Politicians versus Historians: Lord Avon's 'Appeasement Battle' against 'Lamentably, Appeasement-Minded' Historians

In retirement, Sir Anthony Eden, seeking to safeguard the anti-appeaserimage cultivated following his resignation as Neville Chamberlain'sForeign Secretary in 1938, proved extremely sensitive to theway in which his political career was presented in memoirs,biographies, and histories. Eden, who accepted the earldom ofAvon in 1961, saw himself as refighting old politcal battles,except that by the 1960s his attack was directed increasinglyagainst what he described as ‘lament-ably, appeasement-minded’history professors rather than former politicians. During 1966–7objections to Frederick Northedge's The Troubled Giant evenled him at one stage to consider legal action for defamationof character. The ensuing dispute, highlighting Lord Avon'spreoccupation with the verdict of history, illuminated alsothe varying, often conflicting, perspectives adopted towardsthe past by historians and politicians. ^*Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the BISA BritishInternational History Group Conference at the University ofExeter, September 1996, and the Millennium after 25 Years Conferenceat the LSE, October 1996. I am grateful to the Countess of Avon,the Marquess of Salisbury, the Borthwick Institute of HistoricalResearch at the University of York, the Master and Fellows ofChurchill College at Cambridge, and the Archivist of CarmarthenshireRecords Service at Carmarthen, for permission to quote fromthe papers of the first Earl of Avon, The Marquess of Salisbury,the Earls of Halifax, Lord Strang, and Viscount Cilcennin respectively.I am particularly indebted to Muriel Grieve, Professor Northedge'swidow, for assistance in my research and permission to quotefrom her husband's correspondence and publications, as wellas to Sir Bryan Cartledge, who helped Lord Avon with his memoirs.     

A Berlin for Historians

On his death in 1997 Isaiah Berlin was widely hailed as a leading philosopher of political liberalism. This article takes the position that Berlin's philosophical views, particularly those on freedom and cultural pluralism, can also be construed as a valuable guide for historians working in the present, "postmodernist" climate of debate. It further argues that Berlin's character and career, the subjects already of considerable critical inquiry, lend added authority to these views. The focus is on three lengthy essays on history written by Berlin in the 1950s, one of which was first published in the first issue of this journal. The article concludes, following Berlin, that it is the responsibility of historians, as historians, to recognize the often incommensurate plurality of ultimate values to which their fellow human beings historically have subscribed and to judge, as judge they sometimes must, with that recognition fully in mind. If the result of these as well as the other choices that they make is a plurality of histories, of contending subjects, approaches, methods, and outcomes, that is only to be expected, indeed welcomed. It is freedom in practice, and infinitely preferable as such to any known alternative.     

Historians and Their Duties

We need to specify what ethical responsibility historians, as historians, owe, and to whom. We should distinguish between natural duties and (non‐natural) obligations, and recognize that historians' ethical responsibility is of the latter kind. We can discover this responsibility by using the concept of “accountability”. Historical knowledge is central. Historians' central ethical responsibility is that they ought to tell the objective truth. This is not a duty shared with everybody, for the right to truth varies with the audience. Being a historian is essentially a matter of searching for historical knowledge as part of an obligation voluntarily undertaken to give truth to those who have a right to it. On a democratic understanding, people need and are entitled to an objective understanding of the historical processes in which they live. Factual knowledge and judgments of value are both required, whatever philosophical view we might have of the possibility of a principled distinction between them. Historians owe historical truth not only to the living but to the dead. Historians should judge when that is called for, but they should not distort historical facts. The rejection of postmodernism's moralism does not free historians from moral duties. Historians and moral philosophers alike are able to make dispassionate moral judgments, but those who feel untrained should be educated in moral understanding. We must ensure the moral and social responsibility of historical knowledge. As philosophers of history, we need a rational reconstruction of moral judgments in history to help with this.     

真诚的史家，真实的历史——新世纪史学的希冀和期望

2000年,中国社会科学院院报邀我写一篇对新千年祈愿的字。我在小开头就写了一段不大合乎时宜的话——21世纪即将来临。抒发迎接新世纪的豪言壮语,此其时也。作为历史癖,我更想在送别从前时,多一些回眸。过去的百年,从动荡走向稳定,从落后走向进步。人们在高歌辉煌灿烂之时,切勿忘记曲折失误;在津津乐道于历史进步之时,切勿忘记冷静地总结历史教训;尽管回忆往事,会带来一些苦涩哀痛。     

The Quarrel Between Historians And Postmodernists

Book reviewed in this article:
Konstruktion der Vergangenheit: Eine Einführung in die Geschichts-theorie By Chris Lorenz. Translated from Dutch by Annegret Böttner with Introduction by Jörn Rüsen     

Hayden White's Appeal to the Historians

Historians rarely agree with Hayden White's account of theirdiscipline. To a certain extent their dissatisfaction can be explained by the fact that historianscustomarily distrust historical theory and always tend to look at the historical theorist with thegreatest suspicion. But historians find an extra argument for their dislike of White's ideasin his alleged cavalier disregard of how historical facts limit what the historian might wish to sayabout the past. And, admittedly, this criticism is not wholly unfounded.
Nevertheless, this essay attempts to show how misguided this traditional criticism ofWhite actually is. For it is historians who too easily take the truth of their accounts of the past forgranted, whereas White's theoretical writings can be shown to express a full awareness ofthe kind of problem encountered in the effort to tell the truth about historical reality. Hence,White's writing—rather than those by historians criticizing White—testify to therespect that we owe to historical reality itself.
That this is how we should read White becomes clear if we consider his intellectualevolution as a whole rather than the individual books or essays that he wrote.