Herbert Butterfield (October 7, 1900-July 20, 1979) was a British historian and philosopher of history (see philosophy of history) who is remembered chiefly for a slim volume entitled The Whig Interpretation of History 1931. October 7 is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years). ... 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ... July 20 is the 201st day (202nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 164 days remaining. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... The philosophy of history asks at least these questions: what is the proper unit for the study of the human past? the individual, the city or sovereign territory, the civilization, or nothing less than the whole of the species?; what broad patterns can we discern through the study of the... 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ...

Butterfield was born in Oxenhope in Yorkshire, and received his education at the Trade and Grammar School in Keighley. He was awarded a MA by Cambridge University in 1922. Butterfield taught at Princeton University (1924-1925) and at Cambridge from 1928 to 1979. He was Master of Peterhouse (1955-1968), Vice-Chancellor of the University (1959-1961), and Regius Professor (1963--1968). Butterfield served as editor of the Cambridge Historical Journal form 1938 to 1952. He was knighted in 1968. He married Edith Joyce Crawshaw in 1929, and had three children. The University of Cambridge (often called Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. ...

Butterfield's main interests were diplomatic history and historiography. As a Protestant, Butterfield was highly concerned with religious issues, but he did not believe that historians could uncover the hand of God in history. Sometimes referred to as Rankian History, diplomatic history focuses on politics, politicians and other high rulers and views them as being the driving force of continuity and change in history. ... Historiography is the study of the way history is and has been written. ...

In The Whig Interpretation of History, Butterfield defined "whiggish" history as "the tendency of many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present." Whiggishness is a generic term of description for some approaches, in the fields of politics and historiography, supposed to accept or adapt attitudes of the Whig politicians in the past of the United Kingdom. ... Protestantism is a movement within Christianity, representing the splitting away from the Roman Catholic Church during the mid-to-late Renaissance in Europe—a period known as the Protestant Reformation. ... While the Whigs (along with the Tories) are often described as one of the two political parties in late 17th to mid 19th century Great Britain, it is more accurate to describe them as loose political groupings or tendencies. ... It has been suggested that Revolutionary be merged into this article or section. ...

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.

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-seventeenth century into those which remind us of ourselves most and least, or the imagine them as struggling to produce our wonderful selves. They were of course struggling, but not for that.

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'.

Work

• The Historical Novel, 1924.
• The Peace Treaties of Napoleon, 1806-1808, 1929.
• The Whig Interpretation of History, 1931.
• Napoleon, 1939.
• The Statecraft of Machiavelli, 1940.
• The Englishman and His History, 1944.
• Lord Acton, 1948.
• Christianity and History, 1949.
• George III, Lord North and the People, 1779-80, 1949.
• The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800, 1949.
• History and Human Relations, 1951.
• Reconstruction of an Historical Episode: The History of the Enquiry into the Origins of the Seven Years' War, 1951.
• Liberty in the Modern World, 1951.
• Christianity, Diplomacy and War, 1952.
• Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship, 1955.
• George III and the Historians, 1957, revised edition, 1959.
• Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (co-edited with Martin Wright), 1966.

See also

• Whig history

Whig history is a pejorative name given to a view of history that is shared by a number of eighteenth and nineteenth century British writers on historical subjects. ...

References

• Chadwick, Owen "Acton and Butterfield" pages 386-405 from Journal of Ecclessiastical History, volume 38, 1987.
• Coll, Alberto R. The Wisdom of Statecraft: Sir Herbert Butterfiled and the Philosophy of International Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985.
• Elliott, J.H. & H.G. Koenigsberger (editors) The Diversity of History: Essays in Honour of Sir Herbert Butterfield, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970.
• Elton, G.R. "Herbert Butterfield and the Study of History" pages 729-743 from Historical Journal, Volume 27, 1984.
• Thompson, Kennthe W. (editor) Herbert Butterfield: The Ethics of History and Politics, Washington, DC: University Press of American, 1980.