Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (6)

What history should we study?

After defending the importance of historical studies as a whole and the validity of historical theories based on sources, the question now comes to - what facets of history has been studied?

Traditionally, history was about the study of key figures such as kings, nobles and generals. They alone would make history and studying their events alone would be able to map out the historical progress. However, historians increasingly realised that this history contour is effectively political history and should not be confused with the full history - these people might have been a key input in how the society evolved, but there are a lot other human and non-human factors involved in shaping the society. In other words, studying the political history alone is too narrow.

A spin-off of studying key figures is that of national-state-focused history, where the emphasis is on the evolution of a nation state or a group of nation states alone (e.g. Europe). While some arrogant historians dismissed non-Europe or American history as peripheral to the world's progress or that little learning would be obtained, the mainstream historians no longer see it that way, and are ready to seek learning from other countries' history. When studying other countries' history, there is also greater consciousness in not studying from a European or American standpoint, but from the target countries' standpoint, so as to avoid a reincarnation of the arrogance.

But if not political or nation-state history, then what history? Quite a lot to choose from, actually. Social history in studying the masses has become popular, but so has the study of economic history and histories into particular genres such as racial history or gender history. The problem now is that the profession is spoilt for choice, with different angles of study for the same topic with similar source materials.

This flourishing of history means that defining a "snap history" for a particular time period of nation state becomes difficult owing to the multiple angles, and there were attempts to co-ordinate these dimensions through tomes that provide a backbone narrative. They were initially useful, but eventually editing them became time-consuming while they invariably contained lots of personal preferences by the authors - these tomes were not impartial narratives but the authors' own view of the nation state or period, decimating their usefulness as a definitive guide. Renewed attempts were to include various perspectives to provoke readers' thoughts, but a more popular alternative is simply for the readers to select a range of text to form their view of the "real narrative".

As the new angles developed, and married with the post modernist view that history are literary stories based on hypotheses about the past, there is a new trend for historians to mix & match different angles to synthesise new angles. This means more variety and complexity, but should be welcomed.

It is by now very difficult for a generalist historian to emerge, as the angles call for specialisation and different angles may not fit with each other for a person to master both. More collaboration is called for, but that also means a more dynamic environment for history to flourish.