von Ranke

Background

- Leopold von Ranke was born in the late 18th century in Germany.
- Family had strong theological roots and as Ranke grew older, his Lutheran faith grew deeper.
- Ranke’s interest in history did not begin until he had finished his education at university.

History of Latin and Teutonic Nations 1494-1514

- In 1824, Ranke published his first book, History of Latin and Teutonic Nations, 1494-1514.
- In this book he wrote his criticisms of contemporary historiography, and he was
subsequently appointed professorship.
- As his interest in history grew deeper, von Ranke’s acquired almost unlimited access to the
Prussian and Viennese archives, followed by the Venetian, Florentine and Roman archives.
- Von Ranke immersed himself in these archives, and worked dedicatedly and diligently.

Von Ranke died in 1886, and wrote non-stop and published his ideas on how history should be
written up until his death. He is credited as being the father of modern history, and is said to have
turned the writing of history into a professional occupation.

Context

- Deeply influenced by the Age of Reason in the 19th Century Enlightenment, where there
was a major shift from religious faith to scientific proof and therefore history adopted a
‘scientific’ method.

Methods

- Ranke’s historical evidence was the official records and accounts by powerful men which
caused his history to be a ‘top-down’ account, focusing on how great men were responsible
for change in society and overlooked the lower classes.
- However, he was not just relying on his evidence to uncover the objective truth, but his own
personal position in society as an upper-class man of power, was reflected in his historical
stance.
- Rather contradictory in his methods, since although he believed that the progression of
technology allowed history to discover an objective past, he also believed that in doing this
he could uncover the hidden hand of God.
- Believed archives and primary sources upmost importance in achieving truth.

Although Ranke and his Empirical method were a great influence on many historians, his history
showed that although time and reason has progressed, Ranke still practiced many of the ancient
historical disciplines of the Classical Historians – using both evidence and personal motivation to
reconstruct the past.

While many before him were responsible for only one major work, von Ranke was responsible for
many historiographical works. To him, history was not to be conveyed nor written in narrative from.
Ranke believed historians should be writing to reconstruct the uniqueness of the ages. He disproved
of the style of historical writing at his time, and believed a more objective approach was required.
He believed that the historian should not judge the past, but simply present history “as it actually
was”. Ranke tried to free history of bias by using the original, rather than textbook documentation.
However, there would be bias in using these sources as well. For example, most of these sources
were written by the rich and powerful. Historians, such as John Warren, criticised his sources for this
very reason.

The prejudices and context of von Ranke’s life would have affected his writing of history, as he was a
conservative pro-monarch as well as a German nationalist. His context also included the French
Revolution and the Enlightenment period.

“It is only when they remove all traces of themselves that they can revive the past as it
really was.”
“History has had assigned to it the office of judging the past and of instructing the account for the
benefit of future ages.”

Ranke is saying what people have done in the past, have been handed to people to analyse their
actions, so that future generations can benefit from it later in time. This is similar to how Bede
viewed history as a way to influence people to do good things.

Ranke, similar again to likes of Bede, was deeply influenced by his religious beliefs, as a Lutheran.
This could culminate to a subjective outcome within his writings. As such, Ranke was labeled as a
“Historicist”, he applied approaches to history which were obviously unrelated. Ranke’s devotion to
uncovering knowledge or facts is assured with less ambiguity:

“Strict Presentation of facts, no matter how conditional and unattractive they might be, is
undoubtedly the supreme law.”

While Ranke left no manual on “how to do history”, his emphasis on objectivity, his exigency for
archival research...to offer information on stances and feelings must be seen as highly influential.
Ranke did maintain objectivity effectively, he defiantly wrote about topic of his own interest which
could include minor subjectivity, and has since been criticized thusly.

Ranke wants us to put aside our present values, to avoid judging, yet he adds that at some point we
should acknowledge the intentions of God. You can say by looking at history this was you are
imposing a value system on the past. Ranke insists that an objectivity from the historian, but at the
same time proposing what that objectivity should lead to. Much can be said about Leopold von
Ranke’s writing as he is writing subjectively, he is writing from the influence of “God”, outlining
God’s purpose, which in turn means his writings take on a religious tone.
Herodotus
Herodotus was a 5th century BC Greek historian credited as the “father of history”. This is because
he invented the genre of history through his only known work, The Histories. This was based on
personal research. During his time, Greece faced defeat by the Persian Empire; hence much of
Herodotus’ work is concerned with the telling of the Persian-Greek tension. Some historians criticize
Herodotus’ credibility and call him the “father of lies”, based upon his narrative style of writing
where truth is often forgotten in order to create a good story.

Herodotus’ history is narrative. He had no previous scholar works to elaborate on, and no printing
press, meaning mainly oral sources. It was not until later that his work was written down. The
purpose of The Histories was to preserve the memory of the past by recording the astonishing
achievements of the Greeks as well as discussing the stories of people from other societies. He
looked at these cultures and contrasted them with the success of the Greeks, showing how they
came into conflict.

The style of Herodotus’ work is quite different to contemporary historical works. Herodotus was
influenced by the style of Homer, including his neutrality, show by his description of the Greeks as
heroes, but not the enemies as villains. Unlike Homer, Herodotus did not seek the aid of gods to
assist in his story, did not write in verse, instead he based much of what he wrote on his own travels,
observations and enquires. However, his work was affected by his context. That is, the majority of
people he spoke to were of societal influence, and hence an underlying bias was inevitable.

Herodotus named the places he visited and often the individual spoken to. He then sought other
viewpoints to challenge or collaborate on his original information. He then interpreted what was
said, or provided reasoning for his doubts over a particular claim. Therefore he has also been
criticized by modern scholars for not offering conclusions and for being very vague in his calculations
of particular things.

The narrative style of his work was to be kept interesting so that The Histories would be orally
passed down through the generations. Herodotus did this by including anecdotal sub-stories of little
significance, but of considerable fascination.
Classical Historians: Herodotus & Thucydides.
The Classical Historians set the foundations for modern historical methodology. Like Ranke, they
offered a rather ‘top-down’ account of history as they celebrated the reigns of monarchs, the
careers of great political figures, and the outcomes of major battles

Herodotus aimed to record the great deeds of men in an entertaining and celebratory way. His
evidence relied on word of mouth of men in similar positions to himself – upper or middle class men
of power. While some of his evidence lacked credibility since word of mouth has its limitations,
Herodotus was also significantly affected by the Greek culture of his time and therefore intertwined
his history with Greek mythology. This showed how he was stuck in the interstices of modern
historical thought and Ancient Greek mythology and therefore his history became fragmented and
exaggerated, proving that both evidence and social influences steer a historians’ history.

Although Thucydides criticised Herodotus’ method, he too was guilty was imposing his own beliefs
and experiences on his history. Thucydides believed that since he was a learned and upper class
Athenian with experience abroad due to his exile, he was able to enter the minds of important
people in his history and write what they would have said. In essence, Thucydides mixed his
available evidence from official records and military leaders with his own fabricated speeches and
thoughts. While both Classical historians portray giant steps in the process of historiography, they
were both limited by their social and personal context reflecting their military and nationalistic
pride, which affected the evidence they used and the histories they wrote. Similar to the Relativists,
the Classical Historians used their own personal, social and political ideology in order to reconstruct
the past.
Bede
Bede was a 7th and 8th century Anglo-Saxon theologist .He dedicated his life to learning, teaching and
the spreading of the Christian gospel, living in his monastery in Northumbria. England at the time
was mainly lawless, anarchic and violent and had previously been under Roman rule. Anglo-Saxons
were also arriving in large numbers, and the Christian religion was predominating. Bede accepted
the view of St Augustine and Isidore of Seville that time could be split into six linear ages. Before his
time, it was believed these ages lasted 5500 years; Bede recalculated this period to be 3952 years.

Bede was a prolific writer, working in a monastery with his books, credited as the most
comprehensive English library at the time. He is best known for the Ecclesiastical History of the
English People; a series of five books which provided:

 The first known work to use the AD dating system.

 Main source of early English history following Roman occupation, including political and
ecclesiastical development.
Bede was also the author of several other books regarding the Christian religion, including
biographies of church figures and Saints.

Bede said his purpose was for the “instruction of posterity”, however, his main aim was to spread
the Christian gospel. Bede saw himself as a teacher—one with a propagandist view towards his
religion. His real purpose was to help believers grow as Christians and to guide heathens as
Christians. Bede explains this as:

“If history records good things of good men, the hearer is encouraged to imitate what is
good. If it records evil, the reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and follow what
he knows to be good and pleasing to God.”

Bede stated history is God’s plan revealed. When God’s laws are respected, people will prosper,
when people sin, God permits them to suffer.

Bede, like Herodotus, wrote in narrative to maintain interest, as he was trying to spread the gospel.
He expanded dated events with narrative and undated material from saints' lives and also legends
and accounts from battle.

Unlike most medieval writers, Bede named his sources, referenced quotes and laboured to verify his
sources for accuracy. Some say this was to strengthen Christianity, but he was also a scholar so this
is expected. He often attributed certain events to miracles which has also tarnished his reputation
among some modern historians. Bede was also one of the first to disclose the difficulty of
translation. That is, words cannot be translated literally without lose of meaning.

“Should the reader discover any inaccuracies, I ask that they do not impute them to me, as I have
laboured honestly to transmit whatever I could ascertain from the sources I have.”

DIDACTIC: intended to teach a moral purpose

The Annalists
The “Annalist School” refers to a group of historical writers stretching from the 1920s to the end of
the 20th century. Founded by March Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the Annalists aimed to provide a
medium to unite historians and social scientists in discussion. Annalists lived through great changes
but also enormous destruction: like WWI, the depression, WWII, and the Cold War. Rankeanism,
with its obsessive concentration on detailed facts was a German phenomenon. Perhaps it is not
surprising that it was largely French writers who rejected this style of history, and embraced the
Annalist style. However, from the 1970s onwards, the Annalists have become more fragmented and
less distinctive as other historians have adopted characteristics of their approach.

Annalists analysed a problem instead writing a narrative; they analysed beliefs, ideas, and mass
psychology among other things, and studied these through various perspectives; geographical,
economic, and social.

What set the Annalists apart from other historians was what they wrote about and their approach
doing it:

 Instead of writing a traditional narrative of a period, Annalist writers preferred to analyse a

problem. For example, if writing about the middle ages, Annalists would seek to explain why
people in the Middle Ages believed that a king’s touch could cure disease.
 Rather than writing about the activities of various people, Annalists write about beliefs,
ideas, culture, et cetera.
 This approach required the historian to collaborate with other disciplines, like psychology
and sociology.
 Long Duree, long term historical processes, geographical history,
 Challenged linear euro history

The Annalists broke new ground in their analysis of history. One of the most basic elements to the
study of history is the notion of time, yet the Annalists challenged the prevalent divisions of time
into defined eras. They argued that time was subjective and depended upon the perspective the
researcher was coming from. History showed that the past could not be neatly packaged and always
overlapped.

Marc Bloch, there is an abundance in life and work of him to appeal to anyone fascinated by history.
Bloch functioned on the foundation that history was the study of the past not documents. Just this
sentence alone can tell us whether Bloch is objective or subjective, he states that history is the study
of the past NOT documents, this can mean that Bloch wrote what he thought happened in the past
with maybe some orated sources to back up his argument, though we do know he had immaculate
expertise with in the field of document study, he did not want history to be seen as textbook study.

In 1913, an early study of the area around Paris the Île-de-France, where he accentuated the
importance of geography.

In Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft” he tells us about , obviously what the title states – The
Historian’s Craft, how historians write, but there is no reference to sources in this which I’m led to
believe is subjective because he is only stating his view, and his knowledge.

Sociolology: scientific study of a society

History in it’s broadest definition is about inquiry, therefore so broad by the influences of language,
societies, cultures

“If the sciences were obliged to find a new name each time they made an advance — what a
multitude of christenings! and what a waste of time for the academic realm!…”

“For, to begin with, the very idea that the past as such can be the object of science is ridiculous…
How, without preliminary distillation, can one make of phenomena, having no other common
character than that of being not contemporary with us, the matter of rational knowledge? ”

The human element is what defines history

Looks at overlap between sciences

Should understand where your not objective. reworked their way around subjectivity.

Braudel - History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly
and what appears not to move at all."

- Time was not uniform, there was geo, social and individual time, none of which cooincided

- Relied greatly on geography (intermixing of disciplines) e.g. book part 1: role of enviro

- Writes history as structures

- Believes individual events are superficial understanding e.g. would focus on religion not on
pope

- Annalists prefer to analyse a problem rather than to narrate a period of history, which was
the Ranke’s problem of focusing on Major people and important classes

- Instead of people’s activities they wrote about beliefs, ideas, mass psychology, culture,
religious practice

- Annalists lead to developments of Marxism

- Challenged linear history, superiority of western society, providing an approach to history

quite different from the solidly political approach based by Rankean historiography
Hobsbawn
- One of the leading historians of the 20th century

- Said to have brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of

thousands of people. Essentially bringing history out of the ivory tower and into
people's lives.

- Hobsbawm's work was influential in the evolution of New Labour during the
1990s. Tony Blair called him "a giant of progressive politics history, someone
who influenced a whole generation of political and academic leaders. He wrote
history that was intellectually of the highest order but combined with a profound
sense of compassion and justice. And he was a tireless agitator for a better
world."

- " he said many years later. "The months in Berlin made me a lifelong
communist."

- His work as a historian was greatly admired even by those who disagreed with
his politics.

- His politics did not prevent Hobsbawm from being a truly great historian,"

- Hobsbawm's magisterial four-volume history of the rise of modern capitalism in

the 19th and 20th centuries, from the French Revolution to the fall of the USSR, is
acknowledged as among the defining works on the period, admired both for his
analysis and the quality of his prose. The tetralogy, from The Age of Revolution in
1962, to 1994's The Age of Extremes, "remains the best introduction to modern
world history in the English language".

- Eric Hobsbawn was Born of Jewish Background 1917 in Egypt, he is a British

Marxist- STRUCTURALIST - Historian, public intellectual and author and arealist

- Long standing member of the now defunct communist party of Great Britain

- Rankean style: “I strongly defend the view that what historians investigate is
real.” denouces relativism, is a truth: Marxism ---Biggest Influence Karl Marx---

- Believes history must be based on evidence

- Strong Marxist: “to find Marx’s ‘materialist conception of history’ the best guide
by far to history: works the ages are about running of society: Marxism,
capitalism, social, bourgeoisie

- “No one’s work should be judged by the political labels they or others attach to
them”.
- In 2003 awarded the Balzan Prize for European history since 1900, “for his
brilliant analysis of the troubled history of twentieth century Europe and for his
ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent.

- Ethical view of History… relativism has consequences, bring in ideological

- His approach has arisen out of a very Rankean influence (processes of

uncovering truth), Marxist (political, economy shaping of classes)

- Parallels between the Annals and Marxism; (Marnie Hughes-Warrington)

- Believes marxism is different to communism

- In his four-volume history of the modern world, Hobsbawm departs almost

completely from Marxist attitudes to culture. He celebrates cinema and
modernist art as powerful cultural forces, ones he doesn't even attempt to
reduce to economic determinants. The truly revolutionary age of art was before
the first world war, he wrote, when Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse remade art
completely. By the 1930s, he argued, the avant garde had become a social ritual:
everyone going to see all those hip, surrealist movies. In his view, the avant garde
was dead by the 1960s. Famously, Hobsbawm loved jazz, an art form that is
impossible to reduce to a simple economic theory.

- Most importantly of all, Hobsbawm applied his sense of the power of culture to
rethinking socialist politics. The Labour movement had lost contact with modern
culture, he argued in the pages of Marxism Today magazine in the 1980s. It was
Thatcherism that reflected postmodern ways of life. An avid student reader of
this magazine in the 1980s, I learned that masculinity is a cultural construct, and
that Madonna was a feminist. It was a long way from old Marxism, and over it all
hovered the crystal-clear mind of Hobsbawm. Of course, he couldn't have
predicted that it would be Tony Blair who ended up taking Labour into a new
cultural age.

- Hobsbawm was still writing until within a few days of his death at 95.

- He was not just one of the master historians of the era but one of the last
remaining first-hand witnesses of so many of its decisive events, too. Few
historians were as interested as Mr Hobsbawm in explaining the politics and
economics of the present in the light of the lessons of the past. He looked the
facts in the eye and drew his conclusions – occasionally wrong ones. But it
helped him progress from the communist rigidities of his youth

- A few weeks before his death, Mr Hobsbawm remarked that he was amazed to
have lived long enough to see another global capitalist crisis. But the existence of
such crises was not a surprise to someone who had seen it all before.
- Yet the one thing that, more than any other, accounts for Mr Hobsbawm's status
in his own country was his readiness, at a crucial time in the late 20th century, to
acknowledge the historical exhaustion of the dogma that industrial labour would
overthrow capital and construct a socialist order. His essays in Marxism Today in
the late 1970s and early 1980s – many of them reprinted and debated in this
newspaper – marked the moment when the left painfully began to assess its
failures and prospects. Some of it still has barely started to do so even now.

- The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one's
comtemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most
characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late 20th century. Most young men
and women at the century's end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking
any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in. This makes
historians, whose business it is to remember what others forget, more essential
at the end of the second millennium than ever before. But for that very reason
they must be more than simply chroniclers, remembrancers and compilers,
though this is also the historians' necessary function. In 1989 all governments
and especially all foreign ministers in the world would have benefited from a
seminar on the peace settlements after the two world wars, which most of them
had apparently forgotten.
Tuchman
- American journalist, historian and author
-
- “I think of myself a storyteller, a narrator who deals in true stories, not fiction”
- Best known for “Guns of August”
- The book was an immediate bestseller on the NY best seller list for 42
consecutive weeks
- America’s Security in the 1980s (1982)
-
- Father: Investment banker, art collector and philanthropist
- - Mother: Secretary of treasury under P. Roosevelt = PRIVLEDGED
- Attended Radcliffe college- degree in 33
- Wealth allowed to travel, Tokyo journalism, 1936 worked for ‘Nation’
(correspondent for Spanish civil war
- Married doctor, had domestic help for her to continue writing
- She tried to project not
- Climatic, chronological structure reflected her entertain purposes
- She reflected Rankean history as she went to primary souirces, western front
trenches etc.
Journalistic background influenced her aims not only to inform but also to hold
readers attention.

- Language, access to resources, technology aided come to conclusions

- Journalist background- Not to primarily inform but ‘Hold readers attention
- “truth more interesting & beautiful than romance
- Supporter of Rankean History, looked to primary source, visited sites e.g.
Western Front
- Wrote on index cards to condense thoughts, “Know when to stop”
- Believed in a holistic approach: “Leaving things out because they do not fit is
fiction, no history”
- Military/journalist perspective= popular culture ideals
- Believes contemporary have no perspective on the matter, “What he gains in
personal accquantaince he loses in detachment
- Throughout the aforementioned narrative, Tuchman constantly brings up the
numerous misconceptions, miscalculations, and mistakes that she believed
resulted in the tragedy of trench warfare e.g. economic miscalculation, failure to
consider political backlash
Jenkins
- Post Moderninst
- Concept of history itself is a literary genre to express ideas of past
- Relationshp of fact and objectivity doesnt alloow to tru;y view the past
- “Do away with history”.
- Theres no truth in history
- “History is an effective vehicle for discourses of truth”
- Imposing views and context and beliefs makes it impossible for a writer to
convey an objectve view
- History has developed through ages, its silly that only thing kjeeps ythings
together is a study of the past.
- Evans stated that, “Self defeating as he frequently employs historical
methedology to undermrine history.”
- What is history
- The arguments are not so much about knowledge, but what meaning you make
of them
- See’s works as stories/discourse
- Keith Jenkins is a British historiographer. Like Hayden White and other
"postmodern" historiographers, Jenkins believes that any historian's output
should be seen as a story. A work of history is as much about the historian's own
world view and ideological positions as it is about past events. This means that
different historians will inevitably ascribe different meaning to the same
historical events.
- “history is an aesthetic/literary genre such that therefore, the questions
historians normally considered—the relationship of facts to values, of
interpretation, of objectivity, truth, etc., were not much to the point if the object
of their concern was not one capable of being reduced to epistemological
(knowledge) claims.”
- Best known for Re-thinking History,
- Argues for the end of history
- Contradiction: says traditional historians look too much at document, but uses
written sources and documentation to support his argument
- They way that you know stuff is limited
- Can you know history/do you really need to
Hayden White
- Born 1928 Tennessee
- Undergraduate degree from Wayne State UNI in Michigan 51
- PHD in 1956
- Professor of History at Rochester and served as the departmental chairperson
from 1962-64- Burden of history led to later works
-
- Definitive narrative, classifies past structures and proccesses

- The actual past has gone. It has in it arguably neither rhyme nor reason: it is
sublime. The presence of the past is manifested only in its historicised traces
accessible now; such traces signify an 'absent presence'. –Jenkins on White

- That past, appropriated by historians, is never the past itself, but a past
evidenced by its remaining and accessible traces and transformed into
historiography through a series of theoretically and methodologically disparate
procedures (ideological positionings, tropes, emplotments, argumentative
modes), such historiography — as articulated in both upper and lower cases —
then being subject to a series of uses which are logically infinite but which, in
practice, correspond to the range of power bases that exist at any given juncture
and which distribute/circulate the meanings drawn from such histories along a
dominant-marginal spectrum

- Best known for his ‘Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-

century Europe, 1973

- Influenced by eighteenth-century scholar Giambattista Vico and literary critic

Kenneth Burke

- "Seemed to me that the way the most people had written history of history was
to listen to what the historians had said they did rather than analysing what they
actually wrote"

- Criticized for his alleged epistemological and moral relativism caused by his
conflation of historical and fictional narrative, as well as his denial of the
objective value of historical evidence

- strongly contest his assertions about the impossibility of creating realistic

representations of history

- accused of adhering to a rigid formalism that denies the plurality of forms of

historical writing

- lack of attention to historical context within his own works

Henry Reynolds
A study of the Historian Henry Reynolds reveals that his historical debate favouring the Aboriginal
interpretation of history is influenced by sympathetic personal convictions dealing with
disadvantaged and displaced indigenous people.

Henry Reynolds’, according to Bruce Dennett, “had a desire to understand and explain
contemporary conditions.” Reynolds’ argues and revises issues regarding Australian History,
specifically addressing ideas of settlement and the white and Aboriginal responses, Wik and Mabo
cases, and broadly national identity, political correctness and the black arm-band version of history.
He argues the history that was taught, erased aspects of the black and white struggle in early
Australian colonisation, namely the violence towards Aborigines by early settlers.

For Reynolds, white history was at odds with what he saw around him. According to Dennett, “What
he found in North Queensland…the image of the imprisoned children remains vividly with Reynolds
thirty years later.” Could it be that Reynolds close relationship with Aborigines after taking a
position at Townsville University, affects a sympathetic views towards Aborigines and consequently
the ways in which he presents such a history.

According to Bain Atwood, Henry Reynolds has been criticised for “overdoing the violence theme”.
Keith Windschuttle, of an opposing argument to Reynolds describes early frontier conflict as
“widespread violence”, whilst Reynolds describes the conflict as “widespread massacres”.
Reynolds, selective use of the word “massacres” holding direct negative connotations is reflective of
his partiality to the Indigenous interpretation of history. Admitting himself in ‘Why weren’t we
told’, that “it is a book of opinions…based on things I have seen and heard as much as they are on
reading and research”.

In explaining where his understanding and views on the Aboriginal settler experience were derived,
Reynolds professes that “I came to an understanding…as a result of living in North Queensland.”
Reynolds sympathetic views towards the Aborigine representation of history are evident when he
admits, in his own words, “I met Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. I saw their poverty and the
way they were treated” and such sympathetic views have lead Reynolds to come under scrutiny by
the “History News Network”, when he when he misquoted George Arthur in support of the
Aborigine argument and according to Windschuttle, Reynolds took figures on the numbers of whites
killed by Aborigines and estimated that ten times as many Aborigines were killed by whites.

In studying the Historian Henry Reynolds it is revealed that his experiences living in North
Queensland were a catalyst for his writing which sided with a “Black armband view of history”,
supporting and Aboriginal interpretation of events.
Windschuttle
- Born 1942, educated Canterbury Boys High School

- - Sydney Journalist  Masters at Mac Uni in 1978

- - 1993 Publisher of the Macleay Press

- Frequent writer and lecturer on Australian History and historiography

- Lived through the Aboriginal Activism, Baby boomer, Vietnam War movement,
Terrorism

- Propogated ‘Black armband View of History’

- Unemployment: A social and political analysis of Economic Crisis in Australia

(1979)

- The Killing of History: How a Discipline is being murdered by Literary Critics and
Social Theorists (1994)

- The Fabrication of Aboriginal History

- In youth was a Marxist, but now a proud conservative Historian- Ranke/Elton

Methodology

- Systematically checked the footnotes of the proponents of the “massacre view of

our history”.

- In the History wars, had to main purposes in writing “The fabrication of

Aboriginal History

- Mcintyre: denounces Wind’s mentality of “Left-Wing Conspiracy”

- In Rankean form, did not believe in the primary sources of Aboriginal accounts
“hearsay”, relying fully on official white colonial records

- Windschuttle supported by the Howard Government e.g. Refusal to say sorry

-
Karl Marx
- German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and
revolutionary socialist

- - Born 1881 into wealthy middle class

- Jewish, long line of Rabbis but abandoned faith at young age protestant

- Studied at Uni of Bonn and Uni or Berlin= interest in philosophical ideas

- Hegel’s theory

- Theory: Dialectical Materialism

- Leading figure of Communist League

- Exiled moved to London= poverty

- Campaigned for socialism

- Brussels 1844 posthumously published book the German Ideology

- Founded his own newspaper

- The Class Struggles in France

- The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

- The outlines 1941

- Thesis of The German Ideology "the nature of individuals depends on the

material conditions determining their production.”

- Premise of materialist method: (law of development of human history)

- 1. People productive to survive need both material and social goods 

societal change therefore material and societal structure determines social status

- Also looked how religion fit into

- Theory of history was not detailed

- Culture, in the tradition of social analysis that took its lead from Karl Marx, was
seen as a secondary and superficial aspect of human life. The economic base,
according to the old Marxists, determines everything else; art and literature
merely reflect that economic base. The English 18th-century portrait, for
instance, reflects the rise of bourgeois individualism. Marx himself believed in
the economic determinants of culture.