1. Main Currents of Modern History
Historiography
BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, Hyderabad

2. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
E.H.Carr
• Edward Hallett Carr – 1892
• Cambridge
• Foreign Office 1916
• Resigned 1936
• Prof. of International Politics
• Asst. Editor of Times
• Tutor in Politics, Oxford
• Fellow, Trinity College – Cambridge
• Numerous works
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3. The Historian and his facts
• I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal
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of it must be invention – Catherine Morland
• 1896 – Lord Acton; 1956 – Prof. George Clark
• Reflection of change in our outlook on society between the
two – Victorian vs beaten generation
• Positive belief vs bewilderment
• What is history – the answer consciously or unconsciously,
reflects our own position in time
• what view we take of the society in which we live is based
on the times that we live
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4. Presenting Facts
• Nineteenth century was a great age for facts
• Mr. Gradigand - Facts alone are wanted in life – agreed to
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and followed by 19th century historians
• Three generations of British, German and French
historians followed this motto
• Positivist contribution to cult of facts – history as a science
• Empirical theory of knowledge – separation between
subject and object
• Oxford Dic. ‘fact’ - a datum of experience as distinct from
conclusions
• Common sense view of History
• C. P. Scott: 'Facts are sacred, opinion is free.'
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5. What is a historical fact?
• Caesar crossed the Rubicon; Battle of Hastings 1066
• Not all facts about the past are historical facts, or are
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treated as such by the historian
• What is the criterion which distinguishes the facts of
history
• It used to be said that facts speak for themselves
• The facts, speak only when the historian calls on them
• Historians regard it as a major historical event – Hastings,
crossing of Rubicon
• The historian is necessarily selective
• Belief that historian is above interpretation is fallacy
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6. What is a historical fact?
• Case of gingerbread vendor, 1850
• Our picture of Greece in the fifth century B.C. is defective
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not because of lack of facts – Athenian view
• Our picture has been preselected and predetermined for us
by the Athenians
• People of the Middle Ages were deeply concerned with
religion – History written by people in Religion
• They thought Religion is supremely important, and recorded
everything relating to it, and not much else.
• 1917 Russian revolution destroyed the myth of peasants
being deeply religious
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7. What is a historical fact?
• The history we read;' writes Professor Barraclough, himself
trained as a medievalist, ‘though based on facts, is, strictly
speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted
judgements.’
• Documents – they tell us what the author thought happened
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or supposed to…
• Gustav Stresemann, the Foreign Minister of the Weimar
Republic…Bernhard – 3 Volumes
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