who says its history?

“What is history?... is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.”- E.H Carr

After reading the article by E.H Carr and looking at all the different definitions people had of history, I feel that the author himself sums up its definition the best.

To me, history for the most part of my life was just annoying dates that had to be mugged up in class. I hated it with a vengeance and cursed the authors of our textbooks. However there always was an aspect that intrigued me. Who wrote this history? Who decided what the inhabitants of the Indus valley civilization were thinking when they made a highly advance drainage system? Who knew what the world actually looked like in the dinosaur ages? Who said that Akbar actually loved painting?

Many say that History is an explanation of past events and their causes, While there are some others who seem to give it no more importantance than any piece of fiction.others go beyond that to scorn it.

“History is the lie commonly agreed upon.”- Voltaire
Im not entirely sure what this statement means , but I sense it could be referring to something similar to what Carr also talks about in his article, where he says that ‘ knowledge of the past has come down through one or more human minds, has been ‘processed’ by them, and therefore cannot consist of elemental and impersonal atoms which nothing can alter…’. Since all history involves people and their points of view every piece of history is as legitimate as another.
The main job of a historian is to evaluate not record. He uses empirical evidence, or facts, and re-plays history in his mind, and this history becomes legitimate for the reader. But how are facts recorded? Facts too come out of some sort of a consensus between historians. One day a historian, bases on his point of view and his ‘findings”, puts a date to an event. This becomes the food for another historian who uses this as a fact and then adds to it his point of view. Overtime as others use it, it becomes a historical fact. So it is essential, as Collingwood says that the reader re-enacts what went on in the mind of the historian, just the way the historian re -enacted what went on in the mind of his ‘dramatis pesonae’. And so, I guess very often if not read and dealt with correctly, as G.K Chesterton says, history can become a “confused heap of facts”, and maybe even lies.
In E.H Carr’s article he talks about an aspect of facts and interpretation. This is interesting. I am not sure I entirely agree with a classification of facts into facts of the past and facts of history . In my view there are a bunch of facts out of which the historian sees just a few and out of those that he sees, he chooses to give importance to a few.
Once a historian has his facts, he strangles with the interpretation. But it is important to get his facts right as for a historian, ‘Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue.” The historian then builds around the past to give his interpretation of what history is.

In summary, History is a complex interaction between events, memories, a perceiver, his interpretation, a reader and his interpretation.It may not be an ultimate truth of our past, but today I feel it helps us share a common experience. It does consciously or unconsciously reflects our position in time, answers questions on our lives and society, and binds us together.

Perspective - Historian or a Designer!

This article questioned the birth and evolution of history itself. Historical views on History.

"Our answers, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question what view we take of the society in which we live."

Historians added character to what existed as facts, figures, some memories and research. By the end of the article we know that facts and historians have an unending equal relationship. What I find amazing in this article is that I find so many perspectives and in so many places.
The article itself is not just a single view on history but a well concluded, constructed and evolved one, with so many takes on history throughout our past. And now we are here giving our take to these views, which is yet another perspective and will become history.

"St Augustine looked at history from the point of view of the early christian......Each was the only one possible for the man who adopted it."(pg 20)

This also tells us a lot about having different perspective, the same fact being looked at from 10 different point views creates 10 different histories! And further 'validation' by other historians may build upon these perspective to create their own perspective in history.
The character and the life which a historian gives to his findings and readings are inevitable yet important. As the different perspective themselves tell us a lot about the historian, the era he wrote it in, what influenced his views, etc.
But sadly we have a very narrow view on history. I feel a gap between reading history and understanding that it is just one of 100 views of the same fact.
As kids, it came as information. We had to know how, when and why British came to invade and colonize, how many died, and what a devastating effect they must have had. No other perspective came our way. We were never bothered by who wrote it and who validated it.

Another thing which stands out in this article for me is the selection process.
"It never occurred to me to inquire by what accident or process of attritation that minute selection of facts, out of all ...............become the facts of history" (pg7)
To which I want to quote another view by Neitzsche (Pg 21)
".... The question is how far it is life furthering, life preserving, species preserving, perhaps species- creating"
One talks about the selection process.Who decided what is valid and relevent for the present and the future. And the other talks about purpose.
" Knowledge is knowledge with a purpose". Every historian, in my thinking has the right to chose his own pupose of writing and recording, and it is our purpose which makes us accept it or not. Time, events, nature and experience, all would determine whats important for the historian.

I constantly related these issues to the relevance it has in my life. I concluded that as a designer, persective, selection and purpose are as important as a historian.
A designers role is also of a historian's.

Vidhi Goel

Today's history

“....our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question what we take of the society in which we live.”

History is each person’s personal response to the past. My history is different from someone else’s. If history remained the same.... if we were to read the same view of the past through the centuries it stops being of any relevance to us. History becomes our reflection of the present. Facts are always present, but what historians make of them is based on how they see it in relation to who they are or who we are right now. This seems to be the reason why with the change it the government there is a change in the syllabus (history text in particular).This might have been done purposefully or unconsciously we don’t know... but the question is how many of us are aware of it. History in that sense is like the media today... you see what the reporters think you should see. The facts are the same in every news channel, but it is coloured with an individual or a group of individuals view of the matter. It is like what C.P. Scott’s motto says, ” every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts.”(pg.5,What is a History) .
History is about the historian’s interpretation. And Carr also reminds us that this is an ongoing process. Individuals are not free of the society that envelopes them. Is it possible for us as humans to rise above preconceived notions of the world around us to write history objectively?... is it possible for us to look beyond what the immediate boundaries of the society we live in to broaden the possibilities of the past. Do we then lose its relevance to the present? The important thing about historical facts is context. Historians themselves may see their interpretations change over time.

Also another thought that occurred to me while reading the article ,about how the auxiliary sciences of history - archeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, etc. enable a historian to write history with, then wherein lies oral traditions? As most of us know in India the tradition of learning was through oral or word of mouth between student and guru/teacher. Where then does that come in our history. Are those not facts of our past? If only archeology and documents are facts since they can be verified and interpreted upon over and over again, what of the history that could not be recorded? Carr says "that history cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he writes." It then seems that we are then continuously distancing ourselves from the past that is beyond a certain time. The more in the past something occurs the more difficult it seems to understands its relation to us. Forgetting history also seems to be a big part of who we are today.

Coming back to society and its relation to history we begin to reinterpret all things as a necessity. So i guess ultimately our goal in history is to understand the past and the way the past has shaped the present.

“Who has the Authority of History”

“all history is history of thoughts”, says the author. I might agree to this up to a great extent but the question I would ask is whose thoughts is it? Does the authority of history solely belong to “the historian” or there is another aspect to it. Locating this in a slightly bigger picture I see an institution working. An institution with institutionalized thoughts shaping various kinds of intellects, one of which is “the historian”.
So is History an institution by itself and those thoughts are all that matters to the institution?
This is clearly argued that History has no option but to be subjective. The subjectivity is discussed right from the point when history is facts in some documents. “No document can tell us more than what the author of document thought”, says the author. Somewhere he discusses morality in construct of history by saying that, “History can not be written unless the historian can achieve one kind of contact with the mind of people about whom he is writing”
This adds a completely spiritual element to the process, the manifestation of which cannot be analyzed.
Facts have their interpretations as information and the hierarchy to present that is set by the historian. There is no one objective ideology for that interpretation. Not only is the existence of subjectivity, but understanding the dynamics of it is quite difficult. How far can you protect the Ideology behind the subjectivity (of facts and of interpretation) from not being an agenda? Or define History by just its institution to counter the confusion caused by subjectivity, and have the information in true spirit of its provider, that is the author, the historian ?

Same Same but Different :The historical construct

“My first answer to the question, What is History? is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the past and the present”

This is E.H. Carr’s theses line at the end of the first chapter (The Historian and His Facts) of his seminal study - “What is History”, and I believe it is one of the most comprehensive statements made about the nature of history. This is my second reading of Carr, I read these words four years ago as a student of history and they impressed me deeply and to a large extent shaped my position on the subject. What is history? It is not a question one normally engages with, history to the majority of us who learn it in school is a series of wars and conquests, royalty and revolutions, violence and spectacle. It resides largely in the realm of academia, often deemed an unnecessary system of knowledge in practical everyday life. Carr’s interpretation of it as a tool (amongst other things) of understanding the present imbued the study of history with some added value and the advent of the idea that it could be constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed made the prospect all the more exciting. His key idea, that “history is an unending dialogue between the past and the present”, though propounded five decades ago, I believe, is still as valid as it was in his context.

The terms “process” and “dialogue” establish history as a deliberate construct that helps us understand our present realities through the perspective of time and collective experience. They also emphasize that history is every changing, it can never be completely pinned down to a single set of meanings, and that no historian however convincing or influential has the final word.

Carr says, “When we attempt to answer the question what is history, our answer consciously or unconsciously reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question what view we take of the society in which we live.” This seems to explain why different kinds of history is written in different eras of thought and why there is the constant need to reconstruct the past. It also means, I believe, that no kind of history that is written is incorrect – it eventually morphs into a past and historiography gives us as much insight into the concerns of a time as history itself.

If one takes the example of G.M.Trevelyan and the tradition of the Whig historians, their point of view was essentially imperialist and the stress lay rather more on chronicle than interpretation because they lived in a society which believed in a certain model of progress where the colonists were redeeming the natives from ignorance and their backward cultures by teaching them more civilized modern and essentially western ways of living. The fetishism of collecting facts of the nineteenth century historian, can be traced back to Darwin’s revolutionary theory of evolution which was one of the greatest achievements of those times. The stability and confidence of early industrial society is reflected in the histories written at that time and in their blind faith in facts as concrete and irrefutable, much in the way they believed their model of progress was.

Carr wrote “What is history?” in 1961, and it becomes evident that a lot of the dichotomies in his writing is a product of the turbulent post war decades that saw a disillusionment with the establishment and the accepted ideas of progress. That he lays so much emphasis on interpretation is no coincidence in an atmosphere which was becoming conditioned to question any given information especially if it came from authority or institution. The fact that his school of history became so popular in the following two decades reflects the spirit of rebellion that pervaded youth culture and university campuses in the 60s and 70s. Similarly his struggle between trying to reconcile the subjective with the objective may seem futile to us now, but it must have been an almost existential question at a time when science was still considered the epitome of how a system of knowledge should function and postmodernism was still in its foetal stages. The fact that economic forces were given so much importance in historical writing of the time was because Marxism was one of the dominant ideologies and communism was on an ascendant.

Similarly, the 80s and early 90s saw a surge of revisionist history which reversed the radical histories of the previous decades and returned to a more conservative point of view at the same time as the fall of the Soviet Union and the return to power of conservative governments such as under Reagan and Thatcher.

The fact that the construction of history is guided by the dominant ideologies of our time is further illustrated in the way history is being written today. The focus on individual narratives, the disintegration of the subject into various specialisms and the skepticism of all forms of meta narratives is certainly reflective of alienation and fragmentation – two primary concerns of post modern society. The growing field of post colonial studies and the advent of bottom up histories, I believe, is a result of the first generation authorial voices that have emerged from beyond the traditional bastions of scholarship in the west. The popularity of cultural history today also has a lot to do with the questions of identity which have gathered primacy in the era of globalization and the internet. The fact that we all tend to agree that all history is subjective and that objectivity is an almost utopian ideal is certainly influenced by post structuralist thinkers such as Foucault or Derrida.

This is a brief illustration of what I understand to be the unending dialogue between the past and present which constitutes history – where the historian is at once agent and catalyst. And though one may never be sure of the facts of the past, surely the histories written in the future will continue to differ in their re-telling of the same stories.

The Historian and His Facts

“What is history?, is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts…”

Despite E.H Carr saying some rather extreme things about facts His conclusion to this particular chapter “The Historian and His Facts” Summarizes quite beautifully, the relationship a Historian needs to have with his subject.

When one looks at facts one can assume that they are subjective. When we look at what EH Carr has to say we realize that a fact is only something someone else has prioritized and made a historical fact. To understand a fact we must know where it came from and in what context did our documenter choose to interpret it. “History never comes to us pure it is always refracted from the mind of the recorder.” Thus our concerns should lie with the historian and not the facts.

In my opinion everything needs to stem from somewhere. We must assume certain things are true to begin discussion and take topics further. If one is to doubt all previous statements then how does one move further? To start using certain facts as a base could also lead to someone else critiquing your work and taking it to another level.

What I’m trying to get at stems from foucault’s theory of discourse. All human beings feed off each other through means of communication. Small ideas turn into earth shattering change that could effect us all just by conversation. The beginning need not be where it ends up but it is always a place to start. Facts work as triggers to stimulate ones mind into thinking about what they say.

Eventually it is the ‘why’ that matters, all of this stemming from the ‘how’ and the ‘where’ etc.

“All history is the History of thought” It is all based on the Historians Interpretation of facts. However, let us take for example the Oral History tradition In India. Stories, songs and theater have been passed down for generations through families, disciples, marriage etc. For every generation that gains this knowledge some gets left behind and some considered worth remembering. A lot of stories, songs etc are changed to suite modern society and its outlook o the world. Yet the underlying structure and its essential meaning remain the same. A hundred year old song could be sung very differently now but it will still have the same emotion as when it was first created. A lot has changed but some of the basic foundations remain the same, allowing the artist to grow, change and contradict, as he gets more knowledgeable.

This Brings me back to EH Carr’s quote: A historian is someone who interacts with his facts. “The function of the historian is neither to love the past or emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it is a key to the understanding of the present”. A historian must have a symbiotic relationship with his subject leaving him open to change and vice-versa. This relationship is what constitutes good documentation, it is always a work in progress

History as an accepted judgement

On History

Kamala Murali

Liberal Arts

301



“The history we read though based on facts is, strictly speaking not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgements.”

Professor Barraclough



Professor Barraclough, in his book History in a Changing World, chose to use the term ‘accepted judgements’ when putting forward his opinion on the flawed topic of historiography. He simple wrote that history is only a record of facts that have been universally accepted by other historians and has failed in achieving to be factual. While reading through the same article that this quote was from, I couldn’t help feeling a bit alarmed. It had never occurred to me that the history that I had been reading here and there was history that had been through a process of selection, modification and simplification.



Who writes history and for what reason? If history could be manipulated to such an extent that facts are only facts in subjective contexts, then what do we learn from history, not just as a student, but as a society? There seems to be a great concern arising out of this process that historians do to write history which is that of selection and deletion. The concern lies in the fact that so far many facts that could have been considered significant in shaping history have been lost. What we have though is a history from select points of view, not keeping in mind general society. It seems that as history is being made everyday, society with all its problems, and its contexts through which it functions or not functions even determines in a way the greater history that till now can be said to be recorded. There is a lack of history about the contexts through which decisions about economy, health, war, terror, wealth and disasters were made. What was society like in those times? Such information can provide rich insights about the decisions that one has to make in the future.



It only seems natural that a process of filtering must happen in order to write something as big and heavy as a history. But the danger is in understanding that these judgements that have been made and that are accepted universally are actually deceiving. Judgements are very hard to get rid of. Once they exist, they don’t disappear easily. This reason is because there is a tendency as humans to agree to a general consensus without really questioning what is considered the truth. It is only recently that historians have started to engage with historiography and its accuracy. What happens to the facts that are forgotten but that could provide us with a richer understanding of the past?



One of the definitions of the term ‘history’ is that it is a series of events that have the potential to shape the future. In this ongoing debate on how authentic historiography is, it is shocking to note that maybe for decisions to be made for the future, there is very little we can understand from the past.

-KAMALA

The Historian and His Facts

“History is written by the winners”

All history is documented. In my opinion, it ends up being biased, even if the historian doesn’t intend it to be. History is supposed to be a construct of ‘ascertained facts’, but the historian’s representation of these facts makes a huge difference. History ends up (deliberately or indeliberately) taking form as a narrative or story, as the historian puts together the facts/events. The reader’s interpretation depends on the construction of this narrative. But history essentially helps the reader to understand the present, as the past events have led up to the present.

Also, the historian chooses what to include and what to leave out. This creates major gaps, as what might be unimportant in the time a particular history was written, might just be important a few years or decades later.

Historians have to keep in mind the kind of society they are writing the history in. A historian belongs to the present. Some facts might be left out or presented differently as they might be taboo or unacceptable to the society the historian belongs to. Some events/occurrences might be exaggerated to stay in the ruling class or government’s favour. But at the same time, a historian must have an understanding of the people he writes about, which helps him perceive their actions or decisions. But this doesn’t mean they justify or berate the same.

Language and connotations also change with time. So do ideologies. Use of archaic or ancient words doesn’t help, as the historian writes for the present reader. Texts that were written in the middle ages, were written mainly by people who were devout, hence it tends to portray everyone being religious and god-fearing. The Neanderthals have been stereotyped as savages. In Indian textbook history for schools, Jinnah has been ostracized, and shown as a major cause for the partition, whereas Nehru and Gandhi have been glorified. Vice-versa in Pakistan. But as time has passed, and texts are being allowed to be more liberal, known histories are being written again. Even still, some authors end up being condemned. A very recent example being that of Jaswant Singh being crucified for criticizing Nehru and supporting Jinnah, in his book.

Objectivity seems almost impossible, as a historian basically writes a story, in the process, makes history. Hayden White in his book, Metahistory, writes about the types of narrative forms historians employ. He deconstructs histories into prose structures. Like a storyteller, a historian picks facts from the available data. He decides what is important and what is not. He includes or leaves out events that he thinks necessary or relevant and puts it all in an order he decides best. Like all writers, he intends the piece to interest the reader, and form an opinion, or interpret it favourably.

A completely objective history would be too comprehensive, and quite bland and uninteresting too. As referred by E.H Carr from a passage by Sir George Clark, “There is no ‘Objective’ historical truth.”

Hari

Contemporary History..

" All history is 'contemporary history' declared Croce meaning that history consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes of the present and in the light of its problems."

Coming to think of contemporary history, I think its aim would be purely to conceptualise, contextualize and historicise, to explain – some aspect of the recent past or to provide a historical understanding of current trends or developments. Thus according to Gilbert, G.John, in his book "Contemporary History of India" provides information on the social, political and economic history of free India. His book attempts to analyze social issues like untouchability, gender equality, unemployment and other related problems like poverty and overpopulation.

Thus I feel that interdisciplinarity has allowed contemporary historians to use concepts and theories to enhance their understanding of the recent past. For example those interested in political history have to be aware of the recent works of political scientists, the constitutional developments and in social history. Social history, sometimes described as the 'history of the people', or 'history from below' emerged with the object of interest being agents of social change.

I now will state the example of "oral history" where we see that possibility of interviewing people, of capturing their memories and interrogating them for information, has been a resource available only to historians working on the recent past. The use of oral history has helped to recover the history of those who may not have left written records behind or who were in other ways silent. The history of working-class lives, for example, has been better brought to life by oral history. However, its use has not been uncontroversial because it is a well-known fact that memory is fallible, because people may lie, so, critics say, oral history is inherently flawed.

I therefore think that the main work of the historian is not to record, but to evaluate, for if he does not evaluate, how can he know what is worth recording.
For this reason E.H Carr in his book What is History talks about the fact that all historical judgements involve persons and points of view, where one is as good as another and there is no objective truth.

Thus according to Collingwood, the past which the historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present. Hence all history is the history of thought, and history is the re-enactment in the historian’s mind of the thought whose history he is studying. The reconstitution of the past in the historians mind is dependent on empirical evidence. An example of the empirical theory is the sociology of law, where we see that the founders of sociology as a discipline regarded the sociology of law as an integral part of social theory. Law and its historical variations were treated by them as constitutive components of social life. This can be demonstrated especially with regard to Émile Durkheim and Max Weber.

Thus the empirical school marks the distinction between the two processes by defining a fact as a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions. This is called the 'common sense' view of history. History thus consists of a corpus of ascertained facts, which are available to the historian in documents and inscriptions. It is this common sense view that states
basic facts for all historians which form the backbone of history. History according to me thus is made up of facts which encroach on the on the observer from outside, and are free of his consciousness.

Indeed, observation serves as one of an historian's most important and powerful tools. The passage of time can allow hidden source materials to surface, and long-term effects to become evident. However, it doesn't always take observation to recognize an important event. Recently generated source materials can easily be discarded and lost forever since many people equate "historic" only with "old", but this is not true, history is not always associated with the old, there are various facets of contemporary history which provide a link between the past and the present and are important in terms of social change today.

Doubting History

‘History is the historian’s experience. It is “made” by nobody save the historian; to write history is the only way to make it.’ – Professor Oakeshott.

When I was in school learning history I wasn’t much interested in the fact, figures and the timeline which were handed over to me to learn without thinking. It always seemed significant to know about the civilizations that existed before, their kings, how they ruled their empire, what they did during their time as kings, how the people lived in that time, what kind of resources they had, how was the society so different from what we have now and the evolution of the culture we have inherited now. Then and now was the only thing that had me intrigued in this subject.  

I never thought what am reading has been brought to me in the purest form. History as we know it has been passed on from one human mind to another interpreted in a different way everytime, ofcourse keeping in mind the loss of information on its way to us. Everyone likes to boost their ego. No one will ever leave behind a piece of evidence which wouldn’t make him/her sound impressive. How is that we can believe that the evidence he have found about our history is in the purest form? How can we be so sure about the fact that the information that we have collected by hasn’t been tampered with? It is just not possible that no one else ever found it except for us. The books we find about kings and their empires were usually written under the consent of the king. We can never be sure of our findings. I can write a book about our time and make everything sound really nasty 1000 years down the line maybe except for my book people couldn’t recover anything. Would they assume our society to be like the way I have portrait it to be.

Yes one can argue that there were other facts supporting the big picture of how things were then but we can never be certain can we, since it is the historians job to decide which fact to consider more important as compared to other. Our history is basically dependent on the choices the historians make. The way he decides to craft it. He might find Caesar crossing a small river significant. I might not. I can call myself a historian. I can get all the books I need on the subject I wish to write on, derive my own theory from the facts and the figures as I wish and come to a conclusion as per my will. I see no reason for them to disagree with me. It was my decision to decide what was relevant or not. It might turn out to be extremely different from what most people agree with. What am trying to say is that our history is defective. Even from whatever we have people tend to interpret it in their own way. They make their own assumptions. Some feminist find Ramayana to be very offensive to women from the way Sita was treated. They claim Valmiki was a man and that he wanted to show mans control over women and that’s why position of women Indian society is so bad. Well it is their point of view.

History has always been amended from time to time. It has always been a subject of interpretation and change. As we find more facts what was written already is ignored and the new version is incorporated. Simply to show how things were seems like an impossible task, plus a historian is necessarily selective. It all depends against what background a historian wrote. In the end it is just an experience crafted by the historian.

The Historian and His Facts (response paper)

“The history we read, though based on facts, is strictly speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgements.” – Professor Barraclough.

Naively reading that reference, that might sound blasphemous. Everything I’ve ever learned in history lessons is a factual account of what has happened in the past. In reality, every bit of history has been filtered down and interpreted by a human being. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the historian decides which facts can be considered worth preserving. Coming into play here, unquestionably are the historian’s prejudices, limitations and his vulnerability to outside influences. This element of interpretation is what makes it impossible for history to exist objectively and true to the events that did actually happen in the past. In fact, this subjectivity exists in anything that involves humans – right from a piece of gossip to a witness account of a crime or to even identifying a colour.

And if history is as objective as it should be, and as objective as some 19^th century historians believe it to be, then why are historians repeatedly editing and revising history books? Less controversial reasons are a huge reserve of sources available and newer evidences being found. Nanki already discussed BJP’s process of saffronising text books as being a major reason to edit history books. Changing authorities and decision makers, newer and more relevant scholars call for a revision of priorities of the ‘facts’ in text books.

By accepting the role the historian plays in the passing down of history, one could label the historian – at the cost of sounding trivial, and possibly illogical – a history designer, and hence creating ‘brands’ of history.

E.H. Carr wrote in the article: One of the fascinations of ancient and mediaeval history is that it gives us the illusion of having all our facts at our disposal – illusion being the key word here. History tends to romanticize facts. One of the reasons why people even still remain interested in studying history (as discussed in class) is because of the colourful narratives and the grass always seems to be greener in the past, that you believe to be the truth.

A history book is similar to a newspaper. Both document past events, though at different time frames, by sensationalizing the story. For sake of an example: a history book reads - ‘Shah Jehan was deposed and imprisoned. Aurangzeb's treatment of his father betrays a deep-rooted complex.’ You read that and believe it to be true. You believe that Aurangzeb was a heartless man. A recent newspaper article, read something like this – ‘Bajaj rebuffed his father’s emotional outburst...etc.’ This however you might take awhile to believe – because it has happened in your lifetime, so you might be familiar with its context, also you know newspapers usually sensationalize stories, and ‘rebuffed’ and ‘emotional outburst’ might sound too strong in context. If for instance, this article was published to be a part of history 100 years from now, those reading it would think it to be wholly true, mostly acceptance and because they don’t know any better. An account being in a history book automatically lends it some sort of validation. Carr says that it never occurred even to him to enquire how certain facts had survived to become historical facts. Often enough, people don’t question the content of what they’re reading. That is the problem.