A Historian's Handbook
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It is said that history has to be rewritten in each generation. This is because additional information has become available; the opening of previously closed archives, the discovery of letters unknown before, the finding of lost documents. But it is also because what seems important in past experience to one generation may seem less important to another generation, and vice versa, as people search for help in meeting current problems. Different writers of history will be writing from different perspectives and see things in different lights. Scholars may have developed new or modified theories to explain historical events, movements, and trends. Reinhold Niebuhr, in his The Irony of History (1952) raised this question about historical interpretations: History might be likened to the confusion of spots on the cards used by psychiatrists in a Rorschach test. The patient is asked to report what he sees in these spots; and he may claim to see the outlines of an elephant, butterfly, or frog. The psychiatrist draws conclusions from these judgments about the state of the patient’s imagination rather than about actual configuration of spots on the card. Are historical patterns equally subjective? Gerald White Johnson has written, (American Heroes and Hero Worship, 1943): ANothing changes more constantly than the past, for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believed happened. But it is more than that. It is how people interpret what they believe happened. There is an old saying that "Even God cannot change the past, but a historian can."
Revisionism All of this is bound to lead to some revision in the recounting of history. But at times we may detect a querulous search for a dramatic or startling new interpretation calculated more to attract attention and readers, or to affect policy, than to get at a reasonable and considered conclusion.
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A Historian’s Handbook
About the Author
James A. Huston received an A.B. with Honors and an A.M. from Indiana University and his Ph.D. from New York University, with further postgraduate studies at Oxford in England and Fribourg in Switzerland. He was a member of the history faculty at Purdue University for over twenty-five years, with times out for stints with the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, and on the faculties of the Naval War College and the National War College. He was Dean of the College of Lynchburg College in Virginia for twelve years. During World War II Huston served as a rifle battalion operations officer in the European Theater. He continued in the Army Reserve to the rank of colonel. He is the author of a dozen other books and numerous articles and reviews on history and military and international affairs. He and his wife, Anne Marshall Huston, reside in Lynchburg, Virginia.