What is history?Why study history?

What is history?

What do you think of when you think of studying history?What do you need to do to do well in history?

What is history?

1890: Emperor Meiji bestowed the Constitution upon the people of Japan.

Memorizing dates, facts and leaders?

Look at this picture.What can we learn from it?

What can we learn? e.g.

• Clothes• Mix of Japanese & Western Aesthetics• Attitudes• Political structure• Status of the emperor • Technology• Focus on military • Artistic techniques

Where can we learn about history?

• Pottery• Poems• Art• Speeches• Diaries• News• Company /

school documents & records

• Books• Interviews• Maps• Timetables• Fashion• Army records • Music• Architecture

• Talking to people

• Cemeteries• Photos• Newspapers• Campsites• Posters• Advertisements• TV shows• And many more

History: Choosing and interpreting facts

Who am I?• An only son• Poor family• Wanted to be rich• Gathered together some friends.• Started to attack people on an island• Stole all their money.• Took them prisoner• Lived a rich life on the stolen goods.

Choosing facts is important for creating history.

How did the oni feel?

Analyse, interpret. What is happening?

On this a general attack was made on the soldiers . . . our lives were in [immediate] danger . . . Instantly three or four soldiers fired.... The mob ran away, except three unhappy men who died. . . I asked the soldiers why they fired without orders, they said they heard the word fire and though it came from me. This might be the case as many of the mob called out fire, fire, but ….I gave no such order.

Fact: a picture of a statue of a minute man from the US war of independence.Interpretation?

What’s happening here?

Who do you feel sympathetic towards?

“Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. It didn’t say: What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?’”Eddie Adams

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.

Eddie Adams, photographer.

• Just before that photo had been taken, several of the general’s men had been shot dead. The Vietcong attacked during the holiday of Tet, even though they said they would not. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong killed many defenceless people.

Context ( 事情 )

When we analyse we need to think and ask questions.

Questions that should be asked:• Who is writing it?• Who is the intended audience.• Who is paying the person who is writing it?• When was it written?• Where does it come from?• What is the purpose? • Is there more to the story? Another side?• Do other sources confirm or contradict?• We must cross check before we accept.

Kobayashi Kiyochika : In the Battle of the Yellow Sea, 1894-1894 a Sailor onboard Our Japanese Warship Matsushima, on the Verge of Dying, Asked Whether or Not the Enemy Ship had been Destroyed

1) Who has drawn the picture?2) When was it drawn?3) What does it show?4) How do you think the artist feels about the war? Give reasons5) Do you think this is how the war would really have looked? Explain.6) Would you expect a Chinese artist to paint a picture in this way? Explain. What might be different?  

Analysing:

Take care to discard prejudices

The Japanese protester: ‘Oppose the new security treaty, Down with the Kishi Cabinet! Dissolve the Diet!’ The Chinese demonstrator: ‘Oppose the Japan-U.S. military treaty, Support the struggle of the Japanese people’

Confucius 孔子 551 BC - 479 BC

Study the past ifyou want to

make the future.

Aristotle 384BC-322BC

To understand anything, you need to observe its beginning and its development.

George Santayana (1836-1952)

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

George Orwell

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and destroy their own understanding of their history.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881),

History is rumour

crystallized•

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) PM England

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

“History is written by the

victors”

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

Golda Meir – former PM, Israel

Napolean Bonaparte 1769-1821

History is the invention of historians.

E. H. Carr (1892-1982) Historian

"The role off the historian is neither to love the past nor to free himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present."

But

• Sometimes it’s not possible to find the truth, and sometimes there are different truths that contradict.

• History should be faced bravely. All countries have terrible things in their past (and present).

• History should be used to create understanding and a better future.