History

What is history?

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

Herodotus

Historical Sources

• primary

• secondary

Primary Sources

Problems:-

- individual fallibility/ bias

- social bias

- deliberate manipulation

Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past

- George Orwell

Secondary Sources

historiography:- the study of the writings of history

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

Historical Causes

Causes of the First World War

M. militarismA. alliances divide Europe into competing campsN. nationalistic feelings (desire for war)I. imperialismA. alliances cause diplomatic failuresC. competition over colonies in Africa/AsiaS. Serbian assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

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

Historical Causes

• individual motives

• chance occurences

• social and economic conditions

• geographical conditions

Historical Causes: individual motives

The history of the world is but the biography of great men

- Thomas Carlyle

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

Historical Causes: chance occurences

Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole history of the world would have been different

- Blaise Pascal

Historical Causes: social and economic conditions

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles

- Karl Marx

Historical Causes: geographical conditions

History and Narrative

• Deteriorationist

• Positivist

• Circular

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

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

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

Historical Bias

• topic choice bias• confirmation bias• national bias

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

Historical Objectivity

Historical Perspective

Can we learn the lessons of history?

Those who don’t study the past are condemned to repeat it

- George Satayana

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce

- Karl Marx

History and Prediction

History and Truth

Linking Questions