Monday, February 20, 2017

History is written by the victors

One of the most unfortunate and widely-accepted ideas about historical thinking is that “history is written by the victors.” This talking point asserts that the truth of the past is not shaped by reasoned interpretive historical scholarship or a factual understanding of the past, but by the might of political and cultural leaders on the “winning” side of history who have the power to shape historical narratives through school textbooks, public iconography, movies, and a range of other mediums...
“History is written by the victors” is a lazy argument that is usually deployed in the absence of historical evidence to defend claims about the past.

The quote, "history is written by the victors" appears to be misattributed to Winston Churchill