Sunday, May 25, 2008

Quotations from Tosh #5: National History

"We teach and write the kind of history which is appropriate to our organization, congenial to the intellectual climate of our part of the world. We can scarcely help it if this kind of history is at the same time the one most adapted to the preservation of the existing regime." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 64.

"New interpretations always come with crudeness and violence at first as we shall see. They erupt upon the world as propaganda; they must make their way as fighting creeds. They can become wise and urbane, perhaps even harmless, all of them, but only after they have submitted to the chastening effect of controversy, discipline and tradition." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 65-66.

"From the 17th century our greatest innovators have tried to show that they were not innovators at all but restorers of ancient ways. And so it is that even when we have a revolution we look to the past and try to carry it out in accordance with ancient precedents." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 66.

"The American must go outside his country and hear the voice of America to realize that his is one of the most spectacularly lopsided cultures in all history. The marvelous success and vitality of our institutions is equaled by the amazing poverty and inarticulateness of our theorizing about politics. No nation has ever believed more firmly that its political life was based on a perfect theory. And yet no nation has ever been less interested in political philosophy or produced less in the way of theory." -- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 70.

"Who would think of using the word 'un-Italian' or 'un-French' as we use the word 'un-American'?"-- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 73.

"By the decolonization of African history I mean four main things: the use of other sources besides the documentary; the approach to research into African history from the African and not European perspective, the interpretation of data against the African and not the European background, and finally the application of the same terminologies by historians the world over." -- A. Adu Boahen, Clio and Nation-Building in Africa (1975), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 78.

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