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History: A Very Short Introduction (2000) - John H. Arnold

 今日紹介するのはJohn H. Arnold著のHistory。Oxford University Press(OUP)刊のA Very Short Introductionシリーズの一冊。アマゾンを通して又は通さないでAudible等でオーディオ・ブックとしても入手可。


History Very Short Introduction


 「歴史」に関する本を読むのは実に久しぶり。

 さて、このVery Short Introductionは「歴史」をどのように料理して見せてくれるのだろう、昔々中学時代の歴史の教科書は石器時代或いはアウストラロピテクスの記述辺りから入っていたであろうか、高校時代は授業があっても教科書すら買わなかったような気もするが、この僅かなページ数に世界の又は人類の膨大な「歴史」が「超」がつくほどにまで凝縮されているのだろうか、或いはある程度テーマ・アプローチを絞った上での「歴史」に関する本だろうか、などと読む前からいろいろ想像を膨らませながらいざページを繰ってみると、


 ・・・想像していたようなものと全然違う・・・。


 もしタイトルから本書に興味を持たれた方で、私のようにアホおっちょこちょいな人は、買う前あるいは借りる前にいま一度アマゾン等で内容の確認を。

 これは「歴史」の本と言っても、世界史だったら所謂古代文明だの日本史だったら鎌倉幕府がどうしたの、という本ではなく、むしろアマゾンのレビューにあるように、我々が一般に所謂「歴史学」(historiography)として位置付ける内容について書かれた本なのである。


 < Language can be confusing. 'History' often refers to both the past itself, and to what historians write about the past. 'Historiography' can mean either the process of writing history, or the study of that process. In this book, I use 'historiography' to mean the process of writing history; and 'history' to mean the end product of that process. As we will see, this book argues that there is an essential difference between 'history' (as I am using it) and 'the past'. >


 この冒頭にある但し書きからも分かるように、この本はかなりややこしい内容を扱っている。そもそも本のタイトルにある用語を本の中で定義しなければならなかったことからもそれは明らかだろう。そんな訳で、このブログで取り上げておいて今更こう言うのも何だが、ボキャ貧な私ではとても内容をうまく紹介できる自信がない。そこで、ここでは章ごとに目に留まった(あるいはどこか引っかかった)記載を「続きを読む」以下で引用するすることで、本書の内容・雰囲気を伝えるに留めたい。


 なお、本書の構成は下記の通り。

 1 Questions about murder and history

     1308年のregisters of inquisitionに記録された(そして実際には1301年に起こった)殺人事件を題材に、この本でその後に扱う内容・用語の紹介

 2 From the tails of dolphins to the tower of politics

     Herodotus(ヘロドトス)、Thucydides(トゥキディデス)らの仕事を紹介しながら、「歴史」の過去、つまりこれまで「歴史」はどのように(発展というよりは)変化して来たのかについて記載

 3 'How it really was': truth, archives, and the love of old things
     二章に引き続き、「現代歴史学の祖」ともされるLeopold von Ranke(レオポルト・フォン・ランケ)から現代まで

 4 Voices and silences
     第4章から先は、実際に歴史学者がどのようにして作業を進めるかについて実例を通して具体的に詳述

 5 Journeys of a thousand miles

 6 The killing of cats; or, is the past a foreign country?

 7 The telling of truth


 私が当初思い描いていた内容とは随分違っていたが、今まで読んだA Very Short Introductionシリーズの中でもかなり良書の部類に入ると思う。複雑な内容を分かり易くコンパクトにまとめつつ、ユニークな題材・視点で読者を楽しませてくれる。

 本書は非常に読み易く、「歴史学入門」としては打ってつけの書。文系・理系問わず大学の教養部(って今もあるんだろうか?)の一、二年生の学生、高校生で大学で歴史について学びたいと思っている方、そして歴史学に興味のある一般読者の中で、英検準一級以上、TOEICなら700-750以上のレベルの方にお薦め。



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にほんブログ村
 1 Questions about murder and history

 < The process of writing history ('historiography') is full of questions, as this book will show. ... In many ways, history both begins and ends with questions; which is to say that it never really ends, but is a process. >

 < It has been suggested (by the writer L. P. Hartley) that 'the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there'. Douglas Adams, the science-fiction author, posits an opposite case: the past is truly a foreign country, they do things just like us. Somewhere between these two propositions is the elusive element that attracts us to the past, and prompts us to study history. >

 < We know about religion, but we are probably unfamiliar with the concept of heresy, the workings of inquisition, and the belief in two Gods. ... 'Heresy' can only exist where there is an 'orthodoxy' to define it: both medieval Catholics and medieval Cathars laid claim to being 'true' Christians. >

 これは確かに宗教の世界に限らず現代でもあるような。最近、イギリスのイスラム教の指導者が例のIslamic State(イスラム国)に加わった(加わろうとする)者をhereticsとしてfatwaを出したという報道があったっけ。heresyだのhereticどころかfatwaもよく分からんが。

 < Indeed, the concept of 'literacy' was rather different in the fourteenth century: if you were described as litteratus ('literate') this meant that you could read and write Latin and knew how to interpret scripture. Facility in vernacular languages did not count as 'literacy', no matter how useful that ability was. Reading and writing Occitan (or German, French, English, and so on) would still label you illiteratus ('illiterate'). >

 < Historians cannot tell every story from the past, only some of them. There are gaps in the material that exists (some of the pages of d'Ablis's register are missing) and there are areas for which no evidence survives. But even with the evidence we do have, there are many more things that could be said than we have space to discuss. Historians inevitably decide which things can or should be said. So 'history' (the true stories historians tell about the past) is made up only of those things which have caught our attention, that we have decided to repeat for modern ears. As we will see in a later chapter, the grounds on which historians have selected their true stories have changed over the years. >

 < ... But for most modern historians, this is not enough. We need to interpret the past, not simply present it. Finding a larger context for the story is an attempt to say not just ‘what happened’ but what it meant. >

 次はかなり長い引用だが、この本のきもの部分なので、そのままコピペ。

 < Later in this book we shall talk more about how historians fill in these blanks, and the art of good guessing. 'Guessing' suggests a degree of uncertainty about the historiographical process. It might even suggest that at times historians get things wrong. They do, of course: historians, like everyone else, can misread, misremember, misinterpret, or misunderstand things. But in a wider sense, historians always get things 'wrong'. We do this first because we cannot ever get it totally 'right'. Every historical account has gaps, problems, contradictions, areas of uncertainty. We also get it 'wrong' because we cannot always agree with each other; we need to get it 'wrong' in our own ways (although, as we shall see, we sometimes form different groups in how we interpret things). However, whilst getting it wrong, historians always attempt to get it 'right'. We try to stick to what we think the evidence actually says, to search out all the available material, to understand fully what is happening, and we never fabricate 'the facts'. Historians sometimes like to define their work against that of literature. An author of fiction can invent people, places, and happenings, whereas a historian is bound by what the evidence will support. This comparison might make history seem somewhat dry and unimaginative. However, as we have seen and will further explore, history also involves imagination, in dealing with that evidence, presenting it, and explaining it. For every historian, what is at stake is what actually happened – and what it might mean. There is an excitement to these precarious attempts to grasp the 'truth', a truth that might at any point be revealed as illusory.
  These doubts are necessary for 'history' to exist. If the past came without gaps and problems, there would be no task for the historian to complete. And if the evidence that existed always spoke plainly, truthfully, and clearly to us, not only would historians have no work to do, we would have no opportunity to argue with each other. History is above all else an argument. It is an argument between different historians; and, perhaps, an argument between the past and the present, an argument between what actually happened, and what is going to happen next. Arguments are important; they create the possibility of changing things.
  It is for these reasons that throughout this chapter and this book I have used the term 'true stories' to talk about history. There is a necessary tension here: history is 'true' in that it must agree with the evidence, the facts that it calls upon; or else, it must show why those 'facts' are wrong, and need reworking. At the same time, it is a 'story', in that it is an interpretation, placing those 'facts' within a wider context or narrative. Historians tell stories, in the sense that they are out to persuade you (and themselves) of something. Their methods of persuasion depend in part upon the 'truth' – not making things up, not presenting matters as other than they are – but also in creating an interesting, coherent and useful narrative about the past. The past itself is not a narrative. In its entirety, it is as chaotic, uncoordinated, and complex as life. History is about making sense of that mess, finding or creating patterns and meanings and stories from the maelstrom.
  We have begun with a series of questions, and I have presented some propositions: that history is a process, an argument, and is composed of true stories about the past. These things we explore more fully in the rest of the book. But one last thing: thinking about history (as we are doing here) presents us with both opportunities and dangers. It allows us to reflect upon our relationship to the past, to look at the kinds of stories we have chosen to tell about the past, the ways in which we have come to those stories, and the effects of telling those stories. When the past re-enters the present, it becomes a powerful place. Part of thinking about 'history' is to think about what – or who – history is for. To begin this enquiry, we might find it useful to look backwards, to attempt to understand what 'history' has been in the past. >

 ややこしいこと、この上ないが、何となく雰囲気は伝わるだろうか。ただ、本書をあまり時間をかけずに読み通せば、少なくとも筆者の言わんとしていること、意図は充分に汲み取れる。

 「歴史」の偽造、捏造は現代でも実際にあるような気もするが、逆に言えば偽造・捏造に関わる者は真のhistorianではないということか。最近では科学の世界でも報道の世界でも偽造や捏造が疑われるものがいっぱいあるような気もするが、ある意味偽造や捏造に対する目が厳しくなっている分だけもしかしたら状況は改善しているのかも。


 2 From the tails of dolphins to the tower of politics

 < Part of the story of this chapter is to show where some of the constituent parts of writing history came from. But part also has been to show that ‘history’ has always meant different things to different people.
  This chapter should not be read as a story of ‘progress’, about people getting better and more clever at writing about the past. To do so would miss the point. All of these historians were attempting the best understanding of the past they thought possible. We might – from our current position – see some of these attempts as more accurate than others. But that is to follow our idea of what is ‘true’. Past people had different ideas about truth, and what the point was in writing a true story about previous times. >

 < Thucydides concentrated on recent events only, where he could avoid the more tricky written sources of the past and rely upon eyewitness testimony and his own experience of the war. He implicitly criticized Herodotus, glossing a correction to the earlier historian's account with the words, 'most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear'. >


 3 'How it really was': truth, archives, and the love of old things

 < A historian, Baudouin suggested, should be like a lawyer: balancing conflicting accounts, trying to establish the exact sequence of events, treating 'witnesses' (documents) with dispassionate and objective suspicion. This may sound strangely familiar; at school, I was certainly taught (perhaps because it sounded exciting) that a historian is like a detective investigating a crime. Lawyers were the 'detectives' of Baudouin's age. >

 < As one writer put it, 'to regret "the good old days" one must not know what they were like'. >


 4 Voices and silences

 < A source can in fact be anything that has left us a trace of the past. >

 < History begins with sources. ... So perhaps it would be more truthful to say that one way in which history begins is with sources. Another way in which it begins is with historians themselves: their interests, ideas, circumstances, and experiences. >

 < The study of handwriting is called 'paleography', and historians make use of this skill not only to decipher old documents, but also sometimes to date them, as patterns of writing can be roughly linked to particular periods. Other language skills are also useful to historians. Some learn modern languages, in order to read both documents and the works of foreign historians. Some learn archaic languages, such as Medieval Latin, Ancient Greek, Old English or Middle High German, so that they can work on documents in those tongues. >

 < Few historians have many of these skills. Instead, through accidents and choices of their personal histories, they tend to specialize. >

 < But this in itself is not 'history'. It may be of interest to know that Mrs Burdett was to receive an annuity, but as yet it lacks a context to give it meaning or importance. The murder of Guilhem Déjean, related at the beginning of this book, was perhaps a more exciting story than Mrs Burdett's finances; but that too, we saw, needed to be placed within a larger narrative to have much meaning. What the extract from the Assembly Book has given us is a building block, shaped and ready to use; but the house itself remains to be constructed. >

 < Furthermore, there are other questions to tackle. We need to be certain, for example, that what we are looking at is not a forgery. >

 < Historians are also taught to think about 'bias' in the sources. .... Without 'bias' (were ever such a thing possible), there would be no need for historians. So 'bias' is not something to find and eradicate, but rather something to hunt and embrace. >

 < We also need to think, however, about what the document can and cannot provide. The Assembly Book was written for a purpose, not for our interest and enjoyment: it was there to record the important decisions made by the town. We need to think about what it does not say, as well as what it does. .... Historians need to be aware of the nuances of sources, the gaps between what is said and what is not said; their rhythms and syncopation. >

 < ..... and here we are reliant on the work of other historians. This is no exception to the rule: historians rely on one another's work just as much as on their own investigations into historical sources. >

 < Tracing Burdett through all of them could take a very long time, so what is a historian to do? Well, sometimes that is exactly what a historian does: works painstakingly and tediously through every available document, searching for mention of what interests him or her. Tedious is the key word here. Quite a lot of the doing of history is tedious, and one of the skills of the historian is to continue to operate in the face of that tedium, hoping for the rare moments of discovery. War is sometimes described as long periods of boredom punctuated by short moments of excitement. History is often similar, if rather safer. >

 < Most historians make use of published source material as well as the original archival documents. Although it is often best to see the original document, this desire frequently exceeds the limits of time, patience, and research grant funding. Looking at a published edition has, in any case, its own particular rewards, as it usually means that someone else has done most of the hard, boring work for you, allowing one to pick the tender fruits from the index. >

 < Note that Winthrop, in his own journal, refers to himself in the third person, and so is perhaps aware that he is writing a semi-official account that may be viewed by other people. We are not privy to his innermost thoughts here, but to what he chose to record. >

 < Sources are not transparent and innocent documents. They are written in particular circumstances, for particular audiences; >

 < Winthrop's Journal – like every piece of historical evidence – needs care and attention in its use. Documents rarely set out to trick historians, but they can bamboozle the unwary at every turn. >

 < At a certain point, the sources fall silent, and the historian must begin to make some guesses – that is, to interpret the documents. >

 < This could be a good guess – it fits the evidence – but it must be a guess nonetheless. >

 < The historian has to make these little bridges, but he or she cannot and should not forget who placed them there and why, or ignore the fact that each bridge may demand a small toll: the price of continuing down a satisfying path, which may close off or render unnavigable other possible trails. >

 < However, each guess should be remembered as such. Walk upon too many suppositions, and we may be lost. >

 < The sources do not 'speak for themselves' and never have done. They speak for others, now dead and forever gone. Sources may have voices – plural – which can suggest directions and prompt questions, leading to further sources. But they lack volition: they come alive when the historian reanimates them. >

 < For sources are not innocent; their voices talk to certain ends, intend certain consequences. They are not mirrors of past reality, but events in themselves. >

 < .... why did Winthrop decide that it should be written down and recorded? >

 < And always there are new questions to ask. Why? Because of new ways of looking, because of other things seen before or after, because of different paths travelled. But primarily because there are gaps, spaces, elisions, silences. The sources do not speak, and they do not tell all. >

 < .... archives must burn down (symbolically of course) for history to happen. We must have sources – but we must have silences too. >

 < This could be a good guess – it fits the evidence – but it must be a guess nonetheless. >


 5 Journeys of a thousand miles

 < We often find ourselves talking of 'causes', and sometimes also of 'origins'. These are useful, common-sense expressions, for getting at complex processes; but they have dangers attached. Searching for the 'origins' of, say, the English Civil War (as a number of historians have done) is tacitly to claim that before a certain point, the event would not have happened. This may be true, if we see the following events as one story; but if we admit to the variety of tales that can be told within seventeenth-century England (religious conflict, political ideals, social and economic change) the idea of an 'origin' becomes more difficult. >

 これは文学史でも科学史でも音楽史でも言えることかも。我々はついつい「最初のミステリ作品」だの「ロックンロールの創始者」だのといった魅力的な概念に捉われてしまいがちだが、仮にある物事が起こるのに当たってある一人(あるいは複数)の天才の存在が必要だったとしても、それが'causes'や'origins'に当たるもの全てを包含する存在であるというのは先ずあり得ないことなのだろう。

 < Synthesis always involves silencing something; in the second and third chapters of this book, we have a synthesis of over two thousand years of historiography. One must be aware that, given more space, this story would look much more complex than my brief account. Synthesis is useful and unavoidable – but it is still a 'true story' and not the whole truth. In recent years, historians (and, arguably, society in general) have become suspicious of the 'grand narratives' formed by synthesis, since these stories tend to trample over the complexity of any particular situation. We are rather less persuaded than we used to be by the meanings ascribed to these grand narratives. >


 6 The killing of cats; or, is the past a foreign country?

 < But these lines in the sand come to have wider associations: if we want to talk about an 'eighteenth-century way of thinking', do we suppose that this changed into something else on the midnight of 31st December 1799? We talk in the West of 'the Sixties' and 'the Seventies' to indicate something we feel to be essential or particular about those decades. But again this is shorthand – and recently modern historians have started to argue that 'the Sixties' (by which they mean a set of cultural ideas and values) really ran from about 1964 to 1974. Similarly, other historians sometimes discuss 'the long eighteenth century'; that is, a century that somehow extends beyond the hundred years usually expected. This process of carving time into periods is undoubtedly useful, and perhaps unavoidable, but one needs to be wary of it. Did everyone in 'the Sixties' wear flowers in their hair, get stoned, and go to Woodstock? Did even most of the people do those things? If not, why do we choose this mode of life – this mentalité – as the 'key' image for that decade? >

 確かにこれも、「70年代」だの「80年代」だの「昭和」だの「20世紀」だの「ヴィクトリア朝」だのといった分類というか区切りは使い勝手が良くてついつい使ってしまうが、そういった分類・区切りを使うことで話を展開させることには弊害もあるのかも。

 < The problem – but perhaps also the solution – with mentalité is that the people of the past are as different from us as we are from ourselves. >
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Idler

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読んだ本、視聴したテレビ番組・ラジオ番組・音楽の感想など。やや英語の作品や洋楽、特にイギリスのコメディやミステリ作品に偏向。

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