Most people think of history as the scholarly study of what-really-happened-in-the-past. Professional historians, however, know that the discipline is far more complex than that. It is a human enterprise, subject to the same problems that beset every other endeavor of man: prejudice, self-righteousness, vanity and, if not outright perversion of the truth, then at least the subconscious obfuscation of some grimmer reality.
The gulf between facts and interpretation is the source of most historical controversy. Attempts to separate them or give priority to one over the other are doomed to failure. In the end, a person’s view of the past is only a reflection of his or her deepest values and fundamental beliefs. If these are not based on evidence, they will be rooted in the historian’s personal biases and preferences, and thus will distort his or her interpretations of the evidence.
This is especially true when the historian’s prevailing views are at odds with those of the people who are most directly affected by his or her writing. History has always been an incredibly powerful tool for shaping identities and, at the most general level, justifying or discrediting actions, events and individuals in the present. Unfortunately, it is also a weapon at the center of culture wars, clumsily wielded by those who use it to promote their own ideologies and agendas.
For example, the “false prophets” of the Protestant Reformation were accused of reading into the past a preordained plot to destroy Christianity. In this way, the false interpretation of history was used to support an illegitimate and immoral war of ideas. It is in such controversies that historians often find themselves caught up, either as participants or critics.
In the past, there were many different styles and approaches to the study of history. Historians like Hugh Trevor-Roper argued that it was an art and should be understood as such; the French historians of the Annales school promoted quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of average citizens; and intellectual historians emphasized the significance of ideas. Moreover, social historians began to study formerly neglected groups in society and write about their experiences. These and many other approaches to history have proliferated in recent decades.