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History as an Area of Knowledge. Your History. Why does your past matter? How good is your memory? How reliable is it? You take photos, you keep a diary; what do you include, what do you omit?
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Your History • Why does your past matter? • How good is your memory? How reliable is it? • You take photos, you keep a diary; what do you include, what do you omit? • Would you be more inclined to trust an autobiography or a biography of the same individual written by a historian? • To what extent do you think people learn from their mistakes, and to what extent do you think they keep making the same mistakes?
What is History? • Two answers
Evidence • History is the study of ‘present traces’ of the past.
Significance • The publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Speicies in 1859; • The birth of Bill Gates in 1955; • The deposition of MuamarGadaffi in 2011; • England’s World Cup victory in 1966; • The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001; • BinguMutharika becoming President of Malawi in 2005; • The publication of US diplomatic despatches by Wikileaks in 2011.
Significance • Criteria?
Why Study History? • “A page of history is worth a volume of logic” • Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841-1935 • “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” • William Faulkner, 1897-1962 • “Those who don’t study the past are condemned to repeat it” • George Santayana, 1863-1952
1) It has created our reality and all the world’s identities.
2) It is a defence against lies, propaganda and myth – ‘ignorance is strength’. • “Who controls the