Samples leading views of historiography over 1750-1950. In the 19th century, history played a polemical role similar to ideology in the 20th. This edition is willing to lend credence to ‘socialist history’ and demonstrates the mid-20th century’s fascination with Freud. Historicism is used in various ways, though generally negative; surprisingly, Butterfield’s Whiggish history is omitted. The profession has sometimes ruled out certain views, or at least reached consensus, but more typically moves from one waystation to the next – which may help explain the timebound views of historicism. The most persuasive, enduring approaches are those of Ranke (‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’; what actually happened, irrespective of the author), Meinecke, Trevelyan, and perhaps Barzun. Of note:
• Ranke: history should ascend from observing particulars to a universal view of events, knowledge of objective existence. It will focus on general concepts where nations have played an active role. ‘In power there appears a spiritual substance, an original genius, which has a life of its own, fulfills conditions peculiar to itself’. ‘We work in two directions: investigate the effective factors in historical events and understand their universal relationship’
• Trevelyan: no historical event can be so isolated as to deduce from it general laws. The ideals of any epoch are insufficient for a general way of life. There are three distinct functions: the scientific (gather factors, in sufficient evidence), the imaginative (recreate, guess, generalize), and the literary (restore to life; attract and educate). Great history is accessible to, and may be requisite, to a reading public of pronounced character. The truth is black and white – ‘in patches’
• Meinecke: the dispute between political and cultural history arises because neither is clear on the relationship between values and cause; the state may be central (a la Hegel), but not necessarily the highest, being subordinate to the spiritual or moral; that there are copious state records do not make it the leading institution
• Coulanges: what ideas or customs hold sway over individuals wills so as to make them happy? Institutions are to be studied over time
• Barzun: cultural history is not history of ideas – the former turns not on logic or scientific advance. Intellectual history is geometric, whereas cultural history requires Pascal’s espirit de finesse.
• Macaulay: the perfect historian has the imagination to fuel narrative, the discipline to preserve the integrity of his materials. He exhibits the character of the subject’s age. History does not have laws of progression but of method
• Holborn: the objective point of view paradoxically relies on the scholar’s subjective approach. Stern adds the most one can aspire to is ethical consideration of personal views and fidelity to truth (knowledge)
• Namier: when properly studied, what happened is specific knowledge; whereas how things do not happen should be intuitive – wisdom does not come from remembered events (which are ‘clutter’)
• Young: ‘go on reading until you hear people speaking’
• Thierry: in history simple exposition is safest, elaborate logic obscures truth
• Acton: overemphasis on analysis returns to synthesis (narrative)
• Mommsen: the historian is not born but trained, not educated but self-taught
• Orwell (echoing Macaulay and Trevelyan): history promotes a sense of possibility and liberty that tyrants must suppress
NB: Thierry – ‘Indeed, if it is merely a misfortune to suffer oppression imposed by the force of circumstances, it is shameful to display servility.