Do you have any routes on the controller? Backbone only creates the history once at least one route is specified.
More:
TypeError: Cannot call method ‘start’ of undefined**
Hmm, for some reason Backbone.history is undefined, and so there is no
start method on it. It turns out that Backbone.js creates an instance
of Backbone.History (upper case ‘H’) called Backbone.history (lower
case ‘h’) once a controller has been created that has at least one
route specified on it. This makes sense, as history management is only
required if there are routes to respond to.
http://tinnedfruit.com/2011/04/26/testing-backbone-apps-with-jasmine-sinon-3.html