Ohio History Journal

THE PUBLIC AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY*

by SAVOIE LOTTINVILLE

Director, University of Oklahoma Press

It has been said that if you scratch a historian you will surely

find an author. There is scarcely a discipline in America today as

productive as history--and I do not exclude even the sciences, whose

"cosmic chill" seems to work inversely, enkindling the imagination

of mankind the more as the outlook for the future becomes the less.

Perhaps it is because the record of the past offers a more manageable

focus to the researcher, for whom the act of historical synthesis is

still, within certain limits, a matter of "free enterprise." Perhaps the

development of new techniques opens wider opportunities, not

only for new research but for revision of the old. Certainly it is

true that the general public has provided an almost inexhaustible

stimulus to work of genuine merit in practically every historical

field.

But if we may speak candidly among ourselves, it should

perhaps be said that there may be even more important tasks in the

world than finding authors. One of them, indeed, may consist in

finding--"stimulating" is a better word--a more publishable type of

research, from the graduate school through the highest levels of

historical scholarship. This may not be the first item on the agenda

of a historical association, but it has been so placed by publishers of

scholarly books for almost longer than I can remember. It is, in short,

an imperative at that level where the historian offers himself to the

public.

The graduate student deserves first notice, for the simple

reason that he is unquestionably the best example of conspicuous

waste in historical research and writing today. He has received a

great inheritance from the German school of critical scholarship,

which, despite some of its obvious failings, was the indispensable

*This is the text of a paper read at the annual meeting of the Mississippi

Valley Historical Association, Oklahoma City, April 20-22, 1950.

58 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

58 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

means to historical advance in this country from the middle of the

last century until the close of the first decade of the twentieth. He

has the benefit of the objective method, tempered by modern psy-

chological knowledge of the nature of historical synthesis. He is

grounded and drilled in the critical and evaluative techniques which

lie at the very heart of successful research in any field. But with

these wings he is almost never asked to fly.

The Ph.D. dissertation remains earthbound. In the minds of

all too many supervisors of research, it is an exercise which (with

tongue in cheek) "ought somehow to be published." Indeed it

ought. But it will not be until the candidate for publication has

learned the difference between these ground-school banks and turns

and the real thing. Why aren't these matters dealt with in the

graduate schools? This is a question for you rather than for me, but

I admittedly have a notion or two on it.

There is an enormous gap between academic practice and prac-

tical reality; between the suggestion of a subject by a supervisor

and the developed book which the historical profession and public

need; between the style which is adequate for an examining com-

mittee and that which is palatable to an audience which actually

pays money for books.

Every director of research and every dissertation committee-

man might well ask himself, before a subject has been assigned and

after it has been completed, "Would I be willing to venture $8,500

to $10,000 on the publication of such a work in book form?" This

test should have more value than mere academic soul searching for

a number of just and simple reasons. A dissertation should be the

springboard to publication. Academic advancement is practically

impossible without publication, which should come within the first

five years of tenure. Publication costs are so formidably high every-

where that even learned books today must be launched on what is

known as venture capital, to be recouped from sales through the

usual and ordinary channels of trade. Severely delimited works and

those without the requisite imaginative and stylistic qualities cannot

secure the backing of a publisher's venture capital.

The foregoing syllogism in four propositions leads to an in-

evitable and easily understood conclusion: misdirected energy at the

The Public and the Writing of History 59

The Public and the Writing of History 59

graduate school level may lead an otherwise capable person into

an academic cul-de-sac for which those who direct graduate pro-

grams must take at least partial responsibility. The problem here is

one of bringing things up to date, and the obligation to solve it lies

mainly with mature, experienced teachers and scholars. But to clarify

both the problem and the impelling necessity for change, we may

profitably borrow a figure from another discipline.

"Social lag" was once a theory reserved to the sociologists, but

in recent years it has acquired all the validity that comes from care-

ful research and application. The corresponding concept of "his-

torical lag" apparently still awaits recognition. With some notable

exceptions, graduate research in American history--if one may

generalize upon the written results that publishers see-rests today

upon almost precisely the foundations provided by the objective

method half a century ago. These foundations are adequate enough,

but we may need to remind ourselves from generation to generation

that the techniques of internal and external criticism do not of them-

selves afford a historical superstructure. The all too frequent failure

to advance beyond technique--especially technique applied to a

severely delimited field--is a matter of some gravity. It indicates a

preoccupation not merely with the methods developed fifty and

more years ago, but with the forms of historical presentation as

well. This is historical lag.

The graduate student richly deserves to be made more aware

of these matters. He needs to know that research is not, as was

thought half a century ago, an entirely worthy end in itself. He

needs to know, as Paul Carpenter said of music, that history is one

of the communicative arts. He needs to know that a fragment of

history may be important to the total pattern of history, but it cannot

provide a career. He needs to know, most importantly, that the study

of history is intended to serve an intellectual purpose, and that, to

achieve such an end, it must have scope as well as style and

thoroughness.

It would be both misleading and futile to suggest that all the

dissertations produced in this country each year would find pub-

lication if they were done according to the standards I have out-

lined. The hope is rather that a much larger percentage of them

60 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

60 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

could be published. Careers would be advanced more rapidly. The

leaven would work in its own subtle way amongst aspiring scholars.

And the public would almost certainly return large benefits for

large benefits received. The drive here, as you may plainly see, is

towards the elimination of that conspicuous waste of which I spoke

in the beginning.

Too few historians, apparently, are aware of the tremendous

influence which the lessons learned in graduate school exert upon

the subsequent careers of their charges. The pattern of graduate

methods is so indelibly impressed upon the minds of hundreds of

men and women that they never depart from it. Here, it must be

obvious, I am suggesting that there must be the greatest departure

from both the scope and the form of graduate school writing if

history is to be served truly and the historian is to realize himself

in fact.

It is not that many men are lacking in the essential qualities

of imagination and perspective. It is, rather, that, once impressed

into a given mold, they are either unable or unwilling to break

from it into the larger creative world of genuine scholarship.

This is waste of the most serious kind, because it involves

mature individuals who may possess every qualification for the

greatest scholarly and social usefulness save a respectable model

or precedent.

The quality of imagination and the ability to use it are today

of fundamental importance in historical writing of all kinds.

Straight-line methods of interpretation and reinterpretation threaten

to exhaust certain areas, if not permanently, then at least for a

generation or more. As a publisher, I am keenly interested in de-

partures from straight-line methods, because I can foresee careers

of extraordinary usefulness and research results of splendid origi-

nality and significance developing from them.

The tendency in the past, as you well know, has been to

address oneself to a certain corpus of history and to deal with it

definitively if possible. Thus researchers have approached political,

or constitutional, or economic, or social, or cultural history, de-

veloping exhaustive statements of it. The time has arrived, it seems

The Public and the Writing of History 61

The Public and the Writing of History 61

to me, for a more complete understanding of the value of managing

two or three rings at one time.

If you will conceive of political history as one circle, and in-

tellectual or cultural history as another, and let the one fall upon

the other, to make a segment however large you like, it is in the

resulting segmental area that the new contribution to history is

to be made today. From my own meager field, it is suggested by

the statement of the Younger Pitt to Adam Smith, "We are all your

pupils," or of Benjamin Disraeli in the novel, Vivian Grey, "The

task of Government in the nineteenth century is to ameliorate the

condition of the lower orders." It is splendidly exemplified in the

works of the late Elie Halevy of France, and nearer home in the

works of Merle Curti, Louis Hacker, and Henry Steele Commager,

to name a few of our outstanding scholars.

The possibilities are not by any means restricted to a con-

vergence of intellectual history with the political or social, as some

of the foregoing examples might suggest. Joining political and

social history is pretty obvious and well exploited, but how large

are the opportunities to be had from joining intellectual and

economic history, or cultural and industrial history, or cultural, in-

dustrial, and economic history, for examples?

History, as it is written today, has too often a single dimension,

whereas at least it should have two, and for achievement of the first

order, it must have three dimensions. I am talking now of writing,

not of the multiple corpora which should be used for presentation

and development of new concepts. The letters of the Younger Pliny

to Trajan might be of first-rate importance to the man who is dealing

with the letters of Hopkins to Roosevelt, and the writings of Taine,

the French literary historian, may throw valuable light upon prob-

lems of American cultural interpretation. History is, or ought to

be, a study in depth.

In the brief time remaining, I cannot be much more than sug-

gestive. When I told a student of American literature recently that

the University of Oklahoma Press is to publish shortly a thousand

page work on the dime novel, he asked me, not without some

seriousness, "Must you descend to the sub-literary level?" My sug-

62 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

62 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

gestion to you is that the cultural history of the last half of the

nineteenth century can hardly be interpreted without reference

to the reading mores of our people. This is one sense of the German

phrase that I can heartily endorse, Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, not

Wie es hatte geschehen sollen, as my friend, the student of letters,

might prefer it. Incidentally, the fact that this work is the product

of a geologist's labors may reinforce the suspicion that tasks await

both the literary scholar and the historian.

From this point of view it becomes quite as important in in-

tellectual history to cope with the idiot fringe and the unimaginative

masses as with the few highly gifted people who advance mankind.

The truth of economic history may consist as much in the cost of

things not sold as of those sold most widely. Political history is at

best a thing of shadows until the thoughts and aspirations of plain

people are brought to bear upon it. For wherever you may turn, the

fact is unassailable that the study of history is both limited and

enlarged by its social context.

The historian, therefore, will do well to remind himself that

the writing of history is directed to social ends-in simplest terms,

not only for the edification of the cognoscenti throughout the

world, but even more for the purpose of educating and quickening

the imagination of plain men in all the walks of life. The writing

of history requires a base as broad as the interests of society and

as deep as the currents which move that society. We need no particu-

lar genius to discern, for example, that, contrary to the historic

desires of our people, the greater the degree of urban industrializa-

tion, the greater the consequent trend towards collectivism. But

the man who sets out to interpret this almost inexorable force in

twentieth-century America ought to know something about social

psychology, which has much to say about the human desire for

security.

It comes very near being futile to talk of "historical per-

spective" if the elements fundamental to intellectual insight are

lacking. Law and literature, science and art, music and languages,

medicine and the technologies-there is hardly anything so dis-

parate or so remote that does not have a large and meaningful