Gombrich's A Little History Of The World

When looking back at different historical events, it seems to be that these events are told from the viewpoint of one single party. History is a story made from bits of the past, stories that are built on narratives. For example history books, these books are a reconstructed version of the past for the present. The past is what is made up of events, events that have happened before now and history. But in all the past is gone and only exist in our reconstructions of it. That is when history comes into play, it takes the events and makes it into one, leaving gaps in between the story. In relation, histories are stories that are not just focused one particular event. These histories can help examine the aspect of our past instead of trying to …show more content…
It’s seen through the way he tells stories, through the great man theory in which he praises the impact that a particular man has had on history. Gombrich tends to focus on a particular story and only emphasizes on one thing happening at a time rather than one single event that has different perspectives. Take the Dark Ages, for example, Gombrich states, “This is the name given to the period which followed the collapse of the Roman empire when few people could read or write and hardly anyone knew what was going on in the world. ‘Dark’, too, because houses in those days were small and dark, and because the streets and highways that the Romans had built had fallen into decay and were overgrown and their camps and cities had become grass-covered ruins” (Gombrich, 110). This explains that to Gombrich the Dark Ages were indeed a dark era because of what the Romans had lost but never seems to mention other aspects of that era. In relation outside of Europe, the Dark Ages were truly an age of enlightenment. Given one example is the great advances made in science and math in the Islamic world. “At the same time, the Islamic world leaped ahead in mathematics and the sciences, building on a foundation of Greek and other ancient texts translated into Arabic. The Latin translation of “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing,” by the ninth-century Persian astronomer and mathematician al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-c. 850), would introduce Europe to algebra, including the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations; the Latinized version of al-Khwarizmi’s name gave us the word “algorithm” (Pruitt). To clarify, there are indeed multiple viewpoints of a same event or era, which are equally important and valid. However, Gombrich tends to always draw attention to the Western world, which leads to just viewing history not histories. Gombrich states, “What I have