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

WHAT IS HISTORY
in which history is moving, but have consciously or unconsciously believed that this
direction was on the whole the right direction, that mankind was moving from the worse to
the better, from the lower to the higher. The historian not only recognised the direction,
but endorsed it. The test of significance which he applied in his approach to the past was
not only a sense of the course on which history was moving, but a sense of his own moral
involvement in that course. The alleged dichotomy between the 'is' and the 'ought',
between fact and value, was resolved. It was an optimistic view, a product of an age of
overwhelming confidence in the future; Whigs and Liberals, Hegelians and Marxists,
theologians and rationalists, remained firmly, and more or less articulately, committed to
it. For 200 years it could have been described without much exaggeration as the accepted
and implicit answer to the question 'What is history?' The reaction against it has come with
the current mood of apprehension and pessimism, which has left the held clear for the
theologians who seek the meaning of history outside history, and for the sceptics who find
no meaning in history at all. We are assured on all hands, and with the utmost emphasis,
that the dichotomy between 'is’ and 'ought' is absolute and cannot: be resolved, that
'values' cannot be derived from 'facts'. This is, I think, a false trail. Let us see how a few
historians, or writers about history, chosen more or less at random, have felt about this
question.
Gibbon justifies the amount of space devoted in his narrative to the victories of Islam on
the ground that 'the disciples of Mohammed still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the
Oriental world'. But, he adds, ‘the same labour would be unworthily bestowed on the
swarms of savages who, between the seventh and twelfth centuries, descended from the
plains of Scythia', since 'the majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived these
disorderly attacks'. This seems not unreasonable. History is, by and large, a record of what
people did, not of what they failed to do: to this extent it is inevitably a success story.
Professor Tawney remarks that historians give 'an appearance of inevitableness to an
existing order 'by dragging into prominence the forces which have triumphed and thrusting
into the background those which they have swallowed up'. But is not this in a sense the
essence of the historian's job? The historian must not underestimate the opposition; he
must not represent the victory as a walk-over if it was touch-and- go. Sometimes those
who were defeated have made as great a contribution to the ultimate result as the victors.
These are familiar maxims to every historian. But, by and large, the historian is concerned
with those who, whether victorious or defeated, achieved something. I am not a specialist
in the history of cricket. But its pages are presumably studded with the names of those
who made centuries rather than of those who made ducks and were left out of the side.
Hegel's famous statement that in history 'only those peoples can come under our notice
file:///C|/Documents and Settings/Vidula/Local Settings/Temp/Rar$EX00.750/carr.htm (77 of 97)7/20/2006 11:28:45 AM