What is History ?

                                                               E.H. Carr

In a critical assessment of the field of historical studies, E. H. Carr’s essay “The Historian and His Facts” introduces his readers to the importance of recognizing the limitations that are inherent in the study of history as well as his view on how historical fact is created and what the historian’s relationship is with his/her facts. Using various historians from the nineteenth and early twentieth century as examples, E. H. Carr’s essay presents a sensible appeal for a paradigm shift in the field of historical study that departs from the arrogant and misguided assumptions of past scholars. Although some of the information he provides may appear like common sense, such as the fact that history is never neutral, he nevertheless articulates his ideas in a jargon-free manner that any novice would easily understand.

In a critical assessment of the field of historical studies, E. H. Carr’s essay “The Historian and His Facts” introduces his readers to the importance of recognizing the limitations that are inherent in the study of history as well as his view on how historical fact is created and what the historian’s relationship is with his/her facts. Using various historians as examples from the nineteenth and early twentieth century as examples, E. H. Carr’s essay presents a sensible appeal for a paradigm shift in the field of historical study that departs from the arrogant and misguided assumptions of past scholars. Although some of the information he provides may appear like common sense, such as the fact that history is never neutral, he nevertheless articulates his ideas in a jargon-free manner that any novice would easily understand.

Carr begins his essay by criticizing the common misconception, often held by Positivists, that history is simply about the gathering of facts. This is because Positivists, or those who believe in the Empirical Theory of Knowledge, believe that history could be studied as a hard science. This belief, according to Carr, is based on the (mistaken) assumption that an (unbiased) conclusion could be extracted by simply analyzing what are deemed to be empirical facts. In other words, Positivists believe that the facts would simply “speak for themselves.” Based on this erroneous belief, the Positivists then presupposed that history, like the hard sciences, have a dependent variable, the “conclusion”; an independent variable, the “facts”; and a controlled variable, the “objectivity” of the facts. This view is unsurprisingly consistent with the Empirical Theory of Knowledge which argues that outside stimuli are separate from one’s capacity to process them. In other words, Positivists believe that gathering information is not influenced by the issues of language and translation.

The absurdity of such a belief should have been apparent for any reasonable historian, for even a brief deliberation would yield the fact that humans are notoriously impressionable. Indeed, everyone may have their own guarded opinions, but these are often influenced by others, and even shared experiences are often remembered differently by different people.

Central to Carr’s bid to correct the Positivists’ faulty understanding of history is his argument that facts do not speak for themselves. Carr argues that this is a task reserved for the historian who can pick and decide which facts deserved to be shown, the order they are shown, and their context.

Since the past is itself filled with facts, these facts must therefore be sifted, interpreted and analyzed for their relevance and value in relation to the prevailing historical knowledge.

From this perspective, historical facts are thus seen as being essentially created by the historian and not merely discovered. This distinction between creation and discovery obviously has major ramifications in terms of the objectivity or reliability of the facts, particularly for the Positivists, but Carr embraces this inherent limitation in history as simply part of what a historian has to accept: that “Neutrality in history is impossible.”

 Therefore, by acknowledging this limitation, the historian’s relationship with his/her facts is transformed from something that is akin to regurgitation, as posited by the Positivists, into a discipline that actually creates them.

Another way of looking at this is by viewing history as something that is “made,” not “born.”

Obviously, there are ramifications when one simply assumes that subjectivity is the essence of history. Indeed, this is a dangerous notion that could be taken advantage of by anyone, for ill or for good. For instance, all nation-states create their own origin myths to foster a sense of shared identity and to unite disparate groups of people, demagogues often re-shape history to serve their aims, and some revisionist historians may make changes to the prevailing historical narratives to serve a political objective. Since history is inherently subjective, oftentimes offering an infinity of possible meanings, some historians therefore believe that historical interpretations should all be viewed as equals — that none is any righter than any other. But others, such as Carr, believe that although history may have an infinity of meanings, one should nevertheless take comfort at the fact that there are a few which offers a better interpretation than all the others. For Carr, the quality of the interpretation is more important than the quantity of the interpretations.

 This view is central to the most important aspect of the creation of historical facts: the historian himself.

As already mentioned above, history is never neutral. Likewise, an historian’s understanding of the past can never be divorced from the prevailing culture, politics, and ideas of the present.

In other words, an historian’s understanding of the past is filtered through his worldview. This means, therefore, that the power relations, the prevailing norms, culture, religion, and political ideas dictate how an historian interprets the past. Because of this, Carr has arrived at the profound, but debatable, notion that the historian “belongs not to the past but to the present.” One way that Carr demonstrates this notion is through his criticism of the nineteenth century historians who lived under the zeitgeist defined by “confidence and optimism.”

During this period, historians simply believed that history had no meaning, “that its meaning was implicit and self-evident.”

The nineteenth century, with the strong belief in laissez-faire, was defined by the belief that everything will just fall in their proper places once the facts have been ascertained. This idea is obviously the basis of the Positivist belief that facts will speak for themselves. With the full benefit of hindsight, Carr simply describes the nineteenth century historians as living in the Age of Innocence. He argues that this innocence led them to unknowingly ignore the limitations posed by history.

Because history can never be objective — considering the fact that it has none of the formulas that are at the core of the hard sciences — historians therefore are given a certain level of “creative license” in the way they interpret and write history. For Carr, the writing of history is a process that involves simultaneous reading and writing, the latter being the aspect that expands a historian’s intellectual horizon (i.e., writing enables the historian to uncover the known unknowns).

 In this arguably laborious process, the historian is essentially engaging “on a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts.”

Paradoxically, however, this process is both one of the strengths and one of the weaknesses of history since it essentially allows for its use for propaganda purposes. Oftentimes, non-democratic societies tamper with their history to legitimize the ruling regime; but even democracies are equally guilty of tampering with their history to cover up past records that may be viewed as contradictory to their ideals. Nationalism, religions, tribalism, etc. all create their own interpretation of history with the implicit aim of serving their own ends. Therefore, Carr’s suggestion that one must first study the historian before one begin to study the facts is something that must be instilled, not only to historians, but to non-historians also.  

In conclusion, E. H. Carr has demonstrated that the historian and his/her facts are inseparable. In other words, the facts create the historian and the historian creates the facts. This is obviously a circular argument, but it proves that the Positivist notion that facts could simply speak for themselves as erroneous. Also, Carr has shown that history is ultimately a subjective enterprise simply because the historian will always be limited by his subjective worldview. By extension, this means that historical facts are never neutral nor objective. But Carr has accepted this limitation since he thinks that students of history must first study the historian before the historical facts — an important prerequisite considering the dangers posed by the various misuse of history.