History is evolving

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‘While the past itself never changes, history – in other words, our understanding and interpretations of the past – is always evolving.

New historians explore and interpret the past through their own methods, priorities and values. They develop new theories and conclusions that may change the way we understand the past. Historiography acknowledges and discusses this process of change.

Historiography is a difficult and complex study. It is an important component of most college or university-level history courses, where students are expected to know about the past and how it has been interpreted over time.

Many senior secondary and high school courses include some basic historiography, usually through the study of different historians and competing historical interpretations.

Facts versus interpretations - To understand historiography, one must first accept that history is never set in stone. Our understanding of the past is and should never be immune to criticism, challenge or revision.

One must also understand the critical difference between historical facts (things shown conclusively by evidence and accepted as true) and history (the human study and interpretation of these things). 

The past certainly contains millions of concrete truths or facts. Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Germany was gripped by rampant hyperinflation in 1923. Approximately 58,000 American servicemen were killed in the Vietnam War.

On the evidence available, these facts are beyond doubt. Taken on their own, however, these facts can be ‘dry’, isolated or devoid of meaning.

Key questions - The role of the historian is to make sense of these facts through research and analysis. To do this, they examine and interpret evidence, form conclusions, develop theories and articulate their findings in writing. 

Historians must answer many questions, including:

• How and why particular actions, events or ideas came to be (causes).

• The outcomes of particular actions, events or ideas (effects or consequences).

• The contributions made by different people, groups and ideas (actions).

• The relative importance or impact of different people, groups or ideas (significance).

• Things that altered and things that stayed the same over a period of time (change and continuity).

Unlike the physical sciences, history often churns out different answers to the same question. Historians frequently study the same sets of facts but end up reaching different explanations or conclusions. 

A sports analogy - Think of a significant historical event as being like a major sporting fixture, such as an important football match watched by thousands of people. Football matches have factual outcomes: scoring charts, a final score, team and player statistics, player injuries and so forth. These are the ‘historical facts’ of the game.

Explaining these outcomes, however, can be a very subjective process. Witnesses to a football game might attribute its outcomes to different factors – team selections, the performance of individual players, fitness or injuries, umpiring decisions, weather, ground conditions, ‘home ground advantage’, coaching tactics and so forth. There may be some consensus about these causes but not total agreement.

In some respects, historians are like sports journalists: they explain outcomes after the fact, relying on evidence but also their own judgement and interpretations. These interpretations can vary markedly to the point where the conclusions of one historian may directly contradict the conclusions of another other.

The word “historiography” can also describe the body of history written about a particular person, period or event. The ‘historiography of the French Revolution’, for example, describes every significant history book written about the revolution.’ (Source)

Wow it seems like history is a never-ending topic! Now it’s time to learn about historiography!

Let’s continue - What is historiography?

Start at the beginning – What is the historical truth?