What is History?

Over the past three weeks of my second-year college classes, one question has become the antithesis of my studies: “What is History?” In searching for the answer, my classmates and I turned through hundreds of pages that carried various views on Historical work and History as a whole. In his What Is History?, E. H. Carr carefully examines the popular 19th-century view of History known as “wie es eigentlich gewesen”. This is known as the pursuit to recount History and historical facts solely “how it really was”.

Carr reviews this Historical practice, observing that History in this period was best defined as a “Cult of facts,” with little to no room for the Historian and his thoughts as an individual. In a 19th century view of history, even mentioning History being partly subjective would’ve had you laughed out of the room. Carr paints the image of a History governed by objective, infallible, and unquestionable facts. Carr dismantles this 19th-century “fetishization of facts” by highlighting the implicit selection bias in primary source documents, suggesting that our “objective” view of history can’t be built solely on the facts ancient empires chose to include or exclude from their records based on their own “subjective” interpretations.

It is from here that Carr turns to the Historical philosophy of the 20th century, which, in reaction to the faults of its predecessor, adopted the Historian and their subjective interpretation into the Historical process, placing the Historian in the seat of power to rule over facts. Carr’s examinations are synthesized in his conclusion, where he states that his ideal History is neither a cult of facts nor a pure subjective interpretation of facts but rather “a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past”

In addition to E.H. Carr’s What Is History?, Arlette Farge’s The Allure of the Archives provides a view of historical work dedicated to telling the story of the underclass French citizenry, arguing that historians have a responsibility to integrate the forgotten stories of the underclass into collective memory, to speak today for those who couldn’t speak themselves. Similarly, Gayatri Spivak argues that although History has been viewed as an objective collection of facts, in truth it is neither objective nor a collection of facts. Like Carr and Farge, Spivak paints a narrative of collective history built from historical facts, which are carefully selected to reinforce the upper-class narrative. Arguing that the history of impoverished minorities was deliberately carved out and hidden from the collective narrative which we call “History”.

Eventually, the same question these highly educated figures attempted to answer was turned on me: “What is History?” Almost out of instinct, I fell back on the ideas brought forward by our three writers to structure my own interpretation of this impossible question; although written at different times from vastly different perspectives, these three authors share a list of similarities between them. Firstly, these authors explicitly target what I like to call the “Historical establishment,” criticizing how, over time, it has become little more than a cult of facts with no other objective than to provide a biased justification for the circumstances of the present. Unlike these authors, when asked about “history,” I do not begin to think of the Historical establishment; I do not think about professors, universities, documents, or archives, and to the surprise of the 19th-century historian, I do not think of any fact or collection of facts, objective or subjective. The definition of History in my view is much more abstract than that. Salvador Allende, president of Chile in 1970, claimed in his last speech that “La historia es nuestra y la hacen los pueblos,” or “History is ours, and it is made by the people”. This quote serves as part of the foundation for what I believe History is. History is something that exists in the service of the people and their existence. It stands as a guiding force for what we should seek to be, the wrongs we should seek to right, and how we should, as the U.S. Constitution outlines, over time become a “more perfect union.”

History, to me, stands as even more than a shining city on a hill; it’s more than a definition of who we are; it is a weapon against oppression. The existence of the historical record is itself a check on the power of the oppressor; it serves as a collective guide for how to fight their ways of evil, how to extract liberty in a life defined by the pursuit of happiness. There is no replacement in this world for what history does for us.

As I continue to tailor my own answer to this question, I’ve looked back to the writings of Arlette Farge, Gayatri Spivak, and E.H. Carr, asking myself during this second examination which of these philosophies is closest to my own near-metaphysical belief. I’m slightly disappointed in myself that I’m unable to provide such a simple answer to anything asked of me; this is no different. Farge, Spivak, and I all view history as belonging to the most underclass or “subaltern” people in a society, but I differ from them both in major ways. Firstly, Farge and Spivak both adopt a hopeless view about the underclass and their relation to history: that because of their routine oppression and lack of resources, they are unable to properly weaponize history “to speak”. While it is objectively true that “Subaltern” and underclass people have an extremely difficult path to historical representation, many still find this historical representation in the face of stomach-wrenching cruelty. For example, in 1863, an enslaved person named Peter Parks escaped slavery in Louisiana. After a brutal forty-mile crawl, Peter arrived at a Union Army camp and enlisted to fight against the machine of slavery. Peter became an iconic symbol of the abolitionist movement, not because of his daring escape but rather because of a photograph taken of his “scourged back, “ which was covered in keloid scars from relentless assaults by his master. This image of Peter’s back, and his testament of the horrific things he had endured, spread throughout the North and later the South, providing a striking visual for just how disgusting chattel slavery was.

The story of Sergeant Peter, a soldier in the Union Army, serves not only as an exceptional example of how the underclass truly can speak for themselves but also illustrates to us what history, and its study, exists for. History seeks to comb through human morality, showing us what is right, what is wrong, what is good, and what is evil, not through a series of hypothetical thought experiments but through a collective memory of experience. History is a roadmap of who we are, where we’ve been, and where we should go, not just as a collective but also as individuals. Our past is a guardrail for a society barreling down an incomplete highway into a future defined by instability. I often think about how history absolves the heroic people who died in their time, labeled as villains. I think about John Brown and his violent revolt against the institution of slavery and the power lent to it by the U.S. Supreme Court. I think of how he was hanged for the crime of standing against a liberty-engulfing evil, and how we view him today, not as a criminal but as an unyielding supporter of abolitionism. History, and its journey to the present, defends the life and actions of John Brown. History looks at Sergeant Peter and fights to ensure that the disgusting acts of the past are never again committed, to ensure that we improve as humanity. It is my unyielding belief that History is not the past but rather is the greatest power one can master, because it gives one the ability to see shadows of the past in the developing future, and to manipulate present actions to improve that imminent future for themselves and humanity.