Comprensión de los procesos y responsabilidades de la designación de Sitios Ramsar

Having thus returned to the university and redirected his attentions away from history ed- ucation and back to historical research, Fling worked towards the completion of his biography on Mirabeau, his commissioned war history, and his last major work on method. This last book,

The Writing of History, emphasized the procedures behind the last step in the historic method: the final compiled narrative. Moreover, this book shows a refinement of Fling’s philosophical beliefs regarding historical consciousness and the importance of historical study. An idea that he coined in his lectures even in the 1890s, Fling’s concept of historical consciousness had evolved through thirty years of Fling’s own experience as a researcher, professor, and historian. His commitment to the role that this historical mindset played for students of history only increased over this expanse of time, especially in the wake of his experiences during World War One. Thus, Fling’s exposé of this vital philosophical underpinning of his holistic history belief system formed the backbone of the last decades of his career.

Fling’s Last Major Work: The Writing of History

The only major publication to follow his 1919 journal article would be Fling’s last work,

The Writing of History, published in 1920. Interestingly, in her lecture notes in 1926, Mary Hermanek Cripe recorded this unexplained comment from an October lecture: “historical method based on Bernheim & 2 French profs. Wrote book before war – printed afterward.”535 Since the only book that Fling printed in this after war period was The Writing of History, Cripe must have been referring to this work. Thus, again, there exists evidence of the disruption caused by the

war. Although Fling may have finished the book before the war years, he did not publish it until this later time in 1920.

This book explained the work of historians by focusing primarily on the finished histori- cal output of research, known to Fling as the historical narrative. Importantly, Fling expressed that the book “[was] not a revised edition of [his] Outline of Historical Method.”536 Instead, he offered this additional volume to readers as, in his words, “an ‘introduction’ to historical meth- od.”537 _{On the surface, Fling’s choice to write an introduction to his method more than twenty}

years after penning the full detailed account of it in the Outline seems peculiar. However, con- sidering the recent perceived perfidy from the teachers’ association within Nebraska, this move has a contextual motivation. Instead of continuing to reference the Outline, which had twenty years to become a foundation of historical teaching and had failed to do so, the Writing of Histo- ry provides a more direct option for understanding and employing the methodology that Fling thought historians should use. It accomplished this task by providing real-time examples of each stage of the method as well as suggestions for the reader to apply to his own research in order to give as best as possible a glimpse of the method in action.

However, Writing was not intended as a resource specifically for teachers or for history education, as his Outline was directly conceived to be. Instead, as Fling explained, the book is meant for “college students who are beginning their studies in historical research, for teachers of history who have had no critical historical training, and for students of history who are hoping to find in private study some compensation for opportunities not enjoyed in college.”538 _{This ex-}

planation differs significantly from that found in the Outline. As an alternative to urging teach-

536 _{Fling, Writing, 7.} 537 _Ibid.

ers to commit time to studying method, or to defending the reason that teachers need such train- ing, or to providing additional resources or direction for teachers’ further pursuits past “the sim- ple reading of the text” as he does in Outline, in Writing, Fling is casually acknowledging a pur- pose to which the book may be put instead of the intention under which it was written.539

Specifically, his espoused purpose in providing this final work was that readers may use the book alongside their own research to understand the process in practical action. As he ex- plained, “[o]nly by such an experience can one fully understand what critical historical study means and how difficult and exacting the work of the scientific historian is.”540 _{In this sense,}

Writing can be interpreted as a workbook that readers may use in conjunction with their own re- search to make sure they are following a purely scientific historical method as they progress from source collection and analysis to synthesis and final narrative. His purpose was no longer to empower teachers to become better instructors in their history classrooms through emphasis on training. Instead, it was to communicate to a wide audience and to all those interested in his- torical study precisely what it is that a historian does and precisely how he must do it to ensure scientific historical success. This difference can be seen most literally in the titles of the two books: whereas Outline provides a resource manual in reference form, Writing provides a more action-driven companion to the research process.

In many ways, what this book omits tells more than what it includes as does Fling’s atti- tude in his writing towards this condition. Within this volume, Fling specifically stated that “this volume does not deal with the teaching of history.”541 However, he admitted this circumstance

539 _Ibid. 540 _Ibid. 541 _Ibid.,8.