Three Little-known Historians who Shaped my View of History
Why unbiased and non-politicized vision is important
Modern history is highly politicized, which creates an intractable problem for understanding the past outside of “current affairs” and political context. The positivist tradition of nineteenth-century history, dominated by the idea of the nation-state and based on the archive, began to give way in the 1970s to a concern with recent history in which the historical witness became paramount. As the past ceased to be a body of knowledge and became a public issue, a new form of political influence came to bear on historians.
Imperceptibly but radically, a process has taken place that has led to what can be called a completely different kind of general politicization of history. This means not only the fierce politicization of historians themselves, but also the inevitable process of turning what they produce into an ideology. It is the process of transforming the world in which historians work and with which they have to deal into an ideological system, following the discovery of their own historical authenticity.
In this article, I would like to introduce you to the names of three historians (Russian, French, and American) who have consistently opposed the politicization of historical knowledge and who have…
