What is history?

[Vraith]

Yes Cyberwheez - I would certainly agree that scource material is much more likely to be tainted by bias the closer to the event it is recording it gets - and depending on which side of the fence they are sitting. At some point it ceases to be history writing at all and becomes 'reportage'. Once this state prevails all the angles must be studied or the ensueing history's value will be much reduced.

As to Av's point about all history being revisionist - I don't know. Isn't much history work (like much science) done within the framework of existing understanding; more of a 'fleshing out' of the detail rather than a revision. Again like science the true revisionist works are surely those which turn an accepted 'viewpoint' on its head and require a total reapraisal of the event concerned. The best example of this I can think of would be how 'Scott of the Antartic' has been re-formed as an inept bungler who led a group of men to their deaths from the 'stiff upper-lipped British hero' he was presented as in the days of my boyhood.

Well, on the first line...heh...does anyone remember how often Rus used to say [roughly] that only the people there at the time are unbiased, and everything else is "worldview?" Sometimes I miss that guy.

It's at least ironic [and maybe meaningful, but I don't feel like looking up the etymology right now] that history is made up of "His" and "Story." [and that probably says everything that needs to be said about what I think about most of historical works, fiction or hypothetically non-...but of course I won't stop just cuz that says enough...]

I mean...we teach things as history even now that aren't. To use my favorite absurdity [I've probably used it in some thread somewhere, cuz it is one of my favorites even if not the best or directly on point] it's generally still taught that everyone thought the earth was flat, and Columbus and Magellan and such proved it wasn't.
But people...at least educated people...didn't think the earth was flat.

One thing I think leads to serious problems in telling history is the need/desire [maybe subconscious] for everything to be cause/effect, for it to be consistent, and full of intention. For human decisions to be the source and force of most events/turning points, and to downplay the incidental, coincidental, random. It's really a dynamic interaction between "shit happens," "what the hell do we do," and "That dude on the rock seems to know what he's talking about!" [and sometimes he...or she...does.]

[peter]

In part Iolanthe, I think the problem with histories of recently occured events is hampered by more than just censoring and biased presenting - it is our actual 'mindset' that is not ready to recieve the brute facts and apply unbiased reasoning to them. Our minds are structures that are built from the very framework of ideas we uncritically absorb as infants and then children (I have made the point about atheism elsewhere, that irrespective of the depth of 'faith' that someone has in their dis-belief in 'GOD' - it will in the west be the western 'GOD' that they are claiming dis-belief in. To disentangle ones mind from the idea so deeply embedded in the architecture of ones mind is in my view near impossible - hence the reason I do not believe it possible for westerners to transfer across to the 'pantheon' of belief that eastern religeon demands; you just cannot weave it into the already set structure of your mental architecture. But I digress ) In my case for example from WWII the 'English good, Germans bad' ideas of how the war was are so deeply set by the cultural soup I developed in, that it would be next to impossible for me to think about it in different terms at the deeper level even if I professed to on the surface - and was genuine!

I agree wholeheartedly that our inate need for order is always going to be a hurdle in the presentation of 'accurate' history. That things happen 'just because' is not a thing that isever going to 'fit' in a linear presentation of cause/effect facts. History could be almost totally written as 'The History of Unintended Consequenses' so much more does this feature in the pathway of human events than it's 'intended consequence' cousin.

[Avatar]

Neither were the letters that my grandfather sent back from the Boer war...

Hey, my great grandfather fought in that. On both sides. More than once.

It's at least ironic [and maybe meaningful, but I don't feel like looking up the etymology right now] that history is made up of "His" and "Story." [and that probably says everything that needs to be said about what I think about most of historical works, fiction or hypothetically non-...but of course I won't stop just cuz that says enough...]

I feel the same way, exactly, but it's just ironic. I posted the etymology of history on the first page, and it's not strictly related. Although, history as a word did originally include fiction.

--A

[Iolanthe]

Neither were the letters that my grandfather sent back from the Boer war...

Hey, my great grandfather fought in that. On both sides. More than once.


--A

I wonder if they met, or even fought? My grandad was in the Cheshire Yeomanry - he volunteered. His letters are wonderful, about 30, all written on scraps of paper in pencil. They are deposited in the Imperial War Museum in London but I have transcriptions. He said some very rude things about the British commanding officers.

[Avatar]

That's fantastic. I unfortunately have nothing other than probably apocryphal oral history.

--A