Without knowing what came before and what came after, without knowing what was happening at other places at the same time, and without exploring the forces that were at work to create a particular historical moment and to cause a certain historical structure or artifact to be created and then sometimes left behind, we do not really understand that moment or place in history. To be old is not enough. To be understood is the challenge. That is where the historical context that gives meaning to the past becomes important.
The Problem of Historical Context
Perhaps the single most important element marking the research of professional historians is the effort to understand the larger meaning, the subtle implications, and the true historical significance of whatever the literal focus of the inquiry may be. Which is to say that there are two sets of questions being asked by the historian when investigating a particular topic: (1) What is going on in the past? And (2) What does it mean? What difference does it make? The latter set often amounts to asking, “So what?” And that is a question that needs to be asked more often.
Context provides a framework by which we can arrive at those larger meanings. Historical context is the larger set of circumstances and forces that illuminates specific events by suggesting broader patterns of which those events may be a part or to which they may even be exceptions. As the historian E. P. Thompson observed, “The discipline of history is, above all, the discipline of context; each fact can be given meaning only within an ensemble of other meanings . . . .”[1] As we seek to understand and learn from the past, it is not the isolated facts themselves that are important, for in and of themselves they are devoid of meaning. Instead, we must seek out the patterns that the multitude of facts together comprise. Those patterns may be complex, they may be subtle, and they may also be subject to debate, but identifying the patterns is a continuing responsibility that requires ongoing critical thinking and re-examination to assure that the context is both accurate and meaningful. Historical context thus is identified by determining what else is happening at the same time and also what happened before and after—there and elsewhere. Moreover, there is seldom universal agreement on those patterns since the close analysis of each aspect of the past and then the comparison of those findings with what other historians have found often produces historical debates; this also produces growth in our knowledge.
The problem of historical context is one that has occupied me throughout my professional career and that concern is evident in everything that I have written, from my exploration in “grass-roots” sources to help us understand the development of particular patterns of race relations in the United States, to my local studies where I use particular communities as microcosms of larger patterns of change, to my preparation of historic context studies for the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (homesteading, ranching, and farming in Wyoming; Depression Era Federal Projects in Wyoming), the National Park Service (U.S. Route 66 and also Fort Laramie), and the Bureau of Land Management (stock raising in the Powder River Basin and also patterns of agriculture and community in the area that became Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument).
I have developed the notion of historical context conceptually in several essays. Two of them have been published and, while not accessible online, they are readily obtainable otherwise. They are: “E. P. Thompson and the Local Historian,” in Carol Kammen and Norma Prendergast, eds., Local History Encyclopedia (Walnut Creek, California: American Association for State and Local History and Alta Mira Press, 2000), 435-437, and “Slaves, Families, and ‘Living Space’: A Note on Evidence and Historical Context,” Southern Studies, XVII (Summer 1978), 409‑415.
But probably the most important of my investigations into the problem of historic context was never published. It began as a paper presented at the Southern Labor Studies Conference in Atlanta in September 1982. The paper was titled, “After Two Decades: The English Model and the American Context” and focused on the development of a broad model of analysis by European historians, especially E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, a model that had dramatically altered not just the field of labor and working class history in England but also was revising much other history by bringing into serious focus parts of society traditionally omitted from the inquiry. I was fortunate at the Atlanta session in having comments offered on it by two of the foremost labor historians in the world, David Montgomery and Eric Hobsbawm (they were warm in their comments). Following that conference I revised the paper and incorporated some of their observations and then started the process of sending it off for publication in professional historical journals. The story got strange at that point and after some puzzling (not exactly negative, for we always learn from reviewer comments, just puzzling) experiences in the editorial offices of the American Historical Review I sent it to the Journal of American History, which was willing to publish it in a truncated form. At that point I was occupied with other projects and thought of what the alterations would involve, both for my schedule and for the point I was trying to make, and returned the context essay to the file drawer. Besides, I was optimistic that the ideas of people like E. P. Thompson were gaining broad understanding and acceptance; thus I expected my essay would soon be superfluous. (After another decade and a half, I revised my optimism downward in the “E. P. Thompson and the Local Historian,” article cited above.) I now pull the 1984 essay out of the drawer and post it here. It still has something to say.
[1] E. P. Thompson, “Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context,” Midland History, I (1972): 45.
Click below to download a PDF of the essay.
Context provides a framework by which we can arrive at those larger meanings. Historical context is the larger set of circumstances and forces that illuminates specific events by suggesting broader patterns of which those events may be a part or to which they may even be exceptions. As the historian E. P. Thompson observed, “The discipline of history is, above all, the discipline of context; each fact can be given meaning only within an ensemble of other meanings . . . .”[1] As we seek to understand and learn from the past, it is not the isolated facts themselves that are important, for in and of themselves they are devoid of meaning. Instead, we must seek out the patterns that the multitude of facts together comprise. Those patterns may be complex, they may be subtle, and they may also be subject to debate, but identifying the patterns is a continuing responsibility that requires ongoing critical thinking and re-examination to assure that the context is both accurate and meaningful. Historical context thus is identified by determining what else is happening at the same time and also what happened before and after—there and elsewhere. Moreover, there is seldom universal agreement on those patterns since the close analysis of each aspect of the past and then the comparison of those findings with what other historians have found often produces historical debates; this also produces growth in our knowledge.
The problem of historical context is one that has occupied me throughout my professional career and that concern is evident in everything that I have written, from my exploration in “grass-roots” sources to help us understand the development of particular patterns of race relations in the United States, to my local studies where I use particular communities as microcosms of larger patterns of change, to my preparation of historic context studies for the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (homesteading, ranching, and farming in Wyoming; Depression Era Federal Projects in Wyoming), the National Park Service (U.S. Route 66 and also Fort Laramie), and the Bureau of Land Management (stock raising in the Powder River Basin and also patterns of agriculture and community in the area that became Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument).
I have developed the notion of historical context conceptually in several essays. Two of them have been published and, while not accessible online, they are readily obtainable otherwise. They are: “E. P. Thompson and the Local Historian,” in Carol Kammen and Norma Prendergast, eds., Local History Encyclopedia (Walnut Creek, California: American Association for State and Local History and Alta Mira Press, 2000), 435-437, and “Slaves, Families, and ‘Living Space’: A Note on Evidence and Historical Context,” Southern Studies, XVII (Summer 1978), 409‑415.
But probably the most important of my investigations into the problem of historic context was never published. It began as a paper presented at the Southern Labor Studies Conference in Atlanta in September 1982. The paper was titled, “After Two Decades: The English Model and the American Context” and focused on the development of a broad model of analysis by European historians, especially E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, a model that had dramatically altered not just the field of labor and working class history in England but also was revising much other history by bringing into serious focus parts of society traditionally omitted from the inquiry. I was fortunate at the Atlanta session in having comments offered on it by two of the foremost labor historians in the world, David Montgomery and Eric Hobsbawm (they were warm in their comments). Following that conference I revised the paper and incorporated some of their observations and then started the process of sending it off for publication in professional historical journals. The story got strange at that point and after some puzzling (not exactly negative, for we always learn from reviewer comments, just puzzling) experiences in the editorial offices of the American Historical Review I sent it to the Journal of American History, which was willing to publish it in a truncated form. At that point I was occupied with other projects and thought of what the alterations would involve, both for my schedule and for the point I was trying to make, and returned the context essay to the file drawer. Besides, I was optimistic that the ideas of people like E. P. Thompson were gaining broad understanding and acceptance; thus I expected my essay would soon be superfluous. (After another decade and a half, I revised my optimism downward in the “E. P. Thompson and the Local Historian,” article cited above.) I now pull the 1984 essay out of the drawer and post it here. It still has something to say.
[1] E. P. Thompson, “Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context,” Midland History, I (1972): 45.
Click below to download a PDF of the essay.
