Critical and Reflective Thinking
Is history the story told by the Winners?
History. Is it written by the Winners? This depends on where you are learning history.
While I was learning about the Russian Revolution, I’ve noticed the fairly unbiased nature in how it’s taught. This, I’m sure is from hours of curation and hard work on my teacher’s part. If their is any bias, it would be against Bolshevik Russia. If we consider that the Bolsheviks ‘won’ the revolution as the most successful political party, I can conclude that my education was not written by the ‘winners’. The question goes deeper than that though. If I was a student studying the Russian Revolution in Russia today, my education would surely be different. I would be taught different things. Maybe they would frame Lenin in a better light; communism too, would be shown as an improvement over earlier systems. I would not know any better. I can also see other examples where history is written by the winners.
The history of the residential schools in Canada is currently being rewritten as new information is coming out. Canada was the Winner. Yet the entire truth is not known. History is never the ‘essential truth’. No matter what source you draw from there will be biases. The French experience of the Treaty of Versailles is different than the German one. History isn’t just written by the winners, each nation will have its own history, or set of stories that explain their perspective. That’s all History is. Not a guarantee of Truth. Simply a collection of stories with a specific narrative.
I can analyze evidence to make judgements.
In this assignment I analyzed my experiences learning about the Russian Revolution in History 12 and determined that my education was not influenced by the Winners of the Conflict, the Bolsheviks. I also analyzed my learning of the Treaty of Versailles and concluded that different Nations would have differed views on how history is taught.