Historians

A historian is a person who studies or communicating over the story. Its task is to relate historical facts, categorize, and then to propose a balanced interpretation and justified by sources under the control of the informed public , the legitimacy of any citizen to know and make known the full story. No group, no brotherhood, no corporation - not even those of university professors - no legally elected assembly can not and should have exclusive say or write that history is not an exact science.

Historians of the high Middle Ages were clerics or monks. They brushed stories (Historiae) edifying nature or stood on record, barely more than chronologies of reigns. National histories narrate the origins of the nation of the historian who is sometimes confused with those of the dynasty of their sovereign. The edifying character then continues through the biographies of kings, hagiographies , while born in the late Middle Ages reviews made by the laity.

In the Middle Ages, one of the most widely read historical works in Europe is the Ecclesiastical History of the English people written by the Venerable Bede.

Teachers, researchers and other historians

Only in the last quarter of the ^nineteenth century , that goes up the higher education of history in France. The Third Republic created an institutional framework that is intended to promote the training of teachers of history. From 1877 , students had the opportunity to receive grants for this purpose, they could participate in study sessions (seminars) that teaching them the techniques of analysis and criticism of sources. The reform led to a proliferation of outlets: in the universities , we increased the number of professorships and creates the first posts of lecturers. All these measures are based in fact teaching German in the aftermath of the defeat of 1870-1871, appears as a reference. Before this period, the history teacher was rarely a professional in the modern sense. He was usually paid tutors in the letters as some clerics, sometimes lawyers or philosophers.

The university policy of the ^Third Republic in recent years led to the birth of a community historian. Still limited in 1914 (55 chairs in the faculties of history of French letters) , the latter experiencing an explosion of its workforce from the 1960s with the mass of students. Today, as noted by Antoine Prost , historians of this group is united by a common training (university), a network of association and journals, professional ethics (what one historian has right to do or not do?) and method (how should it work to produce a book of scientific history?). Prost was even tempted to speak of "corporation" to them, with resulting disadvantages (conformist, dogmatic). You should know that university lecturers and professors are recruited by a vote of their peers and thus their future colleagues. However, beyond this apparent unity, the profession also has its internal divisions. Besides the large group of academics, there are members of prestigious research organizations ( Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales , National Center for Scientific Research , French School of Rome , Institute of Political Studies ).

Historical practice is not limited to faculty. It is in fact widely shared in society since history, belonging to the humanities versus sciences, was in essence political. Many people who have time and knowledge, produce historical works. There are politicians, journalists, local scholars, and lovers of heritage or simply curious who engage in the writing of the history of their village or their families. Some of these productions are remarkable. Other fish due to ignorance of historical context, a lack of rigor in the narrative of events or a poor command of spoken or written expression. These gaps in the methodological criticisms and do not generally cross the threshold of publishing, including magazines and collections 'story' of leading publishers.

If exercise activity historian wins to enjoy learning - especially if this matter should be taught - it is absolutely insufficient. The transmission of a memory is mostly a matter of work and therefore time - for research and writing - and where life experience and intellectual maturity have their place of course.

Aspects of the "business" of historian

The historian's work has sometimes been compared to that of an investigative journalist. Indeed, the similarities are numerous. History does not mean the word does not in Greek "investigation"? The historian must search for sources of information to identify the facts. Its focus is primarily on archival material and oral evidence but (for the study of recent times), an archaeological discovery can also provide valuable information. These sources must be cropped in a space-time and analyzed. The historian applies to establish the events or phenomena devices, capture or reflect the "silences" of documents and tracing errors or omissions "stories of history" by proposing, for example, a critical bibliography. It shall also seek - with caution - the causes, motives to human actions. One of the most exciting in this activity is precisely to talk about the sources apparently silent or inappropriate for the subject.

Comparison with the judge is often to describe the historical work. Like him, the historian must be impartial and distancing. This attitude is reflected by taking into account the different versions of a fact and to distinguish that which is accurate without being dominated by his prejudices and passions. If a historian and judge have in common the search for truth, the comparison stops there to Marc Bloch. The first does not condemn (at least, it should be the spirit of the historian) . It does not make value judgments: this is good, this is bad. For the simple reason that a decision would be absurd given that the value systems of today do not match those of the past . The historian has only to understand. In some cases, this behavior may shock the public and lead to misunderstandings because trying to understand the dark periods of history (Holocaust in particular), it seems that the historian and thus justifies somehow excuses executioners. It is sometimes accused of atrocities in perspective some of the past (slavery of blacks ) while the process historian is simply to contextualize the facts and to establish their true significance. Anyway anachronism in the assessment, evaluation or interpretation of a work of history is the main pitfall of this discipline. In good faith, historians there fifty or hundred years, marked by attitudes of their times and the times, have been lured to the blind or at the very least, shortsighted for explain some cause and effect. They have neglected certain figures that seem important today (including many women) or, conversely, they valued certain attitudes, certain principles or certain works whose importance or interest fell to us.

The historian is finally a writer. Some historical works also reveal literary works. In the nineteenth ^century , Augustin Thierry in Narratives of the Merovingian and Jules Michelet in his Histoire de France were using all the tricks of the novel, sometimes at the expense of facts. Multiplying formulas and lyrical metaphors, they knew dramatize their stories and provide the key necessary to describe the picturesque scenes of the past. Today, the French Academy welcome some authors of the discipline: Pierre Nora and Max Gallo gained their seats, according to their illustrious elders Fernand Braudel , Georges Duby , Francois Furet and Rene Remond.

The social and political roles of the historian

Herodotus , which is considered the first historian, justifies the writing of his book History "is the statement of . In other words, the function of a historian is to keep the memory of past events and explain their conduct. From Herodotus to today, nothing has changed. It is expected that historians tell us "what really happened" (wie es eigentlich gewesen ", wrote the German historian Leopold von Ranke ). This application does not seem to falter when we see the success of the commemoration ( Capetian millennium , the bicentenary of the French Revolution ^, 60th Anniversary of the Normandy landings ...) in which the historian stands out as an actor have to.

In addition, the company is asking historians to explain this in light of the past. Faced with breaking news, waiting for an analysis that allows them to contextualize the event, placing it back in time evolution and understand the more global issues. In short, knowledge of the historian is called to bring back.

"Destroy the false stories, dismantling the meaning impostors" : it is in these terms that the University of Rouen Olivier Dumoulin describes the role of his fellow historians. It is followed in this idea by Arlette Farge , for whom "history is the story every time because of the events, one who prevents tampering and flagrant excesses of shame or denial deadly." In The Assassins of Memory , Pierre Vidal-Naquet was also similar comments by warning against "lies" pseudo-historians self-proclaimed "revisionists" who are bent on denying the existence of gas chambers and, More broadly, the Holocaust.

Attempts to instrumentalization of the past, especially in these times of identity assertions, indeed require safeguards. The objective narrative (Antoine Prost prefer to say "distanced and unbiased) historians lead them out of lecture halls and classrooms. Recently, some have gone "from the pulpit to the courtroom" . French and foreign scholars Jean-Pierre Azema , Marc-Olivier Baruch , Philippe Burrin , Robert Paxton , Rene Remond have testified as an expert (although they have not always lived the Vichy period ) during the trial Papon in 1998, the aim being to restore the chronology of the acts of the prefect accused, and to inform judges and juries in its scope and operation of a prefecture under the Occupation. Similarly, historians Henry Rousso , Annette Becker , Philippe Burrin and Florent Brayard were hired as experts to shed light on practices denial of some students and professors at the University of Lyon III. This investigation resulted in the publication of the Report Rousso.

The historian finds herself involved in the movement of "legalization" of society. For the U.S. , this trend is even clearer. At trial, historians are paid by the prosecution or the defense to seek evidence in the archives.

At the same time, the activity shifts to another historical trend of today's society: the commercialization. Across the Atlantic (and increasingly in France), historians receive orders from individuals, businesses, lawyers. They thus participate in projects as varied as the drafting of a commemorative booklet or the story of a factory, the bustling local societies or museums or looking for a liability in a deposit of toxic material. This applied history that Americans call public history places the researcher in action and not in the neutral observation. Under these conditions, the historian will he keep his own ethical requirements of historical thinking? By becoming a service provider, tipping does not in this "history-serve 'denounced by Lucien Febvre , in other words in a story that serves the interests? The credibility of his speech may be doubted.

References

See also

Related articles

• How history is written by Paul Veyne
• Ethics in the historical profession
• Famous Historians
• Contemporary historians
• History of History
• Historiography
• Historical methodology
• Historical truth

Bibliography

• Marc Bloch , Apologie for history or art historian, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993 ^(1st edition 1949).
• Antoine Prost , Twelve lessons on the history , Le Seuil, 1996.
• Olivier Dumoulin , Le Role social historian, Albin Michel, 2003.

• Portal of work and occupations
• Portal History

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