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What is History?

What is History?. U.S. History. What is history?. History has many different definitions, depending on who you ask! Simply put, history is the study of the past. “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” –Napoleon “History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice.”- Will and Ariel Durant

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What is History?

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  1. What is History? U.S. History

  2. What is history? • History has many different definitions, depending on who you ask! • Simply put, history is the study of the past. • “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” –Napoleon • “History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice.”- Will and Ariel Durant • "Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past." -Sigmund Freud

  3. Why do we study history? • We can see how past events have shaped the present. • We can see how we are similar and different from others over time. • History helps us enjoy and understand the world around us. • We can apply lessons and ideas from the past towards the future.

  4. How do we reconstruct the past? • A student of history must figure what happened at some point in the past. • A good historian will collect information from many sources, analyze the information, and draw conclusions about the past based on the information. • Information may come from documents, interviews, or artifacts. • Historians may also make educated guesses where there is missing information.

  5. Primary Sources • Anything written or made by somebody who was at the historical event or lived during the time period. • Primary sources can include: journals, letters, speeches, newspaper articles, photos, interviews, video footage, etc. • Primary sources are the best way to get accurate information about the past.

  6. Secondary Sources • Made by people who were not actually at the event. • Ideas from several primary sources are combined. • This would include history textbooks and biographies.

  7. Determine Point of View (POV) • Point of view refers to the perspective that a historical event is seen from. • A historical event can have many different interpretations, depending on the point of view of the author/witness. • Ex.- A slave, slave owner, and abolitionist would all view the Emancipation Proclamation from a different point of view.

  8. Watch out for bias! • Bias refers to favoritism shown towards a person or historical event. • Authors of history may be knowingly or unknowingly biased. • As students of history, we need to be able to identify biased sources and have a clear view of what actually happened.

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