“all history is history of thoughts”, says the author. I might agree to this up to a great extent but the question I would ask is whose thoughts is it? Does the authority of history solely belong to “the historian” or there is another aspect to it. Locating this in a slightly bigger picture I see an institution working. An institution with institutionalized thoughts shaping various kinds of intellects, one of which is “the historian”.
So is History an institution by itself and those thoughts are all that matters to the institution?
This is clearly argued that History has no option but to be subjective. The subjectivity is discussed right from the point when history is facts in some documents. “No document can tell us more than what the author of document thought”, says the author. Somewhere he discusses morality in construct of history by saying that, “History can not be written unless the historian can achieve one kind of contact with the mind of people about whom he is writing”
This adds a completely spiritual element to the process, the manifestation of which cannot be analyzed.
Facts have their interpretations as information and the hierarchy to present that is set by the historian. There is no one objective ideology for that interpretation. Not only is the existence of subjectivity, but understanding the dynamics of it is quite difficult. How far can you protect the Ideology behind the subjectivity (of facts and of interpretation) from not being an agenda? Or define History by just its institution to counter the confusion caused by subjectivity, and have the information in true spirit of its provider, that is the author, the historian ?
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