We revisited an old chestnut this week, during a KCL colleague’s fascinating seminar on Kenya during the Mau Mau revolt: what’s the point of using theory in an essentially historical account?
In an interdisciplinary department, this is always good for a laugh. I was heavily outnumbered by historians, who, you’d think, would have learned by now that that they have to apply concepts in order to avoid being ad hoc storytellers. Apparently not. I tactfully pointed out that they were suffering from groupthink, but to no avail.
Don’t get me wrong, too often you see spurious theorising jammed in ahead of some more-or-less detached primary material – very often that’s true of work converted from the PhD. Nonetheless, I don’t think you need to see history as social science rather than as a humanities subject in order to conceive of it as a theoretical exercise, rather than an old-fashioned trawl through the archive material, presented in engaging prose style. Aside from beach reading, we left narrative history behind some time ago – even in military history. Indeed, Clausewitz gave a good kick up the behind of atheoretical military historians some years ago, even if it thereafter took some time for the message to sink in.
Anyway, I picked up Bruce Berman’s book on Control and Crisis in Kenya, recommended by Huw Bennett in the seminar. Here’s what a man who includes the dread word ‘Dialectic’ in his subtitle has to say on the matter:
The historical evidence with which we have to work consists largely of the unavoidably subjective records or observations of human experience, whether in official or private archives, the accounts of journalists or travellers, interviews with surviving participants or traditional oral accounts. And such evidence, as any scholar who has worked with it well knows, is almost always incomplete, if not fragmentary, and often maddeningly inconclusive or contradictory. Pattern, process or structure in history do not emerge from the evidence through a process of inductive inference. The facts, as sociologists of science have repeatedly demonstrated in recent years, do not speak for themselves, but only through more or less explicit theoretical concepts and assumptions that guide their selection, suggest their relationships and render them meaningful. This intellectual apparatus must be supplied by the analyst, as explicitly as possible, before the collections and evaluation of the evidence begins. Otherwise our ability to develop a reflexive, self-awareness of the conceptual and methodological bases of historical analysis and critically evaluate the results of employing one or another theoretical approach are seriously compromised.
Quite so. Those who disavow explicit theorising in their research are nonetheless engaged in theorising – they just don’t want to admit it. I consider that a gauntlet dispatched to the feet of my historical friends, and look forward to their thoughts.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m a diplomatic and environmental historian writing my dissertation on the Second Indochina War, and I couldn’t agree more! My research is on the Kennedy administration – only 2+ years – and yet the official documents, oral histories, memoirs, etc. are voluminous. I don’t know how I’d even know where to look, or what I was looking at, if I didn’t have some sort of theoretical compass. Not every historian shares this view, of course, but I’m not sure how anyone in the diplomatic/foreign policy/political history world could refute it. Without some theory of animals, you’d never know that the blind men are talking about an elephant.
Thanks for raising this issue.
Evelyn
One can construct a theory around historical material but such a constrct is only credible when it sucessfully competes against other theoretical models and is publicly seen as valid. Even then it cannot be proven, only accepted.
Slightly off topic but how did the seminar go? An interesting piece of history.
It went well, Daniel. Huw’s got loads of interesting stuff from the archive and good thoughts on stringing it together. A good seminar series so far, altogether – I’d love to podcast them, but since it’s work in progress, I doubt the presenters would be on for it. Might ask though…
On the theory, he’s looking at civil military relations, as the title suggests, so we bandied about some Janowitz and Huntington, among others.
‘we left narrative history behind some time ago – even in military history’.
Not necessarily a good thing!!
Let me develop this further and, as a historian, take up the gauntlet you have dropped.
Frankly, I can’t see what use ‘theory’ would be in a lot of historical research. Take, for the sake of example, my current project, researching the life of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Jr, commander in chief of the Russian Army at the start of WW1. The kind of questions I am grappling with are ‘to what extent was the grand duke himself responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other non-Russian Russian subjects?’, and ‘to what extent was he reponsible for propagating spy mania?’, or were these things, as most histories suggest, largely the work of his Chief of Staff, General Ianushkevich? I can’t see how ‘theory’ will help answer these questions. Answering them involves ploughing through vast numbers of official documents as well as other sources, such as memoirs, to unearth as much relevant detail as possible. Then, for instance, when I find a letter from Nikolai Nikolaevich to the Tsar accusing the Russian ambassador to Romania, Poklevskii-Kozell, of being a German spy, I have a pretty good clue that the grand duke is indeed taking a role in propagating spy mania and it isn’t just the chief of staff. Similarly, when I read telegrams from him personally to the President of the Council of Ministers regarding his attitude to German Russians, and what to do about them, then indeed the record does ‘speak for itself’. The purpose of the research process isn’t to develop some theory of leadership or operational art, or anything such, but rather to find as accurately as possible what happened, including who did what. Where on earth would ‘theory’ come into this??
As far as narrative history is concerned, I’m all for it, as long as it is properly researched and well written – there is no good reason why you cannot do very good historical research and write a good story. See Dominic Lieven’s latest history of Russia’s war against Napoleon, which he starts by saying explicitly that his aim is to tell a story. Good historians can do this – knocking narrative, I tend to think, can be the excuse of a bad historian who objects to the fact that people don’t read what he writes.
Paul
Hi Paul – thanks for those thoughts. My view is that theory and bad writing are regularly conflated – there’s no reason why theory can’t be properly woven into a lively, even entertaining account. I find far too may academic articles soporific on account of only a passing acquaintance with the Queen’s English.
Additionally, I’m not an arch positivist. I agree with Clausewitz that theory should give concept to art, rather than laws to ‘science’. My view is that without those concepts, how do we know which facts are salient? In your case, that might be as simple as contrasting the role of the individual and a bureaucracy, or small group of policymakers. Even if you don’t point that up explicitly, that seems to be what your research question is driving at.
“an old-fashioned trawl through the archive material, presented in engaging prose style”
Sounds good to me! Where can I find some?
Lacking anything less contemporary, I would recommend Sebastian Junger’s “WAR” (it seems to be all caps) as an account of Battle Company in combat. Talking about engaging! Blue skies! — Dan Ford