Historiographies can be described as
falling into one of three categories:
2.
Basic Issues Studied in Historiography
3.
Some Recent Controversies
4.
Insider-Outsider
problem
5.
Fiction
as History
6.
Historiography
from a Faith Perspective
Historiography is a meta-level analysis of descriptions of
the past.
The analysis usually focuses on the narrative,
interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other
historians.
The term can also be used of a body of historical writing,
for example "medieval historiography.”
1.
Approaches that understand history as random; hence,
there is no purpose behind history—although the human race can take control of
history to ensure a better future.
2. Understandings of history that regards
history either as a product of human evolution or of dialectical processes.
3. An understanding of history that accepts
the reality of a divine power in whose hands human destiny and therefore
the historical process itself finally resides. This view is usually associated
with religious convictions. This approach tends to regard history from a purely
secular perspective as inadequate, since historians who fail to recognize the
reality of divine intervention cannot render a true account of history. For
example, a secular account of history would not explain someone's victory in
terms of God aiding them or the victory of an evil person in terms of a satanic
attempt to disrupt God's purposes. For their part, secular historians regard
such an approach as unscientific, arguing that it rests on subjective judgments
not on empirically provable facts.
It can be argued that all approaches read meaning and
purpose into, rather than derive meaning and purpose from, historical
data. Nonetheless, people of religious faith will claim the right to argue in
favor of their analysis of history in the hope that a better world will emerge
as people are encouraged to take responsibility under God for the correct
ordering of human life, society and the world. The best historiography is one
that engages critically with other understandings of history. It is also open
to positive aspects of other approaches, although it will identify what from
its perspective are their shortcomings and inadequacies.
Conal Furay and Michael J. Salevouris (1988) define "historiography" as "the study of the way
history has been and is written—the history of historical writing…. When
you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works
of individual historians" (223).
Although questions of method have always concerned
historians, the modern study of historiography can be said to have its
beginnings with Edward Hallett Carr's 1961
work What is History? (ISBN 0333977017) and his challenge to the traditional belief that the study
of the methods of historical research]] and writing were unimportant. His work
remains in print to this day, and is common to many postgraduate programs of
study in both the United States and in Great Britain.
Much critical historiography in the 1960s focused, for
example, on the exclusion of the roles of women, minorities, and labor from
written histories of the United States. According to these historiographers,
because historians in the 1930s and 1940s were themselves products of their times;
their models of who was "important" to history reflected the cultural
attitudes of that period (e.g., a bias towards well-connected white males).
Many historians from that point onward devoted themselves to what they saw as
more accurate representations of the past, casting a light on those who had
been previously disregarded as non-noteworthy.
The study of historiography demands a critical approach that
goes beyond the mere examination of
historical fact. Historiographical studies consider the source, often by
researching the author, his or her position in society, and the type of history
being written at the time. Historiography
that is considered controversial or extreme is often pejoratively labeled
as historical revisionism.
Some of the basic questions considered in historiography are:
§ Who
wrote the source (primary or secondary)?
§ For
primary sources, we look at the person in his or her society, for secondary
sources, we consider the theoretical orientation of the approach for example,
Marxist or Annales School, ("total
history"), political history, etc (see below).
§ What
are the authenticity, authority, bias/interest, and intelligibility of the
source?
§ What
was the view of history when the source was written?
§ Was
history supposed to provide moral lessons?
§ What
or who was the intended audience?
§ What
sources were privileged or ignored in the narrative?
§ By
what method was the evidence compiled?
§ In
what historical context was the work of history itself written?
The use of particular styles of historiography has a great
impact on the conclusions of historians and much controversial history stems
from this problem. In recent American history writing, some controversies based
on disputed historiography include:
§ whether
dynastic Egypt was a black, African civilization (there has been debate about Cleopatra's
racial identity)
§ the
role of whiteness in U.S. labor struggles;
Such debate is also referred to as culture or as identity
politics. A feminist account of Islamic history, for example, sees much of
Islam as a deviation from its original ideal; for example, see Leila Ahmed's Women and Gender
in Islam (1993).
The original spirit and intent of Islam was egalitarian but men were not
prepared to allow women equal rights so manipulated the tradition in their own
favor. Accounts that rewrite history, such as those that deny that the
Holocaust took place, are also called revisionist. The re-writing of history
from any ideological perspective is also revisionist or deconstructionist, for
example, deconstructing colonial assumptions from Indian or African history
(see Saunders 1989).
In 1989, after the collapse of the Berlin
Wall, Francis Fukuyama wrote an article in the National Interest called "The End
of History." He meant that a consensus had emerged in the world community
that liberal democracy was the legitimate and final form of government. In his
view, the ideal of democracy could not be improved on. Thus, humanity's
ideological evolution had reached its end point and in that sense, history also
ended. He was misunderstood to mean that history as a continuation of events
had ended, and, as events continued to occur, he was said to be wrong.
Critics of the way Western scholars have constructed
histories or anthropological accounts of non-Western societies highlights the
relationship between such scholarship and colonial attitudes of superiority.
Such criticism includes novels written by outsiders about other people's
cultures and societies. Much of this was explored in the work of Edward
Said (1978,
1994). Within anthropology, for example, there has been talk of an
epistemological hypochondria' concerning, as Clifford Geertz put it, “…how one
can know that anything one says about other life forms is as a matter of fact
so” (1988, 71).
The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, referring to Joseph Conrad's classic novel Heart of Darkness (1899), described it
as reducing “Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European
mind” which raises “the question is whether a novel which celebrates this
dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called
a great work of art” (1988: 257; 1977: 782f; "An
Image of Africa." from The
Massachusetts Review 18(4)
(Winter 1977): 782-794). In reaction to this problem, one response is to
say that people should only write about
themselves; that is, they should write "their own histories.” This has
been called nativism. The problem with this is that it is extremely
pessimistic about people's ability to understand other societies, or to develop
genuine cross-cultural understanding. Another response is to say that any history or account of another society
written by an outsider should be subject to insiders' approval. Another
response is to say that accounts are best
written collaboratively, by insiders and outsiders together. This
recognizes that insiders have unique insight into their own cultures but that
outsiders sometimes shed light on aspects of a culture or tradition that
insiders take for granted.
Loewen (1996) questions
what he calls the "heroization" process by which history and the contemporary media elevate some people above others. For example,
“…whose rise to prominence provides more drama—Blackwell’s or George Bush's
(the latter born with a silver-senate seat in his mouth?” (19); or "who
deserves more space, Frank Lloyd Wright, inventor of “the carport” or Chester
A. Arthur, who “signed the first civil service act.”
Heroization can distort the lives of people so that we
“cannot think straight about them” (20). The fact, for example, that Helen Keller was
a radical socialist, which “stemmed from her experience as a disabled person”
(21) is left out of accounts of her famous struggle to overcome her handicap.
Commenting on the statue of George Washington in the Smithsonian,
Loewen remarks on how history textbooks portray every American hero as “ten
feet tall, blemish-free with the body of a Greek God” (32). He suggests that
other historical figures than those usually considered to be heroes may be
better role models for moral and ethical conduct. “If text book authors,” he
says, “feel compelled to give moral instruction, the way origin myths have
always done, they could accomplish this aim by allowing students to learn both
the good and the bad.” Loewen is referring here to the Pilgrim fathers and
mothers, the American tale of origins, which involved conflict, “grave-robbing,
Indian enslavement, the plague and so on” (96) as well as cooperation in the
form of the first Thanksgiving shared with the American Indians (97).
Although the accuracy of historical fiction, especially when
the subject is someone else's history (not the author's), is open to challenge;
nonetheless historical fiction can help to overcome some of the problems
involved in attempting to re-construct not so much the events of history but
the personal motives and worldviews of its actors. It has been suggested in
this regard that novelists do what anthropologists and historians think they do—that is,
render an account of what people did and thought. Use of imagination can help
explore people's self-understanding and motivation, which contributes to
historical knowledge. Clifford Geertz (1973) commented that ethnographical
accounts—and this also applies to history—are “fictions in the sense that they
are ‘something made,’ ‘something fashioned’ - the original meaning of ‘fictio’
- not that they are false” (15).
Historiography from the perspective of
belief in a divine mover behind or within history may be accused of imposing
subjective belief onto empirical data, as noted above. On the other hand, such
an approach has much in common with many of the historiographies listed above.
Like 'Big History,' it is interested in identifying 'big themes' in order to
understand whether the trend at a given period was away from, or towards, the
End that God has planned for history. Recognizing that self-interest and group-interest often manipulate historical data to
render a story that promotes their interests over and against others, a
providential view of history shares with post-modernism and deconstruction the
view that historical accounts must be interrogated to uncover bias and hidden
agendas.
With the Annales School of history, such an approach is also
interested in what life was like for the many not just for the few. With Marxist historiography (a secular
"faith perspective"), it accepts that the powerful often oppress the
powerless, so it does not always regard the victors of history as 'right'
and the losers as 'wrong', believing that forces of evil can delay the progress
of the good. Some Christian historiographies see the inexorable hand of God
overriding human action, but others posit that history may regress as well as
progress, depending upon human co-operation with the divine.
Historians who bring a faith perspective to their study of
history do not understand the exercise as neutral, value-free reconstruction of
facts but as a means to learn lessons from history. For example, when
individual and social life was God-centered, selfless and moral, history moves
towards fulfillment, when life was self-centered and God-less, history
regresses. When the external (material, worldly) aspects of life dominated the
internal, spiritual aspects, humanity worked against God. When these two
aspects of life were harmonized, humanity aids God. When divisions of race or
religion divide person from person, humanity regresses. When people realize
their common humanity and recognize that there are multiple ways of knowing God,
humanity progresses. When male and female compete, humanity regresses; but when
both the masculine and the feminine are valued, humanity progresses.
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