In addition to conflict, this year, I have picked up on another overarching theme which seems to be intertwined with conflict and equally important to pick up on. This has been our exploration of historiography. I feel this theme has stretched throughout the course. From Mihirangi Forbes’ lecture, in which she discusses the importance of the way we share and record stories, all the way through to Thomas Gregory’s lecture in which he discusses how we record the names of casualties of war. In the sessions, the information we have discussed has been coloured and shaped by the way it was recorded. This ubiquity of the concept of historiography, alongside our acknowledgement of its shortcomings in the discussion surrounding V.D Hansan, has led me to consider how we partake in it. Particularly, how important it is in our current internet environment. 

 

Historiography has played a large part in our lives and how we perceive events, as well as what events we are able to perceive at all. We are lucky enough to be aware of the shortcomings in historiography we have seen in the past. We often criticise such commentary, crediting it to creating entirely flawed depictions of conflicts and reality. This was well explored in Thomas Gregory’s lecture. He discussed the idea that how we define civilians, a largely conceptual endeavour, has the power to affect quantifiable understandings of how many people die in war. Clearly, historiography has immense power and is not to be taken lightly. Yet, this is what we see happening constantly in the new medium of the internet. 

 

To an extent, all of us have the ability to be historians now. We can all publicly analyse and publish our interpretations of history as widely as the internet sees fit to spread them. We are in a unique position of having unrestricted access to information about history and unprecedented ability to share our opinions about historical events despite our likely lack of qualification. Whilst we don’t realise it, historiography happens online every day. We are able to write about history openly and comment in ways which have the potential to be both incorrect yet widely published. We can easily write blogs, post to forums, or make commentary on social media, all of which have potential to add to the fabric of historiography. In a discussion surrounding the flourishing of holocaust denial online, Christopher Wolfe states that hate and false historiography is “growing geometrically through online tools that facilitate posting to the Internet. The number of websites, online videos, Facebook postings by its 800 million users, and blog entries is staggering.”1 We are in an age of endless publication opportunities and we are one amongst millions of authors who are able to have their say on whatever historical event they would like. Wolfe writes that “ it is unrealistic to expect human review of every posting,” yet the authenticity of our history is at stake.2 It is imperative that we hold ourselves to a high standard which represents both the wealth of knowledge we are exposed to and our responsibility as agents in online discourse. The power historiography has to shape perceptions of the past requires that we do not abuse our ability to do so on a potentially global scale.

 

 

1: https://www.adl.org/news/article/holocaust-denial-and-freedom-of-speech-in-the-internet-era

2: https://www.adl.org/news/article/holocaust-denial-and-freedom-of-speech-in-the-internet-era