Historical Research On Everyday Participants
Understanding History From a Social and Cultural Perspective
Jul 13, 2009
Thomas Carlyle once stated that “history is the essence of innumerable biographies.” A complete understanding of history can only come from all parties involved, and that includes the so-called everyday or common man. As literacy rates rose during the 17th and 18th Centuries more of these people left behind diaries, letters, wills, and other written records that better help historians understand the collective thinking of an age.
For centuries history was understood and taught through the prism of the great men and women – the kings, presidents, and generals. Narrative studies relied on diplomatic archives, edicts, and official biographies. But the everyday men and women were neglected. Regrettably, the affects of historical decisions from the top down never fully addressed the short term and long term effects on affected populations.
How the Need for Total History Helps the Discipline
In a 1925 biography of Catherine the Great, written by Katharine Anthony, the education of the future Russian empress is addressed. The author writes about Babet Cardel, a French governess involved in the education of the young princess. Anthony writes that the governess “has vanished into the limbo which is reserved for the domestic servants of the famous…Our history books…do not consider these people important.”
Contrast this view with any number of contemporary histories on virtually any subject that frequently make great use of available data from ordinary people. James M. McPherson’s book, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, is one such example. McPherson laboriously researched hundreds of writings from soldiers on both sides of the conflict in order to develop his thesis – one that confronted previously held views of the Civil War because few researchers had thought to ask the common man.
Currently throughout the United States there is a concerted effort by archivists, museums, and historical organizations to record the stories of World War II veterans. The same was done with World War II Holocaust survivors, victims of the Japanese internment of 1942, and, during the Great Depression, the recollections of men and women that had been slaves or were descended from slaves as first generation freedmen.
Social and Cultural History Provides Rich Context
Princeton’s Robert Darnton is a world renowned scholar of French cultural history, notably of the 18th Century. His 1984 book, The Great Cat Massacre continues to be viewed as a classic and is frequently assigned in required college readings. His chapters, “A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City as a Text,” and “A Police Inspector Sorts His Files: The Anatomy of the Republic of Letters,” clearly demonstrate what can be learned from the writings of ordinary people – even from old police files.
It is one thing to read the reports of George Washington during the bitter winter encampment at Valley Forge, yet quite another to read letters and diaries of soldiers describing their tribulations. Students researching the 1777 battle of Saratoga will, no doubt, encounter the official correspondence of General Burgoyne, yet the diary of Baroness Friederike Riedesel captures the mood of the soldiers and their dependents and helps to explain why so many of these German mercenaries elected to remain in America.
History and the Balance of Reporting
History is a totality of all elements that forge the movements taking mankind from one level to the next. The study of everyday life and ordinary people must not, of necessity, neglect the traditional narrative associated with the upper tier. All aspects of historical inquiry – from psychohistory to micro history, play a part in telling the complete story.
Books Cited in the Article
- Katharine Anthony, Catherine the Great (Garden City & New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1925)
- Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books, 1984)
- James M. McPherson, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
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