nm0085: so this [0.4] can people see this all right [0.5] despi-, [0.2] cou-, 
cou-, [0.2] well i know you can't you can't see it 'cause of the pillar can you 
[0.6] tough [laugh] [0.3] those who [0.9] w-, for whom it's in their line of 
vision can you read it [0.2] [laughter] [0.3] yeah okay [0.3] er [0.5] i'd i 
wanted to get a better picture of Carr [0.4] but that's the one on the front of 
a recent biography of him [0.9] er if i move it up you'll see that the [0.2] 
crucial thing about it is that Cambridge dons [0.2] live on tea [0.7] er [1.7] 
but [0.4] that gives some idea of who this guy [1.0] who i hope you've all been 
reading [0.9] is [0.6] er [0.3] the dates are there [0.3] you should all have a 
handout as well with some quotes [0.3] i hope you've all got that have you [1.
0] yeah [0.6] right [1.3] and since i watched the tape of namex's lecture [0.8] 
i don't know if any of you remember one of you in the room must [0.4] er i'm 
supposed to take my glasses on and off [laughter] all the time [0.5] 
right [0.9] i've not i noticed after you told namex that that he i don't think 
he put his glasses on once [laughter] [0.3] i'll try and keep mine on but i 
can't guarantee it [0.6] er [0.5] right who was E H Carr [0.5] a middle class 
boy from north London [1.2] a student at Cambridge [0.4] er during the First 
World War escaped conscription on health grounds [0.5] and he had these four 
distinct careers [1.2] er [0.5] first [0.4] at the end of the First World War 
through the nineteen-twenties he's a Foreign Office official [0.6] working on 
er [0.2] north European and Russian affairs [0.3] er at the Versailles 
conference [0.7] er [0.4] posted to the British Legation in Riga in Latvia to 
work on Russian questions [0.3] during the nineteen-twenties [0.6] and [0.3] 
during the early thirties when the League of Nations was falling apart [0.3] he 
was part of the British diplomatic team in Geneva [0.7] watching that int-, 
international institution fall apart [2.4] in nineteen-thirty-five he 
quit [0.3] the Foreign Office [0.6] er [0.2] and [0.6] became Professor of 
International Relations at Aberystwyth [0.8] er [1.0] where he [0.5] er sat 
down and wrote [0.4] er [0.3] a book [0.2] er [0.2] er called The Thirty Years' 
Crisis which i'll say more about later [0.4] but it's basically [0.6] the 
foundational text or a foundational tax-, [0.2] text of the realist science of 
international relations [0.2] i'll er er expand on that later [0.6] er [1.1] 
very well worth reading published in er the end in nineteen-thirty-nine [2.4] 
during the Second World War and immediately afterwards he's a leader writer [0.
5] er on the Times [0.9] and he's a key figure among the [0.2] middle of the 
road [0.2] intellectuals [0.8] who are shifting the whole political census in 
Britain to the left [0.4] and preparing a way for the Labour victory in 
nineteen-forty-five [0.6] er [0.3] Winston Churchill [0.4] used to call the 
Times [0.2] er the threepenny edition of the Daily Worker the Communist paper 
[0.4] er because of the way the Times was no longer [0.3] er voicing the er 
conventional views of er the Conservative establishment [2.4] when the Cold War 
[0.6] set in [0.9] this basically 
turned Carr [0.2] from being a reformist intellectual at the hub [0.4] of the 
way things were going [0.5] in nineteen-forties Britain [0.5] into [0.8] an 
academic outsider [0.6] because he stuck to the view that good relations with 
the Soviet Union were crucial for British foreign policy [0.5] er [0.3] very 
much an outsider [0.4] er [0.2] definitely found it difficult to get an 
academic job at the height of the Cold War he ended up [0.4] er in a Cambridge 
college [0.3] where he spent the rest of his life [0.4] er [0.4] as a historian 
[0.2] of the Soviet Union [1.0] and that's his main claim to fame as a 
historian [0.5] er [0.2] he started that fourth career when he was fifty-four 
[0.8] he published fourteen volumes on the history of the Soviet Union between 
[0.5] er the revolution [0.5] and he got to nineteen-twenty-nine [0.4] by the 
time he was er [0.4] what was he eighty-three he published the last volume in 
nineteen-seventy-seven [1.2] so the a fourteen volume massive [0.4] work [0.3] 
on [0.3] basically the emergence of a planned economy in the sov-, from the 
revolution to nineteen-twenty-nine [1.5] and in nineteen-sixty-one [0.7] 
er he gave a series of lectures to history students in Cambridge [0.3] called 
What is History which is the book that i hope [0.2] you're reading [1.2] er i 
wish i could say i was there [0.7] ac-, i arrived in Cambridge actually the 
that autumn [0.5] just missed them [0.4] but i did buy the book and when i f-, 
when when we put this course on i got it back off my shelves and reread it [0.
6] and it's full of my er infantile [0.3] notes at the time [0.3] bought in 
December nineteen-sixty-one so i was in at the beginning of this [0.5] er [0.4] 
i completely misunderstood much of it at the time [0.3] but of course you won't 
because you'll be guided by this lecture and by the wonderful discussions 
you're going to have in seminars [0.8] er [1.8] since nineteen-sixty-one this 
book er has been [0.8] it must be the most widely read [0.4] er text on the 
nature of the historical discipline [0.7] er in this country [1.4] now [1.7] 
before er [1.6] i discuss [6.7] Carr [0.5] i want to say a few words about the 
chief object of his 
attack [0.4] which you could label naive empiricism [3.6] i namex did a show of 
hands didn't he last week about how many people had heard of [0.3] Ranke [0.5] 
and it wasn't very many which is very good because Ranke's a n-, [0.2] er a 
very long time ago and everything's moved on [0.4] but as he said [1.0] we have 
to engage with Ranke and it's actually he's g-, actually going to be very 
interesting [0.6] the most quoted phrase of all that you'll find in this course 
[0.3] i suspect [0.5] is Ranke's [0.3] notion [0.7] which was foundational for 
the nineteenth century emergence of history [0.5] as [0.4] an organized [0.4] 
academic discipline [0.9] that the purpose the what the historian did [0.5] was 
[0.8] discovered [0.4] how it really was [0.5] what actually happened in the 
past [0.8] now [0.3] as you'll [0.3] gather when you read about Ranke and in 
the next lecture in this course [0.6] there was nothing at all simple-minded 
about Ranke's own take on historical method he certainly was not a naive [0.3] 
empiricist [0.8] but much of the profession [0.3] that he was [1.1] responsible 
in some ways [0.3] for inventing [0.7] has 
been [0.9] extremely simple-minded [0.2] about the sources of its own knowledge 
[0.7] and hasn't really thought much about the sources of its own knowledge [0.
7] Patrick Burke's book History and Social Theory which is on the er [0.3] er 
reading list [0.5] er [1.1] traces [1.3] he starts the book by tracing the 
nineteenth century divorce [0.3] between history [0.7] and [0.6] the other 
social sciences from the later nineteenth century [0.4] as history became 
professionalized [0.2] into an academic discipline [1.2] and it became 
professionalized [0.3] around [0.3] an antitheory [0.4] ethos [1.7] especially 
in this country where of course empiricism [0.6] and a culture of no nonsense 
common sense is something of a [0.2] national fixation [3.4] now for the 
antitheory cast of mind which [2.0] certainly anybody who has been socialized 
in [0.3] British culture [0.8] part of their mind is certainly [0.2] belongs [0.
3] however hard they struggle against it [laugh] [0.3] to this antitheory cast 
of mind [0.5] er [1.0] doing history is just applied common sense [0.4] the way 
to produce objective [0.3] positive 
knowledge about the past [0.6] is to go through the sources without 
preconceptions [0.4] with an open mind [0.5] to rid yourself as best you can of 
any preconceptions [0.7] and of [0.9] present minded questions questions 
arising out of [0.7] present issues [1.0] and study the past for its own sake 
[1.5] for its own sake [0.4] not in order to grind axes [0.2] in arguments 
going on in the present [1.2] except of course arguments among historians [1.4] 
the most eloquent proponent of the antitheory view [0.5] is another Cambridge 
historian [0.2] Geoffrey Elton [1.0] who er [0.6] most famous for his er [0.9] 
discussion of [0.9] sixteenth century statecraft [0.6] er [0.3] the Tudor 
revolutionary government who published [0.5] a counterblast to Carr [0.4] in 
nineteen-sixty-seven called The Practice of History [2.4] er Elton [0.2] argues 
in that book [0.7] that er historians have got their own methods they're rooted 
in practical common sense [0.9] and these give you a real [0.5] if always of 
course provisional [0.8] knowledge about the past [2.0] practical common sense 
[2.1] the problem of course about common sense [0.7] is that one person's 
common sense is another 
person's nonsense [1.2] common sense [0.5] describes untheorized [0.3] 
prejudice [0.8] what just comes to your mind through the ether as it were 
without too much enquiry about where it comes from [2.3] unless one engages 
seriously with theory we're never going to realize our own unconscious 
prejudicises [0.8] and [0.5] those prejudices are going to prefigure our 
reading of the sources in a way that [1.3] we ourselves are not aware of [2.5] 
and that [0.7] in many ways is is kind of the key question for this whole 
course i think [0.7] er the evolution of the historical discipline since Ranke 
[0.8] in dialogue with other disciplines [0.5] in the social sciences 
particularly but also [0.3] literature [0.6] er [0.6] has created a whole 
storehouse of strategies [0.5] for how historians can handle that difficult 
relationship between [0.4] the historian's mind [1.3] and [0.5] the sources [0.
9] out of which we construct historical [0.6] narratives explanations and so on 
[3.8] and i think by the end of the course you will have been through a whole 
menu of different 
ways of approaching that problem and be able to locate yourself and your own 
preferred solutions [1.7] but Carr's a good starting point for all this [0.9] 
because he lays out very clearly some of the difficulties [0.2] and the very 
incoherence of Carr's book and as i'll try to show [0.5] it is i think 
fundamentally incoherent [0.6] but the very incoherence [0.7] takes one as it 
were to to to to [0.3] to the issue [0.9] that [1.0] subtler minds than Carr's 
[0.2] er [0.3] er that you will encounter as the course goes along [0.4] er 
also worry away at [3.2] the key to [0.5] approaching that book is to 
understand its rhetorical strategy [1.7] in chapter one [0.9] Carr gives you a 
radical [0.4] a radically scepta-, sceptical view [0.4] of [0.3] empiricism [0.
6] and of the antitheory claims of traditional empirical history [2.6] he's 
acutely aware of the difficulty of constructing objective accounts [0.3] of the 
past [0.5] rather than just using the past as a screen on which you project [0.
9] your own prejudices make up [0.2] any stories you please [2.9] but having 
laid that subjectivist trap he 
proceeds to [0.2] argue his way out of it [2.5] he believed that subjectivism 
[2.3] simply [0.4] er er the [0.3] er er a view in which [0.4] the state of his-
, of historical knowledge is no greater than the state of th-, the its status 
[0.3] as objective truth about the past doesn't exist [0.3] it's simply [0.2] a 
projection of one's own prejudices [0.8] he believes that subjectivism could be 
avoided [0.3] to the extent that [0.5] one deconstructed outdated assumptions 
[0.9] and grasped realistically how the world was changing around you [2.2] the 
most objective historian he ends up by saying is the one who understands the 
trend of history [2.0] Carr essentially clings to er [0.2] an enlightenment 
faith in reason and progress [0.2] ultimately it's progress he argues [0.8] 
that makes history intelligible [2.2] now [1.4] i'll talk about all this i'm 
just laying out the agenda as it were [0.3] Carr's [0.2] certainty about 
progress and what it looks like [0.3] may now seem very dated [1.5] but at the 
end of the lecture i'm going to suggest that maybe [0.7] he has a point [1.7] 
about 
the inextricability of the idea of progress [0.5] and the practice of history 
[9.1] now what i want to do is to look in turn at Carr's analysis of [0.3] what 
i've called the subjectivist trap [0.5] and then at how he seeks to mobilize 
the idea of progress to spring that trap [2.7] the main burden of chapter one 
[0.9] is that there is no hard core of historical facts [0.2] existing 
independently of the historian [3.1] interpretive frameworks are at work [0.6] 
right from the start of the process [0.7] of constructing [0.3] knowledge about 
the past [1.1] as Carr puts it an element of interpretation enters into every 
fact of history [1.9] or it's an interpretation here and fact there [0.7] 
they're inextricably [0.8] mixed up [2.0] i think it's important to understand 
what Carr is saying and what he isn't saying here [1.2] he doesn't make it easy 
'cause his terminology is rather confusing [0.4] and i'm going to suggest [0.4] 
substituting [0.2] a terminology that makes it easier [2.1] he's not in fact 
denying that information about the past exists independently of the insh-, [0.
2] of the historian [1.7] what 
he's trying to do is to make a distinction between two kinds of facts about the 
past [1.4] and he does this if you've read that chapter using rather strangely 
[0.4] upper class male metaphor about clubs [1.1] and you'll remember his er [0.
4] there are run of the mill [0.2] plebeian facts [0.3] which no one pays any 
attention to [0.9] and then there are important facts which have been nominated 
for membership of this [0.4] club [0.2] of professional historians [0.7] er [2.
7] those are facts mobilized as evidence [0.6] for some argument or another 
about the past [0.8] and once they're mobilized by a [0.2] properly [0.2] 
accredited professional historian to support some argument he's making [0.3] 
they become [0.9] properly historical facts [1.8] now this is very confusing 
'cause he's using the word fact [0.3] to apply to two quite different kinds of 
thing [0.7] or concepts [1.1] Keith Jenkins [0.8] in his little book on 
rethinking history [0.8] er which er [1.7] i think we're all going to be 
talking about to some extent in the first seminar of this course [0.3] er v-, 
[0.2] very much [0.3] providing a [0.8] er er er a simple 
guide to post-modernist ideas about [0.3] er [0.2] er [0.2] about history [2.9] 
whatever one one may think of Keith Jenkins' approach overall i think he 
provides an extremely useful [0.3] er way of sorting out this fact fact problem 
[0.5] in [0.2] Carr [0.9] the key distinction he points out is between the past 
[0.3] and history [1.5] the past [0.3] was real [1.4] no doubt about that [0.5] 
it all happened [0.5] whatever it was that happened [0.2] but it doesn't exist 
any longer [1.1] it was real but it no longer exists [0.7] history [0.2] is 
what we write about the past [0.2] okay straightforward [1.6] the reason we can 
write about the past is 'cause it left traces behind [1.2] and that's a crucial 
word [0.3] traces [0.6] it left traces behind [0.4] buildings field systems [0.
7] but mainly [1.1] for historians written documents [1.7] those traces of 
course do [0.4] exist [0.2] in the present [1.2] most of these documents 
sitting in archives here and there [1.8] and we can consult the traces of the 
past [0.5] in search of evidence about the past [1.9] so for Carr's two kinds 
of facts about the past [0.4] non-historical facts inert ones that nobody 
pays any attention to on the one hand [0.2] and properly historical facts [0.8] 
facts which historians have picked up and run with as it were [0.7] one can 
substitute the much clearer terms i think [0.8] the traces from the past 
unworked on possibly as yet undiscovered documents [0.5] but these are the 
traces of the past or what the archaeologist find as he digs [0.2] these are 
the traces of the past [0.6] on the one hand [0.2] an evidence [0.7] 
information [0.4] about what actually happened distilled [0.2] from the traces 
by the labour of historians [1.3] the traces [0.2] have a purely objective 
existence they're there [0.8] you can't argue with it [0.3] yeah [0.9] the 
evidence of course is thoroughly mixed up [0.2] with questions of 
interpretation [2.8] the complications i think begin [0.4] when you contemplate 
the process of how you win [0.9] Carr's historical facts or what i'm calling 
evidence [0.4] from these inert [0.2] traces of the past [0.4] for the more 
empiricist historians like [0.4] Geoffrey Elton [1.4] that process is very 
skilled [0.8] you need a PhD to do it properly [0.7] mm [0.7] but [0.3] it's 
essentially value free [1.4] the 
trained historian checks the authenticity [1.3] of any particular [1.0] piece 
any particular trace of the past make sure it really is a trace of the past not 
something planted there [0.3] by a forger [1.0] er [1.8] he compares different 
accounts [0.2] in the sources [0.6] did it happen as this document says it did 
is the document likely to be [0.8] misinformation [0.7] produced at the time to 
misinform someone else [0.9] er [1.5] did the event leave traces in several 
documents independently produced so you can compare them with one another and 
therefore get a bit more than objective view of what went on [1.0] and at the 
end of such a process [0.2] one has objective knowledge about past events for 
Elton [0.2] about what actually happened [0.5] one has [0.5] a hard core of 
historical facts existing independently of any particular historian [0.6] 
checked out authenticated [0.6] but that's what happened in the past [1.7] now 
this is what Carr's concerned to deny [1.9] and perhaps the most convincing [0.
4] er criticism [0.2] of this idea of a hard core [1.3] of facts [0.5] is the 
selection problem [0.8] as i call it [1.6] 
the past leaves far more traces [0.2] than we can handle [2.5] and the recent 
past [0.2] all the more [1.1] all the historical work involves selection [0.2] 
and selection of course involves having an agenda an interpretive framework [0.
6] even before historians start checking out the authenticity of the sources [1.
5] the reliability of the evidence inferred from the traces [0.3] they have to 
decide what sources to look at [0.6] what kind of evidence [0.2] to try to 
infer [3.1] the evidence doesn't exist independently of the historian's agenda 
[0.9] it's inferred from the traces of the past [0.3] in order to answer some 
predetermined set of questions [1.4] which is why evidence is a more helpful 
term [0.3] for what Carr means than facts [0.7] facts you know are the kind of 
empiricist building block they're [0.2] hard [0.2] nuggets of things which have 
sharp and well defined edges [0.7] and you can [0.3] pile them up [0.5] into 
your [0.8] b-, [0.5] building bricks to make your tower of historical narrative 
[0.6] evidence on the other hand [0.4] only exists in relation to a case being 
made 
it's what's called in evidence [0.4] in relation to a particular argument [1.1] 
and that's what Carr means when he says that the facts of history can't be 
purely objective [0.4] since they become facts of history [0.3] only in virtue 
of the significance attached to them by the historian [2.0] he quotes 
approvingly a description of er the historian at work as [0.2] rummaging in the 
ragbag [1.1] er for traces of the past [0.2] in order to select [0.7] piece and 
pattern [0.3] evidence related to the interpretation he's seeking to construct 
[0.4] so rummaging in this [0.2] almost limitless ragbag [0.5] of traces [0.9] 
to look for the [1.1] bits of information that will help you construct what it 
is that you're trying to construct [2.2] is Carr right [1.5] to dismiss the 
idea that there's any hard core of facts out there [0.8] should we dismiss the 
claims of empiricist historians to produce [0.2] objective facts about the past 
[1.8] i'm not going to [1.1] even begin to try to offer you any kind of 
definitive answer to that question because er [0.7] what from one direction or 
another we'll come back 
to it again and again [1.2] er but i just want to suggest you give it some 
thought and to help you think about it let's just take one [0.3] very well 
attested historical fact the Second World War [1.2] right [1.4] we can all 
agree [0.2] it occurred [1.7] can we [0.7] whatever differences we might have 
are going to be about matters of interpretation [0.2] causes [0.2] effects [0.
2] and so on [0.8] well at first sight yes obviously you know the [0.2] the the 
tanks move the bombs drop the ships were sunk [0.5] and millions of people got 
killed [3.0] but [0.4] think again about it the Second World War [0.8] if it's 
such an indisputable fact when did it begin [1.5] mm [0.2] did it begin in 
nineteen-thirty-nine [0.6] or did it begin in nineteen-forty-one [0.6] or did 
it begin in nineteen-thirty-one when the Japanese attacked Manchuria [1.9] was 
it the Second World War [1.5] or was it just a continuation of the first [0.3] 
in a hundred years' time will historians talk about The Thirty Years' War of 
the early twentieth century [3.4] i'm sure there will be great debates [0.5] 
among historians as to whether such a concept [0.4] 
is more useful [0.4] than talking about a first and a second [0.8] or you can 
revise it the other way around [0.5] as the uncertainty over the date suggests 
is it one war [2.5] or is that [0.2] the historian imposing a single narrative 
[0.2] on a series of events [0.6] which make more sense [0.8] er looked at 
discretely [0.3] a series of discrete squabbles hundreds of local wars and 
civil wars [1.6] telling the story [0.3] as that of and it is telling the story 
constructing a narrative [0.2] of a second world war [0.3] perhaps privileges 
[0.6] you know Churchill Roosevelt Stalin you can see them sitting there in the 
[0.2] photograph directing [0.2] the course of history [0.7] but perhaps that's 
not how history [0.2] was made [0.4] in that period perhaps it's made much more 
[0.3] by a whole series of interlocked and interrelating processes [0.3] which 
are not grasped by the concept of a single second world war [0.6] in the longer 
perspective that particular narrative device and that's what it is [0.2] the 
Second World War [0.6] might be abandoned in favour of a more bottom-up 
approach that privileges 
local and regional dynamics [1.0] in understanding that period of a of global 
upheaval [2.1] perhaps there are some facts so er i ask you just to think about 
that and you i'm sure you could all come up with similar examples [0.5] of you 
know commonplace [0.3] historical events [0.3] which [0.2] as soon as you start 
to think of them are actually constructed narratives which could be constructed 
quite differently [0.8] er [0.5] perhaps there are some facts which exist 
independently [0.3] of interpretive frameworks [0.3] they're probably very 
trivial ones [1.1] most events [0.4] are themselves already interpretations 
mental constructions by historians [0.2] particular ways of telling a story [0.
3] to give it a particular kind of a meaning [3.7] now [0.5] those who don't 
get beyond the first chapter of Carr [1.3] er sometimes see Carr himself [0.2] 
as embracing a sceptical view that basically you can get any interpretive 
framework you make [0.4] you know there there there's no way out of this trap 
[0.3] that [0.3] you project onto the past whatever narrative you want [1.3] 
though even in 
chapter one he makes no secret of his contempt for such a view [0.9] as he puts 
it the past is not a child's box of letters [0.3] with which we can spell any 
word we please [1.9] and in fact [0.3] as i said at the beginning the 
rhetorical strategy of the book [0.2] is to set that sceptical trap [0.9] only 
in order to spring it [1.5] but before turning to the way he springs it [0.2] 
ah [0.8] the glasses came off put them back on again quick [0.4] [laughter] but 
before turning to the way he springs it [0.5] er [0.8] let me probe a bit 
deeper [0.2] into the sources of Carr's thinking [1.9] which brings me to a 
section [1.8] called er [2.7] the sociology of knowledge [6.2] now Carr is a 
middle class boy from a business family in north London he grows up with er [0.
9] a conventional Gladstonian belief [0.9] in that great truth of nineteenth 
century Britain [0.5] that the universal interests of humanity [0.2] are the 
same thing [0.3] as free 
trade [0.6] especially free trade dominated by the British [1.0] er [2.0] First 
World War [0.8] his experience as a Foreign Office official [0.3] blows all 
that apart and in the book i mentioned before The Twenty Years' Crisis [0.2] 
published in nineteen-thirty-nine which is a [0.4] basically a history of 
international relations between nineteen-eighteen [0.8] and nineteen-thirty-
nine [3.0] well [0.7] no it's not basically that it's the the that's its its 
ostensible subject matter [0.8] er [0.5] Carr performs a quite brilliant 
deconstruction of the role of ideology [1.8] in masking [0.2] power [1.1] in 
masking [0.4] raison d'état [1.7] in international politics [0.5] he shows how 
the apparently utopian ideals of peaceful international relations [0.5] built 
around free trade Adam Smith Richard Cobden [0.2] and then the Americans 
Woodrow Wilson [0.3] and the idea of the League of Nations [0.4] the ut-, whole 
utopian strand [0.2] of er er thinking [0.4] er built around the idea that free 
trade free commercial intercourse among nations will bring peace [0.2] and 
prosperity to the world [0.4] that all this in fact [0.3] served 
to promote the interests of the most powerful [0.3] economies [0.7] high-minded 
free trade pacifism [0.3] didn't express any genuine harmony of interests it 
expressed [0.2] the interest [0.3] of [0.4] whoever was the current economic 
superpower the British in the nineteenth century the Americans [0.3] in the 
twentieth century [2.2] free trade was a weapon designed to subordinate weaker 
economies [1.7] wisdom [0.2] Carr concludes in foreign affairs [0.6] comes not 
out of the pursuit of er [0.5] utopian moral goals in foreign policy [1.1] but 
in adapting to the realities of power [0.2] as he saw them [1.0] for example [0.
3] er it's er central to that book on the Thirty Years' Crisis [0.3] the er [0.
2] in Eastern Europe [0.9] er [1.0] there could only be one of two dominant 
powers it either had to be Germany or Russia [1.3] and it was daft to think 
that you could construct any kind of society in Eastern Europe that wasn't 
dominated by one of these great powers or the other [0.3] and therefore Carr 
was an appeaser [0.2] in the nineteen-thirties [1.0] and [0.5] an opponent of 
the 
Cold War [0.2] after nineteen-forty-five [1.0] before the war it was Germany's 
area after the war it was Russia's area [0.2] and it was simply stupid [0.4] to 
try to [0.2] er resist this [2.2] the argument he mobilizes in The Twenty 
Years' Crisis is foundational as i [0.3] said earlier for the realist school in 
international relations Carr is really founding another academic discipline [0.
3] or playing an important part in it [0.4] er the the social scientific 
discipline of international relations [0.4] and he's doing [1.3] to pitch him 
at a high claim he's doing for international politics [0.2] what Machiavelli [0.
3] had done for domestic politics [0.6] getting behind [0.5] the moralizing [0.
2] er rhetoric [0.3] to [0.5] the [0.8] understanding that unless the Prince er 
for Machiavelli or the [0.2] Kissinger [0.2] for Carr [0.4] who [0.2] would be 
one outcome of this kind of thinking i suppose [0.3] er [0.4] and and and 
unless they can get behind er the i suppose its moral goals of foreign policy 
and understand the realities of power [0.2] they'll make a mess of things [1.7] 
now in formulating his ideas 
about the relationship [0.8] between [0.5] ideology [0.4] and power [0.2] in 
international relations he draws heavily on the ideas [0.2] of a Hungarian 
sociologist [0.7] who came to live in Britain in the mid-thirties er [0.3] at 
[0.2] at er L-S-E and s-, had a job at London School of Economics [0.4] Karl 
Mannheim [1.2] and Mannheim's most distinctive [0.7] contribution [1.0] that 
Carr picked up [0.2] was this idea of a sociology of knowledge [2.0] the key 
idea there was that all values [0.5] all truths in quotation mark [0.4] are 
rooted in a specific time and place [1.0] and the key to understanding the 
universalizing claims [0.8] that particular groups make the claim that their [0.
8] er er their ideas [0.3] represent the universal human interest [0.7] er the 
key to understanding these is to unmask them [0.2] to unmask the social basis 
of ideas [1.9] to do a sociology of knowledge [1.1] you always ask whose 
purposes are served by this political doctrine [0.3] that religion [0.6] this 
utopian project [1.3] the job of the social scientist or the historian [0.4] is 
to unmask [0.4] the unacknowledged function [2.0] of assertions of universal 
values [0.3] in sustaining or advancing particular [0.5] interests [1.9] but of 
course if knowledge production has a sociology [0.4] then this is true of the 
production of historical knowledge [1.5] as well [0.8] and in that spirit Carr 
attacks attempts to erect any [0.5] as he puts it suprahistorical standard by 
which to judge historical events [1.3] and you should all have a sheet with 
quotations on it [0.9] er [1.7] on the first of which is er or the second of 
which is that the serious historian is the one who recognizes the historically 
conditioned character [0.9] of all values [0.2] not the one who claims for his 
own values an objectivity beyond history [4.1] but if there are no values which 
have objectivity beyond history [1.3] where can you find objectivity [2.3] 
which brings me to er [0.8] the final section [0.3] of the lecture [0.4] er [0.
5] Carr and the idea of progress [3.0] he tries to mobilize the idea of [0.3] 
progress to spring the subjectivist trap [3.5] the key proposition is really 
very simple [1.3] and almost 
commonsensical [1.1] the test [0.2] of the objectivity of any particular 
historical interpretation [0.5] lies in its ability to predict the future [3.9] 
the most objective historian that's to say [0.7] is the one who has the deepest 
grasp of the tide of history [1.9] the most as Carr puts it profound and 
lasting vision [0.5] of the future [2.1] you know the quotes on your sheet [0.
5] only the future can provide the key to the interpretation of the past [0.6] 
it's only in this sense that we can speak of an ultimate objectivity in history 
[1.0] that doesn't mean of course that you can ever quite reach it because you 
don't actually know what's going to happen in the future [1.3] but [1.1] those 
historians who have understood the trend of history [0.4] are going to be the 
ones who last [0.4] Carr's saying and time will tell [0.5] which they are [2.3] 
now for Carr the tide of the twentieth cent-, er [1.8] sorry [0.8] Carr has 
this very firm conviction that there are tides in history that history has a 
direction [1.0] that these tides are knowable [1.2] though never of course [0.
2] 
absolutely [0.4] time tells [1.9] who [0.3] had understood better [0.4] the 
objectivity of any particular informing vision [1.4] for Carr the tide of the 
twentieth century was above all towards and a key word in all Carr's thinking 
[0.4] planning [3.7] the First World War [0.4] seemed to demonstrate pretty 
clearly that liberal capitalism [0.2] was over [0.9] the future lay with the 
planned economy [0.9] the First World War had shown how to do it particularly 
in the German war economy [1.1] but also to some degree in the British war 
economy [1.9] the stark contrast between [0.2] capitalist crisis nineteen-
twenty-nine [0.7] and Soviet five year planning [1.4] was an inescapable [0.3] 
demonstration it seemed [0.8] er of er where the future lay [0.7] as Carr 
himself wrote in nineteen-thirty-one [0.4] the new religion of the kilowatt and 
the machine [0.6] may well prove to be the creed for which modern civilization 
is waiting [1.0] this new religion is growing up on the fringes of a Europe 
that's lost faith in her-, in herself [0.4] contemporary Europe is aimlessly 
drifting [1.2] and that view of 
things was of course triumphantly vindicated it seemed [0.5] by [0.4] the 
stupendous achievements of the Red Army in the Second World War [1.1] Hitler 
being defeated [0.8] by in Carr's view [0.4] the [0.2] triumphs of Soviet 
planning [0.4] essentially [2.5] none of that means that Carr was a Stalinist 
[0.7] or believed that Soviet style planning [0.3] was appropriate for Western 
societies [1.7] but this mids-, ni-, twentieth century belief in planning was 
more or less universal among reformist intellectuals [1.1] it was rooted in the 
experience [0.2] as i indicated of Western war economies [0.9] and [0.3] er 
thinking about what on earth do we do about the slump [0.5] as much as it was 
[0.2] anything to do with the U-S-S-R [0.7] and [0.2] whole notions of planning 
in the mid-twist twentieth century are responding as much to the needs of [0.4] 
big capital [0.2] big business [0.4] as they are [0.3] to any aspirations of 
socialists [0.9] but planning [0.6] becomes a point of convergence if you like 
[0.4] between the revolutionary drama in the Soviet Union on the one hand [0.7] 
and Western social democratic reformism [0.5] 
which Carr [0.2] the Times leader writer [0.4] is a central figure in in 
Britain [0.5] on the other [4.9] now Carr no less than Geoffrey entlo-, Elton 
[laugh] er there there it goes again [0.3] Carr no less than Geoffrey Elton [0.
4] er opposed [0.4] er [0.3] present mindedness [0.9] but in the name not of 
the study of the past for its own sake [0.9] but [0.2] in the name of as he put 
it a long term vision of a past and future [1.2] so if you like he's 
substituting [0.3] future mindedness for present mindedness [0.7] and he cites 
his own approach to the history of the Soviet Union as an example [1.5] Western 
views of the Soviet Union he says in a preface to some of the later volumes of 
er [0.5] the the the history of Russia [0.5] er [1.1] Western views have 
fluctuated drastically as international relations shifted from the kind of pro-
Soviet ethos of the wartime years [0.3] to the Cold War years [0.9] Carr [0.2] 
says he stands aloof from the transient fluctuations of opinion [0.4] to 
document a deeper story which he [0.2] summarizes [0.5] late on in writing 
this history as [0.3] the determination the dedication the organization the 
sheer hard work [0.3] which in the last sixty years [0.2] have transformed 
Russia into a major industrial country [0.2] and one of the superpowers [1.3] 
for those who accused him of being an apologist for Stalin's crimes lacking the 
proper perspectives [0.4] he said after all with a sideswipe at Geoffrey Elton 
[0.4] nobody er [0.4] er an English historian can praise the achievements of 
Henry the Eighth [0.3] without [0.2] being a supporter of er [0.4] b-, being 
supposed to condone the beheading of wives [2.6] now Carr was confident that in 
the long historical perspective the achievements of Soviet [1.0] 
industrialization [0.6] would outweigh [0.4] would appear to be of greater 
historical significance [0.3] than the brutalities of the Stalinist terror [2.
0] whatever the peculiarities of his vision [0.2] and i'll come back to those 
[0.9] it was built on the fundamental proposition that human history embodies 
[0.4] the expansion of reason [1.4] widening application of the power of reason 
to [0.2] 
place human beings in control [0.2] of the natural environment and of social 
relations [1.5] seemed to Carr to be at the core of the twentieth century 
revolution [1.9] the transition from laissez-faire [0.6] to planning [0.7] from 
the unconscious to the conscious [0.6] from a belief in objective economic law 
somehow operating r-, remotely from human control [0.4] to a belief that man 
can [0.4] master his own [0.5] action [0.9] that man can be the master of his 
own destiny [1.4] man can plan his society [2.6] now [1.1] it's difficult not 
to conclude that Carr's contradicting himself [0.3] how on earth can you 
combine a statement of faith in the expansion of human reason [1.0] with his 
earlier insistence that there's no absolute values [0.4] outside history [0.3] 
that no serious historian can claim objectivity for his values beyond history 
[0.3] Carr's values are very clearly the values of the Enlightenment [0.4] and 
of the expansion of human reason [3.0] and he admits as much actually in an 
essay he wrote on Mannheim i won't read it out the quote's there [0.3] er o-, 
[0.2] er [0.4] er er this is er quite late 
in his life [0.4] er [0.4] he says that after all at the end of it all [0.3] 
you have to admit there is a supratemporal reason lurking somewhere [2.0] and 
he says you know i'm really just an old Victorian i can't get out of my head 
this notion of progress [0.8] er [1.5] i don't think you should judge Carr 
harshly for admitting to self-contradiction on this crucial and central issue 
[0.4] when it comes to the really big philosophical questions [0.4] my 
suspicion is you have to be slightly lunatic not to contradict yourself [1.5] 
er [0.4] perhaps some of you can find ways out of this that don't involve a 
measure of self-contradiction i don't know [0.3] but this isn't a philosophy 
course and we don't have to solve these big philosophical questions [0.2] 
though we should note them [2.0] but there are some particular aspects of 
Carr's idea of progress [0.5] which are more troubling [0.7] at the centre of 
[0.8] his historical imagination planning [0.5] the capacity of twentieth 
century man to move beyond the [0.3] anarchy of the marketplace [1.9] beyond 
that kind of 
nineteenth century condition of life which as Carr sees it is much the same as 
the primitive savage in the jungle who doesn't understand anything and that 
language of primitive sava-, savages in jungles [0.2] is very much part of 
Carr's rhetoric [2.2] er [0.3] you move from that into the sunlit uplands of 
the conscious control over our social and economic destiny [0.3] that planning 
gives you [1.5] sometimes Carr's presented as a Marxist and thought of as a 
Marxist and his thinking certainly owes something to Marxism [1.4] but he's 
more accurately located among that group of non-Marxist European intellectuals 
[0.5] who concluded from the early from the events of the early twentieth 
century [1.0] that some kind of socialism was inevitable [0.9] they might not 
want it [0.4] whether they liked it or not [1.3] so the sensible thing [1.2] 
was not to resist the tide of history [0.8] they knew what the tide was that's 
h-, where it was going [0.6] planning was the future [1.0] but to cooperate [0.
4] with the tide of history with a view to controlling it [0.3] 
freedom [0.6] in Hegel's famous phrase [0.2] was the recognition of necessity 
[1.6] you ride the tides of history [1.1] if sociali-, was socialism was 
inevitable [0.4] then the point was to make sure that rational educated people 
like themselves control it [0.5] not to leave it to the dangerous whims of the 
oppressed [3.3] the case against that kind of reasoning was made very forcibly 
by another Cambridge intellectual with whom Carr [0.2] jousts in What is 
History Isaiah Berlin [1.1] and i've given you quite a long quote from Isaiah 
Berlin in nineteen-fifty [0.7] er [2.3] which [0.9] in view of the time i won't 
read out but you've got it there to look at let's just pick out a couple of 
bits of it though [0.3] Carr is deeply affected by the contempt for liberalism 
made fashionable in the last century by Hegel [0.7] history is a procession of 
events ruled by inexorable laws [0.9] and it's childish to resist them [2.2] 
now [1.1] Carr [1.9] er [0.5] arguably is much too ready to identify progress 
and the expansion of reason [0.4] with the wielding of 
unprecedented power [0.6] by intellectuals and bureaucrats in control of 
massive state apparatuses [1.7] the history of Soviet planning which he wrote 
privileges the point of view of the planners privileges the [0.5] view debated 
within the Bolshevik project of the nineteen-twenties of how do you turn a 
society round [0.3] by a powerful state machine from the top [0.4] how do you 
transform a society from above [1.9] he's not very interested [0.7] in focusing 
on the costs of progress or in looking at history from below as Isaac Deutscher 
[0.4] there are his dates the biographer of Trotsky among others [0.2] and one 
of Carr's few [0.2] academic friends actually but if this is what your friends 
said imagine what your enemies said [0.4] er was w-, as Deutscher said of Carr 
[0.5] er [0.3] his passion is for statecraft [0.3] not for subversive ideas [0.
9] Deutscher was rather more interested in subversive ideas at least some of 
the time [1.9] some of Carr's [0.2] formulations show a surprinding [0.2] 
blindness to the dangers [0.2] to human freedom [0.6] involved in this project 
[0.5] of conscious control [1.6] you may have felt i don't know there was some 
disproportion [0.2] in his [0.6] quip at Elton [0.4] comparing [0.8] Henry the 
Eighth's [0.6] treatment of his wives with Stalin's treatment of er large 
sections of the Russian population [1.3] more fundamentally [0.7] there's an 
impatient dismissal of the concerns of nineteenth century liberalism as [0.3] 
nothing other than the selfish ideology of the bourgeoisie [0.9] the sociology 
of knowledge tells you this [0.8] huh [0.3] there's a rather facile dismission 
er dismissal in the second chapter of Carr of [0.3] the tension between 
individual liberty [0.3] and the pursuit of social equality [1.0] which is 
perhaps an abiding problem [0.3] of liberalism [1.3] and there's a bland 
assertion by Carr that [0.2] the modern preoccupation with social and economic 
ends [0.4] represents a broader and more advanced stage of human development [0.
3] tides of history again [0.5] than the nineteenth century liberal 
preoccupation with 
political and constitutional ends [0.2] we've moved on [1.3] political 
questions constitutional questions [0.3] anxieties about freedom that's behind 
us we're on to economic and social planning [1.2] now Carr's history of reason 
[1.1] triumphantly manifesting itself in the planning state [0.3] is worlds 
away [0.9] from [0.3] those path breaking historians [0.4] who [1.0] from the 
nineteen-sixties were launching a new social history as a history from below [0.
7] a history concerned with losers [0.6] as well as with winners [0.7] a 
history concerned with the costs of progress [0.9] a history concerned with [0.
2] recovering the mental world of the oppressed [1.1] as well as with 
reconstructing the reasoning of the rulers [1.1] already by the nineteen-
sixties there are plenty of historians challenging Carr's rather outrageous [0.
3] and deeply Hegelian [0.6] dismissal [0.4] of [1.1] er did i put the quote 
here as of the history of the medieval poor [0.4] as not existing [0.3] the 
medieval poor have no history they had no rational life of their own he writes 
[0.3] the mass of the people belonged [0.3] like 
prehistoric peoples [0.2] to nature [0.4] rather than to history again they 
were savages in the jungle [1.2] you didn't have to share [0.4] Isaiah Berlin's 
liberal standpoint which makes the same point [0.8] to find remarks like that 
deeply offensive [1.0] er indeed as we'll see when we get to E P Thompson in 
this course [0.3] the most effective [0.8] rescue of the history of the 
defeated was mounted precisely by Marxist historians [0.7] of a very different 
[0.3] er [0.2] tenor than Carr's [0.3] Marxist historians for whom subversive 
ideas [0.4] rather than statecraft [0.2] was at the centre of their vision [1.
4] so [2.8] let's er try and [0.5] draw this together [0.3] er [2.6] i think 
reading Carr now the particular idea of progress that er [0.7] Carr places at 
the centre of his strategy for rescuing history from subjectivism [0.4] i [0.3] 
th-, [0.3] the his idea his particular idea of what the trend of history is [1.
0] er seems very dated [1.0] neither the Soviet Union of course [0.3] nor 
planning more generally [0.3] look [0.2] like the future [1.1] though a 
cautionary note i think [0.3] you know one should never forget every historian 
should have inscribed on their hearts really the er [0.6] the famous saying of 
Mao Tse Tung's when asked [0.3] er [0.6] what were the effects of the French 
Revolution [1.1] it's too early to tell [0.8] mm [0.5] er [0.2] well perhaps 
that's not true about seventeen-eighty-nine er [1.0] but it's certainly true 
about nineteen-eighty-nine [0.8] er that's only ten years [0.2] [laughter] [0.
5] er [2.9] but can the link between [0.2] historical objectivity and progress 
survive Carr's particular formulation of it [1.2] and these are really the 
questions i want to send you away [0.6] thinking about hopefully [0.7] how 
convincing is his argument that some idea of progress [0.9] of the advance of 
human reason of that kind of widening sphere of understanding and therefore [0.
2] conscious control of one's destiny [1.8] er [0.9] how convincing is the 
argument this is really a precondition for any kind of historical thinking [3.
0] can one distinguish between Carr's particular conception of progress and any 
conception of progress [2.1] Carr himself may not have 
understood the trend of the twentieth century [0.2] though [0.2] it may be too 
early to tell [0.8] er [0.5] but does this mean it has no trend [1.7] and might 
Carr have been right in thinking that the search for a trend for some 
meaningful narrative some [0.3] in in [0.3] some [0.5] something unfolding the 
unfolding of reason in Hegel's [0.3] term [1.7] was fundamental to the practice 
of history [0.3] i think one of the more appealing passages in in in in Carr's 
book i put on [0.2] here [0.5] er has Carr writing in [0.2] rather more modest 
vein than he sometimes does [0.5] modern man he says is to an unprecedented 
degree self-conscious [0.5] and therefore conscious of history [0.5] he peers 
eagerly back into the twilight out of which he's come [0.3] in the hope [0.2] 
that its faint beams will illuminate the obscurity into which he's going [0.8] 
and conversely [0.2] his aspirations and anxieties about the path that lies 
ahead [0.3] quicken his insight [0.2] into what lies behind [1.9] 
unsatisfactory though 
peering is [0.4] can we do history without it [0.6] er is Carr for all his 
inadequacies [1.0] right in linking the very idea of history [0.6] to [0.3] 
some kind of enlightenment belief in progress [1.9] and if history is not in 
some way a record of the expansion of human reason [0.5] does it have any 
meaning purpose or function [1.2] my own hunch [0.5] is that if the answer to 
that question is is negative that it isn't in any sense [0.2] a record of the 
expansion of human reason [0.4] i think we'll disappear from the culture myself 
historical study i i think it belongs [0.2] to the idea of progress [0.5] and 
that if you get rid in some level of the idea of progress [0.3] what you'll you 
history [0.2] simply becomes fiction [0.3] and why not have fiction novelists 
do it much better [0.8] mm [1.2] much more readable [0.3] [laugh] [0.5] er [0.
8] shall i just leave you with that er extremely er [0.2] un-, [0.7] er worked 
out [0.3] thought [1.5] okay