Reading Log Week 1: What Even Is History?
John Douglas Belshaw, Canadian History: Pre Confederation, 1.
In the first chapter of John Douglas Belshaw’s, ‘Canadian History: Pre-Confederation’ he focuses on answering: what is history? To answer this question he focuses on three main points : how to make histories, research histories, and understand how history has influenced the modern world. In the beginning of the chapter he states that the “study of history is a combination of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.” [1] This ‘what’ and ‘how’ can be found through historiography (the study of historical writing), and come from either a primary or secondary source. Just as anything else in the modern world history cannot always be trusted; to be legitimate historical evidence the material must be reliable and verifiable. This can be difficult to determine because history has a stale-date and the “past is constantly subject to change.” [2] We are constantly making history–yesterday, just as one-hundred years ago, is no longer the present; therefore anything done or learned in the past can be used as a building block for history. Many factors come into place when understanding the past: events, leaders, ideologies and methodologies are what create what we know as history. If historical events such as the Canadian fur trade did not happen, there would be no Canada, or if the National School approach never existed Canada would have never gained the national identity or historiography that they did. These events would have never occurred if Canada hadn’t had the leaders and ideologies that they did.
So what is history? History is a past that lingers on today. It is our foundation and our answers to the ‘what’ and ‘how’s’ of today.
[1] John Douglas Belshaw, Canadian History: Pre Confederation, 1.
[2] Belshaw, Canadian History: Pre Confederation, 5.
