What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization.
Interpretation
Historians analyze and interpret historical events, while collectors simply gather facts.
In this quote, Edward Hallett Carr emphasizes that historians go beyond merely collecting data about past events; they actively engage in the process of interpreting and generalizing these facts to derive meaningful insights. This ability to generalize is what distinguishes historians, as it requires a deeper understanding of context, causality, and the broader implications of history, making it a discipline of thought rather than just a compilation of information.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of historical analysis, I might say, 'As Edward Hallett Carr noted, what distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization.'
History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.
History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.
The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It's not a democracy, but it's not a tyranny. It's not like the rest of the world, the rest of Europe. There is a parliament, laws have to be made, elections are made.
Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.
Never to forget the Holocaust was not only against Jews. It was mostly against Jews but it was also against homosexuals, gypsies and, let's not forget, people with disability.
In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.
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