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What Is History?

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historians could properly understand the period under study only by looking at all possible outcomes and all sides; historians who adopted Carr's perspective of only seeking to understand the winners of history and treating the outcome of a particular set of events as the only possible outcomes, were "bad historians".
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said in a 1963 review that it is not a "fact of history" that he had toast for breakfast that day. Walsh said Carr was correct that historians did not stand above history, and were instead products of their own places and times, which in turn decided what "facts of the past" they determined into
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criticized Carr for his "whimsical" distinction between the "historical facts" and the "facts of the past", saying that it reflected "an extraordinarily arrogant attitude both to the past and to the place of the historian studying it". Elton praised Carr for rejecting the role of "accidents" in
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said Carr's dismissal of the "might-have-beens of history" reflected a fundamental lack of interest in examining historical causation. Trevor-Roper said examining possible alternative outcomes of history is not a "parlour-game", but is an essential part of historians' work. Trevor-Roper said
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history, but said Carr's philosophy of history was an attempt to provide a secular version of the medieval view of history as the working of God's master plan with "Progress" playing the part of God.
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The first edition was published in 1961, with reprints in 1961, 1962 (twice), 1969, 1972, 1977 and 1982. In 1986 a posthumous second edition was published with a Preface by
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is one of the most influential books written about historiography, and that very few historians working in the English language since the 1960s had not read it.
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as an important factor in historical analysis. His work provoked a number of responses, most notably
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caused a revolution in British historiography in the 1960s. Australian historian
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From E.H. Carr's Files: Notes towards a Second Edition of What is History?
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The book originated in a series of lectures given by Carr in 1961 at the
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page lv in E.H. Carr (1986) What is History, 2nd Edition
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Some of Carr's ideas are contentious, particularly his
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Carr's views about the nature of historical work in
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Index

What is History?
Cover to the 1990 edition
E. H. Carr
English
Historiography
University of Cambridge
Penguin Books
United Kingdom
E. H. Carr
historiography
University of Cambridge
historiography
relativism
contingency
Geoffrey Elton
The Practice of History
The Practice of History
Geoffrey Elton
Hugh Trevor-Roper
Andreas Hillgruber
W. H. Walsh
Richard J. Evans
Keith Windschuttle
Bob Davies
"What is history? book review: E. H. Carr, a critical appraisal"


The English Historical Review
doi
10.1093/ehr/LXXVIII.CCCVIII.587

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