Man and His Past: The Nature and Role of Historiography

Christopher English is a history lecturer at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland and a recent law-school graduate.

One of the risks of publishing a work in translation is that an approach that might have been entirely appropriate for the original audience may be less suitable to the foreign-language readership targeted in the translation. This extended essay is a case in point: despite its merits, for it has interesting and provocative things to say in an idiomatic and readable form, it fails to address the needs of its new audience. Simply put, it tells English-speaking undergraduate history students what they may already know; and what it assumed of its francophone readers in the original is precisely what its anglophone readers will need to hear explained.

Such miscalculations are surprising in a book whose thesis is that a historian’s choice of research topic and methodology is influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the beliefs and biases of the culture in which he was born and educated and in which he continues to function. If this is true of the historian, it is as true of the reader for whom he writes.

In calling for greater attention to the way in which history as a discipline is conceived, researched, and written, and in warning against an overreliance on refinements in methodology to achieve greater historical exactitude, Dr. Gagnon aims his remarks at his francophone colleagues and students trained in that theory and practice of history which has prevailed for a generation in France. His exhortations are valid; but in aiming them at an English-speaking audience he is probably appealing to the converted. E.H. Cam, most often cited here, is undoubtedly one of the best examples of the approach to history which Dr. Gagnon wishes to publicize. But his What Is History? (1961), now in its umpteenth Penguin reprint, is a fixture on undergraduate reading lists in English Canada.

While Cam, and his predecessors Collingwood and Croce, may deserve to be better known to francophone students, anglophone readers will wish to know why the sociology of history has, in the author’s estimation, been ignored in France and in Quebec. Why do Québecois and French historians place such faith in the progressive refinement of scientific method? Approaches such as those of the Annales school will be new to English-speaking students and deserve closer attention in a book addressed to them.

In this respect, the relatively brief discussion of how historians of French Canada have interpreted their own past offers much of interest. English-speaking students will be introduced to unfamiliar authors of whom they may wish to know more. (Happily they may turn to Dr. Gagnon’s recently published Quebec and Its Historians, 1840-1920.) At the same time the absence of English-speaking historians of Quebec from his discussion is curious. Is there no Eccles or Trofimenkoff whom the author would propose as a practitioner of the approach to history advocated here? One must not insist that an author write a book he did not intend to write. But these lacunae, as with the failure to target his English-speaking audience, represent lost opportunities.

That said, it must be emphasized that historians practicing in our two cultures must become better known to each other; author, publisher, and the Ottawa granting agencies deserve recognition for making this interesting essay available.