Comment on History is rewritten by victors. How can I find books about actual history?
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You do so by reading primary sources. From both the victors and the losers. On the losing side this can be difficult as their stuff is less likely to be preserved (intentionally or not). It is important to remember that every side will have its own bias, but this is often also shaped with time, so it is important to get sources that are as close as possible to the events before they can be mythologized. Also there are no wrong answers; just answers with supporting context.
mez@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Victors don’t rewrite primary sources? Losers and their things - aren’t they destroyed?
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I believe I have addressed that in my answer. Still I will add this. By definition a primary source is not “re-written”. Note I did not write unbiased. A bit of a Socratic approach: do the defeated embellish their stories?
Because I think its worth re-stating for any social science:
andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Then there are no ancient primary sources. I don’t think you understand ancient or medieval concepts of authorship, or document transmission.
mez@lemmy.world 6 days ago
so you’re saying there’s no way to find texts about actual history
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
There is always going to be some level of interpretation. You are looking for an absolute truth that, while it may theoretically exist, cannot be reliably perceived through a human lens, which you are guaranteed to have at least 1 of (yourself), and almost certainly 2 (the source), and maybe many, many, many more in between.
Imagine you had a time machine that could bring you back into whatever time you’re interested so you can watch it unfold first-hand. Ok, great. But do you trust your eyes? Did you see everything that happened? Even if you can invisibly go and explore the aftermath. Even if you can go back to the same point 100 times, 1000 times, and meticulously detail everything you find. Do you now have the perfect and unambiguous truth? Of course not. You can make mistakes, you can misunderstand. Even our eyes lie to us. Even our brain misremembers things. Different people using the same time machine to travel to the exact same point in time may see what happens in an entirely different way, may see things that you did not see. Who’s right?
I know you think you’re looking for the absolute unvarnished truth, but you are chasing a phantom. Your goal is not realistic. At some point you have to arbitrarily accept and define what errors and limitations the sources you’re drawing your understanding from might have, and attempt to make your own interpretation of what the facts actually are. You will never know what really happened with absolute certainty. Absolute certainty is its own kind of myth and there’s some very fundamental metaphysical reasons for that. You’re not going to find a magic textbook of trustworthy history that solves that problem.
Understanding history is a process that requires connecting many different pieces of variously flawed contexts and information to paint your own, interpreted but hopefully relatively accurate picture. No matter what book you read, you cannot guarantee its accuracy and it is a fool’s errand to try, but you can continue to try to collect more evidence, more pieces of context, more clues to add more details to your picture. Perhaps you will never be satisfied with the detail of the picture you’ve created, sometimes you will have to throw your whole picture away and start to create a new and different picture on the basis of some details you find that don’t fit. You’re never going to have a perfect picture, but I think a lot of people have managed to create really pretty good ones based on a whole lot of research of many different sources and pieces of detail, not just written records alone but cultural references, archaeological artifacts, scientific analysis, and sometimes just assumptions about basic human behavior. You just have to learn who and what you can trust and how far you can trust them. Both as sources, and as interpreters. And you are always welcome to argue you own interpretation.
naught101@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There is no way to find text about anything without various biases and values embedded in it. You just need to approach reading with a critical lens. Obviously more critical in some domains than others.
occultist8128@infosec.pub 6 days ago
you can, re-read what the person above is saying about. not directly answering your question but you can watch this (there’s a tip how to know the actual history)
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 6 days ago
THE NARRATIVE OF ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEÇA DE VACA
These are some digitized primary sources. Feel free to read them and discuss what is “not actual history” with the class.
The diary of a Napoleonic foot soldier is also another example.
Could any of them have made stuff up? Maybe, even if they didn’t mean to. At a minimum we can say that their stories are real to them and are grounded in what we know from other sources. As far as the French Soldier example I am sure we might have a parallel Russian or Englishman to pair with it.
@cecilkorik elaborates very well.
GeneralDingus@lemmy.cafe 6 days ago
Rewriting/forging historical documents to fit your narrative is really difficult and time consuming. I’m sure you can go to a library and actually see the documents. You can even see this with declassified documents, although they’ll be redacted. This isn’t the same for internet archives though.
I’d say, for “victors”, it’s easier to destroy primary sources.
harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
It’s the primary mission of pretty all colonizing societies - destroy the sources and you destroy a cultures collective memory.