Conjectural history facts for kids

Conjectural history is a type of historiography, which means a way of writing history. It was first described in the 1790s by a Scottish thinker named Dugald Stewart. He called it "theoretical or conjectural history." This approach was popular among historians and early social scientists during the Scottish Enlightenment.

Stewart believed that conjectural history allowed people to guess about the causes of events. It did this by suggesting natural reasons that could have led to certain outcomes. This idea was similar to the French term histoire raisonnée and David Hume's use of "natural history" in his book The Natural History of Religion. Conjectural history was also related to "philosophical history." However, it focused more on the early history of humans, using logical guesses rather than relying heavily on actual evidence.

This type of history was very different from the narrative history written by people like Edward Gibbon and William Robertson at the time. Stewart defended conjectural history, saying it was more useful for understanding all of humankind. He felt this was true even if it meant less detailed proof. It wasn't about political stories or public life. Instead, it saw itself as a "moral science" that investigated human behavior.

For Stewart, Adam Smith's Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was a key example of this approach. To make conjectural history work, people had to assume that human nature was mostly the same everywhere. Stewart called this the "capacities of the human mind."

Conjectural history was seen as a main part of the idea of progress in Scottish philosophical history. Historian J.G.A. Pocock noted that Scottish conjectural history was important for Gibbon's work. By the 1780s, some European historians started using a different method. They preferred to gather facts and then draw conclusions (an inductive method). This was unlike the pure guesswork of conjectural history. Later, in the development of anthropology and archaeology, people moved away from conjectural history. This led to the growth of culture history.

Early Ideas About Society

The idea that societies develop in different stages wasn't new. However, social thinking was changing in Early Modern Europe. People started to think more about civil society, which includes how people behave in groups and how society is organized.

Models of "Savage" Life

Historian Margaret Hodgen wrote about how "conjectural series" were often used to explain history in the Early Modern period. The idea of the great chain of being was a static, unchanging view of the world. "Stage series" had roots in ancient ideas. These could include ideas of progress or even decline.

Hodgen explained that over time, people started to combine these ideas. They imagined a "savage" person as the first step in these guessed-at stages of human culture.

Early Natural History

The Natural History by Pliny the Elder was an ancient Roman encyclopedia. But "natural history" had different meanings in the Early Modern period. One important meaning was the Baconian natural history. This was about systematically collecting facts and observations about nature. This kind of natural history was different from natural philosophy, which focused on theories.

Histoire raisonnée

Histoire raisonnée was a style of historical writing that grew in France in the 1600s. It focused on individuals within their social groups. It also described culture and customs as key parts of history. This style came from Renaissance humanism, which looked to ancient Roman and Greek models. But histoire raisonnée also highlighted social issues. It tried to explain why individuals acted the way they did. With Géraud de Cordemoy, historians became interested in how cause and effect played a role in historical change. This was different from the humanist idea that people's lives were controlled by Fortune (luck).

Stadial History

Today, we often call this stadial history. This means discussing the different stages of society using theoretical ideas. You can read more about this in sociocultural evolution#Stadial theory. The idea of stadial theory is often linked to the jurist Samuel Pufendorf. Grotius had already used conjectural history to discuss Aquinas's ideas on private property.

So, some basic conjectural history about human civilization was discussed in the 1600s. Later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau disagreed with the idea of a "state of nature." He debated with Count Buffon about how civilization developed. The Scottish thinkers then took this theory to a new level. They focused on humans and how they changed nature. They also emphasized what a typical early society might have been like. They even used information from reports about Native Americans as valid evidence.

Conjectural Histories of Language

Adam Smith gave lectures on rhetoric starting in 1748. In these, he presented a speculative history of language. He said he was inspired by a 1747 work by Gabriel Girard. Smith was interested in how we become aware of literary style. This is the example that Dugald Stewart used when he created the term "conjectural history."

At the time, people would have recognized ideas from the Bible and classical writers like Lucretius. Today, we think Smith was also influenced by Montesquieu's ideas on law and government. Smith's theory on language and how it changed over time is seen as typical of his historical approach. Some even believe it was the basis for his later famous work on political economy. However, some, like David Raphael, have pointed out that the term "conjectural history" might not fit all of Smith's work.

Lord Monboddo, on the other hand, wrote a long conjectural history of language. He did this because he focused on the history of manners (social customs). Around 1740, William Warburton suggested a stage-by-stage conjectural history of writing. He did this in his book Divine Legation of Moses, which supported biblical authority. This work was later translated into French as Essai sur les hiéroglyphes des Égyptiens. Warburton believed that writing moved from pictograms (picture symbols) to alphabets. He thought language use similarly moved from gestures to figures of speech.

The Four Stages Theory

The term "conjectural history" wasn't widely accepted in Stewart's time. Instead, there was a common four stages theory of society. These stages were:

1. Hunting: People lived by hunting animals and gathering plants.
2. Pasturage: People started to herd animals.
3. Agriculture: People began farming and growing crops.
4. Commerce: People traded goods and services.

This ladder-like order was seen as a strict, straight line of development. It was believed that societies always moved forward in this way. This idea is called unilineal evolution. There was also some economic determinism. This means people thought that how a society got its food greatly affected its social life. The stages were also supposed to show moral progress, as well as economic growth. Both French and Scottish Enlightenment writers believed in this pattern.

The invention of this type of theory (with three or four stages) is credited to several European writers from the 1750s onwards. These include Adam Smith, Turgot, and Vico. In Scotland, it appeared in works from 1758 by David Dalrymple and Lord Kames. Some argue their source was Smith's lectures on jurisprudence (the theory of law) in Edinburgh. In France, it was published around the same time by Claude Pierre Goujet, Claude Adrien Helvétius, and François Quesnay. Smith's "natural progress of opulence" is a very similar idea.

Key Works

Besides Adam Smith, other important Scottish writers in conjectural history included Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Lord Kames, John Millar, and Lord Monboddo. They wrote from the late 1750s to the late 1770s. Smith, Kames, and Millar generally stuck to the four-stage theory. Monboddo's stage-based history was more complex and much more debated. He even included primates and feral children in his ideas. Robertson, in his History of America, moved between telling a story and using conjectural history.

Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

In this book, Ferguson tried to clearly connect the hunter stage with what was called the "barbarian" or "savage" stage. He was very aware that this whole system had many tensions within human possibilities. He argued against the idea of a single foundation story for societies, like those found in classical history. Instead, he suggested that unintended consequences might have more to do with how a society was formed than a deliberate law-giver.

John Millar, Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1771)

Millar argued that each of the four stages of society had its own "system of manners" (social customs). He also discussed how freedom advanced and spoke out against slavery. As property became more complicated, government also became more complex. This work shows how conjectural history was connected to the experimental moral philosophy of Thomas Reid and George Turnbull.

Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man (1774)

Lord Kames has been called the leader of Scottish conjectural history. He had objections, which he wrote about, to both Rousseau and Montesquieu's approaches. He felt they reduced the importance of human nature, which he believed was not constant but the very goal of investigation. The connection was that conjectural history was meant to be a way to discuss natural law. Kames encouraged Isaak Iselin to write Ueber die Geschichte der Menschheit (1764), which is also a conjectural history.

The Sketches was a collection of essays on social, cultural, and political topics. In it, Kames gathered ethnographic and other information. He put together a long chapter specifically as a "history of women." Kames was an early polygenist, meaning he believed different human races had separate origins. Or, he was a skeptical environmental monogenist, believing all humans came from one origin but were changed by their environment. In any case, he argued his ideas could fit with scriptural ethnography (history based on the Bible), using the story of the Tower of Babel.

Kames said he had collected materials for a history for 30 years. However, his finished work was not very organized. His plan for conjectural history included the idea that a providential order (God's plan) allowed historians to write even without all the facts. A German translation of his work appeared in 1774.

Later Ideas

Mainstream conjectural and philosophical history, in the Scottish style, mostly faded away by the 1790s. Books went out of print. Younger writers like John Adams, William Alexander, and John Logan didn't manage to refresh these ideas. For example, Alexander's History of Women (1779) was criticized as shallow. Dugald Stewart's description of conjectural history was published in 1794. Some historians, like John Burrow, believe Stewart wanted to separate Adam Smith from radical political ideas of the time.

When stadial theory appeared in later authors, its original meaning was sometimes changed. Some historians say that James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Auguste Comte were heirs to this tradition. Others argue that the historical and sociological insights of the Scots were lost in Britain.

Relationship to Antiquarianism

In the 1700s, "conjectural argument" had a bad reputation among British antiquarians. Antiquarians were people who studied ancient things and history. They preferred a strict, fact-based approach, like that used by Richard Gough and James Douglas.

However, the ideas of stadial theory were quite welcome. While the Scottish school made them popular, they didn't seem completely new. They fit with earlier ideas about natural law and civic humanism. The urban history written by John Trussel was an earlier example. The discussion of how the feudal system broke down was also a big interest for antiquarians. The stadial history was embraced by Thomas Pownall.

Conjectural History of Peoples

In 1798, Charles Athanase Walckenaer took the four-stage theory and added a fifth stage. He divided "hunting" into "gathering" followed by a pure hunting stage. This was an effort to classify the world's peoples by their level of development. Early anthropology in the 1800s continued to assume that finding the origins of civilization and using unilineal evolution were good ways to study societies. It was also widely believed that current "peoples" could offer a look into the past. These approaches were seen in the work of Lewis Henry Morgan. Eventually, in the 1900s, fieldwork and structural functionalism led to a rejection of this whole way of thinking.