In Defense of History

Each generation reflects on the sense and non-sense of history - and a historian ambitioning to be a "master practitioner" sooner or later succumbs to the urge to write a book on this topic. By stepping in the footsteps of E. H. Carr and Sir Geoffrey Elton, the author stakes out the claim. This urge is given urgency by post-modernism, which (in the author's view) is savaging the discipline. In so doing, the author has simply written a tract. All tracts (as all incidental matters) in the end disappoint. This book is no exception: it is rather dull, repetitive, and meandering, and in the end, too self-consciously self-important.The basic reason for this is the author's failure to look outside the tea pot of history writing (and its tempests) for advances in epistemiology, philosophy, and logic as well as sciences. Had he done so, he would have realized that many of his positions are plain untenable. Below but a few - one could extend the excursion to areas as diverse as evolution, consciousness, and anthropology.Take this statement on p. 110 (which may stand for other versions of the same thought elsewhere in the book): "...interpretations really can be tested and confirmed or falsified by an appeal to the evidence..." Had he read Karl POPPER he would know, that "confirmation" is logically impossible, and that anyone believing this is in the thrall of "confirmation bias". Evidence may disprove a conjecture - I hate the word theory, which is used malappropriatedly in the social sciences (a case of p-envy with respect to physics) - but never confirm. Add to the principle point the fact that history is a middens: facts have been thrown into it pell-mell, and many have gone under, either fortuitously or by design. We may never be sure that all the relevant facts have been preserved or discovered. Finally, the "facts" and "sources" are dodgy at best. When Ranke writes that the sources can tell us "Geschichte wie es wirklich war" - one can only burst out laughing. Wirklich, Herr Professor? Having participated in the construction of archival evidence of my government I know, for one, that the record seldom reflects the motivations of the deciders, and is often only a running screen behind which the real horse-trading of power takes place.Another example of weak argumentation is the right-wing argument against relativism: "Once postmodernist hyper-relativism's principles are applied to itself, many arguments begin to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions" (p. 190). Self-referential arguments have been debated by philosophers on and off for most of the XXth century. We know by now that they cannot be used to self-invalidate - see the long litany of philosophers who have grappled with it (from Russell, to Gödel, and beyond). Some arguments may simply not be decided - so the argument is inherently insipid. An amusing example of "self-referential statements" that cannot be decided is the note Kant wrote to himself, and found among his papers: "Forget Lampe". Lampe was a servant, Kant had been fond of, but had to fire on grounds of theft.A third example is the messy treatment of causation in history. On p. 113 the author makes light of A.J. P. Taylor's view that "tiny causes have vast consequences". Alas for Dr. EVANS, this is indeed so, as complexity theory has proven. If a butterfly can trigger a hurricane in New York (and it might do just that, as we know) it is impossible to go back and identify which butterfly was the culprit. Causation is a fickle master, and there is no easy relation between the two.The author rejects the idea that "narratives do not exist in the past itself but are all put there by the historian" (p. 120) and points to "the narrative is there in the sources, lived and thought by the people we are writing about: German or Italian unification...". Lived through in the case of Italy? One is left wondering: 2% of Italians spoke the language! Italian historiography is tentatively emerging just now from the nationalist drall that has transformed a civil war after the occupation of the Kingdom of Naples into "banditism". And the mainstream history-writing about WWI still has to face up to the fact that "irredentism" was a sham for a few politicians' ambition to create an empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Even mainstream American history is not devoid of glaring selectivity in the presentation of the "the evidence". The role of slavery in the US Constitution is hardly properly mentioned (or the 3/5 rule); the pivotal role of Spain in the Revolutionary War is seldom referred to, for it detracts from Yorktown; the indirect yet critical involvement of New England in the running of the Caribbean sugar economy is forgotten; and there are more instances of "gaps"...A final point about "minority issues": reading ancient Chinese history one hardly finds reference to the economic role and importance of silk weaving - yet taxes were partially paid in silk. Textiles in the ancient Mediterranean are hardly an issue for the "ancient economy" - despite the fact that probably over 50% of household effort was devoted to textile production by women. One is left to wonder whether this "oversight" is not linked to the fact most historians are men...Admittedly many of the claims of the hyper-relativists are fatuous, and best forgotten. Their impenetrable jargon is enough justification for ignoring them. Any "argument from principle" is in any case vacuous, particularly in history, which deals with material reality - albeit a reality long past. But many points are valid, and recent history writing has been leavened and livened by their reflections. History writing hovers precariously between fact and fiction: it is never final or finished - yet it teaches us to understand and cope with humanity's as well as life's unending diversity. There lies its value - and any historian who, honestly, undertakes to illuminate diversity, complexity, and life's contradictions should be encouraged - provided he writes in plain language.

There has been an ongoing and vigorous debate in the philosophy of history for the last thirty or so years concerning the ways in which postmodernism should or should not impact the writing of history.In this delightfully polemical book, Richard Evans does not try to engage the writings of the major postmodernists. Do not expect to find counterarguments to the writings of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard or de Certeau. It is in the writings of thinkers like Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, Dominick LaCapra, Keith Jenkins, Elizabeth Ermath, Joan Scott, etc. that the major claims of the postmodernists have been made for history in the English speaking world. It is with their writings that Evans engages in debate. This does not, however, put him in the camp of conservatives like Gertrude Himmelfarb, John Vincent, David Harlan and Keith Windschuttle.Evans is arguing for a middle position- one that emphasizes the recalcitrance of the "facts", i.e., the historical records. Evans denies that all of history is interpretation and that no one interpretation is better than any other. He believes that careful and honest shifting of the historical record will show some or one interpretations to be better grounded in that record than others. On the other hand, he is excited by some of the possibilities for history that have been opened up by those working historians whose work he admires and who are identified with the postmodern camp, e.g., Simon Schama, Theodore Zeldin and Orlando Figes.One of the main points of his critique is that Evans feels that postmodernism removes the possibility of any sort of critical perspective- he reiterates the old point that if there is no grounds to prefer one interpretation over another, if there is no such thing as a fact than there is no reason to prefer the views of the standard histories of the Holocaust over those of a denier, e.g., David Irving.This is not the best of the books I have read recently on historiography. Berkhofer's Beyond the Great Story retains that distinction. It does have the advantage of being very well written, very clear in it's presentation and quite enjoyably feisty. Evans' style is like that of a good lightweight- constantly circling, jabbing his opponents, sensing a weakness and then throwing the combination.If you think my pugilistic metaphor to be inappropriate, ... for a series of short essays Evans wrote in reply to his many and equally nasty critics. This site is probably the best way to figure out if this book is for you.As for me, I have come to realize that this is a debate without end. Evans did not really settle anything for me. Neither has anyone else I have read lately. He does give you a lot to think about and he points the reader in the direction of a lot of interesting work done by other people.

There is nothing wrong with theorizing historical research, but the danger resides in analysis to the point of dissolution. In the Introduction to his book, Richard Evans expressed this idea clearly: “The theory of history is too important a matter to be left to the theoreticians” (p. 12). It’s the old debate between the doer and the thinker, no tolerance for the other. While the thinker has the ideas, it’s the doer that must implement them—and s/he knows what is practical and what is not as Evans pointed out: “Practicing historians may not have a God-given monopoly of pronouncing sensibly on such matters, but they surely have as much right to try and think and write about them as anyone else, and the experience of actually having done historical research ought to mean that they have something to contribute which those who have not shared this experience do not” (p. 12). Historians always must theorize to a point, depending on the topic, the sources available and practical ideology.

This book is a stinging indictment against the overfragmentation, hyperspecialization, and relativization of history. It's accessible to non-historians and should be required reading in introduction to history courses for undergraduates, and at the very least graduate students in history and related disciplines (my own interests in this book pertain to historical theology and the philosophy of history). While it seems that Derrida and Foucault have won the day, Evans pushes back against the strangely vogue notions that historical records cannot mediate truth about the past.