Whig history or Whiggish historiography presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians stress the rise of constitutional government, personal freedoms and scientific progress. A constitution is a system for government often Codified as a written document that establishes the rules and principles of an autonomous political entity Freedom, or the idea of being free is a broad concept that The term is often applied generally (and pejoratively) to histories that present the past as the inexorable march of progress. Words and phrases are pejorative if they imply disapproval or contempt It also refers to a specific set of British historians. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Its antithesis can be seen in certain kinds of cultural pessimism. Cultural pessimism is a variety of Pessimism, as formulated by what is nowadays called a Cultural critic.

Contents 1 Origins of the term 2 The nature of Whig history 3 Whig historians writing English history 4 Criticism 5 History of science 6 As teleology 7 In popular culture 8 See also 9 Notes 10 External links

Origins of the term

The British historian Herbert Butterfield coined the term in his small but influential book The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). Sir Herbert Butterfield ( October 7, 1900 &ndash July 20, 1979) was a British historian and philosopher of history who is remembered It takes its name from the British Whigs, advocates of the power of Parliament, who opposed the Tories, advocates of the power of the King and the aristocracy. The Whigs (with the Tories) are often described as one of two political parties in England and later the United Kingdom from the late 17th to The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories In the political tradition of some English-speaking countries, the term Tory has referred to a variety of political parties and Creeds since it was The Kings of Wessex, who conquered Kent and Sussex from Mercia in 825 became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during Aristocracy is a form of Government, where rule is established through an internal struggle over who has the most status and influence over society and internal relations Butterfield's celebrated book itself has been criticised by David Cannadine^[1] as slight, confused, repetitive and superficial. David Nicholas Cannadine (born 1950 is a British historian known for a number of books including The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy and Ornamentalism

The term has been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (the history of science, for example) to criticize any goal-directed, hero-based, and transhistorical narrative. Teleology ( Greek: telos: end purpose is the philosophical study of design and Purpose. The abstract noun Whiggishness is sometimes used as a generic term for Whig history. It should not be confused with Whiggism as a political ideology, and has no direct relation to either the British or American Whig parties. The Whigs (with the Tories) are often described as one of two political parties in England and later the United Kingdom from the late 17th to The Whig Party was a Political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. (The term Whiggery is ambiguous in contemporary usage: it may either mean party politics and ideology, or a general intellectual approach. )

The nature of Whig history

The characteristics of Whig history as defined by Butterfield include:

• Interpreting history as a story of progress toward the present, and specifically toward the British constitutional settlement;
• Viewing the British parliamentary, constitutional monarchy as the apex of human political development;
• Assuming that the constitutional monarchy was in fact an ideal held throughout all ages of the past, despite the observed facts of British history and the several power struggles between monarchs and parliaments;
• Assuming that political figures in the past held current political beliefs (anachronism);
• Assuming that British history was a march of progress whose inevitable outcome was the constitutional monarchy; and
• Presenting political figures of the past as heroes, who advanced the cause of this political progress, or villains, who sought to hinder its inevitable triumph. The constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of laws and principles under which the United Kingdom is governed The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories A constitutional monarchy, or a limited monarchy, is a form of Constitutional Government, wherein either an elected or hereditary Monarch is A hero (from Greek grc ἥρως hērōs) in Greek mythology and Folklore, was originally a Demigod, the offspring of a mortal and

Butterfield argued that this approach to history compromised the work of the historian in several ways:

• The emphasis on the inevitability of progress leads to the mistaken belief that the progressive sequence of events becomes "a line of causation," tempting the historian to go no further to investigate the causes of historical change.
• The focus on the present as the goal of historical change leads the historian to abridge history, selecting only those events that have some bearing on the present.

Roger Scruton, in his A Dictionary of Political Thought (1982), takes the theory to be centrally concerned with progress and reaction, with the progressives shown as victors and benefactors. Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an English Conservative Philosopher. Reactionary (also reactionist) is a derogatory term usually used by the Left wing in regards to movements which oppose radical change in society and seeks a return Cannadine^[2] wrote of the English tradition that:

It was fiercely partisan and righteously judgemental, dividing the personnel of the past into the good and the bad. And it did so on the basis of the marked preference for liberal and progressive causes, rather than conservative and reactionary ones. [. . . ] Whig history was, in short, an extremely biassed view of the past: eager to hand out moral judgements, and distorted by teleology, anachronism and present-mindedness.

Butterfield's antidote to Whig history was "to evoke a certain sensibility towards the past, the sensibility which studies the past 'for the sake of the past', which delights in the concrete and the complex, which 'goes out to meet the past', which searches for 'unlikenesses between past and present'". ^[3]

Whig historians writing English history

Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and Henry Hallam's Constitutional History of England (1827) reveal many Whiggish traits. Sir William Blackstone (originally pronounced Blexstun ( 10 July 1723 &ndash 14 February 1780) was an English Jurist and The Commentaries on the Laws of England are an influential 18th century treatise on the Common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally Henry Hallam ( 9 July 1777 - 21 January 1859) was an English Historian. According to Arthur Marwick^[4], Hallam was the first Whig historian. Arthur John Brereton Marwick, ( 29 February, 1936 &ndash 27 September, 2006) was a Professor in History.

The Liberal politician Thomas Macaulay was one of the most popular and perhaps the most famous historian of the Whig school, although his work did not feature in Butterfield's 1931 book. The Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the early 19th century until the rise of the Labour Party in the 1920s and a third party According to Ernst Breisach^[5] his style captivated the public as did his good sense of the past and firm Whiggish convictions. Perhaps the pinnacle of Whig history is his widely read multivolume History of England from the Accession of James II. Macaulay's first chapter proposes that:

I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her opulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.

. . . (T)he history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.

A crucial figure in the later survival and respectability of Whig history was William Stubbs, the constitutional historian and influential teacher of a generation of historians. William Stubbs ( 21 June 1825 &ndash 22 April 1901) was an English Historian and Bishop of Oxford. According to Reba Soffer^[6]

“

His rhetorical gifts often concealed his combination of High Church Anglicanism, Whig history, and civic responsibility.

”

George Kitson Clark writes^[7]

“

. George Sidney Roberts Kitson Clark (1900-1975 was an English historian a specialist in the nineteenth century . . the survival of the myth through the times of Stubbs is one of the most interesting and significant facts in its history. [. . . ] . . . indeed it was largely later 19th century historians who converted that very equivocal, essentially medieval character Simon de Montfort into a forward-looking, Liberal-minded statesman with a profound understanding of the virtues of representative government. Simon de Montfort 6th Earl of Leicester (1208 – August 4, 1265) was the principal leader of the Baronial opposition to King Henry III of England

”

Criticism

Undermining 'whiggish' narratives was one aspect of the post-World War I re-evaluation of European history in general, and Butterfield's critique exemplified this trend. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All The history of Europe describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting the European continent to the present day Subsequent generations of academic historians have similarly rejected Whig history because of its presentist and teleological bent. Presentism is a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past

When H. A. L. Fisher in 1928 gave the Raleigh Lecture on The Whig Historians, from Sir James Mackintosh to Sir George Trevelyan he implied that "Whig historian" was adequately taken as a political rather than a progressive or teleological label; this put the concept into play^[8]. Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher OM ( 21 March 1865 &ndash 18 April 1940) was an English historian educator and Liberal Sir James Mackintosh ( October 24, 1765 - May 30, 1832) was a Scottish jurist politician and historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan 2nd Baronet OM, DC LLD DL (20 July 1838 17 August 1928 was a British Statesman and Author was born in P. B. M. Blaas has argued that Whig history itself had lost all vitality by 1914^[9]. According to Victor Feske, there is too much readiness to accept Butterfield's classic definition from three years later as definitive^[10].

History of science

The history of science was found to be "riddled with Whiggish history". The Historiography of Science usually refers to the study of History of Science in its disciplinary aspects and practices (methods theories schools and ^[11] Like other Whig histories, Whig history of science tends to divide historical actors into "good guys," who are on the side of truth (as we now know it) and "bad guys," who opposed the emergence of these truths because of ignorance or bias. ^[12] From this whiggish perspective, Lamarck would be criticized because he believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics while Darwin would be praised because he did not; Ptolemy would be criticized because his astronomical system placed the Earth at the center of the universe while Aristarchus would be praised because he placed the Sun at the center of the solar system. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck ( August 1, 1744 &ndash December 18, 1829) was a French Soldier Charles Robert Darwin (February 12 1809 &ndash April 19 1882 was an English naturalist, who realised and demonstrated that all Species of life Claudius Ptolemaeus ( Greek: Klaúdios Ptolemaîos; after 83 &ndash ca This kind of evaluation ignores the evidence that was available at a particular time. Did Aristarchus have evidence to support his idea that the Sun was at the center; were there good reasons to reject Ptolemy's system before the Sixteenth Century?

The writing of whig history of science is especially found in the writings of scientists^[13] and general historians,^[14] while this whiggish tendency is commonly opposed by professional historians of science. Nick Jardine describes the changing attitude to whiggishness this way:^[15]

By the mid-1970s, it had become commonplace among historians of science to employ the terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Whiggish’, often accompanied by one or more of ‘hagiographic’, ‘internalist’, ‘triumphalist’, even ‘positivist’, to denigrate grand narratives of scientific progress. At one level there is, indeed, an obvious parallel with the attacks on Whig constitutional history in the opening decades of the century. For, as P. B. M. Blaas has shown, those earlier attacks were part and parcel of a more general onslaught in the name of an autonomous, professional and scientific history, on popular, partisan and moralising historiography. Similarly,. . . For post-WWII champions of the newly professionalized history of science the targets were quite different. Above all, they were out to establish a critical distance between the history of science and the teaching and promotion of the sciences. In particular, they were suspicious of the grand celebratory and didactic narratives of scientific discovery and progress that had proliferated in the inter-war years.

More recently, some scholars have argued that Whig history is essential to the history of science. At one level, "the very term `the history of science' has itself profoundly Whiggish implications. One may be reasonably clear what `science' means in the 19th century and most of the 18th century. In the 17th century `science' has very different meaning. For example chemistry is inextricably mixed up with alchemy. Before the 17th century dissecting out such a thing as `science' in anything like the modern sense of the term involves profound distortions. "^[16] Historians' rejection of Whiggishness has been criticized by some scientists for failing to appreciate the temporal depth of scientific research. ^[17]

As teleology

In The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986, see anthropic principle for details) John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler identify Whiggishness (Whiggery) with a teleological principle, of 'convergence' in history to liberal democracy. In Physics and Cosmology, the anthropic principle states that humans should take into account the constraints that human existence imposes on the kind of theoretical John David Barrow FRS (born November 29, 1952, London) is an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia Alabama Prof Teleology ( Greek: telos: end purpose is the philosophical study of design and Purpose. The term "liberal" in "liberal democracy" does not imply that the government of such a democracy must follow the political ideology of ^[18]

In popular culture

Despite their shortcomings as interpretations of the past, Whiggish histories continue to influence popular understandings of political and social development. This persistence reflects the power of dramatic narratives that detail epic struggles for enlightened ideals. Aspects of the Whig interpretation are apparent in films, television, political rhetoric, and even history textbooks. ^[19]

See also

• Anachronism
• Chronological snobbery
• Historian's fallacy
• Historiography
• Precursorism
• Presentism
• Schools of History
• Great man theory
• Ethnocentrism
• Classical liberalism

Notes

External links

• Text of The Whig Interpretation of History
• James A. Hijiya, "Why the West is Lost"
• 2003 article Catholic Whiggery

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