What is history? #1
We surely have a lot to talk about history. The Romans, the Renaissance, and more. But history means something different for every person. Some might devote their whole lives to studying this subject. Others might simply don’t even care about it. I also have my own definition of history. And this is my own vision of history.
‘Histories are useful for telling us how we got “here”’
Faridah Zaman, Associate Professor of History, University of Oxford
To start with, I believe in a quite normal version of history. History is history in its dictionary form. History can also be a constant talk of the past and the present. But it can also mean the lives of the people that came before you. I of course think that acknowledging why the Warsaw Pact decided to invade Czechoslovakia is far more important than learning how Brezhnev pooped. But, history is not run by only the elite, war, and politics. History is a more complex system of life itself. The century we are living in will be written on history textbooks to teach. Some of us will be writing books or be written in one. We will teach the people who will come after us about how to live by presenting them with our own lives. People will ask “but I don’t do anything that is revolutionary ‘’. That is a valid statement. But, what the statement dismisses is that the French people were sleeping and eating normally while Napoleon went over the Alps. Also, in a huge disaster like the pandemic, we are the people that will make history that actually are revolutionary than you think. We read stories about people going to the mountains during the Pest pandemic. These types of lifestyles and normal lives of those people can certainly be a crucial and interesting part of society. Both Stalin’s house and a normal Soviet citizen’s house are both considered Soviet architecture. And when an army invades a nation, the elites are not the only ones that are affected but the people under them are also.
History to me is the lives of the people at that era. How the people acted, how the people changed the course of history. History is not a subject debating about a specific time called the past. It is more about ‘what happened at that time?’ and ‘what can we learn from it?’. The meaning of historical events will vary according to your philosophy and life or your definition of history. So, by considering what history means to you, I believe that we can make more out of history
The only thing I fear is history-Yeonsangun(former king of the Joseon Dynasty)
