An Explanation of My Field: The Historian

History majors often go into the field of teaching, but there are also historian positions with museums, corporations and the government. Historians, as a profession, contribute to the overall knowledge base by archiving and/or chronicling past events to share with and educate others. They can focus on big questions such as: Was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand truly the match to the straw that started World War I? But historians can also focus on the small questions: What was an aspic and why was it a popular food in America during this same time period? (An aspic is a molded dish made from gelatin, and likely you’ve had the sweet version: a jello fruit salad. Another gelatin version was savory, often spiced and containing bits of meat or fish.) This leads to questions of societal preferences as well as food availability and storage. Within the U.S., food access at that time was greatly dependent on location. Philadelphia had refrigerated warehouses while a town in midwest would likely only have had the same dry grocer as it did for the previous decades. This type of narrow history focus, and my preference, is often referred to as history from below, meaning the research is dedicated to the average person and what they experienced in their time, in a specific geographical and social setting.

A considerable part of being a historian is to analyze historical data without judgment (no matter what your or my personal feelings on the idea of ingesting fish-infused gelatin may be). The historian must not be tempted to reshape the past to the fit modern sensibilities. An excellent example of this is the book The United States in the Great War by Willis J. Abbot. Published in 1919, months after the end of World War I, it is a treasure of information. A case in point is this photo caption:

“This German submarine was caught napping and found herself at the mercy of the American destroyer Fanning. The officers and crew are on deck eager to save their lives by surrendering to a chivalrous foe. The Germans instinctively realized that their enemies were not as base and cruel as they were.”

In our politically correct world of 100 years later, uttering this today would cause a controversy, but historians don’t get to rewrite it. Analysis while carefully considering the time and context, however, is theirs for the taking. For example, one point may be that German is the number one self-identified ancestry in the United States, then and today. That makes the standard “they’re-different-so-they-must-be-a-threat” rhetoric an impossible sell when getting a country to support a war, so the media strategies were intense. A second point of consideration might be details such as the preferred journalistic stylings of the period. The words “chivalrous” and “base” (lacking morals) are generally associated with the Middle Ages, a time period that was highly idealized during the Victorian era preceding World War I. Medieval ideals weren’t just a subject of discussion – the Victorian view of them permeated philosophy, politics, art and, importantly in this instance, literature.

A third point of illumination could be the Sedition Act of 1918, which meant all Americans risked prosecution for saying the wrong thing. This included up to 20 years of imprisonment for “whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag...” (firstworldwar.com). The response to this act meant that many writers went to the other extreme in effuse praise of the government. The act was in full effect when this textbook was published, and it wasn’t repealed until December of 1920. The end result is that the historian doesn’t rewrite the content but provides the background information to understand the context of the statement.

To me, the initial requirements to be a historian are imagination and a love of stories. Can you put yourself in the other person's shoes? Perhaps, more importantly, can you put yourself in their shoes while making every attempt to respect and honor their stories, their culture, and their religion? If so, then working on writing, archiving, researching and analytical skills plus studying the past are likely the next best steps to becoming a historian. This is not a get-rich career track, but to me, it is a fascinating one.

Works Cited
Duffy, Michael. "Firstworldwar.com." First World War.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2016.