Historiography

1
Historiography

• Every history reflects in part the intellectual
  outlook of its time. Historians are a product of
  history.

2
The Ancient World

• The Uniqueness of Western Historical Mindedness
• Ancient Bureaucracy prepared way for written
  History
  
• Early historical civilizations were the Greeks
  with Homer and Herodotus
  
• The Christians, Romans and the Jews
• Greek and Roman Historians
• Herodotus who chronicled the Persian Wars
• Rome included Tacitus who wrote political
  histories

3
Greco-Roman

• Organized Records
• Desire to record significant events
• Hope that from the study of the past one might
  extract laws that could be applied profitably to
  the future was destined to prove illusory
  
• Political history about themselves

4
Historians

• 5C BC Herodutus and Thucydides Greek
• 1C BC Polybius and Tacitus Roman
• Plutarch Historical writing on polite essays
  about great men

5
Christian

• Universalism influenced by Augustine
• Chronicling of events
• Parochial
• Messianic and biographical
• Witness of time history had pietistic value in
  keeping alive great deeds and great ideas that
  otherwise would be lost to view
  
• Christian period chronicling of Gods incessant
  supervision of mens affairs.

6
Medieval

• Chronicling of events
• History in medieval universities failed to be
  equal to philosophy and math.
  
• It was too practical like engineering.
• Not philosophical, subordinate branch of ethics

7
Medieval Historical Writing

• Venerable Bede, 675-735
• St. Augustine
• Einhard, 817-821
• William of Malmesbury
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• Froissart (14C French)
• Byzantine and Arabic Historical Writing
• Romans and Constantinople with Justinian
• Arabs Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406). First to compare
  civilizations

8
History in the Early Modern Period, 1450-1650

• Machiavelli and Luther have historical approaches
  to life
  
• Returned to imitation of ancients with collection
  of materials
  
• Science of Textual Criticism Emerges
• Descartes Scientific Rationalism
• Dating of documents, beginning of methodology,
  dependent on law
  
• Appeal to the past to justify the future
• Scientific revolution influences all facets of
  study
  
• History functioned as natural propaganda of
  social order
  
• Public history as folk use of stories

9
Renaissance

• 1450-1650
• Humanistic, placed emphasis on realism
• Hearken back to Greco-Roman
• Textual criticism and critical attitude toward
  documents and sources
  
• Although similar to Greco-Roman chronicling,
  Machiavelli original

10
Reformation

• 1600s
• Hearken back to Christian with Luther
• Catholic historians, propagandistic, biased
• Combined Renaissance techniques with Reformation
  motivation
  
• Passionate partisanship
• Propaganda frequently the parent of objective
  history

11
Transition to Enlightenment

• During the Enlightenment no attempt was made to
  lift history above the level of propaganda
  
• Characterized by an inability to see history as
  evolution but as contemporaneous
  
• The big questions "Had there been progress in the
  Ren/Ref?"
  
• Conviction of Enlightenment history is that
  beneath the accidents of events, we may uncover
  the larger trends and processes
  
• Faith of reason inherited from Newton applied to
  human studies

12
18th Century

• Enlightenment Voltaire expands subject matter
• Universal view of history stressing social and
  moral aspects
  
• More philosophical than past historians
• Hume Should not judge one age by the standards
  of another
  
• Past was useful only for exhibiting dreadful
  examples of how badly people had always behaved
  and for demonstrating why they had failed to find
  the road to utopia
• Rebelled against supernatural history, narrow
  political or biographical chronicles, and the
  uncritical acceptance of ancient historians

13
18th Century Historians

• Vico and Gibbon Synchronize history into
  meaningful general patterns
  
• Adding archaeology to history
• Philosophes
• Cause and effect, history is alive
• Voltaire proposed and produced a secular and
  naturalistic history that would depict the life
  and spirit of peoples, their art, science and
  politics.
• Believed that history could play powerful role in
  the enlightenment of men and in the creation of a
  rational, humane society.
  
• Sought to promote the writing and study of history

14
Niebuhr

• Studied antiquity his History of Rome was first
  attempt to reconstruct historical origins of
  Roman state
  
• First to apply critical method of philology to
  study of ancient history

15
Voltaire

• Reaction against supernatural history, namely
  political or biographical chronicles, and the
  uncritical acceptance of ancient historians
  
• Proposed and produced a secular and naturalistic
  history that would depict the life and spirit of
  peoples, their art, science and politics

16
Macauley

• History falls between reason and imagination
• It is sometimes fiction sometimes theory
• "history has its foreground and its background
  and it is principally in the management of its
  perspective that one artist differs from another.
  Some events must be represented on a large scale,
  others diminished the great majority will be
  lost in the dimness of the horizon and a general
  idea of their joint effect will be given by a few
  slight touches."

17
Hume

• Wrote to correct misinterpretations of faction
  also argued not to judge one age by the standards
  of another--avoid fallacy of presentism.

18
Gibbon

• Proposed between the old world and the new
  Decline and Fall of Roman Empire did much to make
  serious history popular.

19
19th Century

• Historians of the 19C worked under the pressure
  of 2 internal tensions on one side there was the
  constant demand of societywhether through the
  nation-state, the church, or some special group
  or class interestfor memory mixed with myth, for
  the historical tale that would strengthen group
  loyalties or confirm national pride. Against this
  were the demands of critical method, and even,
  after a time, the goal of writing scientific
  history.

20
More 19th Century

• Philosophy of history almost always meant grand
  speculative interpretive schemes rather than the
  analysis of historical epistemology
  
• With science historical seminar evolved from a
  nursery of dogma into a laboratory of scientific
  truth
  
• Another professor of history hoped to establish a
  sort of working historical laboratory for
  students, that shall correspond to chemical and
  physical laboratories, and where the process of
  learning shall be much the same,-- not memorizing
  a textbook, but, so to speak, manipulating
  literary, political and historical apparatus
• History is and should be a science

21
Romantics v Scientific

• Romantics Macauley, Bancroft, Prescott and
  Parkman
  
• Scientific Von Ranke

22
19th Century Scientifics

• Objective history as academic discipline
• VonRanke established canons of criticism and
  historical methods
  
• When we contemplate the whole sequence of ages
  and ideas, we find a logical order Hegel
  
• Thought they saw the past in its truest form due
  to scientific method
  
• Systematic organization of knowledge

23
Von Rankean School of Historical Writing

• Formulation of historical method
• Originated historical seminar and archival
  research
  
• Primary source historian and originated
  historicism
  
• Expanded view of historians to look at progress
  of non -European peoples as well as previously
  neglected aspects of western society

24
Von Rankean School of Historical Writing, cont.

• Strict presentation of the facts, conditional and
  unattractive though they may be, is
  unquestionably the supreme law, for historical
  research is oriented by its very nature to the
  particular.
• While we leave to our collaborators freedom and
  the responsibility of their personal opinions, we
  ask them to avoid contemporary controversies, to
  treat the subjects they are working on with the
  methodological rigidity and absence of
  partisanship that science demands and not to seek
  arguments for or against doctrines that are only
  indirectly involved."

25
19th Century Romantic Historians

• Conservative class of men writing for a
  conservative public
  
• Bancroft True political science venerates th4e
  masses. Listen reverently to the voice of lowly
  humanity.
  
• Extremely patriotic history
• Myopic, nationalistic stories
• Idealistic portrayal of human motivation in
  national events
  
• Filiopietistic
• Prescott One of the most conspicuous of the
  brilliant amateurs whose works created a
  world-wide interest in history during the middle
  decades of the 19C.
• More attracted by the concrete aspects of life
  than by ideas
  
• Stately narrative
• Not critical of use of authorities
• Increase in access to sources of history
• Guizot History has a goal, a direction, a plan.
  Patriotic and romantic nationalism reflected in
  his work.

26
19th-20th Century

• Progressive Historians
• Influenced by Marx and Hegel
• Beard, Turner and Parrington
• Emphasized social and economic factors
• Trend toward broader history
• Want to use history as tool for social change
• Turner The Significance of the Frontier in
  American History
  
• Beard Economic Interpretation of the Constitution

27
Turner

• New, demand for comprehensive history serving the
  needs of the living present and promoting civic
  virtue
  
• Each age tries to form its own conception of the
  past. Each age writes the history of the past
  anew with reference to the conditions uppermost
  in its own time

28
20th Century

• Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology used in
  history
  
• Social History (Annales School) with Bloch,
  Braudel
  
• History needs broader approach and an awareness
  of what it can learn from other social science
  disciplines
  
• Collingwood Not an idealist in the sense of
  holding that historical reality is mental. We
  must infer motives from the evidence we have not
  prejudge what those motives were
• Focus of history is human actions and actions
  require an acting and deciding subject.
  
• History is a science because it relies on the
  systematic collection of evidence and on rigorous
  analysis of that evidence.
  
• Class Hobsbawm, Thompson and Gutman influenced
  by Marx

29
1960s-1970s

• Cliometricians
• Foner and those who use the new methods in the
  social sciences
  
• Number crunchers
• Social events changing focus of historical study
• Civil Rights and Feminism direct methodology and
  content of historical study

30
21st Century

• Deconstruction
• Post-Structuralism
• Post-Modernity
• No consensus