Historiography

Upon reading the title my reader(s) entered one of two categories: either someone who knows what Historiography is or someone who is reading the entry. Since anyone reading obviously doesn't know what historiography is I'll explain. Historiography is the most boring topic on earth. I am not making that up. Historians, you know, the kind of people who get excited reading about the inner squabbling of Dutch merchant guilds in 17th century Amsterdam find historiography boring. Historiography is the study of the study of History. You heard that right, its the history of people writing history. In the Dr. Seuss book "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are." he tries to imagine the worst possible fates that could befall someone, Dr. Seuss accurately describes historiography in action in the part about the Bee Watch Watch Watcher Watcher. In fact, I am starting a rumor that the entire inspiration for that book was Dr. Seuss learning what historiography is. Pass it on, its highly possible.

Why then do historians write them? Why is a paper considered worthless garbage if it doesn't start with one? Because its important. Our perceptions change with time and it can be helpful to learn how people in the past thought about the past. One quick example before I get on to my topic, I remember when I was five my parents taking me to see the annual reenactment of the Battle of Lexington. Now we celebrate that battle as perhaps the most important event in our history. But the first commemoration on the anniversary wasn't until the 1820s. A politician running for office drug out the last surviving veterans to honor them for their deeds. One cynical observer at the time remarked that even if there were no survivors the candidate would have exhumed the bodies from the graveyard so he could publicly honor them.

I know macro-historiography sounds boring enough to kill but in the spirit of full disclosure I feel I need to go there. The how and why of writing history has shifted dramatically since the first historians invented the concept. There is such a thing as Academic History that we teach in our universities and that I was trained in. What I write on the blog is not academic history style and I admit that. For one, I write in narrative format as opposed to the more neutral academic tone. I don't usually get into the details of historical disputes (you should thank me because that's historiography.) Technically history is supposed to be an unbiased quest for historical truth but that's just not how it is. Actually I think the biggest kritik of academic style is that its pretentious in claiming to get to the actual truth when we openly admit that our writing will always be a bit biased. Since the mid-19th century History as a discipline has been trying to get itself classed as a social science and the fact that it by nature can't be observed dispassionately or lend itself to repeatable experiments using the scientific method are a few of the many reasons it isn't.

Livy was a very important Roman Historian who was a friend of Julius Caesar. He wrote Ab Urbe Condita, a 142 volume history of Rome that covered its first 745 years. The fact that his work was used heavily as a source by Edward Gibbon, one of the fathers of modern history, in his six volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is even more impressive when you consider that out of 142 volumes only 35 survive intact. However, were Livy writing today he wouldn't be able to get his articles published by any self respecting academic journal. That's because Livy spells out at the very beginning that he is writing history in order to provide moral instruction to what he sees as a morally decaying Rome. He tells a lot of myths about the early days of Rome which he may or may not have made up. If you want to see what I am talking about check out my post on Jacques-Louis David, who painted lots of paintings to give moral lessons using stories from Livy.

That's pretty much what I do except I go one step further and try to relate it to today's politics. I use a conversational tone to reach laymen bored with other history writing so history is more accessible. Perhaps its best to describe what I do as more using History instead of writing History.