From the Beginning to the Enlightenment:

Western Historical tradition begins with Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus
and Plutarch. History was then quite unabashedly a preparation for life, especially
political and military life. Essentially it was a narration of memorable events designed t
o preserve the memory and propagate the knowledge of glorious deeds or of events which
were important to a man, a family, or a people. Political incidents, wars, and revolutions
predominated.

In the post-classical period, the tradition was left almost exclusively in the hands of
monkish chroniclers whose annalistic accounts lack the elements of reflection or analyses
which would make them history.

The Venerable Bede (735) was an exception; he paid special attention to chronology,
enumerated his written sources and made some effort to test and evaluate oral tradition.

In medieval times, there was some difficulty in separating the sacred from the profane.
Miracles were accepted. Not much analysis due to belief in divine intervention.

Renaissance historians rational, secular approach and critical scholarship. Due to

external features such as geographical expansion, printing etc. Reformation and counter-
reformation lent impetus.

Machiavelli and Guicciardini the inductive method. Conclusions based on evidence

rather on some accepted a priori theory. Followed by Bacon and Hyde.

The greatest advances were made in seventeenth century France where men like
Duchesne, Baluze, Mabillon and Montfaucon created the science of history and placed
new tools like palaeography, archaeology and diplomatics in the historians hands.

Bodin (1530-96) declared history to be both of intellectual interest and of pragmatic

value.

Voltaire and Montesquieu were the French Enlightenment historians. Voltaire insisted
that historians must give due attention to the civilisations of India and China, that
religions should be treated comparatively, with no suggestion that any automatic
primacy was inherent, and that economic, social and cultural matters were as much
the concern of the historian as the doings of popes and kings.

Scottish historians: Humes idea of history a man acquainted with history can be said to
have lived since the beginning of time.
Adam Smith economic history.
Millar sought to trace back the history of society to its most simple and universal
elements to resolve almost all that has been ascribed to positive institution into the
spontaneous and irresistible development of certain obvious principles and to show
with how little contrivance or political wisdom the most complicated and apparently
artificial schemes of policy might have been erected.
Gibbon Wars and public affairs are the principal subjects of history.

Three fundamental weaknesses of the Enlightenment period:

1) Innocent of any sense of human development and change using one standard
to measure behaviour and actions.
2) Although important scholarly works continued side-by-side with the great
interpretative works, there was little contact between the two.
3) History was not taught as an intellectual discipline.

Ranke: His Disciples and his Critics

Vico human history divided into divine, heroic and human. He appreciated cultural
differences between different nations.

Herder History is an onward march. Importance of geography. Concept of national

character. Concept of sympathy First sympathise with the nation, go into the era, into
the geography, into the entire history, feel yourself into it. Opposed the enlightenment
notion that everything, relatively, is right in its own historical context.

Ranke aimed to show what really happened. Stress on an objective account of the past.
Concept of genetic relationism genetic because of the stress laid on origins and the
notion of every phase developing out of a previous phase. Relationism because every
person, activity and institution must be seen in relation to the age. The historian may
judge, instruct but first he must understand. Critical method, precision of
documentation. Emphasis on primary sources. Rigorous research. All of which created a
more refined historical methodology. Ranke also played an important role in the
establishment of history teaching at the university level. Some reactions to Ranke from
Romantics like Burckhardt and Thierry.
Problems with romanticism over-dramatisation and emotionalism.

Positivism and Marxism:

Positivism treated history as a science and aimed to discover broad, universal laws
which would help predict the future. August Comte.

Marx Materialist conception of history. First of all a distinction is made between the
basic economic structure of any society, constituted by the conditions of production
taken as a whole, and the superstructure of laws, institutions and ideas. History
has unfolded through a series of stages, Asiatic, antique, feudal and modern
bourgeois, each determined by the prevailing conditions of production. The motor
for this development from era to era is provided by the class struggle, classes
themselves being determined by the relationships of particular groups to the
conditions of production. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles. When a stage is reached where the material productive forces of
society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, there begins an
epoch of social revolution.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes:
Macaulay focussed on the literary aspect, less of scholarship. Also notorious for the
whig interpretation of history, i.e. a product of the intellectual and material
developments of the time and the reaction of the liberal upper-class intellectuals to these
developments.

Carlyle overemphasised the role of the great men in history.

Stubbs Constitutional history.

The End of the Century:

Langlois and Seignobos The aim of history is knowledge pure and simple. Everything
else is secondary.

J B Bury History is a science, no less, no more. He also believed that history has
developed since the time of Ranke, and it was no longer merely political history. Now it
was more comprehensive, looked at both material and spiritual aspects, social
institutions, law, trade, industries and fine arts, religion, philosophy, folklore etc. Wanted
a broad conception of history concerned with the constant interaction and reciprocity
among all the various manifestations of human brain power and human emotion.

Lord Acton sought objectivity through The Cambridge Modern History. (Description of
Waterloo).
The Development of Historical Studies: The Twentieth Century

Literary History Begun by Trevelyan. Trevelyan argued that History could perform
neither of the functions properly expected of a physical science which he defined as
direct utility in practical fields and in more intellectual fields the deduction of laws of
cause and effect. The only fashion in which history could be scientific was in the
collection of facts, the weighing of evidence as to what events happened. He went on to
say that no one can ever give a completely or wholly true account of history, but several
imperfect readings of history are better than none at all; and he will give the best
interpretation who, having discovered and weighed all the important evidence obtainable,
has the largest grasp of intellect, the warmest human sympathy, the highest
imaginative powers.
To sum up Trevelyns stand: in the most important part of its business, history is not a
scientific deduction, but an imaginative guess at the most likely generalisation.
Trevelyn believed that historys primary purpose was educative. It provides a basic
training in citizenship.
Trvelyn believed there were three distinct functions of history the scientific (collecting
and weighing evidence as to facts), the imaginative (selection and classification,
interpretation and generalisation) and the literary (that which would attract and educate).

New Approaches Economic Sombart and Meinecke. Development of intellectual

history, fusing Ranke and Burckhardt.
Pirenne every effort at synthesis, however premature it may seem, cannot fail to react
usefully on investigations, provided one offers it in all frankness for what it is.
Lefebvre Without scholarship, there can be no history. Admired social psychologists.
Clapham Economic historian, early twentieth century England.

Intellectual History and Total History Turner frontier thesis. Behind institutions,
behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs
into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. Significance of sections.
James Robinson History used to explain the present.
Lucian Febvre geography and tomorrow. Also psychological history.
Marc Bloch Comparative method comparisons within a country, or between
countries. Regressive method using customs etc. of a later period to learn more about
an earlier period. Viewed feudal society from the standpoint of peasants.
Exemplary virtues of honest labour backed by solid and conscientious research, exact
impartiality. Bloch history is the science of men in time. Belief in a total integrated
history.

Philosophies:
Bury Historical relativism truthfulness of history can be only assessed relative to the
age in which it was written.
Becker History keeps getting outdated true only in one sense, that is relative to the
needs of the age which fashioned it.
Croce historical knowledge is a kind of intellectual intuition. The past has no existence
therefore history is only in the mind of the historian all history is contemporary
history it has existence only in the minds of the contemporaries. Relativity of history
not a symbol of weakness, but one of intellectual and imaginative power.
Collingwood History is the creation of the historian, not synonymous with the past
the facts of the past only exist when the historian envisions them through sheer historical
thinking. All history brings its narrative down to the present day. Therefore, every age
must write history afresh.
Everyone brings his own mind to the study of history, and approaches it from the point
of view which is characteristic of himself and his generation; naturally therefore, one age,
one man, sees in a particular historical event things which another does not, and vice
versa. The attempt to eliminate this subjective element from history is always insincere
it means keeping your own point of view while asking other people to give up theirs.
The historians goal is knowledge of the present and as a historian, how it came to be
what it is. In this sense, the past is an aspect or function of the present; and that is how it
must always appear to the historian who reflects intelligently on his own work.
All history is the history of thought.
Toynbee comparative study of civilisations which passed through similar stages of
growth, breakdown and eventual dissolution advanced laws to explain the same. The
objective of the historian is to help his fellow men of different civilisations to become
more familiar with one another and, in consequence, less afraid of one another and less
hostile to one another by helping them to understand and appreciate one anothers
histories and to see in these local and partial stories a common achievement and common
possession of the whole human family.

The Straight Line Professionals: