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Paper 6 Historical Theory and Methods DDCE/History (M.A)/SLM/Paper-VI HISTORICAL THEORY AND METHODS By Dr. Binod Bihari Satpathy 0 CONTENT HISTORICAL THEORY AND METHODS Unit.No. Chapter Name Page No Meaning, Scope and Importance of History 1. Definition, Nature, Scope, Object and Value of History. 02-19 Unit-I. 2. History, Science and Morality. 20-32 3. History and its Allied disciplines-Archaeology, Geography, 33-44 Anthropology, Sociology, Politics and Literature Traditions of Historical Writing 1. Greco- Roman Traditions- Herodotus, Thucydides, Polibius, Livy 45-59 and Tacitus 2. Medieval Understanding: Western- St. Augustine: Arabic-- Ibn Unit-II 60-72 Khaldun 3. Scientific History: Vico, Hegel, Ranke, Croce, Collingwood. Comte and Marx, Post- Modernist Critique of History; Total History : The 73-117 Annalists of France Historical Methods 1. Historical Source Material: Primary and Secondary. 118-132 2. Historical Criticism: External and Internal Criticism; Examination Unit-III. 133-157 of Sources 3. Collection and Selection of Facts and Evidences and Causation in 158-171 History Preliminary Ideas of Historical Research 1. Area of Proposed Research: History within a Boundary and without 172-182 Unit-IV. a Border- Significance of Regional History 2. Explanation and Presentation- Objectivity and Bias in History 183-196 3. Distortion as a Challenge to History 197-218 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT It is pleasure to be able to complete this compilation work. containing various aspects of Historical theories and methods. This material is prepared with an objective to familiarize the students of M.A History, DDCE Utkal University on the various theories and methods used in historical research. This work would not have been possible without the support of the Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education, Utkal University. I would especially like to thank Prof. Susmita Prasad Pani, the Director, DDCE, Utkal University. As my teacher and mentor, he has taught me more than I could ever give him credit for here. He has shown me, by his example, what a good teacher (and person) should be. The compiler owes many thanks to all the reputed scholars on historiography as well as theories and methods of history whose work is being used here for the sake of making the students understand the subject. I have copied, collected, and made use of the scholarly works of great scholars whose work has been mentioned in the further reading section of each chapter. The compiler of the present material claims no authority and originality on any topic of the materials cum textbook. As already been mentioned above the work is a compilation of already existing works of great scholars among whom name of a few have been mentioned at the end of each chapter. Besides the SLM of IGNOU and other Distance Education Centre have been also consulted and used for preparation of this material for that I duly acknowledge those textbooks. Would be grateful by receiving suggestions and comments to improve this material cum textbook, from the students, teachers and also the practicing professionals Binod Bihari Satpathy 2 Unit-1 Chapter-I MEANING, SCOPE AND IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY Definition, Nature, Scope, Object and Value of History Structure 1.1.0. Objective 1.1.1. Introduction 1.1.2. Meaning of History 1.1.3. Definitions of History 1.1.4. The Value of History 1.1.5. Scope of History 1.1.6. Nature of History 1.1.6.1. History Repeat Itself 1.1.6.2. Cyclic or Linear Nature of History 1.1.6.3. Unending dialogue 1.1.6.4. All history is contemporary History 1.1.6.5. Roots of Historical Phenomena 1.1.6.6. Variation in History 1.1.6.7. History is a verb, not a noun. 1.1.6.8. Knowledge of the past is incomplete 1.1.6.9. The known past is infinitely smaller than the actual past. 1.1.6.10. Our view of the past keeps changing 1.1.6.11. History is subjective 1.1.6.12. History is a search for truth 1.1.7. Why Study History. 1.1.7.1. History Helps Us Understand People and Societies 1.1.7.2. The Importance of History in Our Own Lives 1.1.7.3. History Contributes to Moral Understanding 1.1.7.4. History Provides Identity 1.1.7.5. Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship 1.1.7.6. History Is Useful in the World of Work 1.1.7.7. The Ability to Assess Evidence 1.1.7.8. The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. 1.1.7.9. Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. 1.1.8. Conclusion 1.1.9. Summary 1.1.10. Exercise 1.1.11. Further Readings 3 1.1.0. Objective In this chapter, students investigate the nature, scope and importance of history. After studying this chapter the learners will be able to: • understand the meaning and definition of history; • discuss the scope of history as a subject of study human past; • examine the nature and objectives of historical study; • clarify the value of studying history; and; • identify the importance of studying history. 1.1.1. Introduction History is often described as the mother or queen of social sciences. It outdates all other social sciences. It is the basis of all subjects of study which are grouped under Humanities or social sciences. It is considered an indispensable subject in providing man’s complete education. We are already in the twenty first century, an expanding new era, thus, the complex meanings, intrinsic qualities, purposes, and value of history require serious attention. For the diverse and rich social foundations of life, whether language, material culture, national identity, or the organization of work and politics, are the palpable inheritance of a resilient human past, and if humanity is to plot a realizable future, we need to understand through history how it has achieved its present. The usefulness of history, therefore, is not only that it constantly offers new ways of viewing and understanding the grip of the past: it is also a means of generating the confidence about, and absorption of, critical knowledge, to produce a changing consciousness. In bringing the potential of human action to the center of investigation, the dynamics of historical understanding can contribute actively to the shaping of our future, always emphasizing that it can be one of possibilities and alternatives. History, then, is a form of inquiry which is never prescriptive or rigidly predictive about the impact of systems or of events. This chapter will discuss the meaning, nature and scope of history as a subject in general and in this changing scenario in particular. 1.1.2. Meaning of History In its very earliest known uses in human society, history was simply a narrative account of past events. As a word, it entered the English language from the French formulation of histoire, the Latin notion of historia, and the Greek construction of istoria, each of which represented the basic sense of a knowledge of the past. In these early concepts, the sense of history encompassed both an imaginative story of events and a narrative or chronicle of past events. In its early English usage, history and story were generally applied equally to any account of the past, whether of imaginary events or of incidents which were held to be true. Such use of history for imagined or invented events is, of course, a practice which has persisted, at diminishing levels, up to the present. It continues to be embedded especially in imaginative literature, such as the novel. This can take the form of an attempt at fictional realism, as in J. G. Farrell’s 1970s story, The Singapore Grip, which recreates the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941, blending established historical facts with an invented story. Or, it can be the deliberate novelistic fabrication of a “counterfactual” history, as in Robert Harris’s 1980s story, Fatherland, which is based on the premise of Nazi Germany having won the Second World War. From roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards, the meaning of history moved more emphatically towards an account of past real events, and the notion of story drifted towards a set of uses which included less documented accounts of past events, and accounts of purely imagined events or fantasy. History now began to take on the distinctive character or sense of an organized knowledge of the past. The notion of some organization of knowledge of the past was a general extension of the earlier sense of a specific written or oral account. Through the development 4 of this sense of history emerged the distinctly modern meanings and role of historian, historical, and historic. Writers on historiography and culture confirm that in contemporary English, this has become the predominant and lasting general sense of history. At the same time, it is important to note the growth of a further significant conception of history which goes beyond the basic meaning of an organized knowledge of past life. It is difficult to date or to define its intellectual source exactly, but it is the sense of history as something continuous, as human or self-development. This particular stage of thinking is increasingly evident in European thought from around the eighteenth century, and saw early expression in the emergence of new forms of universal histories or world histories, based on the imperial sense of a “discovery” or physical charting of the world. Adopting the argument of the cultural critic, Raymond Williams, the clearest way of projecting this newer post-eighteenth century sense of history is to say that past events are viewed not as specific or bounded histories, but as a continuous and connected process.
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