what is history. it is long answer
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Answer:
History is narratives. From chaos comes order. We seek to understand the past by determining and ordering ‘facts’; and from these narratives we hope to explain the decisions and processes which shape our existence. Perhaps we might even distill patterns and lessons to guide – but never to determine – our responses to the challenges faced today. History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours. It is so compelling a subject because it encapsulates themes which expose the human condition in all of its guises and that resonate throughout time: power, weakness, corruption, tragedy, triumph … Nowhere are these themes clearer than in political history, still the necessary core of the field and the most meaningful of the myriad approaches to the study of history. Yet political history has fallen out of fashion and subsequently into disrepute, wrongly demonised as stale and irrelevant. The result has been to significantly erode the utility of ordering, explaining and distilling lessons from the past.
History’s primary purpose is to stand at the centre of diverse, tolerant, intellectually rigorous debate about our existence: our political systems, leadership, society, economy and culture. However, open and free debate – as in so many areas of life – is too often lacking and it is not difficult to locate the cause of this intolerance.
Writing history can be a powerful tool; it has shaped identities, particularly at the national level. Moreover, it grants those who control the narrative the ability to legitimise or discredit actions, events and individuals in the present. Yet to marshal history and send it into battle merely to serve the needs of the present is misuse and abuse. History should never be a weapon at the heart of culture wars. Sadly, once again, it is: clumsily wielded by those who deliberately seek to impose a clear ideological agenda. History is becoming the handmaiden of identity politics and self-flagellation. This only promotes poor, one-dimensional understandings of the past and continually diminishes the utility of the field. History stands at a crossroads; it must refuse to follow the trend of the times.
Any thoroughly researched and well-argued study of any aspect of the past counts, for me, as history. I do have a preference for historians who probe into the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ but, overall, I think that our scope should be as broad and as catholic as possible. I am old enough to remember a time when women’s history was a separate field – left, in many universities, to Women’s Studies programmes – and the existence of non-white people was recognised by historians only in the context of imperial history. Back then – I am talking only about the late 1980s – English, Anthropology and even History of Science departments were often more adventurous in addressing the history of ‘others’ but their work, we were often told by ‘real’ historians, wasn’t proper history: ‘they use novels as evidence, for heaven’s sake!’ ‘Have any of them been near an archive?’
If things are better today in History departments, it is because the disciplinary frontiers have been redrawn. But we still have our borders, not all of which are imposed by our institutions or funding authorities. How many History departments would exclude an otherwise excellent candidate only because her sources are mostly literary? A great many, I dare say, including my own. Many of the field’s old fixations may have disappeared, but quite a few antiquated fences still await a well-aimed boot.
Political, economic and social history are, without question, essential; so is the history of Europe and America. But they are not the alpha and the omega of History as a discipline. We still do not pay enough attention to histories of ideas, of the arts, of medicine, of philosophy, of entertainment, of technology, whether in Europe or America or elsewhere. Nor do we feel particularly comfortable about biographical approaches to history. None of these potentially enriching themes can be addressed unless we jettison our atavistic equation of the archive with a collection of yellowing reams of paper. It won’t be easy to dislodge this idol, but I would like to hope that coming generations of historians will chip away at it with greater conviction than mine has been able to muster.
Answer:
History is the study of past.That related to past event as well as memory , discovery , collection it is knowns as history.