Pieris M Berreitter
15 March 1997
Lit 80V/ Question #2
A history of History
Complete in Eight Pages
From the most primitive scrawls on limestone caves to the first myths over five thousand years ago, through Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian war to today’s paper, each of these represents an epoch and a different way of representing the past. But the newspaper does not print epic poems about the president in iambic pentameter, and artistic descriptions are left to the Opinion section. Our present concept of history and how it can best be represented has changed dramatically, even since as little as fifty years ago.
Myth and religion have long existed to explain natural phenomenon. For ancient societies, fear of nature, and of the unknown, were the dominant forces in the tradition of oral storytelling. Lessons to be learned were more qualitative than in later periods; moral codes and procedures, the foundations of a community, were taught from a very young age with stories and fables. Factual history was in a way irrelevant: history’s point, in the form of legends and epic stories, was to make the past not simply interesting but applicable to everyday life in the form of a conceptual understanding of the interrelations between humans and gods. Myths and legends are characterized by "extraordinary characters who… possess a magnetism which not only survives long after their death, but increases and attracts to their name many stories of different kinds." (Epic of Gilgamesh 17) Because many ancient myths were told orally, or written records were destroyed and had to be recopied, the story varied slightly each time it was told, and actual historical events become so misconstrued that it would be impossible to correlate the myth with real occurrences (Epic 22). Myth and legend were not history in the quantitative, literal sense, but a "history in the conduct of life and in morality" (White 53).
For the most part history and myth were equivalent through the fifth century B.C. At this time, Herodotus catalyzed a change from historiography as moral lessons and fascinating tales to factual interpretation in his presentation of the Peloponnesian war. Still very much under the influence of Greek mythology, his preconceived judgment of many of the historical figures he represents is characteristic of his writing style; from his self-appointed omniscient perspective Herodotus blames mishaps and tragedies on fate: "Candaules … was fated to end ill" (Greek Historians 32). Even so, Herodotus was the first true classical historian, his ulterior motive to preserve "from decay the remembrance of what men have done" (Greek Historians 29). It is true, he goes on to say "preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians form losing their due meed of glory," demonstrating that history writing had a ways to go before it could become acceptable as such by twentieth century standards.
This transformation would be accomplished by Thucydides, who was to introduce the concept of history that we are familiar with today. He denounced myth and improbable stories, accusing Herodotus, his contemporary, of being "vulgar" in "accepting readily [as truth] the first story that comes to hand." (Thucydides 46) For the first time myth was regarded as fiction, with the idea in mind that although myth would change, facts would not, and thus his work could "last forever" as a guide to "those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future" (Thucydides 48). Nonetheless, even in his ability to record the events of the war in as much detail and as close to the truth as possible, Thucydides used the technique of conjuring his own versions of public speeches, and occasionally interjected his own opinions into certain matters: "Hyperbolus, a wretched character, who had been ostracized… because he was a thoroughly bad lot and a disgrace to the city" (Thucydides 580). Such heated prejudices would not be found in writing claiming to be history today, and fabricated speeches can only be found in historical fiction. Unfortunately, the dark ages interrupted and people became more concerned with such things as finding food and outliving the Plague than how best to write history.
Although the time span between ancient Greece and the Renaissance is rather large, we shall for the most part ignore historiography during that time. Certainly the Spanish legend of El Cid during the 700 Years War, the Arthurian legends and the tales of the Plague, the Crusades, and countless other less than enlightening events would typify history writing of the day, if it could be given such a laudable interpretation. Nonetheless, these were legends and myths, with the same conceptual origins as the ancient Greek and Babylonian tales. For much of the middle ages, the precious few books that existed were meant to be read aloud, and appealed to emotion and aesthetic style rather than intellect ( 12). These histories, for the most part simple chronicles and commissioned biographies, often followed the style of Thucydides, putting words and speeches into the characters’ mouths. Interpretive history was a long ways off, and even the concept of universal history would have to wait until the decline of the Roman Catholic Church under the Protestant reformation, which subsequently allowed for the flourishing of heretofore repressed scientific thought. Scientific thought brought the Age of Enlightenment, and now that people could not be burned at the stake for heresy it was possible for history to progress (in the conceptual sense, of course) (Muller 259).
Universal History was, in my eyes, a carry-over from the middle ages. Because so little history was written and read during that period, there was by necessity a delay. Ranke’s concept of universal history was "an autonomous discipline…. Each event was unique and had to be understood as a discrete phenomenon, each period was "immediate to God," who had fashioned it" (Varieties of History 55). Ranke believed that one merely needed the facts and the meaning would become apparent. This ‘transcendental philosophy’ as Croce called it, had roots in the middle ages, a time when to be right meant following the king and the pope, and to be wrong was to be burned as an unbeliever (of the absolute truths set forth by the rulers). For the subjects of the king, the idea of supreme truth was not, as we see it today under a democracy, an unattainable and ridiculous concept. Supreme truths were whatever the king made them to be, and that was that.
Ranke lived and worked under the influences of these concepts, for the English monarchy and German Empire were still very much alive, though nonetheless bruised by political turmoil, and the power of the Catholic church was not as pervasive as it had once been. Thus for Ranke and his contemporaries the old style of thought was as good as any. The ideology of the existence of a "reality which transcends reality… contemplation of the concept without outside judgment" (White 50) permeated all intellectual discourse of the time. Indeed, it may be postulated that since there was so little of such a thing during the middle ages, Ranke fell inside a time when the concepts of the old and the new were still blended together; his universal history took advantage of the tools brought about by the Renaissance and used them to fashion history as it existed for the crusaders.
For many historians, Ranke represented a new era history writing; with the advent of industry, technology, and scientific knowledge, historians yearned to see their studies fit into a quantitative scientific discipline. Thucydides invented speeches, and the history of the middle ages involved witches, magic, and heroic legends. With universal history the would-be scientists thought they finally had a history that could be written once and stand unchanged and unchallenged for all time. History for the fist time became an academic, scientific discipline, and with the birth of a new field came national schools of study, research councils and publications.
Had history writing remained unchanged since Ranke’s dictum, we would be stuck with voluminous chronicles, committing ourselves to memorize facts and dates in the hope that a sort of epiphany of understanding would accompany them at a later date. Often this is how history is taught as an academic discipline in grade school; children have Ranke to thank for this. What was to bring about a change in the way history was written was history itself. As long as monarchies and religion dominated the prevalent ways of thought there was to be no change in historiography, or in any other subject for that matter. What was required was a revolution, political in the sense that the monarch was no more supreme than any other human; social in the birth of new ideas and the examination of old ones. This revolution in thought was the Renaissance: "the slow creation and progressive adoption of a revolutionary concept of men and the world" (Febvre 261). With the fall of monarchs (if not literally, then in the eyes of the people) and the catholic church, the concept of a universal arbiter whose every utterance was to be taken as verity, the concept of universal truth was shattered, and its progeny, universal history, became an empty shell. The concept of supreme authority having been vanquished, Ranke’s brainchild lost the foundations for its existence.
Thus a new historicism was to emerge, one that incorporated the new ideas of the times into itself. It was realized that universal history, in its Herculean task to record every intricate event in meticulous detail, passed completely by the human element, the very instigator of the history it recorded. History as a way to examine life for the present, and not merely to preserve for future generations but to teach humanity and "historical thought, sole and integral form of knowledge" (White 51). This was the new ideal; to crumble the edifice of universal history being constructed by Ranke, the idea of a massive concatenation of facts that could be physically staggering, built up into a towering monument constructed from infinitesimal statistics. It was during the period of the Renaissance that knowledge for its own sake, "the sacredness of mere truth in itself" (Clare 4), was realized to be veritably useless as far as humanity was concerned. "Facts that could be established beyond all reasonable doubt remained trivial in the sense that they did not, in and of themselves, give meaning or intelligibility to the record of the past" (Aiken 2).
For an example of how this new historicism was represented we shall turn to two authors, Karl Marx and Gustave Flaubert, one a German political theoretician, the other a French author of fiction, who undertook the task of preserving for posterity the events of revolutionary Paris from 1848-1851. Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Flaubert’s Sentimental Education were vastly different in representation of events and style; Marx discusses the sociology of the involved classes and the raison d’être behind the individual events of the revolution based on the overall political atmosphere. Flaubert concentrates on private lives which, though fictitious, nonetheless contribute a humanistic aura, accurately conveying the charged atmosphere and spirit of revolutionary Paris. For a man like Ranke, neither of these outstanding works could be considered history; Marx interpreted current events as they were happening, and Flaubert’s novel was purely fiction. Or was it?
From the limited point of view of the protagonist, the clamorous noise of revolution conceals itself in the background, mentioned in passing at regular intervals but visibly affecting the plot in only a few places, where an insurrection boils to the surface and must not be ignored if the author is to call his book a history. Yet we must acknowledge Flaubert’s work as such, for only when the revolution became too uproarious to ignore did the reluctant Frédéric take part in it. "Moreau, it is important to recall, is not a proletarian; he is a bourgeois through and through; and his life during the period 1848-51 mirrors perfectly… the career and betrayals, of itself and others, of the French bourgeoisie" (Concept of Style 288). Though Flaubert’s novel has little value insofar as political history is concerned, it promulgates the understanding of a human aspect of the revolution otherwise left unaddressed by the political discourse undertaken by historians and analysts such as Marx and even Ranke.
Flaubert’s work exemplifies how our understanding of factual events can be complemented with an understanding of the human thoughts and actions taking place concurrently with political change. Ranke’s conception of a transcendent reality (White 50) offered no value towards a philosophy of "the conduct of life and morality," which was for Flaubert and his contemporaries the true value of history. We have seen this guide for history twice now, once under the Renaissance and once as an explanation for myths and legends. This is not as surprising as it may seem, for self-reflection and study of "the life of the people, their toils and sufferings" (Varieties of History 109) are characteristic of both the Renaissance and the ancient civilizations. For people of both periods, of paramount interest was not concrete facts but a guidance almost spiritual in nature, one that could be applied to everyday life and could explain, in a way, the human condition.
For Marx, the political aspect of the revolution received the focus of his work, but it is explained in the context of social and humanistic tensions. Were we to edit out all complementary discourse and explanations from Marx’s text, we would be left with simple, straightforward facts. Positivists would remain skeptical, due to the currency of the events, but they could not complain insofar as ‘true representation’ is concerned. In this manner it can be seen that interpretation of events does not necessarily erase or convolute the literal evidence; the actual facts, the who, what and where of what happened, is secure in the translation from event to analysis – the ‘why’ of historical happenings. Nietzsche ’s dictum "there are no facts, only interpretations" need not be swallowed whole; we can have indisputable facts intermingled with the interpretation, without which they would form no benefit to humanity.
What is to keep interpretations from misconstruing actual events? This is the valid question first raised by Ranke in the 19th century, and with which historians are still grappling with today. One of the most glaring incongruities that had gone unnoticed (or unprotested) until recent times is the exclusion of women from all writings in historical context since the time of Herodotus. The very reason why women were being excluded at the time of this ‘discovery’ was, paradoxically, because of history writing itself. Most historians had assumed that "the history of women is the same as the history of men, and that the significant turning points in history have the same impact for one sex as for the other" (Kelly 3), and thus it was not necessary to include women in the discourse of social and political realms. This exclusion of women is a prime example of the dangers, first noted by Ranke but elucidated by Hayden White, of "the figure of the author [obtruding] itself between the thing to be represented and the representation of it" (Probing the Limits of Representation 46). In this case, the facts are not necessarily misrepresented, but simply left out, assumed by the author to be trivial or inconsequential to the subject at hand. Because women have been underrepresented in western historical writing for the past 2,500 years, to suddenly propose, as the feminists did, a change in the representation of gender in politics and social relations was to go against the established traditions erected by not history, but by the history writers.
Thus we cannot write history as "the strict presentation of the facts" of mankind "in its fullness and totality" (Varieties 61) because of the necessary interposition of the author in his or her dialogue between the represented and the audience. Even ‘what happened’ can itself be controversial; as Herodotus said, we may never know whether Io was kidnapped, or whether she went with the Phoenecians of her own accord. The best we can do is to tell both stories, leaving the final decision up to the reader, a tactic that Ranke would applaud. "So long as an institutional framework, however imperfect, exists for critically judging our reconstructions, no individual historian can impose his or her will on the past" (Probing 107). What is crucial for this statement to work is, as demonstrated by the difficult task of the feminist historians, that the institutional framework itself may be modified. This is a dangerous thing, as all intellectual freedoms are; we can modify or even erase the past if the framework permits. But if it were possible for the dominant ideology to become fixed, there could be no new interpretations. This is the mark of a great thinker, to escape the confines of the dominant tenets of society, to strike out new ground that may be built upon to "expand the horizons of all the generations before him [or her]" (Clare 6). For this quality we must admire and accredit Ranke, Flaubert, Thucydides, and others who have changed the way history is interpreted and represented, whether we agree with them or not. All of these once revolutionary variations on how to tell the story of the past are apparent in historiography today, and tomorrow’s representations will build upon the past we now call the present.
Works Cited
Aiken, D. Wyatt. A philosophy of ethics. P. Lang, 1988.
Clare, Israel Smith. Library of Universal History. R.S. Peale, J.A. Hill, 1897.
The Concept of Style. Ed. Berel Lang. Cornell University Press, 1987.
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Ed. Nancy K. Sandars. Penguin Books, 1960.
Febvre, Lucien Paul Victor. A New Kind of History. Translated by K. Folca. Harper & Row, 1973.
The Greek Historians. Ed. Moses I. Finley. Viking Press, 1959.
Kelly, Joan. Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Muller, Herbert Joseph. The Uses of The Past: profiles of former societies. Oxford University Press, 1954.
Probing the Limits of Representation. Ed. Saul Friedlander. Harvard University Press, 1992.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Penguin Books, 1980.
The Varieties of History. Ed. Fritz Stern. Meridian Books, 1956.
White, Morton. The Age of Analysis. Mentor Books, 1961.