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

WHAT IS HISTORY
commit the cardinal sin of speaking of history with a capital H and tell him that History
was against him. The business of the politician is to consider not merely what is morally
or theoretically desirable, but also the forces which exist in the world, and how they can be
directed or manipulated to probably partial realisations of the ends in view. Our political
decisions, taken in the light of our interpretation of history, are rooted in this compromise.
But our interpretation of history is rooted in the same compromise. Nothing is more
radically false than to set up some supposedly abstract standard of the desirable and
condemn the past in the light of it. For the word 'success', which has come to have
invidious connotations, let us by all means substitute the neutral 'that which works best'.
Since I have joined issue with Sir Isaiah Berlin on several occasions during these lectures,
I am glad to be able to close the account with, at any rate, this measure of agreement.
But acceptance of the criterion of 'what works best' does not make its application either
easy or self-evident. It is not a criterion which encourages snap verdicts, or which bows
down to the view that what is, is right. Pregnant failures are not unknown in history.
History recognises what I may call 'delayed achievement': the apparent failures of today
may turn out to have made a vital contribution to the achievement of tomorrow - prophets
born before their time. Indeed, one of the advantages of this criterion over the criterion of
a supposedly fixed and universal principle is that it may require us to postpone our
judgement or to qualify it in the light of things that have not yet happened. Proudhon, who
talked freely in terms of abstract moral principles, condoned the coup d'etat of Napoleon
III after it had succeeded; Marx, who rejected the criterion of abstract moral principles,
condemned Proudhon for condoning it. Looking back from a longer historical perspective,
we shah probably agree that Proudhon was wrong and Marx right. The achievement of
Bismarck provides an excellent starting-point for an examination of this problem of
historical judgement; and, while I accept Sir Isaiah's criterion of 'what works best', I am
still puzzled by the narrow and short-term limits within which he is apparently content to
apply it. Did what Bismarck created really work well? I should have thought that it led to
an immense disaster. This does not mean that I am seeking to condemn Bismarck, who
created the German Reich, or the mass of Germans who wanted it and helped to create it.
But, as a historian, I still have many questions to ask. Did the eventual disaster occur
because some hidden flaws existed in the structure of the Reich I or because something in
the internal conditions which brought it to birth destined it to become self-assertive and
aggressive I or because, when the Reich was created, the European or world scene was
already so crowded, and expansive tendencies among the existing Great Powers already so
strong, that the emergence of another expansive Great Power was sufficient to cause a
major collision and bring down the whole system in ruins I On the last hypothesis, it may
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