Introduction to Historiography

This presentation was created by Tara Ellam, tara.ellam@det.nsw.edu.au
What is
Historiography?
WELCOME TO
HISTORY EXTENSION
T. ELLAM

What is this History thing
of which you speak?
 There is debate
over WHAT *is*
history
• And debate
over the
purpose or
point of history • Is history ‘art’ or ‘literature’ or a
‘social science’?

Questions for you...
Write down your thoughts…
What is history?
What is the point of studying
history?
What is the difference between
‘history’ and ‘the past’?

 The PAST is what
happened
 HISTORY is just what later
people (us)
write/say/think happened
in the past
 The concepts of TRUTH
and FACT in history is
disputed.
(Postmodernism)

 History Extension is
 NOT about History
 Concerning Historiography
 Historiography is:
 The history of history
 The history of the historians of history
 A study into how and why history has been
created/written over time
 Who are the creators of history? Write down
your thoughts….
 To what extent is Jane Austen an historian?

Other People Doing History
 Museums (public history)
 Politicians and Government (curriculum, war memorials etc)
 Teachers and schools (curriculum)
 Amateurs eg Gavin Menzies
 RSLs
 Directors, Writers, producers, actors (History Channel, historical films,
documentaries): Peter Fitzsimmons
 Novelists eg Kate Grenville, Phillipa Gregory, Christian Jacq, Hannah
Kent
 Singers/Musicians: Bastille “Pompeii”; Beds Are Burning by Midnight Oil
 Video game creators: Assassins Creed:Origins

To what extent
is ‘history’ that
we consume
‘really what
happened’; or
just a fallible
interpretation.

History in History
 How did historians in ancient and medieval times
present history?
 Who were the ‘historians’
of the past?
Rulers such as Egyptian
Pharaohs. Eg Rameses
carved reliefs into temple
walls of his victorious
Battle of Kadesh against
the Hittites. It shows him
larger than life prevailing
over the chaotic enemy.

 Who is the historian in this case?
 How and why did craftsmen and artists present history?
 Purpose of history?
 How does context affect history? Bias, propaganda?
 Consider this: Rameses did NOT WIN this battle!!!
• The issue of
truth,
propaganda
and bias in
the ‘historical
record’

•Hatshepsut, female pharaoh of Egypt.
•Akhenaten, controversial pharaoh who
revolutionised Egyptian religion.
•Tutankhamun.
All three pharaohs above had their names
ERASED from the official historical annals of the
pharaohs.
Their works were smashed or ‘renamed’ with
‘legitimate’ Pharaohs names
History was effectively modified.

Dictatorial histories
 The Emperor Augustus of Rome
commissioned Roman poet
Virgil to write an epic history for
the new empire, in a similar
vein to Homer’s Iliad.
 Virgil wrote the Aeneid – a
mythic history and a
propaganda piece
 Religious and Political influence
on construction

Dictatorial Histories
 Further, Augustus exiled Roman writer Ovid
and banned his work.
 It did not conform to Augustan standards
and politics.
 Politicians controlling history?
 Implications for history?
 Consider: Turkey vs France over “Armenian
Genocide”
 Consider: Japan and China over “Nanking
Massacre”
 Consider: John Howard vs Black Armband
View of History and the NMA
 Who controls the past controls the future:
who controls the present controls the past.
(George Orwell)

History has more than one (or
two?) sides...
Whose side is the
real ‘past’? ‘True
history’? Which do
we ‘believe’?

 Who is telling the “truth” of the Crusades?
 To what extent can we know the ‘truth’ of the past?
 How would the Islamic vs Catholic perspectives be
different?
 Crusade and Jihad = ‘holy war’
Compare to:
 Middle East vs Western views of Iraq War 2003.
 Taliban vs West over Afghanistan
 Sioux vs American over Battle of Little Bighorn
 Aboriginal vs British Australian view of ‘colonisation’

 There is no history of mankind, there
is only an indefinite number of
histories of all kinds of aspects of
human life.
Karl Popper
If this is true, how
can ‘history’ ever
be accurate?

History is flexible.
History is written by the winners.
Hero?
Traitor?

 US War of
Independence
 History was written
by the American
Winners
George Washington
becomes a national
hero, a President,
Founding Father and
a mountain.

 Was he a hero for American freedom and liberation from British
oppression?
 Or a traitor to his King and country (British King and Empire)?
 If Washington and co. had lost the war, how would the historical record
change?
Washington
and other
leaders would
be treated as
traitors to the
King and
condemned to
death as war
criminals!!

Joan of Arc
 Heroine
 Witch / Devil Worshipper
 Saint
 Schizophrenic?

Ned Kelly
 Great leader?
 Terrorist?
 Freedom Fighter?
Yassar Arafat
 Criminal / Outlaw
 People’s Hero
 Police killer
 National Legend

Julia Gillard?
 First female PM
 Shrewd and intelligent?
 Backstabber?

 History is in the making
 Who is making the history
 Alternative views of Gillard’s PM
 JG writing her own history!

 Who gets to write
history?
 Politics in history
 Politicians making
history
 History as ‘politically
correct’ in the times
of the historian>?

Obama?
Bin Laden?
Mandela?
Stalin?
Augustus?

 How will history remember
Obama?
 If history is what happened, why
are there and will there be
different perspectives?

What if?
 How might history have been portrayed differently?
 How might different people, groups, cultures have
different perspectives of events, issues and histories?
There is no history, only
fictions of
varying degrees of
plausibility.
Voltaire

Loser!
 History is written by the winners?
 What about the Loser’s point of
view?
 Just because they lost is their
account ‘wrong’?
 King Harold I (Pic)
 Women
 Poor
 Indigenous “Black Armband”
 Migrants

 Who are these Winners writing history?
 In the West: White, European,
Western, Male
 Thus Losers: non white, Eastern,
indigenous, non Euro, females, other
gender identities

Alternative History?
 What if Cleopatra’s nose was a little shorter?
Blaise Pascal remarked, “Cleopatra’s nose, had it
been shorter, the whole face of the world would
have been changed.”
“Had her nose been smaller, he felt, she would have
lacked the dominance and strength of character which,
in the physiognomy of her times (and the seventeenth
century by the way), a large nose symbolized. Without her
impressive olfactory projection, the great men of Rome,
Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, would not have fallen
under her spell, great civil wars would not have been
fought, and today we might be speaking Latin. A stretch,
maybe, but who knows. History is linear, it goes from point
A to point B, no one has figured out how to go in the other
direction, yet.”
http://birminghamhistorycenter.wordpress.com/2011/05/1
9/cleopatras-nose/

It’s all a matter of perspective...

‘the history of any event is
never precisely the same
thing to two different
persons and it is well
known that every
generation writes the
same history in a new
way, and puts upon it a
new construction’
- Carl Becker

So the Historiographical Issues
 Who are the historians?
 What is the purpose of history?
 How is history constructed and recorded and
presented?
 Why have approaches to history changed over
time?

 Aka Top Down Approach
“History from Above”
 That is, history of elite persons and
groups and rulers.

History From Above
 Big events
 Big People, aka
Great Man History
 Big Issues

“History from Below”
 That is, the histories of
the minorities, often
ignored in history –only
really studied from 19th
C. onwards.
 AKA Bottom Up
Approach
 Eg history of women
 History of Aboriginal
Australia
 History of the working
class in England in
19C

Role of Government in
dictating the construction and
access to history

The Australian, August 21, 2006
What is the importance of history in politics and society?
How does History define our national cultural identity?
How is the control of History of political importance?

Postmodernism
is an ideology
that crosses
disciplines: art,
philosophy,
history
Post-
modernism
This presentation was created by Tara Ellam,
tara.ellam@det.nsw.edu.au

Be critical and questioning…
I NEVER JUDGE THE ABILITY OF
MY STUDENTS WITH THE
ACCURACY OF THE ANSWERS
THEY PRODUCE FOR MY
QUESTIONS BUT WITH THE
QUESTIONS THEY PUT
FORWARD……
DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN

The
development
of history
What is History ?
Classical
historiography
1 Medieval & Christian
historiography
2
Renaissance
historiography
3
Enlightenment
historiography
4
Marxist
historiography
5
Annales
6
7 Other
approaches:
eg Pomo, Big
History
Article: John Tosh, The Themes of Mainstream History

Introduction to Historiography

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