History
An
Area
Of
Knowledge
A Predicament
Imagine waking up one morning to discover that
you have lost your memory. After a few minutes
of blind panic, you begin to examine the room
you find yourself in. You discover a scribbled
note which says “Meet George, mall, 10.” You
glance at the clock, it’s 9:00am. Since you don’t
want to tell anyone about your predicament, you
give yourself the hour to work out who you are
from the contents of what is clearly your room
and make it to the mall to meet George –
whoever he is…
A few thoughts…
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If you found yourself in the previous
situation, to what extent would you be
able to reconstruct your identity by
examining the objects in your room?
What problems would you face trying to
do this, and how similar are they to those
facing a historian?
How would amnesiac shellfish poisoning
affect the victim?
A few thoughts…
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Why should you care about your past?
What dangers are there in being obsessed
with your past, and what dangers are
there in ignoring it?
How good is your memory, and how
reliable do you think it is as a guide to the
past?
If you keep a diary, what determines what
you choose to include and what you
choose to omit?
A few thoughts…
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Would you be more inclined to trust an
autobiography, or a biography about the
same person written by a historian?
To what extent do you think that people
learn from their mistakes, and to what
extent do you think they keep making the
same mistakes?
What is History?
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Evidence
Significance
Explaining & Understanding
What is History?
Evidence
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A study of the present traces of the past
Problems:
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Too little evidence
Too much evidence
What is History?
Evidence
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A study of the present traces of the past
Problems:
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Too little evidence
Distant past: easy to misinterpret evidence & jump
to conclusions
 Ex: “our knowledge of the wars between Persia
and Greece in the fifth century BCE is based on a
single, quite unreliable, source- the Greek historian
Herodotus (c.485-420 BCE).”
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What is History?
Evidence
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A study of the present traces of the past
Problems:

Too much evidence
Modern history
 Ex: history of the year 2000
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What is History?
Significance
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A record of the significant events of the
past
Problem: how do we decide whether or
not an event is significant?
Criteria:
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How many people affected by an event?
To what extent were people affected?
What is History?
Significance

Using any criteria of your choice, rate the
historical significance of the following events.
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Publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the
Species in 1859
Your last TOK class
The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948
The 1930 soccer World Cup Final – won by Uruguay
Birth of Bill Gates
Former US president Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica
Lewinsky
Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center &
Pentagon in 2001
What is History?
Explaining the Past
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History is concerned with explaining and
understanding the past
Establishing what happened is usually a
prelude to trying to understand why it
happened.
Why Study History?
“The study of history is so important that it
should be a compulsory IB subject.”
 Think of as many arguments as you can
for and against this claim.
Why Study History?
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…gives us a sense of identity.
…is a defense against propaganda.
…enriches our understanding of human
nature.
Why Study History?
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History gives us a sense of identity.
As a community, if you don’t know where
you have come from it will be impossible
for you to make any sense of the present
or what you should do in the future.
You can know a country only if you know
something about its history.
How does this apply to the Middle East?
Why Study History?
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How important do you think it is for our
political leaders to have a good knowledge
of history?
Do you think that some countries are
more obsessed with their history than
others? What danger, if any, are there in:
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Ignoring the past?
Being obsessed with the past?
Why Study History?
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History is a defense against propaganda.
National pride may dictate a one-sided
interpretation of the past which highlights
a country’s achievements and overlooks its
mistakes.
History may be exploited
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Legitimize rule
Justify territorial expansion
Whitewash past crimes
Stalin example
Why Study History?
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History is a defense against propaganda.
Can also be used to puncture some myths
Chief Seattle quote (1854 response to US
government attempt to buy his land)
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No one knows what he said on that day
Speech written by Ted Perry for an ABC
television drama in 1971
Why Study History?
What do you understand by George Orwell’s
observation, ‘Who controls the past
controls the future, who controls the
present controls the past’?
To what extent do you think this is true?
Why Study History?
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History enriches our understanding of
human nature.
Shows us what human beings have
thought and done in a wide variety of
circumstances.
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Should it make us feel optimistic or
pessimistic about human nature?
Why Study History?
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History enriches our understanding of human
nature.
“History shows…” should be treated with caution
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Self-realizing expectations
Historical record can sometimes be a source of
hope rather than despair.
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Changes could not come about if people had seen
themselves as the victims of history.
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Abolition of slavery
Emancipation of women
Birth of United Nations
Why Study History?
“One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one
observes the actions of man displayed on the great
stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals
here and there; but the web of human history as a
whole appears to be woven from folly and childish
vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of
destruction: with the result at the end one is puzzled to
know what idea to form of our species which prides itself
so much on its advantages.”
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
- From your own study of history, to what extent do you
think that Kant’s pessimistic assessment of human
beings is justified?
- Are there any grounds for taking a more optimistic view?
How Can the Past be Known?
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Problem with knowing the past: it no
longer exists.
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Memory is fallible.
Evidence is ambiguous.
Prejudice is common.
Ideal: Objectivity
How Can the Past be Known?
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G.R. Elton
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Samuel Butler
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“In a very real sense the study of history is concerned
with a subject matter more objective and
independent than that of the natural sciences. Just
because historical matter is in the past, is gone… its
objective reality is guaranteed; it is beyond being
altered for any purpose whatsoever.”
“Though God cannot alter the past, historians can.”
Which of these views is closer to the truth?
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
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Written by someone who was there at the
time.
‘Bedrock of History’
How can they be contaminated?
How can the four ways of knowing distort
the production of a primary source such as
a diary?
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
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Fallible Eye-Witness
Perceptions shaped by interests,
expectations, & cultural backgrounds.
Emotion and prejudice affect accounts of
an event.
Other biases?
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
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Social Bias
Primary sources may reflect the interests
of one particular social group.
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Why is medieval Europe often thought of as a
very religious place?
People with the power control the pens.
The illiterate usually pass through history
without a trace.
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
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If you were to make a time capsule to be
opened in five thousand years time, what
things would you put in to give future
historians as objective a picture as
possible of life in the early twenty-first
century?
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
Deliberate Manipulation
- A disturbing problem arises when primary
sources are deliberately manipulated by
governments and other interest groups to
change the “facts” of history.
-
Ex: Trotsky out of photo
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
History is written by the victors.
- How different would it be if written by the
losers?
How Can the Past be Known?
Primary Sources
Reliability:
 Who wrote it?
 What was their motive in writing it?
 How long after the event was it written?
 Comparison to other primary sources
 Documents of a legal or administrative
nature may be less biased than such things
as letters and diaries.
Writing History
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The starting point of historical
investigation is often a question or
problem which reflects contemporary
preoccupations.
Writing History
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History is a Selection of a Selection
Primary sources are a selective
interpretation.
The historian chooses his sources.
Our knowledge of the past is filtered first
through the eyes of those who witnessed
it, then through the eyes of the historian
who wrote about it.
Writing History
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The Advantages of Hindsight
The historian knows how things turned
out
Certain ways of describing events may not
be available at the time, but only
retrospectively.
Division of history into periods is
retrospective.
Writing History
G.M. Trevelyan (1876-1962):
“Unlike dates, periods are not facts. They
are retrospective conceptions that we form
about past events, useful to focus
discussion, but very often leading
historical thought astray.”
- How can dividing history into periods be
useful and misleading?
Writing History
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The Advantages of Hindsight
The writing of history is influenced by the
era in which it is written.
Events are judged by their consequences.
Each generation interprets the past in the
light of its own experience.
Writing History
Do you think you should study current
events in history (last 5 years) on the
grounds that they are relevant to your
experience, or do you think they should be
excluded on the grounds that they are too
close for you to see them objectively?
Writing History
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The Disadvantages of Hindsight
Hindsight Bias
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The results inevitable.
Anyone could have seen what would happen.
If you were there, you would not have made
the same mistake.
The Problem of Bias
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Topic Choice Bias
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Confirmation Bias
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Influenced by current preoccupations
Only appeal to supporting evidence (ignoring
counter-evidence)
National Bias
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Difficulty of dealing objectively with sensitive
issues
We begin with our prejudices and search for
evidence to support them.
The Problem of Bias
Do you think that it will ever be possible to
write a history of the world that can be
agreed upon by all countries?
The Problem of Bias
Pluralistic Approach
“Cubist History”
 Explores the past from a variety of
perspectives.
 Does not necessarily revert to relativism.
 Does not preclude historical truth.
Theories of History
H.A.L. Fisher (1856-1940):
 “The human universe is so enormously
complicated that to speak of the cause of any
event is an absurdity.”
Possible causal factors:
 Geographical conditions
 Individual motives
 Social & Economic conditions
 Chance occurrences
Theories of History
To what extent do you think that your
country’s history has been influenced by
its geography?
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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Course of history is determined by great
individuals.
A.J.P. Taylor (1906-90)
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“The history of modern Europe can be written in
terms of three titans: Napoleon, Bismarck, &
Lenin.”
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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Journal Entry:
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If you could travel back in time and interview
one character from history, who would it be
and why?
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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Nicholas Humphrey (psychologist):
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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.
Do you think that great historical figures are
more like Newton or Shakespeare?
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943):
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“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
whose agency the event came about: and this is not
something other than the event, it is inside the event
itself… All history is the history of thought.”
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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Empathy
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Useful
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Often difficult
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some have even tried psychoanalysis
Difficult to empathize with Genghis Khan
Limits to agent’s perception of the situation
Does no take advantage of hindsight
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
To what extent do you think one can and
should try to empathize with Hitler in
order to understand his actions?
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
Give examples from history of actions
which had consequences that could not
have been imagined by the agent.
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
When he was a young man, Hitler once sought a job as
a stage designer. Armed with a letter of introduction, he
went to the Vienna Court Opera to see the set director,
Alfred Roller, three times, but each time he lacked the
courage to knock upon the door. According to the
historian Frederick Spotts, “If Hitler had been taken up
by Roller, he would have been very happily engaged as a
stage designer. It would have been heaven for him.’
How different do you think 20th century history would
have been if Hitler had summoned up the courage to
knock on Roller’s door?
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Langemaat
Theories of History
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Great Person Theory of History
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Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) in War and Peace
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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 (as Alexander
said in his last letter to him), 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, to do what was bound to be his share in the
common edifice of humanity, in history.
Theories of History
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Economic Determinism
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History is determined by economic factors.
Printing Press, Steam Engine, & Computer
Theories of History
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Economic Determinism
Which invention do you think has had the
most decisive impact on history in the last
two thousand years?
Theories of History
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Economic Determinism
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Karl Marx (1818-83)
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Deterministic
Claimed to have discovered laws of historical
change (compared himself to Newton)
Technological & economic factors are engines
of change (not great individuals)
Theories of History
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Economic Determinism
We can predict the behavior of a gas with
a great deal of accuracy even thought he
behavior of an individual molecule is
unpredictable. Do you think that, in a
similar way, we can make accurate
predictions about society even though
individual behavior is unpredictable?
Theories of History
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Economic Determinism
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Karl Popper (1902-94)
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Predictability of future is 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.
Theories of History
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Role of Chance
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French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) If
Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter…
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Mark Antony might have found her less attractive
not have fallen in love with her
not have fallen out with Octavian
Rome remained a republic rather than empire
Rome might not have fallen into decadence
Able to resist the barbarian invasions of 4th & 5th centuries
Rome might never have fallen
Europe & North Africa might still be Roman
A Few More Thoughts…
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Why do we normally think of history as
the catalogue of ‘great events’ and
assume that the details of our own microhistories have nothing to do with it?
A Few More Thoughts…
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The past no longer exists, but History
seeks to reconstruct it on the basis of
evidence found in the present.
A Few More Thoughts…
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Skepticism about the past is no more
justified than any other skepticism, and it
is possible to establish a generally agreed
historical facts.
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There is less agreement about the meaning
and significance of these facts.
A Few More Thoughts…
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There are many different interpretations of
the past, and trying to determine which
one is best is a matter of judgment rather
than proof.
If history is not to collapse into fiction, we
must take seriously the idea that there is
some kind of truth about the past and that
a good historian can at least help us to get
closer to this truth.
A Few More Thoughts…
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Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) said that
History does not “make us more clever the
next time, but wiser for all time.”