Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (7)

Can we trust the history we are reading?

After establishing the validity of historical hypotheses and the range of histories now available to read or study into, the logical next step for the author is whether we can trust the historical studies presented by historians.

We now know that for the same history topic, it could be studied in multiple angles and with different target purposes, and so there isn't the "one definitive narrative" for a historical event or topic. However, is it possible to have a timeless conclusion for a specific purpose & angle for a topic? What the author argues, is "no" - when historians look into history, they are bringing their contemporary concerns and questions into the process and thought logics. If there is racial tension in the current world being unfolded in a specific way, these provocations will influence the researcher's angle and analysis, in the hope that historical events could elucidate the path. This is inevitable, and so for the same topic and set of sources, different researchers along the timeline will look at it in different ways and come up with varied conclusions. It doesn't matter how impartial the researchers try to be, it's in the DNA of historical studies.

Having established the inevitable human factor in historical studies, the next logical question is that will the researchers' background affect the macro scope of study? For example, researchers are intellects and middle class, and as such would they be tempted to investigate history to justify their social status and economic benefits such as professors' pay? In theory this is of course possible, but from practical observations the researchers do not appear to be doing that. Despite being middle class, a lot of them championed for the ethnic minority and labour class, and go on to criticise the establishment. This is the result of universities being deliberately maintained crucibles of provocative thoughts, and the dedication of researchers in to finding the impartial truth.

However, this does not mean that the human factors is not affecting the health or dependability of historical studies. Postmodernism grew out of the diminished status of history in the society (although less of a case in academia and universities). They called for history as evidence-based literature and simultaneous validity of a multitude of theories, such that there is no "orthodox narrative" and that readers are free (or forced) to seek professional interpretation of historical events, putting historians back in the centre of historical studies which is required for any interpretation to take place (a bit like dieting). This has damaged the reputation of history as people started to question whether finding the truth about the past was ever possible, and whether the learnings could be genuinely trusted and be significant to our lives today.

Human factor is inevitable and not necessarily skewing history, but how does the identity of the researcher affect the history topic being studied? A school of thought is that a history topic the most valid when studied by someone with direct relationship or experience to it, such as a woman researching on women's history, or an ethnic minority studying into ethnic minority's history. For ancient military history, then they are best studied by retired general who have been through wars. This is an appealing theory and would pass thought experiments, but it's again not true in practice. A lot of middle class white male researchers write far better history on ethnic minority or the working class, defeating the theory comprehensively. Furthermore, the idea of history is that the past events' contexts may be very different from the current events' contexts, e.g. the ethnic minorities' pressure in the past may be different from the current ones, such that the direct experience is more of a constraint or provides false hints. Outsiders studying into a history topic could also bring in fresh thoughts, dimensions and rigour not possible by those bound by their own experience.

What these theories and real experience suggest the need for an all-inclusive society where opportunities thrive - it is one thing to come up with thoughts and reasoning to limit people, and quite another to let experiments take place, let real data gather and then make a conclusion.