Historian: Encyclopedia II - Historian - The changing nature of the historian

Historian - The changing nature of the historian

The modern role of the historian (and the discipline of history) is a somewhat recent construction. The job of the historian has been important for thousands of years, to the extent that the definition of history has frequently been simply recorded history. The closely allied job of the chronicler often produces similar work as the historian and they are often considered together. The chronicler usually records events as they happen, so they engage less in delving back into history and there is often less historical analysis in their work. Many chronicles have short early histories attached so that they will start from the beginning of the world. These prefaces are usually of much less historical interest. While ancient writers do not normally share modern historical practices, their work remains valuable for its insights within its cultural context.

An important part of the job of many modern historians is the verification or dismissal of earlier historical accounts through reviewing newly discovered sources, recent scholarship, or through parallel disciplines such as archaeology.

Historian - Developments prior to the Twentieth century

Although we regularly refer to Ancient writers such as Herodotus (often called "The Father of History") or Tacitus (c. 56–c. 117) as "historians," their works do not meet the modern standards of impartiality and objectivity. Many of the historians of the past have been called upon to write histories either to furnish a king or a ruling class with a lineage, thereby offering it legitimacy, or to give a people a cultural heritage and sense of identity. This meant that the works of these historians openly mixed oratory, poetry and literature in a way which is incompatible with the contemporary concern for impartiality and objectivity. This does not necessarily devalue their work, but does require that their efforts be considered within their cultural context.

Herodotus, 5th century BC, is known as "The father of History" for being one of the earliest nameable historians whose work survives. His recount of strange and unusual tales are gripping stories, but not necessarily representative of the historical record. Despite this, The Histories of Herodotus displays some of the techniques of more modern historians. Herodotus interviewed witnesses, evaluated oral histories, studied multiple sources and then pronounced his preferred version.

The work of Herodotus covered what was then the entire known world, or at least the part regarded as worthy of study, i.e., the peoples surrounding the Mediterranean. At about the same time Thucydides pioneered a different form of history much closer to reportage. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote about a single long conflict with its origins and results; but as it was mainly within living memory, and Thucydides himself was alive at the time of many of the events, there was less room for myths and tall tales.

Much of the groundwork in creating the modern figure of the historian was done by Montesquieu (1689–1755). His wide-ranging Spirit of the Laws (1748) spanned legal, geographical, cultural, economic, political and philosophical study, and was hugely influential in forging the fundamentally inter-disciplinary historian.

Historian - Twentieth century developments

At the turn of the twentieth century, Western history remained notoriously biased towards the so-called "Great Men" school of history - covering wars, diplomacy, large ideas/science, and politics. This point of view was inherently bias towards the study of a small number of powerful males within the socioeconomical elite.

A pronounced shift away from crude Whiggish analyses has started, in favor of a more critical and precise perspective. For example, a common myth is that Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb; a traditional American history might highlight Edison's story at the expense of all others. In contrast, a modern history of Edison mentions all his predecessors and competitors, in order to show that Edison's real accomplishment was in finding a long-lasting filament, and in engineering the successful commercial deployment of the technology.

Since the 1960s, history as an academic discipline has undergone several revolutions. These changes fostered advances in a number of areas previously unrecognized in historiography. Previously neglected topics became the subject of academic study, such as the history of popular culture, mass culture, geographical culture, and the lives of ordinary people.

Historians also started investigating histories of ideas surrounding various categories of people, such as women studies (including an entire branch of feminist history, sometimes called Herstory)), racial minorities (like African-American History), or disabled people (eg., a historian might study the construction of ideas about disabled people, and the results thereof, perhaps in a specific historical setting, such as Nazi Germany).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The changing nature of the historian", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki