najmelliw
Welcome - and I honestly admire everyone, who's enjoying ancient history.
I enjoyed it at university too - up to the point, where my unaware of Greek and medium knowledge of Latin stopped my carreer. (I really was glad, when I had passed my exams in Ancient History!)
naj, FYI, Walter is the A2K History Forum Guide. He's our resource on history, and you'll get to appreciate his depth of knowledge as all of us have. c.i.
I'm a bit of a daydreamer myself. I have always wondered how people in that time lived when I heard the stories. And even though I have little fond memories of most of my teachers in Highschool, one positive exception has been my history teacher. His stories about the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians were awe inspiring! I can honestly state here that his class was the only one I always eagerly looked forward too!
I'm a freshman in college now, and have as of yet not been formally 'introduced' to the field of contemporary history. I'll try to keep an open mind and see what it entails, but for now I doubt it will be interesting enough to be a pick when I have to make choices at the start of the next school year.
PS. I have no knowledge about Greek either, Walter. I have a selfstudy Latin at home, which I worked a bit on during Christmas vacation, but I can still say my knowledge of that language is still virtually non-existent. So it sems you are ahead of me allready! ;-)
PPS. Cicerone, I knew. The history forum was one of the first I checked out, and I read somewhere that Walter was it's guide. From my Abuzz days I knew it was in good hands, but Setanta it seems is a history buff as well! It's going to be entertaining at least to read the interactions ... ;-)
Naj.
Naj, welcome to A2K. You're in the right place.
Joe Nation, i would like to point something out to you.
"History is written by the victors."
"History is a set of lies agreed upon."
Both of these are quotes of Napoleone Buonaparte. He was obsessed with history, and i believe this was because he cared about what would be written himself. Given that he eventually lost, history has been rather kind to him. When he was a young student at Brienne, doing his "prep" for the Ecole Militaire, he excelled in two areas--history and mathematics. After he was permanently exiled, one of his instructions for the education of his son by his Austrian wife, the "King of Rome," was that he be made to read history.
History is a very complex study--my advisor in college told me (rather pompously) that history is the study of everything. This is true in a sense, although, obviously the historian can and should rely upon the expert testimony of specialists. History is much like criminal investigation, as well. Immediate, eye-witness testimony has great value, and can also be a wrong as wrong can be. And, over time, events and circumstances come to light which were previously unknown. History as it is written today becomes more and more reliable as time goes on--one has always been obliged to look for an author's agenda, and discount it, before taking what is written as the whole truth. But the old "history is written by the victors" shibboleth just won't wash.
I've said this before on another thread, but I think it bears repeating. That history is "written by the victors" is so obvious a fact that it seems a cliche to even say it. However, what's wrong with repeating it over and over is that people draw an unsupportable corollary from this: namely, that therefore history is all from the victors' point of view. No, as Setanta rightly says, any given historian with a personal agenda may slant his facts to support his agenda. This is usually done through euphemistic language, e.g. describing the Trail of Tears as a "migration" (see above). But the facts themselves are not changed by the historian or the writer of history. He may put a particular slant on it, trying to justify even something as vicious as genocide, but, in the long run, the facts will speak for themselves.
Setanta is right. In the end, the fact that history is written by the victors is a meaningless statement.
Basically, I wonder where I was, when we had History class in grade and high school.
I loved math. Hated history.
As an adult, I now like geography
.
Can't remember history, loved math, now like biology!?!
Didn't care for any study in high school. Now love geography, history, and travel.
c.i.
I liked every high school subject.
Perhaps my favorite subject was Detention ... I sure volunteered for it a lot.
timber
Same here, and I went to a school that made me pick up trash during detention.
Always knew you were weird, Craven!
My favorite subject was recess in elementary school and Creative Skipping in high school. Why I was ever accepted by a fairly reputable university is still a deep mystery to me.
MA, You know, I felt the very same way, but I knew it was because of discrimination; my grades were so poor, their remedial classes would have been a complete failure.
c.i.
