What Is a Historian?

Historians are curious people. They're detectives who nose around and poke through old books and documents and even the Internet to get to the facts of the matter. Once they do, they reassemble the facts to create a picture of a time, a place or an event that may be completely foreign to the way we think and behave today or may explain why we do. Historians work in all sorts of ways to help us know our past and avoid old mistakes.

History

History as a study began when humans developed the level of safety and security to begin to wonder about the past. Herodotus and Thucydides, Greek scholars of the 5th century B.C., established the main themes of historical inquiry, anecdotal and documentary. Anecdotal history relies on interviews and primary documents such as letters, diaries and personal recollections; documentary history is more like reporting, relying on primary documents such as laws, books by participants and contemporary accounts of events. Josephus, the great Jewish historian of the 1st century B.C., was primarily an anecdotal historian; Sima Qian, considered the father of Chinese historiography, wrote what could only be considered a documentary account of 2,000 years of Chinese history looking backward from 91 B.C. Eight hundred years later, Arab scholars preserved historical research and documentation that would provide legends for "The Arabian Nights," "Le Morte d'Arthur" and other medieval romances. Charles, Baron de Montesquieu (French, 1689--1755), and Edward Gibbon (English, 1734--1797) are considered the first modern historians. Their principal works, "The Spirit of the Law" and "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," established history as a social science, with its events subject to the law of cause and effect and its progress subject to human actions. Modern historians examine both the distant and near past and often use tools of other social sciences, including sociology and anthropology, to develop narrative and theory.

Function

Historians hold a mirror up to society by showing us what has happened in the past. In that mirror, we see our ancestors---their hopes and struggles, the results of their politics and economics, and the legacies they have left to us. Historians help demystify the past and wipe away the mists of nostalgia and romanticism. They identify individuals who provide examples of courage and honor as well as those who weren't what their reputations might suggest.

Types

Historians serve as educators, researchers and museum curators. But they also serve specific disciplines such as art, architecture, medicine, science and literature, expanding knowledge and choices for modern practitioners. They work as consultants in law, government and historic preservation, enriching understanding and keeping the present true to the past.

Considerations

Historians examine events and human activity from a distance that, more often than not, gives them an objectivity that those who live too close to an event may not have. But their distance in time from an event also limits what information is available, making some history one-sided or limited in its scope.

Potential

Historians can show us where we've been, but, more important, they show us the consequences of human ideas and actions. They are investigators, using science and curiosity to understand the past, but they are also artists, weaving a tale of human experience.

Resources

• Essays by American historians
• American Historical Association
• Organization of American Historians