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The Whig Interpretation of History

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"The Whig Interpretation of History" is superb meditation on the craft of history and how it can be distorted by "whig history." This was how Herbert Butterfield described historians who project modern attitudes on to the past, pass moral judgments on historical figures, and regard history as significant only to the extent that it labored to create the modern world. Butterfield regarded "whig history" as the antithesis of real history, which glories in the sheer "differentness" of the past and attempts to understand past events and people in the context of their own time, not of ours. Butterfield's writing was eloquent, his thought profound, and his temperament humane. His book, although old, is a genuine classic, to be treasured by all historians and readers of history. Highly recommended.

On reading histories of the nineteenth century, one cannot help but note that the historians believed that all the clashes of history inevitably led to the apotheosis of virtue in the person of the Whig gentleman. Sir Butterfield adeptly demolishes such a naive, though entrenched, approach to historical documentation, noting that the chaos of history, whether provoked by the Reformation or by English politics, in no way consciously intended many of its results. Religious liberty, for instance, was not a conscious aim of the Protestant Reformation, but a byproduct of the brutal wars over religion which scarred Europe for a century. It is only in the deforming glasses of Whig interpreters that the Protestant Reformers appear as advocating everything whiggish.

Butterfield does have a few of his own biases, speaking in the magisterial "we" when declaring our age a secularized one, or speaking of alleged Catholic irrationality. But these are minor faults, and easily accounted for, hardly marring lthis excellent essay.

At the time this book was originally published (1931) I suspect it had a lot of direct relevance for practicing historians. Today, it reads somewhat old fashioned. However, it's well written, if a bit formal, and certainly needs to be read by anyone who wants to keep his or her thinking about history on track. But see also the mention this book gets in Fischer's Historians' Fallacies. Even Sir Herbert doesn't escape that work unscathed.

I am not a historian, nor am I especially familiar with historiography. The remarks here will, therefore, be those of a well read neophyte. But since that will probably describe many readers coming to this book for the first time, perhaps that will not be too much of a disadvantage.

The greatest flaw in the book at this stage in its career is the lack of a historical introduction. It is no longer a contemporary book, the better part of a century old. If I were an editor at Norton, I would give serious consideration to reissuing this book with a new introductory essay. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure who the Whig historians were, and am not quite certain what the relations between being a Whig historian and being a Whig politically is. The only Whig historian Butterfield mentions by name, Lord Acton, was, as Butterfield points out, a Tory. I think I would have profited far more from this book if I had not had to spend all my time wondering precisely who Butterfield's targets were.

Essentially, this book is a critique of imposing moral judgments in historical research. It is a defense of taking each historical epoch on its own terms, and not imposing one's own moral and cultural standards on figures and situations that existed with, perhaps, a different set of moral and cultural concerns. To this degree, the book is commonsensical and noncontroversial, and can be read with a great deal of profit.

The structural problem of the book is that the entire discussion is framed in extremely polemical terms. Perhaps Butterfield was a Whig Catholic, but given the examples he constantly brings up, and the barely disguised passion he brings to the debate, one wonders if he were not a Tory Catholic. Perhaps not, but one cannot help but wonder why he is so polemical. The same points--none of them especially controversial today, however they may have been in 1932--could have been expressed far more effectively in a nonpolemical fashion. But, again, perhaps an introductory essay by a contemporary historian could explain just why Butterfield chose such an inflammatory mode.

Nonetheless, any nonhistorian can read this book with great profit, even if they, like me, wonder about the context in which he wrote and who the Whig historians were.

An excellent warning of common historical fallacies. A must for developing a mature understanding of proper historiography .

My review will be in french (my mother tongue) and english. The english parliamentary history in England was under two interpretations (Whig or Tory), but the Whig interpretation tooks the first rank in the interpretation of this event. Butterfield have a profound look about the historiography of the historian like an avenger. At the end, the question is not a problem for the philosophy of history but a problem « of the psychology of the historian ». In the same sense, E. H. Carr wrote also : « Before you study the history, study the historians."

Mon compte rendu sera en francais (ma langue maternelle) et en anglais. L'histoire du parlementarisme britannique est liee aux interpretations Liberale ou Conservatrice, mais c'est l'interpretation liberale (Whig) qui a domine la scene de l'intrepretation de l'evenement. Butterfield nous offre un point de vue intelligent au sujet de l'historien comme "vengeur" du passe. A la fin, la question n'est pas un probleme de philosophie de l'histoire, mais une question de "psychologie de l'historien". Dans le meme sens, E. H. Carr a ecrit : "Avant d'etudier l'histoire, il est mieux d'etudier l'historien." (Texte en francais sans accent.)

I'd always fancied myself more of a Tory until I read this book. It's changed my outlook on life. I mean, in a perfect world, I'd be a Constitutional Monarchist. But hey.