History as a discipline is quite subjective. The practitioners of history commit to rigorous and relentless investigation as to how they conceptualize the subject matter of the past. But a historian, like every person, is a product of their experiences, biases, situations, and environment. As each historian approaches a source with a unique set of experiences and skills, they interpret the text differently.
Parthika Sharma and Aarushi Anand explain.
A painting of Marie Antoinette, 1783. By Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
“The study of the past with one eye, so to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history....”
- Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History
While there is no one right interpretation of historical events, if a source is not handled carefully, historical knowledge instead of getting constituted may get incoherently jumbled. The craft of historians lies in developing a grasp over subjects to abstract information and not everyone can achieve that. So is history real? How do we decide if an account is authentic? The answer lies in evaluating whether historical writing entails a deft handling of sources.
The official report of the Versailles Peace Conference after the First World War was written by the victors and thus it claimed that Germany and her allies planned the war from the outset. The documents published by Weimar Germany in the 1920s on the other hand centered on the aggression of the Serbian government. The arguments stated in either cannot be used as a window to see the past and attribute a single narrative to it. There is a need to interrogate the sources to determine their degree of consistency and inconsistency. Contemporariness of source (primary source) over later written documents (secondary source) neither makes it authentic nor unmediated by filters. They cannot be seen as inherently holding truth; rather, historians must retrieve truth.
Marie Antoinette
For example, the libelles of the 1700s dubbed Queen Marie Antoinette l’Autrichienne- ‘the Austrian bitch’, and portrayed her pornographically wrapped around lavishness, intrigue, infidelity, adultery, and sexually transmitted diseases. A primary source, however, should not be taken at face value. It is important to analyze the socio-political landscape of the French Revolution and the need to blame the monarchy for its downfall. It is important to consider the possibility that the public humiliation of the queen was to demonize the Old Regime and execute her for not fitting 18th-century gender roles. The later accounts like A Day with Marie Antoinette by Hélène Delalex demystifies her, unveiling the woman behind the queen, and the wife and mother behind the sovereign. Thus one needs to subject historical knowledge to debate. A rhetorical reading of the political libelles would enable one to put forth probing questions like "Who is the account directed to?", "what sparked the portrayal?", “what aspects of the record are reticent?” to get a deeper insight.
Through the process of deft source management, the work of Brittany A. McLaren- The Many Faces of Marie Antoinette proves to be objective and informative. The trial of Marie Antoinette, the political pornography of the Enlightenment underground, and Madame Campan's memoirs, Antoinette's First Lady in Waiting, are the three primary texts she examines. She concludes that since each source is skewed by the author's own beliefs, none of them portrays the "true" Marie Antoinette. While Robespierre tried and assassinate Marie Antoinette because she did not conform to 18th-century gender standards, political pornography condemned her to defame the entire Old Regime. Finally, Campan shows her allegiance to the revived Bourbon monarchy by using Marie Antoinette as a foil for herself. Thus, it is less important who Marie Antoinette was, and more important to understand what it is she came to symbolize. By juxtaposing it with other historical information, the actual account of what happened can be determined.
Thus in the process of subjecting sources to critical analysis, we get to know the reasoning/conceptual framework behind the production of a record. All information of a given historical circumstance must be mobilized to create the setting(socio-ecological political construction) ) and context (space-time) in which the source is generated. This exercise would even involve using our textbook information and gauging vantage viewpoints, for example, women's voices which were previously dismissed.
Ethnocentrism
A great deal of new research is not about looking for sources in variety but approaching well-known content with fresh eyes and questions. Ethnocentrism emerges from a “we-they” view of the world, in which one identifies with a specific group—usually a nation or a religion. This viewpoint is prevalent in the writings of nationalist historians. To give an example, in contemporary politics, historical research is contested as a version of “my religion vs yours.” For example, Indian nationalist writers attempted to portray "Muslim rule" as a dark period, but in doing so, they legitimized the colonial view that the British freed India from this period of darkness.
However, in this type of reading, the past is not studied in itself but to validate a person’s current position. It leads to the bias that one's current way of living should be used to judge the past, which is contrary to the historical perspective because praising modern values while condemning and belittling the rest is not a historical view. The focus shifts to “what was not” there in the past rather than what was. A careful reading of sources would tell us that before engaging with non-Muslim subjects, the dominant emperor would engage with dominant shades of Muslim opinions and practices. Foremost, Islamic emperors, this stride was between Shias and Sunnis.
A historian’s nature of inquiry would depend upon his approach towards the source. According to John Tosh, sources are neither neutral reservoirs of knowledge nor transparent records of the past. They are, rather, small children from the past who do not speak to strangers. Unless we know how to question them and listen, the sources, just like the children, tell nothing. Hence handling sources entails a constant interaction between the historian and her sources to arrive at a complex and richer understanding of the past.
Historian’s role
The past cannot be discovered, but it can be imagined as truthfully as possible. It is quite true that these biases are sometimes unconscious, and it's not always easy to isolate the past from the present, as historical inquiry often stems from present needs. However, it is essential to avoid studying history from these viewpoints; a historical perspective necessitates an understanding of the past without admiring or rejecting it. The purpose of history is to comprehend the past as a whole, not as a less developed predecessor to the present. The emphasis should be on understanding rather than condemning the past.
Even if complete impartiality is impossible to achieve, the historian's role does not have to suffer. They shall employ the concept of 'reciprocal action' on 'the historian and his facts'. The historian's responsibility to his facts involves ensuring that facts are accurate and include all known or knowable facts pertinent to the topic on which he is working and to the interpretation proposed. The historian is to mold his data to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts without giving one precedence over the other.
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Now read the authors’ article on the 3 key reasons for European Empires here.
Bibliography
● Jordonova, Ludmilla. (2000). History in Practice, London/New York: Arnold and Oxford University Press Inc ., pp.27-57, 92-112 and 184-193 (Ch.2, "Mapping the Discipline of History", Ch.4, "The Status of Historical Knowledge", and Ch.7, "Historians' Skills").
● Daniels, R. V. (1981). Studying History: How and Why. Third edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, pp.76-97 and 104-110.
● Tosh, J. (2002). In Pursuit of History. Revised third edition. London, N.Y ., New Delhi: Longman (Ch.4, "Using the Sources").
● Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources; Karen Rosenburg
● Marvick, Arthur. The nature of history. N.p.: Macmillan, 1985. (Ch.1 “The Past, History, Sources and Myths”
● .Hobsbawn, Eric. On History. New Press, 1998 (Ch.3 “What Can History Tell Us About Contemporary Society”)
