Recovering History

According to Dictionary.com, Historiography is “the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.” Or, it is “the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation;  methods of historical scholarship.”  Historiography, therefore, is the study of historical study.  While a future post may tackle historiography, it is important to establish the word’s definition for the sake of this post. 

Richard Evans, in his book In Defense of History, discusses a number of facets to the study of history.  Specifically in Chapter 6, he analyzes society and the individual in relation to the occurrence and study of history.  Evans states that, after its professionalization in the 19th century, history “was emphatically the political history of the nation-state and its relations with other nation-states (Evans, 161).” History was the study of warfare, politics, economics, and the migration of groups of people across the globe.  

This early history is at a macro level sticking predominately to whole countries, regions, or the globe in general.  “Bottom up” history is at a micro level focusing on the individual, the action, or the minute circumstances of an event.  Furthermore, this history is focusing less on the “great person” of history wherein it avoids speaking specifically about those in power.  “Bottom Up” history is about how the lower strata of society lived, and how they shaped or were shaped by historical happenings.  Traditional history looks at that macro level, perhaps discussing the movement of armies and major battles.  This micro level, bottom up approach focuses on the individual soldiers who made up those armies.  Their thoughts, feelings, material culture, and actual culture are all fair game in the study of how that lower strata of society exists.  

Historians who focus on how the bottom majority lived seek to recreate, interpret, and preserve a history which was often overlooked by historians of the past.  This new approach from the bottom up came to be called the  “New Social History” as it was developed in the mid-twentieth century (Cheng, 136).  Social History identifies what E.P. Thompson states in his The Making of the English Working Class.  Thompson argues in the book that in England “the working class made itself as much as it was made (Thompson, 194).”  This is the root of the New Social History and the “Bottom Up” school of thought.  

The scholarly community now understands that history is not only made by the “Great Hero” of past generations. Rather it is made by the relationships, interactions, and perspectives of all of those who experienced or recorded it regardless of their place in society. Evans argues through In Defense of History that “relating a source to its contexts depends above all on what questions one is asking of it (Evans, 159).” Social History, from the bottom up, asks a different set of questions from those of the past ultimately providing a fresh perspective of past historical events and interpretations.

Works Cited:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/historiography

Richard Evans, In Defense of History (London, UK: Granta Books, 1997), 161.

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, UK: Victor Gollancz, Ltd, 1965), 194.

Eileen Cheng, Historiography: an Introductory Guide (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2012), 136.

Evans, 161.