Making History: The Historian and the Uses of the Past

Jorma Kalela
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ISBN: 9780230276819; 216pp.; Price: £52.50
Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1272
Date accessed: 29 January, 2023
According to the blurb on the back of this book:
‘Everyone has a personal connection to the past, independent of historical inquiry. So, what is the role of the historian? Making History argues that historians have damagingly dissociated the discipline of history from the everyday nature of history, defining their work only in scholarly terms. Exploring the relationship between history and society, Kalela makes the case for a more participatory historical research culture, in which historians take account of their role in society and the ways in which history-making as a basic social practice is present in their work. Making History not only asks provocative questions about the role of the historian, it also provides practical guidance for students and historians on planning research projects with greater public impact. This book is vital reading for all historians, lay and professional, and will be an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on historiography and research methods’.
The pursuit of this ‘more participatory historical research culture’ starts in the preface (entitled ‘Why history?’) with the author, Jorma Kalela, arguing that this question is more fruitful than the conventional ‘What is history?’ This undertaking is rationalised by the author with the claim that people need knowledge of the past, which is as natural as needing to eat or breathe (the author quotes the American historian David Thelen to this effect) (p. ix). Kalela then goes on to offer a detailed defence of the history profession, based on the basic assumption upon which the book is built and which it defends. This assumption is that there is a ‘relationship between historical inquiry and history-in-society’, but Kalela places ‘the emphasis on the other end of the question’ (p. x). It is a book about not just the nature of history (which the author defines as a ‘craft’) but its uses and especially how ‘laypeople’ create histories. Kalela thus addresses (as he says) ‘a much more complicated matter than just the disciplinary practices of which historians willingly talk – not to mention the idea of some postmodernist thinkers according to which history is the historians invention’ (p. xi). Then in the next-but-one sentence Kalela says it is his hope ‘...that members of any society will accept, as the British historian John Tosh has recently emphasized, history by its nature as the citizens’ resource’. Now, it is not much of an insight to say that we all read texts through our own intellectual beliefs. So, I came to realise from the first few pages that this book was probably not going to be one I could agree with. I became certain when I read the author’s claim that historians ought to ‘... take on a more balanced way of thinking and greater self-awareness’ (p. xi) concerning what they do. Spending half my career trying to pursue this exact objective has suggested to me that such an aim is laudable but incapable of delivery. But that apart, what is it that Kalela is arguing?
As Kalela says, ‘... it seems obvious’ (to him) ‘that we have a connection to the historical past, as ordinary persons, prior to and independently of adopting a historical cognitive interest’ (p. xi). He summarises this as ‘history-in-society’ (p. xii). This is delivered for Kalela through his defence of what elsewhere I have called the ‘empirical-analytical/colligatory-representationalist’ epistemological understanding of how we can and should be able to conflate the past and history. Kalela ends the preface to his book by saying ‘Since the book is written in the spirit of “history is an argument without end”, I welcome all criticism and comments: jorma.Kelela@utu.fi’. So, please regard this review as both criticism and comment.
That apart, the author gets into his stride in the introduction to chapter one, which he subtitles ‘Second thoughts about history’ (p. 1). Basically, he addresses the connection he makes between the public consumption and professional production of history. In acknowledging that history is a social process, and that historians are ‘parts of history’ (quoting E. H. Carr) to the effect that historians are ‘spokesmen of the society to which they belong’ (p. 1), Kalela evaluates the matter of ‘history-in-society’, believing that the big issue is the public functioning of history. In pursuit of this narrative the author notes the ‘paradigmatic change in historical research’ comprised of ‘the disruption within the discipline ... that elevated cleaners to a status on a par with kings’, and a second such change, namely the linguistic turn ‘which questioned the familiar tenets of historical research, reality, objectivity and truth’ (p. 5). This time of turmoil in approach and content was shaped by the ‘the trouble symbolized by Hayden White’s Metahistory from 1973, for example’ (pp. 5–6). Invoking Richard J. Evans as his source for his analysis of this ‘trouble’, the author concludes that this ‘postmodern threat’ overshadowed the other ‘disruption’ (p. 6). The resulting upset was ‘...enough to be characterised as a paradigmatic change’ and produced a ‘scientific revolution in historical research’ (ibid.) and that ‘everyday history, too, was transformed towards the turn of the twenty-first century thanks to the unparalleled number of people engaged with history’ (p. 7).
But, Kalela claims, the nature of this change in ‘perspectival paradigms’ (p. 8) led to no consensus on what is ‘real’ historical research (ibid). Kalela then says the extent of these paradigmatic changes (to cleaners as opposed to kings and the linguistic turn) remains open to question, quoting John Tosh to argue that the connection between ‘historical enquiry and history-making as a basic social practice is a case in point, since most academics look askance’ at popular uses of the past (ibid.). And the author completes his thoughts with a further Tosh quote, to the effect that these developments were a diversion from the real job of reconstructing and interpreting the past. And this is what concerns me with this book. I find myself having to qualify the author’s claim that ‘It is the task of the profession to advance archive-based scholarly knowledge that has been reliably reconstructed and explained’ which is again from John Tosh (ibid.).
So, what is the point of this book? I read it as being an evaluation of the process of the creation of history and its use in society, and not merely by academics. This leads the author into heritage and the social context in which history is produced and used. The author invokes the customary range of reasons for why history is socially useful, particularly that history which is written in a common-sensical everyday way (though most historians have not reflected on the consequences of this). History, the author argues, is a present-minded discipline and that mediates the distinction between ‘objectivists’ and ‘the representatives of partisanships’ this time quoting Koselleck (p. 13). As the author notes, the dominant objectivist or orthodox section of historians take no account of the present, and that this view was rejected by the postmodern radicals. But the meaning of all this furore is that historians do not work in a social vacuum which permits no involvement in the present. This is the return to the classic idea of E. H. Carr (as the author more than happily admits) that historians can do the job (in an objectivist way) but still ‘shake off their professional blinkers, and clarify their relation to the ongoing social process of history-making’ (p. 18). In effect historians can rise above their social and historical situation by recognising the extent of their existence in it.
The answer to all this, for the author, is to acknowledge and welcome a ‘participatory historical culture’ (p. 20) that builds ‘... on the shared histories which people have mutually created’ (ibid.). Hence the author argues that his book is not an introduction to the study of history but an introduction to a discussion on the nature of historical research ‘...as a genre of history making’ (ibid). The rest of the book delineates how this can be achieved. It is a mix of classic empirical-analytical and representationalist procedures that Tosh and his familiars would approve – planning, testing and producing a final account that acknowledges the ‘tension’ between ‘reasoning’ and ‘rhetoric’ (p. 23). Making the history sound ‘...in order to make the message (meaning?) more convincing’ (ibid.). Rhetoric of course serves scholarship. Writing-up is important – very important – but it is still writing-up. It serves the meaning of the past and does not create it. At this point I found myself muttering to myself about the ontological distinction between the past and history.
The analysis and description of historical research (in chapter two) is pretty straightforward. After acknowledging that historians must reflect on their profession as a cultural institution, he goes on to say that they must also evaluate it as a discipline (p. 25). This means that thinking about the scholarly practices of historians must take place on the historian’s terms, and not be influenced by ideas imported from issues in philosophy. Historians, we are reminded, work in society, and they make histories in and for their society. History making is a public endeavour and the idea of ‘everyman his own historian’ is restated in support of the notion of ‘shared histories’ and the existence of the remnants of the past in the present (pp. 27–-49). This section of the book offers and defends the classic empirical, inferential and representationalist model of historical research. So, sources yield meaning to the ‘expert referee’ through the notion of the most likely interpretation that results from the ‘reconstruction’ of the past in the historian’s description. The author says ‘The argument of this book, all the consequences of the linguistic turn notwithstanding, is that there is no reason to give up the objective of reconstruction’ (p. 35). The author immediately admits that it is true that ‘ ...it is an epistemological impossibility to make transparent something that is inherently opaque. This is the argument that supports the postmodernist demand that construction is substituted for reconstruction’ (italics in original). However,
‘...the impossibility of mastering another person’s thinking does not prevent the historian from attempting to reach out to that other person’s concept of reality and discourse. Still less does it hinder the scholar from reconstructing the circumstances in which that person lived. On the contrary, if research is carried out properly, the resulting account is a fair description. Performing these methodological operations is what the rationale of historical research demands’ (p. 35).
I think this is a step too far. That it seems practical, realist, common-sensical, and representationalist fails to convince me. Surely, historians today know about images and stories, the creation of narrative, the knotty nature of causality, their own subjectivity, the unavoidability of authorial points of view, that they are writing invented narratives, the cultural imperatives under which they labour and above all – surely these days – they/we are all too well aware of the fictive nature of the connection between language and the world both past and present?
That a whole profession can be said to legitimately ignore all these strictures is for me inexplicable. And calling it common sense does not make it any kind of sense. Many years ago I wrote a book called Deconstructing History in which I dissected precisely this argument, and as far as I was aware at the time, I created this nomenclature to describe the basic forms of historical thinking and practice – reconstructionist, constructionist and deconstructionist (later Keith Jenkins and I added what we called postist history). Anyway, I ‘deconstructed’ the concepts of reconstruction and construction and argued that they were fraught with unwarranted and – frankly – woefully undercooked epistemological assumptions. I confronted what I took then (and still do take) to be the facile belief that the notion of being able to reconstruct the past as a narrative mental model was at best unlikely and hence this is why I find Kalela’s argument to the contrary unconvincing.
Historians are no better fixed to referee the meaning of the past than anyone else. There is nothing special in either reconstructionist or constructionist historical thinking and practice that permits the historian to elevate themselves beyond desire and prejudice. It remains – as Kalela admits – that historians must justify their choices and decisions, and truth is enigmatic (pp. 41–3). Indeed, Kalela acknowledges that the historian is an intermediary between the past and present, and one who can only operate from a point of view. This point of view it is again admitted is generated by the relationship the historian creates between form and content. But Kalela denies that Hayden White’s analysis of form and content is of value. He argues it is reasonable to deploy literary conventions and devices such as modes of emplotment or different kinds of tropes but that a history text ‘cannot be reduced to them as White suggests’ (p. 139). Well, I do not think that is what White was saying. He also pursues Frank Ankersmit’s concept of ‘narrative theses’ (e.g., ‘Renaissance’ or ‘Cold War’) ‘which bring historical data together but do not emerge from it’ (p. 140). It all depends, as he says, on the balance between truth and argument. To do this he examines the relationships between the historian, the audience and the content of the past. A useful survey but ultimately flawed by the judgement that ‘literary techniques are helpful’ (p. 141), rather than being central to an understanding of the past as history. And this is why we should always distinguish history (in all its forms) from the content of the past.
So, my criticisms of this book concern its author’s assumption that history is essentially a sophisticated reconstruction of the past as it most likely was – as the author says ‘The point is that the historian aims, firstly, to reconstruct the reality of the people studied – as they saw it’ (p. 130). The notion of such an access to the reality of the past is defended as well as it could be in this book. But while the defence is elegantly put it just does not convince me. The notion of ‘reasoning while writing’ (p. 131) fails to persuade me because I prefer the argument that reasoning about the nature of our engagement with the past can only be reasonably addressed through an understanding of ‘writing-the-past-as-history’. If historians really wish to grasp what they are doing, then they need to understand how they create and write narratives – and different forms of narrative – for public, heritage or so-called professional history purposes.
Author's Response
Contrary to what Alun Munslow’s review suggests I share his view that the writing of history is fundamentally a constructivist endeavour. The historian’s creative role is crystallised in his/her final account as a text that is devised to support the interpretation of the past s/he has arrived at. Yet, the common philosophical stance notwithstanding, I part company with him as regards the nature of the historian’s final account: we have quite different views both on its emergence and the function it serves. Munslow’s preconceived notions have even led him to attribute positions in Making History from which I have explicitly and systematically dissociated myself.
It is insufficient and misleading to regard the construction a historian produces in the first place as his/her creation; rather, it is a representation conveying the idea that ‘it was not like that’.(1) Specialists in the past comment on existing knowledge: not in the sense of putting things right, but aiming at producing a more convincing interpretation. They seek to demonstrate that the subject studied is, in the form the historian has defined it, relevant to those thought to be interested in it, and to induce them to reflect on that connection. It is the historian’s message, one of the key concepts in my book, that dominates his/her final account.
‘Historians … must make it clear (to those addressed) that the past is a terrain that does not allow for debates in terms of “truths”; what is within the bounds of possibility are findings that are both sound and significant, knowledge that is sustainable’ (Making History, p. 46; italics original). However, the rejection of truth in the correspondence sense does not exclude epistemological evaluation; on the contrary, it underlines the crucial role of meeting the criteria of soundness. The interpretation argued for must be based on impeccable reasoning, be cogent in relation to prevailing explanations, and contain a plausible description of the past matters studied.
Soundness is the sine qua non of the historian’s account. ‘Everyone agrees that although there are no true or false buildings, there clearly are better and worse constructions’ as the philosopher Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen puts the argument metaphorically.(2) Embedded is that creating one’s message directs the research process. The historian starts from an inkling that the chosen topic matters, assesses the strength of his/her outlined message against the primary sources, and finishes the process by composing the final account. And at every step s/he must make sure that s/he will be able to meet the criteria of soundness when eventually presenting the findings.
The necessity of learning to work in terms of sound and meaningful knowledge instead of being captive to an unattainable truth belongs to the message Making History advocates. This notion matches the conditions in which historical research has to be done: past reality is beyond anyone’s reach. I most certainly do not argue anywhere in terms of ’the balance between truth and argument’. Nor do I use expressions like ‘the content of the past’.
Connection to the past matters studied is indirect because prevailing knowledge always acts as an intermediary. This quality is highlighted by sources from the period studied: they cannot be taken at face value. While consulting the traces that have survived, the historian must bear in mind that anyone’s comprehension of reality is conditioned by the language s/he uses to express his/her beliefs. As a result, since there neither exists objective reality nor neutral language, the historian must keep on asking ‘whose reality’ and ‘whose discourse’ (along the lines of the philosopher Frank Ankersmit). Taking one’s present-mindedness seriously is also the key to success as regards previous knowledge and the people addressed.
The basic idea of demonstrating that something is contrary to what is claimed or is believed to have been the case calls for keeping in mind the distinction between the critical and constructive sides of this effort. Professional training gives the historian competence to assess the soundness of prevailing histories: whether past people’s actions have been presented on their own terms or whether an event has been situated in a justifiable past context, for instance. This critical mandate does not, however, endow a privileged position regarding the constructivist side of the study. As regards the meanings of past phenomena in the present, ‘the specialist must adjust to a situation where his or her arguments are on a par with those of other history-makers’ (p. 36).
Making History does constantly highlight the importance of keeping soundness and meaningfulness apart from each other. Because of this it is preposterous to claim that my arguments would permit historians ‘to elevate themselves beyond desire and prejudice’ or that they would be ‘better fixed to referee the meaning of the past than anyone else’. The fundamental stance advocated by the book is that historians must give up thinking in terms of traditional objectivity, and instead concentrate on how to gain intellectual control of their unavoidable involvement in the surrounding society. To claim that I would advocate doing research ‘in an objectivist way’ is simply incomprehensible when the very idea of the book is to criticise those who suggest such an approach, and when this position has been demonstrated in several perspectives.
One of the recurrent themes in Making History is the historian’s basic predicament: the temptation to compromise the demands of soundness in order to make the message more convincing. The point here is that the seduction is present from the very beginning of the research process; the historian’s creative role is not limited to writing the final account as Munslow suggests. At the last stage of the project the basic predicament takes the form of a contradiction between reasoning and rhetoric. The composition the historian has to develop for the text must make sure that it is possible to assess his/her reasoning while simultaneously convincing the readers that the findings are relevant for them. To solve this tension calls for literary skills and bringing this necessity to the fore is Hayden White’s contribution to historical research.
Arguing for the meaning and importance of the matters studied is a more burdensome job than displaying the soundness of the findings. The meanings embedded in prevailing explanations and the functions the interpretations criticised perform are quite often far from obvious. In addition, analysing prevailing knowledge is for the historian the way of discovering the room for his/her alternative exposition, the method of designating the study’s objectives.
Thus, the constructivist side of the research effort presupposes that the historian carries out two tasks simultaneously: putting at a distance what is sustained by the explanations criticised and anticipating the implications of his/her alternative interpretation. In this way the historian meets the demand of double detachment, a reasonable substitute for the misleading and unrealistic traditional ideal of objectivity: s/he distances him/herself both from the interpretations criticised and the one/s s/he is proposing. Doing this helps the historian to attain the capacity needed to conduct the study adequately, getting intellectual control over the circumstances where the research has to be done.
If there is a ‘big issue’ in Making History it is not ‘the public functioning of history’ but the necessity for historians to analyse their present-mindedness and to learn to discipline their thinking. They conduct their work on the battlefield of rival interpretations; the research effort is situated socially by the politics of history. This state of affairs is clear from the very outset of the project, and that is why the sensible historian starts his/her endeavour by taking the first steps to meet the demand of double detachment. The objective is to avoid, for example, situations where insufficient attention paid to the context of the research turns the specialist on the past into a virtual piece of driftwood floating on current circumstances. The point is working towards an awareness of ‘why, and on what, I am actually doing research’. In opposition to Munslow I do not regard this as an aim that is ‘incapable of delivery’.
Reflecting carefully on one’s audience is as crucial a step to be taken at the planning stage as analysing prevailing knowledge. Here prospective historians have been left to their own devices by their profession, since the whole issue of the people addressed has been taboo for academic historians. Yet, hardly anyone denies that different people appreciate different aspects of the past, and this means that selecting a topic for the study entails choosing one’s audience. Making History demonstrates that knowledge of the people addressed is a necessary criterion for the choices that must be made in the different stages of the research process, in addition to achieving intellectual control over the context of one’s research. The historian’s answer to the key question is clearly an essential part of the rationale of his/her work: ‘for whom are the research findings likely to be important?’
The rationale of historical research is, from the historian’s perspective, to call the audience’s attention to one’s selection and arrangement of the particular past matters in order to demonstrate their present relevance. It follows that the target audience is present throughout the investigation even if the various consequences of this have not been discussed. With regard to the reception of the study, the substance of the same rationale is that historians meet the demand for knowledge concerning the past. This perspective, too, has been underrated by the profession. What is more, hardly any attention has been paid to the status of the people addressed: the historian’s readers are in a way historians as well. This statement may at first seem odd, but will cease to cause surprise when one gives up the prevailing tendency to think about all history in disciplinary terms.
Accounting for the past, or creating histories as the historian David Thelen puts it, is ‘as natural a part of life as eating or breathing’.(3) The philosopher David Carr in turn reminds us that even historians ‘have a connection to the historical past, as ordinary persons, prior to and independently of adopting a historical cognitive interest’.(4) And the historian Raphael Samuel famously contends that ‘if history was thought of as an activity rather than a profession, then the number of its practitioners would be a legion’.(5) The conclusion is that history is not only a genre of knowledge but also a basic feature of human life, and for the historian this entails working in the midst of everyday history-making.
Casual references to what has taken place make up the overwhelming majority of accounts of the past, but there are also a great number of deliberately created representations. They are produced in every field of society and by a wide variety of actors, from private persons to, for example, politicians and various media. These histories serve countless purposes, so their genres abound. The diverse accounts do also influence each other and Making History suggests that their constant interaction should be called the never-ending social process of history-making. Scholarly accounts play a significant role in this reciprocal production: that is, historians participate in the process and have no chance of situating themselves outside it.
Against this background it is perfectly sensible to quote my main source of inspiration, the historian E. H. Carr, for whom historians are ‘parts of history’.(6) Through the questions they ask and the answers they produce they are ‘conscious or unconscious spokesmen of the society to which they belong’. This is why they should aim at gaining an awareness of their work that is as accurate as possible, and this presupposes clarifying their relation to the ongoing social process of history-making.
It is everyday history, the ensemble of diverse histories that signifies the historian’s relation to his/her readers. The people s/he addresses are, in contrast to what most members of the profession instinctively think, not passive consumers of scholarly findings. On the contrary, they are persons who use scholarly accounts to create their own histories and these histories, in turn, influence their actions. Yet, caution is necessary: historians easily overestimate their own influence and forget the reality of social history-making. The competition from the wide variety of public and popular histories should by no means be played down. Moreover, the individual historian must pay attention to what s/he shares with other historians, what follows from the role of their profession in society.
It seems to be plausible to suggest that the never-ending social process of history-making is universal by its nature and goes back to time immemorial, and likewise that the historian’s craft has an equally long lifespan. In any case, history has been allocated high value in everyday life, at least in Europe since antiquity. The emergence of historical enquiry as an academic discipline in the early 19th century can be seen to have led to the detachment of trained historians from the social process of history-making. What then, in more specific terms, is the role of specialists in the past in society? Answering this question was my main objective from the outset when working on Making History.
My search resulted in a two-part answer as was suggested above. The critical dimension of historical research makes experts referees in everyday history. They represent, as the historian Richard J. Evans puts it, ‘a critical, sceptical discipline’.(7) As regards the constructivist dimension, trained historians are consultants in history-making, a definition that is uncommon and calls therefore for explanation. The key issue is here the relation of scholars to everyday history.
What justifies the existence of the historical profession is that meaningful knowledge of the past is sustainable only if its foundation is sound. This is the crucial element embedded in the rationale of 19th century founding fathers of the discipline: the specialists in the past are there to produce sound knowledge, not to convey moral stories or political lessons, for instance. In the mainstream historians’ view this idea meant keeping non-academic histories at arm’s length, but the idea of upholding everyday history-making seems to have gradually taken its place (8) in the wake of the paradigmatic change of the discipline at the end of the 20th century.(9)
Active consultancy takes place in the large number of local, community and familial projects that represent collaborative history-making (10), but expert advice does not necessarily call for a new kind of activity. A mere change of perspective may lead to fresh thinking. An example is double detachment , that serves didactic purposes even if its primary function is to control one’s unavoidable involvement in society. By displaying their social and cultural position the historians make clear the contested nature of all historical knowledge. They also have the opportunity to demonstrate in practical terms the demand of soundness. In other words, even if accountability is the primary reason for making one’s method of working transparent it offers by the same token the trained historian an undemanding way of acting as an consultant of history-making.
The historian’s dialogue with the people addressed is a recurrent theme in Making History, and dialogue is also the mode of thinking suggested for approaching the people studied. Through virtual conversation it is possible to gain an understanding of the way they assessed their situation and to define their intentions. Interpreting the meaning of their actions and deeds is then part of the historian’s general constructivist operation. The logic of dialogue is furthermore, in my opinion, the key to the historian’s ultimate goal, creating a virtually reciprocal relationship between the people of the past studied and the people addressed.
The ultimate idea of the dialogue is to connect the study being conducted to the audience’s present concerns in a way that gets them to relate their own ideas to the ways in which people who had lived in very different conditions had thought about themselves and their circumstances. This is the deepest sense of the historian’s message: to open up new perspectives on the world for the people addressed and prompt them to ponder their own values. Reconstruction is the prerequisite of the historian’s ultimate goal: the virtual conversation suggested makes sense only if the description of the people studied is plausible. True, the traditional requirement ‘in their own terms’ is as unattainable in a correspondence sense as is ‘past reality’, but this does not undo reconstruction in an ethical sense.
‘Being unfair to the people studied results in at least one, but in many cases two, scenarios. One possibility is the spreading of propaganda, where those studied have become the historian’s pawns, their views and actions misrepresented to serve the historian’s message. The other is where historians have deceived not only themselves but also their audience by strengthening prevailing prejudices. Failure to produce a fair description is really to lose the very point of historical research’ (p. 35).
It is thus hard to accept Munslow’s basic point that regarding reconstruction as the foundation of historical research testifies to the anachronistic nature of Making History.
Notes
- Stefan Collini, ‘Review of Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Vol. 1’, The Times Literary Supplement (10 March 1995).Back to (1)
- Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, in an unpublished research plan. See also his: ‘The missing narrativist turn in historiography of science’, History and Theory, 51 (October 2012).Back to (2)
- David Thelen, ‘A participatory historical culture’, in Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York, NY, 1998).Back to (3)
- David Carr, Time, Narrative and History (Bloomington, IN, 1986).Back to (4)
- Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Vol. 1, Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London and New York, NY, 1994).Back to (5)
- E. H. Carr, What is History?, (London, 1961).Back to (6)
- Richard J. Evans, ‘The wonderfulness of us (the Tory interpretation of history)’, London Review of Books (17 March 2011).Back to (7)
- Peter Mandler, History and National Life (London, 2002).Back to (8)
- To demonstrate the significance of this change, the proportions of which have been underrated by historians, is the idea of chapter one in Making History.Back to (9)
- Active consultancy is the substance of the last chapter in Making History, ‘The potentials of a participatory historical culture’. See also my ‘What is history for’, History Workshop Online <http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/?s=Jorma+Kalela> [accessed 18 June 2012].Back to (10)