Insights from Renowned Historians

Herodotus: The Father of History

Ever wondered who first started writing history? Meet Herodotus, the wealthy Greek from Halicarnassus who pioneered historical writing around 425 BCE. Born in 484 BCE and living through the Greco-Persian Wars, Herodotus created a new type of writing that focused on recording human achievements rather than mythological tales.

His single massive work, "The Histories," aimed to record the past, recount great achievements of both Greeks and non-Greeks, and explain the reasons behind the conflict between Greece and Persia. Unlike historians before him, Herodotus traveled extensively to places like Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, gathering firsthand accounts from hundreds of eyewitnesses with different perspectives.

What made Herodotus revolutionary was his approach to sources. He explicitly stated, "My business is to record what people say, but I am by no means bound to believe it"—essentially inventing the concept of source criticism. He would interview multiple people about the same events, present their differing accounts, and let readers form their own opinions.

Did you know? Unlike his contemporaries, Herodotus rarely attributed events to the gods, instead holding humans accountable for their actions. This was a radical shift in thinking that set the foundation for modern historical analysis!

Herodotus: Strengths and Limitations

Herodotus created a new standard for historical investigation that we still use today. He meticulously identified his sources (even if he couldn't always name them), compared conflicting accounts, and approached his subject with remarkable impartiality for his time. Without his work, we would know very little about the pivotal Greco-Persian wars that shaped Western civilization.

However, Herodotus wasn't perfect. Modern evidence has revealed he sometimes claimed to visit places he never actually went to. His work also contains fantastical elements like flying snakes and supernatural soldiers that undermine his credibility. These entertaining but dubious stories suggest that he sometimes prioritized engaging his audience over strict historical accuracy.

Memory also presented a significant challenge. With no access to written sources, Herodotus relied entirely on his own memory and the recollections of others—memories that naturally fade or change over time. And despite his attempts at impartiality, his Greek background occasionally shows through in comments about "Greek freedom" versus "Persian dominance."

Despite these flaws, Herodotus established the foundation of historical methodology that historians would build upon for centuries to come. His work represents the first serious attempt to investigate the past systematically rather than simply accepting myths and legends as fact.

Bede: Christian History

Imagine being placed in a monastery at age 7 and spending your entire life dedicated to religious scholarship. That was the life of Bede, an English monk born in 673 CE who became one of the most influential historians of the medieval period. Living at a time when Christianity was still new but growing rapidly in England, Bede wrote approximately 40 works, including his masterpiece "The Ecclesiastical History of the English People."

Unlike Herodotus, Bede rarely traveled beyond his monastery. Instead, he relied on church libraries, documents from papal archives, and conversations with travelers passing through Northumberland. His approach to constructing history involved first ordering events into a timeline sequence, then expanding on each event with narratives that explained their significance.

For Bede, history had a specific purpose beyond simply recording the past. As he explicitly stated, he wrote to provide "instruction of posterity" and to guide Christians toward heaven. "For if history records good things of good men," he wrote, "the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good; or if it records evil of wicked men, the devout listener is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful."

History hack: Bede invented the dating system we still use today—Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC)! Next time you write a date, remember you're using a system created by a monk nearly 1,300 years ago.

Bede: Contributions and Limitations

Bede's work revolutionized historical writing in several important ways. He established a new standard for referencing sources, meticulously listing where his information came from so readers could verify it themselves. He also clearly distinguished between written sources and oral accounts, making judgments about their reliability. These practices were remarkably advanced for his time and set standards that historians would follow for centuries.

However, Bede's work had significant limitations. His history was undeniably Christian propaganda, openly promoting religious values and beliefs. He described Christian figures in glowing terms to encourage readers to follow their example, and he presented miracles as historical facts to demonstrate God's power. His bias is particularly evident in his list of English kings, where he deliberately omitted the only two pagan rulers.

Bede's perspective was also limited by his lack of travel. Rarely leaving his monastery meant he had access to fewer sources and perspectives than a more worldly historian might have had. Additionally, he showed clear favoritism toward his home kingdom of Northumberland in his accounts.

Despite these limitations, "The Ecclesiastical History of the English People" remains one of our best primary sources about the development of Christianity in England. Bede's work demonstrates how historical writing can serve both as a record of the past and as a tool for promoting particular values and beliefs.

Leopold Von Ranke: Scientific History

History changed forever when Leopold Von Ranke, a German professor born in 1795, transformed it from an art into a science. Working at Berlin University from 1825 to 1871, Von Ranke witnessed the French Revolution and German unification, experiences that shaped his approach to studying the past. Though he held strong personal beliefs—he was a devout Lutheran, German nationalist, and supporter of monarchy—he pioneered the idea that history should be presented with complete objectivity.

Von Ranke's famous motto, "Wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("how things actually happened"), reflected his belief that historians should present facts without embellishment or judgment. He created the Empirical Method, insisting that historical conclusions must be based on provable facts and solid evidence. Unlike previous historians, Von Ranke distrusted textbooks and secondary sources, viewing them as reflections of historians' biases rather than historical truth.

His access to royal archives in Prussia, Vienna, Venice, Florence, and Rome gave him unprecedented access to primary sources. Von Ranke meticulously analyzed these documents, seeking to understand the past on its own terms rather than judging it by contemporary standards. By emphasizing primary sources and objective analysis, he transformed history into a professional discipline with rigorous standards.

Critical thinking: Von Ranke believed primary sources were inherently more reliable than secondary sources. Is this always true? Consider who created primary sources and for what purpose before accepting them at face value.

Von Ranke and the Annales School

Despite Von Ranke's commitment to objectivity, his work still fell short of his lofty ideal. The primary sources he relied on were written by the upper class, for the upper class, about the upper class—giving him a narrow window into the past that excluded the experiences of ordinary people. His Lutheran faith also influenced his work, and his decisions about which events were significant enough to include revealed his subjective judgment.

The limitations of Von Ranke's approach became apparent with the rise of the Annales School, led by Fernand Braudel. Born in 1902 in France and shaped by the devastation of both World Wars, Braudel rejected traditional history focused on important events and people. Instead, he examined broader themes and long-term factors, considering politics and individuals as minor parts of a larger picture.

Braudel's masterpiece, "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II," demonstrated this revolutionary approach. The book was divided into three sections: first examining the role of environment and geography; second looking at social structures like economic systems and political institutions; and finally discussing individuals and events. This structure deliberately placed the traditional focus of history—people and events—as the least important layer.

Braudel's innovative approach included collaboration with experts from other fields—psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, and scientists—to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the past. His famous quote, "Men make history, but history also makes men," captured his belief that individuals both shape and are shaped by larger historical forces.

The Annales School and Marxist History

The Annales School transformed historical study by widening its scope beyond politics to include social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors. This interdisciplinary approach showed how deeper, long-term forces shape both individuals and events. However, critics argued that Braudel minimized human agency, depicting people as prisoners of their environment rather than active shapers of history.

While the Annales School examined structural forces, Marxist history focused specifically on class struggle as the driving force of historical change. Karl Marx, a German philosopher and revolutionary of the 1800s, viewed all history as "the history of class struggles" between oppressors and oppressed. His Communist Manifesto (1848) presented history as moving inevitably toward a communist society where everyone would be equal.

Christopher Hill, born in 1912 in England, applied Marxist analysis to British history. Living through the Great Depression and the rise of fascism, Hill joined the Communist Party in the 1930s (though he left in 1957 after Stalin's invasion of Hungary). In works like "The World Turned Upside Down" (1972), Hill presented history from below—capturing the experiences and perspectives of ordinary people typically excluded from historical accounts.

Perspective shift: Marxist historians like Hill pioneered the "worm's eye view" of history—looking up from the perspective of ordinary people rather than down from the perspective of rulers and elites. How might this change your understanding of historical events you've studied?

Marxist History and Postmodernism

Marxist historians made valuable contributions by expanding history's scope beyond politics to include social and economic factors. By examining history from below, they gave voice to the ordinary people who had been written out of traditional narratives. Christopher Hill's use of unconventional sources like court reports and novels demonstrated how historians could recover perspectives that might otherwise be lost.

However, Marxist history had significant limitations. Marx's philosophy has been criticized for being rigidly deterministic, portraying human decisions as meaningless in the face of inevitable historical forces. Hill's application of modern Marxist values to past events has been seen as projecting his personal biases onto history, rather than understanding the past on its own terms.

These criticisms intensified with the rise of postmodernism after World War II. Postmodernism emerged from a profound distrust of authority and skepticism about progress, challenging the very idea that objective historical truth is possible. Postmodernists argue that all historical writing is subjective, reflecting the historian's perspective rather than objective reality.

E.H. Carr, in his influential work "What is History" (1961), articulated this view: "The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides which facts are given the floor, and in what order or context." According to Carr, something only becomes a historical "fact" because a historian decides it's important, while countless other aspects of the past are forgotten because no one wrote them down.

Postmodernism and Historical Truth

Postmodernism has fundamentally changed how we approach historical works. Instead of simply accepting historians' accounts as truth, we now analyze the historians themselves—their backgrounds, motivations, and methodologies. We examine how their language choices, structural decisions, and even what they choose to omit shapes their presentation of the past.

This critical approach reveals how power structures have influenced historical narratives. Traditional history often privileged the experiences of white people over people of color, men over women, heterosexuals over homosexuals, and the wealthy over the poor. Postmodernism encourages us to question these biases and seek out alternative perspectives.

Keith Jenkins, one of the most vocal postmodernists, goes further in works like "Rethinking History" and "Why History?" He suggests that reconstructing history might be a fundamentally futile exercise and that we should "forget history, let it go, learn to live in new ways." For Jenkins, even the most genuine primary sources are deeply flawed, representing only versions of the past rather than absolute truth.

Think critically: When you read a historical account, ask yourself: Who wrote this? What was their background and perspective? What sources did they use? What might they have left out? How might their choice of language shape my understanding of the event? These questions are the legacy of postmodernism.