Many people think that the study of history is just a matter of rote memorization: names, dates, places. While a lot of that sort of learning is important, it’s not enough to understand what happened in the past. To really appreciate what happened, you need to interpret the past—which is where history really starts to come alive.
If you’re looking to become more knowledgeable about a particular time period, consider studying biographies of famous figures from that time period (or your favorite). Benjamin Franklin, for example, was one of the most accomplished people in modern history, working as a printer, an inventor, a statesman, and a writer — just to name a few of his accomplishments. Reading about his life can give you a glimpse into how people lived in that era and help you learn more about what they were thinking at the time.
The most common way that people study history is by studying primary sources, which are first-hand accounts of past events. These can include everything from ancient manuscripts to diaries and letters, as well as government records like censuses and tax rolls. Historians also look at secondary sources, which are written by other historians and contain information about the primary sources. Secondary sources can be as reliable or unreliable as the original source, and historians are skilled in assessing their reliability.
Even the most careful studies of primary and secondary sources are susceptible to distortion and error. It’s not difficult to sway your interpretation of a historical event by the emotional baggage that you bring to it. This is why it’s important to keep in mind the maxim of E.H. Carr, who said: “Study the historian before you begin to study his facts.”
Determining what actually happened in the past is a messy business and it’s not uncommon for the truth to be obscured by prejudice, self-righteousness, vanity, or the simple obfuscation of some grim reality. Even if we could tape-record all the eyewitnesses’ versions of what actually happened at a given moment, it would be hard to reconstruct a coherent narrative out of them all.
Many historians, however, have adopted a less personal approach to the subject and taken a more thematic view of historic events. For example, some historians focus on what might be described as the ‘winds of change’, which are powerful ideas and forces that influence economic or social conditions in different ways.
Ultimately, historians aren’t just interested in how the past relates to the present—they’re also trying to understand what the future might hold. That’s why history isn’t an old and dusty discipline to be consigned to the bottom floor of a library that nobody ever visits. Rather, it’s the most relevant and incendiary subject there is. Just ask any car bomber, shooter, or incarcerator who has misused history to justify their crimes. They’re simply attempting to make sense of a past they have misinterpreted.