The Relationship Between the Past and Present in Historical Writing......... By Asanbe Abdulgaffar O.

Introduction

This paper intends to bring to fore the relationship between the past and present in history as a field of academic discipline. Hence, it will take a brief survey into the definitions of history, relevance of the past to historical studies, concise discussion of the intimacy between the past and present in historical analysis and finally conclusion.

Definition of History

The word “history” is derived from the Greek noun “historia” meaning “inquiry or research”.[1] Learning by inquiry about the past of mankind was developed into a discipline by the Greek historians Thucydides and Herodotus (who is popularly known as “father of history”).[2] Aristotle regarded history as a systematic account of a set of natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the account.[3] E.H. Carr also defined history as a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, which can be interpreted as an “unending dialogue between the present and the past”.[4] Alan Roberts in his “Dictionary of History” defined history as a “record of the past events of human societies”.[5]

The above definitions simply express that history deals with the systematic account/record of past events in human societies and presented/analyzed in present time. In other words, the past provides the facts, while the present makes available the historian that would in turn utilize and interpret the facts. The importance of these definitions lay in the fact that they depict what history stands for. However, emphasis is also placed on sources and facts.

Importance of the Past to History

With the definitions of history examined, it is pertinent to note the relevance of the past to the realm of historical studies. The past constitute an independent reality, although one to which we do not have the same immediate access as to outside world in its present aspect. The fact that we cannot perceive the past directly, does not mean that it is not real; it is part of reality just as much, and as such as worthy of our attention. The past exists for itself and is interesting by itself, and needs no applications to justify its existence.[6] Therefore, the past stands independently, and history as a field of inquiry relies heavily on its provisions.   

The Relationship between the Past and Present in Historical Studies

The present is, in the words of Hume, nothing but a bundle of perceptions, without a past there is no way we can make sense of them and form a personal identity.[7] Hence, the past and present in historical studies can be described as two sides of same coin, with the two sides corroborating one another. It can therefore be deduced that the studying of past events of mankind in their various environments and societies occur in the contemporary or present time. A historian who wants to make history for public consumption must involve him/herself in the search for relics or traces of the past, collects and verify them wherever found, analyzed and make valid deductions from them before presenting them as final well-written form.

In the same vein, Benedetto Croce affirmed that “all history is contemporary history”. This means that history consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes of the present and in the light of its problems, and that the main work of the historians is not to record but to evaluate, for, if he does not evaluate, how can he know what is worth recording?.[8] This view is also supported by Carl Becker, who argued that “the facts of history do not exist for any historian till he creates them”.[9] The nagging distinction between the facts of history and other facts about the past vanishes, because the few know facts are all facts of history.

Historical justification also reflects the nexus between the past and present. This enunciate that the only way we can fully understand the present is by knowing its origins in the past, and by contrasting the present to many alternatives in the past.[10] E.H. Carr aptly put it best as “the dual and reciprocal function of history is to promote our understanding of the past in light of the present and of the present in light of the past”.[11]

Similarly, in Collingwood’s “the Idea of History”, he opined that the philosophy of history is concerned neither with “the past by itself nor with the historian thought about it by itself, but with the two things in their mutual relations”.[12] This dictum reflects the two current meanings of the word “history”- the inquiry conducted by historians and the series of past events into which he inquires. “The past which a historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present”. But a past act is dead, i.e. meaningless to the historian, unless he can understand the thought that lay behind it. Hence “all history is the history of thought”, and “history is the re-enactment in the historian’s mind of the thought whose history he is studying”.[13] More so, human history is the history of human thought. A simple thought or fact may by itself yield very little, it is only in encountering other thoughts that they come alive again, and thus makes the past a living entity of the present. History is of the past, but it takes place in the present.[14]

Furthermore, the key conception of history according to Collingwood is the re-enactment of the past in the living present. Thus simply remembering is not enacting history, not even your personal history, because any kind of re-enactment invariably involves inference. Only if you use your memories as evidence, reasoning out of their testimonies to draw conclusions, are you engaged in re-enacting your life historically. The past exists in terms of the traces it has left in the present, and the task of the historian is to bring those traces to life. History takes place in the present, only in the present can it be alive. A historian may worry that he will not be able to give a true picture of the past because all the sources and all the evidence are not available to him. This is no cause for worry, because history lives in the present, and we can only the best we can with what we have. However, future discoveries of new evidence may very well undermine the conclusions we are able to draw now, but this will be a problem of the future. Thus it is a true anachronism to berate people of the past for not transcending their times. By definition no one can transcend the limitations of the times in which they find themselves. Would they be able to do so, means that the times were different from what we assumed they were.[15]

The link between the past and present in history also reflect in the fact that history is made possible by the pre-established harmony between the historian and the objects of his studies. In the first place, the facts of history never come to us ‘pure’, since they do not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the mind of the recorder. Hence, it follows that when we take up a work of history, our first concern should be not with the facts which it contains but with the historian who wrote it.[16]

The language of the historian also expresses the relationship between the past and present in historical studies. The historian belongs not to the past but the present. We can view the past and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present. The historian is of his own age, and is bound to it by the conditions of human existence. The very words which he uses like democracy, empire, war, revolution – have current connotations from which he cannot divorce them. For instance, ancient historians have taken to using words like polis and plebs in the original, just in order to show that they have not fallen into this trap. They too live in the present, and cannot cheat themselves into the past by using unfamiliar or obsolete words, any more than they would become better Greek or Roman historians if they deliver their lectures in a chlamys or a toga. More so, the names by which successive French historians have described the Persians crowds which played prominent roles in the French revolution – les sans-culottes, le peuple, and la canaille – are all manifestos of a political affiliation and of a particular interpretation which is the manifestation of their contemporary situation.[17]      

The interpretation, selection and ordering of facts show to a greater extent the relationship between the past and present in historical analysis. Both the interpretation and the selection and ordering of facts undergo subtle and perhaps partly unconscious changes through the reciprocal action of one or the other. And this reciprocal action also involves reciprocity between present and past, since the historian is part of the present and the facts belong to the past. The historian and facts of history are necessary to one another. The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historians are dead and meaningless.[18]

The aspect of history that shows the handing of tradition is intimately relevant to the relationship between the past and present in historical studies. The present has no more than a notional existence as an imaginary dividing line between the past and the future. Since the past and the future are part of the same time-span, interest in the past and interest in the future are interconnected. The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past and in their future. History begins with the handing down of tradition; and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefits of the present and future generations.[19]     

Conclusion

By and large, it is crucial to assert that the paper has so far established that history is the study of the past, but not of every kind of event in the past, but only that that pertains to the thoughts of men and the actions which derive from those. Meaning that it is only the objective part of the past which can leave traces in the present, and thus the only past that in principle can be reconstructed. Hence, it is suffice to opine that the past and the present are inseparable within the confine of historical studies.

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[1] History, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/history, net-retrieved 15^th June, 2013

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] E.H. Carr, What is History?, London, Penguin Books, 1962, p.30.

[5] A. Roberts, Dictionary of History, Kuala Lumpur, Golden Books Centre, 2001, p.121. 

[6] R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford, O.U.P., 1976, p.2

[7] Ibid.

[8] E.H. Carr, Op. cit., p.21

[9] Ibid.

[10] Edgar Kiser, Relationships Between the Past and Present: A Typology and Analysis, University of Washington, p.4

[11] Ibid.

[12] E.H. Carr, Op. cit. p.22

[13] Ibid.

[14] R.G. Collingwood, Op. cit. p.14

[15] Ibid. p.11

[16] Ibid.

[17] E.H. Carr, Op. cit. Pp. 24-25

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.