The Historian And His Facts By Edward Hallet Carr
Historians often come across different evidence on the same subject. However, this does not necessarily mean one would be considered more “correct” than the other. History is recorded through the eyes of the historian and therefore inevitably prone to human error. In the essay “The Historian and His Facts”, Edward Hallet Carr presents to his readers the limitations inherent in the study of history and the relationship between the historian and his or her facts. Carr makes use of historical accounts throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century in attempts to explain a noticeable paradigm shift over time. He then goes on to present three neglected truths about the role of historians. First, Carr believed history was more than just gathering
facts. History never came to us pure, it was the historian’s task to select which facts deserved to be shown; the facts attained by the historian were to be interpreted and analyzed based on their importance towards historical knowledge. Second, from Carr’s perspective, historians did not merely discover historical facts rather they created the facts “for the minds of the people with whom the historian is dealing”. He mentions how “Neutrality in history is impossible”, viewing history as something that is made, not born. Therefore, historical accounts may overlap and clash, and the better interpretation would be based on the historian himself. Third, “we can view the past and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present”. The understanding of the historian’s past is crucial as the historian accounts for the event through his worldview. Culture, politics, and ideas of the past can never be divorced from the historian, as these are the means he or she interprets relevance. Towards the end of his essay, Carr mentions the dangers of total skepticism. Although history has been viewed through different perspectives, it does not mean everything recorded is in the right; “it does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape at all or an infinity of shapes”. Carr argued that historians have an obligation to be as fair-minded as possible when interpreting evidence from the past.
facts. History never came to us pure, it was the historian’s task to select which facts deserved to be shown; the facts attained by the historian were to be interpreted and analyzed based on their importance towards historical knowledge. Second, from Carr’s perspective, historians did not merely discover historical facts rather they created the facts “for the minds of the people with whom the historian is dealing”. He mentions how “Neutrality in history is impossible”, viewing history as something that is made, not born. Therefore, historical accounts may overlap and clash, and the better interpretation would be based on the historian himself. Third, “we can view the past and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present”. The understanding of the historian’s past is crucial as the historian accounts for the event through his worldview. Culture, politics, and ideas of the past can never be divorced from the historian, as these are the means he or she interprets relevance. Towards the end of his essay, Carr mentions the dangers of total skepticism. Although history has been viewed through different perspectives, it does not mean everything recorded is in the right; “it does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape at all or an infinity of shapes”. Carr argued that historians have an obligation to be as fair-minded as possible when interpreting evidence from the past.