The Historians' History of the World 01

The point of all this in our present connection is that we know the historians of antiquity very imperfectly, and that hence we are almost sure to misjudge them as a class when we attempt generalisations concerning them. In the very nature of the case, the historian who told a good story in a pleasing style stood a far better chance of being perpetuated through the efforts of copyists, than did the philosophical historian, however profound, who put forward his theories at the expense of the narrative proper. Making all due allowance for this, however, it can hardly be in doubt that the last century and a half has seen a remarkable development of the scientific spirit in its application to the work of the historian, and that the average historical work of the nineteenth century is philosophically on a far higher plane than the average historical work of antiquity. If we were to attempt to characterise the most recent phases of historical composition, we should, perhaps, not go far afield in saying that in regard to history-writing, as in regard to many other subjects, this is pre-eminently the age of specialists. In recent years no historical work could hope for any large measure of recognition among historians, unless it were based upon personal investigation of the most remote sources bearing upon the period that could be made accessible. The recent period has been pre-eminently a time of the searching out of obscure or forgotten records; the unburying of old letters and state papers; the delving into hitherto neglected archives; and the critical analysis of the conflicting statements of alleged authorities previously accessible.

The work began prominently—if any intellectual movement may properly be said to have an explicit beginning—with Gibbon and Niebuhr; it was continued by Grote and Mommsen and George Cornewall Lewis and Clinton, and the host of more recent workers, whose specific labours will claim our attention as we proceed. Naturally enough, since each generation of specialists builds upon the labours of all preceding generations, the work has become more and more minute and hair-splitting with each succeeding decade. Gibbon, specialist though he was, covered a period of a thousand years of European history, and left scarcely anything untouched that falls properly within that period. Niebuhr specialised on the few centuries of early Roman history, but his comprehensive view reached out also to Greece and to the Orient, and he was accounted a master over the whole range of ancient history. Mommsen’s efforts have followed the Roman Republic and Empire throughout the length and breadth of its wide domains, and over the whole period of its existence, as well as into all the ramifications of its political, commercial, and social life.

But there has been a tendency among most recent workers to confine their attention to a narrower field. Macaulay’s History of England attempts the really detailed history of only about seventeen years. Carlyle devotes six large volumes to the History of Frederick the Great, and such authorities as Freeman and Stubbs and Gardiner and Gairdner gave years of patient research to the investigation of single periods of English history. The obvious result of all this minute and laborious effort is the piling up of a mass of more or less incoördinate details as to the crude facts of history, which only the specialist in each particular field can hope to master, and the remoter bearings of which in their relations to world history are not always clearly appreciable. It is rarely given to the same mind to have a taste or a capacity at once for minute research and for broad and accurate generalisation. Therefore much of the work of the specialist, admirable in its kind, must still be regarded rather as crude material than as a finished product. It is the work of the world historian to attempt to mass this crude material, to visualise it in its relations to other similar masses, and to build with it a unified structure of history, in which each portion shall appear in its proper relations to all the rest.

Let us turn for a moment to the work of the world historians of the past, and glance at the results of their various efforts to weld the individual history of men and of nations into a comprehensive history of mankind.

CHAPTER IV

WORLD HISTORIES