A REFLECTION: What Is History (by E.H.

Carr)

AN, Byungmin
Government College University, Lahore
15th. Jan. 2018

This book was originated from a series of lectures delivered by E.H. Carr in
1961 at Cambridge University examining the question “What is History?”. He
discussed the nature of history in six chapters; (1) The Historian and his Facts,
(2) Society and the Individual, (3) History, Science and Morality, (4) Causation
in History, (5) History as Progress, (6) The Widening Horizon. It is commonly
said that this book provides historical knowledge of liberal humanity. However,
what I learned from the book was the prerequisites to be a historian. In my point
of view, this book is a required reading for all historians to be qualified with
desirable attitude and mindset. In this paper, I highlight his assertion and its
implication which lie in the following five instructions for historians.

1. Epistemological turn : new perspective of understanding what history is

E.H.Carr begins his argument with criticizing the overcredulity of facts in the
nineteenth century when historians revolved around empirical view under the
influence of positivism. Ranke remarked that the task of the historian was
simply to show how it really was. In this view, historian had to collect facts that
were accurate and independent on any historian’s opinion. The responsibility of
historian was to produce an objective scene of the past without any historical
view. Understanding history is just to see the past as recorded. However, Carr
argued that history consists of a corpus of ascertained facts, but the facts speak
only when the historians call on them. Of course, facts are essential to the
historian. But they do not by themselves constitute history. Historians decide to
which facts to be history in what order or context. Carr is asserting that historian
selects which facts are important and what facts get to become historical facts. It
is remarkable that E.H.Carr offered new perspectives of understanding history.
History was simply a record of the past and compilation of its documents before
his work. History was a bibliography of the dead. However, Carr resuscitated it
into the story of the living by changing the epistemic perspective of history.
It is obvious that Carr shared his ideas with non-empiricists like Collingwood
who said that the philosophy of history is concerned neither with the past by
itself nor with the historian's thought about it by itself, but with the two things in
their mutual relations. For them, all history is the history of thought, and history
is the re-enactment in the historian's mind of the thought whose history he is
studying. The reconstitution of the past in the history, mind relies on empirical
evidence. But it is not in itself an empirical process, and cannot consist in a
mere recital of facts. On the contrary, the process of reconstitution governs the
selection and interpretation of the facts: this, indeed, is what makes them
historical facts. 'History', says Professor Oakeshott, who on this point stands
near to Collingwood, ‘is the historian's experience. Likewise, the faces of
history never come to us 'pure', since they do not and cannot exist in a pure form:
they are always refracted through the mind of the recorder. However,
interestingly, Carr does not fully adopt the approach of non-empiricists. Rather
Carr noted that non-empiricists may lead the untenable theory of history as an
objective compilation of facts or the equally untenable theory of history as the
subjective product of the mind of the historian. So, he argues that history should
follow a middle-path, constituting a relationship of equality between the
historian and their evidence. He remarks that the historians retain to mould his
facts to suit their interpretation and their interpretation to suit their facts, and
takes part in a dialogue between past and present. In conclusion, Carr presented
his own answer to the question of ‘what is history?’, remarking that "it is a
continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an
unending dialogue between the past and the present". I appreciate him for that
history that had been bounded to the past was emancipated by his new
perspectives in this book.

2. Ontological value of historian : selection and interpretation

When talking about E.H.Carr and his book ‘what is history’, in my opinion, we
cannot but mention about his new proposition of the role and responsibility of
historian, which were traditionally confined to mainly search for documents of
the past and write all facts without any opinion objectively. However, according
to him, historian is necessarily selective and has the dual task of discovering the
few significant facts and turning them into facts of history, and of discarding the
many insignificant facts as unhistorical. Furthermore, ignorance which
simplifies and clarifies or which selects and omits is the first requisite of the
historian. Also, the historians need imaginative understanding for the minds of
the people with whom he is dealing, for the thought behind their acts. History
cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the
mind of those about whom he is writing. Carr described that the facts are really
not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about
in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean. In this view, history comes to mean
interpretation. The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to
emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to
the understanding of the present. Therefore, Carr stressed, history is a hard core
of interpretation surrounded by a pulp of disputable facts and it is what the
historian makes. This argument represents why historian should exist and how
to play the role in discussing about history. Selection and interpretation of the
past are historian’s ontological values in the present.

3. Subject of history : Overcome the cult of individualism

E.H.Carr criticized the idea that the individual was entirely separated from
society, which was emerged by western classical liberalism. He rather focused
on the fact that each individual is molded by society and everyone, including
historian, is a social phenomenon. In turn, society influences the historian and
even his interpretation of the past. In the same way, no individual can be free
from the social environment in which they live. According to Carr, the
increased individualization which accompanied the rise of the modern world
was a ·normal process of advancing civilization. The ideology of the new social
order strongly emphasized the role of individual initiative in the social order.
But the whole process was a social process representing a specific stage in
historical development, and cannot be explained in terms of a revolt of
individuals against society. Likewise, the men whose actions the historian
studies are not isolated individuals acting in a vacuum, they acted in the context,
and under the impulse, of a past society. The historian, then, is also an
individual human being. Like other individuals, he is also a social phenomenon,
both the product and the conscious or unconscious spokesman of the society to
which he belongs. So, the point in the procession at which he finds himself
determines his angle of vision over the past.
The facts of history are indeed facts about individuals, but not about actions of
individuals performed in isolation, and not about the motives, real or imaginary,
from which individuals suppose themselves to have acted. They are facts about
the relations of individuals to one another in society and about the social forces
which produce from the actions of individuals results often at variance with, and
sometimes opposite to, the results which they themselves intended.
In this view, Carr refutes the assumption that one individual can affect an entire
event and concludes that the view he would like to discourage is the view which
places great men outside history and sees them imposing themselves on history
in virtue of their greatness. He attributes their greatness to the support of the
masses and describes them as the “representative of existing forces”.
The great man is an individual, and, being an outstanding individual, is also a
social phenomenon of outstanding importance. The reciprocal process of
interaction between the historian and his facts, what Carr called the dialogue
between present and past, is a dialogue not between abstract and isolated
individuals, but between the society of today and the society of yesterday.
From my understanding, Carr placed the people in the seat of subject of history,
instead of great men, by overcoming the cult of individualism.
4. New thinking of historian: Scientific and logical methods

In this book, E.H.Carr strongly argues that history constitutes a science. He

claims the similarities between history and science. For example, both begin
with collecting facts, then interpret them. The status of the hypotheses used by
the historian in the process of his inquiry is also similar to that of the hypotheses
used by the scientist. Moreover, both scientists and historians entertain the more
modest hope of advancing progressively from one fragmentary hypothesis to
another, isolating their facts through the medium of their interpretations, and
testing their interpretations by the facts. Therefore, Carr regards history more as
a social science, not an art. He then remarked five objections to considering
history as a science. These objections are in brief: (1) that history deals
exclusively with the unique, science with the general; (2) that history teaches no
lessons; (3) that history is unable to predict; (4) that history is necessarily
subjective, since man is observing himself; and (5) that history, unlike science,
involves issues of religion and morality. With regard to these five reasons, he
clearly contradicted and he argues that scientists, social scientists, and historians
are all engaged in different branches of the same study: the study of man and his
environment, of the effects of man on his environment and of his environment
on man. The object of the study is the same: to increase man's understanding of,
and mastery over, his environment.
With reference to religion and morality, especially, Carr clearly put forward to
his suggestion that serious historian do not invoke God as an explanation of
particular historical events and do not judge individuals, but events, institutions,
or policies of the past. Also it is important to remind that history is movement
which implies comparison. That is why historians tend to express their moral
judgements in words of a comparative nature like ‘progressive' and 'reactionary'
rather than in uncompromising absolutes like ‘good' and 'bad’; these are
attempts to define different societies or historical phenomena not in relation to
some absolute standard, but in their relation to one another.
In the deterministic outlook, he remarked another method of thinking, which
can be called ‘cause and effect’ method. Carr strongly mentioned that the study
of history is a study of causes. It does not mean that, however, he was a
determinist. In his point of view, all human actions are both free and determined,
according to the point of view from which one considers them. He describes
that the main job of a historian is to seek rational causes as to why events
occured rather than blame them on chance. I also agree to that the great
historian is the man who asks the question 'Why?' about new things or in new
contexts, because the interpretation in history is always bound up with value
judgements, and causality is bound up with interpretation. The search for
causalities in history is impossible without reference to values. There always
lies, directly or indirectly, the search for values'. And this is the dual and
reciprocal function of history to promote our understanding of the past in the
light of the present and of the present in the light of the past.

5. The eyes for the future values : mission of historian

I will culminate this paper by remarking Carr’s note that good historians,
whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the
question 'Why? is the historian also asks the question 'Whither ?'.
Different from common sense that many people believe, I argue that history is a
study for the future, not for the past. Carr’s question is also relevant to the
future that we must look. He explored his idea that history is a matter of human
progress. Humanity has progressed throughout history. Therefore, history is a
study of progress. Carr came to the question what is the essential content of
progress in terms of historical action the people who struggle, say, to extend
civil rights to all, or to reform penal practice, or to remove inequalities of race
or wealth, are consciously seeking to do. He also suggests that it is the historian
who applies to their actions his hypothesis of progress, and interprets their
actions as progress. In other word, to proceed historical progress is the mission
of historian.
Historians enable to restore the rational character of the historical process itself
and history become progress towards the goal of the perfection of man’s estate.
Thus the progress of history has something to do with values.
Therefore the answers which we obtain are prompted by our system of values.
Our picture of the facts of our environment is moulded by our values, i.e. by the
categories through which we approach the facts. Values enter into the facts and
are an essential part of them. Our values are an essential part of our equipment
as human beings. It is through our values that we have that capacity to adapt
ourselves to our environment, and to adapt our environment to ourselves, to
acquire that mastery over our environment, which has made history a record of
progress. Progress in history is achieved through the interdependence and
interaction of facts and values. Therefore, historian ultimately must be those
who see and work with values for the future progress.