Michael Strutt wrote:

>A friend was arguing with an historian, trained in folklore, who states
>that only historians are objective enough to study history because they
>do not have any theoretical bias.

Sorry, but that just isn't so.

The practice of history is loaded with theoretical baggage, perhaps more
than anthropology.

The myth of an "objective" historical profession grew out of
nineteenth-century romanticism, and it didn't work. In every generation, a
new wave of historical theorists posits a "system" that will eradicate the
previous generation's bias. Read Beard, Turner, Ranke or Braudel.

The history profession is so bogged down by theoretical bias that the best
authors in the field aren't historians at all. Which histories are
influential? Usually, they are  written by journalists, such as Shirer or
Churchill.

By the way, I am a recovering historian.

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