In Defense of History PDF
Preview In Defense of History
Arso nv Rrcnano J. EvaNs IN The Feminist Mouement in Germany ß94-tgjj The Feminisß Rethinking Cerman Hk tory IETTNSE Death in Hamburg Comrades and Sisters Kn e ip enge spröche im Kai s err ei ch In Hitler\ Shadow 0r Proletarians and Politia Rituals of Retribution Rereading Cerman History HISTOHY Thles from the Cerman Underworld Richaril l. [vans E ìry. Iv. it0RT0il & [0MPAilY tJil{ Y0Rt{ 1,0ilt[0it Fars pro fofo For Chistine, with loue Ex libris Aauro Grassi løgnanøsø Copyright @ 1999,1997 by RichardJ. Ewans All rights ¡eserved P¡inted in the United Sates ofAme¡ica For informaÈion about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, 'WiWi Norton & Cornpany, Inc., 500 FifthAvenue, NewYork, NY 10110. The text of this book is composed in Bembo with the display set in Corvinus Sþline Desktop composition by hne KimbdlTrubey Mmufa*uring byThe Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group Book design byJAM Design Library of Congress Catdoging-in-Publication Data Evans, RichardJ. In defense of history / RichardJ. Evans. ed. -lstAmerican P. cm. Rev. ed. of In defense of history. Includes Bibliogmphical references and index. rsBN 0-393-04687-7 L Evans, RichardJ. In defense of history. II. Tide. D76.8.8847 1999 9O7---ðc27 98-24422 CIP 'WiW Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, N.Y 10110 http: //www.wwnorton.com 'WW Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London CW1A lPU 1234567890 I O NTE NTS Acknowledgments / ix Preface to the American Edition / xt I¡¡rnooucrroN / t r. TnE Hrsronv or Hrsronv / 13 z. HrsronY, ScrnNcn, AND Mon¡rrrv / 39 3. HrsronrlNs ,{ND Tnnrn Facrs 65 4. Souncrs AND Drscounsns / 89 5. CausarroN rN HrsronY / 111 ó. Socrnrv A.ND THE Ixorvrou¡r / tlg 7. KNowrEDcE AND Pownn / 165 8. On¡ncrrvrrY ¡r.¡o Irs Lrnrrrs / tgl Nofes / zzt Further Reading / zSS Index / zZ3 A[HNOWI,TI TMTNTS Mv first debt is to the students at Birkbeck College, University of London, with whom I have spent meny fruitful evenings discussing historical knowledge, truth, and objectivity and to the colleagues in the History Department at Birkbeck who encouraged me to turn my rough ideas on history and its current predicament into a book. During the many rewritings and reworkings of the text since then I have had the benefit of constructive crit- icism from many people, but I would especially like to thank David Cannadine for his wise criticisms and Neil Belton, at Granta Books, for his detailed and heþful com- ments. Ros Tätham helped me find out what happened at the Stalybridge'W'akes. Christine Corton, as always, has provided support and encouragement and read the prooß with a trained eye. My thanks to all of them. Rrcn¡no Evaus J. I-andon, March tggT PREFATT TO THT AMERIIAN EIITION FoR this American edition I have included consideration of major work that has been published in this ûeld since March ry97,aLdded or amended a few historical examples to make them more relevant to an American readership, and altered a few passages where it seemed to me that the critics of the British edition had succeeded in finding obscurities or errors in the text. The essence of my argu- ments, however, remains unchanged. I am gratefirl to Steve 'W'W Forman, of Norton & Company, for his help and advice.A comprehensive and periodically updated reply to my critics can be found et the following Web site: http : / / ihr. sas. ec.tk / thr / revi ews. mnu. html. Rrcnano Evaus J. Inndon, February 7998 N ITFTNSE OF HISTOHY INTROIUTTION I THrs book is not about history but about how we study it, how we research and write about it, and how we read it. In the postmodern age, historians ere being compelled to address these questions afresh. Of course, there have been many attempts to tackle them in the past. But they need to be confronted by every new generation of histori- ans in turn. Currentþ the ûeld is held by two books published thir- ry or more years ago by the British historians Edward Hallett Carr and Sir Geoffrey Elton. E. H. Carr's What Is History? has been wide- ly used as an introduction to historical study by teachers and students since its ûrst publication in t96t,and idis easy to see why. Carr was e precticing historian of vast experience, who had the ability to think clearþ about difficult philosophical issues and to communicate his thought in a concise, witty, and thorougtrly readable manner. What Is Hßtory? does not talk down to the student in the manner of con- ventional history primers or introductions to the study of history. It addresses itself to the reader as an equal. Carr engages in lively argu- ments with many other historians about the nature of history. He challenges and undermines the belief, brought to university study by too many students on leaving high school, that history is simply a matter of objective fact. He introduces them to the idea that history Introduction IN DBrBNse oF FIrsronY 3 2 books, like the people who write them, are products of their own "merging of the mainstreams around the E. H. Carr position," inso- times, bringing particular ideas and ideologies to bear on the past' far Naso tthheinreg ish aasn oy ugtednaeteradl tahgere veimewens t naomt oonngl yh iostfo Erialtnosn ,a bt uallt. 5even of Carr, more obviously than the arrival in the r98os of postmodernist theory which has called into question many, if not most, of the argu- ments puc forward by both of them.o Instead of causes, which Carr regarded as central to historical scholarship, the "linguistic turn" has given us discourses. History is widely argued to be only one dis- enormous experience, and in the course of dispensing a good deal of course among many. The notion of scientific history, based on the sensible advice on how history should be studied' written' and rigorous investigation of primary sources, has been widely attacked. Increasing numbers of writers on the subject deny that there is any such thing as historical truth or objectivity-both concepts defend- ed, in different ways, by Carr as well as Elton' The question is now not so much "'W'hat Is History?" as "Is It Possible to Do History at torical work should have a narrative of political events at its core. All?"The result has been that in place of the optimistic belief in the Those which did not, he dismissed as not reaþ being proper histo- progress of the discipline held in different ways by both Carr, who ry at all. And while carr enjoined his readers to study the historian saw it in the expansion of historical scholarship, and Elton, who saw before they studied his "facts," Elton told his readers to focus above it in the accumulation of historical knowledge, historians at the end all on the documentaiy record left by the past, the ultimate arbiter of of the f\rventieth century are haunted by a growing, fin-de-siècle historical accuracy and truth, and to leave historians and their sense of gloom. "A time of uncertainfy and of epistemological crisis; a critical turning point: such," observed the French historian Roger motives to themselves. while both Elton and carr are still very much worth reading, Chartier in t9g4,"are the diagnoses, mostly apprehensive, given of there is, however, as critics have remarked, something rather strânge history in recent years."' The intellectual historian David F{arlan, about two books written more than thirry years ago still serving as wgoriitningg " ainn 1e9x89te, nthdoeudg ehpt itshteamt hoilsotgoircicaal l csrtiusdisie.s" ' wIner et hined emeidd -urgngdoesr-, basic introductions to a scholarþ discipline.'Yet in many colleges and universities in Britain, the united States, and other countries they American historians Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob undoubtedly do.'Although some historians seem to think that Elton echoed this view: "History has been shaken right down to its scien- continues to represent "conventional wisdom in the historical pro- tific and cultural foundations."o The postmodernist view that lan- fession,"' or (more pretentiously) the"doxa amongst professional aca- guage could not relate to anything except itself must, as another demic historians,"n in practice this has long ceased to be the case. Few alarmed historian observed, "entail the dissolution of history" and historians would now defend the hard-line concept of historical "necessarily jeopardises historical study as normally understood."'o by Elton. The prevalence of historical contro- The postmodernist challenge, warned distinguished Princeton histo- profession for decades, has long since disabused rian Lawrence Stone, had plunged the historical profession "into a that the truth lies buried in the documents and crisis of selÊconfidence about what it is doing and how it is doing that once the historian has unearthed it, no one ever need perform it."" The sense of crisis is widespread." "Historians," declared anoth- the same operation again.It is more true to say that there has been a er writer on the subject,"have suffered a major theoretical challenge IN Dnr¡Ns¡ oF FIrsronY Introductiott 5 4 ro rhe validity of their subject."u Some indeed see this challenge as British historianJamesVernon similarþ complained in 1994 about more than merely theoretical: "Poststructuralism," in one historian's his colleagues'"general air of complacency" about postmodernism. opinion, even "threatens to throw historians out of work" by robbing "'While elsewhere," he noted, "historians are tt least discussing the their discipline of its traditional legitimacy and raison d'être.'nThus' problems of writing social history in the r99os, indeed the possibiliry according to one outraged Australian academic, what we are wit- of writing 'history' at all in these post-modern limes, the editorial of nessing is the "killing of history," in which the traditional practice of Socíal History's fiftieth issue boldly declared that 'social history is the discipline "is a visibly deteriorating path to research grants, pub- emphatically not in crisis.' "'o "Far from the historian being belea- lication, conferences and academic employment."" Such has been the guered," another British historian, PatrickJoyce, observed in t99r, "the power and influence of the postmodernist critique of history that commanding heights of academy history seem secure against the skir- growing numbers of historians themselves are abandoning the search mishing bands outside, though some notable walls have fallen, chiefly for truth, the belief in objectiviry, and the quest for a scientific in the United States." In Britain,Joyce's view is that "rank indifference approach to the past. David Harlan has even gone so far as to remark rather than outright hostility" is the "dominant response:"" Much of that ,,by the end of the rgSos most historians-even most working "the historical profession at large," he has complained, has tended to historians-had all but given up on the possibility of acquiring reli- "fail to register the intellectual history of their own time, above all the able, objective knowledge about rhe past."'u If this is indeed the case, now decades-long challenge to received ways of historical thinking no wonder so many historians are worried about the future of their represented by what may loosely be termed post-modernism."'' In r99j he repeated his charge in an article published as a contribution lo discipline. a controversy on history and postmodernism in the Btitish journal Social History. "The Socia| History journal he commented, somewhat II ungratefully abusing the publication which has formerþ acted es a vehicle for his arguments,"is a good example . . . of the poacher turned gamekeeper. The elders of social history remain in station still, sup- 1rEr far from this sense of crisis being universal among practicing his- ported by a younger generation of scholars largely immune to the torians, many commentators have discerned a widespread sense of intellectual history of our own times."" complacency among hisrorians in the mid-r98os. while American Of course, by "the intellectual history of our own times"' what intellectual historian Allan Megill indicted the historical profession Joyce really meant was his own ideas. The fact that they were being in 1989 for what he called its "sclerotic selÊsatisfaction"'' in the face debated in the journal itself amounted to an implicit rebuttal of his of the posrmodernist challenge, the medievalist Nancy F. Partner, complaint. Thanks not least to Joyce's own interventions, the debate writing in rgg5, thought this same attitude was "entirely commend- in Britain has become steadily more heated and has been gathering able," adding: pace in an increasing number of scholarþ journals. Already by tggz two American specialists in British history could describe it as "a The theorerical destabilizing o1 history achieved by language-based now all-pervasive academic discourse."'r In 1995 even the much- modes of criticism has had no practical effect on academic practice maligned editor of Social History was forced to admit that as a result because academics have had nothing to gain and everything to lose of the emergence of postmodernism, the optimism with which he by dismantling their special visible code of evidence-grounded rea- had founded the journal in the late r97os wâs now "in shreds."'o By soning and opening rhemselves to the inevitable charges of fraud, dis- the lare rggos, rherefore, there can be little doubt that the debate honesty and shoddiness-'' 6 IN D¡r¡Ns¡ oF Hlsronv Introduction 7 about history truth, and objeccivity unleashed by postmodernism has declared, were a "menace to serious historical study."'o Theories become too widespread for all but the most obscurantist to ignore. which "suggest that historians are in the business of creating-not The critics' complaints of complacency and selÊsatisfaction among discovering or interpreting-historical meaning," added two histori- the historical profession now seem to be little more than a rhetori- ans from the lJniversity of Pennsylvania, "undermine our authoriry cal means of goading those whom they are ctiticizing into making a the mystique of our enterprise, the very purpose of our work."'o 'Where reply. so many historians are issuing such dire warnings couched No less a traditionalist than Sir Geoffrey Elton himself charged in such colorful and alarmist language, something important is clear- into the lists not long before he died, to underline the growing sense ly going on. No one should doubt that the postmodernist challenge among historians that the enterprise in which they were engaged to historical study as conceived in different ways by Carr and Elton was under severe and unprecedented attack. Elton roundly is a serious one. Some of the intellectual barbarians at the discipli- denounced postmodernist ideas on history as "menacing," "destruc- nery gates are loitering there with distinctly hostile intent. tive," "absurd," and "meaningless." "Total relativism," he declared, was "Autumn," declared the Dutch postmodernist Frank Ankersmit tri- "the ultimate heresy," a "Virus" of "frivolous nihilism" that was infect- umphantþ in r99o, "has come to'W'estern historiography."" Similarly, ing a disturbing number of young historians, above all in the lJnited KeithJenkins, author of rwo recent postmodernist critiques of histo- States. "In battling against people who would subject historical stud- ry announced approvingly in a reconsideration of Carr's work pub- ies to the dictates of literary critics," he pronounced, "we historians lished in rg95:"'W'e have reached the end of modernist versions of are, in a. way,fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the what history is."" PatrickJoyce has declared that "contemporary his- lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim tory," meaning history as practiced today,"is itself in fact the offspring ro offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights-the of modernity" and therefore part of the intellectual world which intellectual equivalent of crack."" It is not only among conservatives postmodernity is now displacing." As Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, üke Elton that alarm bells of this sort have been ringing.The left-lib- two British historians who have tried to moderate in the controver- eral historian Lawrence Stone has called upon historians to arm sy, have remarked of the rwo opposing sides, "A theoreticel hauteur themselves to repel the new intellectual barbarians at the disciplinary instructs a redoubt of methodological conservatism, and the latter gates. If postmodernists gained any more influence, he warned,"his- shouts defiantþ back. Berween the rwo lies a silence, a barrier that in tory might be on the way to becoming an endangered species."'u On these tones cannot be crossed."'n the socialist left, the radical historian Raphael Samuel, progenitor of "For progress in understanding the truth and objectiviry of histo- History Workshop, warned in one of his last publications that "the ry," a cool Australian observer of the debate has advised, "each side deconstructive turn in contemporary thought" invited everyone to must attend more closely to what the other is saying."" Drawing up "see history not as a record of the pâst, more or less faithful to the the disciplinary drawbridge has never been a good idea for histori- facts," but "as an invention, or fiction, of historians themselves."" FIe ans. For centuries they have profited immeasurably from the inva- made it clear that this was something which he found completely sions of neighboring disciplines, starting with philology, the founda- unacceptable. Arthur Marwick, founding professor of history at tion of the methods of source criticism associated with the name of Britain's open universiry voiced his fears that history students the great German historian Leopold von Ranke in the nineteenth would find the postmodernists"'presumptuous and ill-informed crit- century and moving on through economics, sociology, anthroPolo- icisms" of history "disorienting" and might "even be persuaded that gy, statistics, geography, psychology, and other alien forces as time has the history of the historians is worthless."" Postmodernist ideas, he gone on. Lawrence Stone himself has in the past been one of the
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