It is necessary for historians to maintain sufficient vigilance and humility on the boundaries of their own disciplines, what is the nature of the work of historians, and what can and cannot be done by historians, such questions are not avoidable by historians, but need to be considered.
Historians can only indirectly come into contact with the past through texts, but the constraints and constraints of the true past on historians are constantly revealed through historical materials. The discipline norms and the skills of historians formed by history over a long period of time are the best of its vitality and legitimacy.
The development of history, like all other disciplines, often requires historians and theorists to constantly reflect on their disciplinary premises. The question of "what is history" is therefore perpetuating. It deals with the nature of the discipline of history, the object of study of history, and the relationship between the historian and the history he studied. In my opinion, through the investigation of the development trajectory of Western historiography in the 20th century, we can summarize the pursuit and solution of this question into three directions, which are the historical outlook of reconstructionism, constructivism and deconstruction.
Reconstruction: History can be reconstructed and restored as it is
A central element of an important legacy that historiography has received from the 19th century is the belief that the goal of historiography is to seek truth, to reconstruct and restore history as it is, and to achieve objectivity.
In Europe, the 19th century is a century of history compared to the 18th century. The reaction to the Enlightenment brought about the emergence and development of historical consciousness. History has developed considerably, gradually becoming a modern discipline that is becoming specialized. This is an important legacy of historiography from the 19th century.
A core element of this legacy is the belief that historiography should seek truth, to reconstruct and restore history as it is, and to achieve objectivity as its goal. This was what the American historian Beard later called "that noble dream" of historians. It can be said that this is what we call the "reconstructionist" view of history. Ranke, who established the norms for the professionalization of history, is certainly a figure with a very complex ideological face, but the most profound impression he left on later historians is his famous sentence of "truthful and straightforward".
In the early 20th century, when positivism was all the rage, some historians believed that history could eventually discover its own laws, just like the natural sciences. Many historians deny that there are laws in history similar to those in the field of natural science, but they also believe that there is no difference between history and natural science in terms of the goal of seeking truth and the ability to achieve truth and objectivity. Hence Bury's famous quote: "History is science, no more, no less." ”
In order for history to realize that "noble dream" and rank among the sciences, two conditions are needed. One condition is the exhaustive collection and rigorous examination of historical materials. The object of historical research is different from that of other disciplines – the activities of human beings in the past have disappeared and never returned. However, human activities have left behind a variety of historical records. Collecting and reviewing historical materials can help us establish the facts of the past. The accumulation of past facts naturally leads to their interconnectedness, the pattern and meaning of the historical process. Another condition is that when a historian engages in research and writing, he needs to eliminate subjective factors, not to mix his national, political, and personal preferences into his own preferences, and he must be as objective, neutral, and impartial as possible.
The combination of these two conditions seems to be able to achieve the objectivity of historiography. Ranke said that he wrote a history of the Reformation that would be acceptable to both Protestants and Catholics. Later, Sir Acton, who presided over the Cambridge Modern History of the World, also demanded that the writing of the Battle of Waterloo be satisfactory to the French, Germans, and Dutch. The historian is like a mirror that waits for himself, clearly reflecting the facts presented in the historical materials, and becomes a perfect picture of the historian's work. It is precisely for this reason that from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, among historians with similar beliefs, quite a few people said with a sense of self-satisfaction and a little loss that in some fields of study, the historical materials have been collected and the research has been carried out in sufficient depth, and the skills of historians have been exhausted, and future generations have nothing to do. This leads to Acton's term "ultimate history," which roughly means that every historian's work is entirely interconnected from that of others, and that you study the currency of ancient Greece, and he studies Hitler's war decisions. But in the final analysis, the accumulation of research results is pointing to the "ultimate history" that reveals the true face of all human civilizations in the past.
The reconstructionist view of history has the following implications: historical facts are hidden in historical materials, and unbiased and skilled historians can reveal them; The accumulation of historical facts will naturally take on the original appearance and meaning of the past; Humanity has a single, unified past.
Thus, we can see that, on the one hand, historians believe in "grand narratives", believing that the history of mankind in the past is ultimately a unity developed according to a certain clue, regardless of whether this clue can be recognized by people or not; On the other hand, there is the increasing specialization of the work of historians, who of the academic school, like specialists in other disciplines, become more and more aware of smaller and smaller things.
These two aspects are wonderfully combined. "Ranke religiously believed that if he took care of the facts, God would take care of the meaning of history," Carr's ridicule of Ranke is a vivid portrayal of this situation.
Constructivism: Historians are to "resurrect" history in their own spirit
In the history of constructivism, subjective factors such as the historian's theoretical equipment, ideological height, and ability to empathize with experience constitute the elements of historical research, rather than being the object of vigilance and prevention.
In common sense, we can divide history into three different levels: the history of what actually happened, the history of historical sources, and the history written by historians. In the history of reconstructionism, the results obtained by historians through the study of historical materials will eventually show the appearance of real history, and there is no insurmountable barrier and insurmountable gap between the three levels of history. The question is, are there some separations between the three, and not as harmonious as the refactoring theory envisions?
What does history study? Probably many people will answer without thinking: in the past. However, according to the British historian Elton, "the study of history is not the study of the past, but the study of the traces of the past that have survived to the present." If there is no trace of anything we say, think, do, or experience, it means that none of these facts have happened. It's like the ancient poem says, "Things are like spring dreams, without a trace". Reconstruction theory argues that history should restore the past as it is, but probably no one is naïve enough to think that people can restore the past without any problems. However, people often unconsciously assume that those fragments of the past that are really important and valuable will always leave traces that our research can rely on.
But is that really the case? Let's take a few examples. Tombs are important materials for us to study ancient history, and the tomb owners who can retain a large number of tombs that reflect the system, culture and other factors of the time are only a very small number of people in the society who are in an advantageous position, and as far as the "silent majority" is concerned, we often lack sufficient basis to infer the relevant situation. For example, the cabinet archives of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which numbered as many as 8,000 sacks, had been destroyed by the order of Prince Alcohol at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The importance of these archives for the study of Ming and Qing history is self-evident. There are too many constraints and contingencies in the formation, circulation and preservation of historical materials. It's a very fluke that a lot of important things have survived. It can also be inferred that there are so many important things that have not survived that we can't even trace their importance. The phrase "rebuilding the past as it was" seems to need to be more restrictive.
In addition to the contingencies of formation and preservation, are historical materials like a glass plate that allows us to clearly see through the past? Historical materials are made by people, and they inevitably bring a specific perspective. Karl said that our understanding of ancient Greece is lacking, mainly because the narrative of Greece during that period was written by a small group of people in Athens. We don't know what the Spartans, the Persians, the non-citizens of Athens thought of Greece. "The picture we see is pre-selected and decided for us. "The bias and narrowness of historical materials are destined to be distorted and blurred to varying degrees, although they may not allow us to see the past, but they are destined to the picture we get from looking at historical materials.
Reconstructionism holds that facts are out there, waiting for historians to discover. Carr's argument, however, is that the facts themselves do not speak, and that it is the historian who lets the facts speak. We can say that the historian has his own concerns, his own sense of problems, and it is these subjective factors that are projected on certain aspects of the past that some facts in the dark depths come to the fore. "All history is contemporary history", Croce's proposition is familiar to everyone. One of the implications is that historians always look to the past from the perspective of the present life, from their own concerns. Carr wrote in his famous book What is History? The answer is: "History is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, a never-ending question-and-answer conversation between the present and the past." "The relationship between the historian and historical materials and facts is not that of the former reflecting and presenting the latter passively, as the reconstruction theory envisages, but of the interaction between the two sides. Croce's "all history is contemporary history" and Collingwood's "all history is intellectual history" both emphasize that historians must "reenact", "reproduce", and "resurrect" the ideological and spiritual worlds of historical figures in their own spirits in order to truly grasp the past.
After World War II, there was a trend towards the study of history as a social science. The development of social science historiography has not diminished to this day, but it is far from being as exclusive as it was at its peak. In the view of many historians influenced by the social sciences, without the observation of social theory and the intervention of conceptual tools, people cannot truly understand the past. It can be said that this line of thinking also focuses on emphasizing that the intervention of a specific perspective is the only way for people to grasp the past history.
The main point of the constructivist view of history is that historians must intervene in historical research from a specific perspective, with their own spiritual experience, theoretical observation, and conceptual tools, and construct their own historical picture. In stark contrast to the strict vigilance of subjectivity in constructivism, in the history of constructivism, subjective factors such as the historian's theoretical equipment, ideological height, and ability to empathize with experience constitute the elements of historical research, rather than being the object of vigilance and prevention.
Deconstruction: History is the books that people write and call history
When historians write their research into historical texts, they inevitably inject their own thinking patterns, ideological positions, aesthetic tendencies, and other factors, either explicitly or implicitly.
The deconstructionist view of history is actually the postmodernist view of history, because postmodernist historiography "deconstructs" history and historiography into pure texts.
Postmodernism has had a wide and far-reaching impact on history and historiographical theory. Hayden White is arguably the leading theorist of postmodernist historiography. Let's begin with White's statement that historiography is "a structure of words whose content is both discovered and invented in equal measure." The first half of this sentence refers to the finished product produced by the work of historians, that is, historical works and **, etc., which are historical texts and linguistic products. In the second half, it is said that there are elements of discovery and invention in the content of this linguistic product. The "discovered elements" are easy to understand, and the study of history emphasizes no signs or beliefs, no word or sentence without origin, and such elements in historical texts are discovered and found from historical materials and archives. What does "ingredient of invention" mean?Does it mean that there are also elements in historical texts that have been fabricated out of nothing?Of course not. Although every word of a historical text is based on historical data and appears in an objective and neutral manner, under normal circumstances, when a historian is faced with a topic and forms his own historical text, he always selects one part of the historical materials related to the subject that he may use, and discards the other (often more) parts to form his own historical pictureHe always wants to give more importance to some of the facts contained in them, and to put others in a more marginal position;He always chooses a starting point and an end point for the historical picture he has built;And so on and so forth. These elements of selection, arrangement, processing, and stereotyping are exactly what the word "invention" is intended to express.
As we have seen, White's attention to historiography focused on the characteristics of historical texts. In my opinion, the deconstructionist view of history is to textualize the study of history. The so-called textualization has at least the following two implications:
First, the object of the historian's work is a variety of historical materials, which are mainly various documents, but also include archaeological discoveries, palace utensils and other material remains, which can be classified as texts in a broad sense, and eventually they must enter the study of historians in the form of language. And the final work products of historians, such as monographs or **, also appear in the form of linguistic products. In this sense, the historian can never really have direct access to the past itself, but can only speak about the past with the help of various historical texts, so textuality is the barrier from which the whole work of the historian cannot be escaped. This does not mean that deconstructionists will necessarily deny that there was a real past, but the point they emphasize is that historians have no direct access to the past, nor can they compare a real past with various historical images to determine whether the latter is true or false.
Second, historians, unlike natural scientists, do not have their own professional language. In White's words, it can be said that they use "the language of daily culture." Due to the opaque nature of everyday language or natural language, historical texts cannot truly reproduce the past, and it is impossible to convey history to readers as it is, without distortion or loss. When historians write their research into historical texts, they inevitably inject their own thinking patterns, ideological positions, aesthetic tendencies, and other factors, either explicitly or implicitly. Under the surface of the statement of facts, historical texts contain elements of choice, imagination, and creation. This is precisely the argument that Wright wants to argue in his book Metahistoriography, which laid the theoretical foundation for postmodernist historiography.
When the textualization of history goes to the extreme, it is not difficult to conclude that White's ** historical theorist Hans Kellner concludes that "history is the book that people write and call history".
What is the true meaning of history?
After clarifying the basic ideas of the historical view of reconstructionism, constructivism and deconstruction, let's take a look at a few passages from several famous contemporary historians and analyze them slightly.
Let's take a look at the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg's statement: "Of course, the writing of history is a kind of 'construction'. We put together the fragments of the past that have been passed down from generation to generation over a long period of time in order to build a credible image of the past, but this image is also a 'reconstruction'. It is this inherent tension – the difficult and often difficult interaction between these two principles – that gives the study of history its unique character. Ginzburg added that the literary form is a filtering mechanism that separates the work of historians from historical sources. In the previous remark, Ginzburg meant that construction and reconstruction are not diametrically opposed, but both tension and interaction;The latter remarks are quite similar to Hayden White's thinking. This illustration shows that, on the one hand, there is an intrinsic relationship between reconstruction, construction, and deconstructionOn the other hand, although the above three views of history have a successive historical context in their emergence and development, they can also be regarded as "ideal types" in the sense of Max Weber. The stance of a particular historian or theorist may not strictly fit into one of these categories, but these categories can help us to effectively grasp various ways of thinking about the question of "what is history".
Then there is the example of the American historian Robert Darnton. Regarding the facts, Darnton has said different things on different occasions. He said that all historians should have a period of time to learn to report on robberies, **, etc., for the newspaper for a period Xi of time, with only one purpose, and must get the facts right. The implication is to remind historians that their research is subject to historical realities. But on other occasions, he said that the so-called facts, to a considerable extent, can only be "presented": "What you see in the newspaper is not what actually happened, but what happened is reported." On the one hand, Darnton is saying that the text is not a direct and transparent reflection of the factsOn the other hand, the constraints and constraints of facts on the text cannot be ignored.
Finally, there is a quote from Bernard Behring, an authoritative scholar of American history. History, he said, "has never been a science, sometimes an art, always a craft." The academic norms accumulated in the course of its long-term development, the constraints of historical materials on historians, the various skills that help historians collect and examine historical materials, and the ingenuity displayed by historians in establishing their own historical picture are the foundation of historical studies. What Behring emphasizes is the nature of history as a "craft."
From the previous analysis and citations, we can draw a few simple understandings:
First of all, history is an empirical discipline, but like any other discipline, it requires constant and conscious theoretical reflection on its own presuppositions. Secondly, it is necessary for historians to maintain sufficient vigilance and humility on the boundaries of their own disciplines, and what is the nature of the work of historians, and what historians can and cannot do, these questions are questions that historians cannot avoid and need to think about. Third, historians can only indirectly come into contact with the past through texts, but the constraints and constraints of the true past on historians are constantly revealed through historical materials. When irrefutable historical sources question or subvert their own historical composition, a qualified historian must have the courage to abandon his or her own presuppositions, which is the most common situation in the practice of historical research. This shows that, in any case, the past has not lost its utility and significance because of the textual nature of history. Finally, the discipline norms and historians' skills formed by history over a long period of time are the first of its vitality and legitimacy.