Political and Social History.pdf

7/27/2019 Political and Social History.pdf

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POLITICAL HISTORY Polit ical History concentrates on the

quest for power

C. R. Elton Political history is the study of that

dynamic activity in the past whichhas direct relevance to the

organizational aspects of society. Itis concerned with those activitieswhich arise from the fact that mencreate, maintain, transform, anddestroy social structures in whichthey live. Dynamic activity depends

on the presence of forceon theemployment of energyand theforce applicable to pol itical systemsis power: the power to do things for,or to, other people. Power

consti tutes the essential theme ofpolitical history


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19TH CENTURY NATIONALISTHISTORY

Nationalist histories writtenduring the mid-19th centurytended to describe polit ics asthe inevitable triumph of

ideals Thomas Macaulay portrayed

British history in the 17th and18th centuries as the victoryof the Whig idea of l iberty

over the despotism of theBritish monarchy

George Bancroft describedAmerican history as theflowering of a uniquelyvirtuous ideal of democracy


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SHIFT IN EMPHASIS

In the 20th century, historians tried to penetrate therhetoric of politicians and discover the realcauses of political activity

Influenced by Marxism and social science Used techniques such as prosopography and

collective biography, they have examined thefamily and social relationships, the material

interests, and the psychological motivations ofthose who contend for power Such as members of legislatures and lobby

groups, leaders of factions and polit ical

parties, diplomats, aristocrats, and clergymen


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CHARLES A. BEARD

Wrote An EconomicInterpretation of theConstitution of the UnitedStates (1913)

Studied the economicinterests of the AmericanFounding Fathers and themeans they used to engineerthe drafting and ratification ofthe Consti tution

Concluded that theConstitution was not createdto foster freedom anddemocracy but to advancethe immediate economic

interests of a small group ofwealthy property owners


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SIR LEWIS NAMIER

Reevaluated Macaulaysinterpretation of 18th centuryBritish politics by using themethods of col lective biography Examined the motives of

individual members ofParliament and suggestedthat the great ideasexpressed in the polit icalrhetoric of the time had lit tle

impact on the actualprocesses of polit ics Which were motivated

primarily by material self-interest


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ORDINARY PEOPLE

Pioneers such as GeorgeRud, Albert Soboul,Ramsey Macmullen, JesseLemisch, and Alfred Younghave introduced the mass

of ordinary people in theirdiscussions of politics inthe past Have explored the

influence of crowds and

mobs in revolutions andpolitical protest as wellas the political influenceof public opinion ingeneral on politics

Alfred Young

Albert Soboul


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SOCIAL HISTORY Traditionally, social historians have looked at how

human beings live and work together, at the

quality of their lives, and at their relationships withone another They have provided descriptions of manners

and morals, diet, costume, home life, and

entertainment They look at humanity in general, regardless of

social or economic class They are especially concerned to examine the

experience of the nameless and faceless, or inarticulate, people usually left out ofaccounts of struggles for political power

Women, children, slaves, and the poor


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SOCIAL/CULTURAL HISTORY

A broad view of social history also takes incultural historyAn examination of the ideas, attitudes,

values, and beliefs that shape a societys

culture

Cultural historians try to reconstruct thepictures and ideas that guide peoples

interpretation of the world They examine evidence neglected by

political historians Folktales, childrens stories, buildings,

art, music, and popular crafts


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VOLTAIRE AND BURKHARDT Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations

(1756) Voltaire Tried to elaborate on the idea that each

age has a unique spirit expressed in allsphere of li fe

Civi lization of the Renaissance in Italy Jacob Burkhardt Demonstrated that the Renaissance was

qualitatively different from the MiddleAges

Although largely based on elite literarysources, he sharply dist inguishedcommon features of Renaissance life Not only elite preoccupations of

statecraft, diplomacy, and economicsbut also the religion, morality, andsocial relations that governed themiddle class as well as the aristocracy


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SOCIAL DIVERSITY Some modern historians object to this sort of

attempt to generalize about the character orculture of an entire people or period

Argue that such generalizations create the falseimpression that nations can be regarded as

though they were individual persons, therebyobscuring the differences between distinctgroups within the nation

These historians instead have tried to create asocial history that sets forth the distinctiveculture and social relations of particular groupswithin society and that describes and explains

how different groups interact


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E.P. THOMPSON The Making of the English Working Class (1963)

Used Marxist notion of class to analyze theclass consciousness of British workersduring the 18th and early 19th centuries

Argued that class was not an abstractconcept that could be defined like astatistical category

Argued that class consciousness resultedfrom the experience of being a Brit ishworker during this period

Warned against merely assuming that sinceBrit ish workers were all workers that they

automatically had a class consciousnessthat was identical and never changed Insisted that the rise of class consciousness

might follow similar patterns in dif ferenttimes and places, but that it never occurred

in just the same way


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MARXIST SOCIAL HISTORY

Historians who adopt aMarxist approachcommit themselves toa specific focus and to

the use of certainconcepts

Notably Marxsconception of class

These concepts maybecome unwieldy

Eugene Genovese

E.J. Hobsbawm


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MOBILITY

Poverty and Progress: SocialMobil ity in Newburyport Stephan Thernstrom Tested old clich that America

was the land of opportunity andthat the descendants ofimmigrants moved up in society Found that most did not and

that they remained at thebottom

Some did move up and it wastheir story, endlessly repeatedand exaggerated by the press,that perpetuated the myth that

American was a land of

opportunity for immigrants


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CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIALHISTORY

Social history has been a valuable corrective to thepredominantly elitist orientation of polit ical history By reconstructing the lives and sometimes the thoughts

and feelings of ordinary people, social historians have

demonstrated how li fe has changed over t ime anddeepened our understanding of the common humanityof people of all ages

Moreover, by focusing on how ordinary people havelived in the past, social historians have also increased

our understanding of the distr ibution of power withinsocieties

Social history provides an understanding of therelationship between how ordinary people lived and how

societies as a whole have functioned and have beenorganized


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THE ANNALES SCHOOL

Marc Bloch andLucien Febvrefounded Annales:

Economies,Civilisations,Socits in late1920s

Both men tendedto operate outsidethe historicalmainstream of thetime

Lucien Febvre


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NONTRADITIONAL GUYS

Marc Bloch wrote a two-volume bookon the Middle Ages (Feudal Society)where he never once described abattle, never recounted the life of

ruler Instead concentrated on the

relationship between the threemajor classes of medieval societyand the unique way each viewed

the world Clergy, nobi lity, and peasantry

Lucien Febvre was interested inpopular beliefs during the early

modern period Marc Bloch

CREATION OF THE ANNALES


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CREATION OF THE ANNALESSCHOOL

Bloch and Febvre created a forum for themselves

and the new history they engaged in by foundingthe Annales Gradually attracted a scattering of like-minded

scholars

Not really a school United by their frustration with traditional

history and the way its practitionersmonopolized the French historical

profession; by their deep attachment to socialhistory; by their willingness to try a new topicor source; and by their desire to develop atheory that would explain social change overtime


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AFTER WORLD WAR II

Students of Bloch and Febvre would,after World War II, create firm outlinesof the Annales model of social change

Would take the energy and sense ofadventure of the pre-war Annalesgroup and give it a philosophical

direction and justification as well as amore-or-less rigorous methodology


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THE LONGUE DURE

Primarily concerned with the longue dure (long term)

The Mediterranean and theMediterranean World During the

Age of Philip II Fernand Braudel Deals with period from late

1400s to early 1600s

The Peasants of Languedoc Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Deals with period from the

1300s to the 1700s

Fernand Braudel


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WHY THE LONGUE DURE?

The event, the single historicalepisode, is basically unimportantto the Annales historian Because they are trivial in the

long term What is important to them is

structure Slow moving, almost timeless,

trends that possess a life of

their own Human intervention hardly

affects them at all Examples of structures

include climate and the basicdemographic system

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

STRUCTURES


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STRUCTURES Structures form the foundation of human li fe in the

past Even the slightest change in one of these

structures has a profound effect on human lifeand activity

Annales historians are not completely deterministic

They do not claim that every aspect of human lifeand behavior is directly tied to structures But they do argue that structures strongly

influence history and play a larger role than anyother factor in shaping the event (any short-term structure-influenced activity by humanbeings)

The only way a historian can systematically studythe slow movement of structures is to study them for

a long period of t ime

STRUCTURAL CHANGE


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STRUCTURAL CHANGE Braudel was concerned with long-

term changes in economic

structures which shifted the focusof international economic activityin the 16th century away from theMediterranean This shift caused secondary

economic systems around theMediterranean to decline,changed old trade routes,altered demographic patterns,cause some towns and citiesto deteriorate and others to

grow and prosper One fundamental change in

structure, occurr ing over acentury, had a big impact oneveryday lives and actions of

human beings


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WEAKNESSES

Annales model falls down when it tries topinpoint exactly how changes in theunderlying structures cause short-term

changes to take place

Annales historians also have difficulty inisolating when things change, of locatingthose crucial transition points when social orany other type of change takes place

MENTALIT


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MENTALIT Baroque Piety and

Dechristianization inProvence during the 18thCentury

Michel Vovelle

Classic Annales work onchanges in peoples beliefsover time

Sampled 30,000 wil ls over a75 year period in the 18thcentury and countedvarious religious aspect

embedded within them


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VOVELLES ARGUMENT

Claimed that indicators of pietydeclined in a proportional andabsolute sense as the 18th centuryprogressedArgued that this decline

demonstrated that society inProvence became less intense inreligious feeling during the 18thcentury

A fundamental change in attitude

took place during this time andVovelle asserted that he hadprecisely located one of thoseelusive transition points whensocial change took place


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PROBLEMS

Vovelle is never able to say why this declinein religious feeling took place when it did Cannot link this change in attitude to any

underlying cause Did not even conclusively demonstrate that

dechristianization occurred in the first place Annales school made a good try at trying to

account for causation in social history, attrying to develop a way to explain why socialchange takes place, but, in the end, it doesntquite make it

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Political and Social History.pdf