What is History / by Edward Hallett Carr - Universal History Library

WHAT IS HISTORY
actions. Belief in the duty of the historian to pronounce moral judgements on his dramatis
personae has a long pedigree. But it was never more powerful than in nineteenth-century
Britain, when it was reinforced both by the moralizing tendencies of the age and by the
uninhibited cult of individualism. Rosebery remarked that what English people wanted to
know about Napoleon was whether he was 'a good man'. Acton in his correspondence with
Creighton declared that 'the inflexibility of the moral code is the secret of the authority, the
dignity, and the utility of History', and claimed to make history 'an arbiter of controversy,
a guide of the wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and
of religion itself tend constantly to depress'" - a view based on Acton's almost mystical
belief in the objectivity and supremacy of historical facts, which apparently requires and
entitles the historian, in the name of History as a sort of super- historical power, to pass
moral judgements on individuals participating in historical events. This attitude still
sometimes reappears in unexpected forms. Professor Toynbee described Mussolini's
invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 as a 'deliberate personal sin';" and Sir Isaiah Berlin, in the
essay already quoted, insists with great vehemence that it is the duty of the historian 'to
judge Charlemagne or Napoleon or Genghis Khan or Hitler or Stalin for their massacres'
This view has been sufficiently castigated by Professor Knowles, who in his inaugural
lecture quoted Motley's denunciation of Philip II (' if there are vices ... from which he was
exempt, it is because it is not permitted by human nature to attain perfection even in evil')
and Stubbs's description of Ring John (' polluted with every crime that could disgrace a
man') as instances of moral judgements on individuals which it is not within the
competence of the historian to pronounce:’ The historian is not a judge, still less a hanging
judge.' But Croce also has a fine passage on this point, which I should like to quote:
The accusation forgets the great difference that our tribunals (whether juridical or moral)
are present-day tribunals designed for living, active and dangerous men, while those other
men have already appeared before the tribunal of their day, and cannot be condemned or
absolved twice. They cannot be held responsible before any tribunal whatsoever, just
because they are men of the past who belong to the peace of the past and as such can only
be subjects of history, and can suffer no other judgement than that which penetrates and
understands the spirit of their work. ... Those who, on the plea of narrating history, bustle
about as judges, condemning here and giving absolution there, because they think that this
is the office of history ... are generally recognised as devoid of historical sense.
And if anyone cavils at the statement that it is not our business to pass moral judgement on
Hitler or Stalin - or, if you like, on Senator McCarthy - this is because they were the
contemporaries of many of us, because hundreds of thousands of those who suffered
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