To study history, we need to begin by asking questions about history and historians, for example: Why does history matter so much? What is the legitimizing function of history? Can history be objective? Is it always political?
- Ecclesiasticus:“Let us now sing the praises of famous men, our ancestors in their generations.” Myth-making is a powerful motivation for history. (Writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans used the idea as the title of a 1941 book about Southern sharecroppers. William F. Buckley pondered the phrase in a memory of Winston Churchill.)
- Herodotus: (484 – 420 BC) “These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory…” Written 440 B.C.
- Thucydides: (460 – 400 BC) “The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever… The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.” (Written 431 B.C.)
- Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794) Author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in 1776, one of the first modern histories that attempted to explain the past as a guide to the future.
- Leopold Von Ranke: (1795 – 1886) Father of the “scientific” approach to history who said historians should report “The Way Things Really Were.” Von Ranke said: “To accomplish something in history there are three requirements: a sound understanding of people, courage, and honesty. The first, simply for insight into things; the second, not to be shocked at what one finds there; and the third, not to dissemble in any particular, even to oneself. So do the simplest moral qualities govern, even in science” (Diaries, c1843)
- George Bancroft (1800-1891) Author of “A History of the United States” (1834). “The movements of humanity are governed by law… The growth and decay of empire, the morning lustre of a dynasty and its fall from the sky before noonday; the first turning of a sod for the foundation of a city to the footsteps of a traveller searching for its place which time has hidden, all proceeds as it is ordered. The character of science attaches to our pursuits.” (Address to the American Historical Association April 27, 1886)
- Lord John Edward Emerich Acton (1834-1902) “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Acton is also remembered for his “History of Freedom” project. “For our purpose, the main thing to learn is not the art of accumulating material, but the sublimer art of investigating it, of discerning truth from falsehood and certainty from doubt… Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.” From the Inaugural lecture on the study of history.
- Herbert Butterfield– Whig history is “the tendency of many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”
- George Santayana (1863 – 1952) “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (The Life of Reason, 1905). The Harvard philosopher’s statement about history is probably the best known historical concept.
- Allan Nevins (1890 – 1971) — (Journalist/ historian) “Imagination is essential to re-creation of the past, and it is re-creation at which the historical artist aims… [a good history] shows us the workings of the human heart.” (From “The Old History and the New,” Allan Nevins on History). Also: Where the differences lay (comparing North and South prior to the Civil War).
- Harold Innis (1894 – 1952) — Economic historian who put communication at the center of history. Civilizations that had communication through durable media were biased (oriented) towards time and orthodoxy (Egypt, Babylon); On the other hand, civilizations with flexible media (Rome, Greece) were biased towards control of space and a secular, scientific approach to life.
- Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980) — Media critic who also put communication at the center of history. Most famous quote: “The medium is the message.” About history: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
- Howard Zinn (1922 – present) “History is invoked because nobody can say what history really has ordained for you, just as nobody can say what God has ordained for you. Political leaders suppose that the population is as mystified by the word history as they are by the word God, and that therefore they will accept whatever interpretation of history is given to them…” (from Original Zinn, Harper Perennial, 2006). Note: Compare this to Thucydides’ (above) about receiving traditions without any critical test.
- James W. LoewenLies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong “History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason, not just answers to be learned. Textbooks encourage students to believe that history is learning facts. “We have not avoided controversial issues” announces one set of textbook authors; “instead, we have tried to offer reasoned judgments” on them – thus removing the controversy! No wonder their text turns students off!?”
- Francis Fukuyama — What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such… That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
- History and Historians — American historical writing in perspective by Abraham S. Eisenstadt. “What then are this generation’s historians saying about the major themes that have run through American historical writing? They have retreated from celebrating America’s Providential role among the nations, its mission as a city on a hill, and the singularity and exceptionalism of its society. Although some have stressed the interwoven American principles of liberty and democracy, most have turned away from a larger vision, focusing instead on different aspects of society and on localities rather than the nation as a whole. In lieu of their earlier concentration on a mainstream, essentially Anglo-American politics and culture, they have been increasingly concerned with racial, ethnic, religious, generational, and sexual groups striving for civic and legal equity. If they seem to have no unifying vision of their past, that may very well be because they are too close to their own time to gain its overall measure.”
- War on History? — “A a large and powerful movement (is) determined to impose a thoroughly distorted, ultra-partisan, Christian nationalist version of US history on America’s public school students. And (it) has scored stunning successes. If you want to see a scary movie about this movement, consider taking in Scott Thurman’s finely-crafted documentary Revisionaries.” — The Guardian, May 22, 2012.
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“But gawd damn it, This world is so damn mean.
Nobody learn no nothing from no history.” — Gogol Bordello
