History has evolved over the last two centuries. In the introduction to Interpretations of American History edited by Francis G. Couvares, et al., he states that the transition of the way history was interpreted has only “linked the past more strongly to the present” (Couvares 1).
Before, historians –mostly white male- used to report only about “male” topics but since then, different issues have transformed the way history used to be. Over the last 400 years, the four different stages that have reshaped the writing of American history have been the providential, the rationalist, the nationalist, and the professional.
Late- nineteenth-century historians, usually called “historicists” or “positivists” believed that history was like science and with practice it could be solved. According to Couvares, Croce believed that Positivists were faulty in their assumptions because history was perceived differently every time it was written down since no one thinks exactly alike. With so many different views, historians are usually adding more and more information to each other’s perceptions. Couvares says that “history is historiography, the study of history and its changing interpretations” (Couvares 3).
When interpreting history, historians were influenced by their personal circumstances, beliefs, and environment. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all through the Civil War, historians wrote a form of “providential history” (Couvares 4).
Puritans – usually ministers, magistrates, and women- wished to “justify the ways of God to man, and vice-versa” (Couvares 4) in their history.
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They interpreted what was happening at the time as a sign of God wanting them to move forward which led them to believe that the Revolution was a win for “reformed” Christianity. With the European Enlightenment, came more of an intellectual and natural way of thinking. Couvares notes how the “rationalist historians”, greatly influenced by Newton and Locke, prospered along with the people who had been at the top of the colonies before. During this stage, “the progress of reason” (Couvares 5), as they called it, was their new belief. Most historians during this time were wealthy and with a high position in society, hence the style of their writing. Because of the way they thought of themselves, their history explained how the “enlightened” world was a success because of men like them. According to Couvares, Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia very much sums up the thought of the rationalists where they were the ones who achieved greatness, it wasn’t God driven.
However, the rationalists were not that far off from the providential it’s because their story “still pointed upward” (Couvares 6).
As the nineteenth century went on, historians started to see “America as the triumph of Anglo-Saxon people over inferior races” (Couvares 6).
They thought that because America had overcome other “inferior” races that they were better. Couvares explains how Bancroft organized America’s history around three themes: “progress, liberty, and Anglo-Saxon destiny” (Couvares 6).
This is where the third stage comes in. Their idea that the Teutonic people were supposed to spread “freedom across the globe” was the start to their sense of pride, love, and nationalism.
Not only were men, but also female historians hooked on this idea. Helen Hunt Jackson wrote about white-Indian relations, which at the time was a big obstacle to jump; while at the same time anthropologists beginning to study these relationships. Around the 1870s, though, Bancroft seemed like the past and the future possibilities were just around the corner. As universities started being built and education was more common among the middle class, history was becoming a profession. Practiced by the people who had access to advanced education, white men, they started concerning themselves with “specialized training, research methodology, and educational credentials” (Couvares 7).
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Adams and Turner both shared the belief of applying Darwin’s method to history. Adams argued that history was like physics and that it could be deciphered the same way.
Even though Adams couldn’t accomplish his goal, Turner did while at the same time seeming connected to the nationalists is sharing a little bit of their beliefs. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, another type of professionals emerged. These Progressive historians, unlike the Adams, saw history as politics and not as science. They believed that “science was needed to produce usable facts, and art to persuade people to act on them” (Couvares 9) but it was political action what they wanted to accomplish with it; which could be why Progressives could be classified as reformers.
Basically, their point was that the function of history “was to uncover the economic basis of political ideas…and educate the citizenry” (Couvares 9).
In the end, with the Great Depression going on and the Second World War, the question that was raised was whether or not if the history had prepared them. Nobody could have foreseen what was going to happen, and eventually history continues to be written everyday and like Couvares pointd out, “history is an act of interpretation” (Couvares 1).
