Chapter 1: Proof and the problem of objectivity
- History: a science or an art?
- History and the status of historical knowledge 3 Choosing evidence, challenging interpretations 4 Causes in history
This chapter introduces history as a discipline and as an approach to historical knowledge. While it cannot be comprehensive, its aim nevertheless is to explore problems faced by historians as they seek to understand past societies. How they do this depends on many factors. At its simplest, however, it largely depends on whether history is regarded as a science which has the historian as objective fact finder and analyst. Or whether, alternatively, history is treated as an art in which the historian presents an interpretation of the past that is a result of either personal experience or the social and cultural milieu in which the historian is located. The first section introduces these issues by looking afresh at the argument first raised in the 1960s between historians E. H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton but in the newer context of postmodernism. It sets out the varying ways in which each of these prominent historians approached the discipline and dealt with historical evidence in all its varied forms. Section two uses historical writing concerned with the events of 1857, the Indian Mutiny, in order to discuss whether history is truly a dependable basis of knowledge that can provide a comprehensive and reliable explanation of how past societies change. The third and final section will focus in on another dispute between historians, that of Chartism. We shall see how historical facts are generated but how too historians select evidence and then use innovative techniques to inform our historical understanding. This section will explain how historical explanations for a single historical event or period can change radically over time, either by the discovery of new evidence or more likely the altering approach to evidence by historians influenced by developing methodologies. The last section goes to the heart of the historical project. How can the historian establish cause and correlation? Occasionally we can know when ‘stuff happened’, but these events and circumstances can exist in parallel narratives unless meaningful connections can be found and then proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Summary
The four sections of this chapter said four things:
- Historians, certainly English‐speaking historians, quite often protest that they would prefer to get on with the business of researching and writing history than concentrating on that theory that serves
this evidence. Despite this, a surprising number are happy to engage in discussing the boundaries of history. In particular, the extent to which the discipline has a history and the historian interrelate. In order to illustrate this simple problem, this section has explored the debate as to what history is about and how it is (or should be) practiced. Nowhere has the important question about the objectivity or subjectivity of the historian been more comprehensively debated than in the argument between E. H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton. The section tends not to take sides in this debate but recognises that the notion of history as a verifiable ‘science’ or an art where the subjectivity or imagination of the historian is taken into account has been one of the most enduring problems in historiography. It does argue, however, that as the historian is part of history, subjectivity may be impossible and may even be an advantage, once admitted and in some circumstances.
- Questions regarding objectivity and subjectivity are highlighted by looking at the way in which the Indian Mutiny in the nineteenth century has bequeathed us both ‘hard’ empirical evidence and received ideas about the role of the British during the imperialist experience. Here, by looking how one historians has used evidence and through the application of a simple exercise, it can be demonstrated how a perfectly respectable history of India is written using certain historical and linguistic assumptions held by the author. This then allows us to reconsider afresh the view of Geoffrey Elton that history should be evidence led with the historian decentred from the application of clear historical method applied to the evidence.
- Since the decline of Chartism in the 1850s, historians have sought to explain its demise. Biographical approaches to approaches that examine the expressive aspects of Chartism have all been used at one time or other. Chartism has also been the source of present‐day tussles that have emphasised the political nature of the movement, its national or local character, its economic basis and so on. Choosing evidence to support this or that viewpoint has differed, while the interpretation of that evidence has often depended on the preoccupations of the here and now. The section emphasises, however, that the most significant breakthrough in this field was prompted by the work of Dorothy Thompson and then Gareth Stedman Jones. They agreed on much, but the use by Stedman Jones of linguistic theory succeeded in transforming our knowledge of Chartism without the addition of a single new fact.
- The final section investigates the problem of causation in history. Since the Enlightenment (see Chapter 5), historians and social scientists have attempted to identify precisely what caused particular historical episodes to take place. The transition from facts to general laws, however, which seemed to be accomplished with great success in the natural sciences, worked less well in history.
The main problem was in the evidence itself. Scientific evidence tended to be much more secure,
reliable and controllable. Facts were gathered by scientists (or social scientists such as Auguste Comte) under strictly monitored conditions. They derived from first‐hand observation which, if necessary, could be repeated time and again. No historian enjoyed such privileges. The inevitable outcome was that history remained rooted in the compilation of facts which came to be seen as its sole raison d’être. So where does all this leave the question of historical causation? If we reject the idea of a single causal factor or of the determining influence of individual actors, then are we necessarily forced to accept the view that historical causation is multivalent and multi‐layered? Yes, we think it does.