“The Problem of Hyper-specialisation in the Discipline of History”

By David M. Hart

[Created: January, 1986] [Revised: 24 October, 2024]

This is part of a collection of Papers by David M. Hart

It is often said today that academic disciplines have become so narrow and so specialized that communication within them is breaking down and that communication between them has all but disappeared. Comment on this statement with particular regard to your own discipline and set forth what you feel can be done to overcome what is often called the dilemma of specialization.

Introduction

The academic discipline of history has suffered as much as any other from the problem of hyper-specialisation of the past forty odd years. Periodically, new sub-branches of history, such as the new economic history, world-system analysis, black and feminist studies, to mention only a few, have broken off from the historical mainstream to found their own journals and societies. The sheer number of new journals devoted to narrow specialisations makes it impossible for any historian, even with the best of intentions, to keep up with the avalanche of monograms, articles and books.

The reason for this fragmentation of historical studies is quite understandable. New approaches to the study of history are more often than not rejected or at least resisted by the mainstream journals. Quite often the new approach requires a new methodology or a new theory which is not understood or which is opposed outright by the current orthodoxy. This forces the supporters of the "new wave" to set up independent means of propagating their work, announcing meetings and conferences, and reviewing and criticising new work. Only after establishing themselves as a separate group and after they have "proved" themselves by their published work and by the interest others have taken in it do the mainstream journals offer their pages to the "new history" - and not always then.

The consequences of this compartmentalisation and specialisation of historical studies is neither all good nor all bad. The good consequences of specialisation are obvious to anyone who has read Adam Smith on the benefits of the division of labour. It allows scholars to acquire expertise in a field of managable proportions. It also indicates a certain health and vigour, whereby the nostrums of the orthodoxy are challenged and new approaches tried out.

The unfortunate consequences of specialisation in history is the same as that in any other field of academic endeavour. The volume and diversity of published material makes it impossible for the interested scholar to come to terms with anything but a minute fraction of the total amount. The result is that scholars who call themselves "historians" often do not know anything about or care little for the specialised work of their colleagues working in the office next door or across the road. If this is true within the discipline of history it is also true for relationships between the other social sciences, not to mention the completely "foreign" disciples of the hard sciences.

History as a specialised academic discipline

In spite of the considerable benefits to be gained from the academic division of labour it is to be regretted that large sections of the history community are apparently unable to communicate with each other. Apart from other problems of a social and an administrative nature, the communication problem creates what economists have termed the information problem. Just as socialist economies are unable to coordinate their economic affairs in the absence of freely determined prices, historians are unable to best "coordinate" their research and teaching efforts in the absence of continued and serious communication with their colleagues. It is a commonplace to state that research efforts in one field may have profound consequences in another, largely unrelated one. This has been proven in the fields of pure mathematics and theoretical physics but it is none the less true for academic fields which are just as profoundly related - namely, those fields studying the nature and consequences of human action.

The natural interdisciplinary nature of history

That history has succumbed to the problem of excessive specialisation is a tragedy because I believe it of all academic disciplines lends itself most easily to an interdisciplinary approach. Unlike other disciplines which are strictly determined by their subject matter and their methodology, history's field of study involves all of human action. The only restraint is that this action must have taken place some time in the past.

So in fact history must draw upon other disciplines for theoretical insights and methodologies in order to understand the various aspects of human action in the past. For example, sociologists have developed abstract theories about stratification which historians can use to analyse specific instances of social, political, or economic stratification; economists are beginning to understand the theoretical problems of extensive government intervention in the economy which historians will be able to apply to the study of socialist and other interventionist states; political philosophers are developing important theories about the nature of legal spontaneous orders which historians will be able to use to analyse the growth of legal systems which have protected private property and thereby encouraged the market (Great Britain and the United States) and those which did not (Imperial China and Moghul India).

Since history is dependent on the other social sciences for much of its own theory it is surprising that history as a discipline has suffered the same fate as other academic disciplines. One would have thought that historians would have been more aware than most other academics of the natural interdependence of the social sciences (one could even include the hard sciences and technology if the important fields of history of science and technology are included in the general field of historical studies, as I am inclined to do). I do not believe it will be as difficult to overcome the problem of hyperspecialisation in history as it will be for other disciplines such as economics or political science. Historians are already aware, to some extent at least, of how much they draw upon the other social sciences for their theory.

I will discuss some examples of the intersection of history and other academic disciplines which I believe could be used to encourage a more self-consciously interdisciplinary approach to the study of history. It might also inspire non-historians to approach their own discipline in another, less intellectually cramped manner (economists are probably the worst offenders in this regard).

History and Sociology

One of the most fruitful areas from which historians can borrow material is that of sociology. A sociologically-minded history could benefit from the theoretical insights into social structure and conflict which have preoccupied sociologically-minded political theorists since Machiavelli and liberal sociologists since Herbert Spencer and Max Weber. On the other hand, the process might work in the opposite direction with benefits not only to historians but also to the discipline of sociology. An historically-minded sociology could avoid the artificial and sterile abstractness of much of modern American sociology by including the problem of dynamic change (as formulated by historians) and unintended consequences (as developed by the Austrian school of economics).

A specific example of the way in which sociological theories could assist the historian is the problem of obedience to authority. It is not always clear why individuals suppress their privately held moral principles in order to transfer responsibility for decision-making into the hands of political or military office-holders. Why normally morally responsible individuals capitulate to authority, especially during periods of warfare, is a major problem for historians of the twentieth century. The insights of sociologists in the Weberian tradition (as well as psychologists) have much to offer historians working in this area.

Another historical problem which is susceptible to sociological analysis is that of the rise of the modern nation state and the related problem of the conflict of competing groups for control of state power. There already exists a rich tradition of socio-historical analysis from which a modern historian can draw. Otto Hintze, Herbert Spencer, and the Austrian and Italian "realist" schools of sociological analysis have done the most interesting work in this field. An increasing number of modern works on the state are using the insights of this tradition and it would not take too much effort to use the growing interest in this approach to promote the classical liberal interpretation of the state and class analysis.

History, literature, and art

A common complaint of high school and even some university students who are forced to study history as part of their overall program is that the modern approach to history is dull and uninteresting. The traditional emphasis on aristocratic and monarchical élites and the more recent emphasis on demographic and economic statistics share the same problem of remoteness from the student and his nor her concerns. Some attempts to make historical study more relevant to students have resulted in courses which are less academically demanding or which are too much the product of current political movements. An approach to history which is both more personal (and hence of more interest to students) and which retains its critical rigour is that of combining literary and historical themes.

Students appreciate the fact that there is no substitute for reading narrative political histories or detailed economic or social studies of the period in question. But what literary works provide which pure history does not is a view of events from the position of the actor rather than from the more distant and possibly more detached observer. This is true in the case of warfare where no amount of narrative or economic analysis can bring out the true horror and suffering of modern war. Only the personal accounts written in the form of diaries, letters or thinly disguised fiction can really engage the reader on an emotional level. [1]

Warfare is not the only historical topic which can be approached through the medium of literature. The catastrophe of communism is best understood by means of dissident Eastern European writers. An economic analysis of the housing shortage or a sociological essay on the privileged "new class" in the Soviet Union could not do any better than Vladimir Voinovich's bitter and amusing The Ivankiad in making the tyranny of Soviet rule clear to the student. [2]

Revolution can also be studied in this manner. A less well-known but extremely interesting and useful analysis of revolution can be made with the assistance of art historians. The consequences of radical political and social change percolate right through a culture and even change the manner in which artists perceive the world around them. If literature can make history personal then art can make history visual. In the case of the French Revolution the change in political climate can be measured by the change in Goya's artistic representations of Spanish life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The absurdities and tyrannies of the ancien régime were wickedly ridiculed by his pen and brush, as was the terror of Napoleon's invasion of Spain and the abuses which resulted from it. There is no better depiction of the consequences of war for the common person than Goya's Los Desastres de La Guerra. [3]

The combination of history with literary and art criticism is an excellent example of the benefits of interdisciplinary studies. The benefits include a better appreciation of the personal aspect of historical events, a way of attracting more students to the study of history, as well as adding a richer and more individual approach to historical problems.

History and law

The study of legal institutions and ideas from an historical perspective is undergoing a revival after an eclipse, at least in Anglo-American circles, of some decades. Not since the great liberal legal historians, Maitland and Dicey, did their great work in the late nineteenth century has legal history enjoyed such a vogue. Hayek has shown the importance of understanding the legal system of a free society as a spontaneous order which evolves over time. Hintze and Weber have bequeathed a tradition in German speaking countries of rich institutional analyses of legal systems. This approach is partly sociological and partly historical but it does lack the intellectual dimension. A truly interdisciplinary approach would attempt to link the ideas behind legal theories with the institutions to which they give rise. An interesting case could be made that ideas about individual sovereignty and natural property rights both created liberal political and legal institutions as well as were molded by them. The legal revolution that accompanied the French Revolution was a product of the radical Enlightenment which stressed ideas of property and limited state power. The result was a codification of these principles in the short-lived "Declaration of the Rights of Man" in France and the more successful American Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. [4]

Few historians are equipped to give students an adequate legal dimension to the study of history. This is a weakness which must be rectified if the principles of a free society are to become current amongst intellectuals. The legal aspect is vital for two reason. Firstly, because it has been by means of the legal system that the state has extended its political and economic powers to the extent it has. Historians need to explain how this came about, what ideas were behind the new legal principles which justified this action by the state, and how illiberal legal concepts were propagated. Secondly, historians, political philosophers, and legal theorists need to understand what is required for the proper functioning of a free market society and how law has made this possible in the past (even if only in part). The intellectual benefits of a marriage between law and history are hard to judge from this point in time but I wager that it will be the most promising and rewarding of all the interdisciplinary approaches to history which I have discussed in this paper.

Conclusion

If the richness of an interdisciplinary approach to history is as great as I have claimed, why is it then that so few historians have done the kind of work I have advocated? The prime reason is that few historians are equipped with the intellectual framework to enable them to do so. Marxists are aware of the importance of interdisciplinary work and it is they who have done the most to encourage interdisciplinary work. Classical liberals, like many Marxists, have a world view which encourages this combination of related fields of inquiry. As liberal ideas spread I am convinced that liberal interdisciplinary studies will appear and thus begin to break down the intellectual isolation of too many of our academic disciplines. I hope to be able to make a small contribution to this process with my work in modern European history and perhaps encourage another generation of students to do the vast amount of work which needs to be done if classical liberal ideas are to have any practical and long-term influence.

Endnotes↩

[1] An excellent recent work which shows the power of literature to reveal historical information - in this case the mindsets of the German and French people before and during the Second World War - is Frederick J. Harris, Encounters with Darkness. French and German Writers on World War II (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

[2] This is published by Penguin as is The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. His collection of essays In Plain Russian (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1979) continue the political theme of life under communist rule.

[3] On Goya, Gwyn A. Williams, Goya and the Impossible Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). On the revolutionary period in general, Ronald Paulson, Representations of Revolution 1789-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).

[4] See the collection of essays in Rechtsphilosophie der Aufklärung ed. Reinhard Brandt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982) and the stimulating overview of western legal development by Marshall Berman Law and Revolution.