I was 33 years old when I realized I was living in a different era from my past. My 1950s world of big skirts with felt poodles, petticoats, and even hoops; of sweltering at school in May and June because there was no air conditioning; of 45 rpm records; of going to the drugstore soda fountain and choosing vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream—all had been part of a different epoch.
Yes, I had been a young adult during the turbulent ‘60s (and was part of the turbulence), but I hadn’t experienced them as anything other than one year following the previous one, like day follows day, even if those days were tumultuous. It took twenty years for me to see my past as part of a distinct period, one that was gone.
Historians, however, routinely chop up time—they have to.
The protocol for most history articles is to begin with a critique of previous historians’ writing or to note that they have missed something important. Most historians do this politely. Sometimes though, exchanges can be heated, even a bit nasty. It isn’t all dull behind the covers of the Economic History Review.
I’ve seen two such debates in my limited experience—an animated conversation with just barely contained hostility. In both cases, the conflicts were between a “social” and an “economic” historian and between a man and a woman. Here’s a summary of one. [1]
In 2004, economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie criticized a new approach to the history of pre-modern guilds—“rehabilitation” literature that painted guilds as contributing to economic efficiency rather than being merely self-interested monopolists (as economists had been saying for years). She called these “stimulating perspectives,” but they needed to be“tested against alternative theories,” which she then proceeded to do with an empirical study of a weavers’ guild in southwestern Germany. Nothing was untoward in her remarks.
A few years later, S. R. Epstein replied. First, he said that Ogilvie used merely a “single—arguably even singular” example. Her goal was to “demolish a view now held by a majority of scholars with relevant expertise in early modern economic history.” “[H]er article not only misrepresents essential elements of modern international scholarship” but also “fails to address significant elements of her [own] selected study.” All that in one paragraph.
In a sense, all historical writing is revisionist. In their writing, most historians attempt to show that some aspect of history has been slighted, ignored, or undiscovered, and they have come up with a remedy. Sometimes, though, revisionist history is very powerful.
In his 1992 book The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy offered a revisionist view of the Protestant Reformation in England. His goal was to “contribute a shovelful of history to the burial of the venerable historiographical consensus” about the English Reformation.[1]
That consensus (which echoes the “whig version” of history challenged by Herbert Butterfield) pictured an open-minded, modern religion (Protestantism) replacing a superstitious, populist “folk” religion (Catholicism). Historians, says Duffy, were under the sway of A. G. Dickens, the “doyen of English Reformation studies,” who disdained what Duffy calls “late [Catholic] medieval piety.” Duffy’s 654-page volume (which I am reading for a class this fall) was designed to restore respect for Catholic England, and apparently it did.
Over my lifetime I have loved reading history—especially big-themed books about the rise of the Western world and the causes of the Industrial Revolution. No, I did not expect to duplicate that kind of subject matter when I started an academic course of history.
I expected instead some chunky medium-sized themes in European history. I thought I would learn things like why the Hapsburgs fell, what caused World War I, why did the German states take so long to form a nation, why did France have so many credit problems, and why was the Hanseatic League successful?
My expectations were off-base. Had I been starting an undergraduate history major, such (yes, some unanswerable) questions might have been subjects of discussion. But graduate school is different. The emphasis is more on writing (especially a thesis) than on acquiring facts. Indeed, if I dare say so, the success path for graduate students and other researchers is to find something that no one has noticed before, research it, and then prove it shouldn’t be obscure at all! Continue reading “I Learn What Graduate Courses Are About”
The Internet has transformed research. But until I began taking college classes again, I didn’t understand how much an academic library can help me take advantage of it.
If you use Google Scholar, you come upon rich sources of information, but unless you have an avenue through a library, many of them are closed to you. As a student at NC State Library, I can check a box and every listing to which NC State has arranged a relationship will be marked “Find Text at NC State.”
I just found online the complete 1744 “Essay Presented, or a Method Humbly Proposed, to the Consideration of the Honorable the Members of Both Houses of Parliament by an English Woolen Manufacturer…” (a petition for subsidies). I can’t link you to it because of its limited access; nor can I give you access to the multitude of articles I have read from journals such as Past and Present, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of French Historical Studies, etc. Reaching this treasure trove is not cheap. You have to take at least one course ($2600 at the graduate level) but you are treated like a king.
