In Defense of History

Rating:
Summary: Engaging, scholarly refutation of the post-modern attack
Review: +AH4-A most enjoyable and stimulating review of the purpose, methods and practice of history. Professor Evans is most adept at exposing fallacies and contradictions in the post-modern critique of history; while at the same time pointing out how some concepts of postmodernism can bring a breath of fresh air to history. His discussion of sources is excellent. He colorfully reviews individual historians and their methods and thoughts; not holding back where criticsm is needed. His analysis of the Paul+AH4-+AH4- De Man controversy seemed right on the money. A wonderful overview of the current state of history with emphasis on postmodern attacks, with a staunch and stout defense of the classical, objective center.+AH4-

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: Evans sets out to defend to "history" from its deconstructionist, post-modern critics, and, simultaneously, aspires to replace the English historiographic standards, written by Edward H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton. Evans, repeatedly and insistently, dismisses the deconstructionist critique as a form of "extreme relativism." This is unfortunate, because they have important points to make, regarding what, in olden days, might have been called, the epistemology of history. The deconstructionists are, typically, glibly provocative, superficial, prone to introducing opaque jargon and unjustifiably arrogant. One can certainly understand why Evans might be angry with them, and impatient.

The deconstructionist critique of history, however, has important insights to offer, however. "History" in its classic form, is a dramatic, interpretative narrative. A simple-minded claim to "objectivity" in history is unsupportable; the "objects" of real events are incredibly numerous, long-gone and did not really occur within a context of future events. "History" is always highly selective in retelling events, and always looking for meaning, drawn from subsequent events. ("The historian remembers the future and imagines the past.") Evans will not or cannot let loose or revise his belief in "objectivity" as a standard of value, however, and rails against the deconstructionists as "extreme relativists" for trying to make him consider it.

Without fully crediting the deconstructionists, he adopts their methods to demolish the pretentious historiography of a previous generation, represented (on the left) by Edward H. Carr and (on the right) by Geoffrey Elton. Although it is clear that he aspires to provide a replacement for the classic works of Carr and Elton, for use in graduate seminars everywhere, the book he provides leaves much to be desired.

Comfortable with the methods of the professional interpreter and processor of historical source material, and defensive of the value of those methods, he seems to be at a bit of loss, when it comes to the methods of composing a narrative. (It is, of course, at this higher level of abstraction, where the deconstructionists have aimed their missiles.) Rather lamely, he ends his book, with the defiant assertion, ". . . I will look humbly at the past and say, despite them all: it really happened, and we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical, find out how it did and reach some tenable conclusions about what it all meant."

I cannot help, feeling great disappointment. Mistaking the deconstructionist criticism as "relativism," he has foregone the opportunity to really come to grips with the fundamental nature of the historical enterprise. What is the nature of "historical truth"? It is certainly not "objective" in any simple-minded sense. No historian can be without a point of view, nor should any be allowed to pretend to be. The meaningful interconnections created by a dramatic narrative have no correspondence with any observable "event" in the past -- they could not possibly have such a correspondence, for a variety of reasons, literary and scientific. (Hume established that the operation of cause and effect are never directly observable in the 18th century! You don't have to be a post-modernist to see that the "truth" of history can be problematic.)

Evidently too frightened by these challenges to think, Evans brands the deconstructionists as extreme relativists, and proceeds to demolish the value of extreme relativism. Evans spends a lot of time shooting fish in the barrel of "extreme relativism," without realizing that the postmodernists and deconstructionists are not swimming in that barrel. He delights in turning the methods of deconstructionist critique on the critics, demonstrating to his own satisfaction, if no one else's, that the deconstructionists are hypocrits at best, for denying "any" value, and then turning around and asserting the value of their own frameworks. It never seems to occur to him that the deconstructionists, despite their glib provocations, are not hypocrits, because they are not, in fact, extreme relativists.

Failing to tackle the epistemological challenges, Evans misses the opportunity to begin laying a solid foundation for historiography. It is terribly unfortunate, because he has intelligence, wit and the great advantage of professional competence and experience, all of which are evident throughout this book.

He offers some useful insights and comments along the way, and his passion is evident. I still wish that,instead of the courage of his convictions, he had shown more courage to question his convictions.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: Evans sets out to defend to "history" from its deconstructionist, post-modern critics, and, simultaneously, aspires to replace the English historiographic standards, written by Edward H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton. Evans, repeatedly and insistently, dismisses the deconstructionist critique as a form of "extreme relativism." This is unfortunate, because they have important points to make, regarding what, in olden days, might have been called, the epistemology of history. The deconstructionists are, typically, glibly provocative, superficial, prone to introducing opaque jargon and unjustifiably arrogant. One can certainly understand why Evans might be angry with them, and impatient.

The deconstructionist critique of history, however, has important insights to offer, however. "History" in its classic form, is a dramatic, interpretative narrative. A simple-minded claim to "objectivity" in history is unsupportable; the "objects" of real events are incredibly numerous, long-gone and did not really occur within a context of future events. "History" is always highly selective in retelling events, and always looking for meaning, drawn from subsequent events. ("The historian remembers the future and imagines the past.") Evans will not or cannot let loose or revise his belief in "objectivity" as a standard of value, however, and rails against the deconstructionists as "extreme relativists" for trying to make him consider it.

Without fully crediting the deconstructionists, he adopts their methods to demolish the pretentious historiography of a previous generation, represented (on the left) by Edward H. Carr and (on the right) by Geoffrey Elton. Although it is clear that he aspires to provide a replacement for the classic works of Carr and Elton, for use in graduate seminars everywhere, the book he provides leaves much to be desired.

Comfortable with the methods of the professional interpreter and processor of historical source material, and defensive of the value of those methods, he seems to be at a bit of loss, when it comes to the methods of composing a narrative. (It is, of course, at this higher level of abstraction, where the deconstructionists have aimed their missiles.) Rather lamely, he ends his book, with the defiant assertion, ". . . I will look humbly at the past and say, despite them all: it really happened, and we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical, find out how it did and reach some tenable conclusions about what it all meant."

I cannot help, feeling great disappointment. Mistaking the deconstructionist criticism as "relativism," he has foregone the opportunity to really come to grips with the fundamental nature of the historical enterprise. What is the nature of "historical truth"? It is certainly not "objective" in any simple-minded sense. No historian can be without a point of view, nor should any be allowed to pretend to be. The meaningful interconnections created by a dramatic narrative have no correspondence with any observable "event" in the past -- they could not possibly have such a correspondence, for a variety of reasons, literary and scientific. (Hume established that the operation of cause and effect are never directly observable in the 18th century! You don't have to be a post-modernist to see that the "truth" of history can be problematic.)

Evidently too frightened by these challenges to think, Evans brands the deconstructionists as extreme relativists, and proceeds to demolish the value of extreme relativism. Evans spends a lot of time shooting fish in the barrel of "extreme relativism," without realizing that the postmodernists and deconstructionists are not swimming in that barrel. He delights in turning the methods of deconstructionist critique on the critics, demonstrating to his own satisfaction, if no one else's, that the deconstructionists are hypocrits at best, for denying "any" value, and then turning around and asserting the value of their own frameworks. It never seems to occur to him that the deconstructionists, despite their glib provocations, are not hypocrits, because they are not, in fact, extreme relativists.

Failing to tackle the epistemological challenges, Evans misses the opportunity to begin laying a solid foundation for historiography. It is terribly unfortunate, because he has intelligence, wit and the great advantage of professional competence and experience, all of which are evident throughout this book.

He offers some useful insights and comments along the way, and his passion is evident. I still wish that,instead of the courage of his convictions, he had shown more courage to question his convictions.

Rating:
Summary: I Can't Match The Erudition Of Your Other Reviewers But....
Review: I came across this book purely by chance as someone with a BA in history (from almost 40 years ago) who remembered much enjoying EH Carr's What Is History. Well, although he is prone to repetition, I think Evans writes wonderfully well and most persuasively, matches his views with those of a succession of historians, some well known to me and others not at all. As a jury trial lawyer, I relished the similarities and differences in our two professions--as, for example, Evans's reference to Flaubert who said that a historian drinks an ocean only for the purpose of producing a cupful of piss.

Rating:
Summary: In defense of popular history it is!
Review: Now, it's surely pathetic to be sermoned by Evans, an inept, lazy charlatan scholar on the intricacies of historography, bearing in mind that he's notorious for NOT doing any researches on archival materials, infamous for ripping off others' insights, and bent on resconstructing the past with his present misconceptions, prejuidices and idiosyncracies.

Rating:
Summary: Enigmatically Oblique
Review: Richard Evans is a British historian. In this book he sets out a considered course for the practice of history, one that aims to pursue a course between the twin evils of overly conservative, objective positivism and a left-leaning, liberal postmodernism. The book has been billed as a defence of history against its more postmodernist abusers but I don't think this is true. Evans attacks the sterility of fellow British historians Sir Geoffrey Elton and E.H. Carr (and American historian Gertrude Himmelfarb) as much as he attacks a Hayden White, Keith Jenkins or Frank Ankersmit (all devils in disguise to conservative historians).

For all this I don't think that Evans says much for all the ink he has spilt. What perseveres through Evans' prose is nothing more (but perhaps nothing more is needed) than Evans' belief that we can do history, we can get at what happened in the past and we can deal critically, and beneficially, with the materials at our disposal. Evans writes what amounts to a defence of "doing history" as oppsed to theorising about history. Indeed, Evans is not hot on theory (he should perhaps steer clear of it in future) and his less than ample interaction with his opponents of the postmodernist persuasion in this book suggests to this reader that he is more of a distant acquaitance of their work than an intimate. A historian's rule of thumb comes into play here: if they mention something but don't interact with it to any great degree then assume they don't really know much about it.

Evans is largely an irenic and uncontroversial supporter of a broadly conservative historical approach. He is in defence of all the traditional (that is, post-Enlightenment) things such as "facts", "objectivity" and "truth" whilst espousing a weak acceptance of some postmodernist proposals. Evans' usual trick here is to claim that actually the benefits of a lightly-worn postmodernism (such as accepting that historians affect and colour their own historical researches) are actually things that all real historians knew all along anyway. This is a neat, if obvious, trick and sometimes he almost gets away with it.

I have one major complaint. Evans repeatedly refers to "postmodernist hyper-relativism" but he never tells us what this is either briefly or, which would be more satisfactory, in detail. Once again, Evans might be proffering a phantom menace. At the very least it allows us, story-like, to conjure up our own historical demon to fight against as we read. In the end one is left with the conviction that theorists should theorise and historians like Evans should get on with DOING history. Personally I think that Evans' history books are a better defence of "history" (whatever that is, again he never defines) than this book turns out to be.

Rating:
Summary: Not the last word but enjoyable and provocative.
Review: There has been an ongoing and vigorous debate in the philosophy of history for the last thirty or so years concerning the ways in which postmodernism should or should not impact the writing of history.
In this delightfully polemical book, Richard Evans does not try to engage the writings of the major postmodernists. Do not expect to find counterarguments to the writings of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard or de Certeau. It is in the writings of thinkers like Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, Dominick LaCapra, Keith Jenkins, Elizabeth Ermath, Joan Scott, etc. that the major claims of the postmodernists have been made for history in the English speaking world. It is with their writings that Evans engages in debate. This does not, however, put him in the camp of conservatives like Gertrude Himmelfarb, John Vincent, David Harlan and Keith Windschuttle.
Evans is arguing for a middle position- one that emphasizes the recalcitrance of the "facts", i.e., the historical records. Evans denies that all of history is interpretation and that no one interpretation is better than any other. He believes that careful and honest shifting of the historical record will show some or one interpretations to be better grounded in that record than others. On the other hand, he is excited by some of the possibilities for history that have been opened up by those working historians whose work he admires and who are identified with the postmodern camp, e.g., Simon Schama, Theodore Zeldin and Orlando Figes.
One of the main points of his critique is that Evans feels that postmodernism removes the possibility of any sort of critical perspective- he reiterates the old point that if there is no grounds to prefer one interpretation over another, if there is no such thing as a fact than there is no reason to prefer the views of the standard histories of the Holocaust over those of a denier, e.g., David Irving.
This is not the best of the books I have read recently on historiography. Berkhofer's Beyond the Great Story retains that distinction. It does have the advantage of being very well written, very clear in it's presentation and quite enjoyably feisty. Evans' style is like that of a good lightweight- constantly circling, jabbing his opponents, sensing a weakness and then throwing the combination.
If you think my pugilistic metaphor to be inappropriate, ... for a series of short essays Evans wrote in reply to his many and equally nasty critics. This site is probably the best way to figure out if this book is for you.
As for me, I have come to realize that this is a debate without end. Evans did not really settle anything for me. Neither has anyone else I have read lately. He does give you a lot to think about and he points the reader in the direction of a lot of interesting work done by other people.

Rating:
Summary: Too Defensive
Review: This book is a sensible (if somewhat repetitive and meandering) defense of mainstream historiography against the claims of post-modernists. I gave the book four stars instead of five because Evans is defensive to a fault and too respectful of post-modernism, which is one of the dopier intellectual fads of the late 20th century. Historians have always known that documents must be read critically, and that extra-historiographical considerations can shape the way source materials are interpreted. This element of "looseness" and subjectivity is an invitation to rational discussion of the documentary record, not proof that rational discussion is impossible. Working historians should treat post-modernism the way working scientists treat it: by ignoring it and going about their work.