HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY

Final Preparation notes

We actually learn about historical philosophy or philosophy of the history and its
relations of the social sciences in this lesson. Please consider this.
Levent Elpen

1-THE HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, FROM

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO 1945
Social science is an enterprise of the modern world. It roots lie an attempt,
full-blown since the sixteenth century, and part and parcel of the construction of our
modern world, to develop systematic, secular knowledge about reality that is
somehow validated emperically.
The so-called classical view of science, predominant for several centuries
now, was built on two premises. One was the Newtonian model, in which there exists
a symmetry between past and future, since everything coexists in an eternal present.
The second premise was Cartesian dualism the assumption that there is a fundamental
distinction between nature and humans, between matter and mind, between the
physical world and the social/spiritual world.
Since the sixteenth century, progressing in the sciences and separated them
into two domains as the “natural” sciences and the philosophy or art or lettres or
culture or Geisteswissenschaften in German.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, science or term “science” came to
be equated primarily with natural science.
The intellectual history of the nineteenth century is marked above all by this
disciplinarization and professionalization of knowledge, that is to say, by the creation
of permanent institutional structures designed both produce new knowledge and to
reproduce the producers of knowledge.
The reformulation of “history” as geschichte –what happened, what really
happened- was thought to give it impeccable credentials.
History would cease to be a hagiography justifying monarchs and become the
true story of the past, explaining the present, offering the basis of wise choice for the
future.
This kind of history (based on empirical archival research) joined social
science and natural science in rejecting “speculation” and “deduction” (practices
which were said to be mere “philosophy”.
August Comte revived the term of “social physics”.
For Comte, social physics would permit the reconciliation of order and
progress by turning over the solution of social questions to “a small number of elite
intelligences” with the appropriate education.
And in between the humanities and the natural sciences, thus defined, lay the
study of social realities, with history (idiographic) closer to, often part of, faculties of
arts and letters, and “social science” (nomothetic) closer to the natural sciences.
(Source: Wallerstein, 1996)
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Definition of Idiographic and Nomothetic
Idiographic and nomothetic methods represent two different approaches to
understanding social life. An idiographic method focuses on individual cases
or events. A nomothetic method, on the other hand, seeks to produce general
statements that account for larger social patterns, which form the context of
single events, individual behaviors, and experience. (thoughtco.com)
History is idiographic ► individual or particular cases, no generalization (e.g.
Conquest of Istanbul - why, how?)

Sociology is nomothetic ►creates the norms to establish general laws

(generalization, e.g. reasons and conclusions of all the conquests)

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2- HISTORICAL AWARENESS
The term “social memory” accurately reflects the rationale of popular
knowledge about the past. Social groupings need a record of prior experience, but
they also require a picture of the past which serves to explain or justify the present,
often at the cost of historical accuracy.
All societies look to their collective memories for consolation or inspiration,
and literate societies are in principle no different.
Social memory continues to be an essential means of sustaining a politically
active identity.
Sometimes social memory is based on consensus and inclusion, and this is
often the function of explicitly national narratives.
While social memory has continued to open up interpretations that satisfy new
forms of political and social need, the dominant approach in historical scholarship has
been to value the past for its own sake and, as far as possible, to rise above political
expediency.
There were certainly important precursors –in the ancient world, in Islam, in
dynastic China, and in the West from the Renaissance onwards. But it was not until
the first half of the nineteenth century that all the elements of historical awareness
were brought together in a historical practice which was widely recognized as the
proper way to study the past. This was the achievement of the intellectual movement
known as “historicism”, which began in Germany and soon spread all over the
Western world (the word comes from the German “Historismus”).
The fundamental premise of the historicists was that the autonomy of the past
must be respected.
They held that each age is a unique manifestation of the human spirit, with its
own culture and values. For one age to understand another, there must be a
recognition that the passage of time has profoundly altered both the conditions of life
and the mentality of men and women –even perhaps human nature itself. Historians
are not the guardians of universal values, nor can they deliver “the verdict of history”;
they must strive to understand each age in its own values and priorities, instead of
imposing ours.
Historicists’ three principles to understand historical awareness in a sense:
i- Difference (most fundamental) is recognition of the “gulf” which separates
our own age from all previous ages. Because nothing in history stands still, the
passage of time has profoundly altered the way we live. The first responsibility of the
historian is to take the measure of the difference of the past; conversely one of the
worst sins is anachronism –the unthinking assumption that people in the past behaved
and thought as we do.
Anachronism: A historical inaccuracy in which elements from
one historical period (usually the present) are inserted into an
earlier one, such as the use of modern language or attitudes in
historical films and dramas.
More importantly, the difference is one of mentality: earlier generations had different
values, priorities, fears and hopes from our own.
II- Context: The underlying principle, all historical work is that the subject of
our enquiry must not be wrenched from its setting. We must place everything we
know about the past in its contemporary context.
iii- Process: Historical awareness is the recognition of historical process –the
relationship between events over time which endows them with more significance
than if they were viewed in isolation.
Are professional historical awareness and popular social memory in
opposition?
In the sense understood by the historicists, then, historical awareness means
respecting the autonomy of the past, and attempting to reconstruct it in all its
strangeness before applying its insights to the present.
Popular historical knowledge, on the other hand, tends to highly selective
interest in the remains of the past, is shot through with present-day assumptions, and
is only incidentally concerned to understand the past on its own terms.
Three recurrent features of social memory have particularly significant
distorting effects:
i- Respect for tradition: An assumption that what was done in the past is an
authoritative guide to what should be done in the present.
ii- The invented traditions of nationalism: Nations are of course the product
of history, and the same national designation has usually meant different things at
different times. Unfortunately historians have not always kept this truth at the
forefront of their minds. For all their scholarly principle, the nineteenth-century
historicists found it hard to resist the demand for one-dimensional, nation-building
history, and many did not even try.
Historians were caught up in popular nationalism like everyone else, and
many saw no contradiction between the tenets of their profession and the writing of
self- serving national histories.
Nationalism... rests on the assertion of tradition, rather than an interpretation
of history. It suppresses difference and change in order to uphold identity.
iii- Nostalgia: Like tradition, nostalgia is backward-looking, but instead of
denying the fact of historical change, it interprets it in one direction only-as change
for the worse.
It works most strongly as as reaction to a sense of loss in the recent past, and it
is therefore particularly characteristic of societies undergoing rapid change.
Anticipation and optimism are never the only –or even the main- social responses to
progress.
iv-Progress: Like process, progress is about change over time, but with the
crucial difference that a positive value is placed on the change, endowing it with
moral content. The concept of progress is fundamental to modernity, because for two
hundred years it was the defining myth of the West, a source of cultural self-assurance
and of outright superiority in its dealings with the rest of the world. In this sense
progress was essentially the invention of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
Tradition, nostalgia and progress provide the basic constituents of social
memory.

3- THE USES OF HISTORY

...one cannot get vary far in understanding how historians set about their work,
or in evaluating its outcome, without first considering the rationale of historical
enquiry.
i- Metahistory:History tells us most of what we need to know about the
future. Our destiny is disclosed in the grand trajectory of human history, which
reveals the world today as it really is, and the future course of events. This belief
requires a highly schematic interpretation of the course of human development,
usually known as metahistory.
But the most influential metahistory of modern times has been Marxism.
The driving force of history became the struggle by human societies to meet
their material needs (which is why the Marxist theory is known as “historical
materialism”). Marx interpreted human history as a progression from lower to higher
forms of production; the highest form was currently industrial capitalism, but this was
destined to give way to socialism, at which point human need would be satisfied
abundantly and equitably.
ii- The rejection of history: Nothing can be learned from history: not that
history is beyond our reach, but that is offers no guidance.
Takes two forms:
a- Essentially a defence against totalitarianism: because the practical
consequences of invoking the past legitimate communist ideology.
b-If one is committed to the new, why bother with the past? Rejecting history
is a commitment to modernity.

Neither metahistory nor the total rejection of history commands much support
among practitioners of history.
Metahistory may cast the historian in the gratifying role of prophet...
Marxism has had great influence on the writing of history over the past fifty
years, but as a theory of socio-economic change rather than as the key to human
destiny. ..
There are many intermediate positions. If most historians would tip the
balance in favour of free will, this is because determinism sits uncomfortably with the
contingencies and rough edges that loom so large in the historical record. Metahistory
involves holding on to one big conviction at the expense of many less ambitious
insights. It is an outlook profoundly at odds with the experience of historical research.

The uses of history – an inventory of alternatives

Historical difference lies at the heart of the discipline’s claim to be socially

relevant. As a memory-bank of what is unfamiliar or alien, history constitutes our
most important cultural resource. It offers a means – imperfect but indispensable –
of entering into the kind of experience that is simply not possible in our own lives.
History reminds us that there is usually more than one way of interpreting a
predicament or responding to a situation, and that the choices open to us are often
more varied than we might have supposed.
This has been a persistent theme in the work of the foremost historian of the
English Revolution, Christopher Hill:
Since capitalism, the Protestant ethic, Newtonian physics, so long taken for granted by our
civilization, are now at last coming under general and widespread criticism, it is worth going
back to consider seriously and afresh the arguments of those who opposed them before they
had won universal acceptance.

The point is not to find a precedent but to be alert to possibilities.

History is an inventory of alternatives, all the richer if research is not
conducted with half an eye to our immediate situation in the present.

Lessons from the familiar

Alongside features that have changed out of all recognition, we may encounter
patterns of thinking or behaviour that are immediately accessible to us. The
juxtaposition of these two is an important aspect of historical perspective, and it is
often the point at which the more thoughtful professional scholar engages most
directly with the claims of social relevance.
History here is not being quarried for "meaning" to validate particular values
but is treated as an instrument for maximizing our control over our present situation.

Facing up to pain: history as therapy

The concept of historical difference has one other rather surprising application
– as a means of grappling with aspects of the very recent past which we might prefer
to forget. It is a measure of the almost incredible extremes of human behaviour over
the past century that a real effort of the imagination is now needed to understand what
happened under the Third Reich or in the Soviet Union under Stalin (more recent
instances include Idi Amin’s Uganda and Pol Pot’s Cambodia). In cases such as these
the gulf between present and past is, as it were, compressed into a single life-span.
Those who lived through these experiences of mass death, incarceration and forced
removal suffer from a collective trauma. The line of least resistance may be to leave
the past alone, and in the Soviet Union "forgetting" was the official line for most of
the period between the death of Stalin and the collapse of Communism. Individuals
did not forget, but there was no way in which their pain could be shared or publicly
marked. A nation that cannot face up to its past will be gravely handicapped in
the future. This understanding was central to the policy of glasnost ("openness")
proclaimed by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. He realized how crippling the
psychological burden of the past was as long as it remained buried. After some initial
hesitation he opened up the archives to historians and allowed the Soviet people to
acknowledge publicly the terrible sufferings of the Stalin era. Whatever else happens
in Russia in the future, that collective owning of the past cannot be undone.

The summary of this part: Social traumas that caused by totalitarian regimes or
dictatorships, are tried to forgotten by these regimes, but people never forget
these pains. After the collapse of these regimes, history may use as a therapy
tool through opening all the archives to the historians and allowing the free
speech, especially about the past. If a society cannot face up to its "notorious"
past, it will be gravely crippled in the future. (L.E.)
Understanding behaviour in its context

The practical applications of historical context are much less likely to make
the headlines, but they are no less important. .. the discipline of context springs from
the historian’s conviction that a sense of the whole must always inform our
understanding of the parts. Even when historians write about specialized topics in
economic or intellectual history, they should respect this principle, and they open
themselves to major criticism if they fail to do so.
The reason why this mode of thinking has contemporary application is not, of
course, that our own society is alien or "different". Rather, the problem today is the
baffling complexity of society, which leads us to place exaggerated faith in specialist
expertise, without proper regard to the wider picture. E.J. Hobsbawm deplores how
modern policy-making and planning are in thrall to "a model of scientism and
technical manipulation".
The argument here is that the technical approach to social and political
problems compartmentalizes human experience into boxes marked ‘economics’,
‘social policy’ and so on, each with its own technical lore, whereas what is really
required is an openness to the way in which human experience constantly breaks out
of these categories.

The summary of this part: Social perceptions and behaviors of the past were
more different. It is necessary to an understanding approach in its own
context. This should not be a technical or disciplinary (approach). (L.E.)

Does history repeat itself?

Context is also the principle that historians invoke against the common, but
mistaken, belief that history repeats itself. Human beings strive to learn from their
mistakes and successes in their collective life just as they do in everyday individual
experience.
... Winston Churchill and Roy Jenkins, for example. That politicians have a
lively interest in the historical context in which posterity will judge their own standing
is only part of the explanation. The real reason for their study of history is that
politicians expect to find a guide to their conduct – in the form not of moral example
but of practical lessons in public affairs. This approach to history has a long pedigree.
It was particularly pronounced during the Renaissance, when the record of classical
antiquity was treated as a storehouse of moral example and practical lessons in
statecraft. Machiavelli’s prescriptions for his native Florence and his famous political
maxims in The Prince (1513) were both based on Roman precedent.
The summary of this part: History does NOT repeat itself. This is a "political
tale" for the present aims. (L.E.)

The way ahead: history and sequential prediction

Process – the third principle of historicism – is equally productive of insights

into the present day. Identifying a process does not mean that we agree with it, or
believe that it made for a better world. But it may help to explain our world. Situating
ourselves in a trajectory that is still unfolding gives us some purchase on the future
and allows a measure of forward planning. In fact this mode of historical thinking is
deeply rooted in our political culture. As voters and citizens, almost instinctively, we
interpret the world around us in terms of historical process. Much of the time our
assumptions are not grounded in historical reality; they may amount to little more
than wishful thinking projected backwards.
But if conclusions about historical process are based on careful research,
they can yield modest but useful predictions. We might call these sequential
predictions, in order to distinguish them from the discredited repetitive or recurrent
variety. These prevailing beliefs about historical process need to be brought into the
light of day, tested against the historical record, and if necessary replaced by a more
accurate perspective.

The summary of this part: History cannot make predictions like sociology,
economy and statistics, but it can give an idea about the trajectory of the
world. May be the process is related to the progress but if the history is
idiographic, then, history cannot make any predictions (According to Serhan
Hoca). This argument of classical historicists should be totally collapsed at
present. Ain't it? (L.E.)

Questioning assumptions

But the most important role of processual thinking is in offering an

alternative to the assumptions of permanence and timelessness that underpin so many
social identities. .. nations tend to imagine themselves as unchanged by the
vicissitudes of time. The fallacy of essentialism does not hold up well against
historical research. ‘British’, for example, was in the eighteenth century a newly
minted category to take account of the recent Union of Scotland and England, and it
was built on the exclusion of Roman Catholics and the French.
A historical perspective requires us to abandon the idea that nations are
organic; it is nearer the truth to regard them, in the words of an influential recent text,
as ‘imagined communities’.
The summary of this part: There is no "nation" on the earth from all eternity.
Newton's invented after eighteenth century and the French Revolution. But,
processual thinking gives us that modern societies are permanent (almost
eternal) and timeless. This is the fallacy of essentialism. Historical research is
against this fallacy. Besides, nations are not organic, instead, social identities
change very much in time. (L.E.)

Relevant fields of historical study

Historians should, of course, strive to be true to the past; the question is, which
past? Faced with the almost limitless evidence of human activity and the need to
select certain problems or periods as more deserving of attention than others, the
historian is entirely justified in allowing current social concerns to affect his or her
choice. International history originated in the 1920s as a very positive contribution by
historians to the new – if short-lived– ethos of internationalism. The notable
broadening of the scope of historical enquiry during the past forty years is largely the
result of a small minority of historians responding to the demands of topicality.
African history was developed at about the same time in Africa and the West
by historians who believed that it was indispensable both to the prospects of the
newly independent states and to the outside world’s understanding of the "dark
continent". More recently, women’s history has grown rapidly as traditional gender
roles have been modified in the family, the workplace and public life.
Obviously new areas of history which proclaim their relevance run the risk of
being manipulated by ideologues. But the responsibility of historians in these cases is
clear: it is to provide a historical perspective which can inform debate rather than to
service any particular ideology. Responding to the call of ‘relevance’ is not a matter
of falsifying or distorting the past but rather of rescuing from oblivion aspects of that
past which now speak to us more directly. Historians of Africa, for example, should
be concerned to explain the historical evolution of African societies, not to create a
nationalist mythology, and one of the consequences of four decades of research and
writing is that it is now much easier to distinguish between the two than it used to be.
Our priorities in the present should determine the questions we ask of the past, but not
the answers. ..the discipline of historical study makes this a meaningful distinction. At
the same time, it is a fallacy to suppose that the aspiration to reconstruct the past in its
own terms carries the promise of objectivity: no essay in historical re-creation is proof
against the values of the enquirer.

The summary of this part: The question of topicality is historian's headache.

Historians often meet the "relevance" with the present of the past events. This
has a risk of manipulating by the ideologies. Historians may answer these
kinds of questions providing a historical perspective which can inform the
debate without creating a nationalist mythology. (L.E.)
4- USING THE SOURCES

Who can hope to become an authority on even one country during a narrowly
defined time-span when so much spadework has to be done before the task of
synthesis can be attempted? If by ‘authority’ we mean total mastery of the sources,
the short answer is: only the historian of remote and thinly documented epochs.

Different approaches to using source material

According to the first, the historian takes one source or group of sources that
falls within his or her general area of interest – say the records of a particular court or
a body of diplomatic correspondence – and extracts whatever is of value, allowing the
content of the source to determine the nature of the enquiry.
The second, or problem-oriented, approach is the exact opposite. A specific
historical question is formulated, usually prompted by a reading of the secondary
authorities, and the relevant primary sources are then studied; the bearing that these
sources may have on other issues is ignored, the researcher proceeding as directly as
possible to the point where he or she can present some conclusions.
Each method encounters snags. The source-oriented approach, although
appropriate for a newly discovered source, may yield only an incoherent jumble of
data. The problem oriented approach sounds like common sense and probably
corresponds to most people’s idea of research. But it is often difficult to tell in
advance what sources are relevant.

Analyzing sources

The reason why the ideal remains for the most part unattainable is not only
that the sources are so numerous but also that each of them requires so much careful
appraisal. For the primary sources are not an open book, offering instant answers.
They may not be what they seem to be; they may signify very much more than is
immediately apparent; they may be couched in obscure and antiquated forms which
are meaningless to the untutored eye.
Before the historian can properly assess the significance of a document, he or
she needs to find out how, when and why it came into being. This requires the
application of both supporting knowledge and sceptical intelligence.
Historians have long been aware of the value of primary sources – and not
merely the more accessible sources of a narrative kind.
The introduction of a critical approach to the sources into mainstream history-
writing was Ranke’s most important achievement.
His appetite for archival research was truly prodigious. And through his
seminar at the University of Berlin he brought into being a new breed of academic
historians trained in the critical evaluation of primary sources – and especially the
many archival sources that were being opened to research for the first time during the
nineteenth century... Ranke won acceptance for the idea that the evaluation of sources
and the writing of history must be kept in the same hands. The spread of Rankean
method to Britain came comparatively late...

Is it authentic?

The first step in evaluating a document is to test its authenticity; this is

sometimes known as external criticism. Are the author, the place and the date of
writing what they purport to be? These questions are particularly relevant in the case
of legal documents such as charters, wills and contracts, on which a great deal could
depend in terms of wealth, status and privilege.
Once suspicions are aroused, the historian will pose a number of key
questions. First, there is the issue of provenance; can the document be traced back to
the office or person who is supposed to have produced it, or could it have been
planted? In the case of great finds that suddenly materialize from nowhere, this is a
particularly significant question. Secondly, the content of the document needs to be
examined for consistency with known facts. Given our knowledge of the period, do
the claims made in the document or the sentiments uttered seem at all likely? If the
document contradicts what can be substantiated by other primary evidence of
unimpeachable authenticity, then forgery is strongly indicated. Thirdly, the form of
the document may yield vital clues.
The historian who deals mostly in handwritten documents needs to be
something of a palaeographer in order to decide whether the script is right for the
period and place specified, and something of a philologist to evaluate the style and
language of a suspect text.
Lastly, historians can call on the help of technical specialists to examine the
materials used in the production of the document. Chemical testing can determine the
age of parchment, paper and ink; the hand of the Vinland Map forger was betrayed by
microphobe analysis of the ink, which revealed a substantial percentage of an
artificial pigment unknown before about 1920.

Understanding the text

The authentication of a document and – where applicable – cleansing the text

of corruptions are only preliminaries. The second and usually much more demanding
stage is internal criticism, that is the interpretation of the document’s content.
Granted that author, date and place of writing are as they seem, what do we
make of the words in front of us? At one level this is a question of meaning. This
involves more than simply translating from a foreign or archaic language, difficult
though that may be for the novice trying to make sense of medieval Latin in
abbreviated form. The historian requires not merely linguistic fluency but a command
of the historical context that will show what the words actually refer to.

Is it reliable?

No source can be used for historical reconstruction until some estimate of its
standing as historical evidence has been made. This question is beyond the scope of
any ancillary technique such as palaeography or diplomatic. Answering it calls
instead for a knowledge of historical context and an insight into human nature. Here
historians come into their own.

What influenced the author?

What most affects the reliability of a source, however, is the intention and
prejudices of the writer. Narratives intended for posterity, on which a general
impression of the period tends to be based, are particularly suspect. The distortions to
which autobiography is subject in this respect are too obvious for comment. Medieval
chroniclers were often extremely partisan as between one ruler and another, or as
between Church and state...

The uses of bias

Once bias has been detected, however, the offending document need not be
consigned to the scrap-heap. The bias itself is likely to be historically significant. In
the case of a public figure it may account for a consistent misreading of certain people
or situations, with disastrous effects on policy. In published documents with a wide
circulation, bias may explain an important shift in public opinion.
The reports of nineteenth-century Royal Commissions are a case in point.
Newspapers provide other examples: the war reports of the many British dailies
which were opposed to Asquith’s government in 1915–16 are not a reliable guide to
what was happening on the front, but they certainly help to explain why the Prime
Minister’s reputation at home declined so severely. Autobiographies are notorious for
their errors of recall and their special pleading. But in their very subjectivity often lies
their greatest value, since the pattern that the writer makes of his or her own life is a
cultural as much as a personal construct, and it also illuminates the frame of mind in
which not only the book was written but the life itself was led.
Reading sources in their context

One of the most illuminating ways into the past is to focus on a specific source
and to reconstruct how it came into being by all available means – through textual
analysis, related documents from the same source, contemporary comment and so on
... This is in effect the procedure now adopted by historians of ideas. Traditionally
their subject was studied to reveal the pedigree of key concepts such as parliamentary
sovereignty or the freedom of the individual through a canon of great theorists down
the ages. This had the unfortunate effect of implying that the great texts were
addressing ‘our’ issues and thus obscured the contemporary significance of the
sources themselves. But the first task of the historian is to treat these works like any
other document of the time and to read them, as far as possible, in the specific
intellectual and social contexts in which they were written. This means having
regard to both the specific genre – or discourse – to which the work belonged and its
relation to other genres with which readers of the time would have been familiar.
Context is at least as important as text in coming to terms with an original
thinker in the past.

The hidden problems of public records

Traditionally the staple diet of researchers, public records have most often
been studied from one of two standpoints. First, how did the institution that generated
the records evolve over time, and what was its function in the body politic? And
second, how were specific policies formulated and executed? In this context
reliability is hardly the issue, for the records are studied not as reports (i.e. testimonies
of events ‘out there’) but as parts of a process (be it administrative, judicial or policy-
making) which is itself the subject of enquiry. They are as much the creation of an
institution as an individual and therefore need to be examined in the context of that
institution – its vested interests, its administrative routine, and its record-keeping
procedures; any records to do with law or public finance call for technical knowledge
of a particularly demanding kind.
Considered apart from the series to which they belong, the records of public
institutions no longer extant are almost certain to be misinterpreted.

Gaps in the record

A knowledge of administrative and archival procedures is also vital if the

historian is to be alert to one particularly serious cause of distortion in the surviving
record – the deliberate removal of evidence. While the planting of a forgery in the
official record presents major difficulties, it may be a comparatively easy matter to
suppress an embarrassing or incriminating document.
No doubt there have been instances of unauthorized censorship which are
proof against detection, but the historian familiar with the administrative procedures
of the department in question is a great deal less likely to be duped.

Officially published records

While some records have been carefully removed from the historian’s reach,
others have been pushed into the limelight. In several fields of modern history,
collections of records published soon after the time of writing can be consulted. It is
important that these collections should not be accorded special weight just because
they are so accessible. They nearly always represent a selection, whose publication
was intended to further some practical end, usually of a short-term political nature.
The well-known series of State Trials was for a long time accepted as a
reliable record of some of the major English criminal proceedings since the sixteenth
century.
In all these cases the historian will obviously prefer to go to the originals. If
these are not available, the published versions must be scrutinized carefully, and as
much as possible must be found out from other sources about the circumstances in
which they were compiled.

Weighing sources against each other

Each type of source possesses certain strengths and weaknesses; considered

together, and compared one against the other, there is at least a chance that they will
reveal the true facts – or something very close to them.

Hidden traces in the records

The examples just discussed – international relations and government policy –

are topics for which there exists primary source material in abundance. In each case
there is a well-defined body of documents in public custody, with numerous ancillary
sources to corroborate and amplify the evidence. But there are many historical topics
which are much less well served, either because little evidence has survived or
because what interests us today did not interest contemporaries and was therefore not
recorded. If historians are to go beyond the immediate concerns of those who created
their sources, they have to learn how to interpret them more obliquely.
There are two principal ways of doing so. In the first place, many sources are
valued for information which the writers were scarcely aware they were setting down
and which was incidental to the purpose of their testimony. This is because people
unconsciously convey on paper clues about their attitudes, assumptions and manner of
life which may be intensely interesting to historians. A given document may therefore
be useful in a variety of ways, depending on the questions asked of it – sometimes
questions that would never have occurred to the writer or to people of the time. This,
of course, is one reason why beginning research with clearly defined questions rather
than simply going where the documents lead can be so rewarding: it may reveal
evidence where none was thought to exist. From this point of view, the word ‘source’
is perhaps somewhat inapposite: if the metaphor is interpreted literally, a ‘source’ can
contribute evidence to only one ‘stream’ of knowledge. It has even been suggested
that the term should be abandoned altogether in favour of ‘trace’ or ‘track’.

Unwitting evidence

This flair for turning evidence to new uses is one of the distinctive
contributions of recent historical method. It has been most fully displayed by
historians who have moved beyond the well-lit paths of mainstream political history
to fields such as social and cultural history, for which explicit source material is more
difficult to come by. A case in point is the religious beliefs of ordinary people in
Reformation England. Although the switches of doctrinal allegiance among the élite
are relatively well recorded, evidence is very sparse for the rest of the population.
Legal history arouses relatively little interest among historians at present, but
court records are probably the single most important source we have for the social
history of the medieval and early modern periods, when the vast majority of the
population was illiterate and therefore generated no records of its own.

Working backwards from the sources

The second oblique method of exploiting historical evidence is much more

controversial, and it was also propounded by Marc Bloch.
Bloch wanted to reconstruct French rural society in the Middle Ages. The
documents for the period contain a great deal of information but little sense of how
the details fit together to form an overall picture. Such a picture emerges only in the
eighteenth century, when French agrarian life was systematically described by
agronomists and by commissions of inquiry, and when accurate local maps began to
appear in large numbers.
Bloch maintained that only someone familiar with the structure of French rural
society as it was revealed in the eighteenth century could make sense of the medieval
data. He did not, of course, assume that nothing had changed in the meantime; his
point was rather that in this kind of situation the historian should carefully work back
by stages from what is known in order to make sense of the fragmentary and
incoherent evidence for earlier periods.

Methodology and instinct

In approaching the sources, the historian is anything but a passive observer.

In practice, unfavourable notice of a secondary work often turns on the
author’s failure to apply this or that test to the evidence. Admittedly, the rules cannot
be reduced to a formula, and the exact procedures vary according to the type of
evidence; but much of what the experienced scholar does almost without thinking can
be described – as I have tried to do here – in terms that are comprehensible to the
uninitiated. When spelt out in this way, historical method may seem to amount to
little more than the obvious lessons of common sense. But it is common sense applied
very much more systematically and sceptically than is usually the case in everyday
life, supported by a secure grasp of historical context and, in many instances, a high
degree of technical knowledge.
It is by these taxing standards that historical research demands to be judged.
(Source: Tosh, 2006)

The summary of ALL of this part: This is the problem of source material of
historical analysis. 1- How we approach to the source material? a- Review
them and put aside, then extract valuable ones and allow to determine of the
content source of our inquiry. b- (Problem oriented) Specific historical
question which prompted by reading of the secondary authorities, is
formulated and relevant primary sources are studied at the cost of the
ignorance from other issues, and then, proceed as directly as possible to the
point. 2- Historian should analyze his/her sources with how, when and why
questions that required supporting knowledge and skeptical intelligence. 3-
The historical source (document) should test for its authenticity (external
criticism). If the documents contradict to the epoch, this indicates the forgery.
If handwritten documents do not supply paleographic or philological basics,
these scripts are suspected texts. 4- Internal criticism or the interpretation of
the document’s content. Historian has to sensitively understand that the real
meaning of content in its own epoch. 5- Historian should consider what
influenced the original author (autobiographical distortions, partisanship of the
chroniclers) 6- Non-reliable documents that consist "bias", may give us worthy
material and knowledge about living and mentality of the epoch. Bias may be
an important shift in public opinion. 7- Documents should read and treat in
their own (intellectual and social) context. This is the first task. Original
thinker's discourse is belong to the epoch. 8- Be careful about like
administrative, judicial or policy-making public records. What were their
functions in the body politics and how executed them in a specific policy?
Every institution need to be examined in the context. 9- Unauthorized
censorship and other administrative difficulties may cause distortion of
surviving records. 10- Some official records may be removed or completely
terminated so that they do not subject to the historical research. If these
documents published, they should be scrutinized carefully. 11- Each document
may consist strengths and weaknesses. It should be considered together, and
compared them. 12- Some documents may be much less well served or their
writers did not care of the some concepts which are invalid in the epoch. It
should look at some "traces" or "tracks" on the record. 13- Usually, there are
no records about vast majority of the "illiterate" people, especially for the
cultural and social history works. 14- Some data that belong to the previous
periods, may be none. If the stage was very broad and historian has documents
which belong to a little part of this stage, he/she carefully work back by the
stages. (L.E.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the classroom notes
Fact
Undebatable facts: e.g. Istanbul is conquered in 1453.
These are raw materials, not facts.
Facts which historians can be disagree about.
If it is not debatable is not a fact.
ultimate history: the final say of history.
conventional history: traditional history.
Modern history is empirical based on facts.
Empiricism came out physics, separation between subject and object.
Historicists' view is positivism.
influx: changing all the time. It is about being factual or not.

Archives Output
------------ process ----------
books,
input data eliminate some article
documents

processing process

historical sources / history

primary sources ►directly
secondary sources ► about the period
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5- THE HISTORIAN AND HIS FACTS

Ultimate history we cannot have in this generation; but we can dispose of
conventional history, and show the point we have reached on the road from one to
other, now that all information is within reach, and every problem has become
capable of solution.
The nineteenth century was a great age for facts... When Ranke in the 1830s,
in legitimate protest against moralizing history, remarked that the task of the historian
was "simply to show how it really was (wie es eigentlich gewesen)".
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science,
contributed the weight of their influence to this cult of facts. First ascertain the facts,
said the Positivists, then draw your conclusions from them - In Great Britain, this
view of history fitted in perfectly with the empiricist tradition which was the
dominant strain in British philosophy from Locke to Bertrand Russell. The empirical
theory of knowledge presupposes a complete separation between subject and object.
Facts, like sense-impressions, impinge on the observer from outside and -are
independent of his consciousness. The process of reception is passive: having
received the data, he then acts on them.
History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the
historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish on the fishmonger's slab. The
historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever
style appeals to him.
First get your facts straight, then plunge at your peril into the shifting sands of
interpretation - that is the ultimate wisdom of the empirical, common sense school of
history. It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts
are sacred, opinion is free."
...I shall not embark on a philosophical discussion of the nature of our
knowledge of the past. Let us assume for present purposes that the fact that Caesar
crossed the Rubicon...
Caesar crossed the Rubicon: Military men had prohibited to
enter to Rome in the Republican period. There was a military
camp outside Rome near Rubicon River. But Julius Caesar
dared to cross the Rubicon River and entered to Rome. He
succeeded his coup (d'Etat). (L.E.)
...not all facts about the past are historical facts, or are treated as such by the
historian. What is the criterion which distinguishes the facts of history from other
facts about the past?
What is a historical fact? This is a crucial question into which we must look a
little more closely... for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066... It is
no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065
or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The
historian must not get these things wrong. But when points of this kind are raised, I
am reminded of Housman's remark that "accuracy is a duty, not a virtue".
The historian is not required to have the special skills which enable the expert
to determine the origin and period of a fragment of pottery or marble, to decipher an
obscure inscription, or to make the elaborate astronomical calculations necessary to
establish a precise date. These so-called basic facts, which are the same for all
historians, commonly belong to the category of the raw materials of the historian
rather than of history itself. The second observation is that the necessity to establish
these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an a priori
decision of the historian.
It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing
of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the
Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all. The fact
that you arrived in this building half an hour ago on foot, or on a bicycle, or in a car,
is just as much a fact about the past as the fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. But it
will probably be ignored by historians. Professor Talcott Parsons once called science
"a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality".
The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical
facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a
preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
...the Oxford philosopher and historian Collingwood, the only British thinker
in the present century who has made a serious contribution to the philosophy of
history. He did not live to write the systematic treatise be bad planned; but his
published and unpublished papers on the subject were collected after his death in a
volume entitled The Idea of History, which appeared in 1945. The views of
Collingwood can be summarized as follows:
The philosophy of history is concerned neither with "the past by itself" nor
with "the historian's thought about it by itself", but with "the two things in their
mutual relations." (This dictum reflects the two current meanings of the word
"history" - the inquiry conducted by the historian and the series of past events into
which he inquires.) "The past which a historian studies is not a dead past, but a past
which in some sense is still living in the present." But a past act is dead, i e.
meaningless to the historian, unless he can understand the thought that lay behind it.
Hence "all history is the history of thought", and "history is the re-enactment in the
historian's mind of the thought whose history he is studying". The reconstitution of
the past in the historian's mind is dependent on empirical evidence. But it is not in
itself an empirical process, and cannot consist in a mere recital of facts. On the
contrary, the process of reconstitution governs the selection and interpretation of the
facts: this, indeed, is what makes them historical facts.
In the first place, the facts of history never come to us "pure", since they do
not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the mind of the
recorder. It follows that when we take up a work of history, our first concern should
be not with the facts which it contains but with the historian who wrote it.
Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. This is, after all, not
very abstruse.
The second point is the more familiar one of the historian's need of
imaginative understanding for the minds of the people with whom he is dealing, for
the thought behind their acts: I say "imaginative understanding", not "sympathy", lest
sympathy should be supposed to imply agreement.
The third point is that we can view the past, and achieve our understanding of
the past, only through the eyes of the present. The historian is of his own age, and is
bound to it by the conditions of human existence. The very words which he uses -
words like democracy, empire, war, revolution-have current connotations from which
he cannot divorce them.
The historian belongs not to the past but to the present.
The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate
himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding
of the present.
...'there is no "objective" historical truth'. In place of the theory that history has
no meaning, we are offered here the theory of an infinity of meanings, none any more
right than any other - which comes to much the same thing.
Knowledge is knowledge for some purpose. The validity of the knowledge
depends on the validity of the purpose.
The duty of the historian to respect his facts is not exhausted by the obligation
to see that his facts are accurate.
The historian starts with a provisional selection of facts, and a provisional
interpretation in the light of which that selection has been made - by others as well as
by himself.
"What is history?" is that it is a continuous process of interaction between
the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.

6- HISTORY, SCIENCE AND MORALITY

The article of Edward Hallett Carr’s “History, Science and Morality”, have the
characteristics of generally comparison with the natural and other sciences, and
decomposition from them and also, fundamental effects on history. Carr, on the other
hand, argues the concepts of “science” and “morality” in terms of effectiveness on the
historian’s work.
Carr, first of all, argues the problem of applying the methods or the “laws” of
the natural (physical) sciences into the social sciences including the history. Carr
emphasizes that this terminology is old-fashioned not only for the natural sciences but
also, for the social sciences. Carr thinks that is a fruitful way to make hypothesis for
the social sciences: “It is recognized that scientists make discoveries and acquire
fresh knowledge, not by establishing precise and comprehensive laws, but by
enunciating hypotheses which open the way to fresh inquiry.”Carr, illustrates how to
apply this into historical methods as follows:
“The division of history into periods is not a fact, but a necessary hypothesis
or tool of thought, valid in so far as it is illuminating, and dependent for its validity on
interpretation.”
But, accepting hypothesis can be made biases. Carr also emphasizes that
historian’s judgements could be arisen from the hypothesis which he adopted.
Carr, claims that it is necessary to draw a line between natural and social
sciences (and history),which it is connected these objections:
“1) that history deals exclusively with the unique, science with the general; 2)
that history teaches no lessons; 3) that history is unable to predict; 4) that history is
necessarily subjective, since man is observing himself, and 5) that history, unlike
science, involves issues of religion and morality.”
Thus, Carr argues the uniqueness and generalization concepts and suggests
that they could not be separated or given precedence to one over the other, only at that
time, it could be separated fact and interpretation. According to Carr, “history is
concerned with the relation between the unique and the general”. Additionally, he
suggests that “learning from history is never simply one-way process”. Because,
taking lessons from history is an involvement of the present conditions. Similarly,
Carr, suggests the history cannot be used to predict the future. In the meantime, the
subject and the object of the social sciences are in the same category, because, there
are a reciprocal relations between them. This is an important point to apart social
sciences from natural sciences: According to classical theories of knowledge, there is
“a sharp dichotomy between the knowing subject and the object known”.
E. H. Carr, finally, argues involving the religion and the morality to the history
far from the natural sciences.
Underlying notes that extracted from Carr's article, as follows (L.E.):
The conception of the social sciences, and of history among them, gradually
developed throughout the nineteenth century; and the method by which science
studied the world of nature was applied to the study of human affairs. In the first part
of this period the Newtonian tradition prevailed. Society, like the world of nature, was
thought of as a mechanism; the title of a work by Herbert Spencer, Social Statics,
published in 1851, is still remembered.
Then Darwin made another scientific revolution; and social scientists, taking
their cue from biology, began to think of society as an organism. But the real
importance of the Darwinian revolution was that Darwin, completing what Lyell had
longer with something static and timeless, but with a process of change and
development. Evolution in science confirmed and complemented progress in history.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientists assumed that
laws of nature- Newton's laws of motion, the law of gravitation, Boyle's law, the law
of evolution, and so forth...
The word "law" came down trailing clouds of glory from Galileo and Newton.
Students of society, consciously or unconsciously desiring to assert the scientific
status of their studies, adopted the same language and believed themselves to be
following the same procedure. The political economists seem to have been first in the
field with Gresham's law, and Adam Smith's laws of the market. Burke appealed to
"the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the Laws of
God". Malthus propounded a law of population; Lassalle an iron law of wages; and
Marx in the preface to Capital claimed to have discovered "the economic law of
motion of modern society".
Today this terminology sounds as old-fashioned as it is presumptuous; but it
sounds almost as old-fashioned to the physical scientist as it does to the social
scientist.
French mathematician Henri Poincaré published a small volume called La
Science et l'hypothèse which started a revolution in scientific thinking. Poincaré's
main thesis was that the general propositions enunciated by scientists, where they
were not mere definitions· or disguised conventions about the use of language, were
hypotheses designed to crystallize and organize further thinking, and were subject to
verification, modification, or refutation. All this has now become something of a
common place. Newton's boast "Hypotheses non fingo" rings hollow today; and
though scientists, and even social scientists, still sometimes speak of laws, so to
speak, for old time's sake, they no longer believe in their existence in the sense in
which scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century universally believed in them.
It is recognized that scientists make discoveries and acquire fresh knowledge, not by
establishing precise and comprehensive laws, but by enunciating hypotheses which
open the way to fresh inquiry. A standard text-book on scientific method by two
American philosophers describes the method of science as "essentially circular":
We obtain evidence for principles by appealing to empirical material, to what
is alleged to be "fact"; and we select, analyse, and interpret empirical material on the
basis of principles.
The word "reciprocal" would perhaps have been preferable to "circular"; for
the result is not to return to the same place, but to move forward to fresh discoveries
through this process of interaction between principles and facts, between theory and
practice. All thinking requires acceptance of certain presuppositions based on
observation, which make scientific thinking possible but are subject to revision in the
light of that thinking.
The controversy about periodization in history falls into this category. The
division of history into periods is not a fact, but a necessary hypothesis or tool of
thought, valid in so far as it is illuminating, and dependent for its validity on
interpretation.
The bias of the historian can be judged by the hypothesis which he adopts.
...differences between the mathematical and the natural sciences, or between
different sciences within these categories, a fundamental distinction can be drawn
between these sciences and history, and that this distinction makes it misleading to
call history- and perhaps also the other so-called social sciences - by the name of
science. These objections - some of them more convincing than others-are in brief:
(ı) that history deals exclusively with the unique, science with the general; (2) that
history teaches no lessons; (3) that history is unable to predict; (4)"that history is
necessarily subjective, since man is observing himself; and (5) that history, unlike
science, involves issues of religion and morality.
Hobbes's famous dictum still stands: "Nothing in the world is universal but
names, for the things named are every one of them individual and singular." This is
certainly true of the physical sciences: no two geological formations, no two animals
of the same species, and no two atoms, are identical. Similarly, no two historical
events are identical. But insistence on the uniqueness of historical events has the same
paralysing effect as the platitude taken over by Moore from Bishop Butler and at one
time especially beloved by linguistic philosophers: "Everything is what it is and not
another thing."
The very use of language commits the historian, like the scientist, to
generalization. The Peloponnesian War and the Second World War were very
different, and both were unique. But the historian calls them both wars, and only the
pedant will protest.
The historian is not really interested in the unique, but in what is general in the
unique.
The historian constantly uses generalization to test his evidence.
History is concerned with the relation between the unique and the general. As
a historian, you can no more separate them, or give precedence to one over the other,
than you can separate fact and interpretation.
This is perhaps the place for a brief remark on the relations between history
and sociology. Sociology at present faces two opposite dangers - the danger of
becoming ultra-theoretical and the danger of becoming ultra-empirical. The first is the
danger of losing itself in abstract and meaningless generalizations about society in
general.
Learning from history is never simply a one-way process. To learn about the
present in the light of the past means also to learn about the past in the light of the
present. The function of history is to promote a profounder understanding of both past
and present through the interrelation between them.
My third point is the role of prediction in history: no lessons, it is said, can be
teamed from history because history, unlike science, cannot predict the future. This
question is involved in a tissue of misunderstandings.
The clue to the question of prediction in history lies in this distinction between
the general and the specific, between the universal and the unique. The historian, as
we have seen, is bound to generalize; and, in so doing, he provides general guides for
future action which, though not specific predictions, are both valid and useful. But he
cannot predict specific events, because the specific is unique and because the element
of accident enters into it. This distinction, which worries philosophers, is perfectly
clear to the ordinary man.
My fourth point introduces a far more cogent argument for drawing a line of
demarcation between the social sciences including history, and the physical sciences.
This is the argument that in the social sciences subject and object belong to the same
category and interact reciprocally on each other.

7- CAUSATION IN HISTORY

The article of Edward Hallett Carr’s “Causation in History”, argues what

caused the historical events, and how these causes placed on the historian’s work.
Carr, proposes us a methodology about this subject.
Carr, first of all, emphasizes the existence a large number of (and enormously
increased) causes and the ways of appraising them: “The true historian, confronted
with this list of causes of his own compiling, would feel a professional compulsion to
reduce it to order, to establish some hierarchy of causes which would fix their
relation to one another, perhaps to decide which cause, or which category of causes,
should be regarded ‘in the last resort’ or ‘in the final analysis’ (favourite phrases of
historians) as the ultimate cause, the cause of all causes.”
Carr, invokes the general “dual” characteristics of the science which is
advancing simultaneously “towards variety and complexity” and “towards unity and
simplicity”. But, this may causes of the question of complexity through advances in
the science that “takes us further away from crude uniformities”:
“But the historian, in virtue of his urge to understand the past, is
simultaneously compelled, like the scientist, to simplify the multiplicity of his answers,
to subordinate one answer to another, and to introduce some order and unity into the
chaos of happenings and the chaos of specific causes.”
Thus, Carr, reaches the problem of “determinism” in history (and all of human
behavior) and try to define it. Carr, explains this with inevitability of everyday life
and all human actions are both free and determined.
The other problem is which is called “Cleopatra’s nose” theory:
“This is the theory that history is, by and large, a chapter of accidents, a
series of events determined by chance coincidences, and attributable only two the
most casual causes.”
But, Carr pauses at this point and notices the origin of recent widespread
insistence on the role of chance in history: “Accident is not simply something which
we fail to understand. The solution of the problem of accident in history must, I
believe, be sought in a quite different order of ideas.”
E. H. Carr, finally reaches these consequences: “...history is ‘a selective system’ not
only of cognitive, but of causal, orientations to reality. (...) Other sequences of cause
and effect have to be rejected as accidental, not because the relation between cause
and effect is different, but because the sequence itself is irrelevant. The historian can
do nothing with it; it is not amenable to rational interpretation and has no meaning
either for the past and the present.” (L.E.)

8- HISTORY AS PROGRESS

The article of Edward Hallett Carr’s “History as Progress” emphasizes and

argues the problematic of “progress” in a historical work and its mentality in
background “progressiveness” or “progressivism” as an extension of the
Enlightenment period.
According to Carr, actually, this is a kind of religious (of course, secularized
in modern times) teleology: “The rationalists of the Enlightenment, who were the
founders of modern historiography, retained the Jewish-Christian teleological view,
but secularized the goal; they were thus enabled to restore the rational character of
the historical process itself.”
Carr, separates each other the concepts of progress and evolution, which are
caused this muddle and try to clear up.
“Hegel met the difficulty by sharply distinguishing history, which was
progressive, from nature, which was not. The Darwinian revolution appeared to
remove all embarrassments by equating evolution and progress: nature, like history,
turned out after all to be progressive. But this opened the way to a much graver
misunderstanding, by confusing biological inheritance, which is the source of
progress in history.”
Secondly, Carr, explains how this may be a source of “the end of the history”
thesis and raises and objection to this.
His third (objection) point is that there is no “sane” person ever believed in a
kind of progress, which advanced in an “unbroken straight line” without reverses and
deviations and breaks in continuity... This is very important, because, there is no
“straight line” in history from almost pre-historic times to the present. Instead, there
are so many “fluctuations” in the history.
His last point is the “essential content of progress” in terms of historical
action: “It is the historian who applies to their actions his hypothesis of progress, and
interprets their actions as progress. But this does not invalidate the concept of
progress (...) Belief in progress means belief not in any automatic or inevitable
process, but in the progressive development of human potentialities. Progress is an
abstract term; and the concrete ends pursued by mankind arise from time to time out
of the course of the history, not from some source outside it.”
But, Carr, consequently recognizes the progress in the modern historiography:
“Historiography is a progressive science, in the sense that it seeks to provide
constantly expanding and deepening insights into a course of events which is itself
progressive. This is what I should mean by saying that we need ‘a constructive
outlook over the past’.” (L.E.)
(Source: Carr, 1961)

9- THEORISTS AND HISTORIANS

The article of Peter Burke’s “Theorists and Historians” deals that differences
between historians and social theorists, especially sociologists, and the points which
are separated from each other.
Burke, emphasizes that historians and sociologists fail to agree in most cases.
Burke, this attribute to the beginning of the Enlightenment and later on, started to
separate in two areas as “scientific” disciplines.
Burke, also emphasizes that not only differences between history and
sociology, but social theory and history and theory and practice in the beginning of
this distinction.
“Sociology may be defined as the study of human society, with an emphasis on
generalizations about its structure and development. History is better defined as the
study of human societies in the plural, placing the emphasis on the differences
between them and also on the changes which have taken place in each one over time.
The two approaches have sometimes been viewed as contradictory, but it is more
useful to treat them as complementary. It is only by comparing it with others that we
can discover in what respects a given society is unique. Change is structured, and
structures change. Indeed, the process of ‘structuration’, as some sociologists call it,
has become a focus of attention in recent years.”
Afterwards, Burke tries to tell how some “social disciplines” like psychology,
economy, anthropology as well as sociology separate from history and generally
“social theory”, and also how history starts them together in a more scientific sense
“like two trains on parallel lines”… Furthermore, in this article, Burke notices that a
formation of “philosophy of history” and “historical ethics. According to Burke, some
British Marxist historians contributed to these ethics. (L.E.)
(Source: Burke, 1993)

10- "CLASSICAL HISTORICISM AS A MODEL FOR HISTORICAL

SCHOLARSHIP” AND “THE CRISIS OF CLASSICAL HISTORICISM"

The articles George G. Iggers’ “Classical Historicism as a model for Historical

Scholarship” and “The Crisis of Classical Historicism” deals that how emerge of
Classical Historicism by German historian Leopold von Ranke and historiography as
a scholarship in the nineteenth century and how criticized by some scholars it in
twentieth century.
Iggers, emphasizes that there were two main historiographical approaches
until Ranke and previously some historians in the Enlightenment era: 1-Learned or
antiquarian 2- Literary. Iggers, explains Ranke’s historical approach with its learned
side but free from narrowly antiquarianism and its literary quality. According to
Iggers, Ranke wanted to be the history as a “rigorous science”. Also, Iggers
emphasizes Ranke’s “historicist” approach to the history that a conclusion of the
Enlightenment era, rising the natural sciences and rising the German bourgeoisie or
Bürgertum.
Afterwards, Ranke style historiography or historicism was accepted as a
science in the universities and dominantly preserved in Germany and in general,
Europe. But, in the twentieth century especially after World War I, Ranke’s
historicism was criticized by new scholars, especially German and American
historians.
“Like the older school, they were firmly convinced of the quality of modern
Western civilization. They also saw history as a unitary process that, whether they
affirmed explicit theories of progress or not, pointed upward.”(L.E.)
(Source: Iggers, 2005)