By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 02, 2025

I was reminded of EH Carr’s What Is History? when I read Kevin Baldeosingh’s letter, “Teach fact-based African history”.

He excoriated the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) for not spending “a single cent from the millions given to them by [the] government to commission such a [history] book” which he wanted them to write from a Euro-centric point of view (Express, August 4).

In his mind, Afro-centricism is the most offensive concept that ever entered the English language.

Sitting on his intellectual high throne, he tells African people why a book commissioned by the ESC is likely to throw more light on African history than any such existing histories. Fact-based as he is, I am sure he has the empirical evidence to prove his contention.

He then gives us “a small sample of true African history” to guide our proceedings.

Baldeosingh may not be aware of what some thinkers call a theory of history or a theory of reading. To begin with, there is no such animal called a “true history” of any region or of our past since all history depends on our interpretation of the known facts and new knowledge that constantly comes to light.

Baldeosingh’s most egregious blunder lies in his presumption that history is a static phenomenon that can be deployed to attack any mystery man he has in his mind. In chapter 1, “The Historian and His Facts”, Carr asks the fundamental question: “What is a historical fact?”

He answers: “This is a crucial question into which we must look a little more closely. According to the commonsense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.

“But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned.

“It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong.

“But when points of this kind are raised, I am reminded of Housman’s remark that ‘accuracy is a duty, not a virtue’.

“To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function…

“These so-called basic facts, which are the same for all historians, commonly belong to the category of the raw materials of the historian rather than of history itself.”

In other words, while facts are the necessary building blocks of a historian’s work, they are not “the essential” aspect of what s/he does.

Carr also emphasises that “the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an a priori decision of the historian”.

Baldeosingh ends his letter with a furious denunciation: “As a history writer I hope that any African syllabus will be fact-based rather than Afro-centric propaganda.” He forgets that all historians enter the historical arena with a well-defined approach to history and which determines what he writes.

There is a simple reason for this. All social beings are constructed within their social order or, as Michel Foucault suggests, “we are shaped and defined by the social and historical contexts we inhabit”.

Even language is a function of one’s social order. For example, an individual is not born with language. He is born with a capacity for language which is why an individual that is born in Japan speaks Japanese, and someone who is born in China speaks one of the dialects of that language.

An Englishman or Frenchwoman writes from a social, epistemological and even ontological perspective that is shaped from where s/he was born.

Correspondingly, an Igbo man writes from an Igbo perspective because he is born into a specific social order. It follows, therefore, that to write from an Igbo perspective is no more propagandistic than an Englishman writing or interpreting historical events from his innate English perspective.

Carr got it right. He said: “Facts [do not] speak for themselves…The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides which facts to give to the floor, and in what order or context.” Baldeosingh, a God-given oracle, is free of all these restraints.

Other people write about African and Afro-Trinbagonian history. However, there cannot be an a priori assumption that they write “the truth” while we [African historians] wallow in propaganda.

Our duty is clear: under no circumstances should we leave the telling of our stories to these illustrious, truth-telling strawmen who presume they are bereft of any social affiliations.