Recently, while I was listening to a series of lectures on Herodotus, the lecturer distinguished between what she called History definition A and History definition B*. She also briefly mentioned the confusion caused when people do not realise which definition they are using.
History A is everything in humanity’s past, and History B are the accounts we rely on to describe everything in humanity’s past. This distinction may seem trivial, but it becomes an issue when you must rely on a restricted number of accounts of the past, such as with Herodotus’s Histories, or when the accounts you rely on conflict with one another.
I also recently began listening to the history podcast Friendly Fire once again. The show takes war films as its starting point for examining both the conflicts depicted and the people depicting them, and they recently watched the 2013 film Lone Survivor. I have not seen the movie, but it represents a good example of the second issue that can occur when studying history. Marcus Luttrell survives a Taliban attack in which three other Navy Seals are killed. According to Luttrell, his unit was assaulted by a horde of around 200 fighters. The after-action report determined there were somewhere in the range of eight to ten fighters. While Luttrell continues to publicise his experiences, the official documentation of the event tells a different story**.
This is where I bring up positionality, reflexivity, and the responsibilities of academic researchers. Should historians pursue History A or History B? Possession of History B is necessary to understanding History A, but is possession of an account sufficient for us to claim we have attained perfect understanding of what History A contains? I personally do not think so, and neither do I think History A will ever be perfectly understood. However, my unwillingness to accept a perfect account of humanity’s entire history does not mean I do not wish to pursue one.
What both Herodotus and Luttrell teach us is that no single account of a past event is sufficient for claiming historical truth, but historical truth is itself founded on the collation and comparison of those accounts. As academics, we must not only pursue History B. We must also pursue historical accounts which contradict our own if we are to ever establish the contents of History A. If we do not, however can we hope to understand humanity’s past as anything but those individual accounts of it?
*The Great Courses – Herodotus: The Father of History with Professor Elizabeth Vandiver
** Friendly Fire – Lone Survivor (2013)
