THE RANKEAN TRADITION

LEOPOLD VON RANKE (1795-1886)

• German historian
• Wrote multiple works
• Eurocentric outlook
• Founder of the Rankean model of studying history

"To history has been given the fuction of judging, the past, of instructing men for the profit of future years....It (the present) merely wants to show how, essentially, things happened..."

RANKEAN TENENTS

• Reality objectivity
• The possibility of interpretation of document evidence
• Equally meaning attempt to understand the past on it's own terms
• Rejection of distortion of evidence with personal or political influence in mind

RANKEAN TRADION

• A defense against contemporary political or philosophical trends
• History should be critical, colorless and a strict presentaion of facts
• Empirical
• Less of a focus on the individuals
• Strong distinction between acquiring historical knowledge and universal truth

BRITISH SUPPORTS

HERBERT BUTTERFIELD

• Scholar at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1919
• Chair of Modern History in 1944
• Against the Whig theory history
• Fears influence of secularist liberal optimism
• And atheistic communism both denied soveriegnity of God

BUTTERFIELD

• Comfirmed that history should be..
• Realist and empirical
• But emphasized the individual
• Saw WWI, cold war, Holocaust, and Hiroshima as unwarranted presumation
• And dangerously close to using history to elict the meaning of life

WILLIAM STUBBS

• Regius Professor of Modern History
• First to professionally the study of history in University
• Saw progression in history
• Large supporter of von Ranke

BRITISH OPPOSITION

JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DELBERG ACTION

• Reserched in church achieves
• Found that church scholars comprised the truth in their records
• History is meant to protect morality
• History must be practically objective
• Whig historian

LOUIS BERNSTEIN NAMIER

• Distrust doctrines of progress because he distrusts human nature
• Rejected teleogical
• Studies individuals
• Obsessed with study of parliament
• Created Namierization