History is a subject that attracts many amateurs, despite its often-gritty, pointy-headedness. Books and articles about great people, storied wars, and everyday material life are a major part of popular history. The study of history is more than memorizing dates, names and places; it requires empathy for historical actors, respect for interpretive debate, and the skillful use of an evolving set of tools.
The discipline of history is not without its critics, and for good reason. A historian’s work is not simply the recording of what happened in the past; it is the attempt to reconstruct those events and, to the extent possible, establish their cause and effect. As a consequence, every historian’s work will be flawed. Even the work of the most skilled and careful historian is not immune to the errors, biases, and blind spots that are endemic to all human endeavors.
Historians seek to establish the truth through an iterative process of reading, interpreting, and writing. They examine primary sources—those documents, artifacts and other data that were created by those who took part in the events being studied—and secondary sources, those works that are based on, or have been interpreted by, previous historians. They read these with skepticism, but they also learn to accept the ambiguity of evidence and welcome contradictory perspectives.
In some historical fields, such as prehistory and military history, the only source is what has been recorded in the past, often in the form of written records that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. These can include cuneiform tablets discovered in Mesopotamia or the 13th-century manuscripts of Genghis Khan that are found today.
Other historians focus less on the individual and more on broader trends, factors and conditions that influence or cause significant historical change. These may be things like economic changes, social conditions or the winds of change that produce shifts in cultural beliefs or practices.
All of these approaches must be evaluated against the enduring standards that define the discipline: a desire to understand the causes of human behavior, a commitment to establishing verifiable facts, and a willingness to revise and discard any theory that proves to be unpersuasive or flawed. This tension is inherent in all historical work, and is at the heart of what makes history so interesting to those who embrace it.
The most important lesson for anyone studying history is that the study of the past is not a simple matter of gathering and regurgitating facts. A true student of history will not run to the back of a textbook to find the “right answer.” The only way to become an expert is to wrestle with the material and make your own attempt at understanding it, which is where the reward lies. Trying to write as an historian is a lot like trying to solve a difficult math problem. Those who do it successfully will learn more about the past than those who just look at what other historians have already written about it.