2

T H E NAT U R E O F H I ST O RY:
H I ST O RY A S
R E C O N ST RU C T IO N

“God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.”
—Ambrose Bierce

“The past does not influence me; I influence it.”

—Willem de Kooning

It is important to realize that historical “periods” and “eras” are artificial constructs
that help the human mind come to grips with the immensity and complexity of the
human past. For instance, some historians have referred to the previous century as
the “short” twentieth century, citing the inclusive dates 1914 to 1989. Why only
­seventy-five years? Because, these historians argue, the years 1914–1989 mark a series
of interrelated conflicts—World War I (1914–1918), World War II (1939–1945), and
the so-called Cold War (ca. 1945–1989)—that finally came to an end in 1989.
From this perspective, then, 1989 marked the end of an era—a major turning
point in Western history that deserves considerable attention from scholars. Indeed
historians have already begun the process of describing and explaining the events
that led to the end of the Cold War, and the mountain of literature on the subject
grows daily. Given the twenty-four-hour news cycles of the electronic age, one
would assume that historians have more than enough information on which to base
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

these accounts. To some degree this is true, but it would be a mistake to assume that
we can easily and completely write the history of these world-shaking events. One
small example dramatizes this reality.
During the Cold War a number of Eastern European states were closely con-
trolled by Communist Russia, or, more accurately, the Soviet Union (USSR). In
1989, as the world watched with astonishment, these states began to break
from Soviet control and set up more democratic, non-Communist governments.

The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide, Fourth Edition. Michael J. Salevouris with Conal Furay.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
14 Historical Thinking

In Czechoslovakia this process was called the “Velvet Revolution,” because of the
peaceful and “soft” nature of the transition. Noted British historian and journalist
Timothy Garton Ash was an observer of the events in Prague, the capital, and he
commented on the difficulties of writing history:

[T]he evidential basis on which history is written is often extraordinarily thin.

Sometimes we have only one witness. During the Velvet Revolution in Prague, in
1989, crucial decisions were taken by a group around Václav Havel [who was to
become Czechoslovakia’s new president], meeting in a curious glass-walled room in
the subterranean Magic Lantern theater. Most of the time, I was the only outsider
present, and certainly the only one with a notebook open, trying to record what was
being said. I remember thinking: if I don’t write this down, nobody will. It will be
lost forever, as most of the past is, like bathwater down the drain… . [W]hat a fragile
foundation on which to write history.1

This story dramatizes an important truth about the nature of history: there is a vast
gulf that separates the actual events of the past from the accounts that journalists
and historians later write about those events.

What Is History?

In English the word “history” has two distinct meanings. First, “history” is the sum
total of everything that has actually happened in the past—every thought, every
action, every event. In this sense, “history” is surely one of the broadest concepts
conceived by the human intellect. “History,” broadly defined, encompasses the
entire scope of the human experience on this planet. And this meaning of the
word—things that happened in the past—is what most people have in mind when
they use the term in daily conversation.
But there is a second meaning of the term “history,” one more central to this
book. If “history” is the past, it is also an account of the past—i.e., the books, arti-
cles, films, and lectures we encounter in school. It should be clear with just a
moment’s thought that the past (all of those thoughts and events that actually hap-
pened) is lost forever, as Garton Ash noted in the quotation above. Our only contact
with the past is through the relatively scant records left by those who lived before
us and through the accounts written by historians on the basis of those records. It
is this “history”—created accounts of the past—that we read, think about, and
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

study in school. And it is history in this sense—history as a creation of human

intelligence—that is the subject of this book. As historians James Davidson and
Mark Lytle put it, “History is not ‘what happened in the past’; rather, it is the act of
selecting, analyzing, and writing about the past. It is something that is done, that is
constructed, rather than an inert body of data that lies scattered through the
archives.”2

Timothy Garton Ash, “On the Frontier,” New York Review of Books, November 7, 2002, 60.
1      

James Davidson and Mark Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, 4th ed.
2      

(New York: Knopf, 2000), xviii.

 The Nature of History: History as Reconstruction 15

The Nature of History

“History,” then, is both the past and the study of the past. In order to appreciate
better the vast intellectual distance that separates the past-as-it-actually-happened
(history in the first sense) from historians’ accounts of that past (history in the sec-
ond sense) we ask you to take a brief journey of the imagination. Try to visualize
yourself walking at night amidst a rugged landscape punctuated by dramatic peaks
and valleys. As you walk a companion turns on a powerful searchlight that illumi-
nates some of the recesses and promontories formerly veiled in darkness. As the
light moves, the previously lighted objects disappear from view and new features of
the landscape appear. You want to see the entire landscape spread before your eyes,
but the beam of light, narrow and imperfect, lets you see only a tiny fraction of the
reality before you at any given time. When the light is turned off, you can see nothing
at all. The peaks and valleys and forests are still there, and remain there, awaiting
other beams, projected from other angles, to reveal their features.
In this allegory the peaks and valleys of the landscape represent the “past-as-it-
actually-happened”—history in the first sense. The person with the searchlight is the
historian who, by using the beam, reveals some of the outlines of the landscape.
Essentially, the historian “lights up” some segment of the past that we cannot per-
ceive directly, just as the person carrying the searchlight illuminated a landscape
hidden in darkness. The glimpse of the landscape provided by the beam, although
transient and incomplete, is analogous to an account of the past written by a historian.
This analogy is imperfect in that the historian cannot even shine a weak beam of
light on the real past as if it were a mountain or a valley. The past, unlike any existing
geological feature, is gone forever. To the extent we can know anything about the past-
as-it-actually-happened, that knowledge must be based on surviving records. Still, the
analogy is useful. Just as a landscape can be real, so, too, is the past that historians
study. The actual events of the past are gone forever, but they were just as “real” as all
the human activities you see around you every day. Further, as inadequate as the beam
of light was in illuminating the totality of the landscape, it did provide useful glimpses
of reality. Similarly, historians’ accounts can and do provide glimpses of the contours
of the past, but those accounts constitute only a pale reflection of reality.
To reiterate the central point: Even though a relationship exists between the past-
as-it-actually-happened and the historian’s account of a segment of the past, the
historical account can no more show past events as they actually took place than a
narrow beam of light can illuminate an entire landscape. The historian can reveal a
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

tiny piece of the past, can present us with an individual version of a segment of the
past, but no one can present the past as it actually was.
This leads us to another point: All historical accounts are reconstructions that
contain some degree of subjectivity. Whether written or spoken, every piece of his-
tory is an individualized view of a segment of past reality—a particular vision, a
personalized version based on incomplete and imperfect evidence. Writing history
is an act of creation, or more accurately, an act of re-creation in which the mind of
the historian is the catalyst. Any piece of history that we read or hear ought to be
treated as an individual creation. In fact, one might even say that any history we
read is as much a product of the historian who wrote it as of the people who actually
lived the events it attempts to describe!
16 Historical Thinking
Alfred R. Waud, artist for
Harper’s Weekly, sketching on
the battlefield of Gettysburg
(July 1863). Historians are
not the only ones who seek
to “reconstruct” the past.
Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Division,
LC-DIG-cwpb-00074.

Reconstructing the Past

The subjective, reconstructed, nature of written history becomes clearer if we look

more closely at the process whereby the historian bridges the chasm between the
particular part of the past being studied and the historical account, or product of
that study. Actually, the historian’s intellectual task is as challenging as any on earth.
Unlike the scientist who can experiment directly with tangible objects, the historian
is many times removed from the events under investigation.
The historian, as noted before, cannot study the past directly, but must rely on
surviving records. It should be obvious that surviving records, compared to the
actual past events they reflect, are like a few drops of water in a very large bucket.
For instance, most past events left no records at all! Think of the number of events
in your own life for which there is no record but your own memory. Multiply those
unrecorded events in your own life by the billions of human beings who inhabit the
earth and you get some idea of the number of events each day that go unrecorded.
And that is only the beginning of the problem. In the words of historian Louis
Gottschalk:

Only a part of what was observed in the past was remembered by those who
observed it; only a part of what was remembered was recorded; only a part of what
was recorded has survived; only a part of what has survived has come to the
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

historians’ attention; only a part of what has come to their attention is credible; only
a part of what is credible has been grasped; and only a part of what has been grasped
can be expounded or narrated by the historian… . Before the past is set forth by the
historian, it is likely to have gone through eight separate steps at each of which some
of it has been lost; and there is no guarantee that what remains is the most
important, the largest, the most valuable, the most representative, or the most
enduring part. In other words the “object” that the historian studies is not only
incomplete, it is markedly variable as records are lost or recovered.3

3      
Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History (New York: Knopf, 1950), 45–46.
 The Nature of History: History as Reconstruction 17

Clearly, then, the historian can never get or present the full truth about a given
past. The best the historian can provide, even under ideal conditions, is a partial
sketch of a vanished past. “Even the best history,” said historian Bruce Catton, “is
not much better than a mist through which we see shapes dimly moving.” Or, in the
words of W. S. Holt, “History is a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss.”
If all this were not enough, the historian is also a factor in the equation. Not only
are historians fallible and capable of error, but personal biases, political ideology,
economic status, religious persuasion, and personal idiosyncrasies can subtly and
unconsciously influence the way in which they interpret existing sources. We all
have a unique “frame of reference”—a set of interlocking values, loyalties, assump-
tions, interests, and principles of action—that we use to interpret daily experience.
A frame of reference is like a lens through which we view the world around us.
It leads us to make certain conjectures, to classify individual items in a certain
way, to ask certain kinds of questions, and to develop certain interpretations. In
the United States, conservative Republicans often read and interpret the political
and constitutional history of the nation in a very different way than do liberal
Democrats. Protestants and Catholics frequently disagree when writing about the
religious upheavals known as the Reformation. And Northerners and Southerners
are notorious in their differences concerning the history of the American Civil
War. For example, Hodding Carter III, assistant secretary of state under President
Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), was aware at a young age that the American history he
was taught in the South differed from that taught in the North. “It was easy for me
as a youngster growing up in Mississippi to know that my eighth-grade state his-
tory textbook taught me a lot which didn’t jibe with what my cousins in Maine
were being taught. We spoke of the War Between the States. They spoke of the
Civil War… . But our texts might as well have been written for study on different
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Artist Peter Rothermel’s rendition of the Battle of Gettysburg created ca. 1872. Like
historians, artists often attempt historical reconstructions long after the original event.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-03266.
18 Historical Thinking

planets when it came to the status and feelings of the black men and women of the
state or nation.”4
Small wonder that there is an element of subjectivity in historical accounts, inas-
much as we have historians with widely differing ideals, loyalties, interests, motiva-
tions, yes, even biases, each of which are shaped by different ethnic experience,
religious allegiance, political leanings, and class interests. And if this is true of
Americans, what does it tell us of how myriad other peoples around the world see
themselves and others?
Historians are justified in viewing an event from any perspective they wish, and
from that perspective explaining how and why that event happened as it did.
However, there is a danger involved in allowing a historical inquiry to be totally
shaped by one’s singular frame of reference. Excessive focus on one’s own viewpoint
closes the mind to the legitimate insights residing in alternative perspectives and,
equally troublesome, to evidence that contradicts one’s own view. Some call this ten-
dency “Procrustean,” the term referring to an ancient Greek brigand who strapped
his victims to a bed—if their legs were too long, he cut them off till they fit; if too
short, he stretched them to the proper length. In the realm of ideas, this describes a
tendency to make the evidence fit one’s preconceptions.

The Question of Truth

At this point you might be asking, “Why study history at all if historical accounts are
so far removed from the past they attempt to understand?” What happens to the
search for “truth” if we acknowledge that historical accounts are by nature subjective
and incomplete? How can we justify the pursuit of knowledge that appears so shal-
low and fleeting?
This entire book addresses this question, but for now it is sufficient to note that
an element of subjectivity by no means invalidates the importance or substance of
historical studies. First, it is worth reminding ourselves that the past did happen.
Even though the records of past events are inadequate and difficult to interpret,
they do constitute a tangible link between past and present. And even though histo-
rians can never completely escape their personal frames of reference, that does not
preclude their writing credible and convincing accounts firmly grounded in the
existing e­ vidence. As Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist and historian
of science, put it: “We understand that biases, preferences, social values, and
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

psychological attitudes all play a strong role in the process of discovery. However,
we should not be driven to the opposite extreme of complete cynicism—the view
that objective evidence plays no role, that perceptions of truth are entirely relative,
and that scientific [or historical] conclusions are just another form of aesthetic
preference.”5
This is an important point: history is not fiction. Different historians will interpret
the past differently for many different reasons. But in all cases their accounts must be

“Viewpoint,” The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 1982.

4      

Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
5      

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 244.

 The Nature of History: History as Reconstruction 19

based on all the available relevant evidence. A version of the past that cannot be
­supported by evidence is worthless and will quickly be rejected by other historians.
Thus one opinion (no matter how strongly held) is not as good as another, and the
student of history, whether beginner or seasoned professional, must learn to discrim-
inate closely between reasoned claims supported by the available evidence and those
that fail this basic test. (Don’t panic right now if you don’t know how to make this
kind of determination; it is something that this book intends to teach you.)
Finally, history is not unique in its subjectivity, nor is it the only discipline in
which conclusions are tentative and constantly open to revision. No field of study is
ever static. All research is, to some degree, conditioned by the “climate of the times”
and the values and attitudes of the researchers themselves, not to mention the dis-
covery of new evidence. Even theories in the so-called “hard sciences” are subject to
the vagaries of time, place, and circumstance.

Conclusion
The realization that history involves the study of individual interpretations or ver-
sions of the past can be unsettling. Many of us yearn for the security afforded by
unchallenged, definitive “answers” to a limited and manageable set of “questions.”
To find out that historians are always asking new questions, and continually offering
new answers to old questions, eliminates the possibility of discovering the absolute
and singular truth about the human past. At the same time, this is also what makes
history so intellectually exciting. History is not the lifeless study of a dead past; it is
not about the memorization of dates, names, and places. History is a living and
evolving dialogue about the most important subject of all—the human experience.
And all of us are capable of taking part in that dialogue.
The remaining question is: How do you do this? Simply by learning how histo-
rians think and by sharpening the analytical and communication skills essential for
success in university and professional life.
The methods of history are not especially complicated or confusing. Most of them
are based on common sense and can be learned without a great deal of specialized
or technical training. Still, “doing” history is not altogether easy. (One historian
compared writing intellectual history to trying to nail jelly to the wall.) But with
some time, effort, and enthusiasm even beginning students can become historically
literate.
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Main Features of the Discipline of History

Universities and colleges typically organize themselves around widely recognized

subject areas, or disciplines, typically grouped under broad categories: the sciences,
the social sciences, and the humanities. Historians themselves disagree about
whether history as a field of study is more appropriately placed with the humanities
(like literature, philosophy, and religion) or the social sciences (such as economics,
sociology, and political science). What is clear is that the humanities and social
­sciences all attempt to understand the activities and creations of human beings.
20 Historical Thinking

This being so, what makes history unique as a discipline? Any brief generalization
can be dangerous, but, in simple terms, the basic characteristics of history are three:

1.  History is concerned with human beings operating in society, especially

in the centuries since the invention of writing. The historian is not primarily
concerned with the origins of the earth (geology), or the organic processes of
life (chemistry and biology), or when and how humans emerged on the land
(anthropology, paleontology). The historian’s work only begins in the presence of
reliable records—especially written records—that indicate a specific human
group shared a specific set of experiences in a specific time and place.
2.  History is concerned with change through time. Quite obviously, human
society is also a central concern of many disciplines other than history. As dis-
tinct from these other disciplines, however, history traces and explains a society’s
experiences through time. It is important to note that history—good history—
does not merely list events like a chronicle or a diary; it attempts to explain how
and why things happened as they did in the context of a specific period of time.
3.  History is concerned with the concrete and the particular. This is not
always true, of course, because many historians do try to make generalizations
that apply beyond a single situation. But, in the final analysis, a basic defining
characteristic of history is its continuing preoccupation with the unique and
concrete situations at a given point in time. In other words, broad generalizations,
however important, are secondary to those insights that provide knowledge of a
particular, unique past.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.