So what is History?

Carl Becker says, " the facts of history do not exist for any historian till he creates them"

Its all about personal interpretation. What the historian makes out of a story just to satisfy himself and the people reading what he states. It cannot be denied that facts do exist on their own, but to make them known, someone has to talk about them and when they do, they talk about it in their own language – in other words, Facts don’t speak for themselves! But the most important thing is to get your facts straight, ‘cause only then, its almost acceptable to plunge into your own interpretations of them.

For a historian, facts are the first level to a good piece of writing. To add quality and interest in them, its his or her job to “add” to it. Nothing is right or wrong unless they beat around the bush and just make the concerned fact a fairytale! Each person will have their own opinion about whatever they read. Even in my case, you may not agree with what I say. But that doesn’t solve the purpose, it doesn’t end the topic. We are a million of us having our own thoughts and yes, not to forget, we are all from different generations. History is looked at differently by each one of us and thats where the facts come out from. Facts are made and known for people to believe – Believe what took place in the past! For example, Julius Caesar was killed by Brutus. Now thats a known fact. Historians have had their own stories on it as to why was he killed and that it was not Brutus but Cassius who killed him out of anger or even about Caesar’s last words to Brutus, but in all of them the most common conclusion is, THE fact which people believe and MIGHT be true – Brutus did kill Caesar because he was ambitious and didn’t do good to Rome and even though Brutus loved him he refused to budge from killing him.

“No document can tell us more than what the author of the document thought – what he thought had happened, what he thought ought to happen or would happen, or perhaps only what he wanted others to think he thought, or even only what he himself thought he thought” – Its all a big MAYBE. History, as how people look at it, is all about writing the past. We haven’t experienced it physically- we just “know” things through scooping out information from old papers, pictures and stories from every corner of the library and making a not so definite conclusion of it, which only we “think” is just perfect to understand what happened in those days.

If historians weren’t so curious to know about the past and if we weren’t so inquisitive to learn about it, facts would have just been kept the way they were and maybe not have been known to us at all. The Subject History would just have been neglected. It all boils down to depending on the historian of the present- what he thinks and chooses to say and its just his way of approaching what he perceived – it is Hi(s)Story! – the kind of fish he wants to catch and the dish he wants to make.