Actions and Events
There are many justifications for the study of history. One of the most important of these is that it enables us to explain things that happened in the past. Surprisingly perhaps, methods of historical explanation are not very well understood. The National Curriculum talks about "explaining the main causes and consequences of the events studied" and most text books simply follow what they think this means by providing snippets of information from which pupils can extract the causes of an event - sometimes dividing these between ‘short-term’ and ‘longer-term’. This approach may satisfy the requirements of the Attainment Target, but it bears little resemblance to the activity of historical explanation.
For example, the approach makes no distinction between what is being explained - is it an action or an event? If it is an event, then it is correct to talk about ‘causes', but if it is an action, we need to look for 'reasons' - and methods of interpreting reasons are not quite the same as those for interpreting causes. However, both approaches share some common ground, as we shall see later.
Let’s look at some examples to illustrate different kinds of explanation:
| Why did Chamberlain sign the Munich Agreement? |
 |
| Why did Custer attack the Sioux at Little Big Horn? |
|
| Why did Henry VIII break from Rome? |
|
| |
|
| What were the causes of World War I? |
 |
| Why was Charles I executed? |
|
| Why was the Armada defeated? |
|
Explaining Actions
The basic question to ask of any action is: "What was the actor - ie. the person carrying out the action - trying to achieve?" Or to put it another way, "What were his/her intentions, given what he/she knew at the time?"
The last part of the question is particularly important. In order to explain why an action was taken, it is first necessary to try to see the situation or problem as the actor might have seen it. As historians, we can still make a judgement about whether the action was the right one or not, but in doing this we have to remember the simple fact that the actor could not see into the future.
How do we go about "seeing the problem as the actor might have seen it’? This is not easy. It involves, for example:
- Knowing what happened
- Understanding of ideas, beliefs and attitudes that were typical of the time - ie. how the person would have expected (or was expected by others) to behave in that situation
- Estimation of the kind of information immediately available (or not available) to the person carrying out the action
- Assessment of how the person had acted in similar situations
- Awareness of a wider context of events, in order to understand what was at stake
- Combining all of these to arrive at an explanation of the action
Why did Jellicoe Turn Away at the Battle of Jutland?
This question requires us to explain an action - that of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Commander of the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, the only major sea battle of the First World War. In order to do this, we need access to the kind of information suggested earlier. Therefore, we will be investigating:
- A description of what happened
- Information about the beliefs and attitude of Jellicoe and others about the role of the Royal Navy and about how sea battles should be fought
- The amount and quality of information available to Jellicoe before, during and after the battle
- The wider context - pressures acting upon Jellicoe in the moments leading up to his decision to ’turn away’ from the German torpedoes.
Further Questions to Ask
- What were Jellicoe’s intentions when he set out to meet the German High Seas Fleet?
- Why was it said of Jellicoe that he was the only commander on either side who could lose the war (not just the battle) in an afternoon?
- Why did Jellicoe turn the British Grand Fleet away from the German High Seas Fleet?
- What other action could he have taken? Why did he not do so?
- Why did Jellicoe allow the German High Seas Fleet to escape?
|
