A Look At How Students Of History Are Gaining More Experience By Learning From Modern Historians
A Look At How Students Of History Are Gaining More Experience By Learning From Modern Historians
History is the study of time. It is the arrangement and sequence of events through time. Prehistoric events before the dawn of writing systems, oral tradition, rock carved images, and cave paintings are regarded as prehistoric history. “historic history” is also an umbrella phrase encompassing the record, discovery, analysis, collection, preservation, and presentation of those events.
The study of history has many currents. Some historians concentrate on time periods and other related factors such as culture, religion, political structure, and social organization. Others focus on a single geographic region or even time periods. Still others use chronological methods to analyze events in the past. While each researcher uses a different method of study, all attempt to understand the relationships among people, places, and specific events.
The history of the United States can be studied from a variety of perspectives. One perspective is that of a national historian who studies the development of America as a nation-state through its history. Historians who support this viewpoint assume that we live in a historical continuum beginning with the colonial period, extending through the Civil War, preserving a national identity for the United States through the Great Depression, and culminating in the Second World War. A different kind of historian, sympathetic to the anticolonialist cause, studies the interactions of American Indians with the European colonizers during the colonial period. These historians focus more on the relationship between Native Americans and the colonizers than the interactions between settlers and Indians.
Another perspective of history is that of revisionists, who question the validity of any events that occurred before the time of the historians themselves. These revisionists argue that most history really happened the way it is reported by the historians, namely, as recorded by them, in their own words. These historians also tend to doubt the authority of popular history, especially works of fiction such as, “The Things Thatchers Do.” Revisionists point out that many of the facts presented by these so-called historians do not conform to logical or common sense. For example, some people believe that the United States really became an empire rather than a republic. They further believe that the country did not become a Republic until after the Civil War.
Still another perspective of history is that of sociohistorical knowledge. This perspective focuses on how the cultural meaning of various events in history has been formed. It also teaches us how the meanings of events have been shaped by those who tell the history. Examples of sociohistorical knowledge are the way that literary critics look at novels written by a certain author. The critics will look at the book as a whole and determine whether or not it teaches us anything about the author’s actual personality or beliefs.
If you want to be a better student of history then you should learn from the most influential historians of all time. Two of these great historians of past times are Thomas Carlyle and Napoleon Hill. Thomas Carlyle is best known for his “deduction” style of historical knowledge and his popularity with the new generations. Napoleon Hill is also well-known for his “theory of man’s self-being” work. Together, these two great historians teach us how to look at the past in a more positive manner and form a much more complete picture of what actually happened in history.