 Hi, what we're going to do today is talk a little bit about historiography, and historiography is really very simple, but it's a very important term. The term really means the study of the writing of history, and as you can tell from the readings that you've already done so far, that is what has been covered. How do historians write about Texas history? And so I want to talk a little bit right now about some of the trends in recent historiography, and how those apply to what you're reading now. If we look at the influences on American historiography, we'll realize that early American historians were influenced by different things that historians are today, and one of the themes in this course is to learn what prompted historians to write Texas history the way they did. Now, this is looking on the slide right now at historians of American history, but I think the same thing can be applied to Texas historians as well. Early historians were writing about history from their perspective. And so some of the early historians, you see some of the early religious historians writing about being God's chosen people, and seeing God's hand, or a religious hand in the actions that propel them forward, as they thought. You also see wealthy historians, patrician historians, that natural laws determine behavior and history, that people and things behaved like they did because of the laws of nature. And then you also have the romantic historians a little bit later. And these people were propelled by nationalism, by this idea of American exceptionalism. And you see this reflected heavily in Texas history as well, Texas exceptionalism. The idea that the nation in nationalism, the nation is most important, and that progress is made with the growth of the nation. And the idea of exceptionalism, meaning that the subject in either America or Texas, is exceptional and is different from everyone else. And so you've heard the old saying, things are always bigger in Texas. And it's this idea of Texas exceptionalism, that things work differently because we live in Texas. Some of the major developments in modern US history have been influenced by science and historians writing about science, by the idea of progressivism, and especially true in the 1930s through about the 1950s, the idea of progress, that we're making things moving forward. Look at the time period though that these things are happening. So when we talk about science and historians, the scientific historians believe that you could actually find the real truth about history. If you looked at enough documents, if you studied all the facts, then you could write history in the words of one historian, Von Ronka, history as it actually was. And this thought that there was a true history, a history that was true and couldn't be disputed, lasted up until the 1930s. The progressives were writing from a little bit different frame of mind. And they were writing, look, by the 1930s you have the Great Depression. So this was on their mind the idea of a stronger government. And so the ideas of making progress, coming out of the depression, recovering from the depression, and that America would get better. They were also influenced by the fact that, and some Marxism and the collapse of the American economy during the Great Depression, that maybe capitalism wasn't the best and the brightest. It wasn't the best thing out there. And that they were challenging capitalism. They also had a tendency to look at economic factors, playing a greater role in history than other historians might have. So that the quest for money, the idea that wealth and acquisition was very important to people throughout history. This was very evident in some of the writings of the progressive historians. By the 1950s, after World War II, you see a new type of historian. And this is called the consensus historian. The consensus historian was a bit more conservative. They thought that government was good and the government should be powerful. But that American people were bringing together various forces. So rather than the conflict that the progressive historians might have seen people and wealth versus the government, the consensus historians were more likely to see people working together, various groups working together to make a better America or better Texas. And this predominated American historical thought in the 1950s and the 1960s. By the 1960s, you have different factors that come into play. The Vietnam War, civil rights, the early age of the computer and the age of the space race, and this gives rise to so called new left historians who don't really see government as being good. Who see it as being maybe too powerful. And in, some people might call the new left historians neoprogressives, new progressives. The neoprogressives or the new left historians were predominant through the 60s through the 80s. And they're influenced by what we call the new social history. The new social history deeply influenced by statistics, by sociology. And it's influenced out of a French historical movement called the Annals School. The Annals was a journal that was deeply influenced by historians who had been trained in sociology, psychology, and various social sciences. And so you see this movement quantifying, looking at not just governments, not just leaders, but an average everyday people. The tape recorder and television also revolutionized these historians, and they put more emphasis not on statistics and quantifying, but also on recording histories, oral histories with everyday people. And so this is history, some people have called it from the bottom up. Looking at it not just at the leaders, but at the everyday people and their lives. So it's this technological influences the idea of social history and social sciences involved in history and the use of oral histories as well. To increase the scope of documents that are contributing to the histories that the new left historians are writing. Currently today, most people say we're in a neo-consensus phase. And if you go back to the old consensus historians, they thought that big government was good and that government was bringing people together and could help that. The neo-consensus historians are not so convinced that a big government is a good government, but they do see that people are coming together more and are writing about different aspects. Now, there probably needs to be a new school of thought. Now that we've got about 20, 30 years behind the neo-consensus, but nothing has really developed as far as a new school of thought. I think the schools of thought are much more diverse now and you see a lot of different types of thought coming in to historical writing. Going back to the Annals School, some of the historians in the Annals School are the French historians Marc Bloch, Lucien Feber, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Legault and others. And they were writing in this journal, which basically means the Journal of History of Annals d'Église d'Ivoire. An economica social started in 1929. And both of these were heavily influenced by statistics and quantifying data and then using that data to look at everyday people's lives. Because you didn't have as many documents from everyday people, you could certainly look at statistics. Now, of course, many of these were collected by government, by tax rolls, by school rolls and other types of rolls that the government collected. And then looking at what that told us about the past. Another more recent, and this was especially in the late 70s, early 80s through the 90s, was the idea of race, class and gender. Race, class and gender, historians influenced by race, class and gender movement were looking at how history had been written. And predominantly history in the past was written by the dominant culture. For the dominant culture by usually college educated and therefore more wealthy, more elite people of society, and specifically focusing on men. What race, class and gender tried to do was to recast the way history was being written. And focus on not just the dominant race, but on other races as well, more multicultural and across class lines. Don't just look at the elites, the wealthy, but look at everyday people. And gender, not just men. And now that's gone into more LGBTQ issues. Looking at history of other and gender bending and different types of history of androgyny, for example. Gay history, history of transgendered societies. And so that has exploded. But for the most part, early on race, class and gender because the documents were not as readily available for people of different races or of lower class or different genders. It was difficult and it's had a hard time getting off the ground in the early years. And I think now it's more infused in history and more accepted. This idea of post-modernism also, post-modernism can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But in the 1950s to about today, most historians would not say, well, we're gonna get all the facts and write the truth about history. I mean, what is truth? That is an age old statement, an age old question. Can we really know the truth? Is it more about interpretation? Can we trust the assumptions that we've always been making? And a lot of revisionist histories and historians are looking at these old assumptions and challenging them. And we see that more and more today. So I think you've seen already in your readings on Texas history, some of these ideas about what is influenced historians and how that influence from the wider world has been reflected in their writing. And I think as you see that more and more and as you read more and more, this will make more sense and be clearer. And I hope you're enjoying your readings and be prepared. Coming up very soon is exam one. I'll be posting that so you'll know well in advance what you're supposed to be writing on. Thank you, have a good day.