What Is History Now? (review)

What is History Now? emerged from a two day symposium in November 2001 at the Institute of Historical Studies, in London, to mark the fortieth anniversary of E.H. Carr’s “seminal-cum-perennial” What is History? The greater part of the book comprises essays on the current condition of some of the compartments in Clio’s mansion—social history (by Paul Cartledge), political history (Susan Pedersen), religious history (Olwen Hufton), cultural history (Miri Ruben), gender history (Alice Kessler-Harris) intellectual history (Annabel Brett) and imperial history (Linda Colley). While a short review cannot give each chapter individual attention, it can be broadly stated that some contributors expound on the state of the art (eg. political history), others plea for new approaches (eg. imperial history), and others again make universalizing claims (eg. gender history—and one wonders why its practitioners feel constantly obliged to resort to the exhortionary mode). While the resulting publication makes no claim to being a successor to Carr, its editor clearly intends it as more than just another collection of chapters on the conventional sub-divisions of the historical discipline. David Cannadine’s stated aims are threefold: “to celebrate and re-evaluate Carr’s original publication”; to account for the diversification of the practice of history in the last forty years; “and to create a volume which might reach the sort of broad public audience for whom history rightly remains (as it should, and as it must) an essential element in educated citizenry, public culture and national life” (p.vii). To varying degrees these objectives are realised.

Carr and his works were not universally admired. In life and death he has aroused some hostile denunciation, for example Arthur Marwick’s tirade in the Times Literary Supplement (November 16, 1984). Richard J. Evans’s contextualizing prologue “What is History?—Now” makes the case that Carr’s canonical text justifiably remains both a referent and a touchstone. Evans’s discussion of some of the changes to the historical profession in the intervening years is superb in itself, and it provides much of the glue that holds the subsequent chapters more or less together. Something that Evans might have taken up explicitly is the question raised by Carr’s biographer, Jonathan Haslam, that Carr may not have been serious in What is History?—in the sense that his views on relativism in history-writing were at odds with the objective determinism that typified the history that he wrote himself. ¹ Evans concedes that Carr never resolved the contradictory strands in his thinking and practice (pp.15–16)—and indeed there is an irresolvable tension between the quest for objectivism and a recognition that the historian is a social phenomenon. Whether or not Carr was “serious” remains unanswered; although one may feel that this is a question that Haslam, having raised it in the first place, should have answered himself.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s epilogue “What is History Now?” is also firmly based around Carr. The other contributors attempt the same with mixed results, and at times the effect is a bit strained. There is the suspicion in some cases that Carr would not have rated a mention had the essay in question been a discrete journal article. But not always. Linda Colley neatly rounds off her chapter—a timely plea that imperial historians became more comparative in their approaches—with the observation that Carr denounced the parochialism of British historiography. Yet the chapter on religious history displays this very insularity; it confines itself to Western Europe and has nothing to say about overseas missionary activity, or about E.H. Carr for that matter.

More indirectly than directly, more negatively than positively, What Is History Now? demonstrates new developments in, and diversification of, the historical discipline since Carr left off. In his editor’s preface, Cannadine is not altogether upbeat about some of these developments, pointing out that the exponential growth of historical writing means that practitioners can barely keep abreast of the literature in their own field...