In Great Britain a student doesn’t major in history, he/she reads history. “Read” is the operative word since a student of history in Britain and the U.S. does read a great deal: commonly hundreds of pages a week. But what kind of reading — and writing — is involved in history?
The occasion of this essay was a book I ordered: “Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500,” by Peter H. Wilson. The book as advertised in the New York Review pictured a volume of maybe 350 pages. What I got weighed several pounds and ran to 900-plus pages. It was awkward to hold in my lap; it should be read lying flat on a table. I began to read about the Holy Roman Empire: “The authority to use force was widely dispersed throughout late medieval Europe.” I read about 50 pages and put the book aside.
For a few weeks “Iron and Blood” and I kept at a distance, eyeing each other warily across the room. (We judge books, but books judge us too!) Finally, I cracked it open in the middle, to a page that was headed “Horse and Musket.” There followed sub-chapters headed “Infantry,” “Cavalry,” “Light Troops,” “Artillery,” “Technical Troops and Fortifications.” This was more like it. I had found a way in.
People are also reading…
It’s a challenge to write about events in the distant past. Statements of fact that are not common knowledge must be supported by a source. This is done with footnotes. A sentence that contains information that relies on a source ends with a period, followed by a number, like so: “(1).” At the bottom, or foot, of the page appears the same number, “(1),” with the source information next to it. In most instances these days footnotes have been replaced by endnotes, grouped at the back of the book. “Iron and Blood” has 75 pages of endnotes, in small print.
“Iron and Blood” reads clearly and is well-organized, but it is, well, dry. Wilson never gets overly excited by his subject. He doesn’t dramatize, remains at a distance, analytical. His foot- or endnote numbers march unobtrusively down the page. This is a scholarly text, unlikely to excite most readers. It is a traditional history and flawless in its way. However, there is another way to write history, somewhat disreputable.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the Mississippian Shelby Foote published his monumental three-volume work, “The Civil War: A Narrative.” Each volume checked in at 1,000-plus pages — and there were no footnotes and no endnotes. Foote had begun his writing career as a novelist and had shunned grad school. If he had included foot- or endnote numbers throughout the text, he insisted, it would not be the same book; the reader, distracted by the note numbers in the text, would not have the same flowing experience.
Ed Rossmann
Foote’s history reads like a novel. His prose is visual, cinematic. He writes as if he had been there — we know how his characters felt on a particular day, what they wore, which way they turned their horse. We see them get worried and angry and then pull themselves together. Can any of this be verified? Well, Foote has done his homework and it’s all plausible. However, the reader who would like a source of a particular scene is frustrated. For example, when Grant, after the Battle of the Wilderness, in the privacy of his tent throws himself on his cot and gives way to his frustration. What document is the source of that?
Would footnote numbers have ruined Foote’s history, destroyed the narrative’s excitement and continuity? Foote certainly thought so, and it’s his book. However, Gordon Rhea and Stephen Schama also write about the Civil War, use footnotes, and still write exciting narratives. Foote remains in the scholarly doghouse for writing without notes and his work is not included in his successors’ bibliographies. (Endnotes, of course, would have made Foote’s volumes even bulkier than they are).
You don’t have to be a professional historian to use the basic historical tool in everyday life; in fact, it may be necessary. When you hear someone say, “Senator X conducts black masses in a Washington, D.C. cemetery crypt,” you have a choice. You can nod and say nothing, or you can ask the person the source of the story — where he or she got their information. “How do you know that?” Of course, we must be polite, and not embarrass the individual, and inspire an angry reaction. But if we say nothing, we encourage the proliferation of the fiction, and our own critical spirit is diminished.
Ed Rossmann lives in Aurora and has been an educator most of his life, including 17 years in high school.
This post was originally published on here
