What is History?

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What is History?

• The definition of history.  Webster's Third New
  International Dictionary gives three relevant
  definitions of the word "history"
• a) "a narrative of events connected with a real
  or imaginary object, person, or career"
• b)"the events that form the subject matter of a
  history"
• c)"a systematic written account comprising a
  chronological record of events and usually
  including a philosophical explanation of the
  cause and origin of such events."
• We note from these three descriptive definitions
  that the word "history" can mean either a record
  of events or the events themselves and it can
  also mean a narrative of real events or of
  imaginary events.

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The Historical Method

• Historical method basically involves four things
  
• a) a technique of investigation
• b) an ability to identify what really took place
  
• c) knowledge of what others are affirming in
  one's own field, in cognate fields, and in allied
  disciplines
• d) an ability to express correctly what one has
  ascertained

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What is History?

• History is about change and continuity over time
  and space. We study the past from many
  perspectives such as political, military and
  diplomatic developments, economic, social, and
  cultural development, and the role of religious
  ideas and beliefs in shaping human experiences.
• The range of topics open to historians is
  virtually endless. Some historians deal with
  global issues like the rise of capitalism or the
  origins of WWI, others take a microhistorical
  approach and closely study a small sect or
  community within a carefully bounded period of
  time so as to recover deeply buried experiences
  and meanings.
• The power of ideas in shaping past societies is a
  popular field, as is the impact of social and
  economic structures on such societies.
• Historians study the origins of conflict as well
  as the impact that such conflicts have upon those
  caught up in them.
• Some historians work on the very recent past the
  origins of ethnic cleansing for example, while
  others may study societies in the far distant
  past. Our geographical scope is just as
  wide-ranging, with historians in our department
  studying Canada, China, Europe, Latin America,
  the United States, Africa and India.  

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History

• With so many possible points of departure,
  historians must frequently look to other
  disciplines in the social sciences and the
  humanities to gain the necessary tools.
• For example, a study of a community in a time of
  change can often benefit from detailed
  demographic analysis while someone studying a
  particular historical document could gain by
  employing techniques of literary analysis.
• Hence, History emphasizes interdisciplinary
  approaches.
• Training as an historian enables students to
  gather, organize and evaluate historical sources,
  understand complex cause and effect
  relationships, and to communicate this knowledge
  effectively.
• History provides a unique awareness of the world
  from its origins to the present and gives
  excellent foundation for careers that require an
  understanding of human diversity as well as of
  how the past impinges on the present and the
  future.

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What do Historians do?

• By providing intensive training in research and
  writing, and by exposing students to a wide range
  of human experiences, history has proven to be an
  excellent foundation for many careers.
• History prepares its students for a range of
  professions, including teaching in schools,
  colleges and universities, diplomatic service,
  law and business. History graduates also become
  journalists, archivists, and librarians. Others
  work in museums and historical sites.
• People holding degrees in history can also be
  found in the corporate sector where their
  analytical and communication skills can be put to
  good use.
•  

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What will History do for me?

• History degrees in particular, and history
  courses more generally, provide students with
  excellent skills and abilities such as critical
  and creative thinking, analysis of problems,
  effective oral and written communication, the
  gathering and organizing of information, logical
  calculation, abstract reasoning and its
  application, insight and intuition in generating
  knowledge, and interpretative and assessment
  skills.
• An historian has the tools and knowledge
  necessary to undertake the following
• identify a problem and determine the pertinent
  evidence
• systematically locate and acquire written, oral
  and electronic evidence through libraries,
  archives, oral interviews, the internet and
  public institutions
• critically assess the evidence
• prepare oral and written presentations of the
  evidence and its subsequent analysis in order to
  address the original problem
• provide a synthesis of the knowledge gained

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Method of Historical Inquiry

• Recall History is what we choose to remember
  about the past.
• Interpret History involves explaining people and
  events.
• 3). Apply Use what we know about the past to
  understand the present.
• 4). Analyze History involves figuring out
  complicated situations.
• 5). Synthesize History involves making sense
  out of jumble of facts.
• 6). Evaluate History involves making judgments
  about people and events

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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

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Quotes

• This I regard as history's highest function, to
  let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to
  hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror
  to evil words and deeds. ----Tacitus

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Impact Importance of History

• All modern wars start in the history
  classroom --Anonymous
• "God cannot change the past, but historians can."
  --Samuel Butler

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Ignorance of History

• What good fortune for those in power that people
  do not think nor do they read history
• -- Adolf Hitler
• "Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise,
  terror, sabotage, assassination these are the
  lessons of history and this is the war of the
  future..." - Adolf Hitler

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Dangers of Ignoring History

• "What experience and history teach is this--that
  people and governments never have learned
  anything from history, or acted on principles
  deduced from it."
• --G. W. F. Hegel

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Ignorance of History

• While the mediocre European is obsessed with
  history, the mediocre American is ignorant of
  it.
• --Anonymous

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Historys Lessons

• That men do not learn very much from the lessons
  of history is the most important of all the
  lessons that History has to teach --Aldous
  Huxley
• Throughout history the world has been laid waste
  to ensure the triumph of conceptions that are now
  as dead as the men that died for them.
  --Henry De Montherlant

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Versions of History

• History's like a story in a way it depends on
  who's telling it.
• --Dorothy Salisbury Davis
• "If you do not like the past, change it."
• --William L. Burton
• "History . . . is indeed little more than the
  register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes
  of mankind."
• --Edward Gibbon

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History Propaganda

• History is the lie commonly agreed upon
• --Voltaire

Who controls the past controls the future who
controls the present controls the
past --George Orwell
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History Historians

• History is simply a piece of paper covered with
  print the main thing is still to make history,
  not to write it.
• --Otto von Bismarck

• Anybody can make history only a great man can
  write it
• --Oscar Wilde

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PROBLEMS IN HISTORY

• History as a discipline can be characterized as
  having a collective forgetfulness about women.
  --Clarice Stasz Stoll
• War makes rattling good history but Peace is
  poor reading --Thomas Hardy

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Historical Perspective (?)

• Let others praise ancient times I am glad I was
  born in these --Ovid

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Historical Perspective

• "An historian should yield himself to his
  subject, become immersed in the place and period
  of his choice, standing apart from it now and
  then for a fresh view."
• --Samuel Eliot Morison

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The Value of Studying History

• "Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his
  past
• --Sigmund Freud

• "Every past is worth condemning"
• --Friedrich Nietzsche

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The Past is not the same as History

• History requires evidence.
• History is not everything that happened in the
  past, just the important things.
• History is not merely a description of what
  happened in the past, but also an attempt to
  understand it.

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Three Forms of Historical Writing

• Generally speaking, historical interpretations
  can be presented in three different forms that
  correspond to the basic forms of historical
  writing 
• 1. Argument An argumentative essay presents the
  interpretation in the form of a thesis and
  reasons for that thesis.
• 2. Narrative A narrative essay presents the
  interpretation in the form of a narrative or
  story. 
• 3. Description Descriptive essay gives a
  portrayal of a person, place or object at a
  particular moment in time.
•  
• Depending on the point to be made, a particular
  author might make use of only of these forms or
  might use different ones at different points in
  the work.

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Historical Facts

• But the facts of history cannot be repeated and
  tested like many facts in science.
• Whether or not a mockingbird feather and a gold
  coin will fall at the same speed in a vacuum can
  be checked by experiment. They do. Every time. 
  But no one can replay the siege of the Alamo.
• Yet, like most human statements, historical facts
  can be verified by confirming evidence and
  checked by consistency. Still, they have an
  unnerving way of remaining capable of being
  questioned and disputed.
• For one thing, historical facts can be based on
  at least two kinds of sources primary and
  secondary.
• Primary means a comment made by someone who was a
  witness or a participant in an event. A secondary
  source is a record made by someone not present at
  an event, but who uses primary and other
  secondary sources as evidence.

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Facts Sources

• A letter or an interview can be a primary record
  from someone who was an observer or a contributor
  when something happened. Of course, this does not
  guarantee truth. People can forgetor lieand the
  older a person becomes, as more time falls
  between event and recall, the more memories
  alter.
• Most history books are secondary records. They
  can be moreor lessaccurate than first-person,
  primary accounts they can be reliable stories or
  sheer propaganda.
• To complicate the issue, the questions one asks
  when using a record can determine whether a
  source is primary or secondary.

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Facts or Fiction?

• However defined, the facts of history are not
  fiction. In responsible history, an individual
  cannot simply decide that something did happen,
  or did not, without proof.
• And proof in history comes from three sources at
  a minimum
• 1) reliable witness,
• 2) logical possibility, and
• 3) observable causes and effects.
• In addition, historical facts must be consistent
  with one another. All of them.

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Facts Interpretations

• Yet, the facts of history, most of the time, are
  really the least important things.
• Certainly an invention, or the migration of a
  people, or a war of conquest, or the publication
  of a book, or the success of an assassination, or
  the result of an election can be significant.
  Such facts cause noticeable effects. But what
  these events and objects mean to people is much
  more important.
• Human knowledge is built on interpretations of
  objects and events and people, whether
  experienced or heard about, whether self or
  others.