Historiography

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Historiography Historical Interpretation

• K.J. Benoy

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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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What is History?

• History is, indeed, little more than the
  register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes
  of mankind.
• Edward Gibbon

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What is History?

• History is a myth we all agree to believe.
• Napoleon

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What is History?

• History is the Essence of innumerable
  biographies.
• Thomas Carlyle

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What is History?

• History isthe development towards the
  consciousness of freedom as expressed in the
  political, cultural and religious institutions of
  a nation ---Volksgeist
• G.W.F. Hegel

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What is History?

• History is more or less bunk.
• Henry Ford

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What is History?

• History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from
  which I am trying to awake.
• James Joyce

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What is History?

• The past is useless. That explains why it is
  past.
• Wright Morris

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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
  bullst."
• Tom Robbins

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What is History?

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

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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

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What is History?

• History deals not only with the lives of great
  individualsit 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

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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

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What is History?
Gary Larson The Far Side
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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

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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

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Why Study History?

• What is past is prologue.
• William Shakespeare

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Why Study History

• Life must be lived forward, but understood
  backward.
• Kierkegaard

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Why Study History?

• Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. (World
  history is the worlds court of judgement.)
• Friedrich von Schiller

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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

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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 mans awareness of
  himself, that strengthens his chance of
  controling himself and his environment, is well
  worth pursuingThe 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

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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

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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

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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

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Why Study History?

• If you do not like the past, change it.
• William L. Burton

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Why Study History?

• History will be kind to me for I intend to write
  it.
• Winston Churchill

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 fishmongers 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

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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.

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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?
• Every age contains its own biases. These make
  understanding past thinking difficult but not
  impossible. Historical imagination is needed.

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Job 3 Dispensing With the Rubbish
Identifying Important and Answerable Questions.

• Sources must be selected critically.
• Topics need to be limited.
• 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.

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Types of 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

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Types of 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

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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.

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