I had a writing professor comment one time that he thought it was interesting that universities and colleges in the Western US put History under Social Sciences (with Sociology, Anthropolgy, Psychology, etc.) where as in the Eastern US they would be in the Humanities (with English, Writing, Art, etc).
Is this true, and indicative the discipline changing over time? My understanding is historians prior to 1960s(ish) were more focused on producing literature on the stories of the past, rather than any sort of scientific analysis (or bringing to light ignores stories).
And, has that change been somewhat uniform? Are there competing ideas of what the discipline should be/should be accomplishing depending on where in the world you are studying? Or has the discipline, on sort of a global level, settled into a shared idea of practice and purpose?
I cannot comment on the US as I am not that familiar with the system over there but there are definitely competing ideas on the aims of history as a discipline. When I studied as an undergraduate, we had a module in our second year that tried to get us to think about this kind of question. The textbook for that module was called Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003). I have been moving increasingly into philosophy in my career recently and have been thinking about the philosophical underpinnings of the discipline. There are some great essays in the volume that consider some of these questions, one being the debate on what history is. At times it has been seen as a science, and there is some credit to this view depending on how you define science. At other times it has been seen more as literature, as you mention. There were a few themes that cropped up regularly though. The German, Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) is credited as developing the methods that shifted history from being the pursuit of amateur gentlemen towards a professional discipline by championing archival research. Another big influence has been Karl Marx. A lot of historians are left-leaning and the whole discipline of social history as opposed to “Great Men” can be seen as linked to the Marxist focus on systems. There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which historical figures are the product of their system and how much agency they have. If anything, the development of post-structuralism has furthered the Marxist argument by acknowledging how we are shaped by culture, language, and society.
So no, there is no real consensus. The degree to which historians are aware of their own historiography and philosophical foundations really vary. I managed to complete and undergraduate and postgraduate degree with top grades without giving it much serious thought and a lot of professional history that I read betrays the same lack of awareness. Having said that, some historians are excellent at it and very reflective. Every subject has its own philosophical foundations and the skill here is not being knowledgeable about subject content, but the ability to ask the right question(s). The kind of history you get will be determined by the kind of questions that you ask. While on some level most historians will want to “seek the truth” about what happened in the past, the way that they approach it and the questions that they will ask will vary.
One example to finish with: military history. You ask if there is a consensus in history generally, but I would say that there probably isn’t even a consensus within the sub-disciplines. A few months ago I was reading a blog by a military historian at King’s College, London (https://www.military-history.org/blog/why-military-history-is-important-2.htm). In the article he raises a number of questions about what the purpose of military history is. These can include: are we learning about how people cope under pressure? Or the tactics of the past in order to perform better in the future? Who is it that is learning military history, the military and political leaders of today and tomorrow? How do your answers to these questions shape your response to the purpose of military history?
For me, I think history is something that people do. We would tell stories of our past regardless of whether or not there was an academic discipline studying it. The stories that we tell shape narratives and inform how we see ourselves. I am British and I saw a lot of this taking place in our media around the Brexit debate. Some people look back and see Britain as a declining world power that needed to join the EU to save itself. Others look back and see joining the EU as a mistake that Brexit will grant us the freedom to be “Great” again. I think the role of historians is to guide these kinds of debates by tearing down the imagined past that gets created in the public conscience and providing us with a more realistic lens through which to see ourselves but we must be honest that this will be shaped by our own experiences and ideologies so there is no objective account.