Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: That Never-Ending Battle
- 1 The Enlarging Horizon: Henry Thomas Buckle's Science of History
- 2 The Sciences of History
- 3 Controversial Boys
- 4 Discipline and Disease; or, the Boundary Work of Scientific History
- 5 History from Nowhere
- 6 Broad Shadows and Little Histories
- 7 The Death of the Historian
- Epilogue: Froude's Revenge
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - History from Nowhere
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: That Never-Ending Battle
- 1 The Enlarging Horizon: Henry Thomas Buckle's Science of History
- 2 The Sciences of History
- 3 Controversial Boys
- 4 Discipline and Disease; or, the Boundary Work of Scientific History
- 5 History from Nowhere
- 6 Broad Shadows and Little Histories
- 7 The Death of the Historian
- Epilogue: Froude's Revenge
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Do not image you are listening to me, it is history itself that speaks.
Lord Acton (paraphrasing Fustel de Coulanges), ‘The Study of History’ (1895)I am very convinced that the one who drives the coach should commit himself to nothing.
Mandell Creighton to James Bryce, 28 December 1885Establishing history as a science certainly seemed like violent sport, largely promoted through attacks and arguments about what history should not be, rather than what it could and should be. There was a fairly consistent message behind the attacks, however, one that suggested the historian must suppress his subjectivity and present the facts in an inductive fashion. For Seeley, this involved understanding that history is not dramatic, that it is not inherently structured like a novel. One of his main goals over his tenure as Regius Professor was to impress on students and the general public that history had to eschew its literary past and embrace a way of thinking and writing about the past that likely would not be fascinating to the ordinary reader. Freeman was less convinced that history could not be entertaining but he also knew that there was a temptation to make it more entertaining than it already is with a twist of phrase or simply a literary style in general that might force a weak mind such as Froude's to consistently skew the facts to fit the story rather than making the story fit the facts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Science of History in Victorian BritainMaking the Past Speak, pp. 95 - 114Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014