That excerpt you quoted reminds very much of Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History. The introduction starts by directly talking about that t

That excerpt you quoted reminds very much of Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History. The introduction starts by directly talking about that topic, on page 3 of the following PDF if anyone cares to read a little. He starts talking about the perception of the historian as an avenger, beating the high and haughty while raising the downtrodden, and that it would be better for the historian to be a reconciler instead rather than one who divides large swathes of humanity in good and evil, black and white. He prefers a historian who finds common unity between two different sides and pities these two sides who perhaps had no pity for the other. His comments in the intro also touch on a phrase I personally dislike, "the right side of history". http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/LojkoMiklos/Butterfield,_The_Whig_Interpretation_of_History_highlights.pdf http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/LojkoMiklos/Butterfield,...