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

WHAT IS HISTORY
Modern History which I quoted in my first lecture, referred to history as 'a progressive
science'; and in the introduction to the first volume of the history wrote that 'we are bound
to assume, as the scientific hypothesis on which history is to be written, a progress in
human affairs'. In the last volume of the history, published in 1914 Dampier, who was a
tutor of my college when I was an undergraduate, felt no doubt that 'future ages will see no
limit to the growth of man's power over the resources of nature and of his intelligent use of
them for the welfare of his race'." In view of what I am about to say, it is fair for me to
admit that this was the atmosphere in which I was educated, and that I could subscribe
without reservation to the words of my senior by half a generation, Bertrand Russell: 'I
grew up in the full hood of Victorian optimism, and ... something remains with me of the
hopefulness that then was easy.' In 1920, when Bury wrote his book The Idea of Progress,
a bleaker climate already prevailed, the blame for which he laid, in obedience to the
current fashion, on 'the doctrinaires who have established the present reign of terror in
Russia', though he still described progress as 'the animating and controlling idea of
western civilisation'." Thereafter this note was silent. Nicholas I of Russia is said to have
issued an order banning the word 'progress': nowadays the philosophers and historians of
western Europe, and even the United States, have come belatedly to agree with him. The
hypothesis of progress has been refuted. The decline of the west has become so familiar a
phrase that quotation marks are no longer required. But what, apart from all the shouting,
has really happened? By whom has this new current of opinion been formed? The other
day I was shocked to come across, I think, the only remark of Bertrand Russell I have ever
seen which seemed to me to betray an acute sense of class: 'There is, on the whole, much
less liberty in the world now than there was a hundred years ago.' I have no measuring-rod
for liberty, and do not know how to balance the lesser liberty of few against the greater
liberty of many. But an any standard of measurement I can only regard the statement as
fantastically untrue. I am more attracted by one of those fascinating glimpses which Mr A.
J. P. Taylor sometimes gives us into Oxford academic life. All this talk about the decline
of civilisation, he writes, ‘means only that university professors used to have domestic
servants and now do their own washing- up'.' Of course, for former domestic servants,
washing-up by professors may be a symbol of progress. The loss of white supremacy in
Africa, which worries Empire Loyalists, Africaner Republicans, and investors in gold and
copper shares, - may look like progress to others. I see no reason why, on this question of
progress, I should ipso facto prefer the verdict of the 1950s to that of the 1890s, the verdict
of the English-speaking world to that of Russia, Asia, and Africa, or the verdict of the
middle-class intellectual to that of the man in the street, who, so cording to Mr.
Macmillan, has never had it so good. Let us for the moment suspend judgement on the
question whether we are living in a period of progress or of decline, and examine a little
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