History is written by people who write stuff down.
True, and dead people make poor writers.
tbf that’s just historians minus one step
We know about the Persian empire in the time of the ancient Greeks because the Greeks wrote about them. The Persians didn’t bother. Most Greeks weren’t writing stuff down for history, were they?
We know about the Persian empire in the time of the ancient Greeks because the Greeks wrote about them. The Persians didn’t bother.
Much of the Persian corpus of the period is lost to us due to several waves of literary destruction, not because they didn’t bother.
Most Greeks weren’t writing stuff down for history, were they?
As mentioned elsewhere in this comment section, history is not just the events of the past, but how they are arranged into a coherent narrative.
History is not created by historians.
We all create and collect historical source by living. And historians collate that information into stories in books.
Historians do not create history. History is a joint effort created by humans.
History is not just “the past”. History is, specifically, the discipline interested in recording and creating narratives out of events that happened.
Historians - professional or otherwise - create history, and it is the duty of a historian - and the purpose of the discipline - to do so responsibly and truthfully.
Does that mean both the left frame and right frame of the OP are correct? The victors are historians because they told a story about how great they were?
According to your argument recent history include your private messages and online profiles, but that only becomes relevant once collected and analysed. Sure with modern media that doesn’t only result in written text, but figuring out what part of the past is true fact and what is not is a study done by scholars. Deciding what happens is a collective act, deciding what of that is recorded (and how) is done by a smaller group, and what of that records is considered “true” history is done by an even smaller group.
If you want to know what happened at some place 5 years ago and would like to do your own research you can, but you can’t decide whether your research will be used by others. The further back you go in time the harder it will be to figure it out without using 2nd hand data.
Fox News and such write the current truth for many. If the right continues to take over everything and suppress freedom of speech, then the standard understanding for the current time will become what Fox is spouting. This then becomes ‘history’.
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Nice try but no.
Who wrote the history of the US Civil War for the first ~100 years or so after?
PROTIP: by and large, it wasn’t the victorious North.
Yeah that’s one example of one tiny portion of history…
Man, I could give you examples for literal days. The history of the Mongols, by and large, was not written by the victorious Mongol Empire. The history of the Jews was not written by their occupiers and subjugators. The history of Norse conquerors were largely not written by the Norse. The history of unifying pagan Slavic kings was largely not written by pagan Slavs. The history of the Roman Emperor Augustus was not written by his partisans, despite his massive investment in propaganda and trimming ‘inconvenient’ narratives during his (highly successful) life.
History is written neither by winners nor losers; history is written by those who intend to write history. Smart rulers can get a head-start on this during their rule, but can never control it completely, and the longer they’ve passed, the more feeble their efforts at control become.
“I am Ozymandias, King of Kings…”
you’re just splitting hairs at this point, semantics for the sake of semantics
“I am Ozymandias, King of Kings…”
A great poem, but there remains quite a bit more than level sands of what Ramses II made. Hes probably in the top 3 of famous pharaohs.
Doesn’t detract from the rest of your point though.
Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
And in political history there’s a lot of discrediting one’s predecessors, and retroactively paitining some personalities as crazies.
And part of modern historian’s job is to point out all the possible conflicts of interest in historical sources, so that we can know that we’re presented specific perspective of events or if it was written hundreds of years after events.
Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
Herodotus, often considered the founder of the Western tradition of history as a discipline, actually is very fascinating on this point - because while he can give numbers that are… dubious… he also often notes discrepancies and where reality intervenes with the stories he’s heard, and engages in rough math to prove and disprove claims at certain points.
“Father of Lies”, because he recorded so much bullshit that was floating around, but “Father of History” because he tried to sort bullshit from fact, and align it in a cohesive narrative. o7
So like… step-daddy of lies
I am reminded of this passage from the Ministry of Time:
“You misunderstand how history works,” she said. “History is not a series of cause and effects which may be changed… It is a narrative agreement about what has happened and what is happening. History is what we need to happen. You talk about changing history, but you’re trying to change the future.”
And I might point out that it isn’t what history is written that is important, but what history is studied and taught.
Does it follow that historians are the victors? If so o have finally won something!
