A Guide to Historical Methodologies
A Brief Primer on Best Practices, for Readers and Writers of History
There are some basics to understanding and appreciating history that also may help prevent one from falling into certain intellectual and ideological traps many find themselves in.
History is, as a field, a deeply human-centric discipline. There is a reason why it has historically been categorized within the field of the Humanities, even as some departments of higher-education over the past century began planting it more and more within the Social Sciences. Though social sciences have seen their problems in recent decades (don’t get me started), it is true that History belongs also—at least to some degree—within that framework as well.
Thus, history has one foot firmly planted in the Humanities and the other foot planted (though by how much is up for debate) in the Social Sciences. The unique placement of history in the intellectual space, then, means that it is part of the Humanities but it also is not. It is part of the Social Sciences but it also is not. It is defined by what it is, but also by what it is not.
Put simply, History is the study of the human experience across time. As an intellectual historian, my emphasis is rooted in the history of ideas. Because I am an early Americanist (a scholar of early American/U.S. history) primarily, the intellectual history I focus on the most is related to matters and events connected to the American Revolution, the crisis period (the era between the end of the Revolution and the new Constitution), and the first few decades of the early republic (also known as the constitutional period), where ideas put to parchment by pen were put into practice.
Certain methodologies I have developed have been helpful for my own work, but I believe they would be a benefit to readers of history as well. With that in mind, the following is a brief listing of methods and standards I use as an historian. I think you may find them useful, as they act as reminders to not become trapped inside partisan orthodoxy and to work to consistently challenge and re-focus one’s attention on matters that are enduring, rather than those things which are shallow and fleeting.
Avoid Engaging in Presentism
This one may be obvious to some, and yet it is a principle that I have had to explain more than once to people with supposedly impressive credentials. Presentism is not something everyone is familiar with, including scholars outside of the field of history. Having a sense of presentism, and knowing how and why to avoid it, is helpful to everyone, both inside and outside of the academy (and outside the historical field). More than just a tool for historical work, it is useful in everyday life when evaluating matters both new and ancient.
Presentism is the act of imposing your modern-day sensibilities, values, and expectations upon figures and events in history. It is something so understandably easy to do that one may question why it should be avoided, or at least tempered. It is because if one is interested in analyzing history with any sense of objectivity whatsoever, one must shed their personal viewpoints—if only momentarily—in order to attempt to assess historical matters with some semblance of neutrality. It is not easy to do. In fact, it can be quite difficult. It is a muscle that needs to be exercised by using it anytime a moment, movement, or event in history is looked upon.
The process of analysis is inherently subjective to some extent. When historians provide analysis of history, they do so—at least at some level—by utilizing their worldview. This is not a reason, however, to reject avoiding presentism. On the contrary, because our analysis is inherently intertwined with our worldview, all the more reason to consciously avoid presentism as much as possible.
“Dis3”
There are three “Disses,” you might say, or there is this “Dis3,” represented in the symbol above, that are also useful when reading or evaluating history. Though these are most useful for practitioners in the field, they should also be of some benefit to readers of history as well.
The three in this category of historical methodology are:
Disabuse
Disambiguate
Dispassion
The origins of the term disabuse are interesting. Though the term abuse is now used almost exclusively to define emotional, psychological, and physical harm upon another person, the word also used to include the harm done by those engaged in deception. Thus, the term disabuse means to relieve people of the misconceptions they have fallen into—whether those misconceptions were innocent mistakes or caused by bad faith actors.
It is thus the historian’s role, and indeed any person who seeks to be historically literate, to disabuse people of the misconceptions of history that lead to misunderstandings about the past, and that lead to misconceptions about our own time as well.
Disambiguate is a linguistic term which I have co-opted for the discipline of history. To disambiguate is to clarify. It is similar to disabuse in that it seeks to resolve errors of confusion, but whereas disabusing is the act of correcting errors of historical fact, to disambiguate is to clarify by disentangling various factors so that they not be conflated unnecessarily. Conflation (believing things are connected when they, in fact, are not) is an enormous challenge in the understanding and appreciation of history, and the disambiguation of terms, figures, and events is a means for providing remedy to such conflation and confusion.
Approaching history with a level of dispassion connects with similar aims of avoiding presentism. Presentism, however, is the act of allowing your modern prejudices and sentiments to color your view of the past. Exercising dispassion is motivated by avoiding your emotions’ impact on your analysis (again, as is humanly possible). Passions are certainly motivated by one’s place in history, but they need not only be matters related to current personal or worldly circumstances. Emotions that derive from a particular religious perspective or something that similarly predates one’s own existence but has nevertheless informed a worldview, may color one’s analysis as well (this can be any given long-held tradition, or indeed one’s vehement rejection of said traditions). For this, the principle of remaining dispassionate can be a useful tool to achieve an understanding that otherwise may become lost if passions (whether ideological or (a)theistic) are left out of check.
It is thus the historian’s role… to disabuse people of the misconceptions of history that lead to misunderstandings about the past, and that indeed lead to misconceptions about our own time as well.
“C3” Historical Methodologies
The C3 Historical Methodologies are:
Complexity
Contingency
Context
Treating any aspect of history as though it is simple to explain and easy to understand is foolish. History is life, and life is complicated. Is your life easy? Is your life free from complexity? Are the things that make up your life perfectly sorted and breezily simple to comprehend? Probably not. So, why do we expect history to be any different? Human beings are incredibly complicated, contradictory, at times—hypocritical, and yet we expect history, which (again) is the study of the human experience across time, to be simple and easily packaged. Let’s calibrate our expectations of history to fit with what we know about how human beings are: complex and sometimes difficult.
A fact of history that many do not grasp is the role of contingency. Nothing in history was inevitable. Nothing is inevitable, including this moment you find yourself in with me—reading these words right now. All of history is a result of unforeseen and innumerable variables, placed in a specific order, bringing us to this moment you and I find ourselves in. This very moment is the result of contingency, as is all of history. It is always useful to keep this in mind.
Perhaps nothing is more important in the understanding and appreciation of history than context. Knowing the antecedents to events allow us to appreciate how and why the event that followed manifested as it did. Similarly, by looking back through history (gaining further knowledge about an event that could have only been discovered in retrospect and in the uncovering of previously unknown data), context empowers us to know, to make sense of our world—which so often feels as though it makes no sense at all.
Let’s calibrate our expectations of history to fit with what we know about how human beings are: complex and sometimes difficult.
With this small handful of tools and methodologies, anyone can develop a better appreciation and understanding of history. These are only some of the instruments in my toolkit, but they are among the best and the most important.
I am currently in the process of finishing a brief how-to guide about writing history and nonfiction. It is a short work that touches on some of these same matters, but also delves more deeply into the writing side of the process. Be on the lookout for installments of that in the future. While finishing my work on that small project, I decided that some of these tools can be useful not merely for those interested in history or writing as a career, but also those who read History Killers—who already have a sense of the importance of history and who may appreciate how these tools could improve their own means of assessing what they read and what they see.
It is very much hoped that some of these things will indeed be helpful to you in the future.
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