The Past and Present Society

Introduction
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Past & Present, No. 1 (Feb., 1952), pp. i-iv
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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Introduction
NEW HISTORICALPERIODICALSTEND TO DISCLAIMCONTROVERSIAL
VIEWS

about their subject. PAST AND PRESENT cannot do so. This

journal has come into being, not so much because its founders think
that there is room for more periodicals in which serious historical
work in non-technical language may be published, but because
there is room for concern about the state of historical research and
discussion at present. The first issue is perhaps a suitable place for
the editors to explain what the journal is trying to do. However, in
future issues it will do it, in the tradition of the late Marc Bloch and
his associate, Lucien Febvre, ' not by means of methodological
articles and theoretical dissertations,but by example and fact.'
What kind of historical writing do we wish to encourage?
The matter has been well put by the great Arab scholar Ibn
Khaldun in the fourteenth century, a period which fortunately
acquits him of twentieth-century parti-pris. 'History' he writes
(Prolegomena i, 56)
is the record of human society, or world civilisation; of the changes that
take place in the nature of that society . . . ; of revolutions and uprisings
by one set of people against another, with the resulting kingdoms and states
with their various ranks; of the different activities and occupations of men,
whether for gaining their livelihood or in various sciences and crafts; and
in general, of all the transformations that society undergoes by its very
nature.

Our main task, most of us would agree, is to record and explain

these ' transformations that society undergoes by its very nature.'
Such a study cannot but prompt some general conclusions, whether
or not we call them ' laws of historical development' - though we
shall be poor historians if we underrate their complexity. Men are
active and conscious makersof history, not merely its passive victims
and indices. Each form of human society, and each individual
phase therein, has its own speciallaws of development. Consequently
we believe that fashionableattempts to express history in terms of the
much simpler changes in the natural sciences (for instance in terms
of biological evolution, statistical growth-curves or invariant
psychological mechanisms) oversimplify and falsify it. Nor can it
be explained merely as a function of outside environment- for
instance climate, geography, or, more fashionably, culture-contact.
We distrust attemptsto explain one phase of history in terms primarily
applicable to another - for instance Roman economy in terms of
modern capitalism or imperialism, thirteenth-century cathedralbuilding in terms of Keynesian economic policies, let alone the

ii

grosser anachronismsof journalists and political platform-speakers.

One need not deny that such theories may throw some light on limited
aspects of the subject; but they must be severely kept in their very
modest place, and at present they are not.
The main danger of this oversimplificationno longer comes, as it
did in nineteenth-century, from the misapplication of narrowly
mechanical views of the physical sciences, or of biological evolution.
It comes ratherfrom the vogue of certain ideas drawn from academic
anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics, themselves
sciences considerably less advanced than Victorian physics or
biology, and much more directly charged with politics. The
' structural-functional approach, as developed in contemporary
sociology' has been used, for example, to interpret French history
since 1789. The work of economic statisticiansand econometricians
is recommendedto us as the foundation for a new positivism entirely
concerned with ' determinismes historiques.' ' Status systems'
and 'psychological maladjustments' are us i to interpret nations.
The economic history of the past century and a half is divided into
periods of' empirical,' ' informed,' and ' cognitive entrepreneurship,'
following a fashion to which an entire transatlanticresearch centre
has now been dedicated. Whatever the merits of such ideas and
methods - and some are no doubt stimulating, - they are unable
to deal with any but the simplest forms of historical change. They
are indeed misleading precisely because they hide behind a much
greater degree of technical sophistication than Buckle or Comte
possessed.
All these methods, however, share the belief that history may be
rationally studied, and some of them, though over-simple, have in
their time made important contributionsto historical understanding.
Moreover, it is important to observe, this rationalismis the preserve
of no creed or party. The present generation, however, has seen
the recrudesenceof certain schools of thought, descended directly or
of early nineteenthindirectly from the anti-rationalWeltanschauung
century Romanticism, which deny the very possibility of a rational
and scientific approach to history. Such views we find difficult to
share. That does not mean, of course, that we deny the existence
or the influence of irrationalforces in the makingof the past, nor that
we suppose that the past is susceptible of explanationby means of a
simple chain of causality. We are as aware as any other historians
of the immense force of prejudice and passion in all their
manifestations, religious, social and political; we do not deny the
impact of the unique, the accidental or the fortuitous, and we are
prepared,with the great historian and founder of the modern school
of art-history, Max Dvorak, to consider the process of historical
change not as the tracing of a single unbrokenline of development,
but rather as a complex development establishing at every stage new

iii

conditions of creative activity and releasing at all stages new shoots

from which new developments unfold. But these considerations,we
believe, do not invalidate the scientific approach and the application
of the scientific technique which nineteenth-century historical
scholarshipbuilt up to our lasting advantage. We have no sympathy
with superficial rationalisations; by the same token we have no
sympathy with those for whom the irrational or the providential
is the only thing of consequence in their conception of the past. The
view of H. A. L. Fisher that history is merely one damned thing after
another is, in our belief, unwarrantable. We dissent from it even
when presented, by Benedetto Croce and his disciples, in the more
sophisticated dress of philosophicalidealism. To believe with these
writers and others that the pattern we find in the past is merely the
subjectiveone we put into it from the present, is, in effect, to deny that
it can be scientific in any real sense. It is no more true, and certainly
a great deal more c,ngerous, than the old view, long since outmoded,
that it is possible for the historian- and, indeed, is his sole legitimate
function - to establish by a laborious accumulation of ' fact,' a
photographically exact reconstruction of an ' objective ' past.
Neither of these extremes, we believe, reflects accurately the
possibilities of history and the functions of the historian. We believe
that the methods of reason and science are at least as applicable to
history as to geology, palaeontology, ecology or meteorology, though
the process of change among humans is immensely more complex.
Like these disciplines, history cannot logically separate the study of
the past from the present and the future, for it deals with objective
phenomena, which do not stop changing when we stop observing
them.
Lastly, we agree with Polybius (XII, 25b) that
the property of history is, first, to ascertain what was actually said (or done)
and, second, to discover the causes of success or failure. The facts by
themselves may be interesting, but hardly useful. It is the study of causes
which makes history fruitful.
When our minds transfer to present occasions similar conditions from the
past, we acquire a basis for estimating the future . . . and are helped to
face coming events with confidence.

We should perhaps to-day rely, not on discovering past parallels,

but on understanding how change took place in the past; but we
share the belief of Polybius in the value of history for the present,
and in particular his conception of historical discipline as an
instrument enabling us 'to face coming events with confidence.'
In a generation which, as Friedrich Meinecke demonstrated, has
history in its marrow, and for which an historical mode of thought
is second nature, we believe that it is to history that the great majority
of thinking men and women look for strength and understanding.
It is to them that we address ourselves.

iv

Within these general limits there is plenty of room for difference

and disagreement. The Board, and contributors to PAST AND
PRESENT study different periods and aspects of history, inherit
different preconceptions, and hold differing views. The Editorial
Board therefore takes no responsibility for the views of contributors,
nor does it seek to impose its own on them, where it is united, nor to
exclude contributionswhich are at odds with some or all its members.
We shall, of course, apply certain technical criteria. Articles which
merely bring the results of a piece of detailed researchwhose interest
is narrowly restricted will not normally be published; nor, on the
other hand, those which deal with wider historical problems without
a firm foundationof scholarlyresearch. We shall of course encourage
contributionson historical questions which seem to us to be important
- but with the object of discovering rather than of confirming the
answers. We shall make a consistent attempt to widen the somewhat
narrow horizon of traditional historical studies among the Englishspeaking public. The serious student in the mid-twentieth-century
can no longer rest content in ignorance of the history and the
historical thought of the greater part of the world. PAST AND
PRESENT therefore will make special efforts to bring to nonspecialist readers knowledge of Indian, Chinese, Arab, African or
Latin-Americanhistory, and to make availablethe work of historians
writing in unfamiliar languages, aided by advisers and collaborators
from France, China, Italy, India, Czechoslovakiaand many other
countries.
PAST AND PRESENT will appear, for the time being, twice a
year. It will publish articles, review articles and shorter
communications on topics of interest to historians- whether
specialists or not.
THE EDITORS.