Spinning stories
HELEN CARR assesses a magisterial overview of how people have represented the past, from medieval propaganda to historical fiction
“Before you study the history, study the historian,” said EH Carr in his 1961 lecture series ‘What Is History?’ In these lectures, later turned into a book, he argued that no writer of history has ever been able to recount the past without being influenced by their own present and human experience.
It is Carr’s direction to study the historian – a call against objective history – upon which Richard Cohen expands in Making History. This in-depth analysis considers those who have written about the past, and how their writing was influenced by their present.
Cohen begins with the so-called “father of history”, Herodotus, and considers how much the ancient Greek writer was influenced by his world and personal experiences when writing The Histories. Herodotus was perhaps the earliest narrative historian, erudite and lyrical, journalistic in his approach of collecting reports. But at times he also played fast and loose with the truth, leading Plutarch to critique Herodotus as the “father of lies”. Despite this, Cohen argues that The Histories formed “a new way of seeing”. Certainly, Herodotus’s approach to history writing was different from that of his slightly later counterpart, Thucydides, who – unlike Herodotus – drew entirely from his own research and experiences.
However, it is not only written history that has influenced our view of the past. The Bayeux Tapestry, Cohen notes, has “influenced our understanding of history possibly more than any other pictorial artefact”. Millions of schoolchildren have pressed their noses against the glass at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy to soak in the history of the conquest. Likely created by the nuns at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, the Tapestry tells the well-versed story about England’s past as both Norman and Anglo-Saxon propaganda.
The Middle Ages were also a period rife with political propaganda. Chroniclers frequently pitched their viewpoints against one another in order to appease a patron’s perspective or a religious standpoint. William Shakespeare shook this up with his vision of the past, in which he offered historical figures “a psychological depth they had not received before in English drama”. The playwright introduced tropes and caricatures that still endure today, and which have irrevocably influenced our perception of the past and its politics.
By the 18th and 19th centuries, fictive history had gathered pace, and writers such as Walter Scott – author of Rob Roy and Ivanhoe – were prolific. Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace, argues Cohen, is “the world’s likely best
Herodotus was the earliest narrative historian, with a lyrical style and a journalistic approach – but at times he also played fast and loose with the truth
historical novel”, and it was followed by a “roll call of notable novelists” interested in romantic nationalism, epic costume drama and romance. Moving on to the 20th century, Toni Morrison’s work is praised as “history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music”. Hilary Mantel notes the importance of historical fiction, too, writing: “If we want added value – to imagine not just how the past was, but what it felt like from the inside – we pick up a novel.”
Because history is largely written by privileged white men, Cohen’s chapters ‘Herstory’ and ‘Who Tells Our Story?’ are important. In the latter, Cohen acknowledges that black history has been mostly ignored. From accounts of life during the Confederacy to slave narratives – such as Elizabeth Keckley’s 1868 chronicle of her life as an enslaved person and her subsequent freedom – Cohen devotes this chapter to the development of black history writing from the 19th century to the present. He’s optimistic that black history now has an indisputable place in historical discourse.
Making History proves that Carr’s lesson to “study the historian” is a good one. This is a biblical text for scholars of history to navigate what it means to write the past.
Helen Carr is the co-editor of What Is History, Now? (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021)