Een complete samenvatting van geschiedwetenschap/study of history van de Universiteit Utrecht. Alle leesstof van de werkcolleges is samengevat alle aantekeningen van de hoorcolleges.
Pursuit of History, Ch. 1 by John Tosh
Tosh believes that a clear distinction should be made between social memory and
historical awareness. Since all people are, in a way, historians, their memory should be
acknowledged. However, since our current priorities lead us to highlight some aspects of the
past and to exclude others, our collective memory is somewhat unreliable. The goal of
historians, and therefore historical awareness, is to have a resource with open-ended
application, instead of a set of mirror-images of the present.
Social memory has always laid the foundation of a social group. Social memory has
accurately reflected the rationale of popular knowledge about the past. It has always served
as a rationale for social groupings in order to explain or justify the present. In most illiterate
societies, what counted for historical knowledge was what was handed down from one
generation to the next, often including some particular places and ceremonies. This also
highlights a universal need: if the individual cannot exist without memory, neither can
society, and that goes for large-scale, technologically advanced societies too. Social memory
continues to be an essential means of sustaining a politically active identity. Its success is
judged by how effectively it contributes to collective cohesion and how widely it is shared by
members of the group. However, it should be noted that social memory is not always
excluded. Sometimes, social memory is based on consensus and inclusion, and this is often
the function of explicitly national narratives (f.e. Dunkirk). However, social memory can also
be used to sustain a sense of oppression. For socially deprived or ‘invisible groups’, effective
political mobilization depends on a consciousness of common experiences in the past.
Historicism was only created until the first half of the nineteenth century as the proper way
to study the past. Historicists believed that for one age to understand another, there must
be a recognition that the passage of time has profoundly altered both the conditions of life
ant the mentality of men and woman; they must strive to understand each age on its own
terms and to take on its own value sand priorities instead of imposing ours. This was also
called historical recreation.
Historical awareness rests on the principle of people being aware of their past and
therefore a rather individual principle. Historicism lays on the principle of the three
following ideas:
1. Difference. Recognizing the gulf that separates our own age from all previous
ages. Never rely on anachronism: thinking that the people in the past behaved
and thought as we did. Earlier generations had different values, priorities, fears
and hopes from our own. One way in which we measure our distance from the
past is by periodization. However, this is an act of interpretation and mostly
Eurocentric, and therefore not as reliable.
2. Context. The underlying principle of all historical work is that the subject of our
enquiry must not be wrenched from its setting. Everything in the historian’s
training militates against presenting the past as a fixed single-track sequence of
events; context must be respected at every point.
3. Progress. The relationship between events over time which endows them with
more significance than if they were viewed in isolation. There will always be a
difference between the past and now, but that difference is also made up by a
process of growth, decay and change. There may be abrupt changes like
, revolutions, but there are also many things that have grown over centuries.
Historical awareness rests on the notion of continuum: just as nothing remained
the same in the past, so too our world is the product of history.
Social memory has three significant distorting effects on popular historical knowledge, and
therefore also historical awareness:
1. Tradition. In any society with a dynamic of social or cultural change, an uncritical
respect for tradition is counterproductive. In modern societies, tradition may hold a
sentimental appeal, but to treat it as a guide to life tends to lead to unfortunate
results. Nationalism is an example of this.
2. Nostalgia tends to look at certain aspects in the past that we miss in our own
present. This can be seen as a form of pessimism. Next to that, nostalgia looks at
how we miss certain aspects of the past. Whereas historical awareness should
enhance our insight into the present, nostalgia indulges a desire to escape it.
3. Progress. If nostalgia reflects a pessimistic view of the world, progress is an
optimistic creed, for it asserts not only that change in the past has been for the
better, but that improvement will continue in the future. Progress is a definition
evaluative and partial, since it is premised on the superiority of the present over the
past, it inevitably takes on whatever values happen to be prevalent today, with the
consequence that the past seems less admirable and more primitive the further back
in time we go.
Social memory through history.
- In Ancient Greece they thought everyone descended from the gods. Also, the idea of
citizenship was social memory and the establishment of democracy.
- In the Medieval period, religion was very important in everyday life. Everything you
did surrounded the church.
- In the Early Modern Period, nationalism came up and this is shown in the importance
in e.g. national anthems. Next to that, people started fighting for their independence
and freedom.
- During the Modern Period, the idea of freedom became centralized in society.
- During the Contemporary Era,
Tradition, nostalgia and progress provide the basic constituents of social memory. Each
answers a deep psychological need for security – through seeming to promise no change or
change for the better or an escape into a more congenial past.
Historians also need to act on the difference between social memory and historical
awareness. It follows that one important task of historians is to challenge socially motivated
misrepresentations of the past. However, society may be deeply attached to its faulty vision
of the past, and historians do not make themselves popular whilst pointing this out.
However, the distinction between social memory and history are not as hard as they may
seem. There are significant areas of overlap. Next to that, it is not always possible to
distinguish completely between history and social memory, because historians perform
some of the tasks of social memory. Also, it is important that historians make a distinction
between their work and social memory. Social memory also fully depends on the content of
the memory according to context and priorities and therefore historians should always be
, able to keep a distinction between all of that.
Week 1: Introduction
Historiography
Academic history is based on difference, context and process
Pieter Geyl: ‘History is indeed an argument without end’
Studying historians forms an entry point toward studying the topics they themselves
studied
Academic history vs other forms of studying history e.g. social memory
Academics not only have knowledge, but also need self-reflection: how did you
obtain the knowledge? How valuable is it? What is the source of the knowledge?
Reflection on the study of history itself, what does it entail?
History relies on a human factor: people have different views of the same event,
different experiences, biases. This creates a degree of subjectivity in historical
sources.
History is never certain: ‘facts’ can be challenged by the finding of new texts and
evidence.
In the study of history, we always have to be aware of the limitations of using
sources.
Different periods in time have different questions about history.
Pieter Geyl was born late nineteenth century in the Netherlands, and worked in the
twentieth century.
Father never achieved ambitions and had poor mental health.
Geyl started with study of Dutch literature, considered himself a poet. Joined the
debating club. Eventually developed interest in history, went on an archiving trip to
Venice.
Meanings of history
Res gestae: all the things that have happened.
Historia rerum gestarum: The story about the things that have happened.
Res gestae can be seen as the mass of facts from the past.
Meanings of historiography
1. Writing history
2. History in the second degree
First degree history: a historian studying a topic, e.g. a country
Second degree history: a historian studying how historians studied a certain topic.
Pieter Geyl studied history in the second degree (he studied historians who studied
Napoleon)
Historiography (history in the second degree) can be:
1. On a specific subject
2. The history of history
Geyl was involved in a propaganda war in World War 1, and was part of the
historians who had to make a case against Belgian claims on Dutch territory.
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