Theodore K. Rabb: Narrative, Periodization, and the Study of History
[Theodore K. Rabb is emeritus professor of history at Princeton University. Among his many books and articles are Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575-1630 (Harvard University Press, 1967) and Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629 (Princeton University Press, 1998). ]
... If there is no “basic” story to tell, even within nations, let alone for the West, then any account is as good as any other. Common criteria dissolve; the center does not hold. If professional historians can agree on no landmarks, then those who use the past for their own purposes—politicians, ideologues, theorists—are free to choose their own. Those contemporaries who reject the special attention to politics that marked the pioneers of the discipline, and remained in place for nearly two and a half millennia, offer nothing in its place. The resultant impression of incoherence merely diminishes the influence of all historical work.
This is not to say that there needs to be a united front, a facade of lock-step orthodoxy. Historians have always disagreed with one another. But it is to argue that, without certain organizational criteria, both research and teaching alienate the audiences they deserve. And the central device whereby historians have gained those audiences has been through narrative. It is when they help shape a larger story that scholars’ detailed findings and their broad accounts resonate most strongly. The heart of any narrative, moreover, is periodization.
To make that claim is not to try to impose politics on those who deny that it is the bedrock on which all else rests. Rather, it is to suggest that there is a need for general structures that enjoy wide acceptance because they alone can restore a sense of connectedness and coherence to our understanding of the past. Atomization has to give way to recognizable form. And there is surely no more effective way to distill that form from the mass of available information than the one that has served the creators of our discipline so well from its earliest days: periodization.
The identification of periods that are distinct, both from what came before and from what comes afterward, is an enterprise that goes back at least to Thucydides. It implies that there is a basic uniformity to the experience of a particular geographic area over an extended period. The argument here is that unless such blocks of time are defined, widely embraced, and appropriately labeled, historians become incapable of addressing one another, let alone students or fellow citizens, in effective fashion. It may be that, for some regions of the world, historical research remains too incomplete to establish such an outline. But for Western and American history there can be little doubt that the major dividing points have long been in place. Attempts to classify these periods, or to argue over their features or boundaries, are often dismissed as fruitless exercises. But I would emphasize the contrary: they are essential to the health of the profession....
Read entire article at Historically Speaking
... If there is no “basic” story to tell, even within nations, let alone for the West, then any account is as good as any other. Common criteria dissolve; the center does not hold. If professional historians can agree on no landmarks, then those who use the past for their own purposes—politicians, ideologues, theorists—are free to choose their own. Those contemporaries who reject the special attention to politics that marked the pioneers of the discipline, and remained in place for nearly two and a half millennia, offer nothing in its place. The resultant impression of incoherence merely diminishes the influence of all historical work.
This is not to say that there needs to be a united front, a facade of lock-step orthodoxy. Historians have always disagreed with one another. But it is to argue that, without certain organizational criteria, both research and teaching alienate the audiences they deserve. And the central device whereby historians have gained those audiences has been through narrative. It is when they help shape a larger story that scholars’ detailed findings and their broad accounts resonate most strongly. The heart of any narrative, moreover, is periodization.
To make that claim is not to try to impose politics on those who deny that it is the bedrock on which all else rests. Rather, it is to suggest that there is a need for general structures that enjoy wide acceptance because they alone can restore a sense of connectedness and coherence to our understanding of the past. Atomization has to give way to recognizable form. And there is surely no more effective way to distill that form from the mass of available information than the one that has served the creators of our discipline so well from its earliest days: periodization.
The identification of periods that are distinct, both from what came before and from what comes afterward, is an enterprise that goes back at least to Thucydides. It implies that there is a basic uniformity to the experience of a particular geographic area over an extended period. The argument here is that unless such blocks of time are defined, widely embraced, and appropriately labeled, historians become incapable of addressing one another, let alone students or fellow citizens, in effective fashion. It may be that, for some regions of the world, historical research remains too incomplete to establish such an outline. But for Western and American history there can be little doubt that the major dividing points have long been in place. Attempts to classify these periods, or to argue over their features or boundaries, are often dismissed as fruitless exercises. But I would emphasize the contrary: they are essential to the health of the profession....