Political history

fate, shape history—the study of past events— and many groups of diverse individuals from all around the world. While others argue against the importance of history, and the necessity to study it, others boldly defend the significance of analyzing the past. Countless historians, such as the five authors of the following sources, endlessly enforce their own diverse range of opinions, while including other aspects that contribute to their arguments. However, there is no doubt that history serves…

The book American Slavery by Peter Kolchin provides a detailed history of slavery from its establishment in the 13 colonies to its abolishment in the United States. He analyzes its practices and its effects on the culture of those affected by it, black and white. The topics discussed in the book provide a good amount of insight to the political views throughout the eras discussed. He focuses on three main eras: the colonial era, the revolutionary era, and the post-war era. The practices and…

why the popular memory should be disregarded as history, as it is just as valuable as the scholarly history itself, it just needs to be analyzed for different purposed. Historical events viewed in a scholarly way are widely more accepted by academia, where memory is seen as separate from history. “Memory is not history” an article in The Economist proposes. It states that “memory is by its nature subjective and selective. It cannot substitute for history” (The Economist), which is a view that is…

With this same philosophical idea proposed by George Santayana, the study of our nation’s history and foreign policy efforts should be used as a lesson to guide any future behavior on how the United States should deal with the threat ISIS presents because of the clear thread that exists between the past and present. The same gap of communication and lack of understanding of different cultures, values and histories that brought destruction and instability during the Philippines-American War and…

the significance of the traditions of history, education and argument, and civics as well as express how these concepts are connected. While Nadar experienced these things as a child and his narrative refers to events when he is younger, these virtues are vital to the engage citizens to actively participate in government and impact their communities. To gain more aware and active citizens, these citizens must be equipped with history. In Nadar’s writing, history takes the form of stories and…

Now that we are at the end of the Spring 2016 semester, it is time to reflect on the History Department’s exciting year. I don’t normally like to turn my back on people, but I wanted to model the History Student Association’s new t-shirt. Not only do I like the shirt, I believe that our students came up with a wonderful way of describing what it is that we as historians do and are. We are scholars who are “in-betweeners.” “Our minds are in the past, our bodies in the present, and our…

Essay 1 The word history stems from the ancient Greek word for “inquiry.” Indeed, the study of history should be an investigative examination into the past which provides information and insight. Yet beyond information regarding timelines and facts about historical people and events, historical study can provide an avenue of reflective thought that supports the development of critical thinking skills, rational judgment, empathy, and the expansion of our understanding of what it means to be…

months after taking office. James Garfield, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Guiteau and Dr. Bliss were some of the characters that interwove together, each with their own backgrounds to tell a bigger story. How these characters intersected would change history. I did thoroughly enjoy the historical portion of this book and thought it was an enjoyable way to learn. My difficulty with the book, is that the author tends to associate the characters to be either good or bad. In my point of view, life is…

How do words affect our view of history and do our modern terms change our perception of the times being examined? Robert Bartlett’s usage of terms such as “ethnicity” and “colonialism”, addresses an important question of modern concepts in our understanding of the medieval past. The purpose of this paper is to make connections of the key ideas of Robert Bartlett’s use of these concepts, ethnicity and colonization, in his book “The Hanged Man” drawing from his own explanations from his articles,…

One of the hardest things to do as a history teacher, especially at the high school level, is to get students to understand what it means to be “doing history.” It isn’t just to have facts and dates thrown at you to parrot back, but to come up with an understanding of what the people of that time were thinking and doing and why the document that is being analyzed even exists and what it did for this country, if not the world. In the books Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts: Charting…