Herbert Butterfield

Herbert Butterfield
Born 7 October 1900
Oxenhope, Yorkshire
Died 20 July 1979
Sawston, Cambridgeshire
Alma mater Peterhouse, Cambridge
Notable work The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
Origins of Modern Science (1949)
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School British historiography
Institutions Peterhouse, Cambridge
Main interests
 History of science
Notable ideas
 Whig history

Sir Herbert Butterfield (7 October 1900 – 20 July 1979) was Regius Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.[2] As a British historian and philosopher of history, he is remembered chiefly for two books, a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and his Origins of Modern Science (1949). Over the course of his career, Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past. Butterfield was a devout Christian and reflected at length on Christian influences in historical perspectives.

Butterfield thought that individual personalities were more important than great systems of government or economics in historical study. His Christian beliefs in personal sin, salvation, and providence heavily influenced his writings, a fact he freely admitted. At the same time, Butterfield's early works emphasized the limits of a historian's moral conclusions: "If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance."

Biography

Butterfield was born in Oxenhope in Yorkshire and was raised a devout Methodist, which he remained for life. Despite a low-class upbringing, receiving his education at the Trade and Grammar School in Keighley, in 1919, he won a scholarship to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1922, followed by an MA four years later. Butterfield was a fellow at Cambridge in 1928-79, and in the 1950s, he was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was Master of Peterhouse (1955–1968), Vice-Chancellor of the University (1959–1961), and Regius Professor of Modern History (1963—1968). Butterfield served as editor of the Cambridge Historical Journal from 1938 to 1955. He was knighted in 1968.[3] He married Edith Joyce Crawshaw in 1929 and had three children.

Work

Butterfield's main interests were historiography, the history of science, 18th century constitutional history, Christianity and history as well as the theory of international politics.[4] He delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1965. As a deeply religious Protestant, Butterfield was highly concerned with religious issues, but he did not believe that historians could uncover the hand of God in history. At the height of the Cold War, he warned that conflicts between self-righteous value systems could be catastrophic:

The greatest menace to our civilization is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins of the other give it pretext for still deeper hatred.[5]

The Whig Interpretation of History

Butterfield's 1931 book, The Whig Interpretation of History, became a classic for history students and is still read today.[6]

He had in mind especially the historians of his own country, but his criticism of the retroactive creation of a line of progression toward the glorious present can be and has subsequently been applied more generally. A given "Whig interpretation of history" is now a general label applied to various historical interpretations.

He found Whiggish history objectionable because it warps the past to see it in terms of the issues of the present to squeeze the contending forces of, say, the mid-17th century into those that remind us of ourselves most and least, or to imagine them as struggling to produce our wonderful selves. They were of course struggling, but not for that. Butterfield argued that the historian must seek the ability to see events as they were perceived by those who lived through them.

Butterfield wrote that "Whiggishness" is too handy a "rule of thumb... by which the historian can select and reject, and can make his points of emphasis".[7]

He also wrote about how simple pick-and-choose history totally misses the boat: "Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research. History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present."[8]

In 1944, Butterfield wrote The Englishman and His History and he stated:

We are all of us exultant and unrepentant whigs. Those who, perhaps in the misguided austerity of youth, wish to drive out that whig interpretation, (that particular thesis which controls our abridgment of English history,) are sweeping a room which humanly speaking cannot long remain empty. They are opening the door for seven devils which, precisely because they are newcomers, are bound to be worse than the first. We, on the other hand, will not dream of wishing it away, but will rejoice in an interpretation of the past which has grown up with us, has grown up with the history itself, and has helped to make the history... we must congratulate ourselves that our 17th-century forefathers... did not resurrect and fasten upon us the authentic middle ages... in England we made peace with our middle ages by misconstruing them; and, therefore, we may say that “wrong” history was one of our assets. The whig interpretation came at exactly the crucial moment and, whatever it may have done to our history, it had a wonderful effect on English politics... in every Englishman there is hidden something of a whig that seems to tug at the heart-strings.[9]

Christianity and History

Butterfield's 1949 book Christianity and History, asks if history provides answers to the meaning of life, answering in the negative: [10]

Prizes and accolades

In 1922, Butterfield was awarded the University Member's Prize for English Essay, writing on the subject of English novelist Charles Dickens and the way in which the author straddled the fields of history and literature.

In 1923, Butterfield won the Le Bas Prize for his first publication, The Historical Novel; the work was published in 1924.[11]

Also in 1924, Butterfield won the Prince Consort Prize for a work on the problem of peace in Europe between 1806 and 1808. At the same time, he was given the Seeley Medal.[12]

Bibliography

Notes

  1. ↑ John D. Fair, Harold Temperley: A Scholar and Romantic in the Public Realm, University of Delaware Press, 1992, p. 11.
  2. ↑ Haslam, Jonathan (2011-07-15). "The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield by Michael Bentley – review". Guardian. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  3. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 44600. p. 6299. 31 May 1968. Retrieved 2009-07-04.
  4. ↑ Gifford Lectures – Biography of Butterfield by Dr Brannon Hancock
  5. ↑ Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1952)
  6. ↑ William Cronon, “Two Cheers for the Whig Interpretation of History” (American Historical Association, September 2012) online at https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2012/two-cheers-for-the-whig-interpretation-of-history.
  7. ↑ Butterfield 1931, p. 10.
  8. ↑ http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/03/whig-history-at-eighty
  9. ↑ Herbert Butterfield, The Englishman and His History (Cambridge University Press, 1944), pp. 1-4, p. 73.
  10. ↑ Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (London: Bell, 1949) 88-89, 130. There have been reprints and revisions in 1950, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1964, 1967 and 3009.
  11. ↑ The historical novel: an essay. Google Books. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  12. ↑ McIntire, C.T. (2008). Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter. Yale University Press. pp. 29–36. ISBN 0300130082. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  13. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1929-01-01). The Peace Tactics of Napoleon, 1806-1808. The University Press.
  14. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1965-01-01). The Whig Interpretation of History. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393003185.
  15. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1939-01-01). Napoleon. Duckworth.
  16. ↑ books.google.com
  17. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1970-01-01). The Englishman and His History. Archon Books.
  18. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1948-01-01). Lord Acton. Historical Assn.
  19. ↑ http://rootx.com/i/the-origins-of-modern-science-1300-1800/
  20. ↑ Butterfield, Sir Herbert (1951-01-01). History and human relations. Macmillan.
  21. ↑ McIntire, C. T. (2008-10-01). Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300130082.
  22. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1951-01-01). The Reconstruction of an Historical Episode: The History of the Enquiry Into the Origins of the Seven Years' War : Being the Eighteenth Lecture on the David Murray Foundation in the University of Glasgow Delivered on 20th April, 1951. Jackson.
  23. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1952-01-01). Liberty in the modern world. Ryerson Press.
  24. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1952-01-01). Christianity in European History. Collins.
  25. ↑ Butterfield, Sir Herbert (1953-01-01). Christianity, diplomacy and war. Abingdon-Cokesbury Press.
  26. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1955-01-01). Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship. CUP Archive.
  27. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1957-01-01). George III and the historians. Collins.
  28. ↑ Butterfield, Herbert (1981-08-01). The Origins of History. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465053445.

References

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Herbert Butterfield
Academic offices
Preceded by
Paul Cairn Vellacott		 Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge
1955–1968 		Succeeded by
John Charles Burkill
Preceded by
Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian		 Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
1959–1961 		Succeeded by
Ivor Jennings
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