Although separated in time by sixty years, Carl Becker and
Bernard Bailyn are both concerned with the nature of “history” and the practice
of historians’ work. Despite this
temporal separation their definitions and concerns for the practice of the
historians’ craft are remarkably similar: what is “history”, how should
quantifiable data be incorporated into historical writing, the generational
revision of historical meaning, and the relevance of “history” to society. Interestingly, their responses to these
issues are similar, with a few important differences.
Recognizing the need for a common starting point, Becker
provides a base definition of “history” as “the memory of events that have occurred
in the past.” This definition
conveniently includes large events like the Apollo moon landing, and small
events like driving to class. A broad
definition is useful for Becker’s argument that history is pervasive in human
life. The pervasiveness is important not
only because it shows that on some level everyone is a historian because they
must perform the same types of tasks to get through daily life. Just as historians attempt to reconstruct the
past based on recovered documents, so does the average person. Becker uses the example of paying household
bills to illustrate this point – if the bill in question is not on hand, it
must be sought out, sometimes require searches in multiple locations before a
satisfactory resolution is found. Becker
further expands the utility of history into the creation of both the present
and the future through the utility of cause and effect relationships; memory of
the past allows people to anticipate what may happen in the future, providing a
usable time stream beyond that posited for less evolved species.
The idea that history creates both past and future through
the anticipatory moment leads Becker to argue that history is an imaginative
creation, whether at the hands of the individual or the professional historian,
based on the experiences of the creator.
History is separated from fiction by the limitations imposed by society
to base history on verifiable outside sources like class schedules or
contracts. Still, despite the
requirement for outside sources, Becker writes that the history of the
individual is a near mythical thing based on based on a combination of “fact
and fancy.” The creation of history in
this way also impacts the professional historians, who are influenced by their
own personal experiences, real and imagined.
The difference is that the professional historian is under the
additional onus of remembering the distant past for the recollection of society
at large.
The additional task of remembering the past for the
community forces upon professional historians additional limitations not
suffered by the individual that creates his own history. This additional task is to make history fit
accepted social traditions, while preserving the knowledge of the actual events
that took place. If possible, the
professional historian should also correct society’s misunderstanding of events
for the greater good – to tell a “true” story instead of the story that
tradition tells for the benefit of society as a whole.
Becker also assigns to professional historians the task of
interpreting the past and giving it meaning for the current generation. In this he argues that a bald retelling of
facts, or quantification of statistics and events does not help society anymore
than simply looking into a mirror. At
the base of this mountainous endeavor is the requirement to meticulously
unearth the facts contained in documents of all types and ascertaining their
validity and accuracy. It is not enough
to assume that presenting the facts is enough.
Instead, Becker argues that Historians must tell their societies what
the facts and events mean.
Bailyn uses Becker’s definition of history as “memory of things
said and done,” with the corollary that it is the “artificial extension of
memory” to formulate a basis for the modern practice of historians. Like Becker, Bailyn utilizes a broad
definition of who to consider a historian, specifically including public
historians, biographers, journalists, and corporate historians as individuals
responsible for artificially extending the memory of the past.
Like Becker, Bailyn assigns a heavy social duty to
professional historians, writing that not only do historians have the duty to
interpret the bare facts that represent the past. Bailyn includes in the historians’ duty the
task of keeping society “sane.” The duty
of keeping their societies sane through the presentation and interpretation of
accurate historical information is due primarily to history’s function of
orienting individuals to the present.
This function of orienting society as a whole is the source of
totalitarian regimes efforts to control the presentation of the past both in
real situations like the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of
China, and in fictional situations like George Orwell’s 1984. The impact of the
social orientation function of history goes a long way to explaining the
inclusion of the history curriculum during the 1980s and 1990s, as both
conservative and liberal activists strove to deploy their vision of the past
for social and political reasons.
The major difference between Becker’s and Bailyn’s analyses
of the historical profession comes in the dependence on quantifiable data and
statistical analysis. Where Becker
applauded the gradual return to more literary approach to historical writing in
the 1930s, Bailyn believes that quantification of data and statistical
analysis are essential parts of the historians’ craft. One difference is that modern historians’
reliance on quantifiable data is combined with the understanding that such data
must be interpreted for readers, not simply presented to them as a finished
product by themselves. The primary
reason for the difference in opinions on the utility of quantifiable data is
that modern historians have access to computers and advanced statistical
methods that allow more complex analysis of large amounts of data that
historians can them interpret as having specific meanings. In effect, information technology allows the
modern historian to combine stark quantifiable data with literary methods in a
manner that would be satisfactory to both Becker and Bailyn.
No comments:
Post a Comment