· This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers. According to historian Arnold John, history is a progressive story that determines how the past was by attempting to understand the present and future days through the development of historiography · History is what is commonly known as facts, such as events that have happened throughout the course of time. An example of history would be that Alexander the Great ruled as king over the Macedonian Empire. A historiography of that would be everything that we know in regards to Alexander’s kingship over the Macedonian Empire · There are many examples of historiography. For example, studying the way historians all over the world recorded the discovery of America, and how and why this has changed over time, would be an Video Duration: 6 min
�� Free Essay Example - The Story of Historiography - Essay Example | blogger.com
Types of Writing Assignments, historiography essay example. Basic Considerations When Writing on History. Types of Sources. Critical Reading. Preparation and Writing. Basic Quoting Skills. Style and Editing. In a nutshell, historiography is the history of history. Rather than subjecting actual events - say, the Rape of Nanking - to historical analysis, the subject of historiography is the history of the history of the event: the way it has been written, the sometimes conflicting objectives pursued by those writing on it over time, and the way in which such factors shape our understanding of the actual event at stake, and of the nature of history itself.
A historiographic essay thus asks you to explore several sometimes contradictory sources on one event.
An annotated bibliography might come in handy as you attempt to locate such sources; you should also consult the footnotes and bibliographies of any text you read on a certain event, as they will lead you to other texts on the same event; if your research is web-based, follow links - always bearing in mind the pitfalls of the Internet - and if you are researching in the library, check out the books on nearby shelves: you'll be surprised by how often this yields sources you may otherwise never have found.
For an example of an essay on multiple perspectives on the same event for our purposes, the Rape of Nanking, an event also examined in the context of Book Reviewsclick here. The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold: 1, historiography essay example. to allow you to view an historical event or issue from multiple perspectives by engaging multiple sources; 2.
to display your mastery over those sources and over the event or issue itself; and 3. to develop your critical reading skills as you seek to answer why your sources disagree, and what their disagreement tells you about the event or issue and the very nature of history itself.
Specific skills honed by such an exercise include your ability to discern bias or prejudice and to historiography essay example contradictory data and claims. As you will have to quote from your sources in order to make your point, you will also have to display basic quoting skills.
The very nature of an essay on multiple sources also requires a Works Cited page, of course, on which, see Bibliography. You will begin a historiographic essay with a thesis that presents the issue or event at stake, then introduces your sources and articulates, in brief, their authors' perspectives and their main points of dis agreement.
As you do so, ask and answer why you think the authors of your various sources disagree. Is their disagreement a product of personal or professional rivalry, historiography essay example, ideological incompatibility, national affiliation? These questions go to the heart of historiography. In your conclusionfinally, you will briefly summarize historiography essay example findings and, more importantly, assess the credibility of your various sources, and specify which one s you find to be most compelling, and why.
In final conclusion you might articulate in brief the insights you have gained into the event or issue at stake, the sources you have used, and the nature of history itself.
Let us assume that the subject of your historiographic essay is the Rape of Nanking, historiography essay example, an event discussed in some detail in the Book Reviews section. There, we examine the event as it is described and analyzed by Iris Chang in her bestselling book The Rape of Nanking. To this we now add several other sources, all of which are listed in the Works Cited section at the end of this pagehistoriography essay example cited in the text immediately following, which exemplifies, in brief, some of the basic strategies of a historiographic essay.
The interested reader will find another brief exercise in historiographical inquiry - this one on the disputed relationship between the Catholic Historiography essay example and fascism during the s - in the Research Paper section of this site, under "Conducting Research for 'The Austrian Catholic Church and the Anschluss': Catholicism and fascism.
Home Types of Writing Assignments Historiography essay example Narrative History Response Papers Creative Approaches Annotated Bibliographies Book Reviews Historiographic Essays Research Papers. Overview Cause and Effect Chronology Establishing a Broader Context Don't s Common Fallacies.
Overview Time Management Note-Taking Tips Developing a Thesis Organization Formulating a Conclusion. Overview Drafts and Revisions Common Stylistic Errors Resources. Historiographic Essays. THESIS: The so-called Rape of Nanking ofa six-week massacre of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanking perpetrated by the invading Japanese army, was presented to a largely uninitiated American mass audience by Iris Chang in her best-selling book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Chang's vivid book spawned international interest and a number of responses historiography essay example fellow historians worldwide, historiography essay example.
Western historians generally agreed with Chang's insistence that the event - long a mere footnote in the popular historiography of World War II - deserved larger notice, but some criticized her for displaying personal bias as well as historical inaccuracies and methodological weaknesses of various sorts. The response from a number historiography essay example Japanese scholars was overwhelmingly negative.
They denied her account of a post-war Japanese "cover up," yet at the same time also, to varying degrees, denied that the event had even occurred. EXAMPLE 1 : Tanaka Masaaki, for example, author of the website "What Really Happened at Historiography essay example The Refutation of a Common Myth," refers to Chang's work as one of "lies, hyperbole, propaganda.
by the United States, Great Britian, or France. ANALYSIS: Much of Masaaki's criticism smacks of precisely the kind of revisionism Chang critiques in her book, and is easily exposed as such. The fact that Chinese communist party records make no mention of the event, for example, is hardly surprising, as the Chinese communists were at this time in disarray, historiography essay example, operating largely underground in the Nanking area.
Not until did the communists begin their rule over China and begin keeping official records: why then should we expect there to exist records dating back to ? Nor should the silence of the League of Nations, the United States, Great Britain and France come as any surprise, historiography essay example.
In the same year that France and Britain stood by as Nazi Germany re-militarized the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles; and that the United States and the League of Nation stood by as Franco and Mussolini continued in their campaigns against the rightful governments of Spain and Ethiopia, why would we expect the United States or the League of Nations to have registered any protest over events halfway around the world?
EXAMPLE 2 : Other arguments by Masaaki are more compelling. For example, he notes of one of the many disturbing photographs in Chang's book - a famous one, apparently showing a Chinese prisoner of war about to be beheaded by a Japanese historiography essay example brandishing a sword - that its "fakery is easy to detect if you look at the shadow cast by the man at the center [the officer] and that cast by [a lower-ranking] soldier to his right. The photograph does indeed seem to be a composite, and while stopping short of supporting Masaaki's claim that "not a single one of [Chang's photographs] bears witness to a 'Nanking Massacre'," even American historian Robert Entenmann concedes that several of the photos in Chang's book are indeed "fakes, forgeries and composites," including one also singled out by Masaaki "of a row of severed heads," which, according to Entenmann, historiography essay example, in fact depicts "bandits executed by Chinese police in rather than victims of the Nanking Massacre" Masaaki, Entenmann.
COUNTER-ARGUMENT: Faked though some of Chang's twelve pages of photos might be - perhaps even all of them, as Masaaki suggests - the fact that there exist literally hundreds of photographs of the Nanking Massacre, many of them "souvenir photos" taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, strains the credibility of his larger point and even more so the point made by his stridently anti-Chang colleagues Takemoto Tadao and Ohara Yasuo.
In their The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claimsthese writers state that "none of these photos are dated, and the names of places and photographers are not stated. In other words, there exist [no] photos that are rigidly authentic, and definitely, these photos can not be used as evidence of [the] 'Nanking Massacre'" Tadao and Yasuo In fact, several hundred photographs have been published in one volume - The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs historiography essay example, by Shi Young and James Yin, many of them showing female rape victims with legs spread and genitalia exposed - graphic photographs it is hard to conceive of as historiography essay example. Such pictures, while not settling the matter beyond historiography essay example, offer powerful testimony that speaks for itself.
EXAMPLE 3 : Notwithstanding the many graphic photographs that exist, it is precisely the accusation of widespread rape - most likely because of its abhorrent nature - that Chang's Japanese critics wish to deny. daily [during the six week period of the Massacre]. This number is absolutely not trustworthy," they conclude, citing instead the number of only official complaints of rape actually registered during this period Of course, they are parsing numbers here.
The fact is, whether there were three hundred rapes, thirty thousand, historiography essay example, more, or less, rape perpetrated by an occupying force against a civilian population and that such was the case is amply documented in Chang and virtually all extant historiography essay example on Nanking, including the Japanese sources, although they, of course, acknowledge only is a crime of war.
But that it is an individual crime of war, rather than a collective, government-sponsored crime against humanity such as the Holocaust is precisely the point for the Japanese historians: "[Holocaust] killings were indeed Those acts of crimes [were] the responsibility of each individual soldier" Following this line of reasoning, the Japanese government is absolved of any blame for the rapes that did occur in Nanking, historiography essay example, the exact number of which remains unknown.
On this issue, see Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims. EXAMPLE 4 : More trenchant criticism of Chang than that offered by Japanese historians comes from the American academy.
Robert Entenmann, historiography essay example, for example, a China expert and senior faculty member in the History department at St.
Olaf College, faults Chang on the very premise of her book. On this last count, it is worth noting that the specific wording of the question does not appear to address Nanking explicitly, and that the opinion poll's finding thus bears little relevance to the question at hand. We might also be skeptical of Entenmann's generous appraisal of Japanese textbooks: on its role in World War II, Historiography essay example high school textbooks in particular are subject to constant revision, much of it aimed at mitigating the government's role in wartime atrocities, as a New York Times article reminds us Onishi EXAMPLE 5 : Entenmann's more fundamental criticism of Chang's work and perspective, however, goes deeper.
As the granddaughter of former Nanking residents who barely escaped the city, historiography essay example, she is guilty, historiography essay example, he writes, of having fallen victim to "her own ethnic prejudice.
Her explanations are, to a large extent, based on unexamined [anti-Japanese] ethnic stereotypes. In fact, Entenmann points out, Hirohito's response is unknown, and Chang may be guilty here of "confus[ing] Japanese leaders' delight in the fall of historiography essay example Chinese capital with exulting in the massacre that occurred afterward" Entenmann, historiography essay example. ANALYSIS: Such sleights of hand which Entenmann himself indulges in, as his opinion poll example above shows are perhaps conscious on Chang's part, or perhaps a function of her not being a professional historian and therefore applying a less-than-rigorous methodology in her efforts to tell a good story, historiography essay example.
She is after all, a popular rather than an academic historian, historiography essay example, whom another bestselling historian, Stephen Ambrose, whose scholarship has historiography essay example been faulted on several counts, once called "the best young historian we've got because she understands that to communicate history, you've got to tell the story in an interesting way" Ambrose qtd, historiography essay example.
in Sullivan B6. In an effort to place the Rape of Nanking into historical context, for example, she states that "[u]sing numbers killed alone" it "surpasses much of the worst barbarism of the ages. and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" Chang 6.
In The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiographyan anthology generally sympathetic to Chang's project if not to her methodologyGeorge Washington University history and international affairs professor Daqing Yang, himself a native historiography essay example Nanking, notes that "such a comparison [as Chang's] is methodologically sterile" and "morally misguided" Yang Indeed, it is precisely the sort of parsing of numbers for which Chang herself would most likely challenge the above-mentioned Japanese historians in their effort to deny the extent to which rape occurred at Nanking.
Despite these failings, Chang's book ultimately emerges as a more persuasive argument of what did in fact happen at Nanking than those offered by her Japanese detractors. The enduring controversy surrounding the event, however, and the specific criticism against Chang from even those who support her premise, point both to the endlessly debatable nature of history, and to the need for a more rigorous, analytical approach in its telling. As Joshua Fogel notes in his introduction to The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography"The Massacre and related events must be lifted beyond the popular level to be studied with greater nuance and with a wider range of sources" Fogel 1.
In such a project, the contradictory data and claims of Chang and her critics need not necessarily be mutually exclusive but, instead, might help establish a broader context within which the event can be understood more fully, from all sides.
Works cited Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II New York: BasicBooks, Entenmann, Robert. H-Net List for Asian History and Culture Accessed July 1, Yang, Daqin. Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press,- Masaaki, Tanaka.
Onishi, Norimitsu. Sullivan, historiography essay example, Patricia. Washington PostNovember 12,B6. Takemoto, Tadao and Ohara Yasuo. The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claims.
Tokyo: Meisei-sha, Inc.
What is Historiography? - Historian Essentials - Casual Historian
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· There are many examples of historiography. For example, studying the way historians all over the world recorded the discovery of America, and how and why this has changed over time, would be an Video Duration: 6 min · However, the presentation of the material is not dry but rather includes rich commentary and even opinion that is solidly based on source evidence. For example, the author reflects on the personality and character of some of the Ming emperors and eunuch dictators, using strong adjectives that reflect the views of their contemporaries · This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers. According to historian Arnold John, history is a progressive story that determines how the past was by attempting to understand the present and future days through the development of historiography
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