Text

E-book History from Loss : A Global Introduction to Histories written from defeat, colonization, exile, and imprisonment

---

Penilaian

---

Imagine a world in which there is only one history to watch, read, or listen to. If you find this idea difficult, then you have understood something important about history: that there is never just one version of it on offer. Some people might not like this idea, and try to refute it, but no matter how much they argue, or even work to destroy histories, they will be unsuccessful. We live with a world of multi-ple histories and history-makers—our term to describe those who work to explain the past, including professional historians—and we do not assume that they will be the same as one another. At the same time, however, it is common for people to group, to order, or to categorize histories. In your local bookshop or online plat-form, for example, you might see histories arranged by approach, or by spatial or temporal scale. Military history and world history tend to have their own sections, as do biography and ancient and modern histories.What we do not tend to see in these displays are labels or categories for histories made from the winning or losing side. This may stem from the assumption that all histories are made from the winning side. This is a commonplace thought, the origins of which are hard to pinpoint.1 It is often attributed to Winston Churchill, who did have first-hand experience writing history as a victor.2 If Churchill did say it, which seems doubtful, then it is virtually certain that he was repeating some-thing he himself had heard long before. We keep on repeating the idea today, from the opening lines of the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) to the final lines of the musical Hamilton (2015), and in the narratives of everything from the science fiction novel Tiamat’s Wrath (2019) through to the experimental documentary Sans Soleil (1983).3So too, we can find the idea of history being made from the winning side in works on the theory of history, or historiography. In Nothing but History (1995), for example, David Roberts asserts bluntly that “[h]istory is always written by the victors, and victory conflates with domination and exclusion.”4 He asks whether appeals to truth and reality in history by their very nature push against dissent, against alternatives, and thereby serve the powerful. In a similar vein, Michael Stanford has commented on the inherent bias of the historical record, noting “that the winners not the losers write history.”5There are many examples from history which also seem to bear out the idea of writing from the winning side. Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books documents the destruction and even the targeting of historical records in political transitions and in wars.6 Ian Cobain’s The History Thieves (2017) is one of a burgeoning num-ber of treatments of how colonial governments have removed or restricted access to evidence of atrocities, under often specious claims of privacy and national security.7This is not just restricted to societies with written approaches to history-making: it is also possible to find examples where peoples with pictorial and oral approaches to history-making have painted over or excised different accounts of the past.8 As Antoon De Baets so poignantly reminds us, the destruction of history is not just about objects, it is also about people. Thanks to his efforts, the persecution, exile, imprisonment and even murder of history-makers have been documented.

---

Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

900 ADO h

Penerbit

: Taylor & Francis., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

271 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781003127499

Klasifikasi

900

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

History, Events

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

Komentar

---

Anda harus masuk sebelum memberikan komentar