Diane writes: in response to Paul
>
>the notion of history-as-a-text is not to say that history IS a text,
>but that text is historical.
and in particular Paul writes:
"I have a hard time seeing how world war 2's pacific armies sweeping across
polynesia, micronesia, melonesia can be considered a text. I can see how
the
engulfed pacific islanders incorporated that historical experience into the
frameworks their culture provided for making sense out of it, but I can't
see it as a text itself"
In "What is history?", E.H. Carr says "History i made in the writing.
Knowledge of the events and artifacts of the past is antiquariansim.
History surely is the interpretation of these events and artifacts.
Currently there is considerable termoil in the school curriculum of South
Africa. What was taught to me as history, a child of the end of the
British Empire, I hope is different to the history as taught in schools
elsewhere.
That red coated Scots and Irish soldiers battled with other mercaneries
engaged by English descended cartel of merchants eager to maintain their
monopolistic position in the provision of high priced tea (and other
goods)....
is merely a tea party depeneding on your point of view.
Colonial expansion of Japan ocurred, but what was the Japanese point of
view? What did the Japanese think of the French colonisation of
Indo-China, Britain in the sub-continent and the Malayas, The Dutch in
Indonesia and the US in the Philipines?. Events are not history.
Diane, I think many historians would feel that History is text.
Martin
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