Talk:Historian

Super Historians
What makes a historian "super." I can think of several who are very important in the field of the crusades alone. Joshua Prawer and Johnathon Riley-Smith seem obvious. Robert Chazen has made great contributions in the field of Jewish history. W.G. Godfrey, Ian Mckay, David Frank and Bumsted, all seem "super" in the field of Canadian History. I would argue this: "The consistent development of new fields and sub-fields has led to the demise of the so called "Super" historians like Gibbon and Ranke, and given rise to a new more specialized group of academics." Or something like that.MedievalScholar 18:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


 * That entire "super historian" bit is pretty silly. "There has always been a class of..." Maybe it's just me, but all that section did was make me laugh a whole lot. It should probably be deleted, unless the author of the book that was cited actually had a good point to make - and in that case the section should be rewritten. Aibara 00:55, 14 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow, this article is SOOO POV it isn't funny.
 * Whiggish analysis? Sounds like it was written by a liberal. To much discussion on the question of "what is history" then "what is a historian". Benkenobi18 (talk) 19:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

How about "super plumbers" or "super bankers"? What it really means is "ones I've heard of" and it betrays ignorance. --OhNoPeedyPeebles (talk) 23:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Twentieth-century developments
This sections reads like a celebration of the shift from history as a literary pursuit to history as an instrument of cultural-marxist propaganda. True, this is the main twentieth-century development in history, but it bears describing not celebrating.  —joeFriday— { talk }  16:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I did a pretty decent job cleaning that up and at least restoring some semblance of a professional tone to it. Let me know what you think. --Grahamdubya (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

A historian or An Historian?
Both usages are ok. Here's some proof from across the 20th century--titles of books by very famous historians noted for their fine style (not merely a passage in the text): 1) How good an historian shall I be?': R.G. Collingwood, the historical imagination and education by Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Academic Press 2004); 2) An historian in the twentieth century: chapters in intellectual autobiography by Max Beloff, (Yale University Press, 1992); 3) To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian by Stephen E. Ambrose (2003); 4) The recreations of an historian by George Macaulay Trevelyan (1919); 5) Milton as an historian by Charles Harding Firth, (1908). Rjensen (talk) 05:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If both usages are ok, then we should use the version that is most common. This google trends link ( http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=an+historian%2Ca+historian&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 ) show that the usage of "an historian" fell below the usage of "a historian" in literature sometime in the 1890s. In fact, the trends indicate that the usage of "a historian" vs. "an historian" is roughly three times as much in current literature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.29.16 (talk) 00:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia relies on the RS, and the RS are clear enough. What uninformed people do on their private websites is NOT considered by Wikipedia to be acceptable for RS. Furthermore, when two usages are acceptable editors defer to the first editor. It's rude indeed for an newbie anonymous person with no editing experience whatever to barge in and impose his personal preferences. Rjensen (talk) 00:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Very well then. This article was created in October 2001. The first usage of the word 'historian' in conjunction with an article occurred on August 31, 2004 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historian&oldid=5559705 ). In this version, the article used is "a", as in "a historian." Furthermore, the google trends link uses data collected from published literature (unless you think that 'uninformed people' had published websites in the 1800s?). I believe that qualifies under RS for this matter. As you can see, no personal preference was imposed by anyone during the editing of this page. As Wikipedia is a wiki that can be anonymously edited by anyone, I do not feel the need for an account to show off my 'seniority.' I believe that the edits made to an article must be made using hard factual evidence, as in this case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.29.16 (talk) 01:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the article back. "A historian" is the most common usage -- indeed it's even used by Rjensen! -Ben (talk) 13:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Manchester University: Original research into the undergraduate programme
I think a mention should be made of T.F. Tout and C.H. Firth, the Manchester university system and resistance at Oxbridge to accept that undergraduates should do research with primary sources: As T.F. Tout's Wikipedia entry says: "Tout also introduced original research into the undergraduate programme, culminating in the production of a Final Year thesis based on primary sources. This horrified Oxbridge, where college tutors had little research capacity of their own and saw the undergraduate as an embryonic future gentleman, liberal connoisseur, widely-read, and mainstay of country and empire in politics, commerce, army, land or church, not an apprentice to dusty, centuries-old archives, wherein no more than 1 in 100 could find even an innocuous career. As to which, they had a fair case, given the various likelihoods and opportunities for their charges. Tout's ally Firth fought a bitter war to persuade Oxford to follow Manchester and introduce scientific study of sources into the History programme, but failed. So, too, at Cambridge. Other universities, however, followed Tout, and Oxbridge - very slowly - had to face up to the fact, with fundamental changes to the selection of college fellows across all disciplines."

As I know nothing about it, and the section in is not sourced T.F. Tout, I think it would be interesting to have a section in this article about this change with reliable sources. --PBS (talk) 08:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

14.98.219.249 Deletion of Historian
Regarding your restoring what I'd deleted on the Wikipedia page titled "Historian", I don't have any questions (other than the obvious). Let me give you reasons why I'd done what I'd done. 1) The page is on historians, and the first Indian historian proper is Kalhan, who wrote a history of Kashmir in the 12th century AD. He isn't even mentioned in the section that I'd deleted. If he is, chronologically speaking, he should be moved to after the China section, which has written histories by known specific individuals (historians) from the BC era. (In fact, it should come after Livy, Josephus, Suetonius, Procopius, Bede, etc., all of whom, shockingly, find no mention anywhere on the page.) Instead, the section starts with "India has a long record of historiography with chronicles being maintained by dynasties, monks and communities", which is not at all true, there being neither names of any historians, or even individuals who could be labelled historians, nor any texts which can even loosely be called history from India right upto Kalhan's time. If you have any such knowledge, kindly share it with me. 2) Nobody can call the Vedas history of any sort. They do not describe any kind of history at all. Some of the Puranas do have creation stories and lists of rulers, but then, as I'd pointed out, Hesiod's Theogony is also a creation story and even the opening chapters of Genesis are basically a creation myth. Further, the OT books from Judges to Chronicles 2 all have king lists, etc. These have no place in this article, and so neither should the Vedas or Puranas. 3) The Mahabharata and Ramayana are, likewise, epics, which belong to mythography and not historiography or history, just as the Iliad and the Odyssey (and even the Aenied, for that matter). Hence, my comparison with Homer as well. 4) The last line of the section reads "Jain and Buddhist monks also chronicled many events in ancient India in their scriptures.[11]", the footnote citation being "Michael S. Dodson, "Contesting Translations: Orientalism and the Interpretation of the 'Vedas,'" Modern Intellectual History, (Apr 2007) 4#1 pp 43-59". The line itself is not at all substantiated, as it should be, which makes it a stub. The first page of the cited paper, from which the abstract is clearly visible, is on the following webpage: http://universitypublishingonline.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9788175968721&cid=CBO9788175968721A010. Kindly read it and let me know if it qualifies as an appropriate citation to the matter at hand. If it does give any information about those Jain and Buddhist monks, then that should have been mentioned in the text of the section. 5) The Wikipedia page on historiography has no mention of India whatsoever (which, as I've tried to point out to you, is justified), so how can its page on historians have a section on India. These are my reasons for deleting the section on Indian "historians". What is written there doesn't qualify for the page, while many who should have been mentioned (cf. Point 1) aren't. If you still find my reasons non-constructive, kindly do let me know and give me your reasons. Sincerely, 14.98.219.249 (talk) 18:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC) 14.98.219.249 Hillabear10 (talk) 18:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Inventing history
Before modern history, historians felt it their privilege to invent missing bits of history. Studying the tendency of historians to do this became a subject in itself (though I forget the name for this subject). It would be useful if a new section of this article discussed this subject. FreeFlow99 (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Human?
"A historian is a human who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it" reads the first line. Should it not be a person as apposed to human? I didn't think any other species studies and writes about the past.  Rob van  vee  14:52, 3 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I've changed it. It's just political correctness gone mad. GrindtXX (talk) 23:42, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

. The British historians wrote history from their perspective. However, there were also those who were objective in their approach. What does that mean?​
Hi 2A02:9B0:8001:AE8E:543A:FAB:1FD9:F965 (talk) 18:39, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Protection Request
I’d like for this page to be semi-protected. Looks like it’s been hit with a lot of trollery and WP:VANDALISM. -AuburnFan7 (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I already did the deed. For future reference, the place to request page protection is WP:RFPP. Cheers Girth Summit  (blether)  16:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Perfect, thanks! -AuburnFan7 (talk) 16:59, 23 October 2022 (UTC)