David C. Douglas Quotes (1898-1982)

“I claim for students of history that their study – if properly conducted – can strip the mind of illusions, leading them from heady abstraction back to men and women in their infinite diversity – warning them, by reference to actuality, against this or that ideology which oversimplifies the past under a single formula or promises the millenium the day after tomorrow.”

“The search for wisdom in precedent flourished as if naturally among a people whom foreign observers at a later date have praised especially for its reliance upon tradition rather than upon those wide general theories which claim universal validity.”

“He was harsh and rapacious, personally pious, courageous in adversity, and indomitably tenacious of purpose. He could suit his policy to opportunity; but his will was inflexible, and his energy was untiring.”

“The prime cause of Green's popularity and influence was his originality and it is the measure of his achievement that we are now in danger of forgetting this. He reconstructed in a single volume the development of a nation, taking cognizance not only of the political but also of the social, the cultural and the religious aspects of its life. His whole method was startlingly novel when he wrote; and it may be remarked that no one has since accomplished on the same scale the same task for this or, indeed, for any other nation. When Green found it necessary to remark: "As you see in my own Wee Book, I think moral and intellectual facts as much facts for the historian as military facts," he uttered what has now become a truism. The doctrine was of course not new, but Green was the first resolutely to apply it to the general history of a great nation.”

“[I]t may be doubted whether any work of comparable importance in English historical literature has ever been more easy to criticize than Freeman's Norman Conquest. It was in Green's phrase "far too rhetorical and diffuse", and yet despite its excessive length, it concentrated too exclusively upon strictly political events. Nor was the treatment of the authorities itself comprehensive, so that a generation which has been taught to value the record sources of history, and which pays perhaps even an excessive reverence to material which has not yet been printed, is inevitably sceptical of an historian who neglected records, who misinterpreted Domesday Book, and who positively boasted his contempt for manuscripts. Freeman was, in fact, more erudite than critical, and even the narrative sources which were the sure foundation of his work were sometimes by him mishandled. Generally, as J. R. Green remarked, he tended to be unjust to the Norman writers, but otherwise he often gives the impression of giving equal credence to all his authorities and of blending together their contradictory accounts into an unreal synthesis. In this way his account of the crisis of 1051–2 is, for instance, incomprehensibly confused. It must, moreover, be added that, having made up his mind, he could show most obstinate bias towards his sources, selecting only those which could best illustrate his point of view... Freeman's Norman Conquest was, in short, magisterial without being definitive.”

“No one knows more than Douglas about the early history of Normandy and here we have a magisterial survey of the duchy, both before and after the Conquest. No one leads more confidently through the genealogical maze and uses family connections to better effect.”