The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History

371 Pages·2002·7.73 MB·English

by  John Tosh

THE
PURSUIT OF HISTORY
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THE
PURSUIT OF HISTORY
Aims, methods and new directions in the
study of modern history
Revised Third Edition
JOHN TOSH
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PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED
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© Pearson Education Limited 1984, 1991, 1999, 2000, 2002
The right of John Tosh to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without
either the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence
permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London
W1P OLP.
First published 1984
Second edition 1991
Third edition 1999
Revised Third Edition 2002
ISBN 0 582 77254 0
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
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For Nick and William
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Contents
Preface to the Revised Third Edition ix
Preface to the Third Edition xix
1 Historical awareness 1
2 The uses of history 26
3 The raw materials 54
4 Using the sources 83
5 The themes of mainstream history 108
6 Writing and interpretation 138
7 The limits of historical knowledge 164
8 History and social theory 204
9 History by numbers 244
10 Theories of meaning 271
11 History by word of mouth 295
Conclusion 323
Further reading 329
Index 335
vii
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Introduction to the Revised
Third Edition of The Pursuit
of History (2002)
This book belongs to a genre of writing about the discipline
of history which can be said to have begun with the pub-
lication of E.H. Carr’s book, What Is History? in 1961. The
fortieth anniversary was marked by the reissue of the
original text in 2001, together with Carr’s notes towards a
second edition and a new introduction by Richard Evans.1
What Is History? has never been out of print, and it has
been a reliable fixture on student reading lists since it first
appeared. Its reissue with all the editorial trappings of a
classic invites reflection on the current standing of the disci-
pline of history.
In some ways, the continuing popularity of What Is His-
tory? is surprising. Carr stood at an oblique angle to the
historical profession. He was not trained as a historian and
he never taught history; only in later life did he devote
himself primarily to the writing of history (in his multi-
volume History of Soviet Russia); before the 1950s he was
much better known as an authority on international
relations. What Is History? originated as a set of lectures
delivered in the History Faculty of Cambridge University.
It is a strongly polemical work. The title was something of
a provocation, considering Carr’s position as an outsider.
While he demonstrated a respect for the great historians of
the past, he was dismissive towards the current practitioners
ix
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