Reading Snippet - In Defence of History

The never-ending fad of "The True View of History"

The author spent the introduction and Chapter I giving a view on how historians see history in term of its function and best practice approach. It makes fun reading, as it gives the reader a sense of the variation in how history as a subject defines itself.

Starting from the middle ages in Western civilisation, history was seen as a chronicle to document God's deeds on Earth, and how those deeds illustrated God's power; by Age of Enlightenment, religious thoughts have given way to philosophy & moral, and history are real-life stories that illustrate the good and the bad, and the desirable traits. When revolutions broke out in Age of Reason, history becomes nostalgic episodes to look back at times when the world was stable and rosy for the well-to-do, contrasting with the contemporary world which was uncertain, brutal and upside-down.

Throughout these three early stages, history is more proverbial and sub-ordinated to other subjects - be it Divinity, Political Theories or Philosophy, and facts only have to be right-ish to be sufficient indicative. However, as natural sciences developed, there was a greater call for history to "get the facts right" in the same way that natural science gradually improved in its accuracy in quantifying and de-mystifying the world. This called for efforts in poring through primary documents and critiquing sources or previous writings to identify the sole truth and write it out. This is a strenuous task and could not be conducted as part of another subject - history earned its place as an independent subject requiring its own skills and expertise.

This 'scientific view' of history evolved with time from 18th century onwards, alongside shifts in scientific philosophy. When raw materials were abundant but under-utilised back in the 18/19th century, the emphasis was on combing through the sources and write definitive tomes; when relativity emerged and everything was 'relative' to the perspective of the researcher, the scientific view adopted relativity and emphasised on relativistic interpretation of historical events. When computers emerged and quantitative data became easily analysable, researchers shunned relative views in favour of 'big data analysis' to derive historical conclusions - let the algorithms and formulae tell the truth, and stop individual researchers' preferences from muddling with the truth.

Apart from the fact-centric evolution of history, the implications of historical studies (and ultimately its purpose) also developed, as people started to get the historical facts "right" and more value could be derived from the more solid base. Moving away from the religious/moral/nostalgic purposes, the rise of nationalism in late 19th and early 20th century organised history along national boundaries and used it to stir patriotism and justify the borders. In between the two world wars, history was used to reflect on victories and defeats and use history to justify their victories or explain why the lands loss through defeats should be recovered; where this went to the extreme in Nazi Germany, historical views were heavily doctored to justify the regime.

After the second world war, the credibilities of history as discoverer and impartial evaluator of past events was shattered. There were calls for it to be once again sub-ordinated to social science subjects, or to focus on "laying out the impartial and correct facts" avoiding judgements or advocacy of excessive interpretations.

In recent times after the fall of Communism, history became challenged by post modernism in whether there could be anything as an impartial history, as any theory or events would be subject to the authors' own preferences and values.

What has been presented by the author and summarised above is not the only interpretation of how historical studies have shifted in the past 3-4 centuries. Different authors would surely place the trends differently or raise other angles of observing such paradigm shifts. One thing that came out of this history of history is how fads came and went.

At every stage and every age, there would be some theories or paradigms that became fashionable, and any doubter would be shot down by its numerous supporters. These paradigms would be heralded as the "one and only correct way" to do things, and the future could only be bright through its hegemony; all the previous paradigms or alternative paradigms are utterly wrong and should be discarded. There would be people raising questions, but they would be ignored; cracks or mis-fits would appear, but people were happy to overlook or whitewash; addendum and modifications were regarded as corruption to this way and would be defended against. When the fad shifts, all of a sudden the paradigm would look silly, and abandoned.

What this episode reminds us is that at any time, there would be countries, cultures, theories, political views that look invincible, the "true way forward", and weak points would be hard to observe and opponents are all "backward and stupid". But we should keep challenging, be sceptical, and do not stop suggesting alternatives or modifications. Otherwise, we will be trapped by endless fads.