The Historian and His Facts

“What is history?, is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts…”

Despite E.H Carr saying some rather extreme things about facts His conclusion to this particular chapter “The Historian and His Facts” Summarizes quite beautifully, the relationship a Historian needs to have with his subject.

When one looks at facts one can assume that they are subjective. When we look at what EH Carr has to say we realize that a fact is only something someone else has prioritized and made a historical fact. To understand a fact we must know where it came from and in what context did our documenter choose to interpret it. “History never comes to us pure it is always refracted from the mind of the recorder.” Thus our concerns should lie with the historian and not the facts.

In my opinion everything needs to stem from somewhere. We must assume certain things are true to begin discussion and take topics further. If one is to doubt all previous statements then how does one move further? To start using certain facts as a base could also lead to someone else critiquing your work and taking it to another level.

What I’m trying to get at stems from foucault’s theory of discourse. All human beings feed off each other through means of communication. Small ideas turn into earth shattering change that could effect us all just by conversation. The beginning need not be where it ends up but it is always a place to start. Facts work as triggers to stimulate ones mind into thinking about what they say.

Eventually it is the ‘why’ that matters, all of this stemming from the ‘how’ and the ‘where’ etc.

“All history is the History of thought” It is all based on the Historians Interpretation of facts. However, let us take for example the Oral History tradition In India. Stories, songs and theater have been passed down for generations through families, disciples, marriage etc. For every generation that gains this knowledge some gets left behind and some considered worth remembering. A lot of stories, songs etc are changed to suite modern society and its outlook o the world. Yet the underlying structure and its essential meaning remain the same. A hundred year old song could be sung very differently now but it will still have the same emotion as when it was first created. A lot has changed but some of the basic foundations remain the same, allowing the artist to grow, change and contradict, as he gets more knowledgeable.

This Brings me back to EH Carr’s quote: A historian is someone who interacts with his facts. “The function of the historian is neither to love the past or emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it is a key to the understanding of the present”. A historian must have a symbiotic relationship with his subject leaving him open to change and vice-versa. This relationship is what constitutes good documentation, it is always a work in progress