their faith, their class, their country – creatures and even prisoners”

Elton ‘The Practice of History’: If an event can be known, “that is all that is required to make it a ‘fact of history’. Interpretation or general acceptance of a thesis has nothing whatsoever to do with its independent existence.

Elton acknowledge that evidence is not clear-cut and that the historian must intervene but he denied that the historical facts are then so distorted that one must accept Carr’s view that studying the historian is a necessary preliminary to historical inquiry.

The ‘cure’ for the inevitable difficulties facing historian over partial nature of evidence and allegation of subjectivity lie in proper practice scholarship + research

Elton’s solution – study the past on its own terms.

Elton’s response to argument that history is present minded: “For the historian is in the first place concerned with the people of the past – with their experiences, thoughts and actions – and not with the people of the present, least of all with himself”

Elton argued that with “proper scholarship and research” distortions of truth could be avoided. “I believe in the independence of history and the possibility of discovering a right truth by the techniques of scholarship”

Carl. L Becker 1959: “The actual event contributes something to the imagined picture; but the mind that holds the imagined picture always contributes something too”

Tuchman: “Without an opinion a historian would be a ticking clock and unreadable besides”

Herodotus expressed a desire to find the ‘truth’ in history and used “I” in his work, very much involving himself in the process and creation

There is no such thing as objective truth. Lyotard – “incredulity towards metanarratives”

Ranke: “wie es eigentlicj gewensen” – to “show how it actually was”

Ranke: “I tried to distinguish

As soon as we weave facts about the past into a story we enter the realm of subjectivity, as everyone chooses their facts differently.

Historical truth is not singular: there are always multiple, subjective and equally valid ways of looking at the past.

Some even suggest that the concept of no truth is liberating

Derrida questions the notion of ‘absolute truth’ as he believes that thinking is like writing – we constantly interpret and reinterpret it.

Foucault emphasised the role of power and politics rather than language as a bar to the notion of absolute truth. His thinking is essentially based on the notion that as societies are not ‘neutral’ “traditional history based on the credo of objectivity is misguided, since there is no neutral position from which to take this view – after all, the ideal of objectivity and neutrality in itself is a viewpoint.” One of his most famous acts was to show how sexuality was a historically inflected activity, and consequently just as worthy of study as politics or wars.

Keith Jenkins: “History is always for someone, and that someone cannot be the past itself for the past does not have a self.”

American theorist and historiographer Hayden White – the content of the historian’s work is as much invention as it is

my own self, as it were, to let the facts speak”

History aims to uncover the truth about the past – something that historians have tried to do for more than 2000 years.

Historians should be able to decide between two competing view points by weighing up the evidence.

Sound historical writing is objectivity, achieved through the calm application of reason and training

The notion that historical truth is not singular leads to a kind of moral relativism, an unforgivable “anything goes” attitude.

How can postmodernists argue that there is no such thing as the objective truth as that statement itself purports itself to be an objective truth.

fact. White accepts that some of the raw material – traces or original sources – may provide factual material but such traces never provide a structure for these facts: only when the facts are given a structure by the historian do they make sense. – There is a need for a narrative, or story to shape these traces and facts

The quest for historical objectivity has proved a recurring mantra, yet the h’s context and identity remains a profound influence on choice + interpretation evidence

How are historians affected by

their context and beliefs?

Herodotus affected by his person belief that the gods’ hand could be deduced in everything. Believed in ‘supernatural causation’ – HOPersianWars- Xerxes ignored a phantom spirit that warned him against attacking Greece, did not listen and forced to pay. Also, deaths of Spartan ambassadors in Persian wars as “clear evidence of divine intervention”, “hand of gods was clearly seen”. Also belief in hubris – focus on individuals

H. wrote about great families + priests of holy places. Gould has argued that Herodotus deliberately sought out people of similar social standing/descendants of those involved

Thucydides – focus on militaristic aspect. His occupation in Athenian army during Pel.war

Ranke – “remove all traces” but Ranke’s upper class inclined him to focus on political events and individuals he considered

significant, lower classes overlooked. His deeply religious Lutheran beliefs influenced him to believe God could not be “pigeon-holed” and his presence could be found in past + present events. “In all history God dwells, lives, is to be found. Every deed testifies to him”

Annales – world of extremes, War, Holocaust, Cold War. Influenced them to utilise history as an explanation for social issues – encourage focus away military/pol. history

ISSUE: AIMS AND PURPOSES

Postmodernism Conservative Balanced

Role of history

A historian’s purpose is likely to be reflected in every aspect of work – affects choice subject matter, selection + use of sources or imposition of particular standard of “truth”

Can only learn if you know the truth, which is unattainable Poststructuralist historians reject any theory of history which claims to identity or explain a law of development

“Incredulity towards metanarratives”

Commercialisation history: Lyotard argued that as a result of the shift from mass production to mass communication knowledge is no longer the search for a timeless or absolute truth, but is increasingly commodified. “Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself.” Increasingly minor narratives have taken the place of grand ones.

In 21st Century, with advent of global advertising and rise of consumerism, history has been somewhat transformed from professional pursuit, with intent to inform and educate the reader, into a commercial commodity in order to entertain audience

Can learn from the past Herodotus – essential aim

was to “preserve the memory of great deeds of renown for future generations”

Fehling: “Herodotus’ idea was not to research the Persian Wars: he wanted to recount them as Homer had recounted the Trojan War. For him it was a matter of staving off oblivion rather than increasing knowledge”

Thucydides: historians should focus on great historical period – pol/mil history. “I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment but as a possession of all time”. T. wanted to discern truth in events because he felt it revealed certain things about human nature that were vital to know

Reacting against system building and generalisations of Enlightenment, Ranke claimed one should study the past for its’ own sake and respect uniqueness of each age: “To history has been given the function of judging the past, of instructing men for the profit of future years. The present attempt does not aspire a lofty undertaking. It merely wants to show how, essentially things happened”

Elton: “contribution to the intellectual improvement of mankind”

Herodotus established a dual purpose to history – a desire to discern the truth and to record stories where the truth was impossible to ascertain.

Tuchman – create a work that is engaging for the reader, which remains within the bounds of historical evidence. “I did not write to instruct but to tell a story. The implications are what the thoughtful reader himself takes out of the book – the best book is a collaboration between author and reader”

Evans: “Historians still have to engage in the basic Rankean spadework of investigating the provenance of documents, of enquiring about the motive of those who wrote them, the circumstances in which they were written and the ways in which they relate to other documents on the same subject”

Carr: “The past is intelligible to us only in the light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in the light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase the mastery over the society of the present, is the dual function of history

History Wars

History wars are symptom of the debate of the ‘truth in history’. Historians are expected to know the ‘truth’ and when the disagree among themselves, the value of their work is called into question

Power – Michel Foucault – power is spread throughout society and has its home in language. “Each society has its regime of truth”. “Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it”

Interview ‘Truth and Power’ Foucault: “History which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of language”

VIKINGS:1. Anglo Saxon

Chronicles: “hungry wolves who tore, robbed and murdered” – King Alfred 800AD

2. Icelandic sagas – courage, pride. 13th – isolate farms, Althing, patronage

3. Victorian revival – shipbuilders + culture

4. Nazi – lebensraum, encourage Danes + Scandinavians to recruit, Nordic, blonde hair blue eyes

5. Hollywood depiction

Ranke: “tell it how it is” Tuchman: “It was Ranke who set the historian’s task: to find out what really happened, or literally, how it really was. His goal is one that will remain forever just beyond our grasp for reasons because we who write about the past were not there. We can never be certain that we have recaptured it as it really was. But the least we can do is to stay within the evidence.”

Can historians ever find ‘truth’?

Pomo – believe historians only ever present a selective + partial view of past and such representations are dictated by identity + context

Foucault – we are unable to see truth because we are stuck in our historical limits and normalised to our surroundings

Jenkins – historians do not just use evidence to

reconstruct the past but also take it upon themselves to fill in gaps that past has left open. “The past is sublime and the content is as much invented as found”

How has history been constructed and recorded over time?

ISSUE Postmodernism Conservative BalancedTraditional

history v Pomo history

Postmodernism – certainly no friend of traditional narrative history: event-centred, cause and effect, telling the story history due to antagonism towards metanarratives. Then what kind of history should pomo historians provide? Jenkins: “If the present can bets be understood as post-modern, then this suggests to me that the context of a preferred history should be studies of this phenomenon. In the post-modern world, then, arguably the context of history should be a generous series of methodologically reflexive studies of the makings of the histories of postmodernity itself”

Joyce Appleby: “The move toward the most radically sceptical and relativist postmodern position inevitably leads up into a cul-de-sac. Dismissals of history, politics and narrative as hopelessly modern ideas, now outmoded in the postmodern world, might seem up to date, but history, politics and narratives are still the best tools available for dealing with the world and preparing for the future” 20th C – larger

quantity of source material – mass newspapers, photographs, film

Ranke turned history into a science

Methods of historians

Annales – often used non-literary sources such as maps. Operated on the basis that history meant study of the past, not study of documents.

Annales: “If your neighbour on the left says two times two equals four

Thucydides used technique of entering into the mind of his character and to discuss his feelings

Evans believes that Ranke’s principles still form basis of historical research and teaching today:1. Est. history as a

and the one on the right says it is five, do not conclude that the answer is four and a half”

Annales introduced regressive method – reading history backwards, moving from the known to the unknown. Marc Bloch did not agree with historians entering into study with preconceived notions and many of the answers to questions were tentative

Tuchman is similar to Bloch when she suggests that it is easier for a historian to enter historical inquiry without a predetermined mindset and then let the conclusion or “why” surface during the process – during the gathering of facts, evaluating sources and data. “If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to import himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers”

and behaviour, such as the Athenian commander Nicias before his great defeat at the hands of Syracuse in 413BC: “Meanwhile Nicias, appalled by the position of affairs and thinking, as men are apt to think in such crises”

separate discipline2. Asserted that a study

of past should not be coloured by present standards: “Every epoch is immediate to God”

3. used methods of philologists + applied them to study of modern history

Why have approaches to history changed over time?

Postmodernism Conservative BalancedApproaches will always change according to audience

Influence of Postmodernism and Postructuralism – In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there was a remarkable flowering of innovative historical writing (drawing on both H+T) – gender history, micro-history, cultural history, history of sexuality, history of the body

Blur between high and low culture

Foucault: history could be decentered and historians did not

Herodotus used myth and legend and chose prose. Largely used oral sources and work deviated into digressions, allows for uncertainty and was acutely conscious of validity + reliability of sources. Like ‘Homer’, history in Herodotus’ day was supposed to be read aloud

Curthoys + Docker: “Herodotus does not confine history to any area or field or focus, rather establishing historical writing as freely economical, political, diplomatic, social, cultural, sexual, religious, military, naval”

Thucydides – work is fast moving, precise, decisive, structures, chronological and analytical. Obsessed with methodology – attacks the care others take in ascertaining facts + asserts that he was not satisfied with 1 eyewitness account but took great pains to

Evans believes that Ranke’s principles still form the basis of historical research and teaching today

In fact, technology has made the Rankean methods easier – Hitler diaries of the 1950s exposed as forgeries

have to seek, pursue and desire a master narrative

correlate + judge between differing accounts of different participants. T. recognised as first critical historian – it was not until 19th C. that the discovery of archives + invention techniques of source criticism allows historians of past to believe that they could meet standards demanded by T. “The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest”. Whilst Herodotus chose to write about past (Persian War). T. remarked in book’s opening paragraph that he found this impossible “because of its remoteness in time, to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distant past or even of the history preceding our own period”. Thucydides’ perspective that history cannot be written retrospectively is partially credible, as it emphasises the need to fully understand a period by living in it and not studying it anachronistically. However, this theory also prevents historians from having the luxury to a broad range of sources + retrospective thought

Thucydides produced a world history – very anti-nationalistic

H + T = focus on oral sources and traditions – history written to be read aloud. Histories told a tale and were meant for entertainment + oral recitation – added speech, drama and pace techniques

The massive economic, pol. + social changes of 10th C. were instrumental in generating distinctive types of history

Methods introduced by Ranke saw history turned into a science – history became an academic study

Ranke – influenced by state bureaucracy during his time, which meant that European collections of national records began to appear

Carnage WWI and subsequent eco, disasters such as Depression led number of historians to question history which feed needs of nation

state that had started wars. Notion of nation state had led to war + genocide, reaction against 19th C. traditions like empiricism and subject specifity – increasing dissatisfaction with ‘event-centred’ traditional history + desire to widen historical scope + methodology. French historians interested in interdisciplinary approaches and used geo + sociology

Forms of history and

use of sources

H’s focus on oral sources reflected his context, a world before technological advances which brought printing press + abundant plethora of written sources. History was communal, shared entity

Focus of history

Herodotus sees motivation of historical events as been derived from individuals rather than broader forces – individuals influenced society rather than society influencing individual. H. recorded everyday crises, human relationships and flaws

Ranke, although espousing belief to “tell is how it actually was” focused primarily on events of prominent individuals and pol. events. “I have not devoted much space to less significant events but this has enabled me to pay the greater attention to those of world-historical importance”. Quentin Durward challenged R’s focus by writing history incorporating ‘low’ society such as Orientals, Africans, Gypsies and Jews

Annales called for TOTAL history – past is everything. Wrote about beliefs, mass psychology, culture and religious practice. Bloch and Febvre stressed importance of collective mentalities in influencing events. Ladurie focused on village, society and culture – subject matter included housing, villager’s perception of space, time, nature, family life, childhood, sexuality + death

Annales challenged confidence held

in linear history – supported notions of Western superiority

Annales posed questions, such as Marc Bloch: “How could people believe in the illusion that Kings had a healing touch?”