American historians have long prided themselves on a distinctive approach: let the facts speak for themselves. While European colleagues debated Marxism, structuralism, and various theoretical frameworks, American historians claimed to simply do the hard work of archival research without ideological baggage.

This pragmatic tradition produced extraordinary detailed scholarship. It also created a peculiar blindspot. By refusing to engage explicitly with theory, American historiography didn't eliminate theoretical assumptions—it merely buried them beneath claims of objectivity and common sense.

Understanding this tradition matters because hidden assumptions shape conclusions more powerfully than acknowledged ones. The American case reveals how every historical interpretation rests on theoretical foundations, whether historians admit it or not.

The first generation of professional American historians—Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Vernon Parrington—established a template that would define the field for decades. They combined exhaustive archival research with implicit commitments to social reform, believing that uncovering historical truths would naturally advance democratic progress.

Turner's frontier thesis exemplified this approach. Rather than citing European theorists, he claimed to derive his interpretation directly from census data and western expansion patterns. The thesis appeared as empirical discovery rather than theoretical argument. Yet Turner embedded profound assumptions about American exceptionalism, the relationship between environment and character, and the nature of democratic development.

Beard pushed further with An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, arguing that the Founders' economic interests shaped the document's creation. He presented this as documentary revelation, not Marxist analysis—though his framework clearly echoed economic determinism. By avoiding explicit theoretical language, Beard made his interpretation seem like straightforward fact-finding.

This Progressive model created lasting patterns. American historians learned to present interpretive frameworks as discoveries emerging from evidence. They developed sophisticated research methods while remaining suspicious of systematic theory. The result was scholarship that appeared objective precisely because its theoretical foundations remained unexamined.

Takeaway

Presenting interpretation as pure empirical discovery doesn't eliminate theoretical frameworks—it conceals them, making assumptions harder to identify and challenge.

By the 1950s, a new generation rejected Progressive conflict-focused history in favor of emphasizing American unity and shared values. Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, and Louis Hartz argued that Americans had always agreed on fundamental liberal principles. Class conflict was a European phenomenon; America's story was consensus.

This shift didn't happen in an intellectual vacuum. Cold War anxieties about communist ideology and un-American activities created powerful incentives to emphasize national unity over internal divisions. The Consensus historians rarely acknowledged these contemporary pressures explicitly. They presented their reinterpretations as superior readings of the evidence.

Hofstadter's work particularly reveals the pattern. His Age of Reform recast Progressive-era movements as status anxiety rather than genuine class conflict. Populists became irrational conspiracy theorists rather than rational economic actors. The interpretation served Cold War liberalism's need to distinguish American reform from dangerous radicalism—all while appearing as neutral historical analysis.

The Consensus School demonstrated how present concerns inevitably shape past interpretations. These historians genuinely believed they were correcting Progressive excesses and achieving greater objectivity. They couldn't see how their own moment's ideological pressures structured their conclusions, precisely because they rejected the theoretical self-awareness that might have revealed these influences.

Takeaway

Historical interpretation always reflects contemporary concerns—the question isn't whether present shapes past, but whether historians acknowledge this influence or pretend to transcend it.

The American tradition's deepest irony is that rejecting theory is itself a theoretical position. The claim that historians should avoid explicit frameworks and let evidence speak assumes that facts are self-interpreting, that trained scholars can achieve neutrality, and that common sense provides adequate analytical tools.

These assumptions constitute a philosophy of historical knowledge—one that happened to align conveniently with American pragmatism and suspicion of European intellectualism. By refusing to name their theoretical commitments, American historians made those commitments invisible and therefore immune to criticism.

Consider what this anti-theory stance actually requires believing: that selecting which questions to ask doesn't shape answers; that categorizing evidence involves no interpretive choices; that narrative structures are neutral containers rather than meaning-making devices. Each assumption is debatable, yet the pragmatic tradition treated them as obvious.

When theoretical challenges finally arrived—from social history, women's history, and cultural studies in the 1960s and 1970s—the American tradition's defenders often couldn't articulate what they were defending. They had built sophisticated research practices on foundations they'd never examined. The theory wars that followed revealed not just intellectual disagreements but fundamentally different understandings of what historical knowledge could be.

Takeaway

Every historian operates with theoretical assumptions—the choice isn't between theory and no theory, but between examined and unexamined frameworks.

The American pragmatic tradition produced genuinely valuable scholarship. Its emphasis on archival depth, evidential standards, and accessible writing created historical works of lasting importance. These achievements deserve recognition.

Yet the tradition's blindspot remains instructive. By treating theory as optional rather than inevitable, American historians couldn't critically examine the frameworks shaping their interpretations. Their objectivity claims concealed rather than eliminated perspective.

For contemporary historians, the lesson isn't to abandon empirical rigor for theoretical abstraction. It's to recognize that every historical interpretation rests on theoretical foundations—and that acknowledging those foundations is the beginning of genuine scholarly honesty.