History is said to be written by the victors or those in power. In recent years, they have been many attempts to rewrite history in many parts of the world. When I was in Indonesia a few years ago, there was an account of the Indonesian confrontation with Malaysia at the basement of their National Monument. I was shocked to see how much the Indonesian account differs from ours. The Europeans hailed Columbus as an adventurer, navigator, and a hero. He supposedly discovered America. Native Americans see him in an entirely different light so much so that many states in the US no longer celebrate Columbus day.
To make history relevant, the intuitive suggestions to the historian is that they should be more objective, inclusive and balance in their writings. They should be aware of their bias and mental model in their writing. I don’t think there is any new here as historians know very well of these shortcomings but just do not know how to deal with them.
While historians recognize that there are many problems with the way they write history, what is troubling to me is that history repeats itself. These repetitions mean that we are unable to learn from history. Learning from history is one of the primary purposes of history, and failure here requires us to question the whole purpose and discipline of history.
One of the difficulties in documenting history is that a single narrative has constrained historians for too long. The single narrative is a linear way of documenting history, whereas, in history, many things are happening at the same time. It is a network of people, organizations, activities, events and places and so on, in a dynamic environment. This single narrative limitation is a human issue as human consciousness has limited focal points. Historians have to choose what to include and what to leave out all the time.
Today, it is anachronistic to use a single narrative, as we can assemble the contents of a document from various sources to create a dynamic document. For example, if we are trying to document an event, there are at least three sides to the story, the protagonists and antagonists and those affected by the event. To have a full picture we will need to break the situation down chronologically and by issues and matters. With this in place, we can have documents that let us view the particular issues or matters chronologically from all three perspectives. We can display the various narratives side by side, on an equal basis, for comparison. We may also want to examine the story from the perspectives of each of the parties involved. This dynamic document may not uncover the “truth” as the agenda of the parties involved may not be reviewed, but it can certainly help us understand the event better and identify the discrepancies in the various accounts from the multiple views available.
Historical information can be grouped into objective, subjective and environmental information. With history, there should be a set of objective or factual information, even if some of them are disputed. This variation is understandable, as people are looking at the story from different perspectives. Like the blind men and the elephant, a fuller model of the elephant is obtained when their seemly conflicting observations are integrated. Furthermore, the objective information may be from primary, secondary sources or even inferred. Isolating the objective information will help us revert back to the basics without the influences of subjective interpretation when required.
Subjective information is how different people evaluate or interpret the stories. We need to assess the subjective information against the objective information to see which account is more consistent and credible.
The environmental information is the context of the story. The culture, tools, technology and many other things have changed over the years. Our interpretation of history will surely be off-the-mark without the right background information or context. In ancient times, a city may have 20,000 inhabitants. Today, it can be as much as 20 million. Communications are slow and can take days if not weeks. Today, it is almost instantaneous and it can be enriched with multimedia.
Malaysian history apparently focuses on socioeconomic, political and cultural issues. In reality, our history is heavily influenced by our own agriculture and industrial history. We also cannot avoid the impact of globalization, world politics, management and other systems, and the development of technology, including information and communication technology.
If we do not want history to repeat itself; If we want history to guide us in making wise decisions; if we want to avoid the follies that have been made; we need to reform how history is studied and written. We have many national issues to resolve such as national unity, racism, religious intolerance, extremism and so on. What important lessons can we learn from history? Is this question the usual rhetoric that gets us nowhere? If history is to be useful, it has to be comprehensively documented in a dynamic environment that enhances its usefulness. We need not only to be able to learn from history but to be able to review and re-evaluate the historical facts and their interpretations.
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