What I mean to ask is — Is it factually incorrect? If so, in what sense? is it incomplete, and if so is that due to the unavailability of certain information about Rome during Gibbon’s lifetime or did he deliberately omit certain details? If so, what’s missing? Or, is it just that the opinions, analyses and worldview that Gibbon presents is currently out of vogue with historians?
On the latter point, I don’t really think that’s a valid reason for dismissing the work. For instance, one can firmly disagree with the outlook of and conclusions drawn by von Ranke, Freeman or Collingwood whilst still recognising the immense value of their works on Early Modern Prussia, the Norman Conquest or Roman Britain respectively.
Also, I have the same question with regards to Arnold Toynbee’s ‘A Study of History’, unlike Gibbon’s Decline and Fall I haven’t read it but one of my lecturers at university went on and on about, recommending that we all read it and saying that if she could base entire courses out of it she would, which is quite an endorsement. Personally I have mixed feelings about Toynbee, his survey of Hellenism is one my favourites but his works on Germany especially feel more like polemic and propaganda than anything resembling academic research, and some other works of his like the essays in ‘The New Europe’ and ‘Civilization on Trial’ and his BBC Reith lecture ‘The West and the Rest’ as something in between the two.
Hi,
While you wait for answer that touches on all of your points, you may be interested in this FAQ section regarding Gibbon. You may also be interested in this previously answered question, which doesn't appear in the FAQ.
I did answer a similar question about Toynbee here recently.
Yes, like you say, some earlier historians work sometimes doesn't get enough attention. Collingwood is more famous now for his writings on the philosophy of history, but he actually got his hands dirty also doing archaeological digs at Roman Britain sites. The reason that doesn't get as much attention as his work in philosophy is that it was published,, re-interpreted, augmented with yet more data from other digs, all re-interpreted again.... Yes, the data is still there, and he ought to get credit for it: but his own accounts of it are now outdated. Now, there are examples of scholars who did so much basic research in an area that people still use them: S. R. Gardiner did a meticulous massive narrative history of the English Civil War that's still important and commonly used. Theodor Momsen initiated a search for and a compilation of Roman inscriptions from monuments, stones, etc all over Europe, and though it's over 100 years old, its 15 volumes are still used.
The problem comes, like you might have noticed, when somebody looks at a lot of research, sees a pattern in it, and feels they can start a lecture with "history teaches us". That's much harder. There's the danger of confirmation bias, seeing things you really would like to see in the data, the sources, that really appeal to you... more than other sources. There's also the question of what matters to you- as Collingwood would say, what questions are you asking? Because it's going to affect what you write. French historians of the 19th c. were obsessed with knowing whether the original French people were Germanic (Franks) , Celtic ( Gauls) or Latin ( Romans) , which made a lot of sense to them because obviously those were three different races and in constant racial competition with each other. Both Gibbon and Toynbee were preoccupied with the question of whether their own native empires were in danger of becoming decadent or corrupt and falling into chaos, and so they were motivated to identify common features in "civilizations" through history falling apart. But if you are spending a lot of time on drawing up your wide conclusion, you haven't had enough time to really be sure of your sources. Other information comes to light, others look at the sources more carefully and find problems, and the grand scheme is pecked to bits by specialists.. The the wider the conclusion, the more problems are usually found. As an example, Toynbee stated that the ancient Greeks had a steam engine but never developed it into an industrial revolution because they had slaves to do their work ( an idea not original to him, but he went along with it). Some digging into the actual physics of Hero's Engine, and some careful assessment of the ability of the Greeks to fabricate a version big enough to do any work , makes this statement just wrong. And you suspect that if Toynbee hadn't been strongly influenced by disapproval of Greek slavery, he wouldn't have accepted it.
As I said in the other post, Decline-and-Fall is a very appealing thing to write about, and Toynbee and Gibbon have not been the only ones to do so. But one striking thing about both Gibbon and Toynbee , examined in the present light, is how much they thought of people as constant agents of their own declines and how little notice they seem to take of environmental factors and chance doing it to them- in reading them, you'd think that humans always just shrugged off drought, famine, plagues , hurricanes and bad luck. In the middle of a plague, and with global climate change around us, we are thinking of different questions to ask.
You know actually someone discussed this here and I found it extremely interesting
u/shlin28
https://amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35y36l/theory_thursday_academicprofessional_history/
That poster goes into how modern historians are mostly using all the same primary sources that Gibbon uses, and some people dismissing Gibbon don't actually read him - Gibbon really did have an excellent grasp of his sources, and the main issues with his work is that he took the sources at their word and didn't have access to the archeology we do now. It was a really good read.