wHAT IS HISTORY?

Question

WELL OF COURSE I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.

BUT OF COURSE HISTORY IS MORE THAN WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST, ITS MORE THAN THAT.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF WHAT HISTORY REALLY IS AND MEANS?

Answer 1

History is what enables a society to be. To eradicate a civilizations history is to eradicate that civilization. It can be used as a tool to warn the present, or manipulated and spun for use as a weapon.
For example of both, America lost in Vietnam, yet there is almost the same "stab in the back" attitude as in Germany at the end of WWI (the army did not fail they were betrayed by...) that led to WWII.
Also, despite losing, the vast majority of material about Vietnam, is American and is generally gentle to the sensitivities of American veterans and relitively disingenuous to the government/press/liberals of the period. It tends to portray the North Vietnamese army as a cunning ruthless jungle dwelling enemy. (the truth is most V.C. and N.V.A.) were nearly as unused to living in tropical jungle as the Americans.

Answer 2

History is much more than details and records of past wars and other events. It is also a record of culture ,traditions ,social attitudes and moral values of the people from past eras. All of these can be broken down into subgroups.
It is from history that we are meant to learn how not to repeat our mistakes as individuals and nations.
But history also shows we are not yet such an evolved and enlightened species that we are always able to do that.
I think that history is incredibly important it a record of our heritage and from it we know who we are and even why we are.
From studying our history we can even get a projected idea of where humanity is going.

Answer 3

Someone once said that history is written by the winners in order to justify their actions. There may be a lot of truth to that.

But to me, it has always been the study of our shared past so we understand where are now and in what directions we are likely heading. When history is done right, that is what it means to me.

Answer 4

What the winner's say is what happened is history. Winner's right the history books. This is because the losing side (in war, but also in grander scales of civilizations and cultures, whichever people is dominant is the winner, those weaker losers get assimilated) is subjected to the pressure of the winner and is silenced. The winner's point of view is dominant and gets disseminated to posterity as 'history'.

Answer 5

Honestly, history is different to every person, or at least the significance of it. But one might also argue that what happened is also different for every person. The hero to one side in a conflict is the goat to the other side, and is totally irrelevant to everyone who wasn't involved. It's all about history.

We do not read history the way it is, we read history the way we are.

Answer 6

The short definition I use in class is "The study and analysis of the recorded human past". We can also say that history is the way in which historians and others choose to talk about the past. What it most assuredly is not is "the way things were".

Answer 7

History is written accounts of what has happened through time. But in order for it to be considered history it had to have had been written or recorded in someway.

Hehe