Historian

Record keeping redirects here.

For other uses, see Historian (disambiguation).

Main article: List of historians

Herodotus (5th century BC), one of the earliest nameable historians whose work survives.

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, the individual is a historian of prehistory. Although "historian" can be used to describe amateur and professional historians alike, it is reserved more recently for those who have acquired graduate degrees in the discipline. Some historians, though, are recognized by equivalent training and experience in the field. "Historian" became a professional occupation in the late nineteenth century at roughly the same time that physicians also set standards for whom could enter the field.

Objective historian

During the [[Irving v Penguin dinosaur

Books and Lipstadt]] trial it became evident that the court need to identify what was an "objective historian" in the same vein as the reasonable person, and reminiscent of the standard traditionally used in English law of "the man on the Clapham omnibus". This was necessary so that there would be a legal bench mark with which to compare and contrast the scholarship of an objective historian against the methods employed by David Irving, as before the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial there was no legal precedent for what constituted an objective historian.

Justice Charles Gray leant heavily on the research of one of the expert witnesses, Richard J. Evans, who compared illegitimate distortion of the historical record practice by holocaust deniers with established historical methodologies.

In summarising Gray's judgement, in an article published in the Yale Law Journal, Wendie E. Schneider distils these seven points for what he meant by an objective historian:

1. She must treat sources with appropriate reservations;
2. she must not dismiss counterevidence without scholarly consideration;
3. she must be even-handed in her treatment of evidence and eschew "cherry-picking";
4. she must clearly indicate any speculation;
5. she must not mistranslate documents or mislead by omitting parts of documents;
6. she must weigh the authenticity of all accounts, not merely those that contradict her favored view; and
7. she must take the motives of historical actors into consideration.

Schneider uses the concept of the "objective historian" to suggest that this could be used as an aid in assessing what makes an historian suitable to be an expert witnesses under the Daubert standard in the United States. Schneider proposed this, because, in her opinion, Irving could have passed the standard Daubert tests unless a court was given "a great deal of assistance from historians".

Schneider proposes that by testing an historian against the criteria of the "objective historian" then, even if an historian holds specific political views (and she gives an example of a well-qualified historian's testimony that was disregarded by a United States court because he was a member of a feminist group), providing the historian uses the "objective historian" standards, he or she is a "conscientious historian". It was Irving's failure as an "objective historian" not his right wing views that caused him to loose his libel case, as a "conscientious historian" would not have "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" to support his political views.

History analysis

Main articles: Historical method and Historiography

The process of historical analysis involves investigation and analysis of competing ideas, facts and purported facts to create coherent narratives that explain "what happened" and "why or how it happened". Modern historical analysis usually draws upon other social sciences, including economics, sociology, politics, psychology, anthropology, philosophy and linguistics. While ancient writers do not normally share modern historical practices, their work remains valuable for its insights within the cultural context of the times. An important part of the contribution of many modern historians is the verification or dismissal of earlier historical accounts through reviewing newly discovered sources and recent scholarship or through parallel disciplines like archaeology.

Historiography

St. Nestor the Chronicler, the first Russian historiographer (by Viktor Vasnetsov).

Ancient

Herodotus and Thucydides were as the founders of the discipline of history. Concerning Herodotus (5th century BC), one of the earliest historians whose work survives, his recount of strange and unusual tales are gripping but not necessarily representative of the historical record. Despite this, The Histories of Herodotus displays many of the techniques of more modern historians. He interviewed witnesses, evaluated oral histories, studied multiple sources and then pronounced his particular version. Herodotus's works covered what was then the entire known world of the Greeks, or at least the part regarded as worthy of study, i.e., the peoples surrounding the Mediterranean. Herodotus was also known for visiting the various battle sites he wrote about, including the battle of Thermopylae. About 25 years after Herodotus, Thucydides, perhaps the most important of historians, pioneered a different form of history, one much closer to reportage. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote about a single long conflict that lasted 27 years between Athens and Sparta with its origins and results. But, as it was mainly within living memory and Thucydides himself was alive throughout the conflict and a participant in many of the events, there was less room for myths and tall tales. Moreover, he included transcriptions of speeches that were delivered by historic figures, although sometimes they were made up by Thucydides himself according to what those people should have said at the moment they delivered them.

Other noteworthy and famous Greek historians include Plutarch (2nd century AD), who wrote several biographies, the Parallel Lives, in which he wanted to assess the morality of its characters by comparing them in pairs, and Polybius (3nd century BC), who developed Thucydides's method further, becoming one of the most objective historians of classical antiquity. Polybius is also credited for being the first historian to write a History of the World, and to offer argued explanations and interpretations of history facts, and not only a record of them. The most important Roman historian of the classical world was Tacitus (late 1st and early 2nd century AD). The foremost Roman historian, he wrote an extremely influential account on Rome in the first century, the Annals. Due to his literary style and the thoroughness of his research—which seemingly included studying Roman imperial archives and heavily relying on Thucydides—and his apparent rigor—for he tended not to support any character or subject, taking an impartial point of view—he was by far the most read and admired historian during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Modern Era. Thus, his historian style has been imitated all through the ages, and had a strong impact in Edward Gibbon and Montesquieu.

Polybius, one of the first historians to attempt to present history as a sequence of causes and effects, carefully conducted his research—partly based on what he saw and partly on the communications of eye-witnesses and the participants in the events.

India

India has a long record of historiography with chronicles being maintained by dynasties, monks and communities. The texts of ancient and medieval India are in verse, unlike Europe where serious work in history was in prose. The Vedas, Puranas and the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata narrate many events in ancient India although not always in a linear fashion. The Mahabharata is in fact an epic centered mainly around the House of the Kurus, who ruled a large part of northern India. It was progressively called Jai, Vijaya, Bharata and finally Mahabharata. The Puranas are also chronicles of past events and owe their name to the Sanskrit word Purah ( Before ). Jain and Buddhist monks also chronicled many events in ancient India in their scriptures.

China

Sima Qian (145-86 BC), a Prefect of the Grand Scribes (太史令) of the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD), is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography because of his universal history, the Records of the Grand Historian (史記). It provides an overview of the history of China covering more than two thousand years from the legendary Yellow Emperor to Sima's contemporary Emperor Han Wudi (漢武帝). His work laid the foundation for the Twenty-Four Histories which, unlike Sima's independent endeavor, were government-sponsored works usually commissioned by new dynastic houses after the conquest of the previous dynasty.

Arabs

Ibn Abd-el-Hakem was an Egyptian who wrote the History of the Conquest of Egypt and North Africa and Spain, which was the earliest Arab account of the Islamic conquests of those countries. Much like Herodotus' works, it mixes facts with legends, and was often quoted by later Islamic historians. Al-Jahiz was a famous Arab scholar and historian. Hamdani, an Arab historian, was the best representative of Islamic culture during the last effective years of the Abbasid caliphate. Ali al-Masudi was an Arab historian, known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs." Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was a famous Arab Muslim historian who engaged in historiography philosophy of history. He is best known for his Muqaddimah "Prolegomenon".

Enlightenment

Voltaire was a highly influential historian during The Enlightenment; he stressed the need to move away from great men and to study the people and their culture. Sakmann points out that he complained that too much historical writing combined boring detail, outrageous lies, and narrow-minded presentation. Good history, Voltaire argued, agrees with reason and natural science, and is based on the corroborating evidence. Equally influential was Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755). His wide-ranging Spirit of the Laws (1748) spanned legal, geographical, cultural, economic, political and philosophical studies and was greatly influential in forging the fundamentally interdisciplinary historian. Often called "the first modern historian", the English scholar Edward Gibbon wrote his magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788).

19th century Germany

Modern historiographical techniques were dramatically advanced in the German universities of the 19th century. Leopold von Ranke (1795 – 1886) was a founder of modern source-based historiography. His research seminar for graduate students set professional standards for historical training at the University of Berlin (1824 - 1871). His many books demonstrated how to rely upon primary sources in writing narrative history on international politics (Aussenpolitik). He dug through the archives of Europe, especially those of the Vatican and Venice, whose ambassadors followed events very closely and reported on them at length. Ranke thus sent the researcher to the archives for primary sources; there he should transcend his personal predispositions and parochial loyalties, and write objective history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("as it actually happened"). Highly influential German classicist historians were Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) and Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) Historians of Germany included Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-84), Heinrich von Sybel (1817-95), and Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96). They deliberately avoided social, economic, and cultural topics because they might undermine the national political development which their writing celebrated. Von Sybel in 1859 founded the Historische Zeitschrift, which set the world standard for a scholarly history journal.

Twentieth-century developments

The whig approach emphasizes the origins of today's positive political features, with history seen as a force that pushes society forward. It studies the past with reference to the present."

Since the 1960s, academic history has seen the emergence of new approaches and topics such as social history, demographic history, ethnic history, women's history, environmental history and cultural history. There has been a shift of emphasis away from national topics to the experiences of ordinary people. For example, labor history has shifted away from the study of union leaders to the study of the workers. Slavery studies used to be about debates among politicians. In Roll, Jordan, Roll, historian Eugene D. Genovese ignored all that and focused on the interaction on the plantation between slaves and their owners. Edward Said's Orientalism examines how and why Western societies came to consider non-Western ones as inherently inferior.

While there has been a flowering of new historical approaches and microscopic studies there has been much less attention to the pre-1960 staple of teaching, the development of one's own nation state and its values and practices. As historians provide highly detailed narratives of increasingly smaller subjects there is less concern for the larger picture of the meaning of it all. Fewer historians try to tackle all of the various historiographies relevant to a broader interpretive or analytic synthesis, and some suggest that a post-modern perspectives does not allow any real synthesis. On the other hand many scholars have been calling for a "new synthesis" in American history for years. Thomas H. Bender has argued that synthesis raises its own unresolved issues such as teleology, causation, agency, and subjective meaning; and inclusion and exclusion. Richard D. Brown worries that if historians fail to synthesize they, "run the risk of confirming the anti-academic canard that "historians know more and more about less and less."

An MA seminar in progress at the Institute of Historical Research, London.

Education and profession

An undergraduate history degree is often used as a stepping stone to graduate studies in business or law. Many historians are employed at universities and other facilities for post-secondary education. In addition, it is normal for colleges and universities to require the PhD degree for new full-time hires, and a Masters degree for part-timers. Publication is increasingly required by smaller schools, so graduate papers become journal articles and PhD dissertations become published monographs. The graduate student experience is difficult—those who finish take on average 8 or more years; funding is scarce except at a few very rich universities. Being a teaching assistant in a course is required in some programs; in others it is a paid opportunity awarded a fraction of the students. Until the 1980s it was rare for graduate programs to teach how to teach; the assumption was that teaching was easy and that learning how to do research was the main mission.

Professional historians typically work in colleges and universities, archival centers, government agencies, museums, and as freelance writers and consultants. The job market for new PhDs in history is poor and getting worse, with many relegated to part-time "adjunct" teaching jobs with low pay and no benefits.

See also

• Antiquarian
• Auxiliary sciences of history
• Historiography
• List of historians
• List of historians by area of study

References

• Schneider, Wendie Ellen (June 2001). "Past Imperfect: Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd., No. 1996-I-1113, 2000 WL 362478 (Q. B. Apr. 11), appeal denied (Dec. 18, 2000)" (PDF). The Yale Law Journal. 110 (8). Published by: The Yale Law Journal Company: 1531–1545. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature (ed. by Mary Beth Norton and Pamela Gerardi (3rd ed. 2 vol, Oxford U.P. 1995) 2064 pages; annotated guide to 27,000 of the most important English language history books in all fields and topics vol 1 online, vol 2 online
• Allison, William Henry. A guide to historical literature (1931) comprehensive bibliography for scholarship to 1930. online edition
• Barnes, Harry Elmer. A history of historical writing‎ (1962)
• Barraclough, Geoffrey. History: Main Trends of Research in the Social and Human Sciences, (1978)
• Bentley, Michael. ed., Companion to Historiography, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0415285577990 pp; 39 chapters by experts
• Bender, Thomas, et al. The Education of Historians for Twenty-first Century (2003) report by the Committee on Graduate Education of the American Historical Association
• Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, 3rd edition, 2007, ISBN 0-226-07278-9
• Boia, Lucian et al., eds. Great Historians of the Modern Age: An International Dictionary (1991)
• Cannon, John, et al., eds. The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians. Blackwell Publishers, 1988 ISBN 0-631-14708-X.
• Gilderhus, Mark T. History an Historiographical Introduction, 2002, ISBN 0-13-044824-9
• Iggers, Georg G. Historiography in the 20th Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (2005)
• Kelly, Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. (1999). Fitzroy Dearborn ISBN 1-884964-33-8
• Kramer, Lloyd, and Sarah Maza, eds. A Companion to Western Historical Thought Blackwell 2006. 520pp; ISBN 978-1-4051-4961-7.
• Todd, Richard B. ed. Dictionary of British Classicists, 1500–1960, (2004). Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004 ISBN 1-85506-997-0.
• Woolf D. R. A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (2 vol 1998) excerpt and text search

External links

• Selected texts by the most known historians