Pluralism in Historiography: A Case Study of Case Studies

In history the same historical episodes can be reconstructed from multiple perspectives, leading to different interpretations and evaluations of the same events, and sometimes even to different factual claims. In this paper, I analyze what I call “historiographical pluralism”—situations of conflict between different case studies of the same historical episodes. I address two interrelated questions: First, which features of historical reconstruction and representation give rise to such conflicts? Second, can we assess rival historical case studies and decide between them, thus restricting historiographical pluralism? As an answer to the first question, I highlight the selective and theory-laden character of historical representation and argue that the narrative dimension of historiography is central for the knowledge that a historical case study can convey. I then go on to analyze how—in practice—disagreement about historical facts emerges. I discuss four case studies paired around two historical episodes and show that conflicts arise from the selective, theory-laden, and narrative aspects of historical methodologies. The second question I answer by discussing different criteria for assessing historical accounts. I note a dilemma in the evaluation of historical reconstructions. On the one hand, there exist neutral and almost universally accepted evaluation criteria. But these criteria are weak and cannot always decide between conflicting accounts of the same episodes. On the other hand, there are stronger methodological criteria. Alas, they are often not neutral with respect to the substantial theoretical issues at stake in situations of conflict between different historical reconstructions. I conclude that because of this dilemma, we have to accept some degree of pluralism in historiography.