Historiography: An Overview
Part I
Historiography is the study of the writings of historians, or the “literature” of history.
It encompasses historical “schools of thought,” as well as new directions and
interpretations of events and processes in the various fields (e.g. Economic, Social,
Women’s Studies, etc.) of the discipline.
The European Background
 The Renaissance. Remember covering the Renaissance last year in Modern World History?
Remember that it was a renewal or “re-birth” of interest in the scientific and philosophical writings
of the Greeks and Romans? Well, the modern study of history (what we do and how we do it in US
I-Honors) came out of that same Renaissance. Just as reason and scientific thinking were applied
toward understanding how the solar system or the human body functions in the real world, so too
the scholars of the Renaissance tried to apply a more secular (non-religious) and “real world”
approach to the study of human history. In the Renaissance we begin to see a division between
religious history (history of the churches and religious institutions and how the divine affects the
flow of history) and secular history (the history of kings and queens, laws and wars and their
direct affect on society).
 The Antiquarians. Simply put, people who collect antiques think that old things are cool.
And most Renaissance scholars were no different than antique collectors and they were obsessed
with old Greek, Roman and Mediaeval accounting books, bills and receipts, diaries, record books,
cookbooks, illustrated bestiaries and gardening books, etiquette books, letters and legal documents.
They worked hard to dig them out of old libraries and preserve them, not because they were
particularly useful or contained any insight into human life, but because they were OLD and
therefore it was considered very fashionable to fill up your bookshelves with them and use them to
make lists of random historical events.
 The Enlightenment. VOLTAIRE ! Remember him? The French philosophe who kept
getting kicked out of European countries for telling kings and queens painfully true stuff that they
didn’t want to hear? Well, Voltaire decided that these Renaissance antiquarian historians focused
way too much on endless lists of dates and minor, random events and minute, nit-picking historical
details. He found it boring and pointless. (You probably like him a lot already). Voltaire developed
a serious attitude and wrote histories that answered the questions “What’s the point of all these
random facts?” and “What can we do with all these cool, old record books besides admire how cool
and old they are?” In short, Voltaire applied his razor-sharp Enlightenment intellect and attitude and
made sweeping GENERALIZATIONS and OBSERVATIONS about what all these old records could
tell us about the past in a way that made them useful and instructive about what was going on in the
present
 Scientific History. By the nineteenth century, science and technology had begun to redefine
the way we looked at the world. It is at this point that “History” became an academic subject
completely separate from literature and the humanities and one that required rigorous training.
Leopold von Ranke, a German historian, pioneered the growth of “Scientific History” which
attempted to apply the scientific method to the study and analysis of the past.

Von Ranke’s Method:
1. Like scientists, historians should practice a dispassionate objectivity.
2. Historians should focus on going back to contemporary sources, not the opinions and
assumptions of later writers.
3. An attempt should be made to identify and analyze the biases and the circumstances of
contemporary observers.
4. History should rely on scientific investigation rather than literary intuition.
The American historian, Henry Adams, was heavily influenced by von Ranke. Adams speculated that a
“Darwin-like” figure would emerge to offer an overarching theory of human history, just as Darwin had
done in Biology. Well, it never happened! History never approached the level of certitude that one
finds in pure science. Nonetheless, the improved research methods and the goal of “scientific-like”
accuracy that von Ranke introduced certainly improved the quality and the sophistication of historical
writing.
Part II
American Historiography
The Puritan Historians of New England. In the 1630s John Winthrop, the first governor of
Massachusetts Bay, declared that his colony should aspire to be a “City upon a hill” (ie., make itself
clearly visible to the rest of the world) establishing a moral and upright society in the New World that
the corrupt and decadent Old World might follow. This became one of the most enduring images of
America in our history. (As recently as 1980, Ronald Reagan used the “city upon a hill” image as a
campaign slogan).
Early New England “historians” such as William Bradford and Cotton Mather sought to portray the new
American settlements as part of a divine plan to improve the world. In doing so, they demonized their
enemies (e.g. Indians and non-Puritans) as agents of evil who stood in the way of “God’s Plan.” For
instance, the small pox epidemics that ravaged and drastically reduced the Indian population of New
England were characterized as evidence of God’s approval of the “City upon a hill.”
The Nationalist Historians (aka the “Patricians”). Francis Parkman and George Bancroft. These
American “gentleman historians” of the nineteenth-century were actually not so different from their
Puritan ancestors in their “self justifying” attitude.
Puritans had sought to establish the righteousness and glorify the success of a small religious group in
New England; historians such as Parkman and Bancroft extended this to the entire English-speaking
world. The British defeat of the French in the struggle for the North American continent, the success of
the American Revolution and the westward expansion of the United States were described in intensely
patriotic (and self-justifying) tones. The enslavement of African people was largely ignored in nationalist
narratives and Indians were depicted as uncivilized impediments to American expansion and growth.
The concept of the “American people” (not all the people, just white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) as a
“nation” was spoken of with intense emotion.
Whig History. Named for the “Whig faction” in British politics that traditionally stood against the
party of the King and the Anglican Church (who were known as “Tories”), the Whig tradition portrays
the history of England and the United States as the continuing and unstoppable march of liberty: “It’s
getting better all the time.”
Whig historians “connected the dots” of the Magna Charta, the Glorious Revolution, the American
Revolution and the adoption the U.S. Constitution, religious freedom, westward expansion and
economic growth, the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, etc. to create a “straight line narrative”
that made the development and growth of liberty and free enterprise seem inevitable.
The Scientific Historians (aka the first generation of “professional” historians). First, go back and
check out the European origins of “scientific history” on page 2. As Grob and Billias point out, Henry
Adams searched for a scientific philosophy of history, while Frederick Jackson Turner borrowed
Darwin’s idea of evolutionary development to explain the impact of the “Frontier” on American history.
Turner’s ‘Frontier Thesis’ is one of the BIG IDEAS in American historiography. The turn toward
scientific history transformed American historians from “literary figures” into “scientific investigators.”
The Progressives. To quote Grob and Billias, “ The Progressive scholars viewed history as an
ideological weapon that might explain the present and control the future.” Progressive historians saw
American history as a series of conflicts and resolutions (e.g. the conflict between factory workers and
factory owners in the late 19th century was resolved by the formation of labor unions and the passage of
laws protecting workers’ rights and providing for safer working conditions). The Progressive school
flourished from the end of the nineteenth century until just after World War II.
There’s no question that the Progressives were influenced by Marxist thought with its view of history as
the continuing struggle of the proletariat against the wealthy for economic equality. However, the
Progressives differed from Marxist historians in important ways:
1. Progressive historians seldom divided American society into a rigid class system as Marx had done.
They correctly saw that lower and middle class Americans have never developed what Marx would have
called “class consciousness.” This means that the lower classes in America don’t see themselves as a
permanent underclass doomed to being exploited until they rise up in revolt, but rather as equal citizens
who just haven’t worked their way up to being rich yet.
2. They emphasized rational and pragmatic action through democracy to improve conditions within the
existing capitalist system rather than trashing the whole system in a violent revolution and moving
towards a “communist utopia.”
The Neo-Conservative, or Consensus School
Beginning in the aftermath of World War II, the United States confronted the Soviet Union in what
would become a half-century of “Cold War.” The threat of an all-out nuclear conflict shaped the rivalry
between the US and the USSR and the two superpowers competed for supremacy on the world stage in
almost every way imaginable: the development of military technology, the exploration of space and
even the Olympic games, to name just a few.
During the early part of the Cold War American politics made a decided turn to the right. Most
Americans saw the Cold War as a continuous struggle between the “free world” led by the United States
and the “communist world” dominated by Soviet totalitarianism. A new generation of conservative
historians began to regard the progressive critique of American history and society as unpatriotic and
detrimental to the nation in a time when America needed to project a positive and unified front to an
increasingly dangerous and uncertain world. The new Consensus, or neo-Conservative, historians
downplayed the impact of political, economic, ethnic and religious conflict in American history. They
stressed instead the unifying political and economic principles and ideals that they felt united American
society. They emphasized America’s important role as a force for good in the world. The recent
United States victory over fascism and dictatorship in World War II as well as the nation’s strong stand
against communist totalitarianism influenced the way Consensus historians looked at the American past.
To be continued…