At present about what Historia
ns do not write?
Answers
Answer:
The people who write history by collecting the sources of history are called historians .
Historians should be passionate about history and be able to see the world through the eyes of the people of the past and take into account all the circumstance that affected their actions.
Explanation:
As this report is being written the American Historical Association is completing the first forty years of its existence, a comparatively brief period in the life of a great cultural society, but nevertheless a period rich in progress and actual achievements. In 1884 the big universities had one or two professors of history where they now have ten or more. Most colleges had one professor of history, but he usually taught it in connection with political economy, political science, or public speaking. To-day the average college has from two to five teachers of history, and political economy and political science have been made separate departments. Forty years ago history was taught in a perfunctory manner in the public schools; now it has a strong place in the grades and in the high school. In university, college, and public schools, as compared with 1884, history is now being taught several times more in quantity and several times better in method.
With this brilliant advance we have a right to expect history to be in a better position with the men and women of the country than ever before. Since more of them have studied it in school, ought we not to expect that a very large part of our people should be interested in reading history, that a great demand should exist for historical books, and that a large and powerful group of historians should be writing many histories to meet this demand? But no such conditions exist. From the librarians who hand out the books which the people read, from the publishers and booksellers who distribute the books that are published, and from all other competent observers of actual conditions comes unvarying testimony that history is less read to-day than formerly, and that it is not in strong demand at this time with the people we are accustomed to call the “educated class.” Such was not the case forty years ago.
The attention of the writer was pointedly called to this situation a few years ago on reading a circular received from a popular “literary agency,” whose business was to find markets for articles whose authors could not dispose of them without assistance. This particular circular, after enumerating many kinds of writings that were salable, said with brief emphasis: “But no history is wanted.” It is possible that the writer of the circular had some pique against history, and his pique may have been responsible for the curt respect he paid the subject; but it is not to be doubted that his business instinct would have made him willing to take historical writing to sell, if he had thought it possible to sell it.
Here is another indication of the same change in the attitude of the public. Forty years ago history had a place in the magazines. Witness the series of articles on the Civil War published in The Century Magazine, and later brought out in four large volumes with the title, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Such a series would sink any magazine to-day. I find that in 1884 the Century published twenty articles that may be said to have been historical, Harper’s Magazine published twenty-one, and The Atlantic Monthly published twenty-two. Let the reader turn to these same periodicals for 1924 and see how many historical articles appeared in them in that year.
Every well-wisher of history is doubtless concerned to know the reasons why this vast amount of history-studying has not led to a wider popular interest in the subject studied. It is the writer’s purpose to examine the methods and aims of the older group of historians, to contrast with them the methods and aims of the new school, to discuss the influence of the methods of the new school on historical style, to point out some of the undesirable habits into which our writers have fallen, and to offer the testimony of some persons whose experience qualifies them as experts in the situation. It is not to be expected that any one person can lay down rules for others to follow. But it is not too much to hope that the readers, and especially the younger men and women who are giving themselves to history, may be incited to make an examination of the subject, each according to his or her individual needs. For there is no single road in which all feet may walk. Each man goes as his own nature makes possible; and it matters not how he goes, if his steps lead to the achievement of the best in him.
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