Are people truthful about history, or do they want you to see it how they want you to see it?

Answer 1

Hitler one said
"History is the propoganda of winning side"

And Nepoleon once said

"What is history but a feeble agreed upon"

you have to use a lot of common sense and circumstancial evidence and facts and your anaylatical approach to figure out..

Answer 2

People aren't untruthful about history, nor are they necessarily slanting it so you see it the way they want you to see it, but in many cases, people actually do see things differently.
If you've ever had the opportunity to be present at a traffic accident, or a hold-up, or any other traumatic event, with a dozen witnesses, you will get a dozen different versions of what happened. None is lying, each is recounting what he or she saw. But the stories don't match.
News media reporting on something as large as a war, are still just people, and they see different things, place different emphasis on those things. Who's telling the whole truth? Likely none of them. That's what makes history so difficult. Someone once said that history is written by the victors, so it is there story that is left for succeeding generations, and there is a great deal of truth to that. Point of view is everything.
At least, that's my take on history....

Answer 3

People have been distorting history since they started recording it.

For example, Napoleon Bonaparte has a pretty bad reputations in modern history books as a military dictator. What people don't tell you, is that by the standards of his time he was actually a pretty nice guy. Europe went to war with Napoleon, not because he was a military dictator opposed to democracy, but because he was a self proclaimed monarch arguing (by his actions, not his words) that the "Divine Right" to rule claimed by his adversaries was a fiction.

The Romans were also pretty good with slanting history. All those ribald stories about Emperor Caligula? They were written by the man who led the coup to replace him.

Any historian will tell you that to find the truth about history you have to do more than read a single point of view.

Answer 4

Historians have to be very careful when writing about their subject as their papers are open to criticism from their learned fellows. Not all historians agree on every theory but their is a lot of agreement on many basic issues. Some historians do attempt to write with their own beliefs and theories in mind which is only natural but their findings are put to the test by other academics. The study of History itself is a very complicated process and our historians are well trained to deal with the sources they encounter. These primary source documents and artifacts etc have been generated during the period which is being studied and can thus be biased. The historian though, has been trained to deal with any bias or one sidedness contained within these sources and can compare them with other documents in order to test their reliability.

As an example. If you were researching the French Revolution you would look at many many different documents with differing perspectives. Laws from France, News papers from England and America, diaries, artwork, architecture, etc etc. This along with knowledge of the best secondary source evidence of the academics would give a balanced and unbiased view of the period you are researching.

Answer 5

History is always subjective, though the nest historians try to balance their works.

Facts are cold and do not convey a story. A historian takes facts and weaves them together to form an argument. This does not mean its untrue, but its an interpretation of those facts.

had this beautifully conveyed to me in a British history class I took at university. In two consecutive lectures with the same prof, we took Henry VIII. The first lecture argued that he was a power mad arrogant king who chopped of his wives heads and set up a church with him as supreme leader so no one could quesiton his power. The next lecture portrayed him as as devout christian struggling to ensure a line of succession to keep his country stable. Same facts, different interpretation.

Incidentally, that His-Story thing the guy answered earlier is utter nonsense. The word was coined by herodotus, it derives from Greek, and the similarity is nothing but coincidence

Answer 6

most of the history we learned in school is biased, the word is broken down into HIS STORY, meaning how the story was told from father to son etc... the kids today will have a better grasp on history because most stuff is documented on video so the facts can not be too twisted.

Answer 7

History is sometimes just another means of manipulating the masses.

Answer 8

we know what people in power want us to know, especially when tyrants were in power, or what few things we have stumbled upon, how many cover ups does our goverment have now? DO you think we are fully aware of what goes on in this world?

Answer 9

they write it how they see it. And all people have there own point of view.