Why do historians need to look at other sources like autobiographies, accounts of travellers, etc. Apart from government records?
Answers
Answered by
8
History is about the changes that occur over time. It is about the finding out of how things were in the past and how things have changed in the present. As soon as we compare the past with the present we refer to time, we talk of ‘before’ and ‘after’.
• If someone asks you when people began to drink tea or coffee, you would fail to answer this question. It is because people did not begin drinking tea on a one fine day, they developed the taste for it over time. Thus, you can only refer to a span of time, an approximate period over which particular changes became visible.
• Still we have enough reason why we associate history with a string of dates. There was a time when history was an account of battles and big events. It was about rulers and their policies. Historians wrote about the year when a king was crowned, the year he married, the year he fought a particular battle, etc. For such events, specific dates were fixed.
• How do we determine that a particular set of dates is important? The dates we select, the dates around which we compare our story of the past, are not important on their own. They became important because we focus on a particular set of events as important.
• The histories written by British historians in India, the rule of each Governor-General was important. These histories began with the rule of the first Governor-General Warren Hastings and ended with the last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten.
• If someone asks you when people began to drink tea or coffee, you would fail to answer this question. It is because people did not begin drinking tea on a one fine day, they developed the taste for it over time. Thus, you can only refer to a span of time, an approximate period over which particular changes became visible.
• Still we have enough reason why we associate history with a string of dates. There was a time when history was an account of battles and big events. It was about rulers and their policies. Historians wrote about the year when a king was crowned, the year he married, the year he fought a particular battle, etc. For such events, specific dates were fixed.
• How do we determine that a particular set of dates is important? The dates we select, the dates around which we compare our story of the past, are not important on their own. They became important because we focus on a particular set of events as important.
• The histories written by British historians in India, the rule of each Governor-General was important. These histories began with the rule of the first Governor-General Warren Hastings and ended with the last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten.
Similar questions