In Defence of History.

By Richard J. Evans (London: Granta Books, 1997. vii plus 307pp. Australia $39.95.).

E.H. Carr's What is History? and G.R. Elton's The Practice of History have a Siamese-twins quality. Great equals and opposites, each helped to "make" the other. Over thirty years later, these aging and grey-haired tomes soldier on unrepentantly. Although no longer on the cutting edge, they simply won't lie down or be put out to pasture, despite the clamouring of numerous competitors. In 1995, for example, Keith Jenkins explicitly attempted to displace the duo with a postmodernist challenge, the execrably written On "What is History?": from Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, whose claim to fame is that resoundingly unecumenical passage: "Today we live in a condition of postmodernity We do not have a choice about this. For postmodernity is not an 'ideology' or a position we chose to subscribe to or not; postmodernity is precisely our condition: it is our fate." To think that I paid good money for this book.

Another book on which I spent good money, this time wisely, was Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History. If ever a love-it-or-hate-it book has been written, it is likely to be this one. He confronts the postmodernist challenge in boots and all fashion with never a backward step. The reaction - even by those who affect to ignore him - is more likely to be akin to what Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote to Sir James Barrie: "A violent friend, a brimstone enemy, is always either loathed or slavishly adored: indifference impossible."

Evans' defence of history largely entails a withering attack on the universalizing pretensions and the "onslaught" of postmodernism. He takes up such familiar themes as history as a science, morality in history, historians and their facts, causation, society and the individual, and objectivity and its limits; and also some that Cart and Elton back in the 1960s would never have dreamed about, such as knowledge and power and the history of discourses.

To describe In Defence of History as a demolition derby on postmodernism does less than justice to the subtlety and erudition of much of Evan's argument. It also ignores the fact that he sees postmodernism "in its more constructive mode" as offering useful correctives in encouraging greater self-reflection, closer scrutiny of sources, and among other things. (pp. 156, 243-49, 252) Evans harbors grave misgivings, which I fully share, of its "ultra-sceptical variants": ultrarelativism; the unknowability of the past; the idea that history only serves to preserve power structures; experience not being real but imagined; the historian assuming greater importance than the past; and the trivializing consequences of reducing history to a play with words. Evans provides a point by point rebuttal and concludes that: "Once postmoderism's principles are applied to itself, many of its arguments begin to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions." (p. 221) The idea that all approaches are equally valid is confounded by the postmodernists' claim that theirs is the one and only. At the individual level, the claims of contingency are undermined by the certitude with which these interpretations are presented - and not surprisingly because modernists and postmodernists alike appeal in the last resort to notions of "truth" and factuality. Postmodernism, in Evans' view sallied forth with great expectations of redefining history, but is simply another approach - like cliometrics, social history and oral history - which confronted the world of historical scholarship, only to became recognized specialisms that have added their mite to the increasing diversity and fragmentation of the discipline.

These are perhaps not particularly original conclusions. What gives the book, in a paradoxical way, its freshness and force is Evans' seemingly old-fashioned appeal to standards of documentary objectivism, to the related notion that genuine insights into the past are possible, and, moreover, his insistence that competing interpretations often can be tested against the evidence. "For my own part," he writes, "I remain confident that objective historical knowledge is both desirable and attainable." (p. 252) In some ways it is refreshing to have such an uncompromising affirmation of faith, even if (despite the qualifiers) his unnuanced objectivism stands in odd contrast to the subtlety of much of his discussion. In Defence of History is. to empiricist-objectivists, what Peter Novick's That Noble Dream is to the relativist cause - and it is instructive indeed to note the contrasts in emphasis and content between their respective accounts of the "David Abraham Case." (Evans, pp. 116-23; Novick, pp. 612-21) Although Evans says that: "Few historians would now defend the hard-line concept of historical objectivity espoused by Elton" (p. 3), it is difficult to avoid sensing that he himself embraces it wholeheartedly.

What somewhat mars the effect of a powerful and generally persuasive book is an often pointedly personalized style of argumentation. Unable to resist the sarcastic aside, the cutting remark, and the unkind jibe, Evans is prone to going over the top in ways that are unnecessary to his argument - much with Elton. Then there is the point scoring (eg. pp. 50, 81-82, 271-72 n14, 275 n15) and a somewhat gratuitous speculation on another's motives (pp. 210, 268-69 n15), all of which run contrary to the spirit of humility that he enjoins upon others.

The exception is Evans' gentleness towards E.H. Carr, about whom he writes with perception and compassion (esp. pp. 224-31.) At the same time, Evans challenges almost every major proposition in What is History?, thus creating a strange contradiction because the dust-jacket proclaims Evans to have written "a worthy successor to What is History?" Even if some publisher's lackey wrote that particular passage, the effect is peculiar in view of Evans' affinity with Elton's unabashed championing of the sovereignty of sources as the pathway to an objective truth. In short, Evans can more properly be seen as a "worthy successor" to Elton, a counterpoise (or counterpoint?) to Novick, and a thoroughgoing (although respectful) repudiation of Carr.

Whether this robust and erudite book will enjoy the longevity of Carr and Elton will probably depend on the persistence of the postmodernist challenge, the very thing that Evans is trying to stifle. If postmodernism finds itself on the wane, as Evans would wish, then his book could find itself largely obsolete and be remembered as a forceful piece d'occasion. For my part, I hope that Evans can have it both ways.

Doug Munro

University of the South Pacific