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Whig History and Present-centred History*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Adrian Wilson  and
T. G. Ashplant
Adrian Wilson
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Cambridge
T. G. Ashplant
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Liverpool Polytechnic
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Extract

Of the many books written by the late Herbert Butterfield, the most influential by far was The whig interpretation of history. The importance of that essay is not just that it attained the status of a classic in Butterfield's own lifetime, and has continued to be reprinted for over fifty years. Its main significance is that the historical profession in Britain came to accept its polemical terminology. The phrase ‘whig history’ has long been used as a term of historiographical criticism, in such a way as to imply, firstly, that everyone knows what it means, and secondly, that nobody wants to be ‘whiggish’. This usage is much in accordance with Butterfield's intentions: he succeeded in implanting the term in the professional language of historians.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Butterfield, Herbert, The whig interpretation of history (London, 1931)Google Scholar; subsequent editions include a facsimile reprint (New York, 1965) of the first edition, and a Penguin edition (Harmondsworth, 1973). Page references below are to the first edition.

2 Tosh, John, The pursuit of history (London, 1984), p. 197Google Scholar.

3 Cowling, Maurice, ‘Herbert Butterfield 1900–1979’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXV (1979), 595–609Google Scholar; Hall, A. Rupert, ‘On whiggism’, History of Science, XXI (1983), 45–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elton, G. R., ‘Herbert Butterfield and the study of history’, The Historical Journal, XXVII (1984), 729–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar (we quote below from p. 734).

4 Our critique of The whig interpretation will cover similar ground to Hall's general criticisms of that book, though from a rather different standpoint. We have not dealt with Hall's more specific argument, that in the particular field of the history of science, Butterfield's historiographic strictures simply cannot be followed, and that ‘whiggism’ is unavoidable. The problem of presentcentredness in the history of science is examined by Andrew Cunningham, ‘Getting the game right: some plain words on the identity and invention of science’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). We shall be referring to this where relevant.

5 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, p. 31Google Scholar.

6 One particular field in which these terms are in common use is the history of science. In the case of science, the present does indeed seem superior to the past; science is produced by an elite whose members – the scientists – enjoy great prestige; and its historiography has often consisted in a celebration of the present by means of a conception of inevitable progress. More recently, however, historians of science have been striving to avoid such anachronistic assumptions, and to distance themselves from the associated value judgments. It is not surprising, therefore, that amongst professional historians of science the label of ‘whiggishness’ is part of everyday discourse.

7 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

8 Ibid. pp. 9–10.

9 Butterfield, Herbert, The origins of modern science (1957 edn), pp. 13, 14, 2Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. pp. viii–ix.

11 See Mehta, Ved, Fly and the fly-bottle (Harmondsworth, 1963), pp. 198–215Google Scholar; the appraisals by Cowling and Elton cited in note 3 above; Hobart, Michael, ‘History and religion in Herbert Butterfield’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXII (1971), 543–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Needham, Joseph and Pagel, Walter (eds.), Background to modern science (Cambridge, 1938)Google Scholar; Butterfield, , Origins of modern science (London, 1949)Google Scholar, Introduction (p. vii). Butterfield's 1933 essay (Scrutiny, 1) was reprinted as ‘Marxist history’ in his History and human relations (London, 1951), pp. 66–100Google Scholar.

12 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, p. 72Google Scholar.

13 Hall, , ‘On whiggism’, p. 51Google Scholar.

14 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, p. 21Google Scholar

15 Ibid. pp. 24, 25.

16 Hall, , ‘On whiggism’, p. 52Google Scholar.

17 Ibid. p. 59, note 7.

18 For a definition of the precise meanings we give to the terms ‘evidence’ and ‘relic’ in this context, see the discussion of terminology in section II below.

19 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, pp. 14–15, 69–70Google Scholar.

20 Ibid. p. 73.

21 Ibid. p. 22.

22 Ibid. pp. 26–7.

23 Ibid. chapter 5 (pp. 90–106); we quote from pp. 92–3.

24 See particularly ibid. chapter 3 (pp. 34–63); and also pp. 27–8, 78–82.

25 Ibid. pp. 102–3.

26 Hall, , ‘On whiggism’, pp. 49, 50Google Scholar.

27 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, pp. 16, 92, 17Google Scholar.

28 Hall, , ‘On whiggism’, pp. 53, 54Google Scholar.

29 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, pp. 11–13Google Scholar. This passage is quoted by Hall, , ‘On whiggism’, p. 46Google Scholar.

30 Butterfield, , The whig interpretation, p. 31Google Scholar.

31 This has happened on a large scale with the development of social history. For instance, the John Johnson collection of printed ephemera in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which was originally assembled to record varieties of printing practice, is now increasingly used for the contents of its handbills and flysheets.

32 Thus radiocarbon dating permits organic materials to be examined as a source for questions of ancient chronology; ultra-violet light enables an erased or over-written manuscript to be read.

33 For instance, the rise of labour history and women's history has involved challenging the claim that there are no sources from which such histories could be written.

34 Oral history constitutes at least a partial exception to this rule.

35 See Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’, History and Theory, VIII (1969), 3–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cunningham's paper cited in note 4 above.

36 Ibid.

37 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford, 1953), II, xi (194)Google Scholar.

38 Schuyler, R. L., ‘Some historical idols’, Political Science Quarterly, XLVII (1932)Google Scholar; Hull, David, ‘In defense of presentism’, History and Theory, XVIII (1979), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tosh, , Pursuit of history, pp. 199–25Google Scholar.