There are few good historians. To me, good historians are those who carefully dissect their subject, then put it together again in the form of a great story, informed by much ‘telling’ detail and respectful of alternative viewpoints, thereby inviting further reflection, reading and research on the part of the reader.

All these qualities of the historian are essentially art forms. Even analysis is an art form, although we like to rationalise its fantastic and subconscious aspects. Remember the chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz. One day, whilst researching the molecular structure of benzene, he had a dream of a snake biting its own tail. From that dream he developed his ‘ring’-theory of benzene, a huge break-through in organic chemistry.

There are even fewer good female historians. I could cite obvious historical and sociological reasons for the underrepresentation of women in historiography and there may be other, less obvious reasons, possibly even genetic in nature. Ladies may take comfort in the fact that there are many more bad male historians than bad female ones.

However this may be, I would like to discuss the good ones. What makes them good? Do they have unique qualities that (most) male historians lack?

Exhibit One

Barbara Tuchman, well-known to all English-speaking history buffs. The proud Tower, her portrait of pre-WWI Europe, is always with me because of the strong imagery she evokes of the main events and the personalities involved. Her portraits of Senator Thomas Reed and Georges Clemenceau, her sketch of the German Emperor giving vent to his suppressed homosexuality by dancing in his little ballerina costume, all those images still stick many years after I last read the book. The book says a lot about World War I, precisely because it evokes a world that had no idea of the impending doom, of the terrible devastation to come in a couple of years. Most male authors I know treat this era as a prelude to war, they look at it from the perspective of that war. Only Tuchman has the sensitivity to perceive its essential innocence.

Is that because she is a woman and doesn’t have an axe to grind, doesn’t have anything to prove because war is essentially a male business?

Exhibit Two

In another thread someone mentioned C.V. Wedgewood’s book The Thirty Years War (1938) as being a good read. I agree - but why is it a good read? As far as I recall, it is a good read because it strikes a careful balance between the ‘heroic’ military developments on the one hand and the rest of German society (and its horrible, senseless suffering at the hands of armies) on the other. She describes a full cycle of self-destruction in human society: heroism grows out of despair, performs great feats, then turns into hatred and finally ends in cruelty and senseless slaughter. Does it take a woman to see through this mechanism, see through the male mythology of war and perceive the cycle for what it is?

Exhibit Three

My all-time favourite: Régine Pernoud.

I remember at the end of a working group on the Middle Ages at university, I told my professor that I didn’t understand why in the course of some war a particular earl had taken the side of a particular king, who was his liege lord, instead of another one who was also his liege lord. His answer was: ‘Why don’t you stop by the library, pick up Lumière du Moyen-Âge by Pernoud and read Chapter One?’ I did, it was an eye-opener and I’ve been a fan of hers ever since.

In that Chapter Pernoud says that there is only one perspective from which we can understand the Middle Ages. It’s neither the old perspective of the Three Orders (Chivalry, Clerics, Peasants), not the modern perspective of a division between the privileged (one percent of society) and the underprivileged (the rest). The only useful perspective is the family. That’s what made people throughout the Middle Ages tick, from the lowest of peasants to the most exalted of Kings and Popes. She goes on to develop that theme in the rest of her book and it is one of the most convincing texts I have ever read.

How did she develop this perspective? Isn’t it a typical example of ‘female’ emotionalism to stress the family above all else? I would say it’s not. I think a lot of male historians are more emotional and more likely to believe in ideological explanations (such as the Three Orders) and in mythologies of honour and heroism and chauvinism and nationhood. She wrote the book in 1944, mind you – as if she wanted to tell her compatriots: okay guys, we’ve had four years of slaughter and murderous ideology, now let’s get real, let’s skip the patriotic bull and take a fresh and honest look at ourselves and accept that we are, first and foremost, herd animals.


So, what’s up with female historians? Are they special?

Oyez, oyez, .org patrons! Show us your exhibits and prove me right or wrong!