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.
57
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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
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
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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
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-
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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
The Public and the Writing of
History 63
significance to the researcher whose
goal is a telling restatement
of history. For history is nothing
short of the whole art and craft
of mankind-nowhere more splendidly
available to those who
possess the tools and the imagination
than in the area of American
history. The opportunities and the
challenge were never so great
as today.