Man, I could give you examples for literal days. The history of the Mongols, by and large, was not written by the victorious Mongol Empire. The history of the Jews was not written by their occupiers and subjugators. The history of Norse conquerors were largely not written by the Norse. The history of unifying pagan Slavic kings was largely not written by pagan Slavs. The history of the Roman Emperor Augustus was not written by his partisans, despite his massive investment in propaganda and trimming ‘inconvenient’ narratives during his (highly successful) life.
History is written neither by winners nor losers; history is written by those who intend to write history. Smart rulers can get a head-start on this during their rule, but can never control it completely, and the longer they’ve passed, the more feeble their efforts at control become.
Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
And in political history there’s a lot of discrediting one’s predecessors, and retroactively paitining some personalities as crazies.
And part of modern historian’s job is to point out all the possible conflicts of interest in historical sources, so that we can know that we’re presented specific perspective of events or if it was written hundreds of years after events.
Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
Herodotus, often considered the founder of the Western tradition of history as a discipline, actually is very fascinating on this point - because while he can give numbers that are… dubious… he also often notes discrepancies and where reality intervenes with the stories he’s heard, and engages in rough math to prove and disprove claims at certain points.
“Father of Lies”, because he recorded so much bullshit that was floating around, but “Father of History” because he tried to sort bullshit from fact, and align it in a cohesive narrative. o7
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 day ago
Who wrote the history of the US Civil War for the first ~100 years or so after?
PROTIP: by and large, it wasn’t the victorious North.
_fryerDan@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yeah that’s one example of one tiny portion of history..
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 day ago
Man, I could give you examples for literal days. The history of the Mongols, by and large, was not written by the victorious Mongol Empire. The history of the Jews was not written by their occupiers and subjugators. The history of Norse conquerors were largely not written by the Norse. The history of unifying pagan Slavic kings was largely not written by pagan Slavs. The history of the Roman Emperor Augustus was not written by his partisans, despite his massive investment in propaganda and trimming ‘inconvenient’ narratives during his (highly successful) life.
History is written neither by winners nor losers; history is written by those who intend to write history. Smart rulers can get a head-start on this during their rule, but can never control it completely, and the longer they’ve passed, the more feeble their efforts at control become.
“I am Ozymandias, King of Kings…”
_fryerDan@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
you’re just splitting hairs at this point, semantics for the sake of semantics
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
A great poem, but there remains quite a bit more than level sands of what Ramses II made. Hes probably in the top 3 of famous pharaohs.
Doesn’t detract from the rest of your point though.
ivan@piefed.social 1 day ago
Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
And in political history there’s a lot of discrediting one’s predecessors, and retroactively paitining some personalities as crazies.
And part of modern historian’s job is to point out all the possible conflicts of interest in historical sources, so that we can know that we’re presented specific perspective of events or if it was written hundreds of years after events.
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 day ago
Herodotus, often considered the founder of the Western tradition of history as a discipline, actually is very fascinating on this point - because while he can give numbers that are… dubious… he also often notes discrepancies and where reality intervenes with the stories he’s heard, and engages in rough math to prove and disprove claims at certain points.
“Father of Lies”, because he recorded so much bullshit that was floating around, but “Father of History” because he tried to sort bullshit from fact, and align it in a cohesive narrative. o7