What is history

Introduction of
Social Studies

戴传杰 Dai Chuanjie
[e-mail]

D401

冬日项目：南京历史考察

What is History？

Why we need to learn History？

A. 20:00，温度是28度

B. 晚饭时分， ***一个人在食堂用餐，据好友描述，她心情有些低落，吃饭时不
时发呆

C. ***走出教室，再也没有回教室

D. 晚自习， ***坐在角落里发信息

E. 19:00， ***再次悄悄拿出手机，看着手机屏幕，脸上浮出了笑意

F. 晚自习结束后，根据校车点名同学反馈，两名同学未能准时登上校车，校车已
经开走了

G. ***和好友说，初中最好的朋友恋爱了

H. ***去洗手间，洗了把脸，回到教室，同桌看到她脸上都是水

A. 20:00，温度是28度

B. 晚饭时分，***一个人在食堂用餐，据好友描述，她心情有些低落，吃饭时不
时发呆

C. 20:15， ***走出教室，再也没有回教室

D. 18:00，晚自习刚开始， ***坐在角落里发信息

E. 19:00， ***再次悄悄拿出手机，看着手机屏幕，脸上浮出了笑意

F. 晚自习结束后，根据校车点名同学反馈，两名同学未能准时登上校车，校车已
经开走了

G. 下午上历史课的时候， ***和好友说，初中最好的朋友恋爱了

H. 19:50， ***去洗手间，洗了把脸，回到教室，同桌看到他脸上都是水

I. 19:30， ***打开MB，看到自己数学测验得了2分

J.18:30， ***收到了初中朋友分手的消息

Facts
something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information

• Story（History）
  knowledge acquired by investigation

• the systematic study and documentation of the human past

Facts
something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information

• Story（History）
  knowledge acquired by investigation

• the systematic study and documentation of the human past

​Assumptions Reasoning
Imagining
Analyzing
……

模棱的“历史”Ambiguous HISTORY

（1）过去人类各种活动的全体——历史事件的实际过程

the totality of past human actions

（2）我们现在用它们来构造的叙述和说明——历史思维的过程

the narrative or account we construct of the past

human actions now

W.H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History,
Thoemmes Press, 1961.

​Can we really know HISTORY？

The past is the past.
Can we know what really happened in the past?
How can we be sure that the "history" we know is true?

Interpretation (Secondary sources)

• Secondary sources were created by someone who did not experience first-

hand or participate in the events or conditions you’re researching. For a
historical research project, secondary sources are generally scholarly
books and articles.

• A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. These

sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Secondary
sources may contain pictures, quotes or graphics of primary sources.

• Some types of secondary source include: Textbooks; journal articles;

histories; criticisms; commentaries; encyclopedias

Core work: historical research

Gathering information，
Interpreting and organising information，
Reading texts，
Interpreting events，
Conducting interviews，
Visiting significant historical sites，
Developing coherent narratives

Promotional outcomes

Presenting findings

Teaching and lecturing
Writing articles and books

​Social work

work with museums, archives, media, etc.
Preserving historical objects
Assisting with museum exhibits
Advising archivists
Participating in documentaries and television
Assessing historical sites

How do we access historical facts?

Historical sources

Any leftover of the past can be considered a source. It might well be a
document, and we often think of history as a textual discipline, based on the
interpretation of written texts, but it might also be a building, a piece of art
or an object.

These are all 'sources' because they all provide us in different ways with
information which can add to the sum of our knowledge of the past.

Facts (Primary sources)

• Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence

concerning a topic under investigation. They are created by witnesses or
recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented.

• Often these sources are created at the time when the events or

conditions are occurring, but primary sources can also include
autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later.

• Primary sources are from the time period involved and have not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation.

明《永乐大典》

公元1世纪 贵霜王朝城址 贝格拉姆（今阿富汗
喀布尔附近）

100 years later，could
these bottles be
‘historical source’？

Any information could
these bottles provide with
us？

奥斯维辛

唐章怀太子墓壁画

榆林窟第3窟
冶铁图 西夏
展现了西夏时
期冶铁技术水
平，铁匠使用
风箱鼓风，使
炉膛始终保持
所需高温。

Sources only become historical evidence, however, when they are
interpreted by the historian to make sense of the past. The answers
they provide will very much depend on the sorts of questions
historians are asking.

This is why it makes little sense to ask if something is ‘good historical
evidence’, without knowing what evidence it‘s supposed to provide.
【Evaluation of historical sources】

ü Behind every photograph of film is a creator

with own personal biases and prejudices, which
may be reflected in a work, either consciously or
subconsciously.

ü • Can be manipulated by the creator to convey a

certain point or impress upon the viewer his/her
own conceptions.

• e.g. parts can be edited
• parts could be cut out
• certain details can be excluded or downplayed
• certain details can be accentuated or focused on
• angle the photographs are taken from

​Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge.

History is a discipline that collects data from the past and pieces together such data to create a historical event.
Interpretation of data begins and the fragmentation of historical data is linked together to form a historical event or finding.

Leopold von Ranke

" I see the time approaching when we shall base modern history, no longer on the reports even of contemporary historians, except insofar as they were in the possession of personal and immediate knowledge of facts; and still less on work yet more remote from the source; but rather on the narratives of eyewitnesses, and on genuine and original documents.”" 

" To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire: It wants only to show what actually happened " 

Richard Marius and Melvin E. Page

" The evidence for past events is...always incomplete and fragmentary. Many pieces of evidence are lost, and others are often faded and warped. Historians fit the pieces together as carefully as possible, but holes remain in the picture they try to reconstruct…What emerges may closely resemble what happened, but we can never be completely sure that what we know as history is an exact replica of the past." 

​The historian’s act of filling in the gaps between historical facts points to the artistic aspects of history as a discipline. An inevitable part of the process of historical writing, is the historian’s need to deduce a subjective narrative and piece together facts to mold a reconstruction of history. Without this narrative construction, history would be incredibly difficult to grasp. This is the point at which history clearly becomes partially an artistic discipline.

“My first answer therefore to the question,
what is history?, is that it is a continuous process
of interaction between the historian and his
facts, an unending dialogue between the present
and the past.” E.H.Carr

E. H. Carr（1892-1982）

British historian, diplomat, journalist and

international relations theorist

Margaret MacMillan

" Every generation has its own preoccupations and concerns and therefore
looks for new things in the past and asks different questions." 

“My first answer therefore to the question, what is history?, is that it is a
continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an
unending dialogue between the present and the past.” E.H.Carr

（1）过去人类各种活动的全体——历史事件的实际过程

the totality of past human actions

（2）我们现在用它们来构造的叙述和说明——历史思维的过程

the narrative or account we construct of the past

human actions now

• What is History? E.H. Carr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkdzu8X84fo

• What is History? How do Historians study the past as contrasted with

Non-historians?

https://www.valdosta.edu/history/documents/what-is-history.pdf

Every generation has its own preoccupations and concerns and therefore
looks for new things in the past and asks different questions.

Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History, Profile Books, 2010

“All history is contemporary history” Benedetto Croce

all serious study of the past is informed by the problems and needs of the writer's
own time

All history was written from the point of view of
contemporary preoccupations. Inevitably, perhaps,
we look at the past through the eyes of the present.