Historiography

19. Kenyon, History Men (5 October 2024)

by kurto

Surveys the development of English historiography to the 1980s, focusing on the distinction between literary (i.e., politically minded, aristocratic, and/or ‘amateur’) and professional (postwar, specialized university) work. New social history, inspired by Namierite prosopography, sociology, and so on is prematurely seen to have failed: Kenyon didn’t account for ideology. As the Marxists and the Annalistes never much figured in the literary specialists’ treatment of the ancient constitution or the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, so their long march through the schools was not yet evident.

Raleigh was the first to discern political uses of antiquarian writing. Whiggish history commenced with Hume, whom Macaulay sought to eclipse. The contemporaneous opposition was not Voltaire’s philosophical reflections of universal relevance, but Ranke’s emphasis on re-creation of events and ideas. William Stubbs initiated premodern academic study at Oxford over 1866-84, unusually for his time working back into the medieval era to discern the origins of the modern British nation. English professionals (i.e., Oxbridge) trailed Paris, Göttingen, and Vienna. Early 20th-century practitioners were infatuated with scientific history, lacked degrees to rival the continental schools, and were already becoming overspecialized even as new institutions such as Manchester sprung up. Albert Pollard of University College Lond was the era’s driving force.

Trevelyan was perhaps the last of the aristocratic literary men. Elton, co-star with Namier of the postwar era, was England’s most Germanic practitioners; curiously both were immigrants. The former opposed conceptual history; history is the only truly empirical discipline, in which the author starts not with a thesis or paradigm to test but criticizes evidence, asks questions, examines authoritative claims – especially when the subject moves from narrow intellectual concerns (sexuality) to political matters that concern all. Plumb contended the point of undergraduate history is to prepare for public service and statesmanship, to embrace ideas and policies, the better see through forthcoming events. The quality of an age is not the work of the common man, though they must labor namelessly to support it.

9. Stern, Varieties of History (1 April 2024)

by kurto

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.

Gibbon’s historiography

by kurto

In searching for causation, the balance between social forces and individual agency is contingent on the subject. In ‘Edward Gibbon & the Enlightenment’,
Keith Windschuttle observes:

… In opposition to the French [i.e., Montesquieu’s] search for general laws of historical causation, Gibbon argues that explanations need to be appropriate to their subject. In some historical circumstances, such as newly formed or emerging polities, the role of individuals such as founding fathers may be profound; in other circumstances, a system may be so well entrenched that it might survive the worst kind of abuse from apparently powerful political figures. Similarly, once major internal systemic problems have emerged, neither the fortunes nor adversities of politics may be able to stem the tide.

And further, echoing Himmelfarb’s

    Roads to Modernity

:

…The intellectual product and legacy of the English Enlightenment is quite different from that of the French. In Gibbon, the spirit of inquiry and the fruits of research confirm the value of the existing institutions of English society, including its religion. In France, these tools were deployed in opposition to the same institutions. In England, Gibbon emphasized the responsibility of individuals and celebrated the virtue and courage of statesmen and churchmen, where they existed, even though he recorded that the natural passions of humanity were likely to leave such qualities in short supply. In France, the philosophes sought to find general laws of society that would render the actions of individuals irrelevant. The intellectual heritage of the English Enlightenment, as exemplified in Gibbon, clearly goes some of the way to explaining the different political histories of the two countries in the ensuing two centuries. England has enjoyed a stable and peaceful national history marked by a gradual extension of its democracy; France has been periodically racked by revolution, internal collapse, and foreign invasion.

New Criterion, June 1997

7. Conquest, Dragons of Expectations (2005)

by kurto

Unsound or biased readings of history create false expectations of present politics. Conquest, a specialist in Soviet Russia, reviews the Enlightenment, the French and Russian revolutions, and the legacy of Western intellectuals such as Hegel. There is a crucial distinction between the ‘law-liberty’ culture of Britain and America, and the prescriptive traditions of the Continent. Conquest demonstrates the left’s hyper-criticism of tradition and its ready acceptance of the untried. Thus the title.

18. Geyl, Debates with Historians (9 September 2023)

by kurto

Essays on the historiographic practices of famous 19th- and early 20th-century historians, particularly Arnold Toynbee, whom Geyl disparages for introducing systems which effaces facts and events.
• Toynbee, asserting ‘civilizations’ not nation-states are the atomic unit of history and that climates produce innovation through challenge of necessity, habitually treats ‘mental convenience as objective fact’. His facts are but interpretations which can be seen in other ways. He is not a historian but a Christian prophet hoping to stem the modern West’s decline. The problem is not only looking for ‘laws’ but also treating eras by standards foreign to them (historicism); whereas the value of history is entering into each period on its own terms, to enlarge one’s own frames of understanding.
• Ranke’s firm insistence on removing the historian’s personal views is itself the imposition of a personal view. In disdaining such retrospective criticism as the left favors, the stance in inherently conservative, yielding each generation’s ‘immediacy to God’. Though not quietist, it presumes the practitioner’s taking events as fixed. Sometimes this is too accepting, too open-minded.
• Macaulay, the Whiggish progressive and critic, demonstrates more personal intellect than the moral imagination necessary to connect with the past.
• In Carlyle, not ideas but people are the indicators of events in trend; the ‘eternal truth’ appears in great personalities. He represents the puzzle of disavowing technocratic expertise without descending into cultural mayhem. Yet however beholden to power, he roused concern for 19th-century industrial blight more than anyone else.
• Michelet overlooked the totality of events in service of the French Revolution’s mythology, most notably Rousseau’s general will in action. Nothing is less historical than associating the struggle between good and evil with the course of events. French historians disavow Talleyrand for distinguishing between statist (i.e., Napoleonic) France and the conscience of a statesman: in fact he represents a flawed but individual pursuit of right and justice. Not only foreigners should be reminded to resist the dictator.
• America proved its claim itself to Western heritage by fighting a civil war to eradicate slavery. There was no majority for war yet it came because the sides would not be reconciled. Lincoln’s holding the abolitionists at arm’s length is comparable to William the Silent’s seeking to establish the Netherlands nation-state not Protestant religion. The essay dwells more on (lack of) inevitability in history (see below).
• Not Dutch religious attitudes but riverine geography held off Habsburg Spain.
• Subordinating facts and one’s imagination to system (ideology) is unforgiveable. Quoth Maitland: national spirit is the historian’s unacceptable deus ex machina.
• The historian’s entire mind, including the present, inevitably surfaces in his work. He does not accept inevitability; often the minority prompts the course of events. Whereas Hegel, the Romantics, and advocates of philosophy of history follow a metaphysical logic. Such determinism, when promoted by the professional historian, stems from the practitioner’s mind, said Berlin.

7. Elton, Practice of History (2010)

by kurto

History is a discrete discipline because it aims to explain bygone events, mindsets, and the course of change. Its purpose is to understand the past on its own terms, and not to apply or deduce laws or patterns. Masterful research, particularly of documentary evidence, enables historians to understand what is missing and/or what questions are implicitly raised. This is why political history is the queen of the discipline. There is truth to be discovered ‘if only we can find it’: such outcomes are more likely in history than in scientific disciplines because events and evidence are unalterable and independent of the practitioner. Evidence is to be criticized, however, leading to differing interpretations, which may be magnified by the historian’s individual style of writing. The format of presentation itself will be either narrative, the superior of chronology, or analytical, the higher form of description. The choice is normally dictated by the topic. In making the case for more use of narrative (where possible), Elton displays one of many instances where he sets his cap against social scientists and sundry postmodernists – in 1965. Aimed at professionals, it includes a section on teaching and is therefore not fluid. Still, a confident, masterful brief.

8. Beloff, A Historian in the 20th Century (2010)

by kurto

A loose-knit series of essays reprising the author’s career as a historian-cum-policy specialist expert on Britain, France, the US, Europe, and Russia as well as Zionism / Israel. The chapters reflect enduring concern with continental unity and imperial aftermath. There are few insights here and no methodological passages: he is better when more topically focused.

1. Doyle, French Revolution (7 Feb 2012)

by kurto

Narrates the course of Europe’s first and probably greatest popular uprising, synthesizing political and social perspectives as well as competing interpretations. Making good use of illustrative facts amid the twists leading to Napoleon’s ascension in 1798, Doyle’s work reverts to the themes of political theory and faction, class and regional (especially Parisian) antagonisms, economic distortion and hardship, and international conflict borne of cynical French adventuring. Fueled by Enlightenment thought, the protagonists ‘failed to see … that reason and good intentions were not enough by themselves to transform the lot of their fellow men. Mistakes would be made when the accumulated experience of generations was pushed aside as so much routine, prejudice, fanaticism, and superstition’. The cost was millions of dead and as many or more lives wasted. Clearly written, worth re-reading.

9. Kagan, Thucydides (23 Mar 2015)

by kurto

Critically reviews

    The History of the Peloponnesian War

to assess the validity of Thucydides’ account, with the broader goal of illuminating the Greek’s contribution to the discipline of history. Thucydides favored Pericles (as a worthy leader of Athens) and Nicias (as the general who tried to dissuade the hubristic public for invading Sicily), while scorning Cleon (as lucky at Sphacteria and for rejecting Sparta’s peace offer in 425). These views would have been contrary to popular understanding, therefore Thucydides is revisionist. Kagan also shows holes in Thucydides’ work, such as glossing the Megarian Decree. Thucydides fundamentally sought to get the story right, however, and in so doing established history as of men for men — eschewing divine intervention as explanatory — so that future generations would be able to learn from past affairs. Further, in focusing on politics, war, and statecraft, he narrowed Herodotus’ consideration of society and culture (seen today in Annalisme) and thus connected history to political philosophy, the pursuit of the best life for the whole of the citizenry. Superb conclusion.

19. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (24 September 2022)

by kurto

George III’s intentions at accession have been revealing of the historian’s partisanship and methodological preferences. Primarily narrating the historiographical turns of the succeeding two centuries, Butterfield points up the novelty of party in 18th-century England: the great minds of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Burke were innovating. Therefore to claim the king broke rules of constitutional monarchy which were not so well established in 1760 as in 1860 indicates anachronism. Further, both Whigs (Rockinghams) and court parties were necessary to conflict and resolution; one should not write history as if conflict should not have occurred. The role of independent MPs, not to mention the Wilkes saga, brings politics back into relief. Where Whiggish historians have seen partisan views (e.g., in parliamentary debates) as automatically leading to voting outcomes, Namierites have seen socioeconomic classification as determinative. (As an analogue, see historical treatment of assembly debates early in the early French Revolution.) Yet individuals acted on particular influences or preferences. No amount of scholarship can remedy insufficient imagination in interrogating and reconstructing the past. Equally, the historian who recovers structure and process is not obliged to defend it. The professional is to be diligent in search of evidence, responsible to it, and fair-minded in judgement and presentation. Narrative encompasses both analysis and structure most fully. Put more colloquially, the reader should not be able to guess the outcome.