Constructed History
To study history, the facts and information must be passed down. To do so, historians record the information in textbooks and other nonfiction works. Whether or not the historians retell facts or construct their own version of history is debatable. History can be percieved as being “constructed” by the historians due to their bias, elimination of controversy, strive for entertainment, and neglect to update the information.
Each historian has his own bias. It is said that history is typically written by the winners. The story of Christopher Columbus provides an example of this. Although Columbus treated the natives harshly, he is celebrated as a great man. Textbooks commonly refer to Columbus as being the first to discover
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the Americas. Even though evidence shows that Africans, Asians, or other Europeans may have beaten him to the Americas, the historians leave the credit with Columbus. James W. Loewen, the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” surveyed twelve American history textbooks. Of the twelve, only two mentioned the possibility of Africans beating Columbus to the Americas. Loewen states that American history textbooks promote the idea that the most important world developments can be traced back to Europe (Loewen 42). These historians hold a bias against the idea of African success. The historians would rather give false credit to Columbus than to admit the possibility of Europe not reigning supreme. History is compiled of controversy. The facts are presented, and the reader decides for himself whether an account is morally right or wrong. Despite this, most history textbooks are written from one point of view. Instead of allowing the reader to form his own opinion, the text is presented in a way that prevents the reader from questioning anything that is written. For example, Christopher Columbus did more than discover the Americas; he brought death and disease to the native people. Undeterred by this, the historians tell of his story in such a way that the students never think to consider how Columbus had affected the native people or how they might have felt about his arrival. Historians leave no room for controversy and, in turn, make history facts to be learned, not learned from (Loewen 5). Historians have a way of making history more entertaining.
They try to make the text more intriguing, but do so in a way that alters the facts. In the case of Columbus, historians have altered his story to depict him as the man who boldly forged ahead while the rest of his crew feared that they would fall off of the earth (Loewen 45). In truth, by Columbus’s time, people knew that the earth was round. Washington Irving was the first to popularize this myth. While he might have believed it added a harmless dramatic touch, it actually makes a difference. By giving Columbus credit for being a minority to believe the earth was round, the people before his influence are given a primitive title. The myth invites people to believe that before Columbus’s knowledgeable influence, people had limited geographical understanding (Loewen 46). Historians unreliably recount history when they alter the stories for better entertainment.
New discoveries are constantly made that alter how history is currently documented. Loewen’s research shows that the majority of textbooks remain unaffected by recent research (Loewen 5). Again, the story of Columbus keeping the title of the "discoverer of America", despite what recent research shows, comes into play. The historians neglect to update the information and instead just clone the already published textbooks. The historians ignore the change and leave the “facts” as they had been told up to that point. Because they neglect to update the information, textbooks are
unreliable. In conclusion, history can be viewed as something “constructed” by historians rather than a re-telling of the facts. Historians write history with a bias, making it favor one side over another. By leaving out controversy, historians mold history into something that only has one correct answer. Readers are given no room to form personal opinions, or to question the justification of historical events. Historians modify the facts for entertainment purposes, essentially changing the facts. Also, by neglecting to update the information, historians produce inaccurate textbooks. By committing to these deeds, historians construct history in their own design instead of re-telling the facts.
Some of the problems when studying history are the texts and documents that have been discovered are only from perspective. Furthermore, on occasion that one perspective is all there may be for historians to study. A good example of this textual imbalance can be found from the texts about the discovery of the New World; more specifically, the letters of Christopher Columbus and Pêro Vaz de Caminha during their voyages to the New World. Plenty of the text from this time is written from the perspective of the Europeans, as the Indigenous population did not have any written text. What this means is that it provided only one perspective, which can drastically hinder how history is interpreted. Columbus’s letter of his first voyage to the Caribbean
When I was in High School, my history teacher once said to me, “history is written by the victors.” In other words, those who win, decide how they will be remembered. For instance, the history of the United States and their interactions with Native Americans. Old (bias) history textbooks will tell us you how the white European “discovered” America and saved the native “savage” from himself or herself. However, this old way of thinking, only allows us one perspective. We never hear the Native Americans’ point of view. This is why historians, and the work they do, are so important to our society. Historians depend on evidence to develop a narrative and arguments about the past. Yet the arguments that they develop are strictly based on the primary
Columbus does not deserve to be praised for the discovery of America. In short, if he didn't do it, someone else would have within 10 years. He was not the only one who believed that the earth was round, and the ideas of similar voyages had been previously proposed.
Second, the historian must place himself within the existing historical debate on the topic at hand, and state (if not so formulaically as is presented here) what he intends to add to or correct about the existing discussion, how he intends to do that (through examining new sources, asking new questions, or shifting the emphasis of pre-existing explanations), and whether he’s going to leave out some parts of the story. This fulfills the qualities of good history by alerting readers to the author’s bias in comparison with the biases of other schools of scholarship on the topic, and shows that the author is confident enough in his arguments to hold them up to other interpreta...
For more than five centuries Americans have lifted Christopher Columbus to heights of greatness and god-like. We celebrate his life as though he was a man that had done us a great favor. In resent years Christopher Columbus has come under scrutiny, his life and works being questioned more than celebrated. There have be many great men and women that contributed to the building of our great nation but they do not receive anywhere as much recognition as Columbus. When a person begins to study the actual accounts of the "finding of the New World" they begin to wonder if Columbus should adored or hated for his actions. As a child I was taught that Columbus was a great man that had accomplished great things for the sake of humanity, but in reality his agenda was not to better humanity but to better himself. He found the Americas by mere chance and he did not even know of what he found. We give him credit for "finding" the Americas but history tells of the people, that he called Indians, already inhabiting the foreign land. So you decide whether or not Christopher Columbus should be revered a hero.
I didn?t know much about Columbus, but when it was taught to us as a class, which was rarely, the lessons were brief and covered only the ?positive? things that he did. That is, from the eyes of those who believe Columbus was a noble man. It wasn?t until 6th grade when my teacher showed my class the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen that we opened our eyes and saw reality. We had been deceived. Deceived by videos. Deceived by books. Deceived by teachers. But at least it felt good to know the truth-finally.
In the text Columbus the Indians and human progress Zinn has put forward clearly the journey of Columbus along the islands in search of gold and treasures. Throughout the text zinn has argued how the history is written and how historians have distorted it. Zinn has plainly discussed Columbus reactions towards the people he met on the islands. Also, he has tried to show the pictures of history writing. Zinn clears that history has been written only from the prospective of leaders, warriors and elites, by showing their achievements and struggle. But it is not written from the view of suppress and powerless people that become the victim of the leading historians. Such that historians have showed a bias work. The historians only write history in their prospective where it sounds and seems good for them, but that cannot be accepted by other people in the world. He has specified that, writers have written half truth of history and gone quickly over the dark truth of historians in terms of atrocities made by them on the weak people. Zinn has said that, historians put much attention on thei...
It’s truly fascinating how there are so many different approaches to history, how so many different types of minds and schools of thought can come together to study the events of the world’s past. There are so many ways to approach what happened in our past, and the groups of historians previously mentioned are only a fraction of the actual number of different ways of researching and thinking that exists as it pertains to the study of history. History is in some ways, always a mystery, and all historians, regardless of schooling, training or biases, seek to accomplish one goal: to understand what occurred before us and why, and to use that knowledge to learn how the world was shaped into the world we live in today.
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
All historians have biases and these biases shape the way the write history. Some authors write to promote an ideal while others write to educate the public and authors also differ in what aspects of history they write about. When reading any history text it is important to remember why the author wrote and what was important to them. An author like Jo-Ann Shelton writes history to educate people on the social history of Rome by using letters and inscriptions left from individual people, the authors of the fourth edition of A History of Rome write to educate college students on the political and economic history of Rome while occasionally discussing the culture in a traditional text-book format, and Suetonius wrote history to tell stories about the emperors and therefore discarded information unless it directly pertained to the single man he was focusing on. Jo-Ann Shelton places more emphasis on many different individuals as a way to accurately portray Roman history, the authors of A History of Rome place significantly less emphasis on many individuals but they still discuss different groups of people throughout the Roman Empire and various inscriptions, and Suetonius only discusses the emperors, and those who had an impact on their reign, in depth.
After I reading the chapter one about the Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress, and the chapter 2 entitled, “1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus,” from the book I lies My Teacher Told Me, I thought that why they celebrate Columbus Day? Columbus was not an honest person. Again, I was surprised when I read a paragraph about Columbus give impossible task to Indian and if they cannot do task they killed them and cut off their hand and bled to death. In two year, almost 250000 Indians are death by murder, suicide or by mutilation. When I saw the pictures of Native American, first words that came in my mind was they are uneducated. Moreover, about
Christopher Columbus is the father of globalization. This claim is true because of the changes Christopher Columbus brought to the world and the cultures he brought together. Christopher Columbus made discoveries to the world that made others think differently.
History is something we live with everyday. It happens every second in every part of the world. It’s been happening for centuries. Even before man embark on writing it down. History is and every changing chain of events and fact that have been spread over time. But how do historians write history. How do they know what really happened at that time. How do they find the correct facts and put them in a book or compare them to the time they are studying. In Edward Hallatt Carr’s book, What is history? He attempts to answer this question, by explaining how historians come by their fact, how they see it as individuals, he compares it to science, the causes, as a process, and as a growing field. Which Carr’s purpose is to expose the correct what to writing and understanding history for one who wants to become a historian.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
Learning about history helps us learn about the humanities own reflection and what’s good or bad about it. This is just like a diary , people and by people I mean historians , just wrote what they saw and what seemed to cause a major change in society and we just happen to be reading it a couple of years later. I believe that historians actually wrote historical truth because it makes sense and it has been scientifically proven