History: What & Why?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives

180 Pages·1996·1.018 MB·English

by  B. Southgate

History: What and Why?
History: What and Why? is an introductory survey of the nature and
purpose of history.
Beverley Southgate argues that the traditional model of the subject
as a re-discovery of the past ‘as it was’ has now been superseded. It
has been successfully challenged by developments in disciplines such
as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, as well as by the work of
Marxist, feminist, and post-colonial historians.
This book combines a historical perspective with a clear guide to
current debates about the nature of history. It proposes a positive role
for historical study in the postmodern era.
Beverley Southgate is Reader in the History of Ideas at the University
of Hertfordshire. His background is in classics, history, and philosophy,
and he has many years’ experience of teaching history.

History: What and Why?

Ancient, modern, and postmodern
perspectives

Beverley Southgate

London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1996 Beverley Southgate
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Southgate, Beverley C.
History, what and why? ancient, modern, and postmodern
perspectives/Beverley Southgate.
p. cm.
Includes biliographical references and index.
1. History—Philosophy. I. Title.
D16.8.S683 1996
901–dc20 95–48492
CIP

ISBN 0-203-43776-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-74600-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-13882-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-13883-3 (pbk)
In memory of my mother and my father

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Introduction: history, philosophy, and historiography 1
1Introduction 1
2Theory and the crisis of postmodernism 3
3Postmodernism and historical study 7
4Agenda 9
2 What was history? The past as it was 12
1Introduction 12
2History and poetry 14
3History and science 18
4Conclusion: the past as it was 25
3 Why history? Past answers 28
1Introduction 28
2Interest and entertainment 28
3Moral teaching 29
4Religious teaching 40
vii
viii Contents
5Politics and ideology 48
6Conclusion: chance, change, and empowerment 54
4 External challenges to the old model: some
interdisciplinary perspectives 58
1Introduction 58
2Psychology: problems of perception 59
3Linguistics: problems of language 70
4Philosophy: the problem of scepticism 76
5Conclusion 85
5 Internal challenges to the old model: some major
forces 86
1Introduction 86
2Marxism 88
3Feminism 94
4Post-colonialism 100
5Conclusion 106
6 What and why? The future of history 108
1The postmodern predicament 108
2History as hypothesis 122
3The point as ‘empowerment’: affecting and effecting
the future 131
Notes 138
Bibliography 154
Index 162
Preface

What is history? and why study it anyway? These two interrelated
questions stand at the centre of a debate that is currently dividing
historians into two opposed and sometimes aggressively hostile camps,
and it is a debate that has far-reaching implications.
The division within the discipline of history is part of a wider
intellectual upheaval which confronts any thoughtful person at the
end of the twentieth century. It has to do not only with academic or
theoretical questions concerning such matters as the nature of truth,
but also with very practical questions of where as humans we are
going; and in both respects historical study is deeply involved.
As far as the philosophical issue of truth is concerned, the debate
has been running since antiquity, and is essentially between those
who see it as an absolute, fixed once and for all and independent of
any observer, and those for whom it is relative, with its meaning, like
that of everything else, dependent upon perceptions of individuals at
different times and places. For historians claiming to seek and even
find the truth about the past, this theoretical debate has obvious
importance.
The immediately practical concerns relate to human life itself in
the late twentieth century—to politics and education, and to our very
future. Here some lines of debate, in relation to historical studies, are
equally well drawn. There are those who continue to argue that
academic study should be engaged in simply ‘for its own sake’, while
others insist that a multitude of pressing practical questions
concerning the future now await our answers and that it is on these
that all education should be focused.
The discipline of history is not always perceived as being
concerned with philosophy or with the practical or with the future,
but it is argued in this book that it should be. So while an attempt is
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