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.
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.