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

WHAT IS HISTORY
I confess that I find this theory unsatisfying and unconvincing. The role of accident in
history is nowadays seriously exaggerated by those who are interested to stress its
importance. But it exists, and to say that it merely accelerates or retards, but does not alter,
is to juggle with words. Nor do I see any reason to believe that an accidental occurrence -
say, the premature death of Lenin at the age of fifty-four - is automatically compensated
by some other accident in such a way as to restore the balance of the historical process.
Equally inadequate is the view that accident in history is merely the measure of our
ignorance - simply a name for some- thing which we fail to understand. This no doubt
sometimes happens. The planets got their name, which means of course 'wanderers', when
they were supposed to wander at random through the sky, and the regularity of their
movements was not understood. To describe something as a mischance is a favourite way
of exempting oneself from the tiresome obligation to investigate its cause; and, when
somebody tells me that history is a chapter of accidents, I tend to suspect him of
intellectual laziness or low intellectual vitality. It is common practice with serious
historians to point out that something hitherto treated as accidental was not an accident at
all, but can be rationally explained and significantly fitted into the broader pattern of
events. But this also does not fully answer our question. Accident is not simply something
which we fail to understand. The solution of the problem of accident in history must, I
believe, be sought in a quite different order of ideas.
At an earlier stage we saw that history begins with the selection and marshalling of facts
by the historian to become historical facts. Not all facts are historical facts. But the
distinction between historical and unhistorical facts is not rigid or constant; and any fact
may, so to speak, be promoted to the status of a historical fact once its relevance and
significance are discerned. We now see that a somewhat similar process is at work in the
historian's approach to causes. The relation of the historian to his causes has the same dual
and reciprocal character as the relation of the historian to his facts. The causes determine
his interpretation of the historical process, and his interpretation deter- mines his selection
and marshalling of the causes. The hierarchy of causes, the relative significance of one
cause or set of causes or of another, is the essence of his interpretation. And this furnishes
the clue to the problem of the accidental in history. The shape of Cleopatra's nose,
Bajazet's attack of gout, the monkey- bite that killed King Alexander, the death of Lenin -
these were accidents which modified the course of history. It is futile to attempt to spirit
them away, or to pretend that in some way or other they had no effect. On the other hand,
in so far as they were accidental, they do not enter into any rational interpretation of
history, or into the historian's hierarchy of significant causes. Professor Popper and
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