=============
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE
HISTORY OF HISTORY
BY
JAMES T. SHOTWELL, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.
________
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1922.
To
M., G. and D.
THE series of which this volume forms part was planned before the war. Its purpose was twofold: in the first place, to make accessible in English those sources of the history of Europe which are of prime importance for understanding the development of western civilization; in the second place, to indicate some of the more significant results of scholarship in the field covered. It was intended to supply, to those who could not read the documents in the original, the means for forming some idea of the problems of the historian. About twenty volumes had been arranged for, covering a considerable diversity of topics, but bearing in one way or another upon the main purpose of the series, when with the entry of the United States into the war the Editor was called into Government service which lasted through the Peace Conference. Work upon the series was therefore interrupted, with the result that only three volumes have been published as yet: a general, comprehensive source-book for Greek social history, Hellenic Civilization by Professors Botsford and Sihler; and two volumes of a different type, each dealing with but a single source, — Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks by Dr. Brehaut, and The Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis) by Dr. Loomis.
With the close of the war, plans for continuing the series were again taken up, but with modifications imposed by changed conditions. Without entering into details as to the way those conditions have affected contributors and publishers, it may be said that in general it has been necessary to lessen the purely documentary matter in the series wherever it was otherwise readily accessible, and to enlarge the scope of the “studies” which had been a somewhat secondary element in the original plan. This modification, however, did not affect the essential purpose of the series; for it had never been the object to present merely revised translations of texts already easily available in English, valuable as that service might be. Its aim had been rather to fill certain gaps in the equipment of the average American student of history, and those gaps viiiexist as frequently in the field of critical interpretation as in the knowledge of the texts themselves. Even where the text is already at hand, therefore, the student’s problem is not necessarily solved; for modern scholarship may have suggested new and unsuspected meanings. In such instances the new editorial plan is to shorten the text to mere illustrative extracts and to concentrate upon descriptive or critical comment. In this way it is hoped to reduce the bulk of the volumes, while opening up in a freer way than formerly the significance of the sources with which they deal. In other instances, however, where the text itself is the chief contribution, the original method of publication will be maintained as far as possible. This involves a certain inconsistency in the treatment of text and comment, since, in volumes like the present one, the elimination of a purely textual section has thrown many illustrative extracts into an introduction — now become the body of the book. Even this lessened plan, however, could not have been realized but for the generous support of the Trustees of Columbia University.
The present volume needs an especial word of explanation and apology. It has grown out of an introduction to a proposed collection of texts from mediæval and modern historians. Nothing could have been farther from the original intention of the author than to write a history of antique historiography, which the book now in part resembles. But the absence of any satisfactory general survey covering the antique field led to enlargement in scope and critical comment, until the work assumed the present form. It is freely recognized that the field covered belongs of right to the ancient historian, properly equipped not only with the classics and the languages of Western Asia but also with archæology and its associated sciences. If any such had done the work, this volume would have remained the single chapter originally planned; so the classicist, who will undoubtedly detect in it the intrusion of an outsider, is at least partly to blame for the adventure, since it was the absence of a guide such as he might have offered which led to the preparation of this one.
However much of an adventure this is in itself, the circumstances under which the volume was made ready for the press have ix made it all the more perilous from the standpoint of scholarship. For it has been prepared at odd moments, as occasion offered, in the midst of other work of an entirely different kind and involving heavy responsibilities. Part of it has been written during European travel with only such books at hand as could be obtained in local libraries or could be carried along; part of it is drawn from fragments of old university lectures; and part was already prepared for a mere introduction to source selections. This will explain, if it does not excuse, some irregularities in treatment, and inadequacies in the bibliographical notes, as well as the use in most instances of available translations of extracts. Had there been any possibility of a separate and lengthy series of illustrative translations, as was originally planned, these extracts would not have appeared in the Introduction. Generally, however, a little examination will reveal something like a substitute for the bibliographies in the footnotes, or in a reference to some comprehensive manual which is the inevitable starting point for further work in any case. If, however, this Introduction to the exacting disciplines of history has itself escaped some of the many pitfalls which lie along the pathway it follows, its good fortune is due in the first instance to the fact that the pathway is, upon the whole, not an obscure one, but travelled by many, who, however, go only part way or turn off in different directions. But in the second place, it is due to the critical care and scholarly oversight which has been given the entire apparatus of the book by Miss Isabel McKenzie, formerly of the History Department of Barnard College.
J. T. S.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
April, 1921.
=============