Christian historiography evolved following the fall of the Roman Empire in the later half of the 4th Century AD Christian historians, such as Eusebius, relied on the history of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, using this as evidence for basis of arguments. The Venerable Bede who lived during the 7th and 8th Century saw historical writing as a means of worshipping God and spreading the Christian ideal that God was able to openly arbitrate in the world as Warren write, ‘to reward virtue and punish sin’. Bede’s perspective on history is evident in his work, Ecclestial History of the English People where he reflects on Christianity and his faith in Christianity in his record of King Edwin of Northumbria: “As a sign that he would come to the Faith and the heavenly kingdom, King Edwin received wide additions to his earthly realm”. Warren explains Bede’s history style as ‘highly propagandist’, as he wrote very much within the contemporary political situation. Bede’s perspective of history can be greatly attributed to his access to sources, as seen in his preface in the Ecclestial History of the English People, where he writes, “I am not dependent on any one author, but on countless faithful witnesses who either know or remember the facts, apart from what I know myself’.
The Enlightenment period focused on escaping the faults of the old attitudes by adopting the new, as Warren explains. Historians from the Enlightenment period therefore aimed at focusing on what previously was not centered on, that is recognising history as concerned with the progress of manners, customs, legal and political institutions. This view is opposed to recounts ‘of military and political manners’, as evident with the ancient historian Herodotus.
Leopold von Ranke marked the Enlightenment period through his advocating of the need to be objective in studying history and also to criticise sources and evidence. This reflected the Enlightenment belief that history was not simply an account of previous events and their consequences, but rather an investigation into motives, ideas and concepts surrounding these events.
Although he denounced Edward Gibbon’s historiography, seeing him not as a true respecter of history, but rather a distorter of history in order to fit his own theories, Ranke exemplified that the Enlightenment was not a unified movement but rather a development from previous historical styles.
In recognising that the history at the time would not ‘instruct men for the profit of future years’, but ‘merely…show(ed) how, essentially, things happened’, it can be seen how Ranke’s perspective on history envisaged a more effective approach that had not been fulfilled previously. This recognition marks the beginning of the evolution of modern history, as outlined by the Catholic intellectual Lord Acton in the late 19th Century, claiming that Ranke ‘is the representative of the age which instituted the modern study of History. He taught it to be critical, to be colourless, and to be new’.
During the 19th Century Karl Marx emerged, determined to change the ideals of his homeland Germany, and much of the world. He was opposed to nationalism, the power of the state and the politics of the elites, and looked upon society in horror at the dominating and growing prospects of industrialisation and capitalism. Marx’s historical perspective is greatly influenced by the political and economic events at the present time. As Warren explains, Marx attributed changes in history to changing economic conditions, represented by contentions in social classes. This view is evident in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in which is explains that the history ‘of all society up to now is the history of class struggles’, where oppressor and the oppressed fought for ascendance. Marx’s acknowledgement and exposure of the proletariat highlighted the growing power of the working masses reducing the power of history for the aristocrats. This founded an economic structure as seen in most economies today: The Labor Party. In highlighting the development of Marxist historiography it can be seen how history developed since the Ancient times of Herodotus.
Following the negative events at the turn of the 20th Century and the instability of society as a whole, as seen in revolutions, civil unrest and the Great War, many historians moved to assess history in new and previously untouched aspects. This view of history described is that of ‘Total History’ as put forward by the Annales School of writing. The Annales Historians, significantly Bloch, Febvre, Braudel and Ladurie, turned away from ‘event centred’ history and the study of the renown of great men. They turned away from studying historical sources alone for their works, to include sociology, geography and linguistics. This change in perspective was derived from the argument that history was not based on great men and great events but on the factors underpinning these events.
This complex perspective can best be summed up by the concept of ‘total history’, a term commonly used by Braundel. Braundel wished to approach history from a perspective outside that previously taken. In using time as an analogy: time is not uniform and nor should history be so, he explains that geographical time, social time and individual time combine to form a historical period or event. This perspective recognises the complexity of history and the history of perceiving ‘history’.
Postmodernism, as the name suggests, surfaced from the end of modernist theory and all that is stood for. This view is not only reflected in postmodernist history but also in art, music and literature. Postmodernism rejected the modernist views, and questioned that history was fundamentally structured by the distortion of history. In recognising that history has been written through the study of other distortions, postmodernist historians not only questioned history but also refused to accept the accuracy and truthfulness of history. This clear opposition is evident in Hayden White’s Metahistory, where he writes of his belief that the composition of a historian’s work is as much fabrication as it is actuality. This perspective can be seen in George Iggers explanation of White, where he suggests White argues that ‘an historical text is in essence nothing more than a literary text, a poetical creation as deeply involved in the imagination as the novel’.
Many different perspectives have evolved over time, which reflect the changing attitudes of society and culture. In comparing the contemporary postmodernist view to that of the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, or Christian historians Eusebius and Bede, the transformation of perspectives is most significant. In recognising that interpretations of history have varied greatly in over two thousand years, it is interesting to try to comprehend what history will mean and what it will be perceived as in the following centuries.