What is History?

Note : E H Carr's Trevelyan Lectures delivered in 1961 were crafted into the by now famous manuscript : What is History




I envy three sets of individuals, in fact four. I seriously do. 

The mathematician is the most I envy. In fact, I adore the mathematician since I am of the firm opinion that [s]he has the most talented bundle of grey matter which consistently works on convoluted and esoteric topics ranging from number theory to topology. 

The doctor comes next in line. Whatever you do, whatever you are, you are at the end of the day lying down in front of the doctor - in so helpless a condition. I hate the doctor because once [s]he arrives, either I or my closest family member would be ill. 

The actor. In India, the actor reigns supreme. Be it an actor on the big screen in Bollywood, or any other 'wood' for that matter, or small screen or over internet, [s]he is the most popular, if not the richest. 

And when you live in India, you hardly have an option not to be jealous of the cricketer. Every ingredient of life lays bare in front of him (the lady cricketer though a rising star, is yet to reach the apex of ''everything"). A cricketer is sometimes the God, at times revered as an idol through a biopic movie or in a novel, and most of the times eulogised as the 'hero'. 




Who cares about the historian? 

The economist in India is being dealt with a bit more seriousness now after the likes of Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee have pushed the limits of 'general knowledge' of the 'aam aadmi and aurat' insofar as 'how many Nobel prizes have been won by Indians and in which subject?' 

The economist to an 'aam aadmi and aurat' is also somehow related to 'money' and that pays off for the economist to be known as an intellectual. 

There is no 'Nobel prize' or for that matter a 'Man Booker prize' for a historian. Naturally, the historian is a 'persona non grata' in the Indian socio-economic matrix. 

Poets and physicists can surely give the historians a run for their money in this 'game of being dethroned'. 

E H Carr had lived long, quite long - from 1892 to 1982 - a broad span of ninety years. Yet one of his brief works, and not his magnum opus - the fourteen volume work 'A History of Soviet Russia', won accolades beyond comprehension and turned out to be a path-breaking theoretical literature pursuing the most fundamental question for the historian - What is History?

Another powerful historian was Eric Hobsbawm : 1917 to 2012 - had a mammoth life span of ninety-five years. 

The doyen of subaltern school of historiography - Ranajit Guha, was born in 1923 and still intellectually strong. R C Majumdar with 96 years, Bipan Chandra 86 years, and Ram Sharan Sharma and Satish Chandra playing into their 90s, historians could at least be envied for their long lives, if not for unraveling the past. 

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With the study of history confined primarily to the closet of the professional historian, and with the love of history relegated to the secondary and tertiary social priorities of the present day, a reading of the first chapter of John Tosh's book entitled 'The Pursuit of History' is a refreshing and soothing experience, if not a blissful encounter.

Be it for an imaginative exploration of the intricacies of the poetic mind of Sadat Hasan Manto torn apart by the pushes and pulls of the partition in the 1940s or the study of the role of crowds in revolutions and rebellions throughout human history, the first chapter of Tosh's book is a definitive enlightening exercise. 

History can have a theoretical justification, is itself an interesting and intellectually stimulating hypothesis - more so when present day specialist professionals - immersed in their own 'domain-specific ponds of knowledge' posit condescending notions on the uselessness of learning history either as an academic discipline or for that matter, as a rediscovery of human past in order to draw inspiration for providing torque to the present. 

It was fascinating to learn that the Italian mafia had its genesis in the 19th century and that German historian Ranke had to his credit the publication of an unthinkable 60 volumes of work. 

And it was heartening to note that imperial England (which pontificated on India's lack of socio-political development in the 18th and 19th centuries) had its 'blemish spots' in the late 18th century where in the countryside, separation and re-marriage were 'achieved by means of sale of wives in full public glare'. Even in London during the same period, public hangings were common which drew crowds in thousands. 

Tosh refers to an 'intellectual movement known as historicism which began in Germany' and had spread across the West. Historicists attempt to understand each age in its own terms. Tosh is specific about the definition of historicism when he writes that History holds the key to understand the world. 

The importance of 'context' in unraveling historical awareness has been highlighted in clear terms. Moreover, the author has laid stress on the 'difference' of periods between two historical epochs - a gulf created by the passage of time - and discernible through social, political and economic institutions. 

A third fundamental aspect of historical awareness is the recognition of historical 'process', which Tosh describes as the relationship between events over time. Nostalgia and traditionalism have been cited as the two biggest distortions of historical awareness. 

Though a professional historian himself, yet Tosh is honest to admit that "it would be wrong to suppose that accuracy of research is the exclusive property of professional historians"; and in order to bolster his argument he quotes Raphael Samuel from Theatres of Memory : Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (1994). 

Moving on from this highly encouraging yet real submission, Tosh journeys into the romantic pursuit of history and in the process draws along with him, the enthused reader. 

As we peregrinate into the second chapter titled 'the uses of history', the author talks about two extreme viewpoints on the concept of history as a subject of discourse. 

One is the 'proposition that human destiny is disclosed in the grand trajectory of human history' whreas at the other end 'is the view that nothing can be learned from history'. 

While striking at the very roots of the irrational imagination in history, John Tosh refers to Peter Laslett's work on the history of the English family. Laslett had arrived at the conclusion that the concept of an extended family in the pre-modern English society is a figment of nostalgic imagination. So, nuclear families were not a product of industrialization, rather traces its origin in old English practice. 

Notions and perceptions are hit hard when Tosh curtly speak out that 'even within the time-span of a hundred years, history does not repeat itself.