The document discusses different perspectives on what history is and how it should be studied and understood. It addresses questions such as: What is the nature and purpose of history? How do we know what happened in the past? How do biases and perspectives influence the telling of history? The document presents various views on these topics, including: 1) History involves interpreting sources and evidence from the past, which is imperfect and open to interpretation. 2) Historians must consider factors like context, culture and paradigm that influence their selection and analysis of facts. 3) Textbooks aim to teach a coherent narrative of the past but inevitably involve some level of selection and potential biases.

1. History
What is history but a fable agreed
upon? (Napoleon)
1

2. What is History?
• History is but the register of human crimes and
misfortunes.
• History: An account, mostly false, of
events, mostly unimportant, which are brought
about by rulers, mostly knaves, and
soldiers, mostly fools.
• History is a kind of experiment, albeit an
imperfectly controlled one.
• History: that is, history understood as a
single, coherent, evolutionary process, when
taking into account the experience of all peoples in
all times. 2

3. What do we mean by „History‟
• Past events
– What actually happened
– Our knowldege ..... complete or incomplete?
– Objective reality?
• Academic enquiry, historical writing
– How do we know?
– Reading and selection of sources
– Interpretation
3

4. The purpose of History
Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his
inquiry, so that human achievements may not
become forgotten in time, and great and
marvellous deeds – some displayed by
Greeks, some by barbarians – may not be
without their glory; and especially to show
why the two peoples fought with each other.
(Opening
Herodotus, the father of History - Cicero of Herodotus‟ „Histories‟)
4

5. Purpose of History
• To provice societies with a sense of
Identity
– “a country without a history is like a person
without a memory”
• (Defence against) Propaganda
– “Who controls the past controls the
future, who controls the present controls the
past” Orwell
• A key to understanding Human behaviour
– “Those who don‟t study the past are
condemned to repeat it” Santayana 5

6. A model of history
• X happened
A saw it
B recorded it
C interprets and writes it
D publishes it
E reads it
F teaches it
G learns it
6

7. The „facts‟
• The belief in a hard core of historical facts
existing objectively and independently of
the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but
one which it is very hard to eradicate‟ EH
Carr
Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49bc
The battle of Bosworth Field took place in
1485 on BosworthHill
Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo in
7
1815

8. Information
• How much information / source material do
we have about these historical events?
– The Persian Wars
– Caesar seizing power in 49bc
– The Wars of the Roses
– The Napoleonic wars
– The First World War
– The Vietnam War
– The Iraq War
• What does it consist of?
8

9. “Facts” and Sources
• What do they consist of?
– “primary sources”
– “statistics”
– “eye-witnesses reports”
– “contemporary reports”
– “documents” / archives
– Secondary sources
• How „reliable‟ are they?
9

10. Moscow, May 5th 1920

11. Moscow, May 5th 1920

12. Same picture, different editing…

13. Who is this? Who‟s this then?

14. Evidence questions
• Is there a hard core of evidence all can agree
on? Or is it a fallacy?
• Is there historical knowledge that would
satisfy our definitions of „knowledge‟ in TOK?
• How do we „know‟ History?
• What role do bias and selection play in
History?
14

15. Historians
– examine the sources
– reflect on the views of other historians
– come up with conclusions…
– publish findings…for whom ?
• For God, for academic reputation, for
money ?
15

16. “History”
• Who writes it?
• For what purpose?
• How do historians decide what’s included / left
out?
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it - Churchill
16

17. Bias
• something conscious?
• By what is it dictated?
• Does it imply dishonesty?
• Is it a separate issue from selection?
17

18. Selection
The facts are like fish swimming in a vast and
murky 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 bait he chooses – these two facts of
course being determined by the type of fish
he wants to catch. By and large the historian
will get the facts he wants. EH Carr 18

19. Selection
• The historian selects (and analyses)
according to
– The means at his/her disposal
– Paradigms
– Context
– Culture or era in which he/she lives
•If seen as bias
Topic bias
Confirmation bias
National Bias 19

20. Paradigm, context, culture ......
• Suicide bomber - Freedom fighter or terrorist?
• Trafalgar, a decisive battle or a skirmish?
• The colonisation of America, a triumph or the end
of a civilisation?
• The atomic bomb, end of the war or the beginning
of a new era (the cold war)?
• Henry VIII‟s divorce – a sordid mess or the start of
the fall of the Catholic Church in England?
20

21. Textbooks
• Do all textbooks give the same account of
events?
– Selection
– Interpretation
– Use of language
– Analytical concepts used
• What is their purpose?
21

22. The use of Textbooks
• “The systematic distortion of the historical
record propagated in the Japanese
educational system, which seeks to
whitewash the actions of Imperial Japan
during WWII”
– Why should that be?
– Is it true?
22

23. Testimony to the US Senate
………..The second history textbook problem -- increasing content bias
and distortion -- involves political judgments. The critique of distorted
content in history is, of course, a problematic one. One person's
distortion is another's correction. Yet the list of textbook activists
grows. It spans gender, ethnic, religious, environmental and nutrition
causes that want to use textbooks to advance their agendas.
The defenders of the revised history textbooks claim that textbooks
used to be racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and jingo. Now they're not.
This is a political half-truth, a spurious and calculated claim, but it
has been an effective one.
Gilbert T. Sewall, American Textbook Council, New York 23

24. An Indian petition
Swami Vivekananda once said "The child is taken to
school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a
fool, the second thing that his grandfather is a
lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are
hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books are lies!".
He was describing education in India in the pre-
independence era. Thanks to NCERT, which publishes
textbooks for all the state run schools in India , Swamiji's
words are more true today than ever before . Consider
this ……
2. According to an NCERT textbook the first war of
independence was nothing but mutiny.
………..
We request your Excellency to ensure that such
distortions be removed from our education system 24

25. Types of History
• History books I read as a boy…
• Actually British people; Caractacus, Richard the
Lionheart, Chaucer, Samuel Pepys, Alfred the
Great, Florence Nightingale, Captain
Scott, Alexander Fleming etc
25

26. People and History
“The History of Modern Europe can be written in
terms of three Titans: Napoleon, Bismarck and
Lenin” AJP Taylor
26

27. People and History
„Although in that year, 1812, Napoleon believed
more than ever that to shed or not to shed the
blood of his peoples depended entirely on his
will... yet then, and more than at any time, he
was in bondage to those laws which forced
him, while to himself he seemed to be acting
freely, ……..
Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)
27

28. People and History
• “If Newton had not existed someone else would
have discovered the law of gravity, whereas if
Shakespeare had not existed no one would
have come up with Hamlet. Are great historical
figures more like Newton or Shakespeare?”
Nicholas Humphrey
28

29. People in History?
• When a historian asks „Why did Brutus stab
Caesar?‟ he means „What did Brutus think which
made him decide to stab Caesar?‟ The cause of
the event, for him, means the thought in the
mind of the person by whose agency the event
came about: and this is not something other than
the event, it is the inside of the event itself…...All
history is the history of thought.‟ RG
Collingwood
29

30. Causal factors
• Individual motives
• Geographical conditions
• Social and Economic conditions
• Chance occurrences
30

31. Causation in History - Waterloo
1. There was a communications breakdown between Napoleon‟s generals.
2. Napoleon‟s parents did not die in infancy.
3. At Waterloo, Napoleon was suffering from chronic haemorrhoids which
made it difficult for him to mount a horse.
4. The wet weather led Napoleon to postpone his attack on Wellington.
5. Napoleon underestimated Wellington‟s abilities as a general.
6. Newton‟s laws of motion determined the flight of the artillery shells.
7. The French troops didn‟t have any nails to put Wellington‟s captured
artillery pieces out of action.
8. During the battle Marshall Ney had five horses shot from underneath him
and this caused him to make errors of judgement.
31

32. Causation
• “nothing was exclusively the cause of the
war and the war was bound to
happen, simply because it was bound to
happen” Tolstoy on the causes of the
Napoleonic wars:
32

33. What sort of History?
• " Philip II and the Mediterranean, a good
subject. But why not the Mediterranean
and Philip II? A much larger subject. For
between these two protagonists, Philip
and the middle sea, the division is not
equal” Fernand Braudel
• The history of events: "surface
disturbances, crests of foam that the tides
of history carry on their strong backs."
33

34. What sort of History?
• Political ?
• Social ?
• Economic ?
• Cultural ?
• Religious ?
• Gender ?
• Local, National, Global ?
34

35. Social History
35

36. Social History
36

37. Economic History
37

38. or Art History? (Cultural)
38

39. Or the history of science and
ideas?
39

40. Economic History
40

41. Economic / gender
41

42. Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books
When high school students in Shanghai crack open
their
history textbooks this fall they may be in for a
surprise.
The new standard world history text drops wars,
dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of
colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social
customs and globalization.
42

43. Economic Determinism
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)
technological and economic factors
are the engine of historical change.
Changes in technology determine how
society is organised and this in turn
determines how individuals think.
Rather than focusing on the actions of
great men we might do better to study
the effects of key inventions.

44. Popper‟s response
 The belief in the predictability of the
future is implausible and incoherent.
 If you could perfectly predict the future
then you would be able to predict such
things as future scientific discoveries,
 but if you could predict the details of such
discoveries, you would then have
discovered them now and not in the
future,
 and that contradicts the original
supposition.

45. Back to TOK
• What knowledge issues have we identified?
• Can we list them?
• Is there such a thing as historical truth? Can it be
created?
• How does History compare with other human
sciences?
• How does History compare with natural sciences?
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