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“What is History?” A question that needs a lot of thinking to be done. Before I read the book I thought the definition that best suits the question is “History is a narrative of what civilized men have thought or done in the past” given by Will Durant. EH Carr’s “What is History?” Not only talks about history being an objective work but also talks about how difficult it is to maintain objectivity. To write an objective History, Historians should put aside their views and must be willing to use theories and facts more effectively. Maintaining objectivity is not as easy as it sounds because Historians tend to select those facts which support their hypothesis and remove those which have a high chance of proving their hypothesis wrong, and this automatically leads history to become subjective. Moreover, Carr also compares society and individual History. He says that society should be given more importance as it is in a generalized form. Also, EH Carr discusses History being an Art or Science. He says that history is a combination of both and therefore should be regarded as a social science. Having read the book, I do not think History is just some narratives of what civilized men thought or did rather I feel that it is beyond narrating the past.
Having read the book “what is history?” I now understand that History is not just a narrative about what civilized men thought or did in the past because writing history includes a series of collections of facts and a lot of intellectual interpretations. EH Carr says that every interpretation does not have to be as good as others, but the type of interpretation done can only be judged by proper methods. And the proper methods include getting the correct evidence and how the Historians use this particular evidence to make judgments for their long-term vision that is for the past as well as for the future. Previously I thought that History was all about narrating past events but now I understand that it’s more about collecting the correct facts and knowing how to interpret them to the best. But when we say collecting facts EH Carr says that not all facts are Historical facts and therefore one needs to understand which facts to use because facts give more accurate data. So I now understand that it is very essential for Historians to make proper use of facts to prove their points.
Moreover, history needs to be written keeping objectivity in mind. EH Carr also focuses on the idea of objectivity and asks a significant question of whether it is possible for Historians to achieve complete objectivity. To light on that he says that historians select their facts based on the hypothesis and deliberately cuts out the information that would prove their hypothesis incorrect. This immediately makes their work subjective. He also says that History cannot be written unless the historians have directly collected information from the person about whom he is writing. Having learned this, I now realize that if history needs to be objective then it isn’t just a narrative about past events. Because narratives could include subjectivity and the historian’s point of views which is not appropriate in writing History. And also writing narrative history could include the omission of certain facts and data that the historian doesn’t find necessary. As a learner, I think this knowledge is important for me because developing neutrality as a history student is a must. Though achieving complete objectivity isn’t really possible I will try my best to be more objective and less subjective.
Carr in his book puts forward a really important question of history being an art or a science. Though he says that science is mainly focused on facts and that history is more about interpretations and a little bit of imagination, he still says that history is a combination of both because both disciplines work with a hypothesis and try their best to prove it with proper evidence. But if history was a narration it would never be regarded as social science therefore history is not just a mere narration. Before I read this book, I never imagined that history could go side by side with science but now I understand that history isn’t a supporting subject and that writing history involves proper methods and that is the specialty of history.
After reading “What is History?” by EH Carr, my opinion on history has completely changed. I understand that history is more than just stories and events about the past. History is more about how you interpret the events to the best and the type of facts collected has a great influence on writing history. Though achieving complete objectivity in writing history is somewhat a mission impossible I think it’s more important to understand how to interpret the facts that we collected and try to be as neutral as we can. Being biased is not a quality of a great Historian! Further, I got to understand why history should be regarded as social science and how important it is to prove a hypothesis correct to historians. The most important knowledge that I got as a learner is that history is not just a mere narrative about great people in the past or it isn’t about some events that took place in the past, rather it's more about how analytically we discuss the events and how well we can interpret the data. After all, interpretation is the main charm of writing history.
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