Historical Theory

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This topic examines ways in which sociologists have conceptualized the state and political institutions and at how they have analysed political obedience in terms of power (coercion) and authority (the recognition of legitimacy). It explores different notions of power developed by theorists such as Foucault, and ideas of bureaucracy, social discipline, revolt and revolution. Ways in which historians have used or developed these ideas are discussed. Such a logic of history was an intellectualised version of the notion that God directs the universe and history is the fulfilment of His design, which in this case is the freedom of humanity. As envisaged by Hegel, this freedom was not realised through the emancipation of mankind from oppressive and servile social conditions but from the overcoming of false, inadequate ideas.

History is full of irony. It has an overall objective logic which confounds its most powerful participants and organisations. Although the heads of states apply definite policies, and peoples and individuals consciously pursue their own aims, historical actuality does not fall into line or accord with their plans. The course and outcome of history is determined by overriding internal necessities which are independent of the will and consciousness of any of its institutional or personal agencies. Man proposes—the historical necessity of the Idea disposes. Historical materialists would be untrue to their own principles if they failed to regard their method of interpreting history as the result of a prolonged, complex and contradictory process. Mankind has been making history for a million years or more as it advanced from the primate condition to the atomic age. But a science of history capable of ascertaining the laws governing man’s collective activities over the ages is a relatively recent acquisition. writing two short applied essays on a secondary source of their choice that they are studying in another history class. The writing of history soon engendered interest in the science of history. Once the habit of viewing events in their sequence of change was established, the questions arose: How did history unfold? Was there any discernible pattern in its flux? If so, what was it? And what were its causes? Man made himself by acting upon nature and changing its elements to satisfy his needs through the labour process. Man has worked his way up in the world. The further development and diversification of the labour process from savagery to our present civilisation has continued to transform his capacities and characteristics.

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Although they may have held different opinions of what the essential qualities of humanity were, idealist and materialist thinkers alike have appealed in the last resort to permanent principles of human nature to explain social and historical phenomena. Thus the materialist-minded Thucydides, as M.I Finley tells us in his introduction to The Greek Historians, believed that “human nature and human behaviour were—essentially fixed qualities, the same in one century as another”.

exploring historical relationships: bivariate descriptive statistics (correlation, measures of association including correlation coefficients, linear regression)

Literary and Critical Theory

Consideration of central problems which affect all historical writing: the scope and proper subject matter of history; historical objectivity; the interrelation between the author’s past and present; the relation of literature to history; the question of whether there is a “Whiggish” progression in historical writing, so that modern writing is necessarily better than that of earlier periods; and (not least) why we should bother with history at all. The first attempts to survey the long march of human history, study its causes, and set forth its successive stages along scientific lines were made only about 2500 years ago. This task, like so many others in the domain of theory, was originally undertaken by the Greeks. Under such circumstances, neither society in general nor one’s own special mode of living is looked upon as a peculiar object which is worth special attention and study. The need for theorising about history or the nature of society does not arise until civilisation is well advanced and sudden, violent, and far-reaching upheavals in social relations take place during the lifetime of individuals or within the memories of their elders. Giambattista Vico of Naples was the great pioneer among these thinkers. He asserted at the beginning of the 18th century that since history, or “the world of nations”, had been created by men, it could be understood by its makers. He emphasised that social and cultural phenomena passed through a regular sequence of stages which was cyclical in character.

The historian confronting written documents can also draw on a long history of criticism. Manuals for beginning historians often dwell on the problem of forged documents, but this is seldom a problem, except occasionally for the medieval historian. A spectacular exception was the alleged diary of Adolf Hitler, a forgery that temporarily deceived the distinguished British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1983. A more formidable challenge is simply to read well. This sometimes starts with learning to read at all. Modern advances in deciphering codes (stimulated by World War II) enabled classicists to translate Linear B, yielding evidence about the Mycenaean language used on Crete in the 2nd millennium bce. Computerized technology promises to assist in deciphering other languages not presently understood. These diverse elements of historical interpretation can appear in the most incongruous combinations in a given country, school of thought or individual mind. Stalinism has provided the most striking example of such an illogical synthesis. The votaries of “the personality cult” sought to fuse the traditions and views of Marxism, the most modern and scientific philosophy, with the archaic Great Man version of the contemporary historical process. This topic examines an area where the debt of many historians to the work of anthropologists has been extensive and has opened up a number of lively debates. The work of Evans-Pritchard or Clifford Geertz and its influence on historians such as Keith Thomas or Robert Darnton offers a classic example. At a general level the topic encourages students to examine why religion and magic make sense to their participants and to consider the limitations of concepts such as popular culture.

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At the same time Marxism rejects all versions of antiquated theories which have failed to provide an adequate or correct explanation of the origins and evolution of society. It does not deny that historical idealisms contain significant ingredients of truth and can even exhibit a forward march. The main trend of their progression since the Greeks has been from heaven to earth, from God to man, from the imaginary to the real. Individuals, influential or insignificant, and ideas, innovating or traditional, are essential parts of society; their roles in the making of history have to be taken into account. For many centuries after the Greeks, scientific insight into the workings of history made little progress. Under Christianity and feudalism the theological conception that history was the manifestation of God’s plan monopolised social philosophy. In contrast to the stagnation of science in Western Europe, the Moslems and Jews carried forward the social as well as the natural sciences. The most original and unsurpassed student of social processes between the ancients and moderns was the 14th century thinker of the Maghreb, Ibn Khaldun who analysed the stages of development of the Mohammedan countries and cultures and the causes of their typical institutions and features in the most materialist manner of his epoch. Hegel was the foremost modern exponent of this theory that the progress of mankind consisted in the working out and consummation of an idea. He wrote: “Spirit, or Mind, is the only motive principle of history.” The underlying goal of the World Spirit and the outcome of its laborious development was the realisation of the idea of freedom. This Approach introduces students to the historiography of gender, women’s history and the history of sexualities and to explore the contributions these approaches have to other historical agendas. The contributions of women’s history are explored, underlining the importance of recovering the experiences of women in the past, the methodological challenges of doings so, and interrogating key concepts like patriarchy. The work of historians using gender as a category of historical analysis uncovers the degree to which masculinity and femininity are contested social categories, and the ways in which gender norms shape social, political, economic and cultural structures and processes, allowing students to look at the means by which gender and sex hierarchies are maintained and contested. Examining the history of sexuality and the body introduces students to work exploring the cultural, social and scientific categories of sexuality and gender as historically and geographically specific and malleable, and to studies highlighting the differences between laws, norms and experience. as if the whole web of human history were woven out of folly and childish vanity and the frenzy of destruction, so that one hardly knows in the end what idea to form of our race, for all that it is so proud of its prerogatives.