Re-reading ‘What is History’ after a history PhD
New book out now.
Re-reading ‘What is History’ after a history PhD
Certain fictional, non-fictional, and even academic works, possess a remarkable ability to linger in the minds of their readers long after the final page. For this writer, one such work has been What Is History? by E. H. Carr. First published in 1961 and prescribed as essential reading for the postgraduate course on ‘Historical Methodology’, the book has continued to resonate in ways not fully anticipated at the time of its first reading.
One classroom discussion remains particularly memorable. Students, somewhat overwhelmed by the density of the methodology course, confessed their difficulty in grasping even the basic contours of historiography. In response, the professor remarked that the purpose of the course was not mastery, but initiation into the lifelong process of learning and unlearning how to practise history. It was in that moment that What Is History? came to be understood not as a text to be completed once and set aside, but as a work to which one must return repeatedly over the course of a lifetime, with each reading yielding new questions, and occasionally, a few more answers.
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The 2018 edition published by Penguin Classics opens with an introduction by the historian Richard J. Evans, whose In Defence of History has now found its way onto my ‘to read list’. I was not only curious but almost compelled to understand the perspective of someone offering such a pointed engagement with a text as canonical as What Is History?. However, I also found myself mildly annoyed at encountering the critique before the text itself as part of me wanted to approach Carr unmediated, uncoloured by Evans’s opinions. But, lacking the discipline to skip ahead, I read the introduction anyway and moved through the book in the only way I seem capable of, from beginning to end, even if that means surrendering, at least in part, to another historian’s interpretive lens before forming my own.
I do understand the need for such an introduction. After all, Carr himself urges us to know the historian before we know his history, reminding us that every historian is a product of their age, shaped by the intellectual currents around them. In that sense, it becomes important to situate Carr within his own context, and so as Evans notes, he was very much a figure of the 1960s, who ‘approached history from the angle of someone who spent his life working for the Foreign Office and for a national newspaper’.
This background, Evans suggests, shaped Carr’s historical priorities. Questions of state-building and the formulation of policy took centre stage in his work. In his multi-volume History of Soviet Russia, for instance, Carr is described as taking ‘state-generated documents, formal policies, constitutions and paper legislation very much at face value’, a tendency Evans attributes, in part, to Carr’s training within bureaucratic structures. At the same time, Carr’s approach drew criticism from contemporaries like Isaiah Berlin, who accused him of viewing history through the eyes of the victors, to the extent that ‘the losers have for him all but disqualified themselves from bearing witness’. In words of Evans:
Nowhere did Carr’s elitism, his identification with the government rather than the governed, come out more strongly that in his dismissal not only of the losers in history but also of the vast majority of human beings throughout recorded time as being uninteresting to the historian because they had contributed nothing to the process of historical change.
Evans adds that Carr’s somewhat patrician understanding of ordinary people was soon rendered outdated by shifts within the discipline of history itself. From the mid-1960s onward, historians increasingly turned towards recovering the experiences of the poor and marginalised, seeking, in the memorable words of E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class, to rescue them ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’. Significantly, Thompson’s work appeared only two years after Carr’s lectures were published in 1961, marking a rapidly changing historiographical landscape.
Evans pushes this further by linking Carr’s intellectual formation to his professional life. Since his formative intellectual years were spent not in the ivory tower of academia but in the practical world of diplomatic service, for Carr, he argues, there was nothing of ‘direct interest unless it made a contribution to the formation of policy’. Therefore, he ‘could never free himself from the assumption that history was primarily designed to provide a guide to policy’.
The introduction also offers a particularly engaging glimpse into Carr’s process of writing, an insight, I would say, into the working mind of the historian:
It has often described how he would occupy a chair in his sitting-room, surrounded by scraps and sheets of paper that would accumulate around it as he put his thoughts down and began to stitch them together. Anyone who wants to get an idea of just how disorderly this seemed only has to open the folders of notes for the never-completed second edition of What is History? in the Carr papers at Birmingham University library, with their seemingly random scribblings on pieces of paper of varying sizes, all in no obvious order.
Disorganised as it may appear, the principle of history-writing that Carr advanced, of research and writing as a continuously interactive process, is one that many later historians would both recognise and endorse.
Despite the author’s now well understood contextual limitations, what then makes Carr’s work enduringly relevant? After all, his What Is History? continues to be a classic!
Beginning with the positivist notion that history could be approached as a science (read also ‘History: Science or fiction?’), and with the assumption that facts must first be established before conclusions are drawn, Carr traces the intellectual legacy of historians such as Leopold von Ranke and the generations of German, British, and French historians influenced by him from the 1830s onward. Their insistence on empirical fact rested upon the belief that the historian’s task was ‘simply to show how it really was’. Carr, however, challenges what appears to be the commonsensical understanding of history. In the characteristic wit that runs throughout What Is History?, he remarks that ‘to praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building’. Accuracy, therefore, is merely a necessary condition of historical writing, not its essential function.
For Carr, facts do not speak for themselves, they speak only when the historian calls upon them. This immediately raises questions of selectivity and, therefore, subjectivity. As he famously writes:
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 is very hard to eradicate.
Carr therefore argues against what he calls the ‘fetishism of facts’, often accompanied by a corresponding ‘fetishism of documents’. Documents, whether decrees, treaties, official correspondence, or private letters, do not transparently reveal what actually happened. Rather, they tell us what their authors believed had happened, what ought to happen, what they feared or hoped would happen, or even what they wanted others to believe had happened. Documents acquire meaning only through the historian’s labour of interpretation.
This, for Carr, highlights the importance of what he terms an ‘imaginative understanding’ of historical actors and their worlds. Such understanding, however, should not be mistaken for sympathy, ‘lest sympathy should be supposed to imply agreement’. Equally significant is Carr’s insistence that the past can only be understood through the eyes of the present, since historians, like the historical figures they study, are themselves products of their own times.
At the same time, Carr does not abandon the possibility of objectivity altogether, nor does he reduce history to whatever a historian chooses to make of it. Historians remain bound by facts in the sense that they must strive to incorporate all known or knowable evidence relevant to the subject under investigation and to the interpretation they advance. Interpretation, in this sense, becomes not the enemy of history but, as Carr suggests, its very ‘life-blood’.
What, then, is history? Carr argues that the historical process begins with a provisional selection of facts and an equally provisional interpretation by the historian. As research and writing progress, both the arrangement of facts and their interpretation evolve through their constant interaction with one another. This process also entails an ongoing reciprocity between past and present, since the historian belongs to the present, while the facts belong to the past. History, therefore, is above all an unending dialogue between the present and the past, sustained through the continuous interaction between the historian and their facts.
Carr also challenges another “commonsensical” understanding of history, the idea that history is simply written by individuals about other individuals. While this perspective had been encouraged by nineteenth-century liberal historians and was not entirely incorrect, Carr regarded it, by his own time, as overly simplified and increasingly inadequate. Neither historical actors nor the historians who study them, he argues, exist as isolated individuals detached from their social contexts. Both are shaped by the societies in which they live, learn, and act; both are, in Carr’s formulation, social phenomena and, in some sense, spokespersons of their age.
In one of the book’s evocative metaphors, Carr compares history to a moving procession:
The historian is just another dim figure trudging along … And as the procession winds along, swerving now to the right and now to the left, and sometimes doubling back on itself, the relative positions of different parts of the procession are constantly changing … New vistas, new angles of vision, constantly appear as the procession—and the historian with it—moves along … The point in the procession at which he finds himself determines his angle of vision over the past.
The metaphor captures Carr’s larger argument that historians are never outside history, they move within it. Consequently, historians must remain conscious of the assumptions and biases of their own age, many of which inevitably and often unconsciously shape their writing. As Carr observes, ‘the historian who is most conscious of his own situation is also more capable of transcending it’, and better able to appreciate the differences between their own society and those of other times and places, than the historian who insists upon complete individuality and detachment. Thus, Carr’s famous insistence that one must study the historian before studying their history acquires an additional dimension, that is, one must also study the historian’s social and intellectual environment.
As far as the study of “great men” in history as extraordinary, isolated individuals is concerned, what may appear self-evident today seems to have required explicit emphasis in Carr’s own intellectual context. Carr argues that no great individual exists outside the social forces of their time. Even a rebel, he suggests, represents either already existing historical forces or new forces that emerge through their challenge to established authority. Great individuals do not stand apart from history, they are embedded within it.
At the same time, Carr reminds readers that the greatness of those figures who appear far ahead of their age is itself dependent upon historical recognition. Their significance exists because later generations identify and acknowledge it. In this sense, an outstanding individual is simultaneously both a product and an agent of the historical process, that is, at once shaped by social forces and capable of reshaping them in turn. Such figures become both representatives and creators of the forces that alter societies, institutions, and ways of thinking.
The broader conclusion that emerges from these reflections is that history, both in meaning and as a mode of enquiry, is fundamentally a social process in which individuals participate as social beings. To Carr’s earlier definition of history as the reciprocal interaction between the historian and their facts, as an unending dialogue between the present and the past, must therefore be added another dimension. The dialogue is not between abstract or isolated individuals, but between the society of the present and the society of the past. History, therefore, becomes ‘the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another’.
As I have already detailed in my essay ‘History: Science or fiction?’ (read here) when confronted with the question that is history little more than a fallback for those who find literary classics too demanding and science too serious?, Carr insisted that history was far too difficult than classics and every bit as serious as science. To quote from ‘History: Science or fiction?’:
According to Carr, the initial distinction often drawn between the two rested on the claim that history dealt exclusively with the unique, whereas science dealt with the general. However, Carr pointed out, even in the physical sciences no two geological formations, no two species, and no two atoms were truly identical. Similarly, in history no two events were identical; but to overemphasise their uniqueness was equally misleading, since the very use of language inevitably involved a degree of generalisation. For instance, the Peloponnesian War (431–04 BCE; fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the ancient Greek world) and the Second World War (1939–45) were vastly different and each unique in its own right, yet both were described as ‘wars’. British essayist and historian, Edward Gibbon did something similar when he grouped together the establishment of Christianity and the rise of Islam under the general category of ‘revolutions’. Modern historians continue this practice when they write of the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and others. Therefore, Carr’s point was that ‘the historian is not really interested in the unique but in what is general in the unique’.
Both the reader and the writer of history were, in his view, habitual generalisers, constantly applying insights from one context to another. This did not mean, however, that historians should construct some vast overarching scheme into which all events must be forced. On the contrary, each event must first be studied in its own terms and only then compared with others; it was through this interplay between singularity and generalisation that a richer historical understanding could be achieved.
The second ground of distinction lied in the claim that history taught no lessons. In the decade preceding the First World War (1914–18) hostility towards historical consciousness—and towards the historian—had grown so widespread that James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (and later a central figure in Ulysses), described history as a ‘nightmare’ from which Western man must awaken if humanity was to be served and saved. By then, the accusation against history had acquired a moral dimension: scientists accused historians of methodological or intellectual failure, while artists charged them with a failure of sensibility or will. The catastrophe of the First World War further discredited the profession. History, long expected to provide training for life by offering instructive examples, seemed to have done little to prepare humanity for the devastation of global conflict. The past, in the popular imagination, came to be seen as a burden, worse even than religion.
But is it true that the past is incapable of teaching lessons? Carr argued otherwise. For him, the very act of generalisation was itself an attempt to learn from history, to apply insights drawn from one set of events to another. A striking example was the case of the makers of the Russian Revolution of 1917, who were profoundly influenced and indeed obsessed by the lessons they drew from the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, and the Paris Commune of 1871. The effort to read meaning across different events, Carr suggested, was precisely what makes history a source of instruction.
Thirdly, closely related to the question of lessons, was the claim that history, unlike science, could not predict the future. Yet even science, since the twentieth century, had grown less confident about universal ‘laws of nature’ that supposedly enabled prediction. Carr illustrated this with the law of gravity, which no longer proved with certainty that an apple will fall to the ground, since one could always imagine the possibility of someone catching it in a basket. Modern physics, accordingly, had shifted its focus from absolute laws to probabilities. In much the same way, when historians generalised, they did not make specific predictions but provided a general guide for future action.
The fourth distinction concerned the charge that history was subjective. Carr noted that the dichotomy between the subjective and the objective arose during the age of the birth and development of modern science, when ‘man’ as subject was set sharply against the external world as object in order to grapple with and master it. But even in science this distinction did not remain tenable for long. The so-called external world and its forces came to be seen less as hostile objects than as phenomena to be harnessed and worked with for human purposes. For Carr, therefore, the argument that history was not a science because it was subjective was no longer convincing. In science itself, there was no longer a rigid divorce between subject and object, nor should there be in history.
Lastly, it was often argued that history, unlike science, necessarily involved questions of religion and morality. Carr acknowledged that history inevitably engaged with religious issues, but this did not imply that divinity intervened directly in any specific events. No serious historian could invoke divine agency as an explanation for the occurrence of historical events. Carr put it succinctly that God could not be the joker in the pack, and history was a game that must be played without this joker. Regarding morality, the historian’s task was equally distinct from that of the moralist. Historians did not need to pass judgment on the private lives or public actions of historical figures. Their standpoint, Carr insisted, was fundamentally different from that of the moralist; historical analysis required detachment and explanation, not ethical evaluation.
Carr ultimately maintained that history ought to be regarded as part of the sciences, arguing that the perceived divide between history and science stemmed largely from a long-standing intellectual prejudice. At the same time, he was cautious about describing history as a science in an uncomplicated or rigid sense, since doing so, in his view, risked reinforcing the separation between the so-called ‘two cultures’ of the humanities and the sciences. What united the historian and the scientist, Carr believed, was not method in a narrow technical sense, but a shared commitment to explanation and enquiry. Both proceed through the process of asking and answering questions, driven above all by the fundamental question, why?
For Carr, the study of history was, in the simplest terms, the study of causes. Historical events may emerge from a multiplicity of causes, yet the historian’s task, Carr argues, is to bring order to this complexity by establishing some hierarchy of causes. A historian must determine how different causes relate to one another and, where possible, identify the more decisive or underlying cause among them. As Carr succinctly puts it, ‘every historical argument revolves round the question of the priority of causes’.
Closely connected to this concern with causation was Carr’s engagement with the role of accident or chance in history, a subject he believed his contemporaries often exaggerated. Taking recourse, once again, to his characteristic wit, he offers the following example:
Jones, returning from a party at which he has consumed more than his usual ration of alcohol, in a car whose brakes turn out to have been defective, at a blind corner where visibility is notoriously poor, knocks down and kills Robinson, who was crossing the road to buy cigarettes at the shop on the corner.
Carr suggests that what he calls the ‘devotees of chance’ might conclude that Robinson died because he happened to be a smoker; had he not run out of cigarettes that evening, he would not have crossed the road at that moment. But, for Carr, such reasoning mistakes coincidence for historical significance. While multiple circumstances may contribute to an event, the historian’s responsibility lies in distinguishing which causes are historically meaningful.
In this example, historically significant causes might include drunk driving, defective brakes, or unsafe road conditions, that are factors from which broader social conclusions or preventive measures may be drawn, such as stricter traffic regulations, improvements in automobile safety, or better urban planning. Carr’s larger point, therefore, extends beyond merely asking ‘Why?’ about the past. Historical inquiry, for him, also contains an orientation towards the future. The historian not only asks why events occurred, but also, in Carr’s words, asks ‘Whither?’, that is, towards what direction societies are moving and what lessons may be drawn from the past for the future.
Distinguishing between evolution and progress, Carr argues that the two operate on fundamentally different scales. Evolution unfolds over millions of years, whereas progress may be observed within generations. For Carr, the essence of progress lies in humanity’s capacity, as rational beings, to develop and expand its potential through the accumulation and transmission of experience from one generation to the next. History, therefore, becomes progressive insofar as acquired knowledge, skills, and social experience are inherited, preserved, and reworked across time.
At the same time, Carr does not imagine progress as linear, uninterrupted, or universally uniform. Progress, in his formulation, remains an abstract and uneven process rather than a steady march towards perfection. No final state of complete fulfilment or perfectibility can ever truly be attained. Despite these qualifications, Carr retains a fundamentally optimistic outlook. Rejecting both historical pessimism and fatalism, he advances the idea of an open-ended and potentially unlimited progress in history, grounded in humanity’s continuing ability to learn from and build upon the experiences of the past.
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What has perhaps changed most over the years is the way this writer now reads Carr, and, indeed, historians more generally. As a postgraduate student first encountering What Is History?, Carr’s arguments appeared almost inscribed in stone, to be absorbed with complete sincerity and intellectual obedience. Returning to the text now, after years of research and the experience of pursuing a doctorate in history, the limitations of Carr’s framework appear far more visible.
Carr was undeniably shaped by the world he inhabited and by the intellectual and institutional structures within which he worked. His conception of history remained deeply elitist in important ways. He was explicit in his belief that those who, in his view, contributed little to the making of historical change, such as, women, pre-literate communities, or politically unorganised masses, did not occupy the centre of historical enquiry. The history he privileged was overwhelmingly male, political, and state-centric, and concerned primarily with the actions of the powerful and the victorious rather than with the lives of the marginalised or dispossessed.
However, recognising these limitations does not diminish the continued significance of Carr’s work. If anything, it demonstrates the very principle Carr himself insisted upon, namely, historians are products of their own times. His blind spots today become, paradoxically, another lesson in historical methodology. To read Carr now is not to accept his arguments uncritically, but to engage with them by questioning them and sometimes even resisting them. Perhaps that is precisely why the book continues to endure. Despite its exclusions, What Is History? remains valuable because it compels readers to think seriously about what history is, who gets to write it, whose experiences are considered worthy of remembrance, and how the relationship between past and present is continually negotiated.