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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

A Brief History of History

History is the story of the political communities which were formed through the bonds of language, geography, culture, religion, and nationhood. The term “history” arises from within the Western civilization. The ancient Greek thinkers like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, and Plutarch were the world’s first historians. Through their work the method of recording, analyzing, and understanding the past (the method of creating historical records) has developed. 

Since the time of Herodotus, historians have been playing a critical role in the evolution of Western philosophy, politics, and culture. During the Age of Imperialism (1750 to 1940s), while the Western imperialists were conquering colonies, their historians were engaged in investigating and analyzing the past of these colonies—they produced a massive collection of books and papers on the history of the Asian, South American, and North African nations. Today people in most parts of the world understand their past through the work of the Western historians. 

I am not a fan of the West, but I have to accept that the art of writing history is a unique Western achievement.

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