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.
You gotta understand - the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that's what actually happened.
All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.
It is true that not all the victims were Jews, but all the Jews were victims
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.
The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones.
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