Category Archives: History

Joshua Nkhata said he wanted to show the importance of Black history in the context of his personal experience.

A young Minnesota poet is sharing a powerful message about Black history in America, through the lens of his own personal experience.

Joshua Nkhata wrote the spoken word poem, "Black History is a Verb," and read it for KARE 11's Breaking the News on the first day of Black History Month. Watch his performance in the video above.

"This poem, 'Black History is A Verb,' ultimately attempts to exemplify the importance of Black history in our community by demonstrating its impact on my individual life," Nkhata explained. "As the poem would suggest, Black history was always a touchy subject for me. As a kid I hated the way it was taught to me. It was always just a brief few pages in the back of an otherwise all-white textbook."

Nkhata was previously featured on "Breaking the News" after writing another powerful spoken word piece following the killing of George Floyd last May. That moment of recent Black history also played a role in his latest poem.

"Black history must be a verb, an action word, he said. "When I began to treat Black history as an action, my understanding of it became much clearer. Black history was no longer the somber retelling of the past, it was the ever-evolving story of now. While Black history is certainly the stories of MLK and Rosa Parks, it is also the stories of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Black history is right now, it is every person fighting against a burden unfairly imparted upon them from birth. Black history is everywhere, don't blink, you might miss it."

See Nkhata's previous spoken word piece featured on "Breaking the News" below:

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'Black History is a Verb': A young poet's message about Black history in America - KARE11.com

(CNN) -- The new lawyers who signed on to lead former President Donald Trump's impeachment defense team bring a curious history of experience with them as they prepare to defend the former President in his second Senate trial.

Trump's office announced on Sunday that David Schoen, a seasoned civil and criminal lawyer, and Bruce L. Castor, Jr, a well-known lawyer and the former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, district attorney, would defend him at the trial, which is set to begin next week.

The lawyers, both of whom have legal careers peppered with curiosities, joined Trump's team a day after five members of his defense left, effectively collapsing the team.

They're tasked with devising a defense strategy for a former President who faces the impeachment charge of inciting a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, something that if convicted could also result in him being barred from holding federal office ever again.

The attorneys filed a 14-page response to the House's impeachment on Tuesday, arguing in their first filing ahead of the impending trial that Trump cannot be convicted by the Senate because he is no longer in office.

The former President's defense also argued Trump's speech about the election and before the January 6 riots is protected by the First Amendment.

CNN has reached out to Schoen and Castor for comment.

For Schoen, whose website says he "focuses primarily on the litigation of complex civil and criminal cases before trial and appellate courts," Trump is just the latest controversial figure his career has brought him to in recent years.

Schoen was on the team of lawyers representing Roger Stone, Trump's longtime friend and former adviser, in the appeal of his conviction related to issues Stone took with the jury. Stone dropped that appeal after the then-President commuted his prison sentence, but before Stone received a full presidential pardon for convictions, including lying to Congress to protect Trump.

Seth Ginsberg, a criminal defense lawyer who worked with Schoen on Stone's appeal, described his former fellow counselor as a "highly experienced litigator who is very thorough and hard-working."

"He will leave no stone unturned and he will advocate vigorously and relentlessly on behalf on his client," Ginsberg told CNN, adding he doubted they had delineated their roles just yet. "David is no stranger to short deadlines and needing to burn the midnight oil."

Schoen also had the opportunity to represent a much more controversial figure.

He has publicly discussed, with outlets including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that he met with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in prison days before he died by suicide and that he didn't believe Epstein killed himself.

"I saw him a few days earlier," Schoen once told Fox News. "The reason I say I don't believe it was suicide is for my interaction with him that day. The purpose of asking me to come there that day and over the past previous couple of weeks was to ask me to take over his defense."

Schoen, who holds a master of laws from Columbia University and a juris doctorate from Boston College, according to his biography, serves as chair of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Subcommittee of the Civil Rights Litigation Committee.

Castor, meanwhile, served as Montgomery County district attorney from 2000 to 2008, before serving two terms as the county commissioner, according to a release from Trump's office.

He was involved in at least one high-profile case as district attorney, when he declined in 2005 to prosecute Bill Cosby after Andrea Constand reported the actor had touched her inappropriately at his home in Montgomery County, citing "insufficient credible and admissible evidence."

Cosby was later tried and convicted in 2018 for drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, despite the fact that Castor argued during a pre-trial hearing that he'd already committed the state to not prosecuting the actor.

Constand sued Castor in 2015, alleging defamation and false light. Her lawsuit claimed Castor gave various interviews with media outlets and directly or indirectly implied she had been inconsistent in her accusations against Cosby and "exaggerated her claims in a lawsuit and therefore was not to be believed."

In response to the suit, Castor, who at the time was running for his old position as district attorney, alleged his opponent was behind the lawsuit, which was later settled, according to The Washington Post.

Castor later sued Constand and her attorneys, claiming they ruined his political career, among other things, in order to help get his opponent elected, a suit that was ultimately thrown out, according to The Washington Post.

Castor, who holds a law degree from Washington and Lee University and also served as solicitor general and acting attorney general of Pennsylvania, recently joined a law firm that had brought a case against the US Postal Service in 2020 in which lawyers said then-President Trump had "no evidence" for his claims of widespread voter fraud.

The former President's new attorney arrived at the firm after the case was filed.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, Jim Acosta, Kaitlan Collins, Pamela Brown, Jean Casarez, Sonia Moghe, Aaron Cooper and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

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Trump's impeachment lawyers have a history of being involved in controversial legal matters - KCTV Kansas City

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny takes part in a rally in Moscow REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

Alexei Navalny, an outspoken Kremlin critic, delivered a defiant speech in court Tuesday calling out Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He said that history will remember Putin as nothing but an "underpants poisoner."

Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family last August that was reportedly planted in his underwear.

He has said that the Russian government tried to kill him to silence him, a claim the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

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Detained Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said in court Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be remembered as nothing but an "underpants poisoner," according to a transcript of his statement.

The prominent Russian opposition leader is in court and is facing several years in prison for violating the terms of his probation, conditions set as part of a suspended sentence for a money laundering conviction that Navalny argues was politically motivated.

Navalny was arrested in mid-January after returning from Germany, where he spent several months recovering after he was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family last August.

Navalny has accused Putin of trying to kill him.

Though the Russian government, including Putin, has repeatedly denied any involvement, Navalny, working with various investigative organizations, has produced several reports pointing to a Russian government role in the attack.

A December report, produced with CNN and Bellingcat, featured the contents of a phone call with a purported Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent, who was duped into revealing that the Novichok nerve agent was planted in Navalny's underwear.

Speaking in court on Tuesday, Navalny said that the reason for his arrest "is one man's hatred and fear - one man hiding in a bunker." Navalny said that he "mortally offended" Putin by surviving, angered him further by refusing to run and hide, and then infuriated him by digging up evidence of his guilt.

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"Murder is the only way he knows how to fight," he said, referring to the Russian president. "He'll go down in history as nothing but a poisoner. We all remember Alexander the Liberator [Alexander II] and Yaroslav the Wise [Yaroslav I]. Well, now we'll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner."

Navalny said in his defiant court speech that the entire show trial is "because that small man in a bunker is losing his mind."

"He's losing his mind because we proved and demonstrated that he isn't buried in geopolitics," he continued. "He's busy holding meetings where he decides how to steal politicians' underpants and smear them with chemical weapons to try to kill them."

He said that efforts to lock him away are intended to intimidate the Russian people, many of whom recently demonstrated a willingness to push back against the government over Navalny's arrest, as well as long-standing issues of lawlessness and corruption.

Russian authorities have arrested thousands of protesters critical of the government in recent weeks.

"I hope very much that people won't look at this trial as a signal that they should be more afraid," Navalny told the court. "This isn't a demonstration of strength - it's a show of weakness."

"I am fighting as best I can and I will continue to do so, despite the fact that I'm now under the control of people who love to smear everything with chemical weapons," Navalny said. "My life isn't worth two cents, but I will do everything I can so that the law prevails."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Originally published February 2, 2021, 10:52 AM

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Kremlin critic Navalny tells court that Putin will go down in history as nothing but an 'underpants poisoner' - Yahoo News

Daniel Kaluuya stars as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and Lakeith Stanfield is FBI informant William O'Neal in "Judas and the Black Messiah." USA TODAY

One man was for the people, the other for self-preservation.

"Judas and the Black Messiah"director Shaka King wanted to tell the story of two real-life figures, Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and FBI informant William O'Neal, and he sees the film (in theaters and streaming on HBO Max Feb. 12) as "an incredibly clever vessel to introduce a history that has been buried in this country to a very wide audience."

"Black Messiah," which premiered at the virtual Sundance Film Festival, centers on O'Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) avoiding a prison sentence by making a deal with the FBI in 1968 to infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and get close to Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). The chairman formed a multicultural Rainbow Coalition amid a time of social and civil unrest, andbecause he had a gift for reaching people through his words and speeches, Hampton was viewed as a threat by the government and assassinated a year later at the age of 21.

Review: Daniel Kaluuya brings power, presence to 'Judas and the Black Messiah'

Sundance Film Festival: All the best movies we saw, ranked (including 'Judas and the Black Messiah')

Daniel Kaluuya (center) stars as Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who's targeted by the FBI in the period drama "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: GLEN WILSON)

Hampton's ideas "were so profound and insightful and also expressed in such a witty, often humorous but direct, sometimes even profane (and)bombastic way," King said in a Sundance live Q&A Monday night. "The opportunity to present these kinds of ideas expressed this way in a(thriller) was irresistible to me."

Kaluuya was given the Black Panther reading list and for the better part of a week, the British actor just read speeches so he could find the character's voice. What Kaluuya admired about the Black Panthers was "their love for their own, their love for Black people, their love for themselves, unapologetically. Even when they haven't seen that by the powers that be, they poured that love into their own community. They would die to protect their own and liberate their own."

To play his character, Stanfield found inspiration in the only on-camera interview O'Neal gave about his experience, for PBS' "Eyes on the Prize 2," when the interviewer asked O'Neal what hewould tell his son. (O'Neal committed suicide the day it aired in 1990.)

Lakeith Stanfield (center) plays FBI informant William O'Neal in "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: Photo provided by Warner Bros. Pictures)

"It made him stammer a bit, battling with his actual feelings of what he had done," Stanfield said. "For a second in that interview, it cracked through: Hes not a rat, hes not a snitch, hes human. He feels that (stuff)."

Dominique Fishback, who plays Hampton's fellow activist and love Deborah Johnson, kept a journal making "Judas" and wrote poems for every scene Deborah had with Fred. One of them came about when she thought about "all of the Black women losing their children to police terrorism and police brutality. To me, Im putting myself in those shoes. We sometimes think shooting a gun is revolutionary, but Its revolutionary to know that your children are on the frontline every day and you do it anyway out of love."

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. (left, with producer Charles D. King) was a cultural expert on the set of "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: GLEN WILSON)

With "Black Messiah," King wants audiences to recognize the "the history of this government and country in terms of repressing voices of dissent, (past) and present, and also not believe the propaganda about the Black Panthers being thugs and criminals. Theyre feeding children and building medical clinics and ambulances and trying to prioritize the people that werent being taken care of by the government that claims to represent them.

Fred Hampton Jr., the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party Cubs, said theres a combination of emotions seeing his parents story on screen. Their partyin the 1960s was a revolutionary organization that impacted our way of life, our music, even the relationships and our dress.

Now, we serve hot meals and we serve hot politics. The Black Panther Party was there, and the Black Panther Party Cubs, we still here today.

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Sundance: 'Judas and the Black Messiah' introduces 'a history thats been buried in this country' - USA TODAY

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) Bowtie Tuesday is not only in Hampton Roads. Its now in Richmond. And its more than a fashion statement. A Newport News man, now teaching in Richmond, uses bowties to share history and teach life lessons.

WAVY News 10s Don Roberts (our bowtie man) introduces us to Keylon Mayo, aka Mr. Klean Kut.

Don Roberts started wearing bowties on Tuesdays back in 2017 just as a way of challenging himselfto do something different, to keep on growing. And, also, to catch the eye of kids.

These days, Mayo, a high school teacher and football coach in the Richmond area, not only wears bowties; he makes them. He estimates hes given away hundreds of bowties to students.

Mayo is encouraging his students to sport a bowtie and embrace a lesson that comes with it.

Bowtie Tuesday started at Mayos previous school.

Kids started noticing it and saying, Well can I wear a bowtie?' Mayo said.

It gives a fancier, unique vibe, said Kelvin Gilliam, a senior at Highland Springs High School in Henrico, where Mayo teaches economics and coaches football.

Mayo is teaching history while sharing a fashion lesson.

Garrett A. Morgan, of course, [is] known for making the first gas mask. George Washington Carver,[a noted agricultural scientist], a lot of our historical, prominent figures [who] have made a significant impact on our lives, you know, have worn a bowtie.

Other students wanted in on the bowtie buzz, too.

I was going out buying them, said Mayo. Man, Im spending 50 and 60 dollars every time.

And, then, about four-and-a-half years ago, he realized he had to do something different. He bought a sewing machine and began making his own bowties.

Mayo estimates hes given away hundreds. But he also sells them and other fashion accessories through his business, Mr. Klean Kut.

His website features more of his story as well as dozens of pictures of students, sports starsand other celebrities wearing his bowties.

When encouraging a teen to wear a tie, whether its traditional, or a bow, Mayo says what anAfrican American male wears can make a profound difference when meeting someone.

Its all about the first impression you never know who you may encounter, Mayo said.

Learn more about Mr. Klean Kut at these links:

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Virginia teacher uses bowties to share history and teach life lessons - WAVY.com

Longtime Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia announced his retirement Monday. The former MVP and four-time All-Star built himself quite the resume, though his body didn't full cooperate as he was only able to appear in three games in 2018, six in 2019 and zero in 2020.

Though he only managed eight seasons with at least 135 games, Pedroia did build himself a ledger worthy of Hall of Fame discussion, so let's take a look.

With just 1,512 games, he's bound to be light in the counting stats. He had 1,805 hits, 394 doubles, 140 home runs, 725 RBI, 922 runs and 138 steals. By Hall of Fame standards, those are all short.

On a rate basis, Pedroia hit .299/.365/.439, good for a 113 OPS+ while averaging 193 hits, 42 doubles, 15 homers and 15 steals per 162 games in his career. An excellent defender at an up-the-middle position, Pedroia produced six seasons with 5-plus WAR, including 8.0 in 2011 and 6.9 in his 2008 MVP season. We shouldn't overlook the contact aspect of his game in this day and age, either, as Pedroia never struck out more than 85 times in a season and walked more than he struck out a few times. In all, he only struck out 654 times in 6,777 plate appearances, an average of just 70 per 162 games.

Pedroia led the league in runs twice, hits once and doubles once. Most of that action came in 2008, when he led in runs, hits and doubles while hitting .326/.376/.493 and winning MVP honors.

A regular on two Red Sox World Series championship teams (he has three rings but was injured for the 2018 title run), Pedroia racked up 48 postseason hits, including 14 doubles and five home runs. He hit .345 in the 2007 ALCS and .346 the following year's ALCS.

In addition to the MVP and Rookie of the Year, Pedroia has four Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger and won the 2013 overall defensive player of the year from Wilson.

In JAWS, Pedroia sits 20th among second basemen. He's one spot ahead of Jeff Kent, who just got 32.4 percent of the Hall of Fame vote last week. He's also ahead of Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr, Nellie Fox, Bid McPhee, Johnny Evers and Tony Lazzeri. On the other hand, the average Hall of Fame second baseman is well ahead of Pedroia and he trails the likes of Ian Kinsler, Willie Randolph and Lou Whitaker.

The most statistically similar players, per Baseball-Reference, to Pedroia are Howie Kendrick, Jose Vidro, Joe Mauer, Edgardo Alfonso and Daniel Murphy.

Basically, every arrow here points toward a very good player we were all lucky to have witnessed and someone who will be forever beloved by a fan base, but one that falls short of the Hall of Fame standard. Injuries cost him big gains in the counting stats and he only finished in the top 10 of MVP voting three times.

At times I find myself saying that it's not an insult to a player to say he's not a Hall of Famer. It seems ridiculous to need to say such a thing, but it bears reiteration here: Dustin Pedroia was a great player for a long time. He falls short of the Hall of Fame standard, but that's not an intended insult. Being a Hall of Famer is a high bar to clear. Pedroia didn't clear it, even if he had a better career than the overwhelming majority of baseball players.

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Dustin Pedroia will always have a place in Red Sox history; what about the Hall of Fame? - CBS Sports

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the concept, which was first to list all the walkoff wins by the Cubs since 1916 (as far back as baseball-reference has walkoff data), then to note that Id be splitting this up into three subsequent articles.

A note: This series is limited to regular-season games only.

Here, then, are all the walkoff wins since 1916 that the Cubs have had against the original pre-expansion National League teams:

Dodgers: 89Giants: 85Phillies: 82Reds: 78Braves: 75Cardinals: 75Pirates: 74

I find the differences here fascinating. The Dodgers have been among the NLs best teams since the 1940s, yet the Cubs have walked them off more often than any of the others. And the Pirates have had decades of badness, the 1950s, then the 1980s through the 2000s, but they have been walked off the fewest times of any of these. The latter might be due to that poor Pirates play perhaps the Cubs won more blowouts. I do know that for many years in the 1970s, the Cubs didnt win many against Pittsburgh at all.

Heres what I consider the most memorable walkoff win against each of the original NL ballclubs, along with a few honorable mentions.

I only wish this one had video, it would be legendary.

It was a meaningless late-September game attended by just 2,657.

Through eight innings, Dodger righthander Bill Singer was working on a one-hitter. Billy Williams had singled with one out in the fourth; apart from a couple of walks and Ernie Banks reaching on a dropped third strike, that was it for the Cubs offense.

LA and Singer took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth. Willie Smith led off with a walk and Williams doubled him to third. Dick Nen a former Dodger who had replaced Banks at first base after Ernie was lifted for a pinch-runner earlier was given an intentional walk to load the bases.

Ron Santo was the next hitter; he hit a walkoff grand slam.

This is the game in which Santo is said to have gone up to bat with blurred vision due to his diabetes. He later said he saw three baseballs, and swung at the middle one.

We have had several articles about this game previously at BCB; here is the most recent such article, by Mike Bojanowski, from last June.

Short version: Kiki Cuyler tied the game with a two-out single in the ninth, then after the Giants scored four in the top of the 10th, the Cubs came back with five, ending with a three-run walkoff homer by Cuyler. Before Gabby Hartnetts Homer in the Gloamin it was the most famous home run in Cubs history; now, its nearly forgotten.

Beyond that, there had been a partial eclipse of the sun visible in Chicago about an hour and a half before game time. It was quite the memorable afternoon; Bill Veeck, who saw thousands of games in Chicago in his lifetime, said it was the greatest he ever saw in person.

Honorable mention: Les Lancasters walkoff single in the 11th inning, July 20, 1989.

This is perhaps the most famous Opening Day in Cubs history. I wrote about this one on its 50th anniversary in 2019; for the full story go to that link.

Heres the game-winning homer by Willie Smith:

Honorable mention: Jason Heywards walkoff grand slam June 6, 2018.

There are quite a few I could have chosen for the Reds, including this back-to-back homer walkoff April 16, 2004, but the 1977 game had everything: 11 home runs (still the NL record for one game by both teams), several lead changes, both teams scoring in the 12th inning, Bobby Murcer and Jose Cardenal having to play shortstop and second base because the Cubs had run out of infielders, and Rick Reuschel scoring the winning run in the 13th:

You havent lived until youve heard Jack Brickhouse yell, Ooo-eee!

My dad was in the hospital on this day. He told me you could hear cheering up and down the entire corridor.

Many say the 23-22 game vs. the Phillies was more memorable than this one. Id choose this one, I think, it had quite a few interesting twists, plus the Cubs won.

Unless your Cubs fandom goes back even farther than mine, you have probably never heard of Al Heist.

Heist was a journeyman outfielder who had spent 10 years in the minor leagues before he came to the Cubs in 1960 to play 41 mostly unmemorable games.

But on this April day at Wrigley Field, Heist came to bat with the bases loaded in a 5-5 tie and hit a walkoff grand slam. It was one of only eight home runs he hit in a 177-game MLB career, and his only walkoff.

It was also the second consecutive day the Cubs had walked off the Braves with a home run. Sammy Taylor had done it with the Cubs trailing 2-1 in the ninth inning April 14; his two-run blast won it.

That was about the end of Cubs excitement in 1961. They were 2-2 after those walkoffs; they proceeded to lose 24 of their next 34 games and ended up 64-90, in seventh place in that final year of the old eight-team National League, the fifth year of the previous eight that they had lost at least 90 games.

Honorable mention: Reed Johnsons 12th-inning walkoff hit by pitch, June 12, 2008.

If the 1969 home opener was the most memorable in Cubs history, this one might come in a close second.

Future Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins and Bob Gibson battled to a 1-1 tie through nine innings. Jenkins threw a scoreless 10th, then with one out in the bottom of the 10th, Billy Williams won it:

Thats Jim West, who was a Cubs announcer from 1971-76, on the call. It was, in fact, the very first Cubs game West worked for WGN-TV.

Beyond all the Hall of Fame performances in that game, check out the game time: 1:58.

Honorable mention: Sammy Sosas two-run walkoff in the 15th inning, September 2, 2003, first game of a doubleheader.

Heres Mike Bojanowskis article about this game from last spring. This is not only the most memorable walkoff game in Cubs history, it is arguably the most memorable regular-season walkoff game in major-league history. (Obviously there are some postseason walkoffs more memorable.)

If only someone had film of this one. You know, film of Babe Ruths supposed called shot surfaced decades later, perhaps one of the 34,465 in attendance at the Hartnett game took film and shoved it away in an attic for a great-grandchild to find. We can only hope.

Among more recent walkoffs against the Pirates, the 11-10 win on May 15, 2015 has to be up there. The Cubs blew a 10-5 lead and had to battle until the 12th inning for an 11-10 win on this memorable walkoff hit by Matt Szczur [VIDEO].

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Part 3 of this series, featuring Cubs walkoff wins vs. NL expansion teams, will run tomorrow.

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The most memorable walkoff wins in Cubs history, Part 2: Original NL teams - Bleed Cubbie Blue

The study of the past as it is described in written documents

History (from Greek , historia, meaning "inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation")[2] is the study of the past.[3][4] Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Historians place the past in context using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, ecological markers, and material objects including art and artifacts.[5]

History also includes the academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze a sequence of past events, and investigate the patterns of cause and effect that are related to them.[6][7] Historians seek to understand and represent the past through narratives. They often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.[6][8][9][10]

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends.[11][12] History differs from myth in that it is supported by evidence. However, ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is often taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in university studies.

Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is often considered (within the Western tradition) to be the "father of history",[13] or, the "father of lies".[14][15] Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was known to be compiled from as early as 722BC although only 2nd-centuryBC texts have survived.

The word history comes from the Ancient Greek [16] (histora), meaning "inquiry", "knowledge from inquiry", or "judge". It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of Animals.[17] The ancestor word is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin (possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh) into Old English as str ("history, narrative, story"), but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period.[18] Meanwhile, as Latin became Old French (and Anglo-Norman), historia developed into forms such as istorie, estoire, and historie, with new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events (c.1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science (c.1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c.1462)".[18]

It was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. It appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a common word in the late 14th century, with an early attestation appearing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire". In Middle English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century.[18] With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the late 16th century, when he wrote about natural history. For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science was provided by reason, and poetry was provided by fantasy).[19]

In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese ( vs. ) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both "history" and "story". Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all European languages, the substantive history is still used to mean both "what happened with men", and "the scholarly study of the happened", the latter sense sometimes distinguished with a capital letter, or the word historiography.[17] The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.[20]

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race.[21] The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record.[22] The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past"). Part of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively utilize the vast amount of sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The process of creating a narrative inevitably generates a silence as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past.[23][clarification needed]

The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities and at other times as part of the social sciences.[24] It can also be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some individual historians strongly support one or the other classification.[25] In the 20th century, French historian Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography in the study of global history.

Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and have attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have also used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three.[26] But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.

Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study of history. Archaeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its discoveries. Archaeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history. "Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archaeology which often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland, USA, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical environment.

There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally, territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant intersections are often present. It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, although the modern trend has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some practical or theoretical aim, but also may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.[27]

The history of the world is the memory of the past experience of Homo sapiens sapiens around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge of the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood. By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the 20th century, the study of prehistory is considered essential to avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America. Historians in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on the Western world.[28] In 1961, British historian E. H. Carr wrote:

The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past and in their future. History begins with the handing down of tradition; and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations.[29]

This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand Mori in the past, and the oral records maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with European civilization.

Historiography has a number of related meanings. Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of methodology and practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative towards long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s"). Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the philosophy of history. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, world view, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. Professional historians also debate the question of whether history can be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.[30][31]

Historical method basics

The following questions are used by historians in modern work.

The first four are known as historical criticism; the fifth, textual criticism; and, together, external criticism. The sixth and final inquiry about a source is called internal criticism.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BCc.425 BC)[32] has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides (c.460 BCc.400 BC) is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in his work the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and looked at cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine intervention (though Herodotus was not wholly committed to this idea himself).[32] In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a nominally neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of the actions of human beings. Greek historians also viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.[33]

There were historical traditions and sophisticated use of historical method in ancient and medieval China. The groundwork for professional historiography in East Asia was established by the Han dynasty court historian known as Sima Qian (14590 BC), author of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). For the quality of his written work, Sima Qian is posthumously known as the Father of Chinese historiography. Chinese historians of subsequent dynastic periods in China used his Shiji as the official format for historical texts, as well as for biographical literature.[citation needed]

Saint Augustine was influential in Christian and Western thought at the beginning of the medieval period. Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, history was often studied through a sacred or religious perspective. Around 1800, German philosopher and historian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel brought philosophy and a more secular approach in historical study.[27]

In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study of history, and he often referred to it as his "new science".[34] His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,[35] and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"[36][37] or the "father of the philosophy of history".[38]

In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. In 1851, Herbert Spencer summarized these methods:

From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they [Historians] diligently gather all the highly colored fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, while those masses of rich ore, that should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are left untaught and unsought[39]

By the "rich ore" Spencer meant scientific theory of history. Meanwhile, Henry Thomas Buckle expressed a dream of history becoming one day science:

In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This have been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient, untiring thought have studied events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if human events were subject to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results[40]

Contrary to Buckle's dream, the 19th-century historian with greatest influence on methods became Leopold von Ranke in Germany. He limited history to what really happened and by this directed the field further away from science. For Ranke, historical data should be collected carefully, examined objectively and put together with critical rigor. But these procedures are merely the prerequisites and preliminaries of science. The heart of science is searching out order and regularity in the data being examined and in formulating generalizations or laws about them.[41]

As Historians like Ranke and many who followed him have pursued it, no, history is not a science. Thus if Historians tell us that, given the manner in which he practices his craft, it cannot be considered a science, we must take him at his word. If he is not doing science, then, whatever else he is doing, he is not doing science. The traditional Historian is thus no scientist and history, as conventionally practiced, is not a science.[42]

In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or great men, to more objective and complex analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the 20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a social science rather than as an art, which traditionally had been the case. Some of the leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included Fernand Braudel, E. H. Carr, Fritz Fischer, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bruce Trigger, Marc Bloch, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Peter Gay, Robert Fogel, Lucien Febvre and Lawrence Stone. Many of the advocates of history as a social science were or are noted for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined history with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel history with economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger history with archaeology while Wehler, Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways amalgamated history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics. Nevertheless, these multidisciplinary approaches failed to produce a theory of history. So far only one theory of history came from the pen of a professional Historian.[43] Whatever other theories of history we have, they were written by experts from other fields (for example, Marxian theory of history). More recently, the field of digital history has begun to address ways of using computer technology to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital scholarship.

In sincere opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, John Lukacs, Donald Creighton, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Gerhard Ritter argued that the key to the historians' work was the power of the imagination, and hence contended that history should be understood as an art. French historians associated with the Annales School introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalits). Intellectual historians such as Herbert Butterfield, Ernst Nolte and George Mosse have argued for the significance of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. Another genre of social history to emerge in the post-WWII era was Alltagsgeschichte (History of Everyday Life). Scholars such as Martin Broszat, Ian Kershaw and Detlev Peukert sought to examine what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany, especially in the Nazi period.

Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton, Georges Lefebvre, Eugene Genovese, Isaac Deutscher, C. L. R. James, Timothy Mason, Herbert Aptheker, Arno J. Mayer and Christopher Hill have sought to validate Karl Marx's theories by analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the Marxist interpretation of history, historians such as Franois Furet, Richard Pipes, J. C. D. Clark, Roland Mousnier, Henry Ashby Turner and Robert Conquest have offered anti-Marxist interpretations of history. Feminist historians such as Joan Wallach Scott, Claudia Koonz, Natalie Zemon Davis, Sheila Rowbotham, Gisela Bock, Gerda Lerner, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Lynn Hunt have argued for the importance of studying the experience of women in the past. In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his 1997 book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans defended the worth of history. Another defence of history from post-modernist criticism was the Australian historian Keith Windschuttle's 1994 book, The Killing of History.

Today, most historians begin their research process in the archives, on either a physical or digital platform. They often propose an argument and use their research to support it. John H. Arnold proposed that history is an argument, which creates the possibility of creating change.[5] Digital information companies, such as Google, have sparked controversy over the role of internet censorship in information access.[44]

The Marxist theory of historical materialism theorises that society is fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families.[45] Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.[46] Marxist historiography was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse of communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says it has been reduced to the margins of scholarship.[47]

Many historians believe that theproduction of history is embedded with bias because events and known facts in history can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Constantin Fasolt suggested that history is linked to politics by the practice of silence itself.[48] A second common view of the link between history and politics rests on the elementary observation that historians are often influenced by politics.[48] According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the historical process is rooted in the archives, therefore silences, or parts of history that are forgotten, may bean intentional part of a narrative strategy that dictates how areas of history are remembered.[23] Historical omissions can occur in many ways and can have a profound effect on historical records. Information can also purposely be excluded or left out accidentally. Historians have coined multiple terms that describe the act of omitting historical information, including: silencing,[23] selective memory,[49] and erasures.[50]Gerda Lerner, a twentieth century historian who focused much of her work on historical omissions involving women and their accomplishments, explained the negative impact that these omissions had on minority groups.[49]

Environmental historian William Cronon proposed three ways to combat bias and ensure authentic and accurate narratives: narratives must not contradict known fact, they must make ecological sense (specifically for environmental history), and published work must be reviewed by scholarly community and other historians to ensure accountability.[50]

Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians.[51] The names given to a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the beginning and end of a particular period. Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the dating system used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and studied.[52]

The field of history generally leaves prehistory to the archaeologists, who have entirely different sets of tools and theories. The usual method for periodisation of the distant prehistoric past, in archaeology is to rely on changes in material culture and technology, such as the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age and their sub-divisions also based on different styles of material remains. Here prehistory is divided into a series of "chapters" so that periods in history could unfold not only in a relative chronology but also narrative chronology.[53] This narrative content could be in the form of functional-economic interpretation. There are periodisation, however, that do not have this narrative aspect, relying largely on relative chronology and, thus, devoid of any specific meaning.

Despite the development over recent decades of the ability through radiocarbon dating and other scientific methods to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many cases neighbouring cultures with writing have left some history of cultures without it, which may be used. Periodisation, however, is not viewed as a perfect framework with one account explaining that "cultural changes do not conveniently start and stop (combinedly) at periodisation boundaries" and that different trajectories of change are also needed to be studied in their own right before they get intertwined with cultural phenomena.[54]

Particular geographical locations can form the basis of historical study, for example, continents, countries, and cities. Understanding why historic events took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to geography. According to Jules Michelet in his book Histoire de France (1833), "without geographical basis, the people, the makers of history, seem to be walking on air."[55] Weather patterns, the water supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization, studying the geography of Egypt is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the civilization. There is also the case of climate, which historians like Ellsworth Huntington and Allen Semple, cited as a crucial influence on the course of history and racial temperament.[56]

Military history concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat. The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of warfare on society and culture.[57]

The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals include Church History, The Catholic Historical Review, and History of Religions. Topics range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy.[58] This subject studies religions from all regions and areas of the world where humans have lived.[59]

Social history, sometimes called the new social history, is the field that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies and institutions for coping with life.[60] In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%.[61] In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 1425 (25%).[62]The "old" social history before the 1960s was a hodgepodge of topics without a central theme, and it often included political movements, like Populism, that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. Social history was contrasted with political history, intellectual history and the history of great men. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible."[63] While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with the politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in."[64]

The chief subfields of social history include:

Cultural history replaced social history as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past is a major topic.Cultural history includes the study of art in society as well is the study of images and human visual production (iconography).[65]

Diplomatic history focuses on the relationships between nations, primarily regarding diplomacy and the causes of wars. More recently it looks at the causes of peace and human rights. It typically presents the viewpoints of the foreign office, and long-term strategic values, as the driving force of continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study of the conduct of international relations between states or across state boundaries over time. Historian Muriel Chamberlain notes that after the First World War, "diplomatic history replaced constitutional history as the flagship of historical investigation, at once the most important, most exact and most sophisticated of historical studies."[66] She adds that after 1945, the trend reversed, allowing social history to replace it.

Although economic history has been well established since the late 19th century, in recent years academic studies have shifted more and more toward economics departments and away from traditional history departments.[67] Business history deals with the history of individual business organizations, business methods, government regulation, labour relations, and impact on society. It also includes biographies of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs. It is related to economic history; Business history is most often taught in business schools.[68]

Environmental history is a new field that emerged in the 1980s to look at the history of the environment, especially in the long run, and the impact of human activities upon it.[69] It is an offshoot of the environmental movement, which was kickstarted by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the 1960s.

World history is the study of major civilizations over the last 3000 years or so. World history is primarily a teaching field, rather than a research field. It gained popularity in the United States,[70] Japan[71] and other countries after the 1980s with the realization that students need a broader exposure to the world as globalization proceeds.

It has led to highly controversial interpretations by Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, among others.

The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990.[72] The H-World discussion list[73] serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.

A people's history is a type of historical work which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people. A people's history is the history of the world that is the story of mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals or groups not included in the past in other type of writing about history are the primary focus, which includes the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and the otherwise forgotten people. The authors are typically on the left and have a socialist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s.[74]

Intellectual history and the history of ideas emerged in the mid-20th century, with the focus on the intellectuals and their books on the one hand, and on the other the study of ideas as disembodied objects with a career of their own.[75][76]

Gender history is a subfield of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. The outgrowth of gender history from women's history stemmed from many non-feminist historians dismissing the importance of women in history. According to Joan W. Scott, Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power,[77] meaning that gender historians study the social effects of perceived differences between the sexes and how all genders utilize allotted power in societal and political structures. Despite being a relatively new field, gender history has had a significant effect on the general study of history. Gender history traditionally differs from women's history in its inclusion of all aspects of gender such as masculinity and femininity, and today's gender history extends to include people who identify outside of that binary.

Public history describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice has quite deep roots in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The term itself began to be used in the U.S. and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field has become increasingly professionalized since that time. Some of the most common settings for public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, and all levels of government.[78]

LGBT history deals with the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations, involves the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples and cultures around the world. A common feature of LGBTQ+ history is the focus on oral history and individual perspectives, in addition to traditional documents within the archives.

Professional and amateur historians discover, collect, organize, and present information about past events. They discover this information through archaeological evidence, written primary sources, verbal stories or oral histories, and other archival material. In lists of historians, historians can be grouped by order of the historical period in which they were writing, which is not necessarily the same as the period in which they specialized. Chroniclers and annalists, though they are not historians in the true sense, are also frequently included.

Since the 20th century, Western historians have disavowed the aspiration to provide the "judgement of history."[79] The goals of historical judgements or interpretations are separate to those of legal judgements, that need to be formulated quickly after the events and be final.[80] A related issue to that of the judgement of history is that of collective memory.

Pseudohistory is a term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions.It is closely related to deceptive historical revisionism. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative, or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military, and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.

A major intellectual battle took place in Britain in the early twentieth century regarding the place of history teaching in the universities. At Oxford and Cambridge, scholarship was downplayed. Professor Charles Harding Firth, Oxford's Regius Professor of history in 1904 ridiculed the system as best suited to produce superficial journalists. The Oxford tutors, who had more votes than the professors, fought back in defence of their system saying that it successfully produced Britain's outstanding statesmen, administrators, prelates, and diplomats, and that mission was as valuable as training scholars. The tutors dominated the debate until after the Second World War. It forced aspiring young scholars to teach at outlying schools, such as Manchester University, where Thomas Frederick Tout was professionalizing the History undergraduate programme by introducing the study of original sources and requiring the writing of a thesis.[81][82]

In the United States, scholarship was concentrated at the major PhD-producing universities, while the large number of other colleges and universities focused on undergraduate teaching. A tendency in the 21st century was for the latter schools to increasingly demand scholarly productivity of their younger tenure-track faculty. Furthermore, universities have increasingly relied on inexpensive part-time adjuncts to do most of the classroom teaching.[83]

From the origins of national school systems in the 19th century, the teaching of history to promote national sentiment has been a high priority. In the United States after World War I, a strong movement emerged at the university level to teach courses in Western Civilization, so as to give students a common heritage with Europe. In the U.S. after 1980, attention increasingly moved toward teaching world history or requiring students to take courses in non-western cultures, to prepare students for life in a globalized economy.[84]

At the university level, historians debate the question of whether history belongs more to social science or to the humanities. Many view the field from both perspectives.

The teaching of history in French schools was influenced by the Nouvelle histoire as disseminated after the 1960s by Cahiers pdagogiques and Enseignement and other journals for teachers. Also influential was the Institut national de recherche et de documentation pdagogique, (INRDP). Joseph Leif, the Inspector-general of teacher training, said pupils children should learn about historians' approaches as well as facts and dates. Louis Franois, Dean of the History/Geography group in the Inspectorate of National Education advised that teachers should provide historic documents and promote "active methods" which would give pupils "the immense happiness of discovery." Proponents said it was a reaction against the memorization of names and dates that characterized teaching and left the students bored. Traditionalists protested loudly it was a postmodern innovation that threatened to leave the youth ignorant of French patriotism and national identity.[85]

In several countries history textbooks are tools to foster nationalism and patriotism, and give students the official narrative about national enemies.[86]

In many countries, history textbooks are sponsored by the national government and are written to put the national heritage in the most favourable light. For example, in Japan, mention of the Nanking Massacre has been removed from textbooks and the entire Second World War is given cursory treatment. Other countries have complained.[87] It was standard policy in communist countries to present only a rigid Marxist historiography.[88][89]

In the United States, textbooks published by the same company often differ in content from state to state.[90] An example of content that is represented different in different regions of the country is the history of the Southern states, where slavery and the American Civil War are treated as controversial topics. McGraw-Hill Education for example, was criticised for describing Africans brought to American plantations as "workers" instead of slaves in a textbook.[91]

Academic historians have often fought against the politicization of the textbooks, sometimes with success.[92][93]

In 21st-century Germany, the history curriculum is controlled by the 16 states, and is characterized not by superpatriotism but rather by an "almost pacifistic and deliberately unpatriotic undertone" and reflects "principles formulated by international organizations such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe, thus oriented towards human rights, democracy and peace." The result is that "German textbooks usually downplay national pride and ambitions and aim to develop an understanding of citizenship centered on democracy, progress, human rights, peace, tolerance and Europeanness."[94]

Original post:

History - Wikipedia

History, the discipline that studies the chronological record of events (as affecting a nation or people), based on a critical examination of source materials and usually presenting an explanation of their causes.

Britannica Quiz

41 Questions from Britannicas Most Popular World History Quizzes

This quiz collects 41 of the toughest questions from Britannicas most popular quizzes on world history. If you want to ace it, youll need to know the history of the United States, some of the most famous people in history, what happened during World War II, and much more.

History is treated in a number of articles. For the principal treatment of the subject of historiography and the scholarly research necessary for the discipline, see historiography. Information on any specific historical topic, such as the history of specific peoples, cultures, countries, and regions, will be found under the relevant title. For information on the historical aspects of military affairs, economics, law, literature, sciences, art, philosophy, religion, and other fields of human endeavour, the reader should also first consult the relevant title and review the subtopics in the Table of Contents. The general articles contain many cross-references to specific historical movements and events and to biographies of significant figures.

The rest is here:

History | discipline | Britannica

On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major protest of the African American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistanceto segregation in theSouth.The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

A powerful orator,King appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the events grand finalewas Kingsfamous I Have a Dreamspeech. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech.

In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, Kingbecame the youngest person to win theNobel Peace Prize (in2014 Malala Yousafzai became the youngest to receive the prize at age 17). In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic rights for poor Americans. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

READ MORE ABOUT MLK:

10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King, JrFor Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent Protest Never Meant Wait and SeeThe Fight for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

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This Day in History - What Happened Today - HISTORY