Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on manuscript sources
- Introduction
- PART I PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL 1900–1945
- PART II CONTOURS OF AN ORIGINAL MIND
- PART III PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 1945–1979
- 10 Height of his powers
- 11 From history to historiography
- 12 From diplomatic history to international relations
- 13 From autumn to winter
- Further reading
- Index
- References
11 - From history to historiography
from PART III - PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 1945–1979
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on manuscript sources
- Introduction
- PART I PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL 1900–1945
- PART II CONTOURS OF AN ORIGINAL MIND
- PART III PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 1945–1979
- 10 Height of his powers
- 11 From history to historiography
- 12 From diplomatic history to international relations
- 13 From autumn to winter
- Further reading
- Index
- References
Summary
The world still waits for the wag who will scientifically examine the nineteenth and twentieth-century writers of history and show us how far their studies and researches really did raise them above the fevers and prejudices of their time …
Herbert ButterfieldHow far will future generations regard Butterfield as great? Perhaps for the advice to study world history through historiography.
Robert Dudley EdwardsDisenchantment is the usual destination for professional historians. Not that they come to lose the love of their subject or sense of its importance or confidence in its rigour. They do not normally, or at least inevitably, lose heart. The word is meant more literally: they lose the past as a place of magic and charm. Their past becomes the object of a forensic enquiry, a place constructed as much as discovered through the sophisticated methods and tools that their education and training has lent them. Times gone by no longer seem romantic in the way that historical novels and docudramas seek to make them. For some professionals the past retains the quality of reality which makes their books and articles accounts of incontestable events, firm in their fixity, nailed by scientific method. For some sceptics that image needs refinement and limitation. All agree that, no matter how one conceives the past, it must not appear embroidered or roseate; it must never at their hands appear ‘quaint’. Butterfield himself made his first steps along this familiar road.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Life and Thought of Herbert ButterfieldHistory, Science and God, pp. 291 - 319Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011