PENULISAN KEBENARAN SEJARAH
Introduction
That
history contains errors, will not come as news to a person who has
reflected on the topic. The very
first history, a Greek one, History of Herodotus, written around 450 BC, likely had quite a number
of fictional details so as to effect its
purpose.[1] Those parts of our history which are suspected to be fiction
are, at least, through research and comparison, salvageable. What, however, is
possibly more disturbing than the realization that, in general and throughout,
our history is wrong (a sub-topic which I shall treat to a greater extent
further on, herein) is the
realization that there are great gaps in it. We have failed to record
and gather together the little human
events which make up the fabric of history: it is little events, strung together and accumulated
over time, which account for our place in history.
Though it may have been, in certain of its parts,
reconstructed incorrectly and small shards are missing here and there, history,
by a well-read and descriptive author, like a Grecian, is a spectacle to
behold; like man himself -- fascinating, seductive, intriguing, and
spectacular. It maybe, that I, like most, enjoy looking in on, at a safe
distance, the follies and misfortunes [2] of his fellow man, a method to
gratify the natural curiosity that most of us have about such things. History,
written in a lively and descriptive manner as the best are, so to grip and hold
the reader, have, veiled and concealed as it might be, a lesson or moral such
that the reader might modify his view of the present and his forecast of the
future. This, incidentally, is the principal reason that history ought to be at
the core of any scheme of education. In this light, as John Morley observed, the
actual twists and turns of the great historical happenings are not so important
in themselves, "except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through
what is happening to-day."
While its primary allure is like that of gossip,
history is important because it is the story of the collective self, the story
of passionate man. Fiction, coming as it does from the imagination of some
fellow human being, does not have the same
attraction, at least, not for me, simply because it is not true. What I
need from my reading is to learn
something, and while I shortly will come to listing the lessons of history, the
principle lesson is this: that while the ages and the settings change, the
actors in history are guided by the same passions of human nature: there is in
all histories a similarity. As Emerson wrote in his Essays: "Nature is an
endless combination and repetition
of a few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable
variations."
There
is no reason that I can think of that makes it necessary to make history a complicated subject, but strange thinking
men have attempted to do just that, to
make history into something that it is not; everything from the moving
hand of God to that which resembles a living creature metaphorically from stage
to stage.
The biblical theory can best be briefly dealt with by
quoting Leslie Stevenson of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland:
"When the Jews fail to obey God's laws, there
comes the idea of God using the events of history, such as defeat by
neighbouring nations, to chastise them for their sin (a theme which recurs
throughout the histories and prophets in the Old Testament). And then there is
the idea of God's merciful forgiveness, His blotting out of man's transgressions,
and His regeneration of man and the whole of creation (Isaiah chapters
43-66)." [Seven Theories of Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 1987)
at pp. 48-9.]
As the living creature theory: one of the strangest,
and, as it turned out, one the most destructive, was the Hegelian theory of
history. Hegel was a philosopher and his view was that there are fundamental
laws which drive the development of a culture or a country; that a culture or a
country has a kind of a personality of its own, and its development is to be
explained in terms of its own character. In later years, a fellow German, Adolf
Hitler, rose to this Hegelian bait, and through the Third Reich brought misery
to millions of our fellow human beings.
Marx picked up on the Hegelian view and asserted that
there were fundamental laws which drove the development of a culture or a
country.[3] These notions of historical development and of alienation were to
play a crucial role in the thoughts of Marx. Marx had a deterministic view that
all events (economic stages) come about as a result of the inevitable progress
of history.[4]
Well, personally, I do not
subscribe to any of these fancy theories. History is but a series of past
events of which we have become conscious.[5] Each event is a very thin and a
very short fibre like that of the countless number which make up the great rope
of humanity. The position of any particular fibre and its contribution to the
whole is almost entirely a matter of chance. I doubt, to continue this
metaphoric vein, that the rope of humanity has any particular purpose or that
it has a predestined end.
History
and Tradition
Generally
speaking, our childhood experiences in school have given us a rather poor image
of history books. The trouble with the typical school history book is that it
is, like most surveys, too synoptic. To most people when a mention is made of a
history book what comes to their mind is a dry thick tome filled with listed
events in order of time, interspersed with columns of causes and consequences.
History, however, can be, in the hands of a proper history writer, just as
sensational, sexy, and spectacular as the best fictional sellers of the day.
But the point to be made, and that which is more essential to us in the reading
of history, is, that we may find it more interesting to go beyond the reading
of the lives and battles of the politically powerful, and, though more
difficult it seems to come by, to read of our customs and traditions.
"Nothing is more misleading, then, than the
conventional formulae of historians who represent the achievement of a powerful
state as the culmination of cultural evolution: it as often marked its end. In
this respect students of early history were overly impressed and greatly misled
by monuments and documents left by the holders of political power, whereas the
true builders of the extended order, who as often as not created the wealth
that made the monuments possible, left less tangible and ostentatious
testimonies to their achievement." (Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 33.)
While hardly able to tell of
their origins, a diligent historian can tell of custom, the great guide to
human life, can tell of the experiences (upon which custom is built) of
ordinary people; and thus, show how rules for living have evolved, and how
these evolved rules for living have contributed and influenced the stable
development of society. In such an approach, history might well prove to be
more interesting; it certainly is more instructive.
"When the oak tree is felled, the whole forest echoes
with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din every ear, and with joy or
terror intoxicate every heart, pass away like tavern-brawls; and, except some
few Marathons and Morgartens, are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws
themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life, but only the house
wherein our Life is led: nay, they are but the bare walls of the house; all
whose essential furniture, the inventions and traditions, and daily habits that
regulate and support our existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens,
but of Phoenician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists, of
philosophers, alchemists, prophets, and all the long-forgotten train of artists
and artisans, who from the first have been jointly teaching us how to think and
how to act, how to rule over spiritual and over physical Nature. Well may we
say that of our History the more important part is lost without recovery."
(Carlyle.)
Not
all of our histories are accurate records that, for good or bad, reflect the
true course of events. This could be, in certain instances, because the author
was not as careful in his research, which, as an historian, he must be; or, in
other instances because the author has some ulterior purposed [6]; or, simply
because the writing of an accurate history is an impossibility.
"For in all historical inquiries we are dealing
with facts which themselves come within the control of human will and human
caprice, and the evidence for which depends on the trustworthiness of human
informants, who may either purposely deceive or unwittingly mislead. A man may
lie; he may err." (Freeman, "Race and Language.")
A further reason is that, as every lawyer would know,
people tend, all too readily, to accept hearsay.
"Men accept one another's reports of past events
... So impatient of labour are most men in the search for truth, and so prone
to jump to ready-made conclusions." (Thucydides.)
At any rate, if one subscribes to the skeptical
school, all knowledge is but a belief, an opinion, a theory. And while it is so
that nothing is for sure, we must,
nonetheless, proceed at some point to classify certain of our theories
as knowledge. What happens, in real science, in real life, is that we build on
our "knowledge" which, in the final analyses, is but a mass of
theories that have been held up and exposed to testing, unabated over long
periods of time; and, because these theories have never been falsified (as
apposed to being proven right, which, in the nature of things, cannot be done)
they become part of our store of human knowledge.[7] (I should say, in passing,
that we are obliged to continue to hold up and expose to testing even our most
used and trusted knowledge; the plain fact is that there is not a thing we can
take for sure, though our collective experience will show that some things are
more sure than others.)[8]
Another reason why history is often wrong is best
illustrated by the legal maxim, Nimium
altercando veritas amittitur (By too much altercation truth is lost). The fact
of the matter is that the history book you just picked up might well be just a
re-write of a re-write. A history writer is bound to go back and in his
research and dig out, if they exist, the original documents. On the other hand,
contemporary history writers, while fresh to the facts, are often influenced by
contemporary pressures.[9] A researcher, therefore, is equally bound to come
ahead in time and read the historic accounts of related matters; and then,
finally, to put the whole matter fully in a historical perspective. Thus, a
history may therefore be wrong because it is based, either on the biases of the
contemporary writers, or on the inadequate or absent records used by future
writers, or simply because it is an inadequate or an improper mix of events.
So, as one can see, the writing of history for a conscientious person, becomes,
indeed, a most difficult task, one of synchronizing and synthesizing many different
accounts of the same and related events.
Whether historians transmit erroneous accounts, or
not, is separate from that which people believe to be history. Peoples'
perception of history is often wrong because they have accepted fictional
accounts (often plainly represented as such) as being the gospel truth. What
ever they get out of a popular paperback, or at the movies, or out of the TV:
is, for them, the way it is. The stories of many historical figures are wrong,
often embellished stories to be sold. Most people today will readily tell you
that Kennedy was killed by an army of sharp shooters taken from the ranks of
the CIA, all because a film maker by the name of Stone did not either know of
the historical facts, or did not care for them. This kind of thing has been
going on for a long time, for instance, Shakespeare, gave a false depiction of
Caesar as "a pompous, posturing old gentleman without an idea in his head,
who for some obscure reason had managed to become the uncrowned king of Rome
..." And the reading of the autobiographies of historical personages,
while interesting, may not necessarily
give an accurate picture of historical events: memoirs especially need critical
reading. Not only have we to bear in mind the proclivity of most memoir-writers
to speak well of their friends and ill of their enemies, so too, we must
remember that memoir-writers are a select class (not one of the "Dumb
Millions," but one of the speaking thousands).
Then, there are history writers "the most
learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, [who]
frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned the habit
of making history into the proof of their theories."[10] One can see that
Macaulay was of the same view as Lord Acton when he observed that even the best
historians "have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit general
principles."[11] Then there are those historians who were too sentimental
and emotional and should have kept there hands out of history altogether. It is
not well for a historian to be become too impassioned about their historical
subjects. Feeling for their subject is important, but it is essential that they
should have knowledge of it. "We prefer history to be written by those who
know -- if they feel too, so much the better; but the more knowledge they have,
the better chance they have of being read." (Birrell.) It maybe, in the
final analysis, that a person with some legal training, or, at least,
acquainted the rules of evidence is the type of person who would make the best
historian: Macaulay thought so.
LESSONS
OF HISTORY
I.
Mankind is Continuously Struggling; He is Evolving:-
"Every thoughtful student of history is
confronted by these alternative interpretations. Is there discernible in
history taken as a whole anything which we can call progress, or is the record
one of an aimless struggle among a species of higher apes, in which any
apparent gain is offset by equal or greater loss? The idea of automatic
progress must be ruled out at once. No one is so naive as to maintain that from
the mathematics of Egypt and Babylon to the philosophy and art of Greece, the
jurisprudence of Rome, the theology of the Middle Ages, and the science and
social conscience of the modern world runs a continuous line of advance in
which each segment represents a clear gain on the last. On the contrary, it is
evident that the emergence of Greek civilization from the background of ancient
Asia, the appropriation of the Greek achievement by Rome, the decline and fall
of Rome before Gibbon's 'barbarism and religion,' and the overthrow of medieval
Catholicism by modern commercial civilization were in each case attended by
cruel struggles, and in each case created problems which the succeeding order
could not solve without creating new ones in their place." [Archibald
Robertson, How to Read History (1952) (New York: Ungar, 1963).]
II. What Counts
Over Time is the Aggregate of All the Simple, Regular, and Little Events of
Life:-
"The circumstances which have most influence
on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition
of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from
ferocity to humanity - these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions.
Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call
important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They
are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded in no archives. They are carried on
in every school, in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand
firesides." (Macaulay, "The Task of the Modern Historian.")
III.
There is no Good; There is no Evil:-
We are apt to think that in the great battles of
history, it is good that triumphs over evil; but what is presented in history
is the winning side's account of the matter. "There is no Persian history
of the Graeco-Persian wars. All pagan accounts of the victory of Christianity
over paganism have perished." (Robertson, op. cit.)
IV.
Power is the Name of the Game?:-
"Long before we reach our generation we see
that the same issues are always present, that the same fundamental qualities of
thought and character are permanently dividing men, that the struggle for the
concentration of power for the limitation and division of power is the
mainspring of history."[12] (Lord Acton.)
V.
In Spite of the Greatest Reverses the Human Spirit continues, Invincible:-
"The lesson of life is, practically to
generalize, to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours;
to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense.
Things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. The appearance is immoral;
the result is moral. Things seem to tend downward to justify despondency, to
promote rogues, to defeat the just; and by knaves as by martyrs the just cause
is carried forward. Although knaves win in every political struggle, although
society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into
the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed,
and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are
somehow answered. We see now events forced on, which seem to retard or
retrograde the civilization of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and
storms and waves cannot drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws: and so,
throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the
years, and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great
and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams." (Emerson, Representative
Men.)
The
first challenge to one who would choose a history book is to make a
determination as to whether what they have in hand is a true history book, or
is it but a fable. Some works, undoubtedly are fables but time has allowed them
to be rested on our history shelves.
"No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a
fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome, are passing
already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is
poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have
made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris
and New York must go the same way." (From Emerson's Essays.)
Fables can, of course, make for interesting reading;
but if one wants a true account of the past one generally must first carry out
some research on the historian (just as one should on all writers) before
plunging into his books. A person can not go wrong if he or she sticks to the
classics, which by definition are those which have been tested with time.[13] A
sampling:
Edward Gibbon, Decline & Fall of the Roman
Empire; Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England; Thomas Carlyle, The
French Revolution; Francis Parkman, France and England in North America; George
Macaulay Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century; Will Durant, The
Story of Civilization.
Through the reading of history we gain knowledge of
our past. It can be an exciting and an entertaining adventure; but,
importantly, it is one of the primary methods by which we gain knowledge, an
essential guide to our future conduct. In the process, as we gain new ones, we
are bound, at times, to throw out old beliefs, ones that are often more comfortable
and possibly more widely held; but, if it is properly concluded that the old
belief is wrong, then throw it out we must. The test for knowledge is whether
the particular belief or hypothesis is true, or not; not whether it may or may
not be offensive. To initiate the process we must examine the beliefs of other
men; history books (as well as good literature) is one of the best sources.
But, time is short and books are many; so, first, in the order of things, as I
hope I have been able to get across in my pages, one must choose a good history
book: best to start (as with any book) by carefully choosing the author: by
first getting to know the historian and his reputation.
[1] "This history of Herodotus lays stress on the weakness of Persia. This history is indeed what we should now call propaganda propaganda for Greece to unite and conquer Persia." (H. G. Wells, History of the World.)
[2] History, as Edward Gibbon cynically put it, is no
more "than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of
mankind." Tennyson: "The trouble of ants in the gleam of a million
million of suns."
[3] Marxian view can be traced back the French
philosopher and founder of the school known as positivism, Auguste Comte
(1798-1857). In Comte's aphorism,
"Progress is the development of order," one can see the roots
of all socialistic or collectivist thought, viz., the belief that man is
perfectible and through "science" can be "guided" toward a
superior state of civilization.
[4] "A nation is assigned the accomplishment of
one of these stages, it flourishes for a while and then gives way to another.
It then disappears and another, superior State emerges." [Alphern, An
Outline History of Philosophy (Forum House, 1969) at p. 168-9.]
[5] See Popper's The Poverty of Historicism.
"The fundamental thesis of this book
[is that] the belief in historical destiny is sheer superstition, and
that there can be no prediction of the course of human history by scientific or
any other rational method ... [it is dedicated to] the memory of the countless
men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist
and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."
[6] This, of course, brings Napoleon's declaration to
mind: "History is but a fiction agreed upon."
[7] Except possibly for Euclidian theory (and that
has been questioned) nothing can be conclusively proved; one, however, may be
able to falsify a proposition. See the works of Sir Karl Popper.
[8] For anyone who doubts this proposition I need
only refer to Newtonian theory which held sway for better than two hundreds
years, until, in the 20th century,
quantum theory came along.
[9] It was Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) who said,
"Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the
heels, it may haply strike out his teeth." (History of the World, 1614.)
[10] Lord Acton's The History of Freedom.
[11] "The Task of the Modern Historian."
[12] Vol. III, p. 520.
[13] There are bound to be current works which are good, but I have not the time to wade through them. Paul Johnson, a history writer with some sense of philosophy and economics, is most readable and invariably full of the most interesting tidbits; check out his works, particularly, Modern Times and The Birth of the Modern.