What is History ?

            Edward Hallet Carr in  his essay 'The Historian and his facts' asks the question what is history? and how there is no truth. Here he answer his own questions that history is.

             Carr believes that the historical facts written before the 1890's must be false he also questions whether any of history is true. He talked about on the first Cambridge Modern History and how the authors made sure to make the French, English, German and Dutch happy by being unbiased, most historians in their home countries tend to be biased towards other countries.

            Another thing in history is the accuracy of the text. How do we truly know when a certain battle took place? Accuracy about the date and is location where an even took place is not good. Carr then says accuracy should be common sense to a historian.

            Carr explains that people are interested in certain major events in history  because historians have made those events major. Historian decide whether an event is worth written down or not.

According to Carr, Ignorance is bliss in History of Ancient but in modern times it is hard since the historian must find important fact to prove his point he gives the example of Gustav Stresemann, out of his 300 boxes of documents only some important facts were selected and most of the original documents had been destroyed.

            Carr was trying to mention that in history the original are often lost and the copies are the only ones to take their place more bias and some part of the other persons point of view.

According to Carr :

            "It is a process continues process of interaction between the historian and his facts and undying dialogue between the present and the past."

Thus he says that can never be thought purely, it does not exist in a pure form. It has to go through the mind of the recorder first the recorder gives his own opinion the event and select what he or she thinks important. Action writes in his report of october1896 to syndic of the Cambridge University press.

            "It is a unique opportunity of recording in the way most useful to the greatest number, the    film of the knowledge which the 19th century is about to bequeath.......now that all        information is within reach, and every problem has became capable of salutation."

George Clark in his general introduction to the second Cambridge modern history commented;

            "Historians of a later generation do not look forward to any such prospect. They expect their            work to be superseded again and again."

They consider that knowledge of the past has come down through one more human minds, has been process by them and therefore cannot consist on elemental and impersonal atoms which nothing can after......

            The exploration seems to be endless and some impatient scholars take refuge in scepticism or at least in the doctrine, that since all historical judgements involve persons and points of view, one is good as another and there is no objective historical truth.

            Thus he reflects the change in our total outlook on society over the interval between these two pronouncements. When we think about history, It reflects our own position in timeand view we take of the society in which we live.

According to Ranke :

            "The task of the historian was simply to show how it really was

Three generation of German British and French historians marched into battle intoning the above magic words. The empirical theory of knowledge presupposes to complete separations between subject and object.

            Facts like sense impressions impinge on the observer from outside and are independent of his consciousness the process of reception is passive having received the date he then acts on them. History consists of  a Corpus of ascertained facts as The Oxford shorter English Dictionary marks.

            Even Sir George Cleric critical as he was of Aton's attitude himself contrasted the  'Hard core facts' in history with surround pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulp part of fruit is more rewarding than the hard core.

            But not all the facts about the past are historical facts or are treated as such by the historian.