Historiography & Historical Interpretation K.J. Benoy

What is History? “ History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illuminates reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.” Cicero

What is History? “History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” Edward Gibbon

What is History? “History is a myth we all agree to believe.” Napoleon

What is History? “History is the Essence of innumerable biographies.” Thomas Carlyle

What is History? “History is…the development towards the consciousness of freedom as expressed in the political, cultural and religious institutions of a nation ---Volksgeist” G.W.F. Hegel

What is History? “History is more or less bunk.” Henry Ford

What is History? “ ‘History,’ Stephen said, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” James Joyce

What is History? “ The past is useless. That explains why it is past.” Wright Morris

What is History? “Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bulls[~]t." Tom Robbins

What is History? “History is something that never happened told by someone who wasn't there.” Ramon Gomez de la Serna

What is History? “There can be no history of the past as it actually did happen; there can only be historical interpretations, and none of them final, and every generation has to frame its own.” Karl Popper

What is History? “History deals not only with the lives of great individuals…it may be said to consist of the sediment of the lives of millions of smaller men and women who have left no name, but who have made their contribution.” A. L. Rowse

What is History? “ The study of the past has never been static. The practice of history has witnessed many shifts and turns in the way it is thought and undertaken. Since the 1960s, for example, the discipline of history has experienced a 'social science turn', a 'cliometric' or 'statistics turn', a 'women's history turn', a 'cultural history turn' and so on. These are not novelties that have not come and gone. Each has remained a significant way for historians to reflect upon and write about change over time. Alun Munslow

What is History? Gary Larson – The Far Side

Why Study History “ The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.“ Livy

Why Study History? “Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity.... But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion." Anna Commena

Why Study History? “What is past is prologue.” William Shakespeare

Why Study History “Life must be lived forward, but understood backward.” Kierkegaard

Why Study History? “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.” (World history is the world’s court of judgement.) Friedrich von Schiller

Why Study History? “ The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present." E.H. Carr

Why Study History “There are human truths to be derived from history, and truths well worth the telling, some large, some small, some general, some technical. Some, if not the most important, of the problems which face society today are not new ones; there are similarities and analogies in the past. Any process which increases man’s awareness of himself, that strengthens his chance of controling himself and his environment, is well worth pursuing…The purpose of historical investigation is to produce answers, in the form of concepts and generalizations to the fundamental problems of historical change in the social activities of men.” J.H. Plumb

Why Study History? “To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.” Oscar Wilde

Why Study History? “…what happened in the past influences what happens in the present, and, indeed, what will happen in the future, so that knowledge of the past – history – is essential to society.” Arthur Marwick

Why Study History “ By enabling us to know about other centuries and other cultures, it provides, along with the collections housed in our great museums and galleries, the best antidote to the temporal parochialism which assumes that the only time is now, and the geographical parochialism which assumes that the only place is here. There is not only here and now; there is there; and there is then. And the best guide to there and then, and thus also the best guide to here and now, is history: in part because it helps us understand how our world got to be the way it is; in part because it helps us understand how other worlds got to be the way they were -- and the way they are. “ David Cannadine

Why Study History? “If you do not like the past, change it.” William L. Burton

Why Study History? “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Winston Churchill

Why Study History? “The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves -- a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future.“ Carl Becker

Why Study History “One reason why history rarely repeats itself among historically conscious people is that the dramatis personae are aware at the second performance of the denouement of the first, and their action is affected by that knowledge.” Edward Hallett Carr

Why Study History "Historical knowledge enables us to place our perceptions of the contemporary world into a meaningful context and to discern the cause-and-effect relationships between events that serve as the basis for future expectations. Without such knowledge we would be as bewildered as a quarterback entering the fourth quarter of a football game without knowing the score, the amount of elapsed time, or the successes and failures of plays and players.“ Allan J. Lichtman and Valerie French

Why Study History? “People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past." Milan Kundera

The Historical Approach How can we understand anything of other people or ourselves, if we know nothing of history? The historian shows us how change has worked in the past and helps us to understand the present and make educated guesses about the future.

Historiography  Historiography is the writing of history.  It is what historians do.  Historians vary widely in what they feel is significant and important about the past.

Historiography  Students of history must examine not only the past, but those who write about it. – “Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. The facts are really not at all like fish on a fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch.” Edward Hallett Carr

Job #1 – Finding the Facts  What are facts?  Which facts are important?  Are facts enough to explain the past? The historian investigates facts and selects relevant ones. This is an art and not a science.

Job #2 – Identifying Bias  Bias is the slant one puts on things. – It can be deliberate or unintentional. – All writing contains bias.  Identify it by looking at the types of words used. How are the words meant? Historical imagination  Every age contains its own biases. These make understanding past thinking difficult – but not impossible. Historical imagination is needed.

Job #3 – Dispensing With the Rubbish – Identifying Important and Answerable Questions.  Sources must be selected critically.  Topics need to be limited.  Primarysecondary  Primary and secondary sources must be consulted.  Value judgments are made.  Conclusions must be based on the weight of evidence.  Variations in interpretations should be understood and accepted.

Types of Sources  Primary Sources  Primary Sources were produced at the time an event occurred and are directly connected to the events. Examples are: – Photographs – Memos – Dispatches – Cartoons – Newspaper articles – Art works – Literary works Grigori Rasputin

Types of Sources  Secondary sources  Secondary sources are sources produced after the fact – looking back on the events with the benefit of hindsight. They offer an analysis or restatement of primary source material. Examples include: – Textbooks. – Books about art or literature – Movies – Documentaries

Job #4 – Presenting an Account  Historians share their work and present it for criticism.  Books and essays are the chief written forms.  Accounts are narrative or analytical. Controversial historian – David Irving

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