An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.
Interpretation
A historian should engage deeply with their subject while also maintaining a perspective for clearer understanding.
This quote emphasizes the dual approach necessary for historians to analyze their subjects. By immersing themselves in the historical context of the event or period being studied, they can gain a richer understanding. However, it is also crucial to step back occasionally to gain an objective perspective, which allows for fresh insights and a more balanced interpretation of history.
In practice
During a lecture about the importance of historical context, you might reference this quote to illustrate how deeply engaging with subjects is critical for historians.
But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period-Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States-are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao.
The freedmen were not really free in 1865, nor are most of their descendants really free in 1965. Slavery was but one aspect of a race and color problem that is still far from solution here, or anywhere. In America particularly, the grapes of wrath have not yet yielded all their bitter vintage.
So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.
Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.
No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.
Dream dreams and write them aye, but live them first.
No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.
Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice.
You gotta understand - the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that's what actually happened.
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
People want to know why the South is so interested in the Civil War. I had maybe, it's a rough guess, about fifty fistfights in my life. Out of those fifty fistfights, the ones that I had the most vivid memory of were the ones I lost. I think that's one reason why the South remembers the war more than the North does.
The historian does simply not come in to replenish the gaps of memory. He constantly challenges even those memories that have survived intact.
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