Unraveling Historiography: The Evolution of History Writing

1. Wrap up lecture I Historiography Dr Claudia Stein

2. Lecture 1: What is historiography and why is it important?

3. Two Meanings of ‘Historiography’: • 1. It can describe the body of work written on a specific topic such as the history of war, the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, the history of fashion, Global history, women’s history etc... • 2. Refers to both the study of the methodology and theoretical approaches of historians more generally and how these have changed over time • This modules tends to focus – at least in term I – on the 2nd meaning. Term II is about topics and how the methodologies and theories have been applied to and used in various topics by colleagues here in the department.

4. History writing exists for centuries but this modules begins with the Enlightenment: Since then the following questions have been discussed and debated over, and over, and over and over.... • How to explain human agency and human experience in the past? • What is historical change and what causes it? • What is the role of the historian in the production of history? Should s/he morally judge the past? Or should s/he be neutral and objective? Should s/he be allowed to measure the past against the values and norms of the present? Or, should we use the past ‘to critique’ the present? • What is the material of historical work? What is a historical ‘fact’? Is there such a thing? • Can the historian get at the experiences of the past? Is there such a thing? • Is history writing a ‘science’ (in the sense of a natural science discovering ‘laws’) or an ‘art’ (a form of fiction)?

5. Central claims which are important to the module by Carr ‘The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.’ The fact speaks 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….It is the historian who has decided for his own reason that Cesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people…interest nobody at all. (What is History? p. 11) Edward Hallet Carr (1892-1982) What is History?

6. His advice therefore was .... ‘Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment. The historian, being an individual, is also a product of history and of society: and it is in this twofold light that the student of history has to learn to regard him.’ (What is History? 38)

7. Slidely differently framed and more recently.... “… every generation has to rewrite history, not because the past has changed …but essentially because the present is changing, and with it the assumptions and needs of reader of history. In other words, like the anthropologist, the historian is a kind of interpreter, a “cultural translator” we might say, who attempts to make the language of the past intelligible to the present.” (Peter Burke, ‘Decentering the Italian Renaissance’, in S. Milner, At the Margins, 2005, p. 36) Claim: History writing can never be ‘objective’ or ‘neutral. It always reflects norms and values, topics and interest of the society in which the historian is writing.

8. Lecture 2 Making of Modernity I: Enlightenment and History. An Introduction

9. What is Enlightenment? ‘Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Self-incurred is the inability if its cause lies not in the lack of understanding but rather in the lack of the resolution and the courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapereaude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! It is thus the motto of the enlightenment.’ (Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’ BerlinerischeMonatsschrift (1784): 481-494, 481) History writing becomes a key area to show and celebrate how humankind became more mature and enlightened through time! Immanuel Kant

10. With the celebration of human reason the question of how to do History ‘right’ becomes and important issue What should an enlightened historians focus on and how to write history? Claim: History helps to understand development of human civilization; it is part of the Enlightenment project of understanding man through rational method: the 'science of man The rise of national histories he History of England: from the invasion of Julis Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 (1754–61) , first published in installments “I believe this is the historical Age and this the historical Nation”, 1777 David Hume 1711-1767, moral Philosopher and historian

11. Another fan of national histories.... But he also wants it to be based on ‘facts’....the archive becomes fashionable History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1731) The Age of Louis XIV (1751) Essay on the Manners of Nations (or 'Universal History') (1756) ‘History is the narrative of facts taken to be true, in contrast to the fable which is the narrative of facts taken to be false.’ (Voltaire, ‘Histoire’, p. 164 François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778, known as Voltaire

12. Why study history according to David Hume? Entertainment Leads to erudition and improvement of the mind – reasons and its training is key for thinkers at the time. 3. History has the power to direct readers’ wills and to become more virtuous. History is a moral lesson. How can this be done? How can history make the reader more virtuous, more moral through history writing?

13. Understanding the past through ‘sympathy’ Human experience, or the experience of reading about past experiences,makes one virtually ‘feel’ history, empathise with others, absorb moral lessons, and become more virtuous. Adam Smith, 1723-1790

14. How does change in history happen? Answers in England and France.... Laws of Nature by Newton are applied to human history; the task of the historian is to discover these laws first and then to identify the causes of historical events HUman nature is universal and everywhere the same... ‘Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing mean in all varieties of circumstances and situations and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular spring of human action and behaviour…’ (Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, pp. 83-4) Isaac Newton, 1642-1726

15. Historical change can be understood laws of nature: study of climate and geography Environment shapes human character and the character of society and its political system. Claim: climate drove Europe from classical world of virtuous republics to commercial monarchies Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, 1689-1755

16. But God is still in the game... Providence: the idea that human history is a gradual unfolding of a divinely ordained plan Note: to be ‘enlightened’ did not mean to be an atheist William Robertson, 1721-1793

17. Def.: A rational reconstruction or speculation of what must have happened to mankind in the past, even if it can’t be empirically shown. The belief in laws of historical development allows for ‘conjectural history’.... ‘…if we are asked therefore, Where the state of nature is to be found? we may answer, It is here; and it matters not whether we are understood to speak in the island of Great Britain, at the Cape of Good Hope, or the Straits of Magellan. While this active being is in the train of employing his talents, and of operating on the subjects around him, all situations are equally natural.’ (Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society, pp. 11–12) Adam Ferguson, 1723-1816

18. The idea of laws also allows for a ‘stage/stadial history’; history as a story of human progress... From so-called ‘primitive’ cultures to Enlightenment European society. • 1. Hunting – no property, no wealth to accumulate, stage of savagery’ • 2. Pasturage – less mobile but still nomadic, wealth can be accumulated • 3. Agriculture -- even less mobile, farmer live on land in own houses, • more wealth and greater inequality • 4. Commerce – property ownership, laws governing property, complex societies Adam Ferguson

19. Lecture 3 Making of Modernity II: The German Enlightenment

20. Germans are not keen on some of the French/English enlightened ideas of history writing.... General enthusiasm for: • Celebration of human reasons; ‘sapeaudere’ (Kant); freedom from traditional authorities • ‘science of man’; the hope to create a more ‘humane society’ in which people to not oppress others but live in harmony and eternal happiness • History writing offers orientation, guidance or even a moral lesson for people in the present • German lands are not politically united; there is no national history possible; there is no ’common’ history to be celebrated as in England or France

21. What do German thinkers reject? • Human nature is universal • Civilisation develops in stages which lead to the highest stage, that of Enlightenment Europe • Laws of nature ergo human nature is universally the same • Human history can be investigated like nature and be deciphered by the empirical method (see Newton’s empirical method) • Rejection of rationalisation/mechanismation of society through the empirical natural sciences

22. What do they offer? Def. Historicism historicism means ‘the fundamental historisation of all our thinking about mankind, its culture and values’. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, p. 2) What does it mean to historicise thinking? To historizise our thinking means to recognize that everything in the human world – culture, values, institutions, practices, (concepts such as) rationality – is made by history, so that nothing has an eternal form, permanent essence or constant identity which transcends historical change. The historicist holds, therefore, that the essence, identity or nature of everything in the human world is made by history, so that it is entirely the product of the particular historical process that brought it into being.’ (Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, p. 2) Ergo: everyone is part of this historical development; nobody can observe the past ‘objectively’

23. Johann Gottfried Herder, Yet another Philosophy of History for the Education of Humanity: Contribution to the Many Contributions of the Century (1774) • Presents the central themes of historicism: • the past should not be judged by the standards of the present • each culture is individual and a unique whole • each age has its own standards of happiness and virtue • that the past should be relived and felt rather than just described and ‘explained through empirical evidence from the sources • Cultures should not be understood by empirical method along • ‘… go into the age, in the region, and the entire history, feel yourself into it – only then are you on the way to understand the (general) word.’ • Providence; not all we do can be know by empirical evidence; there is God’s plan

24. These ‘historicists’ beliefs guide all university education in Germany which becomes world leading Humboldt University, Berlin (ca. 1811; the Harvard of the 19th century) Bildung: engl. education/formation but broader meaning German tradition of self-cultivation, wherein philosophy and education are linked in manner that refers to a process of both personal and cultural maturation. This maturation is understood as a harmonisation of the individuals mind/spirit and heart and in a unification of selfhood with broader society (e.g. Bildungsbürger) Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)

25. History is more than empirical collection of facts....the past needs to be ‘intuitively’ grasped by the historian An event is only partially visible in the world of the senses, the rest has to be added by intuition, inferences and guesswork. The manifestations of an advent are scattered, disjointed, isolated. What it is that gives unity to this patchwork, puts the isolated fragments into a proper perspective, and gives shape to the whole, remains removed from direct observation. It is the historian who must separate the necessary from the accidental, uncover its inner structure and make visible the truly activating forces. (Humboldt, On the Historians Task)

26. The founder of the modern history writing in the 19th century comes out of this German Enlightened tradition of thinking (he is in the Anglo-American world wrongly celebrated as an empiricist only) • Introduces 'seminars’ in which he discusses source texts with student • Invents the famous ‘footnote’ • ‘critical method’: philological method; checking text whether they are genuine • Aim: a) to distance history writing from novel writing (Sir Walter Scott) • b) to fight Herder’s influential philosophical history writing Leopold von Ranke

27. Ranke insists that history writing has to be based on empirical facts... but also needs intuition from the historian The most famous but most misunderstood quote in history writing ....it seeks to only show the past ‘how it essentially was’ (wieeseigentlichgewesen) (History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples, 1824) Problem ‘error’ of translation into English: ‘eigentlich’ – ‘really’ but it needs to be ‘essentially

28. Ranke is a historicist and religious believer; his work is to discover God’s footprint in the past... ‘Every epoch is immediate to God and its worth is not at all based on what derives from it but rests in its own existence, in its own self’ The historian uses intuition to grasp the hidden meaning of the past It follows: • never judge the past from one’s own standpoint but to grasp its uniqueness (see Herder and Humboldt) • there is no progress to a higher state of civilization in history (see Herder and Humboldt); God does not favour • one historical period over another

29. History is a science and an art ‘The historians task, however, is at once art and science. It has to fulfil all the demands of criticism and scholarship to the same degree as a philosophical work; but at the same time it is supposed to give the same pleasure to the educated mind as the most perfect literary creation. (Ranke, Wissenschaft und Kunst)

30. How do we have to understand the quote? 1. Different understanding of what ‘science’ means from the anglophone world Wissenschaft(en) = science(s): any scholarship that follows a systematic methodology (the study of theology and music is therefore ’scientific’ Geisteswissenschaft(en) (human science(s) – Naturwissenschaft(en) (natural sciences) both are sciences History is the sense of a science (but not a natural science) for Ranke

31. Historiography week 5 Making of Modernity III: History as Class Struggle Critique of industrial capitalism and a new understanding of society and historical change Karl Marx, 1818-1883

32. Young Marx (still in Germany) is obsessed with critiquing Hegel’s explanation of historical change History develops through thought towards freedom Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) "World history... represents the development of the spirit's consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realization of this freedom.” Spirits develops along logical path and concerns ‘thinking’; move to higher stages is ’dialectic’

33. Marx does not believe historical changes comes from ‘thinking’ (as Hegel suggests) but from real life activity. ‘In direct contrast to German philosophy which descend from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, or imagined, conceived in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics and all the rest of the ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness no longer seem to be independent. They have no history or development. Rather, men who develop their material production and their material relationship alter their thinking and the products of their thinking along with their real existence. Consciousness does not determine life, but life determines consciousness.’ (The German Ideology, Selected Writings, p. 164)

34. Historical materialism Claims that man, the real and total man, the ‘real living’ individual – not the ideas produced by these individuals – are the subject matter of history and of the understanding of its laws the duty of the historian Society develops in stages ‘dialectically’; the ultimate aim is the destruction of capitalist society and the establishment of communism; the class of the proletaria will carry of the revolution

35. Structure of society • Superstructure (legal, political institutions of society; culture, arts etc.) • give rise to • relations of production; the relations between people or between people and material things • give rise to • productive forces/modes of production: things used to produce (machinery, raw materials, and human skills, land etc) • ‘The hand mill gives you a society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist (and the proletarian’ • Move from one ‘mode’ to another is through dialectic struggle (see Hegel); The aim communism

36. Lecture 5The Making of Modernity IV:Empiricism and Positivism in British History Writing of the 19th Century

37. Not everyone was a critic of capitalism in 19th-century Britain....technology and science was a sign of national pride and progress of the British civilization...

38. The ‘father’ of scientific history? The History of Civilization in England (1857) The most successful historical work in the mid-19th century ‘It was provocative, topic, well-written and, what is more, it was shocking.’ (Hesketh, Science of history in Victorian Britain) Why? Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862)

39. Buckle relies entirely on ithe sociological August Comte, the founder of the positivism (and the discipline of sociology) • Def. Positivism • Holds that only true and authentic knowledge is knowledge that is based on actual sense experience and its empirical collection. ‘Positive’ knowledge can only derive from affirmation of theories through strict ‘scientific’ method. Any metaphysical speculation is supposed to be avoided (note: difference to historicism) • Important: Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general physical laws (see French/English Enlightenment ideas). Introspective and intuitive knowledge (Ranke &Co) is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology. • Positivism is believed to be a purely rational way of looking at the world; it emphasizes observation and classification of data and facts and involves the heavy use of mathematics and statistics. Auguste Comte, 1798-1857

40. Buckle was shocking because he left no room for God or human free-will ‘I have been long convinced that the progress of every people is regulated by principles – or as they are called, Laws – as regular and as certain as those which govern the physical world. To discover those laws is the object of my work. With a view to this, I propose to take a general survey of the moral, intellectual, and legislative peculiarities of the great countries of Europe, and I hope to point out the circumstances under which those peculiarities have risen. This will lead to a perception of certain relationships between the various stages through which each people have progressively passed. Of these general relations, I intend to make a particular application; and by, a careful analysis of England, show how they have regulated our civilisation, and how the successive and apparently the arbitrary forms of our opinions, our literature, our laws, and our manners, have naturally grown out of their antecedents.’

41. History writing for Buckle needs to be ‘useful’ (to the further scientification/rationalization/industrialisation of the British Empire Philosophy of utilitarianism underpins his thinking John Stuart Mill – ‘father of modern liberalism’; celebration of the freedom of the individual; in opposition to any state and social control; loves Buckle’s history! Jeremy Bentham, 1748 – 1832; founder of utilitarianism

42. Buckle’s Opponents: British Rankean historians position: impossible to generalise man’s actions -- which Acton they believed, was brought about by man’s free will -- to a singular physical law. (against the use of statistics in history writing Rejection of positivism: ‘Theory invented) ....by under-educated, or half-educated men, adepts in physical sciences, but ignorant of the principles of any other, who insists that all science must have the same method as theirs, and that metaphysical realities must be measures and explained by physical laws.’ Ranke – or what was interpreted as Ranke’s critical theory’ – became the benchmark for ‘official’ British history writing in the 19th and early 20th century John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 1834 – 1902

43. Another way of using the new discipline of sociology for history writing.... One of the founders of sociology – the scientific study of society -- which he defines as the study the ‘togetherness’ of people He is critical of positivism and utilitarianism (so against people like Buckle or Comte) He is the ‘last’ historicist Max Weber (1864-1920)

44. In contrast to Buckle or Comte, Weber suffers from industrialization and technologisation of the modern world... He considers its key feature ‘rationalization’ as a curse.... Rationalisation has led to the ‘disenchantment of the world’ How this happens Weber demonstrates in his work Protestant Ethics which emphasizes the role of religion in the ‘making’ of modern rational capitalism ‘How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all- powerful trend?’

45. ‘ There is no absolutely ‘objective’ scientific analysis of culture... All knowledge of cultural reality... is always knowledge from particular points of view. ... An ‘objective’ analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "laws," is meaningless... [because]... the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end.’ (Max Weber, ‘Objectivity’ in Social Science, 1897) Involves empathetic liaison of the observer with the observed – intuition (note: historicism) He set against this his sociology of ‘Verstehen’ (understanding)