Opinion Piece on the Study of History

I found this to be an intriguing piece on how the study of history has changed a lot in the past 20-30 years - I would say even more so in the past 10.

You Have Your History, I Have Mine

http://chronicle.com/article/You-Have-Your-History-I-Have/230635/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Thoughts, anyone?

 

I am an historian. History is like any other academical discipline. You put forward a theory, based on the evidence that you have gathered. This may well be debunked by another theory. It cannot be an exact science as we were not present and written accounts can be varied. (Exaggeration, written some years later or the victor writing the history then it being accepted as fact). It is like the police investigating an incident - they will get many different accounts.

 

It seam to me that he missed a key point. The study of history is the search for those "facts" that he describes as so fluid. In some of the cases he was bemoaning history wasn't the issue politics and propaganda was. They have always affected our view of history but now it's a bit more out in the open.

Perhaps as a journalist he is a bit touchier on some of these points. Journalism often not having the time to really dig deep into things to find out what really happened.

 

I think you've touched on a fascinating point. We tend to be very focused on our country's interpretation of events which is why it's so interesting to me to read British historians discuss American involvement in the war. The most recent example I can think of that I read was Giles MacDonogh's work After the Reich. It doesn't paint the Americans in the best light; but then, I've read plenty of stuff from American historians that doesn't paint the British in the best light.

You're right - it's key to keep our eyes open to other views.

I think right now there is a tendency in the historical community to do "bottom-up" history - history from the POV of the lesser known people/groups. It's led to some really interesting work.

 

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to write an unbiased historical account no matter how hard you try. Everyone has an angle. At school I was taught about the 'savage' 'uncivilized' peoples of Africa, Asia and South America. These people had civilizations many centuries before the West. The approach to teaching History has now drastically changed. We no longer use western values to assess people. In the 18th to late 20th centuries, history was looked at from a Christian prospective.

 

The author sums up the problem nicely themselves:

"Now I confess, I am no scholar. I am but a journalist — a myopic creature of deadlines and foreshortened horizons. "

Thereof the issue.


The biggest issue, IMO, is all the agendas, that most are very keen to label other people with, and force them into their own narrative. Part of human nature is to categorize, in order to understand & explain, but it becomes erroneous, and many tmes only partially true, alienating others.

The issue is only because "fact-driven" history is rather dry, and as humans we often seek to complete the picture with motivations, reasons, causes, and, all too often, the historical record for these are at best incomplete.

 

On another post I said that the inexplicable should remain that until someone comes up with an answer. Many early people venerated the sun, moon or whatever because they saw it as a dominating force in their world. They worshiped them as Gods and made sacrifices to placate them. Mankind will always have a theory to explain what we do not understand. Mostly inane. It is all a big adventure!