E.H. Carr and What Is History?: The Invisible Man of American Historiography

Americans view themselves as the vanguard of democracy, the last stand for liberty, and the superpower that ties together all other nations. Or so the American historical community would have you believe. For better or worse, Americans have a unique view of their own history because of how it has developed into a global player. This view consists of three components. Primarily, the United States has been viewed as the experiment in the practical applications of democracy from its very inception. Developing from this is the interventionist philosophy that as the quintessential democracy, Americans must spread out globally to protect the ideals of freedom and equality. In order to maintain these two components, Americans media and history seek to praise American victories politically and militarily, as a rallying cry for further democratic intervention. This does not mean that critics do not exist among historians and reporters in the United States; these dissenters, however, are a significant minority and are typically discounted as radicals.

Having defined what American history is to the American public, it becomes obvious that a divisive work that criticizes traditional theories of knowledge would be unacceptable in the doctrine of American historiography. E.H. Carr’s What is History? is such a work, questioning the obsessive, fact-based nature of history and substituting an interpretative, interdisciplinary theorizing on history. Carr’s work is not only ignored by American historians, but also is forgotten in America in general for several reasons. Carr, in short, is a relic and a curmudgeon from the Cold War era that sought to destroy the fetish-like collection of historical facts and encourage that the historian mold the facts into a work useful for contemporaries. This simply does not hold up to the standards that Americans have set forth for historical study. I will present briefly Carr’s lectures and then describe the criticisms of Carr and his place in modern historiography.