On Footnotes and Doing History

Lisa Clark Diller

I recently picked up Anthony Grafton’s The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard University Press, 1999) in an attempt to find more coherent ways to talk to my students about citation and research. I have somehow never managed to read it before now, and I’m finding Grafton’s overt connection between what we are “doing” in history and how we document that work, to be extremely useful. As I think about what I need to do to prove to my reading audience that I know what I’m talking about, I have forgotten what a thin tissue evidence rests on—our assumptions regarding footnotes. The Footnote also contributes to the discussions we’ve been having on this site about conversations between generations of historians.

Grafton reminds us that “in documenting the thought and research that underpin the narrative above them, footnotes prove that it is a historically contingent product, dependent on the forms of research, opportunities, and states of particular questions that existed when the historian went to work” (23). The genealogies of scholarship so neatly mapped out by Dan Allosso last week can also be seen in the footnotes and bibliographies of individual works of scholarship. Who we think it important to cite, what range of sources were important (or available) at the time, and the family of historiographical ancestors we choose for ourselves all reveal our location in time and situate us on an ideological map.

Footnotes reveal our technical proficiency, but they do so within a particular context. While in grad school, I can remember discounting entire volumes of historical research because the footnotes were so “thin.” And one of my advisors at the University of Chicago would warn us to look with grave suspicion on any early modernist who cited too many printed sources. I’m less puritanical in my standards now. And Grafton has reminded me that: “No accumulation of footnotes can prove that every statement in the text rests on an unassailable mountain of attested facts. Footnotes exist, rather, to perform two other functions. First, they persuade: they convince the reader that the historian has done an acceptable amount of work . . . . Second, they indicate the chief sources that the historian has actually used” (22).

We sometimes still operate under the assumption that if we have all the “original sources” our argument will be solid. But what makes history interesting is all the various interpretations that we can develop from the same sources. It is part of why we revisit the same problems over and over again. Interpretation as well as sources give each of us our originality. This is decidedly not the same thing as saying that any interpretation of the documents is as good as another, but it is what keeps me from reading a scholarly tome and thinking that because the footnotes took up 37% of each page I read, no one need any longer do research on that subject. Grafton also reminded me to be careful in judging the scholarship of an earlier generation by the type or quantity of footnotes.

As I sweat through proper citation of digital works and decide how much to include or exclude from my own footnotes, I am glad to remember that this process isn’t simply about showing off my guild credentials. It’s also a way to “out” myself regarding my priorities and methods. The evidence I use won’t be considered equally sufficient for all time; but then again, I don’t expect to answer historical questions and decide their significance once and for all.

The footnote reminds me of the time-laden nature of my queries and verifications.

Mea Culpa

Lisa Clark Diller

While attending the North American Conference on British Studies last weekend, I was pretty sure I heard one of the most unexpected phrases to be uttered in such settings: “I was wrong about that.” In this case, the historian in question appeared to be attempting to end a long-term feud regarding the importance of religion in the Glorious Revolution. He explained that he had changed his mind about his characterization of the events of 1688/9 as a continuation of the Protestant Reformation.

This got me thinking: To what extent do we make it possible for historians to say they were wrong? Part of the pain of publishing is setting ideas down in print with something one might later change one’s mind about. We all know that with more research we might have to revise our ideas. But sometimes we build our reputations by making very strong claims—even creating a binary within the field, which allows scholars to join one “side” or another. Young scholars decide which side of the historiographical debate they want to be part of. These binaries make it especially hard to admit when one has been wrong.

Nuance and carefully hedged assertions don’t sell books or recruit graduate students. They also don’t play as well in the classroom. But they are often more honest. In order to build our standing within our sub-fields, do we unnecessarily go further than we should? And where and how do we admit we are wrong? Later work may demonstrate that an author has changed her mind, but in few places can she admit it in black and white. Is this just part of the temperament of those who become scholars or do the structures of the academy prevent us from undermining the edifices of our academic status?

I found Tony Claydon’s words to be the most interesting part of the NACBS last week. On the “other side” of his earlier position I, of course, welcome him to what I might humbly call the more “enlightened” view of the role of religion in 1688. But I began to think about what it might take to change my own mind in the face of the evidence. My beginning assumptions, the respect for other scholars’ whose work is similar to my own, and my ideological commitments, may often keep me from admitting that my framework for a particular problem is mistaken or slightly distorted.

What does it take to change one’s mind on that scale? How much evidence is required? I’m curious about the experience of readers. Have you had to change your mind regarding the fundamental framework of the problems in your field? Would you have to look at all the primary evidence yourself or would a compelling piece of scholarship push you in another direction? Does the personality or reputation of scholars on either side of a debate affect you at all? What are the most “famous” examples of scholars changing their minds? Do we have space for those of us who are not superstars to admit our mistakes and still be taken seriously as scholars? What should we do in these situations?

The Vital “Irrelevance” of Early Modern History

Lisa Clark Diller

I’ve been reflecting lately on my fate as someone who studies early modern history. For me personally, being an early modernist means I get to study a world with few strict borders, really big personalities, and lots of mystery. For my students, apparently, enjoyment of this era is primarily connected to obsessive attendance at Renaissance Fairs. The longer I teach, the more my undergraduates’ insistent connection of everything we study with the present day weighs on my class time, my reading, and even my research into the modern period.*

However, I’m increasingly convinced that those of us who study the pre-modern world play a crucial role within our departments and the broader profession. Part of the nature of “modernity” is that we know where history is going. The world is always becoming more mechanized, specialized, literate, committed to democracy, always on the way to the nation-states we are now divided into. Our situation in the modern period means we’re consistently looking in the past for how we got to be how we are now, and it limits our imagination.

Those of us who study the pre-modern world, if we’re careful, get to bring a few more possibilities to the table. First, we frequently have fewer texts, and often less information about our subjects. This does not mean we can’t tell true stories about our past, but that the evidence for those stories requires slightly different skills than is often asked of historians who study the modern world. The people and situations we study are allowed to retain some of their shadowy characteristics. Second, those men and women before and outside the triumph of the Enlightenment did not “know” where the world was going yet. Their writings are less driven by the paradigm of progress and national identity. Their world was more steeped in mystery and they also remain a bit mysterious to us.

So the early modern historian can bring a bit of drama to the table—my sources did not know about the framework of the modern world, so I can also try to suspend knowledge, if I choose. They often leave their evidence in the form of stories, which allows me to retain my commitment to storytelling as part of the art of history. My subjects’ knowledge was contingent, and so is mine. This is also true for those who study the modern world, but perhaps early modernists’ are forced to be more aware of it.

We early modernists are important to our more numerous colleagues who study the relatively recent past because our attitudes and practices reinforce the historians’ commitment to drama, mystery, and asking creative questions of difficult sources. But we are also important because our knowledge is so often “useless.” As we collectively wring our hands over the commodification of knowledge and the future of the history professor, it is those of us who study the pre-modern world who have developed skills in explaining what we study in such a way that it seems “relevant” to the obsessively presentist mind. You need us around. Besides, who else is the world going to turn to when it becomes clear that previously frivolous fields of study such as early modern piracy in the Indian Ocean aren’t so silly and extraneous after all?

*I use “modern” here to mean roughly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We can argue about that later, if anyone is interested.

Lisa Clark Diller is assistant professor of history at Southern Adventist University. She earned her Ph.D. in Modern British History at the University of Chicago in 2003. Diller is especially interested in the origins of religious toleration in 17th-century England.