History – advice and reading

Charlotte Fischer – Debate Chamber History Tutor
This is going to sound geeky, but much like the first time you meet someone you fall in love with, I actually remember the exact moment I decided I wanted to study history. Also much like the moment you meet someone you fall in love with, it would have seemed truly unremarkable to the outside observer. I was in my year 10 class, and we learnt that in the 16th century (I think I recall now…) bricks became a popular fashion in England due to a drought in Italy causing the price of timber to rise. Not terribly cool, really. But this singular fact fascinated me – I couldn’t get over how it seemed (to my 15 year old self) to contain a full explanation of how the world worked – how seemingly random events had such huge impacts, and a hidden story behind every event. I think I also liked history because I was, at heart, a bit nosey. Asking about how people lived now – their relationships, what matters to them, how they dress, eat, and the decisions they make – seemed to be a little socially unacceptable ( I hadn’t yet discovered sociology and anthropology…) – but with a few centuries between you and the person, it was absolutely encouraged.

In the course of my applying to university, I began to read a little more about historical theory – known as historiography – and that intrigued me even more. If history books weren’t just a list of dates, but an attempt to tell a story, then what were we really doing? During a trip at the end of my first year, I went to Israel and the Territories and was rather severely challenged on my understanding of the historical side of the conflict. My interests really began to fall in line after that trip, although looking back I think it was probably a path I had been unconsciously following for quite a while; I became fascinated by what people see as their histories. It’s my belief that we all hold a narrative inside us; a way of explaining our lives, or our beliefs or our concepts of our self. In a similar way, groups and societies and even nations hold narratives of their history. From then on, I think I knew what I really loved in history (although that didn’t stop me from taking a possibly unhealthy level of interest in the British isles in the first millennia, and the history of the Western church, during my degree….) and wrote my undergraduate thesis on what children in conflict regions learn about the history of the conflict – and it’s what I’m working on now, too. Proof that a history degree can be useful!

FURTHER READING

The following works are recommended by Debate Chamber tutors for anyone who is thinking of studying history at university:

R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

Collingwood’s posthumously published work surveys how the idea of history has evolved from Herodetus to the twentieth century giving a analytical and comprehensive overview of the development of the discipline. More than this though towards the end of the book Collingwood advances what his idea of history is: with an attempt to reconcile philosophy and history. Collingwood has been inspirational to the evolution of history over the past 30 years, in particular he provides an intellectual foundation for all history being the study of past thought.

Machiavelli,    The Discourses

Machiavelli’s lesser known work provides an example of history being used in the classical and medieval sense: to teach, persuade, entertain and crucially to provide guidance for political action. A widely unaccepted conception now, students at university often have to grapple with these kinds of sources for the light they shed on the period and contemporary attitudes to events. The Discourses also offer a complementary approach to the more widely known Prince and point to a Machiavelli with more Republican sympathies than is often acknowledged.

Richard J Evans, In Defence of History

A classic of the modern canon, this is the book that gave historians the ability to sleep at night after a crisis of self-confidence that hit the profession in the 1980s. Lucid, thoughtful, and – not to be taken for granted with history books – readable, this book has the added advantage of summarising a lot of other peoples’ thoughts and writings on the matter, giving the reader a useful introduction into what is still a highly relevant debate – what is history, and what are we doing when we write it?

John Tosh, The Pursuit of History

If you had never encountered any history books before (heaven forfend!) were only allowed to read one book in order to to turn you into a super duper historian, this would be the one to choose. Tosh breaks down the historian’s craft into thoughtful and concise chapters – sample titles include ‘the themes of mainstream history’, ‘writing and interpretation’ and ‘the limits of historical knowledge’- to give a thorough introduction into the process of writing – and interpreting – history. It is impossible to read this book and not become a better historian for it.