How and why do we write history? Introduction by PN

Allegory of the truth, time and history by Goya (1800)

How does a society consider its past? We have seen how “cultural heritage” is not just “old buildings”; physical vestiges of the past are made use of by people today: these vestiges have symbolic value, they are used for instance to remember or even commemorate events. How we preserve and use those vestiges, how we perpetuate or reinvent traditions, says a lot about what a society is like today, its values, and the power relations between individuals and groups.

How historians, novelists, journalists, diarists write about the past also says a lot about the world view of a people today. Why do we recall certain events (often very partially) at certain times? Because it is useful for someone to do so? Why do we “forget” others? Because it is necessary?

Historic events are not set in stone but have changing meaning for society (it is a social construct). We are going to carry out an historiographic study of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA using the  articles and references contained in this blog. The idea is to show that there have been different interpretations (reinterpretations) over time of the Civil Rights Movement; we will try to understand why it has been perceived differently at different periods.

What historians choose to study, what aspects he brings out (discovers), the way he presents the research results (popular, erudite?), what use is made of the discoveries, the way historical “fact” is communicated (e.g. in graphic novel form), is underpinned by ethical and political considerations. 

Historians, for the most part, try to give objective, complete, honest accounts of past events (i.e. adopting a scientific approach). But historians do not just satisfy their intellectual curiosity; some are committed intellectuals (politically engaged). They feel they have to let others know their opinion on past events (the “truth” from their point of view). Their job is to be the “memory” of a people (“My job is to tear down the veil on facts too terrible to mention”, dixit Toni Morrison)...

Sometimes, the knowledge and opinion of historians is sought to resolve contentious legal cases (e.g. in the trials of suspected Nazi war criminals), or to contradict revisionist accounts of the Shoah, or to remind a nation of its attitude and behavior during a certain period of its history (e.g. collaboration under the Nazi occupation of France, or torture on prisoners carried out by the French army during the Algerian war).

Historians are sometimes consulted as regards commemorations; what and how should events be remembered? Also on issues of national contrition; should a country apologize for a nation’s past attitudes (as regards for example slavery or the Vel d’Hiv events).

The relation of a social group to its past is one of questioning: what were we like, what have we become? It is also one of selecting: we focus on past events that justify present preoccupations, i.e. we have a selective (collective) memory. Finally, it is one of simplification; the past is often depicted as “glorious” to prove the superior values of a people today, or it is even sometimes invented to give historic “depth” to a region’s identity (cf. the “invention” of the history of the Vendée region in France).

The past is simplified in order to make it easier to understand, so that it becomes a part of a collective identity; it needs to be spectacular, associated with particular places, key figures, decisive moments… Historians know that history is more complex than that; many people took part in or witnessed an event, commented it afterwards, in fact turned it into an “event”. Most people have a simple (simplistic) take on “the past”; for them, “history” is “great men” and a few action-movie-like heroic events that prove we were/are the best!

The historian’s job is to try and understand and to explain what happened in the past; he is not a moralist, but the knowledge he elaborated can be used by intellectuals, politicians, people, to think about attitudes, opinions and moral positions, not just in the past, but today. The way history is studied and presented is never neutral; school textbooks in particular are often subject to controversy because they are instrumental in shaping national attitudes.

Memory (individual, family, or a social group’s memory) is not history (though an historian can make use of memory in his studies) because memory is selective (things are “forgotten”) and more to do with feelings than fact. Collective memory (i.e. a shared - but partial - knowledge of the past) is contradictory (individuals do not always agree on “what happened”) and, as said, selective. A good example of this is depicted in the 1969 documentary “Le chagrin et lapitié” by Marcel Ophuls. It is about how the French suffered after the Second World war from a sort of collective amnesia (described by the author Henri Rousso as the “syndrome de Vichy”) as regards the four years of German occupation; most people described themselves as victims or resistance fighters rather than collaborators…

Collective as well as individual memory is a sort of dialogue with ourselves, a reflection on who we think we are and on how we have changed. The historian can contribute through his “objective” reconstruction of the past to this introspection. He sometimes reminds us of unpleasant truths about who we were. In France, political leaders (Presidents) have since the 1990s made it their duty to remind the French of the darker side of their past: colonization, slavery, collaboration, torture during the Indo-Chinese and Algerian wars, etc. Special days and places have been designated (“lieux de mémoire”) as means of commemorating those past somber events and to maintain a collective conscience (based on honesty and transparency).

Most historians seek the truth, but they know it can never be the whole picture; it is very difficult to know "what happened" exactly, to understand and explain it. Sources are incomplete, partial. The historian is not always able to give a complete picture, because he tries to show or prove something in particular. He has a particular way of looking at things; he might be a feminist, a Marxist, a specialist in one type of historical analysis or other, etc. A past event will be interpreted according to prevalent research objectives and methods. These are conditioned by the preoccupations and values of the society in which the historian works. Howard Zinn, describing his work as an historian in writing “A People’s History of the USA” said: “I knew that a historian… was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian”.