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To what extent is history trustworthy?
Napoleon Bonapart once said that «History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon». In my opinion, his words are an objective description of this science as history always includes some subjectivity. There are a lot of historical events which we have doubts about, because we still haven’t got a trustworthy testimony to the facts written about it in the books and other sourses. So the thing is, many historical “truths” are, in fact, historical myths.
Let’s speak about some examples. The most important holiday in the American calendar - The Independence Day – is actually celebrated in the wrong mounth. On the 4th of July in the 1776 Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. But it was only first step. The struggle continued for another 7 years after this with some of the most brutal fighting in the whole war. And only on the 3rd of September in the 1783 due to the Treaty of Paris the USA officially became the independent country. History is seldom “cut and dried”. The events are often complicated and messy. The achieving of American independence was a lengthy affair. Presumably 4th of July was chosen as the date to celebrate because it was seen as more significant than the date of actual end of the war.
Another event which proves the subjectivity of the books on history is the discovery of America. The first name connected with it that comes to our’s mind is, undoubtably, Christopher Columbus. In fact, there were many people there before him. The first ones were certainly the Native americans, thousands of years before 1492. Eveт Vikings had made a number of expeditions there in around 1000 AD. Moreover, Columbus set out to Asia and he didn’t even realised it was America. So perhaps, we can think of Amerigo Vespucci as the explorer of America?
Everyone believes such historical ‘facts’ because they got them from what they thought was a reliable source. History has traditionally been written by the winners. If the conquered indigenous peoples had written the history , it would most probably have been very different. But even this wouldn’t guarantee the objectivity as the point of view of the conquered can be just as biased as the point of view of the conqueror. In addition, the writing of history depends not only on the ‘side’ the writer is on, but also on the culture and attitudes of the era it is written in.
In conclusion, I’d like to stress that history is always subjective. So when you read history, take it with a pinch of salt.