The Professionalization of Historical Learning

Abstract

The transformation of the study of history from an avocation into a profession was part of a general process of institutionalization which scholarship underwent in the nineteenth century. Until then historians had been amateurs in the strict sense of the word, men who wrote about the past out of sheer love of the subject. Their chief occupation was in some other field. Thucydides was a military leader in the Peloponnesian War who, after his exile from Athens, decided to write about the conflict in which he had been a participant. Einhard was counselor and architect at the court of Charlemagne before becoming the emperor's biographer. To Voltaire the writing of history was only one campaign in a lifelong war for the intellectual emancipation of mankind. Macaulay published his massive celebration of the Glorious Revolution as part of a broad literary output which included critical essays, political commentaries, biographical studies, and popular verse. Even Parkman, who devoted his entire life to the study of history, did so not out of professional commitment but as a labor of love. For about two thousand years history continued to be written in a haphazard hit-and-miss fashion, intermingling scholarship with theological speculation, philosophic reflection, moral uplift, and national pride. The lack of a systematic methodology and autonomous purpose, however, was in no way incompatible with the creation of important works of historical learning. Indeed, it often encouraged a broad outlook and sharp insight. Gibbon's Decline and Fall or Carlyle's French Revolution continue to attract readers, more than many later works of greater scholarship but lesser brilliance, although their point of view now appears outdated. What draws us to such books is the grandeur of their theme, the passion of their conviction, or the vividness of their style. The institutionalization of history, that is, its metamorphosis from a branch of literature, theology, or philosophy into a profession with a purpose, method, and spirit uniquely its own, was the result of the reorganization of education which began in Europe during the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But indirectly it reflected the growing affluence of society resulting from the rationalization of economic activity. The curriculum of the university in the preindustrial era had of necessity been