Presidential Address: The Historian's Social Function

• Published in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1977-12, Vol.27, p.197-211
• Main Author: Elton, G. R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Historians; Historical particularism; History instruction; Humanity; Intellectual freedom; Memory; Phenomena; Political history; Political protests; Prophets
• ISSN: 0080-4401; 1474-0648
• DOI: 10.2307/3679194

There is said to be a crisis in historical studies whose collapse some predict. I think myself that the word crisis gets over-used, and I am convinced that history as a subject of study and instruction will survive. We may find fewer students of it in schools and universities, but we shall stop well short of the retreat (itself, it seems to me, now halted) that has befallen the classical languages. People will continue to read history, even serious history, and people will continue to write history, even good history. Still, there are enemies, some lurking in thickets, some boldly skirmishing across the plain, and while their peashooters cannot kill they can and do hurt. Those sufficiently out of date still to think that what gets the customers is rele-vance continue to proclaim that history is irrelevant to a forwardlooking—indeed, a progressive—society; and since their numbers include a good many who decide what happens in colleges of education, in schools, and (worst of all) in the Department of Education and Science, their obscurantism is not to be ignored. I do not here, in this company, need to defend or justify the study of history, but I feel urged to warn historians that they would be well advised to consider and state their case: at the very least we cannot any longer take it for granted that society will as a matter of course accept us at our own valuation and therefore support us. Today, therefore, on this last occasion that I address this body as President, I should like to consider the grounds on which I would argue that no healthy society can afford to abandon the professional study of the past at its highest, most intensive, and to all appearances least practical level. I cannot now also attend to the history that is told to the generality: one thing at a time.