Professionalization Of History Research Paper

1. The Historian’s Profession As Bread-Winning

In the first sense of professionalism, there have been professional historians for a long time but there is no distinct collective process of professionalization. The writing of history is age-old. Some famous history writers were active in the European antiquity, and especially Herodotus and Thucydides of Greece have won lasting fame. These and other early European historians were not writing history for their living. In China from at least the second century BC, and later in Korea and Japan, historians were engaged to describe the history of their country under a dynasty. This usage involved a real employment in China and it even entailed a personal responsibility of the historian for what he wrote. Sima Qian (born 145 or 135 BC), known as the Grand Historian, was employed to make justice to the Han dynasty but he also maintained a theoretical discourse on history (Wang 1995). He and other Chinese dynastic historians were obviously fully occupied and cannot even normally have worked alone but must have had a small office with clerks at their disposal. The Chinese professionalism among its historians had no known counterparts. In Korea the first well-known historians (eighth century AD) were politicians who wrote on their own behalf. In India there were no real historians until the thirteenth century because of the dominant cyclical time perception in the Hindu culture. The late Roman and medieval European historiographers had little profit from their writing and could not live from it. ‘A book belonged to its author for as long as it stayed in his hands. After that it was free as air’ (Smalley 1974). Some late medieval chroniclers in Europe however managed to live by their work as historians. Such chroniclers were employed by princes or cities in order to relate the important events that took place within the principality or city.

In Europe, the chroniclers employed by princes and cities (those active in monasteries were not employed for the purpose and formally not living by their historical writings) were followed later by official historiographers hired by kings and states for the ‘proper’ recording of the wars where their masters were engaged. Titles like Historiographer of the Realm (in variations all over Europe) make clear the official mission of the historian. The French Historiographe du Roi, was a title used from 1554 to 1824, and 104 persons bore the title. It was not so much a function as a title with a reward, and the historiographers were not highly regarded at court (Boer 1985). For most such official historiographers, the revenue from the title was only a side income and not enough to live on. Quite another type of professional historians in this sense arose with the great wars in Europe in the seventeenth century: those who lived from their reports from the war scenes. They established a form of market situation for themselves, and especially those behind the Theatrum Europaeum were successful in their branch, a sort of intermediary between history and journalism.

Already from the late eighteenth century another type of professional historians, in sense (a) of the word, appeared in Europe: the literary men writing history and more or less living by their literary accomplishments. Men like Voltaire, Gibbon, Robertson, and, to an extent, Schlozer and Herder made themselves known as historians (though primarily as learned and literary men) and their works were sold in editions of considerable numbers. Their ambition was to a large extent to give to the reader an impression of historical personalities and their struggle with moral problems, a sort of applied political science or applied moral philosophy. These historians did not strive for new factual knowledge at first hand but rather a better insight into the moral problems of politics pursued by states and kings. Such literary professionals who worked with historical subjects were more successful than the contemporary professors of the universities of Europe, who also earned their living from history and who were mostly not well known.

Still in the (a) sense of the word professional the authors of the ‘broad’ literature on history which grew up from the early nineteenth century should be mentioned. Many narrators of history wanted to give to their countrymen a better understanding of the past of their nation. Publishing narratives on national history for the broad layers of the population sometimes also gave a living to the authors already in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is easy to see the continuation of such popular narrative into the twentieth century. The number of persons who have had the possibility to earn their living by telling history in different media and not only in printed books has increased enormously. The demand for history as entertainment, originating in the eighteenth century among the upper classes, has grown and spread in society. In the twentieth century, publishers have been interested in different types of books, such as specialized historical works, textbooks for schools and universities, historical journals, historical fiction and pure historical entertainment. Adaptations of history in various forms for radio and television have also gradually increased their share in the total turnout, and art film has been used for telling stories with a historical setting. The comprehensive number of persons who make their living from these forms of writing and processing history has never been calculated.

In the twentieth century, though starting earlier, there has also been a great growth of the number of professional historians in sense (a) of the word, who have been employed in teaching. Here must be included all teachers specializing in history, both in secondary schools and at the university level. Historians working in archives and museums also belong to this category. With the great expansion of secondary and tertiary education, the sector has been steadily growing in the twentieth century, especially after World War II. For France in 1910, Boer has estimated the number of historians in these categories to 1045 (Boer 1985). On the eve of the 1950s the number of professional historians in France has been approximated as less than 3,000 but then this number does not include archivists and historians employed in museums. In 1967, the number of the same limited category of professional historians had grown to close to 8,000 (Charle 1995). German and Australian calculations go in the same direction. (Raphael 2000, Macintyre 2000).

2. Establishing Professionalism Among Historians As A System Of Norms

The second sense in which the term professional is used, ‘professional as a qualified person who is recognized by society (not least by his her fellows in academia) as competent to practice the trade,’ has a more complicated historical reference. Historians who were recognized as competent historians by their contemporaries have existed for long. But in regard to the recognition by fellow historians, especially those with university posts, this is something much newer. If recognition is taken to mean an inclusion into a network, group or a formal association, only the history of the period from 1750 provided any means for the realization of such professionalism. If, further, a sort of common program of the network or group is required, the field is narrowed even more.

From the middle of the eighteenth century we can discern the beginnings of a formation of schools among academics in general and also among historians in Europe. It is difficult to say if anything comparable has been at hand in other parts of the world earlier. This was the period when German universities were flourishing and universities in other parts of Europe and its colonies were not. Because of the low level of state power in Germany not only free authors could express their views but also civil servants, such as professors. This made German universities, especially those in Halle and Gottingen, serve as a nursery for new notions in the humanities. Linguistics and history prospered. In the nineteenth century, 130 Protestant historians (plus an unknown number of Catholics) became full professors of history at German universities and for most of them this chair meant a culmination of their academic career. For the first time an occupational group of historians developed. Their competence for the professorship was mostly carefully examined and a discourse on history emerged (Blanke 1991). Mostly, however, these were individual accomplishments and the level of coordination between the learned men was low. No common rules for historical works were acknowledged, though an effort to write a manual of historiography was made by G.A. Will. Many other historians, e.g., Johann Martin Chladenius and Johann Christoph Gatterer, lectured on rules and wrote on the theory of history (Reill 1975). The process of standardization of methodological rules was, however, regarded with skepticism by some of the most important historians, such as August Ludwig Schlozer, who talked about imprisonment in scholarly rules, as Blanke has noted (Blanke 1991). In the early years of the nineteenth century at least four introductions to historical studies were published. As to rules for the critical use of sources and general methodological emphasis the introductory book by Friedrich Ruhs from 1811 is noteworthy.

There were hardly any ‘schools’ of historians before well into the nineteenth century. Academic teaching of history and research in history were well established in many countries in the eighteenth century, though without a canon of methodology or a professed normative system, which applied to history as a discipline. History was rather regarded as a part of a wider discipline of morality, the French sciences morales et politiques. Past events could be used to show the consequences of different types of conduct and new enlightenment notions made it possible to analyze historical processes without referring to God or providence (Heilbron 1990). For centuries history had been used for this purpose, but the morality concerned changed its content and its stability in the eighteenth century. The new directions were not diffused to students in standard formulations or transformed into methods and manuals. The cohesion among enlightenment historians was low and this continued to be the case up to around 1830.

The change brought about primarily by Leopold von Ranke was to create the conditions for a network of historians under the guidance of the master. He had meetings with his disciples, later known as his seminar, where problems of history were discussed. Ranke himself was a spokesman for three main principles of historical interpretation: the state as a central entity, the state system as the polity of international relations, and the necessity for the historian to evaluate each single entity for its role in history and not from its relation to contemporary politics. The first of these principles was a common ground for many thinkers of the period, but combined with the other two it formed a specific analytic system. The third principle has been partly traced back to forerunners in the eighteenth century (Meinecke 1936, Blanke 1991, Blanke and Rusen 1984) and it created the basis of the thought system, which became known as Historismus.

In the German academic community of historians the combination of Historismus and teaching through seminars became an instrument for the professionalization of historians. A common evaluative system was created in the latter half of the nineteenth century. A methodological part was often combined with individualization of persons and collective entities of the past, especially among the historians of the Middle Ages who were concerned with the editing of the Monumenta Germaniae historica. This work elaborated further methodological principles for editing which had been developed in France by Jean Mabillon and others from the seventeenth century and onwards, and which gave rise to the Ecole des Chartes at Paris. Methodology became important and the principles for the evaluation of sources became more and more systematized. A methodological direction of historians within the Historismus has therefore been discerned, with a philosophical direction as its counterpart. The former was characterized by its devotion to empirical studies with a sincere application of methodological principles in order to obtain objective knowledge, while the philosophical direction generally rejected the possibility of reaching any form of certainty and proclaimed relativity of knowledge. In fact it will seem that the differences within Historismus were great. On the one hand were those who saw historical relativism as fundamental and regarded history primarily as a means of orientation in the present. On the other hand were those who wanted to overcome as much as possible the constraints of the sources for understanding the past, though still with a considerable relativism in regard to values (Oexle 1996, Scholtz 1997).

In several respects a new turn of historical professionalism grew out of the empirical Historismus. It was important that new methodological manuals were published and widely accepted in the European com- munity of historians. J. G. Droysen had published his Grundriss der Historik (1868), but its emphasis was rather on the principles of Historismus than on the strictly methodological side. Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode (1889) and Charles-Victor Langlois’ and Charles Seignobos’ Introduction des Etudes Historiques (1898) were in this regard epoch-making. These books were in the first hand methodological (from the 1903 edition Bernheim added a section on philosophy of history), and they received a very wide circulation. They taught how to find secure knowledge in history. The authors sought somewhat different philosophical bases for their standpoints but the authors of both books turned their back to the relativism of knowledge. Their differences mattered less than their methodological aims, which found appeal among historians.

The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed a change in the general approach to historical professionalism. The emphasis had been on the theory of the state or the theory of state systems or the theory of the (individual) nation. Now the methodological element became central. Without the proper knowledge of how to evaluate sources a historian was not accepted as a professional. Several factors helped to make methodology a central element in the professionalism of historians. One was the rise of national historical associations. This was a process that took place all over Europe (and also beyond Europe in some countries) in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Philosophical and political issues divided all such associations and, thus, only methodology was really a common basis. This was even more the case with the international organization of historians, later known as the Comite International des Sciences Historiques, which can be traced back to 1898. In the early programs of its international congresses from 1900 and 1903 methodology played an important role and the object of the discussion was rather which were the conclusions for the philosophical foundations that must be drawn from the established methods than the other way round. After the congress of 1908, the French historian Simiand complained in a review article that methods had not been sufficiently emphasized in the congress contributions (Erdmann 1987).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century the historical associations of the European countries also in most cases started journals (Stieg 1986). The influential German Historische Zeitschrift was, however, founded in 1859 as a private initiative by Heinrich von Sybel. The earliest still existing seems to be the Danish from 1838. During the twentieth century the creation of journals of history has become usual in all parts of the world, and some of these are much more than national journals but quite general (such as the American Historical Review, founded in 1895) or thematic for studies of the history a major part of the world (such as the Journal of Asian Studies, founded in 1957). Other journals and reviews with a thematic or rather broad methodological focus, such as the Revue de Synthese Historique (1900–31); the Annales d’Histoire Economique et Sociale (founded in 1929, from 1946 called Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations); the Past and Present (founded in 1952); the Journal of Contemporary History (founded in 1966); the Journal of Modern History (founded in 1929), etc., were mostly later creations. In most of the journals, articles on themes of history were combined with critical reviews of books. An important element in such reviews was to examine the methods used and the shortcomings of authors in respect to methodological rules. Thus, in the form of critical reviews of the works on history, the methodological norms were spread. These norms were also commonly accepted. In the case that a historian wanted to contradict criticism he or she had to show that the principles had been observed rather than that these principles were not valid. This is something that characterizes methodology but is not valid for the kind of substantive norms that formed the major part of Historismus.

For the formation of the profession of historians, the debates on the application of historical methods were very important. A series of such debates took place in different countries in the first decades of the twentieth century. There was a big debate in Germany, called the Methodenstreit, on the correct use of methods in regard to any scientific activity. Generalization and interpretation were advanced as alternatives. Karl Lamprecht, with his concept of social and cultural history, was rather lonely in Germany and is often regarded as defeated. In fact, part of the issue was the theories of Historismus and the alternative professed by Lamprecht. Another part dealt with methods and their application in the strict sense, where individualization (W. Windelband, H. Rickert, M. Weber, F. Meinecke, and others) was opposed to views based on structures and collectivities (W. Sombart, H. Pirenne, F. Simiand and others) (Iggers 1984). The struggle was reflected in other countries such as Finland. In other countries, e.g., Sweden, Norway, and China, there were other straightforward struggles about the use of methodological principles and the consequences for national history. The historians who advanced new and radical consequences of methodologies, which were already well known, had a program. They wanted to establish firm knowledge in history, a knowledge that was contrasted to guesses and conjectures, not to historical relativism. In the USA, the focus of the debate was the possibility of establishing objectivity (Novick 1988).

Historical professionalism also increased through the ongoing specialization of all historical fields. In the beginning of the twentieth century, it was no longer the normal thing for a historian to take as the theme of an investigation the history of a country during a certain period. This had been quite usual in the middle of the nineteenth century, but in the first decades of the twentieth century this had changed. History had begun its separation into specific subfields, and economic, social and cultural history were regarded as major such parts. Specialized research institutes came into existence and specialized journals were published: the Economic History Review from 1927, the Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte from 1903, the Journal of Contemporary History from 1966, and the Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte from 1953. Similar journals were published in many countries with specific reference to the speciality in the national context. Specialization went further, chronologically and thematically. Investigations became very specialized in regard to field and object of study, and period of investigation. There was a dramatic change in the themes regarded fit for doctoral dissertations from the middle of the nineteenth century to 1920. Dissertations then were also outcomes of extensive archival research where the author could and should show his or her (some women were achieving the doctoral degree at the time) acquaintance with sources and with the appropriate methods. Academic professionalism aiming at firm knowledge had found its way of expressing itself in such specialized studies.

At the same time as the second phase of historical professionalism in the sense of recognition among equals was triumphing in the interwar years, a distrust in the validity of its central notion, the idea of secure knowledge, was winning ground among historians. The philosophical direction of the Historismus had long since brought about doubts as to the possibility of reaching to security in historical research. Its proponents had allied to the old tradition of hermeneutics, grown out from Bible studies, for acquiring a system of understanding. It contained two main requirements: pre-knowledge as the conceptual apparatus and direction of interest; and empathy as the means of acquiring an understanding of human thoughts and actions. Hermeneutics was regarded as a means to acquire more or less probable statements on the past and the most general formulations included an ambition to maximize the probability through research. Collingwood (1946) worked in this direction, and after World War II, Hans-Georg Gadamer brought out his influential interpretation of hermenutics, Truth and Method (1960), which was later overshadowed in some circles by Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrati e (1983–85).

Common to these works was that many historians accepted them as important foundations for the work of the historian. This meant that a new professional identity arose among some historians, conflicting with the earlier established group identity based on firm knowledge. As long as a basic norm in the hermeneutical camp was to increase probability of historical statements through empirical research, the conflict could be kept within close bounds. After the 1980s, this was no longer possible. Various theoretical directions have taken the relativistic claim further. The debate in the 1980s and 1990s has gone out from Hayden White and his rhetorical analysis of historiography (White 1973, 1978). The analyses of his standpoint have been numerous, above all in the USA, and have led to a variety of relativistic positions as regards the theory of history based on the assumption that history is basically a rhetorical and aesthetic discipline. At the same time, in Europe, postmodernism has influenced other philosophers of history. A far-going relativism in different forms thus has more or less superseded the earlier basis of professional identity among historians.

Social theories in the broad sense of theories of the social sciences have since long occasionally been used by historians. More regularly has this been the case from the 1960s and onwards. In economic history it was already earlier the rule to rely on and use theories of economics, but theories of management and organizations and sociological theories have been used to a large extent by historians in historical studies only in the 1970s and 1980s. The professionalism of economic historians has come to rely on the ability to apply such theoretical instruments as well as specific economic (statistical) methodology. The analysis of social structures and social dynamics has also developed through the use of social theory. This approach had one of its origins in the Annales circle, then most often directed towards demography and geography and their social consequences. More explicitly, social science theory in general, including sociological and organizational theory, was proposed as the proper instrument for historical research by the so-called Bielefeld school, consisting of a group of historians who had some relation to the university of Bielefeld in the 1970s.

What they proposed was in line with what had been done by several American historians earlier, such as Merle Curti and Stephan Thernstrom, but their efforts had not been coordinated into a program. The Bielefeld historians advanced the concept of a ‘historical social science’ (Kocka 1977, Wehler 1980). This type of history found much appeal in the 1970s and 1980s. Although parts of this enthusiasm for social sciences were criticized later, it is rather the theories used than the close link to social science (including social anthropology, which found growing appeal among historians) that have met opposition. The use of social science theories has thus been one source of professional identity among historians in the recent decades.

The conflict between ideals inspired by traditional approaches, relativism and social science has not been resolved. In fact historians have no longer (if they ever had) one source of professional identity. This is not only a consequence of the fights between different convictions within the academic community. All through the twentieth century historical professionalism has also been challenged from political quarters. Autocratic regimes all over the world have tried to make historians into docile instruments for the propaganda of the ruling ideology. Many have suffered for their professional ideals, others have accepted the norms of the state instead of the norms of the profession.

By the end of the twentieth century, when historians tried to base their professionalism on interpretative theories, methodological rules and social science theories, all without general acceptance, the history of historiography seems to have met a new interest. Different standpoints to historical knowledge may unite in the interest in investigating the history of historiography, and it is equally important for all different standpoints. The role of this disciplinary self-understanding for a renewal of professionalization should not be overrated, however. The history of the discipline cannot meet the requirement of providing the norms through which a closure can be upheld against nonprofessionals and, as regards norms there is no unanimity. In many countries it seems that the professional closure has become softened in recent decades and no sharp line is often drawn between historians and persons of literature. If history is at a point of crisis as a discipline, as is frequently said, it might be a consequence of two facts. No single normative theory is prevailing and the profession seems to rely on the quasi-theoretical field of its own history to reproduce a common professional identity.

Bibliography:

1. Bernheim E 1889 Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode. Dunker and Humblot, Munich, Germany
2. Blanke H W 1991 Historiographiegeschichte als Historik. Fromann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt, Germany
3. Blanke H W, Rusen J (eds.) 1984 Von der Aufklarung zum Historismus. Zum Strukturwandel Historischen Denkens. f. Schoningh, Paderborn, Germany
4. Boer P den 1985 Geschiedenis als Beroep: De Professionalisering an de Geschiedbeoefening in Frankrijk (1818–1914) [History as a Profession. The Study of History in France]. SUN, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
5. Charle C 1995 Etre historien en France: une nouvelle profession? In: Bedarida F (ed.) L’Histoire et le Metier d’Historien en
6. France 1945–1995. La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, pp. 21–44
7. Collingwood R G 1946 The Idea of History. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK
8. Droysen J G 1868 Grundriss der Historik. Leipzig, Germany
9. Erdmann K D 1987 Die Okumene der Historiker. Geschichte der Internationalen Historikerkongresse und des Comite International des Sciences Historiques. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Gottingen, Germany
10. Gadamer H-G 1960 Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer Philosophischen Hermeneutik [Truth and Method ]. Mohr, Tubingen, Germany
11. Heilbron J 1990 Ontstaan an de Sociologie [The Rise of Social Theory]. Prometheus, Amsterdam
12. Iggers G 1984 The ‘Methodenstreit’ in international perspective. The reorientation of historical studies at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Storia della Storiografia [History of Historiography], 6: 21–32
13. Kocka J 1977 Sozialgeschichte: Begriff, Entwicklung, Probleme. Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Gottingen, Germany
14. Langlois Ch-V, Seignobos Ch 1898 Introduction aux Etudes Historiques. Hachette, Paris
15. Macintyre S 2000 History in a new country. Australians debate their past. In: Torstendahl R (ed.) An Assessment of Twentieth Century Historiography. Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 71–86
16. Meinecke F 1936 Die Entstehung des Historismus. R. Oldenburg, Munich, Germany
17. Novick P 1988 That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
18. Oexle O G 1996 Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeichen des Historismus. Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Gottingen, Germany
19. Raphael L 2000 Flexisble response? Strategies of academic historians towards larger markets for national historiographies an growing scientific standards. In: Torstendahl R (ed.) An Assessment of Twentieth Century Historiography. Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 127–47
20. Reill P H 1975 The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism. University of California Press, Berkeley, LA
21. Ricoeur P 1983–85 Temps et Recit [Time and Narrati e]. Le Seuil, Paris, Vols. 1–3
22. Scholtz G (ed.) 1997 Historismus am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Internationale Diskussion. Akademie, Berlin
23. Smalley B 1974 Historians in the Middle Ages. Thames and Hudson, London
24. Stieg M F 1986 The Origin and Development of Scholarly Historical Periodicals. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL
25. Wang Q E 1995 Time perception in Ancient Chinese historiography. Storia della Storiografia 28: 69–86
26. Wehler H-U 1980 Historische Sozialwissenschaft und Geschichtsschreibung: Studien zu Aufgaben und Traditionen deutscher Geschichtswissenschaft. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Gottingen, Germany
27. White H 1973 Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD
28. White H 1978 Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD