Define history as a never ending dailogue of events between the past and the present.
Answers
Answer: Carr begins his interrogation by analysing how the “fact” is prepared and presented by the historian who studies it. He does so by dividing facts into two categories: facts of the past and facts of the present. A fact of the past – for example, “the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066” – is indisputable but basic. A fact of the present is something a historian has chosen to be a fact: “By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.”
Carr was not the pioneer of subjective historical theory. RG Collingwood thought that the objective past, and the historian’s opinion of it, were held in mutual relation; suggesting that no historian’s view of the past was incorrect and also that history only manifests with the historian’s interpretation. Carr contested this approach, arguing that it is the historian’s job to engage with the fact as a dialogue; “it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past”.
What is History? not only addresses the issue of interpreting fact, but also how the historian is shaped by it. History, he states, is “social process” and no individual is free of social constraint, so we cannot impose our modern understanding of the world on our ancestors. “Progress in human affairs,” he wrote, “whether in science or in history or in society, has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests.”
In 1962, Isaiah Berlin, a contemporary and opponent of Carr, reviewed What is History? in the New Statesman and criticised the central issues raised. Berlin took issue with the theory that personal motivation did not account for action and disagreed with Carr on the key matter of objectivity, which Berlin argued was obtainable through the methods used by the historian.
Despite criticism, What is History? promotes the necessity of subjectivity in the study of history, arguing that we are all shaped by the society and the time that we live in. Ultimately, by understanding this, we are able to think critically about the evidence laid before us, before we begin to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of the past.
Shortly before his death, Carr had prepared material for a second edition of What is History? Only his preface was written, but in it he looks for “an optimistic, at any rate for a saner and more balanced outlook on the future”.
My grandfather, John Carr, describes how his father “would choose to sit in the main sitting-room, with us around, following our own pursuits, while he wrote his profound thoughts on pieces of paper accumulated around his chair”. It is this memory of the chaos of deep thought, the scraps of paper fluttering about his feet, that I would like to cherish, and in my mind, perhaps sit and watch as he conjures his next book. In reality, I am fortunate enough to observe the work he created take its place on the grand stage of history, and share with my grandfather the hope that it will “stimulate further study and understanding of the future way forward in the world.