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

WHAT IS HISTORY
institution, it was the one historical institution; it alone was subject to a rational course of
development which could be comprehended by the historian. Secular society was moulded
and organised by the church, and had no rational life of its own. The mass of people
belonged, like prehistoric peoples, to nature rather than to history. Modern history beginswhen
more and more people emerge into social and political consciousness, become aware
of their respective groups as historical entities having a past and a future, and enter fully
into history. It is only within the last zoo years at most, even in a few advanced countries,
that social, political, and historical consciousness has begun to spread to anything like a
majority of the population. It is only today that it: has become possible for the first time
even to imagine a whole world consisting of peoples who have in the fullest sense entered
into history and become the concern, no longer of the colonial administrator or of the
anthropologist, but of the historian.
This is a revolution in our conception of history. In the eighteenth century history was still
a history of elite’s. In the nineteenth century British historians began, haltingly and
spasmodically, to advance towards a view of history as the history of the whole national
community. J. R. Green, a rather pedestrian historian, won fame by writing the first
History of the English People. In the twentieth century every historian pays lip service to
this view; and, though performance lags behind profession, I shall not dwell on these
shortcomings, since I am much more concerned with our failure as historians to take -
account of the widening horizon of history outside this country and outside western
Europe. Acton in his report of 1896 spoke of universal history as 'that which is distinct
from the combined history of all countries'. He continued:
It moves in a succession to which the nations are subsidiary. Their story will be told, not
for their own sake, but in reference and subordination to a higher series, according to the
time and degree in which they contribute to the common fortunes of mankind.'
It went without saying for Acton that universal history, as he conceived it, was the concern
of any serious historian. What are we at present doing to facilitate the approach to
universal history in this sense ?
I did not intend in these lectures to touch on the study of history in this university: but it
provides me with such striking examples of what I am trying to say that it would be
cowardly of me to avoid grasping the nettle. In the past forty years we have made a
substantial place in our curriculum for the history of the United States. This is an
important advance. But it has carried with it a certain risk of reinforcing the parochialism
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