XIII. A GENERATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY. By WILLIAM A. DUNNING, A GENERATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY. By WILLIAM A. DUNNING. The American Historical Association was born in 1884. This was a generation ago, as men roughly reckon the stages in the life of the race. It has been suggested that this meeting might feel some interest in the consideration of what has been achieved in this generation in American historiography. The suggestion is attractive and plausible. When, however, one starts to act in accordance with it, there arise the usual troubles about the definition and limits of the field. Historiography is a dignified and mouth-filling word. But what precisely does it mean? And in particular what does it mean for him who has to deal with thirty odd years of it in one-third of an hour? From its etymology the term is almost ridiculously simple. "History" means history, and "graphe" means writing; ergo, historiography means either the writing of history or the writing about history or the writing about the writing of history-which does not solve our problem at all. If the first sense be taken-though it is by no means the most logical or the universally accepted sense-we are confronted with the question, what is the difference, if any, between a historian and a historiographer? And is there any distinction, in form or in substance, between historiography and plain history? Must we dismiss as unworthy our instinctive conviction that the longer word connotes the greater dignity—that a man may become a historian by a single duodecimo volume, but may never get a footing in the sacred precincts of historiography on less than five volumes octavo, with a special library edition in calf with gilt top and uncut edges? Then we have with us the perennial questions: Is a textbook historiography? Even a textbook so successful as to develop into a shelf-full of volumes through successive reincarnations adapted respectively to universities, colleges, high schools, eighth grades, sev.. enth grades and so on down to the subkindergartens? And is a great collection of sources historiography? Even if the collector be a man of the utmost industry and detective genius, and the results of his labor of the utmost significance to our understanding of a people or an age? And is a doctoral dissertation historiography? Even if it is 800 large pages in bulk and covers as many as ten years in time? The answers to these questions, and others that spring at once to the lips of every reflecting person, I shall not undertake to suggest. If a presumption as to the answers is derivable from what follows, the paper will not have been written in vain. In a way the present appears a peculiarly favorable moment for reviewing the progress of historiography; for all our preoccupation just now is with what may be called in contrast "historiofficy.' From every recruiting center in the land has issued the injunction, endlessly reiterated on the billboards, "Don't read history; make it." We who have written books may feel certain momentary reserves about the first branch of this injunction; but we yield to none in earnestness of god-speeds to the myriads of our young men who have responded to the second. When they shall have "made" the history that the desperate condition of the civilized world requires, they will be the first to urge, approve and promote the activity of those whose function it is to record and interpret their deeds. Looking back to the year in which this association was organized, what do we see going on in the writing of history? In 1884 the small group of American writers who had given distinction to historiography, by works not concerned immediately with the United States, had passed out of life or of influence. Irving and Prescott were long dead. Motley's Barneveld, his last work, had appeared in 1873, and the author died four years later. Parkman, a younger man, came back from general literature to history in this very year 1884, with the volume on Montcalm and Wolfe that confirmed his position in the first rank of the historiographical phalanx. But the man that towered up in general recognition as peculiarly the American historiographer was George Bancroft. He was 84 years old, but it was only two years since the appearance of the two stout volumes that brought his History of the United States down through the formation of the Constitution; and the final revision of his complete work was in progress when the association saw the light of day. There was in the historical guild of that time a very perceptible lack of enthusiasm for Bancroft's history in regard to both its substance and its form; but respect for his age and for the number of volumes that he had written made him an acceptable symbol of the association's ideals. He was made president for a year, and he retained the general function of patron saint till his death in 1891. When Bancroft took up the writing of history, in the 1830's, the culmination of God's wonder-working in the life of mankind was believed by all good Americans to have been the achievement of independence and the creation of a constitution by the United States. When, fifty years later, Bancroft's work was ended, a still greater miracle had supplanted independence in American interest, and those to whom time and faculty were given for the study of history were |