1. Modern historiography and the age of Ranke
Concepts and Methods
Portrait of Leopold von Ranke ( ) by Adolf Jebens after Julius Schrader, 1875
Modern historiography and the age of Ranke

2. Pre-modern and modern historiography: a useful distinction?
Distinction between pre-modern (pre 19th century) and modern historiography (19th century onwards)—does this distinction have merit? Or is it too crude?
Consider the variety of pre-modern historical writing, and the historical context that influences the purposes behind pre-modern historiography; and consider the variety of modern historical writing (both academic and non-academic): is it possible to identify continuities between the two?
What features of ancient and medieval histories make them recognizably ‘history’? And what characteristics make them recognizably ‘pre-modern history’?

3. Professional or academic history: professional societies; university departments and degree programmes; learned journals with peer-reviewed articles; internationally recognized scholarly standards.

4. Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510
The Renaissance
Literally ‘rebirth’.
A rediscovery of classical culture and learning, and a conscious modelling of culture and learning on classical principles.
Many Renaissance thinkers considered the medieval period as one of ‘barbarity’ in learning.
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510

5. Some Renaissance historians
Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People (1415)
Flavio Biondo, Decades of History (1483)
Niccolo Macchiavelli, Florentine Histories (1532)
Polydore Vergil, History of England (1534)
Étienne Pasquier, Researches about France (1560)
Francesco Guicciardini, History of Italy (1561-7)
William Camden, Britannia (1586; first edn)

6. Renaissance humanism
Some features, particularly relating to historiography:
A cultural movement rather than systematic set of ideas.
Key concerns: the culture and ideas of ancient Greece and Rome, in particular the rhetorical concerns of antiquity.
Emphasis on going back to the sources (ad fontes); realized through editorial, textual and philological1 scholarship aiming at the creation of a text as close to its original state as possible.
Interest in moral questions, particularly as they relate to the active, practical life—the idea of virtue (e.g. what it is; how to attain it) was of special interest.
1. Philology: the study of language and texts, particularly texts from the past; textual criticism based on a literary and historical understanding of language.

7. The Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini)
A document, purportedly issued by the first Christian emperor, Constantine I ( ), granting temporal power in western Christendom to Pope Sylvester I and his successors.
Above is a 13th-century fresco depicting Constantine, Sylvester and the Donation.

8. Lorenzo Valla (c.1406-57) Italian humanist and educator.
Wrote, among many other works, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio (On the false belief and forgery of the Donation of Constantine), , in which he proved through philological analysis, that the Donation was a forgery, datable to the 8th century.

9. Shakespeare’s Richard III; above, Laurence Olivier; right, Anthony Sher; below, Paul Whitworth

10. Presenting the Tudor dynasty
Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York (1548)
Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 2 volumes (1577)
Polydore Vergil, History of England (Anglica historia) (1534)
Thomas More, History of King Richard III (c )
Shakespeare, Richard III (c.1592)

11. From Polydore Vergil’s Anglica historia
And so the wretch [i.e. Richard III] quickly suffered that same end that it wont to befall those who equate right, law, and honor with their own will, impiety, and rascality. These are indeed examples which can deter those who keep no hour free of crime, cruelty, and felony, more vividly than can any words… He reigned two years, two months, and one day. He was slight of stature, misshapen of body, with one shoulder higher than the other, and had a pinched and truculent face which seemed to smack of deceit and guile. While he was plunged in thought, he would constantly chew his lower lip, as if the savage nature in that miniature body was raging against itself. Likewise with his right hand he was constantly pulling the dagger he always wore halfway in and out. He had a sharp, clever, wily wit, fit for pretence and dissimulation. His spirit was lively and fierce, and did not fail him even in death. For when abandoned by his own men, he preferred to take up the steel than to save his life by shameful flight, unsure whether he might soon lose it by disease or by suffering his comeuppance.

12. From Thomas More’s History of Richard III
[Richard] was malicious, wrathful, envious, and from before his birth ever forward. It is for truth reported that he came into the world with the feet forward and, as the fame runs, not untoothed. He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly companionable where he inwardly hated, not hesitating to kiss whom he thought to kill, pitiless and cruel, not for evil will always but oftener for ambition and either for the surety or increase of his position. “Friend” and “foe” were for him indifferent: where his advantage grew, he spared no man’s death whose life withstood his purpose.

13. Portrait of Richard III, by unknown artist, c.1520
X-rays have revealed that the painting was altered at an early date to suggest Richard was a hunchback; similarly the right eye has been narrowed.

14. Renaissance to Enlightenment: some broad features
The ‘scientific revolution’—emergence of modern science and scientific method (e.g. Galileo, Newton).
Increasing importance of knowledge based on ‘reason’, as opposed to reliance on religion, tradition, superstition.
Application of ‘reason’ and concepts derived from natural science to other disciplines; increasing belief in the perfectability of knowledge and the idea of human progress.
First Regius Professors in Modern History at Oxford and Cambridge established in 1724, reflecting the beginnings of history as an academic discipline.

15. Enlightenment histories: some examples
Giambattista Vico, Scienza Nuova (The New Science) (1720)
David Hume, The History of England ( )
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ( )

16. Leopold von Ranke ( )
Born in Saxony; studied Classics and Theology at the University of Leipzig.
Taught Classics between 1817 and 1825.
Appointed to a position at the University of Berlin in 1825.
Founded the academic history journal, Historische-Politische Zeitschrift in 1831.
Appointed Royal Historiographer to the Prussian court, 1841.
Ennobled in 1865; appointed a Prussian Privy Councillor in 1882.

17. Selected works of Ranke
Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (History of the Romanic and German peoples between 1494 and 1514) (1824)
Die römischen Päpste in den letzen vier Jahrhunderten (The Roman Popes in the Last Four Centuries) (1834-6)
Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (History of the Reformation in Germany) (1845-7)
Französische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (French History, principally in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) ( )
Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (English History, principally in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) ( )
Weltgeschichte: Die Römische Republik und ihre Weltherrschaft (World History: The Roman Republic and Its World Rule) (1886)

18. Four Rankean principles
The objectivity of historical truth.
The priority of facts over concepts.
The equivalent uniqueness of all historical events.
The centrality of politics.
For a fuller discussion see Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)

19. The objectivity of historical truth
‘History has had assigned to it the task of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of ages to come. The present study does not assume such a high office; it wants to show only what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).’
(Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von )
‘the historian… must for set himself all the more [the aim and task of objectivity] since personal limitation hinders him from attaining it. The ideal of historical education would consist in training the subject to make himself wholly into the organ of the object, that is, of science itself, without being hindered from knowing and presenting the complete truth by the natural or fortuitous limits of human existence.’
(Letter from Ranke to Maximilian II of Bavaria, 26 November 1859)

20. The priority of facts over concepts
‘True doctrine lies in the knowledge of the facts…’
(Letter to Heinrich Ranke, 21 November 1831)
‘An idea cannot be given in general; the thing itself must express it.’
(Letter to Friedrich Perthes, 21 May 1832)
‘From the particular you can perhaps ascend… to the general. But there is no way of leading from general theory to the perception of the particular.’
(A Dialogue on Politics)
‘Strict presentation of the facts, conditional and unattractive though they may be, is unquestionably the supreme law, for historical research is oriented by its very nature to the particular.’
(Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von )
‘God grant that I bring to light the facts, I hope, as they were, without any deception whether of my own or of others.’
(Letter to Heinrich Ranke, 28 December 1823)
Praise for historians who ‘intend only to transmit what happened; they are aided by eye-witnesses delivering reports. The actors speak; documents, alleged and authentic, are present in masses.’
(Ranke, ‘Idee der Universalhistorie’)

21. The equivalent uniqueness of all historical events
‘Every epoch is directly under God, and its value depends not on what comes from it but in its existence itself, in its own self. Thereby the consideration of history, and indeed of the individual life in history, acquires a wholly distinctive stimulus, since each epoch must be seen as something valid for its own sake and as most worthy of consideration.’
(Über die Epochen)
‘All generations of mankind are equally justified in the sight of God, and so must the historian view the thing.’

22. The centrality of politics
Political states are ‘ideas of God’, they are ‘spiritual substances’ and also ‘individualities’.
Each state manifests ‘the idea that inspires and dominates the whole’ of human institutions, it determines the ‘personalities of all citizens’, it embodies the discoverable ‘laws of growth’.

23. Objectivity and subjectivity
Objective truth—a truth not dependent on any mind thinking it; e.g., ‘Ranke was a 19th-century historian’.
Subjective truth—a truth entirely dependent on any mind thinking it; e.g. ‘Ranke is very boring’.
Are the following objective or subjective statements: ‘Ranke influenced, among others, Lord Acton’; ‘early twentieth-century historiography had Rankean ideals at its heart’; ‘Ranke transformed modern historical practice’; ‘Ranke was the most significant contributor to early twentieth-century historical writing’?

24. Scientific model?
Science is empirical; empiricism is the theory that all our knowledge comes from experience acquired through the senses.
Scientific knowledge is gained through observation—observation discovers the facts—not through theory.
Science separates the subject (the scientist) from the object (the world of observable facts)
Can this model (even if it is a correct description of the way science is practised—and many would challenge it) be applied to the study of the past?

25. Problems with the Rankean approach
It can be questioned whether a pure objectivity in any subject, including science, is ever practised.
Is it possible to make the sharp distinction between past (the object) and present (the subject in the form of the historian) that Ranke’s approach demands?
Historians are necessarily selective in practice, about what they study, which sources they consult.
Selection involves evaluation; not all facts are equal—some are more important than others—and the task of the historian is to make decisions about these facts.

26. Was Ranke objective?
Ranke was a Lutheran, and politically conservative.
He considered that God is revealed through history; also revealed is God’s purpose for Prussia and the German people.
His empiricism was founded on the belief that God is in everything.
‘all our efforts stem from a higher religious source’.

27. Victorian historians
T. B. Macaulay ( ), History of England ( )
Lord Acton ( ), Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, and admirer of Ranke; wrote little history, but planned a ‘History of Liberty’.
Acton wrote that the demands on the historian ‘threaten to turn him from a man of letters into the compiler of an encyclopedia’.
Were these historians objective in their approach? Or was interpretation and a theory of the past embedded in their narrative?
See Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), for an argument that English historians interpreted the past in light of the present, as a story of progress and of the triumph of liberty over tyranny.

28. Macaulay’s ‘whiggism’
‘unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered narrative [of English history since 1685] will be to excite thankfulness in all religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.’
Thomas Babington Macaulay, The history of England from the Accession of James II (1848)

29. Objectivity: controversy?
Is objectivity possible? Are historians who claim to be objective being dishonest (whether consciously or not)?
The Rankean approach led to emphasis on politics at the expense of other areas of historical interest; and it tended to emphasize the nation state rather than any other conception of human, social or political organization.
The Rankean approach resulted in narrative history of events, rather than thematic approaches, or approaches that focused on deep structures.
The focus on narrative and objectivity disengaged history from any meaningful dialogue with theory—arguably to the detriment of history.
The debate/controversy over objectivity now takes place within a context informed by postmodernism—is there a single truth to the past, or are all stories we tell of the past equally valid?

30. Heinrich von Treitschke ( ), politician, historian, and Ranke’s successor both at the University of Berlin and as official Prussian historiographer

31. from Heinrich von Treitschke, The History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1879)
[On the German character]
‘Depth of thought, idealism, cosmopolitan views; a transcendent philosophy which boldly oversteps (or freely looks over) the separating barriers of finite existence, familiarity with every human thought and feeling, the desire to traverse the world-wide realm of ideas in common with the foremost intellects of all nations and all times. All that has at all times been held to be characteristic of the Germans and has always been praised as the essence of German character and breeding.’

32. Treitschke on the State
‘The state is a moral community, which is called upon to educate the human race by positive achievement. Its ultimate object is that a nation should develop in it, a nation distinguished by a real national character… The most important possession of a state, its be-all and end-all, is power… The state is not physical power as an end in itself, it is power to protect and promote the higher interests… Only the truly great and powerful states ought to exist. Small states are unable to protect their subjects against external enemies; moreover, they are incapable of producing genuine patriotism or national pride and are sometimes incapable of Culture in great dimensions.’

33. Treitschke on the English character
‘The hypocritical Englishman, with the Bible in one hand and a pipe of opium in the other, possesses no redeeming qualities. The nation was an ancient robber-knight, in full armor, lance in hand, on every one of the world's trade routes.
The English possess a commercial spirit, a love of money which has killed every sentiment of honor and every distinction of right and wrong. English cowardice and sensuality are hidden behind unctuous, theological fine talk which is to us free-thinking German heretics among all the sins of English nature the most repugnant. In England all notions of honor and class prejudices vanish before the power of money, whereas the German nobility has remained poor but chivalrous.’

34. Treitschke on the Jews
‘The Jews at one time played a necessary role in German history, because of their ability in the management of money. But now that the Aryans have become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of finance, the Jews are no longer necessary. The international Jew, hidden in the mask of different nationalities, is a disintegrating influence; he can be of no further use to the world. It is necessary to speak openly about the Jews, undisturbed by the fact that the Jewish press befouls what is purely historical truth.’