Objectivity in History

Paper Summary:

This paper contends that the study of the past has to be selective in what is analyzed or nothing would be achieved and that the question rests on the individual historian and his or her impartiality in treating the past in a balanced way. It examines how there is a distinction between whether the historian is acting impartially and whether the subject matter can ever be true, and it argues that both are false assumptions. An historian may apply the finest scientific method to any enquiry, but is still applying 'truth' to the past and is limited by the sources and evidence available at the time.

From the Paper:

"Elite history and subsequently 'hero-worship' are two broad themes that survive the test of time to form the 'objective' history of what Keith Jenkins in Re-thinking History referred to as the establishments claim to truth. The truest aspect of history is that which survives from the past and heritage sites such as stately homes and artistic works provide historians with a rich field of investigation, yet narrow in that it is the past of the few. The history of the multitude is invariably harder to access due to the lack of surviving records. The disproportionate representation of great figures from the past, the amount we know about them in comparison to other features of their time is reflective of the imbalance of source material."

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