An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.
Interpretation
A historian should engage deeply with their subject while also maintaining a perspective for clearer understanding.
This quote emphasizes the dual approach necessary for historians to analyze their subjects. By immersing themselves in the historical context of the event or period being studied, they can gain a richer understanding. However, it is also crucial to step back occasionally to gain an objective perspective, which allows for fresh insights and a more balanced interpretation of history.
In practice
During a lecture about the importance of historical context, you might reference this quote to illustrate how deeply engaging with subjects is critical for historians.
But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period-Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States-are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao.
The freedmen were not really free in 1865, nor are most of their descendants really free in 1965. Slavery was but one aspect of a race and color problem that is still far from solution here, or anywhere. In America particularly, the grapes of wrath have not yet yielded all their bitter vintage.
So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.
Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.
No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.
Dream dreams and write them aye, but live them first.
American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive,always growing, always unfinished.
The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.
There are two kinds of man: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it.
The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.
Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and then another 100 years of segregation. I grew up in segregation. I know very well what it was about and all of the difficulties it placed on black life, and how we were truly held down before the civil-rights movement.
My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.
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