Organize in 30 days with 1 keyword per day
'History of history'!
[EBS 30 Days of Humanities] The second book in the series

Knowing the historical narrative background allows you to read history more deeply and broadly!
Let's take a look at the 'history of history', which has undergone various changes depending on the era and the historian's perspective!

It is often said that 'history is written by the victors'.
Most of the history we know today is written and told from the perspective and position of the victors.
If so, there would also be a 'loser's perspective and position', and even if it was the same incident, the records would certainly be different.
In this way, history is recorded differently depending on the era, political situation, and the historian's perspective and position.
If we briefly examine the background of this historical narrative, wouldn't it be possible to broaden our understanding of the event or history in question?
This book is a chronological compilation of notable historians and representative works from the field of historical studies, organized so that the overall flow of historical studies from ancient times to the present can be grasped at a glance.
This book allows you to clearly organize the 'history of history' in 30 days with one keyword per day.


Herodotus, who recorded not only what he saw, heard, and researched, but also legends and rumors he heard; Thucydides, who recorded only objective 'facts' with basis; Sima Qian, who described the situation of the time centered on historical figures; Leopold von Ranke, who emphasized objective description through thorough review of historical materials; Robin Collingwood, who argued that history is the subjective product of the historian; Arnold Toynbee, who understood civilization as a history of challenge and response; etc. Many historians from the East and the West, past and present, have defined history in their own way and recorded history accordingly.
Even now, countless historians around the world are recording and analyzing the history of this era we are experiencing.
From what perspective and how do they describe this history of our time? And are these records perfectly objective facts that we can all accept? Let's examine the fascinating aspects of history itself, one by one.

This book explains how 30 historians define history and what they see as its role.
They clarified the essence of history in different ways depending on the era, political situation, and culture, and attempted to establish history as an academic discipline based on this.
To make it easier to understand historical theory, which can be difficult and dry, we have included various episodes.
I hope this book will provide a light-hearted overview of the world of history for those new to the field or those just beginning to study it in earnest.

--- p.9

Herodotus, in his Histories, rejected the idea that the flow of history originated from the gods.
While Homer relied on inspiration from a god who remembered the events when writing about the Trojan War, Herodotus wrote about past events through his own research.
In other words, the source of Herodotus's memory was not the gods, but the individual historian.
Therefore, in "History," there are no instances of God directly intervening in human affairs, and unlike other previous works, mythical time and historical time are separated.

--- p.19~20

Above all, Thucydides' historical narrative is significant in that it deals only with factual evidence.
Herodotus, known as the 'father of history', wrote about myths, legends, and rumors in addition to things he experienced or witnessed, whereas Thucydides wrote only about things he personally witnessed or things he could believe to be true based on various sources and testimonies.
He tried to cover events as objectively as possible, excluding the subjective viewpoint or perspective of the historian.
In other words, if Herodotus' history was a 'story' of the past, Thucydides' history is a record of past 'facts'.

--- p.29

An interesting fact is that the origin of the image of the national god Germania can be found in a historical book.
This is the book “Germania” written by the Roman historian Tacitus (ublius Cornelius Tacitus, 56?~120?).
Unlike Greek historians such as Herodotus or Thucydides, he was not particularly interested in presenting past facts objectively.
For him, history was a useful discipline that provided the ability to discern right from wrong through past experiences.
Tacitus, who served as a tribune and consul, was deeply interested in Roman politics and believed that the crisis facing the Roman Empire at the time was caused by the loss of republican traditions and values.
It was thought that Rome began to become corrupt when all power was concentrated in one person.

--- p.43

The only reason he chose the humiliating castration was to complete the history book he was writing.
The history book completed in this way is the Records of the Grand Historian.
《Records of the Grand Historian》 is a historical book that covers approximately 2,000 years from the legendary era of the Yellow Emperor in China to the Han Dynasty in which he lived, and depicts various characters following the rise and fall of various dynasties.
The lives of countless kings, lords, politicians, merchants, scholars, and others are recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian.
In other words, through the Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian tried to describe the lives of individuals who existed in Chinese history as objectively as possible and to show the essence of life through it.

--- p.57~59

Bruni's "History of the Florentines" consists of twelve volumes, and in the first volume he presents history in a new way.
Instead of the Roman Empire, which traditionally had Christianity as its state religion and widely promoted it, the Roman Republic was made the center of historical narrative.
In other words, he wrote history centered on the subject.
Instead, the remaining 11 volumes follow a classic historical narrative style.
It was a detailed and specific description of the incident, and quoted classical literature.
Therefore, Bruni's writings are often evaluated as a mixture of ancient and modern historical narratives.

--- p.95

In this respect, Flavio's "View of Italy" can be seen as a history book with the character of a geography book.
He draws on a historical analysis of the 5th-century barbarian invasions, Charlemagne, and the Holy Roman Empire to develop a narrative of the Roman Republic and Empire.
In particular, Flavio defined the Middle Ages as a period spanning several centuries rather than a single century, and he was the first to define the Middle Ages as a period rather than a specific century or a specific period with specific characteristics.
In short, he was a historian who sought to examine the era in which he lived from an integrated perspective.

--- p.105

On January 1, 1999, France introduced a new currency, the euro.
Until then, the currency used in France was the franc.
The franc was the currency used in France from 1360 to 1641 and from 1795 to 1999.
Although it was legally abolished during the reign of Louis XIII, it can be said to have been used as currency for quite a long time.
The franc is also used in places that were former French colonies, such as Algeria and Morocco.
The 10 franc note issued between 1963 and 1973 features a person wearing a white wig and holding a white quill pen.
This is none other than François-Marie Aroué, a representative French enlightenment thinker.
He is better known by his pen name, Voltaire.

--- p.127~128

With the fall of communist countries, including the Soviet Union, we now know very well that the structure of human historical development advocated by Marx is no longer suitable.
In fact, Marx has a limitation in that he overemphasizes only economic factors and thus overlooks the role of non-economic factors, especially factors such as the mind and will.
Nevertheless, Marx's view of history as shown through "Das Kapital" became an important foundation for the development of other fields of history, such as economic history and social history.
It is particularly significant in that it focuses on the dominated and marginalized, such as workers and women, in analyzing history.

--- p.147

In fact, since ancient times, the function of history has been emphasized as conveying lessons through past experiences, but Ranke rejected this didactic nature of history.
This is because trying to convey a lesson can lead to ignoring or distorting objective truth.
He believed that trying to represent history through ethnicity or religion was not a correct understanding of history.
He argued that the most important thing is to recognize only history itself, without interfering with subjective judgments or values.

--- p.153

Beyond aesthetics, Collingwood was interested in the subjectivity of history.
He believed that history could never be a science, contrary to what positivist historians, including Leopold Ranke, claimed.
Collingwood believed that what was important in historical sources was not whether they were true or not, but what they meant.
So, I wanted to find a historical methodology that places the object of history in thought and recognizes the thought process.
As a result, we concluded that we must realize that the historian's thinking is autonomous, self-authoritative, and standardized.

--- p.167

Carr argues that history is bound to be different because it is perceived by people through reconstructions based on interpretation.
For Ranke, history is objective, narrated equally by everyone, while for Carr, history is subjective, narrated differently by everyone.
Carr believed that when writing history, the selection of facts that occurred in the past involved personal subjective views.

--- p.179

According to Toynbee, for civilization to arise, rather than being given a good environment naturally, there must be a response that can carve out one's own destiny by actively responding to the enormous challenge of environmental change.
Only when the response to challenges is appropriate can civilization arise, grow, and develop.
Like Spengler, Toynbee also experienced the crisis of Western Europe's decline and became skeptical of Western Eurocentrism.
This awareness laid the foundation for examining history in a broader context, moving beyond the national or ethnic focus.

--- p.189

There are historians who have argued that history is actually nothing more than fiction.
This is American historian Hayden White (1928-2018).
The positivist view of history, which emphasized objective history as it is, was rejected by Edward Carr, and history faced several crises thereafter.
In this context, White argued that history is the field and subject that can achieve harmony and synthesis between science and art and mediate between the past and the present.
He emphasized that historians should not seek continuity between the past and the present, but rather that a history that can awaken discontinuity, a history of discontinuity, chaos, and division would become the new foundation.

--- p.201

Big History goes further and expands the scope of its analysis to include life and the universe, seeking to understand the interconnectedness of humans, life, and the universe.
Because humans are not the only ones who exist on the Goldilocks planet Earth, in the solar system, and in the universe.
We have various interconnections with everything around us.
Big History is a new attempt to demonstrate this interconnectedness, to more clearly understand the origins of everything in the world, and through this, to pursue the coexistence of all things.

--- p.231~232