1. History- Scope • What is the area of knowledge about?
• What practical problems can be solved through applying this knowledge?
• What makes this area of knowledge important?
• What are the current open questions in this area?
• Are there ethical considerations that limit the scope of inquiry?

2. What is History?
Historical study is not the study of the past but the study of present traces of the past. If people have said, thought, done or suffered anything of which nothing no longer exists, those things are as though they had never been
- G R Elton

3. Herodotus

4. Historical Sources
primary
secondary

5. Primary Sources Problems:- - individual fallibility/ bias
- social bias
- deliberate manipulation

6. Primary Sources

7. Primary Sources
Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past
- George Orwell

8. Secondary Sources
historiography:- the study of the writings of history

9. Historical Causes
The annalist is content to say that one thing followed another; what distinguishes the historian is the proposition that one thing led to another
- Isaiah Berlin

10. Causes of the First World War
Historical Causes
Causes of the First World War
M. militarism A. alliances divide Europe into competing camps N. nationalistic feelings (desire for war) I. imperialism A. alliances cause diplomatic failures C. competition over colonies in Africa/Asia S. Serbian assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

11. Historical Causes
The human universe is so enormously complicated that to speak of the cause of any event is an absurdity
- H A L Fisher

12. Historical Causes individual motives chance occurences
social and economic conditions
geographical conditions

13. Historical Causes: individual motives
The history of the world is but the biography of great men
- Thomas Carlyle

14. Historical Causes: individual motives
The cause of the event means the thought in the mind of the person by whose agency the event came about...All history is then the history of thought
- R G Collingwood

15. Historical Causes: chance occurrences
Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole history of the world would have been different
- Blaise Pascal

16. Historical Causes: social and economic conditions
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles
- Karl Marx

17. Historical Causes: geographical conditions

18. History and Narrative
Deteriorationist
Positivist
Circular

19. History and Narrative
Of course, if History were nothing but a succession of extraneous ‘accidents’, it could not be a serious study at all.
- E H Carr

20. History and Narrative
Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen
- H A L Fisher

21. The role of the historian
There is a two-way traffic between past and present, the present being moulded out of the past, yet constantly recreating the past
- E H Carr

22. Historical Bias
topic choice bias
confirmation bias
national bias

23. Historical Bias
The awkward thing about history is that bias seems an essential element in it- even in the best of history. The fact is that the facts do not, as is sometimes said, ‘speak for themselves’
- E H Carr

24. Historical Objectivity

25. Historical Perspective

26. Can we learn the lessons of history?
Those who don’t study the past are condemned to repeat it
- George Satayana

27. Can we learn the lessons of history?
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce
- Karl Marx

28. History and Prediction

29. History and Truth

30. WOKs Memory Sense Perception Language Reason Emotion Intuition
Imagination
Faith

31. Knowledge Questions

32. Linking Questions