The Historian's Craft |
|
|
|
|
This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $9.10.
|
The HTML code below can be pasted onto your web-site, your MySpace page, or blog - or any number of similar places - to create a link to this page:
If, instead of a text link, you'd like to create a link to this page which will display the book cover, if it's available, then the code below will do exactly that:
Check for the same book at these other US book sites:
• [ Abebooks ]
• [ Alibris ]
• [ Barnes & Noble ]
• [ TextbookX ]
• [ Powells ]
… or check UK bookstores
|
Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
[ Unable to obtain editorial review or publisher's summary at present ]
|
Other Items You May Enjoy:
Browse Books From These Related Subjects:
Customer Reviews:
• From One History To Another
10 July, 2007
Journalists and historians have the daunting task of answering the five W's. However, Marc Bloch answers history's who, what, where, when, and why in his somewhat legendary book pertaining to the understanding of the historical method, THE HISTORIAN'S CRAFT, like a stream of thought or a conversation with the reader. Although Bloch's examination is not meant to be a complete analysis, he provides a general theoretical and philosophical discussion as it relates to history that is insightful and thought provoking.
I happened to come across this book, not by reading it in one of my history classes, but by looking at the footnotes and bibliographical information embedded in several scholarly articles I read where the mention of the book kept appearing. It is only now that I have had the chance to read this classic book. Bottom line, Bloch summarizes and observes historiography in 20/20 hindsight e.g., "history was a whole, that no period and no topic could be understood except in relation to other periods and topics" (ix). And ironically, Bloch writes from a pre-1945 perspective and did not complete the book as a result of his sudden passing during World War II; one can imagine what his perspective would have turned out to be if he had lived.
Indeed, Bloch was inclined to examine and research history from an interdisciplinary perspective. And although the subject of history has been described as a foreign land, it is a vast landscape with limitless boundaries. A bulk of Bloch's discussion is based on his training, which took him from Ancient to Modern European history. But had he completed this piece of work, as one reads the concluding pages, possibly he may have delved deeper towards the other side of the globe towards Eastern civilization as well as the industrialist Western civilization. Thus Bloch took a broad historical perspective and implemented it within his discipline as an Economic historian who specialized in Medieval history, but interestingly managed to teach the economic development of the United States during his last years of teaching.
After reading THE HISTORIAN'S CRAFT, aspiring historians or the curious will find that their work has only just begun. Readers will be confronted with the theoretical and philosophical questions, but will also see why history is a part of the humanities as well as a craft that can be hypothesized and shaped to a particular interpretation, be it definitive or revisionist. Bloch makes several anecdotal comments, but this is one that is timeless: "Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present" (43). This is one of the reasons why this book is recommended for supplemental or essential reading.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Interesting Analysis
12 January, 2010
Everyone, at least once in their life, has questioned the usefulness of their career. Marc Bloch, a French economic historian, discovered that this moment could be inspired by a mere inquiry: "Daddy, what is the use of history?" Bloch's answer to his son's innocuous question provides the intellectual back-bone to his study: The Historian's Craft. In this book, Bloch's analysis provides students and professional historians alike with a how-to guide to history, but also, probably most importantly, a poignant defense of the craft itself.
Bloch attempts to lift history from its tradition of romantic storytelling, excessive specialization, and its preoccupation with politics, by re-aligning its practices within the broad realm of intellectual inquiry, most importantly science. "There is then," Bloch writes, "just one science of men in time. It requires us to join the study of the dead and of the living." While Bloc concedes that "human actions...elude mathematical measurement," Bloch argues that any intellectual endeavor that explains change over time is historical in its essence. Geology, for example, explains the processes of erosion and plate-tectonics, within the context of time. Thus, understanding the nature of the earth's crust, in relationship to the deteriorating effects of time, is the purpose of studying geology. In contrast to geology, Bloch explains, "it is men that history seeks to grasp." History like many other sciences, are tools for intellectual inquiry. When man is determined to be the subject in question, history, according to Bloch, is the most appropriate tool. The creation of a lake by a man-made dam serves as an excellent example. The inquisitor who is interested in understanding the events that led to the creation of the man-made lake would be better served by analyzing the economic, political, and social phenomena that led to the creation of the dam, rather than the invisible natural geologic processes that led to the creation of the lake. In this sense, history, in comparison to the highly respected intellectual pursuits of hard science, remains an important fixture in intellectual inquiry.
So Bloch has decisively argued that the subject of history is men. But what context should historians study men? Time, according to Bloch, "is a concrete and living reality with an irreversible onward rush." The harsh reality of this constant, influx- producing force provides the logic behind all major historical events. Thus, history cannot merely be a "science of men," or the "science of past," but is instead the "science of men in time," or man's evolution within the context of time. In relation to this, Bloch additionally believes that historians should "join the study of the dead and of the living." While many world leaders would like to make changes to certain contemporary societies, the cultural traditions of a civilization, which pull against reform, are deeply rooted in the fabric of the past. Thus, Bloch argues that man, "remains a more or less willing prisoner," to human institutions that developed throughout history. A historian or even more importantly a world leader that remains unaware of the controlling function of the past, will fail miserably in his or her attempts to improve the future. Likewise, Bloch argues that historians must also be aware of how the present influences our understanding of the past. Bloch believes that "the knowledge of the present bears even more immediately upon the understanding of the past." Bloch states that since historians do their work "backwards," from present to past, a false understanding of the present could lead a historian on a fool's errand in his analysis of the past. Thus, the past and the present, both functions of time, serve as the foundational reference points that all histories should be written from.
Marc Bloch, before The Historian's Craft was released, was captured, tortured, and executed by invading German forces in 1942. His contribution to historical literature and historiography has been immense and influential. The final intellectual testament of his tragically shortened life and the answer to his son's question: "What is the use of history?" has fascinated modern historians and students alike. Ultimately, Bloch left his historiographic masterpiece to future students of history as inspirational guide that acknowledges the characteristics and tactics of history as an intellectual endeavor.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Passed Master Hands On His Trade
01 May, 2010
It feels like a sin against personality to critique a book like Marc Bloch's "The Historian's Craft," written while he was on the run from the Gestapo, full of anxieties about his family, nation and profession, separated from the tools of his craft; and in the end unfinished because the Germans caught, tortured and murdered him. So consider this less a review than a comment inspired by a work in progress, whose progress was permanently interrupted.
Bloch writes that he and his college mates considered themselves the last of the "Dreyfus generation." In the subsequent four decades, Bloch went to war against the Germans, launched Annales with Lucien Febvre (who assembled a text for "The Historian's Craft" from Bloch's manuscripts), changing the way European historians work, went to war against the Germans and was killed. An eventful life for a scholar but not unprecedented for a French one. Schoolboys setting out in 1788 or 1829 could have looked for as tumultuous a 40 years. In this, the mindset of a French historian must be different from that of an American.
If a single word had to be found to describe Bloch's assessment of his craft, it would be unsparing. Frenchmen like to think of themselves as coolly rational, for all their reputation among the English as excitable Latins. No Frenchman was ever cooler than Marc Bloch.
To me, the most interesting chapter is the one on historical criticism, where he lists example after example of mistakes made and later found out, but the chapter on observation is similar. As a consumer of rather than a writer of history, I was less taken by the early chapters on the philosophy of history. Having read numerous inaugural addresses of presidents of the most notable historical assocaitions, many titled "What Is History?", I conclude that history is what we make of it.
As a consumer, I cannot agree with Bloch that history should not be judgmental. Surely he is right that history writers should not work from conclusions backward. France, which never completed its revolution, is particularly rich in that sort of history, and even, for a short time, was led by a polemical liberal historian, Guizot. Bloch concludes, "In a word, in history, as elsewhere, the causes cannot be assumed. They are to be looked for."
Of course. But once found -- or thought to be found, or partially elucidated -- the causes and conclusions can usefully be judged. If they are not, then we might as well read novels.
We need always to keep in mind the opinion of Samuel Huntington, the diplomatic historian, and Marshall Sahlins, the anthropologist, that there is not a universal agreement about correct behavior. The Fifth Commandment is an aberration. And only the foolish will assume that the ideas of correct behavior that he learned in his own upbringing are necessarily the best. But history does, or should, allow us to know what the choices have been, and it would then be immoral (and amoral, too) to fail to rank them.
It can be a matter of life and death. My reading of the history of Islam reveals a thousand years of military expansion, slavery, economic destruction, intellectual poverty and degradation, ending -- as far as the modern world is concerned -- in 1709, although still continuing to today against premodern people who are not as well armed. From 1709 to 1948, with the exception of occasional outbreaks like the Mahdists, Muslims lost their aggressive habits against Europeans, because they were not as well armed.
Since they have obtained modern weapons, they have resumed old ways. Bloch and Febvre popularized a history of la longue duree (its continuities). Bloch might not have agreed himself, but I consider it Blochian to dismiss fantasies that declare Islam to be a religion of peace. History says it never has been.
The Muslims themselves misunderstand their own history, even the part they have lived through. I recall an interview with a Palestinian woman who complained that the Israelis could push her around because they had tanks. Well, at times the Palestinians and their allies have had tanks. What did they do with them?
Pushed people around, until they were pushed back.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Epitaph To A Learned Man
21 October, 2007
Marc Bloch--veteran of World Wars I and II, historian, professor, writer, French patriot--entreats us in this spare volume to maintain our objectivity, to interpret history with the skepticism of the journalist and the scientific method of the researcher. He identifies some of the pitfalls, the improperly translated idiom, the anthropomorphism of time and place, and relying too heavily on the written accounts of earlier historians, as means by which the understanding of historical events can be skewed. And history must be viewed as a continuum, a rolling cause-and-effect leading from then until now and beyond, events which seldom fit easily into our need to categorize them by fixed dates. But then, historians already know these things, so of what value is "The Historian's Craft" today?
There is a poignancy to this book that Marc Bloch may not have anticipated from his moment in time, but looking back toward the era in which he wrote, the reader can see "The Historian's Craft" as Bloch's attempt to instill order and sanity into the turbulent and almost inexplicably surreal fall of France during World War II. I interpret this book as his salve, his struggle to maintain objectivity during the madness he observed as the Nazis overwhelmed his country. Older than fifty now, having earned the right to a quiet life in academia but refusing to leave his beloved France, Block joined the Resistance, fought against the Nazis, was captured, tortured and killed. And so, "The Historian's Craft" becomes a record to help us interpret Marc Bloch's life and the era of occupied France, as well as lessons in craft from a learned man.
Bloch wrote: ...a generation represents only a relatively short phase. Longer phases are called civilizations."
- Amazon Customer Review
• Primer On Historic Methodology
06 August, 2007
This book is a primer on Historic Methodology for any aspiring historian, neophyte, dabbler in historic issues, and - perhaps most important of all - a concise road map to understanding the nuances of the historians craft. Furthermore, this book is often used in graduate programs of history or those in need of developing their skills at historic methodology or refining their historic lens as objective observers. Marc Bloch was one of the seminal historic scholars of our age. And his insights on how one reads history or attempts to read history clearly challenge personal bias with reading the tracks left by our ancestors and what their intentions, values, and ideals meant in their own time and for audiences long lost to our contemporary evaluations.
- Amazon Customer Review
|
