Why study History?

What does history mean?? ….To inquire, to investigate. Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it. -Oscar Wilde History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions. -Voltaire A country without a memory is a country of madmen. -Santayana Nothing capable of being memorized is history. -RG Collingwood History is a myth that men agree to believe. -Napoleon History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. -Mark Twain History is little else than a long succession of useless cruelties. -Voltaire Man has no nature; what he has, is history. [History is] little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. Edward Gibbon We learn from history that we never learn anything from history. Hegel

The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation. John Hope Franklin Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. Thomas Carlyle People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them. James Baldwin Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence. Goethe History does not belong to us; we belong to it. Hans-Georg Gadamer For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. A.M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. Karl Marx To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child. paraphrase from an observation by Cicero God cannot alter the past; historians can. Samuel Butler There is no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility. Voltaire History is, indeed, an argument without end. A.M. Schlesinger, Jr.

“To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child” We started (this incredible, life-changing journey) by looking at the use-value of history. In other words, why we bother studying the past. We came up with something like this: * In order to know where you are going, you have to know where you are coming from. So…not knowing history is a form of blindness. Remember, we can never have a ‘magic ball’ to predict the future (historians have a very bad track record of predicting the future…), but at least we can identify patterns to use as a guide (Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, for example). *We study history in order to unlearn the history we internalize from popular culture or from other places. Often, history is all wound up with mythology. It is our job to untangle them. *For its own sake. History is overflowing with drama, mystery, tragedy, comedy, heroism, good and evil. It is filled with incredible stories. We can turn to these stories for inspiration and for ethical guidance. *Not only do we study history, but we also make it. Each one of us is not only a student of history but also an actor in history as well, whether we know it or not. Being aware of this fact can be empowering. “To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child” -Cicero

We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of both primary and secondary sources. An ‘eye-witness’ account, rich in detail and anecdote. May miss the ‘big picture’, may miss the real historical significance of an event, which could take years to reveal itself. Secondary Has the power of hindsight and historical perspective. You are far removed from the event. Perhaps you weren’t born when the event happened. You therefore have less personal connection to the event, which may make you more objective. You can end up judging the people of the past by your own, different values. This is what EP Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity”. You have to try to put yourself in the shoes of the people in the past. That can be hard to do, especially the farther you are from the event.

We looked at how evaluating sources poses two challenges: 1) The challenge of quality 2) The challenge of quantity What may compromise the quality of a source? *It may be incomplete, either because it has been deliberately tampered with (say, for example, a government document that has been censored), or because it has been damaged or lost over time (the ‘Lost Gospels’, for example). *The source may romanticize or glorify the past, for a variety of reasons. They may exaggerate the role of prominent individuals and downplay other factors. How can quantity of sources shape our perception of the past? *We may have too many sources, forcing us to pick and choose what we judge to be most important. We may therefore neglect certain information which, if included, would alter our reconstruction of the past. “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it” -Churchill *Remember, sometimes historians and historical actors are one and the same. How does this shape our understanding of the past?

In other cases, we have too few sources *In other cases, we have too few sources. Pre-history, for example, depends on the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. There are no written records. Evidence is scarce, leaving huge gaps in our knowledge. *But besides pre-history, there are other reasons why we may not have enough evidence of the past. Government secrecy, for example. During the Soviet Union (USSR), its state archives were inaccessible. It was only after 1992 (when the USSR collapsed) that the archives opened up. With the opening of the archives, much of the history of the USSR was re-written. Think about wikileaks….

Bias is inescapable. We all have a point of view, based on our ethnicity, nationality, age, our cultural norms, the anxieties and fears of our time, our sexual orientations, individual ideologies, our gender, our class and a wide array of other factors. Bias will be present in all historical sources in one of two ways: 1) Intentionally, explicitly and consiously (for example, in propaganda) or 2) Unintentionally, implicitly and unconsciously. Our task, as students of history, is to be aware of bias, detect it, and identify how it colors the source. Remember, even a heavily biased (and therefore unreliable) source can still be a very useful piece of historical evidence.