Clio in Canada: The Interpretation of Canadian History

J • ,., l..j J. · :. ,. . :- \' I . 1 I . t.: I:I , "' ii ;. '' ,. 1 ' 0 I· . 0 ' .,. "', -' 'r I ,• 1 -·· -~ ' / ... ~. ~ • • I I· I • I CLIO IN CANADA: . THE INTERPRETATION OF CANADIAN HISTORY W. L. MoRTON· JN Canada -~~-ch effort has now been given to historical research. Muc.h less atten t1on, to all appearances, has been devoted to p·roblems of historical criticism, particularly to those which ·arise when the field of .refere~ce is narrowed down to that of national history. Yet certain welldefined interpretations of Canadian history have been developed~ and.have shaped historical thought in Canada and p·opular understanding of Canadian history. ·' This paper intends no more than to raise the questions: ·. upon what critical premises have thes'e interpretations been raised, and ' · what ·has been tQ.eir .·effect in terms of historical thinking and popular knowledge? . · . . ' · Criticism implies standards, and standards implyfunction. It is submitted that the standards of histo~ical criticism are in the long run empiric, the historian's knowledge of his subject and, to a varying .lesser degree, of· "' his times and his fellow men. In Professor Barzun's words: "the worth of history consists ... in the diagnostic power that it develops." 1 The · ,' . function of historical study is to put questions to ascertainable relics of. the past. As R. G. Colling_wood remarks: Each question and ea.ch answer in a giv-en complex [has) to be releva.~t or appropriate·, [has] to 'belong' both to the whole and to the place it [occupic:sJ in· the whole. Each question [has) to 'arise'; there must be thnt about it whose absence we conde~n when' we refuse to answer a question on the ground that it 'doesn't arise.!. Each answ~r must be ~he iright' answer to th~ question it professes- to aoswer. By 'ri~h.t' I d_o not mean 'true.' The 'right' answer to a question is the answer which enables u~ to get ahead with rhe process of questioning and answering.2 But what dete·rmines the questions the historian ·puts~ .He puts a question because he wants an answer, not a particuJar at\SWer to a question, .but an an'swer ,to ·a particular question.. That question is determined by ,his interest in it, the interest arising out of his experience. That is, he wishes - to ext~nd' and confir01 his experience. 'The interest of his readers wilf.be the same as his own, to extend arid confirm their experience. Prejudice may prevent their doing so; n'ew facts may ll1Ddify old, new arguments e~gender new convictions. But the new knowledge·a·nd the fresh judgment must be assimilable to ·experience, or they. will be rejected. If the ]nterpretation of history, then, is in terms of experience, it fo,llows , t,hat the historical judgment of a man or group will conform: to the his- · to'rical experience o( that man or group. Men's interest in .history would ipdeed be narcissistic, were it not that ·what they perceive in history is not J an image but ·a portrait. - . . 1Jacquc:s Ba~zun, "History, Popular and Unpopular" i~· Tht Inter;;tiaiion of History, ed. by Joseph R. Strayer (Princeton, 1943), 50. ~R. G. Col!in~wood, An Autobiography (London, 1939), 37. 227 I I ... I ' I \ I , I i :.... I ' I , . ' I _: - ... I ' ' "\ ,. I I '" ~ l~ ~' i·' I ! ;. ,,I r.· ~ .' . ' l •. .-'j , : - . . i 228· THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO- QUARTERLY ' . ..... . . . 1 It is for this reason that-history is peculiarly the consola6on of the conquered. To thy oppressed, the memory of past freedom gives hope in present despair; to the humj}jated the recollection of past glory restores ~ome measure of self-respect. It inspires, above all, the determination to survive.. The independence 'of Eire, th~· nationalism ~f lnd~a, the survival of French Canada, point the observat~on. -. History, so operating, is of course the history of folk-memory, of ta:-le and ballad, or the work of ·the antiquarian· and the genealogist). naive, mythic, usually tendentious; often inaccurate. Yet even -"objective:• history, the history of the academic. scholar, work~ creatively in· the social order whether by reinforcing tradition or by opening new paths of thought. However...