The status of historical enquiry has been a longstanding debate, especially since the rise of postmodernism in the later part of the twentieth century. Another of the most heated arguments concern the objectives and limitations of historical study, such as whether history is a subject of practical social relevance or whether history should be studied for its own sake as believed by academic historians such as G.R.Elton. Their argument is
based on the grounds that ‘relevant’ history is incompatible with the historian’s primary obligation to be true to the past and with the requirements of scholarly objectivity and therefore it is not their job to draw out the practical import of their work. History is, in Cobb’s phrase, ‘a cultural subject, enriching in itself’ (A sense of place, 1975, p4). Conversely, according to J.Tosh, in ‘The Pursuit of History’ (2000, p32), supporters of practical relevance argue that practical purposes can be entertained without sacrificing standards of scholarship such as objectivity, partly because professional historians are so zealous in scrutinizing each others work for bias. Historians who believe in their subject’s practical functions distance it from the humanities and place it along side the social sciences, as did E.H.Carr in ‘What is History?’ (1961, p86).
Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that if a historian sees history as having a particular purpose, then the purpose is likely to be reflected in every aspect of his/her work, such as the choice of subject matter, the selection and use of sources or the imposition of a particular standard of ‘truth’. For example, Marx wanted and expected his ideas to change the world and perceived that the whole history of mankind was a history of struggles between classes in societies. This is invariably reflected in his works and explanations of the past as he saw the historical record as being forever rigid in favour of the ruling class, which at all times has created the vast majority of the surviving sources; hence, his view of history could be seen as extremely biased.
J.Tosh, in ‘The pursuit of History’ (2000) states, it is possible that a historian’s current
priority may lead her/him to highlight some aspects of the past and to exclude others. Popular historical knowledge tends to a highly selective interest in the remains of the past, is shot through with present day assumptions, and is only incidentally concerned to understand the past on its own terms. Tradition, nostalgia and the belief in progress, which make up social memory, look for a consistent window on the past and result in significantly distorting images of the past.
Conversely, professional historians insist on a lengthy immersion in the primary sources, a deliberate shedding of present day assumptions and a rare degree of empathy and imagination. G.R.Elton argues that the historian’s training predisposes her/him to give a privileged place to the factual or ‘exact knowledge’. They look for the reality content in their documents and aim to build their arguments on empirically verifiable truths. In the same way a scientist would approach her/his task, without preconceptions and moral involvement. Therefore, the historian’s first duty is to accumulate factual knowledge about the past, which will in turn determine how the past should be explained or interpreted. According to R.G.Collingwood, in ‘The Idea of History’ (1946), the historian’s decisions ‘shall follow inevitably from the evidence’.
Postmodernist view the notion of the objective historian as ridiculous, because it presupposes that the truth about the past is recoverable. This argument is backed by the
conviction of the fluidity of language and our only way of recapturing the past is through
language.
No two languages have an identical match between words and things. Meaning is therefore not fixed and cannot be controlled by us, or the authors of the texts we study. There is no certainty in our era as was [and still is] believed by the modernists. The claim for neutrality is based on allowing the past to speak for itself, equally, history has always been written for someone and the historian cannot escape from her/his prejudices and preconceptions. The above argument partly depends on the acceptance of Saussure’s linguistic theory, which is not necessarily true and which is by no means universally accepted as such by linguists themselves.
E.H.Carr in What is History? (1961, p11) argued in opposition to G.R.Elton, that written history is not governed and shaped by the facts, but this is done by the historian, ‘It used to be said that facts speak for themselves…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’. So, we must study the historian, her/his background, education, attitudes, before we can study what she/he had done to the facts. Some would argue that this is a superficially attractive argument, but one which misinterprets the process of source evaluation.
In ‘The Practice of History’ (1967, p76), Elton’s response to the above argument is, ‘If an event can be known, then that is all that is required to make it a fact of history… Mr Carr, and others, who like him, think history is what historians write, not what happened, come dangerously close to suggesting either that it does not matter what one says…or that history is altogether unknowable…’ Elton argued that the ‘cure’ for the inevitable
difficulties of the historian over the partial nature of evidence and the allegation of subjectivity lies in the ‘proper practice of scholarship and research’, which effectively guard against the distortions that some see as separating truth from history.
Unlike postmodernists, Carr was not prepared to reject the possibility of the historian’s objectivity, in fact he suggests that the future can be predicted by an objective historian who has the right understanding of the pattern of development of history. J.Tosh in The Pursuit of History (1984, p148), comments on the later with the following, ‘Nothing is likely to be so subjective and value-laden as the projection of historical trends into the future…’
A.Marwick, in Kozicki’s Developments of Modern Historiography (1993, p136), draws a significant distinction between primary and secondary sources with the later defined as ‘…the history which historians produce through the systematic, disciplined, study of the primary sources’. In The Nature of History (1989), he sets out a numbered list of questions the historian must ask of the primary sources ranging from their authenticity, their provenance, the type of source, through to the position of the author. In 1990, Elton wrote ‘one must approach the sources with a question in mind, but never seek a particular answer to it or distort the sources due to hindsight.
J.Tosh contends historical objectivity by pointing out that ‘we can never recapture the authentic flavour of a historical moment as it was experienced by people at the time
because we, unlike them, know what happened next; and the significance which we accord to a particular incident is inescapably conditioned by that knowledge’.
K.Jenkins in ‘On ‘What is History?’ sights R. Rorty’s use the concept of ‘ironic re-description’ to support the view that anything can be made to look good or bad, desirable or undesirable, useful or useless, simply by being re-described, which includes the past/history. This in turn creates a mass of genres (designer/niche histories) to be variously used and/or abused
T.Zeldin, an opponent of ‘scientific’ theory maintains in his article, ‘Ourselves as we see us’ (31 December 1982, Times Literary Supplement), that all he or any historian can offer is his personal vision of the past, ‘everyone has the right to find his own perspective’.
J.Warren holds that objectivity is less a personal quality or attribute than an awareness of the difficulties of being objective. A historian should be aware of the dangers of overstating the possibility of objectivity, but also the dangers of denying it completely, which plays into the hands of those who have a vested interest in a denial of their own – namely, that the Holocaust actually happened.
In conclusion, history does not exist in the present; it cannot be recreated, but exists largely through the writings of historians, who inevitably distort it to a greater or lesser
degree. Dismissing objectivity altogether is verging on the edge of the relativism cliff. The debate over the definition of history will most definitely continue, which is a healthy sign. Nonetheless, historians satisfy the need of society for an explanation of the past, which is grounded in reality, even if it cannot claim to communicate the absolute truth.
Bibliography
Carr.E.H. (1987) What is History, London, Penguin Books.
Cobb.R. (1975) A Sense of Place, London, Duckworth.
Collingwood.R.G. (1946) The Idea of History.
Elton.G.R. (1967) The Practice of History, London, Fontana Press.
Jenkins.K. (1991) Re-Thinking History, London, Routledge.
Jenkins.K. (1995) On ‘What is History?’, London, Routledge.
Kozicki (1993) Developments of Modern Historiography.
Marwick.A. (1989) The Nature of History, London, Macmillian Press.
Tosh.J. (2000) The Pursuit of History [1984], London, Longman.
Warren.J. (1999) History and the Historians, London, Hodder & Stoughton.
Other Sources
Zeldin.T. (31 Dec. 1982) Ourselves as we see us, Times Literary
Supplement.
