why does a historian have to understand what point of view is

All people are living histories – which is why History matters

Penelope J. Corfield

Historians are ofttimes asked: what is the use or relevance of studying History (the majuscule letter signalling the academic subject area)? Why on world does it matter what happened long ago? The answer is that History is inescapable. It studies the by and the legacies of the past in the present. Far from being a 'dead' subject, it connects things through time and encourages its students to accept a long view of such connections.

All people and peoples are living histories. To accept a few obvious examples: communities speak languages that are inherited from the past. They live in societies with complex cultures, traditions and religions that take non been created on the spur of the moment. People use technologies that they have not themselves invented. And each individual is built-in with a personal variant of an inherited genetic template, known as the genome, which has evolved during the entire life-bridge of the homo species.

So understanding the linkages betwixt past and nowadays is absolutely basic for a good understanding of the status of being human being. That, in a nutshell, is why History matters. It is not simply 'useful', information technology is essential.

The report of the past is essential for 'rooting' people in fourth dimension. And why should that matter? The answer is that people who feel themselves to exist rootless live rootless lives, often causing a lot of damage to themselves and others in the procedure. Indeed, at the most extreme end of the out-of-history spectrum, those individuals with the sad experience of complete retention loss cannot manage on their own at all. In fact, all people accept a full historical context. Simply some, mostly for reasons that are no mistake of their own, grow up with a weak or troubled sense of their own placing, whether within their families or within the wider globe. They lack a sense of roots. For others, by contrast, the inherited legacy may even exist too powerful and outright oppressive.

In all cases, understanding History is integral to a good understanding of the status of being man. That allows people to build, and, as may well exist necessary, also to change, upon a secure foundation. Neither of these options can be undertaken well without understanding the context and starting points. All living people live in the here-and-now but it took a long unfolding history to get everything to At present. And that history is located in fourth dimension-infinite, which holds this creation together, and which frames both the by and the present.

The discussion is amplified under the following headings:

1. Answering ii objections to History
2. Noting two weak arguments in favour of studying History
3. Celebrating the potent case for History
4. The repentance of Henry Ford: History is non bunk
5. Summary

Answering two objections to History

One common objection that historians encounter is the instant put-down that is derived from Henry Ford I, the impresario of the mass automobile. In 1916 he stated sweepingly: 'History is bunk'. Actually, Ford'due south original comment was not and so well phrased and it was a announcer who boiled information technology down to three unforgettable words. Withal, this is the phrasing that is attributed to Ford and information technology is this dictum that is oft quoted by people wishing to express their scepticism about the subject.

Well, and then, what is the use of History, if it is only bunk? This rousingly old-fashioned term, for those who have not come up across it before, is derived from the Dutch bunkum, meaning rubbish or nonsense.

Inwardly groaning, historians deploy diverse tactics in response. One obvious reaction is to challenge the terms of the question, in order to brand questioners think again about the implications of their terminology. To need an accountant-style audit of the instant usefulness of every subject smacks of a very crude model of education indeed. It implies that people learn only very specific things, for very specific purposes. For example, a would-be voyager to France, intending to work in that land, tin can readily identify the utility of learning the French language. However, since no-1 tin travel back in time to live in an earlier era, information technology might appear – following the logic of 'firsthand application' – that studying annihilation other than the nowadays-day would be 'useless'.

Only not so. The 'immediate utility' formula is a deeply flawed proposition. Humans do non just acquire gobbets of information for an immediate task at hand. And, much more fundamentally, the past and the present are not separated off into split up time-ghettos. Thus the would-exist travellers who learn the French linguistic communication are likewise learning French history, since the linguistic communication was not invented today just has evolved for centuries into the present. And the same point applies all round. The would-be travellers who acquire French accept not appeared out of the void only are themselves historical beings. Their own capacity to understand language has been nurtured in the past, and, if they remember and repeat what they are learning, they are helping to transmit (and, if needs exist, to adapt) a living language from the past into the future.

Education is not 'only' concerned with teaching specific tasks but it entails forming and informing the whole person, for and through the experience of living through time.

Learning the French language is a valuable man enterprise, and not just for people who live in French republic or who intend to travel to France. Similarly, people larn nearly astronomy without journeying in infinite, near marine biology without deep-sea diving, virtually genetics without cloning an animate being, about economic science without running a bank, about History without journeying physically into the by, and so forth. The human mind can and does explore much wider terrain than does the human body (though in fact man minds and bodies do undoubtedly have an impressive track record in physical exploration also). Huge amounts of what people learn is drawn from the past that has non been forgotten. Furthermore, humans display dandy ingenuity in trying to recover information about lost languages and departed civilisations, and then that everything possible can be retained inside humanity'due south collective memory banks.

Very well, the critics then sniff; let's accept that History has a part. Only the second criticism levelled at the discipline is that it is basic and dull. In other words, if History is not meaningless bunk, information technology is all the same poor fare, consisting of soul-sapping lists of facts and dates.

Farther weary sighs come from historians when they hear this criticism. It often comes from people who do not care much for the bailiwick simply who simultaneously complain that schoolchildren do not know central dates, usually fatigued from their national history. Perhaps the critics who complain that History-is-so-irksome had the misfortune to be taught by bromidic teachers who dictated 'instructor's notes' or who inculcated the field of study every bit a compendium of data to exist learned by middle. Such pedagogic styles are best outlawed, although the information that they intended to convey is far from irrelevant.

Facts and dates provide some of the basic building blocks of History every bit a field of study, simply on their own they have limited significant. Have a specific instance. Information technology would be impossible to comprehend 20th-century world history if given naught but a listing of key dates, supplemented by information about (say) population growth rates, economic resource and church attendance. And even if further evidence were provided, relating to (say) the size of armies, the cost of oil, and comparative literacy levels, this cornucopia of data would even so non furnish almost enough clues to reconstruct a century'due south worth of globe experience.

On its own, information is not knowledge. That great truth cannot be repeated too oft. Having admission to arable data, whether varnished or unvarnished, does non in itself mean that people tin brand sense of the data.

Charles Dickens long agone satirised the 'facts and nothing only the facts' school of thought. In his novel Hard Times,(ane) he invented the hard-nosed businessman, Thomas Gradgrind, who believes that knowledge is sub-divided into nuggets of data. Children should then be given 'Facts' and taught to avoid 'Fancy' – or whatever form of independent idea and imagination. In the Dickens novel, the Gradgrindian organisation comes to grief, and so it does in real life, if attempts are ever fabricated to institute pedagogy upon this theory.

People need mental frameworks that are primed to understand and to assess the available information and – as often happens – to claiming and update both the frameworks and the details as well. So the chore of educationalists is to help their students to develop adaptable and critical minds, every bit well as to gain specific expertise in specific subjects.

Returning to the case of someone offset trying to understand 20th-century world history, the notional listing of primal dates and facts would need to be framed past reading (say) Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century(two) or, better withal, by contrasting this written report with (say) Marker Mazower'due south Dark Continent(iii) or Bernard Wasserstein's Atrocity and Civilization(4) on 20th-century Europe, and/or Alexander Woodside'south Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea and the Hazards of Earth History(5) or Ramachandra Guha'due south Republic of india afterward Gandhi: the History of the World's Largest Democracy(6) – to proper name but a few recent overview studies.

Or, better again, students can examine critically the views and sources that underpin these historians' big arguments, too as debate all of this material (facts and ideas) with others. Above all, History students expect to report for themselves some of the original sources from the past; and, for their own independent projects, they are asked to notice new sources and new arguments or to think of new means of re-evaluating known sources to generate new arguments.

Such educational processes are a long, long mode from memorising lists of facts. It follows therefore that History students' understanding of the subject cannot be properly assessed by request single questions that require yeah/no responses or by offer multiple-choice questions that accept to be answered past ticking boxes. Such exercises are retentiveness tests but non ways of evaluating an understanding of History.

Noting ii weak arguments in favour of studying History

Some arguments in favour of studying History also turn out, on close inspection, to be disappointingly weak. These do not need lengthy discussion but may be noted in passing.

For example, some people semi-concede the critics' case by saying things like: 'Well, History is not obviously useful only its study provides a means of learning useful skills'. But that says admittedly zero about the content of the subject. Of course, the power to analyse a diverse array of often discrepant information, to provide a reasoned estimation of the said data, and to give a reasoned critique of 1's ain and other people'due south interpretations are invaluable life- and work-skills. These are abilities that History equally a bailiwick is particularly practiced at inculcating. Nevertheless, the possession of belittling and interpretative skills is not a quality that is exclusive to historians. The chief point near studying History is to study the subject for the invaluable in-depth analysis and the long-term perspective it confers upon the entire human feel – the component skills being an essential ingredient of the process but not the prime number justification.

Meanwhile, another variant reply to 'What is the use of History?' is ofttimes given in the following grade: 'History is not useful but information technology is still worthwhile as a humane subject area of study'. That response says something but the first phrase is incorrect and the determination is far as well weak. It implies that understanding the past and the legacies of the past is an optional extra within the educational system, with cultural value for those who are interested but without any general relevance. Such reasoning was behind the contempo and highly controversial decision in United kingdom to remove History from the required curriculum for schoolchildren anile xiv–sixteen.

Notwithstanding, viewing the subject as an optional extra, to add cultural gloss, seriously underrates the foundational part for human awareness that is derived from understanding the past and its legacies. Dropping History as a universal discipline volition simply increase rootlessness amidst young people. The decision points entirely in the wrong direction. Instead, educationalists should be planning for more interesting and powerful ways of instruction the subject. Otherwise information technology risks becoming too fragmented, including too many miscellaneous skills sessions, thereby obscuring the big 'homo story' and depriving children of a vital collective resource.

Celebrating the strong case for History

Much more than can be said – not just in defence of History but in terms of its positive advocacy. The best response is the simplest, every bit noted right at the start of this chat. When asked 'Why History?' the reply is that History is inescapable. Hither it should be reiterated that the subject field is being defined broadly. The word 'History' in English usage has many applications. Information technology can refer to 'the past'; or 'the study of the past'; and/or sometimes 'the pregnant(s) of the by'. In this discussion, History with a capital H means the bookish field of study; and the discipline of such written report, the past, is huge. In practice, of course, people specialise. The by/present of the globe is studied past geographers and geologists; the biological past/present by biologists and zoologists; the astronomical past/present past astrophysicists; and so along.

Among professional historians, the prime focus is upon the past/present of the human species, although there are some who are studying the history of climate and/or the ecology history of the globe. Indeed, the boundaries between the specialist bookish subjects are never rigid. So from a historian'due south signal of view, much of what is studied nether the rubric of (for example) Anthropology or Politics or Folklore or Law tin can exist regarded as specialist sub-sets of History, which takes as its remit the whole of the homo experience, or whatsoever department of that experience.

Certainly, studying the past in depth while simultaneously reviewing the long-term past/nowadays of the human species directs people's attention to the mixture of continuities and different forms of change in human history, including revolution likewise every bit evolution. Legacies from the past are preserved just also adapted, as each generation transmits them to the post-obit i. Sometimes, too, there are mighty upheavals, which also need to be navigated and comprehended. And there is loss. Not every tradition continues unbroken. Only humans can and do larn too from data about vanished cultures – and from pathways that were non followed.

Understanding all this helps people to institute a secure footing or 'location' within the unfolding saga of time, which by definition includes both duration and change. The metaphor is not one of fixation, like dropping an anchor or trying to halt the catamenia of time. Instead, it is the ability to go along a house footing within history's rollercoaster that is and then of import. Another mode of putting it is to have secure roots that volition allow for continuity but also for growth and change.

Nothing, indeed, can be more than relevant to successful functioning in the here-and-now. The immediate moment, known as the synchronic, is always located within the long-term unfolding of fourth dimension: the diachronic. And the converse is also truthful. The long term of history always contributes to the firsthand moment. Hence my twin maxims, the synchronic is always in the diachronic. The nowadays moment is always part of an unfolding long term, which needs to be understood. And vice versa. The diachronic is always in the synchronic: the long term, the past, always contributes to the immediate moment.

As living creatures, humans have an instinctive synchro-mesh, that gears people into the nowadays moment. But, in addition to that, having a perspective upon longitudinal time, and history within that, is 1 of the strengths of the alarm human consciousness. It may be divers as a parallel process of diachro-mesh, to money a new term. On the strength of that experience, societies and individuals assess the long-term passage of events from by to present – and, in many cases, manage to measure time not just in terms of nanoseconds simply also in terms of millennia. Humans are exceptional animals for their power to call back 'long' as well as 'immediate'; and those abilities need to be cultivated.

If educational systems do not provide a systematic grounding in the study of History, and so people will glean some picture of the past and the role of themselves, their families, and their meaning associations (which include everything from nations and religions to local clubs and neighbourhood networks) from a medley of other resources – from cultural traditions, from collective memories, from myths, rumours, songs, sagas, from political and religious teachings and customs, from their families, their friends, and from every grade of homo communication from gossip to the printing press and on to the web.

People do larn, in other words, from a miscellany of resources that are alloyed both consciously and unconsciously. But what is learned may exist patchy or confused, leaving some feeling rootless; or information technology may be simplified and partisan, leaving others feeling embattled or embittered. A expert educational system should help people to study History more than formally, more systematically, more than accurately, more critically and more longitudinally. By that means, people will have admission to a great human resources, compiled over many generations, which is the collective set of studies of the by, and the human being story within that.

Humans do non learn from the past, people sometimes say. An extraordinary remark! People certainly do not learn from the future. And the present is and so fleeting that everything that is learned in the present has already passed into the past past the fourth dimension information technology is consolidated. Of course humans larn from the past – and that is why it is studied. History is thus non but most things 'long agone and far abroad' – though information technology includes that – just it is about all that makes humanity human being – up shut and personal.

The repentance of Henry Ford: History is not bunk

Interestingly, Henry Ford's dictum that 'History is bunk' now itself forms function of man history. It has remained in circulation for 90 years since information technology was first coined. And information technology exemplifies a certain no-nonsense approach of the stereotypical become-alee man of affairs, unwilling to exist hide-bound by old ways. But Ford himself repented. He faced much derision for his apparent endorsement of know-nothingism. 'I did not say information technology [History] was bunk', he elaborated: 'It was bunk to me'. Some business leaders may perchance affect contempt for what has gone before, just the wisest among them await to the past, to understand the foundations, equally well as to the hereafter, in order to build. Indeed, all leaders should reverberate that arbitrary changes, imposed willy-nilly without whatsoever understanding of the historical context, mostly fail. At that place are enough of recent examples as well as long-ago case-histories to substantiate this observation. Politicians and generals in Iraq today – on all sides – should certainly take heed.

Model-T Ford 1908

After all, Ford's pioneering Model T motor-automobile did non arrive out of the blue in 1908. He had spent the previous xv years testing a variety of horseless carriages. Furthermore, the Model T relied upon an advanced steel industry to supply the machine's novel frame of light steel blend, as well every bit the honed skills of the engineers who built the cars, and the savvy of the oil prospectors who refined petroleum for fuel, simply as Ford's own novel design for electric ignition drew upon the systematic study of electricity initiated in the 18th century, while the invention of the wheel was a human being staple dating back some five,000 years.

It took a lot of man history to create the car.

Ford Mustang 2007

And the process by no means halted with Henry Ford I. So the next invention that followed upon his innovations provided synchro-mesh gearing for these new motorised vehicles – and that change itself occurred inside the diachro-mesh process of shared adaptations, major and minor, that were existence developed, sustained, transmitted and revolutionised through time.

After in life, Henry Ford himself became a corking collector of early American antiquarian furniture, besides as of classic automobiles. In this way, he paid tribute both to his cultural beginnings and to the cumulative equally well every bit revolutionary transformations in human transportation to which he had so notably contributed.

Moreover, for the Ford automobile visitor, there was a further twist in the tale. In his old age, the once-radical Henry Ford I turned into an out-of-touch despot. He failed to adapt with the changing industry and left his pioneering business near bankrupt, to be saved only by new measures introduced by his grandson Henry Ford 2. Time and history had the last laugh – outlasting even fast cars and scoffers at History.

Summary

Because humans are rooted in time, people do by 1 means or another pick upwardly ideas about the past and its linkages with the present, even if these ideas are sketchy or uninformed or outright mythological. But it is best to gain access to the ideas and bear witness of History every bit an integral office of normal pedagogy.

The wide bridge of homo experience, viewed both in depth and longitudinally over time, is the subject of History equally a bailiwick.

Therefore the true question is not: 'What is the utilize or relevance of History?' but rather: 'Given that all people are living histories, how can we all best learn about the long-unfolding human being story in which all participate?'

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1. C. Dickens, Difficult Times (London, 1854).
2. E. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century (London, 1994).
3. M. Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (London, 1998).
4. B. Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilisation: a History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford, 2007).
5. A. Woodside, Lost Modernities: Mainland china, Vietnam, Korea and the Hazards of World History (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
6. R. Guha, Bharat afterwards Gandhi: the History of the World'south Largest Democracy (London, 2007).

Suggested farther reading

H. Carr, What is History? (rev. edn., Basingstoke, 1986).

Drolet, The Postmodern Reader: Foundational Texts (London, 2003).

J. Evans, In Defence of History (London, 1997).

Gunn, History and Cultural Theory (Harlow, 2006).

Jenkins, Re-thinking History (London, 1991)

Jordanova, History in Practice (London, 2000).

The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, ed. A. Munslow (London, 1999).

P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (London, 1978).

Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Report of Modern History (many edns., London, 1984–).

Penelope J. Corfield is professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London. If quoting, delight kindly admit copyright: © Penelope J. Corfield 2008

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Source: https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/why_history_matters.html

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